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CHENGDU, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- Chengdu, capital of southwest China's Sichuan Province, will extend its visa-free period for foreigners transiting through the city from 72 hours to 144 next year, local authorities said Saturday.

People of 53 listed nationalities with valid travel documents and onward travel booked for within 144 hours are eligible for the visa-free policy, which will become available from January 1, 2019.

The new arrangement is an extension and optimization of the current 72-hour visa-free transit policy, according to the exit and entry administration of the Sichuan provincial public security bureau.

Besides Chengdu, Fujian Province's coastal city of Xiamen, Shandong Province's coastal city of Qingdao, Hubei Province's capital city of Wuhan, and Yunnan Province's capital city of Kunming will also implement the policy on New Year's Day.

Shanghai, Zhejiang, Jiangsu and the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region have been offering the visa-free service, allowing transit passengers to stay up to six days in total.
BEIJING, Nov. 23 -- China supports necessary reforms of the World Trade Organization (WTO), raising three fundamental principles and five proposals concerning such improvements, the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) said Friday.

The multilateral trading system is now challenged by unilateralism and trade protectionism, Wang Shouwen, vice minister of commerce, told a press conference.

Wang said the WTO is threatened by three factors: the dispute settlement regime is at risk of paralysis by obstruction from certain members and as the vacancy of its appellate body members cannot be filled; certain members raising tariffs by abusing the security exception clause; and some members taking unilateral approaches in disregard of the WTO's multilateral rules.

"China supports necessary reforms of the WTO to strengthen its authority and effectiveness," he said.

WTO reforms should follow three fundamental principles: the reform should uphold the organization's core values of non-discrimination and opening, protect development interests of developing members and address their difficulties in integrating into economic globalization, and follow the mechanism of decision-making by consensus, Wang said.

Rules should be jointly made by the international community, rather than a minority of members, and cliques or factions should not be formed, he said.

WTO reforms should uphold the main channel status of the multilateral trading system, prioritize addressing issues that threaten the existence of the organization, make trade rules fairer and in line with the needs of the times, ensure special and differentiated treatment for developing members, and respect the development model of each member, he said.

China opposes any individual member's actions in undermining and denying the authority of the multilateral trading system, Wang said, warning that the basic rules of the system are threatened by acts of unilateralism.

"Reforms should resolve the issues as soon as possible so as to ensure the normal functioning of the WTO," he said.

Wang said reforms should rectify the long-term severe distortion of international trading of farm products caused by the excessive agricultural subsidies from developed members.

China is willing to shoulder duties commensurate with its development level and capacities, and will not allow other members to strip its special and differentiated treatment as a developing country, Wang said.

China is against the practice of listing the development model issue as part of WTO reforms and opposes introducing groundless accusations into the reform agenda, Wang said.
(Photo/cyol.com)

About 30 politicians, experts and scholars from China and European countries gathered at Madrid, Spain on Nov. 22 for the China-Europe Forum on Reform and Globalization.

They conducted in-depth discussion and reviewed the process of China's reform and opening up, exchanging views on China-Europe partnership, Sino-Spanish relations, trade facilitation and investment liberalization, and building an open global economy.

Bernard Dewit, chairman of the Belgian-Chinese Economic and Commercial Council (BCECC), said China's reform and opening-up success attracted much attention and its steady development was a great contribution to the world. China had become an important force for global economic recovery especially after the 2008 economic crisis, he pointed out.

Dewit, who was in Shanghai earlier this month for the first China International Import Expo (CIIE), said he was impressed by China's opening-up.

"Nowadays, more European enterprises are looking for business opportunities in China. The country, by expanding openness, improving business environment, and treating both European and domestic companies equally , will bring more opportunities for Europe," Dewit said.

In the next 15 years, China will further open up its market. The country is expected to import $24 trillion worth of goods, attract $2 trillion foreign direct investment and invest a total of $2 trillion overseas.

In the period, the number of Chinese outbound tourists will hit 2 billion.

China's expanding opening-up will create new opportunities to enhance China-Europe trade and economic cooperation on a wider scope and at a higher level.

Miguel Jimenez, editor-in-chief of Spanish financial newspaper Cinco Diassaid China had made breathtaking economic achievements over the past 40 years of reform and opening up, and its innovation capabilities for technologies had been improved markedly.

The Chinese government always laid importance on innovation and increases input in science and technology, which was worth learning for other countries, he added.

Chinese economist Liu Shijin told People's Daily that the high-quality economic development of China would upgrade China-Europe cooperation, broaden the range of cooperation and create new grounds for growth.

Former Spanish ambassador to China Eugenio Bregolat Obiols expressed that both Europe and China were beneficiaries of economic globalization and free trade, as well as the protectors of rule-based multilateral trading system opposing unilateralism and protectionism.

The European Union (EU) remains China's largest trade partner for 14 years in a row, and China is the second largest trade partner of the EU.

Javier Solana, former Spanish minister of foreign affairs and former secretary general of the Center for Global Economy and Geopolitics at ESADE, said China's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) marked an important case of active integration into globalization, and the EU was a firm supporter of international trading rules.

Noting that the current world was faced with uncertainties, Solana suggested the EU and China be firmly committed to building an open world economy, promote trade facilitation and investment liberalization, resist protectionism and unilateralism, and push globalization toward a more open, balanced, inclusive and reciprocal direction.

The Eurasia is a key region for Belt and Road construction. So far, China has signed intergovernmental agreements on Belt and Road with 11 EU members. China-Europe freight trains have made more than 10,000 trips, reaching 43 cities in 15 European countries.

Lv Fan, Chinese ambassador to Spain, said the volume of Spain's exports to China's Yiwu through the China-Europe freight trains surged to $10.1 million in 2017 from less than $1.6 million in 2014.

China and Europe were respectively located in the eastern and western ends of the route of Belt and Road. The two countries could collaborate in more areas, expand channels of cooperation, explore new modes for economic growth, cooperation, governance and development, so as to share the dividends brought by interconnectivity of the Eurasia, said the ambassador.
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Air raids hit rebel areas west of Syria's Aleppo: monitor



Beirut, Nov 25 (AFP) Nov 25, 2018



Air strikes hit the edges of Syria's last major rebel stronghold west of Aleppo on Sunday, a monitor said, a day after an alleged toxic attack on the regime-held city.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said regime ally Russia "likely" carried out the air strikes on a planned buffer zone around the opposition bastion of Idlib.

They were the first to hit the area since Moscow and rebel backer Ankara agreed to set up the demilitarised area around Idlib in September to prevent a massive regime attack to retake the area.

The attack came after Russia seemed to accuse Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an alliance led by Syria's former Al-Qaeda affiliate, of carrying out Saturday's chemical attack on Aleppo city.

Russian defence ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said "terrorist groups" in an area of buffer zone held by HTS fired shells filled with chlorine on a residential area of the city.

The Observatory said the attack left around 100 struggling to breathe, though more than half had been discharged by Sunday morning.

Syria's state news agency SANA reported "107 cases of breathing difficulties".

A rebel alliance denied any involvement, but HTS did not immediately issue a statement.

The September 17 deal was intended to protect three million inhabitants in the Idlib region, more than half of which is held by HTS.

But its implementation has stalled after jihadists including HTS failed to withdraw from the planned buffer zone by a mid-October deadline.

Syria's regime has insisted that the buffer zone deal is temporary and that Idlib will eventually revert to government control.

Syria's war has killed more than 360,000 people since it erupted in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests.
Iraq floods leave 21 dead in two days: health ministry



Baghdad, Nov 25 (AFP) Nov 25, 2018



At least 21 people have died and tens of thousands displaced by heavy rains that have battered Iraq over two days, the health ministry and United Nations said on Sunday.

Women and children were among the dead, health ministry spokesman Seif al-Badr told AFP. Some had drowned, but others had died in car accidents, were electrocuted, or were trapped when their houses collapsed.

At least 180 more were injured, he added.

Iraq and neighbouring countries have been hit by heavier-than-average rainfall in recent weeks, resulting in deaths and widespread damage.

The country's north has borne the brunt of it, and the UN's Iraq office said the downpour had forced tens of thousands of people out of their homes.

An estimated 10,000 people in Salahaddin province and 15,000 people in Nineveh are in desperate need of help, including families living in displacement camps, the UN said.

In the Al-Sharqat district in Salahaddin, about 250 kilometres (150 miles) north of Baghdad, thousands of homes were left totally underwater by the rains.

And in Mosul, the Islamic State group's onetime bastion in Iraq, the heavy storms submerged two floating bridges along the Tigris river, which bisects the city.

They were the only way to move between Mosul's eastern and western halves, after its bridges were all bombed by the anti-IS fight.

Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi announced Friday he was establishing a "crisis cell" of security forces and local authorities to coordinate a response.

The ministries of electricity, oil, and trade had also indicated their willingness to help.

Iraq is one of the hottest countries on earth but when heavy rains do hit, they can result in casualties because of deteriorating public infrastructure.

In 2015, 58 Iraqis were killed in floods and cases of electrocution due to intense downpours.
Trump ups pressure on Macron as weighs in on French demos



Washington, Nov 25 (AFP) Nov 25, 2018



Donald Trump piled pressure on Emmanuel Macron Sunday, pushing for resolutions to disputes on trade and defense spending, as he weighed in on the mass protests against his French counterpart's government.

Writing on Twitter, Trump showed he had been keeping an eye on Saturday's demonstrations across France and refrained from showing sympathy for the beleaguered Macron, whose once cozy ties with the US president have chilled.

"The large and violent French protests don't take into account how badly the United States has been treated on Trade by the European Union or on fair and reasonable payments for our GREAT military protection," said Trump.

"Both of these topics must be remedied soon."

Around 130 people were arrested in France on Saturday during the nationwide protests, while 24 people were injured, five of them police officers.

The protesters -- dubbed "yellow vests" for the high-visibility jackets that are widely worn at the demonstrations -- are drawn mainly from rural areas and have vented their fury at policies they see as being pushed through by a Parisian elite deaf to their concerns.

Some of their arguments carry echoes of Trump's rallying call to "Make America Great Again" and his denunciation of "The Swamp" in Washington, including the anger that they voice at globalization.

Trump's once-close relations with Macron have been strained in recent weeks, with the US president criticizing his French counterpart on everything from his touting of a European army to his continued backing for a nuclear deal with Iran that the US has already ditched.

Trump has frequently criticized other NATO countries, including France, over their levels of defense spending and says the European Union has treated the US "very unfairly" on a range of trade issues.
Syria regime accuses armed groups of 'toxic gas' attack



Damascus, Nov 25 (AFP) Nov 25, 2018



Syria's regime has accused armed groups of carrying out a "toxic gas" attack that left dozens of people struggling to breathe and prompted government ally Russia to launch retaliatory air strikes on Sunday.

Around 100 Syrians were hospitalised with breathing difficulties after the alleged chemical attack in the regime-held city of Aleppo on Saturday, state media and a monitor said.

Russia accused "terrorist groups" of being behind the alleged chlorine attack, and carried out the first air raids in months on the outskirts of a major rebel bastion west of the city.

It was the latest accusation of a chemical attack in Syria's grinding seven-year civil war, which has killed more than 360,000 people and displaced millions.

State news agency SANA reported "107 cases of breathing difficulties", after what health official Ziad Hajj Taha said was a "probable" chlorine attack on Aleppo city.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor, said a total of 94 people were hospitalised after "the smell of chlorine" was reported in the city, but most were discharged.

On Saturday, an AFP photographer saw dozens of civilians, including women and children, stream into an Aleppo hospital, some on stretchers or carried in by their relatives.

The injured seemed to be dizzy and breathing with difficulty.

Staff gave them oxygen masks, through which they breathed for 15-minute sessions, either sitting or lying down.



- Rebel denial -



The regime controls Aleppo city, but rebels and jihadists are present to the west in the country's last major opposition bastion of Idlib.

On Sunday, Russian air raids hit a planned buffer zone on the edges of that stronghold, the Observatory and Moscow said.

They were the first air strikes to hit the expected demilitarised area since a September deal between Moscow and rebel backer Ankara to protect Idlib from a massive regime assault.

On Sunday, Moscow said "terrorist groups" based in that buffer zone carried out the alleged toxic attack in Aleppo.

Russian defence ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said they fired shells filled with chlorine on a residential area of Aleppo.

He said the shelling came from an area of the buffer zone controlled by the jihadist-dominated Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) alliance.

Syrian state media accused "terrorists" of carrying out a "toxic gas" attack on Aleppo, using a term it uses to mean both rebels and jihadists.

A rebel coalition on Sunday denied any involvement.

"We at the National Liberation Front deny the criminal, lying regime's allegations that revolutionaries targeted the city of Aleppo with any missiles and especially not any containing chlorine gas," it said.

Neither HTS, nor the Al-Qaeda-linked Hurras al-Deen group present in the area, have commented on the alleged attack.



- 'Pretext' -



The Russia-Turkey buffer zone deal on September 17 intended to prevent a major regime attack on Idlib, which is home to some three million people.

But its implementation has stalled after jihadists refused to withdraw from the planned demilitarised zone on time, and sporadic shelling and clashes have rocked the area.

On Sunday, Turkey's defence minister and his Russian counterpart spoke on the phone about the "latest provocations" in the Idlib region, Ankara reported, without providing more details.

Syria's regime has insisted that the buffer zone deal is temporary and that Idlib will eventually revert to government control.

After the alleged toxic attack, Nasr al-Hariri, who heads Syria's mainstream opposition, accused Damascus of seeking a "pretext to launch a military offensive in northern Syria".

Over the course of Syria's war, international human rights groups have repeatedly accused the regime of carrying out chemical attacks.

Last year and in April, the allegations caused the United States to carry out punitive strikes in Syria.

A joint commission of the United Nations and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has also accused the Islamic State group of using toxic weapons.

The Damascus regime on Sunday called on the UN Security Council to denounce the attack.

"The Syrian government demands the UN Security Council immediately and harshly condemn these terrorist crimes," the foreign ministry said.

Syria's war has evolved into a complex conflict including world powers and jihadists, since starting in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests.
Air raids target rebel supply lines as deadly clashes hit Yemen's Hodeida



Dubai, Nov 25 (AFP) Nov 25, 2018



A Saudi-led military coalition resumed air strikes against rebel supply lines around Hodeida on Sunday, two days after a UN envoy visited the lifeline Yemeni port city, pro-government military officials said.

The raids came as firefights on the eastern and southern edges of the rebel-held city killed 26 insurgents in the past 24 hours, the officials and doctors in two different hospitals said.

Five pro-government fighters were killed in the clashes with the Iran-aligned rebels and by landmines, the officials told AFP.

The air strikes targeted convoys of rebel reinforcements at the northern entrance to Hodeida and south of the city, they said.

The renewed violence came after UN envoy Martin Griffiths visited Hodeida on Friday to assess the humanitarian situation ahead of peace talks planned for December between Yemen's coalition-backed government and the rebels.

Rebel spokesman Mohammed Abdessalam said on Twitter there had been "35 air raids over the last 12 hours on Hodeida, accompanied by artillery bombardments".

"This escalation destroys the efforts of the UN envoy", he said.

Under heavy international pressure, the Yemeni government and the coalition had until Sunday largely suspended a five-month offensive against the port city.

Fighting had intensified in early November as Yemeni forces backed by the coalition attempted to enter Hodeida, but calm returned after Griffiths arrived in Yemen on Wednesday.

After visiting Hodeida on Friday, Griffiths on Saturday met Mohammed Ali al-Huthi, head of the rebels' Higher Revolutionary Committee, in the insurgent-held capital Sanaa.

The rebel leader on Sunday described the renewed air raids and other hostilities in Hodeida as "an insult" to the UN envoy.

Griffiths is due to hold talks with Yemen's internationally recognised government in the Saudi capital Riyadh on Monday, according to a UN source.

UN agencies say up to 14 million Yemenis are at risk of starvation if fighting closes the city's port, from which nearly all imports and humanitarian aid pass.

According to UN figures, nearly 10,000 people have been killed since the coalition joined the conflict in 2015 to reinforce the government, triggering what the UN calls the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

Rights groups fear the actual toll is far higher.
Founded in April 2008, Tmall is committed to offering a premium online shopping experience for a growing number of Chinese consumers. It has now become the largest e-commerce platform for brands flagship stores and retailers in China.

China is leading the way in the process of global digitalization, said Georges Kern, CEO of Breitling. As a premium Swiss watch brand, Breitling recognizes the importance of accelerating the pace of digital activation here in China, taking this as a development priority of our brand and becoming a leader in this field in the watchmaking industry.

 Breitling

Breitling also joined forces with the platforms luxury channel  Luxury Pavilion  on the same day. Luxury Pavilion is the worlds first exclusive platform for luxury brands, which combines a customization experience with the targeted display of luxury products to offer consumers more assurance and convenience when they shop online. It also encourages the introduction of a new model for the online purchase of luxury watches.

Breitlings new Premier collection was officially launched in China on November 20, 2018. This is the first modern Breitling collection dedicated to everyday elegance, said Breitling CEO Georges Kern about the role the Premier watches play in the brands product portfolio. The new Breitling Premier watch collection is now available at the brands flagship store on Tmall.

Breitling has never slowed down on its journey of innovation. Whether in terms of watchmaking or with its new partnership with Alibaba, Breitling has always maintained a close connection to Chinese consumers, making a continuous effort to achieve brilliant out-comes and bringing to life the brands spirit of innovation.
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While some may think that saving a butterfly species in Latin America or elephants in southwest Africa is the concern of a few environmentalists only, the UNs biodiversity chief says the rapid pace at which we are losing species of all kinds is gravely threatening human existence on earth.

Cristiana Pasca Palmer, the executive secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, says people are not aware of the danger the alarming decline in the variety of animal and plant life in the world can pose to their lives.

It is not something about other animals or plants, Pasca Palmer told Ahram Online. By losing species, we lose the relation that exist between all these forms of life which allow us to derive all the services and functions from nature, and which allow humans to exist and function.

Pasca Palmer is in Egypt to discuss the decline in ecosystems and thrash out ways to safeguard global biodiversity, which is vital for food, clean water and carbon sequestration.

Members of the UNs Convention on Biological Diversity are meeting in Egypt's seaside resort city of Sharm El-Sheikh to make a final push for ambitious global targets by 2020 and draw up a new global framework to combat nature loss.

For a country like Egypt, where most of the population lives in a small fertile stretch of land along the Nile, over a third of the countrys labour force works in agriculture, and where the tourism sector depends on natural resources, any imbalance in nature can affect everybodys economic and social well-being.

Egypts latest national report to the Convention of Biological Diversity says biodiversity in the country is declining at the level of ecosystems, species and populations due to a myriad of manmade factors including pollution, habitat loss and fragmentation, overexploitation and unsustainable use of natural resources, and climate change.

Biodiversity [loss] is a silent killer. It is not doing anything to us today or tomorrow but it is affecting the composition of the whole infrastructure that supports life on earth, argues Pasca Palmer.

Food, water, clean air, everything is a product of a healthy functioning planet and the planet cannot function without these forms of life in it.

Globally, species populations of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians have declined by 60 percent in just over four decades due to a variety of human activities including pollution, deforestation, climate change, according to a report by the World Wildlife Fund released last month.

In Africa, more than half of bird and mammal species could be lost to climate change by 2100, a study by the intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) said.

We have a curve of biodiversity loss that is very steep; if by 2030 we dont manage to reverse it and then start stabilising the loss of nature, we could have a very serious problem in the next few decades, says Pasca Palmer.

"The more we are losing the variety of forms of life, the more climate change intensifies, and the full planet as a system can enter into what they ecologists call a cascading effect where we can see very severe destruction.

Changing the narrative

Delegates from across the world are gathering in Sharm El-Sheikh until the end of the month to ramp up global actions and accelerate initiatives to protect nature and halt the loss in biodiversity.

While the subject still receives little attention, Pasca Palmer urges a "change of narrative" directed at ordinary people and decision-makers alike, with the message that biodiversity is not just about the environment, but rather a development and investment issue.

If you are in an agriculture business, your agriculture productivity depends on good healthy soils, good healthy seeds and on the bees and insects that do the pollination. If you lose that, you lose your business and it has an economic impact on you, she said.

Agricultural cropland habitats in Egypt have been declining over the past three decades due to changes in land use and agricultural practices, the countrys UN report says. Urban growth and loss of agricultural land is a major threat, with some 47,700 feddans estimated to be lost every year.

One major problem leading to rapid biodiversity loss are business models that put money into projects that harm nature, Pasca Palmer said.

For this reason, countries are calling for more engagement of businesses in preserving biodiversity as they convene in Egypt.

Business can play a huge role. It is through their footprint and supply chain that nature can be destroyed, or measures that they take that can buffer the impact," Pasca Palmer explains.

The biodiversity crisis cannot be halted by environmentalists working in isolation with like-minded people, Pasca Palmer believes. Egypt and other countries need to reach out to actors outside the environmental community, including youth, women groups, indigenous people and local and traditional communities, so ordinary people can understand how the issue affects them too.

She emphasises the need for a cross-sectoral approach by governments to promote a change in policymaking and ensure that economic investments are not going to harm birds, animals or plants, or damage the land.

"We need all of them [concerned government members] to come on the table to discuss if they need to build a highway through a habitat for birds: is that a good idea or a bad idea? What are the risks? And what is going to cost us in the long run?" she says.

Egypt is chairing the Convention for two years, until Beijing takes the helm in 2020, and Pasca Palmer says Egyptian ministers have shown great attention to the matter, making her hopeful for a marked change in policymaking in the country.

The solution is not to go on the path we are now, Pasca Palmer says.

Despite the alarming reports and assessment, she believes that when the right solution is found at the right time, nature will recover.

Several species in Africa, including rhinos in Namibia and elephants in Botswana, have recovered from the edge of extinction as a result of governments empowering local communities of villagers to get involved in the conservation process, she said.

"I really hope we will all be bold and courageous and take decisions that will put us on a different trajectory," she says.

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LI YIWEN

Li never truly left the prison camp. He returns to it regularly in his sleep. Two dreams in particular keep coming back.

In the first one, Li Yiwen is squatting on the floor. In his left hand, he holds a bowl of rice, in his right, a pair of chopsticks. His eyes are locked on the floor as a guard stands behind him counting down from 10. Once he reaches zero, he'll tear the food out of Li's hands.

Li inhales as much hot rice as he possibly can. He can feel his esophagus burning, but he keeps shoveling.

A foggy reservoir is nestled between rice terraces and bamboo forests in the hills of central China, not far from Chongqing, one of the world's largest metropolises. This is where Li's hometown was once located. During their relocation, he and 52 of his neighbors felt they had been treated unfairly. When they objected to their local government, they were thrown into a prison camp.

Forty-one-years old, Li was himself once an employee of the state - a patriot, even. But then he was forced to leave the land of his ancestors, and all the illusions about China he had spent a lifetime cultivating collapsed instantly.

Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, an estimated 50 million people have been interned in prison camps, making it the largest system of forced labor, torture and brainwashing the world has ever known. At the height of the system, more than 1,000 facilities were alleged to have stretched across the entire country.

In November 2013, almost exactly five years ago, China's Communist Party officially abandoned the sinister sites. But in truth many of the old facilities still exist, often under a new name. It is believed that up to 1 million people are currently being interned in prison camps in the Chinese province of Xinjiang.

The facilities have one goal in particular: to break the will of the people who dare to imperil the almighty power of the state. In addition to criminals and drug addicts, dissidents of all stripes are also locked away in Chinese prison camps.

These include members of oppressed minorities like Tibetans and Uighurs, members of the Falun Gong school of meditation, members of underground Christian churches, civil rights advocates and activists. And then there are the simple citizens who stand up for themselves in the face of injustice.

This is the story of three of those people.

Li Yiwen, Xie Sunming and Sun Jongdae were imprisoned concurrently between 2009 and 2010 in the Xishanping prison camp, a so-called laojiao suo. Until recently, that was the name for the around 350 prison camps into which a person could suddenly be remanded - without trial and without a legally binding verdict. According to human rights organizations, the conditions in the laojiao were very similar to those in Xinjiang's prison camps.

We have been in regular contact with Li, Xie and Sun over the past six years, via text messages, telephone, Skype and multiple face-to-face conversations. Through them, we have tried to learn as much as possible about the conditions in Chinese prison camps and to observe what imprisonment does to people. How have their personalities changed? How have their families come to terms with everything that happened?

Each of our three main witnesses collected comprehensive documents about their time spent in the prison camp, allowing us to corroborate their statements with thousands of photos, documents and videos. In order to get as objective an impression as possible, we also interviewed the ex-prisoners' family members and friends in addition to personally visiting most of the places described in this story - including the Xishanping prison camp.

Many of the people in this story insisted that their real names be published. It was their explicit wish that their story be made public, even though such a thing can carry a strict penalty in China. Those who wanted to remain anonymous have an asterisk after their name. In order to protect their identity, we have altered some of their personal details. The management of Xishanping was approached for comment but never replied.
Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi launched on Sunday a new initiative to develop digital technology in Egypt and Africa.

In his speech at the inauguration of the 22nd round of the Cairo International Exhibition and Conference on Telecommunication and Information Technology (ICT 2018), El-Sisi announced the launch of the initiative Egypt, Africa, which aims to train more than 10,000 Egyptian and African youth" in digital technology.

El-Sisi added that the initiative will also work on "encouraging the establishing of more than 100 companies in the field of digital applications."

The exhibition is being held at Egypts International Exhibitions Center under the slogan Driving Transformation, and it will run until 28 November.

The event was attended by Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouli, Minister of Communications and Information Technology Amr Talaat, as well as a number of other ministers and senior state officials.

This years edition is focusing on the issue of digital transformation in light of the governments plans to mechanise all public services.

Towards a digital society

The Egyptian president also highlighted that Egypt has given priority to the ICT sector through developing and modernising the telecommunications infrastructure, establishing smart cities, enabling citizens to use digital services as well as spreading awareness about digital transformation.

El-Sisi explained that this will all be implemented through the localisation of technology in different governorates of Egypt.

"What we are witnessing today is a unique effort, creative thinking and projects that are being implemented through cooperation and coordination between various ministries, this reinforces the confidence that we are on the right path towards a digital society," El-Sisi said.

The president added that the aim of a digital society is to provide equal opportunities for citizens to participate in the development process, and to provide innovative digital services that improve operational efficiency, increase productivity and improve the standards of living.

The Egyptian president also spoke about the National Academy of Information Technology for Citizens with Disabilities, which will be launched in accordance with the latest quality standards and training.

El-Sisi highlighted that the academy will stand as a tribute to the state's efforts to empower citizens with special needs by using ICT to support them and provide them with more opportunities to participate and play an active role in society.

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Five people drowned and 18 others were rescued when their ferry sank as it crossed the River Nile in Egypts Nile Delta, according to health ministry official Alaa Othman.

The ferry sank due to heavy winds, Othman said.

The boat was carrying passengers from Balshmay village in the governorate of Menoufiya to Koum Sherik in Beheira governorate.

Nine ambulances headed to the scene as well as security officials and the governor of Menoufiya.

Othman said that all those killed were Menoufiya residents, and that their bodies have been taken to nearby hospitals in their governorate.

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Egypt's Court of Cassation upheld on Sunday death sentences against nine defendants convicted of involvement in the assassination of prosecutor-general Hisham Barakat in 2015.

Six other defendants in the case had their sentences commuted from death to life in prison.

The court also reduced the sentences of four other defendants from life in prison to 15 years, and one defendants sentence was reduced from life in prison to three years.

The court also reduced one defendants sentence from life in prison to one year for the illegal possession of firearms, and he was acquitted of all other charges.

The court also acquitted five defendants that had originally been sentenced to 10 years in prison.

In July 2017, a Cairo criminal court sentenced 28 defendants to death for assassinating prosecutor-general Barakat. The court also sentenced 15 defendants to life in prison sentence, eight defendants to 15 years, and 15 defendants to 10 years.

The defendants were charged with murder, conspiracy to commit murder, the possession of unlicensed firearms and ammunition, and the possession of explosives devices.

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A parliamentary committee said measures should be taken to combat early marriage as a way to curb population growth. Gamal Essam El-Din reports

In a meeting held on Sunday, the Egyptian parliament's defence and national security committee recommended that strict measures be taken on all state levels to stem the runaway population growth in Egypt.

"The population of Egypt is increasing at a fast pace, and all measures should be taken to contain this phenomenon in order for the country to be able to face economic challenges in the years ahead," said the head of the committee Kamal Amer.

According to official figures, Egypt's population stands at almost 100 million, and that the population is increasing by 2.5 million every year.

Amer said the committee is being mobilised to support the state's strategy in birth control and family planning.

"We have so far held six meetings, and today we had another one to propose strict measures that aim to defuse the population bomb in Egypt," said Amer.

"Media campaigns aimed at raising the awareness of citizens of the dangers of the country's population explosion have no longer become sufficient, and now it is high time for strict measures to be taken to contain this phenomenon.

"Topping the list of these measures is that early marriage, particularly in rural areas, should be criminalised, and that Mazouns (persons officially authorised to conduct the marriage contract) who supervise this marriage should be penalised."

"We told the government that in addition to these strict measures, girls below 18 years in age should not be allowed to marry," Amer said.

"At the same time MPs also recommend a package of positive incentives to be offered to families to help them accept birth control services voluntarily."

"We proposed that medical health clinics in all of Egypt offer women different options for birth control to plan the timing of pregnancy and have just two kids," said Amer, adding that "these options include birth control pills and other methods."

"We recommended that families who have one child should be granted greater incentives such as exemptions from school fees and obtaining life insurance for free."

"Families who refuse to follow birth control measures should not be allowed to receive any kind of cash or in-kind subsidies," Amer added.

Egypt's Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly announced on 22 November that "the government has decided not to give any kind of monetary subsidies to families with three children."

"Those who will be entitled to receive such subsidies will be the families with only two kids," said Madbouly, adding that "it is unfair that big families who refuse to abide by birth control measures receive subsidies."

"We will target these families, and all should know that the runaway growth of population is a big threat to the economic development in this country."

Amer said that "the committee stressed that the government should seek the help of religious clerics, both Muslim and Christian, to promote birth control measures in all governorates and stand up to the population problem."

"Religious clerics should tell people that the government is not aiming to prevent birth, but just to achieve family planning in order for the country to be able to raise economic growth development rates," said Amer.

He added that MPs recommended that the ministries of education and higher education play a greater role in implementing the new birth control strategy.

"We want education curriculums to include lessons on birth control, the benefits of small families, and the dangers of early marriage on health," said Amer.

Amer said the Takaful and Karama programme being implemented by Ministry of Social Solidarity is doing a good job in spreading the culture of birth control.

"This programme is based on the slogan Two Kids is Enough, and offers many incentives for women and families in the Nile Delta and Upper Egypt governorates to feel the benefits of birth control."

Meanwhile, parliament's health affairs committee voted in a Sunday meeting in favour of a grant agreement between Egypt and the US on birth control programmes.

According to the first amendment of the agreement, Egypt will receive an assistance grant from the US government valued at $11 million.

The agreement aims to support Egypt's current birth control programme to make it more efficient and permanent.

"To help achieve this objective, the agreement will help offer all the tools necessary to make birth control measures more appealing to families, provide training needed to improve family planning services in health units, and conduct a demographic survey of Egypt in 2018 to collect reliable and high quality data on population and health in Egypt," said the agreement contract.

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Chadian President Idriss Deby will meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Sunday, the first such visit by a leader of the central African nation which severed bilateral ties in 1972, Netanyahu's office said.

Two N'Djamena government sources confirmed Deby's trip.

"The visit is focused on security," one source told Reuters, adding that Israel has supplied the Chadian army with weaponry and other equipment this year to help in its fight against northern rebels.

"This is the first visit of a Chad president in Israel since the establishment of the state (of Israel). It follows many diplomatic efforts led by Prime Minister Netanyahu in the last few years," the statement said.

The Netanyahu government has been investing in outreach to Africa, where some countries previously warm to Israel have kept their distance since its occupation of the Palestinian territories in the 1967 Middle East war.

In July 2016, Deby hosted the then-director of Israel's Foreign Ministry, Dore Gold, for exploratory talks on improving bilateral relations. Gold told Israel Radio on Sunday that his Chadian hosts told him that they had cut off ties 44 years prior under Libyan pressure, a factor removed with the toppling of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

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A drone strike probably carried by the United States killed five suspected Al-Qaeda jihadists, including a local commander, in central Yemen's Bayda province Sunday, an official said.

The US military is the only force known to operate armed drones over Yemen.

An official in Bayda province said the five suspects were armed and in a car when the drone targeted them, and included a local jihadist leader known as "Dahab", gold in Arabic. He gave no further details.

The United States considers the Yemen-based Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) to be the radical group's most dangerous branch.

Drone attacks against AQAP intensified after US President Donald Trump took office in January 2017.

AQAP has flourished in the chaos of the impoverished country's civil war,which pits the Saudi-backed government against Shia Houthi rebels.

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Linkedin Sophie Bouillon (Agence France-Presse) Lagos, Nigeria  Sun, November 25, 2018 13:03 1095 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877dbb827 2 Entertainment Africa,music,Ghana,Nigeria,award Free

After a 15-year career in banking and marketing, Nigerian Mike Dada was looking for a platform to "communicate the strength of Africa to the rest of the world".

He decided to set up Afrima -- the All Africa Music Awards -- Africa's equivalent of the Grammys, whose fourth edition takes place this weekend in Ghana's capital, Accra.

In 2014, penniless but passionate about music, he worked with private sponsors in Nigeria and a partner in Kenya.

Together, they organized the awards ceremony to "create jobs" and "make Africans proud", he told local media, earning the backing of the African Union.

In four years, Afrima has managed to carve out a space as a platform to showcase the bubbling, innovative and prolific African music industry that has exploded in the past decade.

In Accra, it's not World Music the continent is going to celebrate.

Instead, it's Afropop, the Nigerian-born style which mixes Congolese soukous, Ivorian coupe-decale, Ghanaian Highlife and Jamaican dancehall that has got Africa's youth dancing.

"Music is a bridge," said Olivier Laouchez, chief executive of Trace TV, a French music channel popular on the continent.

"In Senegal, we listen to Nigerian hits in nightclubs and South Africa's kwaito (afro-house) is exported to all radio stations on the continent.

"Today, what is bringing Africa together... is sport and music."

Read also: Nigeria's Davido wins BET Award, urges Africa collaboration

- Diaspora -

One category has been dedicated to artists from the vast diaspora.

This year, the contenders include Franco-Malian Aya Nakamura and the surprising Afrotronix, an artist of Chadian origin who dresses like Daft Punk and makes house music with Sahelian rhythms and lyrics in Spanish.

Maitre Gims, who comes from Democratic Republic of Congo and is repeatedly played on French radio, has racked up more than 200 million views on YouTube with "J'me Tire" ("I'm outta here") and is Afrima's most nominated artist this year.

The rapper is as much of an unknown to English-speaking Africa as Nigeria's Davido is to French audiences, despite his 100 million-plus views on YouTube.

"Thanks to Afrima we get to know musicians from all over the continent," Oris Aigbokhaevbolo, a journalist with the Music in Africa website, told AFP.

Take, for example, Diamond Platnumz, a Tanzanian who hit the spotlight after winning three Afrima awards two years ago.

"Love you Die", his duet with Nigeria's Patoranking, is now being played around the world.

"Ghana has always been good (in terms of music) and countries like Sierra Leone or even Gambia are coming up," said Aigbokhaevbolo, who in 2015 was named the continent's best music journalist.

"It makes us feel that we are not the only country producing music on the continent", said the Nigerian.

Read also: Keeping father's protest torch lit, Femi Kuti sees hope

- Nigeria v South Africa -

Still, despite efforts to create regional "best artist" categories, Nigeria and South Africa will dominate the evening.

The big names are regular features from one year to the next: Nigeria's Davido, Wizkid and Tiwa Savage are fixtures, while South Africa's Cassper Nyovest and Nasty-C have made repeat appearances.

The two countries, sub-Saharan Africa's biggest economies, have gone head-to-head for years.

Today, they are virtually the only countries on the continent to have sophisticated music industries, with professional production facilities, agents and copyright lawyers.

Even though South Africa may have a more modern industry, Nigerian artists benefit from a local market of 190 million people, boosting audience numbers.

"We had to limit Nigerian songs for our new ranking show of African hits," Laouchez said.

"Otherwise they would have outshone the entire continent!"

Nigeria has been a clear leader of the Afropop revolution for 10 years.

But it remains to be seen if they will maintain their edge on Saturday night against a continent that wants to be finally heard.
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Linkedin Patrick Galey (Agence France-Presse) Paris, France  Sun, November 25, 2018 07:04 1095 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877db476e 2 Environment climate,ocean,climate-change,scientists,Science,report,journal Free

On November 1, AFP joined news outlets around the world in covering the release of a major academic paper warning that our oceans were warming dramatically quicker than previously thought.

The study was undertaken by some of the world's most pre-eminent climate scientists, using state-of-the-art modelling systems reviewed by their peers, and appeared in one of the most prestigious academic journals.

There was just one problem: it was wrong.

Published in Nature, the paper by researchers from the University of California San Diego and Princeton found that ocean temperatures had warmed 60 percent more than current estimates.

They concluded, with no small sense of alarm, that even the most ambitious emissions cuts laid out in the global plan to prevent climate disaster would need to be slashed again by another 25 percent.

Soon after publication, an independent climate scientist -- one who has repeatedly voiced scepticism of the consensus that human behavior is causing global warming -- spotted an error in the Nature paper's maths.

"After correction, the... results do not suggest a larger increase in ocean heat content than previously thought," Nicolas Lewis wrote on his Climate Science blog.

"Just a few hours of analysis and calculations was sufficient to uncover apparently serious (but surely inadvertent) errors in the underlying calculations.

"It is very important that the media outlets that unquestioningly trumpeted the paper's findings now correct the record too. But perhaps that is too much to hope for," he added.

With the rectified calculation, the authors quickly realised they had made a mistake.

The new results had a far larger range of possibilities in ocean temperature increases -- between 10 and 70 percent: still warmer, but rendering the study vague even for the sometimes unknowable science of climate modelling.

"We quickly realized that our calculations incorrectly treated systematic errors in the O2 measurements as if they were random errors in the error propagation," author Ralph Keeling wrote on climatehome.org.

"We really muffed the error margins," he told the San Diego Tribune.

Read also: Europe poised to launch ocean-monitoring satellite

- 'Climate hoax' -

The correction prompted some climate deniers to wheel out the conspiracy theory that manmade global warming is made up.

Some Twitter users suggested the study was funded by the Democrats, that human-induced planetary warming was invented by former presidential hopeful Al Gore so he could buy a house, and that decades of evidence-based research into the phenomenon constituted "pseudoscience".

But scientists rallied round the authors, pointing out that the process surrounding the Nature paper's publication and correction was, really, how scientific research is supposed to work.

"Science is a human endeavour and it's therefore imperfect. What's important is that results are scrutinised and replicated by others so that we can assess what is robust and what isn't," Gavin A. Schmidt, director at the Goddard Institute for Space Sciences at NASA, told AFP.

"Current climate change has been looked at by thousands of scientists (and other interested people) and our understanding of it is pretty solid," he said.

AFP has since corrected its coverage of the study so its updated findings are on the record for future stories on warming oceans.

Peter Frumhoff, chief climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the ocean study correction was "a beautiful thing".

"The rapid, transparent acknowledgement and correction of inadvertent errors in scientific papers... is at the heart of what separates science from dogma," he told AFP.

"It underscores our confidence in the robustness of consensus scientific findings, based on thousands of independent studies, regarding human-caused climate change."
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Linkedin News Desk (Agence France-Presse) Paris, France  Sun, November 25, 2018 09:05 1095 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877db787d 2 Art & Culture France,Benin,Africa,art,history,Museum Free

French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday agreed to return 26 cultural artifacts to Benin "without delay", a move that could put pressure on other former colonial powers to return African artworks to their countries of origin.

The decision -- which Macron said should not be seen as an isolated or symbolic case -- came as the president received the findings of a study he commissioned on repatriating African treasures held by French museums.

Macron agreed to return the 26 works, mainly royal statues from the Palaces of Abomey -- formerly the capital of the kingdom of Dahomey -- taken by the French army during a war in 1892 and now in Paris' Quai Branly museum.

In addition, he proposed gathering African and European partners in Paris next year to define a framework for an "exchange policy" for African artworks.

The president "hopes that all possible circulation of these works are considered: returns but also exhibitions, loans, further cooperation", the Elysee palace said.

Ousmane Aledji, director of the Benin cultural centre Artisttik Africa, said he was pleased to see "a new form of cultural exchange" with France.

Britain has also faced calls to return artefacts, including the Elgin Marbles to Greece and the Benin Bronzes to Nigeria, while museums in Belgium and Austria house tens of thousands of African pieces.

Read also: Nigeria could borrow back its plundered Benin Bronzes: Governor

- Legislation to return art? -

Calls have been growing in Africa for restitution of artworks, but French law strictly forbids the government from ceding state property, even in well-documented cases of pillaging.

In 2016 Benin demanded France return items including statues, artworks, carvings, sceptres and sacred doors.

While that request was initially denied, in November 2016 Macron raised hopes in a speech in Burkina Faso, pledging to "return African heritage to Africa".

Following his speech, Macron asked French art historian Benedicte Savoy and Senegalese writer Felwine Sarr to study the matter.

Their report, a copy of which has been seen by AFP, has been welcomed by advocates of the restitution of works which were bought, bartered, or in some cases simply stolen.

It proposes legislation be developed to return thousands of African artefacts taken during the colonial period to nations that request them.

There are conditions, however, including a request from the relevant country, precise information about the works' origins, and the existence of proper facilities such as museums to house the works back in their home country.

Macron's office said that museums will be invited to "identify African partners and organise possible returns" and should quickly establish "an online inventory of their African collections".

The president also called for "in-depth work with other European states that retain collections of the same nature acquired in comparable circumstances".

Read also: Art repatriation: Colonial ghosts haunt Europe's museums

- Museums fear losing artefacts -

A UNESCO convention against the export of illicit cultural goods adopted in 1970 called for the return of cultural property taken from a country but it did not address historic cases, including from the colonial era.

With museums fearing they could be forced to return artefacts, former colonial powers have been slow to ratify the convention: France only did so 1997, Britain in 2002, Germany in 2007 and Belgium in 2009.

On Tuesday, the governor of Easter Island in the Pacific tearfully begged the British Museum to return one of its famous statues.

The London museum has held the Hoa Hakananai'a, one of the most spiritually important of the Chilean island's stone monoliths, for 150 years.

Of the estimated 90,000 African artworks in French museums, around 70,000 are at the Quai Branly museum, created by ex-president Jacques Chirac, a keen admirer of African and Asian art.

Elsewhere in Europe, 37,000 objects from Sub-Saharan Africa were at Vienna's Weltmuseum and 180,000 were at Belgium's Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren.

The report commissioned by Macron said such collections were effectively depriving Africans of their artistic and cultural heritage.

"On a continent where 60 percent of the population is under the age of 20 years old, what is first and foremost of a great importance is for young people to have access to their own culture, creativity, and spirituality from other eras," it said.
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Linkedin Lucca de Paoli (Bloomberg)  Sun, November 25, 2018 23:03 1095 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877dc3960 2 Food truffle,food,Europe,climate-change Free

The black truffle is already one of the worlds scarcest foodstuffs, but climate change could drive it to the brink of extinction in its traditional home of southern Europe.

Increasingly dry, hot weather in the worlds prime truffle-producing regions of Italy, France and Spain may become so severe that the delicacy is wiped out there by the end of the century, according to a study published in the journal Science of Total Environment. Prices for the treat, already one of the worlds costliest foodstuffs, will be driven even higher, they predict.

Every time there is a drought event, it impacts that winters harvest, says Paul Thomas of the University of Stirling in Scotland, who led the study. They grow over summer and then they mature over winter, so they need that moisture over the summer.

Black, or Perigord, truffles regularly fetch more than 1,000 euros ($1,135) a kilogram, but they have been known to sell for twice as much after a bad season, according to Thomas, who also heads truffle consultancy Mycorrhizal Systems Ltd. Wholesale prices tracked by Bloomberg for the blacks even rarer cousin, the Italian white truffle, doubled last year after a poor harvest.

Read also: 'Exceptional' white truffle sold for 85,000 euros

Thomas and Ulf Buntgen, a professor at Cambridge Universitys Department of Geography, analyzed 36 years of data on Mediterranean truffle yields and used climate projections to estimate a decline in southern European output by 78 to 100 percent by the end of the century. That could be hastened by events such as heatwaves and forest fires, they warn.

But fungus fans shouldnt be down in the mouth. Truffles may have a future in cooler northern climates such as the UK and Ireland, where mild winters mean heavy frost wont damage the tubers. While truffle cultivation is notoriously tricky, Thomas has carried out successful trials in the UK.

In 2017 we produced the Perigord truffle for the first time in Wales, and we are doing another larger scale trial, he said.
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Linkedin News Desk (Agence France-Presse)  Sun, November 25, 2018 15:03 1095 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877dbd109 2 Science & Tech leica,camera,digital-camera,Panasonic Free

Leica has revealed a new smart, connected and premium model, the Leica D-Lux 7, a high-performing compact camera with features that are very similar to those of the Panasonic LX100 II.

The Leica D-Lux 7 is no different when it comes to the companys signature vintage styling of high performing digital cameras. Though it is equipped with dials and wheels that resemble analog camera hardware, this compact camera is far from primitive, even if there is a very similar model already on the market.

With this camera, Leica emphasizes the shooting versatility made possible by the Leica DC Vario-Summilux 10.9-34 millimeter f/1.7-2.8 ASPH zoom lens thats accompanied by a four-thirds sensor for optimized photographic freedom for capturing unique moments in impressive picture quality. Whether youre capturing landscapes, shooting portraits, or even taking macro close-ups, the 17 megapixel sensor (which is the same as in the Panasonic version) makes documenting the details of low-light subjects a breeze.

When shooting, pictures are optimized with the automatic exposure mode, or you have the option to manually adjust the settings to get the exact shot you want. This is eased with the 2.8 megapixel electronic viewfinder and 3-inch LCD touch display which puts a wide range of functions at the tips of your fingers.

Read also: Leica revives iconic Soviet Zenit camera

In fact, the new model includes several features that enable adjusting an image after the picture is already taken. For example, the focus point of an image can be changed after the picture is taken, and those with different focus points can be overlapped and merged via Focus Stack. Macro photographers can use this feature to increase image depth.

Additionally, the model features 4K video recording with 30 frames per second (just like, you guessed it, the Panasonic model) and is the first of the D-Lux line that can be controlled by a phone via the Leica FOTOS application. This connection allows for the camera to be remote controlled by a smartphone, as well as allows for easy photo transfers.

Though the specs of the D-Lux 7 make it essentially a replica of the Panasonic LX100 II, this model is designed with the timeless vintage flair the Leica brand is known for. The D-Lux 7, available now, retails for $1195, while Panasonics LX100 II costs $999. In 2014, Panasonic and Leica extended their partnership on technological cooperation in terms of digital cameras for a period of five years through to September 2019.
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Linkedin Patrick Galey (Agence France-Presse) Paris, France  Sun, November 25, 2018 05:06 1095 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877db1eb4 2 Health MDMA,drugs,study,research,experiment,Britain,EcstasyPills Free

MDMA, the main ingredient in ecstasy, makes humans more likely to cooperate -- but only with trustworthy people -- researchers said Monday in the first study into how the drug impacts our willingness to help others.

Despite its status in Britain as a Class A drug, MDMA is widely consumed due to the heightened sense of energy, empathy and pleasure it arouses in users.

It contains neurotransmitters -- chemical messengers for the brain -- that are known to be linked to behaviour and mood, but scientists currently understand very little about how these affect social interactions.

Researchers at King's College London studied 20 healthy adult men who were given a typical recreational dose of MDMA or a placebo pill and then asked to complete a set of tasks while images of their brain activity were taken with an MRI scanner.

One of the mind exercises they were given was the Prisoner's Dilemma -- an example of so-called "game theory" in which an individual is asked to choose between cooperating or competing with another, unknown person.

Both players get an equal share of the points on offer if they choose to cooperate, but if one player chooses to compete they get all the points, while the other player gets nothing. They however risk getting nothing if the other player chooses to compete.

The team found that participants on MDMA were more willing to cooperate than those given the placebo.

But, to their surprise, the MDMA takers only became more cooperative with players they perceived as trustworthy, based on observations of the previous choices of the other player.

"We thought MDMA might make you think that other people are more trustworthy. And we were wrong," Mitul Mehta, from King's Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, told AFP.

"Actually it didn't change one bit what you thought of the other person, but it did change your behaviour towards them.

"It's not that MDMA is giving you rose-tinted glasses and therefore you're behaving differently, it's actually keeping your glasses clear and you still think an untrustworthy person is untrustworthy."

Read also: Ecstasy may relieve the agony of PTSD: Study

- Clinical trials -

The team found that MDMA increased activity in the superior temporal cortex and mid-cingulate cortex, two areas of the brain known to be important for empathising with the thoughts and intentions of others.

They also observed noticable differences in activity in the right anterior insula -- a section of brain important in appraising risk and uncertainty -- when participants on MDMA processed the behaviour of trustworthy and untrustworthy players.

"In other words, MDMA did not make participants naively trusting of others," said Mehta.

"For the first time ever we are showing that MDMA isn't having a global effect on brain behaviour, it's actually having quite a specific effect and that's really useful."

The team behind the study, which was published in The Journal of Neuroscience, said their findings could help the treatment of psychiatric conditions such as PTSD.

"Patients with psychiatric disorders have a lot of difficulties with social interactive behaviour. We now can ask the question about what specifically you have trouble with in social behaviour -- is it your behaviour, or how you evaluate others?", said Mehta.

Despite being legally classified in Britain as a schedule 1 drug -- meaning it is deemed to have no medical use -- MDMA has been given Breakthrough Therapy designation by the US Food and Drug Administration.

It's currently undergoing phase 3 clinical trials for treating PTSD and Mehta said the drug should be more widely available for medical research.

"It's about access to treatment that is so promising that it seems unethical not to give people access," he said. "There's a renewed interest in MDMA, how it works and how it affects the brain."
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sun, November 25, 2018 22:05 1095 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877dc359c 1 Health psychopath,sociopath,personality,psychology,mental-health,health,#health Free

Sociopaths and psychopaths are fascinating subjects; one popular iconic figure would be Hannibal Lecter, the psychopathic cannibal featured in the Silence of the Lambs movie and NBC series' Hannibal.

The most common similarities between psychopaths and sociopaths are that both tend to lack empathy, have little or no regard for the difference between right and wrong, and have arrogant personalities, according to author of Sweet Relief from the Everyday Narcissist, Melissa Schenker.

According to experts, despite constantly being mixed up and mistaken for one another, there is one difference that separates psychopaths and sociopaths.

Psychopaths tend to be very emotionally stable, whilst sociopaths are emotionally unstable, according to psychologist Elizabeth Lombardo; who has been featured on the Today show, Dr. Oz, The Steve Harvey Show and CNN, and also provides advice in the Wall Street Journal, among other publications.

When a psychopath interacts with you, if they get upset, they can keep their cool, but a sociopath will lose it, Lombardo said.

Psychopaths are the smooth operator. Its the guy who will compliment you, make you feel good, and just say all of the right things until you find out hes been stealing money from you or hes been plotting some kind of crime, Lombardo added.

She says sociopaths are rather easy to identify; in contrast to a psychopath, when a sociopath does not get what they want, theyll get angry and could be aggressive. They cant keep it together and have emotional outbursts.

According to author of A Beautiful, Terrible thing: A Memoir of Marriage and Betrayal, Jen Waite, who was married to a possible psychopath, said that her seemingly perfect husband was manipulating her the entire time.

Read also: 'Norman,' when artificial intelligence goes psycho

Waite recounted how her husband employed methods to emotionally confuse her in order to obscure his wrongdoings and make her believe she was imagining things. An article in the Business Insider on Waites book describes her husband as being able to lie with ease and without remorse, but who was able to appear charming, intelligent and, most importantly, normal.

Waite says not all psychopaths are serial killers, but are just as capable of destroying lives, as well as family relationships.

According to criminal psychologist Professor Robert Hare, Often theyre our friends, theyre fun to be around. They might take advantage of us now and then but usually its subtle and theyre able to talk their way around it.

It is important to remember that not all psychopaths and sociopaths are dangerous. In an article in the UKs Daily Telegraph, neuroscientist James Fallon from the University of California revealed that an abnormal brain scan he was using in an observation of psychopathic murderers, was in fact a scan of his own brain.

I saw one that was extremely abnormal, and I thought this is someone whos way off. It looked like the murderers Id been looking at, Fallon said, I kind of blew it off. But later, some psychiatrist friends of mine went through my behaviors, and they said, actually, youre probably a borderline psychopath.

Fallon was described as highly successful, driven to win, is pleasant, funny and self-absorbed in the article.

Hare said that cases like Fallon were not uncommon, as not everyone with psychopathic tendencies are criminals. He said that evolving certain traits could have been an evolutionary strategy from our ancestors. (acr/kes)
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Linkedin News Desk (Agence France-Presse)  Sun, November 25, 2018 12:02 1095 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877dbade9 2 Entertainment Rita-Ora,Rudimental,music,single Free

London drum n' bass band Rudimental has enlisted Rita Ora on the new track "Summer Love".

The group announced the song's release yesterday via Twitter, the same day Ora released her new album, Phoenix.

Big love going out to Rita on this one, we loved every second of making this, the band wrote.

Read also: Loving angels, Victoria's Secret extravaganza returns to New York

"Summer Love" is the latest track to be heard off Rudimental's upcoming album, Toast to Our Differences, which is due out January 25.

The new track follows on from previous singles "These Days" featuring Jess Glynne, Macklemore and Dan Caplen; "Let Me Live" with Anne Marie and Mr Eazi; and, most, recently, "Walk Alone" with Tom Walker.
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Linkedin Etienne Balmer (Agence France-Presse) Shanghai, China  Sun, November 25, 2018 01:07 1096 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877db07d5 2 Health China,medicine,tradition Free

A crowd gathers at a Shanghai hospital, queuing for remedies made with plant mixtures and animal parts including scorpions and freeze-dried millipedes -- medicines that China hopes will find an audience overseas.

With a history going back 2,400 years, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is deeply rooted in the country and remains popular despite access to Western pharmaceuticals. Now the authorities are hoping to modernise and export the remedies, but they face major obstacles.

A veritable forest of medicinal plants surrounds patients waiting at Yueyang Hospital's pharmacy. Some leave with boxes of pills, others take away plastic sachets filled with herbal extracts.

Lin Hongguo, a 76-year-old pensioner, has bought herbal remedies that he will boil to make a tea to treat his "slow beating heart".

"I prefer it to Western medicines. It's not about the cost, it's because it works well," he told AFP.

Another patient, pet fish seller Wang Deyun, 51, is also a believer.

"Two months ago my skin had an allergic reaction to a modern medicine for high blood pressure," she said from her hospital bed.

But after a treatment of face masks and plant infusions, she said she's almost fully healed.

Read also: A peek into Guangzhou's traditional Chinese medicine museum

- Painting vs photography -

Traditional medicine is subsidised in China and is cheaper than Western medicine.

It consistently makes up one quarter of the country's pharmaceuticals market -- even as China increasingly opens up to modern medicine.

The World Health Organisation will next year include a chapter on traditional medicine in its "International Classification of Diseases" -- a tome of reference for medical trends and global health statistics.

China hopes the WHO inclusion will spur global recognition of its traditional remedies as it seeks to export them.

But Beijing still faces significant hurdles, not least the fact that TCM focuses on tailoring treatment to each individual, which means different people with the same condition can be prescribed different medicines and dosages.

"It's like a painting -- it's composed differently each time, while Western medicine is more similar to photography" with its standardised products, said Wang Zhenyi, a proctologist at Yueyang Hospital.

That is the crux of China's challenge in gaining overseas acceptance: its traditional medicine is largely incompatible with modern clinical trials which require an identical product to be tested on a large number of patients.

As these medicines typically contain dozens of ingredients, understanding how they work together and proving their effectiveness is a complex task.

Even within China there have been public skirmishes over the efficacy of TCM, pitting its proponents against doctors who advocate evidence-based, peer-reviewed medicine.

Conservationists also say growing demand for products like rhino horn and pangolin scales -- which are used by some practitioners even though they have no proven medical properties -- have decimated vulnerable species.

China partially lifted a ban on trading tiger bones and rhino horns last month despite warnings from conservationists, though state media later quoted an official saying the change had been "postponed".

Chinese experts say endangered animal parts are increasingly being replaced by synthetic versions, but TCM may still prove a tough sell abroad.

"I think the best potential is in the consumer market, such as nutritional supplements," said Tony Ren, a pharma analyst with Kim Eng Securities in Hong Kong.

Read also: Across Asia, liver cancer is linked to herbal remedies: Study

- AI to the rescue -

Few Western pharmaceutical companies are keen to try to untangle these difficulties.

But French biotech company Pharnext has taken on the challenge, partnering last year with Tasly, one of China's biggest producers of traditional medicines.

Together, they are looking to transform the industry by streamlining "the procedures to have a more stable production of plants which have identical properties and understand why the mixture works", said Daniel Cohen, founder and CEO of Pharnext.

The two companies are using artificial intelligence to understand how the medicines work as they look to standardise them, he added.

They face an uphill battle.

In the United States, Tasly has been trying for more than 20 years to get approval for Dantonic, an angina medicine based on sage and ginseng that was legalised in China in 1993.

Though the firm has completed medical trials, it has come up hard against US law, which does not allow treatments composed of different plants.

But Chinese medical professionals still feel the quest for acceptance abroad is worth the effort.

"Medicine is still a very young science, with many unknowns. You increase your ability to heal if you know both Western and Chinese medicine," said proctologist Wang of Yueyang hospital.

"It's the result that counts."
The School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the American University in Cairo will commemorate the memory of late economist and thinker Samer Soliamn on 26 November at 1pm in a seminar that will discuss his seminal work Weak State, Strong Regime.

The seminar is titled Egypt: From Rent to Taxation, which is inspired by Soliman's book where he asserted that Egypt as a state under Mubarak underwent a lengthy but steady transformation from rent dependency to collecting taxes.

The seminar revisits his thesis and examines the political and economic implications of this transformation.

The speakers at the seminar will be economy journalist and commentator Wael Gamal, assistant professor Mohamed Fahmy Menza, and assistant professor at the Department of Political Sciences at the AUC Amr Adly.

The seminar will be at Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud Hall, Room P071 at the AUC's campus in New Cairo.

Soliman (1968  2012) was an assistant professor at the Department of Political Sciences at the AUC. He was also an activist and author. He died after a battle with terminal illness in December 2012.

Soliman graduated in 1990 from Cairo University with a BS in economics. He then went on to earn a diploma in African studies in 1992, followed by a Masters in sociology from the AUC in 1997. He earned his PhD in political science from the Institute of Political Studies in Paris in 2004.

Soliman worked as an affiliate researcher at the Centre d'Etudes et de Documentations Economiques, Juridiques, et Sociales (CEDEJ) in Cairo. He helped found the French-language newspaper Al-Ahram Hebdo in 1994.

Soliman's major publications include his seminal 2005 book Strong Regime, Weak State: The Fiscal Crisis and Political Change in Egypt under Mubarak. He also published a lengthy piece in the Cairo Papers in Social Science under the title State and Industrial Capitalism in Egypt.

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Linkedin News Desk (Agence France-Presse)  Sun, November 25, 2018 16:08 1095 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877dbdf97 2 Art & Culture Tokyo,Japan,Yayoi-Kusama,Museum,art,artist,Time-Out Free

Editors at city and travel guide Time Out have released a Do List of the top 50 experiences around the world right now which includes an art expo in Tokyo filled with glow-in-the-dark polka dot pumpkins, a den of hedonism in New York, and an egg-shaped sauna in Swedish backcountry.

Topping the charts is the Yayoi Kusama Museum in Tokyo, a tribute to the renowned contemporary Japanese artist of the same name best known for her use of polka dots, net and motif repetition.

Opened last year, the museum immerses visitors into the visionary world of the artist, with infinity mirrors, glowing polka dot pumpkins and hypnotic, kaleidoscopic motifs.

Or, as Time Out editors call it, Instagram heaven. The finalists were whittled down from a list of 5,000 possible experiences in 400 destinations, curated by Time Outs network of contributors and editors, and via a survey of 15,000 urbanite readers around the world.

Experiences and activities that made the final cut were judged on factors like uniqueness, authenticity, timeliness, place, audacity and sheer cultural brilliance.

Rounding out the top three spots is the House of Yes in New York, described as a place that celebrates sexual freedom where you can fly your freak flag and the Swedens Solar Egg, an otherworldly golden, mirrored egg-shaped sauna set in one of the northern-most cities in the country, Kiruna.

Read also: Jakarta bids farewell to Yayoi Kusamas dots

Here are the top 10 travel and cultural experiences to be had around the world, right now, according to Time Out:

1. Yayoi Kusama Museum, Tokyo, Japan

2. House of Yes, New York

3. Solar Egg by Bigert and Bergstrom, Kiruna, Sweden

4. Meow Wolf, Santa Fe, US interactive, mind-bending art exhibit

5. Tejo at Los Amigos Club, Cali, Colombia a throwing sport that involves small explosions on impact

6. Museum of Old and New Art, Tasmania, Australia immersive light installations

7. Cinespia, Los Angeles outdoor, cemetery screenings

8. Casa Vicens, Barcelona Gaudi house designed as a summer resort, opened last year

9. Mil, Maras, Peru restaurant dedicated to high-altitude cuisine

10. Time Out Market Lisbon, Portugal a (somewhat self-congratulatory) food and cultural market developed by Time Out Lisbon editors.
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sun, November 25, 2018 20:03 1095 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877dc2d72 1 Parents foreign-language,language,student,children,Education Free

Children are known to have an easier time adapting to a new language compared to adults. However, studies and experts usually offer different suggestions on the exact age children are best able to learn a foreign language.

The latest study by researchers in Boston, the United States, suggests that it is best done before they reach the age of 10.

According to a 2018 research helmed by Boston College psychology assistant professor Joshua Hartshorne, which involved 670,000 children, our brain is able to grasp foreign languages at a maximum capacity when we are very young.

"This is why adults have a harder language learning process compared to children," the study explained as reported by kompas.com.

According to Elizabeth Allen, an English and French language educator from the United Kingdom, the ideal age for children to learn a foreign language is 3 years old  a conclusion she made based on more than 30 years of experience teaching foreign languages.

Read also: Raising bilingual children in Indonesia: the strategies

However, she added that creating a fun learning environment and the full support of parents who accompany their children are also important.

"An effective learning process is through songs, games or watching TV programs or films in a foreign language," Allen said.

"Parents should encourage their children to learn a foreign language before they reach 11," Allen said, adding that based on her experience, it gets harder for children to pick up the language from then on. (kes)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Japan News/ANN) Tokyo, Japan  Sun, November 25, 2018 10:53 1095 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877db8b33 2 Business Nissan,Fraud,tax Free

Nissan Motor Co.s former chairman, Carlos Ghosn, 64, had received roughly 2 billion yen (US$17.7 million) annually in remuneration from the company before disclosure of the names of executives and their actual pay became mandatory in 2010, according to sources close to the financial scandal.

Although the automaker did not reduce the sum of Ghosns pay after the change in law, it only stated it to be about 1 billion yen per year in its securities reports. Ghosn is alleged to have intended to collect the difference between the stated and actual remuneration after he stepped down.

The Financial Instruments and Exchange Law, among other regulations, requires companies to also state future remuneration in reports that would be made the same fiscal year the sum is finalized.

Sources say the special investigation squad of the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office arrested Ghosn for allegedly falsifying the reports for a total of 5 billion yen, or roughly 1 billion yen per year over five years.

Ghosn allegedly ordered that his remuneration be reported as less than he actually received in order to avoid criticism over being paid too much.

[RA::Nissans Ghosn arrested over financial law violation::

Ghosn and Greg Kelly, 62, Nissans former representative director, were arrested on Monday on suspicion of violating the Financial Instruments and Exchange Law.

The two are suspected of conspiring to understate the charismatic leaders pay by about 5 billion yen in Nissans securities reports covering fiscal 2010 to fiscal 2014.

The two also allegedly falsified the reports from fiscal 2015 to fiscal 2017, stating Ghosns total pay to be approximately 3 billion yen less than the actual amount.

Since the time of the fiscal 2009 securities report, listed companies have been required to disclose on their securities reports the names and exact annual remuneration of board members whose pay exceeded 100 million yen each. Companies had only been asked to report the total amount of board compensation until then.

According to sources, Ghosn received about 2 billion yen annually for several years before the change in the reporting requirements. During a general shareholders meeting in 2007, Nissan was criticized for what was viewed as excessive executive remuneration  over 2.5 billion yen in total in some cases  compared with Toyota Motor Corp., which paid a total of 1.5 billion yen.

Ghosn allegedly instructed his close aides, including Kelly, to cut down the sum that would be disclosed to about 1 billion yen. Ghosn allegedly decided his annual remuneration would be roughly 2 billion yen even after the change in the law, and that any difference would be paid after he retired from the company.

According to Nissans securities reports, the company paid a total of 2.58 billion yen to its executives for fiscal 2008. The total amount of pay to executives fell by about 900 million yen to 1.68 billion yen for fiscal 2009, when the disclosure system was introduced, and it has stayed close to that level since then.

While Ghosns pay is suspected of having been understated by roughly 1 billion yen in the securities report for fiscal 2009, the investigation squad chose to arrest him on suspicion of falsifying the reports from fiscal 2010 to fiscal 2014. This was because the investigative authorities acknowledged the statute of limitations of seven years, but also noted the fact that he was staying overseas for a certain period of time, which would affect the statute of limitations.

This article appeared on The Japan News newspaper website, which is a member of Asia News Network and a media partner of The Jakarta Post
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Linkedin News Desk (The Japan News/ANN) Tokyo, Japan  Sun, November 25, 2018 11:09 1095 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877db977b 2 Business Nissan,Fraud,tax Free

The expensive houses in Brazil and Lebanon for former Nissan Motor Co. Chairman Carlos Ghosn were purchased by funds provided by the company via British Virgin Islands companies in the Caribbean Sea as a tax haven, according to sources.

Ghosn, 64, has been arrested on suspicion of falsifying his remuneration on the companys securities reports, and was dismissed from the posts of representative director and chairman on Thursday.

There is a possibility that Ghosn and other executives may have used the tax haven to conceal the opaque flow of funds, the sources said. The special investigation squad of the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office is investigating the case.

Tax havens are countries or regions that attract tax avoidance schemes for corporations and individuals because their rates for corporate and income taxes are extremely low, or no tax is imposed. They are characterized by loose restrictions and confidentiality from financial institutions.

According to sources, Nissan established its subsidiary Zi-A Capital in Amsterdam in December 2010. The subsidiary is believed to be a company ostensibly for investment purposes and Nissan has provided more than 5 billion yen (US$44.3 million) to it.

According to documents obtained from a local chamber of commerce and industry, Greg Kelly, who was one of Ghosns close aides, served as director of the subsidiary and there are no employees.

Read also: Nissans Ghosn arrested over financial law violation

Kelly, 62, has been arrested on suspicion of violating the Financial Instruments and Exchange Law and was dismissed from the post of representative director of Nissan on Thursday.

From 2011 to 2012, Zi-A set up a company based on the British Virgin Islands, which is known as a tax haven, through which the subsidiary purchased an expensive condominium near Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro for about 600 million yen.

During the same period, Zi-A also established another company on the Virgin Islands. Zi-A bought an expensive house in the Lebanese capital city of Beirut for about 900 million yen through this other company on the Virgin Islands and a local corporation in Lebanon, sources said. Later, about 600 million yen was used to renovate the house.

The cost for buying the houses and renovating one of them totaled about 2.1 billion yen. Following their purchase, the condominium in Rio de Janeiro has been managed by Ghosns elder sister while she lives there. The house in Beirut is used mainly by his family, according to sources.

It was revealed that an auditing firm for Nissan made inquiries to Nissan from 2012 to 2014 about Zi-As activities, as the auditing firm felt that the actual activities were unclear, according to sources. The two companies on the Virgin Islands are believed to be paper companies.

According to sources, Kelly, who received instructions from Ghosn, ordered executive officers under him at Nissan to purchase the overseas houses through Zi-A and two companies on the Virgin Islands.

This article appeared on The Japan News newspaper website, which is a member of Asia News Network and a media partner of The Jakarta Post
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sun, November 25, 2018 13:39 1095 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877dbc6cc 1 National Muhadjir-Effendy,Education-and-Culture-Ministry,multiculturalism,Catholic,Jayapura,tolerance Free

Education and Culture Minister Muhadjir Effendy said in a statement sent by his assistant to The Jakarta Post on Sunday that he appreciated what Catholic educational institutions have done in spreading values of multiculturalism.

A staff member of the ministry, Nasrullah, said Muhadjir was aware of the negative comments that were made in response to the Posts article on Saturday and that it was a misunderstanding.

The article quoted the minister as saying that all educators should teach tolerance. The minister gave the speech in front of school teachers under the National Board on Catholic Education (MNPK) in Jayapura.

Read also: Indonesian minister calls on educators to teach multiculturalism

The minister said as quoted by Nasrullah that he attended the event, organized by the MNPK on Saturday, on the invitation of Catholic priest Rev. Darmin, the head of the MNPK. This is not the first time I attended the MNPKs events, he said in the statement.

I came because I appreciate and support what Catholic educational institutions have done, especially those under the MNPK, he said.

The event was titled Strengthening Character Education Based on Multiculturalism Toward a Loving Civilization.

What Catholic schools have done in teaching multiculturalism is important and should be done by other schools. I support the MNPKs policy in affirming character education by strengthening the multiculturalism dimension. Our educational process has to grow the culture of tolerance, openness and dialogue, the minister said. (evi)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sun, November 25, 2018 18:30 1095 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877dc1a5d 4 City Istiqlal-Mosque,mosque,wastewater-treatment-facilities Free

The pollution and environmental damage control directorate general of the Environment and Forestry Ministry is currently building a wastewater treatment plant at the Istiqlal Mosque in Central Jakarta to help the operations of the grand mosque.

Director general Karliansyah said the plants construction started at the beginning of 2018 and was scheduled to finish in December.

Istiqlal spent up to Rp 2 billion (US$137,477) every year for clean water. So, if the water is already clean [after being treated by the plant], the mosque doesnt need to spend that much money anymore, he said on Sunday, kompas.com reported.

The ministry allocated Rp 7 billion to build the wastewater facility. It is to consist of a treatment plant that costs Rp 4 billion and a canal that costs Rp 3 billion.

Istiqlal Mosque was chosen as the site for the plant and a distribution center as the mosque is a Jakarta icon, Karliansyah said.

The mosque is regularly visited by domestic and foreign tourists, as well as by state guests visiting Jakarta.

Karliansyah explained that the plant would take wastewater from Istiqlal Mosque, such as wudhu (ablutions) water and toilet water. The water would be treated in the plant, stored and tested by a lab to ensure it meets the Health Ministrys clean water standards.

If we dumped it into the river it would become dirty, mixing with other waste. Thats why we build a canal, so the wastewater will become clean, Karliansyah said. (ami)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Japan News/ANN) Tokyo, Japan  Sun, November 25, 2018 11:21 1095 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877dba1f6 2 Business Nissan,Fraud,tax Free

The Yomiuri Shimbun Nissan Motor Co.s board of directors spent most of about four hours at Thursdays extraordinary meeting convincing two directors from Frances Renault SA to agree with the dismissal of Carlos Ghosn from the posts of representative director and chairman, according to sources.

The meeting was held in the aftermath of Ghosns arrest on suspicion of falsifying his remuneration on the companys securities reports.

The meeting started at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday with five Japanese directors including President Hiroto Saikawa in an executive boardroom near the top of the companys 22-story headquarters building in Yokohama, while Bernard Rey and Jean-Baptiste Duzan from Renault participated by teleconference from Paris.

Rey and Duzan asked questions one after another, asking for more information and facts, including questions about judicial procedures in Japan.

In France, the media has been speculating that there was a possible conspiracy to allow Nissan to dispel Ghosn, who is said to have spearheaded the merger of Nissan and Renault.

Nissan was concerned that if the two directors opposed Ghosns dismissal, it could spread an impression that the company had entrapped Ghosn.

Read also: Nissans Ghosn arrested over financial law violation

Yet the mood changed at the meeting as the methods of the alleged misconduct, such as significantly understating his remuneration on securities reports and misusing company funds for personal purposes were explained in detail.

Only a handful of persons went to get a vein of gold. I cant imagine its possible to do these things, said one of the Japanese directors who was very surprised at the details, which were beyond their imagination.

When Saikawa proceeded with a vote for dismissing Ghosn, the two from Renault said, Agree, which resulted in the boards unanimous decision on the dismissal.

After the board meeting, a Nissan executive explained that the two directors were convinced that it is not a conspiracy. They clearly chose to agree, expressing a relieved look.

This article appeared on The Japan News newspaper website, which is a member of Asia News Network and a media partner of The Jakarta Post
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sun, November 25, 2018 18:50 1095 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877dc1ba2 4 Politics Israel-Palestine-conflict,Palestine,Jerusalem,Prabowo-Sandiaga,Prabowo-Subianto,Maruf-Amin,Jokowi,Jokowi-Maruf,#2019PresidentialElection Free

Candidates in the 2019 presidential race have weighed in on the debate surrounding Australias recent consideration to move its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, with each camp standing on opposite sides of the argument.

Vice presidential candidate Maruf Amin condemned the move, saying both Indonesia and its people have officially rejected and protested Israels plan to move its capital to Jerusalem.

[Therefore,] we disagree with plans from the United States as well as other countries to move their embassies, Maruf said on Saturday as quoted by kompas.com.

In contrast, presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto said Indonesia should respect Australias planned move. The Gerindra Party chairman made the statement while talking to journalists on the sidelines of the Indonesia Economic Forum in Jakarta on Wednesday.

Regarding their plan to move their embassy [in Israel], I have yet to find out why Australia is doing it. As a supporter of Palestine, we have our opinions. However, Australia is an independent and sovereign country, therefore, we must respect its sovereignty, Prabowo said as quoted by tempo.co.

Last month, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he was open-minded to proposals to formally recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move his nation's embassy to the holy city.

This raised the ire of many countries, including Indonesia, a strong supporter of Palestine. Last month, Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said the country was concerned about the announcement and questioned its merits. (kuk)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jak  Sun, November 25, 2018 17:21 1095 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877dbf3eb 4 City South-Tangerang,traditional-market,market-revitalization Free

The South Tangerang administration plans to renovate the old, murky Ciputat traditional market so it becomes a proper and orderly venue for both vendors and buyers, Mayor Airin Rachmi Diany said recently.

The market, owned by the city since it was established as a municipal administration in 2008, looks dirty and abandoned. Many of the kiosks, especially on the second and third floor, have been abandoned. Merchants have opted to occupy the sidewalks and roadway along Jl. Aria Putra next to the market, which has caused traffic congestion in the area.

Kiosk owner Syanti said the market gets fewer and fewer visitors every day.

I was among the first tenants here. The only people who still visit me frequently are my regular customers, she said on Saturday as quoted by kompas.com.

A buyer named Mani, meanwhile, said that she has never stepped foot on the second or third floors.

Im afraid [to go up to the upper floors]. There is much graffiti on the walls, she said, adding that as a buyer, she wanted the market to be cleaner and more comfortable.

Mayor Airin said on Friday that her administration would invite investors to participate in carrying out the revitalization project of the Ciputat Market.

On Nov. 29, we will hold a market sounding to attract investors for the market revitalization project, she said on Friday.

The administration is to use a government-to-business cooperation (KPBU) scheme for the project, which has an estimated cost of Rp 300 billion (US$20.6 million). (vla)
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Linkedin Im Eun-byel (The Korea Herald/Asia News Network) Seoul, South Korea  Sun, November 25, 2018 08:06 1095 882ab4bc56dbda08a069b30877db605d 2 Destinations South-Korea,traditional,modernization Free

Past the steel-and-glass skyscrapers and stacked apartment complexes, a village of houses built in traditional Korean style can be found in northwestern Seoul.

But something about them looks very new.

Designated by the Seoul Metropolitan Government and Eunpyeong-gu in 2011 as a housing development site, Eunpyeong Hanok Village aims to encourage those looking to build hanok.

Middle-aged couple Park In-ki and Park Eun-jeong live in the village, together with their two sons and the husbands mother. The family built a modern hanok and moved into it in April, naming the house Ham Kyeong Ru.

Park In-ki signed the documents for the land situated in the foothills of Bukhansan in 2013. Park now thinks, he might have been possessed by something at the time.

The move was partly for his aged mother. Living in a typically tightly-clustered apartment, it was as if she were imprisoned. There was nothing for her to do, other than watching TV or staring blankly at the ceiling. The sight pained him.

It was only in 2017 that the construction actually began. Until then, the family traveled throughout the country, visiting a variety of hanok houses. After the visits and some extensive learning through books, they became sure of what they wanted.

Thanks to the studies, we were able to begin with a certain amount of confidence. That is also why we are mostly satisfied with the outcome, the wife said, sitting at the dining room filled with mid-afternoon sunlight.

Ham Kyeong Ru is a two-story hanok with a basement. The house has daecheong, the equivalent of a living room, in the center. The first floor is made up of a kitchen and sarangchae, a guest room. On the second floor, there are two bedrooms and also a small common room.

The atmosphere is bright yet tranquil. Wind and sunlight freely flow in and out of the space, like classic hanok. The wooden house is light in color, but the color is somehow rich, as the wood shows its years.

Another side of Ham Kyeong Ru. (The Korea Herald/Park Hyun-koo)

For hanok, you do not really need any decoration because the interior is also the exterior. In a way, it is an incomplete structure, but therein lies its charm, the husband Park said.

The house offers modern conveniences. A traditional hanok structure should not have any space for an entrance way. In period dramas, we see how the shoes are laid outside. In real life, this would be greatly inconvenient, so Ham Kyeong Ru has a separate space for shoes.

Read also: A day in Seoul: What to visit and when

Though the windows are traditionally shaped, with symmetrical wooden lattices, they are the products of modern technology offering full insulation. Through the windows, the eaves of nearby hanok residences echo the mountain ridges, creating an ink-and-wash painting atmosphere.

Common room space on the second floor of Ham Kyeong Ru. (The Korea Herald/Park Hyun-koo)

Unlike Bukchon Hanok Village or Seochon Hanok Village in downtown Seoul, the regulations on hanok are more relaxed here, allowing the residents to explore new options. That is why there are two-story hanok houses. But that does not mean Eunpyeong-gu is an entirely free field. The restrictions are still tight.

The government has to be more realistic about hanok regulations. To receive municipal funding, we have to meet certain standards proposed by the government, the couple said. But these standards, they are impossible to meet when you are creating a house to actually live in.

Even Ham Kyeong Ru could not receive the whole subsidy amount, as it did not fully meet the regulations. Nevertheless, the house was recognized as one of the best built hanok by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport this year.

At one presentation, a state-funded research project concluded that you can build a hanok for 7 million won ($6,192) per 3.3-square-meter space. This is unrealistic, the husband said. There should be a more concrete, realistic guideline to get more people to actually build hanok.

Hanok villages in the city center have been experiencing difficulties with overtourism, and Ham Kyeong Ru could one day be subjected to too many tourists. But the family is not too worried, as they want more people to feel the joy of living in a modern hanok.

We want more people to experience what we feel. We are thinking about running a guest house after ten years, when our children grow up and leave the house, the couple said. It would be a shame if only we could enjoy the beauty of hanok.

The village is populated by the likes of the Parks. According to the couple, the villagers have formed a sort of a community -- or in simpler terms, they have become friends.

We share the experience of building hanok. There is this connectedness, the husband said. We visit others houses often. It is like, We steamed some tofu and kimchi. Come over for a drink.

Though the 18-year-old elder son had to make some sacrifices after the family moved into the new house -- attending a school 1 1/2 hours away -- even he is satisfied with the new house.

One day, I asked my son, if he likes it here. He simply said, It is like living in a picture frame. Living in an apartment, the outside looked like a frame. We only looked outside but never went out. But here it is different. The words struck me, she said.

He was so right. In apartments, if it snows, we would not go out to enjoy the snow. We would just look at it through the window. But here, if it snows, we can go outside right away and feel the snow falling on our hands.

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This article appeared on The Korea Herald newspaper website, which is a member of Asia News Network and a media partner of The Jakarta Post
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MBABANE - In response to the bold initiative taken by Cabinet on curbing excessive expenditure by Eswatini Government, the chief executive officer of Business Eswatini has reacted by applauding the move.



Business Eswatini Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Nathi Dlamini described this as an encouraging step in the right direction by the new government to address the serious economic malaise and speed up the economic recovery process.

We applaud the commitment demonstrated by government to economic recovery.



Sign



This may well be a sign of good things to come for the business community and the whole nation. Government has demonstrated good leadership right from the start, and it is this sort of fiscal prudence that the business sector has been yearning for, said Dlamini.

He further stated that the private sector felt emboldened when the public sector began to lead by example.



The private sector flourishes when government is able to rein in on excessive expenditure which becomes a burden in the long run. This move by government definitely lays a strong foundation for the stimulation of economic activity, Dlamini explained.



He went on to clarify that when businesses operate in an enabling environment that is conducive for growth and expansion, the pool for tax revenue widens and this eventually leads to wealth creation and a better quality of life for all citizens.



Dlamini also said that the business community was upbeat about other meaningful interventions expected from government to turn the direction of the economy around.



We are really looking forward to more positive action by government to make Eswatini, not only competitive in the region, but also the best destination for Foreign Direct Investment. This will be possible through engagement and Business Eswatini is on standby to keenly participate in a Public-Private dialogue for effective economic growth, added Dlamini.
THE narrative of State capture - juxtaposed and equated to that experienced in neighbouring South Africa - occurring within the shores of this the Kingdom of Eswatini is, oddly enough, seemingly gaining traction yet the possibility of the phenomenon rearing its head here seems to be as remote as eliciting voluntary admission from the governing elite that the Tinkhundla political system is devoid of democratic credentials and, consequently, is a threat to this country.

But can State capture happen in this country?

And what are the fundamentals and characteristics of State capture? To be contextual to the subject matter, there is a need to level the playing field by extracting the etymology of the terms, democracy and capture, for a better comprehension of their form and meaning in the context of the subject matter.

That the obtaining political system is considered to be democratic by its architects, even if political power is not resident with the people, coupled with the absence of political plurality points to a language impediment in the proper diagnosis of the meaning of the very term, democracy, and its etymology by those entrusted with the reins of power.

To clarify, the etymology of the word democracy derives from the Greek word (am not certain of its Latin equivalent for surely there must be one), demokratia, which means rule of the people. Consequently, can the Tinkhundla political system be said to be rule of the people? The answer is a firm NO!



Apparently electing a majority of representatives into the Legislature  even if some of these get to be appointed into Cabinet  does not necessarily mean the people rule. The people, or their elected representatives, do not appoint the Cabinet and, in turn, the Cabinet is not answerable and accountable to the people. The people do not originate national policies and national imperatives in the critical political, social and economic realms. These core activities are an exclusive preserve and exercised elsewhere independent of and without the involvement and consultation of the people, and implemented through Cabinet.



Initially the matter of the possibility of State capture happening within these shores was raised by Sthofeni Ginindza when, as chairman of Eswatini Electricity Company (EEC), delivering a report on the financial performance of the State owned entity. He raised the issue again when ventilating at the recent Sibaya, ahead of the appointment of Prime Minister Ambrose Mandvulo Dlamini, wherein he also bemoaned the fact that he could not aspire for the position since he had the wrong surname.



In South Africa, the face of State capture is (was) the once all powerful Gupta family with, paradoxically, then President Jacob Zuma as its acolyte, to gain control of and manipulate the operations of State owned entities (SOEs) and provincial governing structures to amass wealth. This was achieved through meticulous political manipulation in which the Gupta family appropriated to itself some of the presidents authority apropos Cabinet and provincial government appointments and only their chosen candidates occupied key corporate and political positions. And, by progression, this ensured that leadership of SOEs was in the hands of their lieutenants through which they controlled their operations from which flowed billions of Rands into their bank accounts through procurements, tenders and a variety of other business deals, gives a brief anatomy of state capture in the neighbouring country from my perspective.



As I see it, State capture is a hybrid of institutional corruption higher up in the echelons of power that is mothered by an environment of moral decay fueled by greed. So, abuse of political power, institutional corruption, decadence and greed, not to leave out opportunity, is the sum total of state capture. Of course throw in the institutions responsible for generating revenue and/or dispensing tax money either through services, procurements, etc for that critical clash of atoms that generate human appetite for greed. And we should not mistake State capture with tenderpreneurship because the latter is infantile with lower returns and not as complex and sophisticated relative to the construction of the former.



Can the same happen in this the Kingdom of Eswatini? The answer is a firm NO! To begin with, the political and social construct and ecosystems are quite different to those obtaining in South Africa. For the phenomena that happened in South Africa to replicate itself in this country, it would be essential to establish evidence of the existence of free, independent and autonomous institutions, be they statutory or SOEs/parastatals, which would be the targets for capture. Certainly the conditions obtaining here that are primarily influenced by the political and social architecture are not the same as those in South Africa. For in the kingdom no institution can be captured ostensibly because no institution is or has ever been free, independent and autonomous under the obtaining polity. Ultimately, what is in currency here is far worse than state capture, a situation exacerbated by almost non-existent oversight, lack of transparency and accountability and weak institutional governance.



SAs salvation has been the existence of strong institutions such as the Legislature playing an effective oversight role, the Judiciary and strong civil organisations hence State capture has been unearthed and is now being dealt with through the Justice Zondo Commission of Enquiry.

Regrettably the same cannot be said of this country hence nothing can be captured since just about everything is under political and social patronage of the elites that can only be halted by radical political transformation. Why, even private entities are susceptible to being captured in Eswatini through extra-legal demands for shareholding often times with promises of State tenders.






MBABANE  The woman at the centre of an alleged adulterous affair with a popular radioman has spoken out, and its not good news for her estranged husband.



I hate that man. And if there is a person whose funeral I wont attend, its him, she said of her alienated spouse who has reported the radioman to the latters royal kraal for allegedly having an intimate relationship with her.



The woman, who is a police officer, told the Times SUNDAY how she regretted the day she met and eventually got married to the man.



When he met me in November 2009, I had my own personal problems; I was not in a good space. We knew each other for only a week and he married me (through the traditional teka method) on the following one. I had not known him properly, but I decided to accept the marriage because I assumed he was serious about the relationship and because I was also ready to settle down, she said.



beginning of troubles



She said that was the beginning of her troubles  the latest being her alleged sexual intimacy with the popular radioman.

I would like to apologise to the radioman, his family, my family, my former in-laws, my chief and my employer for all that has appeared in the newspapers, she said of what this publication reported a fortnight ago on the adultery accusations.



She described as untrue rumours by her estranged husband that he caught her at a hotel with the radioman and has challenged him to provide proof to this effect.



She does not deny that she was booked at the hotel, which is located at Ezulwini, but she refutes being with someone, let alone the radioman.

I had just returned to the country from an international assignment and I needed to rest because I was tired. I did not sleep in my room at the Police College because I knew that he (estranged husband) would come to bother me since I had been alerted that he was looking for me.

I then booked myself into the hotel. On the following morning I checked out, and when I went to my car, I found his parked next to mine. Unfortunately, he was not inside so I jumped into mine and drove off. Just as I drove past the hotels main entrance, I saw him at the reception with a relative and they saw me. I did not stop but drove away. Now he claims I was with the radioman at the hotel. Thats all a big lie, she said.



The woman said her husband was making the radioman a scapegoat in their marriage and running away from admitting that the relationship was doomed from the beginning.



insecure person



She said her husband was an insecure person who also had an inferiority complex and was jealous of every man she happened to be seen speaking to.

This began when he would plant people to spy on me. A work colleague was transferred after my husband reported him to my bosses for having sent me a message that said hello beautiful.

I was even withdrawn from patrolling at night because my bosses feared my husband would cause drama since I was going to be assigned with a male officer. This lessened my chances for promotion. I am a hard worker, but his insecurity hampered all this because I couldnt be recommended for promotion, she stated.



She said her neighbours, as well as superiors at work, knew all about her marital problems because her husband made their marriage a community project.

Most of my commanders can attest to this because he would always come to my workplace to discuss our problems with them. Even my family has been called to countless meetings ever since I got married to this man, the woman related.
MBABANE  There is compelling evidence to suggest that the 2017 Form V final examination results are not a true reflection of the pupils performance.



As a result, there is a strong possibility that universities and colleges could have enrolled undeserving students while the deserving ones future is in limbo.

Pupils who sat for the Form V final examinations in 2017 were unknowingly given false grades for subjects whose scripts were never marked because they got lost under mysterious circumstances.



The pass rate for 2017 stood at 87.47 per cent, which was a decrease of 0.26 per cent from that of the preceding year.

The Times SUNDAY has learnt that scripts of at least 10 subjects from different schools strangely disappeared before they could be marked.

Arguably, most of the affected schools are not aware of what happened.



only 2 schools aware



Only two of the schools - Sigcaweni and Masibekela high schools  are aware and have confronted the Examination Council seeking answers after noting anomalies in their results.



Sigcaweni sought answers after pupils who sat for the Information Communication and Technology (ICT) paper did not get any grade for the subject.

This publication understands that even though Sigcaweni is only aware of the ICT anomaly, other subjects were also given false grades because their scripts were also lost.



With Masibekela, the school raised the issue after realising that their pupils had performed dismally in the Agriculture subject yet they were known to be the best in the country and even won a national award for their outstanding performance.



This publications sources allege that it is suspected that the Exams Council cooked the results for the Agriculture subject and other subjects except for ICT.

This is because the ICT paper is set and marked at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom as it falls under the International General Certificate in Secondary Education (IGCSE) programme as opposed to the others that fall under the local Swaziland General Certificate in Secondary Education (SGCSE).



With those subjects that fall under SGCSE, the exams council is accused of having given the pupils grades using an unknown discretion.

But with the ICT subject (which had Paper I, II and III), they could not do anything to the grading because this has to be done by Cambridge University.



Pupils dismayed



This publication spoke to some of the learners from Sigcaweni who sat for the ICT paper and they relayed their dismay at having written an examination for which they ended up not getting a grade.

The pupils, on their final results slips, have the status pending written next to the ICT subject.



When we got the results, we thought we had performed so badly in ICT we couldnt even be graded. But what wasnt clear was why they did not give us a U grade to symbolise ungraded instead of writing pending. When we enquired at school what had happened, we didnt get clear answers and we were never persistent because we still believed we had performed poorly, one of the former pupils said.



Another said they were at pains with not getting the results because they knew ICT to be an important subject since most things were now technology based.

Having an ICT certificate is an advantage nowadays; even if I had scored an E grade I deserve to be given it so that I have something to show that I did write the subject in Form V, the other former pupil stated.



Sigcaweni High School Head teacher Siphasha Dlamini said after learning that the pupils had not been given grades, she approached the Exams Council for clarity, but there were no answers, even to this day.

We are worried as a school and as parents. The former pupils still come to the school looking for the ICT results and we always promise them that we are still working on it, she said.



Dlamini said she even reported the matter to the Regional Education Officer after seeing that little progress was being made with the Exams Council.

We still want to find out what happened. We are still in the dark. We submitted the papers to the exams council and we have evidence for this. When we asked what the pending meant we were told that its a common thing, it happens, she said.

The principal stated that the Exams Council then requested back up files from the school which were duly given to them, but there were still no results given to them.

We have just been made aware that certificates for that year are now available and I will find out when I go to collect them if the grades are now included, Dlamini said.



Principal livid

Masibekela High School Principal Enock Dlamini is livid at the Exams Council over what happened and is demanding the institution to come out and be transparent about the matter.

This is the future of our children we are talking about. This matter made me so angry. I literally trembled when I learnt about it and couldnt even address it properly, he said.

He said what got him hot under the collar was that the Exams Council never bothered to call to alert him that his pupils scripts were missing.

They should have called me to say they couldnt find my pupils scripts, but they never did, the head teacher said.

He said he only got to learn about the pupils missing scripts from one of his school teachers who happened to be among the teachers who were marking the scripts.

He blamed two individuals within council for this and said the Registrar, Dr Edmund Mazibuko, was apparently kept in the dark about the lost scripts.

I went to Dr Mazibuko and we held at least three meetings where the two individuals were called in but all they did was to lie. They refused to tell me if the scripts were marked as they said this was confidential information for the council. One of these officials is a pompous person and he kept telling one lie after another, he said.

The principal said the issue needed to be discussed openly and the truth revealed because it had compromised schools trust with the council.



Ministry promises to act

Can we continue relying on them and trusting that they are doing good for our education. We are talking about parents hard earned money here. The officials are obviously covering for each other and they need to be exposed, he said.

Minister of Education and Training Lady Mabuza said even though she was not aware of the matter, she would take it up now that it has been brought to her attention.

Definitely, I will follow up on it as early as Monday (tomorrow), she assured.

Mazibuko, the Exams Council Registrar, was called several times on his mobile phone since Friday afternoon, but he did not respond to the calls.

A text message was sent to him containing the questions that needed answers to but he did not reply to any.

He was again called a number of times yesterday and still did not respond. Later in the afternoon his phone was either switched off or out of coverage area when called again on several instances.

However, this publication has it in authority that Mazibuko became aware on Friday that this publication was pursuing an article on the 2017 Form V results, specifically on the lost papers and false grades.

Lubombo REO Musa Mthupha could not be found for comment as his phone was not available on the MTN network.
By Trend:

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said that resuming nuclear enrichment is always possible, and Tehran is entitled to it as the US violated the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), IRNA reported.

In an exclusive interview with the Italian news channel Rai News 24, he added, We have the right to abandon JCPOA, but there is another option, we should see how they will secure our interests.

Asked about the US demands from Europe, he said that whatever Washington asks Europe to do with Iran is wrong by the very basis.

If a bullying power is allowed to do everything they want, there will be no end for their bullying, he said.

In response to the reporters question that US President Donald Trump believes that after the new round of sanctions, Iran will be obliged to return to the negotiating table, Zarif said that Trump administration has based its policies on illusion and wrong analyses, but Iran has survived and succeeded.

Thats the US that has withdrawn from the nuclear deal, not Iran, he said, noting, We held negotiations for two and a half year and reached a huge deal, the longest and the most serious negotiations in the contemporary history.

Asked what role Italy can play in anti-Iran sanctions, Zarif said that Italy is Irans biggest trade partner in the EU and it can support the private sector.

Asked why Iran does not leave Syria to alleviate Americans and its allies concerns about its regional influence, he said, If we dont help them, Daesh will find the opportunity to spread across the Middle East.

They helped Saddam and Taliban. Which countries fighters are bombing Yemen? Are they Iranian? he asked.

Americans spent billions of dollars to arm former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and regional states are still paying for their move, Iranian top diplomat said.

Responding to the question whether President Rouhani can meet Trump, he said why should he do such a thing?

Trump is not a reliable partner, as he quit a deal which took two and a half year to complete, Zarif said.
By Trend:

The UN Security Council on Saturday condemned "in the strongest terms" Friday's attacks against the Chinese Consulate-General in Karachi and a market in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan, Xinhua reports.

Members of the council appreciated the swift response of the Pakistani authorities, expressed their deepest sympathy and condolences to the victims' families and to the Pakistani government, and wished a speedy and full recovery of those injured, said the council in a press statement.

The members stressed the fundamental principle of the inviolability of diplomatic and consular premises and the obligations on host governments to take all appropriate steps to protect diplomatic and consular premises against any intrusion or damage, and prevent any disturbance of the peace of these missions or impairment of their dignity and any attack on diplomatic premises, agents and consular officers.

They underlined the need to hold perpetrators, organizers, financiers and sponsors of these reprehensible terrorist acts accountable and bring them to justice, and urged all states to cooperate actively with the Pakistani government and all other relevant authorities in this regard.

They reaffirmed that terrorism in all forms and manifestations constitutes one of the most serious threats to international peace and security, stressing the need for all states to combat by all means threats to international peace and security caused by terrorist acts.

Four people, including two police officers, were killed in the attack on the Chinese Consulate-General in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi. The attackers were killed before they were able to break into the compound.

At least 30 people were killed in a separate attack in the Orakzai region of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in the northwest.
Dubai Investments has grown its healthcare portfolio with a 20 per cent stake in an equity partnership in the Dh465 million ($126 million) Clemenceau Medical Centre, a new development which will offer specialty care across multiple disciplines in Dubai Healthcare City Phase 2.



A leading diversified investment company, Dubai Investments, said the equity partnership with Khansaheb Investments (55 per cent) and CMC SAL (25 per cent) is the latest addition to the Dubai Investments healthcare portfolio, which also includes an equity partnership for a multi-disciplinary hospital and day care clinics in Dubai under world renowned British teaching hospital Kings College Hospital London.



Construction at the Clemenceau Medical Centre is now 68 per cent complete, and the 110-bed specialty care facility is expected to open in June next year.



Managing Director and CEO Khalid Bin Kalban said: "Healthcare is one of the core development sectors of the nation, and there are concerted initiatives to strengthen it and bring world-class medical facilities to the region."



"Through our equity participation in the new Clemenceau Medical Centre in Dubai, we are underpinning our focus on strategic investments in the sector that will contribute to the well-being of the people and improve upon the reputation of the Emirate as a hub for world-class medical care," he noted.



Bin Kalban said the investment was part of a diversification strategy into identified sectors which achieved key business objectives for Dubai Investments besides aligning with the long-term plans of the UAE government and playing an important role in supporting the momentum of the Dubai economy.



"We will work closely with CMC management to ensure we deliver a cutting-edge facility that serves the community," he noted.



CMC Dubai Healthcare City will offer six operating theatres, 44 consultation clinics, state of the art cardiac centre, advance and robotic surgery suite, and wide-ranging inpatient and outpatient services offering the latest technologies and medical procedures.



It is managed by Clemenceau Medicine International and part of the Clemenceau Medicine Network that includes the Clemenceau Medical Center in Beirut, Lebanon and Clemenceau medical center in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, said the statement from Dubai Investments.



Clemenceau Medical Centre Beirut has been selected by John Hopkins Medicine International as one of its affiliate reputable medical institutions, it added.-TradeArabia News Service
5 NEW OFFSHORE CITIES, CAUSEWAY

Bahrain announces $30bn infrastructure projects plan

Bahrain has unveiled a strategic projects plan which will see investments worth over $30 billion in major developments such as the 109-km metro system, the new King Hamad causeway linking Saudi Arabia as well as construction of five new offshore cities.
The fifth edition of Omans top family barbecue cooking competition the ASaffa BBQ Challenge will be held on December 14, and see 50 families battle it out at the Civil Aviation Club in Azaiba.



The teams will be judged by renowned Omani Chef - Malik and his team, who will declare the winner, 1st runners-up and 2nd runners-up.



Three fully-dressed chickens will be provided to each team by ASaffa at the competition. For their own convenience, participants will bring their own barbecue sets, coal, fuel, skewers, spices and culinary-ware.



The teams will receive points based on: Taste, Recipe Innovation, Recipe originality, Cooking Hygiene, Preparation, and Presentation. Having something for every member of the family - the event will provide an ASaffa food spread, magic-show, games, music for kids; and will involve a traditional Omani performances show and a whole lot of cooking fun for adults.



Families must register their teams before December 5, a statement said.



Sidhartha Lenka, head of Marketing and Sales, ASaffa Foods said: Every year, ASaffa Foods gets into the barbecue spirit by organizing this weekend competition for amateur kings and queens of the grill who come to participate from all corners of the Sultanate.



As the largest fully integrated poultry, snack food and allied products producer in Oman, we believe this is the ideal on-ground event to promote our range of fresh, halal, healthy, tasty and 100% natural chickens. Our brand is all about fostering healthy eating habits and having fun with the family; a calendar event, the BBQ challenge has been conceptualized in keeping with this.



The perfect opportunity to showcase ones barbecue culinary skills for a fun-filled family barbecue getaway, everyone coming to the ASaffa BBQ Challenge know its as much about leisure, as it is about the intense competition. As in previous years ASaffa Foods is expecting participation from all over the Sultanate and hopes that as many families as possible participate and enjoy one of the main things Oman is known for during this time of the year  barbecue.  TradeArabia News Service
The St Regis Maldives Vommuli Resort has won the honour of Best Hotel in the Indian Ocean at 2018 Ultimate Luxury Travel Related Awards (ULTRAs) ceremony held recently at Burj Al Arab in Dubai.



Voters came from the well-travelled readers of Ultratravel UK, Ultratravel Middle East, the websites of their partner newspapers - the Daily Telegraph, The National and Al Ittihad - and the top tier members of DISCOVERY, the worldwide luxury hotel loyalty programme in which Ultratravel Collection is the elite segment of hotels.



The Indian Ocean category is fiercely contested but The St Regis Maldives Vommuli Resort came out on top leading the way in luxury guest care, first-class dining and the overall bespoke experience.



General manager Alexander Blair said: We are extremely proud to receive this prestigious award at this years ULTRAs and be recognised globally as the ultimate hallmark of industry excellence. These awards are dedicated to our entire team and are a testament of their hard work to ensure that every guest's experience is truly exceptional."



Designed by WOW Architects, the St Regis Maldives Vommuli resort incorporates aspects of contemporary architecture and interior design inspired by Maldivian traditions, marine life and culture. The property is surrounded by a large House Reef and the island is defined by several distinct ecological areas: lagoon, beach, coastal and jungle. At the resort, guests have the luxury of staying in one of the 77 island and overwater villas, each with a private pool.  TradeArabia News Service
The Japan External Trade Organisation (Jetro) has unveiled the country's pavilion concept and design for Expo 2020 Dubai, portraying a detailed and dynamic space with reverence to Arabic design and culture.



Positioning the pavilion as The Crosspoint for the Future, Japan welcomes Expo 2020 visitors and patrons into a rich architectural and innovation-driven heritage that the unique design offers.



Symbolizing the connection of the Middle East and Japans history, the stands geometry and design showcases a facade embracing Arabesque and Japanese Asanoha patterns with notions reflecting the ancient trade network of the Silk Road. The pavilion signifies the great respect Japan has for other cultures, especially when being hosted as in the case of the Expo.



Nakamura, commissioner general of the Japanese Section, Expo 2020 Dubai, said at the launch event: We are delighted with the concept and design of the Japanese pavilion and are certain it will add value to the prestige and legacy that global Expos represent. By encouraging and inspiring the next generation to take initiative in the development of future solutions, the Japan pavilion will exist as a centripetal force to connect and communicate the vision of our potential in leading a future society based on the spirit, techniques, culture and elements unique to Japan.



The immersive high-tech pavilion will also embody a modernized presentation of water, wind, shadow and light composed with Japanese environmental aesthetics to give visitors an experience of the world we envision and the resolutions that can be achieved with harmony between people, ideas and technology.



Tetsuya Azuma, vice commissioner general of Japanese Section, Expo2020, said: As the first International Registered Exhibition to be held in the Middle East & Africa region, Expo 2020 Dubai represents enormous opportunity for global exhibitors, like Japan, to showcase our social, cultural and economic initiatives to the global community. Through the unveiling of Japans Expo 2020 stand, we will be able to leverage the pavilions unique presence as a launchpad to develop and promote future relations and inbound tourism.



Under the concept of Join, visitors of numerous nationalities, ages, preferences and tastes will experience Japanese hospitality first-hand and gather under one roof to unite in the spirit of Omotenashi.



Moreover, visitors will have the opportunity to Sync and experience Japanese traditions, culture, and art through a sensory journey powered by the latest Japanese technologies. Lastly, the pavilion encourages visitors to act by finding possibilities of co-creation to face future global challenges.



The pavilion will host an array of events throughout the duration of Expo 2020 Dubai, including workshop experiences, Japanese culinary art and cuisine, and diverse presentations and showcases.  TradeArabia News Service
Travel from the UAE to the Czech Republic grew by over 18 per cent in the first half of the year, faster than the previous corresponding period, a statement from the Czech Tourist Authority- CzechTourism and the Embassy said.



It is expected that 2018 will end with significant rise in the number of outbound travellers, it added.



Alexandr Sporys, Ambassador of the Czech Republic to the UAE, said: For both expatriates and the citizens, the Czech Republic is an exquisite geographically close destination. The country offers a diversity of experience within a five-hour flight distance making it possible for even weekend sojourners to visit the Czech Republic.



The overall number of travellers from the UAE to the Czech Republic in the last three year stood at close to 100,000 with an average growth rate of over 28 per cent during the period. The average length of stay of UAE travellers to the Czech Republic was in the range of 3.4 to 4.3 days.



Monika Palatkova, managing director of Czech Tourist Authority  CzechTourism said: The Czech Republic is one of the closest European destinations to the UAE which is being increasingly favoured by family tourists as well. Our aim is to reach out to the potential UAE travellers and to present them the eclectic experiences the Czech Republic can offer across the spectrum of heritage to modernity complemented by the countrys diversity of natural landscape and culture.



She said globally the Czech Republic is fast emerging to be a sought after destination and the number of visitors have been consistently growing over the last three years, highlighting that Czech Tourism has completed a Discover Central Europe Middle East Road Show in the UAE as part of its wider campaign across the Gulf countries to woo tourists.



The aim of the road show was to highlight the multifaceted attractions of the country and highlight it as a unique destination of rich diversity from historical to the contemporary.



The roadshow across the Gulf countries consisting of B2B presentations and workshops is a joint promotional initiative of four Central European national tourist organisations of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.



Arzan Khambatta, head of Tourism Representations at VFS Global, which represents CzechTourism in GCC markets, said: The intrepid travellers of the UAE are increasingly turning to the Czech Republic and its charms. As part of our promotional activities, we will be targeting families, millennials and luxury-oriented mature travellers from UAE to the Czech Republic.  TradeArabia News Service
Transportation Research Board > Blurbs > Examining the Development Effects of Modern-Era Streetcars: An Assessment of Portland and Seattle





Examining the Development Effects of Modern-Era Streetcars: An Assessment of Portland and Seattle





E-Newsletter Type: E-Newsletter Type: University Research News



This Summary Last Modified On: 11/16/2018 The Mineta Transportation Institute at San Jose State University has released a report that examines the effects streetcar investments in Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington have on development. The goal of this report is to better understand the nature of development activity around streetcar systems, as well as the policy and program supports and other factors that have played key roles in these systems. Text Size:
New Delhi, Nov 24 (UNI) Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Directorate of Enforcement (ED) have submitted that former Finance Minister P Chidambaram and his son Karti were not cooperating with the Investigation Agency in the Aircel Maxis case so their custodial interrogation was necessary in the case.

Former Union Minister and Senior Congress Leader P Chidambaram and his son Karti have come under the scanner of Investigating Agency in the Rs 3,500-crore Aircel Maxis deal and INX Media case.

CBI has alleged that P Chidambaram granted FIPB (Foreign Investment Promotion Board) approval in March 2006 to Mauritius based Global Communication Services Holdings Ltd a subsidiary of Maxis.

A chargesheet has been filed in this case against former Telecom Minister Dayanidhi Maran, his brother Kalanithi Maran and others. The Maran brothers and the other accused were discharged by the Special Judge due to deficiency of material.

Directorate of Enforcement is investigating a separate Money Laundering case in the Aircel Maxis which is registered under Prevention of Money Laundering Act.

Counsel for Chidambaram had filed the Anticipatory bail application before Special Judge OP Saini in the month of May this year by submitting that CBI and ED were unsubstantiated and there was no need of their custodial interrogation in the case which is as sought by the Investigating Agency.

CBI and ED filed their replies to the Anticipatory bail Application of Chidambarams by submitting in the court that they were evasive and not cooperating with the Investigating Agency in the matter. Investigating Agencies has sought the custodial interrogation of the accused by further submitting that it is difficult to complete the investigation in a time bound manner as directed by the Supreme Court due to their no cooperation.

Counsel for Chidambaram filed their rejoinder in response to the replies of the Investigating Agencies by submitting that they were always cooperating and so there was no need of custodial interrogation in the case.

Special Judge OP Saini has extended the protection from arrest till November 26 to both the accused in the cases filed by the CBI and the ED.UNi XC-SNU 1836
Cuba appeals to IAEA to assess its readiness for radiation emergencies

HAVANA, Nov 25 (Xinhua) At the request of the Cuban government, experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) are on the island for the first time, to assess the country's readiness for radiation emergencies.

The visit is not an inspection or an audit, but an assessment of how the country complies with the international standards related to preparedness and response to radiation catastrophes, Cuban sources said.

The evaluation, which began on Nov. 19 and goes through Nov 27, will focus on several sites in Havana, including the Ameijeiras Brothers Hospital, Jose Marti International Airport, the fire department and the General Customs Office of the Republic.
Damascus urges UN to punish states backing terrorist groups after Aleppo chlorine shelling

Damascus, Nov 25 (Sputnik) The Syrian Foreign Ministry on Sunday the UN Security Council on Sunday to take punitive measures against countries supporting terrorist groups following Saturday's chlorine shelling of Syria's Aleppo.

On Saturday, militants from terrorist groups fired reportedly chlorine-filled shells at Aleppo's neighborhoods of al-Khalidiye and Al Zahraa along with the Nile Street. People were hospitalized with asphyxiation and other symptoms typical for poisoning. According to local media reports, about 107 civilians have been hospitalized.

"Syrian Arab Republic's Government demands the Security Council to immediately and strongly condemn these terrorist crimes and to shoulder its responsibilities in preserving international peace and security through taking immediate deterrent and punitive measures against states and regimes backing terrorism," the ministry was quoted as saying by the SANA news agency.
EU condemns terrorist attack on southeastern Libyan town

TRIPOLI, Nov 25 (Xinhua) Delegation of the European Union to Libya on Saturday condemned a deadly terrorist attack on the southeastern town of Tazerbu.

"We condemn Friday's cowardly terrorist attack against (a) police station and the murder and kidnapping of civilians," the delegation said in a statement.

"Our condolences to the families of the victims, and sympathy to those injured," the statement added. "Only through unity can terrorism be defeated."
Four killed in Saudi-led airstrike on Yemen

Sanaa, Nov 25 (Xinhua) At least four people were killed on Sunday when a Saudi-led coalition airstrike hit a fuel station in Yemen's northwestern province of Hajjah, a medic and residents said.

Five others were wounded in the air attack which struck the station at the entrance of a popular market of Mastaba district earlier the morning.

Saudi Arabia is leading an Arab military coalition that intervened in Yemen in 2015 to support the government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi after the Houthi rebels forced him into exile and seized much of the country's north, including the capital Sanaa.
Iraq: 6 die in floods in Wasit province

BAGHDAD, Nov 25 (Xinhua) At least six people died in a wave of floods of torrential rain that fell Saturday on Iraq's eastern province of Wasit, the Iraqi government said.

"The hospitals of Wasit province received six bodies of people died of floods during the day," Sayf al-Badr, spokesman of the Iraqi Health Ministry said in a brief statement.

The office of Wasit provincial governor, Mohammed al-Maiyahi, said in a separate statement that the service offices of the provincial government are at highest alert, and declared holiday on Sunday for the unstable weather.
Islamic State seizes Iranian weapon shipment bound for Hamas, says report

Jerusalem, Nov 24 (UNI) The Islamic State affiliate in Egypts Sinai Peninsula has seized a weapons shipment that included a number of Kornet missiles, the Russian-made advanced anti-tank laser-guided weapon system. The shipment was making its way from Iran to Palestinian terror group Hamas in the Gaza Strip, according to a report in the Kuwaiti newspaper al-Jarida.

A security source in Kuwait told the Kuwaiti news paper that the shipment is the largest seized by IS and included other GPS-guided weaponry. The source said a local IS commander was refusing to cooperate with Hamas and transfer the weapons, as cited by Hebrew-language news site Walla, The Times of Israel reported.

Iran, an arch-foe of Israel, has supported Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip, most notably Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Its ties with Hamas, previously close, have thawed in recent months, following years of tensions that began at the onset of the Syrian civil war in 2011 when Hamas criticized Syrian President Bashar Assad, a close ally of Iran.
US blacklists 27 entities including 12 in China over National Security concerns 24 Nov 2021 | 10:26 PM Washington, Nov 24 (UNI/Sputnik) The United States has blacklisted 27 foreign entities, including 12 from China, over national security concerns, the Commerce Departments Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) said on Wednesday. see more..

Japan, Vietnam to step up security co-operation 24 Nov 2021 | 9:48 PM Tokyo, Nov 24(UNI) Japan and Vietnam on Wednesday agreed to step up security co operation, while sharing security concerns regarding the regional waters. see more..

Russia-Islamic World meeting opens in Saudi's Jeddah, highlights cooperation 24 Nov 2021 | 8:46 PM Riyadh, Nov 24 (UNI/Xinhua) The meeting of the Group of Strategic Vision "Russia-Islamic World" opened on Wednesday in Saudi Arabia's city of Jeddah, during which Russia and Islamic states vowed to strengthen cooperation in various fields. see more..

IAEA says holds no political stance against Iran 24 Nov 2021 | 8:43 PM Tehran, Nov 24 (UNI/Xinhua) The Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) denied that the agency has upheld any political stance against Iran, Iran's Press TV reported Wednesday. see more..
Morocco busts illegal migration network

RABAT, Nov 25 (Xinhua) The Moroccan police said Saturday that they have busted a new network of illegal migration.

During a police raid in the northern city of Tangier, two people linked to the network were arrested, the police said in a statement.

Eight people suspected of illegal migration, including six minors, were also arrested, the statement added.
New Delhi, Nov 24 (UNI) Maldives Foreign Minister Abdulla Shahid arrived here on Saturday on an official visit.

This is Mr Shahid's first foreign visit since taking office.

"Both countries share ethnic, linguistic, cultural and commercial ties steeped in antiquity....Together we prosper," MEA spokesman Raveesh Kumar tweeted.

According to official sources, the visiting dignitary will meet his Indian counterpart External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Monday.

He will also call on President Ram Nath Kovind on Tuesday.

Ibrahim Mohamed Solih took over as the new President of Maldives on November 17 after a keenly observed election.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi was present at the grand swearing in ceremony as one of the special invitees.

Shortly after the swearing in ceremony, Prime Minister Modi held a meeting with the new President Solih at Male.

Meanwhile, Teodor Melescanu, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Romania, also arrived here on Saturday evening.

Mr Melescanu is slated to meet External Affairs Minister Ms Swaraj.

He will also meet Deputy NSA.

"India and Romania celebrate 70 years of establishment of diplomatic relations this year," MEA spokesman tweeted.

UNI DEVN RSA 2129
Police seize huge consignment of foreign liquor in dry Bihar

Jamui, Nov 25 (UNI) Police seized 50 cartons of foreign liquor from a car near Batiyasaron village under Chakai police station area in the district today.

Police said here that the consignment was seized when it was being smuggled to Samastipur from Giridih in Jharkhand. Peddlers made good their escape from the spot after abandoning the vehicle on the spot.


Six Al-Qaida operatives killed by US drone strike in central Yemen

Aden, Nov 25 (Xinhua) At least six operatives of the Yemen-based al-Qaida branch were killed in a U.S. drone strike in the central province of al-Bayda on Sunday, a security official told Xinhua.

The pilotless aircraft fired missiles at a location held by al-Qaida militants in Quraishah area of al-Bayda Province, leaving six terrorists killed at the scene, the official said on condition of anonymity.

Local media outlets also reported the US drone attack on al-Qaida militants, saying the six killed included two mid-level commanders.
Simferopol, Nov 25 (UNI) Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) on Sunday said that three Ukrainian warships have intruded Russias state border entering its territorial waters, and are carrying out dangerous maneuvers.

In a statement released by the FSB, "This morning at around 7:00 a.m. Moscow Time three ships of Ukraines Navy violated Articles 19 and 21 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which define the right of a coastal state to ensure maritime security, crossed the Russian state border and illegally entered the temporarily closed waters of the Russian territorial sea".

The Ukrainian warships continue heading to the Kerch Strait, where the traffic is regulated under a schedule approved by the captain of the Russian sea port.
Uganda: 10 confirmed dead, 40 rescued in boat accident

KAMPALA, Nov 25 (Xinhua) Ten people have been confirmed dead and more than 40 others rescued in a Saturday boat accident on Lake Victoria in the central Ugandan district of Mukono, police said.

Police said in a tweet the marine force was continuing with the rescue mission.

Luke Owoyesigire, Kampala Metropolitan Police spokesperson, told Xinhua by telephone that the accident had occurred but could not give more details.
UN condemns terror attack in SE Libya

TRIPOLI, Nov 24 (Xinhua) UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) on Saturday condemned the terrorist attack on the southeastern Libyan town of Tazirbu that took place on Friday, which killed and injured several people.

"The UNSMIL condemns the deadly terrorist attack on Tezirbu, an oasis southeast of Libya," the mission said in a statement.

"UNSMIL reminds the parties to the conflict of their obligation to protect civilians and calls upon them to immediately cease targeting civilians and civilian objects in compliance with International Humanitarian Law," the statement said.
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Credit: William ClaxtonHow does it feel to have Bob Dylan make a rare TV appearance on your late-night program? Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon has the answer, my friends.

On an episode of NBC's The Tonight Show that aired on Thanksgiving, Dylan appeared alongside Fallon in a surreal filmed segment that also featured The Big Apple Circus.

As the clip begins, Fallon is seen sitting by himself in an empty venue, then Dylan quickly joins him, holding a bottle of his new bourbon whiskey, Heaven's Door, and two glasses. Bob pours some whiskey for him and Jimmy and the two clink glasses, and proceed to watch a group of circus performers go through their routines, including dance, acrobatic and trapeze maneuvers.

After a while, Fallon stands and claps, and as the camera pulls back, you see that he's by himself in the stands. Baffled, Jimmy calls out, "Bob? Bob? Where's Bob?" The circus' ringmaster then says to Fallon, "There's nobody there. There was never anybody there."

Jimmy asks himself, "What was in that whiskey," then claps for the circus performers once more as the camera shows the bottle of Heaven's Door bourbon and two partly filled glasses.

You can watch the segment now at The Tonight Show's official YouTube channel.

Dylan announced the launch of Heaven's Door whiskey, a collaboration between him and a number of renowned distillers, in April.

Dylan launched a seven-date engagement at the Beacon Theatre in New York City this past Friday that continues Monday and runs through this Saturday, December 1. He ends his 2018 tour with a December 3 concert in Philadelphia that will mark the opening of the new venue The Met Philadelphia, which formerly was the Philadelphia Metropolitan Opera House.

Copyright  2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
A man is in police custody after a Thanksgiving Day shooting at a New Baltimore apartment complex in what investigators called a domestic dispute.

Police were called to respond to an incident at Margo Manor Apartments on the 35000 block of 23 Mile Road near Jefferson Avenue. Callers told police two men had been arguing and one of the men shot the other.

When officers arrived, they found a man suffering from a single gunshot wound to the leg. He was transported to McLaren Macomb hospital in Mount Clemens where he was treated for his injury. The victim was released a few hours later.

The suspect accused in the shooting called the New Baltimore Police Department and agreed to turn himself in. Officers arrested the suspect when he showed up. He was held in the New Baltimore police lockup.

Detectives were expected to meet with the Macomb County Prosecutors Office for approval of criminal charges. The suspect was expected to be arraigned in 42nd District Court.

 Digital First Media staff
HMGoG Welcomes UK Spelling out Gibraltar Sovereignty Guarantees to EU and Spain

After the end of the European Council meeting early this afternoon, the Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom to the European Union, Ambassador Sir Tim Barrow, has written to the Secretaries General of the Council and Commission of the European Union.

Sir Tim's letters are the response of the United Kingdom to the letters from Donald Tusk, the President of the European Council, and Jean-Claude Junker, President of the European Commission, to Pedro Sanchez, the President of the Government of Spain.

The letters also respond to the statement contained in the minutes of the Council of today's date on the territorial scope of future agreements to be negotiated and entered into between the United Kingdom and the European Union after the UK has left the EU.

In its response, the United Kingdom has stated that it has no doubt over UK sovereignty of Gibraltar, including British Gibraltar Territorial Waters.

Additionally, the UK has specifically reminded the EU of the "double lock" on sovereignty to the effect that Gibraltar's sovereignty would never be transferred against the freely and democratically expressed wishes of the people of Gibraltar. The Ambassador also reminds the EU that the UK has given an additional assurance to the people of Gibraltar that it will not enter into a process of sovereignty negotiations with which Gibraltar is not content.

These timely reminders respond to the references to territorial integrity in the communications from the EU.

Sir Tim's letter then goes on to deal with the terms of the future negotiation by expressing in writing the position the Prime Minister, Theresa May, has repeatedly set out and which re-states the position he set out previously in an earlier letter to the EU yesterday.

Sir Tim specifically writes that, "the Government of the United Kingdom further restates that it will negotiate the future agreements implementing the Joint Political Declaration on behalf of all territories for whose external relations the United Kingdom is responsible, including Gibraltar, to ensure an appropriate and beneficial future relationship with the European Union, taking into account their existing relationships with the European Union."

Sir Tim ends by asking the Secretary General of the European Council, Mr Jeppe Tranholm-Mikkelsen, to transmit a copy to all members of the European Council, which includes the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez.

The Chief Minister of Her Majesty's Government of Gibraltar, the Hon Fabian Picardo QC MP, said: "I am very happy to see this very specific statement by the United Kingdom Government in relation to the matters that have been raised by Spain in the last 72 hours. This communication from the UK directly counters and knocks on the head any idea that the United Kingdom might in any way have agreed any aspect of the statement from the EU27 about Gibraltar's future status. Additionally, the letter from the UK counters any kills dead any suggestion that the UK might have accepted any part of the Spanish attempt to exclude Gibraltar from the negotiations of the future UK/EU agreements. These letters set out the position of the United Kingdom clearly and unequivocally and they will be delivered to the Spanish Government. They put on the diplomatic record the position already clearly and unequivocally set out by the Prime Minister herself in all her public statements on the subject. On behalf of the people of Gibraltar I want to thank Mrs May for her stalwart and unflinching defence of Gibraltar, our British sovereignty and our economic interests. The Withdrawal Agreement she has achieved today protects all of those interests and is the best way for the United Kingdom and Gibraltar to leave behind us 46 years of membership of the European Union in a managed and orderly fashion. It also prepares the ground for a negotiation about the future relationship between the EU and the whole of the UK family. I look forward to those negotiations and to the work we will do with the UK in respect of trade deals to be done with the wider world, in particular the Commonwealth."
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Calvert City Jingle All the Way 5k and Fun Run set for December 4
By West Kentucky Star Staff Nov. 24, 2018 | 10:15 PM | MAYFIELD

A Mayfield man was arrested early Thursday morning on marijuana charges.

The Mayfield Police Department says an officer was on North 15th Street when he noticed a home with the front door open. When the officer got out of his vehicle to investigate, he reportedly detected a strong smell of raw marijuana.

The officer entered the home and found 43-year-old John Issac Hollowell inside. Hollowell was detained, the home was secured and a search warrant was obtained.

During a search, police reportedly found a large marijuana grow operation inside the home, including several grow tents. According to officers, over 150 marijuana plants were recovered, along with a large sum of cash.

Hollowell was arrested and lodged in the Graves County Jail. He's charged with cultivating marijuana, five plants or more, and possession of drug paraphernalia.




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Coleg Cambria submits plans for 20m carbon neutral farm  the first in the UK

This article is old - Published: Sunday, Nov 25th, 2018

Coleg Cambria is planning a 20million carbon neutral farm to pioneer new technologies in digital agriculture and renewable energy.

The colleges Denbighshire site in Llysfasi is proposing to develop the hub as part of the North Wales Growth Bid, with support from North Wales Economic Ambition Board.

Their vision is to create a centre of excellence that will act as a test platform for new and existing renewable low carbon systems.

Chief executive David Jones believes the project would facilitate growth in the burgeoning commercial farming sector through the efficient use of digital precision primary food production.

There is a demand for more skilled workers in agriculture in line with new technologies and rural sustainability, said Mr Jones.

Securing the future of farming is crucial for our communities, culture and the Welsh language.

He added: Coleg Cambria Llysfasi is at the forefront of advances in this arena and we are confident  as part of the imminent North Wales Growth Deal  the Carbon Neutral Farm will play a vital role in helping to prepare and deliver a dynamic workforce with the correct skills and knowledge needed to boost the rural economy.

Lesley Griffiths, Cabinet Secretary for Energy, Planning and Rural Affairs, has spoken of her ambition for the Welsh public sector to be carbon neutral by 2030.

Iain Clarke, Head of Llysfasi, says the colleges renewable energy hub would help to achieve that target and encourage other sectors to follow suit.

The Welsh Government is working hard to become a global leader in clean energy and low carbon electricity generation, and we share their aspirations here at Coleg Cambria, said Mr Jones.

We are at the heart of industry and agriculture in north east Wales and training the future workforce via a series of award-winning apprenticeships, accredited qualifications and partnerships with leading organisations including LEAF Education, AGCO Corporation and Tilhill Forestry.

Collaboration with Welsh Government, Natural Resources Wales and other key stakeholders and businesses will take this forward and play a driving role in supporting the overall Growth Vision for North Wales.

The hub will aim to improve the uptake of renewable energy initiatives with a target of 40 projects over five years, along with improved knowledge transfer to 500 businesses and communities.

It will provide a test bed for commercial testing of market technology whilst delivering a financial injection and further diversification of the regions rural economy.

For more on Coleg Cambria visit the website www.cambria.ac.uk
North Wales AM voices support for Wrexhams new reusable water bottles initiative

This article is old - Published: Sunday, Nov 25th, 2018

A regional Assembly Member is helping to promote an initiative which aims to reduce the single use of plastic in Wrexham.

Water company Hafren Dyfrdwy has launched a new Refill scheme in Wrexham, which will see people able to fill up reusable water bottles for free.

Around 20 local businesses have so far signed up up to the scheme, which aims to help keep people hydrated, as well as bringing environmental benefits by reducing the use of plastic bottles.

Mark Isherwood, Assembly Member for North Wales, referred to the scheme when calling for a Welsh Government Statement on the reduction of single use plastic during last weeks Business Statement.

Speaking at the time, Mr Isherwood said: Ive been asked by water company Hafren Dyfrdwy Limited, Severn Dee, to join them in promoting their Refill in Wrexham initiative, which is launching, I believe, today, working collaboratively with the Welsh Government and founding not-for-profit organisation City to Sea, where a Refill national tap water campaign will encourage businesses, cafes, museums and restaurants to provide free refills, with businesses simply displaying a blue Refill sticker in their windows, and a supporting smartphone app showing the locations of all water Refill Stations.

The Leader of the House, Julie James AM, replied: I know the Minister is very pleased with her Refill policy, and no doubt will be bringing something back to the Chamber in the course of it to tell us how well its doing.

The Refill app can be downloaded for free on Google Play or the App Store. The next action day in Wales will take place across the Powys area on 28 November as both organisations look to sign up more rural businesses.
Robins volunteers across North Wales hospitals celebrated for their outstanding work

This article is old - Published: Sunday, Nov 25th, 2018

A team of hospital volunteers have been recognised for their outstanding voluntary work across the region.

The Robins volunteers received this years Outstanding Voluntary Contribution Award for their work supporting patients across all north Wales hospitals.

They help ward staff in Wrexham Maelor Hospital, Glan Clwyd Hospital and Ysbyty Gwynedd by making time to sit and chat with patients, taking the tea trolley round or visiting the hospital shop if they are bed bound.

Robins volunteers also spend lots of time helping on the Childrens Wards in the hospitals talking to the children or allowing parents a short break so they can go and get something to eat.

The awards, sponsored by Centerprise International, celebrate the outstanding achievements of NHS staff from across North Wales.

Sue Marriott, volunteers manager said: We are small team of volunteers, we probably have about 230 across north Wales in the three acute hospitals and in 16 community hospitals.

We are really trying to raise the profile of the volunteers because we feel that they are valuable, its worthwhile and the feedback we get from clinical staff is that they always go that extra mile.

When the staff see them coming in they are so grateful for the help. We work as a big team, nothing is too much trouble. The clinical staff wear blue and green but we wear red shirts because its a stop sign. It means stop here, whatevers happening, weve got time for you.

Robins volunteer, Bethan Jones said: I love being a Robin, seeing the difference we can make to a patients stay in hospital and the smile you can put on their faces after youve visited them and made a cup of tea for them is brilliant.

As a team we are delighted to win this Award and its great to have all the hard work recognised.

Ifer Gwyn, stakeholder engagement manager for Horizon who sponsored the Award, added: The Robins are well-known throughout North Wales for providing a friendly face to raise the spirits of patients in our hospitals.

All three nominees were outstanding examples of volunteers making a huge contribution to healthcare in North Wales, and I was delighted to present the team with their award.

Jeremy Nash, Chief Executive of Centerprise International, said: Its fantastic to be the headline sponsor at the Health Boards Achievement Awards for the second year running.

Centerprise is committed to supporting the Welsh community and NHS in equal measure, and the awards were a fantastic celebration of the incredible efforts of healthcare staff from across North Wales.
CINCINNATI, OH (FOX19) - Cincinnati-based retail giant Macys is in hot water with shoppers, including a Queen City councilman, over a holiday ad depicting families that many are calling racist.

Tuesday morning city councilman Jeff Pastor tweeted at the store questioning their ad that shows the same white couple twice with white children, a mixed-race LGBT couple with mixed-race children, and what appears to be an image depicting a single black mother and three black children. The picture went viral on Twitter with people citing racism for showing the only single-mother family portrayed as a black family.

Hey Macys whats wrong with this picture?" Pastor asked in the tweet.

We talked with Pastor today who shared this quote with us: The only single parent was the black mother. We have multiple, loving, interracial, different parents, beautiful families. But the only picture you have is a single, black mother.

Pastor is not the only one who took offense with the ad and voiced his displeasure. Hundreds of potential shoppers took to Twitter to tweet their grievances to the company. They took issue with the ad for showing the only black family as having a single mother with no father present.

Macys began responding to Twitter users Sunday morning.

The first person the retail giant appears to have responded to is a Twitter user named Ira who called out the company for not including a black father in the image. Macys responded by Sunday afternoon offering an explanation that said in part the images were intended to celebrate families and togetherness, never to offend.

Councilman Pastor told us he accepts that apology but added that picture shouldnt have happened in the first place.

Its not like they did it with ill intent. But its somebody within diversity and inclusion missed that picture. said Pastor.

The company also said in their original statement via Twitter its important for us to know when weve missed the mark.

After the initial tweet and response, complaints began flooding Macys Twitter account. Macys immediately began responding to angry customers quickly with the same copied-and-pasted statement.

By Monday evening, the company began offering a longer statement via a three-part Twitter response to the hundreds of angry people still flooding their mentions.

The new and longer response thanked users for offering feedback on their holiday pajama product images and apologized for an unintended offense.

Part two of their new response told customers the images were product images that were cut and pasted together and not run in an advertisement from Macys.

The final part of Macys new statement informed Twitter users that they know they are at our best when what we do fully reflects the rich diversity of our colleagues, costumers and communities.

Macys also said theyve shared the comments with their team and are making changes so customers see balanced images when shopping online.

The company did not respond to Jeff Pastor but their GVP of Corporate Communications did respond to FOX19 NOW when asked to comment on the controversy.

Radina Russell, GVP of Corporate Communications with Macys Inc., echoed the statement on Twitter by reiterating that the images were not an ad, but a collection of images cut and pasted together from their website.

Below is a statement from Russell:

"We appreciate everyone who reached out to share feedback about our holiday pajama product images on Macys.com  we want our customers to tell us when we dont get it right.

"We apologize. It was certainly not our intent to offend anyone."
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-25 01:48:53|Editor: Shi Yinglun

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Yemeni people take part in a protest against the ongoing fighting and blockade outside the United Nations Office in Sanaa, Yemen, on Nov. 25, 2018. Preparations are underway to hold the expected UN-sponsored peace talks in Sweden next month. (Xinhua/Mohammed Mohammed)

by Murad Abdu

ADEN, Yemen, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- A fresh wave of fighting erupted between the Yemeni government forces and the Houthi rebels in Yemen's western port city of Hodeidah just a few hours after the departure of the United Nations special envoy to Yemen, Martin Griffiths.

Both warring parties ignored the UN calls aimed at de-escalating the situation in the Red Sea port city of Hodeidah, and engaged in armed confrontations on the ground amid heavy exchange of artillery shelling, raising questions about the fate of ongoing peace efforts.

Although both sides had declared their willingness to halt the fighting and head to participate in the upcoming UN-sponsored peace talks in Sweden, sporadic fighting and exchange of gunfire continued in Hodeidah.

An army commander told Xinhua by phone that the government forces clashed with Houthi rebels in the areas surrounding the Kilo 16 area in Hodeidah, but no military progress was made.

"Houthis positioned inside the citizens' farms keep targeting our sites with artillery shells and some of our soldiers were injured as a result of the bombardment," the commander said on condition of anonymity.

He said that the government forces responded and shelled the Houthi-controlled sites with artillery gunfire, sparking armed confrontations in the same areas around Kilo 16 area.

A source of the government's media center said that several shells fired by Houthis landed on residential buildings in Hodeidah's neighborhood of Mandher, causing casualties.

"Some of the houses were partially damaged and many families were evacuated as the Houthis randomly shell the area," the source said anonymously.

Witnesses told Xinhua that warplanes of the Saudi Arabia-led coalition launched a number of airstrikes against the Houthi-held areas in Hodeidah.

The Houthi-affiliated Masirah television network reported that two of the Saudi-led airstrikes hit the rebels-held district of Aljarahi in Hodeidah.

The sporadic violations and resumption of fighting raging over the control of the strategic Red Sea port city Hodeidah raised questions about the result of the UN peace efforts.

On Friday, Griffiths, accompanied by the World Food Program Chief Stephen Anderson and the UN Humanitarian Coordinator Lise Grande, visited Hodeidah.

During his visit to the war-torn city, the UN envoy negotiated with the Houthi leadership about a supervisory role over the strategic port in Yemen's Hodeidah, which is still under the control of the Iranian-backed rebels.

"We have agreed that the UN should now pursue actively and urgently detailed negotiations for a leading UN role in the port and more broadly ... such a role will preserve the essential humanitarian pipeline that starts here and serves the people of Yemen," Griffiths said.

However, the Yemeni Minister of Information, Moammar el-Eryani, said on Friday that it is not possible to accept any agreement that allows the management of Hodeidah's port without its return to the legitimate government's control.

The minister stressed that his government won't accept the presence of the Houthi rebels in Hodeidah, and urged the UN envoy to persuade them of leaving the strategic city and its port, handing it over to the internationally-recognized government peacefully.

Earlier in the day, Yemeni local media outlets reported that the UN envoy left the country's capital Sanaa after a three-day visit that included meetings with the seniors Houthi leaders.

Preparations are underway to hold a new round of UN-sponsored talks to end the country's years-long conflict. The meeting is expected to kick off in Sweden next month.

The state-run Saba news agency quoted the country's foreign minister as saying that "the government has informed the UN envoy to Yemen ... that it will send a government delegation to the talks with the aim of reaching a political solution."

Hodeidah, the main Red Sea port city which handles 80 percent of Yemen's imports and aid, has witnessed deadly clashes over the past few weeks between the government troops backed by the Saudi-led coalition forces and the Houthi rebels.

The government backed by the Saudi-led Arab coalition has been trying to recapture Hodeidah from Houthis who seized it along with much of the country's north in late 2014.

The previous UN-sponsored peace talks in Geneva collapsed in September after the Houthi delegation did not appear.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-25 04:14:14|Editor: yan

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TEHRAN, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- Trade between Iran and the European Union (EU) member states amounted to 14.89 billion euros (16.89 billion U.S. dollars) in the first three quarters of 2018, Eghtesadonline news website reported on Saturday.

The figure registered a 7.5-percent rise in the mutual trade in the nine months, compared with the corresponding period last year.

Iran's top five trade partners over the period were Italy, Spain, Germany, France and Greece with 3.78 billion euros, 2.31 billion euros, 2.28 billion euros, 2.25 billion euros and 1.11 billion euros worth of commercial exchanges, respectively.

Iran experienced decline in trade with Cyprus, Malta, Portugal, Bulgaria and Ireland.

Iran exported 8.3 billion euros worth of commodities to EU member states during the nine-month period, which shows a 25.1-percent rise compared with the same period last year.

The top exported commodities included mineral fuel, mineral oil and products of their distillation, bituminous substances and mineral waxes, iron and steel, edible fruit and nuts, zest of citrus fruit or melons.

As for Iran's imports from the EU during the first nine months of 2018, they decreased by eight percent compared with the same period of the past year to stand at over 6.59 billion euros.

The imported products mainly included nuclear reactors, boilers, machinery and mechanical appliances and parts, vehicles other than rail or tramway rolling stock, electrical machinery and equipment.

The EU is working on a special transaction channel, called Special Purpose Vehicle, away from the U.S. financial system to keep up trade with Iran in the face of the recently reimposed U.S. sanctions against Iran.

The Special Purpose Vehicle, announced first by the European Union's foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, is said to involve a barter system that would allow firms to bypass the SWIFT international bank transfer system.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-25 04:24:15|Editor: Chengcheng

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LONDON, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- The leader of the Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) told its annual conference in Belfast Saturday that the party remained opposed to British Prime Minister Theresa May's Brexit deal.

Arlene Foster was speaking as May headed to Brussels ahead of the expected signing of an agreement Sunday between Britain and the European Union (EU) on a future relationship after Brexit.

May's minority Conservative government at Westminster relies on the support of the 10 DUP MPs to give it a majority in the House of Commons. The loss of those vital 10 votes will cause a major headache for May when the deal is debated by MPs next month.

Addressing the conference, Foster said the DUP could not support a Brexit deal that would open the possibility of divergence in either customs or regulatory measures between the British mainland and Northern Ireland.

Foster told the conference the Brexit deal was not in the national interest and would cause long-term economic damage to Northern Ireland.

As part of the deal, a so-called backstop arrangement has been included that could see an option of Northern Ireland keeping some EU customs regulations for a short time after the end of an implementation period due to end in December 2020. It would mean different rules applying in mainland Britain and Northern Ireland, though May insists it will not be used.

The backstop would only be needed if a solution has not been agreed to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.

Ahead of the conference, Foster warned May she risks losing the support of the DUP support if she presses ahead with her current Brexit deal.

In a media interview in Belfast, Foster called on the Prime Minister to ditch the UK-EU Withdrawal Agreement or face the end of the Westminster pact between the DUP and the Conservatives.

Foster told Radio Ulster's Inside Politics if the deal is not going to deliver on Brexit, the DUP would have to look at the confidence and supply agreement between the two parties.

In a speech at the DUP conference Saturday, former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson told delegates Britain is on the verge of making a historic mistake if it does not scrap the backstop. It could risk tearing apart the fabric of the United Kingdom, Johnson warned.

He said Northern Ireland faced being reduced to the status of a semi-colony of the EU if the Brexit deal is ratified by the British parliament.

He called DUP MPs at Westminster to work with him and the many Conservative backbenchers who have pledged to vote down May's deal next month.

In what the Daily Telegraph described as a rousing speech to the DUP conference, Johnson said the draft Brexit withdrawal agreement conjured up images of famous ocean liner Titanic heading off to sea, adding: "now is the time to point out the iceberg ahead."

The ill-fated Titanic was built in Belfast and sank on its maiden voyage across the Atlantic in 1912.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-25 05:04:20|Editor: Chengcheng

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A wounded man is carried to a hospital in Aleppo, Syria, Nov. 24, 2018. At least 44 civilians suffered suffocation as a result of a rebel attack with "poisonous gas" in Syria's northern city of Aleppo on Saturday, state TV reported. The rebels fired projectiles stuffed with "poisonous gas" on the al-Khalidiyeh and Zahraa neighborhoods as well as the Nile Street in Aleppo city, said the report. It said 44 people suffered suffocation and were taken to the hospitals, adding that two of them are in critical conditions. The TV, meanwhile, aired footages from inside one of the hospitals in Aleppo, showing doctors rushing to help the wounded people. A doctor said the situation of the patients are stable, noting that a child had to be taken to the intensive care unit. The type of the poisonous gas couldn't be identified immediately. Some reports said it's chlorine gas. The rebels in the countryside of Aleppo city have repeatedly targeted the city with mortar shells. But it's the first instance in a while since the state media accused the rebels of firing shells with poisonous gas as the namesake capital city of Aleppo was fully liberated from the rebels in 2016 except the western and northern countryside. During the more than seven-year war, the rebels and the Syrian government side traded accusations of chemical weapons in the battles. In 2013, officials of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) arrived in Syria to monitor the dismantlement of the Syrian chemical weapons arsenal, after Damascus officially joined the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Convention. The Syrian government said that the Western-backed rebels resorted to chemical weapons to frame the Syrian government and draw in foreign intervention. (Xinhua/Stringer)

DAMASCUS, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- At least 44 civilians suffered suffocation as a result of a rebel attack with "poisonous gas" in Syria's northern city of Aleppo on Saturday, state TV reported.

The rebels fired projectiles stuffed with "poisonous gas" on the al-Khalidiyeh and Zahraa neighborhoods as well as the Nile Street in Aleppo city, said the report.

It said 44 people suffered suffocation and were taken to the hospitals, adding that two of them are in critical conditions.

The TV, meanwhile, aired footages from inside one of the hospitals in Aleppo, showing doctors rushing to help the wounded people.

A doctor said the situation of the patients are stable, noting that a child had to be taken to the intensive care unit. The type of the poisonous gas couldn't be identified immediately.

Some reports said it's chlorine gas.

The rebels in the countryside of Aleppo city have repeatedly targeted the city with mortar shells.

But it's the first instance in a while since the state media accused the rebels of firing shells with poisonous gas as the namesake capital city of Aleppo was fully liberated from the rebels in 2016 except the western and northern countryside.

During the more than seven-year war, the rebels and the Syrian government side traded accusations of chemical weapons in the battles.

In 2013, officials of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) arrived in Syria to monitor the dismantlement of the Syrian chemical weapons arsenal, after Damascus officially joined the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Convention.

The Syrian government said that the Western-backed rebels resorted to chemical weapons to frame the Syrian government and draw in foreign intervention.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-25 05:14:22|Editor: Chengcheng

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WASHINGTON, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Senate was expected to get a briefing on Saudi Arabia next week from administration officials, according to reports by U.S. media on Saturday.

An "all-senators briefing" was likely to occur next week when the lawmakers convened again in Washington following the Thanksgiving holiday recess, U.S. political media The Hill reported, citing two congressional sources.

The briefing, in which some senior government officials will participate, was vital for Congress decision on whether to impose sanctions on or blocking a major arms sale to Riyadh, an important ally to Washington in the Middle East.

The briefing will focus on the conflict in Yemen as well as the kingdom's role in the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, according to the report.

Khashoggi has been missing since he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2. The Saudi authorities said Khashoggi died in a "brawl" in its consulate.

After releasing the results of its initial investigation, the Saudi Public Prosecution announced that 18 Saudis were arrested for their alleged connections with the killing.

The U.S. Congress has urged a thorough investigation into the murder of Khashoggi, and threatened to take more actions against Saudi Arabia if those responsible were not held accountable, such as suspending the U.S. military sales to Saudi Arabia and sanctioning the kingdom.

Meanwhile, the U.S. administration has been reluctant to further punish the Saudi side, citing alliance concerns and Saudi purchase of U.S. military equipment.

The U.S. Treasury imposed sanctions on 17 individuals over their alleged roles in the killing of Khashoggi earlier this month, following U.S. State Department's decision in late October to revoke 21 Saudi suspects' visas.

The military conflict in Yemen began with the 2014 takeover of the capital of Sanaa by the Houthis, which forced Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi into exile. The Saudi-led coalition allied with the government has been fighting the Houthis since 2015.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-25 05:19:23|Editor: yan

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JERUSALEM, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- A senior leader of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community threatened Saturday evening to boycott Israel's leading airline El Al if it does not apologize within 24 hours for a flight incident.

In a letter to El Al, Rabbi Shalom Ber Sorotzkin wrote that "if by Sunday evening an apology is not issued, unfortunately, we will have to start preferring other airlines."

The ultra-Orthodox community is outraged after the airline's flight from New York to Tel Aviv on Thursday took off 5 hours later, sparking fears among the 180 ultra-Orthodox passengers that they would be on board after the "Shabbat" day began, which is considered a serious violation for Jews.

According to Judaism, the holy Shabbat starts at sunset on Fridays and lasts until Saturdays' sunset.

Eventually, because of the delay, the plane landed in Athens, Greece, so that the ultra-Orthodox passengers would not be on the flight during Shabbat.

Following the flight, El Al said the ultra-Orthodox passengers on the flight had rioted and acted violently against the crew. The company also threatened to file a complaint to the police.

The ultra-Orthodox public were upset at the delay, and especially on the company's announcement.

Rabbi Sorotzkin, who was on the flight, has been negotiating with El Al's CEO Gonen Usishkin over an apology. Usishkin admitted that no violence had occurred.

The 180 passengers demanded compensation from the company 50,000 new shekels (13,380 U.S. dollars) each and an apology.

El Al do not fly on Shabbat days, claiming that about 20 percent of its passengers are religious Jews.

In 2006, the ultra-Orthodox community boycotted El Al, after several flights took place on Saturday. These flights flew back passengers who remained abroad due to a general strike.

El Al promised then not to fly anymore on Shabbat except rare cases approved by a rabbi.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-25 05:49:30|Editor: ZD

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by Xinhua writers Pan Lijun, Yang Shilong

NEW YORK, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- As more Americans tend to browse online to get good deals on Black Friday instead of lining up at the crack of dawn in front of brick-and-mortar stores, the shopping spree seemed less wild this year.

Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving that marks the official start of the U.S. holiday shopping season, pulled in 6.22 billion U.S. dollars in online sales this year, up 23.6 percent from a year ago and setting a new high, according to Adobe Analytics, which tracks transactions for 80 of the top 100 internet retailers in the United States, including Walmart and Amazon.

However, it does not mean traditional retailers have lost their appeal. Buy online and pick up in stores grew to be a popular option for shoppers this holiday season, with "click-and-collect" orders increasing 73 percent from Thursday to Friday, according to Adobe.

While online sales made inroads, retail malls were still packed though definitely not mobbed. More than 164 million Americans are expected to shop over the five days from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday, projected the National Retail Federation.

South Coast Plaza, the largest shopping mall on the West Coast of the United States, predicted that nearly 200,000 people would have visited the center, who set a record of the county in sales of over 1.5 billion U.S. dollars last year and is seeing a new record in 2018.

The largest shopping center in California, anchored by three Macy's stores, Sears, Nordstrom, Bloomingdale's, and Saks Fifth Avenue, is located in city of Costa Mesa, 77 km east of Los Angeles downtown.

"Today was the busiest day after Thanksgiving in South Coast Plaza's history," Debra Gunn Downing, spokeswoman for South Coast Plaza, told Xinhua on Friday. "Some shoppers came for the Black Friday promotions while others came to enjoy the holiday atmosphere. There were lines outside the doors of some boutiques, including Chanel."

"All told, nearly 200,000 people will have visited the center today. We anticipate that to continue through the weekend and the momentum to carry through the holiday season," she added.

Black Friday, which was once relegated to the day right after Thanksgiving, now gets longer as stores offer pre-Black Friday and pre-pre-Black Friday sales.

South Coast Plaza opened its holiday season last week, lighting three 90-foot-high Christmas trees and setting a Santa's Village indoor where shoppers take photos with Santa Claus in live holiday music. Amazon also offers a "Black Friday Deals Week," with different markdowns each day.

WORRYING FOR POTENTIAL PRICE HIKE

Total spend for Black Friday weekend is predicted to reach roughly 59.6 billion U.S. dollars, according to estimates by GlobalData Retail. That represents an increase of 5.7 percent over the 2017 sales.

"More people have already shopped than at this point last year, and their average spend is higher," said Neil Saunders, the firm's managing director, said in a statement.

One factor driving this year's shopping spree might be concerns over potential price hike against the backdrop of U.S. tariffs battles with its major trading partners.

"More worryingly, this holiday season is likely only to be the start of higher prices for shoppers," wrote Erin Dunne in an opinion carried by www.washingtonexaminer.com.

In a rustling shopping mall in Queens, New York, 30-year-old Soraya and her husband were busy checking off items from their shopping list: clothes, sneakers, video games and a laptop.

Soraya told Xinhua she might even consider buying more goods this year to avoid higher prices.

According to a recent survey by Harris Insights & Analytics, a market research firm, 44 percent of U.S. consumers said they would compare prices of products more closely during the shopping season.

"It can affect your bottom line for sure," Lisa Jones, who was shopping Wednesday at a Home Depot store in San Mateo city, northern California, told Xinhua.

She was worried that price increases would cost her more in the coming years.

"I haven't seen the prices go up yet, but I think it will happen," she said.

Ruben, a shopper in Houston, told Xinhua he would shift some high-end electronics from his Christmas list.

"I normally wait until mid-December, but I am afraid that products in December will include the new imposed tariffs," he said.

Peifan Yu, a Houston resident, said he would not be waiting to see lower price after Christmas as usual.

Puneet Manchanda, professor of marketing at University of Michigan, told Xinhua on Wednesday that most U.S. retailers had not increased prices, but people would see that happen early in the new year.

"There is strong evidence that companies are changing their behavior vis-a-vis tariff implementation - they are stocking up heavily on the affected commodities and rationalizing their purchasing for next year," he said.

Alex Boehnke, spokesman for the Ohio Council of Retail Merchants, said in a report that the household impact would really be seen in January or February, when retailers have to restock shelves after the holiday shopping season.

Sunny Zhang, associate professor of Marketing at the Cameron School of Business, University of St. Thomas in Houston, noted that "for made-to-order items, for example, custom-made furniture, retailers are playing the effects of tariffs as they put the pressure on consumers on immediate purchases."

(Xinhua correspondents Gao Lu in Houston, Wang Ping and Xu Jing in Chicago, Ye Zaiqi in San Francisco, Huang Heng in Los Angeles contributed to the story.)
Photo courtesy of Cretan Astronaut Project.

ATHENS, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- A team of Greek students and graduates are set to conquer the stratosphere this December with the "first Cretan astronaut", a symbol of efforts aimed to promote innovation and youth entrepreneurship in the country.

"Manousos" wears a space suit, grows a handlebar moustache and comes from Crete, the largest island of Greece. He is not a real human being, but a figure, the brainchild of a team of aerospace enthusiasts called "Cretan astronaut".

His test flight on Oct. 17 this year was crowned with success and the first official mission is scheduled for early December, depending on the weather conditions, his creators said.

"Manousos" will reach the stratosphere on a reusable "ship" built from scratch and will return to Earth with the help of a high altitude balloon.

The project is an idea of a group of seven students and graduates who aim to put Crete on the world map of technology and innovation, they told Xinhua.

They are trying to achieve their goal through Youth Entrepreneurship Club, a nonprofit, non-governmental organization based in Chania, Crete, created by young people interested in entrepreneurship.

The organization, founded in 2012, counts more than 100 volunteers and through its 30 actions has direct impact on 3,000 people. Its mission, according to the founders, is to highlight new opportunities for young people in Greece and to reverse pessimism and brain drain which had increased during the eight-year debt crisis.

Photo courtesy of Cretan Astronaut Project.

"Manousos" was born when one of the team members proposed a year ago a flight to the edge of the Earth's atmosphere.

"At first it was a crazy idea that no one believed in, but afterwards with hard work it started to develop and somehow the first Cretan astronaut was born," said Olympia Kokka, executive director of Youth Entrepreneurship Club and one of the members of the project.

The test flight was recorded by a 360-degree camera and the two innovations used were the full reusability of the ship and the addition of two degrees of flight control, facilitating its recovery, Vasilis Kottas, the Marketing & Communications manager, explained.

"The journey which started from Chania lasted about 117 minutes, with an altitude of 23.5 kilometers and the temperatures Manousos had to deal with was about -40 degrees Celsius," he said.

People on Crete island embraced their "astronaut" from the very first moment and supported his journey through crowd funding. A financing campaign started on May 30 and closed on Sept. 15 raised 915 euros (1,037 U.S. dollars). "Manousos" was also blessed by people through a poll organized on social media platforms.

December's flight will not be the end of the mission for "Manousos".

"We also want to raise awareness through various actions such as speeches in schools and other institutions so as to show and inspire a different Greece, a country that can create opportunities and is extrovert. Finally we would like to transform this venture into a business model. This of course needs a lot of research and funding," noted Thanos Paraschos, project manager of "Cretan Astronaut".

The ultimate goal of all, according to the team members, is to create a workshop in collaboration with the Youth Entrepreneurship Club, where new scientists will be able to experiment and innovate in today's Greece.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-25 06:59:41|Editor: ZD

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NEW YORK, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- Business for Italian luxury brand Dolce & Gabbana, recently caught in a racism controversy that angered many in China, is also impacted in Manhattan as local Chinese Americans and visitors from China seem to be boycotting the brand.

Only a few Chinese or Chinese American customers could be spotted entering into the D&G stores or patronizing the Italian fashion designer's special counters in Manhattan in New York City in recent days, the Chinese language newspaper The China Press and the Chinese language TV news channel Sinovision both reported on Saturday.

"After nearly three hours of waiting at the entrance of the Fifth Avenue D&G store on Black Friday, I barely saw any Chinese faces going in," a Sinovision reporter said in a news program run by the channel.

The Black Friday, which falls on the day after Thanksgiving, marks the start of the biggest sales and shopping season in the United States.

A female Chinese American, identified as a Miss Wang, told The China Press that she used to like the D&G brand a lot, but the latest controversy "changed my perception," which made her "quit visiting the D&G stores this holiday season."

"Although D&G and its designers have apologized for what happened, it seems to me that they did so just to save their markets and were not sincere enough," Wang added.

According to the newspaper, sales staff at the D&G stores and counters in Manhattan have been reluctant to comment on the recent controversy or its impact on their business, but some have insisted that they are still expecting an increase in customer flow and sales revenues for this holiday season.

Two Chinese students from the State University of New York at Stony Brook still made some purchases at the D&G Fifth Avenue store on Friday. The two, identified only by their surnames - Ding and Zhao, told The China Press that they also believed the Italian designer's apologies "came too late and lacked sincerity."

D&G provoked a public outcry after some short videos it released to promote a fashion event in Shanghai were accused of cultural insensitivity and racism. To make things worse, the company's co-founder Stefano Gabbana was later found verbally insulting China in his online quarrels with some netizens.

The D&G Shanghai show had to be canceled after many Chinese celebrities decided to boycott it, and Chinese e-commerce giants like Alibaba and JD.com also removed D&G products from their platforms amid the escalating row.

On Thursday, the company founders posted online a subtitled video that stated: "We offer our sincerest apologies to Chinese people worldwide."
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-25 07:24:45|Editor: ZD

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HAVANA, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- At the request of the Cuban government, experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) are on the island for the first time, to assess the country's readiness for radiation emergencies.

The visit is not an inspection or an audit, but an assessment of how the country complies with the international standards related to preparedness and response to radiation catastrophes, Cuban sources said.

The evaluation, which began on Nov. 19 and goes through Nov. 27, will focus on several sites in Havana, including the Ameijeiras Brothers Hospital, Jose Marti International Airport, the fire department and the General Customs Office of the Republic.

The team of experts hired by the IAEA will also visit 30 organizations related to the area including the General Staff of the Civil Defense, Isotope Center.

The director of the National Center for Nuclear Safety, engineer Alba Guillen, said the issues concerning emergency matters in the country have been examined in previous missions, but this is the first time it has focused on radiation and nuclear incidence.

In interviews with the local press, Guillen said there is a lot of interest in the IAEA to deploy the Emergency Preparedness Review (EPREV) mission at the request of each country.

The visits provide recommendations, suggestions and determinations on good practices on this issue, as well as offering the possibility sharing them with others, Guillen said.

"After the visit there is a time to establish an action plan, aimed at perfecting the response system for radiological emergencies," said the specialist.

The experts focus on the evaluation of the standard established by the IAEA, from the exchange of experiences with Cuban specialists.

In Cuba, some 120 entities use ionizing radiation, most are located in Havana, where the highest risk facilities are located, including the hospitals with cobalt sources for cancer treatments.

Cuba has a proven system to face different types of emergency, led by the Civil Defense, and the world is acknowledged by its timely and effective response to the usual natural disasters hitting the country, such as the hurricanes.

Cuba, Belarus and Canada are three countries that will receive EPREV missions this year.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-25 10:00:14|Editor: Chengcheng

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WASHINGTON, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump said Saturday that migrants seeking asylum in the United States via the southern border will wait in Mexico while their claims are moving through legal procedures.

"Migrants at the Southern Border will not be allowed into the United States until their claims are individually approved in court," he tweeted Saturday evening. "All will stay in Mexico."

The president also renewed a threat to close the U.S.-Mexico border "if for any reason it becomes necessary."

The tweets came after The Washington Post reported earlier in the day that Mexico's incoming government has agreed to support the U.S. government's plan to remake U.S. asylum policy.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-25 10:05:16|Editor: Chengcheng

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YANGON, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- A South Korea-Myanmar contemporary art exchange exhibition is underway in Myanmar's Yangon to mark the 70th anniversary Myanmar's Independence and the 30th anniversary of South Korea-ASEAN dialogue partnership.

Beginning Saturday, the five-day art exhibition, held at the National Museum, is displaying 31 paintings by 12 Myanmar artists and 11 paintings by South Korean artists along with four sculptures by 14 South Korean artists.

Speaking at the opening ceremony of the event, South Korean Ambassador Lee Sang-hwa said, "The art of painting is not limited to people from around the world, regardless of whatever languages they are speaking. So, people speaking different languages can communicate through the message the paintings give."

The ambassador added that South Korea is trying to further strengthen its good ties with all member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) including Myanmar.

Meanwhile, a South Korean cultural concert is to take place in Nay Pyi Taw next week, the official Global New Light of Myanmar reported Sunday.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-25 10:10:18|Editor: Chengcheng

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TRIPOLI, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- UN Special Envoy to Libya Ghassan Salame on Saturday said security in the capital Tripoli has improved since a ceasefire agreement was signed in September.

Salame made his remarks during a meeting with local municipal council members, city parliamentarians and elders of the city of Tarhuna, some 64 km southeast of Tripoli, where he discussed new security arrangements in the capital and upcoming elections in the country.

"Since the ceasefire agreement, Tripoli's security has improved, security officials have been changed, the cabinet reshuffled, and new security arrangements are being implemented," Salame said.

"Things don't change overnight but we see progress," Salame added.

In August, Tripoli witnessed violent clashes between forces allied with the government and armed groups from Tarhuna that lasted weeks and killed and injured many people, mostly civilians.

Rival parties in September signed a UN-sponsored ceasefire agreement, which stipulated that armed groups must leave public buildings and be replaced by regular forces.

"We are holding the National Conference so that Libyans can decide their election date, the constitutional framework, the mechanism to distribute resources and more. These recommendations will be taken to the UNSC who will push for their implementation," Salame explained.

A National Conference is to be held in the first weeks of 2019 and subsequent electoral process should begin in the spring, said the UN Envoy earlier this month in a briefing to the UN Security Council.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-25 10:15:21|Editor: Chengcheng

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TRIPOLI, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Delegation of the European Union to Libya on Saturday condemned a deadly terrorist attack on the southeastern town of Tazerbu.

"We condemn Friday's cowardly terrorist attack against (a) police station and the murder and kidnapping of civilians," the delegation said in a statement.

"Our condolences to the families of the victims, and sympathy to those injured," the statement added. "Only through unity can terrorism be defeated."

The Libyan government on Friday called for unity against terrorism, confirming it will spare no efforts to eliminate terrorism.

A military source told Xinhua that dozens of gunmen on armed vehicles carried out separate attacks on Friday evening against a police station and government buildings in Tazerbu, killing eight people and injuring more than 15 others.

The source confirmed that terrorists took dozens of hostages as they withdrew from the area, adding that these attackers were likely Islamic State terrorists who carried out a similar attack last month in the central district of Jufra, some 650 km southeast of Tripoli.

Tazerbu, a small oasis town, is one of the most important groundwater sources for western and central Libyan cities.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-25 10:45:25|Editor: mym

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People take part in the friendship run in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia, Nov. 25, 2018. Nearly 2,000 people joined a friendship run here on Sunday to mark the 44th anniversary of the establishment of bilateral ties between Malaysia and China as well as to promote greater relations among the two peoples. (Xinhua/Zhu Wei)

KOTA KINABALU, Malaysia, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Nearly 2,000 people joined a friendship run here Sunday to mark the establishment of bilateral ties between Malaysian and China as well as to promote greater relations among the two peoples.

The event was held in the capital of Malaysia's Sabah state in North Borneo, of which the beautiful beaches, tropical rain forest, mountain trails and cultural diversity are increasingly attracting tourists from China.

Oh Ei Sun, president of the Sabah Malaysia-China Friendship Association that hosted the event, said the great participation showed the local government and people were keen to further ties with China, and to participate in the Belt and Road Initiative.

"We hope such healthy and positive event could help the participants to have deeper understandings on the friendship between China and Malaysia, especially with Sabah," he said.

Liang Caide, Chinese consul-general in Kota Kinabalu, said the event is a meaningful way to mark the 44th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Malaysia.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-25 11:05:30|Editor: Chengcheng

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ISLAMABAD, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- An aircraft of the Pakistan International Airlines hit another plane at the Jinnah International Airport on Saturday in the country's southern port city of Karachi, local media reported.

Local Urdu channel Geo TV quoted official sources late Saturday as saying that the engine of an ATR aircraft was being given a run-up during an examination at a hanger, at which the technician present in the cockpit could not keep control over the plane which rushed and hit another plane parked at the airport.

The fuel tank and an engine of the ATR aircraft were seriously damaged after it crashed with the other plane.

No one got hurt in the accident as no passenger was aboard, the reports said.

An emergency was imposed at the airport and firefighters were summoned as fuel spilled out of the plane following the accident.

However, neither of the aircraft caught fire following the collision.

The situation was under control and an investigation had been launched into the accident, the reports said.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-25 11:40:34|Editor: ZD

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SYDNEY, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- More migrating whales are getting recorded along Australia's east coast, but the rising numbers are also resulting in more of the animals dying from entanglements or strandings this year, according to wildlife authorities and whale-watching operators.

"It's thought that this year there'd be anywhere from 33,000-35,000 humpback whales coming down the coast," the ABC news channel quoted major whale-watching operator Simon Millar as saying on Sunday.

The whales migrate north in May and return around September toward warmer waters in the Southern Hemisphere.

"We're seeing more and more whales every year," said Millar, who runs his charter out of New South Wales state capital Sydney and coastal town Merimbula.

"We found a pod of 50 to 60 killer whales one day off Sydney," he said.

But the recovering whale population is also fueling an increase in the number of cetaceans caught in entanglements - with marine debris and industrial activity - and carcasses found, state parks and wildlife service officer Susan Crocetti told the channel.

"As the population recovers - we're talking about 33,000 humpback whales - we're going to expect there to be some mortality of those animals," she said.

Parks officers recorded about 20 incidents of entangled whales off the state coast in this season alone.

The rise in whales stranded on beaches is another reasonable indicator of a rising population, marine park veterinarian Duan March told the channel.

"We have been to a few dead animals on the beach and those numbers are increasing, and I think what we're seeing is an increasing number of strandings based on an increasing number of animals," he said.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-25 11:55:37|Editor: ZD

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JAKARTA, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Rescuers are searching for seven crew of a cargo ship that sank in waters off Bali resort island of Indonesia, a senior rescuer said on Sunday.

KM Multi Prima One cargo ship heading to Waingapu town of East Nusa Tenggara province capsized in Bali Gulf after leaving waters off Surabaya, the provincial capital of East Java province, said Yusuf Latief, head of communication for media of national search and rescue office.

"A total of seven out of 14 crew remain missing, now the search operation to recover them is getting underway," he told Xinhua by phone.

The search operation is being carried out at the radius of 200 nautical miles from the site of the sea incident, said Latief.

The seven crew who survived the incident were rescued by another ship, Cahaya Abadi 201, which was passing by the spot, according to him.

Sea water transport is a favorite transport means in Indonesia, a vast archipelagic country home to over 17,500 islands. A lack of safety standard has often triggered sea incidents.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-25 12:35:41|Editor: ZD

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UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- The UN Security Council on Saturday condemned "in the strongest terms" Friday's attacks against the Chinese Consulate-General in Karachi and a market in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan.

Members of the council appreciated the swift response of the Pakistani authorities, expressed their deepest sympathy and condolences to the victims' families and to the Pakistani government, and wished a speedy and full recovery of those injured, said the council in a press statement.

The members stressed the fundamental principle of the inviolability of diplomatic and consular premises and the obligations on host governments to take all appropriate steps to protect diplomatic and consular premises against any intrusion or damage, and prevent any disturbance of the peace of these missions or impairment of their dignity and any attack on diplomatic premises, agents and consular officers.

They underlined the need to hold perpetrators, organizers, financiers and sponsors of these reprehensible terrorist acts accountable and bring them to justice, and urged all states to cooperate actively with the Pakistani government and all other relevant authorities in this regard.

They reaffirmed that terrorism in all forms and manifestations constitutes one of the most serious threats to international peace and security, stressing the need for all states to combat by all means threats to international peace and security caused by terrorist acts.

Four people, including two police officers, were killed in the attack on the Chinese Consulate-General in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi. The attackers were killed before they were able to break into the compound.

At least 30 people were killed in a separate attack in the Orakzai region of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in the northwest.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-25 12:55:44|Editor: Li Xia

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NEW DELHI, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- India has deputed its two union ministers to attend the ground-breaking ceremony of the Kartarpur Sahib pilgrimage corridor for Indian pilgrims to be held in Pakistan on Wednesday.

Pakistan had invited India's External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj to attend the ceremony. However, Swaraj cited her pre-committed political engagements midst forthcoming elections in several states as the reason for not able to attend the ceremony.

Instead, she deputed two ministers - Minister of Food Processing Industries Harsimrat Kaur Badal and Junior Minister for Urban Development Hardeep Singh Puri.

In a letter addressed to her Pakistani counterpart Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Swaraj hoped that Pakistan would expedite the construction of the pilgrimage corridor in order to ensure that Indian citizens could pay their respects at the Sikhs shrine Gurudwara Kartarpur Sahib using the corridor as soon as possible.

India had recently urged Pakistan to expedite the process of building the corridor to facilitate the Sikhs pilgrims who visit the shrines located in Pakistan in large numbers every year.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-25 13:40:50|Editor: Shi Yinglun

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People inspect debris of a house, which was burnt during a gunfight between militants and joint contingents of police and army at village Kapran-Batagund, about 65km south of Srinagar city, the summer capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir, Nov. 25, 2018. At least six militants and a trooper were killed Sunday in a predawn fierce gunfight in restive Indian-controlled Kashmir, police said. (Xinhua/Javed Dar)

SRINAGAR, Indian-controlled Kashmir, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- At least six militants and a trooper were killed Sunday in a predawn fierce gunfight in restive Indian-controlled Kashmir, police said.

The gunfight erupted early Sunday at village Kapran-Batagund of Shopian district, about 65 km south of Srinagar city, the summer capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir.

"In a predawn gunfight today here, six militants were killed in a stand-off with joint contingents of police and army," a senior police official posted in Shopian told Xinhua. "An Indian army trooper was also killed fighting these militants."

According to police the gunfight broke out after government forces cordoned off the area on specific intelligence information suggesting presence of militants.

"No sooner the joint contingents reached near the suspected area, the militants present inside a house fired upon them, thereby triggering a gunfight," the police said.

The identity of slain militants was being ascertained, police said.

This is a second major gunfight in the past three days. On Friday six militants were killed at Sutkipora of Bijbehara in Anantnag district.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-25 14:50:57|Editor: Chengcheng

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WASHINGTON/MEXICO CITY, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- President Donald Trump said Saturday that migrants seeking asylum in the United States via the southern border would wait in Mexico while their claims move through legal procedures, but the Mexican incoming government denied the two sides had reached any deal.

"Migrants at the Southern Border will not be allowed into the United States until their claims are individually approved in court," he tweeted Saturday evening. "All will stay in Mexico."

The president also renewed a threat to close the U.S.-Mexico border "if for any reason it becomes necessary."

The tweets came after The Washington Post reported Mexico's incoming government has agreed to support the White House's plan to remake U.S. asylum policy.

However, Mexico's incoming Interior Minister Olga Sanchez Cordero, who will take office next month, denied any type of agreements between the two sides in a statement on Saturday.

"There is no agreement of any type between the future federal government of Mexico and that of the United States of America," the statement said, but did not explain why the Post had quoted her as saying that there had been agreement.

"For now, we have agreed to this policy of Remain in Mexico," Sanchez was quoted by the U.S. newspaper as saying in an interview, while calling it a "short-term solution."

The newspaper said the plan, known as "Remain in Mexico", would require those seeking refuge at the border to stay in Mexico while their cases are processed, potentially terminating the system, which Trump has decried as "Catch and Release" that has generally allowed asylum applicants to wait on U.S. soil.

Caravans of migrants, many of whom say they are fleeing from persecution, poverty and violence in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, were making their way through Central America towards the U.S. border for weeks. Many of them want to claim asylum.

Several thousands of migrants, including women and children, are reportedly in the Mexican border city of Tijuana living in a makeshift shelter.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made no mention of a deal with Mexico in a statement issued earlier this week but reiterated that "the caravans will not be permitted to enter the United States."

Thousands of U.S. troops have been deployed along the country's southern border with Mexico to help strengthen border security while offering only engineering, logistic and medical support.

However, Trump said earlier this week that he has given the troops the "OK" to use lethal force against migrants "if they have to."

The president issued a proclamation earlier this month, saying that only people who enter the country at official checkpoints can apply for asylum, but it was temporarily blocked by a federal judge.

Border patrols registered over 400,000 illegal crossers this year, according to figures compiled by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-25 15:51:05|Editor: mym

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NEW DELHI, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Udhav Thackeray, the president of right-wing political party Shiv Sena in India's south-western state Maharashtra, on Sunday said that the country's main ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will not be able to return to power in next year's general elections if it failed to fulfill its commitment of building the "Rama Temple" in Ayodhya, a town in India's northern state of Uttar Pradesh.

Shiv Sena is one of the ruling parties in Maharashtra along with the BJP, and a long standing constituent of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) led by the BJP at the Centre.

Over 200,000 Hindu saints and supporters have reportedly congregated in Ayodhya on Sunday for a "Dharam Sansad" (Religious Parliament) to give a call, and also put pressure on the central government to build the "Rama Temple" in Ayodhya, the birth place of Hindus' "Lord Rama".

In the wake of huge gathering, elaborate security arrangements have been made in the town to avoid any untoward incidents.

Addressing media persons in Ayodhya after visiting the disputed site where "Rama Temple" is demanded to be built, Thackeray recalled that BJP had promised to look into all possibilities of constructing the temple.

"BJP will not be able to form a government next time if the temple is not built, but the 'Rama temple' will be built," he said, adding that the current government headed by Narendra Modi was a strong government and could easily build the temple by taking a strong-willed move.

The issue of "Rama Temple" has been pending in the country's Supreme Court. "If the matter has to go to court, then the party should not use this as a poll plank and should tell the people that this is just another fake promise. They should not play with the emotions of Hindus," Thackeray added.

Thackeray also called on the Modi government to set a specific date for building the "Rama Temple".
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-25 16:11:08|Editor: mym

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MAIMANA, Afghanistan, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- At least four militants have been killed and three others injured as clash broke out in Pashtun Kot district of Afghanistan's northern Faryab province, provincial police spokesman Abdul Karim Yurash said on Sunday.

According to the official, the clash erupted in Sar-e-Hawz area after Taliban militants attacked security checkpoints early morning and police returned fire which lasted for a while. The militants fled away, leaving four bodies behind.

Three more militants and a security personnel sustained injuries, the official said.

The cleanup operations would continue in the area to ensure peace and security, the official added.

Taliban militants are yet to make comments.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-25 16:31:11|Editor: mym

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JALALABAD, Afghanistan, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Spokesman of the Islamic State (IS) outfit Sharafat Shafaq was killed in Afghanistan's eastern Nangarhar province, said a statement of military website Corps 201 Selab released here on Sunday.

According to the statement, the IS propaganda in-charge and spokesman was killed during operations against the insurgent group in Deh Bala district.

Without providing more details, the statement said that the government forces would continue to target IS militants from ground and air elsewhere in the country.

The hardliner IS outfit has yet to make a comment on the claim.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-25 17:11:17|Editor: Yurou

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KAMPALA, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- The Ugandan military has joined the search and rescue operation in the disastrous Saturday boat accident on Lake Victoria in the central district of Mukono, a spokesperson said here on Sunday.

Lt. Col. Deo Akiiki, Uganda's deputy military spokesperson said in a statement that Uganda People's Defense Forces (UPDF) marines are entering deep waters on Sunday morning to join the search for survivors and retrieving the dead bodies.

"UPDF marine divers are entering the deep waters in the next few minutes to reach the lake bed where the boat is. Sad for our country and the bereaved families," said Akiiki.

Emilian Kayima, police spokesperson said the death toll had risen to 13, dozens are still missing and 26 had been rescued by Saturday night when the search and rescue operation was postponed. The police had earlier said that 40 people had been rescued.

"The team of experts will resume this rescue mission this morning where many people are feared dead, deep in the waters where the boat in which they were traveling capsized and completely submerged," said Kayima.

The boat reportedly carried over 120 passengers, beyond its capacity of 100, who traveled from KK beach in capital city Kampala to Mukono, according to local media.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-25 17:31:23|Editor: Yurou

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BANGKOK, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Five suspected drug traffickers were killed in a clash with Thai army troops in Thai-Myanmar border area on Saturday night.

The slain drug suspects were among a group of about 10 heavily-armed men, who had been spotted trafficking drugs from Myanmar to Thailand's mountainous border area in Mae Sai district of Chiang Rai province, said an army source on Sunday.

A patrol squad of the Second Cavalry Regiment, attached to Pha Muang Task Force, exchanged gunfire for about 15 minutes with the unidentified, suspected drug traffickers, killing five of them.

The other suspects retreated into Myanmar's territory while no casualties on the Thai side were reported, the army source said.

Hours later, the cavalry unit cleared up the scene and found an estimated one million tablets of methamphetamine in strapped bags alongside the bodies of the gunned-down suspects.

No tourists have been allowed to pass the border area in which the clash had occurred due to security reasons while Third Army Region commander Lt. Gen. Chalongchai Chaiyakham inspected the scene on Sunday.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-25 17:36:26|Editor: Lu Hui

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MADRID, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- The China-Spain readers' seminar on the book "Xi Jinping: The Governance of China" was held here Thursday, days before the scheduled state visit to the country by Chinese President Xi Jinping.

About 200 guests, including senior officials from the two countries, attended the event and held in-depth discussion about Xi's book.

The book opens a window for audience around the world to understand China's achievements, driving forces and prospects of development, said Wang Xiaohui, executive deputy head of the Publicity Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

The great work gives an insight into the trend of history, expounds the purpose of China's reform and development and its source of strength, as well as provides Chinese wisdom and approaches to solving global issues, said Wang, who is also vice director of the Policy Research Office of the CPC Central Committee.

The book will help people better understand the key to China's success and follow the trend of the times and human development, Wang added.

Lyu Fan, Chinese ambassador to Spain, said reading the book, Spanish readers can learn about Xi's insight into international situations, as well as the Chinese president's wise and unique opinions about human development.

In the book, one can find answers about the way to jointly build a better world, said Lyu.

Xi's upcoming visit will be a golden opportunity for Spain to boost its exchanges with China on governance and reform, participate in and support the Belt and Road Initiative, as well as deepen economic and trade cooperation and people-to-people exchanges, said Juan Jose Lucas, president of the Constitutional Commission of the Senate of Spain.

Xi's book is "very valid" for foreign readers to deepen their understandings of China, and also contains easy-to-understand speeches useful for those who want to know China, said Victor Cortizo, vice president of the Catedra China.

Also on Thursday, an economic seminar on China's reform and opening-up held here attracted some 150 attendees, including former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, former Spanish Foreign Minister Javier Solana and State Secretary for Global Spain Irene Lozano.

The attendees agreed that China has made remarkable achievements in its reform and opening-up, as well as significant contribution to tackling the international financial crisis and promoting global economic growth.

This year marks the 45th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Spain. The attendees believed Xi's upcoming state visit will open a new chapter in bilateral relations, and hoped that the two countries can seize the opportunity to promote their cooperation in various fields and contribute to the two countries' comprehensive strategic partnership.

A series of cultural exchange events were also held in Spain from Nov.21 to 23.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-25 17:56:34|Editor: Yurou

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JERUSALEM, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Palestinian property was vandalized amidst a suspected Israeli hate crime attack in the West Bank early on Sunday morning, Israel's police said.

The incident took place in al-Mughayyir town, northeast of Ramallah city.

Pictures released by the Israeli police showed several vandalized cars, with their tires slashed. Hate graffiti were spray-painted on some cars and walls.

An investigation was launched, but no suspects have been arrested yet.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said in a statement that police and military units "will enter the area to examine the incident."

The vandalism was the latest in a surge of racist attacks by ultra-nationalist Israelis over the past months in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and in Israel.

Overnight between Thursday and Friday, vehicles were vandalized and hate-graffiti were spray-painted in the village of Asira al-Kabaliyeh in the Nablus area.

Similar incidents took place in two separate locations in East Jerusalem, where car tires were slashed and slogans of racist graffiti were found on the walls of some buildings.

Far-right Israelis have carried out thousands of attacks over the past years. The attacks include violence against Palestinians in the West Bank and Israel and vandalism of mosques, churches, cemeteries, and personal property. Most of the incidents remain unsolved as the law enforcement authorities usually fail to arrest and charge any suspects.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-25 18:06:35|Editor: Yurou

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ANKARA, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Several shots were fired overnight near the Austrian embassy in Turkish capital Ankara, state-run Anadolu Agency reported on Sunday.

Shots were fired into to the air from a white car after which security forces rushed to the location and briefly closed roads near the diplomatic complex.

There were no reports of casualties or injuries.

According to news reports, the incident happened around midnight on the Ataturk boulevard in downtown Ankara on which several embassies are located and police are searching for the white automobile.

In August, gunmen, reported to be drunk by the police, shot at the United States embassy, causing no casualties.

The police arrested two man who had previous criminal record in relation to the incident. The U.S. embassy is located on Ataturk boulevard, near the Austrian one.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-25 19:01:45|Editor: Shi Yinglun

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A helicopter is seen on the rescue mission of missing passengers from a boat accident on Lake Victoria in central district of Mukono, Uganda, on Nov. 25, 2018. Many people are still missing as the death toll from a boat accident on Lake Victoria in Uganda on Saturday has risen to 30, a police spokesperson said Sunday. (Xinhua/Joseph Kiggundu)

KAMPALA, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Many people are still missing as the death toll from a boat accident on Lake Victoria in Uganda on Saturday has risen to 30, a police spokesperson said Sunday.

Patrick Onyango, Uganda's deputy police spokesperson, told Xinhua by telephone that joint police and military marine teams, together with local divers, have rescued 27 people.

Two boats capsized and completely submerged in the deep waters on Lake Victoria in the central Ugandan district of Mukono.

"Our teams are still trying to either retrieve dead bodies or rescue some people alive. But the hopes for people still alive is dwindling," said Onyango.

"Many more people are missing. We fear for the worst. We believe many of them have died. The boat reportedly had about 84 people on board who had gone for weekend partying," he said.

The boat reportedly carried more than 120 weekend revelers, beyond its capacity of 100 from Port bell Luzira in the capital Kampala headed to Mutima Island on Lake Victoria, according to a local media report.

The report added that a second local boat, which went for rescue mission also capsized and submerged due to overloading.

The spokesperson said the deceased bodies have been taken to Mulago National Referral Hospital and City Mortuary for postmortem.

Some of the deceased bodies have been handed to the wailing relatives at the two mortuaries for burial, according to the police.

Onyango said that the police have launched investigations into the cause of the deadly incident highly suspected on overloading, strong winds and possibly mechanical problem.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-25 19:31:50|Editor: mym

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Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, European Union's (EU) chief negotiator Michel Barnier and European Council President Donald Tusk (from L to R) talk during a round table meeting at a special Brexit summit in Brussels, Belgium, Nov. 25, 2018. The European Council endorsed the agreement on the withdrawal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK) from the European Union and the European Atomic Energy Community, according to its press release on Sunday. (Xinhua)

BRUSSELS, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- The European Council endorsed the agreement on the withdrawal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK) from the European Union (EU) and the European Atomic Energy Community, according to its press release on Sunday.

On this basis, the European Council invited the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Council of the EU to take the necessary steps to ensure that the agreement can enter into force on March 30, 2019, so as to provide for an orderly withdrawal.

The European Council also approved the Political Declaration setting out the framework for the future relationship between the EU and the UK.

The European Council restated the EU determination to have a partnership as close as possible with the UK in the future in line with the Political Declaration, according to the press release.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-25 19:41:52|Editor: mym

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ADDIS ABABA, 25 (Xinhua) -- The African Union (AU) has reaffirmed its commitment to continue closely following up the conduct of the second round of the presidential election in Madagascar.

In its latest meeting, the Peace and Security Council of the 55-member African Union has deliberated on the situation in Madagascar, according to an AU statement late Saturday.

The council has urged the Malagasy actors to continue to work in peace and dialogue, with a view to finding adequate consensual and peaceful responses to the challenges they may encounter in the conduct and conclusion of the electoral process.

Madagascar conducted its first round of the presidential election on Nov. 7, and the country will go for the second round on Dec. 19 to elect its future leader for the next five years.

According to provisional results released last week by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) of Madagascar, Andry Rajoelina and Marc Ravalomanana went into the second round of presidential election in Madagascar, which will take place on Dec. 19.

The council has called on all the relevant stakeholders to recourse to the constitutional and legal channels provided for by Malagasy laws and regulations to address and resolve any electoral disputes.

The council called on Malagasy authorities to learn useful lesson from the conduct of the first round of the Presidential elections, with a view to enhance the organization of the second round, scheduled for 19 December 2018.

It has also urged the international community to provide Madagascar with the required material, financial and technical support to meet all the necessary conditions for the smooth running of the second round of the presidential elections and to consolidate the remarkable progress made in the process aimed at consolidating constitutional order in the country.

The council expressed AU's commitment, in close cooperation with regional blocs and others, to continue to support Madagascar during the post electoral phase, including in relation to the efforts for the socio-economic recovery.

The council called on the Presidential candidates and their supporters to work for the conclusion of the electoral process and to continue to show scrupulous respect for the institutions, laws and regulatory frameworks applicable at country.

The African Union (AU) has deployed a long-term election observation mission in Madagascar.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-25 19:57:00|Editor: mym

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Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis (L) talks with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker during a round table meeting at a special Brexit summit in Brussels, Belgium, Nov. 25, 2018. The European leaders on Sunday endorsed the Brexit deal at the European Union (EU) summit, a major breakthrough since the lengthy Britain-EU Brexit negotiation started one and half years ago. (Xinhua)

BRUSSELS, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- The European leaders on Sunday endorsed the Brexit deal at the European Union (EU) summit, a major breakthrough since the lengthy Britain-EU Brexit negotiation started one and half years ago.

The European Council agreed on the withdrawal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK) from the European Union (EU) and the European Atomic Energy Community.

The political document covers Britain's 39-billion-pound "divorce bill", citizens' rights and the Northern Ireland "backstop" - a way to keep the Irish border open, if trade talks stall.

The European Council also approved the Political Declaration setting out the framework for the future relationship between the EU and Britain.

The Political Declaration sets out what Britain and the EU's relationship may be like after Brexit, outlining how things like UK-EU trade and security will work.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said that "it's a sad day," as he arrived Sunday for an EU summit in Brussels to endorse the Brexit agreement. He told reporters that the summit "is neither a time of jubilation nor of celebration. It's a sad moment, and it's a tragedy."

"Let's pave the way towards a close post-Brexit relationship," he said. "The UK is leaving the European Union not Europe."

Asked whether a better agreement can be found, should the British Parliament reject it, Juncker said: "This is the deal. It's the best deal possible. The European Union will not change its fundamental position."

Britain is scheduled to leave the economic and political union on March 29, 2019.

The terms of the UK's withdrawal have been under negotiation since June 2016 following a referendum, in which 52 percent voted for Brexit.

Even if the EU approves the deal, it still has to be passed by the British Parliament as many MPs have stated their opposition.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-25 20:52:57|Editor: Yurou

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Members of Tibetan opera troupe perform in a Tibetan opera funded by China National Arts Fund in Lhasa, capital of southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, Nov. 24, 2018. Tibetan opera was awarded national intangible cultural heritage status in 2006. (Xinhua/Liu Dongjun)
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-25 21:27:12|Editor: mym

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KAMPALA, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- The Ugandan government has launched investigation into the cause of the Saturday night boat accident on Lake Victoria.

Moses Ali, first deputy Prime Minister, said in a statement issued on Sunday the aim of the investigation is to ensure that such an incident does not occur again.

He said the country would be briefed as soon as the investigation report is out.

He said government has also formed an inter-ministerial committee headed by Prime Minister Ruhakana Rugunda to handle the tragedy.

"Government has decided to release the bodies that have been cleared by police and identified by families and relatives," he said.

President Yoweri Museveni in a condolence message on Sunday said preliminary information shows that the boat was unregistered and unlicensed.

Museveni said the boat had a capacity for 50 people only but there were about 120 passengers on board, who also seemed to be partying with a lot of music.

"They might not have heard the emergency commands of the captain, who is still unaccounted for," the president said.

He said the tragedy should be a warning to everybody not to board boats that are overloaded, no life jackets and have no reliable navigation.

Museveni said the government has ordered the electronic registration and monitoring of all the boats so that authorities know who is where on the lake and why.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-25 21:52:16|Editor: Yurou

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CHENGDU, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Having sent two satellites into space within 100 days after its establishment, a young Chinese commercial space firm is preparing for a new launch in December.

Supported by the local government, the Chengdu GuoXing Aerospace Technology Co. Ltd. was set up in the capital of southwest China's Sichuan Province in May. It has developed two experimental satellites integrated with AI technology.

"The AI technology could give the satellite a stronger capability of automatic data analysis," said Zhao Hongjie, vice president of the startup firm.

For instance, the remote sensing satellite with AI technology could autonomously identify clouds and fog, and select the useful images to send back to earth, thus greatly improving its working efficiency, Zhao said.

One such kind of AI satellite developed by the company for commercial use was sent into the sun-synchronous orbit on Oct. 29.

The company, employing more than 40 staff, most of whom are under 30, is only one example of China's emerging commercial space industry.

Companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic are developing cost-effective carrier vehicles with the aim to make space travel possible for ordinary people. They have also inspired Chinese entrepreneurs.

Launching rockets and satellites has long been the goal of China's state-owned aerospace companies, but private space firms are now popping up hoping to make a name for themselves in this burgeoning industry.

According to a report by Beijing-based investment institution FutureAerospace, more than 60 private Chinese firms have entered the commercial space industry over the past three years, focusing on the production and launch of satellites and rockets.

This follows a government policy issued in 2015 to encourage private enterprises in space industry.

Analysts say commercial space activity could help lower costs and increase the efficiency of space activities, and accelerate technology development.

The value of the global space market is estimated to reach 485 billion U.S. dollars in 2020 when the value of China's space market is projected to be 800 billion yuan (125.78 billion dollars). About two-thirds of global satellite orders will come from commercial customers in the next decade.

Lured by the promising market, Chinese space companies recently unveiled a series of programs to produce and launch small and micro satellites.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-25 22:02:19|Editor: mym

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MOSCOW, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Three Ukraine naval ships violated the Russian border in the Black Sea on Sunday and conducted dangerous maneuvers defying Russian orders, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB)'s Border Service in Crimea said.

The Ukrainian ships entered the temporarily closed waters of the Russian territorial sea circa 7:00 a.m. Moscow time (0400 GMT) and were sailing toward the Kerch Strait, the FSB Border Service in Crimea said in a statement.

The vessels aim to create a conflict situation in the region, it said, adding that the Border Service is taking all measures to stop this "deliberate provocation" and ensure security of navigation and regulation of maritime traffic in the Black Sea, the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait.

The Kerch Strait connecting the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov has been closed to civil ships over security concerns, Russian media reported, citing sources in transport authorities.

Ukraine has accused Russia of "aggressive actions" in the Sea of Azov after Russia inaugurated a bridge over the Kerch Strait earlier this year and started inspecting commercial ships sailing through the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said earlier this week that Moscow resolutely rejects any accusations that calling its actions "aggressive and illegal" as Crimea is part of Russia, which can exercise its sovereign rights in nearby waters.

Ukraine plans to establish a new maritime security department at the State Border Guard Service by the end of this year, which will take control over the entire maritime border of the country in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.

Crimea declared to be part of Russia following a local referendum in March 2014, but Kiev and Western countries rejected the results. Russia-Ukraine relations have been filled with disputes and tensions since then.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-25 22:22:23|Editor: Yurou

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TRIPOLI, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Libyan navy announced on Sunday that it had received a new Italian-made vessel to support its efforts against illegal activities in the Mediterranean.

The new boat, Ubari, measuring 27 meters long and seven meters wide, arrived at port of the capital Tripoli on Saturday, the navy said in a statement.

Last month, the Libyan navy received a similar vessel from Italy, as part of the Italian support to the Libyan Coast Guard's efforts against illegal activities in Libya's maritime waters, under the Treaty on Friendship, Partnership and Cooperation signed between the two countries in 2008, according to the statement.

The Libyan navy is expected to receive 10 speed boats in the near future, which will be used in intervention and law enforcement operations off the Libyan coast.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-25 22:27:25|Editor: mym

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KUALA LUMPUR, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- The Malaysian anti-corruption body said Sunday that it has launched an investigation into a claim that an audit report on state investment fund 1MDB had been tampered with.

Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) said in a statement that it was studying original documents produced by the National Audit Department.

This comes after Auditor-General Madinah Mohamad claimed an aide to former Prime Minister Najib Razak had instructed her office to remove a paragraph mentioning Malaysia businessman Low Taek Jho or Jho Low, who has been the focus of the ongoing 1MDB investigation but remains unaccounted for.

"MACC will summon several witnesses in the near future to record their statements and facilitate investigations," said the statement.

Madinah earlier issued a statement listing down in chronological order all the times the report was altered.

According to her, two crucial deletions were made to the report at the request of a private secretary of then Prime Minister Najib in 2016. One was on the financial status of 1MDB and the other on the presence of Low at a meeting of the 1MDB board of directors.

The changes delayed the presentation of the audit report to the Public Accounts Committee.

Madinah added she had briefed the Cabinet of incumbent Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad on the amendments to the 1MDB final audit report that was finalized and presented to the committee.

"The 1MDB final report prior to the amendments was submitted to the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission and the Royal Malaysia Police in 2018 for investigation," she said.

Muhammad Shafee Abdullah, the leading defense attorney representing Najib, said the claims of tempering were politically motivated.

"By her own admission, the Auditor General's press statement which was unusually released to the public on a Sunday morning was made under orders of the cabinet," he said.

Najib has repeatedly said his relationship with Low was strictly professional despite claims Low was a family friend and alleged mastermind of a scheme to siphon public funds through 1MDB.

Najib faces 38 charges including some accusing him receiving hundreds of million U.S. dollars in public funds connected to the scandal. He has pledged not guilty to all the charges.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-25 22:37:26|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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TRIPOLI, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- The former security chief of the Libya's capital Tripoli survived an assassination attempt on Sunday in front of his home but was severely injured, an official told Xinhua.

"Gen. Salah al-Smu'i survived an assassination attempt after gunmen fired heavily at him in front of his house in Tripoli," the official with the Interior Ministry said on condition of anonymity.

"Al-Smu'i suffered severe injuries and was transferred to the hospital," the official said, adding that his condition is currently stable.

Three weeks ago, the newly-appointed Interior Minister Fathi Bashagha relieved al-Smu'i of his duty and appointed Salem Gremida as the new security chief of Tripoli.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-25 22:42:30|Editor: Shi Yinglun

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NEW DELHI, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Chinese mobile manufacturing company Vivo has been allotted around 68 hectares of land in India's northern state of Uttar Pradesh to expand its manufacturing capacity.

The land approved by the Yamuna Expressway Industrial Development Authority (YEIDA) is located in the state's business township Greater Noida.

Vivo currently has a rented manufacturing facility of about 20 hectares in the township, with a capacity of manufacturing 2.4 million mobile phones per year.

Local media reports quoted YEIDA chief executive officer Arunveer Singh as saying that the Chinese smartphones company would create 25,000 jobs.

Vivo would start construction works on the allotted land by March 2019.
The Russian guided-missile frigate Admiral Makarov arrives at the Bay of Sevastopol to join Russia's Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol, Crimea October 5, 2018. (REUTERS FILE PHOTO)

MOSCOW, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Three Ukraine naval ships violated the Russian border in the Black Sea on Sunday and conducted dangerous maneuvers defying Russian orders, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB)'s Border Service in Crimea said.

The Ukrainian ships entered the temporarily closed waters of the Russian territorial sea circa 7:00 a.m. Moscow time (0400 GMT) and were sailing toward the Kerch Strait, the FSB Border Service in Crimea said in a statement.

The vessels aim to create a conflict situation in the region, it said, adding that the Border Service is taking all measures to stop this "deliberate provocation" and ensure security of navigation and regulation of maritime traffic in the Black Sea, the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait.

The Kerch Strait connecting the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov has been closed to civil ships over security concerns, Russian media reported, citing sources in transport authorities.

Ukraine has accused Russia of "aggressive actions" in the Sea of Azov after Russia inaugurated a bridge over the Kerch Strait earlier this year and started inspecting commercial ships sailing through the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said earlier this week that Moscow resolutely rejects any accusations that calling its actions "aggressive and illegal" as Crimea is part of Russia, which can exercise its sovereign rights in nearby waters.

Ukraine plans to establish a new maritime security department at the State Border Guard Service by the end of this year, which will take control over the entire maritime border of the country in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.

Crimea declared to be part of Russia following a local referendum in March 2014, but Kiev and Western countries rejected the results. Russia-Ukraine relations have been filled with disputes and tensions since then.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-25 23:12:35|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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ADEN, Yemen, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- At least six operatives of the Yemen-based al-Qaida branch were killed in a U.S. drone strike in the central province of al-Bayda on Sunday, a security official told Xinhua.

The pilotless aircraft fired missiles at a location held by al-Qaida militants in Quraishah area of al-Bayda Province, leaving six terrorists killed at the scene, the official said on condition of anonymity.

Local media outlets also reported the U.S. drone attack on al-Qaida militants, saying the six killed included two mid-level commanders.

Local residents said the U.S. aircraft was hovering very low over the area for hours before launching the aerial bombardment against al-Qaida operatives.

The Yemen-based al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which carries out sporadic attacks against Yemeni forces backed by the United Arab Emirates in the southern regions, neither denied nor confirmed the U.S. airstrike.

The AQAP network, mostly operating in eastern and southern provinces, has been responsible for many high-profile attacks against security forces in the country.

The U.S. military has carried out several airstrikes against AQAP fighters in different provinces of the war-torn Arab country since U.S President Donald Trump approved expansion of military operations against the group.

The operations included intensified overnight airstrikes and ground military raids against the al-Qaida hideouts in the mountainous areas of al-Bayda and the southeastern province of Shabwa.

The Yemen-based al-Qaida branch, seen by the United States as the global terror network's most dangerous branch, has exploited years of deadly conflict between Yemen's government and Houthi rebels to expand its presence, especially in southeastern provinces.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-26 00:47:57|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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ISTANBUL, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Thousands of Turkish women marked on Sunday the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women by gathering in central Istanbul to protest against male violence.

The protesters planned to hold a symbolic march on the iconic Istiklal Avenue, but were blocked by police.

Playing drums and chanting slogans, they shouted, "We are everywhere," "Women get rebellious," "We defend life."

"You will get used to seeing strong women who say 'no' to violence," said a young woman in the crowd.

"Violence has no type. I don't want women to get hurt," another added.

According to womenhomicide.com data, 337 women have been murdered by their male partners, husbands or family members this year across Turkey. Other platforms claim the figure is as high as 363.

"We are against all kinds of violence against women, not only the physical one but also the psychological one," said Fusun Demir, a woman with a master's degree in psychology.

"Independently from their education level, many women are subjected to violence once in their lifetime in this country," she said, urging women to raise their voices against violence.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-26 02:43:10|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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TRIPOLI, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Libya's UN-backed Prime Minister, Fayez Serraj, on Sunday issued a decision to transform two large military camps in the capital Tripoli into health and education facilities.

According to the PM's information office, Serraj gave orders to evacuate the camps within 72 hours and be handed over to the state-owned Economic and Social Development Fund.

The two camps are located in southern Tripoli, which in August witnessed violent clashes between forces allied with the government and other armed groups, killing and injuring hundreds of civilians.

"We must take advantage of the vast area of the camps and build civilian facilities that benefit the people in vital areas such as health and education," Serraj said during a tour inside the camps.

Serraj stressed all the other camps in the city will also be turned into civilians facilities as well, and be handed over to the Economic and Social Development Fund.

The Economic and Social Development Fund was established in 2006 in order to finance strategic economic projects, such as tourism, real estate, industry, and oil.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-26 03:08:19|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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GENEVA, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Swiss voters on Sunday strongly rejected a right-wing proposal in a referendum to put the Swiss constitution above international law that would have meant renegotiating many treaties, with a 66.2 percent no vote recorded, results showed.

The initiative put forward by the rightwing People's Party (SVP) for "Swiss law instead of foreign judges," was rejected Sunday by a majority of Switzerland's 26 cantons, the official results showed.

Justice Minister Simonetta Sommaruga said in reaction to the result that "Voters do not want a rigid system which could create problems with international treaties."

Local media reported that the business community also welcomed the result saying voters wanted "a country open to the outside world."

A yes vote would have forced Switzerland to renegotiate countless treaties, including texts on human rights, child rights, environmental laws and on trade.

Under the so-called "Swiss law first" proposal, the powers of the government, parliament, as well as the courts, would have been restricted. International accords which are not in line with the Swiss constitution would have been canceled or be subject to new negotiations.

Those opposing the initiative, which included the Swiss government and the business community, warned that its approval would create legal uncertainty, thereby undermining Switzerland's position as a reliable partner.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-26 03:43:23|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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WASHINGTON, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- A U.S. federal judge on Sunday rejected requests by George Papadopoulos to delay his 14-day prison sentence and ordered the former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser to report to prison as scheduled.

Papadopoulos, 31, had asked a federal judge twice in the past 10 days to pause his sentence but U.S. District Court Judge Randolph Moss said in an order Sunday that he had waited too long to contest his sentence.

"Papadopoulos waited until the eleventh hour to seek relief; indeed, he did not file his second motion - the stay request - until the last business day before he was scheduled to surrender to serve his sentence," Moss wrote. "He has only his own delay to blame."

U.S. authorities have Papadopoulos set to surrender at a correctional camp in the state of Wisconsin on Monday.

In October last year, Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators about his Russian contacts during the 2016 presidential campaign.

He gave up much of his rights to appeal under his plea agreement, which he cut with special counsel Robert Mueller's office.

Mueller is looking into the alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and any potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow, among other matters that may arise from the investigation.

Papadopoulos was the first Trump campaign aide sentenced in Mueller's investigation.

The White House has claimed that Papadopoulos was a low-level volunteer on the campaign.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-26 04:08:30|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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CAPE TOWN, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- South Africa's Parliament has filed a legal affidavit to counter a court bid to set aside a report on amending the Constitution to pave way for land reform, parliamentary spokesperson Moloto Mothapo said Sunday.

The affidavit is in response to civil group AfriForum's application to the Western Cape High Court to set aside the report by Parliament's Joint Constitutional Review Committee (JCRC) on amending section 25 of the Constitution to allow the state to expropriate land without compensation, Mothabo said.

In the affidavit, Parliament argues that AfriForum was deliberately trying to frustrate Parliament's legislative process, said Mothabo.

Last week, AfriForum launched a court bid, seeking an order to have the JCRC report set aside. The group also approached the U.S. Embassy and some other foreign embassies, seeking their help to force the South African government to stop its controversial land reform.

Parliament has asked the court to dismiss or strike AfriForum's application from the court roll with punitive costs, Mothabo said.

Earlier this month, the JCRC adopted its report which recommends that section 25 of the Constitution be amended to make it explicitly clear that expropriation of land without compensation by the state in the public interest should be one mechanism to address the injustices of the past, inflicted on the majority of South Africans.

The report, wich will be referring to the National Assembly (Lower House) and National Council of Provinces (Upper House) for consideration, is an interim step, similar to a bill, according to Mothabo.

"It is not final in effect. It may be accepted or it may not," Mothabo said.

Before adopting the report, the JCRC embarked on an extensive public participation process - at public hearings in each of the nine provinces and meetings and workshops in Parliament.

This is an additional pre-legislative step before the process of introducing a bill, Mothabo said.

"Thousands of South Africans joined the national conversation about land and its role in building our democracy and redressing the wounds of our past," he said.

After a decision by Parliament, a bill may be introduced, and at that stage Parliament will again invite further and full public comments, in terms of Parliament's constitutional obligations, according to Mothabo.

In essence, AfriForum wants to interdict Parliament, at this stage, because it alleges that the committee should have considered each submission, including those that it admits are duplicate submissions, Mothabo said.

The committee did not exclude any submissions except where those were enquiries, unrelated, blank or repeats, said Mothabo.

The ongoing land reform has sparked a heated debate in South Africa. Opponents argue that the process will drive away white farmers, kill jobs and threaten food security.

But the government has assured that it will pursue the land reform without destabilizing the agricultural sector, endangering food security in the country, or undermining economic growth and job creation.

Since taking power in 1994, the government led by the African National Congress has made land redistribution from whites to blacks without compensation one of its priorities.

But land remains predominantly in white hands more than two decades after the end of apartheid, sparking growing discontent among South African blacks.
Rescuers search in the site where the wildfire engulfed in Paradise of Butte County,California, the United States, Nov. 19, 2018.(Xinhua/Wu Xiaoling)

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- The deadliest wildfire in the history of the U.S. state of California that has killed at least 85 people was finally brought under control after burning for more than two weeks, authorities said on Sunday.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) tweeted that the fire, dubbed as Camp Fire, scorched 153,336 acres (620 square km) before it was 100 percent contained.

"#CampFire ... is now 100% contained," the state fire authority said on its official Twitter account, noting that it has destroyed 13,972 residences, 528 commercial and 4,293 other buildings.

Meanwhile, the Butte County Sheriff's Office said in a statement that 249 people remained unaccounted for till Saturday, down from more than 1,000 days ago.

But there are still 271 names on the missing list posted on the homepage of the county sheriff's office Sunday morning.

The office also said the death toll rose to 85 on Saturday after three more bodies were found on the day. It was the deadliest wildfire in 100 years in the United States since 1918's Cloquet Fire which killed 453 people in northern Minnesota.

The Camp fire was first reported in the morning of Nov. 8, and then in a few hours torched Paradise, a foothill town located 150 kilometers north of Sacramento, the capital city of the Golden State.

More than 5,000 firefighters from all western states as far as South Dakota and Texas had been struggling with the fire on the scene for about two weeks before rains that moved into Northern California last Wednesday doused the flames and helped them gain more control of the blaze.

However, the rain also raises concerns that mudslides and debris flows could be caused in the burn scar areas of Paradise. The Butte County Sheriff's Office warned residents to be aware of risks associated to the weather.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-26 04:43:35|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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TRIPOLI, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Libyan navy on Sunday said that a Spanish ship intervened in a rescue operation of illegal migrants on Saturday off Libyan coast.

"When the coast guards vessel approached the migrants' boat, a foreign bulldozer was found in the area. After declaring the patrol's identity and mission, it was asked to leave immediately, but it refused to respond," the Libyan navy said in a statement.

It turned out later that it was a Spanish ship, added the statement.

"As a result of this irresponsible action, 10 of the migrants jumped from the patrol's boat into the water and swam to the Spanish ship that picked them up and refused to respond to our call to hand them over," the statement said.

The navy accused the Spanish ship of "hindering the operation and almost causing the migrants to drown."

The coast guards patrol managed to rescue 27 migrants, including 3 women, of different African nationalities, the statement revealed.

Libyan navy has complained on numerous occasions of the involvement of foreign rescue vessels, especially Spanish, in migrants rescue operations in Libyan waters.

In March, the Italian navy seized the Spanish rescue ship Proavtiva Open Arms for obstructing a migrant rescue operation of the Libyan coast guards.
Russian navy ships and helicopters take a part in a landing operation during military drills at the Black Sea coast, Crimea, Sept. 9, 2016. (AP File Photo)

KIEV, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Russian forces have opened fire on Ukrainian vessels near the Kerch Strait, injuring one person, the Ukrainian Naval Forces said on Sunday.

The armored artillery boat of the Ukrainian Navy "Berdyansk" was damaged during the attack, the navy said in a statement on Facebook.

Earlier on the day, the Russian Federal Security Service's Border Service in Crimea said that three Ukraine naval ships violated the Russian border in the Black Sea and conducted dangerous maneuvers defying Russian orders.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Navy said it has informed Russia in advance about the passage of Ukrainian vessels from the Black Sea to the Sea of Azov through the Kerch Strait separating the two seas.

According to local media reports, Russia has blocked Ukrainian vessels from entering the Sea of Azov.

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry has accused Russia of provocative actions, saying it has "violated freedom of navigation by unlawfully using force" against the Ukrainian ships.

Volodymyr Yelchenko, Ukraine's ambassador to the United Nations, said Kiev would appeal to the UN Security Council over the incident.

Ukraine has accused Moscow of "aggressive actions" in the Sea of Azov after Russia inaugurated a bridge over the Kerch Strait in May this year and started carrying out inspections of commercial ships sailing through the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait.

Russia said the inspections of ships are aimed at ensuring security in the waters of the Azov Sea and the Kerch Strait and do not violate the international law.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-26 05:33:46|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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JERUSALEM, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Chad's President Idriss Deby on Sunday became the first Chadian leader to pay an official visit to Israel, expressing his wish to restore diplomatic ties between the two countries.

Deby met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem in the afternoon.

Both leaders called the visit "historic" and pledged their wish to renew the relations between the two sides.

"We never fully stopped our contacts, but we are now expanding them at a very rapid rate," Netanyahu said, wishing to do so in all areas and "first of all in fighting terrorism."

Deby's visit focuses on security and economic cooperation.

He said that relations between Israel and Chad were severed in 1972, "but our special relations continued all the time."

"The resumption of diplomatic relations with your country, which I desire, does not make us ignore the Palestinian issue," said Deby, adding that "my country is profoundly attached to the peace process."

Deby stressed that Chad and Israel struggle "a common battle" against terrorism. Chad is engaged in operations against Boko Haram and the Islamic State militants.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-26 05:38:47|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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CHICAGO, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- In anticipation of a storm, some 301 flights had been canceled at Chicago O'Hare International Airport by Sunday noon, with some 202 others facing delays.

Midway International Airport, another airport in Chicago, was in the same situation. By Sunday noon, 121 flights had been canceled and 45 others were delayed.

The average delays at the two airports were less than 15 minutes, the Chicago Sun-Times quoted Chicago Department of Aviation as saying.

The National Weather Service forecast Saturday that a winter storm will move through the Chicago area Sunday. From 6 p.m. Sunday until 9 a.m. Monday, heavy snowfall and wind gusts up to 50 mph are expected to impact Cook, DuPage, Kendall, Grundy and Will counties, the National Weather Service warned.

The weather service forecast that the peak storm conditions will start 7 p.m. in the Chicago area.

Due to the conditions, the U.S. Coast Guard has advised people to stay off of Lake Michigan and away from beaches and other areas near the shore.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-11-26 05:58:49|Editor: Shi Yinglun

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NAIROBI, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Newly appointed African Union special envoy Raila Odinga left the country on Sunday for Zimbabwe to open a forum on infrastructure development in the continent.

Odinga, African Union High Representative for Infrastructure Development in Africa, will open a meeting of the Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA), his office said in a statement issued in Nairobi.

It said the former Kenyan prime minister will lay out his vision for project preparation, resource mobilization and financing mechanisms for infrastructure development in Africa.

"He will also share his thoughts on attainment of smart and Integrated Infrastructure Development, among other matters," said Odinga's office. He will jet back into the country on Monday.

Moussa Faki Mahamat, chairperson of the African Union Commission, has said the appointment of Odinga is part of the pan African body's drive to expedite the integration of the continent through infrastructure, in order to promote economic growth and sustainable development.

He said Odinga will work to support and strengthen the efforts of the Commission's relevant departments and those of the planning and coordinating agency of the New Partnership for Africa's Development, within the framework of PIDA.
By now, everyone knows about the Friday news dump  the penchant for sleazy companies or even sleazier government agencies to hold onto a piece of really bad news until late on a Friday afternoon, so that any headlines that are generated come out when everybody's working for the weekend, or in Saturday newspapers that nearly nobody reads.

So, when the bad news involves mass death and disease, a never-ending bowl of natural disasters, the extinction of species, etc.  and when your boss is on the wrong side of the mass-death issue  that calls for the Mother of All News Dumps. That would be a news release at 2 p.m. on the Friday after Thanksgiving, when no one works and most Americans are either waiting on a rope line at Walmart or couch-prone in a tryptophan coma.

"This is, unfortunately, par for the course for this president that he would try to bury this news and deny it," Jake Levine, who'd worked on climate issues during Barack Obama's presidency, said on MSNBC right after the Trump administration realized that Black Friday  while a month ahead of schedule  was their preferred day to drop a congressionally mandated report on climate change that predicted dire consequences if America and the world do not respond quickly.

Don't let Trumpian government dump on your right to this life-or-death information. Now that Thanksgiving is over and blood sugar is returning to normal-albeit-elevated levels, you should read the government's Climate Assessment (the work of 13 different federal agencies) or check out some of the better summaries of its findings from the New York Times or Vox.

The elevator pitch is that global warming should terrify fiscal conservatives because the costs are enormous (wiping out 10 percent of America's gross domestic product, double the hit from the Great Recession of a decade ago), its negative effects are already here in ways that are obvious (the drought-fueled wildfires that killed scores of people in Paradise, Calif.) and not so obvious (the warm-weather spread of ticks that cause Lyme disease), and the impact will only intensify as we get deeper into the 21st century, from California-style wildfires in the U.S. Southeast to trade disruptions as natural disasters around the globe interrupt the supply chain.

Friday's blunt warning got more attention than most stories about climate change  our slow-motion disaster that never breaks through the 24/7 news cycle of fast-moving ones  but yet the overwhelming reaction was still cynicism and sad resignation, like a cancer diagnosis for a patient that refuses treatment. Maybe 13 government agencies understand the world is on fire, but the 14th and the only one that matters  the White House  remains in deep denial. In a statement accompanying the Black Friday news dump, the White House especially "blamed" the Obama administration for beginning work on a report that was "largely based on the most extreme scenario."

Climate denial is as deeply ingrained in the Trump brand as overpriced steaks and diploma scams  because anything that annoys pointy-headed liberals must be good, because it was something he could lord over Hillary in West Virginia "coal country," and because slippery oil barons and even slipperier Middle Easterm sheikhs are Donald Trump's kind of people. Seeing the devastation of Paradise firsthand isn't going to change his mind  "I want great climate," he babbled afterword  nor is a 1,656-page egghead-scientist report. Instead, Trump recently ridiculed climate science on Twitter.

But what's really so frustrating, if not stunning, about the Trump White House's denial on climate is that all you have to do is watch cable news for a couple of hours  which is pretty much how the president spends his "executive time" every morning  and you can see the ways that oil and other fossil fuels soak both our domestic and foreign policies, in ways that are increasingly poisonous. There will be blood?  to echo the foreboding title of a popular Hollywood movie about early 20th century oil exploration. It's already here.

The most obvious cry for help on global warming is coming right now from Northern California, where the fast-moving Camp Fire turned entire subdivisions in Paradise into grim rectangles of grey rubble in a matter of hours, as those surrounded by flames frantically called and texted their family members to say goodbye. The death toll stands at 85, but officials still don't know how many of the hundreds still listed as missing actually escaped and how many are dead amid the ashy ruin. Experts widely agree that man-made climate change and hotter temperatures have severely exacerbated California's years-long drought, leaving a whopping 129 million dead trees and dry brush that serve as kindling for each new spark.

And yet Trump continues to worship at the altar of 20th century fossil fuels, and not just here at home where the president's political romance with both struggling Appalachian workers and billionaire energy barons has inspired horrific policy decisions to bring back coal-fired power plants. In the Middle East, there has been blood because the White House has thrown all-in behind the murderous Saudi Arabia regime of Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, or MBS  even after the CIA confirmed that MBS ordered his goons to murder and dismember an American resident, Jamal Khashoggi, who was a columnist for the Washington Post.

The United States under Trump has essentially been an accessory to this act of barbaric immorality  there are even reports that we advised MBS on the American way of damage control  because the president still believes that we can't live without the Saudis, or perhaps that he can't get reelected in 2020 without low-priced crude from the Persian Gulf. He tweeted last week on the recent global drop in oil prices and concluded: "Thank you to Saudi Arabia, but let's go lower!"

Frankly, I don't think America can get any lower than condoning the killing of a journalist  and thus an attack on all press freedom  by the butcherous Saudi regime. But the blindness of Trump's oil-flooded eyes  rendering the United States the only nation on the planet to reject the Paris climate accord  shouldn't blind us to the fact that the rest of the world is also struggling to transition away from fossil fuels and into safer renewable fuels such as solar and wind power.

Just a day after the devastating U.S. climate assessment broke, the front page of the New York Times reported that Asia's growing giants like India and even China (despite its leadership in solar power) continue an opioid-level addiction to burning coal. And what of world leaders like France's Emmanuel Macron who've pushed climate-change-busting policies like higher taxes on fuel? On Saturday, flaming barricades and violent clashes pockmarked Paris' historic Champs-Elysees as working-class French citizens, some aligned with growing right-wing movements, protested those taxes. This is hardly a surprise to experts who've long predicted that failure to move early and decisively on the climate crisis would ultimately lead to widespread political unrest.

Will there be more blood? Perhaps, but there's also a few tiny rays of hope breaking through the thick smog that seems to be enveloping the world right now. In Washington, Trump will be confronted for the next two years by a Democratic-led House chock full of new members who ran unbeholden to Big Oil and with ambitious ideas for a transition away from fossil fuels. The cynical view is that with Trump in the White House and Mitch McConnell as Senate majority leader, this energetic new climate caucus will be tilting at, and not with, windmills. But here's a more optimistic take: The House moves on fossil fuels will set a clear agenda for the future, heighten the contradictions with the GOP's anti-science denialism, and make 2020 a referendum on climate action.

The avatar of this new movement is the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, and arguably the most progressive of the incoming new members, New York's Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She made a bold and politically risky statement earlier this month when she joined a climate protest outside the office of her probable future boss, Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi, and she and other newcomers have made a so-called Green New Deal their No. 1 legislative priority, aiming for a select committee to focus on the best policies.

"People are going to die if we don't start addressing climate change ASAP," Ocasio-Cortez tweeted Friday after the climate assessment came out. "It's not enough to think it's 'important.' We must make it urgent." She added that it's time for people with ties to the fossil fuel industry to stop writing climate policy  a reality that may not happen, unfortunately, until January 2021.

From the flaming embers of Paradise to the Saudi crime scene in Istanbul to chaos on the boulevards of Paris, oil and its aging cousin coal have become the poisons not just rendering our air unbreathable but increasingly inspiring wars, murder and mayhem. It's a regime that's even less morally sustainable than those of MBS or his No. 1 cheerleader, Trump. Despite the president's blather, we don't need to Make Climate Great Again. We just need to make climate normal again. But we're running out of time.
A 54-year-old woman was found dead in a burning duplex apartment Sunday morning in Media. Read more

A 54-year-old woman was found dead in a burning duplex apartment Sunday morning in Media.

Authorities did not release her name, pending notification of relatives.

Police from Media Borough and Upper Providence Township were dispatched at 3:32 a.m. to the two-story residence at 2 E. Ridge Rd. When they arrived, heavy smoke and fire were coming from the first floor.. The woman was found dead there after officers forced their way inside.

The resident of the second-floor unit was outside when police arrived.

Two officers from each department were treated for smoke inhalation at local hospitals.

Firefighters from the Media Fire Company and surrounding departments brought the fire under control.

Its cause is under investigation by the Pennsylvania State Police, Delaware County Criminal Investigation Division, Media Borough fire marshal, and Media Police Department.
Corporal Holsey Gillis Sr., 94, one of the first black Marines and a founding member of the Montford Point Marine Association, died Oct. 25 of dementia. Read more

Cpl. Holsey Gillis Sr., 94, one of the first black members of the Marine Corps and a founding member of the Philadelphia Chapter of the National Montford Point Marine Association, died last month of dementia.

At the time of his death, Cpl. Gillis was living in the Armed Forces Retirement Home in Washington.

Cpl. Gillis was part of the first group of black men allowed to join the Marine Corps following a directive by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1942. The men trained at the segregated Camp Montford Point in Jacksonville, N.C., which had substandard housing and training conditions compared with all-white camps.

Cpl. Gillis along with 400 surviving Montford Point Marines were honored with the Congressional Gold Medal in 2012 for their service during World War II.

"He was very excited and had a sense of relief that someone knew what they did," Joseph Geeter, spokesperson for the Montford Point Marine Association, said, adding that at the time most people only knew of the Tuskegee Airmen and Buffalo Soldiers but not so much the story of the first black Marines.

Cpl. Gillis was born and raised in Fitzgerald, Ga., as the second youngest of seven children. After high school a friend suggested they both try out for the Marines and so the two young men joined in the summer of 1943.

"They were in a gnat-ridden, swampy camp," said his son, who goes by his middle name, Kevin. "When they got to Southeast Asia they were used to the rough tropical conditions. In a way, it got them prepared for conflict."

Cpl. Gillis fought in the battle of Okinawa, Japan.

He would later tell stories of the racism he faced while in the service. After Cpl. Gillis returned home from the war, he was wearing his uniform on a date and some young men were about to jump him when the sheriff intervened, his son said.

"They were appreciated more in Europe," Kevin Gillis said. When they got home, they "can't even sit in the front of the bus. It had to be hard."

Those experiences shaped his view of the world as being black or white with little gray area, his son said. Cpl. Gillis was not shy about expressing his strong opinions on just about every subject.

After the war, Cpl. Gillis moved to Philadelphia, where he had some family in the area. A few years after his arrival, he was set up on a date with Eddie Mary Newsone and the two married in 1950. They had their only son seven years later.

In 1966, Cpl. Gillis helped start the first chapter of the Montford Point Marine Association in Philadelphia. Since then, the association has expanded to 36 chapters throughout the country. Cpl. Gillis remained an active member in Philadelphia through 2011, when he moved to the Washington area to be closer to his son.

Cpl. Gillis, who lived in West Philadelphia, held many jobs throughout the decades, working well into his 80s. He owned a gas station at one point. He was also the manager of the tire center at the Lit Bros. department store. He also owned two taverns (one in West Philadelphia, the other in South Philadelphia) where anyone who cursed would be asked to leave. His son said he never heard his father say one curse word in his life.

The crack epidemic, however, hurt the taverns in town as people didn't want to be out late for fear of being mugged, Cpl. Gillis' son said. Cpl. Gillis closed his bars in the early 1990s and went on to have other jobs, including transporting cars and working as a driver for Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown.

When he was in his 80s, his son said, Cpl. Gillis worked as a security guard at the Art Museum.

When he wasn't working, he sang in the Pinn Memorial Baptist Church choir for 60 years. He also liked mentoring young men and was active politically in the city's Democratic Committee, his son said.

And he remained committed to the Montford Point Marine Association. When the clubhouse at 54th and Market Streets fell to such disrepair that it was no longer safe to hold meetings, Cpl. Gillis opened his home to the members to hold monthly meetings.

"He always made sure the table and chairs were ready and snacks were set out," Geeter said.

Cpl. Gillis was known for his impeccable attire. He always wore dress shirts and pants. Even when he was in the retirement home and nearing death, he would ask his son to fetch him his dry cleaning every day so he could have starched and neatly pressed clothes on.

"He liked looking good and putting on a nice presentation," Kevin Gillis said. "He never wavered from that."

Cpl. Gillis was predeceased by his wife and six siblings. He is survived by his son and two granddaughters.

A memorial service will be held Saturday, Dec. 1, at 11 a.m. at Pinn Memorial Baptist Church, 2251 N. 54th St. in Philadelphia.
Right now our elected officials aren't listening. They don't hear the thousands of student activists rallying for gun control, working on political campaigns, and inspiring true reform for our country.

If it's a decision between meeting with lobbyists or a meeting with students to discuss policy, politicians usually pick the former. It doesn't serve their self-interest to meet with students; we aren't voters, we aren't lobbyists, and we don't have deep pockets of money. The most that a politician would get out of a meeting with students would be a nice photo op to put on social media. That needs to change. Teens deserve to be heard, and not just listened to. We need to have conversations on real policy issues. We need to talk with our elected officials, not just talk to them.

Why? It's because we represent the future. Teens represent an increasingly large segment of the electorate that will soon be ready to vote. We've done our research. Contrary to popular belief, most of us actually know about the Constitution and we're taking government classes. We have ideas and solutions to the problems at hand. For example, students from Akron's North High School in Ohio proposed solutions to the opioid epidemic to the Summit County Opiate Task Force. Or look at Emory University students, who presented proposals to help refugees settle and adapt.

Or, consider me. For the last 11 months, I worked as the deputy campaign manager for Daryl Boling's campaign for Pennsylvania state representative. One of my many jobs throughout the campaign was to develop policy positions with my candidate. When we had policy discussions, my colleagues were often amazed by my knowledge and understanding of a wide variety of contemporary issues. While most of my classmates are not as politically aware as I am, there is a large portion of students that understand the current problems and can think outside the box to help solve them.

So what can politicians do? Start by creating a student liaison group to discuss policy with them. This is where schools and universities can help. Teachers and administrators can identify the sharpest, most innovative, and most intelligent minds, and recommend these students to a local elected official. These student "think tanks" should not merely be talking groups; if the proposed ideas merit it, they should be incorporated into future legislation.

To go even further, politicians should make themselves very transparent and available. One of the reasons that I got involved in politics was that I saw a lack of transparency among my representatives. Town halls, open policy discussions, easily navigable websites should be of paramount priority for elected officials. That's how students and constituents alike can hold their representatives accountable, because at the end of the day, our representatives work for us.

So, I ask all elected officials: Will you listen and respond to our concerns? Will you talk policy with us? Will you involve us in democracy and encourage our participation? It's time for change, and we can spur it on.

Josh Portney is 17 years old and attends Upper Dublin High School as a senior. He plans to run for elected office one day.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday slammed the Congress for dragging his parents into a political slugfest, alleging that it was being done at the behest of party chief Rahul Gandhi.

Calling the Congress a "burden on the nation", he also justified his own tirade against the Nehru-Gandhi family, pointing out that unlike his parents, they occupied top positions in politics and the government.

Congress leaders have kicked up a controversy recently by first comparing the falling value of the rupee to the advanced age of Modi's mother and then claiming that the father of the prime minister was not someone illustrious. "What has happened to the Congress party? The 'naamdar' (dynast, referring to Rahul Gandhi) is tacitly supporting it and therefore, its leaders are dragging the name of my father, who passed away 30 years ago," Modi said, addressing a rally here in poll-bound Madhya Pradesh.

"The Congress is running out of steam in this election, so they have started dragging my parents into politics. "No Congressman would make such a statement against me or my family without the consent of the party president. It is the 'naamdar' who is making his leaders speak against me," he added.

"My mother sits in her house, performing religious rites, confining herself to a room, and has never visited Madhya Pradesh. She does not even know the 'R' of 'rajneeti' (politics)," Modi said.

"Yesterday, they took the name of my mother and now my father. The Congress chief is behind this...," he alleged. "Hundred generations of my family have no links with politics. We lived in a small village....Lived like the poor. "And the naamdar says, Modiji is also speaking against my family'," the prime minister said.

"Naamdar, I do not talk about your family members. I talk about former prime ministers, former Congress leaders. I speak against former Congress leaders, seeking an account of their work. "Yes, I have to take their names as they were in politics, unlike my family members, who sit quietly in their home and do their job," he added.

"You throw questions at Modi, (then) just as Modi is accountable, your family too is answerable," the prime minister said.

The opposition party was left with no issues and was, therefore, indulging in this kind of abusive rhetoric, he added. The previous Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government had introduced a crop loan waiver scheme in 2008, but of the Rs 6-lakh crore agricultural debt, loans of only Rs 60,000 crore were waived, Modi claimed.

Former Union minister Vilas Muttemwar made a controversial statement at a Congress meeting in Rajasthan Saturday, saying nobody knew "the name of your (Modi's) father but everyone knows the name of Rahul Gandhi's father". Before that, Uttar Pradesh Congress chief Raj Babbar had compared the falling value of the rupee to the advanced age of Modi's mother.

At Vidisha, Modi also mentioned his cabinet colleague and local MP Sushma Swaraj, lauding her for ensuring the development of the constituency, despite facing health issues.

Speaking at a rally in Jabalpur later, he alleged that of the last 15 years under Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, "10 years were lost because the government of Madam (UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi) put hurdles in the way of development". "You have to decide. One mistake will take you back to the age of misgovernance when there was no power, the roads were broken, the education system was pathetic due to the absence of schools and the health services were poor," Modi said.

The Congress, which had lost elections in states after states, "has become a burden on the nation", he added. "...They (Congress) are unable to decide who will be their leader in Madhya Pradesh....There is a courtier (apparently referring to state Congress chief Kamal Nath), a raja (Digvijay Singh) and a maharaja (Jyotiraditya Scindia). None of them will become the chief minister," Modi asserted.

In a jibe at Rahul Gandhi, who has promised to make Madhya Pradesh a hub of mobile phone production if the Congress is voted to power in the state, the prime minister said there were only two mobile factories in the country in 2014, while now there were 125, ensuring the availability of low-cost smartphones.

Modi also said Jabalpur would emerge as a major defence production centre, adding that the earlier governments were more interested in buying weapons as that served their purposes.

The 230-member Madhya Pradesh Assembly will go to the polls on November 28 and the results will be announced on December 11.
BJP president Amit Shah on Sunday alleged that the Congress had "neglected" the "son of Telangana" and former prime minister PV Narasimha Rao after his death and sought the response of Rahul Gandhi, the chief of the opposition party, in the matter. He also alleged that the Congress had not paid appropriate last respects to Rao, who died in 2004 when the party was in power at the Centre.

Addressing a public meeting here in Siddipet district ahead of the December 7 Telangana Assembly polls, Shah asked Gandhi to explain the "kind of treatment" meted out to Rao after his demise. "Now Rahul Gandhiji is saying everyone should live with love. I want to ask him, when the son of Telangana and our former prime minister P V Narasimha Rao had died, (why) no 'salami' was given to his mortal remains and why were they sent to Hyderabad.

"I want to ask him (Gandhi), why such a treatment was meted out to the son of Telangana," he said.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had accused the Congress in the past also of ignoring the legacy of Rao and humiliating him, which was denied by the opposition party.

During his speech, Shah listed out various welfare schemes launched by the Narendra Modi government in the last four-and-a-half years. He said the Centre was working for various sections of the society, including the poor, farmers, women, Dalits and tribals. Crores of toilets and houses were built for the people under the watch of the BJP government, Shah said.

"Our government provided LPG connections to poor women and also ensured electricity. These development works improved the standard of living of over 22 crore families," he added.

Improving the country's security was the biggest work of Prime Minister Modi, the BJP chief said. "Under the previous UPA government, infiltrators from Pakistan used to enter India but no proper reply was given to them in those 10 years. However, after the Uri terror attack (in 2016), India under Modiji carried out surgical strikes in Pakistan and avenged the killing of our soldiers," he added. Shah said the respect for India had increased manifold in the world under Modi.

Turning to the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) government in the southern state, he claimed that the ruling party had failed to implement several welfare programmes of the Centre, including its ambitious health insurance scheme, because it was "scared" that the prime minister might become more popular in Telangana.

Shah accused TRS chief and caretaker Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR) of not extending any help to the farmers in the state, due to which, he said over 4,000 of them committed suicide in the last four-and-a-half years. Shah said KCR had failed to fulfil the promises made to the people of Telangana, including the three-acre land parcel scheme for Dalits. He appealed to the people to vote the saffron party to power in the upcoming polls as the Congress, the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and the TRS had been elected earlier.

"Give one chance to Modiji and we will transform Telangana into a model state in five years," Shah said.

The 119-member Telangana Assembly will go to the polls on December 7 and the results will be announced on December 11.
BHOPAL: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Dharmendra Pradhan on Sunday slammed the Congress and accused them of spreading lies ahead of Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections 2018.

According to news agency ANI, Pradhan alleged that a CD which had a conversation between BJP's Madhya Pradesh state president Rakesh Singh and a candidate Mukesh Tandon was fake. The fake CD surfaced two days.

Pradhan said that cyber cell is making an inquiry in this regard and an official complaint has been filed with the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO).

Pradhan also alleged that National Herald had printed verbatim conversation on Saturday and the website had published the audio tape. Pradhan accused the Congress of releasing the fake CD. Election Commission has started taking action, Pradhan added.

The Union Minister also said that a delegation from BJP has met CEO on Sunday and Press Council of India has also been informed. "It is a failed attempt to spread lies," Pradhan added.

This is not the first time that the BJP has filed a complaint against Congress. Earlier on November 21, BJP had accused Congress Madhya Pradesh chief Kamal Nath of violating the model code of conduct by using 'religious politics' during a rally in Madhya Pradesh.

A delegation of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had met the Election Commission (EC) in Delhi and requested to take legal action against Congress for violating the model code of conduct.

BJP had accused Kamal Nath of devided people on 'religious lines' and said that the Congress chief appealed to Muslim voters in a gathering to mobilise 90% votes for the Indian National Congress (INC) in the 'Muslim' booths.

"It is tragic that Kamal Nath chose to even devide the booths along religious lines," said the letter that BJP wrote to EC.

BJP has therefore asked the EC to take action against the Congress and Kamal Nath.

Recently, Kamal Nath had also accused the BJP of using 'WhatsApp politics'.

Earlier on November 18, the Congress had targetted Prime Minister Narendra Modi referring to fake video in a rally.

Madhya Pradesh Congress Committee (MPCC) wrote a letter to EC which said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in one of his rallies, had violated the code of conduct and misguided voters, news agency ANI reported.

Modi in his public rally in Chhindwara had said, "Kamal Nath says that Congress will give tickets to goons, all it needs is a candidate who can win."

The 230-member Madhya Pradesh Assembly will go to the polls on November 28 and the results will be announced on December 11.
New Delhi: The BJP is practicing a frightening level of communal polarisation in election-bound states and this is a huge challenge for the Congress, its strategist and former minister Jairam Ramesh has said.

In an exclusive interview to PTI, Ramesh said for every Amit Shah, the BJP chief, there are 10 Amit Shahs of the RSS practicing covert polarisation. He said the modern name of 'tanashaahi' was Amit Shah and that Narendra Modi was "not prime ministerial" in his election campaign as he indulged in "falsification of history and abuse of political rivals". He said Narendra Modi should not demand respect but should command respect of people as prime minister.

The senior Congress leader also noted that "false news" was the biggest enterprise in "Make in India" under the Modi government, as he accused the BJP of "manufacturing" issues out of non-issues. "There is a high degree of communal polarization that the BJP is doing in every election and in these states," he told PTI.

The BJP and Prime Minister Modi have instead accused the Congress of diving the society by indulging in caste and religious politics and appeasement of minorities.

Attributing even the "staggering" UP mandate of the BJP to communal polarisation, Ramesh said, "The only explanation I have for the UP win of the BJP is the frightening level of communal polarisation which incidentally they have been trying to do in these states also. They are doing this in Chhattisgarh and certainly in MP and Rajasthan."

The 64-year-old former minister, who is a part of the Congress core group for the 2019 Lok Sabha poll planning, said there were two types of communal polarisation the BJP was indulging in across the country.

"One is overt polarisation, which is the language used by Amit Shah and PM Narendra Modi. Then there is covert polarisation done by the RSS and its people through the word of mouth and house to house," Ramesh said.

"Amit Shah is a good example of a person who preaches and practices the politics of overt polarisation" and that "for every Amit Shah there are 10 'Amit Shahs' of the RSS who are practicing and preaching covert polarisation. That is what happened in UP," he noted.

Ramesh said the Opposition "tends to miss" overt polarisation and also the seriousness of covert polarisation.

On a query about whether the Congress has managed to address the issue of polarisation, Ramesh said, "It is a huge challenge and it is not just an electoral challenge". "It is a challenge we have to face whether in power or outside," the Congress leader said, describing the battle with the RSS as a "long drawn out" one. "It is not a one-off thing. It is a long drawn out battle," Ramesh added. He said the RSS had taken years, decades to "infiltrate" the tribal areas.

On why Congress leaders like CP Joshi continue to speak out of turn and make casteist remarks to aid the politics of polarisation, Ramesh said Congress chief Rahul Gandhi had come out very clearly against this.

Blaming the BJP for making an issue out of it, he said, "the BJP is very skilled at creating issues out of non-issues, at manipulation of news".

Asked if Congress leaders continued to defy the party chief by making statements that harm the party's interests, he said he does not blame the leaders as their statements, including himself, have been distorted by the BJP.

"I think this is 'Make in India', Make in BJP. Fake news is the biggest enterprise in 'Make in India' during the BJP regime. The fact is that PM Modi himself, during his election campaign, indulges in falsification of facts, he indulges in falsification of history," he alleged.

"He is not prime ministerial in his campaign. After all Prime Minister is Prime Minister. Whoever the individual, the position of PM must be respected.

"(But) the PM should not demand respect, he should command respect. It is no use Modi demanding respect. He should command respect. The way he distorts history, the way he falsifies facts, the way he abuses his political opponents. And look at the way Amit Shah has been talking of the NRC for example, calling people 'termites'," he said, training his guns on the prime minister for his attacks on the Congress and the Gandhi family.

"Amit Shah is the new word of 'tanashaahi'. The modern phrase of 'tanashaahi' is Amit Shah," he said. Ramesh also pointed out to the manner in which the Reserve Bank of India has been "bludgeoned into submission" and its rights eroded and how institutional autonomy has been compromised. "The 'institutional capture' by the RSS and the BJP is bizarre," he lamented.

Ramesh said the Congress did not face anti-incumbency in these elections and the mood of the people was clearly in its favour and it would thus fare well in the elections to these five states. He also did not consider this as a "semi-final" to the 2019 Lok Sabha election, but said the important decisions of the Modi government -- like demonetisation, farm crisis and the Rafale deal -- will certainly have an impact in these state polls.
NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will hold several back-to-back rallies in poll-bound Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh in an effort to boost his party BJPs poll prospects in two states.

The PM will do his first rally in Rajasthan's Alwar on Sunday. Later, in the day, the PM will also hold two rallies in Vidisha and Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh and wind up his election campaign there.



While assembly elections are due for 230 seats in Madhya Pradesh, polling will take place 200 seats in Rajasthan.

The PM will return to Rajasthan on Tuesday where he will hold three more rallies in Bhilwara, Kota and Baneshwar Dham.

Leaving no stone unturned, Congress chief Rahul Gandhi will also hold three rallies in Rajasthan on November 26.

As per reports, the Gandhi scion will hold rallies in Ajmer, Jalore and Jodhpur.

The PM will come to Rajasthan again on November 28 to hold rallies in Nagaur and Bharatpur.

These poll rallies will be significant as Madhya Pradesh will be polling on the same day.

The PM will be leaving for the G-20 summit in Argentina the same night after returning to Delhi.



The PM will be away for next five days for the G-20 summit and return home on the night of December 2.

On December 3, the PM will again hit the campaign trail, with a massive rally in Jodhpur which is the stronghold area of Congress Chief Minister probable Ashok Gehlot.

Meanwhile, PM Modi will come to Telangana too and hold two rallies on December 3.

The PM will hold three rallies in Rajasthan's Sikar, Hanumangarh and Jaipur on December 4 before finally wrapping up his campaign in Rajasthan.

The TRS-ruled Telangana will see at least four rallies by the PM  two on November 27 and two more on December 3.
TOKYO: Former Nissan chairman Carlos Ghosn, arrested last Monday on suspicion of financial misdoing, has denied the allegations against him, Japanese public broadcaster NHK said on Sunday.

Ghosn, who has not spoken publicly, has told investigators that he had no intention of under-reporting his remuneration on financial documents and has denied allegations against him, NHK said, without giving sources.

Greg Kelly, a former Nissan executive arrested along with Ghosn on Monday, was quoted by NHK on Saturday as defending Ghosn`s compensation, saying it was discussed with other officials and paid out appropriately.
Delhi Police's Special Cell on Saturday arrested three terrorists and recovered huge cache of arms and ammunition from them. The terrorists were planning a major attack.

All the three arrested men belong to Islamic State of J&K (ISJK) terror group.

The terrorists have been identified as Tahir Ali Khan from Tral, Haris Mushtaq Khan from Budgam, Asif Suhail Nadaf from Rainawari areas of Jammu and Kashmir.
The Gujarat Anti Terrorism Squad (ATS) on Sunday arrested Suresh Nair in connection with the Ajmer Dargah bomb blast case, news agency ANI reported.

ATS also said that Nair was allegedly involved in supplying the bombs to the people, according to the investigations of National Investigative Agency (NIA).

Earlier in March 2017, A special NIA court had awarded life imprisonment to main convicts in the 2007 Ajmer Dargah bomb blast case. Accused Devendra Gupta and Bhavesh Patel were sentenced to life imprisonment by the special NIA court.

The court had on March 8 convicted Bhavesh Patel, Devendra Gupta and Sunil Joshi and acquitted others including Swami Aseemanand. Joshi had already died.

The conviction was made under Sections 120 (B) (criminal conspiracy), 295-A (deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs) of IPC, 3 / 4 of Explosive Substances Act and Sections 16 and 18 of Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).

The blast on October 11, 2007 in the Dargah of Khawaja Moinuddin Chisti at the time of Roza Iftaar had left three pilgrims dead and 15 injured.

The case was handed over to the Rajasthan ATS and was later transferred to the National Investigation Agency which re-registered the case with the NIA police station in New Delhi on 6 April 2011.

There were as many as 149 witnesses in the case and 451 documents were examined. The NIA filed three supplementary charge sheet in the case.
Navy Chief Admiral Sunil Lanba will begin his four-day visit to Russia on Monday with an aim to explore new avenues for the already close defence ties between the two countries, officials said Sunday.

The Navy chief will hold wide-ranging talks with his Russian counterpart, Admiral Vladimir Korolev, and meet a number of top military officials including General VV Gerasimov, Chief of General Staff and First Deputy Defence Minister of Russia, news agency PTI reported quoting officials.

"The visit aims to consolidate bilateral defence relations with Russia, as also to explore new avenues for defence cooperation," said Navy Spokesperson Captain D K Sharma.

Admiral Lanba's visit to Russia comes around a week after the two countries signed a USD 500 million deal for construction of two missile frigates in Goa for the Indian Navy.

Under the deal, Russia will provide design, technology know-how and key materials to Goa Shipyard Ltd. For the construction of the ships in India. Admiral Lanba is also scheduled to visit the Nakhimov Naval School and Admiralty Shipyard. He will also visit the Military Academy of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and deliver a talk on -- Indian Navy's Perspective on Maritime Security, Captain Sharma said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin visited India last month during which both sides had decided to further ramp up bilateral defence and security cooperation.

India is going ahead with mega defence deals with Russia disregarding warnings by the US of sanctions. The Trump administration has put several Russian firms under sanctions under Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA).

The US said countries engaged with Russia's defence firms may also face actions under CAATSA. India has been hoping to get a waiver from the US on the deals with Russia.

Russia has been India's largest defence supplier. The bilateral defence and security cooperation has been on an upswing over the last few years. The Indian and Russian navies cooperate on many fronts, including operational interactions and training.

The Indian Navy and the Russian Navy have been conducting the bilateral Maritime Exercise 'INDRA NAVY' since 2003 and INDRA Tri-Services Exercise since 2017.

with PTI inputs
NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address the fiftieth episode his popular 'Mann Ki Baat' radio broadcast programme on Sunday.

Touching upon various social, national and international issues, PM Modi had launched his 'Mann Ki Baat' radio broadcast programme since 2014, which eventually became extremely popular.

Through his `Mann Ki Baat`, PM Modi has reached out to millions across the country, shared the views and opinions of the citizens and lauded their contribution in nation-building.

"On October 3, 2014, we began the journey of `Mann Ki Baat`. With your blessings, this journey completes 50 episodes tomorrow (Sunday), of sharing joy, positivity and amplifying the power of collective efforts. I hope you will enthusiastically tune in tomorrow for the 50th episode," PM Modi tweeted.

On 3rd October 2014, we began the journey of #MannKiBaat. With your blessings, this journey completes 50 episodes tomorrow, of sharing joy, positivity and amplifying the power of collective efforts. I hope you will enthusiastically tune in tomorrow for the 50th episode. pic.twitter.com/cykhwF4y2j  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) 24 November 2018

In the first episode, the Prime Minister urged the citizens of the country to use at least one Khadi product, saying it would help poor weavers. "Subsequently, the sale of Khadi products went up by 120 per cent," an official release said.

In November 2014, PM Modi shared how army personnel won a gold medal in a very prestigious event in Britain called Cambrian Patrol, defeating contestants from 140 nations.

In September 2015, PM Modi congratulated the armed forces, commemorating 50 years of India`s war with Pakistan in 1965.

The Prime Minister dedicated the December 2014 episode of `Mann ki Baat` to make India drug-free.

"The monthly radio broadcast in January 2015 saw a unique event - joint address by PM Modi and (then) US President Barak Obama who shared personal stories and gave an insight into what it takes to achieve your goals in life," it said.

While taking a cue from the idea given by a listener, PM Modi spoke at length about `Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao` (save daughter, educate daughter) in the same episode.

"In the June 2015 episode of `Mann Ki Baat`, the PM shared the account of a Haryana village sarpanch who launched #SelfieWithDaughter campaign and the hashtag soon became viral on social media as people from different walks of life shared it," it said.

(With Agency inputs)
At least three people, from Jammu and Kashmir, were detained on Sunday night at the Pathankot railway station on the basis of suspicion.

They were travelling in an express train headed towards Delhi and were deboarded and detained, news agency PTI reported quoting a police official.

All the three men have been detained and were being questioned about their antecedents, Punjab Police's Border Range IG, SS Parmar told PTI.

Pathankot and its adjoining areas continue to be under a strict vigil, especially after the 2016 terror attack.

Security agencies in Pathankot and adjoining districts have also been on alert after four people, travelling in a hired SUV from Jammu, had snatched the vehicle from its driver at gunpoint near Madhopur area on November 13.

When asked whether three or six men shave been detained, Parmar said, "Three men from Jammu and Kashmir have been detained at Pathankot for verification of their antecedents." They were travelling from Jammu in Pooja Express, he said, adding they are being quizzed.
Srinagar: A terrorist was killed on Sunday in an exchange of fire with the security forces in Khrew of Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama district. The terrorist was affiliated with terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM).

Arms and ammunition have been recovered from the spot. The area has been cordoned off and a search operation has been launched.

The terrorist has been identified as Waseem. Jammu and Kashmir Police have, meanwhile, registered a case.

"The Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) terrorist who was killed in an exchange of fire between terrorists and security forces in Pulwama's Khrew is a Pakistani codenamed as Waseem. Police have registered a case and the area is being searched: J&K Police
SHOPIAN: Protesters on Sunday pelted stones on vehicles of security forces in Shopian in Jammu and Kashmir. The incident took place hours after an encounter in Hipura Batagund village in Kapran area in which six terrorists were neutralised and one Army jawan died.

#WATCH: Protesters pelt stones on the vehicles of security forces in Shopian following the encounter in Kapran Batagund area which concluded earlier today. 6 terrorists were neutralised and one Army jawan died in action. #JammuandKashmir pic.twitter.com/0YHX3sFAX9  ANI (@ANI) November 25, 2018

Weapons and war-like stores were recovered from the encounter site. J&K Police said the slain terrorists have been identified as Mushtaq Ahmad Mir, Mohammad Abass Bhatt, Umar Majeed Ganaie, Mohd Waseem Wagay, Khalid Farooq Mali and one terrorist is learned to be a foreigner from Pakistan.

Security forces had launched a cordon and search operation in the area around midnight following specific information about the presence of terrorists there.

The search operation turned into an encounter after the terrorists fired upon the forces, who retaliated. The operation ended on Sunday morning.
SRINAGAR: In a major breakthrough, the security forces on Sunday killed at least six terrorists in an overnight operation in a Jammu and Kashmir village in the Shopian district. One security personnel was also martyred in the anti-terror operation.

A large cache of arms and ammunition has been recovered from the slain terrorists, the officials said.

''Six terrorists were killed in an encounter at Batagund village in Kapran area of Shopian district of south Kashmir, Defence spokesman Col Rajesh Kalia said.

Kalia further informed that a soldier also lost his life in the operation.

The martyred soldier was identified as Naik Nazir Ahmad.

#JammuAndKashmir: Naik Nazir Ahmad died in action in Shopian encounter earlier today. pic.twitter.com/98ULy4NSVI  ANI (@ANI) November 25, 2018

He said the identity and group affiliation of the slain terrorists is also being ascertained.

The six terrorists were eliminated in the Batagund village in a joint operation by the Rashtriya Rifles, troops of Special Operations Group (SOG) of the Jammu and Kashmir Police and the Central Reserve Police Force following specific intelligence inputs regarding their presence in the area.

#JammuAndKashmir: An encounter is underway between security forces & terrorists in Kapran Batagund area of Shopian district. 4 terrorists have been neutralised. (visuals deferred by unspecified time) pic.twitter.com/MvduHcF4BF  ANI (@ANI) November 25, 2018

"As the security forces tightened the cordon around the hold-up group, they started firing, triggering the encounter," a J&K Police official said earlier.

The bodies of six slain terrorists have been recovered from the encounter site and the operation has now concluded.

#JammuAndKashmir: Shopian encounter concludes. Total six terrorists neutralised, one security personnel also died in action. Weapons and warlike stores recovered. pic.twitter.com/RAIm7iw0E1  ANI (@ANI) November 25, 2018

Meanwhile, clashes also broke out between protesters and the security forces near the encounter site.

Mobile and internet services were suspended by the authorities in south Kashmir's Shopian district soon after the encounter as a preventive measure.

Today's anti-terror operation comes days after the security forces killed at least six dreaded terrorists in an encounter in the Anantnag district.

A large cache of arms and ammunition were also recovered from the custody of slain terrorists.

One of the terrorists identified as Azad Ahmad Malik, who was allegedly involved in the murder of journalist Shujaat Bukhari, was also killed in the operation.

Malik was being investigated for the murder of 'Shujaat Bukhari.'

Earlier on November 18, two terrorists were killed in an encounter between terrorists and security forces at Rebban area of Zainapora village in Shopian district.

The encounter took place a day after the terrorists abducted and killed a 19-year-old teenager.
Bengaluru: Karnataka Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy on Saturday announced an ex-gratia of Rs 5 lakh to the kin of the 25 people who lost their lives when a bus plunged into a river canal in Mandya district.

"An ex-gratia of Rs 5 lakh would be paid to the families of the victims who lost their lives in the tragic accident," a statement from the Chief Minister`s Office said.

The mishap took place around noon at Kanaganamaradi village near Pandavapura town in the district.

The accident spot is about 120 km from Bengaluru on the state highway towards Mysuru after Mandya town.

Kumaraswamy and former Chief Minister Siddaramaiah visited the accident site and expressed their condolences to the families of the victims. Rescue operations were still underway to search for the remaining victims.

"This was an extremely tragic incident. I pray for peace to the souls of the deceased and strength to their families to bear the loss," Kumaraswamy said.
NEW DELHI: Congress president Rahul Gandhi condoled the death of two party veterans, Jaffer Sharief and MH Ambareesh, who died on Sunday. Rahul referred to the loss as a day of tragedy for the Congress party.

"It is a day of tragedy for the Congress party, with another senior, loved and respected member of our family in Karnataka, Shri Jaffer Sharief Ji, passing away today. My condolences to his family, friends and supporters in their time of grief," Rahul tweeted.

Former union minister CK Jaffer Sharief died in Bengaluru at the age of 85. He was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of Fortis Hospital on Cunningham Road. He was hospitalised after he collapsed while getting into the car for Friday namaz.

Another former union minister MH Ambareesh also passed away on Sunday following a cardiac arrest. The 66-year-old superstar of the sandalwood industry was a former cabinet minister in the previous Congress government from May 2013 to June 2016. He was also the Union Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting in the first United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government from 2006-2007 and a Parliament member from Mandya Lok Sabha constituency.

Karnataka Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy had already declared a three-day mourning in the state due to MH Ambareesh's death before the news of Sharief's demise came in.

Several thousands of fans queued up outside the Kanteerava Stadium grounds in the Karnataka capital, where 66-year-old actor-turned-politician Ambareesh's body was kept since early in the day.
BENGALURU: A three-day mourning has been declared by the Karnataka government on Sunday after the death of former union minister MH Ambareesh. The actor-turned-politician died at a private hospital on Saturday night following a cardiac arrest.

"As a mark of respect to the departed leader, the government has declared an official mourning of three days," a statement from Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy's office said.

The 66-year-old superstar of the sandalwood industry was a former cabinet minister in the previous Congress government from May 2013 to June 2016. He was also the Union Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting in the first United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government from 2006-2007 and a Parliament member from Mandya Lok Sabha constituency.

Former PM HD Deve Gowda, CM Kumaraswamy, and actor Rajinikanth were seen paying last respects to Ambareesh at Kanteerava stadium on Sunday.

PM Modi also condoled the death of the former minister and recalled his contribution to Karnataka. "Shri Ambareesh will always be remembered for his memorable performances as an actor and extensive contribution to politics. He was a strong voice for Karnatakas welfare, at the state and central level. Pained by his demise. Condolences to his family and admirers," the PM said.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi also condoled Ambareesh's death. "In the passing of Ambareesh Ji, the Congress family has lost a valuable member. He was a famous son of Karnataka, whose work as an actor & and in politics, won him a huge following both in the state & across India. My condolences to his family and friends in this time of grief," Rahul said.

Former Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah also remembered his old colleague. "He was not just a great actor, not just a proven politician but also great human being. Ambareesh, u ll be missed. I am deeply pained by his death. My condolences to all his family members, friends & well-wishers," he tweeted.

Several actors also took to Twitter to share their grief. Superstar Amitabh Bachchan said: "Grieved to learn of the passing of a colleague Ambareesh .. condolences and prayers".
NEW DELHI: Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Sunday declined Pakistan's invitation to attend the groundbreaking ceremony of the Kartarpur corridor on November 28, 2018. The Chief Minister cited continued terrorist attacks in Punjab and the killings of Indian soldiers by Pakistani armed forces as the reason for his refusal to attend the event.

His response comes hours after Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi extended an invite to him to visit Pakistan. Along with the Punjab CM, Pakistan had also sent invites to External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Punjab Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu.

Swaraj had already rejected the offer on Saturday and said that Union Ministers Harsimrat Kaur Badal and Hardeep Singh Puri will travel to Pakistan for the groundbreaking ceremony.

"Since I am unable to travel to Kartarpur Sahib on the scheduled date, Government of India will be represented by my esteemed colleagues Mrs Harsimrat Kaur Badal and Mr H S Puri (sic)," she tweeted.

However, Sidhu has accepted the invitation and has sent an application to the Ministry of External Affairs for an approval. This will be Sidhu's second visit to Pakistan this year after he attended the oath ceremony of Pakistan PM Imran Khan in Islamabad.
Family, friends and laughter are the best cure for an upset state of mind. Yesterday after a brawl among the contestants and Salmans chide on their behaviour, the contestants were a little low spirited. To brighten their day, Bigg Boss invited some television stars to meet the contestants. Bela (Surbhi Jyoti), Mahir (Pearl Puri), Vishaka (Anita Hassanandini) from Naagin 3, Preeto (Kamya Punjabi) from Shakti Astitva Ke Ehsaas Kii, Aditya Hooda (Harshad Chopda) and RJ Jai Mittal (Shivin Narang) had come to spend some time and take part in some fun activities with the contestants.

There was a Bigg Boss pageant organised for the boys of the house and Kamya, Anita and Surbhi were the judges and Shivin was the host. The boys had to showcase their talent. Karanvir and Rohit dance to Desi Boys and also went shirtless to flaunt their chiseled bodies. Romil did a rap and Deepak sang a song. Sreesanth did a break dance on the song Muqalla Muqabla and everyone joined him in the dance. Later, Rising Star 2 winner Hemant Brijwasi also came to entertain the contestants. There was jukebox that was kept in the garden where the contestants had to pick a song and dedicate it to each other and Hemant would sing that song.

Before meeting the contestants, the stars enacted various situations in the house disguised as the contestants where Pearl was Sreesanth, Surbhi was Dipika, Anita was Somi, Shivin was Deepak, Kamya was Megha and Harshad was Karanvir. They also did a fun gag with Salman Khan where Surbhi and Anita entered with varmalas and a marriage proposal for Salman. They also did a Naagin dance with Salman.

After all the fun and games, it was time to address the elephant in the room - the eviction for the tenth week.
LUCKNOW: Uttar Pradesh government led by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had announced that it install a 221-metre bronze statue of Lord Ram in the holy town of Ayodhya.

The announcement was made by Uttar Pradesh Principal Secretary (Information) Avanish Awasthi said on Saturday.

While the height of the actual statue would be 151 metres, its overhead umbrella would be 20 metres while the pedestal would be 50 metres, Awasthi said.

A museum would also be housed at the pedestal, Awasthi said.

Five firms short-listed for construction of the statue gave presentations before Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath this evening, the officer said, adding soil testing is being done for installing the statue.

5 architect firms have given a presentation before CM Yogi Adityanath for construction of a 151m tall statue of Lord Ram in Ayodhya. In the pedestal under statue, there will be a museum showcasing history of Ram Janmabhoomi&related subjects.Selection of plot for statue is still on pic.twitter.com/kQd4hH80RF  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) 24 November 2018

It may be recalled that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had on October 31 inaugurated an imposing 182-metre statue of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the country's first home minister, in Gujarat.

The hurried announcement on the statue comes at a time when the right-wing outfits, as well as the Opposition parties, have intensified attack on the Narendra Modi government, accusing it of using the Ram Temple issue for political gains and fooling the Hindus for four years since coming to power.

Attacking the BJP dispensation at the Centre, Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray had on Saturday asked the Narendra Modi government to wake up from a 'Kumbhakarna-like slumber' and declare the date for its construction.

''I have come here to awaken the Kumbhakarana,'' he said, indirectly comparing PM Modi, his government, to the Ramayana character known for sleeping for months at a stretch.

''Today's Kumbhakarna has been sleeping for the past four years," he said.

The Sena leader also urged the BJP government to bring legislation or an ordinance for building the temple on the disputed site in Ayodhya, but he has not linked his own two-day visit to the VHP event.

Thackeray said his party will support any legislation or ordinance for the Ram Mandir, which Hindutva organisations want to be constructed at the site where the Babri Masjid was demolished in 1992.

Thackeray went to the banks of the Saryu river in the evening to offer prayers.

Meanwhile, RSS-affiliated right-wing outfit Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) will be organising a grand Dharam Sabha in the holy town later today.

The town has been turned into a virtual fortress with multiple layers of security and deployment of drones as people began arriving here for Sunday's 'Dharam Sabha', which is being organised by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad to push for the construction of the Ram temple.

The VHP claimed three lakh people, including seers, will attend its public meeting, which has triggered some apprehension over the safety of the town's Muslim community.

Samajwadi Party and former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav said the Army should be deployed in Ayodhya, if needed, to maintain law and order.

All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) Zafaryab Jilani said that the Muslims in Ayodhya are terrified ahead of the VHP meeting.

However, no untoward incident was reported on Saturday and the police assured that strict security arrangements are in place.
AYODHYA: Amid fast-paced political developments regarding the construction of a Ram Temple in Ayodhya, Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray will go for a 'darshan' of Ram Lalla on Sunday amid unprecedented security arrangements.

Meanwhile, RSS-affiliated right-wing outfit Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) will be organising a grand Dharma Sabha in the holy town later today.

This is Thackerays first visit to Ayodhya. He and his family members along with top Shiv Sena leaders had been camping here for the last few days.

The Shiv Sena chief is also reported to have brought a pot full of soil from the Shivneri fort in Pune, which will be handed over to the priest at the 'Ram Janmabhoomi' when he meets him later.

His visit to the disputed site comes a day after he launched a veiled attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led BJP government at the Centre over the delay in promulgating an ordinance for the construction of Ram Temple.

Thackeray on Saturday asked the Narendra Modi government to wake up from a 'Kumbhakarna-like slumber' and declare the date for its construction.

''I have come here to awaken the Kumbhakarana,'' he said, indirectly comparing PM Modi, his government, to the Ramayana character known for sleeping for months at a stretch.

''Today's Kumbhakarna has been sleeping for the past four years," he said.

The town turned into a virtual fortress with multiple layers of security and deployment of drones as people began arriving here for Sunday's `Dharam Sabha', being organised by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad to push for the construction of the Ram temple.

The Sena leader also urged the BJP government to bring legislation or an ordinance for building the temple on the disputed site in Ayodhya, but he has not linked his own two-day visit to the VHP event.

The VHP claimed three lakh people, including seers, will attend its public meeting, which has triggered some apprehension over the safety of the town's Muslim community.

Samajwadi Party and former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav said the Army should be deployed in Ayodhya, if needed, to maintain law and order.

All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) Zafaryab Jilani said Muslims in Ayodhya are terrified ahead of the VHP meeting.

However, no untoward incident was reported on Saturday and the police assured that strict security arrangements are in place.

Thackeray said his party will support any legislation or ordinance for the Ram Mandir, which Hindutva organisations want to be constructed at the site where the Babri Masjid was demolished in 1992.

''Day, months, years and generations have passed,'' the Sena leader said on what he described as his first visit to the town to seek ?darshan' of Ram Lalla.

''Mandir wahin baneyange, par date nahin batayenge (You say you will make the temple there, but won't tell the date),'' he said.

''First say when you will construct the temple, the rest we will talk later,'' he said in what sounded like a dare to the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government.

He said bringing a law on the temple's construction may have been difficult during Atal Bihari Vajpayee's term as it was a coalition government then.

But the current government is strong, and the BJP is in power both at the Centre and in the state.

''Bring an ordinance or law, the Shiv Sena will support it,'' he said.

The Sena chief said he did not want to take the credit for the temple's construction, and others were free to do so."But how many years should we wait for the temple.''

"Ram temple is a matter concerning faith and the government needs to bring a law before the court verdict,'' he said, referring to the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid land case before the Supreme Court.

The apex court has said it will set the dates for the future course of hearings only in January. Thackeray recalled former prime minister Vajpayee as saying, 'Ab Hindu maat nahi khayega (Hindus will not be defeated now), and added, "Hindus will not sit silently."

'There is no political motive behind my visit to Ayodhya,'' he claimed.

The Sena chief was greeted with slogans of "Jai Shri Ram" when he arrived in Ayodhya with his wife Rashmi and son Aditya.

Mahant Nrityagopal Das, the chairman of the Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas, was among those who welcomed Thackeray at Lakshman Qila, where the Sena leader made the remarks.

A drone monitored the event.

Thackeray went to the banks of the Saryu river in the evening to offer prayers.

The Sena claimed to have brought several thousand supporters to Ayodhya for Thackeray's events.

Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati has slammed the BJP and the Shiv Sena, saying they are raking up the Ram temple issue ahead of the Lok Sabha polls to divert attention from their failures.

(With Agency inputs)
BEIRUT: Syria accused insurgents of wounding more than 100 people in a suspected toxic gas attack in Aleppo, which a health official described as the first such assault in the city. The shells spread a strong stench and caused dozens of people breathing problems on Saturday night in Aleppo, which is under state rule, a monitoring group said.

State news agency SANA said on Sunday that 107 people were injured, including children, after militants hit three districts with projectiles containing gases that caused choking. It marks the highest such casualty toll in Aleppo since government forces and their allies clawed back the city from rebels nearly two years ago.

Syria`s foreign ministry urged the UN Security Council to condemn and punish "these terrorist crimes". Rebel officials denied using chemical weapons and accused the Damascus government of trying to frame them.

Russia`s defence ministry accused insurgents on Sunday of firing shells filled with chlorine gas at Aleppo from the rebel stronghold of Idlib. Moscow, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad`s key ally, said it would talk to Turkey, which backs some rebel factions and helped broker a ceasefire in the Idlib region.

"We can not know the kinds of gases but we suspected chlorine and treated patients on this basis because of the symptoms," Zaher Batal, the head of the Aleppo Doctors Syndicate, told Reuters.

Patients suffered difficulty breathing, eye inflammation, shivering and fainting, he said. Hospitals had discharged many people overnight. Batal called it the first such gas attack hitting civilians in Aleppo city during the conflict, which has raged for more than seven years.

STRETCHERS AND OXYGEN MASKS

"The explosive (shells) contain toxic gases that led to choking among civilians," Aleppo police chief Issam al-Shilli told state media. Pictures and footage on SANA showed medical workers carrying patients on stretchers and helping them with oxygen masks.

Abdel-Salam Abdel-Razak, an official from the Nour el-Din al-Zinki insurgent faction, said rebels did not own chemical weapons or have the capacity to produce them.

"The criminal regime, under Russian instructions, is trying to accuse the rebels of using toxic substances in Aleppo. This is purely a lie," he tweeted. Abu Omar, a Failaq al-Sham spokesman, accused Damascus of trying to create "a malicious charade" as a pretext to attack rebel towns.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the shelling in Aleppo wounded 94 people, while government shelling earlier on Saturday had killed nine people in Idlib.

The UK-based monitoring group said two women and seven children were killed in Jarjanaz village in Idlib, where Russia and Turkey have agreed a demilitarised zone.

The dominant force among an array of factions holding sway in Idlib is Tahrir al-Sham, an Islamist alliance led by fighters formerly linked to al-Qaeda. A past UN-OPCW inquiry found the Syrian government used the nerve agent sarin in an April 2017 attack and has also used chlorine several times. It also blamed Islamic State militants for using mustard gas.

Assad's government has repeatedly denied using chemical weapons in the war.
ABC News(WASHINGTON) -- Sen. Amy Klobuchar expressed openness to negotiating with President Donald Trump on his signature campaign promise of a wall on the southern border, but explained border funding includes more than just money for the construction of an actual wall.



She said shes willing to go along with some funding to get an agreement and to make sure we do something on immigration reform.



ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos asked the Minnesota Democrat if shed be willing to go along with some wall funding to get Democratic priorities passed, like protection for "Dreamers," undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children and were given protected status during the Obama Administration.



Remember when we talk about wall funding, she said on "This Week" Sunday. We're talking about border funding, we're talking about personnel, we're talking about a whole grouping of things that protect security.



On Thursday, Trump said a government shutdown could happen in December over funding for the wall.



Could happen, yeah, over border security, Trump said of a shutdown, The wall is just a part of border security -- a very important part. Probably the most important part. But could there be a shutdown? There certainly could. And it will be about border security, of which the wall is a part.



Klobuchar told Stephanpoloulos that she doesn't think they should shut down the government, but that it is in the president's and his party's hands.



In a tweet Sunday morning, the president blamed Democrats for the increase in migrants attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border.



Your response? Stephanopoulos asked Klobuchar after reading the presidents tweet.



My mom taught second grade until she was 70 years old, she said. She always told me if you do something wrong ... you take responsibility for it. You dont blame it on the other kid. Thats exactly what hes doing here. He controls the White House, his party controls the House and the Senate and it is on them to do something."



She continued, First of all, he should have been working with these Central American countries a long time ago to try to ... get to a point where we didnt see this extraordinary amount of people coming through. Secondly, (we need) comprehensive immigration reform.



Klobuchar said that her party has the will to put the money at the border for better security and combine it with some sensible reforms, including things like a path to citizenship, things like making sure that we have workers on our fields and in our factories that we need.



Instead of working with Democrats, Klobuchar said, the president has gut punched them and has chosen to "weaponize" and politicize immigration reform.



We have tried to negotiate with him but he wont take yes for an answer, Klobuchar said.



He has an opportunity here, especially with a new Congress coming in, to get this done, she said. Of course, were willing to talk about this. But if he wants to just keep playing politics with it, instead of getting it done, we arent going to be able to get it done.



Stephanopoulos also asked Klobuchar about the fourth congressionally-mandated National Climate Assessment, put out by the administration on Friday. The report by 13 federal agencies warned if drastic action isnt taken to combat the negative impact of climate change it could drastically impede economic growth over the next century.



The report lays out the impacts of climate change on natural resources and environmental services in U.S. territories from Puerto Rico to the countrys Midwest region, which comprises 18 percent of the countrys GDP through agricultural production.



Youve said that Congress has to act, but what specifically can be done right now to reverse this? Stephanopoulos asked.



The greenhouse gas rules, the clean power rules that we -- were already on the way to getting implemented, we should get those done, she said. Secondly, gas mileage standards, we were clearly on a good path with that and then this administration stepped backwards.



The findings from the report are directly at odds with Trumps policies and rhetoric around climate change. The president has rolled back Obama-era environmental policies, like fuel efficiency and emissions standards for cars, as Klobuchar noted, and replacing the former presidents Clean Power Plan with a new plan that would lead to more carbon pollution.



The president also pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement, an agreement in which nearly every country of the world pledged to curb carbon emissions, which Klobuchar said the U.S. needs to re-enter.



The administration cant, on one hand, issue this devastating report showing the facts and then, on the other, do nothing, " she said. "Its time to act.

Copyright  2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
A serviceman from the Armed Forces of Ukraine sustained injuries incompatible with life in eastern Ukraine over the last day, November 24, reports the headquarters of the Joint Forces Operation.

On November 24, the occupiers opened fire at the positions of our military seven times, two of them were performed from the weapons prohibited by the Minsk Agreements.

Related: Ukrainian military liberate village in Donbas from pro-Russian militants

The enemy conducted aimed shelling of our strongholds in the areas of settlements Krymske, Vilny, Novoluhanske, Krasnohorivka and Lebedyske.

The pro-Russian militants used 120mm mortars at the positions of Ukrainian military near Novoluhanske, and 82mm mortars near Krymske. The highest activity of the enemy fire was recorded precisely at the last-mentioned village. Today, November 25, the fighters were shooting from small arms in the area of Popasna.

According to the Ukrainian reconnaissance, two Russian occupants were eliminated and three were wounded.
Open source

The first tranche from the International Monetary Fund will be $1.5 billion based on a new 14-month SBA program. The Ukrainian News agency reported this citing the source familiar with the results of the negotiations.

The first tranche will amount to 1.5 billion dollars, the second and third tranche will amount to 1.2 billion dollars each, the agencys source said and predicted that Ukraine could receive more than 2.5 billion dollars from the funder by the end of 2018.

Previously, the National Bank of Ukraine assumed that the amount of the first IMF tranche could be 1.5-1.9 billion dollars. The Ministry of Finances claimed that all the money received would be transferred to the reserves of the National Bank of Ukraine.

The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine expects the first tranche from the funder will be sent yet in December 2018. The head of the press office of the IMF Gerry Rice has also predicted the receipt of the new tranche by the end of 2018.

We are now awaiting that the session of the Executive Council (IMF) will be held later this year, after the implementation (by Ukrainian side) of previous actions, which to allow to approve the budget for 2019 in the Parliament and to increase tariffs for heating, according to achieved agreement (increase by 23.5% from November 1, 2018), the IMF representative noted.

Related: Ukraine's Government continues discussion with IMF on gas prices hike, - Finance Ministry

As we reported earlier, on October 19, the Government adopted the decision on the gas price increase by 23.5 percent from November 1. Within one hour after the relevant decision of the Cabinet of Ministers, a statement appeared on the website of IMF that Ukraine and the Fund reached an agreement on a new 14-months-long support program of economic policy Stand-By Arrangement (SBA), which is supposed to replace the Extended Fund Facility (EFF), which is adopted in March 2015 and expires in March 2019.

The Monetary Fund expects that the IMF Council will adopt the program by the end of 2018 under the condition that Ukraine fulfills all agreements. That includes the adoption of the state budget by the Ukrainian Parliament, which corresponds to the recommendations of the Fund.

Related: Ukraine to get new IMF credit in December 2018, - Prime Minister

The credit program for Ukraine in the amount of $17.01 billion was approved by the IMF at the end of April 2014, and the first tranche of Stand-By Arrangement loan in the amount of $ 3.19 billion was granted in early May.

In March 2015, the Board of Directors of the International Monetary Fund approved the allocation of $ 17.5 billion to Ukraine under the 4-year EFF (Extended Fund Facility) program instead of the SBA program.

The SBA program has been replaced by the Extended Fund Facility due to the longer need of the balance of payments of Ukraine.
Canadian Foreign Minister reiterated that Ottawa would always be with Ukraine, opposing the attempts to limit its right for self-determination

Open source

Canada will always support Ukraine in repelling aggressive attacks from Russia. Minister of Foreign Affairs of Canada Chrystia Freeland claimed this on the occasion of the 85th anniversary of the Holodomor of 1932-1933, Ukrinform reports.

Canada will always be with Ukraine standing against the attempts of limiting its right for self-determination, including Russia, and to protect the Ukrainian people, its sovereignty and the territorial integrity, she said.

Related: U.S. expresses solidarity with Ukraine on occasion of Holodomor Remembrance Day

Freeland reminded that the organizers of the genocide of the Ukrainian nation wanted to break the will of the Ukrainian nation and denied their actions.

The attempts to destroy Ukrainian spirit failed. Today and always, we remember this terrible chapter of human history and honor the memory of the victims, she stressed.

Related: Russia responsible for Holodomor of 1932-1933 as USSR successor, - Poroshenko

It should be noted that Canada became the first state in the world after Ukraine, which recognized the Holodomor, as an act of the genocide of the Ukrainians in 2008. From that time, the Day of Remembrance of Holodomor Victims is marked on the official level.

According to the President of Ukraine, there are 15 countries recognized it. Apart from Canada - Estonia, Australia, Hungary, Lithuania, Georgia, Poland, Peru, Paraguay, Ecuador, Colombia, Mexico, Latvia, Portugal and Vatican.
Russian authorities said that three Ukrainian warships in the Sea of Azov illegally entered the territorial waters of the Russian Federation and headed to the Kerch Strait. This is particularly stated in the message of the Federal Security Service border guards in Crimea, reports TASS.



"This morning around 07:00 Moscow time, three ships of the Naval Forces of Ukraine, in violation of Articles 19 and 21 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, defining the coastal states right to ensure security in the maritime territory, crossed the state border of the Russian Federation, wrongly entered in the temporarily closed water area within Russian territorial waters", it is noted in the message.



It also clarifies that the vessel headed to the Kerch Strait, which has a permissive procedure for the movement and anchorage of vessels, in accordance with the schedule of the movement and placement of vessels, approved by the captain of the Russian seaport.

As we reported earlier the coast guard ships of the Russian Navy acted aggressively against the ships of the Ukrainian Navy, which have been carrying out a scheduled transition from Odesa port to Mariupol port in the Sea of Azov. The press office of the Ukrainian Navy reported this on Facebook.

Today, November 25, the ships of the Ukrainian Navy with two armored gunboats and a sea mule tugboat have been carrying out a scheduled transition from Odesa port to Mariupol port in the Sea of Azov. The intention to make the transition was informed in advance in accordance with international standards in order to ensure the safety of navigation. However, contrary to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and the Treaty between Ukraine and the Russian Federation on cooperation in the use of the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait, the Russian coast guard ships - Sobol class patrol boat, Don border guard cruiser, Mangust class patrol boat and Suzdalets anti-submarine warfare ship performed blatantly aggressive acts against the ships of the Ukrainian Navy, reads the message.

It is specified that Don border guard cruiser rammed the Ukrainian armored artillery boat, which led to the damage of the main engine, planting and accommodation rail, life float is lost. The Ukrainian Navy states that "the dispatcher service of the occupiers refuses to ensure the right of freedom of navigation, guaranteed by international agreements.

The Ukrainian Navy states that "the dispatcher service of the occupiers refuses to ensure the right of freedom of navigation, guaranteed by international agreements." Thus, according to the Ukrainian side, Russia has once again demonstrated its aggressive nature and complete disregard for the norms of international law.

Related: SBU detain 'head of rural council' in occupied Donbas
Participants of the protest actions are against new laws on fines and customs clearance of cars with European license plates

The owners of cars with European license plates started blocking roads in protest against new laws on fines and customs clearance of cars with European registration. Deputy of Lviv City Council Ihor Zinkevych reported this on Facebook.

People at the borders block checkpoints such as Rava Ruska, Krakovets, Ustyluh, and about to block Yahodyn, Zinkevych said.

Related: Owners of cars with EU license plates still protest in Kyiv

He added that the protesters want to know what do they do now with the cars with European registration in connection with the new laws  8487 and 8488.

It is noted that reinforcements pulled up to the front of Yahodyn checkpoint in Volyn region.

The laws about the reduction of excise taxes on cars, as well as the reinforcement of control over the movement and use of cars with foreign registration came into force.

Thus, Law  2611-VIII established that the basic excise tax rates for a new car, depending on the type of fuel and engine size:

for cars with a gasoline engine of 1000 cubic centimeter - 50 euros; from 3000 cubic centimeter - 100 euros;

for diesel with an engine of 1500  - 75 euros; from 3500  - up to 150 euros.

In order to determine the excise rate for a particular car, coefficients will be applied to the base rate. The formula will be: Rate = Base Rate  Engine coefficient  Engine Age.

Related: Poroshenko signs law to cut excise taxes on cars with EU license plates

180 working days are given for clearance of non-cleared cars.

Meanwhile, the excise tax is reduced by 50% for cars that will be cleared during the first 90 days after the law enters into force. In the remaining 90 days of the grace period, the rates will become full, but the penalties for violating the terms of stay will not be imposed.

Law  2612-VIII provides for fines for violating the conditions of temporary importation and transit of cars.

Also, the law spells out fines for violation of the period of stay of a non-cleared car in Ukraine - from $6 to $6,000 or confiscation of the car.

Related: Protests of EU license plates car owners: Police detain one activist

The laws take effect the day after the official publication.

On July 13, 2018, Verkhovna Rada supported a bill providing for increased responsibility for breaching the rules of car import to Ukraine. The document establishes a single term for sanctions for customs rules breach, - six months since the day of detection of the violation.

On October 22, the Supreme Court of Ukraine recognized the termless use of the cars with the EU license plates imported in the regime of transit as legal. Later the State Fiscal Service claimed that the use of the uncustomed cars is still a violation of the law.
Both the Ukrainian tugboat and Russias Federal Security Service coast guard ship were damaged during the clashes of ships in the Sea of Azov. Former Commander of the Ukrainian Navy Serhiy Haiduk reported this.

According to the information I obtain, one of the coast guard boats of the Federal Security Service was damaged during the clashes. It was Amethyst patrol boat and now it is being repaired as an emergency ship, Haiduk claimed.

Related: Russian jet intercepts U.S. Navy plane over Black Sea

Ukrainian Navy reported that the ships of the Russian Federation performed blatantly aggressive acts against the ships of the Ukrainian Navy, which have been carrying out a scheduled transition from Odesa port to Mariupol port in the Sea of Azov. In particular, Don border guard cruiser rammed the Ukrainian armored artillery boat, which led to the damage of the main engine, planting and accommodation rail, life float is lost.

The Ukrainian agency claimed that it informed about the intention to make the transition in advance in accordance with international standards in order to ensure the safety of navigation.

Related: Ukrainian Navy upgrades largest security ship in Sea of Azov

At the same time, Russias FSB claimed that three Ukrainian warships have illegally entered the territorial waters of Russia and headed to the Kerch Strait. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry noted that they regard the aggressive actions of the ships of the Russian Federation as a violation of the norms of the UN Charter and the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
The coast guard ships of the Russian Navy acted aggressively against the ships of the Ukrainian Navy, which have been carrying out a scheduled transition from Odesa port to Mariupol port in the Sea of Azov. The press office of the Ukrainian Navy reported this on Facebook.

Today, November 25, the ships of the Ukrainian Navy with two armored gunboats and a sea mule tugboat have been carrying out a scheduled transition from Odesa port to Mariupol port in the Sea of Azov. The intention to make the transition was informed in advance in accordance with international standards in order to ensure the safety of navigation. However, contrary to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and the Treaty between Ukraine and the Russian Federation on cooperation in the use of the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait, the Russian coast guard ships - Sobol class patrol boat, Don border guard cruiser, Mangust class patrol boat and Suzdalets anti-submarine warfare ship performed blatantly aggressive acts against the ships of the Ukrainian Navy, reads the message.

Related: Ukraine-Russia agreement on Sea of Azov not to allow inspecting vessels traveling to Ukraine

It is specified that Don border guard cruiser rammed the Ukrainian armored artillery boat, which led to the damage of the main engine, planting and accommodation rail, life float is lost. The Ukrainian Navy states that "the dispatcher service of the occupiers refuses to ensure the right of freedom of navigation, guaranteed by international agreements.

The Ukrainian Navy states that "the dispatcher service of the occupiers refuses to ensure the right of freedom of navigation, guaranteed by international agreements." Thus, according to the Ukrainian side, Russia has once again demonstrated its aggressive nature and complete disregard for the norms of international law.

Related: Russia accuses Ukraine of militarizing Azov Sea, refuses same charges against it

The ships of the Ukrainian Navy continue to perform tasks in compliance with all norms of international law. All illegal actions are recorded by the crews of the ships and the command of the Naval Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and will be transferred to the competent international bodies, reads the message.

As it was reported earlier, Ukraine has arrested 15 vessels, which entered the ports of the annexed Crimea. In response to this, member of the Council of the Federation Committee on Defense and Security Frants Klintsevich claimed that Russia could block the Sea of Azov for any Ukrainian ship. Minister of Defense of Ukraine Stepan Poltorak said that Ukraine was ready to react to threats both in the Sea of Azov and other areas.

Related: Ukraine prepares draft resolution for UN General Assembly on militarization of Sea of Azov and Black Sea by Russia

It should be noted that the Russian activity in the Sea of Azov increased over the last three months. Russians do not allow the trade vessels heading to and emerging from the Ukrainian ports to freely pass through the Kerch Strait. In this regard, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko commissioned the Minister of Defense, the Chief of the General Staff and the Commandment of the Naval Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to take measures to stop Russian provocations in relation to blocking the entry of vessels into Ukrainian ports on the Azov Sea. The Ministry of Infrastructure of Ukraine developed a set of measures in response to Russia's actions. The set of measures includes the limit of passenger traffic with Russia.
The personnel of the Security Service of Ukraine detained head of rural council of one of the settlements on the temporarily occupied territory of Novoazovsk district in Donetsk region. The press office of the Ukrainian Security Service reported that on Sunday.

The members of the special service established that the local resident has held the office of the rural head in one of the villages in Donetsk region from 2010. However, in 2014, the woman joined the ranks of 'DNR' terrorist organization. Having fulfilled the tasks of the militants, she carried out an illegal management of the temporarily occupied territory within the relevant settlement, reads the message.

Related: SBU reveals perpetrator of oncoming terrorist acts in Ukraine planned by Russias FSB

It is reported that the law enforcement arrested her on the territory controlled by the Ukrainian government, where she arrived for personal business. The detainee was served with charge papers and elected a preventive measure of remand in custody.

As we reported earlier, SBU officers detained the owner of the pharmaceutical manufacturer under suspicion of funding the separate districts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, occupied by militants.

It was noted that the enterprise, which is located in Luhansk region, delivered medicines for Russian militants in particular. According to SBU information, the enterprise was allocating $8-9 thousand for the militants per month.

Related: Ukraine's SBU blocks trafficking of substandard medicines for oncology patients

The SBU representatives added that the owner of the enterprise was detained under the article of Ukraines Criminal Procedure Code.

The perpetrator was served with charges papers on the commission of a crime provided by the article of the Criminal Code on violation of territorial integrity of Ukraine. The immediate investigation is being conducted to bring to responsibility the individuals involved in the activity of the enterprise and funding of the terrorist organizations.
Ukraine urgently convenes the UN Security Council because of the aggravation in Azov Sea. Ambassador of Ukraine in Estonia Mariana Betsa wrote this on Twitter.



Todays dangerous events in the Sea of Azov indicate that the new front of Russian aggression is open. Ukraine is convening an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council, Betza wrote.

Earlier the coast guard ships of the Russian Navy acted aggressively against the ships of the Ukrainian Navy, which have been carrying out a scheduled transition from Odesa port to Mariupol port in the Sea of Azov. The press office of the Ukrainian Navy reported this on Facebook.





Today, November 25, the ships of the Ukrainian Navy with two armored gunboats and a sea mule tugboat have been carrying out a scheduled transition from Odesa port to Mariupol port in the Sea of Azov. The intention to make the transition was informed in advance in accordance with international standards in order to ensure the safety of navigation. However, contrary to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and the Treaty between Ukraine and the Russian Federation on cooperation in the use of the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait, the Russian coast guard ships - Sobol class patrol boat, Don border guard cruiser, Mangust class patrol boat and Suzdalets anti-submarine warfare ship performed blatantly aggressive acts against the ships of the Ukrainian Navy, reads the message.



Related: Escalation in Azov Sea - Ukraine's MFA threatens Russia with reaction

Russian authorities said that three Ukrainian warships in the Sea of Azov illegally entered the territorial waters of the Russian Federation and headed to the Kerch Strait. This is particularly stated in the message of the Federal Security Service border guards in Crimea, reports TASS.



The boats of the Russian Border Guard Service opened fire on the ship group of the Ukrainian Navy, which was moving towards the exit from the Kerch Strait. About this in Facebook reports command of the Ukrainian Navy.



'After the exit from the 12-mile area, gunboats of the Border Guard of Russian Federal Security Service fired on the naval group of the Ukrainian Navy of Ukraine's Armed Forces. Berdyansk, the small armored gunboat took damage. The boat ceased to move, a man was wounded' the message says.
Open source

All the military ships and vessels of Ukraine are sailing out to sea, where today Russian Special Forces captured the Ukrainian small armored artillery boats Berdyansk, Nikopol and the raid tug Yana Kapu. This is stated in the Military portal message on Twitter.



"All ships and vessels of the Ukrainian Navy alerted. They go to the sea," reads the message.



Earlier, the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko convened a military office because of the aggravation of the situation in the Sea of Azov, the prosecutor's office and the Security Service of Ukraine are also carrying out urgent investigative actions. In addition, Ukraine urgently convenes the UN Security Council.



Poroshenko also instructed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to inform the G7 countries and members of the UN Security Council about the actions of the Russian Federation in the Azov-Kerch water area.

Earlier the coast guard ships of the Russian Navy acted aggressively against the ships of the Ukrainian Navy, which have been carrying out a scheduled transition from Odesa port to Mariupol port in the Sea of Azov. The press office of the Ukrainian Navy reported this on Facebook.



Today, November 25, the ships of the Ukrainian Navy with two armored gunboats and a sea mule tugboat have been carrying out a scheduled transition from Odesa port to Mariupol port in the Sea of Azov. The intention to make the transition was informed in advance in accordance with international standards in order to ensure the safety of navigation. However, contrary to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and the Treaty between Ukraine and the Russian Federation on cooperation in the use of the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait, the Russian coast guard ships - Sobol class patrol boat, Don border guard cruiser, Mangust class patrol boat and Suzdalets anti-submarine warfare ship performed blatantly aggressive acts against the ships of the Ukrainian Navy, reads the message.



Russian authorities said that three Ukrainian warships in the Sea of Azov illegally entered the territorial waters of the Russian Federation and headed to the Kerch Strait. This is particularly stated in the message of the Federal Security Service border guards in Crimea, reports TASS.
Open source

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine promises to take all appropriate measures of diplomatic and international legal response regarding the aggressive actions of the Russian Federation to Ukrainian warships in the Sea of Azov. This is stated in a message posted on the website of the ministry.



"Provocative actions of Russia in the Black and Azov Sea crossed the line and became aggressive. The ships of the Russian Federation, in violation of the freedom of navigation, improperly used force against the ships of the Ukrainian Navy. We regard such actions as violation of the norms of the UN Charter, UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine will take all appropriate measures of diplomatic and international legal response," it says.

The coast guard ships of the Russian Navy acted aggressively against the ships of the Ukrainian Navy, which have been carrying out a scheduled transition from Odesa port to Mariupol port in the Sea of Azov. The press office of the Ukrainian Navy reported this on Facebook.

Today, November 25, the ships of the Ukrainian Navy with two armored gunboats and a sea mule tugboat have been carrying out a scheduled transition from Odesa port to Mariupol port in the Sea of Azov. The intention to make the transition was informed in advance in accordance with international standards in order to ensure the safety of navigation. However, contrary to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and the Treaty between Ukraine and the Russian Federation on cooperation in the use of the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait, the Russian coast guard ships - Sobol class patrol boat, Don border guard cruiser, Mangust class patrol boat and Suzdalets anti-submarine warfare ship performed blatantly aggressive acts against the ships of the Ukrainian Navy, reads the message.



Related: "This is serious": MEP comments on escalation in Sea of Azov

Russian authorities said that three Ukrainian warships in the Sea of Azov illegally entered the territorial waters of the Russian Federation and headed to the Kerch Strait. This is particularly stated in the message of the Federal Security Service border guards in Crimea, reports TASS.



"This morning around 07:00 Moscow time, three ships of the Naval Forces of Ukraine, in violation of Articles 19 and 21 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, defining the coastal states right to ensure security in the maritime territory, crossed the state border of the Russian Federation, wrongly entered in the temporarily closed water area within Russian territorial waters", it is noted in the message.



It also clarifies that the vessel headed to the Kerch Strait, which has a permissive procedure for the movement and anchorage of vessels, in accordance with the schedule of the movement and placement of vessels, approved by the captain of the Russian seaport.
Open source

The boats of the Russian Border Guard Service opened fire on the ship group of the Ukrainian Navy, which was moving towards the exit from the Kerch Strait. About this in Facebook reports command of the Ukrainian Navy.



'After the exit from the 12-mile area, gunboats of the Border Guard of Russian Federal Security Service fired on the naval group of the Ukrainian Navy of Ukraine's Armed Forces. Berdyansk, the small armored gunboat took damage. The boat ceased to move, a man was wounded' the message says.

As we reported earlier the coast guard ships of the Russian Navy acted aggressively against the ships of the Ukrainian Navy, which have been carrying out a scheduled transition from Odesa port to Mariupol port in the Sea of Azov. The press office of the Ukrainian Navy reported this on Facebook.

Today, November 25, the ships of the Ukrainian Navy with two armored gunboats and a sea mule tugboat have been carrying out a scheduled transition from Odesa port to Mariupol port in the Sea of Azov. The intention to make the transition was informed in advance in accordance with international standards in order to ensure the safety of navigation. However, contrary to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and the Treaty between Ukraine and the Russian Federation on cooperation in the use of the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait, the Russian coast guard ships - Sobol class patrol boat, Don border guard cruiser, Mangust class patrol boat and Suzdalets anti-submarine warfare ship performed blatantly aggressive acts against the ships of the Ukrainian Navy, reads the message.

It is specified that Don border guard cruiser rammed the Ukrainian armored artillery boat, which led to the damage of the main engine, planting and accommodation rail, life float is lost. The Ukrainian Navy states that "the dispatcher service of the occupiers refuses to ensure the right of freedom of navigation, guaranteed by international agreements.

The Ukrainian Navy states that "the dispatcher service of the occupiers refuses to ensure the right of freedom of navigation, guaranteed by international agreements." Thus, according to the Ukrainian side, Russia has once again demonstrated its aggressive nature and complete disregard for the norms of international law.
Six Ukrainian sailors were wounded in the shelling and capturing of the Ukrainian Navy ships by the Russian Federation. The press service of the Navy of Ukraine reports it on Facebook



"According to the latest information, the Berdyansk ship and Yany Kapu tug are being seized and towed. Another ship, Nikopol, is blocked and moves, accompanied by invaders. Six Ukrainian soldiers were injured, said in a statement.

Earlier the coast guard ships of the Russian Navy acted aggressively against the ships of the Ukrainian Navy, which have been carrying out a scheduled transition from Odesa port to Mariupol port in the Sea of Azov.



Related: Russian forces captured three Ukrainian ships, two sailors wounded

Today, November 25, the ships of the Ukrainian Navy with two armored gunboats and a sea mule tugboat have been carrying out a scheduled transition from Odesa port to Mariupol port in the Sea of Azov. The intention to make the transition was informed in advance in accordance with international standards in order to ensure the safety of navigation. However, contrary to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and the Treaty between Ukraine and the Russian Federation on cooperation in the use of the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait, the Russian coast guard ships - Sobol class patrol boat, Don border guard cruiser, Mangust class patrol boat and Suzdalets anti-submarine warfare ship performed blatantly aggressive acts against the ships of the Ukrainian Navy, reads the message.



Russian authorities said that three Ukrainian warships in the Sea of Azov illegally entered the territorial waters of the Russian Federation and headed to the Kerch Strait. This is particularly stated in the message of the Federal Security Service border guards in Crimea, TASS reported.

Related: Aggravation in Azov Sea: Poroshenko convenes military office

The boats of the Russian Border Guard Service opened fire on the ship group of the Ukrainian Navy, which was moving towards the exit from the Kerch Strait.



'After the exit from the 12-mile area, gunboats of the Border Guard of Russian Federal Security Service fired on the naval group of the Ukrainian Navy of Ukraine's Armed Forces. Berdyansk, small armored gunboat, took damage. The boat ceased to move, a man was wounded,' the message says.
The crews of Ukrainian vessels near the Kerch Strait are in combat readiness. About this said the commander of the Naval Forces of Ukraine Igor Voronchenko, reports Radio Liberty.



Our crews of armored boats are on alert and ready for a possible landing of the (Russian) landing forces, said Voronchenko.



Commenting on the situation in which Ukrainian vessels found themselves at the entrance to the Sea of Azov, he said that now it is difficult to predict how long the Ukrainian vessels will have to wait for the opportunity to cross the strait. He also refuted the statements of Russia that the Russian ship, which allegedly ran aground, is hindering this.



They act as they did in 2014 in the Donuzlav Bay in the Crimea, when they drowned their Russian ships, and our ships could not pass. As of now, we cannot pass either on the right or on the left side, Voronchenko added.

The coast guard ships of the Russian Navy acted aggressively against the ships of the Ukrainian Navy, which have been carrying out a scheduled transition from Odesa port to Mariupol port in the Sea of Azov. The press office of the Ukrainian Navy reported this on Facebook.

Today, November 25, the ships of the Ukrainian Navy with two armored gunboats and a sea mule tugboat have been carrying out a scheduled transition from Odesa port to Mariupol port in the Sea of Azov. The intention to make the transition was informed in advance in accordance with international standards in order to ensure the safety of navigation. However, contrary to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and the Treaty between Ukraine and the Russian Federation on cooperation in the use of the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait, the Russian coast guard ships - Sobol class patrol boat, Don border guard cruiser, Mangust class patrol boat and Suzdalets anti-submarine warfare ship performed blatantly aggressive acts against the ships of the Ukrainian Navy, reads the message.



Russian authorities said that three Ukrainian warships in the Sea of Azov illegally entered the territorial waters of the Russian Federation and headed to the Kerch Strait. This is particularly stated in the message of the Federal Security Service border guards in Crimea, reports TASS.



"This morning around 07:00 Moscow time, three ships of the Naval Forces of Ukraine, in violation of Articles 19 and 21 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, defining the coastal states right to ensure security in the maritime territory, crossed the state border of the Russian Federation, wrongly entered in the temporarily closed water area within Russian territorial waters", it is noted in the message.



It also clarifies that the vessel headed to the Kerch Strait, which has a permissive procedure for the movement and anchorage of vessels, in accordance with the schedule of the movement and placement of vessels, approved by the captain of the Russian seaport.
Take the anti-tour of Albuquerque as the reality of the street and the poetry of fiction mix in a way that makes everyday life a privilege to see. Cash only at the door.

Promenade Albuquerque

A Theatrical Journey

"I was listening to a person. They were saying things inside their head. It went like this:

I was swallowed by a bus one day then the whole city changed and so did I."

A story set in reality, passengers follow the characters from place to place and witness the very special moments of their lives and gain magical access to their thoughts.

In Promenade, the audience forms a group of riders on a transit bus which weaves its way along an eccentric route through streets and neighborhoods of the city. Scenes unfold on sidewalks and spaces along the way revealing unique aspects of daily life as lyrical stories emerge among the characters allowing us to witness the lives of extraordinarily everyday heros. The sonic landscape is delivered to each audience member via individual headsets, and is live-mixed during the performance using music, snippets of interviews and voice, as well as ambient sounds of the city.

Promenade is an original theatre performance concept created by Stereo Akt of Budapest Hungary. The performance was first presented in Budapest and then toured to major cities throughout Europe. In 2017, Promenade debuted in the US in Baltimore, MD in collaboration with Single Carrot Theater.

Promenade is re-imagined and devised as a unique performance specific to the city in which it is being presented, thus Promenade: Albuquerque.

Come join us on our anti-tour of Albuquerque as the reality of the street and the poetry of fiction mix in a way that makes everyday life a privilege to see.

Seating is very limited!

Buy tickets in advance at: https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/3812995

Cash only at the door.
PLEASE NOTE!

Due to the March 23, 2020 NM DOH Public Health Order, These Event Listings Are Not Accurate!

All non-essential businesses are closed, public gatherings are prohibited!

(One day some of these events will be rescheduled or will resume, but they are not happening now!)
Home  Just In  Accused of loving junkets, Lalitpur Mayor says he cancelled 26 trips

Lalitpur, November 25

The Mayor of Lalitpur Metropolitan City, Chiribabu Maharjan, has claimed that he has cancelled invitations for 26 foreign trips as they were likely to give a burden to the state coffers.

Whereas recent media reports have accused Maharjan of misusing the municipal money in unnecessary junkets as he travelled abroad around one dozen times since his election around one and half years ago.

To defend the charge, Maharjan organised a press meet on Sunday and claimed he did not spend a single penny from the city fund in these trips.

I want to inform you that my foreign visits were not for my personal benefits, he said, Neither have I added the expense burden to the Metropolitan City.

The official claimed he consulted other officials of the city and took them as well in his company during such trips.
Major Nepali and English broadsheet dailies published from Kathmandu on Sunday have given priority to a host of issues from political, sociocultural and financial spheres. Almost all newspapers have covered the mental illness that father of Nirmala Pant developed as he continued his sit-in demanding action against the murderers of her daughter. Likewise, the newspapers have given significant coverage to the statement of main opposition Nepali Congress over the governments participation in a function to be organised by a controversial international non-government agency.

Meanwhile, the Secretariat meeting of ruling Nepal Communist Party has also been covered on the front pages of some newspapers.

Important

Nirmala Pants dad in Kathmandu for treatment

Nepal Samacharpatra, Naya Patrika and The Himalayan Times report that Yagya Raj Pant has been sent to Kathmandu on a bus on Saturday late afternoon to provide treatment for his mental problem. Nagarik and Republica inform that he has begun showing abnormal behaviours, shouting at people around him, and threatening to kill himself for past few days.

Earlier, Buddha Air, which is operating regular flights between Dhangadhi and Kathmandu, had refused to take him onboard, according to Kantipur and The Kathmandu Post.

NC protests govt involvement in UPF function

The Kathmandu Post, The Himalayan Times and Kantipur report on their front pages that the main opposition party has objected to the governments involvement in hosting the Asia Pacific Summit being organised by the Universal Peace Federation.

The Federation is apparently involved in promoting Christianity in the country; hence the party has argued that it is against the constitutional provision of secularism, according to the reports.

Ignored

NRA not to agree on Indias conditions

The Indian government has put three conditions to release a loan assistance of Rs 75 billion for Nepals reconstruction works. However, the National Reconstruction Authority has said it will not agree on any of the conditions, hinting the commitment would not be executed, according to Naya Patrika lead story.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Finance has assured facilitating the halted process.

80 per cent school reconstruction over

The government has claimed to have completed the reconstruction of 80 per cent of schools destroyed by the 2015 earthquake, according to Karobar anchor story.

The government, however, says funds are not available for the pending reconstruction of other 1,400 schools.

The Post Disaster Recovery Framework of the National Reconstruction Authority had estimated that the reconstruction of all affected schools in 31 districts would cost Rs 130 billion.

PM forces TU to breach Cabinet decision

In the last week of July, the Cabinet made a decision to direct the Tribhuvan University for putting on hold applications of private colleges for affiliation. However, around 10 days after the meeting, Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli directed the biggest university of the country to grant affiliation to 116 private colleges to run BBM and BCA programmes, according to a brief story in Kantipur.

Officials against forming new transitional justice mechanism

Officials of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Commission of Investigation on Enforced Disappeared Persons have said some activists and conflict victims proposal to replace the two bodies with a new political mechanisms could further complicate the situation and derail the ongoing progress in settling the conflict era issues, according to a four column story in Republica.

Currently, over 65,000 cases are pending at these two commissions.

Interesting

Bajhangs theft-free villages

Villages in five wards of Saipal Rural Municipality in Bajhang district in far-western Nepal are theft-free, Kantipur reports in its anchor story. Locals in these villages do not lock their houses when they go outside while precious things are left in the open.

Likewise, the villages keep their crops in the fields and take them to houses whenever necessary.
Kathmandu, November 25

Nepal Students Union, the student wing of Nepali Congress (NC), on Sunday staged a sit-in at the NC party office in Sanepa of Lalitpur to put pressure on the leadership to create environment conducive for its 12th general assembly.

It has been more than two years since its previous 11th assembly was organised. But there is not any indication that the assembly is going to be organised soon, said NSU leader Dipak Bhattarai to Rastriya Samachar Samiti.

He also accused the leadership of delaying assembly by extending the term of current committee of the student wing by two months.

Over two years have elapsed, how can we believe the assembly will be convened in next two months? he said.

Meanwhile, the NC Central Working Committee meeting is going on at the party central office.

RSS
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 25, ARMENPRESS. Armenian President Armen Sarkissian held a meeting with Armenian Red Cross Society (ARCS) President Mkhitar Mnatsakanyan and the organizations Secretary General Anna Yeghiazaryan, Sarkissians office said in a press release.

During the meeting the ARCS officials briefed the president on the directions and projects of the organizations activities.

Mentioning that their main partners are similar national structures of various countries with the support of whom many types of programs are being carried out, Mnatsakanyan said that the Armenian Red Cross Society has been successfully cooperating particularly with the German Red Cross for already 30 years, Sarkissians Office said.

According to the press release, Sarkissian will soon visit Germany on an official visit and during the trip he will be hosted at the German Red Cross.

Speaking about the activities of the German Red Cross in Armenia in the past 30 years, Sarkissian noted that this proves that humanitarianism has no boundaries.

Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan
But if foreign powers really want to make a difference to PNG, one of the poorest in the region, then funding equipment like telecommunications gear and solar power kits would be widely welcomed. One key benefit would be using mobile phones to transfer money - instead of traipsing long distances to a bank in town.

For PNG, the attention may well translate to development funds. Already the US has pledged to work with Australia to upgrade Lombrum naval base on Manus Island, in what is widely seen as a counter to rising influence from Beijing in the region.

PNG, a country often overlooked by the Australian public, is enjoying the fierce competition among foreign powers for influence in the country after APEC ended in stalemate and heightened US-China tensions.

Boigu Island, part of Queensland, is the most northerly island in the Torres Strait. With its own Australia Post outlet, it is less than 10 kilometres from the PNG coast, an area known as South Fly District, part of Western Province.

BRISBANE - If you set out by dinghy from the northern-most inhabited part of Australia you will make landfall in Papua New Guinea fairly soon.

No fewer than 85% of PNG citizens live in rural and remote areas, it is estimated - so items like these are capable of making an enormous difference in their lives.

Much talk of infrastructure of late has involved the heavy duty type - ports, rail, military bases and the like. But as we all know, the biggest revolution around the globe is internet access.

Stepping into remote villages in the South Fly, one is viscerally confronted with the lack of national expenditure or international finances of any kind.

Life in rural PNG has been described in terms of its subsistence affluence. The people are friendly and the land is fertile, with reliable rainfall.

But the lack of roads or public transport, and access to cash, means that opportunities for enterprise and employment remain extremely low. Everyone is searching for markets for their produce and crafts, so they can get cash to buy consumables and health services, and pay school fees.

One option for transferring money in these remote areas is via mobile phones. Recent research by Tim Grice found that people living in urban centres and rural towns in PNG are already using mobile money to send money to one another.

It is yet to take off in the South Fly but it could do soon, as people are already exchanging mobile phone credits used to top-up their phones.

A young girl in traditional dress uses a mobile phone as she waits for then Australian prime minister Tony Abbott in Port Moresby in March 2014 (Alan Porritt, AAP)

Across the South Fly, villagers receive money from relatives living in urban centres like Port Moresby - or from Australian relatives in the Torres Strait - through the mail service Post PNG or the bricks and mortar Bank South Pacific (BSP) branch in Daru.

Households affected by the nearby Ok Tedi mine receive compensation payments into their bank accounts. The payments relate to extensive environmental damage to the area, especially the Fly River, when BHP Billiton operated the mine. But this could be done via phone payments too.

And then there are public servants or retired public servants, who burn up much of their government pay or pensions just to get to the bank and back. Mobile phone payments would improve life here too.

In the South Fly, officials get payments from the PNG government for community work projects. These officials keep careful records of the hours each villager works, but sometimes spend months in Daru, repeatedly asking the district administrator to release the funds.

When the funds finally arrive, the elected official journeys home, surrounded by relatives as bodyguards, and hand delivers payments to each worker.

Much of the money goes on transport and accommodation in Daru. Again, this money could be sent via mobile phone.

PNGs New Ireland province tested the idea of social payments for aged and disability pensions - with great success. The World Bank assessed the idea and said an electronic payment system was needed across the country.

In many South Fly villages, the shared mobile phone is found dangling from a tree or a window, in the one place where reception appears intermittently.

A lack of infrastructure maintenance and coastal corrosion have seen mobile phone coverage in the South Fly deteriorate. Work is underway to replace failing towers, ahead of moves to bring in 3G internet coverage.

The cost of installing and maintaining mobile phone infrastructure is lower than building roads across river deltas and flood-prone savannah. And the higher the demand for transferring money via mobile phones, the more viable an upgrade to mobile coverage becomes.

International donors like China are increasingly funding infrastructure projects in PNG, though often with strings attached. Australian prime minister Scott Morrison just announced an infrastructure financing facility.

Two major mobile network operators, Digicel and B-Mobile, already provide mobile money services in partnership with BSP, Westpac, and ANZ.

Foreign aid could be distributed this way, to a community-based organisation, for example. And cash flowing in means better-off citizens and more economic activity.

Another big potential benefit to all this could be tackling absenteeism among teachers and medical workers. They are often off work travelling long distances to towns to get their pay and do grocery shopping.

But there are risks. Giving the cash directly to people and organisations - where previously it was funnelled through the central government - will fundamentally shift the politics between citizens, leaders, bureaucrats, and international actors, and not necessarily for the better. Some people who may be benefiting from current arrangements may oppose change to protect the privileges they enjoy.

PNG is a place of great complexity, with a development landscape littered with failed efforts. If such changes are made, there will be winners and losers - but surely its worth considering new approaches, given how little money is getting to these villages now.

Mark Moran is professor of development effectiveness at the Institute for Social Science Research in the University of Queensland
But on Saturday 17 November, in an EMTV news bulletin, another story about the PNG Maserati scandal was broadcast slap bang in the middle of the APEC leaders' summit, triggering the suspension of Scott Waide, a senior figure at the broadcaster.

It wasnt the first time that EMTVs senior reporter had identified and related factual stories that the PNG government found embarrassing, but this one  implicating powerful and controversial health minister Dr Puka Temu - apparently seriously stung the government. You can read the story here.

NOOSA - In the weeks before the recent APEC meeting in Port Moresby, the eminent Papua New Guinean journalist, Scott Waide  assisted by his listeners and viewers throughout PNG, gathered first-hand evidence that the health ministry had been lying about the availability of drugs and medical equipment across the country.

The debacle of 40 luxury Maseratis imported for APEC had been hot news in PNG and globally for two weeks at great cost to the PNG government's credibility.

But the broadcast of footage from New Zealand that Saturday night proved a bridge too far for tender egos.

In the TV story prime minister Jacinta Ardern was quoted as saying she would not be travelling in a Maserati but in a Toyota Highlander. It came at a sensitive point and proved to be the trigger that saw Waide sidelined.

The story also said there were "serious questions raised about whether PNG is actually capable of pulling this summit off".

In Auckland this morning, Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie said he understood the item objected to by the PNG government was the NZ Newshub item about the Maseratis controversy that was rebroadcast by EMTV News on 17 November.

Prof Robie described the action of suspending Waide as shameful and a blow to media independence and freedom of information in Papua New Guinea.

He said it was clear to anybody monitoring PNG affairs and issues that Scott Waide was one of the countrys outstanding journalists with a great deal of courage and integrity, and an example to all reporters in the Pacific.

Social media in PNG and beyond has today also been expressing outrage at what had happened to the popular and highly regarded journalist.

The PNG government's sensitivity to the story came against a background of it experiencing humiliating coverage of its preparations for APEC, which it hoped would be a triumph but had itself seriously tarnished by a mindless expenditure of as much as a billion kina.

The government had also watched the forum go off the rails as China and the US hijacked it as a platform for their own big power rivalry.

Commentator on PNG affairs Martyn Namorong told me that EMTV management are supportive of Scott but are under political pressure. The PNG government controls EMTV through Telikom PNG, which is state-owned.

In a message to its staff, EMTV has said it is addressing the Waide matter as being one of the utmost importance and priority".

EMTV has emphasised that he has been suspended and not dismissed and it has warned its staff not to make any comments or speculation to anyone outside EMTV, or on social media.

EMTV and its masters should understand - bur obviously don't - that to punish a journalist for honest, straightforward and ethical investigative reporting is unacceptable whatever form it takes.
The purchase had generated great controversy and much criticism in PNG and in the overseas media.

The prominent journalist was linked to a story broadcast on Saturday 17 November which originated in New Zealand and mentioned that prime minister Jacinta Ardern would not be travelling one of the 40 Maseratis imported by the PNG government for use at APEC.

Waide has been suspended from his senior job with EMTV after the television station management received instructions from the Papua New Guinea government to do so.

NOOSA  Readers of PNG Attitude have joined thousands of Papua New Guineans and people internationally in voicing strong support for journalist and blogger Scott Waide.

Scott Waide speaks at a Transparency International youth program. The overhead slide is headlined 'A Guardian of Democracy', which Waide's many admirers consider him to be

It is unclear what role Waide played in relation to the broadcast of this story, which went to air during the APEC leaders summit in Port Moresby.

In a message to staff, the state-owned broadcaster EMTV said it had been forced to suspend Waide and told staff not to discuss the matter or make any comments or speculation to anyone outside EMTV, or on social media.

It emphasised that Waide was suspended and not dismissed and said it is addressing the matter as being one of the utmost importance and priority".

But EMTV managers and their political masters should understand - but obviously don't - that to punish a journalist for honest, straightforward and ethical investigative reporting is unacceptable whatever form it takes and that their decision will have serious repercussions.

In the days before APEC, Waide, with the help of his audience, had investigated drug and medical equipment shortages in PNG hospitals. During the summit he had reported on Chinese restrictions on the media.

Radio New Zealand reports that in recent days Waide also wrote about the police minister assuring disciplinary forces that no action would be taken against personnel who stormed parliament over APEC related payments, although it has been reported that this decisions has since been overturned.

There was a stunning reaction to Waide's suspension from PNG and around the world on social media.

On Twitter PNG Attitude reader @Oldman__Emu said: EMTV leadership team have not balls to support their staff member in this case. Scott has ruffled the feathers of PO, JT, Hawkins, Temu and their government. Boycott EMTV. Where is the Media Council of PNG. Is that the organisation Neville Choi heads? The Media Council later issued a public statement supporting Waide.

Transparency International PNG (@TI_PNG) tweeted: Democratic freedoms that allow journalists and citizens to question those in power must not be curtailed. We are seeking clarification on allegations that @EMTVOnline journalist @Scott_Waide was silenced by political interests.

Worrying news that one of PNGs finest journalists has been suspended for critical reporting. Sad fact is you cant seriously investigate wide scale elite criminality in-country without facing huge personal and professional risks, wrote criminologist and researcher Prof Kristian Lasslett (@KLasslett).

The truth hurts! tweeted @mangga_buang. It takes a true investigative and neutral journalist to report the news as it is. @Scott_Waide is unique and the best reporter by far compared to the other PNG reporters. Something good will come out of this for this brilliant reporter. Pen is mightier.

Dan McGarry (@dailypostdan), editor of the Vanuatu Daily Post wrote: One of the most employable journos working in PNG. If I were covering the news there, Id snap him up like that. I said: If I were covering the news there, I would give this man a job. Which is to say hes great, and probably available.

"Scott's reporting without fear or favour has always given pain to our leaders revealing the truth through thorough investigations & hard facts, said Gordon Wavimbi (@gordway). "They jumped at the opportunity to silence him. This is not right. If you can't handle the heat stay out of the kitchen (Cabinet)."

And @I_am_Uro tweeted: Listened to @Scott_Waide today + his story +his passion to talk about the challenges of our nation + shine a light on the everyday heroes that continue to serve and work towards influencing positive change. Amazing journalist striving to change the narrative of our beautiful PNG.
MANCHESTER: Chief Justice of Pakistan Mian Saqib Nisar has said that there would be no further need for fundraising if the looted wealth stashed abroad is recovered and allocated in the dam fund.



People have to answer how they made Rs3 billion worth property in Dubai. The entire wealth which belongs to the people of Pakistan must be given to the Dam fund. There will be strict accountability if not given voluntarily, the chief justice remarked in his address during a private TV channel telethon for the Dam Fund at Manchester.



Those who looted billions didnt give any amount, he lamented.



The chief justice said that the country stands most water scarce as it didnt value water, adding that God forbid, that the country face situations as faced by Somalia and South Africa currently.



Water is linked with life. If there is no water, there is no life, he added.



The chief justice said that he didnt get a satisfactory answer when he asked a top Sindh government functionary to drink a glass of tap water with him.



I came to know that the underground water table has gone drastically low in Balochistan and the dams have dried. He was told that there is no other way than rainfall to fill the dams, he said.



Chief Justice Nisar said that the court decided construction of Diamer Bhasha dam because of lack of consensus on the Kala Bagh dam in the country.



Speaking to the media, the Chief Justice of Pakistan said that Pakistan needs Rs 1500 billion to build Diamer-Bhasha and Mohmand dams to avert water crisis looming over the country.



He said people were objecting to construction plan of a single dam, but we will construct a number of dams in future, he added. It may be noted here that Rs 7.9 billion have been collected in donations for construction of dams so far.



He underlined that he had expected a good donation from a few bigwigs, but unfortunately they didnt give a significant amount in donations.



Those who acquired billions of rupees from the country didnt donate even Rs one billion for the dams, he stated. Chief Justice Nisar said, We have asked such people to declare their sources of income, and everyone in this regard will need to explain about their wealth.



The CJP also hinted at launching an awareness campaign from next month regarding rising population and shrinking resources in its wake.NNI




A mother is asking parents to vaccinate their children, revealing the dangerous reality for kids with cancer.

On Wednesday, author Nicole Stellon ODonnell tweeted in a viral thread with 38,000 likes and 26,000 retweets, Dear parents of children who do not have cancer: a casual measles exposure in a grocery store caused the following things to happen when my child was in chemotherapy.

Nicole, a mother-of-two, explained that as a result of the exposure, her younger child, who was diagnosed with kidney cancer in 2014, suffered.

Author Nicole Stellon ODonnell penned a viral Twitter thread about the dangers of not vaccinating children. Photo: Getty

My daughter was quarantined for one month. Its enough to be bald and chemo stricken at 8, but add being unable to leave the house, she wrote.

She also tweeted, When we arrived at ped/onc they had to cancel appointments and shut down the infusion room while they sorted out the details of her exposure.

Dear parents of children who do not have cancer: a casual measles exposure in a grocery store caused the following things to happen when my child was in chemotherapy:  Nicole Stellon ODonnell (@SteamLaundry) November 21, 2018

The treatment of all the other patients (children with cancer) that afternoon was disrupted.

Stellon ODonnell added, The exam room we were in had to be shut down and given a terminal cleaning, disrupting the ped/onc departments ability to serve other outpatient children with cancer.

2: When we arrived at ped/onc they had to cancel appointments and shut down the infusion room while they sorted out the details of her exposure. The treatment of all the other patients (children with cancer) that afternoon was disrupted.  Nicole Stellon ODonnell (@SteamLaundry) November 21, 2018

She also wrote that her daughter was forced to wear a mask on a subsequent flight home: This may not seem like a big deal, but imagine being eight, bald, skeletal, without eyebrows and eyelashes and having to wear a face mask in public.

Story continues

4: On the flight home she had to wear a mask. This may not seem like a big deal, but imagine being eight, bald, skeletal, without eyebrows and eyelashes *and* having to wear a face mask in public.  Nicole Stellon ODonnell (@SteamLaundry) November 21, 2018

Consequently, there was a related risk that other paediatric patients would require injections of a drug called Neulasta that increases the production of white blood cells.

The side effects include terrible bone pain, Stellon ODonnell tweeted. Fortunately, my daughters WBC count was high enough that no children had to go through thatI cried with relief when they told me none of the other children had to take Neulasta.

6: Our oncology team spent much time working with state epidemiologists to decide what to do. Both for our child and all the other children in the clinic that day. I cried with relief when the told me none of the other children had to take Neulasta.  Nicole Stellon ODonnell (@SteamLaundry) November 21, 2018

Please vaccinate your kids, she wrote. Please get your flu shot. Its an act of compassion for the many children who need herd immunity because their immune systems are not working.

Stellon ODonnell added the hashtag #VaccinesWork.

Please #vaccinate your kids. Please get your #flushot. It's an act of compassion for the many children who need herd immunity because their immune systems are not working. #VaccinesWork  Nicole Stellon ODonnell (@SteamLaundry) November 21, 2018

Stellon ODonnells Twitter thread proved significant. As a grown woman who is immunocompromised, thanks for posting this, a woman tweeted. A casual measles exposure could kill me. Thankfully the one time I know I was exposed I somehow managed enough antibodies. It was a darn miracle, and I cant expect a miracle every time.

Someone wrote, Our son spent a week in isolation after measles exposure. He had a heart transplant and cant get the MMR. Your tweet sums the chaos and panic of an exposure up perfectly. Another person tweeted, I am also immunocompromised and appreciate you putting this out there. People dont understand this can mean our death.

Medical opinion

Robert Huizenga, M.D., a Beverly Hills-based internist and associate professor of Clinical Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, tells Yahoo Lifestyle that children with weakened immune systems, such as cancer patients receiving chemotherapy, should avoid the MMR vaccine, which protects against measles, mumps, and rubella. The MMR shot is a live virus vaccine that, for people with compromised immunity, may not be effective or cause serious infections, he says.



To create herd immunity, says Huizenga, roughly 90 percent of the population should vaccinate to protect this smaller number of people. If you drop below that, too many people are at risk, he adds. Measles can spread through coughing and sneezing, and live for two hours in the air, per the Centers for Disease Control, and in grocery stores, where shopping carts are handled by changing hands can be hotspots.

Huizenga says that people who dont vaccinate for non-medical reasons shouldnt be demonised. Everyone wants to be good parents but some people place too much emphasis on bad science, he says. Doctors should also take partial blame for low vaccination rates  we need to give more information to patients.

Stellon ODonnell did not return Yahoo Lifestyles requests for comment.

Got a story tip? Send it to tips@oath.com

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Twenty-two people have died and more than 60 are feared drowned after a pleasure boat sank on Lake Victoria, Ugandan police said Sunday. The vessel carrying close to a hundred revellers sank during bad weather on Saturday in the latest deadly incident to affect passenger boats on Africa's largest lake. "Twenty-two bodies have been recovered and 26 people rescued," said Asuman Mugenyi, director of operations for the Uganda police. "According to one of the survivors there were more than 90 people on board." The boat, on which party-goers were drinking, dancing and listening to music, sank a short distance from the shore off Mutima in Mukono District, close to the capital Kampala. Mugenyi said overloading and bad weather were likely to blame. "We expect (the number of passengers) is beyond the capacity of the boat. It was overloaded and unfortunately people were drunk," Mugenyi said. "We suspect the mechanical condition of the boat and the weather contributed to the sinking." "A big storm hit," said local government official Richard Kikongo. "It can be fine on land but bad weather on the lake." Kikongo said first responders were among the victims. "Fishermen on two small boats could see that the boat was sinking and went to help. People tried to jump onto the boats but they were too many and those sunk. The rescuers died too," he said. Nearby residents said the vessel was hired out for parties every weekend and often overloaded with revellers. The Mutima Country Haven resort had been converted to a triage centre and morgue on Sunday morning where police were collecting the swollen bodies of victims Police spokesman Emilian Kayima said rescue efforts were continuing. Lake Victoria is the site of many boat disasters. In September, hundreds died when the MV Nyerere passenger ferry sank on the Tanzanian side of Lake Victoria. With a surface area of 70,000 square kilometres (27,000 square miles), oval-shaped Lake Victoria is roughly the size of Ireland and is shared by Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya. It is not uncommon for ferries to capsize on the lake and the number of fatalities is often high due to a shortage of life jackets and the fact that many local people cannot swim. In 1966, more than 800 people lost their lives on Lake Victoria when the MV Bukoba sank off the mainland town of Mwanza, according to the Red Cross. It is not uncommon for ferries to capsize on Lake Victoria and the number of fatalities is often high due to a shortage of life jackets and the fact many local people cannot swim
Around 100 Syrians have been hospitalised with breathing difficulties in Aleppo, state media and a monitor said Sunday, after allegations rebels fired "toxic gas" on the regime-held city the previous day. A rebel alliance in nearby Idlib denied any involvement in the alleged attack. State news agency SANA reported "107 cases of breathing difficulties" in an updated toll on Sunday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor, said a total of 94 people were hospitalised, but most had been discharged and the 31 cases that remained were not critical. Late Saturday, state media accused rebels of launching an attack with "toxic gas" on the northern city in what health official Ziad Hajj Taha said was a "probable" chlorine attack. On Saturday, an AFP photographer saw men, women and children being treated at an Aleppo hospital for breathing difficulties. Some were sitting, while others lay down, breathing through with oxygen masks. The regime controls Aleppo city, but rebels and jihadists are present to the west of the city in the country's last major opposition bastion of Idlib. But a rebel coalition there on Sunday denied involvement. "We at the National Liberation Front deny the criminal, lying regime's allegations that revolutionaries targeted the city of Aleppo with any missiles and especially not any containing chlorine gas," it said. Other groups in the area include the jihadist-dominated Hayat Tahrir al-Sham alliance and the Al-Qaeda-linked Hurras al-Deen group, neither of whom have commented on the alleged attack. Over the course of Syria's seven-year war, international human rights groups have repeatedly accused belligerents -- especially the regime -- of carrying out chemical attacks. The conflict has killed more than 360,000 people and displaced millions, according to the Observatory. A Syrian boy receives treatment at a hospital in regime-controlled Aleppo on November 24, 2018 Map locating Aleppo, where around 100 Syrians have been hospitalised with breathing difficulties
Australian households have been issued a health warning over concerns of lead poisoning from plumbing systems.

The warning from the Environmental Health Standing Committee acknowledges lead is used in a range of home plumbing products including brass fittings and copper pipes which can dissolve into drinking water.

Australia currently allows 18 times more lead in brass fittings than the US and Canada.

Residents are being told to run their taps for at least 30 seconds first thing in the morning before using any water.

Health authorities are worried about the levels of lead in tap water. Source: Getty, file.

Hot water taps are advised to be avoided altogether when it comes to drinking and cooking water.

Bottle fed babies are reportedly at the highest risk due to the amount of water they intake with baby formula.

While the Environmental Health Standing Committee released the information in July, it wasnt highly publicised until now.

Research from Macquarie Universitys Dr Paul Harvey in 2016 found lead in more than half of water samples from hundreds of household taps, The Daily Telegraph reported.

One in 12 had levels above the maximum allowable level of 0.01 micrograms per 100ml, which was set in 1990.

The World Health Organisation has since said any traces of lead in water is unsafe.

In the wake of the warning, Australias allowable level will reportedly drop, with Dr Harvey predicting the new level will match international standards.

We are catching up with the rest of the world, he told The Daily Telegraph.

Concerns arent held for just water, with drinking containers also identified as harbouring high levels of bacteria.
The deadliest and most destructive fire in California's history was finally brought totally under control by firefighters, more than two weeks after it erupted, authorities said on Sunday. "#CampFire ... is now 100% contained," Cal Fire, the state fire authority, said in its latest bulletin on Twitter. The fire, which broke out on November 8, is so far known to have killed 87 people although another 249 people remain unaccounted for. That figure has fallen sharply over the weekend, having stood at 474 on Friday. Only 54 of the fatalities have been identified, according to the local sheriff's office in Butte County, around three hours drive north of San Francisco. A total of 153,336 acres were affected by the fire, with nearly 14,000 homes and hundreds of other structures destroyed. Heavy downfalls that have soaked the firezone in the past days helped douse the remaining flames, but also made it more difficult for crews searching for bodies. The Camp Fire was the second major blaze to hit California in recent weeks with a fire in the Malibu area near Los Angeles also killing three people. The smoke from the Camp Fire was so intense that schools in San Francisco had to close at one point earlier this month as did the city's famed cable car and Alcatraz Island. California's governor, Jerry Brown, has warned that the state can expect a growing number of major fires as a result of global warming. US President Donald Trump, who visited one of the worst-hit towns called Paradise last weekend, caused some consternation by saying that the fires were due in part to forestry mismanagement. Ahead of the announcement that the fire has been totally tamed, authorities had already begun letting residents return to some of the worst hit areas to inspect the damage to their homes. In a joint bulletin posted on Saturday, the police and fire service said evacuation orders that had in place for some areas over the last fortnight were being lifted for both residents and non-residents, while warning that essential services were still "very limited". "Prior to returning home, residents are encouraged to take steps to ensure they have food, water and fuel for their vehicles," said the statement. While Brown has warned that mega fires such as those in Butte and Malibu will cease to be "abnormal" events, the state has allocated about $1 billion over the next five years for fire prevention. Much of the cash will go on education and suppression activities such as clearing grasses and other vegetation, according to officials. But many experts are calling for more restrictions on housing being built in forests as a means of eliminating danger before the blazes even break out. A recent study found that one third of all US houses now are located in what researchers refer to as the wildland-urban interface, where houses and forest vegetation intermingle. While Trump has repeatedly expressed skepticism about global warming, a new report by his administration warned Friday that climate change will cost the US hundreds of billions of dollars annually by century's end unless drastic action is taken to cut carbon emissions. A burnt car at a gas station on November 11, 2018 after the "Camp" fire tore through the region near Pulga, east of Paradise, California A home is overshadowed by towering smoke plumes on November 8, 2018 as the Camp fire races through town in Paradise, California Firefighters battle flames at a burning apartment complex in Paradise, California on November 9, 2018 Noah Fisher (R) and Dusty Cope (L) look through the remains of their home that was destroyed by the Camp Fire in Paradise, California, in a photo taken on November 22, 2018
Chadian President Idriss Deby Itno is due to arrive in Israel on Sunday for a first-ever visit to the country, decades after diplomatic relations were severed between the two nations. It will be the first visit by a leader of the Muslim-majority West African nation to the Jewish State, leading Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to dub the occasion "historic" in a statement. The two leaders are to meet on Sunday, but further details of the visit have not yet been released. Diplomatic relations between Israel and Chad were severed in 1972, according to Netanyahu's office, which said the visit was down to the premier's diplomatic efforts. Chad is one of several West African states engaged in Western-backed operations against Boko Haram and Islamic State jihadists. Earlier this month, the United States donated military vehicles and boats worth $1.3 million (1.1 million euros) to Chad as part of the campaign against Islamist militancy in the country. Deby is one of Africa's longest-serving leaders. He took over the arid, impoverished nation in 1990 and won a disputed fifth term in April 2016. Chadian president Idriss Deby Itno is pictured at the presidential palace, on December 29, 2016, in N'Djamena
As soon as the train rumbles past, the men heave their home-made pushcarts back onto the tracks and passengers hop aboard -- cheating death and beating Manila's notorious traffic. Scores of commuters in the city of about 12 million are propelled to their destinations daily by so-called "trolley boys" pushing metal carts that ply a few segments of the sprawling capital's railroads. Passengers save time and money -- paying just 10 pesos (20 US cents) a trip -- but must face the constant risk of being crushed by a passing locomotive if they or the trolley boys don't move fast enough. "Our job here is very dangerous, you need to know what time the train will pass by," said 57-year-old Rene Vargas Almeria, who has been at it for nearly 20 years. Commuter trains travel nearly two dozen times a day along this 1.2-kilometre (one-mile) stretch of rail in the Santa Mesa district, where authorities grudgingly tolerate the carts due to their popularity. The trolley boys also ply a few other stretches of Manila's battered rail system, that carries an average of 45,000 passengers a day. Incredibly, casualties are relatively rare. Police do not keep statistics, but said they couldn't remember the last time a fatality occurred. The same cannot be said of close calls -- anyone who spends time pushing or riding the carts seems to have a hair-raising story to share. Rodolfo Maurello's scariest near-miss in almost two decades as a trolley boy came when he failed to notice the train behind him as he was pushing a cart packed with passengers. "The train was just metres away," the 60-year-old said, recalling how he turned around with only seconds to spare and waved it to a stop. "The sound of its brakes screeching was very loud." - 'I trust them' - Almeria has a similar tale, which happened one day when his mind wandered and his sole passenger was looking the other way. "I swung my head around and saw the train coming and yanked my trolley off the tracks," he added. "It was really close." On a good day the trolley boys can make up to $10, ferrying passengers seeking to escape Manila's infamous gridlock -- a collision of poor infrastructure, weak public transit and an increasing number of cars. Even as Manila's population grew 50 percent from 1995-2015, investment in the city's creaking transport system has not kept up, opening a gap for informal options like the pushcarts to fill. Most journeys lack life-or-death drama, with workers in office attire and students clutching their lunch bags and pecking at their smartphones, a tattered beach umbrella providing the only protection from the burning sun or frequent downpours. "There is no traffic," 46-year-old Noemi Nieves told AFP. "It is convenient for us and the fare is just right for our budget." Despite the risks and minimal comforts, commuters say the trolley carts offer a welcome shortcut to spending hours in traffic only to travel a few kilometres. Danica Lorraine, 25, shaves nearly an hour off her daily commute, spared from having to take two additional buses each way. "You just need to be cautious -- very, very, very cautious," she said. Kerkleen Bongalon, a teacher, has -- for the most part -- gotten over her unease at riding the carts. One stretch of her journey passes over the Pasig river -- with a 15-metre (50-foot) plunge between the rail tracks and the water below. "At first it was scary," she said. "I don't know how to swim so if something happens while we are on the bridge I really don't know what would happen." "But nothing will happen because the trolley boys know the time the train will pass by," she added. "I trust them". Scores of commuters are propelled to their destinations daily in Manila by so-called "trolley boys" Passengers save time and money, paying just 10 pesos (20 US cents) a trip, but there is constant risk Incredibly, casualties are relatively rare and police say couldn't remember the last fatality On a good day the trolley boys can make up to $10, ferrying passengers seeking to escape Manila's infamous gridlock A "trolley boy" couple waits for passengers in Manila, where investment in the city's transport system has not kept up with population growth
MUSHTAQ GHUMMAN



ISLAMABAD: ExxonMobil, the worlds largest publicly traded international oil and gas company is set to re-enter Pakistani market after being away for nearly three decades, well-informed sources in the Board of Investment (BoI) told Business Recorder.



According to the companys Chief Executive Officer Irtiza Sayyed, Pakistan is a very important market for ExxonMobil with existing and growing demand for energy as it continues its economic growth trajectory. A country with a population of 200 million plus individuals, 67 per cent of whom are under the age of 30, brings Pakistan at the crossroads of an emerging economy.



In a letter to the BoI, he said that ExxonMobil has been evaluating its re-entry into Pakistan for sometime and has been actively pursuing energy related opportunities for several years. Two of most significances are as follows: (i) ExxonMobil Exploration and Production Pakistan BV has completed acquisition of a 25 per cent interest in Block-G (offshore) for which Eni Pakistan Limited will continue to be the operator. The PPL and OGDC are 25 per cent shareholders apart from ENI and ExxonMobil. The first exploration well is planned for January 2019; (ii) ExxonMobil LNG Market Development Inc has partnered with Pakistani Consortium Energas to support the development of Pakistans third LNG import terminal with reliable supply of LNG from its joint ventures to private consumers consisting of IPPs and the CNG industry in the near term, with the desire to supply other sectors as they develop. Energas is sponsored by Younus Brothers (Lucky Cement), Saphire Group and Halmore Power Company.



Irtiza Sayyed further stated that the company is focused on re-entering the Pakistani market after being away for nearly three decades. The company has registered its local affiliate in Pakistan ExxonMobil Pakistan (Private) Limited and secured office space in Islamabad for head office, which marks the official return of ExxonMobil to Pakistan.



With the permanent presence on an ExxonMobil head office in Pakistan, our other business ventures will explore the feasibility of the opportunities in the energy sector, he said, adding that with success of these ventures, ExxonMobil could bring employment to hundreds of Pakistans technical training and worlds best industrial practices.



The companys Chairwoman Emma Cochrane, LNG Market Development, will be visiting Pakistani along with Michael Deal, Vice President ExxonMobil Exploration Co, as well as other senior officials.



We will unveil the ExxonMobil Pakistan plaque on November 27 to mark our return to Pakistan, signifying stability in the country, attractive policy and incentives enabling foreign direct investment by large corporates like ExxonMobil, Sayyed added.




A Queensland man allegedly mounted a footpath and struck a number of cars after leading police on a low-speed pursuit cross the Harbour Bridge and into Sydneys central business district.

Police say no one was injured on Saturday night when the 20-year-old drove in a stolen Toyota Landcruiser before returning to the road and damaging six cars that were stationary in CBD traffic.

Officers smashed the windows of the Landcruiser to arrest the man, from Mackay, who has been charged with multiple offences including unlicensed driving and vehicle theft.

The driver was apprehended after travelling south across the Harbour Bridge. Source: Sunrise

Police say they had earlier tried to halt the driver on Friday, after the stolen vehicle was spotted in Tenterfield, in NSWs northwest.

He allegedly failed to stop for a roadside breath test before police set chase. Yet police say the pursuit was terminate due to the dangerous manner of driving by the motorist.

The man was refused bail to appear before Parramatta Bail Court on Sunday.

 With AAP
European Union leaders on Sunday approved a historic Brexit deal with British Prime Minister Theresa May, and together warned rebellious MPs in London this was the best and only option available. Leaders meeting at a special Brussels summit expressed sadness at the "tragic" end of four decades of British EU membership, but said the terms of the withdrawal were now set. "This is the best deal possible for Britain, this is the best deal possible for Europe," European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said after the agreement was approved. Juncker emphasised that, after 17 months of gruelling negotiations, "this is the only deal possible", warning: "Those who think by rejecting the deal, they will have a better deal, will be disappointed." The agreement prepares for Britain's smooth exit on March 29, 2019, and sets out a vision for "as close as possible a partnership " afterwards. But May faces a major battle to get the agreement through the House of Commons, with a vote planned for next month. MPs of all parties -- including her own Conservatives -- say they will oppose it, with many holding out hope of a better alternative. "It will certainly not be renegotiated and there will be no further room for manoeuvre," said Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency. May herself repeated this, telling reporters in Brussels: "This is the best possible deal, it's the only possible deal." - 'Sad day' - Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said the 27 leaders had made a "conscious decision" not to discuss what might happen if MPs reject the deal. "There is no plan B," said Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, adding: "This is the max that we can all do." He was among several EU leaders to express their sadness that Britain was now a step closer to leaving the bloc. "This is a historic summit and also historic day that evokes ambivalent feelings," said German Chancellor Angela Merkel. "It is tragic that Great Britain is leaving the EU after 45 years." Asked if she was also sad, May -- who joined the other 27 for closed-door talks after they approved the deal -- replied: "No, but I recognise that others do." She added: "I am full of optimism about the future." - 'Time to move on' - The withdrawal agreement covers financial matters, citizens' rights, provisions to keep open Britain's border with Ireland and arrangements for a 21-month post-Brexit transition phase. It is accompanied by a short political declaration setting out hopes for future ties, including security, trade and migration. But, until it passes the British and the European parliaments, all sides are still planning for the potentially disastrous possibility that Britain leaves the EU with no new arrangements in place. European Parliament president Antonio Tajani said a "large majority" of MEPs were in favour of the deal. But in London, eurosceptic Conservatives and their Northern Irish allies have vowed to reject a deal they says keeps Britain too close to the EU. DUP leader Arlene Foster said Sunday that if it passed, her party would "review" its support May's government, instead calling for "a third way, a different way, a better way". But May repeated that it her deal delivered on the 2016 referendum vote to leave the EU and said it was "in the national interest for everyone to get behind it". "The British people don't want to spend any more time arguing about Brexit," she told reporters, adding: "It's time for our country to move on." - Tensions on fishing - The summit risked being derailed by a late objection to the deal by Spain over the British territory of Gibraltar. The impasse was resolved when Britain promised to continue bilateral talks with Madrid after Brexit. There are also concerns in EU states such as France, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands over fishing rights once Britain leaves the bloc's Common Fisheries Policy after the transition, which ends in December 2020. In an annex to the summit conclusions, the 27 EU leaders says a fishing deal based on "reciprocal access and existing quotas" should be agreed as a priority after Brexit. Theresa May met European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker on the eve of a summit to approve a historic Brexit deal The divorce deal took 17 months to negotiate The special summit was almost derailed by a row over Gibraltar
The Brexit deal marks a clear victory for Ireland -- one no-one in Britain saw coming and one which has raised the Irish government's standing at home and abroad. Ireland is tethered to Britain through a common history, enmeshed economies and a border with the British province of Northern Ireland that held up negotiations for months. Some British hardliners had argued that Ireland would simply follow along in any exit deal -- a sentiment that caused outrage among many Irish and helped harden resolve. At the centre of the dispute was a legal guarantee to keep the Irish border open, known as the "backstop", which Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar and his EU allies insisted on and Britain eventually and very reluctantly agreed to. Ireland was opposed to Brexit and is fearful both of the impact on trade with biggest economic partner Britain and any destabilising influence on the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which ended three decades of sectarian conflict. - Bi-partisan support - When the draft accord was published earlier this month, Irish politicians across the spectrum lauded it as the best possible outcome for the Republic in contrast to the deep divisions in the British parliament over its merits. "The Irish government's key preferences were all reflected in the divorce settlement," said Etain Tannam, a senior lecturer at Trinity College Dublin. "Bi-partisan party support in the Irish parliament for the government's Brexit policy has been noteworthy since the withdrawal process began," she said. In the tug of war of international interests, Ireland's government now has greater traction and is earning a reputation as a shrewd bargainer -- at the same time as Britain's prestige is on the wane. "The places have changed. Britain, not Ireland, is the relatively small and isolated country," Irish columnist Fintan O'Toole wrote in a column for the Guardian newspaper. "Ireland, not the British Empire, has on its side the power of a huge multinational bloc," he said, referring to Britain's previous dominant influence over Ireland. - 'Dangerous instability' - Whilst Britain has been plunged into political turmoil ever since the 2016 Brexit referendum, Irish politics has been imbued with a sense of unity in the national interest. Varadkar's centre-right Fine Gael minority government is theoretically vulnerable with its reliance on the centre-left opposition party Fianna Fail through a confidence and supply agreement. But the two age-old rivals agreed to extend their pact through until the end of Brexit negotiations. "An election during this critical time would create a dangerous instability," Fianna Fail leader Michel Martin wrote in an October letter to the prime minister. In polls, Varadkar's party holds a firm lead -- making him one of the few clear-cut winners in the Brexit morass. When the draft withdrawal deal was announced last week Varadkar abstained from a victory lap, issuing the staid remark that it was "one of the better days in politics". - Ireland 'at the heart of the EU' - Ireland had four priorities in negotiations -- to preserve the peace process, maintain common travel rights with the UK and minimise the economic impact of Brexit. The final one was to reaffirm the Republic's "place at the heart of the European Union". Mindful that it will soon be isolated at the edge of the trading bloc, the Irish government has doubled down on its membership of the union with statements of solidarity. And opinion polls suggest that calls by Brexiteers for Ireland to follow Britain in leaving the EU have fallen on deaf ears. A survey by pollsters Red C earlier this year found that 92 percent of the Irish population now support staying in the EU -- up from 88 percent last year. Ireland's Prime Minister Leo Varadkar is one of the winners in the Brexit morass following the announcement on the draft deal which generally took account of Dublin's concerns
French President Emmanuel Macron is to address his nation on Tuesday following persistent and sometimes violent protests over fuel taxes that are morphing into a movement against his business- and environment-friendly policies. Paris saw clashes between police and demonstrators Saturday on the Champs-Elysees where barricades were set on fire, luxury shop windows smashed, and traffic lights uprooted. Some 30 people were injured and 101 arrested, police said. The government blamed much of the violence on a small minority of "ultra-right" activists who shadowed the 8,000 demonstrators who were wearing the yellow, high-visibility vests that symbolise their week-long protests. Bruno Le Maire, the economy minister, acknowledged Sunday that "the current crisis goes far beyond just a question of fuel", adding that it was important that "work be better paid" to improve living standards. "It is time to listen to the French," he said on BFM television, suggesting that Macron would call for "grassroot debates" throughout the country on government policies. - French back protests - The presidential palace said Macron would make a speech on Tuesday on ecological transition and was expected to address the protests. Opposition leaders have been quick to note that the protests, mostly organised by grassroot protesters coordinating by way of social media rather than by traditional political parties or trade unions, have won wide popular support. "When a movement has the backing of three quarters of French people, you give them an answer, you don't just dismiss them as a gang of thugs," Olivier Faure, the opposition Socialist Party leader told Le Parisien newspaper. Guillaume Peltier, a leader of conservative The Republicans party, told the daily it was "all too easy to stigmatise the 'yellow vests' ... and equate their movement with that of a few unacceptable acts". Far-right leader Marine Le Pen voiced her full support for the protesters, telling the LCI channel the unrest revealed grievances held by "the immense majority of the French" who were being ignored by "a miniscule cast working only for itself". Former investment banker Macron was elected on a pledge to put more money in workers' pockets. But the effects of his pro-business reforms on unemployment and purchasing power have been limited so far. He has seen his popularity slide to just 25 percent, according to one poll a week ago, and the protests reflect broader frustration with a leader critics label as aloof and a "president of the rich". US President Donald Trump, whose initial friendly ties with Macron have chilled under the French leader's criticisms, sought to place the French protests in his frequent grumbling over US-EU trade relations and NATO spending. "The large and violent French protests don't take into account how badly the United States has been treated on Trade by the European Union or on fair and reasonable payments for our GREAT military protection," Trump said on Twitter. "Both of these topics must be remedied soon." - Macron 'acting like Louis XIV' - Macron himself had taken to Twitter on Saturday, to condemn the violence and cry "shame" on those who assaulted or intimidated policemen, journalists and other citizens. Several media workers based in France's southwestern city of Toulouse said Sunday they would boycott the "yellow vests" movement after five journalists were threatened or beaten by scores of demonstrators while covering protests in their region. Faced with the public anger, many politicians suggested Macron -- often perceived as aloof or arrogant -- might use his speech to announce measures softening the impact of rising petrol and diesel taxes and restore dialogue with trade unions. "When you act like Louis XIV, you can expect revolts (...) The French back the 'yellow vests' because Macron promised them a new world, and they see that his policies aren't delivering," Bruno Retailleau, who heads the Republican opposition in the Senate. The French "see environmental matters as an alibi for fiscal belt-tightening," he told le Journal du Dimanche newspaper. The "yellow vests" come overwhelmingly from non-urban areas of France. They feel overlooked and penalised by policies they see as being pushed through by elitist politicians in Paris. Many of the often low-income "yellow vest" protesters are particularly incensed at Macron's decision to hike anti-pollution taxes on diesel, while scrapping a wealth tax on the rich. Macron has seen his popularity slide to just 25 percent, according to one poll a week ago, and the protests reflect broader frustration with a leader critics label as aloof and "president of the rich" Police fired tear gas and water cannon on Saturday to break up protesters whose slogans and graffiti called for Macron to resign The government blamed much of the violence on a small minority of "ultra-right" activists who infiltrated some 8,000 demonstrators in their week-long protests against hikes in fuel tax
A man is accused of killing his girlfriend the same day he was released from prison, after serving three years behind bars, police have said.

David James Bohart, 34, was arrested at a hotel Friday on suspicion of second-degree murder in the death of Marika L. Jones, 49, identified by Tuscon News 4 as the mans girlfriend.

Tucson police said they found her body with stab wounds at a house two days earlier, as well as a file of prison records on Bohart.

David James Bohart is accused of killing his girlfriend the same day he was released from prison, after serving three years behind bars. Source: Tuscon Police Department

He had been released Monday from the Tucson state prison complex, where he served a three-year sentence for possession or use of dangerous drugs, the Arizona Department of Corrections website said.

Days later, a warrant was issued for his arrest when he failed to check in to a court-ordered treatment facility, police said.

Jones body was found after a man identifying himself as an interstate lawyer called police Wednesday with information about a possible killing at a Tuscon home.

A warrant was issued for David James Boharts arrest when he failed to check in to a court-ordered treatment facility. Source: Tuscon Police Department

Police said they were already investigating in the same area after a man using a false name called 911 to report he had just been released from prison and killed his girlfriend. The man didnt provide an address, and police werent able to immediately find anything.

Bohart served two previous stints in prison, according to the corrections department website. One was for a forgery conviction, and the other was another conviction for possession or use of dangerous drugs.

He remained in jail Saturday.
The partial reopening of Baghdad's high-security Green Zone to through traffic, planned for Sunday, has been postponed for several days, a government official said. The enclave has been home to Iraq's parliament, government offices, United Nations agencies and western embassies since the US-led invasion that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003. Earlier this week, Iraqi authorities began removing concrete barriers to ease access to a key route that cuts across the enclave, ahead of a planned opening on Sunday, reportedly at the orders of Prime Minister Adel Abdel-Mahdi. But on Sunday morning, a government official told AFP that "the reopening will not take place before the next two days, or perhaps by the end of the week". "An important thoroughfare will be opened, but we must secure its surroundings and seal access to perpendicular streets," the official said on condition of anonymity. The road leads from the banks of the Tigris River northwest through the Green Zone and into other parts of Baghdad. Authorities say allowing through traffic would ease congestion in other parts of the city. But on either side of the route lie the offices and homes of Iraqi officials and international diplomats. The UK embassy and the UN informed staff members they were implementing tougher safety measures inside the zone from Sunday, citing an "elevated threat level." The US embassy has declined to comment on the reopening. The Green Zone, ringed by blast walls topped with barbed wire and guarded by Iraqi security forces, remains inaccessible for most Iraqi citizens. Even if the planned opening goes ahead, Baghdad residents would not be able to access the rest of the zone by car or on foot. Abdel Mahdi, who was appointed premier in October, is keen to portray Iraq as fully secured, nearly a year after the Islamic State group was ousted from its last urban strongholds. Previous prime minister Haidar al-Abadi had also ordered the zone reopened in 2015, but it was sealed off again after only a few days. It was rumoured at the time that objections by the US embassy -- which has the tightest security regulations of all in the Green Zone -- were the reason. On Saturday, Baghdad's residents voiced scepticism that this time would be different. "It's been years, every day they say 'tomorrow, tomorrow' -- and nothing," said Ryad Ahmed as he passed one of the planned entrances to the zone. "We hope they'll reopen it, now that they've removed some t-walls, but we still don't know if it's true or not." Cars queue at one of the entrances to Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone on November 24, 2018 The sun sets behind a crane in Baghdad's Green Zone on June 28, 2018
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was due to visit Bahrain on Sunday on the second leg of a regional tour, his first since critic Jamal Khashoggi's murder. Prince Mohammed, who began his tour Thursday with a visit to Abu Dhabi, will hold talks with Bahrain's King Hamad, the state-run Bahrain News Agency said on Saturday. Quoting a royal court statement from Manama it said that the Saudi crown prince and King Hamad will discuss the "deep-rooted fraternal and historic relations binding the two brotherly countries and peoples, in addition to (the) latest regional, Arab and international developments". Saudi Arabia has been facing intense global criticism over the killing of insider-turned-critic Khashoggi in its Istanbul consulate on October 2. The murder of the journalist who wrote for The Washington Post has tipped the kingdom into one of its worst crises. He was killed and reportedly dismembered in what Saudi Arabia said was a "rogue" operation, but CIA analysis leaked to the US media pointed the finger at Prince Mohammed. Saudi Arabia has warned criticism of the crown prince is a "red line". On Wednesday Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said that calls for the crown prince to be held accountable for the grisly killing would not be tolerated. Prince Mohammed began his regional tour at the request of his father, King Salman, according to the Saudi Press Agency which said he would visit "brotherly" Arab countries. The tour started Thursday in the United Arab Emirates, a close ally that is part of a Saudi-led coalition battling Iran-aligned Huthi rebels in Yemen. And the prince is also set to travel to the Tunisian capital on Tuesday, a presidential source in Tunis told AFP. Prince Mohammed is expected to attend the G20 summit in Argentina next week. A handout picture provided by the Saudi Royal Palace on April 16, 2018, shows Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (L) shaking hands with Bahrain's King Hamad at the closing ceremony of the "Gulf Shield 1" military drills in eastern Saudi Arabia
An Adelaide man said he feared for his familys life after finding what he thought was an alligator in his backyard, and made a desperate call to a reptile catcher to come to the rescue.

Sharing a picture to social media of the reptile that apparently menaced the family, Snake Catchers Adelaide recounted the phone conversation.

I have an alligator in my backyard, the man told the reptile hunter.

Despite the expert assuring the man he was likely mistaken, the Malaysian expat was adamant his life was in danger.

No no no its an alligator and Im very afraid for my family, he apparently told the catcher on the phone.

When the expert arrived at the mans Adelaide home, they found the menacing reptile was a harmless lizard.

An Adelaide man said he feared for his familys life after finding what he thought was an alligator in his backyard, and made a desperate call to a reptile catcher to come to the rescue. Source: Snake Catchers Adelaide / Facebook

They said the family was still afraid of the creature even after they were reassured it was definitely not an alligator.

They wouldnt have a bar of it, the catcher wrote on Facebook, sharing a picture of the critter.

Admitting the gaffe was a bit hard to believe, the catcher defended the man saying the family had only arrived from Malaysia two weeks earlier, and not too familiar with our native animals.

They are new to Australia I suggested they educate themselves on our wildlife, they added.

While many have thought the mistaken identity was hilarious, some have defended the familys overreaction.

If theyve been here two weeks I can understand their fear, people do tend to talk Australia up as THE most deadly place ever, one wrote. Poor buggers.

Others were not so sympathetic.

You cant be serious. We dont even have alligators in this country, one person wrote.

The picture was shared to Facebook two years ago, however the mistake sparked renewed attention yesterday with a handful of people having a chuckle and commenting on the thread.
Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez promised on Friday to continue investing in Cuba on the second day of his historic visit to the island nation, the first by a Spanish leader in 32 years. Speaking at a forum of 200 Spanish and Cuban companies, including Spanish telecommunications giant Telefonica and airline Iberia, Sanchez said his country was "the island's main European partner, accounting for 40 percent of the market." "The Spanish government will continue investing in Cuba," he said, while vowing to find "a solution to the problem of defaults" faced by Spanish companies on the island. With trade worth $1.3 billion in 2017, Spain is Cuba's third largest trading partner after China and Venezuela. The island nation is seeking closer ties with the European Union as its relationships with the United States and Brazil sour on the back of the elections of conservative leaders President Donald Trump and president-elect Jair Bolsonaro. Cuba's President Miguel Diaz-Canel said on Twitter that "the relationship between Cuba and Spain is strengthening," and added that his meeting with Sanchez on Thursday had been "friendly." The two countries' leaders have signed accords to establish bilateral consultations and cultural cooperation. Cuba has been badly hit by the economic meltdown in its socialist ally Venezuela, its primary source of fuel. Meanwhile, a spat with Brazil over a medical aid program that has seen thousands of Cuban doctors head to the South American country to work could cost Havana $400 million in revenues, according to a diplomatic source. Cuba is in need of cash and in February will adopt a new constitution that should facilitate foreign investment. In Madrid, government spokeswoman Isabel Celaa told reporters the visit was "without a doubt one of the most important trips taken by the prime minister," and described Spain as a "bridge" in Cuba-EU relations. She said the two leaders also spoke at length about climate change and renewable energy with a view to promoting investment in Cuba. As for the thorny issue of human rights, Celaa said they agreed to create a bilateral commission that would meet regularly. Spain Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez (L) meets with Cuba President Miguel Diaz-Canel during the former's historic visit to the island
President Maithripala Sirisena on Sunday reignited the power struggle that has crippled Sri Lanka's government for more than a month, vowing never to reappoint arch-rival Ranil Wickremesinghe as prime minister. Wickremesinghe's party has a majority in parliament and Sirisena's bid to bring back the country's former strongman Mahinda Rajapakse has already failed. But Sirisena choked back tears in a meeting with foreign correspondents as he accused Wickremesinghe, who he sacked on October 26, of being "highly corrupt". "Even if the UNP has the majority I told them not to bring Ranil Wickremesinghe before me, I will not make him prime minister," he said, referring to Wickremesinghe's United National Party. "Not in my lifetime," he added. Sirisena dismissed Wickremesinghe following a host of personality and political clashes since they formed a coalition in 2015. He named Rajapakse as new premier and tried to dissolve parliament but the Supreme Court and legislators blocked the president's moves. Wickremesinghe, who occupies the prime minister's residence, and Rajapakse, who has the premier's official offices, have both refused to back down. But the country officially has no prime minister, heightening international fears about Sri Lanka's stability and looming foreign debt repayments. Sirisena told foreign correspondents at his official residence that he will appoint a commission to investigate corruption under Wickremesinghe since January 2015. "He is corrupt. His economic policies are not good for local industries. He pursed an extremely liberal form of government that is not compatible with our culture." Sirisena fought back tears as he recalled how he asked Wickremesinghe to step down in February when their respective parties were beaten in local council elections. "I told him that we lost the election because his economic policies had failed. I told Ranil in this very room to step down, but he refused," Sirisena said. He added that there had been "over 100 instances" of open clashes between the two and that their power struggle had become an open secret in the cabinet. Sri Lanka's parliament meets on November 27 and 29 to discuss a motion by the UNP to cut off government spending. Government finances will stall on January 1 unless a 2019 budget is passed. If the UNP wins the vote, it could force Rajapakse to withdraw his claim to the leadership, and make Sirisena to name a prime minister from the party. "If the UNP shows a majority, I believe Mahinda will do the right thing (and stand down)," said Sirisena, although he reiterated that he would still not reappoint Wickremesinghe. Sirisena insisted that it was not a personality clash but a "disagreement over policy." Asked if he could constitutionally ignore the leader of the largest single party in parliament, Sirisena said he would rely on tradition. "There is a tradition that the person appointed PM should be able to work with the president. I cannot work with Ranil. The UNP will have to bring somebody else." Sri Lanka's President Maithripala Sirisena waves to supporters at a rally in Colombo on November 5, 2018
With banners and slogans against sexism and related crimes, thousands protested in Spanish cities on Sunday to mark international day for the elimination of violence against women. Protesters took to the streets in Madrid, Barcelona, Sevilla, Valencia, and Bilbao, reflecting how the fight to stop violence against woman has become a national cause in Spain. "We are here for all those woman who have been murdered, in Madrid and in Spain. We are taking it very personally," said Rosa Orea at the Madrid rally. Since 2003, 972 woman have been killed by their partners or ex-partners in Spain, 44 of those so far in 2018, according to government figures. "The situation has changed for our generation, but we have to keep fighting, because this (violence) happens more than it seems," said Sofia Serrano a Madrid student. Violence against women has been a key political cause in Spain since 2004 when new laws were introduced against the crime. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Sunday reinterated his government's "commitment" to eradicate violence against women and "culture" of sexism. Protests took to the streets in Madrid, Barcelona, Sevilla, Valencia, and Bilbao, reflecting how the fight on violence against woman has become a national cause in Spain Since 2003, 972 woman have been killed by their partners or ex-partners in Spain, 44 of those so far in 2018, according to government figures
Mexico deported scores of Central American migrants arrested after hundreds forced their way through a Mexican police blockade and headed for the United States but were met with tear gas and rubber bullets. Around 500 men, women and children, part of a caravan of roughly 5,000 mainly Hondurans who have been trekking toward the US for weeks, scrambled over a rusted metal fence and surged into a concrete riverbed toward San Diego on Sunday. The group was stopped by a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire and US Border Patrol agents firing tear gas and rubber bullets. At least one man was wounded. Chief Patrol Agent Rodney Scott told CNN that "numerous" migrants -- mainly men -- had made it across, however, and 42 of them were arrested. Mexico's National Institute of Migration Commissioner Gerardo Garcia confirmed the 98 arrests on his country's side, saying there were "instigators" in the migrant caravan pushing people to illegally cross the border. The incident was the most serious flashpoint in a weeks-long crisis that US President Donald Trump used to drum up support in this month's midterm elections. Trump hit out again by threatening a permanent closure of the frontier, and defended the use of tear gas by US border patrol, saying it was "very safe." "They had to use (it) because they were being rushed by some very tough people and they used tear gas and here's the bottom line: nobody's coming into our country unless they come in legally," Trump told reporters. "The tear gas is a very minor form of the tear gas itself. It's very safe," he later added. Mexico sent a diplomatic note requesting that US authorities "conduct a thorough investigation of the events during which non-lethal US weapons were used in Mexico." Trump also claimed, without providing evidence, that some people at the border he dubbed "grabbers" clutch unrelated children to make it safer for themselves and increase their chances of getting into the US. "They grab a child because they think they'll have a certain status by having a child. You know, you have certain advantages in terms of our crazy laws that frankly Congress should be changing," he said. - 'Broken hearts and hopes' - Most of the migrants stumbled back into camp in the northwestern Mexican city of Tijuana, dirty, scared and with ripped clothes. "We're here with broken hearts and hopes," said Andy Colon, a 20-year-old woman who traveled from Honduras with her sister and two children. "We were deluded into believing that we had already reached the United States, and that they would grant us asylum," Colon told AFP. The San Ysidro border post across from Tijuana -- the busiest crossing on the US-Mexico border -- was closed to traffic and pedestrians for several hours following the incident. Trump, who for weeks has been condemning the caravan, lashed out once more. "Mexico should move the flag waving migrants, many of whom are stone cold criminals, back to their countries," he tweeted. "Do it by plane, do it by bus, do it anyway you want, but they are NOT coming into the U.S.A. We will close the border permanently if need be. Congress, fund the WALL!" Trump said, referring to his central election pledge to build a wall across the US-Mexico border. - 'Lots of kids fainted' - Many of the migrants say they are fleeing violence and poverty in Honduras in search of asylum north of the border. Around 1,000 migrants, including women and young children, had been holding a peaceful midday demonstration in Tijuana when half of the group bolted toward the border. The sudden rush overwhelmed the Mexican police, who were deployed with full riot gear. Several hundred made it over the first barrier, with video clips posted on Twitter showing crowds of people dashing across a shallow concrete riverbed toward the United States. When they neared the second fence, US border agents fired tear gas and rubber bullets at them as helicopters buzzed overhead. People covered their faces to protect themselves from the acrid gas, as mothers clutched their young children and fled back to Mexico for safety. "We were told that if we crossed (the first barrier) they would give us asylum, because we were already in the United States," said Flor Jimenez, a 32-year-old Honduran woman who was among those who turned back along with her husband, sister and young daughter. "But now it seems that they want to kill us, and we got very scared." US Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen accused the migrants of seeking to harm US border patrol personnel "by throwing projectiles at them." But one Honduran man, who did not give his name, told AFP that American officers had "got upset because we were close to the border." "The alarm went off and they began throwing tear gas at us. A lot of people started to go down. A person got hit and lots of kids fainted. So some people got rocks and threw them because many kids were fainting," he said. Another Honduran who gave his name as Wilmer said "they started throwing tear gas and they hit a journalist in the head." A third man, who requested anonymity, showed AFP what he described as injuries from rubber bullets. He had two fresh round bruises in his abdomen. - Asylum demands - Trump has deployed nearly 6,000 troops to the border, on top of more than 2,000 members of the National Guard, but Scott said the Department of Defense was not involved in Sunday's engagement. To enter the US legally, migrants must apply for asylum, but the wait for those requests to be processed can last up to a year. The Washington Post reported Saturday that the Trump administration had gained the support of Mexico's incoming government for a plan to require asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for their applications to be processed. A Central American migrant seeking to reach the United States, while holding a child, walks next to a line of police officers outside of a temporary shelter in Tijuana, Mexico near the US border on November 26, 2018 A family from Honduras poses outside a temporary shelter in Tijuana, Mexico Map locating Tijuana, where US border officials temporarily closed a busy border crossing point on November 25, 2018 US border forces drove the migrants back with tear gas A group of Central American migrants -- mostly from Honduras -- cross the almost dry riverbed of the Tijuana River in an attempt to get to El Chaparral port of entry, in Tijuana, Mexico, on November 25, 2018 US security personnel guard the United States-Mexico border at the San Ysidro border crossing point on November 25, 2018
It wasn't the outcome she wanted, but Dana Balter is pleased with the movement her campaign built and the conversation she helped start in the 24th Congressional District.

Balter, a Democrat, lost to Republican U.S. Rep. John Katko by six percentage points, 52 to 46 percent. For Katko, it was his closest race in three elections.

In an interview with The Citizen, Balter shared her initial thoughts about her campaign, its successes and whether she might try again in 2020.

Balter launched her campaign in September 2017. She won the Democratic Party's designation in February. With the rest of the Democratic field exiting the race, she could shift her focus to the general election.

That changed, however, in early April. Juanita Perez Williams, who declined to run for Congress, reconsidered. At the urging of national Democrats, she entered the 24th district race and forced a Democratic primary.

It was a test for Balter, who was supported by the local Democratic Party and progressives in central New York. While Perez Williams had significant financial backing from top Democrats in Washington, Balter had grassroots support. With her volunteer base, she was able to win the primary by 25 points.

Even though it was clear Balter had the campaign infrastructure to compete in the general election, the view from national Democrats was that she lacked the funding to mount a serious challenge.

In October, Balter altered that perception. She announced her campaign raised more than $1.5 million in the third quarter  the most raised in a single quarter by any Syracuse-area congressional candidate. The final numbers won't be known for a few months, but she is on track to be the best funded congressional challenger in this region's history.

Looking back on her campaign, Balter described it as a "phenomenal experience." She is grateful for the thousands of people she met during her 14-month run. Those meetings, she said, reaffirmed that we are more alike than not.

"We are full of really amazing, good people who are passionate and committed to their communities and to each other," she said.

While she was defeated, she said the most exciting election night result was the turnout. Absentee ballot results aren't in from all four counties, but turnout was high on election night.

To put the turnout figures in perspective: In 2014, there were 203,417 votes cast in the 24th district race. This year, there were 247,632.

The turnout numbers encouraged Balter, but she was also energized by the scores of individuals who volunteered during the campaign. Her campaign had more than 1,900 volunteers by the end of the election.

"The number of people engaged in the election process itself is like nothing I've ever seen before," she said.

A consolation prize for Balter was winning Onondaga County. The election night tally found she narrowly won the 24th district's largest county by one percentage point. It was the first time Katko has lost a county in three congressional elections.

But Katko had a strong showing in the district's three more rural counties. In Cayuga, Oswego and Wayne counties, he won each by 22 percentage points.

Balter, who campaigned often in Cayuga, Oswego and Wayne counties, had a different view of the results. In Wayne County, for example, she said she outperformed the Democrats' performance there in 2016 by nearly 10 points.

In Cayuga and Wayne counties, Balter nearly equaled Colleen Deacon's vote totals. That's impressive when you consider Deacon ran in a presidential election year.

"I think what it shows is all the things that I've been saying all along is that you have to show up and listen to people," Balter said. "It's not OK to write anybody off in our community. It just isn't, especially if you want to represent or you want to be a leader. You have got to show up. You have got to listen. It's not enough to tell people that you care about them or what they have to say or what they need. You have to demonstrate it."

She added later, "I think on every measure we made a lot of progress. There were a lot of successes there."

With those successes, there is an obvious question: Will Balter run again in 2020?

There is a precedent for a second try. In 2006, then-Democratic challenger Dan Maffei narrowly lost to longtime Republican U.S. Rep. Jim Walsh. When Maffei decided to run again in 2008, Walsh opted to retire. Maffei won the election and served one term in Congress.

For Balter, it's too early for a decision on 2020. She wants to reflect on the 2018 campaign before looking ahead to the future. But she pledged to remain engaged in local politics.

"Obviously that's something that's incredibly important to me," she said. "I think we have built a really powerful movement here and I have no intention of walking away from that."

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Over 80 people from central New York attended Veterans Day services in Victory. Although it was a cold, fall day, the enthusiasm of children wearing patriotic ribbons and pins made it a very special day for veterans and participants.

The LaBuff-Cole American Legion Post No. 911 of Cato performed military services at our flagpole lowering the flag to half-staff at 11 a.m. and raising it to full staff at noon. Commander Trevor Cady spoke about all the Legion activities and programs they support from Little League to Boys/Girls State to veterans organizations. Their current special project is helping to clean up and research the cemetery just east of Cato on Route 370 that contains the graves of some Revolutionary War veterans.

At precisely 11 a.m., three volunteers  in the picture with today's column, from left, David Tartleton, Vietnam veteran from Auburn; Mellony Carner from Montezuma; and Barbara Cady, Legion auxiliary, from Cato  rang bells to signify the World War I Armistice, which was signed exactly 100 years ago on Nov. 11, 1918. These Bells of Peace were to toll all over our nation at 11 a.m. on Veterans Day.

Pastor Greg Settle of the Armour of Light Church in Victory gave a most-inspirational, uplifting patriotic message to us and to our nation. Occupying the site of the previous Presbyterian Church of Victory, the Armour of Light Church has an enthusiastic approach to evangelism, discipleship and adventure. They help support over 50 missionaries around the world. Pastor Settle is certainly our armour of light. He has given us messages on Memorial Day and Veterans Day for the past few years.

We were delighted to honor Ken King, our oldest World War II veteran, upon his 98th birthday and his 65th wedding anniversary with his wife, Adrice. He received a special certificate presented to him by Michael Wiggins, town supervisor, and me.

Nancy Blanchard Soules and I played several patriotic songs on guitar to which our audience was welcome to sing along. We honored all five branches of the military  Army, Navy, Coast Guard, Air Force and Marines  during our armed forces salute.

We would like to thank everyone for attending our Veterans Day program in the town of Victory. We thank all veterans for their service to our country. Thank you to the Victory firemen for the use of the fire hall, setting up and cleaning up, and for Robin Bartholomew and her 4-H Club for providing refreshments every year. Thank you to Michael Wiggins, supervisor, and the Victory Town Board for their financial support of our Veterans Day event.

Coming up: Saturday, Dec. 15 is the Wreaths Across America program in Auburn.

Beverly Coleman Sayles is the Victory town historian and a New York state registered historian, and can be reached at (315) 730-3183 or beverlycs65@gmail.com.

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I freely admit that it was not really a surprise revelation, but I have been told that catchy headlines will attract people to click on the article. I'm not selling anything (yet) but I do crave the attention. Bobby Tony

Browsing my old College Yearbook  A surprise revelation

While visiting my brother with my family for the holiday, I found my old College Yearbook. Since we both attended the same college, Georgia State College in Atlanta, Georgia, I assume that the yearbooks were consolidated at some point while cleaning out our parents basement.

Georgia State was and is an Urban College (now University) in downtown Atlanta. It was both a day college as well as a night school for working students. We both started out in the day school but eventually switched to night school as financing required we both find full time employment. Jim is five years older than I, so we never actually attended at the same time.

The yearbook was named the "Rampway", because one of the three buildings (Kell Hall) that housed the college in the 1960s was formerly a parking lot with drive ramps between each floor. It was a perfect skateboard highway between classes long before the Segway was invented. I have written about the parking lot building before HERE.

While browsing through the year book, I paused at the pages dedicated to the local Campus Newspaper. It was called The Signal since 1941 after numerous name changes as the college evolved into more than a local college. The masthead has changed over the years but it has always maintained the Urban Motif as a reminder of its Concrete Heritage.

What attracted me was the collage of the typewriter and Signal staff which dates the picture as a anachronism of photo manipulation. Several things stood out as somewhat analogous to the era.

Photoshop was yet to be invented so tape, razor and camera were needed to make the Royal Typewriter collage.

College students had the same wish to change the world in 1965 ( and way before I suspect).?

Journalism attracts people who want to change the world, before, then and now.

There was a time when the use of masculine was accepted as inclusive of both genders.

Extract in text format from Image above:



"A person can base his opinions only on the information available to him. Decisions cannot be made validly until all sides of an issue have been weighed. News is that event or occurrence affecting a number of persons and altering, to some extent, the status quo. This news being presented impartially, accurately and maturely is the essential component of an informed society. It is the belief of the SIGNAL that the college student should be better informed of his immediate academic environment, his community, and the world in which his future is to be spent. Whether it is a local college affair or one of national or international significance, the Student at Georgia State has not only his privilege, but also his responsibility, as an American to be aware of a changing world."

I would note that in today's IDENTITY CONSCIOUS WORLD , this statement would be reviled as a sexist example of the male dominated era that was 1965. There is one other aspect of the picture which I am also sure would be a point of contention for Liberals who have residual guilt, but I will let your internal balance scale deal with that.

What I don't think would be considered relevant is the basic premise of the statement:

Decisions cannot be made validly until all sides of an issue have been weighed.

I guess it would not be a Bobby Tony article without some form of political reference to current events. I suspect that Jim Acosta of CNN, did not attend Georgia State College. A quick web search revealed that he attended James Madison University in Virginia. Like many students, I also suspect he slept through that part of journalism class that discussed the motto of the University.

KNOWLEDGE IS LIBERTY
ABC News(WASHINGTON) -- A federal judge has rejected last-ditch efforts by one-time Donald Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos to avoid his looming prison term.



He is scheduled to surrender to a federal penitentiary in Wisconsin on Monday for a two-week sentence.



Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI last year about his contacts with Russians and at the time agreed to cooperate with the Mueller investigation. In September, a judge sentenced him to 14 days in prison  a sentence due to begin Monday.



But last week, with a new team of lawyers, the man once derided by a former Trump campaign adviser as a "coffee boy" filed a last-ditch appeal with a Washington federal court Friday to try to forestall his looming stint in a Midwestern medium-security penitentiary.



In the court filing, Papadopoulos argued that the court should wait until an appeals court hears arguments in a separate case challenging the validity of the special counsel. Attorneys in that case, which was brought by a man fighting a subpoena from the special counsel, are scheduled to have briefs filed to the court the same day Papadopoulos is due to surrender for prison.



In countering the new appeal, the team of special counsel Robert Mueller argued that Papadopoulos had long since passed the date by which he was entitled to make this argument. His agreement to plead guilty expressly prohibited him from mounting an appeal on any grounds other than newly discovered evidence or ineffective assistance of counsel.



"The defendant received what he bargained for, and holding him to it is not a hardship," the prosecutors wrote in the filing.



Prosecutors also reminded the judge of the contrite appearance Papadopoulos made before he was sentenced to two weeks in prison  a term far shorter than the possible six-month stretch he was facing.



"He said that his parents raised him 'with the principles of honesty and respect for the law,' and when he lied to the FBI, he 'cast aside those principles and compromised the person who,'" prosecutors reminded the judge. "The defendant further stated that, 'standing here in front of the Court and you, your Honor, and the public today signals to all future and current witnesses in this investigation that this investigation has global implications and that the truth matters.'"



The Papadopoulos appeal came after he spent weeks on social media and in TV appearances challenging the validity of the case against him. He did not say why he waited to mount the challenge in court.



On Wednesday, attorneys for Papadopoulos asked the judge to delay his sentence until the separate legal matter challenging the validity of the special counsel investigation had been resolved. That case was brought by Andrew Miller, a former associate of Trump confidant and political provocateur Roger Stone, who has refused a demand from prosecutors to appear before a grand jury. Miller is objecting, his lawyers said, in order to mount a broad legal challenge to the legitimacy of the special counsel probe.



Miller's attorney, Paul Kamenar, told ABC News in August that he believes Miller's constitutional battle could head all the way to the Supreme Court. He has argued that Mueller was not a constitutionally valid special counsel because he should be considered a "principal officer of the United States" because of his broad mandate, and therefore should have been appointed by the president. The Department of Justice has taken the position that he is an "inferior" officer who could be appointed by a deputy, in this case, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.



To date, Millers argument has not carried the day. Attorneys for Miller tried unsuccessfully two times in July to quash a subpoena requiring Miller to testify before the special counsel's grand jury, arguing that Mueller lacked the constitutional authority to issue it.



Prosecutors in the Papadopoulos matter said he had months to ask whether the Miller challenge could impact his own case  noting that the first court opinion addressing the validity of the Special Counsel's appointment was publicly released on August 2, 2018  "well in advance of his sentencing, and the litigation the defendant cites as his ostensible reason for delay has long been the subject of much public commentary."



Prosecutors also note that Papadopoulos has failed to establish "that he would be able to surmount the procedural hurdles of his guilty plea, his plea-agreement waivers, and his failure to raise the issues in a timely manner, as would be needed to show that the issue is likely to result in reversal."

Copyright  2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
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In just two years, Ricardo Diaz executed an almost impossibly rapid career transformation. Today, he has a new career as a Machine Learning Engineer in Peru, and this is his story.

Ricardo Diaz is a machine learning engineer. He works for a great company in Peru, and hes a graduate of no less than four Nanodegree programs! By all measures, hes a success. But just two years ago, it was a different story. He was still in Venezuela, struggling to learn new skills. He was short of money, and his prospects for making a full-time salary werent great.

How did he manage such a rapid and complete career transformation? We chatted with Ricardo recently to find out.

Great to talk to you Ricardo! Can you set the stage for us? Where does this amazing transformation begin?

Well, computers were always something I was interested in growing up. So when the time came, I enrolled in a Bachelors in Computer Engineering program. This was at a university back home in Venezuela. But there werent really ever any classes. Back then, things were bad economically, and at my university, it meant that classes would just stop because teachers were protesting. It was a mess. And even when classes happened, it never felt like I was learning anything meaningful that would help my career.

So you took it upon yourself to try and learn some new programming skills?

Thats right. I started looking online and tried a few different free programs to learn some programming languagessome HTML, some CSS, some Python. I really liked it, but I wanted to go beyond just learning coding and start learning how to build projects that would help my career. Thats when I began looking at whether I could find more serious resources online.

Is that when you found Udacity?

Yes. From the homepage onwards, it was amazing. I saw all the programs, and the experience on offer was exactly what I wanteda program that could give me career-ready resources and experience. I thought I already knew how to code, but I didnt know how to build anything, so I wanted real projects to practice my developing skills.

What program did you enroll in first to start building the projects you wanted to create?

I started with the Full Stack Web Developer Nanodegree program. I was so excited about working on it that I finished it in just one month. I literally spent all day, every day working on the content. It was my first time actually coding anything like the projects, and I was just so excited.

From day one, I was building something, coding something, doing quizzes. From the first lesson, it felt like I was doing what I had wanted to do for so long.

So there you were, just a month later, a graduate of your first Nanodegree program. What happened next?

I started signing up to some online freelance sites, and tried to get freelancing work with what I had learned in my program. I put up some examples of the projects Id made, and I got a couple of jobs because of that. I managed to save some money.

Money that you put towards more learning?

Yes! I think in maybe November of the same year, I saw Udacity had a new upcoming programDeep Learning Foundations. I didnt really know much about the field back then, but I loved just the basic idea of machine learning and deep learning. I did a little reading, then I saved some more money, and then I enrolled in the program in January of last year.

Were you able to apply the same degree of intensity to your studies?

I was. I was doing it all day, every moment I had. I was working through the content so quickly, that I sometimes got ahead of the content developers! As soon as new content was published, Id start immediately and finish it as soon as possible. In fact, I completed the whole thing so fast, I was told I was the first person to graduate the program!

You were focused on freelance work at the timedid you new skills lead to more opportunities?

Yes, through all of my programs, I was doing freelance work. Every time I learned something new, Id add it to my freelance portfolio on Upwork. And pretty much all of it was useful for getting more workmost of the time, I found freelance work that was exactly the same as the projects I was building in my Nanodegree programs. Especially after I had experience with machine learning. The skills I learned there were really in demand, and the work really helped a lot when I was struggling financially. It meant I could save up to enroll in the Robotics Software Engineer AND the AI Nanodegree programs right after I graduated the Deep Learning program!

Four Nanodegree programs! You must have become quite a familiar face in the various community spaceswhat was your experience like when it came to engaging with the Udacity community?

The community is really great with Udacityyou can put your problem in a community channel, and someone will nearly always answer you really quickly. You can learn so much from the other students. I also really liked trying to teach others, because it helped me understand the concepts better. Id review the projects of fellow students, or help them with a code question, and I would learn as much from explaining a concept to them as from the program content alone!

I understand you learned about your current role while you were studying in yet another Nanodegree program. Tell us how that happened.

About six months ago, I had enrolled in the Computer Vision Nanodegree program, and I got a call from a company that had found me on LinkedIn. Id used Udacitys career support a lot particularly the LinkedIn and resume reviews, to make sure my profile presented my experience properly. And I guess that worked! They reached out from Peru, where theyre based, and invited me to interview for a machine learning role.

Can you tell us about your experience in that interview?

During the interview, I felt they took my credentials very seriously. They asked me about my projects, and the process Id used to work through challenges while I was building them. And they were also really interested in my experience as a freelancerwhat I had worked on, and the things Id built. Having project experience was so important.

What happened after you spoke with them?

I had a couple more interviews, then they offered me the job! They sponsored me to come to Peru and start working for themas a machine learning engineer! Its my first full-time job, and the first time Ive ever worked in an office. Its great! And Ive already been given a raise and a promotion too! Ive only been here five months!

So fantastic! But does this success mean youre taking a break from your studies?

Not at all. Ive still got Term 2 of the Robotics Engineer Nanodegree program to complete, and Im enrolled in the Cybersecurity program, to build my skills in that area. Im also a mentor and beta tester for the Cybersecurity and AI for Trading Nanodegree programs, so Im still learning every day! And Im actually still attending my university online, to finish my Bachelors. Ive stayed enrolled the whole time.

So you actually landed your current machine learning role without having a university degree?

I did. Which was pretty incredible when I think about it now. Most of the job postings Id seen for machine learning seemed to be looking for Masters or PhDs. But that didnt matter in the end, because I had the skills and the experience to impress my recruiters. And since I joined, Ive always been treated exactly the same as my coworkers who have more degrees than me.

Youve come so far, so quickly; have you had chance to catch your breath and think about what your longer-term career ambitions are yet?

I eventually want to go to Silicon Valley. Thats one of my dreams, and Im trying to make that happen. My main goal in life is to try to change the world in a meaningful way with what I do. And I know that over there, in California, in Mountain View, thats where people change the worldjust like Udacity changed mine!

But Im really thankful for where I am in my career now. Peru is greata little colder than Venezuela, but really interesting. I have great coworkers, and Im enjoying my work so much.



Were just astounded by your story Ricardo. Students like yourselfwho commit to learning new skills, who study hard, and who make things happenare why each of us at Udacity are thankful for the work we get to do. We cant wait to hear what you do next, and have no doubt well see you changing the world in Mountain View very soon!

Start Learning
The impacts of U.S. trade tensions with China are starting to show up in the numbers.

According the Census Bureau, an unbiased provider of trade data, in September of 2018 the United States imported over $50 billion in goods from China. Compare that figure to 2017, when it was a little over $45 billion. That $50 billion is an all-time monthly record.

A look at the Census Bureau statistics for manufacturers inventories shows where many of those imports are going. Year over year, US manufactures inventories are up 6.7%.

There will be no debate here on whether or not the tariffs imposed by the Trump administration are a good or bad. What is clear is that because of the tariff situation uncertainty is creeping into the supply chain. Uncertainty makes me nervous.

Anybody who relies on China as a source of supply is looking at the risk profile. Long term, there is a need to realign global supply chains with a more deliberate view toward supply chain risk. Tariff uncertainty is a part of that equation.

We are already seeing the pragmatists react to the uncertainty. They are stuffing their DCs, as shown in the Census Bureau numbers. There is no choice but to hedge against supply chain risk by stuffing the pipeline with inbound supplies.

Build a buffer, stuff the warehouses, and buy a hedge.

Then say a prayer that the politicians in Washington and Beijing find a way out.
Ted Kramer is CEO and co-founder of Six4Three, a creepy US-based machine-learning startup whose debut product was a Facebook app called Pinkini that let you search your friends' photos for pictures of them in bikinis; when Facebook shut down the app after a terms-of-service change, Six4Three sued Facebook and obtained a key trove of internal Facebook documents through the discovery process.

Kramer was in London this week for work, and somehow the UK Parliament got wind of the fact that he was carrying a laptop with all those discovery documents, which have been sealed by order of a California judge. Parliament has been repeatedly trying to get Zuckberg to testify before it, even issuing threats that many believed to be hollow.





The Conservative MP Damian Collins (chair of the culture, media and sport select committee) asked Kramer to turn over the Facebook docs, and Kramer demurred, saying that turning them over would risk a citation for contempt from the San Mateo Superior Court. Collins insisted, and then despatched a Parliamentary serjeant at arms to Kramer's hotel and dragged him before Parliament, where he was threatened with fines and arrest if he didn't turn over the docs.





Kramer surrendered the docs to Parliament.





The documents are said to detail Zuckerberg's direct knowledge of, and participation in, the privacy loophole that Cambridge Analytica exploited.

Facebook's counsel have sent a letter to Parliament asking them not to review the documents and rather to destroy them, in keeping with the order of the San Mateo court.

It's a very dramatic turn in the saga of Facebook's relationship with British officialdom. The company is suspected of allowing illegally laundered dark money to fund influence campaigns during the Brexit referendum, and Zuckerberg's intransigence with Parliament's summonses have galled both the British establishment and many Britons, who view the refusal as an arrogant rejection of British sovereignty.





At the same time, the seizure of documents highlights the extent to which business travelers risk having their trade secrets and other sensitive documents seized by foreign governments. More than a decade ago, cryptographers, security researchers and corporate executives of my acquaintance began to travel with "burner" laptops and phones that had a minimum of data on them before going to territories whose border guards were known for "ghosting" business-visitors' laptop hard-drives  Israel and China were leaders in this practice, but it has since spread to the USA and other territories. Now I'm told that Googlers visiting China have their cloud access severely curtailed for the duration, so even if they are compelled to login to the company's servers, the Chinese authorities will not be able to siphon off much.

It's been five years since UK authorities detained David Miranda, partner of Glenn Greenwald, on trumped-up terrorism charges, while Miranda was transporting an encrypted thumb-drive of documents provided by the whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The UK also pioneered decryption orders whereby people can be compelled to incriminate themselves in defiance of ancient principles of law and human rights.

A part of me is therefore delighted to learn that we're a little closer to the destruction of Facebook and the ruination of Mark Zuckerberg, but another part of me is mindful of the risks of the spreading norm of seizing devices and their data, without charge or due process, that the UK has pioneered, along with other low-human-rights territories like China.



"We have very serious questions for Facebook. It misled us about Russian involvement on the platform. And it has not answered our questions about who knew what, when with regards to the Cambridge Analytica scandal," he said. "We have followed this court case in America and we believed these documents contained answers to some of the questions we have been seeking about the use of data, especially by external developers." The documents seized were obtained during a legal discovery process by Six4Three. It took action against the social media giant after investing $250,000 in an app. Six4Three alleges the cache shows Facebook was not only aware of the implications of its privacy policy, but actively exploited them, intentionally creating andeffectively flagging up the loophole that Cambridge Analytica used to collect data. That raised the interest of Collins and his committee.

Internal documents Facebook has fought to keep private obtained by UK Parliament [Donie O'Sullivan/CNN]





Parliament seizes cache of Facebook internal papers

[Carole Cadwalladr/The Guardian]





(Image: Diliff, CC-BY-SA)
The US Department of Homeland Security has published a new proposed rule that would make people ineligible for US citizenship if their credit-scores were poor.



Notionally, the rule-change is meant to prevent immigrants from becoming burdens on the welfare system (migrants do not make disproportionate use of any public welfare system).





However, the credit reporting bureaus are notoriously inaccurate and arbitrary in the credit-scores they assign; if you have a lot of assets but do not borrow money, you will have a much lower credit-rating than if you unwisely enroll in a number of high cost/high fee store cards and pay them off after running up debts on them and paying significant interest (I am allergic to debt, and with the exception of my mortgage have no debts at all; because of this I have a fairly low credit-score, despite the fact that both my wife and I earn very good livings).





What's more, the credit-reporting sector is riddled with security holes; notoriously, Equifax doxxed the entire adult population of America by breaching more than 150 million residents' financial data. Integrating credit scores into the immigration process will grant the bureaux a permanent government contract and funnel tax-dollars to them forever, despite their routine errors, racial bias, and spurious guilt-by-statistical-association.





Finally, the DHS's change is an appeal to selfishness and cruelty: if America is unwilling to accept migrants who are indigent or who need assistance, what does it say about us as a nation?

It's a Made-in-America version of China's notorious Citizen Scores.



Makes sense, right? People with low credit scores are loafers and can't be trusted to take care of themselves. Unfortunately, this is not what traditional credit scores measure. They are specialized algorithms designed for one purpose: to predict future bill-paying delinquencies, for any reason. This includes late payments or defaults caused by insurmountable medical debts, job loss, and divorcethree leading causes of personal bankruptcyas well as overspending and poor money management. Credit scores do not distinguish between these various causes. A person whose score plunges because of sudden unemployment is the same as a person sunk by foolish spending sprees. Credit scores can also be wrong if the underlying data in credit files is flawed. A Federal Trade Commission study found "potentially material errors" in 1 in 5 credit reports. DHS's proposed use of credit scores points to a much larger problem involving metrics. As more of our everyday interactions produce data, more of our lives can be quantified and turned into scalable measures. Our productivity, health and fitness, internet searches, and consumer behavior are all converted into behind-the-scenes metrics. Our social connectionsnumbers of friends, followers, likes, and retweetsare displayed as public tallies. We even score each other, Black Mirrorstyle, on ride-sharing apps.

DHS Wants to Use Credit Scores to Decide Who Gets to Become a Legal Resident [Josh Lauer/Slate]





(Image: Celso Flores, CC-BY)


When Josh Hawley was Attorney General of Missouri, he was an (extremely selective) firebreathing trustbuster who used his office to chase Google up and down the state, investigating the company's anticompetitive action and the pontential for public harm represented by its market dominance and size.



Hawley is part of a wave of GOP enthusiasm for antitrust enforcement  when it comes to Big Tech, at least. Despite having sainted Ronald Reagan (who kicked off 40 years of antitrust malpractice, and despite being rotten from within by corporate thinktankies paid to espouse the "public harm" standard of antitrust (which holds that monopolies are "efficient" and thus desirable), a bunch of "free market" Republicans have started sounding off like Roosevelt trustbusters about Silicon Valley companies, galled by their Democrat-leading leadership and by a wave of no-platforming directed at the likes of Alex Jones.





And now Hawley is the latest senator from Missouri, and he's doubled down on his trustbusting rhetoric, for Big Tech, at least (Hawley doesn't say much about breaking up big banks, oil companies, or Koch Industries and Walmart). He's joined by noted asshole Tucker Carlson, who uses his Daily Caller to rail against Big Tech's monopoly power, and the trustbusting chorus includes periodic, confused tweets from noted asshole Donald Trump and highbrow intellectual cover in the National Review.

I think this is a mixed bag. The far-right echo-chamber is built on the idea of deference to authority, which means that right-wingers who gain dominance in their little Lord of the Flies LARP rarely get checked from within (publicly, at least  privately, they're all about the long knives in the back). So when Carlson and Trump talk about antitrust and assure their underlings that the proles will understand that antitrust is fine for Big Tech but not for Big Health Care and Big Oil and Big Coal and Big Auto, the bootlickers they surround themselves with will wet themselves with servile reassurances.





But I can easily see how a right-wing anti-establishment trustbusting movement could break free of the careful boundaries set by a leadership that views the base as easily stampeded and easily corralled useful idiots, and end up driving a bipartisan antitrust enthusiasm that uses laws and regs and precedents set in the process of attacking Big Tech to attack capitalism itself.



Fox News personality Tucker Carlson now regularly blasts Google on his show. "Since it has the power to censor the Internet, Google should be regulated like the public utility it is, to make sure it doesn't further distort the free flow of information to the rest of us," Carlson said last year. Writing for the conservative National Review in May, John Hawkins referred to Google and its largest rivals as "unaccountable monopolies with detailed information about hundreds of millions of Americans." President Trump has sounded similar notes, both on the campaign trail and in the White House. He has repeatedly railed against Amazon, describing it as a monopoly. And in an interview with Axios earlier this month, Trump said he was "looking at" stronger antitrust enforcement against Google, Amazon, and Facebook.

Newly elected Republican senator could be Google's fiercest critic [Timothy B Lee/Ars Technica]





(Image: Natureofthought, CC-BY-SA)
Lifestyle / Travel and Tourism

by Andreas Wilson-Spath

Must be reviewed urgently with a view to being stopped

Has no conservation value

Is unethical

Breaks moral and ecological boundaries

Involves serious animal welfare violations

Is poorly regulated and governed

Inflicts massive damage to the country's international image and tourism

Is associated with criminal wildlife trafficking

Are we about to see the end of one of South Africa's most infamous practices - Captive Lion Breeding (CLB) for hunting and trading of their parts? If Parliament adopts the recommendations of a hard-hitting new report released last Tuesday, the days of canned lion hunting and the trade in lion bones are numbered.The report, produced by Parliament's Portfolio Committee on Environmental Affairs (PCEA), summarises the outcomes of a two-day colloquium held in August, at which a broad range of supporters and critics of the business of breeding lions in captivity were given the opportunity to present their case.There was universal condemnation from local and international conservation organisations, including the Born Free Foundation and the Endangered Wildlife Trust, as well as Brand South Africa and even from within the hunting industry itself. The Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA), however, attempted to justify the practice as a supposedly well-regulated, legal and beneficial example of the sustainable utilisation of natural resources. This stance was supported by the Professional Hunter's Association of South Africa and the Confederation of Hunting Associations of South Africa, both of which have been defenestrated by a number of major international hunting organisations for the practice, as well as the South African Predator Association.Importantly the Parliamentary Committee argues that Captive Lion Breeding for hunting and lion bone trade:An increasingly bloody businessSouth African lion breeders initially catered almost exclusively to wealthy trophy hunters willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars for the right to shoot the "King of the Jungle" in what were widely decried as unethical and cruel "canned" hunts. Enabled by a more than sympathetic DEA under the late Minister Edna Molewa, enterprising lion farmers soon expanded their commercial offerings by charging unwitting tourists and volunteers for the opportunity to cuddle and raise cubs and go on bush walks accompanied by juvenile lions, all of which were ultimately destined for the bullet.Roger Cook, the investigative journalist who brought the industry to the attention of global audiences via his 1997 television programme "Making a Killing", described it as "founded on cruelty and fuelled by money".Following an international outcry over canned lion hunting, local breeders have recently shifted their focus and are now making millions of rands through the legal export of lion bones to Southeast Asia, where they are increasingly used as a substitute for tiger bone in jewellery, virility treatments and traditional medical cures the efficacy of which is entirely without scientific proof.The suggestion that this has become a significant revenue stream is confirmed by the fact that the DEA raised the quota for the export of lion skeletons from 800 in 2017 to 1500 this year, by evidence that the vast majority of exported skeletons now include skulls, which indicates that the animals were bred specifically for their bones and not for trophy hunting, and by reports of industrial-scale slaughterhouses at breeding facilities.Today, South Africa is home to some 8000 lions bred in captivity for purely commercial purposes. The population of wild lions is estimated at around 3500.Damning observationsHaving heard, debated and assessed presentations from all stakeholders, the members of the PCEA didn't mince words in their report, describing the industry as "unethical", "horrific" and "hideous", and suggesting that "other than greed and ego, there are no reasons to be breeding lions in captivity to be killed in captivity".This may come as somewhat of a surprise, given the composition of the PCEA, which is numerically dominated by ANC MPs. But according to the DA's Ross Purdon, who is a committee member, "the committee has been able to rise above party politics on a number of occasions, enabling us to focus on national issues".Purdon agrees that among the most serious conclusions drawn in the report are "that the captive lion breeding industry has little to no conservation value, raises serious animal welfare and ethical issues, and [] is doing serious damage to Brand South Africa" to the tune of as much as R54 billion in lost tourism revenue over the next decade if allowed to continue.Committee members found that instead of scientific evidence, "the economic principle of supply and demand was a key aspect" in the decision to increase the export quota for lion skeletons. They note that the industry is tainted by numerous direct and indirect links with criminal wildlife trafficking syndicates and that it "has long been a blemish on South Africa's wildlife and tourism landscape".The ultimate consequence of all of this, according to the PCEA, is that "this tragic story needs to be arrested forthwith to avoid inflicting further and irreparable damage to the South African conservation image", that there was an "overwhelming consensus for the need to bring an end to the controversial aspects of [the] captive lion breeding industry" which "must be stopped immediately by enacting relevant legislation".In its final resolutions, the report proposes that the DEA should urgently review the "Captive Breeding of Lions for hunting and Lion bone trade with a view to putting an end to this practice", as well as initiating a formal audit of lion breeding facilities to ensure that they operate within exiting regulations and laws. The DEA, together with the Department of Agriculture Forestry and Fisheries, is also tasked with presenting a programme that will address the many animal welfare and health concerns raised during the colloquium. The report states that the DEA should reconsider the controversial increase in the export quota for lion skeletons, which, as the colloquium heard, was based on "commercial considerations, as opposed to science".Not just another talk shopConservationists may be surprised by the exceedingly frank language used in the report, but given the DEA's decades-long staunch support for the so-called "sustainable utilisation" of and commercial trade in wildlife "products", including lion bones and rhino horn, they may be excused for viewing this radical rhetoric with considerable caution.What are the chances that Parliament will enact the recommendations of the committee and bring the practice of breeding lions for profit to an end in South Africa?"I honestly believe we will see a significant shift in government policy," says Purdon. "It is important that the Acting Minister (Derek Hanekom) be well briefed. I sincerely believe, that with the correct motivation, government will adopt the recommendations".The PCEA's chairperson, Mohlopi Mapulane, gave the assurance that the colloquium would result in action instead of being just another talk shop. He promised that the committee would follow up its outcomes with the tenacity of a hungry lion chasing after its prey.The end of a hated industry?For too long, the South African government's controversial policies with regards to some of Africa's most iconic and most vulnerable species  rhinos, elephants and lions  have positioned the country on the wrong side of global consensus. By commodifying wild animals and by putting profits before true conservation imperatives, it has sided with a greedy, unethical and often downright criminal minority.By taking the conclusions and recommendations of the PCEA's report seriously and by enacting legislation that will bring the practice of breeding lions for commercial gain to a speedy end  perhaps under the leadership of a new, visionary Minister of Environmental Affairs  government has the opportunity to rescue the country's proud and important conservation history, and to fulfil its moral obligations as the custodian, not only of lions, but of all wild species.In a later development the Acting Minister of Environmental Affairs, Derek Hanekom tweeted "I intend appointing a high level panel review policies and legislation on a number of matters related to animal breeding, hunting and handling"
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by Staff reporter

The trial of former Health and Child Care Minister David Parirenyatwa for alleged criminal abuse of office which was scheduled to start yesterday was postponed to December 11.Mr James Makiya, who was standing in for Advocate Uriri, stated that the trial could not commence because Adv Uriri was unavailable for the next three weeks. Harare magistrate Ms Bianca Makwande postponed the trial to December 11.Parirenyatwa (68) was arrested for allegedly violating Section 174 (1) (a) of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act Chapter 9:23.Prosecuting, Mr Michael Reza alleged that Parirenyatwa abused his position as a public officer and directed NatPharm board chairperson Dr George Washaya to terminate the contract of Ms Flora Sifeku as managing director, allegedly showing favour for Mr Newman Madzikwa, who had once been sacked from the pharmaceutical company for reportedly selling donated drugs.At the time he was fired in September 2009, Mr Madzikwa was NatPharm's Masvingo branch manager. The indictment also revealed that Parirenyatwa had indicated that he required Ms Sifeku's services at the ministry's head office for an indefinite period.The board, it is alleged, complied with the former minister's directive and gave Ms Sifeku and Mr Madzikwa six months contracts, each as managing directors effective June 1 to November 30 this year.It is alleged that Parirenyatwa's conduct created double dipping on NatPharm funds as the company was paying two salaries towards the managing director's position, thereby prejudicing it of a total of $30 006.The State further alleges that Parirenyatwa's actions were prejudicial to the good administration of NatPharm and the Ministry of Health and Child Care.
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A CENTRAL Intelligence Officer based in Bulawayo allegedly drowned at Lower Ncema Dam in Umzingwane on Saturday during an outing with friends.Brian Umera allegedly drowned after he fell from a boat and rescuers had by yesterday not found his body. Matabeleland South police spokesperson Chief Inspector Philisani Ndebele confirmed the drowning yesterday. He said members of the police sub aqua unit were by yesterday still searching for the body."I can confirm receiving a report of a male adult who drowned at Ncema Dam. We're told that he slipped from a boat and drowned. The sub aqua unit was deployed on the same day and are still searching for the body, said," said Chief Insp Ndebele.BCC senior public relations officer Mrs Nesisa Mpofu said the municipality was working with the police following the drowning incident.
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THE Ministry of Transport and Infrastructural Development is in the process of expanding the toll gate in Esigodini to ease traffic congestion during the Zanu-PF Conference to be held at Mzingwane High School next month.Zanu-PF secretary for finance Patrick Chinamasa on Monday requested the Ministry to consider expanding the toll gate to allow the smooth flow of traffic during the conference.He made the request during a joint national and provincial committee preparatory meeting at Esikhoveni Training Centre in Umzingwane."We're expecting more than 5 300 delegates to attend the conference. This means the Esigodini toll gate will be busier than usual due to heavy flow of traffic. The highway will also have more vehicles using it since we're approaching the festive season."We therefore hope that the ministry of transport is putting in place measures to make sure that the payment process at the toll gate is faster. Most of our delegates will be accommodated in Bulawayo and they will be passing through the toll gate everyday," said Chinamasa.An official from the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructural Development told the meeting that they were already working with Zinara to expand the toll gate to ensure the smooth flow of traffic during the conference.Zanu-PF's Politburo set December 10 to 15 as the dates for the conference while accreditation started on November 15 and is ending on December 1.The conference will be held under the theme, "Zimbabwe is open for business: In Unity and Peace towards an Upper Middle Income Economy by 2030."
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Former Cabinet minister and Zanu PF secretary for health, David Parirenyatwa yesterday challenged President Emmerson Mnangagwa's appointment of an Anti-Corruption Investigation Unit, arguing that he was taking the issue to the Constitutional Court (Concourt).The trial of Parirenyatwa, who is facing criminal abuse of office charges, was expected to start yesterday, but his lawyer James Makiya asked magistrate Bianca Makwande for postponement of the matter, saying the accused had engaged Advocate Lewis Uriri, who is out of the country and will be back after three weeks.Makiya then filed a notice to apply for a referral to the ConCourt for a determination on whether Mnangagwa's formation of the anti-corruption unit falls within the laws and did not violate any statutes.The lawyer said a full application will be presented in court on the next remand date.The State, represented by Brian Vito from the President's Anti-Corruption Unit opposed to the postponement, saying the ConCourt challenge will not stop him from going ahead with the trial.However, magistrate Makwande postponed the matter to December 11.
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CHIVI South MP, Killer Zivhu (Zanu PF) has challenged people from the constituency to help mobilise resources for the development of the area instead of waiting for the government, whose resources were already over-stretched to do so.Addressing stakeholders during a pre-business conference at Ngundu Growth Point yesterday, Zivhu said locals could play their part in ensuring that the country achieved a middle income economy status by 2030 through actively participating in development programmes in their respective areas of origin.He said local community leaders, including school heads, councillors, war veterans and traditional chiefs, must contribute towards the rehabilitation and construction of classroom blocks at schools as well as contribute towards the education of at least one disadvantaged pupil."During campaigns, we were pouring resources because we were into campaign mode, but we cannot keep doing that because our coffers are now dry," Zivhu said.He said Chivi was home to many prominent and influential people in society, who have made names in the business, education and engineering sectors."I was recently phoned by two Botswana-based civil engineers who hail from Chivi South. These two men have offered to come and assist in upgrading a bridge in Chasiyatende area at no cost," he said.Zivhu called for the setting up of steering committees to give direction on development projects to be undertaken in the constituency and help in the evaluation processes."We want all-inclusive development, where we all contribute. It is the time to fulfil our election promises as councillors or MPs. We all promised our people something, with some promises being not realistic, during our campaigns. Let us face the reality together now," he said.The meeting was a precursor to an all-stakeholders business conference slated for Saturday at the same venue where a new development narrative for Chivi South would be set.Zivhu has already donated cement and assisted in the construction of classroom blocks, provision of computers and uniforms to over 50 schools in Chivi district.
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MIDLANDS State University (MSU) students who were contesting in the Students Representative Council (SRC) elections have engaged the services of lawyers to force the institution to release the results after authorities postponed the polls on the first day of voting.The university's administration said the polls, which were conducted electronically, had to be stopped after claiming its server had been hacked.The elections were scheduled for November 9 and 15, but on the first day of voting (November 9), MSU registrar, Erasmus Mupfiga announced on the institution's website that the elections had been postponed as result of a "security breach"."The postponement has been as a result of a serious and massive security breach that has been detected by our information and technology department," part of the notice read.There are allegations that the university authorities stopped the polls after realising that their favoured candidate for the SRC presidency, Elsie Moyo of the Zimbabwe Congress of Students' Union, was set to lose to her Zimbabwe National Students Union rival, Jacob Lawrence Sedze.Sedze and other candidates, including Blessmore Jaravaza, Leon Kanhenga and Sylvester Manomano, who were vying for different posts have, through their lawyer  Nomore Hlabano of Hlabano Law Chambers  demanded that MSU announce the results."Our clients advise us that elections were duly held yesterday, 9th November 2018," reads part of the letter by the lawyers dated November 10 and addressed to the chief electoral officer, who is the dean of students, and the electoral college, respectively."Our clients were candidates duly nominated and competing for posts of president and vice-presidents, respectively. However, until now, after the expiry of one day as provided for in Article 33 section 1 (i) of the Midlands State University Student Representative Council constitution, we are advised that the electoral college has not announced the results as required by Article 38 of the same constitution."We have instructions and demand, as we hereby do, that the electoral college announce the results forthwith. Should the electoral college fail, neglect or refuse to so announce, we have instructions to approach the courts to compel the electoral college to do so. Our clients do not wish to engage in unnecessary litigation and have faith that the electoral college will act in terms of the constitution."MSU spokesperson Mirirai Mawere had not responded to questions sent to her yesterday
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THERE was pandemonium at Chakohwa High School last Wednesday after the headmaster's attempt to administer corporal punishment on a pupil backfired when the pupil, with the help of aggrieved teachers, mobilised other pupils to mutiny and forced the school head out of the school premises accusing him of practising satanism.The headmaster, Mr James Chamanwa must be regretting beating the male student for not tucking-in his shirt after irate pupils damaged his vehicle before forcing him out of the school premises while chanting revolutionary songs.The incident led to the disruption of lessons. Mr Chamanwa, is yet to return to the school.Chakohwa High School, which enrols 682 pupils, is under Chimanimani district along the Mutare Masvingo highway.When contacted for comment, Manicaland Provincial Education Director (PED) Mr Edward Shumba said: "I have heard about the case and I have sent a team to investigate the matter. I am told that the headmaster tried to administer corporal punishment to a student who then retaliated together with other students. What we are saying is that two wrongs don't make a right. In as much as the student was wrong the headmaster must not have administered corporal punishment. It was outlawed."Mr Shumba said he cannot comment on Satanism as it is difficult to prove."It is unfortunate that I cannot comment about Satanism simply because that is something we cannot prove. We only want the school space to be respected. Teaching and learning is our core business. I can only give a comprehensive comment about all issues related to the matter after the team investigating the matter have finished their job," he said.Apparently, students at Chakohwa High, teachers and villages in the area are no strangers to issues related to Satanism.Exactly one month ago, scores of irate parents besieged the school baying for the blood of school authorities accused of practicing Satanism after the school was plagued by larger-than-life, underworld and or satanic occurrences that caused discomfort and fear in pupils, parents and teachers.When The Manica Post arrived at the school, the situation had returned to normalcy but emotions were still running high among teachers, students and parents who want the headmaster transferred.Headman Evans Mutidzawanda, who once presided over the matter at his traditional court, said parents no longer want the headmaster at the school"This case was once brought before us. When such things happen we have our own way of helping the situation which is different from what authorities in the education industry do. We did our best to solve the matter but it appears the problem is persisting hence parents no longer want the headmaster at the school as he is also being fingered by parents and students as one of those involved in satanic acts."All that we have managed to do it to control parent so that learning goes ahead while a lasting solution is being worked out. Parents are serious and they are even ready to withdraw their children if the headmaster remains at the school," he said.Mr Chamanwa refused to comment on the matter citing professional restrictions but maintained he does not believe in the religious or traditional ways that were used to solve the problem of Satanism at the school."I was once called to attend a gathering at the local traditional leader's court where they were trying to solve the issue of Satanism. I actually left a church gathering to attend that meeting little had I known that there is a local politician (name supplied) who had already mobilised people against me. They baptised me with milk and all sorts of rituals that I do not believe in. I am going through a difficult time because of things I do not believe in but just being forced on me. It is unfortunate that I cannot comment much about the issue because of professional restrictions," he said.At the height of the Chakohwa High Satanism real life drama, teachers who requested anonymity confirmed the strange occurrences that include waking up to see huge piles of human faeces on their doorsteps and pubic hair under their pillows.Sometimes swarms of bees and scourge of mosquitoes would appear in classes, forcing the disruption of lessons.Snakes were also reportedly appearing in classrooms and it is believed that some pupils were allegedly initiated into Satanism through gifts such as necklaces and food.
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All is set for Mutoko North Constituency and Ward 16 Chegutu Rural District Council by-elections today.The Mutoko North seat fell vacant after the elevation of the former Member of Parliament for the constituency Mabel Chinomona to be Senate President, while the Ward 16 Chegutu council seat fell vacant due to death.Addressing journalists yesterday, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) acting chief elections officer Mr Utoile Silaigwana said they made adequate preparations for the elections and sufficient polling officers and relevant stakeholders were on the ground ahead of today's polling.In Mutoko North Constituency, there are three contestants for the parliamentary seat: Rambidzayi Nyabote of Zanu-PF, MDC-Alliance's Boniface Mushore and Edison Mugoma of NCA."We have 23 295 registered voters in Mutoko North and 765 voters in Ward 16. We are using the international standards of printing 5 percent more ballot papers. ZEC also invited all political parties contesting for training on the electoral process."We have invited nine observer groups, including the British and American embassies and local observers," he said.Mr Silaigwana said the 2018 voters' roll will be used for these by-elections and not the 2013 as alleged by other organisations. He dismissed allegations that there were some duplications on the voters' roll and confirmed that some voters were over 100 years old."There are people over 100 years old and yes, it is possible to have them on the voters' roll. They have a right to vote," he said.
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by Staff reporter

BULAWAYO businessman and philanthropist Raj Modi says while human beings are mortal Highlanders are immortal.The businessman, who is also Deputy Minister of Industry and Commerce, made the declaration in his eulogy to the departed former Highlanders board member Jonathan Sayi Moyo who died at Mater Dei Hospital on Friday night last week and was laid to rest at Lady Stanley Cemetery on Wednesday."Go well son of the soil. Go well baba Sayi Moyo. Death comes to all of us but Highlanders will never die," said Modi who on Sunday confessed his love for the Bulawayo giants as he passed his condolence message to the Highlanders and Moyo family when news of the demise of the former board vice chairman filtered through.The Bulawayo giants have long been known to have been supported by iconic business persons in and around the country as well as abroad.A number of corporates have also been charmed by the administrative acumen at the club that has been passed from generation to generation much to the envy of its competitors. The club has also religiously followed its constitution, a key requirement in terms of good corporate governance.Speaking at the funeral service held at the Brethren in Christ Church in Bulawayo on Wednesday, board chairman Luke Mnkandla said the club had embarked on a programme to document the history of the institution."We engaged figures like ubaba uPatisa Nyathi so that we could come up with a document that will tell the life story of Highlanders and its people like the gentleman we are mourning today who were providing vital historical knowledge towards that project and it's really a huge loss that he is gone," said Mnkandla.In 2016 Moyo was one of the board members together with Mnkandla that led the team when they visited the grave of one of the founder members of the club, Prince Albert Khumalo in Gwatemba area, Filabusi.
News / National

by Mandla Ndlovu

In a shocking move, President Emmerson Mnangagwa on Saturday praised Robert Mugabe as the Founding father of Zimbabwe and condemned anyone who holds contrary views.Mnangagwa was addressing party supporters at Murombedzi, Mashonaland West on Saturday.Said Mnnagagwa, "Robert Mugabe is the Founding Father of the nation, he is our founding father of free Zimbabwe. Those with other ideas about this are dreaming and must do so at their homes. History will always record that the Founding father of this country is Gushungo."I would like to thank the Gushungo clan for birthing, nurturing and giving us a gift in the form of Va Mugabe. The man led us in battle till we attained Independence and we are now moving the revolution that he started forward."Mnangagwa condemned the G40 cabal that surrounded Mugabe during his last days as President."During the end of his rule, Mugabe was surrounded by criminals who knew nothing about the liberation struggle. They never knew that this Independence we are enjoying is a product of a liberation struggle."I would like to assure you that those who do not want to tore the revolutionary line will fall by the wayside."Thank you Chief Zvimba and thank you people of Zvimba for coming in numbers to support this thank you rally that we organised to thank you for the support you have always given us."President Mnangagwa is on a nationwide Thank you rallies that are meant to show gratitude to the voters who voted for ZANU PF.
A teenage extremist who tried to radicalise his younger brothers is facing jail after he was exposed by a Dutch blogger for posting radical material online.

Sudesh Mamoor Faraz Amman, 18, from Harrow, North London , used a family Whatsapp group to share recruitment material with his five younger brothers.

The document, an al-Qaeda magazine called Inspire, edition 16, was sent to the group, which also included extended family members in Sri Lanka.

It encouraged readers to launch lone wolf attacks following pipe bomb attacks in New York and New Jersey in September 2016.

He also shared bomb-making instructions with a person he was in a relationship with, according to prosecutors.

Amman smiled and laughed throughout the hearing at the Old Bailey, including when he was told by Judge Mark Lucraft QC, that he was facing a custodial sentence of 'some length.'

Sudesh Mamoor Faraz Amman kept a stash of terror documents including bomb-making and knife fighting manuals to share with friends

He pleaded guilty to six counts of possessing material useful for terrorism and seven counts of disseminating material on Skype between April 19 2017 and April 2 2018, on the basis of recklessness.

Kathryn Selby told an earlier hearing that Amman came to the attention of police through a Dutch blogger who captured postings of an 'extremist Islamic nature.'

He was arrested by armed police in a street in North London after Mark Van Der Berg, who runs an anti-extremist blog, highlighted the existence of posts in a closed Telegram chat room.

Amman's social media chat was said to have included an 'expressed desire to carry out a knife attack.'

When police arrested him they found he had instructional material on knife fighting techniques, including documents called Bloody Brazilian Knife Fighting Techniques, US Army Knife Fighting Manual Techniques and Close Combat.

He also had a number of bomb-making manuals including How to make a bomb in the Kitchen of your Mom, the Improvised Munition Handbook, and the Anarchist Cookbook.

Bearded, with long hair, glasses and a black prayer cap, Amman was living at home with his mother and six other siblings who are said to be known to social services.

Mark Van Der Berg (seen) who runs an anti-extremist blog, highlighted the existence of posts in a closed Telegram chat room

The material he disseminated, which began when he was 17, included the document How to make a bomb in the Kitchen of your Mom and a number of gory videos with titles including The Islamic State - my revenge, and Let's go for Jihad.

He denied that the Army of Madinah in Kashmir, a book by the British al-Qaeda leader Dhiren Barot - who is serving 30 years for a plot to blow up central London hotels using radiological 'dirty bomb' - was a terrorist publication.

Two charges related to possessing and disseminating the book on Whatsapp and Skype, were ordered to lie on file, along with a charge of possessing a document on making plastic explosives from bleach.

Amman will be sentenced next month.
News / National

by Staff reporter

WORK on the much anticipated $5,2 billion Batoka Gorge Hydro Electricity project will soon commence after President Mnangagwa met officials from the main contractors, General Electric and Power China yesterday.The project, which is being implemented jointly with Zambia will generate about 2 200 megawatts which would be shared equally between the two countries. Writing in his weekly column on this paper and our sister paper, The Sunday Mail, President Mnangagwa revealed that prior to the meeting with the contractors, he had communicated with Zambian President, Edgar Lungu who had endorsed the deal."I wrote to President Edgar Lungu proposing that a consortium of Power China and General Electric be contracted to work on the project which has been outstanding since 1972 when it was first proposed. President Lungu graciously agreed. This week the consortium is set to make a presentation to us here in Zimbabwe so the project can begin. Once completed, the project will generate about 2 200 megawatts which will be shared equally between us and Zambia. With other power projects either completed, underway or planned, Zimbabwe is set to be a power surplus nation," said President Mnangagwa.He said there was also a need for the Government to move with speed in completing the deal where India committed $310 million towards the refurbishment of the Hwange Power Station to further augment power supplies in the country. Under the Batoka project, Zimbabwe and Zambia will share the electricity equally when generation commences.The project is being implemented under the auspices of the Zambezi River Authority, a bi-national organisation mandated to operate, monitor and maintain the Kariba Dam Complex as well as exploit the full potential of the Zambezi River. Project specifications by the Zambezi River Authority show the scheme will be undertaken on a build, operate and transfer basis upstream of the Kariba Dam hydroelectric scheme."The proposed scheme includes a 181m high roller compacted concrete gravity arch dam, radial gated crest type spillway, two underground power stations on each side of the river with four 200 megawatt Francis turbines installed in each, giving a total capacity of 1 600 megawatts for the scheme," states ZRA on its website.Bringing Batoka Gorge on-stream will see Zimbabwe attain electricity self-sufficiency.The country is producing about 1 300MW against demand of 1 900MW, with deficit being covered by imports from South Africa and Mozambique.Meanwhile, the President has noted that the country should not be blinkered by it being land-locked but instead should work towards the development of infrastructure that will see it develop into a land-linked country. He said despite being land-locked Zimbabwe's economy can still be efficiently linked and integrated within the region, the continent and globally through the improvement of communication infrastructure which include the country's road, rail, air, pipeline, inland waterway and ICT assets.He said this could see Zimbabwe easily becoming a sub-regional transport and communication hub. The President said this goal meant planning for an integrated regional transport link masterplan akin to one dubbed the Greater Mekong Subregion Communication Initiative in Southeast Asia which connects China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar and Thailand, with Laos as the hub."I am happy that on the sidelines of the recent African Union Extraordinary Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, I conferred with President Mokgweetsi Masisi of Botswana on this possibility. Building on a prior meeting between him and President Filipe Nyusi of Mozambique, Zimbabwe will soon host a ministerial meeting on how our three countries can cooperate towards investing in rail and pipeline links which will serve our countries and beyond. Thereafter, another meeting involving Zimbabwe, South Africa and Mozambique will be convened to map out plans for a Southern Corridor. Already, Zimbabwe is working on its dry port facility at Walvis Bay in Namibia," said President Mnangagwa.
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by Staff reporter

Teachers have reacted angrily to Finance minister Mthuli Ncube's 2019 national budget, saying it will drive them into deeper poverty as they repeated their demands to be paid in foreign currency.Ncube last Thursday backed his earlier austerity measures with proposed cuts in government expenditure as well as setting import duty for vehicles and other imported goods in foreign currency when he presented the $8,2 billion budget.The Zimbabwe Teachers' Association (Zimta) immediately raised a red flag over the austerity measures describing the fiscal plan for next year as "anti-worker, anti-people and anti-poor".Tapson Nganunu Sibanda, the Zimta secretary-general, said teachers were expecting Ncube to raise their salaries and pay them in foreign currency"We feel that the recent budget statement has nothing for us as teachers. Nothing for us is not for us," he said."We, therefore, warn the government that such a neo-liberal approach to solving the economic crisis, the severe austerity measures on the already suffering citizenry will lead to dire consequences."Sibanda said the budget, whose theme is "austerity for prosperity", would "bring more misery than joy to an already impoverished worker in general and an already incapacitated teacher in particular".He said teachers had been living under severe austerity measures since the 1990s when the government introduced the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme."There is nothing, therefore, to celebrate in this budget statement for teachers. The budget leads the country to a new trajectory of a neo-liberal economy," he said,Sibanda said teachers' salaries had been devalued by over 300% since September after the value of the bond note and real-time gross settlement (RTGS) balances fell dramatically against the United States dollar."Teachers are now demanding payment of their salaries in foreign currency, so as to maintain the stability of their income that is being eroded day in day out," he said."Teachers and other civil servants' salaries are in RTGS, yet the budget statement proposes payment of customs duty in US dollars, what a contradiction."Teachers and the rest of the civil servants can only convert their RTGS amounts to US dollars through the black market, an illegal exercise that attracts a jail term of 10 years."If these conditions of customs duty are meant for a certain section of the populace, who are neither teachers nor civil servants, it is this dualism that is of concern to us teachers."Sibanda said Ncube had effectively reduced civil servants' bonuses by computing them as a sum of the basic salary, excluding housing and transport allowances."This in essence means that this year's festive season and beyond will be a nightmare for the already incapacitated teacher," he said.Ncube said the austerity measures were meant to reduce the government deficit and revive the economy.
News / National

by Staff reporter

THE battle for the control of supermarket chain, Choppies Zimbabwe, pitting former vice-president Phelekezela Mphoko's family and its foreign business partners has taken a nasty turn after the Botswana investors barred workers from talking to the politician.The Mphoko family is embroiled in an ownership wrangle with their Botswana-registered Choppies Distribution Centre (Proprietary) Limited business partners.The boardroom war has spilled into the High Court with the Botswana-headquartered company seeking to bar the Mphoko family from interfering with operations of the business.Botswana-based Choppies group CEO Ottapathu Ramachandran last week wrote a memo to local Choppies employees threatening them for dealing with the Mphokos.The letter, dated November 19, came after Mphoko and his son Siqokoqela met Choppies employees at the company's Bulawayo headquarters that morning to hear their grievances ranging from poor pay, sexual harassment, to unfair dismissal and racial attacks by their Indian managers."Kindly note that Mr P Mphoko and Mr S Mphoko do not have a financial or operational say in the business of Nanavac. We strongly request that all employees desist from dealing with the above-mentioned persons with immediate effect," Ramachandran wrote in the memo."Any action taken as a result from the above-mentioned persons will be contrary to the company rules and procedures and disciplinary action will be taken against the responsible employee (s)."Mphoko and his son insist they are the majority shareholders of Choppies Zimbabwe through their local investment vehicle, Nanavac, with 51%.However, the Botswana investors say the Mphokos only own 7% shareholding. The foreign investors' claim the Mphokos were only drafted into the business to by-pass the then 51% mandatory Indigenisation laws.Mphoko argues his business partners want to take advantage of his political situation since he was fired from government and the ruling Zanu-PF party.The High Court is yet to make a ruling on the ownership dispute.Mphoko's lawyer, Welshman Ncube, told The Standard on Friday that the Botswana-based Choppies CEO was offside in saying the ex-VP had no financial or operational say in the running of the business."He has no right to write a letter like that as his claim that they have exclusive rights in managing the business is still pending at the High Court. They applied for exclusive rights and we opposed it," Ncube said in a telephone interview adding: "he is trying to execute an order that has not been given."Choppies human resources manager Sipho Mpofu yesterday said he was on leave and could not comment while Ramachandran could not be reached for comment.Meanwhile, Ramachandran's memo has angered the Choppies national workers' committee and their representative trade union, Commercial Workers' Union of Zimbabwe (CWUZ).This is amid workers' claims of sexual harassment of female staff, unfair dismissals, low pay and racial attacks where some black employees are allegedly even called baboons by their managers of Indian origin."Your email does not address the bread and butter hostile issues that workers have been subjected to from unprofessional Indian managers. In our view, your email also threatens the workers just like the managers," Zwelithini Malinga, the chairperson of the Choppies national workers' committee, wrote in a letter dated November 20 addressed to Ramachandran that is also copied to the Choppies board of directors"The Indian managers practice racism, sexual harassment of female staff, and vulgar language like Africans are baboons and monkeys, which is a violation of labour laws of Zimbabwe."Malinga on Friday said the workers' committee wanted the directors to stop harassing employees in their boardroom war with the Mphokos, adding "as far as we are concerned, we know the Mphokos have 51% shareholding".The CWUZ weighed in with a statement: "We will not, as a trade union, tolerate that behaviour. The employees have a right to approach the Mphokos until the ownership dispute is resolved."The action by the workers' committee to approach the Mphokos is correct since they are also the directors of the business as things stand."
News / National

by Staff reporter

In a historic development for the nursing profession, Harare Central Hospital has adopted public selection of student nurses as a way of improving transparency and dealing with corruption in the recruitment process.The hospital's chief executive officer, Dr Nyasha Masuka, said the health institution invited members of the public and the media to witness the selection process, a culmination of recommendations by the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (Zacc)."We developed a new trainee nurse recruitment policy following recommendations from a report. An audit of nurse recruitment at Harare Hospital was done by Zacc in 2017. We adopted all the recommendations from the report."The selected students will be interviewed in February 2019 and we will invite the public and media to witness that process as well. We will be the pioneers of implementing this new policy in the country," he said.Dr Masuka said they used a lottery system from all the prospective applicants to get their required figure."We need to recruit a total of 105 trainees for the three 2019 intakes, therefore we need to interview 315 candidates to get these 105 student nurses."We had 7 000 applicants, we then divided 7 000 by 315 and we got 22. We were then picking every 22nd application until we got 315 applications."We then opened the applications and selected those that had the required qualifications and discarded those who didn't qualify and repeated the process until we had the suitable candidates for training," he said."The process looked at those with highest passes, that is those with three As in Mathematics, English and Science. These would give us say 15 point marks and our range was from 11 to 15 points for females and 12 to 15 points for male applicants," he said.Dr Masuka said for the public interviews coming next year, they will use candidate numbers and not names. He said this will increase transparency."The interview panel will be selected transparently and will not include people with conflict of interest. We will allow some independent experts to observe interviews and candidates will not be known by names, but by candidate numbers issued by an independent entity," he said.The hospital boss said the Zacc audit followed a nationwide outcry on the recruitment process."Their audit was prompted by numerous complaints and allegations of corruption. People claimed that they were being made to pay as much as $2 000 to get into training, although nobody has come forward with any proof," he added.This had allegedly led to the decay of the nursing profession as a number of the student nurses were failing the nursing examinations.Dr Masuka is urging all those who might have been swindled of their money to come forward."We have heard reports that there are some students who have offer letters for May and September 2019 intakes and we advise them to come to the hospital and see our clinical director with those letters."The interviews are only scheduled for February next year but already we have reports suggesting that some applicants are in possession of offer letters so we need to investigate the matter," he said.In a related development, the hospital has since closed the quota system door for students that were interviewed and recruited by the Ministry of Health and Child Care."We have since written to the Permanent Secretary advising him of our new recruiting policy  that this time we are not going to take any applicants from the Ministry," he said.
News / National

by Staff reporter

MDC officials accused of plotting to oust Nelson Chamisa from the party's leadership were given final warnings at the party's national council meeting held in the capital on Friday.Party insiders told the Daily News on Sunday yesterday that the officials had Chamisa to thank after he prevailed on the party's highest decision-making body outside congress not to dismiss them from the MDC.During the highly-charged meeting, the party's secretary-general Douglas Mwonzora had a bad day in office after a litany of allegations were levelled against him, along with Elias Mudzuri  the MDC's vice president.It was alleged during the meeting that the two surreptitiously approached Chief Justice Luke Malaba asking for forgiveness following the jeers he received from MDC parliamentarians during the swearing-in of the Speaker of Parliament Jacob Mudenda in September.Mwonzora and Mudzuri, who could not be reached for comment at the time of going to print yesterday, have long been suspected of eyeing Chamisa's position and causing divisions in the party, formed in 1999.Both have strenuously denied the allegations.On Friday, irate party officials bayed for Mwonzora's blood for allegedly working with Zanu-PF to foment discord in the country's largest opposition party that has risen to become the only credible opposition to the Zanu-PF's hegemonic rule.Contacted for comment yesterday, the MDC's national spokesperson Jacob Mafume confirmed that some senior party leaders were hauled over the coals although he could not disclose their names."The party spoke on issues of discipline around mayors and other senior party leaders and the council emphasised on the party leaders to be cohesive and focus on the job at hand. The top leadership was given the last chance to toe the line or face the chop," said Mafume.Party insiders said after a battery of charges were thrown at Mwonzora, it took Chamisa's intervention to calm boiling tempers."Delegates were baying for Mwonzora's blood; he was told not to issue press statements because he has been doing that with no approval from the party. Our constitution is clear that the secretary-general should not issue statements," the source said.He was also accused of sponsoring lawsuits against the party, and doing very little to campaign for the MDC in the run-up to the July 30 elections.According to the source, some members of the MDC youth league stood up and claimed that they were being influenced by Mwonzora to sabotage Chamisa."The youths alleged that they were sponsored by Mwonzora and everyone who was there wanted the issue to go for a vote so he could be expelled from the party. However, Chamisa told Mwonzora to apologise and he stood up and did just that, that is why he is still the party secretary-general." Chamisa also suppressed discussion on the fate of Mudzuri saying that the party for now has to focus on external threats and not internal squabbles," the source said.While addressing the MDC's 19th anniversary rally recently, Chamisa appealed to his potential challengers in the party to give him some time so that he could secure the late Morgan Tsvangirai's legacy before they can challenge him.Chamisa, who lost in the July 31 elections to President Emmerson Mnangagwa by a wafer-thin margin, told thousands of his supporters that removing him now would poke holes into Tsvangirai's legacy."I have told my colleagues in the top leadership that none of us should go wayward because it will be akin to a fish taking itself out of water where it cannot survive," Chamisa said."So we need to continue to follow Tsvangirai's way, the party's ways."Tsvangirai left power for me so that I will also pave way for the next leader in that order. We don't want a situation whereby someone would want to grab from me what I was given by Tsvangirai before I even start the journey he set me to embark on yet you don't even know what he wanted me to achieve. Why don't you wait for me to accomplish that first then I will also show you the way when you eventually take over?" he asked rhetorically.Earlier, Chamisa had jokingly asked his deputy Mudzuri if he did not believe that President Emmerson Mnangagwa had rigged his way to power.This was after Mudzuri had not raised his hand when Chamisa asked who among the thousands present agreed with him that the July 30 elections had been rigged in Zanu-PF's favour."I see you have kept your hands down when I asked the question. Does this suggest that you do not believe that the election was rigged," Chamisa asked teasingly.Only recently, Chamisa called Mudzuri to order during the party's national standing committee meeting for engaging in perceived acts that could undermine unity in the party.This was after Mudzuri had been linked to a controversial Twitter post expressing the desire to challenge Chamisa at the party's elective congress due next year.
'I'm just sorry for what I did': Alberta woman arrested in Thailand returns home

A Grande Prairie, Alta., woman who faced a decade in prison for spray-painting an ancient wall in Thailand has returned home and says she is eager to move on from the ordeal.

Brittney Schneider was vacationing in Thailand in October when she was charged with vandalism for her role in spray-painting Tha Pae Gate, the main entrance to the old town of Chiang Mai.

Furlong Lee, a friend from the U.K., was also charged in relation to the incident.

The pair, both 23, faced a fine of about $40,000 Cdn and up to 10 years in prison. They were initially given a two-year prison sentence, but a judge ultimately gave them a fine of $4,000 each and a one-year suspended sentence.

After seven weeks in Southeast Asia, Schneider and her mother arrived back home on Friday night. She said coming back to Alberta was a surreal experience.

"I'm super happy and was super thrilled to see my family," she said. "I thought I'd never see them again.

"I was just waiting at every airport for them to detain me again. I don't know why, I was so scared. I didn't even have my own passport, they had to escort me to every plane until I was in a Canadian airport."

"Once I landed, I felt great."

Facing threats at home

Schneider says she is now focusing on dealing with the stress of the experience and will see a counsellor. After incurring huge expenses and legal fees, she wants to go back to work and resume a normal life.

She says she is still facing threats.

"People have threatened that they're going to cane me and burn my car and stuff like that," she said. "I went for dinner last night and I had someone come up and record me and tell me spray paint's on sale."

Schneider says Lee, who was detained with her in Thailand, remains in custody in the country. Her family paid extra to have her case expedited, she said, but Lee was not able to do the same.

She says she will remain in contact with him once he is free.

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Schneider says she would like to travel again in the future, but her experience in Thailand has changed her priorities.

She says she has learned she has to be more respectful when travelling and in her life in general. Drinking won't be the focus on her future travels, she said. She maintains the vandalism was a drunken mistake.

She believes she would not have vandalized the wall if she was sober.

"I'm just sorry for what I did," she said.

"I'm not what I did, my mistake doesn't define me. I'm not that type of person. I just made a mistake."
The federal government announced a $450,000 grant to help Pride Toronto develop strategies to make LGBT communities in Canada live more securely.

"For too long, the [LGBT] community has encountered injustice from various institutions in our society in ways that have prevented people from living their lives more fully and contributing their strengths to our country," said Bill Morneau, federal finance minister and MP for Toronto Centre, home to the city's Gay Village.

"We know that we have to do better."

Morneau was joined by Olivia Nuamah, executive director of Pride Toronto, at an afternoon news conference on Saturday to formally commit the new money.

The funding will be used for the creation of a new initiative, run by Pride Toronto, that seeks to address "institutional and systemic barriers that lead to negative outcomes for [LGBT] communities, especially those that they have when encountering the criminal justice system."

Nuamah explained that the organization is taking a "two-pronged" approach. First, it will host consultations with LGBT people in cities and towns across the country to hear their concerns and personal experiences with injustice or feeling unsafe.

According to a news release, that will be followed by the development of an action plan aimed at:

Improving the relationship between Toronto's LGBT communities and the criminal justice system.

Increasing understanding of LGBT offending and victimization (including hate crimes).

Contributing to the implementation of educational and prevention tools for both victims and offenders in this community.

"We are incredibly thankful," Nuamah told reporters.

While he was never mentioned by name, Morneau made several allusions to alleged serial killer Bruce McArthur. McArthur, 67, faces eight charges of first-degree murder for the deaths of eight men with ties to Toronto's Church and Wellesley neighbourhood.

McArthur's arrest in January sent shock waves through the city and exposed deep rifts between its LGBT community and police force. Some within the community have been critical of how police have handled cases of missing LGBT people, some going as far to allege that the community's concerns were ignored by investigators.
BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Thousands joined a student rally in Budapest on Saturday calling for safeguards for academic freedom and changes in government policies which have prompted a university founded by U.S. billionaire George Soros to plan to leave Hungary. The Central European University (CEU) has announced it will move to Vienna unless Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government agrees by December 1 to ensure the legal framework for its continued operation in Hungary. CEU has offered U.S.-accredited degree programs to thousands of students from ex-communist eastern Europe for almost three decades. Participants in the demonstration held outside the historic buildings of Corvinus University on the bank of the Danube river, said the academic climate symbolized by the CEU, one which celebrates free thought and open debate, needed to be defended. "CEU represents free education and diversity... I am fed up with what is going on here," said Maria Palmai, 63, a retired bank official. More than 3,500 CEU alumni are currently working and teaching in Hungary. Students of other universities including ELTE and Corvinus also attended the rally. "If we do not stand up for CEU, the next time they will come for ELTE. Nobody will stand up for ELTE, and if they go for Corvinus, nobody will stand up stand up for Corvinus, " said Eyad, 30, a Jordanian who studies film making at ELTE. CEU's plan to move U.S. accredited programs, the bulk of its courses, to Vienna follows a lengthy battle with Orban's government, including legal changes widely seen as targeting CEU. The conservative nationalist government has accused the Hungarian-born Soros of plotting to destroy European civilization by flooding the continent with immigrants. Soros says his support for refugees is part of a humanitarian mission. The university looks set to move as the government has ruled out any concessions to CEU. (Reporting by Sandor Peto; editing by Jason Neely)
Eight years ago, Toronto playwright Beatriz Pizano travelled to Colombia to be with her critically ill mother, who was suffering from "terrible" Alzheimer's and medical emergencies "one after another."

She didn't know it at the time, but there in the country of her birth, Pizano would help to end her mother's life through euthanasia.

"It was a very long journey. And the last years were truly so much suffering," the playwright and performer told CBC Radio's Metro Morning this week.

"She kept breaking bones, falling."

Euthanasia is legal under Colombian law if a patient gives clear, advanced consent to die at the hands of a caregiver. But the decision about how and when was difficult, Pizano said.

Her mother, Julia Echeverri, died at 82.

"She didn't want to live the way she was living," she said.

Dividing Lines/Lineas Divisorias, a one-woman play that opened this week at the Theatre Centre on Queen Street W., is Pizano's reflection on the life-changing experience.

"We look at euthanasia from a very personal point of view," she said.

According to Aluna Theatre, the company producing the play, Dividing Lines/Lineas Divisorias asks the question: "How do you make a decision about dying?" Pizano is the company's artistic director.

Aluna Theatre/Twitter

'The preciousness of life'

Pizano said the experience gave her a greater appreciation for life.

"It makes you understand the preciousness of life, to really try to live it the best you can and take care of the people you love and how important it is to have support around you."

She recalled a particularly plaintive phone call from a paramedic in Colombia shortly before her mother's death. He told Pizano that her mother was suffering from yet another urinary tract infection.

"If I were you, I wouldn't do anything and would just allow the infection take her now. It would only take a few days. And she can die quietly," he told Pizano.

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But the thought of her loved one dying alone in a care home four thousand kilometres away was too painful.

Aluna Theatre/Twitter

"I couldn't bear the fact of me being in Canada and that happening without me there."

So Pizano returned to the country she had left at 18 to be with her mother. It was there that "out of the blue" she ran into a physician who was at the nursing home to euthanize another patient. She described him as a "shaman" that used ceremony and visualizations to help her understand the process of euthanasia.

'It's so hard when you get there'

While laws around end-of-life planning are different here in Canada, Pizano said the play is still relevant to a local audience. The decisions are always difficult, no matter the circumstances, she explained.

"Even though you may know those are the desires of someone, it's so hard when you get there. It's so hard when you get to that point. My mother could not speak, talk or make decisions anymore. I am the one, saying okay, 'We're going ahead.'"

In Canada, laws enacted in 2016 allow for medically-assisted death in some situations, but the process can be complex. To be eligible, a person must have a serious illness, be in an advanced state of decline, experiencing unbearable suffering to a point where natural death has become "reasonably foreseeable."

The patient must also be able to consent, not only at the time of his or her request but again immediately before the assisted-dying procedure.

According to the Canadian Medical Association, euthanasia means "knowingly and intentionally" performing an act to end the life of another person to ease pain and suffering, whereas medically-assisted dying refers to when a doctor 'knowingly and intentionally" provides a person with the knowledge or means to end his or her life.

Aluna Theatre/Twitter

Play is 'biographical video-essay'

Pizano said it took her a long time to decide to write the play and to settle on what form it should take. She decided against drama.

In its performance notes, the play is described as a "biographical video-essay" that outlines the playwright's struggle with the choice of doing nothing or helping to end her mother's life.

"Borrowing from structures of documentary theatre and ceremony, Dividing Lines /Lineas Divisorias deconstructs the author's watershed moments to reflect on how do we want to die and how do we want to live," it reads.

The plays runs through to Dec. 2nd.
ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey charged 28 people on Friday in relation to the 2016 assassination of the Russian ambassador to Ankara, naming the U.S.-based Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen as the prime suspect in the case, the state-owned Anadolu news agency said. Andrei Karlov was shot dead by an off-duty policeman while speaking at an Ankara exhibit opening in December 2016. The gunman shouted "Allahu Akbar" and "Don't forget Aleppo!" as he opened fire, apparently referring to Russia's involvement in Syria. He was shot dead by police at the scene. President Tayyip Erdogan has said Gulen's movement was behind the assassination, a charge the cleric has denied. Erdogan also blames the preacher's network for an attempted military coup in July 2016. Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in the United States since 1999, has condemned the coup and denied any involvement with it. Authorities charged Gulen and 27 others of attempting to "overthrow the constitutional order", "being a member of a terrorist organization" and of premeditated murder, Anadolu said. Prosecutors say the Gulen's organization was attempting to derail relations between Turkey and Russia with the killing. At the time of the December 2016 killing of Karlov, ties between the two countries had already been strained, after Turkey downed a Russian war plane over Syria a year earlier. Since Karlov's assassination, ties between Ankara and Moscow have made steady improvement. (Reporting by Ece Toksabay; Editing by David Dolan)
Washington has become almost as well-known for its leaks as its classified secrets.

But even in that climate, special counsel Robert Mueller has managed to keep most people guessing about the pace of his probe into Russia's role in the 2016 presidential election.

"Between now and the end of the year we're going to see significant movement in the investigation," says Garrett Graff, who's written extensively on the scope of Russian interference in the electoral process for publications such as Wired magazine.

Between now and the end of the year we're going to see significant movement in the investigation. - Garrett Graff, journalist

Graff knows a prediction like that needs something to back it up. In fact, he is now one of a growing number of people who's been closely following the special counsel investigation and believes the former FBI director is nearly ready to reveal what he's learned.

"Every single court filing he's done  indictments, guilty pleas or what have you  has been deeper, more knowledgeable, more insightful and better informed than we had realized Bob Mueller was up until that moment," Graff told CBC's The Investigators this week.

Charting Mueller's moves

Graff says that's why so many who've been charting Mueller's moves, are increasingly intrigued by a growing set of sealed court files sitting in Washington.

"There has been an abnormally large number of sealed indictments already filed in the District of Columbia this year. We don't know whether those are related to Mueller but we know that there's something like 14 sealed indictments sitting in D.C. right now," he says.

If you feel like you've lost the thread of the Mueller investigation, you're likely not alone. The probe has been underway since May 17, 2017, and it can be difficult to remember precisely what it was Mueller was tasked with doing.

'Laser-focused' on 2 questions

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"Mueller is laser-focused on these two questions of Russia's role in the 2016 election and Donald Trump's attempted or perhaps active obstruction of justice of that investigation ever since," says Graff, who wrote a biography of Mueller before he took on the Russia probe.

"One of the things that has been clear right from the start of this investigation is that Bob Mueller is far ahead of our public understanding of where he is. Generally, his investigation is running about four to six months  ahead of where we think he is."

Graff says only when past indictments have been unsealed, such as in the prosecution of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, has it become clear just how much Mueller and his team have actually learned.

Manafort is one of four former members of Trump's inner circle who've been convicted in connection with the probe. Manafort's former assistant Rick Gates, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former campaign aide George Papadopoulos have all pleaded guilty to lying to investigators after being targeted by Mueller's team.

Andrew Harnik/Associated Press

Graff says those early indictments, and the relative quiet leading up to the midterms earlier this month, also suggest that Mueller may feel he can't push the timeline much past the 18 months the investigation has already been underway.

"He knows he doesn't have forever, and he certainly has been well aware since the summer of 2017 that he might be fired, or this investigation might be shut down almost at any moment. So he has clearly had plenty of time to prepare whatever doomsday type plans he might actually have," Graff says.

Also this week on The Investigators with Diana Swain: Two Toronto journalists share their perspectives on the angry reaction directed towards them by some parents at St. Michael's College School. And Eric Freedman explains why the environment beat has become a dangerous job. Watch The Investigators with Diana Swain Thursdays at 7:00 p.m. on CBC Television; Saturdays at 9:30 p.m. ET and Sundays at 5:30 p.m. ET on CBC News Network.
The street outside Calgary's downtown Hyatt hotel was teeming with pro-oil demonstrators Thursday, forcing police to close traffic along a busy avenue as the growing crowd spilled over the sidewalks.

While a business audience streamed inside the hotel to listen to the prime minister speak, the large crowd chanted, "Build that pipe!" and "Trudeau must go!"

But amidst the rally's clamour, there emerged an unexpected refrain: "O, Canada."

The anthem had the feel of an acoustic flare  an SOS signal to the country and its leaders about the province's plight.

While the miserable price of crude has many Albertans worried, there's frustration the issue isn't being met with enough urgency, even as economists warn of a broader impact.

"People don't realize how much the energy sector contributes to the economy ... it supports families and it supports Canadians," Minh Nguyen, 39, who works in the sector, said at Thursday's rally.

"It's not just an Alberta problem. It is a Canadian problem."

Nguyen's concerns have been echoed across the oilpatch and Alberta's legislature: The situation is serious.

Tony Seskus/CBC

The fundamental issue, as Scotiabank Economics explains, is there aren't enough pipelines to transport the crude from where it's produced in Western Canada to where it's consumed  predominantly U.S. refineries.

This has widened the discount received for Canadian crude relative to U.S. varieties as Canadian barrels need to be marked down for the higher cost of transportation, the Scotiabank report said.

The discount is around $13 US a barrel in normal times, it said, climbing over $20 US to account for the cost of pricier transportation like rail.

"But when production rises beyond the capacity of pipelines and rail combined, as Canada's oilpatch is experiencing today, producers are forced to utilize even higher-cost transportation methods or to wait out the storm in provincial storage tanks already filled to the brim," reads the report.

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"The value of these stranded barrels plummets, dragging the regional benchmark down with them."

The result of the oil glut has been hard on many producers, with discounts tracking around $40 US a barrel in recent weeks, climbing as high as $50 US.

Analysts expect the situation to improve in the months ahead, but meanwhile the industry is losing tens of millions of dollars a day.

While initially the discounts were an issue largely for oilsands crude, it's not stopping there.

"This price deterioration has now spread to all the other different grades of oil that we produce," economist Peter Tertzakian, executive director of ARC Energy Research Institute, told CBC News last week.

If the oil glut isn't addressed in the next few weeks, it could impact spending and jobs across the West, Tertzakian said.

The situation threatens to punch a big hole in Alberta's finances, but there are also warnings of a broader impact.

Premier Rachel Notley, for one, estimates it is costing the Canadian economy $80 million daily.

Making matters worse, the benchmark price for U.S. oil, West Texas Intermediate, has also been falling, dropping on Friday to its lowest level since September 2017.

Jeff McIntosh/Canadian Press

An analysis from BMO Capital Markets on Friday said the longer the extreme lows persist for Canadian oil prices, the greater the economic damage for Alberta, and the national economy.

"The way it can affect the entire country is through overall government revenues," Doug Porter, chief economist at BMO Capital Markets, said in an interview.

"Generally speaking, the federal government doesn't get much directly from the energy industry, but indirectly they certainly do.

"This will hit government revenues and it can also weigh on the Canadian dollar as well."

The price gap has led some oil producers to do something extraordinary: call on the provincial government to mandate production cuts to help clear the glut.

But the request has proven divisive, with large integrated companies  Suncor, Husky Energy and Imperial Oil  rejecting the idea, saying it could create both economic and trade risks.

Alberta's premier appointed a team of envoys to seek solutions with industry, though a quick and easy solution appears elusive. In the meantime, Notley continues calling on Ottawa to help fund a strategy to move more oil by rail.

"If Ottawa won't come to the table, well, then we'll get it done ourselves," Notley told drillers Thursday.

The premier's words may speak to a deeper frustration.

CBC

.

Calgary-based pollster Janet Brown said with the economic downturn, difficult recovery and ongoing troubles with getting pipelines built, there may be more deep-rooted concerns.

"You're really dealing with a heavily emotional situation for a lot of Calgarians," Brown said.

"This is not a question of just pure economics. It's really about people's lives and livelihood and their family, and it's just as emotional for Calgarians as it is a practical concern."

She said some people also feel there's a measure of satisfaction outside Alberta to see the province struggle.

But University of Toronto political scientist Nelson Wiseman doesn't believe that's actually the case. Albertans' concerns are being heard, he said.

"Once you get outside of the environmental groups, the attitude is  the industry is vital, not just for Alberta, for Canadian revenues," Wiseman said. "People here don't think, 'gee, you know if Alberta loses somehow we're better off.' I don't think people see it that way at all."

CBC

On Thursday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau acknowledged Alberta is in a "crisis" over low oil prices, but people who'd hoped he'd come to Calgary with news of help would probably have been disappointed.

Oilpatch leaders, who met privately with Trudeau, said the prime minister appeared to listen to the sector's concerns with oil prices, pipeline construction and Bill C-69, which would overhaul the approval process for energy projects.

"He made it very clear he understands the concerns of the industry," said Cenovus CEO Alex Pourbaix told reporters immediately following the meeting.

But as time winds on  and oil prices languish  concern and frustration build.

"It tells you how desperate times are," Canadian Natural Resources executive vice chairman Steve Laut said when asked Thursday about the large crowd of demonstrators outside the Hyatt.

"You don't normally see that kind of thing happen."
Challenging Star Darshan who shares a special bond with Rebel Star Ambareesh is in total shock ever since the actor heard the news that his appaji is no more.

Darshan was shooting for 'Yejamana' in Sweden. He along with the entire film team has cancelled the shoot and are rushing back to Bengaluru to visit the legend actor and a friendly human being for the last time.

Darshan who fondly calls Ambareesh as 'appaji', has already taken off from Sweden and is enroute to Bengaluru, and thereafter will head straight to Mandya where the mortal remains will be kept for public to pay their last respects till Monday morning.

Ambi treated Darshan more like his son, and always backed him during his turbulent personal life, and professional career. In fact when Ambareesh was admitted in Singapore hospital, Darshan met him and enquired about his health. Later, they shared the screen in 'Ambareesha'.
Photo - Rev Dr Ross Clifford Principal of Morling College, NSW Baptists, the largest seminary in Australia

Years ago when attending a Moruya Chamber of Commerce meeting, the guest speaker from the local business development board, listed in the power point statistical display the percentages of employee categories.

Up came the statistical percentile for 'Clerical'  14%. I raised my hand and commented that I didn't realise there were so many clergy in the Shire!

To this I received the appropriate candour and humour, and further remarked to the gathering that there were seven 'Clergy' in the Moruya township alone. I noted that two had Doctorates, two has Masters degrees and the rest had primary degrees from accountancy to the liberal arts along with theological seminary degrees..

That was quite startling to the Moruya business community that the clergy in their own right were so highly educated, but in historical terms, that is the norm.

Theology and Education

I recall some years ago now that an ordained Anglican minister took up the reigns as the Vice-Chancellor of Sydney University. The Reverend Dr Michael Spence himself a graduate from Sydney University with first class honours in Italian, English and Law took up then role. His specialty was intellectual property law and was at Oxford University, UK, for 20 years, where he also served as an academic administrator.

This is nothing unusual within the context of contemporary Australia, and that in a historical context it is nothing out of the ordinary. Christian leaders have always played a critical role in Education.

Christianity continues to be an integral part of our Australian educational community, and any reference to historical events will show that each of the colonies education systems was initiated by the Christian Churches.

Quite apart from the private schools run by church or independent community religious groups, 'Religious Education' as a legitimate subject is mandated in every State and Territory Education platform. Of course, this is not necessarily entirely Christian religious teaching, as elements of comparative religion and other accredited religious persuasions are catered for in some states (for example, Victoria).

In all States, children have opportunities to be taught about their own faith within the State School system or to opt out of the classes if this cannot be catered for in their local school.

Photo - Mark Tronson in his preaching gown 1979 at Croydon Park Baptist Church  often wore his academic / preaching gown at community functions.

States

The New South Wales Education Department for example, mandates 'Special Religious Education' (SRE) for its high schools. Salaries are met by community groups that raise funds for that purpose, and it works very well as it is an integral part of the school program.

In Queensland a different system is in operation, where 'school chaplains' are the norm, generally administered by Scripture Union. They are partially funded through community efforts and the Federal Government's Chaplaincy program. Each State and Territory has its own mechanism which ensures religious education is covered.

Given Australias heritage, we can see how this situation has its historical roots in the English Education system, where the Christian Church not only established education but were the founders of the great Universities, not least Oxford and Cambridge.

And they in turn were developed on the basis of the original place of Universities, as being part of the European monasteries where the governance of education was centred in the Middle Ages. Up to that time, if you wanted an education for your child, the only place it was available was a monastery or a nunnery.

If you required some learned advice, or medical attention, or a tutor in a particular area, then the people educated sufficiently to provide these services were monks or nuns.

Background

It was at this time in the Middle Ages (when it was compulsory for different professions and guild members to wear the appropriate hat to show who they were), that the traditional black gown, hood and cap was modified from the garb of the monks, which had been sensibly designed to keep them warm and dry in their life of austerity in cold, damp climates.

Subsequently, the wearing of the gown indicated an obvious demarcation of vocations; and the historical fighting between town and gown developed a violent culture of its own. We still have echoes of this tension, but thankfully it is imbued with a bit more humour than in days of olde.

Another entrenched cultural stereotype from these times which remains alive and well is the ivory tower syndrome; although this, too, is a little more tempered with the cross-fertilisation of knowledge and corporate salaries. The town is nowadays much more integrated with gown than in the past.

This extract from a spoof speech to university graduates, given by a businessman, illustrates this tenet:

This is your big day, the day when you leave university, prepared by your professors to go out into the real world. The first thing you'll notice is that your professors are not going out there with you. They're not stupid; that's why they are professors. They've figured out that this seat of learning is a carefree place where the most serious real problem is finding a legal parking space. So your professors are going to stay in college until they die. Even then, they'll go right on teaching classes. This is called 'tenure ''

Photo - Mackay State School 1958 where Mark Tronson started his education

Normal citizen

Back in our real world, education is taken very seriously by Clerics and the Christian laity. This shows that clerics fall into the category of 'normal citizen' - tertiary studies, graduation, (theological post graduate studies), and this currency is mirrored by our entire society which has a huge emphasis on all forms of education.

There are innumerable Federal Government debates, Federal and State conflicts, and public comments on the most effective ways of delivering and funding the very best education for our children. This ranges from pre-school right the way through to the concern about the brain drain of post-graduate researches being lost overseas.

The high value of education for the clergy is that we live in a society where such input is required by congregations. There was a time where Pentecostalism in Australia was derided as non-educated pastors simply hung up a shingle.

In the eighties and nineties a massive shift took place in Pentecostal theological training correlated with the enormous increase in their congregations. Why not make an appointment with your local Pentecostal pastor, youll be astonished to find an articulate well educated couple  husband and wife ministry team.

So too our young writer ministry with Christian Today. Young people 18-30 years interested in writing for Christian Today with your own column please connect with Dr Mark Tronson timeout@bushorchestra.com 0419 917 713

Photo - Delma Tronson a ministers spouse of 41 years at the 2003 opening of the Basil Sellers Art Centre in Moruya

Mark Tronson is a Baptist minister (retired) who served as the Australian cricket team chaplain for 17 years (2000 ret) and established Life After Cricket in 2001. He was recognised by the Olympic Ministry Medal in 2009 presented by Carl Lewis Olympian of the Century. He mentors young writers and has written 24 books, and enjoys writing. He is married to Delma, with four adult children and grand-children. Dr Tronson writes a daily article for Christian Today Australia (since 2008) and in November 2016 established Christian Today New Zealand.

Mark Tronson's archive of articles can be viewed at http://www.pressserviceinternational.org/mark-tronson.html
A rogue misfolded prion protein that destroys the brain was discovered in the eyes of 11 infected patients, a new study reveals.Researchers hope that the discovery could lead to early diagnosis of Creutzfeldt-Jakob diseaseor CJD, the most common prion disease.The findings were discussedin the journal mBioPrion Proteins Found In Patients' EyesResearchers from the National Institute of Health along with the scientists from the University of California, San Diego and the University of California, San Franciso examined the eyes of deceased patients who were diagnosed with CJD. Using the RT-QuIC, a method also use in diagnosing prion disease, they checked for the presence of misfolded prion proteins from eye tissue of 11 patients.They found that the retina has the highest level of prions in all 11 patients. Moreover, the researchers also found traces of prions throughout the cornea, lens, and muscles in and around the eye. This is the first study to detect prions in these parts of the eye.Fear Of Prion Disease InfectionThe findings also raised concerns over the possibility of patients being infected with prion disease. The illness shows up spontaneously most of the time when a prion proteinsuddenly changes into a misfolded form, affecting other proteins around it.For some, it is genetic. However, it can also be infectious. Prion disease can be passed from person to person or animal to person.The concern over the new findings comes from the possibility that eye exam equipment, which is designed for repeated use, has been contaminated. About 40 percent of people who have sporadic CJD develop eye problems and, therefore, go through regular eye exams.In addition, people who have prion disease but have not been diagnosed might be spreading CJD to another person through cadaveric corneal transplants. The study revealed that there are already two to three possible cases of disease transmission.CJD is fatal. The disease can also be difficult to diagnose because its symptoms are similar to those of other, more common diseases.The researchers said that they will continue evaluating ways to use accessible eye components and fluids to diagnose CJD. They also hope that the method used in the study could be applied to other neurodegenerative diseases"If the RT-QuIC method can be used to amplify other aggregated proteins, this might lead to advances in diagnosis for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and related diseases," statedMichael Geschwind, co-author of the study.
An NHS report that claimed more than one in 18 pre-school children has a mental health disorder has been criticised for medicalising what is 'nothing more than bad behaviour'.Among two to four-year-olds, the most common mental health disorder is 'oppositional defiant disorder '(ODD), according to figures released yesterday.This is defined as children refusing to do what they are told and acting aggressively towards their parents. It is said to affect more than a quarter of pre-school children with supposed mental health problems.But there are doubts about whether it is a real psychological illness, with one expert saying the NHS is 'turning everything into a mental health problem' and youngsters just 'don't do what they're told''We are turning everything into a mental health problem,' Professor Julian Elliott, from the University of Durham, told The Telegraph'For many of these children they don't have a mental disorder; it's a question of conduct.'The main problem with three and four-year-olds is that they don't do what they're told.'WHAT IS OPPOSITIONAL DEFIANT DISORDER?Oppositional defiant disorder is a mental disorder recognised by the NHS which is characterised by ongoing bad behaviour and aggression.Symptoms include:Repeatedly questioning rules and arguing with parents and adultsBlaming others for their mistakesBehaving to deliberately annoy or upset othersNot doing what they're toldHaving uncontrollable rages or severe tantrumsAppearing angry and frustrated much of the timeStruggling to concentrate on tasksRarely considering the impact of their behaviour before actingHaving low self-esteem or a negative attitudeBeing easily aggravated by othersAccording to The Priory private mental health clinics, which offers treatment for the disorder: 'The signs and symptoms of ODD may be apparent in all children at some point during their development.'[But] if your child has been diagnosed with the condition, then these symptoms will be so frequent and severe to the point where their learning and social relationships are negatively impacted.'The rehab centre says it can treat the disorder with behavioural therapy sessions, counselling and even medication.Source: The PriorySymptoms of ODD include arguing with adults, blaming others for their mistakes, deliberately upsetting people and having uncontrollable tantrums.But experts argue toddlers' parents would spend be constantly visiting doctors if they thought tantrums were a sign of mental illness.And controversial treatments for the unruly toddlers include sending their parents on NHS-funded parenting courses.But the experts who wrote the report have defended the classification, saying ODD can seriously affect a child's health and education.The National Institute of Health and Care Excellence, which advises the NHS, adopted the US-devised condition in 2013.Exeter University's Professor Tamsin Ford said: 'It does affect these young people  their health is poor and their educational outcomes are poor.'Some 1.9 per cent of two to four-year-olds are believed to have ODD, with the next most common problems being autism spectrum disorder (1.4 per cent of two to four-year-olds) and sleeping disorder (1.3 per cent).Experts have also criticised the Government's decision to bring in specialist mental health nurses in schools and colleges.Leading nurses said existing school medics should just receive further training instead of 'reinventing the wheel', the Health Service Journalreported.The NHS revealed the new mental health practitioner role last month.Sharon White, chief executive of the School and Public Health Nurses Association, said: 'The suggestion that after only one year of training these practitioners would be able to provide the level of understanding deserved by our children and young people  is a nonsense sticking plaster.'There were calls instead for more investment in the current school nursing system.Yesterday's landmark report on the mental health of children and young people in England is the first in more than a decade.The findings were based on a survey of 9,117 children and included those aged two to four and 17 to 19 for the first time.It shows a worsening picture for young people's welfare, with one in eight five to 19-year-olds suffering a mental health disorder in 2017.The rates of illness increase with age, affecting one in ten by the time they finished primary school, one in seven by 16 and one in six by age 20.Women aged between 17 and 19 are the worst affected age group, with almost a quarter of them (22.4 per cent) suffering from an emotional disorder.And one in three gay, lesbian or bisexual teenagers suffer from mental health problems, compared to one in seven heterosexuals.Shockingly, a quarter of teenagers with a mental disorder have self-harmed or tried to kill themselves, and this rose to almost half of 17 to 19-year-olds.The figures have coincided with concerns hundreds of children are being given high-strength antidepressants by doctors going against guidelines to prescribe them.Experts called the figures 'shocking' and said inadequate mental health and support services leave many young people stuck in a 'vicious circle of solitude and suffering'.'These figures are shocking,' said Denise Hatton, chief executive of YMCA England & Wales.'And while progress has been made to normalise conversations about mental health and successive governments have made additional funding for NHS services available, today's figures are a wake-up call that this clearly hasn't gone far enough.'The Mental Health of Children and Young People in England report revealed the proportion of five to 15-year-olds with mental health problems rose from 9.7 per cent in 1999 to 11.2 per cent in 2017.Experts offering their insight into the figures suggested social media could be partly to blame.Dr Dennis Ougrin, a senior psychiatrist at King's College London, said: 'Children with mental disorders are heavier users of social media and are affected by the social media more significantly, than the children without mental disorders.'Teenagers aged between 17 and 19 have the highest rate of emotional disorders, with one in six of them suffering (16.9 per cent), and 6.4 per cent having more than one.The YMCA's Ms Hatton added: 'To end this crisis that is ruining young lives, it's crucial that action and investment goes into preventing young people from experiencing poor mental health in the first place.'From preventative youth and community services, to education in schools, mental health must be incorporated in every aspect of daily life to stop young people from reaching crisis point.'Without preventative services and with the NHS struggling to cope, too many young people are still left alone to deal with their mental health difficulties by themselves, leading to a vicious circle of solitude and suffering.'WHERE DO THE MOST CHILDREN HAVE MENTAL DISORDERS?East of England (15.6%)South West (15.5%)North West (14.7%)Yorkshire and the Humber (14.7%)East Midlands (12.2%)South East (11.7%)West Midlands (11.7%)North East (11.6%)London (9%)Source: NHS DigitalThe British Medical Association  a leading doctors' union  has also called for more investment in mental health services.NHS psychiatrist and deputy chair of the consultants' committee, Dr Gary Wannan said: 'These findings are extremely concerning yet not at all surprising given that the BMA has for a long time warned of the need for greater investment in child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) to be able to meet the rising demand.'Prevention where possible or early intervention is by far the most effective and beneficial means of treating children and young people's mental health.'It was also revealed yesterday that almost 600 children, including some aged 10 or under, are being given strong anti-depressants which raise their risk of suicide.Figures unveiled by The Guardianshowed 597 under-18s were given 'last resort' drugs by doctors going against NHS guidance.The meds, paroxetine and venlafaxine, should not be given to children under normal prescribing circumstances, the paper reported, because they are believed to increase the risk of suicidal thoughts among young people.Use of the super-strength depression drugs came as the number of under-18s taking anti-depressants rose from around 69,000 in 2016 to 71,365 last year.Oxford University psychiatrist Andrea Cipriani told The Guardian: 'Paroxetine and venlafaxine should not be prescribed as first-line treatment, that is for sure.'She added: 'Medications are not a quick fix for depression.''COUNSELLING WASN'T CUTTING IT AND I DIDN'T REALLY KNOW WHERE TO GO'Catherine Nixon felt she'd had a mental health problem from the age of seven but didn't seek expert help until she was 16 years old when it began to take over her life.She told the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme she would get up at 7am and spend seven hours in the bathroom on her compulsive 'morning routine'.Not feeling like her condition was severe enough to seek help from the NHS, Miss Nixon waited for years before getting professional support.'It started to get worse during the first bit of year 12,' she said.'I'd had counselling and low-level CBT but that wasn't really cutting it and I didn't really know where to go.'It wasn't until things got to its absolute worst when I was in and out of A&E that I eventually got into [NHS Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service] and they were like "you're a bit too severe for us, we're going to have to send you to a psychiatric unit", where I was for six months.'Mental disorders measured in Thursday's NHS figures included emotional, behavioural and hyperactivity disorders, as well as other, less common disorders.Data breaking down rates by region revealed children in the East of England and the South West are worst affected, with nearly 16 per cent of them suffering.Whereas those in London have the fewest mental disorders, with nine per cent of them suffering.'We need to support the children who are most vulnerable while making children and young people's mental health a consistently high priority, and everyone's business,' said the Mental Health Foundation's chief executive, Mark Rowland.He added children in low-income homes or who have parents with mental health problems are at a heightened risk of suffering from disorders.Alana Ryan, senior policy officer at the NSPCC said: 'When a generation of children are struggling with their mental health with many having self-harmed or attempted suicide, we are fundamentally failing our young people.'Our own research shows even if children are referred for specialist mental health treatment there is a slim chance they will receive it, which is totally unacceptable.'The British Psychological Society warned the rising number of mental health problems are proof the current treatment system isn't working.Chief executive, Sarb Bajwa, said the statistics confirm 'what psychologists who work with this group have known for years  that the mental health challenges children and young people face are increasing.'He added: 'We need to prioritise prevention and early intervention and psychological approaches that are proven to work with children and their families, peers, schools and communities.''THERE WAS NOBODY THERE FOR ME SO MY ANGER CAME OUT IN SELF-HARM'For many people, mental health problems can start in the vital development stages of their lives, and this was the case for 18-year-old Alexandra Cromie, from Belfast.Alexandra's first years at school encouraged a negative outlook on herself, she says, when bullies would call her fat and even encourage her to cut and kill herself.Not knowing how to deal with her feelings, Miss Cromie soon developed anxiety and depression aged 14. In attempts to change her appearance she became bulimic, trying to slim down to look more like her skinnier classmates.With these efforts not working, and not finding anyone to confide in Alexandra's troubled mental state soon resulted in more extreme actions.'There was nobody really there for me so all my hate and anger started to come out in self-harm,' she revealed.'I was cutting myself, burning myself, scratching myself, picking under my skin, all because I didn't know how to focus that negative energy elsewhere so I just started to focus doing that to myself which lasted around two to three years.'Miss Cromie's problem spiralled so much she eventually began experiencing suicidal thoughts and even tried to take her own life. It was at this point she confided in a doctor and was given an emergency referral to an NHS counsellor.Starting to finally feel supported, Miss Cromie began to feel more optimistic about her future after a year of seeing an NHS counsellor.She has now made huge improvements in her mental health and volunteers for the National Citizen Service, sharing her difficult experiences with other young people who have struggled, and encouraging people to seek help.'People need to realise that mental health can get better with the right support,' Miss Cromie added. 'But the problem is that people just don't talk about it enough.'It can be really hard to open up, I've broken down previously when trying to share my story because I automatically thought people would think I'm a basket-case.'When I did share my story I gained so much support from people thanking me for opening up and saying how inspiring it was.'It really made me feel accepted. It just shows how beneficial it can be to have a supportive network around you, while being provided with a safe space to speak in.'Source:National Citizen Service
New Delhi: After the grand reception in Bengaluru, the hype around Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh's wedding refuses to die down as fresh pictures from their post-wedding bash that took place last night have made way to social media.

Unlike their mehendi, wedding and Bengaluru reception, this time the couple went all quirky and vibrant with their dressing style.

Wearing a knee-length coat with floral embellishments and an over v-neck shirt with black trousers, Ranveer looked dapper.

His kohl-rimmed eyes and two-layered neckpiece have been chosen perfectly to complete the look.

While Deepika looked bewitching in a floral lehenga and a tiara. Adding a perfect amount of oomph to her outfit, she chose to wear a traditional statement neckpiece.

Bollywood photographer Manav Manglani shared a photo of the couple, dancing their hearts out at the bash. He wrote, "#newlyweds #ranveersingh and #deepikapadukone dance their heart out at the wedding party for family and close friends in Mumbai #lastnight #deepveerkishaadi #deepveerwedding."

Also, celebrity hairstylist Clarabelle Saldanha shared another picture with Deepika, captioning it as, "Every girl needs a hairstylist & this #gorgeous girl has two of us!! @georgiougabriel are we the lucky ones or is she ?? thank you @deepikapadukone for calling us your lifelines."

According to media reports, the private party was hosted by Ranveer's sister, Ritika Bhavnani, at Grand Hyatt in Mumbai.

Deepika and Ranveer tied the knot in Lake Como, Italy in a traditional Konkani ceremony on November 14, while a Sindhi wedding was organised on November 15, both of which were attended by close-knit relatives of the two actors.

Bollywood's Bajirao and Mastani will host a wedding reception in Mumbai at The Grand Hyatt on November 28, scheduled to be attended by the who's who of the film fraternity.
K Chandrasekhar Rao said he will ensure that demand for raising quotas was accepted if people elected TRS candidates from all 17 Lok Sabha seats of Telangana next year. (Photo: PTI)

Hyderabad: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP are afflicted with a "disease" that has caused "communal madness" and prompted them to block enhanced job quotas for Muslims in Telangana, TRS chief K Chandrasekhar Rao said on Friday, as poll-time rhetoric got shriller and nastier.

Rao, the caretaker chief minister, slammed the Centre for keeping on hold a decision on raising reservations for Muslims and Scheduled Tribes from 4 to 12 per cent and 6 to 10 per cent in state government jobs and educational institutions despite the state assembly passing a resolution.

"Narendra Modi and the BJP have a disease...In everything they see, they see Hindu-Muslim (divide). They don't see anything else and so they did not do it (raise the quotas)...they have kept it pending," he told an election rally at Narsampet.

Addressing another election meeting in Mahabubabad, the TRS president repeated his charge and accused the Centre of "religious madness".

"Narendra Modi government has a disease. That is minorities (versus) Hindus....they are in that state of 'mataparamaina pichi' (communal madness). It is because of this they blocked reservations for STs and Muslims," he said. Rao said he will ensure that the demand for raising the quotas was accepted if people elected TRS candidates from all the 17 Lok Sabha seats of Telangana next year.

"Not only the Assembly elections...with kindness, help us win all 17 Lok Sabha seats in Telangana. Only if we win can we make Delhi bend its neck. We will get our ST reservation, we will get our Muslim reservation," he said.

The TRS leader claimed both the BJP and the Congress wanted to exercise complete control over the states.

"It doesn't matter which of the two parties forms the government at the Centre. Their attitude is the same. Both Congress and the BJP want to concentrate all powers over states into their hands. This is their culture," he said.

Rao once again batted for a non-Congress, non-BJP "federal front" government at the Centre to end that culture.

The TRS chief, who has been assailing the Congress-led opposition coalition that includes Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu's TDP, asked people at his Narasampet rally whether Telangana needed Naidu.

He has been accusing Naidu of stalling the development of Telangana when it was part of undivided Andhra Pradesh.

He hit out at the Congress for merging the Telangana region with Andhra against the wishes of the people of Telangana. He also accused the Congress government of suppressing the agitation for a separate Telangana in 1969. Rao said Congress leaders were silent when "injustice" was being done to Telangana region in undivided Andhra Pradesh and were trying to bring Naidu back to Telangana now.
Chandigarh: Punjab Chief Minister Capt. Amarinder Singh on Sunday declined Pakistans invitation to attend the Kartarpur corridor foundation stone-laying ceremony on the other side of the border, citing terror attacks in his state and killings of Indian soldiers by Pakistani troops.

However, senior Punjab minister Navjot Singh Sidhu accepted Pakistans invitation on Sunday. The foundation stone of the corridor on the Indian side will be laid by Vice-President M. Venkaiah Naidu.

Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh Sunday declined Pakistans invite to attend the ground-breaking ceremony for the Kartarpur Corridor on the other side of the border, even as his cabinet colleague Navjot Singh Sidhu accepted the request with with unalloyed joy.

In a letter to Pakistan foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Singh said it is a historic occasion, but regretted his inability to be present, citing terror attacks in his state and killings of Indian soldiers by Pakistan troops as the reason.

Firstly, not a day passes when Indian soldiers are not killed or wounded on the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir. Rather than moving towards normalcy, these incidents are escalating, he said.

Secondly, the chief minister claimed, Pakistans Inter-Services Intellige-nce (ISI) has started its nefarious activities in Punjab. Since March 2017, the state has neutralised 19 ISI-armed and controlled modules, appr-ehended 81 terrorists and seized 79 weapons, numerous grenades of the HG-84 type made in Pakistans Ordnance factories with Austrian know how, and some IEDs, the chief minister claimed.

The last attack took place in Amritsar few days ago, on a peaceful religious congregation in a village. Three men were killed and 19, including women and children, were wounded, Singh said, adding that the terrorists had been caught.

I hope that the (Pakistan) Prime Minister will understand the circumstances... It will not be possible for me to be present in Pakistan on this historic occasion, despite the fact that paying my respects at Gurdwara Sri Kartarpur Sahib has always been my cherished dream which will hopefully be fulfilled once these hostilities and killings are stopped, he said.

The Kartarpur Sahib Gurdwara is located about three-four km from the border in Pakistan. PTI
Hyderabad: TD president and AP Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidus surprise fielding of his niece Nandamuri Suhasini from the Kukatpally Assembly seat appears to be part of a plan to politically settle the Nandamuri and Nara families.

According to party sources, Mr Naidu, who utilises every opportunity to push his political strategy, intends to let the Nandamuri family lead the Telugu Desam in Telangana state and keep Andhra Pradesh with the Nara family.

With this, Mr Naidu wants to make way for his son, minister Nara Lokesh, as his political successor in AP without any hurdles from the Nandamuri family.

The late Nandamuri Harikrishna, Ms Suhasinis father, was not on good terms with Mr Naidu. Harikrishnas sons Jr NTR and Nandamuri Kalyan Ram are following in the footsteps of their father. After the death of Harikrishna, Mr Naidu tried to give the impression that the Nandamuri family was with him.

Social media platforms saw several posts that Jr NTR and Kalyan Ram were not interested in Ms Suhasini entering politics. Officially both greeted their sister after she filed her nomination papers. If Jr NTR campaigns for his sister at Kukatpally, Mr Naidu will claim that the actor is not against to him.

There is speculation in political circles that the Nandamuri family is not happy with Mr Naidu promoting Mr Lokesh. After Mr Naidu shifted to Amaravati, he stopped concentrating on the TS Telugu Desam and confined himself to AP. The TD was stronger in Telangana than in Seemandhra during the undivided Andhra Pradesh days.

TS Telugu Desam leaders said they have destroyed the party with their own hands. They requested Mr Naidu several times to appoint Jr NTR or Ms Nara Brahmini, the wife of Mr Lokesh, to lead the party unit. But Mr Naidu has rejected their request every time. TS TD leaders said the party still has strong cadre in some districts. If there is a strong leader to lead the party, it will pick up.

Mr Naidu wants to give the impression that he is not ignoring the Nandamuri family with the selection of Ms Suhasini. He wants to give the impression to the public that the Nandamuri family is backing him.

In some quarters, there is a demand that the Telugu Desam leadership be handed over to the Nandamuri family. Against this background, Mr Naidu wants to hand over the responsibility of Telangana TD to the Nandamuri family. With this it is expected that the Nandamuri family will confine itself to Telangana and the Nara family can lead the party in AP.

TD sources said that if the Prajakutami comes to power Ms Suhasini may be inducted into the Cabinet to balance Mr Lokesh who is in the AP Cabinet.
As business results fall short of targets, Vietnamese blue chips are falling faster than the stock markets continued plunge.

Vietnams benchmark VN-Index dropped 23.5 percent to 917.97 points on Friday from its April peak over 1,200 points. In corresponding comparison, the fall in value of blue chips stocks has been more than twice as high.

A share of Vietnams leading stone manufacturer Vicostone (VCS) on Friday was worth VND75,000 ($3.2), down 47 percent from its peak on April 4 at VND141,600 ($6.06).

Analysts at that time called the stock a "phenomenon," as its value surged 50 times from VND3,000 (13 cents) in mid-2014 on the Hanoi Stock Exchange (HNX).

Vicostones profits also rose over 50 percent a year from 2014 to 2017, while its revenue increased from VND2 trillion ($85.64 million) to VND4.35 trillion ($186.27 million) in the same period.

But this year, maintaining double-digit growth seems to be a challenge for the company as its revenue has stayed the same year-on-year at VND3.2 trillion ($137 million), while net profit fell 7 percent to VND790 billion ($33.82 million) in the first nine months of this year.

Although the company has reassured shareholders that business is normal and that Vicostone plans to buy its own shares to stop the falling momentum, investors have been selling their holdings at increasing speeds.

A similar situation can be seen at the Vietnam Prosperity Joint-Stock Commercial Bank (VPBank). Its stocks on Friday morning closed at VND21,950 (94 cents), dropping 48.7 percent from its peak on April 9 at VND42,826 ($1.83).

Last year, as it focused specifically on consumer finance, the banks stocks was one of the most sought-after when it was listed on the Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange (HOSE) in August.

But its stocks value has been dropping this year because business results are not as expected, analysts say.

The company gained a consolidated net profit of VND4.9 trillion ($209.82 million) in the first nine months, up nearly 9 percent year-on-year, but only 60 percent of the years target.

Securities firm Viet Capital Securities (VCSC) said in its recent report that the bank is not likely to meet targets set earlier this year. It said its own forecast on VPBanks profit and stock prices for the year could be revised downwards 15-20 percent.

Major plastic stocks are also falling in value.

Binh Minh Plastic (BMP) and Tien Phong Plastic (NTP), the country's two leading plastic producers, had their stock values plunge 50 percent from their peak last year.

The two companies recorded high growth from 2010-2016. Binh Minh Plastics revenues went up from VND1.4 trillion ($59.95 million) to almost VND3.7 trillion ($158.43 million), with gross margin going up to nearly 30 percent.

In the same period, Tien Phong Plastics also doubled their revenue and had its gross margin rise to almost 36 percent.

Both companies were able to achieve this growth thanks to cheap materials and continual expansion.

But as investors started to lose faith in the potential of the plastic industry and the entrance of foreign companies along with higher material costs, the plastic manufacturers had to reduce their profit margins.

Last year, Binh Minh Plastics gross margin dropped to below 23 percent, while that of Tien Phong Plastic fell to 33 percent.

Other stocks in the country have also fallen. The HNX-Index on the Hanoi Stock Exchange on Friday closed at 104.271 points, down 24.4 percent from its peak in April.

The UPCoM-Index for unlisted companies on Friday closed at 51.872 points, 16 percent lower from its peak in March.
U.S. flags are handed out at a ceremony in California. Photo by Reuters/Robert Galbraith

Three Vietnamese American men detained by U.S. immigration for deportation have been pardoned by the California governor Jerry Brown.

Tung Thanh Nguyen, Truong Quang Ly and Hai Trong Nguyen, who entered the U.S. as refugees many years ago, but faced federal removal orders from the country, were granted clemency by Governor Brown last Wednesday, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Their involvement in criminal convictions for aggravated assault, robbery and drug-related crimes ensnared the three men in a crackdown by the U.S. government that has put thousands of Vietnamese Americans at risk of deportation.

The three men had completed their sentences several years ago and were being held in custody awaiting deportation to Vietnam.

The pardons may allow them to avoid deportation from federal immigration agents.

Thousands of immigrants from Vietnam have been targeted by the Donald Trump administrations hardline immigration policy.

As per a 2008 bilateral agreement between Vietnam and the United States, "Vietnamese citizens are not subject to return to Vietnam" if they "arrived in the United States before July 12, 1995."

The United States is in breach of this agreement as it seeks to deport thousands of immigrants from Vietnam, according to Washingtons former ambassador to Hanoi, Ted Osius.

Osius told Reuters last April that most people targeted for deportation had arrived in the United States prior to 1995, the year diplomatic relations between Vietnam and the United States were resumed after the Vietnam War.

Brendan Raedy, ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) spokesman, said that as of December last year, there were 8,600 Vietnamese nationals in the United States subject to deportation and "7,821 have criminal convictions."

The Trump administration has labeled Vietnam and eight other countries "recalcitrant" for their unwillingness to accept deported nationals.

According to ICE figures, 71 Vietnamese people were deported to Vietnam last year, compared to 35 in 2016, and 32 in 2015. No information is given on when the deportees arrived in the United States.
Three Vietnamese men have received a one-year flight ban for assaulting a flight attendant in Thanh Hoa Province.

Officials from the Civil Aviation Administration of Vietnam issued the decision on Sunday, saying they have also asked the police to put the men under criminal investigation.

The violence, captured on video by an eyewitness, sparked a public outcry after it went viral online.

The video shows three men slapping and kicking a woman at the Tho Xuan Airport in the central coastal province of Thanh Hoa, a four hour drive to the south of Hanoi.

Drunk men assault flight attendant at Vietnam airport over selfie refusal Drunk men assault flight attendant at Vietnam airport over selfie refusal

The victim was identified as Le Thi Giang, a female employee of the Vietjet Air budget carrier.

At 2:20 p.m. Friday, the three men, Pham Huu An, 28, Le Van Nhi, 41, and Le Trung Dung, 34, went to the airport to see off a friend who boarded a Vietnam Airlines flight for Ho Chi Minh City.

After their friend had completed the check-in procedure, the triple had Giang take a group photo for them at the departure hall. She accepted their request.

When they asked her to join them for another group photo, Giang declined, saying she was on duty.

Following her refusal, the men became agitated and got violent, slapping her and kicking her to the ground. An airport manager witnessed the incident and tried to stop the mens violent acts but was also slapped in the face.

One of her colleagues who filmed the incident with her mobile phone was threatened, and two security staff at the airport were also reportedly attacked by the gang.

A short while after, airport security officers subdued the gang and took them the local police station.

An airport representative said the men were said to be drunk.

Le Nhu Anh, chief of police in Thanh Hoas Tho Xuan District, said they were taking the incident seriously.

Administrative or criminal punishment would have decided on after investigations are completed, he said.

Last year, a Vietnamese man was fined VND7.5 million ($330) for hitting a female staff member of Vietjet Air in the face with his bag after she refused to give him the boarding pass, and offered to move his flight to the next day.

In 2016, an inspector with Hanoi's transport department was sacked for assaulting a female Vietnam Airlines employee in an incident that also triggered public outcry and prompted Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc to call for a thorough investigation.

Low-cost carriers and the rise of middle-income earners have seen rapid growth in Vietnams aviation industry. The country served more than 53 million air passengers in the first half of this year, up 14 percent from a year ago.

UPDATE: Police of Tho Xuan District announced to open a criminal probe against the three men on Sunday night, under the charges of "disturbing public order."
A falling tree killed a man as heavy rains triggered by storm Usagi caused severe flooding in Saigon.

A big tree with diameter of one meter on Nguyen Van Linh Street in Binh Chanh District to the west of the city was uprooted and fell on a man passing by, knocking him unconscious.

The man, whose name has not been revealed, was hospitalized, but succumbed to his injuries later.

Storm Usagi weakened into tropical depression Sunday afternoon, but HCMC suffered severe flooding and saw big trees uprooted.

Heavy downpours that began Sunday morning lasted several hours and inundated many streets in Saigon.

Nguyen Huu Canh, a flood-prone street in Binh Thanh District, Le Van Viet in District 9, Quoc Huong in District 2 and Huynh Tan Phat in District 7 were submerged under 0.5 meters of water after it began raining heavily Sunday morning.

"I think the storm has weakened and did not affect Saigon much, but the rain was still terrible," Le Thi Binh, a woman living in District 7 told VnExpress as she walked her bike on Huynh Tan Phat Street.

Experts have blamed rapid urbanization for the frequent flooding and other problems facing the city.

Falling tree kills man as Saigon streets get flooded again More heavy rains send Saigon back under water

Usagi, the ninth storm of the year to hit Vietnam, devolved into a tropical depression near Sunday noon after making landfall in the Vung Tau beach town in Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province.

As of 1 p.m. on Sunday, the tropical depression was moving along the coast from the south central Binh Thuan Province to the southern Ben Tre Province with maxium wind speeds of 60 kilometers per hour. It is expected to continue moving further inland before forming a low-pressure zone over the Cambodia border area at 1 a.m. Monday.

Southern localities including Ba Ria-Vung Tau, Long An, Tien Giang, Ben Tre, Tra Vinh and Ho Chi Minh City will continue to see heavy rainfall until Sunday night at least, Le Dinh Quyet from the Southern Hydrometeorological Center told VnExpress.

As of Sunday evening, rains triggered by Usagi had uprooted around 100 trees in Vung Tau and flooded many places in the central provinces of Ninh Thuan and Khanh Hoa. A part of the North-South Railway line in Ninh Thuan has been damaged by erosion, which has also caused landslides that have paralyzed traffic to Khanh Hoa's Cam Ranh International Airport.

Below is footage of strong winds in HCMC's coastal district Can Gio, on Sunday afternoon.
People ride under the heavy rain in Can Gio District in Ho Chi Minh City on Sunday morning. Photo by VnExpress/Thanh Nguyen

Storm Usagi is projected to make landfall in southern Vietnam Sunday afternoon.

At 8 a.m. Sunday morning, the center of the storm was just 40 kilometers (24 miles) off the southern province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau, with wind speed of up to 100 kilometers per hour.

Ba Ria-Vung Tau, home to the popular beach town of Vung Tau, neighbors Ho Chi Minh City.

Le Dinh Quyet, a meteorologist from the Southern Hydrometeorological Center, told VnExpress that the storm was moving at a speed of seven to eight kilometers per hour and was forecast to make landfall in southern provinces from Ba Ria-Vung Tau to Ben Tre on Sunday afternoon.

From 3 a.m., many areas in Ba Ria-Vung Tau have experienced torrential downpours, strong winds and sea waves rising as high as three meters.

Sea waves of up to three meters is seen in Vung Tau beach on Sunday morning. Photo by VnExpress/Nguyen Khoa

Several food shops and grocery stores in the downtown area have been closed. Local authorities have used cars with loudspeakers to drive through the streets, warning local residents and tourists to stay at home and not venture outside.

Ho Chi Minh City has been told to expect heavy rainfall of up to 250 millimeters along with with gusty winds, starting Saturday afternoon. Weather experts have also cautioned the city that high tides triggered by the storm can inundate dozens of streets.

Weather stations in Hong Kong have predicted that the storm will make landfall in the adjacent area between HCMC and its western neighbor Long An Province, where more than 500 families in makeshift dwellings along rivers have been evacuated to safe areas.

Torrential downpours and strong winds are already battering Can Thanh Town in HCMCs coastal district of Can Gio.

Video footage shows heavy rains have been lashing HCMC's coastal district Can Gio.

Heavy rains, strong winds lash Vung Tau as storm Usagi approaches Storm Usagi near Vung Tau, sparking heavy rains and strong winds

In the south central province of Ninh Thuan, the storm has triggered heavy rains that caused erosion and landslides in low-lying areas.

At 11 p.m. on Saturday, a section of the North-South Railway from Ka Rom to Phuoc Nhon Station in Ninh Thuan Province was submerged under water a meter high, paralyzing traffic in the area.

Around 1,000 passengers have been stuck at stations on the route.

Erosion has damaged part of the North-South Railway in Ninh Thuan Province.

Weather experts had earlier warned that Usagi could trigger rough seas and six-meter-high waves off the south central and southern coast.

Theyd said that central provinces from Thua Thien-Hue to Binh Thuan and the Central Highlands, home to popular resort towns Hue, Da Nang, Hoi An, Nha Trang and Da Lat, are likely to be battered by rainfall of up to 500 millimeters, while southern provinces can expect up to 200mm.

They had also warned of floods and landslides.

Storm Usagi comes a week after heavy rains from Typhoon Toraji triggered landslides that killed at least 19 people in the south central resort town of Nha Trang.

In the first 10 months of this year, natural disasters have left 185 people dead or missing and injured 134 others, and caused losses of more than VND8.8 trillion ($381 million).
The forecast route of the storm is shown by Vietnam National Center for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting at 11 a.m. Saturday.

Heavy rains lashed Phu Quy Island Saturday morning, hours before storm Usagi was forecast to hit the Vietnams southern coast.

Instead of moving westwards as forecast earlier, Usagi, the ninth storm of the year to form off the Vietnamese coast, has changed course and is now heading south.

Nguyen Van Linh, Vice Chairman of Phu Quy District in the south-central province of Binh Thuan, confirmed that the island has been hit by heavy rains accompanied with gusty winds since early Saturday morning.

No casualties or damage have been reported so far.

Phu Quy Island hit by heavy rains as storm Usagi gets close Torrential rains ravage Vietnams central island as Storm Usagi moves south

As of Saturday morning, the center of the storm was around 110 kilometers (68 miles) to the east of Phu Quy Island and only around 300 kilometers from the southern province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau, with maximum speeds of 100 kilometers per hour.

Ba Ria-Vung Tau, home to the popular beach town Vung Tau, lies next to HCMC.

Over the next 12 hours it is expected to move west-southwest at 10-15 kilometers an hour, according to the National Center for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting.

At 4 p.m. on Saturday, the storm will be off the coast of central and southern provinces from Ninh Thuan to Ben Tre, sustaining wind speeds of 75 to 100 kilometers per hour.

It is expected to continue moving westwards and make landfall in south-central region at 4 a.m. on Sunday with wind speeds of 60 kilometers per hour before devolving into a tropical depression.

Ho Chi Minh City, which was expected to be directly affected by the storm, should expect heavy rainfalls of up to 250 millimeters from Saturday afternoon onwards and dozens of streets to be flooded, weather experts have said.

Weather stations in Hong Kong have predicted that the storm is projected to hit the coast off Vung Tau beach town and Can Gio coastal district before making landfall in the adjacent area between Long An and HCMC.

Due to the effects of the tropical storm, rough water and six-meter-high waves are expected off the south central and southern coast.

Central provinces from Thua Thien-Hue to Binh Thuan and the Central Highlands, home to popular resort towns Hue, Da Nang, Hoi An, Nha Trang and Da Lat, are likely to be battered by rains of up to 500 millimeters while southern provinces can expect up to 200mm.

Warnings of floods and landslides have been issued.

Storm preparations

On Saturday morning, authorities in HCMC's Can Gio ordered a mass evacuation of more than 4,100 residents to safer areas.

Authorities in Can Gio District evacuate local residents to safer areas on Saturday morning to mitigate storm Usagis impacts. Photo by VnExpress/Thanh Nguyen

All schools in the district have been asked to let students stay home on Saturday, and all extracurricular activities have been cancelled.

The HCMC Department of Education and Training has instructed all schools in the inner city to close from 12 p.m. Saturday.

Storm Usagi comes a week after heavy rains from Typhoon Toraji triggered landslides that killed at least 20 people in the south central resort town Nha Trang.

Weather forecasters in Vietnam have warned another four to six typhoons and tropical depressions could develop off the country's east coast from now until the end of the year. Half of them would make landfall in and batter Vietnams central region, they said.

A record number of 16 tropical storms hit Vietnam last year, killing 389 people and injuring 668 others, mostly in the northern and central regions. The General Statistics Office estimated damage at around VND60 trillion ($2.64 billion), 1.5 times the previous years figure.

In the first 10 months of this year natural disasters left 185 people dead or missing and injured 134 others, and caused losses of more than VND8.8 trillion ($381 million).
A mahogany tree of around 100 years old is uprooted on Nguyen Du Street in Ba Ria-Vung Tau, crushing two parked cars. Photo by VnExpress/Nguyen Khoa

Heavy rains are lashing the southern beach town Vung Tau and Ho Chi Minh City's coastal area as storm Usagi weakens.

Sources from the Southern Hydrometeorological Center told VnExpress that the storm weakened at 11:20 a.m. as it entered the coast of Vung Tau.

As of 1 p.m. on Sunday, the tropical depression was raging along the coast from the south central Binh Thuan Province to the southern Ben Tre Province, with maxium wind speeds of 60 kilometers per hour. It is forecast to continue moving inland before forming a low-pressure zone over the Cambodia border area at 1 a.m. Monday.

Storm Usagi devolves into tropical depression after making landfall in Vung Tau Rough water in Vung Tau as Storm Usagi hits

Rains have been pouring down the popular beach town, uprooting trees, blowing off dozens of roofs and sinking boats along the coast.

Several streets in Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province have been submerged under one meter of water.

A woman pushes her motorbike through a flooded street in Vung Tau on Sunday morning. Photo by VnExpress/PV

By Sunday noon, the tropical low has moved to the nearby Can Gio coastal district in Ho Chi Minh City.

Le Minh Dung, vice chairman of Can Gio, said no damage and casualties have been reported so far. "But the weather will remain bad, so we have asked local residents to stay indoors to be safe," he said.

Video below shows almost vacant streets in Can Gio as people stay away from heavy rains and strong winds.

Storm Usagi devolves into tropical depression after making landfall in Vung Tau Heavy rain in Can Gio as Usagi weakens

Southern provinces including Ba Ria-Vung Tau, Long An, Tien Giang, Ben Tre, Tra Vinh and Ho Chi Minh City will be battered by heavy downpours until at least Sunday night, Quyet said. Many places in HCMC should thunderstorms and rainfall of up to 200mm throughout Sunday.

In the south central Binh Thuan Province, six hours west of HCMC, waves of up to four meters high have damaged at least 31 ships anchored along the coast.

A boat is damaged by strong waves in Binh Thuan Province. Photo by VnExpress/Tu Huynh

In the neighboring Ninh Thuan Province, erosion triggered by heavy rains damaged part of the North-South Railway on Saturday night and around 1,000 passengers had to wait to be transfered to other stations by cars.

Storm Usagi comes a week after heavy rains from Typhoon Toraji triggered landslides that killed at least 20 people in the south central resort town Nha Trang.

Weather forecasters in Vietnam have warned another four to six typhoons and tropical depressions could develop off the country's east coast from now until the end of the year. Half of them would make landfall in and batter Vietnams central region, they said.

A record number of 16 tropical storms hit Vietnam last year, killing 389 people and injuring 668 others, mostly in the northern and central regions. The General Statistics Office estimated damage at around VND60 trillion ($2.64 billion), 1.5 times the previous years figure.

In the first 10 months of this year natural disasters left 185 people dead or missing and injured 134 others, and caused losses of more than VND8.8 trillion ($381 million).
Traffic is seen on a street in Da Nang City. Photo by Shutterstock/estherpoon

Da Nang police have detained two teenagers after they snatched a cell phone from an American tourist Saturday.

Pham Trong Hiep, 18, and Nguyen Dang Truong, 17, were driving a motorbike on Hoang Sa Street in Son Tra District when they spotted Michelle Yonah Choi standing in front of a hotel.

They approached her and snatched an iPhone X cell phone from her hands. Local policemen chased the teens and captured them. The phone was returned to the tourist.

The two thieves are being held at local police station pending further investigation for "stealing property," an offence punishable by up to 15 years in jail under Vietnams Penal Code.

Vietnam has attracted 12.8 million visitors in the first ten months of this year, according to the General Statistics Office. Of these, 576,500 were Americans, up 13.9 percent year-on-year.
A high-speed craft launched Thursday will cut travel time between Vung Tau beach town and Con Dao Island by half.

Con Dao Express 36 Ship is launched in Hai Phong on November 22. Photo by VnExpress/ Giang Chinh

Con Dao Express 36, launched Thursday by state-owned shipbuilding 189 Limited Company, will transport passengers between the southern beach city of Vung Tau and Con Dao Island from early next year.

The craft will reduce travel time between the two destinations to three hours, instead of the current six to seven hours.

The vessel has a body length of 46.85 meters (153.7 ft) and a maximum width of 12.2 meters (40 ft). Con Dao Express 36 will have a maximum speed of 35 knots (40 miles per hour), and is said to be the fastest ship in Vietnam.

Officials say the vessel is highly stable and safe, and, combined with its spacious, comfortable passenger cabin, it will induce less seasickness.

It has leather-draped, sound-proofed interiors and chairs that can tilt back 120 degrees. The seating on the double-storied vessel is divided into economy, deluxe and VIP sections.

At the launching ceremony in the northern Hai Phong City, the shipbuilding company said Con Dao Express 36 was the largest, most modern double-storied ship in Vietnam, built following European standards.

The 16-island archipelago Con Dao, once a notorious prison island, is also connected to the mainland by air route, thanks to an airport on Con Son, the largest and only one inhabitated island in the group.
The highly popular Quest Festival was cancelled at the last minute after organizers failed to get the culture ministrys nod.

The organizers said the music festivals suspension had inflicted heavy losses.

Nguyen Thai Binh, head of the cultural ministrys office, asserted that the authorities had stopped the program unexpectedly.

"The Hanoi Department of Culture had licensed the event in July. But on September 19, the agency revoked it after the incident at the West Lake electronic music festival in Hanoi that killed seven people," Binh said.

Seven people died of suspected drug overdose at the Vietnam Electronic Weekend (VEW) festival at the West Lake Water Park. Hanois culture department had said then that all music festivals in the capital city would be suspended until further notice.

"Quest Festival organizers still deliberately organized the festival, which forced the authorities to take action and stop the event," Binh said.

It has been reported that organizers set up stages at the Vietnam National Villages for Ethnic Culture and Tourism Village, brought international artists, and sold tickets to many local and foreign tourists.

License issues led to Quest Festival cancellation Quest Festival canceled due to license problem

The venue, which is 40 kilometers west of Hanoi, does not have enough facilities to accommodate 2,000 people to stay between November 23-25 and was deemed potentially risky, Binh said.

Event organizers dismantled the stages after receiving the suspension notice.

A Facebook post from the Quest Festival organizers on Friday read:

"For the moment our priority is to make sure our team and all Questers are home safe and sound. As such we have offered free transport back to Hanoi for all people stranded at the gates of the Cultural Village.

"We will provide a full statement shortly. Our love and deepest gratitude for your faith and support."

The Quest Festival was held for the first time in 2013, and proved to be a huge hit. Subsequent editions saw attendance increase exponentially and it was featured on prominent international media outlets like the CNN and the Guardian.
28 drown in India bus crash, many of them children

Indian onlookers gather near a plunged bus after an accident in Kanagana Maradi village in Mandya District, some 130km from Bangalore on November 24, 2018. Photo by AFP/Bertrand Guay

At least 28 people drowned on Saturday after their bus plunged into a canal in India, police said, in the latest tragedy on the world's deadliest roads.

Police said they retrieved 28 bodies from the private passenger bus after it veered off the road and fell into the canal in the Mandya district of the southern state of Karnataka.

A police officer at the scene told AFP that many of the victims were children returning from school.

"Many children are among the 28 dead," a police official told AFP by phone.

Police could not provide the exact number of passengers on board or the cause of the crash but said the driver was apparently speeding.

Local media said around 35 people were in the vehicle.

Video footage on television showed locals using ropes to reach the submerged bus and pull out the bodies. Emergency workers and divers joined the volunteers to help.

According to NDTV news channel, the victims were unable to get out of the bus, which had fallen on its side, as the doors were trapped against the floor of the canal.

State chief minister H D Kumaraswamy promised help to the families of the victims.

Road crashes in India claim the lives of more than 150,000 people each year. Most accidents are blamed on poor roads, badly maintained vehicles and reckless driving.

About 50 people were killed in neighbouring Telangana state in September after a bus plunged into a valley in September.

On Thursday, six school pupils were killed after their van collided with a bus in central Madhya Pradesh state.
Paris saw the largest protest as #NousToutes (all of us) supporters demanded action a day ahead of the UN International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. Photo by AFP/Xavier Agon

Tens of thousands of people rallied across Europe on Saturday against sexist violence, with more than 30,000 turning out in Paris.

Demonstrations across France drew around 50,000 people in all, according to organiser Caroline de Haas, to answer a citizen collective's call for a "feminist tidal wave" of outrage against gender violence brought into sharp focus by the #MeToo movement.

Elsewhere, a thousand people braved driving rain in Rome while similar protests drew several hundred demonstrators in Geneva and Athens on the eve of the U.N.'s International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on Sunday.

"The fight against violence against women is progressing daily but our society has a long way to go - everyone must act and fight as this is everybody's business," President Emmanuel Macron tweeted in offering his moral support.

Authorities put the Paris turnout at 12,000 and similar marches in Lyon, Marseille and Rennes at between 1,000 and 2,400, but De Haas felt moved to salute "the largest (feminist) mobilisation France has known", far bigger than a rally that drew some 2,000 last year.

Participants clad in purple, the colour of the #NousToutes women's activist protest movement, shouted slogans including "sick of rape", "end impunity for aggressors" and "a woman is never responsible for the violence she suffers", while also demanding sufficient government resources to tackle the issue.

"I am here to support all the victims and continue this struggle which started long before I came along," said French actress Muriel Robin, who had organised a similar rally last month in the capital.

Rise in violence cases

The rallies drew a number of men, including Tanguy, a 19-year-old student who turned out in the western city of Rennes to declare backing for "a movement which is not based on sex - it's not a fight pitting men against women but a fight by men and women, together, against inequality."

The #NousToutes movement started out in France in September, inspired by the #MeToo campaign that began last year since when the number of cases of sexual violence reported to police in France has risen 23 percent.

Latest French government figures say 2017 saw 225,000 cases of domestic violence against women by their partners while 2016 saw 123 deaths.Further marches are planned for Sunday in a number of cities across Europe to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

Macron last year made sexual equality a priority of his presidency.

But "if the money is not forthcoming public policy won't follow on," warned De Haas, speaking two days after several civil organisations called for a huge increase in public resources dedicated to the problem.

French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe announced on Saturday that an online platform for reporting sexual violence and sexism will be launched on Tuesday.

"This is the first milestone, technical and political, to eradicate" violence, said he said in a Facebook post.

"From now, a few clicks can help everyone make a new start: for themselves, for their family. And perhaps avoid the worst."
Three military boats of the Ukrainian Navy have been captured by Russia's special forces in the Kerch Strait, two Ukrainian troops are wounded, the press service of the Ukrainian Navy reported on Facebook on Sunday evening.

"The vessels have been captured by special forces of the Russian Federation. There is also information about two wounded Ukrainian military sailors," it said.

The Navy's Command also reported that the small-sized 'Berdiansk' and 'Nikopol' armored artillery boats had come under enemy fire and lost their course. The 'Yany Kapu' tugboat was forced to stop.
The principal reason European officials think that forging financial ties with Iran will change the behavior of the Islamic Republic is the belief that helping a stable but dictatorial state is better than taking a risk hearing the voices of millions of Iranians calling for structural change.

There are many metaphors and allegories for the problems in Iran and the multiple threats it poses to global security, but as we pen this commentary we cannot help but think of one specific image: an empty train station with 28 passengers waiting on a platform for a train that will never arrive. These 28 passengers are the member states of the European Union, and the awaited train is their desire for normal relations with what can only be called a theocratic dictatorship.

Its understandable that Europe wants a peaceful bond with Iran. Right at its doorstep is a huge market with a population of nearly 80

million people of mostly young age. It is one of the few countries in the Middle East with an industrial base and vast natural resources. Trade with Iran could benefit both Irans economy as well as help Europe with its high energy needs.

In an ideal situation, both partners would have a lot to gain from close economic ties, but that is exactly what is wrong with current European policy -- it is not the ideal situation.

Instead of changing things for the better, cooperation with Tehran is contributing to an already existing disaster: a wave of immigrants in need of refuge coming to Europe as they flee conflicts generated by the destabilization of the Middle East and an Iranian nation that wants to live up to its potential but is denied that inalienable right under the current system.

Irans is a government that first and foremost terrorizes its own people, restricts simple freedoms, plunders the nation's wealth, has

one of the worst records of human rights abuses in the world, and has sought nothing but destruction in the Middle East. It is therefore, in large part, responsible for the most challenging issue facing Europe today: the refugee crisis. Iran has fanned the flames of war in Syria, one of the most violent proxy-conflicts witnessed in the 21st century that has led to one of the worst humanitarian crises in recent memory.

Tehran is responsible for perpetuating the conflicts in Syria and Yemen, the latter of which according to the UN is on the brink of the worlds worst famine in 100 years while Iran is busy funding proxy terrorist groups as they seek to gain sectarian control of the region through conflict -- all at the expense of its own people and the escalation of bloodshed and terrorism in the region and beyond.

All the while, people at home chant anti-regime slogans saying, No to Gaza and Lebanon, calling for the government to think of the struggling Iranian people for a change. Some Iranians have not received wages for months and are having a hard time providing even the most basic necessities for their families as the government plunders, wastes, and pockets the nation's vast wealth and natural resources.

While Europe worries that it is unable to handle more mass migration,

it continues to seek to contain a regime that is complicit in the atrocities taking place in Syria and Yemen. If it continues with its current policies, destabilization of the European continent looks more likely as the migration of people fleeing conflict in search of refuge will only increase.

Maybe European officials think their doctrine of containment will change Iran in the long run, believing it will one day reform. Maybe Europe wants to balance the current policies of the United States by continuing to lend its political support for the Iran nuclear deal from

which the United States recently withdrew. But this desire of reform within the current system in Iran, however hopeful the Europeans may be, however long they are willing to wait, and no matter how much economic help and political support they are willing to throw at the problem, is misconceived. It derives from thinking that helping a stable but dictatorial state is better than hearing the voice of millions of Iranians calling for structural change. Yet the latter is evolving on a daily basis -- even as Europe seems unwilling to hear, or find a way to support, that voice.

Under the current administration of President Hassan Rouhani, considered a moderate and reformist, execution rates have increased, with more people executed in the first 14 months of his presidency than during the previous hard-line presidents entire time in office. The executions continue as Europe prides itself on being the only political body to have a dialogue with Iran on its human rights abuses, but this is a dialogue that has clearly made little difference. Europe is focusing its energy and ability to listen on the wrong issues from the wrong people.

As the re-imposed U.S. sanctions become the new policy of applying maximum pressure on Tehran, many European companies and banks have stopped doing business with Iran. More than any political pressure, it is business logic that prevails: The bigger market always comes first. Contrary to some comments, European private-sector businesses were not pressured to cease trade with Iran, but they have been given a choice -- and they chose the larger market, the United States.

The European Union has a choice, too. It can realize that another train is departing -- one that lets trans-Atlantic unity evolve to deal with one of the largest dangers for both continents -- and it should get on board on the right side of history. The EU is powerful enough to

formulate its own doctrine without relying on the United States, but it should be with the aim of traveling in the same direction. Otherwise, it can continue to stand by itself in vain on the platform of containing Iran. The train headed toward peaceful and prosperous relations under the current conditions will never reach its destination.

Genuine change in Iran is inevitable because it is the only way to a free, secular, and democratic country. Four decades after the Islamic Revolution we, alongside the 80 percent of Iranians under the age of 40, envision a time in the not-too-distant future when peaceful ties and prosperous relations between a modern Iran and other open societies will no longer be a dream but a reality. Irans civil society already holds such values close to their hearts. The question remains, however: Will Europe choose to keep containing the government of Iran, or will it choose to pro-actively listen and act by the voices of the Iranian people?

Saba Farzan, Dena Ziari, Amir Etemadi, and Damon Golriz are founding members of Farashgard (Iran Revival), an international network of Iranians advocating democracy, human rights, and secularism in Iran.

The views expressed in this commentary are the authors own and do not necessarily represent those of RFE/RL.
Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has quickly reacted to a remark by Iran's president Hassan Rouhani who had called Israel "a cancerous tumor" in a speech on November 24.

Netanyhau in a tweet said, "Israel knows very well how to defend itself from the murderous Iranian regime. Rouhani's slander, which calls for the destruction of Israel, proves yet again why the nations of the world need to join in the sanctions against the Iranian terrorist regime which threatens them".

Rouhani who is considered a "pragmatist" and a relative moderate has toughened his tone regarding Israel and the West in recent months, as United States sanctions were reimposed on Iran.

Rouhani's rhetoric now is not much different from Iranian hardliners headed by the Supreme Leader ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Calls by Iranian officials for the destruction of Israel accelerated during the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005-2013), who was considered an ultraconservative hardliner in foreign policy.

In his speech at the the annual Islamic Unity Conference in Tehran, Rouhani also called on world Muslims to unite against the U.S., instead of "rolling out red carpets for criminals".
The final step in appointing the mayors of Tehran and four other Iranian cities is pending the issuance of security clearances by Iran's intelligence authorities, Irans Interior Ministry says.

A spokesman of the ministry told the Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) on Saturday, November 24 that the Intelligence Ministry has not yet officially responded to the Interior Ministry's request for issuing security clearances for the new mayors of Tehran, Mashad, Yazd, Kermanshah and Rasht.

The mayors have been appointed by reformist-dominated city councils.

Earlier reports said that the Intelligence Ministry had refused to issue security clearance for Tehran's new mayor Pirouz Hanachi because of his brother's membership in the Islamic Republic's major opposition group Mojahedin-e Khalq, also known as MeK. It appears that it is Mr. Hanachi's case which has brought about a halt in processing security clearances for the other mayors.

Three Tehran city council members have objected to the interior ministry's delay in making a decision. Councillor Mahmoud Mirlohi said, "No one should be questioned for a mistake his brother has made 30 years ago." Councillor Morteza Alviri also said that the ministry's scrutiny "is unacceptable."

Meanwhile another councillor Hassan Rasouli said that "Many families have had similar problems. However, even if it is true, the case is several decades old," Negam News Website reported.

Rasouli was referring to the MeK membership of many family members of Iranian officials. These officials include most notably the powerful head of the Guardian Council Ahmad Jannati whose son and daughter-in-law were members of MeK.

The MeK is a well-organized opposition group whose members and leaders left Iran in 1981 after its leadership fell out with the establishment and many of its members were killed by the regime, while the Islamic Republic accuses them of killing many regime supporters. Tehran still views MeK as a terrorist group although they put an end to their armed struggle decades ago, and currently their activity consists of non-violent campaigns.

In another development, Tehran City Councillor Zahra Sadrazam Nouri told the media in Tehran that "Council Chairman Mohsen Hashemi has been told that security clearance for Hanachi might be issued on Monday."

Hanachi was appointed Tehran's mayor during an unusually long procedure as his predecessor had to leave his post based on new legislation that bans retirees from holding public office. The enforcement of the same law also led to the resignation of several other officials including mayors as well as Shahindokht Molaverdi, President Hassan Rouhani's assistant for citizens' rights affairs on Saturday.

The way this legislation is being enforced has been criticized by Iranian media, as some retirees are said to have been granted exemptions while in other cases new officials are only one or two years younger than the retirement age of 60. Even people who took early retirement are being forces out of public office.

The law was meant to open the door for younger people to be appointed to government posts. But so far, the results are mixed as older people get exemptions and younger officials such as Molaverdi being forced to resign.

Most Iranian officials are generally above retirement age, some like the Guardian Council Chief in their 80s or even 90s. Some officials who were around 30 years old in 1979, are now in their 70s and still in office. Critics have been lashing out at Rouhani for too many ministers over 60 and 70 in his cabinet. Last year, he appointed a Telecommunications minister in his 30s, partly because this would bring down the average age of the cabinet.

The issue of security clearance for Hanachi is questionable, as he has already been serving as deputy mayor and deputy housing minister for several years.

In the case of Tehran's all reformist City Council, the main candidate for the post of Mayor was Mohsen Hashemi Rafsanjani, who chairs the council. But if he is chosen as mayor, prominent hardliner Mehdi Chamran who is in the waiting list to enter the council would replace him as council member and possibly chairman and this would undermine the reformist "conquest" of the Tehran City Council.

In the meantime, part of the delay in Hanachi's takeover of the mayor's office, might be the desire of hardliners at security organizations to portray reformists as incapable of running the capital, let alone the country.

Iranian analysts abroad, have also said in interviews with foreign-based media that the delay is also partly due to the rivalry between the Intelligence Ministry which is part of the Rouhani administration, and the IRGC Intelligence Organization which is dominated by Rouhani's rivals. If the former approves Hanachi's clearance and the latter rejects or questions it, this would once again effectively undermine the ministry's authority.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 25

By Matanat Nasibova - Trend:

The State Tourism Agency of Azerbaijan is developing proposals to create modern infrastructure on the territory of the Yanardag State Historical-Cultural and Natural Reserve, Kenan Guluzade, head of the public relations department of the agency, told Trend.

He said that at this stage, work actively continues on the reconstruction of the reserve, which is part of the state agency.

"Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree on measures to reconstruct the Yanardag State Historical-Cultural and Natural Reserve in order to create modern tourism infrastructure in the territory of this reserve," he said.

Guluzade noted that seven reserves are included in the agencys structure.

"Besides Yanardag, the agencys structure includes the State Historical-Architectural Reserve "Ateshgah Temple" (of fire-worshipers), the State Historical and Cultural Reserve "Basgal", the State Historical, Architectural and Ethnographic Reserve Khinalig, the Lahij State Historical and Cultural Reserve, the State Historical and Architectural Reserve "Yukhary Bash" in Shaki city and the Kish State Historical and Architectural Reserve," said Guluzade.

"By his decree, the president of Azerbaijan instructed the state agency to prepare the relevant information on condition of the State Historical and Cultural Reserve "Basgal", as well as to prepare proposals for the development of tourism infrastructure in the territory of this reserve."

He noted that the State Tourism Agency is working on all the issues, as well as closely studying the situation in five other reserves, where work of a similar nature is planned.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @MatanatNasibova
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 25

By Sara Israfilbayova - Trend:

The World Bank (WB) supports Azerbaijans employment strategy and is eager to support the country's employment action plan, Head of the WB Baku Office Naveed Naqvi told Trend.

He noted that, the bank supports the Labor Ministry of Azerbaijan in this direction, adding that work to improve the existing pension system and targeted social assistance, moreover to create job opportunities, is being implemented.

"Moreover, we carry out work with the Taxes Ministry on tax reforms, the Finance Ministry on budgetary reforms and we hope to continue our technical support in different sectors," Naqvi emphasized.

Speaking of the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), he noted that SMEs form a backbone of any normal economy and it is important to support this area.

According to him, SMEs need good business environment and labor market.

He recalled that Azerbaijan has improved its position in the WB's latest Doing Business report and now holds the 25th place, as a result of the taken measures to improve the business environment in the country.

Naqvi went on to say that in another ranking - Human Capital Index, which indicates how efficient the labor market is, Azerbaijan ranks 71st.

"So, there is a big gap between business environment and labor force. My suggestion is that the government needs to boost education and health systems. The Labor Ministry eyes to reform the labor force of the country and we are happy to support the governments these efforts," he underlined.

Azerbaijan has been a member of WB since 1992. The bank has implemented in the country over 50 projects, in the amount of more than $3 billion. Currently, seven projects, worth about $1.5 billion, are being implemented.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 25

By Elnur Baghishov  Trend:

No country wants to see the US or Iran as its enemy, expert Jamshid Adalatian said in an interview with ILNA.

Everyone runs away from conflicts, he said.

Adalatian said that one of the main problems for Iran is a financial mechanism.

Meanwhile, some think that Luxembourg has the best system for a specific financial mechanism because Luxembourg is not an EU member, he said.

In general, such countries as Germany, the Netherlands and France use Luxembourg and Switzerland to avoid their financial system, he said.

That's why this country does not easily transfer bank documents to an organization or a person and fully protects the information, he said.

Adalatian added that from this point of view, this country could be a way out of a difficult situation for Iran.

But in general, it should be taken into account that no country wants to be between two fires, he said.

Iran's economy is not at a level to dictate its views worldwide, he said.

The political benefit of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action is that it prevents some expected losses, Adalatian added.

The EU thinks that the protection of the nuclear agreement is less costly compared to the endless nuclear conflicts in the Middle East and predicts that in case of war, it will face a huge number of migrants, he said.

This is a heavy burden for Europe's security, the expert said.

Therefore, the EU is looking for a way to ensure its own safety besides its economic benefits, he added.

While answering the question will Turkey accept the abovementioned mechanism and is it beneficial for the country? he said that it is important to wait for Turkeys decision.

However, given the broad relations between Turkey and Iran, Turkey may accept it. For this purpose, there is available infrastructure in Turkey, Adalatian said.

Therefore, there are no problems with preparation and infrastructure, he said.

In any case, the EU should create a number of opportunities for Turkey, he said.

All countries are involved in purchase-sale transactions, Adalatian said.

If a country applies to another country, it should give it privileges, he said.

So if Turkey accepts this mechanism, it will have absolute benefits, Adalatian said.

Of course, this issue will determine Turkey's position as an industrial country in the region and will strengthen its position in regional markets, he said.

It can also control Iran, he added.

This is also of interest to Turkey, Adalatian said.
Tehran, Iran, Nov.25

Trend:

US sanctions against Iran undermine equal rights of members of the International Maritime Organization (IMO), said deputy director of Iran's Port and Maritime Organization, Hadi Haghshenas.

IMO members have expressed their disagreement with the US position against Iran," Haghshenas told ILNA.

Iran has officially filed its complaint against US re-imposed sanctions at the 121st Session of IMO Council. It also called on the IMO to conduct a "special review" of the matter at its Assembly.

"IMO is a marine source of reference in the world and all its members have equal rights, he said.

"The foundation of IMO is based on the fact that member states can not threaten security and safety and environment of others,.

Today 170 countries in IMO believe that members don't have a right to threaten ships and vessels of other members, the official said.

" Iran has asked other members of IMO to follow the suit, Haghshenas added.

According to the official, IMO members have expressed their disapproval of US stance against Iran and supported the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

In November, the United States fully re-imposed the sanctions on Iran that had been lifted or waived under the JCPOA. These are the sanctions will target critical sectors of Iran's economy, such as the energy, shipping and shipbuilding, and financial sectors.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 25

By Elnur Baghishov  Trend:

This Iranian year (started on March 21, 2018) 3.5 million tons of mining materials have been extracted from the fields in Irans Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari province, Shata cited Behzad Ibrahimi, Deputy Chairman of Industry, Mine and Trade Organization of Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari Province, as saying.

He added that mining materials were extracted from the fields in nine areas.

Investments worth 671 billion rials (about $15.9 million) were made in exploration of more than 188 fields and jobs were created for 1,850 people, Ibrahimi added.

He added that among the extracted materials are rubble, silica sand, gypsum, clay, fireclay and cement.

On average, about 5 million tons of mining materials are extracted annually from the active fields of the province, Ibrahimi said.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 25

By Elnur Baghishov  Trend:

According to the foreign trade statistics of the Iranian Customs Office, 45 tons of pulleys, spindles and bobbins worth $401,178 were imported to Iran from the different countries during the first six months of this Iranian year (started on March 21, 2018).

The products were imported from Germany, United Arab Emirates, Italy, Turkey, China and Switzerland.

Moreover, 13 tons of goods worth $203,204 were imported from Switzerland to Iran.

Such non-essential items are imported to Iran amid devaluation in Iran, as well as US sanctions imposed on Iran.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said that resuming nuclear enrichment is always possible, and Tehran is entitled to it as the US violated the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), IRNA reported.

In an exclusive interview with the Italian news channel Rai News 24, he added, We have the right to abandon JCPOA, but there is another option, we should see how they will secure our interests.

Asked about the US demands from Europe, he said that whatever Washington asks Europe to do with Iran is wrong by the very basis.

If a bullying power is allowed to do everything they want, there will be no end for their bullying, he said.

In response to the reporters question that US President Donald Trump believes that after the new round of sanctions, Iran will be obliged to return to the negotiating table, Zarif said that Trump administration has based its policies on illusion and wrong analyses, but Iran has survived and succeeded.

Thats the US that has withdrawn from the nuclear deal, not Iran, he said, noting, We held negotiations for two and a half year and reached a huge deal, the longest and the most serious negotiations in the contemporary history.

Asked what role Italy can play in anti-Iran sanctions, Zarif said that Italy is Irans biggest trade partner in the EU and it can support the private sector.

Asked why Iran does not leave Syria to alleviate Americans and its allies concerns about its regional influence, he said, If we dont help them, Daesh will find the opportunity to spread across the Middle East.

They helped Saddam and Taliban. Which countries fighters are bombing Yemen? Are they Iranian? he asked.

Americans spent billions of dollars to arm former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and regional states are still paying for their move, Iranian top diplomat said.

Responding to the question whether President Rouhani can meet Trump, he said why should he do such a thing?

Trump is not a reliable partner, as he quit a deal which took two and a half year to complete, Zarif said.
07:32 (GMT+4) Over 550 people have been injured in a strong 6.3-magnitude earthquake in western Iran, also felt in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, Press TV reported.

01:44 (GMT+4) Iran said on Sunday that no fatalities had been reported but that more than 400 people were injured after an earthquake of magnitude 6.3 struck near its western border with Iraq, Reuters reported citing Iranian state TV.

The tremor was also felt in the Iraqi capital Baghdad and in Kuwait.

We have had 411 injured, 80 percent of whom have been treated and released ... No fatalities have been reported, Houshang Bazvand, governor of the western province of Kermanshah, told state TV.

00:31 (GMT+4) Over 350 people have been injured in a strong 6.3-magnitude earthquake in western Iran, also felt in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, Press TV reported.

According to the US Geological Survey, (USGS), the quake occurred at a depth of 10 kilometers on Sunday.

The official IRNA news agency quoted University of Tehrans Institute of Geophysics as saying that the quake struck 17 km west of the Iranian city of Sarpol-e-Zahab in Kermanshah Province, 18 km from Qasr-e Shirin and 33 km from the city of Gilan-e-Gharb.

The institute also put the magnitude of the quake at 6.4 followed by a number of aftershocks ranging from 5.2-3 degrees on the Richter scale.

The quake was also felt in most cities in Iran's Kermanshah and Ilam provinces as well as in Tabriz and Urmia, the capital cities of East and West Azarbaijan provinces, respectively.

Iran's Red Crescent Society has dispatched relief and rescue teams to the affected areas where local officials have reported cases of injuries among people.

Kermanshah provinces deputy governor general was quoted by Fars news agency as saying that scores of people have been treated for injuries, mostly in the two cities of Sarpol-e-Zahab and Gilan-e-Gharb.

The official added that power supply has been cut in some affected areas in Kermanshah Province with technical teams doing their best to restore electricity.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi Geological Survey said the quake was felt in the capital Baghdad and in Erbil in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region with the countrys Interior Ministry saying that no damage or casualties had been reported so far.

Last November, Kermanshah Province was hit by a powerful 7.3-magnitude earthquake, which killed hundreds of people.

The epicenter of 2017 quake was 32 kilometers south of the Iraqi city of Halabja, in Iraqi Kurdistan, and just across the border from Iran, but the highest casualties occurred in the city of Sarpol-e Zahab, in Irans Kermanshah Province.

23:57 (GMT+4) Iran said on Sunday that no fatalities had been reported but that about 200 people were injured after an earthquake of magnitude 6.3 struck near its western border with Iraq, Reuters reported citing Iranian state TV.

The tremor was also felt in the Iraqi capital Baghdad and in Kuwait.

About 200 to 210 people have been injured ... but we have had no fatalities, Houshang Bazvand, the governor of Kermanshah province, told state TV.

Fears of aftershocks sent people in several cities in the western province of Kermanshah out onto the streets and parks in cold weather, Iranian media reported. Rescue teams were immediately deployed to the quake-hit area.

No reports of any fatalities yet and most of the injured were hurt while fleeing, not due to quake damage, Pirhossein Koulivand, head of Irans emergency services, told state TV.

The quake triggered landslides but officials said all the roads in the area remained open to traffic and electricity had been restored in most of areas hit by the tremor.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said the earthquake occurred at a depth of 65 km (40 miles) and struck 114 km northwest of the city of Ilam, close to Irans border with Iraq.

Iranian media said tremors were felt in at least seven provinces of Iran, most strongly in Kermanshah province, where last year over 600 people were killed and thousands injured in Irans deadliest earthquake in more than a decade.

Local officials said reconstruction undertaken after that strong quake should mean there would not be casualties.

Kermanshah governor Bazvand said some 50 people were injured in the town of Sarpol-e Zahab, about 15 km (10 miles) from the border, near the quakes epicentre.

The Iraqi Geological Survey said the quake had been felt in Baghdad, where the interior ministry said no damage or casualties were reported, Erbil in the Kurdistan region, and other Iraqi provinces.

The quake was felt in some areas of Kuwait but no damage was reported, state news agency Kuna said.

Fortunately, the quake was not near bigger cities. But it might have caused damage in villages and I hope not that many villages are located where it hit, Ali Moradi, head of Irans seismology centre, told state TV.

Iran sits astride major fault lines and is prone to frequent tremors. Last November, a magnitude 7.3 earthquake hit the Kermanshah province. In 2003, a quake of a magnitude of 6.6 in Kerman province killed 31,000 people and flattened the historic city of Bam.
The UN Security Council on Saturday condemned "in the strongest terms" Friday's attacks against the Chinese Consulate-General in Karachi and a market in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan, Xinhua reports.

Members of the council appreciated the swift response of the Pakistani authorities, expressed their deepest sympathy and condolences to the victims' families and to the Pakistani government, and wished a speedy and full recovery of those injured, said the council in a press statement.

The members stressed the fundamental principle of the inviolability of diplomatic and consular premises and the obligations on host governments to take all appropriate steps to protect diplomatic and consular premises against any intrusion or damage, and prevent any disturbance of the peace of these missions or impairment of their dignity and any attack on diplomatic premises, agents and consular officers.

They underlined the need to hold perpetrators, organizers, financiers and sponsors of these reprehensible terrorist acts accountable and bring them to justice, and urged all states to cooperate actively with the Pakistani government and all other relevant authorities in this regard.

They reaffirmed that terrorism in all forms and manifestations constitutes one of the most serious threats to international peace and security, stressing the need for all states to combat by all means threats to international peace and security caused by terrorist acts.

Four people, including two police officers, were killed in the attack on the Chinese Consulate-General in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi. The attackers were killed before they were able to break into the compound.

At least 30 people were killed in a separate attack in the Orakzai region of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in the northwest.
Voters in Taiwan have delivered a strong rebuke to the islands pro-independence ruling party in local elections, emboldening the China-friendly opposition, one of whose main figures says he will now reach out to Beijing to forge more friendly ties, Reuters reports.

The ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) suffered major elections loss on Saturday, losing two key mayoral races, while the opposition Kuomintang took or retained control of 15 cities and counties, leaving the DPP with only six.

With little more than a year before presidential elections, Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, who has had tense relations with Beijing since her election in 2016, on Saturday took responsibility for her partys losses and resigned as DPP chairwoman.

The Kuomintang mayor-elect of the southern port city of Kaohsiung, formerly a DPP stronghold, moved swiftly on Saturday night to reach out to China, telling local media he will set up a working group on China relations and will break down barriers.

We have no walls around our hearts, said Han Kuo-yu, who has previously described Taiwan independence as being more scary than syphilis.

The Kuomintang has sent delegations to China since Tsai took office, where they have been warmly received. China has refused to have direct contacts with Tsais administration.

China, which claims Taiwan as a wayward province, said the elections showed people wanted peaceful relations with Beijing.

The results reflected the strong will of the Taiwan public in hoping to continue to share the benefits of the peaceful development of relations across the Taiwan Strait, and their strong wish in hoping to improve the islands economy and peoples wellbeing, said a statement by Chinas policy-making Taiwan Affairs Office and carried by state media.

Voters also rejected a referendum that would have seen the island join the 2020 Tokyo Olympics as Taiwan, rather than Chinese Taipei, a move which would have angered Beijing.

Chinas Taiwan Affairs Office said it showed voters putting Taiwanese athletes interests at stake is against peoples will. The attempts of Taiwan independence are doomed to fail, it added.

The WeChat account of the overseas edition of the Communist Partys official Peoples Daily said Han had realized one important reality: Taiwan will only be good if relations across the Taiwan Strait are good.

China is suspicious that Tsai wants formal independence, a red line for Beijing which regards Taiwan as its own.

Tsai says she wants only the status quo with China, but will defend Taiwans security. Chinese law mandates the use of force to prevent the island from seceding.

Tensions across the Taiwan Strait have heightened with China conducting military drills around the island and snatching away Taiwans dwindling number of diplomatic allies.

DPP Secretary General Hung Yao-fu, asked on Saturday about whether the China factor had played a role in influencing the elections, reiterated there had been a problem with fake news.

I think this time was a deep lesson, in terms of fake news messing up with a lot of peoples judgment or not getting clear information, he told reporters.

This is a global problem not just Taiwans unique problem.
The protracted Brexit talks have seen London and Brussels disagree on a handful of points, but now that the deal is in the offing, Michel Barnier believes that the EU's two sides will remain friends after their divorce, Sputnik reports.

The European Union and Britain will remain "partners and friends" after the latter's departure from the bloc, the EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said on Sunday.

"Now it is time for everybody to take their responsibility," Barnier said as he arrived at a special EU summit in Brussels that will rubber-stamp the divorce deal.

The leaders of the European nations have gathered in Brussels for a summit to endorse the withdrawal agreement and the declaration on future EU-UK relations. Brexit talks have long stumbled upon the issues of Irish border and future trade relations, but the sides have eventually come to a compromise.

However, a new obstacle has emerged in recent weeks: Madrid has threatened to veto the withdrawal deal unless it is amended to incorporate provisions for direct UK-Spanish negotiations on the issue of Gibraltar, an enclave with close ties with Spain that is ruled by the United Kingdom. On Saturday, much to the relief of Brexiteers and Theresa May in particular, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez announced, after reaching an agreement with May, that Spain would okay the deal and the summit would go ahead.

After securing the approval of European leaders, May will have to get her bill through Parliament. This is seen as a tough call for the PM, as her former minister said two weeks ago that Parliament would vote the deal down so that voters could be given the chance to vote in another Brexit referendum.
Agreeing a Brexit deal with the European Union may have been the easy part for British Prime Minister Theresa May. Getting it through a divided parliament at home could be an altogether tougher battle, Reuters reports.

For now, the odds look stacked against her with criticism of the deal approved in Brussels on Sunday from all sides, including the Northern Irish party propping up her minority government.

But May still has a few tricks up her sleeve.

She has already set loose her party enforcers known as whips who will use their powers of persuasion to ensure she has as much backing as possible in the make-or-break vote, likely in the next few weeks.

May and the whips will play on lawmakers fears for their careers if they oppose the withdrawal agreement and are then blamed by voters for the economic chaos that companies and banks say will follow if Britain leaves the bloc without a deal.

She is likely to focus much of her attention on winning over lawmakers who occupy the middle ground in her Conservative Party - as well as in the Labour opposition, whose leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has urged them to vote against the deal.

Her chances of turning hardliners in either the pro-EU or pro-Brexit camp are slim but she could still try by offering sweeteners such as government posts, backing for lawmakers favorite causes or help for their voting districts.

One pro-Brexit lawmaker, John Hayes, was awarded a knighthood on Friday in what critics called an act of desperation by May to win over opponents of the deal.

What is the thing that can get her to get her a majority? Is it something that helps the hardliners, or is it something for the more moderate point of view? asked Labour lawmaker Caroline Flint.

There is a whole number of people in the middle of that and the challenge for her is whats she going to choose.

Britain is scheduled to pull out of the European Union on March 29, almost three years after Britons narrowly voted to leave in a referendum.

May and her team still hope to get the deal approved by Brussels through the 650-seat lower house of parliament, despite a hostile reception on Thursday when the prime minister failed to win over skeptics who called it a surrender.

Brexit campaigners say the deal leaves Britain as little more than a vassal state, unable to break free of Brussels. EU supporters say the deal offers the worst of all worlds, making Britain a rule taker with no say in future decisions.

Aides say she was ready for the backlash - if perhaps not the ferocity of it - believing that when the parliamentary vote comes, her main message will focus minds.

That message, they say, is clear: vote in favor or risk opening the door to more uncertainty - Britain leaving without a deal, Brexit never happening, or the collapse of the government and the prospect of Corbyn becoming the next prime minister.

When you strip away the detail, the choice before us is clear, May said after securing the agreement of her top ministers at a brutal cabinet meeting that triggered the resignations of two of her team.

This deal which delivers on the vote of the referendum, which brings back control of our money, laws and borders; ends free movement; protects jobs, security and our union; or leave with no deal; or no Brexit at all.

May is taking her argument to the doorstep as part of a charm offensive she hopes will convince the public she has delivered on what her team considers to be the main message of the referendum - tackling immigration.

In any negotiation you do not get everything you want ... I think the British people understand that, she said on Sunday,

And for some lawmakers, that message is one that will resonate with their voters.

Flint said paramount in her mind was whether a deal would protect jobs in her northern English constituency, offer a way to ease the concerns of her voters about immigration, and above all, avoid leaving the EU without an agreement.

My red line is I dont want us to crash out without a deal, she told Reuters. I just think its really high stakes stuff.

She is not alone. Other Labour lawmakers have signaled they could also back Mays agreement if it prevented a so-called no deal Brexit.

When we leave the EU, it must be with a deal because crashing out with a no deal would be a catastrophe, said Gareth Snell, another Labour lawmaker with a northern English constituency that voted to leave the EU and where the ceramics industry relies on trade with parts of the bloc.

I want a deal that enables free trade and protects the manufacturing businesses in Stoke-on-Trent from tariffs or barriers, said Snell.

But parliamentary arithmetic remains difficult and Mays success or failure will rest on whether there are enough lawmakers in the middle ground to force the deal through.

Her plan will face opposition from both eurosceptics and europhiles within her partys 314 lawmakers, and the 313 lawmakers from opposition parties. The 10 Democratic Unionist Party Northern Irish lawmakers propping up the government said at the weekend that they will vote against.

May needs to win a simple majority in parliament, which would be 320 votes if all active lawmakers turn out and vote. Former whips, who have long studied parliamentary arithmetic, say the prime minister may end up needing only 305 votes if illnesses and abstentions are accounted for.

For now, many lawmakers are waiting to see how it all plays out, especially those in Labour who could make the difference.

The only way of justifying voting with the government is that they want Brexit to happen, one Conservative lawmaker said. But why would they want co-ownership of a controversial policy that may not succeed?
An earthquake with a magnitude of 6.3 shook western Iran on Sunday, Reuters reported citing the U.S. Geological Survey reported.

USGS said the quake was at a depth of 65 kilometers (40 miles) and struck 114 km northwest of the city of Ilam, close to Irans border with Iraq.
Turkish defense minister Hulusi Akar discussed the latest developments in Syrias Idlib with his Russian counterpart by telephone on Sunday, Turkish media reported.

No further details were immediately available.

Russias defense ministry said earlier that its warplanes had carried out air strikes against militants it held responsible for firing shells filled with chlorine gas at the Syrian city of Aleppo.

Russian news agencies cited Major-General Igor Konashenkov as saying that the Russian strikes had destroyed all of their targets and that Russia had warned Turkey of the bombing raid in advance via a telephone hotline.
US President Donald Trump threatened on Saturday to close border with Mexico, if necessary, to fight illegal immigration, Sputnik repored.

"If for any reason it becomes necessary, we will CLOSE our Southern Border. There is no way that the United States will, after decades of abuse, put up with this costly and dangerous situation anymore!" Trump said on Twitter.

Trump reiterated that only those who are eligible for refugee status would be allowed in the United States.

Migrants at the Southern Border will not be allowed into the United States until their claims are individually approved in court. We only will allow those who come into our Country legally. Other than that our very strong policy is Catch and Detain. No Releasing into the U.S. All will stay in Mexico," the president promised.

The president has made his statement amid the situation at the country's southern border, where thousands of immigrants from the poorest Central American countries  Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador  are expecting to enter the United States from Mexico to seek asylum.

Earlier in the day, the Washington Post reported that the Mexican authorities had agreed to Trump administration's "Remain in Mexico" proposal. According to the proposal, migrants who wish to enter the United States for asylum from the southern border will stay in Mexico until the decision on their admission is taken.

However, Olga Sanchez Cordero, senator from the Morena party and future Interior Minister (takes office on December 1) in the government of Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has denied this media report.
It was already announced that the maximum age ceiling for the central committee members would be reduced to 75 from the existing 80.
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CEO Spiesshofer of Swiss power technology and automation group ABB addresses a news conference to present full year results in Zurich FILE PHOTO: Chief Executive Ulrich Spiesshofer of Swiss power technology and automation group ABB gestures as he addresses a news conference to present the company's full year results, in Zurich, Switzerland, February 8, 2018. REUTERS/Moritz Hager

By John Revill

ZURICH (Reuters) - The chief executives of ABB <ABBN.S> and Siemens <SIEGn.DE> are traveling to Saudi Arabia to attend a supplier conference, just weeks after they pulled out of an investment event in the country following the death of a journalist.

ABB CEO Ulrich Spiesshofer and Joe Kaeser from Siemens will travel to Dammam for an event organized by Saudi Aramco <IPO-ARMO.SE> called In-Kingdom Total Value Add (IKTVA) which is due to take place on Monday and Tuesday.

The pair had been among the executives who boycotted an earlier investment conference following the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, a journalist who was critical of the Saudi government.

During his trip Spiesshofer will visit an ABB factory in Dammam, and will also meet representatives from Saudi Aramco, one of ABB's most important customers in the region.

Among other attendees at the IKTVA event are Paal Kibsgaard from Schlumberger <SLB.N> and Jeff Miller, CEO of oilfield services company Halliburton <HAL.N>.

"Alongside being a responsible partner to our customers, we act as a responsible employer to our workforce. Therefore, our CEO will meet some 200 employees at our plant in Dammam during his trip to Saudi Arabia," ABB said in a statement on Sunday.

"In addition, the CEO will also be meeting one of our most important customers in the region in order to foster further dialogue with them."

A person familiar with the situation said Spiesshofer was only taking part in the opening ceremony, and would not be a speaker or a panelist.

Siemens confirmed the attendance of Kaeser at IKTVA, where he is among the speakers, but said the executive would not meet with officials from the Saudi government.

"This is a business trip to the Middle East where Mr. Kaeser will visit customers and business partners in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia among others," a Siemens spokesman said.

"In Saudi Arabia he will visit only our customer, Saudi Aramco, in Dammam."

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More than two dozen top officials and executives from the United States and Europe boycotted an investment conference last month over the killing of Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

Khashoggi, a critic of the Saudi government and a columnist for the Washington Post, was killed on Oct. 2 when he went there to pick up documents for his planned marriage to a Turkish woman.

The CIA believes Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the killing of Khashoggi, sources have told Reuters, a claim rejected by the Saudi embassy in Washington.

(Reporting by John Revill, Oliver Hirt and Alexander Huebner; Editing by Mark Potter)
Exiled American whistleblower Edward Snowden has weighed in on the conversation surrounding bitcoin, stating that while the market lodestar will be eventually fade away, the use of cryptocurrencies will not end with bitcoin.

Speaking in an interview with Ben Wizner, Director of the ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology project, Snowden said that the belief which supports bitcoin acting as a global currency will merely transfer itself to other cryptocurrencies instead of dissipating.

Scarcity and Belief

Responding to a question from Wizner about whether he believes bitcoin has long-term intrinsic value, Snowden compared bitcoin to paper fiat money and pointed out that the only difference between fiat and monopoly money is the belief generated by state backing, which essentially boils down to men with guns. In his view, while bitcoin and other blockchain-based crypto assets have a severely limited amount of fundamental value, two things, in particular, ensure that bitcoin remains viable in the near term.

The first he said, is scarcity, which is caused by bitcoins limited supply of 21 million BTC. This scarcity engenders competition to mine the remaining few million bitcoin, and that alone gives it a measure of value. The second and more significant factor in his view is the fact that large segments of the general population view it as a bona fide means of exchange. According to Snowden, this belief in cryptocurrency frameworks as a method of transferring real-world monetary value outside of banking networks is transferable and will survive the death of bitcoin.

In his words:

That belief is how cryptocurrencies move enormous amounts of money across the world electronically, without the involvement of banks, every single day. One day capital-B Bitcoin will be gone, but as long as there are people out there who want to be able to move money without banks, cryptocurrencies are likely to be valued.

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Great Utility, Poor Implementation

Snowden, who lives in Russia after claiming asylum there in 2013 also revealed that despite his prediction of its impending demise, he likes bitcoin because of the opportunities and possibilities it has created around the world. Using himself as an example he said:

Lets say Bank of America doesnt want to process a payment for someone like me. In the old financial system, theyve got an enormous amount of clout, as do their peers, and can make that happen. If a teenager in Venezuela wants to get paid in a hard currency for a web development gig they did for someone in Paris, something prohibited by local currency controls, cryptocurrencies can make it possible. Bitcoin may not yet really be private money, but it is the first free money.

Going further, however, he criticised the existing blockchain hashing paradigm, stating that neither of the two main hashing methods are great and new ones should be developed. Without mincing words, he described Proof of Work as an environmentally destructive activity slanted in favour of the rich, and Proof of Stake as a direct handout to the rich in the hope that their greed will keep the system running.

Featured image from Youtube.



The post Bitcoin Wont Last, But Crypto is Here to Stay: Edward Snowden appeared first on CCN.


A logo is pictured outside the World Trade Organization (WTO) headquarters next to a red traffic light in Geneva, Switzerland, October 2, 2018. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse/Files

By Yawen Chen and Joseph Campbell

BEIJING (Reuters) - China on Friday urged the World Trade Organization (WTO) to close loopholes and correct practices by some member states that damage global trade, warning of a "profound crisis" facing the institution's existence.

China and the United States have clashed about how the WTO should reform to better serve member interests, amid a widening trade dispute that has triggered billions in retaliatory tariffs and rocked global markets.

Members of the G20 are expected to discuss WTO reform when they meet at a summit in Argentina next week, following a failed attempt to reach agreement on the topic at an APEC forum held last week in Papua New Guinea.

Debate on reforming the WTO has been largely driven by U.S. complaints that it has failed to police suspected Chinese rule-breaking, with U.S. President Donald Trump threatening a withdrawal to protect American interests.

The United States wants the WTO to crack down on China's subsidies for state-owned enterprises (SOE), overcapacity in steel and other basic industries, and on the practice of forcing investors to hand over valuable technology.

At a news conference on Friday, China's Vice Commerce Minister Wang Shouwen unveiled a list of detailed demand and principles to clarify China's stance that reform should uphold core WTO values, ensure fairness and protect developing countries' interests.

He took aim at what he called "excessive" agriculture subsidies enjoyed exclusively by developed countries, saying some member states had exploited loopholes in the WTO system.

Reforms should correct some countries' discrimination against investments by other countries and companies, and not be used as a way to deprive China of the right to enjoy differentiated treatment as a developing country, Wang said, without naming any countries.

"Some countries are in reality just hoping to uphold their monopoly status and restrict other member states' development," he said.

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Referring to state-owned enterprises (SOEs), he said China opposed groundless criticism of "normal SOE and industrial subsidies" and "normal sharing of technological innovations".

Wang added the WTO should try to resolve a deadlock in appointments to its Appellate Body, which have been blocked by the United States which blames the dispute settlement body's judges for hampering a U.S. campaign against what it sees as unfair trade practices.

China's ambassador to the WTO, Zhang Xiangchen, said this week that China would not have views forced upon it as he warned fellow WTO members against seeing reform as a chance to put China in a straitjacket.

"The WTO should prioritize key issues that threaten the institution's existence," Wang said.

(Reporting by Yawen Chen and Joseph Campbell; Additional Reporting by Kevin Yao; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
Malta Blockchain Island

Malta. The Blockchain Island. A postage-stamp-sized nation nestled in the Mediterranean famous for its rocky coastline, Baroque cathedrals, Megalithic temples, and centuries of culture. Its a veritable mishmash of graying British expats, luxurious hotels, exotic women, cars that drive on the left, and a host of other legacies left by the various civilizations that invaded the rock over the years.

In more recent times, however, Malta has become famous for more than its rich heritage. Its made a welcoming home for the iGaming sector (a booming industry worth around $1.4 billion  12 percent of Maltas GDP).

In the face of a long and drawn-out European crisis and deficits year after year, Malta was finally able to register a surplus of 182 million for 2017  its second year in a row.

And the country is being talked about in blockchain regulatory circles for its progressive stance on cryptocurrency, even rebranding as The Blockchain Island.

Its government is open-minded, and its Prime Minister Joseph Muscat gave a compelling speech to the United Nations about how countries should work together to solve the worlds problems.

However, Malta has a few problems of its own  and a less-than-impeccable past when it comes to some very sticky issues, money laundering among them.

Malta the Blockchain Island

On the surface, Malta looks to be a pioneer in the cryptocurrency regulation space. On July 4, 2018, it became the first and only country to officially pass three new crypto bills into law.

This established a regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies, blockchain, and DLT in general. 2018 was also the first year that the country held its long-anticipated Malta Blockchain Summit.

When asked about the significance of this for Malta and the crypto community in general, Steve Tendon, blockchain strategist and member of Maltas National Blockchain Task Force said:

It will be the first event ever where Maltas intention to recognize Legal Personality to the innovative technology arrangements (like DAOs) will be presented to a broad international audience. This is an innovation in lawmaking that will support innovation like no other law has ever done.

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Malta didnt just pass three laws as the headlines tend to focus on, they have a whole National Blockchain Strategy penned by Tendon, with six pillars that show a deep understanding of the technology and where its going. It covers initiatives like moving public registries to the blockchain, e-residency and digital identity, and smart governance.

blockchain strategy

Said Tendon:

This will undoubtedly attract all the developers and entrepreneurs who are working on decentralized technologies of all kinds, such as new generation of blockchains, decentralized exchanges, decentralized ICO platforms, decentralized banking services, and so on.

You can see clearly that this is just the beginning. Malta is not just aiming to lead the way in regulating ICOs but showing governments the need to understand rather than fear the technology. At the same time, the country is positioning itself as open for business among a sea of tightly-shut doors.

Attracting Major Crypto Businesses

This forward-thinking regulatory stance has already inspired an influx of blockchain companies to its shores, most notably Binance and a litany of other crypto exchanges.

Its not that Malta is easy on crypto companies  according to Tendon, its KYC requirements are among the toughest out there  but at least it provides companies with a stable environment in which to operate, one in which their business isnt at risk of being shut down from one day to the next, their token declared a security, or their government known for its hostility to crypto.

Maltas progress is undeniable. I was recently at the Summit that attracted some 8,500 delegates. The place was packed at the seams and momentum sky-high.

Muscat gave a speech. Sophia the robot was there, even John McAfee delivered a keynote commending Maltas stanceand then pretty much concluding that governments had no place regulating crypto at all.

john mcafee crypto

But its one thing laying the foundations for a new future. Its another if youre still scrambling to cover up your past.

The Money Laundering Issue and Lack of Crypto Banks

There is certainly positive rhetoric, a buzzing atmosphere, real legislation, and the promise that Malta will see crypto-friendly banks in 2019. But legacy banks are still not coming around. Their standards are higher, along with the fear of being slapped with a massive fine for being too lax on their AML policies. Just ask Deutsche Bank if you want confirmation of that.

While Binance is working on the first decentralized bank in the world, crypto businesses may have to wait a bit longer. And if they think that Malta is their meal ticket to a safe haven, they may also need to dig a little deeper.

Malta has a history of working with less-than-desirable individuals. It seems that beyond gaming, innovation, and technology, the countrys name is also somewhat synonymous with money laundering.

Malta has been mentioned in a number of cases including that of Matthias Krull, a German banker working for the Swiss private bank Julius Baer, who admitted to laundering money for Los Chamos, thought to be connected with Venezuelas President Nicolas Maduro.

Theres also the tragic assassination of Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia who, before she died, had accused the Pilatus Bank of Malta of laundering money. This thrust Malta into the global spotlight over freedom and safety of the press and the Pilatus Bank under the microscope of the European Central Bank (ECB).

Caruana Galizia had also accused the bank of making suspicious payments to senior Maltese and Azerbaijani figures. The bank had its accounts frozen in March and was eventually shut down by the Maltese FSA later in the year.

Then theres the issue that the EU is currently furious with Malta over Muscats latest public blunder. According to Bloomberg:

The unions least-populous member nation has become a cryptocurrency and online gambling hub plagued by allegations of corruption and money laundering. And its selling passports.

While the country was on a high after announcing its second year turning in a profit, Muscat announced that the government would donate 5 million to a cancer charity. This turned out to be a move welcomed by no one after it emerged that the donation would come from a fund that sells Maltese passports to foreigners for 650,000 apiece.

Once again, the whole touchy subject of Maltas tenuous relations with undesirable individuals reared its ugly head, calling Maltese AML practices into question and rekindling the flame on the aforementioned issues.

So is Malta, the Blockchain Island, More than Just Hype?

Clearly, Maltas presence on the global money laundering stage is a fairly large and potentially concerning one.

Some governments, according to Bloomberg, even argue that Malta could pose:

a serious threat to global efforts to track money laundering, enforce economic sanctions, and maintain fair transnational standards.

Theres also the fact that many banks will not work with crypto companies yet and some businesses may not want to associate themselves with Malta and its sketchy past (or should we say present?).

But then again, theres no denying the progress being made. Maltas new regulator, the Malta Digital Innovation Authority, is about more than just blockchain or Bitcoin. Its about innovation itself and other emerging technologies, positioning the country as advanced and open to a world of possibilities.

Blockchain takes a beating from all sides for failure to attract the masses, for not being simple enough to use, and for being unregulated and unsafe. So, its encouraging to see countries diving into the depths, displaying a deep understanding, and welcoming crypto to its shores  even if it is a little lenient on who it does business with.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article are solely those of the author and do not represent those of, nor should they be attributed to, CCN.

Featured Image from Shutterstock



The post Malta: Does Europes Blockchain Island Really Live up to the Hype? appeared first on CCN.


Ahead of Nigerias general elections in February 2019, Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)- the countrys largest opposition party  has included the creation of a comprehensive blockchain and digital currency policy in his policy document.

The move comes as a significant surprise as the countrys regulatory establishment led by the Central Bank of Nigeria has consistently held a very cautious albeit non-hostile line toward cryptocurrency.

Break With Tradition

Atiku, who served as Nigerias vice-President between 1999 and 2007 is running on the platform of a moderniser trying to disrupt the status quo and spark Nigerias slumbering economy into life. The country is still suffering from the twin effects of a devastating 2016 recession and an accompanying global oil price slump which saw the Naira lose 85 percent of its value in less than 24 months.

Nigerias financial regulatory environment has traditionally been perceived as conservative, with banks exerting a significant amount of influence over regulatory processes and decisions. As a result, despite a growing awareness and adoption of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies among the general population, authorities have repeatedly issued statements warning against cryptocurrency investment.

In January, CCN reported that CBN governor Godwin Emefiele described bitcoin investment as a gamble that should ideally be regulated. Despite the posturing, however, Nigeria has one of Africas most vibrant peer-to-peer cryptocurrency trading ecosystems, and providers like PundiX have launched successful bitcoin payment products in the country.

Against this backdrop, Atiku is seeking to present his vision of large-scale job creation as necessary for national security. He is also trying to position himself as a leader who is well-positioned for the 21st century, in contrast to 78-year-old incumbent Muhammadu Buhari, who has been criticised for his handling of the economy.

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Speaking at the launch of his policy plan he said:

My mission is to ensure that Nigerias economy is responsive to the challenges of the 21st century knowledge economy by keeping with the amazingly dynamic technological pace.

Comprehensive Crypto Regulation in Nigeria

In his campaigns recently launched policy document titled Get Nigeria Working Again, Atiku promises that if he wins the February presidential election, a key strategic focus of his government will be to catalyse economic growth through blockchain and cryptocurrency regulation. According to the document, his government will oversee the creation of a comprehensive policy on blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies through collaboration among relevant government agencies, with the ultimate goal of providing opportunities for Nigerians and raising revenue for the government.

An excerpt from the document reads:

In harnessing the potentials of the new economy, we shall promote the Production of a comprehensive policy on block chain technology and crypto-currencies by the relevant government agencies. The terms of this mandate will ensure that these areas are regulated and managed in a way that provides job opportunities as well as income for the government and people of Nigeria. Regulation will provide clarity for informed decision making, in this $278 billion industry that consists of 1,800 currency types.

The pronouncement is significant because it marks the first time cryptocurrency regulation will be a subject of serious political discussion on the continent. It also means that in the event of an opposition victory in next years election, a market of over 177 million people  many of whom are financially underserved  with a GDP exceeding $450 billion will potentially be opened up to large scale cryptocurrency adoption, which could well place Nigeria at the vanguard of the global cryptocurrency conversation.

Featured image from Flickr/LSE Africa Summit.



The post Nigerias Biggest Opposition Candidate Promises Cryptocurrency Regulation appeared first on CCN.


People walk past a temporary sculpture installed to mark the centenary of the Armistice which ended the First World War, in the Canary Wharf financial district of London, Britain November 1, 2018. REUTERS/Toby Melville

By Sinead Cruise, Huw Jones and Andrew MacAskill

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's financial services industry has greeted news of a draft Brexit agreement with weariness and worry, spooked by a political revolt that could topple the government and bring fresh troubles to a sector already reeling from upheaval.

Broad disappointment in a blueprint that offered only basic access to European markets was quickly eclipsed on Thursday, when a wave of ministerial resignations cast doubt over the future of Prime Minister Theresa May and her ability to push the divisive plan through parliament.

Shares in blue-chip banks tumbled after Brexit Minister Dominic Raab resigned to protest the deal with the European Union, saying it presented a "very real threat to the integrity" of the UK. Three other ministers followed suit.

Shares in state-supported Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS.L) plunged 10 percent, their biggest one-day fall since the June 2016 referendum on Britain's departure from the EU, as the main opposition Labour Party said the government was "falling apart".

Barclays (BARC.L) and Lloyds Banking Group (LLOY.L) dropped 5 percent and 6.3 percent respectively by 1420 GMT.

"The mood music today is that it doesn't do for the City's financial sector," said Chris Beauchamp, chief market analyst at IG.

The scale of rebellion against May's plan, agreed just hours earlier by her cabinet, remains unclear, but the industry has found little to celebrate in its proposals. It gives UK banks, insurers and asset managers limited access to European financial markets after a transition period that starts in March and is due to end in December 2020.

Such an arrangement, known as equivalence, would give Britain access to the EU similar to the U.S. and Japan, while tying it to many EU finance rules for years to come.

Industry leaders, including John McFarlane, the outgoing Chairman of Barclays and lobby group CityUK, had hoped policymakers could negotiate an "enhanced equivalence" relationship between the UK's financial industry and the EU, as set out by the government in a white paper earlier this year.

Story continues

But the 568-page document gave little grounds for optimism that such an alliance - offering greater access and tighter safeguards against a sudden loss of rights - would be forged.

"We are not going to get anything more than the U.S. gets. The only addition is that equivalence can be applied for in the transition period, fast-tracked," said a U.S. investment bank official based in London.

"We don't really figure in any of this. The deal is all about solving the Irish question and customs union," the official said. "The rest of it is about divergence and competitiveness for services. Raab has resigned. It all feels very knife edge."

Analysts predicted a freefall by UK assets, with risks of major economic disruption and a change in government looming large. Policy responses could include a cut to base rates, according to Investec analyst Ian Gordon, which could further hurt bank profit margins.

"The tone of May's speech last night was telling, and she was explicit about the difficulties likely in coming days," said Alastair George, chief investment strategist at Edison Investment Research.

"A 'no deal' or 'hard Brexit' proposal would similarly struggle in the current Parliament, leaving a delay to the UK's exit from the EU and a general election as the most likely scenario in our view."

British financial regulators held a conference call with major banks to seek feedback on market conditions after the pound sank, sources said.

One source said the call was a direct request from Bank of England Governor Mark Carney. The Bank of England declined to comment.

PESSIMISM

Britain's decision to leave the EU has put the future of the UK's financial services industry in jeopardy, forcing many of its biggest players to transfer talent, activity and capital to smaller EU financial hubs to hold onto European clients.

Currently, banks and insurers based in Britain enjoy unfettered access to customers across the EU. But equivalence excludes major activities such as commercial bank lending and covers just a quarter of all EU cross-border financial services business, according to some estimates.

The British government has pledged to push for changes to the existing system of equivalence. Two lawyers said the bare- bones reference to the framework in the Brexit deal could get fleshed out in coming weeks.

"I anticipate a form of enhanced equivalence along the lines that the British government proposed ultimately being agreed," said Barney Reynolds, a financial services lawyer at Shearman & Sterling.

With little certainty on the fate of the deal and whether May can survive a backlash from a growing number of political opponents, senior industry sources said banks would move ahead with plans to Brexit-proof their businesses accordingly.

"We are monitoring the negotiations ... However, we are continuing to establish an EU subsidiary in Frankfurt to ensure we can provide uninterrupted services for our clients in all potential circumstances," a Standard Chartered (STAN.L) spokesman said.

Ohers said they feared a far longer phase of volatility.

"... This deal is now the only game in town - there is now no time to negotiate another deal. We thought we had stability - now we have instability writ large," said Iain Anderson, executive chairman of public affairs firm Cicero, which represents many finance companies.

(additional reporting by Lawrence White and Iain Withers; editing by Larry King)
Theres been a growth in popularity of conspiracy theories in the United States over the past few years, but it seems Russia will be fact-checking a long-standing one.

Dmitry Rogozin, head of Russias Roscosmos space agency said in a video posted to Twitter Saturday that Russia will verify if the United States actually went to the moon, the Associated Press reported.

We have set this objective to fly and verify whether theyve been there or not, Rogozin said in the video.

It should be noted that the United States did, in fact, go to the moon in 1969 and Rogozin appeared to make his claim with some humor as he was reportedly smiling and shrugged as he spoke. Rogozin was responding to a question about whether or not the moon landing actually happened.

While conspiracy theories have seen a surge in the U.S., theories on whether or not NASA actually went to the moon are common in Russia, according to the AP.

Its unclear how concrete Russias plans are to verify the moon landing or when they might do so. Russias lunar program was shut down in the 1970s.
KABUL, Nov 24 (Reuters) - A U.S. service member was killed in Afghanistan on Saturday, the NATO-led Resolute Support mission said in a statement, bringing the U.S. combat death toll this year to eight. The identity of the service member and details about the incident will be shared at a later stage, said Debra Richardson spokesperson for the Resolute Support in Afghanistan.

The Pentagon says there are about 14,000 U.S. service members in Afghanistan. The U.S. militarys mission is focused mainly on guiding and aiding Afghan forces battling the Taliban, which was ousted from power in 2001.

More than 2,400 U.S. forces have died in the 17-year-old war, Americas longest conflict. (Reporting by Rupam Jain; Editing by Michael Perry)
Asylum seekers in Mexico will be required to wait until their claims move through U.S. courts before the crossing the border, according to a plan thats won the support of Mexicos incoming government, the Washington Post reported.

In a win for the Trump administration, the potential agreement would break long-standing rules and install new barriers for Central American migrants attempting to reach the U.S., the newspaper reported on Saturday, citing Mexican officials and senior members of president-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obradors transition team that it didnt identify.

The plan, to be known as Remain in Mexico, would require asylum applicants at the border to stay in Mexico while their cases are processed, potentially ending a system President Donald Trump calls catch and release that has until now generally allowed those seeking refuge to wait on safer U.S. soil, according to the Post.

White House spokesman Hogan Gidley didnt directly address the plan in a statement, saying that President Trump has developed a strong relationship with the incoming Obrador administration, and we look forward to working with them on a wide range of issues. An official with Mexicos Foreign Ministry declined to comment.

Historic Reticence

The deal shows that the Trump administration overcame Mexicos historic reticence to deepen cooperation with the U.S. on an issue widely seen there as Americas problem. According to the newspaper, no formal agreement has been signed and details are still under discussion.

Should such a plan go ahead, it could deter people from attempting to migrate to the U.S. from Central America via Mexico. Trump deployed U.S. military forces to California, Arizona and Texas in recent weeks, and threatened to close busy border crossings after migrants traveling as part of a so-called caravan forced their way onto Mexican soil last month.

Democrats and human rights activists are likely to be concerned about such a plan, and in the past have expressed concern it could put migrants at risk and make it more difficult for them to apply for asylum.

Story continues

Election Issue

The new measures could also trigger fresh legal challenges, according to the Post.

Immigration, including recent issues tied to asylum seekers from Central America, was a flashpoint in this months U.S. midterm elections and will likely continue to play a key role in the new Congress and in shaping the debate ahead of the 2020 presidential vote.

The caravans and the topic of asylum seekers has become a source of frustration for Trump, and were a major part of his messaging in a series of pre-election rallies.

Earlier this month, a federal judge in California halted the Trump administrations latest attempt to seal the U.S. southern border by barring migrants from seeking asylum inside the country. The judge prevented the government from restricting asylum applications to those made at official ports of entry, although the Justice Department will likely appeal the order.
Its 4:30 p.m.on a chilly weekday in November. Jonathan Brainin, an artist from New Jersey sits alone at a bar inside Modern, a sleek fine-dining restaurant in midtown Manhattan in New York City, trying to kill some time before dinner. He explores the cocktail menu consisting of nearly 20 options. There are hundreds of colorful bottles of liquor used to make the cocktails occupying the wall of the bar.

A drink named Terracotta Navy catches Brainins eye. Hes curious about two ingredients in the cocktail  Szechuan peppercorn and baijiu. He still remembers how he almost choked while eating an entree made with peppercorns at a Szechuan restaurant. And he never heard of baijiu, the base of the drink.

Brainin just wanted to know what baijiu is. He asks a bartender, who pulls out a glass bottle of Ming River baijiu from the shelf, and opens the lid to let Brainin smell it. A strong aroma emerges from the bottle, something he has never smelt before. Five minutes later, his glass of Terracotta Navy arrives in an opaque and yellow color.

This is floral and fruity. Its very different than anything Ive had before, Brainin said. But its not a girly drink.

Invented in China, baijiu (pronounced by-joe) is now the most consumed liquor in the world and is poised to record the largest growth among all spirits categories over the next five years, according to the International Wine & Spirits Group. Baijiu literally means white liquor in Chinese and has become the go-to drink for gatherings and celebrations in China, from family dinner tables to high-profile diplomatic banquets. But its only recently been discovered here in the U.S.

Chinas vodka isnt popular in the U.S.

President Richard Nixon drinks baijiu with Zhou Enlai, the then Chinese Prime Minister during a state banquet in Beijing in 1972. (Photo12/UIG via Getty Images)

Selling Chinas national liquor to Westerners isnt as easy as selling Chinese food. Baijiu represents less than 1% of liquor sold in the U.S., according to the U.S. Distillery Council. Sometimes referred to as Chinas vodka, the clear spirit may even deter some vodka lovers. It usually contains 40%-65% alcohol by volume and brings a throat-burning experience.

Patrick Smith, the bar manager at the Modern, still recalls the first time he tried baijiu. Its wired to say the least, Smith said. But thats OK. Weird tasting things can also be delicious.

Story continues

Bringing baijiu to his bar was an easy decision. He was approached by William Isler, the CEO of Ming River earlier this year. I want to bring liquor from all over the world to people coming to the bar, and having the most popular one missing has been a pity, Smith said.

The hard part is to mix it in a way that average drinkers can appreciate it. It took Smith a few weeks to develop the cocktail. Baijiu is the bully in the drink, because its so intense and strong, that Smith has to use lemon to add some fruitiness to it. A chef at the restaurant suggested he put in salt to remove the savory taste in the drink, since its made from fermented sorghum.

At $20 a glass, the baijiu-based cocktail has emerged as the top five drinks at the bar, which Smith feels proud about. Any time I encounter someone who hasnt had it before, thats an opportunity for me to blow their mind, because its such an interesting flavor.

In China, theres no such thing as baijiu cocktails

Baijiu cocktail at the Modern restaurant in New York City. Krystal Hu/ Yahoo Finance)

Isler describes his baijiu brands flavor as a mix of tropical fruit, pepper, and then yeast, and then a slight cheesy funkiness to it. He emphasizes baijiu has many variants and different types of baijiu can be as different as whiskey is to rum. The one his startup is trying to introduce is specifically developed for the U.S. market. It comes from the classic Szechuan-style, which has a strong aroma and is the best-selling style in China.



Brainins way of drinking baijiu in New York City couldnt be more different from how Chinese consume it. Theres baijiu everywhere in China, except in bars. In China, baijiu is not sold by the glass, either. People drink it over the dinner table, often with intricate etiquette. Whether its in restaurants or stores, baijiu is sold in whole bottles.

When Isler was living in Beijing, he saw the opportunity to provide non-Chinese people with a place where they can come and learn about and sample baijiu. In 2014, he gained media attention when he opened Capital Spirits, the worlds first baijiu bar in Beijing.

All we did is we did something that no Chinese person thought to do, which is just to treat baijiu the same way as you treat any Western liquor, Isler said.

The results of the experiment are encouraging. The bar, inside a hutong, has attracted not only expats, but also young Chinese, especially women, who usually think drinking baijiu is old-fashioned.

The stock performance of Luzhou Laojiao, the Chinese liquor giant who backs Ming River. (Yahoo Finance)

Islers success came at the very worst time for the baijiu industry in China. Baijiu companies sales slumped after Chinas President Xi Jinping came into power in 2014. Xi launched an anti-corruption campaign, cracked down on government officials using public funds to consume baijiu and who received expensive bottles of baijiu from business people as gifts.

Having proved he can sell baijiu to foreigners, Isler was approached by several local distilleries which were looking for new revenue streams. He ended up working with Luzhou Laojiao, one of the oldest distilleries in Szechuan, a $8.5 billion giant who offered Isler and his partners an initial $6 million all-cash investment.

Isler appreciates the flexibility he was given, even though Luzhou Laojiao is a state-owned enterprise. They understood that it wouldnt be profitable right away  that we could expect to lose money for the first three years, Isler said.

One bar at a time

A customer at the Moderns looks at the Ming River baijiu bottle. (Krystal Hu/Yahoo Finance)

Since June, Ming River has been targeting three major metropolitan areas in the U.S.  New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. In Islers eyes, there are two types of clients, one is Chinese restaurants who would inherently have interest in the alcohol. The other are bars and restaurants like the Modern, which cater to mainstream American drinkers who are always looking and willing to try new and interesting cocktails.

They want to be innovative and unique. They want to set themselves apart. We provide a tool with which they can do that, Isler said.

Still, it takes some time to introduce his brand and educate Westerners about baijiu, which is more than thousands of years old. For now, Islers approach is to conquer one bar at a time. When he and partners canvass in bars across cities to make sales pitches, they bring not only Ming River but other styles of baijiu, so that bartenders can taste the difference between baijiu.

Thats how Smith, who brought baijiu to the Moderns cocktail menu four months ago, got hooked. The best way to learn about the taste is to try it, Smith said. Thats the message he is sharing with customers, too.

After finishing his baijiu cocktail, Brainin asks the bartender to give him a shot of Ming River, the baijiu base of the drink, which has a 45% alcohol level. He takes a sip. Wow, this is so much stronger than the cocktail, he said. I prefer the cocktail.

Krystal Hu covers technology and trade for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter.

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House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington. House Democrats are laying out a vision for their new majority, and one item is noticeably missing from the to-do list: President Donald Trumps impeachment.
Like a creature from a Hollywood horror film franchise, the Pentagons biggest budget nightmare is set to rise from the dead in 2019, slashing as much as $50 billion from the militarys war chest.

Sequestration, an Obama-era, automatic budget-cutting mandate that was driven by congressional gridlock, was paused for three years that end in September but never eliminated.

That has the military and a blue-ribbon panel of defense analysts worrying that key programs could get chopped unless Congress can finally slay the budget-cutting beast.

The Commission on the National Defense Strategy for the United States warned in a report this month that sequestration could threaten Americas defense capabilities as an arms race with Russia and China heats up.

If this shortfall is not corrected, the Department may find itself able to prosecute just one conflict successfully, without the ability to simultaneously deter other adversaries, the panel warned.

American defense spending peaked in 2010, with more than $727 billion allocated by Congress. The budget shank significantly as GOP deficit hawks and the Obama administration cut more than $100 billion from defense programs by 2014.

Defense spending has gone up under President Donald Trump, with $716 billion in spending for 2019. But future budgets could face automatic cuts under sequestration.

The Defense Strategy panel says the prospect of those cuts could derail plans rolled out by Defense Secretary James Mattis this year that are designed to match or exceed defense advances by the planets two other major powers: Russia and China.

It is beyond the scope of this Commissions work to identify the exact dollar amount required to fully fund the militarys needs, but the available means are clearly insufficient to fulfill the strategys ends, the panel said in its report.

But fixing the defense budget will take something Washington is likely to lack in 2019: congressional harmony.

Elections this month gave Democrats a majority in the House, while the GOP held the Senate. Thats a classic formula for gridlock that could hamstring budget bills.

Washingtons Democratic U.S. Rep. Adam Smith, the presumptive chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, has already tangled with the Trump-led Pentagon over recent deployments to the border, nuclear policy and military secrecy.

The panel warned that lawmakers will have to enlarge the Pentagons checkbook if they want to pay for Trumps military policies.

We believe that three to five percent annual real growth is indicative of the investment required, the panel said. Failing that, it may be necessary to alter the expectations of U.S. defense strategy and our global strategic objectives.

One U.S. ally began looking to the future this month despite a notoriously tight defense budget.

The United Kingdom launched its largest-ever military drills for drones.

Unmanned aircraft, trucks and tracked vehicles joined in the Autonomous Warrior exercise this month.

UK Defense Minister Gavin Williamson said the trial will help Britain discern tactics for future wars.

Our troops now have the chance to test out a huge range of robotic kit in what will be the biggest exercise of its kind in our history, he wrote on the ministrys website. Were always working with the brightest minds in Britain and across the world to see how they can support our military of the future, but now the frontrunners have the chance to prove what they can really do on a battlefield. This equipment could revolutionize our Armed Forces, keeping them safe and giving them the edge in an increasingly unstable world.

Contact Tom Roeder: 636-0240 Twitter: @xroederx
A century ago, the flag waved over the battlefields of France above the Colorado Springs volunteers who went to war with Battery C of the Colorado National Guard.

It was found in the basement of the American Legion hall downtown, a dust-covered relic of the forgotten history of the citys World War I heroes. On Saturday, it returned to glory as a piece of the past that reminds todays local veterans of the debt they owe the doughboys who kicked off a national movement to honor and support those who went to war.

Fittingly, it happens in observance of a Veterans Day that marks the 100th anniversary of the armistice that stopped the fighting in World War I, on the 11th hour (French time) of the 11th day of the 11th month, 1918.

This goes back to the true forefathers of the military establishment we have here today, said Army veteran Keith LaMee, who stumbled on the silk flag, as big as a sheet of plywood, as he went through the stored mementos of American Legion Post 5 at 15 E. Platte Ave.

LaMee has been a one-man Army in his work to preserve memories of the Pikes Peak regions heroes. He pushed to have the Veterans Affairs clinic on Fillmore Street named after Colorado Springs World War II Medal of Honor recipient Floyd Lindstrom and was the driving force behind a monument to the local men who have earned the nations highest military honor that now stands in Memorial Park.

The flag is something different and more obscure.

It was presented by a local Elks Club to Battery C at a time when Colorado Springs was bounded on the east by a dirt road thats now Union Boulevard.

There were no military bases here, but there were plenty of patriots.

They formed Battery C amid conditions that might sound familiar in 2018. Tensions were rising along the U.S.-Mexico border in 1916 as Colorado Springs, then a whistle-stop town of 30,000, formed the National Security Committee.

The committee had lawyers and shop clerks, an ancient version of the Chamber of Commerce Military Affairs Committee. Alarmed by raids into New Mexico by the bandit revolutionary Pancho Villa  18 civilians died during a Villa attack on the border town of Columbus  they decided to do something.

So the clerks and professionals got together with Fountain cowboys and Cripple Creek miners to form Battery C, which trained in town then headed to defend the border.

Victor W. Hungerford and Daniel W. Knowlton, prominent lawyers of Colorado Springs, were elected captain and first lieutenant respectively, the history of the unit says.

The border mission brought no honors for the battery, which found itself defending the desert with no enemies in sight, But just as the unit came home, America entered World War I, and the Colorado Springs troops became some of the first soldiers called to the colors.

Overseas, the Colorado Springs unit was equipped with modern French artillery and became one of Americas most decorated artillery units.

In nearly every battle fought by American troops, Battery Cs cannons cleared an explosive path.

They came home to glory, with a parade down Tejon Street, the silk flag leading the way.

What makes the tale of that flag important, though, came after the parade. After past wars, veterans were scattered to the winds. They largely came home, shed their uniforms and did their best to forget.

The boys of Battery C were different.

Its not the war itself, it is how they stayed brothers after the war, LaMee said. They didnt leave a man behind.

Most of the veterans groups now active in Colorado Springs, one of the nations most populous veteran communities, have their roots in the deeds of the men from Battery C.

The nascent Veterans of Foreign Wars, formed by the small cadre of veterans who fought in the Spanish American War, was reinvigorated by the millions that came home from World War I.

And the doughboys founded their group, the American Legion.

Army veteran Dean Noechel, senior vice commander of the Legions Colorado Department, said the generation that fought in the trenches came home as the first veteran advocates in America.

They brought us the VA and the GI bill, Noechel said. The World War I guys had a lot of vision, and they took care of each other.

Hungerford, leader of Battery C, was a leader in the veterans movement, too.

In early 1919, now promoted to major, Hungerford led a delegation to the founding convention of the American Legion in Paris.

When the first organization meeting took place in Paris in March 15-17, 1919, about 1,000 officers and enlisted men attended, the Legions official history says. The meeting, known as the Paris Caucus, adopted a temporary constitution and the name The American Legion.

Most of Battery C troops joined the Legion, and they designed their hall on Platte Avenue, since remodeled, to look like a wartime hut the troops inhabited overseas.

The Legionnaires also voted, vaulting Hungerford to a post on the Colorado Springs City Council and later electing him mayor.

Hungerford was among the leaders who helped craft Colorado Springs into the military powerhouse it is today, with five military bases, 40,000 active-duty troops and more than 80,000 veterans calling the Pikes Peak region home.

They managed to get Camp Carson here and the Air Force bases, and later the Air Force Academy, LaMee said.

That silk flag that flew over battlefields in France had a postwar role to play, too.

In World War I, the flag served as a way to rally troops. In the days before radios and GPS tracking, flags led the way.

Hungerford brought the battle-scarred Battery C colors back to Colorado Springs and donated them to the city.

After World War I, Colorado Springs became a mecca of sorts for veterans, drawing hundreds who had contracted tuberculosis in the trenches to come to the citys many health retreats.

The flag was later given to the new Legion post downtown, with instructions that it be flown at burial services for the units veterans.

It flew beside Hungerfords grave in 1949.

LaMee said the flag was rolled up on a shelf in the basement of the Legion hall. Its still bright colors were wrapped with three ribbons. When the flag was unfurled, brass plaques on its pole showed its significance.

It is made out of silk and the fringe is extremely thin, LaMee said. Its not what you see in todays Army units.

With 48 stars, its a reminder of a bygone era, and the doughboys who changed a city and a nation.

What stands out is their attitude, said Marshall Bostworth, who heads El Paso Countys Veterans Service Office. They went to war for their country, came home to raise their families and laid the groundwork for the next generation.

Noechel said the boys of Battery C turned Colorado Springs into one of the nations best communities for veterans long before the city became a hub for national defense.

We owe them everything, Noechel said. It was their vision to protect our country and protect our veterans.

Battery Cs battle flag has seen better days.

Because it was not stored properly there are a couple of holes, LaMee said. Some of the silk has deteriorated.

Because it is too frail to fly, the Legion has preserved it in an airtight mounting. Now behind glass, LaMee said the flag will be on display to honor those World War I heroes for decades to come.

LaMee said framing the flag and mounting it on a wall for the world to see rights a historic wrong.

It pains me to know their sacrifices had largely been forgotten, he said.

Contact Tom Roeder: 636-0240 Twitter: @xroederx
The Seattle Times reported that Nordstrom alerted employees of a security breach that exposed data such as their names, Social Security numbers, salaries and checking account numbers. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Jeenah Moon
With Thanksgiving behind them, many in Colorado Springs have turned to seeking out the extravagant displays of holiday lights going up on homes, public buildings, streets and attractions.

Its Christmastime, said Sharon Jones, who brought her 2-year-old daughter and 6-year-old son to the Mountain Illumination Festival at Cave of the Winds on Friday, its opening night. Its awesome.

The light show, which is part driving tour, part illuminated stroll, boasts a quarter of a million multicolored lights, refreshments and visits with Santa.

It took eight people working daily for about a month to set up the lights, said Anne Miller, operations manager at the tourist attraction outside Manitou Springs. Its the events first year.

Drivers are encouraged to turn their radios to a station playing holiday music while they wind through a short driving portion. Then people can park and walk through more lights.

Too many activities this time of year are indoors, said Brittany Morse, who lives in Colorado Springs. Thats why she took her 4-year-old son, Abraham Verdonck, to the Mountain Illumination Festival.

Normally people, for winter, they think, Lets stay cooped up indoors,  Morse said. Thats what Im teaching him  just because its cold doesnt mean you cant do anything. Its fun to be able to get out and do something family-oriented.

Sam Medellin and his 7-year-old daughter, Yaneli, came to see the lights while visiting from San Antonio.

We figured it would be a good family event, family thing to do thats kind of different than most things  its a little different than the zoo, its a little different than walking around downtown with the family, Medellin said. You get to see the mountains, you get to see what people put a lot of hard work into.

Yaneli said she loved the strings of lights made to look like an enormous Christmas tree.

But asked what she thought of Colorado Springs, Yaneli said, really cold.
Rachel Stovall is a longtime community advocate and organizer. Also a fundraising, media and marketing consultant, Stovall is most known for singing with her dance band Phat Daddy and the Phat Horn Doctors.
Steve Schuck and his wife, Joyce, are the co-founders of Parents Challenge, a nonprofit organization that empowers low-income parents to choose the best education for their children, be it public, charter, private, or home school. He is a former candidate for governor of Colorado and operates Schuck Communities, a real estate development firm in Colorado Springs.
Protestors carry a sign reading Justice for E.J. during a protest at the Riverchase Galleria in Hoover, Ala., Saturday, Nov. 24, 2018. A police shot and killed 21-year-old Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford, Jr. of Hueytown while responding to a shooting at the mall on Thanksgiving evening. Police said Bradford was fleeing the scene with a weapon. Hoover police initially told reporters Bradford had shot a teen at the mall, but later retracted the statement. (AP Photo/Kim Chandler)
With a new Democratic majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, the GOP is bracing for a sharp change to the Trump administrations plans to grow the military and add a new branch, the Space Force.

Departing Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman, who lost his seat this month in a tide that swept Democrats into state office, puts it bluntly: We can count on the fact that the defense budget is going to be cut.

It may sound like sour grapes coming from a defeated incumbent, but Coffman, who led a top subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee before his ouster, has plenty of signs that point to 2019 being a tough year for hawks.

First is the return of sequestration, an Obama-era set of mandatory budget cuts that were approved under Republican pressure to balance the federal budget. The cuts were put on hold for three years but never repealed, putting more than $50 billion in defense spending on the chopping block before the new Congress takes its first vote.

Then, there are the statements of Democratic U.S. Rep. Adam Smith, a lawmaker from the Seattle suburbs and the incoming chairman of the House Armed Forces Committee, who has been a sharp critic of President Donald Trumps plans even as he seeks to defend military missions and contractors in his district, most prominently Boeing.

Smith, through a spokesman, declined to take questions from The Gazette but sent a series of emailed statements that reveal some of his priorities.

We need to do aggressive oversight of the Pentagons budget and weapon programs to ensure that we are getting the best value for the taxpayer dollars we are spending, Smith said in an email. We know there is waste in the Pentagons budget. Its our job to find it. We also need to make sure the Pentagon can be audited so we know how the money is being used.

The tight-fisted approach comes as America faces increasing competition overseas as China and Russia pour money into new defense technology while each is taking a more aggressive military stance in its region.

Jerry Hendrix, a defense expert for the Telemus Group, a Virginia-based defense consulting firm, and a former Navy pilot, says the new arms race is as much about money as it is about cutting-edge technology.

If you want to compete, that means billions of dollars, he explained.

One of the big-ticket items in competition these days is space. America has long-enjoyed dominance in space, with spy satellites, navigation and communication systems that no rival could match.

Now, that edge in space faces new challenges with Russia and China developing systems that could target American satellites.

The issue set off alarm bells for the Obama administration, which established the National Space Defense Center in Colorado Springs to develop war plans to protect American satellites.

Trump has sought to take the space race further with a new Space Force, a new armed service that has intrigued his most ardent supporters and triggered chants for the new service at his frequent rallies.

Even with the GOP running things in the House, the space idea faced challenges. Now, with Smith at the helm, the Space Force could be strangled before birth.

Smith has opposed the Space Force as a costly policy blunder that he says could set back American efforts to regain dominance in orbit. But he also offered up a political explanation for why he would kill the new service branch.

I am deeply offended by the way he (Trump) has politicized the issue of national security in space by asking his campaign donors to choose a logo for a Space Force and treating it as his own pet project, Smith wrote.

Coffman said that with Democrats in control of the House, the battle for a separate Space Force is over.

Space Force, thats dead in the water, Coffman said. It was already questionable, and the Democrats arent going to hand this president a victory.

At a gathering of Heritage Foundation experts in Colorado Springs last week, a key topic was whether the American public has any eagerness to continue Trumps defense spending boom.

After years of declining defense budgets, Trump pushed a big boost in Pentagon spending, which will top $733 billion in 2019. Thats nearly $120 billion more in defense spending than the Pentagon budget from 2014.

But retired Army Lt. Gen. Thomas Spoehr, a Heritage expert on defense spending, said the American people dont even put boosting the defense budget in their top 10 priorities for the government.

Everything else is taking Americas attention away from national defense, Spoehr said. Americans clearly feel there is no need to allocate more money to defense.

While Americans may have little stomach for bigger Pentagon budgets, experts say theyre stuck with a Trump administration national defense strategy that requires them.

This year, the Trump administration unveiled a national strategy that focuses the Pentagon on Russia and China in what the administration calls a great power competition. That essentially is a slightly warmer, but equally expensive, version of the Cold War.

Spoehr said to meet the needs of the new strategy, Trump needs a much larger military, with a bigger Navy fleet, more Air Force squadrons and more ground forces in the Army.

There are not enough forces to execute the national defense strategy, he said.

Another piece of the new national defense strategy involves retooling Americas nuclear arsenal.

Plans are underway for new submarines and bombers to carry nuclear missiles and new intercontinental ballistic missiles for U.S. silos.

But plans for new nuclear warheads for those weapons have already triggered a bitter partisan debate.

Focusing on President Trumps new nuclear arms race would increase the risk of miscalculation, wreck the budget, and detract from our ability to invest in cyber, information operations, and our troops to counter serious threats to our security and efforts to undermine our democracy, Smith wrote.

Coffman worries that the acrimony between Democrats and Republicans over Trumps plans could lead to partisan warfare over defense spending.

Since the 9/11 attacks, with occasional flare-ups, defense committees have been relatively bipartisan.

Coffman, whose defeat was celebrated on national television by Trump, despite the fact that they are both Republicans, said the hyper-partisanship that dominated the election season will carry into the congressional session, spreading easily to defense committees.

I think it will be partisan, said Coffman, who earned a sarcastic Too bad, Mike from Trump after his loss for his not embracing some of the presidents policies or support.

But, apart from Coffmans objection to the Space Force, Trump and Coffman were largely in step on defense issues.

I worry about China, I worry about a resurgent Russia, and I worry about Iran, Coffman said, ticking off three rival nations that mirror Trumps priorities.

The Democrats dont dispute growing global tension with rival nations. But Smith has additional priorities. Those include battling climate change, keeping transgender troops in uniform and curbing Trumps use of active-duty troops to control Americas border with Mexico.

Smiths statement following a reported Trump drawdown for the border forces shows what the new partisan environment on the House Armed Services Committee could portend.

The reports that President Trump is planning to withdraw some of the troops he sent to the border two weeks ago indicate just how empty, demagogic, and racially motivated this political stunt was, Smith said in an email.

Contact Tom Roeder: 636-0240 Twitter: @xroederx
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, right, shakes hands with British Prime Minister Theresa May before a meeting Saturday at EU headquarters in Brussels. May has the momentous task of selling her Brexit deal to British Parliament and a nation fundamentally split over whether the U.K. should leave the EU on March 29.
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Official Solution:





Marine and Juhu beach, 5 miles from each other, are the two top beaches in country X. After recent epidemic at Marine beach in August, two months back, the influx of tourists in Juhu beach has increased when compared to same time in earlier years. It can, therefore, be concluded that this increase of tourists in Juhu beach is directly related to the epidemic in Marine beach.



Which of the following, if true, weakens the argument ?





A. In spite of epidemic at Marine beach, there was little effect on tourists who visited country X.

B. The influx of tourist is normally high in months after August as compared to rest of the year.

C. There were few cases of drowning in Juhu beach in the month of August this year.

D. Few of the much awaited tourist attractions have been opened in last three months in the three top beaches of country X.

E. Although the two beaches are just 5 miles, there has been no reported case of disease from area around Juhu beach.





A. The argument is about the visitors in Juhu beach, not about total visitors in country X.



B. The passage states that the visitors to Juhu beach this year is higher than that last year (during the same time). That in general the no. of visitors in August is high does not explain or refute the difference between the numbers in two years.



C. The conclusion of the passage is that the increase in number of visitors is the effect of epidemic in marine beach. Number of drownings in Juhu beach does not affect this causal relation.



D. Correct. If the conclusion is that X causes Z, then weakening statement would be something else Y causes Z, since this statement gives reason to doubt the conclusion: Y, not X causes Z. Here X = Epidemic in Marine beach, Z = increase in visitors in Juhu beach, and Y = opening of other tourist attractions.



E. The reasoning is same as that in option C: this statement does not oppose the causal relation.





Answer: D
Grand Old Partisan salutes George Jackson, an early African-American leader of the Texas Republican Party. Born a slave in Virginia, he gained his freedom while a teenager during the Civil War. In 1869, he enlisted in the 9th U.S. Cavalry  Buffalo Soldiers  and was stationed near San Angelo, then a frontier "resort for desperate characters".

After leaving the Army in 1875, Jackson bought land near the town. He prospered with sheep ranching and other ventures, over time becoming "the wealthiest colored man in Texas." He also served as trustee of the local public school for black students.

In the 1890s, Jackson along with six whites and one Hispanic established the Tom Green County Republican Party. He addressed the 1894 state GOP convention and helped elect a Republican to Congress that year. He attended the inauguration of President William McKinley (R-OH), who appointed him a customs inspector. Death came to him this day of 1900.

Here is a Video Version of this article on YouTube: https://youtu.be/bRGLeq_PjpQ

Michael Zak is author of Back to Basics for the Republican Party, a history of GOP civil rights achievement.

Each day, his Grand Old Partisan blog celebrates more than sixteen decades of Republican heritage. And, see Speech Raves for audience feedback from his presentations in thirty-one states so far.

Clarence Thomas cited Back to Basics for the Republican Party in a Supreme Court decision.

Buy the book at Amazon

See www.youtube.com/q?v=IzxKCiXc5Qc for a brief video of a Texas Republican praising Back to Basics for the Republican Party.

"This is the most amazing book about politics that I have ever read. The Overview should be required reading for anyone with even a minor interest in government. The remainder is an enthralling history lesson that I will never forget. For years, we have all been misled about the true nature of the GOP. This is the real deal! Read it and be proud!"

"Michael Zak wrote the definitive history of the GOP."

"Back to Basics for the Republican Party is the most significant contribution to the Republican Party in the last twenty years apart from Ronald Reagan."

"Back to Basics for the Republican Party is more important to our party now than ever before."

and

"one of the best books I ever read"
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For almost 200 years, the House of Representatives  part of the United States Congress  has barred lawmakers from wearing hats. But this year, voters in Minnesota elected Ilhan Omar to represent them in the House.

Omar, who was born in Somalia and is Muslim, wears a scarf that covers her head.

In answer, some political leaders are calling for a change to the rules so that lawmakers can wear religious headwear during official meetings. The proposed change would enable Omar to wear a headscarf on the House floor. It would also permit lawmakers to wear other kinds of religious headwear, such as kippahs. But it is unclear whether any current lawmaker would do so.

The reason for the ban on hats is mostly related to ideas about respectful behavior. Currently, the rule appears alongside bans on smoking or using small computers, such as iPhones, while lawmakers are meeting publicly.

But Democratic Party lawmakers have suggested a proposal to permit religious headwear. Nancy Pelosi and Jim McGovern were two of the writers of the proposal. They noted to NBC News that this year, voters had elected the most diverse Congress in history. McGovern added the amended headwear rule would permit lawmakers to do their jobs, regardless of their religious beliefs.

The Washington Post newspaper notes that the headwear proposal also denounces some of the anti-Muslim language heard in several election campaigns. The Post added, It is also notable coming at a time when several U.S. allies in Europe are adopting countrywide bans on face veils.

Im Kelly Jean Kelly.

Kelly Jean Kelly wrote this story for VOA Learning English. Her reporting was based on stories in The Washington Post, Roll Call, and Bustle. George Grow was the editor.

_____________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

scarf - n. a long piece of cloth that is worn on your shoulders, around your neck, or over your head

diverse - adj. made up of people or things that are different from each other

regardless of - adv. without being stopped or affected by (something)

adopt - v. to accept or approve
New software programs for wireless devices are helping women in India stay safe in public spaces. Developers say these apps, short for applications, make it easier for women to report harassment and get help.

A study for the Thomson Reuters Foundation shows that safety is the biggest concern for women who use public and private transportation.

Writer Sameera Khan helped prepare the book Why Loiter? Women and Risk on Mumbai Streets. She told the Reuters news agency that women always have a plan of action for visiting public spaces. The plan includes what clothes to wear, what kind of transportation to take, what time to go out and whether they should travel alone or in a group.

Reported crimes up 80 percent

Indian government records show reported cases of crime against women increased by more than 80 percent between 2007 and 2016.

The deadly rape and killing of a young woman on a New Delhi bus in 2012 showed the dangers women face in Indias public spaces.

That incident led Supreet Singh of the Red Dot Foundation, a not-for-profit group, to create the SafeCity app. The app urges women in 11 Indian cities to report incidents of harassment and tell where those incidents take place.

Singh told Reuters, We want to bridge the gap between thereality of harassment in public spaces and what is actually being reported.

The aim is to direct attention to the areas where crimes are being reported so that Indian officials can take action against them.

Activists say women feel most at risk on crowded buses and other public transportation, paths leading to public restrooms, underground rooms and parks.

Rights activists say social stigma tied to sexual harassment and an uncaring police reporting process results in many cases going unreported.

Apps are promising

But apps like SafeCity, My Safetipin and Himmat promise to provide privacy to women reporting crimes. They also promise to share the information collected through the app with government agencies.

Supreet Singh says SafeCity has helped in many small ways. She notes an increase in the number of police officials in likely crime areas and improved lighting in dark places.

Police officials in many Indian cities urge women to report crimes using the software programs. In return, officials promise to investigate those reports quickly.

Im Jonathan Evans.

The Reuters news agency reported this story. Jonathan Evans adapted the report for VOA Learning English. George Grow was the editor.

_____________________________________________________________

Words in this Story

harassment  n. annoying or bothering someone in a constant or repeated way

gap  n. a space between two people or things; a missing part

actually  adv. in point of fact used to suggest something unexpected

loiter  v. to remain in an area when you do not have a particular reason to be there

stigma  n. an identifying mark; a sign of something

park  n. a piece of land that often includes grassland or woods and is used for public recreation purposes; a piece of ground used for recreation
The American space agencys lander InSight is to arrive on Mars Monday. The event will mark the space agencys return to the planet.

Unlike NASAs Curiosity rover, which arrived in 2012, InSight will not move across the planets surface.

Instead it will become the first spacecraft used only for exploring underground. It will study the geology of Mars, seeking signs of Martian quakes.

InSight is a joint U.S. and European project. The landers full name is Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport. It is six meters long and 1.5 meters wide. It weighs 360 kilograms.

InSights 1.8-meter robotic arm will put in place two experiments. Both are designed to look deep under the surface to gain understanding about the structure of the planet.

One experiment, called SEIS, for Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure, will study seismic waves. These are waves of energy caused by quakes or objects that hit the planet.

NASA scientists say SEIS will be able to sense changes in speed as the waves travel through the planet. This could help scientists learn what Mars is made of. NASA says SEIS has a shell to protect it from wind, big temperature changes and other conditions.

Another InSight experiment is to dig into the planet. A temperature sensor will be sent as far as 5 meters below the surface.

The device is designed to set itself firmly in place. It will measure temperature and look for evidence of volcanic and other geological activity.

Another important experiment will use radio waves to study Mars wobble. More information about this movement could help scientists determine whether the planets core is liquid or solid. That knowledge might help explain why Mars is surrounded by a weak magnetic field.

Bruce Banerdt is the lead scientist for InSight with NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

He described the spacecraft as a robot that can take care of itself.

Its got its own brain. Its got an armIt can listen with its seismometer. It can feel things with the pressure sensors and the temperature sensors. It pulls its own power out of the sun, he noted.

NASAs science mission chief, Thomas Zurbuchen, said the results of the InSight project could revolutionize the way we think about the inside of our planet.

But, first, InSight will have to land on Mars with its sensitive instruments undamaged.

Since Mars exploration started in the 1960s, only about 40 percent of orbiters and landers have successfully carried out their work.

Tom Hoffman is InSights project manager. He said earlier successes do not lessen the concerns for each new operation. Just because weve done it before doesnt mean were not nervous and excited about doing it again, he said.

InSight will enter the Martian atmosphere traveling at 19,800 kilometers an hour. It will slow for landing on Elysium Planitia, a wide flat area near the planets equator.

If all goes well, InSight could deploy its experiments in about 10 weeks. The InSight project is expected to continue for one Martian year, about two years on Earth.

Im Mario Ritter Jr.

AP reported this story for VOA News. Mario Ritter adapted it for VOA Learning English with additional material from NASA. Caty Weaver was the editor.

_________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

wobble n. to move with an unsteady side-to-side motion

core n. the central part of something

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Mental health is no small issue at colleges or universities around the world, including the United States.

The youngest students at U.S. colleges are just out of high school. Most first-year college students are just 17 or 18 years old; others are usually between the ages of 19 and 24. For many, this is the first time living away from home. In some cases, they are far from friends and family members.

College students quickly learn that they have a lot of responsibilities, some of which they alone must face. They will have hours of intense study, as well as more critical needs, like eating and sleeping well. Some students need to find a job and work to help pay for their education.

On top of this, students are meeting new people, making new friends and establishing their identities as independent adults.

With all of these demands coming together at the same time, it is no surprise that many students struggle with mental health issues. Feelings of worry, nervousness, emotional stress and depression are just some of the issues they may face.

Most U.S. colleges and universities provide mental health services and have trained specialists to help their students. But Nathaan Demers notes that such resources are not always enough of a solution.

Demers is a trained clinical psychologist. He is also vice president and director of clinical programs for a website called You at College.

The site is a joint project of Grit Digital Health, a Colorado-based business, and Colorado State University, in Fort Collins, Colorado. It aims to create solutions for mental health issues in ways that go beyond traditional methods.

How does YOU@College work?

In 2013, several Colorado State students ended their own lives. The universitys administration admitted it was facing serious problems with student mental health, and needed a solution, Demers says.

It was then that administrators reached out to a former CSU student who founded a company called Cactus Communications. A few years earlier, the company built an internet-based tool to help adult men learn about mental health and seek support services. The website used humor to make treatment of mental health issues feel less like a duty and more like an enjoyable activity.

Demers notes the Colorado State administrators wanted something like that. Yet they also understood that college students have their own special needs. College students are often very busy and have little free time to spend doing something that feels like work, Demers says. They also usually do not see mental health issues for what they are.

Theyre stressed out of their minds, he told VOA. Theyre not keeping up in the classroom, so theyre coping with drugs and alcohol. Theyre not sleeping well, missing class because of it. But you know (they say), I dont have a behavioral health disorder. Someone else should be going to the counseling center. Thats not me.

So when the university and Grit Digital Health began working on YOU at College, they tried to make it as appealing to college-aged people as possible, Demers says. Instead of making an online tool dealing mainly with mental health, they organized the website around three ideas: succeed, thrive and matter.

Succeed relates to issues of success, both in education and ones career. Thrive relates more to issues of physical and mental health. And matter relates to finding a purpose and connecting to others at ones college or university.

When a student first uses YOU at College, they are given a short test that examines the students personal qualities in all three areas. Based on the results, the website suggests news stories and videos to students. It also has links to other materials that offer advice on how to deal with issues they may struggle with.

Demers notes all of the sites material is based on the latest mental health studies, takes into consideration current events, and is presented in a clear and enjoyable way. However, most important of all, he argues, it makes suggestions for school-based resources students might use to deal with their problems.

Who needs tools like this the most?

Sam Jennings says information like this is extremely important, especially for first-time students. Jennings is the dean of students for South Dakota State University in Brookings, South Dakota.

After YOU at College was launched at Colorado State in 2016, about 20 other schools expressed interest in the website. They have since agreed to work with Grit Digital Health on developing it for their students. South Dakota State started working with the company earlier this year.

Jennings says that colleges and universities try their best to inform students about all the different support services they have to offer. But it might not always be clear to students exactly what kind of support they need for a given problem. And first-year students are often given more information about their new school, community and surroundings upon arrival than they know what to do with.

Theres no way theyre going to keep all that front of mind when the need comes up six weeks down the roadwhenthey are in crisis, says Jennings.

He adds that he has researched similar online tools before. But none of them offer such direct advice for which resources students might find helpful as YOU at College. This includes meeting times for special student support groups, and the location of counseling centers and names of the people who work there.

All of this makes it that much easier for students to seek help sooner, before their problems build to a point beyond their control. To date, YOU at College has had over 58,000 users at Colorado State alone.

Pushing students towards taking action earlier is especially important considering how much more demand there is for support services, says Lynn Linde. She heads the Center for Counseling Practice, Policy and Research at the American Counseling Association.

Linde notes many young people are highly informed about the problems facing the world today. And as a result, some feel less safe and more worried than earlier generations. So more of them seek out mental health support services, and many colleges and universities struggle to meet the increased demand.

Seeking help sooner helps ease the pressure on college counselors when issues begin to increase in severity, she says. And having tools available online is especially helpful for the current generation of college students, as they grew up using personal devices for almost everything.

However, Linde warns that over-dependence on technology can lead to other problems. And the rules and laws governing traditional counseling services do not yet exist for more modern mental health resources.

Also, websites and other online tools will never does as much good as meeting with a counselor in person.

They are never going to replacethe relationship that develops between the counselor andthe student or the group, said Linde. They go on this journey together.

Im Pete Musto.

And Im Dorothy Gundy.

Pete Musto reported this story for VOA Learning English. George Grow was the editor.

We want to hear from you. What do you think are the best resources for helping college and university students deal with mental health issues? Write to us in the Comments Section or on our Facebook page.

_____________________________________________________________ Quiz Quiz - Website Helps College Students Deal with Mental Health Issues Start the Quiz to find out Start Quiz ________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

nervousness  n. a state of having or showing feelings of being worried and afraid about what might happen

stress  n. a state of mental tension and worry caused by problems in your life or work

clinical  adj. of or relating to a place where medical treatment is given

psychologist  n. a scientist who specializes in the study and treatment of the mind and behavior

beyond  prep. more than something

coping  v. dealing with problems and difficult situations and trying to come up with solutions

counseling  n. advice and support that is given to people to help them deal with problems and make important decisions

dean  n. a person whose job is to give advice to the students in a college or high school and to make sure that they obey the school's rules

location  n. a place or position

journey  n. an act of traveling from one place to another
South Africas national, provincial, and local governments wasted R296 billion in unauthorised, irregular, and fruitless and wasteful expenditure in the past five years.

This is according to a report in the City Press, which said Auditor General Kimi Makwetus reports for government departments show gross mismanagement of public funds.

Some of the findings in the Auditor Generals latest audit reports for national and provincial government include:

A 121% increase in irregular expenditure between 2014/15 and 2017/18.

A 68% increase in unauthorised expenditure between 2014/15 and 2017/18.

A 236% increase in fruitless and wasteful expenditure between 2014/15 and 2017/18.

Makwetu told government bosses that this gross mismanagement of public funds is unacceptable, and that it needs to change.

A culture of no consequences has been created through the leaderships involvement in the decision making that led to transgressions, he is quoted as saying by the City Press.

The continued disregard for procurement processes by the leadership that resulted in irregular expenditure, coupled with limited consequences for the transgressions, created an environment vulnerable to misappropriation, wastage and the abuse of state funds.

Highlights of the Auditor-Generals annual report

Key highlights of the Auditor-Generals annual report on government departments and state-owned companies include:

Just 23% of national government departments obtained clean audits in the year through March, down from 30% the year before.

Unauthorized expenditure rose 38% to R2.1 billion, while fruitless and wasteful expenditure surged more than 200% to R2.5 billion.

Government entities incurred R51 billion in irregular expenditure. That excludes R28.4 billion in irregular expenditure by state-owned companies that arent audited by the Auditor-General.

Contracts worth R6.5 billion couldnt be audited due to missing or incomplete information.

National and provincial government departments are now facing an increased risk of litigation, with almost a third of them facing claims exceeding 10% of their next years budgets.

The biggest money wasters in government

The Auditor Generals annual audit report showed that the countrys government entities have racked up a wasteful and irregular expenditure bill exceeding R51 billion.

This figure, however, doesnt include South Africas two biggest money wasters  Eskom and Transnet.

These two state-owned enterprises had their auditing done by private firms and have amassed a combined R28 billion in wasteful and irregular expenditure.

The table below shows the 10 worst culprits when looking at unauthorised, irregular and wasteful expenditure of public funds.

Department/Entity Total unauthorised, irregular and wasteful expenditure Eskom R19.752 billion Transnet R8.147 billion Water Trading Entity R5.589 billion Transport R5.483 billion Health R5.472 billion Education R3.433 billion Water and Sanitation R2.516 billion Roads and Transport R2.235 billion Correctional Services R1.938 billion Police, Roads and Transport R1.874 billion

Reporting with Bloomberg

Now read: SAA gets R5 billion from government
Johannesburg is on the brink of a disaster as illegal miners run rampant underneath the city.

According to a report by the Sunday Times, despite the risk the government is refusing to help city officials who have requested assistance.

Transnet and Sasol have also come forward to warn of the potential looming disaster as illegal miners are using explosives to blast rock underground and are coming within metres of gas and fuel lines under Johannesburg.

Should one of those lines be damaged, experts say, everything within a 300-metre radius will be incinerated, stated the report.

There is also the risk of parts of the city collapsing due to the network of tunnels being made by the miners.

A 140km stretch of tunnels runs underneath areas such as the M1 highway and FNB Stadium.

Near miss

The report stated that illegal miners have come very close to Transnet pipelines, and in certain cases it was as close as 30cm from the pipes being struck.

However, the national government appears to have done little to address the issue.

Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba has asked the government for help to deal with the miners, but they have not responded.

God forbid something happens because the disaster management teams will stand no chance in trying to control it, said Mashaba about a pipeline being hit.

Illegal mining and other activities are a major problem in South Africa, and extend into many facets of daily life.

Another scourge which the government and cities are dealing with is illegal electricity connections, which have claimed many lives already.

In 2017, the situation reached boiling point in Tshwane as residents clashed with those living in informal settlements who were using illegal power connections  resulting in their legitimate power supply being cut off.

Now read: Amazon warehouse workers in Europe protest on Black Friday
19272018

Allan Thornton Moss Husband, Father, Grandfather and Great-Grandfather, and a man lucky enough to be loved to be loved by many, Dr. Allan Moss passed away at the age of 91 on November 5, 2018. Surrounded during his last days by his wife, Mary Ann and ,any of his children, grand and great grandchildren. Allan lived a rich and full life, and he will be missed.

Allan was born in San Francisco, attended college at IC Berkeley and then medical school at UCSF. During medical school he met Mary Hartman, a nurse, and they married and moved to Los Angeles for his residency, Shortly thereafter, they had their first son, Jeffery. After completing his residency, Allan did a stint in the Navy and traveled to Vietnam in 1954. He returned to SF and became partner in the OB/GYN group practice of Miller, Wiinch & Moss (later joined by Dr Ed Boyce) and worked out of French hospital with offices on Union Square.

after practicing medicine for over 50 years, he and Mary retired and moved to Napa. Living in Westlake and Daly City, Allan and Mary then brought our five additional children into the Moss family. IN 1963, the all moved to Mill Valley where Allan continued in the group in the group practice. He later opened his own medical office with Mary, by then a Nurse Practitioner, where they provided women with high quality, compassionate care. By the end of his medical career, he had delivered more than 5,000 babies, a legacy of joy and happiness for so many parents of which he was so rightly proud. After practicing medicine for over 50 years, he and Mary moved to Napa. There they enjoyed the wine country arts and lots of travel with friends and family until Mary passed away in 2004. Allan was an open, welcoming and social person and began dating in 2005 until he found the new love of his life Mary Ann Slaughter. Mary Ann (also a nurse) and Allan married in 2008. Allan( who was then a lively 80 year old)and Mary Ann embarked on adventures in traveling the arts and out importantly, visits with and family. Mary Ann did so much to help Allan as his physical illnesses increased and we are grateful for the love and care she showed him.

Despite mounting health issues, Allan remained the upbeat, loving and thoughtful man that he was known to be. Always a jokester, nothing brightened a room more than his wide, bright smile, crinkled eyes and infectious laugh. Survived by his wife, Mary Ann, children Jeffery (Donna), Steven (Leslie), Eric (Carla), Lynne (Gary), Lisa and Phillip along with 8 grandchildren, 4 great-grandchildren, brother-in-law Dan Hartman, step-brother Ted Leavenworth) Mimi) and many nieces and nephews, Allan leaves a legacy of happiness, love and integrity. We honor and cherish all that he was and all that he gave to us and thers and wish him peace and serenity.

Allan was laid to rest in a private ceremony; a Celebration of Life will be held on January 12. In lieu of flowers please consider making a donation in Allans name to your favorite charity.

1927 - 2018
As you and I have discussed in the past, growing older is inevitable, and its pretty much up to each one of us how we choose to go about it. Im happiest when active. Ive exercised one way or another my whole life. It always makes me feel more alive, and energetic.

In the spring of 2017, I was introduced to a new type of exciting exercise called Essentrics. Julie Webster, our instructor, spends time with each of us, if we are having a problem with a certain movement, etc. When we were leaving, after class, I asked her a question. When she began answering me, I realized that her answer was very important and informative, and something that all of us could benefit from learning. So I asked her if she would join us at our Corner and teach us all a little more about the many health benefits of Essentrics.

All of her adult life, she has had a great admiration and fascination for the human body, its willingness to adapt, its strength and ability to heal. She became a massage therapist 28 years ago. As she understood the connection between brain and body, she continued her training to receive certification as a neuromuscular therapist. This training allows Julie to work with people who have injuries, are in pain or experience repetitive-use syndromes.

A friend, knowing Julie would love the neuromuscular component of Essentrics, urged her to look into it. Within a few months she headed off to become a certified instructor, soon going through all the trainings and is now a Level 4 instructor.

We all feel better, have more energy and our strength has increased when old pain or discomfort in our bodies has decreased.

Julie, an avid hiker, says that she is continually impressed with how much stronger Essentrics has made her. Her dream is to have everyone try Essentrics for at least six months. She believes they would all be as hooked as she is.

Heres Julie, now.

Julie Webster: Thank you, Betty. Im always happy to teach folks the many advantages to our bodies through the movements of Essentrics.

Betty Rhodes: How is it possible that, at 90 years of age, I am not only able to do the movements, but, in addition to that, I feel so energetic afterwards?

JW: My answer to your question, Betty, is this: Our bodies are designed to move no matter our age. The challenge is when we start to slow down and little pains start to creep in, we think we better not move. In my opinion this is the last thing we want to do.

BR: Julie, since we are all, for the most part, in the age range where it is becoming so vital that we realize the importance of continuing to move, can you share some ideas on this issue?

JW: Of course. I believe the following will help lead you all in the right direction. More and more research is being documented on the value of movement; especially for the connective tissue or fascia. Fascia is a casing or wrapping that surrounds your body throughout. It is located from just under the surface to deep down throughout your muscles and surrounding your organs. Fascia is so prevalent that it actually makes up 20 percent of our body weight! Did you know that you could remove all your bones and muscles and your shape would be the same due to the fascia?

Previously these layers of fascia were moved aside to look at the muscles and organs. This has changed and the findings are remarkable! The fascia itself is made up of collagen or a type of protein fiber that provides strength and cushioning. Research has proven that fascia is very pain sensitive due to the encapsulate nerve endings that are located throughout it. Research is suggesting that more pain is sensed through these tissues than muscles.

Under normal circumstances layers of fascia glide easily on one another, keeping everything in a healthy state. However, when movement is decreased the fascia actually starts to over produce collagen and the area starts to get less and less mobile; resulting in potential increase of pain. This happens in an amazingly short period of time, and in fact one fascia researcher, Dr. Robert Schleip of Germany, is now making sure to move every day to keep this from happening. You should consider the same.

BR: Thank you, Julie. Now would you explain to our readers some of the magic of Essentrics?

JW: Of course, Id love to. The beauty of Essentrics is it allows your body to move naturally throughout all ranges of motion we are designed to do. It uses only your own body weight so as not to put undue stress on the body from an outside source of weight. Essentrics is therefore ideal for any age, even if you are in your 90s.

Ive been teaching Essentrics for over two years now and am thrilled to hear the comments of increased energy, strength and mobility! I think the trick is patience, as most of us didnt get this way overnight. First it is important to be consistent in coming to class regularly. In both my Essentrics with Julie and Essentrics Aging Backwards classes it is the regular attendees that report the most benefits and I can see it!

BR: Julie, thank you so very much for spending this time with us and inspiring us to Keep Moving.

Julies new evening class is at 6 p.m., on Wednesday nights beginning on Nov. 28 at the ASKN studio, 1755 Industrial Way, #22. Call Julie, (303) 786-8715, or visit www.julie-webster.com/essentrics/ with any questions.

The class I attend, called Essentrics with Julie, is on Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 7:15 or 8:30, Industrial Way #22. Julies original class is Essentrics Aging Backwards, on Monday and Thursday at 1:15 p.m.

Julie always asks that you bring a mat if you have one. She also suggests that you check out Essentrics website.

Im a strong believer in trying very hard to stay fit, serve our community, and loving life. How about you, my friends? Please share with me what your wishes for now and the future are. I would love to hear from you.

Till next time, remember to keep moving. Bye for now!

Betty Rhodes enjoys serving our community as a senior advocate. bettyrrhodes@sbcglobal.net
A proposed commercial solar energy farm near American Canyon will return to the Napa County Planning Commission on Wednesday.

The project would create an 18-acre solar field with more than 12,000 panels at 2180 American Canyon Road. It would provide electricity to Marin Clean Energy for use in Napa County.

Commissioners continued the item on Oct. 17 amid questions about the lack of a decommissioning plan and the possible need for county commercial solar farm policies in general. Some residents said allowing the American Canyon solar farm could set a precedent leading to similar projects as less desirable locations.

The county Planning Commission meets at 9 a.m. Wednesday at the county administration building, 1195 Third St.

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Local nonprofits worry that a growing number of foreign-born residents are forgoing health care, fearing medical help could jeopardize their immigration status.

It's difficult to quantify the number of immigrants who are choosing to decline health care because evidence is anecdotal. But OLE Health, Napa Valley's second-largest health care provider behind Kaiser Permanente, says it may have statistics that offer a glimpse into the problem. The organization serves many immigrants.

More than 900 OLE Health clients have disenrolled from Partnership Health Plan, a Northern California health care organization that manages benefits for 560,000 low-income residents on the state-run insurance plan Medi-Cal. Most of those patients were children.

"If you're a citizen, that's great," said Elia Rubio, who educates patients for OLE Health. "But if you're not, you will not access any kind of public benefit out of fear of hurting yourself in the long run for citizenship."

Legal and health care professionals who work with local immigrants say the anxiety around obtaining public benefits, such as government-run health care, started to grow after the election of President Donald Trump in 2016. Trump campaigned on commitments to crack down on people who cross the border illegally and made it a priority to reform immigration policy.

Local health care professionals say the anxiety has grown significantly worse since October, when the Trump administration proposed to change the "public charge" rule that helps the government decide whether a person trying to enter America or obtain a green card may primarily rely on public dollars.

As a result of this proposed change, roughly a dozen clients visit Community Health Initiative Napa County each week wanting to withdraw from public benefits or seeking more information about the proposed public charge rule change, said Elba Gonzalez, head of the organization.

The office, which offers help to patients seeking health insurance, is usually busy around the time of open enrollment for health care benefits. Fewer people seem to be enrolling in Medi-Cal this year, she said.

Every client who seeks more information about the proposed change is misinformed, Gonzalez said. The rules are confusing, especially for people who don't speak English as a first language. Sometimes, clients are so scared that they don't seem to be listening to the advice she offers, she said.

"To see that fear, and that they're having to make a decision that puts their health at risk, it's just really concerning, said Gonzalez, who has worked in the health care resources field for 13 years.

Trying to redefine 'public charge'

The public charge rule exists to help the government determine how big of a charge, or cost, an immigrant could pose to taxpayers. Currently, the rule targets immigrants who receive benefits through Supplemental Security Income and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, but the proposed change to the rule would expand the range of public benefits.

If approved, the government would take into account immigrants receiving housing assistance, non-emergency Medicaid benefits, Medicaid benefits for certain low-income patients who need prescription drugs, and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps. Most immigrants who use such services for at least nine months within a three-year period would be considered a public charge.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which proposed the rule change, says the policy will give the government a more comprehensive set of tools to decide whether immigrants will be self-sufficient.

The changes would mostly affect immigrants who use family connections to obtain a green card, according to an analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation. A much larger pool of immigrants may also be affected, as some may pull out of public programs because they are confused or scared of risking their chance at staying in America, according to researchers.

An estimated 875,000 to 2 million children of noncitizen parents could lose Medicaid coverage if the policy change caused 15 to 35 percent of those patients to disenroll, Kaiser Family Foundation researchers found.

'There's so much fear'

Kids are the fastest-growing group of patients disenrolling at OLE Health, according to Alicia Hardy, head of OLE Health. Some children of undocumented parents have even asked to stop receiving public benefits to avoid jeopardizing their parents' immigration status.

People disenrolling in great numbers could ultimately reduce the availability of services OLE Health can offer to the broader community, officials said.

OLE Health saw a 20 percent increase in clients who became insured when the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, was implemented in 2013, Hardy said. Clients have started disenrolling in the last two years, and for every one percent of clients who drop coverage, OLE Health loses nearly $200,000 in revenue.

Such a change would not hamper OLE Health's plans to expand into its future south Napa campus, but could affect ongoing operations.

The public charge proposal has yet to be approved, but Hardy said it will be a matter of time until the change becomes law. The organization is bracing itself for the possibility that people will disenroll at an even faster rate by trying to educate as many patients as it can.

Patients seem to be coming in less often or only when they're in an emergency situation, Hardy said.

"With the current political environment, there's so much fear of government and fear of anything that could jeopardize someone's ability to obtain legal permanent residency," said Hardy, "even though some of the decision-making is unfounded."

The proposal prompted some who were considering disenrolling from benefits to reach out to the International Institute of the Bay Area, a nonprofit that offers legal help to immigrants.

Karla Marquez, who works in the organization's Napa office, encouraged immigrants who are considering disenrolling to speak to their eligibility case worker and connect with a legal service provider. The case worker can help their client understand how they determine whether someone is eligible for a public benefit, while a legal service provider can help the client understand how receiving a benefit could affect their specific case.

It's better to go to trusted organizations than to live in fear, she said.

"This is really about making a decision," Marquez said. "We want people to be well-informed so that they can  not be overwhelmed by the fear that other neighbors might be feeding to them, or the fear that's being distributed over the television or the radio."
Donning Santa hats and reindeer ears, Napa residents gathered along Second and Third streets to watch this years Christmas parade travel through downtown Napa on Saturday night.

Parade-goers said they love to watch kids participate in the parade and were grateful for an evening free of rain and wildfire smoke.

Families lugged wagons stuffed with camping chairs, fleece blankets and pets as they searched for the perfect vantage point. Volunteers handed out bundles of glow sticks while people munched on snacks and sipped hot drinks as they waited for the parade to begin.

The Christmas parade is the best event of the year, said Carlos Robles as he waited along the parade route. Robles said he comes every year and watches his granddaughter in the parade.

We got hooked, he said.

A few paces down the sidewalk, Gliselle Chavez, wearing glittery reindeer ears, sat in a chair along the sidewalk and waited to watch her daughter in the parade.

Its good to have a community event like this, she said, particularly in the aftermath of the Camp Fire in Butte County that reminded so many of the sadness they felt after last years fires in Napa.

Nowadays, we need stuff like this to bring the city together, Chavez said.

Moments later, siblings Shiloh and Brianna Marsh arrived with their mother and looked to stake out a spot. Theyve come every year since 2002. Brianna loves the bright lights and candy thrown from floats. Brother Shiloh enjoys seeing people he knows participate in the parade.

Jennifer Johnson, of Sacramento, and Tim Johnson, of southern Oregon, were born and raised in Napa. It was their first time coming to the parade in years, though it was tradition to come as children. The small-town feel of the parade is awesome, Johnson said.

Mason Bartlett and Curtis Peck said they love the candy, the dancing horses, police cars and participating in a tradition.

Why keep coming year after year?

To help the community out and to clap and celebrate what they have done for us, Bartlett said.

The sun began to set around 5 p.m., when the parade was scheduled to start.

Horses trotted and parade participants hopped aboard their floats. Music boomed over a speaker above a cacophony of instruments as performers practiced up until the last minute. More than 50 groups participated in the parade this year.

Look at the crowd, they love coming out, said Mike Butler of Napa Valley Cruisers, which brought 10 cars to drive in the parade.

Emma McLaughlin and Yoselin Hernandez of Vintage High twirled wooden rifles and prepared to perform with the rest of the band. Its a good way to bring awareness to their group and encourage younger kids to participate when they get to high school, they said.

Everyones awed by you, Hernandez said.

Especially when you have a rifle that youre tossing into the air, McLaughlin added.

The Napa Police Historical Society was among the first entrants to lead the parade in a 57 Ford that was restored seven years ago, said Sgt. Todd Schulman.

We have a really close relationship with our community, he said. We definitely feel the support from the people who are here at the parade.

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Catch up on the Napa Valley news you may have missed this week.
As extreme weather strikes with greater frequency and ferocity -- especially on the East and West coasts of the U.S. -- media attention rightly focuses on the often heroic response of the emergency services. What is missing from these accounts, however, is a similar emphasis on climate change as a source of the increasing extremity of these events, and consequently, on preventing ever-worsening weather calamities. It is even more problematic when the causes of these events are misdiagnosed, as when the president attributed California's worst forest fires ever to "poor forest management."

The upshot of failing to make the climate change connection is that actions continue to be limited to dealing with disasters after they strike without taking urgent steps to contain runaway global warming. As climate inaction continues, weather disasters are poised to reach a point where no amount of good management will be enough. The 2018 report from the United Nations is clear: Human actions and greenhouse gas emissions are contributing to global warming, and unless the planet's temperature increase (from pre-industrial times) is kept to below 1.5 degrees centigrade, weather catastrophes will go over the tipping point.

There are many policy and technological avenues for climate mitigation, but they all start with a change in our mindsets to link the new weather extremes to global warming. That is necessary if a winning political platform for climate action is to be created. Political support and resources for climate abatement will unleash the innovation and adaptation in ways we may not have anticipated. This has been seen time and again in other global crises, be it tackling terrorism or pandemics, where treating the problem had to be complemented by attending to the root causes.

But unlike terrorism and pandemics, climate change presents a fuzzier -- and potentially deadlier -- chain that connects cause and effect. The effects of climate change still tend to be viewed as something over the horizon rather than here and now. This perception must change: In 2017 and 2018 the worst floods and fires on record were seen not only across the globe but on United States' soil in California, Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico.

In addition to drawing broad links between anthropogenic warming and disaster trends, scientists are also beginning to attribute the higher probability of individual events to climate change, for example, the 2017 Hurricane Harvey in Texas, the 2013 Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines and the 2013 Australian heat waves.

Drawing on this type of evidence, news reporters must make the climate-disaster connection so that people see the extremity of the episodes as manifestations of global warming. The resulting shift in understanding should also trigger a political movement to see climate action as a pro-progress agenda, and a political platform that can help win elections. Florida's Democratic candidate for governor, Andrew Gillum, developed a plan to preserve the state's natural resources, curb harmful blue-green algal blooms and red tide, and invest in renewable energy to fight climate change. We need to see environmental agendas like this among the criteria for winning elections.

To spur action, we also need to view weather disasters as local affairs. The wildfires that swept across the town of Paradise in California in just eight hours are every bit local. So is Hurricane Michael, which hammered Florida's Panhandle. These events also need to be seen as national disasters rather than natural disasters. The United States is the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases after China. The lowering of power plant emissions standards by the administration and encouraging the use of fossil fuels will only aggravate sea-level rises along the country's long coastlines.

Television and newspapers have the biggest bully pulpit in the United States. The current administration's policies show a reckless disregard for the factors behind the increase in weather disasters, endangering the well-being of people for years to come. The media can make a difference in this unfavorable setting by connecting the dots between climate and disasters in real time and helping to make environmental care a live political agenda.

If enough people recognize the true climate-disaster link, positive actions will follow.

Vinod Thomas is author of a 2018 book "Climate Change and Natural Disasters" (Routledge) and a former senior vice president at the World Bank. This was written for the Baltimore Sun.
In more robust times for the metropolitan newspaper business, the Kansas City Star ran a column devoted to nourishing civic memory. The feature recalled events and personalities from 40 years past  roughly half a lifetime  and frequently sparked reflections along the lines of that great French adage: The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Alas, the column has not survived the many rounds of budget cuts visited on the Star and other local papers. But its spirit survives in the 40 Years Ago Column Club. I was their guest at lunch the other day.

The club newsletter at my seat reminded me of the tenor of the world in 1978. Amid the powder keg Middle East, a revolution was underway in Iran. The aged Shah, a despot installed and propped up by U.S. power, imposed military rule in a desperate attempt to extend his reign. Among oppressed Iranians, a rumor spread that the stern visage of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had appeared in the full moonan omen that would be fulfilled a short time later when the Shah fled and Khomeini returned from exile to inaugurate an Islamic republic.

Meanwhile, a cult leader from California, who had taken his followers to a jungle compound in South America, ordered the assassination of a visiting congressman. Then Jim Jones led his people in a ghastly murder-suicide that left more than 900 bodies putrefying in the heat. A third of them were children.

Six nuclear weapons were detonated around the globe in a single month by four different countriesthe United States, France, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union. The total number of test explosions in 1978 was 66. Anxiety over the risk of nuclear war was rising steeply. Within a handful of years, 100 million Americansan astounding 43 percent of the populationwould tune in to a single broadcast: The Day After, which depicted the destruction of Kansas City and nearby towns in a nuclear holocaust.

The newsletter took me 40 years deeper into the past: 1938. A darker period of human history is hard to imagine. Joseph Stalins terror was culminating in the Moscow show trials of his political enemies, while millions of ordinary Soviets were enslaved throughout the gulag archipelago. Farther east, the Japanese army was continuing its brutal conquest of China.

In the United States, the economy was failing again. One in five Americans was out of work. The midterm elections were a massive rebuke of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was widely criticized as a would-be autocrat. Roosevelts Democrats lost 71 seats in the House and seven in the Senate. The New Deal has been halted, the influential columnist Arthur Krock declared.

And in those corrupted storehouses of Western culture, Germany and Austria, the murder of a Nazi diplomat in France was the pretext for an orgy of state-sponsored violence against Jews. More than 1,000 synagogues were burned in two November days and nights; at least 7,500 businesses were looted; some 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and condemned to slavery at Dachau, Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen. This Kristallnachtthe glass of smashed windows covered the Reich like crystalswas followed by a month-long barrage of harsher anti-Jewish decrees. One-fifth of all Jewish wealth was confiscated, along with insurance payments for the destroyed property. Jews were forbidden to own businesses; their children were banned from public schools.

Forty years. This exercise could be continued, I suppose, as far back as records will take us. Forty years before Kristallnacht, in November 1898, a white supremacist army overran Wilmington, North Carolina, and deposed the elected municipal government in U.S. historys only coup detat. Incited by speeches and editorials calling for the mass lynching of African Americans, the heavily armed mob drove hundreds of Wilmington families from their homes and gunned down an estimated 60 black citizens while burning the office of a newspaper editor who dared to suggest that white women might consent to sex with black men.

The lesson: Never in the course of human events was everything well and goodness unchallenged. Hatred and vice have always obstructed and opposed the exercise of virtuesof kindness, generosity, comity, humility, honesty and all the others. If we feel these contending forces more sharply in current events than through history books, its not because our day is more conflicted, more anxious, more contentious or more dangerous. Its because its our day.

Now approaches the day set aside to giving thanks. Im grateful for all those, famous and forgotten, past and present, who have lived through difficult times and chosen hope over despair, respect over contempt, gentleness over cruelty, communion over division, liberty over tyranny, beauty over ugliness, dignity over base impulses and manipulation. These choices are right and good, in all times and places. But that doesnt make them easynot today, not tomorrow, not 40 years hence.

David Von Drehle writes a twice-weekly column for The Washington Post. He was previously an editor-at-large for Time Magazine, and is the author of four books, including Rise to Greatness: Abraham Lincoln and Americas Most Perilous Year and Triangle: The Fire That Changed America.
Gone are the good old days when journalism was a noble profession catering to the needs of the society. Till over four decades ago, a journalist was a hard-boiled crusader for news based on truth. He would be satisfied with a news item prepared by him only after several checking and cross checking. Reporters in those days were known to be travelling for miles together on bicycles over bumpy and virtually non-existent roads in search of authentic news. It was indeed a painstaking mission against all odds for correct news sans any political or communal colour. Accordingly the credibility accorded to a journalist in public domain was extremely high.

With Assam and the Northeast facing the greatest of turbulence and turmoil in its lifeline in the backdrop of issues like the controversial Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016, the NRC, the open attempt to nullify, by means fair or foul, the Assam Accord and the clear threat to the very identity of the indigenous people, the need of the hour is projection of authentic news.

But today, while Information Technology has made mighty strides and continues to accelerate ahead with path-breaking inventions and in the process pushes further the horizon of the media world with every passing day, a sizable section of media reports making the headlines in all formats of reporting appear to be bereft of actual truth. Nay, in some cases, the reports appear to be so coloured, twisted and turned, that the true version seems to be nowhere in the vicinity. Beyond a shadow of doubt, Assam and the Northeast have fallen prey to such misleading journalism over the last couple of decades or so.

While there is general decadence and degeneration in the society with dishonesty, fraud, cheating and all kinds of crimes calling the shots across the social spectrum, the genuine journalists of yesteryears have virtually disappeared from amongst the journalistic fraternity in the Northeast. Today, a journalist strictly guided by honesty, professional ethics and commitment to the society in the true sense of the term is indeed a rare entity and constitute a very small segment of the journalistic circle. Significantly, the vast majority of such genuine journalists are invariably found to belong to the financially poorer section of the society.

How bitter a pill it may be to swallow, the highly despicable and condemnable truth is that a sizable section of the media has come under the venomous clout of some of our heavyweight politicians. These heavyweights throw around their ill gotten wealth as bait for selected journalists, many of whom in turn fall in their line. The result being emergence of paid news, concocted news, misleading news and false news, providing political and social mileage to the political masters. Further, a few media houses are also owned by political big wigs by default.

Significantly, that is not the end of the all the dirt that has made way into the world of journalism. The big names in the corporate world also fish in pools that are actually domains of journalists. These business tycoons at times throw in their cards on their own while on other occasions take dictation from their political masters. At times syndicate raj and other mafia dons also play their part. The overall outcome being that paid or concocted news flow in, driving the general news reader into utter confusion and chaos in the face of highly conflicting and controversial news.

Further, causing the Majithia Wage Board recommendations to rot by the way side by many Northeast print media house proprietors with the apparent blessings of the Government, quite a few of such houses pay just peanuts laced with pay-cuts at the fall of the hat, to their staff. This leads to many engaged in reporting or editing to fall in the net of the moneyed kingpins of paid news in order to make their ends meet.

If one may borrow Thomas Hardys words money matter works better from Jude The Obscure, the feeling does arise that a sizable number of journalists have come under the grip of money power thrown in powerful polluters of journalism.

As of now, by way of example, the issue of massive opposition to the obnoxious Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016 by the sons and daughters of the soil of Assam, almost on a daily basis, is the news that is rocking Assam. However, there are a handful of media houses that are projecting the news apparently with disdainful contempt in the most casual manner.

One can very well comprehend that these houses are simply yes-men of the powers that be whose brain child the Bill is. In the same vein, words are too poor to condemn the brutal attack on frontline civil society activist Agnes Kharshiing allegedly by the coal mafia in East Jaintia Hills in Meghalaya recently. While the role of the administration and the police, particularly during the post assault period, is certainly a suspect, the media has miserably failed to play a pro-active investigative role which was expected of it.

Now that the rot has set in, the conscious section makes a cross-verification of a news by different media outlets to get to the truth or near truth. Unfortunately, very few people have the luxury of so much time in hand to determine the truth. While others go by whatever news they read or hear, the outcome being that the social fabric is hit by disparity and disagreement. This in turn leads to tension and unrest in the society. The gainers are of course the powerful big wigs. With too many unscrupulous players making the scenario murkier by the day, there seems to be no way of putting journalism back on to its original track, at least in Assam and the Northeast.

However, amidst the burgeoning dark clouds, the silver lining is that a section of journalists and commentators, mainly political, continue to pursue their goal with sincerity and honestly. In the process many have over the years fallen to assassins bullets. Having said that, the upright journalist feels that the uphill task against those causing immense ill to the society must continue although on several occasions the forces of good suffer the blackest of eclipse in the hands of the forces of evil who often enjoy the blessings of the high and mighty.

Meanwhile, with several burning issues transforming the Northeast into virtually fuming volcano, the advocates of positive journalism in Assam and the Northeast have a challenging task in hand towards maintaining peace and communal harmony among the people of the region. The scribes of the Brahmaputra and the Barak valley have the extra burden of working towards strengthening the bond of friendship between the people of the two valleys. As of now it is simply beyond ones comprehension as to how much more damage would be caused to the society and body politic of the region by the protagonist of false and misleading news.

Zaheer Akram Bora is a Guwahati based journalist. He can be reached at: [email protected]
EU, WHO provide Yerevan's Surb Grigor Lusavorich Medical Center with state-of-the-art X-ray machine

Armenian soldier found dead on Armenia's border in Tavush Province had been drafted in February (PHOTO)

What Speaker of the Parliament of Armenia really said in response to Russian journalist's question

Analyst: Iran's accession to EEU will create serious counterbalance to Turkey and strengthen Armenia's positions

Armenia FM holds phone talks with Iranian counterpart

Firefighters put out fire in Range Rover Sport near night club in Yerevan

Putin discusses current situation in Karabakh during phone talks with European Council President

Armenia's Liberation Movement holding march after rally, calling on citizens to join

Greek City Times: Azeri military captured the historic Armenian city of Shushi

Georgia says it's not considering possibility of joining '3+3' regional format

Union of Armenia National Security Service's Reserve Officers in favor of fulfillment of Liberation Movement's demands

Armenia, Russia FMs hold phone talks

Karabakh emergency situations service: Remains of another serviceman found in Mataghis

Armenia's ex-Ambassador to Iran appointed Advisor to PM

Armenia's Pashinyan receives Russia Deputy PM, unblocking of communications discussed

Armenia FM presents situation created after Azerbaijani aggression during phone talks with Tajik counterpart

Armenia convict dies from COVID-19 at medical center

Armenia Syunik Province's community heads: Nikol Pashinyan said there won't be corridor

NEWS.am daily digest: 24.11.21

Newly appointed Ambassador of Germany to Armenia presents credentials to Armen Sarkissian

Armenia Armavir Province governor sacked

Armenia MOD: Conscript's body found at combat position, with lethal firearm injury in head area

US has invited 110 countries to Summit for Democracy in December, including Armenia

Requiem Service for Armenian statesman Vano Siradeghyan to be held on Dec. 3

Armenia Parliament Deputy Speaker meets with Argentina Ambassador

Armenia FM presents situation created as a result of Azerbaijan's aggression to Germany's new Ambassador

Armenia PM receives community heads of Syunik Province

Armenia ex-deputy economy minister appointed member of Eurasian Economic Commission's Advisory Board

Exchange rates in Armenia

Another plane heads to Baku through Armenian airspace

Ambassador: Armenia may play major role in development of Iran-Eurasian Economic Union cooperation

Details of Overchuk-Aliyev meeting reported

3 children hospitalized in Yerevan with symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning

UAE-Iran-Turkey corridor to officially start functioning after visit of Emirates officials to Tehran

Sweden elected a female PM for the 1st time in history

Konstantin Ishkhanov: EUFSC determined to continue presenting very best in classical music

Trade Representative of Russia in Armenia: Eurasian Union and Iran are interested in using North-South direction

Human Rights Watch calls on Poland to end violence against migrants

Apple confirms: Eavesdropping is carried out by Pegasus spy program in Armenia

WTI crude oil prices rise by close of trading in US

COVID-19 in Armenia: 28 new deaths

Policemen apprehend protesters who close Yerevan subway entrances

Apple suspends sales of devices in Turkey due to collapse of local currency

Court session kicks off as Serzh Sargsyan sues Khachatur Sukiasyan

Russian peacekeepers clear nearly 2 hectares of land in Nagorno-Karabakh

Armenian PM: Remains of Vano Siradeghyan will be transferred to Armenia soon

Armenian PM: 40-45 square kilometer territories of Armenia under Azerbaijani control after Azerbaijan's May 12 attack

Armenia premier says what the heaviest blow was during his term of office, adds that it's not the defeat in the war

Armenia PM: I had planned to deliver a message on circumstances of war and negotiations on Nov. 9

PM: Armenia decides road through which communication between Azerbaijan and Nakhchivan will be ensured

Armenia PM: Karabakh conflict settlement and unblocking of communications shouldn't be discussed in '3+3' format

Pashinyan fails to clearly state whether Armenia applied to Russia and CSTO in writing in regard to Nov. 16 attack

Armenia PM: Azerbaijan is trying to turn the region into a jungle

Pashinyan: Armenia and Azerbaijan recognized each other's territorial integrity when they acceded to CIS in 1991

Pashinyan: If government of Armenia was a giver, there wouldn't be shootings

Armenia PM: 32 servicemen were captured on Nov. 16, according to unverified information

PM: It's the first time that direct communication is established between Armenian and Azerbaijani defense ministers

Armenian premier: Armenia will not give in to that policy of blackmail

Armenia PM answers question about online meeting with Azerbaijani leader on Nov. 9

Armenia PM on upcoming meetings with Azerbaijan President in Brussels and Sochi

Azerbaijani plane flies from Nakhchivan to Baku through Armenia's airspace (PHOTOS)

Armenia PM is giving a press conference

Armenian demining experts demine 2,000,000 square meters of territory in Damascus along with UNMAS

Armenia opposition movement holding march in Yerevan, calling on citizens to join

NEWS.am daily digest: 23.11.21

Russian analyst: Karabakh's regions under Azerbaijan's control are becoming a serious problem for Aliyev

Stepanakert: Azerbaijan intends to create terrorists training centers in Karabakhs territories

Iran and Georgia hold talks on creation of Persian Gulf-Black Sea corridor

Israeli FM demands Turkey to close offices of Hamas movement

Opposition MP: Situation in Armenia's judiciary is impacting security issues

Armenia PM calls UN Under-Secretary-General's attention to facts of destruction of Armenian heritage

Ruling party MP: If Russia's proposals are acceptable for Armenian premier, they are in Armenia's interests

Putin, Pashinyan and Aliyev to hold talks in Sochi on November 26

Armenia Ombudsman: Baku's Armenophobia is policy aimed at maintaining hostility between two peoples around the world

Karabakh National Security Service: Citizen gets lost, in territory under Azerbaijani control, taken into custody

ECHR awards  5,000 each to judges detained in Turkey after 2016 putsch

American Center of US Embassy in Yerevan sends more than 5,000 Armenian library items to United States

Iranian Ambassador to Turkey: Iran supports '3+3' regional format

Azerbaijan MOD thanks Turkish ASELSAN's CEO for equipment used during war against Karabakh

Armenia MOD receives Russia Ambassador and embassy's Defense Attache

MFA: Armenia has informed Moscow about its willingness to normalize relations with Turkey without preconditions

UN Special Rapporteur on minority issues calls US a nation of paradoxes

Armenian parliamentary commission honors memory of soldier who died yesterday

Alen Simonyan briefs Gerard Larcher over continuing aggressive behavior of Azerbaijan

China and Russia are discussing details of Putin's possible visit to Beijing Olympics

Yerevan court rejects motion to apply to Constitutional Court due to lack of procedures for overcoming MP's immunity

Criminal case initiated into death of Armenian soldier

Employee of Norabak village council on exchange of fire between Armenia and Azerbaijan, issue of wounded soldiers

Russian peacekeepers donate humanitarian aid to Nagorno-Karabakh

Coronavirus in Armenia: 48 new deaths

116 million AMD assistance to minors with disabilities in Shirak Province from Mikayel Vardanyan

Armenian soldier who died in Armenia's Gegharkunik Province was Yezdi by nationality, was in army for a year

Taliban want to establish 'fraternal' ties with Turkey

Letter addressed to UN Security Council President about Azerbaijani attack published as SC official document

Armenia, India to end process of mutual recognition of COVID-19 vaccination certificates soon

Syrian mercenaries who fought on Azerbaijani side during 44-day war complaining about not having received 'salaries'

Armenia Ombudsman: Videos about captured Armenian servicemen being explored, translated from Azerbaijani and identified

Armenia National Academy of Sciences Physiology Institute wins Chan Zuckerberg Initiative's grant

Armenian MFA on news about Pashinyan-Aliyev meeting

Armenia Parliament Deputy Speaker receives ARF-D Lebanon Central Committee member Hagop Pakradouni
Marvel and DC are killing it in inclusion and women but where are the Latinos?! Asking for a friend...  Gina Rodriguez (@HereIsGina) July 23, 2017

Zoe Saldana, Rosario Dawson, Jay Hernandez, Michael Pena, Tessa Thompson, Natalia Cordova... https://t.co/qCpifvR078  Dinah Laurel Lance (@LordPotter4eva) July 23, 2017

so youre gonna act like rosario dawson, tessa thompson and zoe saldana dont exist.... https://t.co/8eVXKS6dI3  ezra miller's whore (@lipgIosse) July 23, 2017

Lupita is Mexican, Rosario Dawson is an Afro Latina and so is Zoe Saldana but you're probably talking about nonblack Latinos huh :/ https://t.co/Vq8cgggChp  Lex  (@LexRambeau) July 23, 2017

What an inspiration #GirlsTrip is for our community. Those women are incredible and I agree this would be fucking fantastic! https://t.co/YFDFRQJqqM  Gina Rodriguez (@HereIsGina) August 3, 2017

Gina Rodriguez really irks my soul



HE SAID WHAT HE SAID BLACK WOMEN pic.twitter.com/3S64wEWmgv  Janet  (@nostalgiaonfilm) September 27, 2018

It was a very personal question because I have two beautiful BLACK daughters who look up to @YaraShahidi so she is their role model. I definitely recognize Yara is a role model for all women of all ages but MY daughters need women like her. https://t.co/bdlTpUFI3L  The Extraordinary Xilla (@BlogXilla) September 27, 2018

Gina Rodriguez Says Black Actresses Get Paid More Than Asian and Latina Stars and Social Media Users Light Her Up https://t.co/BQciZSwvqo pic.twitter.com/y1ciJkCV7S  Atlanta Black Star (@ATLBlackStar) November 23, 2018

With her latest nonsense coming to light people have been buzzing anew about Gina Rodriguez's intentions in regard to her feelings on black people and their works both in front of and behind the camera. This post isn't about debating if the points she makes are valid (often they are) or if what she's doing is anti-black (which it is) so much as it is debating whether or not it's intentional.When trying to point out that the lack of diversity in Super Hero movies Gina made comments expressing desire for latino supers. Now, in and of itself this is not a bad thing but it does, however, erase that there are some afro-latinos currently in place, a point made by fans:Diagnosis: inconclusive - While it's arguable that Gina meant clearly defined hero types or heroes onscreen inspired by latin culture to forget the likes of Zoe Saldana, who has always been loudly and fiercely latina, as well as Rosario, Lupita & others is very short cited.To the surprise of not only white people but everyone who wasn't black 'Girls Trip' ended up being a smash success during last summer's movie season. P*r*z Hilton, busy body troll that he is, made mention that there needed to be a latina version. The problem? With tone being what it is the sentiment can come across as not allowing black works to stand on their own.Diagnosis: Inconclusive - In the context of how black hypervisibility is treated this becomes an eyeroll worthy offense that seems to belittle the achievement of black people but the general sentiment seems innocent enough.In october of 2017 Gina Rodriguez shared a photo of a 'power lunch' she and America Ferrera organized celebrating fellow working latina actresses. The problem? People were critical of the fact that, aside from Rosario Dawson, there were no other afro latina attendees.Diagnosis - negative. While it would've been really incredible to see more afro latinas there considering this was what seemed to be a personal event instead of an official industry one and the fact that Gina doesn't seem to know many afro latinas personally I'm not sure I want to fault her on this particular instance.Expertly covered in an ONTD post two months ago while on a press tour for Little Foot with Yara Shahidi interviewer Blogxilla paid a compliment to Yara for being an inspiration to black girls. Gina gave us a lil bit of the Victoria Justice meme by saying she's inspiration to all girls, a point Blogxilla refuted both in the moment and later on when receiving push back:Diagnosis - yes sis! Blogxilla pointing out how Yara is an inspiration to fellow black girls in particular doesn't preclude her from inspiring all of them so why she felt the need to reference everyone in this instance is beyond comprehension. Even if she wanted to point out how Yara inspires many she could've acknowledged that in a subsequent statement without undermining Blogxilla's point.Which leads us to this latest kerfuffle from yesterday:During a recent panel discussion with Emma Roberts, Gabrielle Union & Ellen 'BEEN' Pompeo for 'Net-a-Porter' to discuss working in the industry Gina Rodriguez felt compelled to compare salaries for latina actresses' lower salaries to other actors. Specifically fellow minorities. As quoted from Yesterday's post on the subject Needless to say black people were not amused by this to say the least.Diagnosis: YES SIS! Leaving out Sofia Vergara as an outlier - because her money comes not just from her work on modern family but all her varied endorsement ventures - pointing out that latina women are paid less is a decent point to make but NOT in comparison to other underpaid and undervalued workers who make less than white counterparts as well.Closing thoughts: While the first 3 examples may go either way it's clear that the last two cannot and, given the context of them, it casts the first examples in a new light of skepticism. Why Gina feels the need to point out black accomplishments in order to contrast them with latina ones is beyond me but the shit is not cool, it's not lukewar-m and sure as hell is not hot! Get it together Gina.Sources: 1
On October 29 Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) announced it had contracted Omani-Japanese joint venture Marubeni Consortium to develop a 100-MW solar photovoltaic (PV) power plant.

The facility, to be developed under the independent power producer (IPP) model, will generate power for PDOs own use and will be located in the Amin region of southern Oman, where the company has operational concessions.

Under the terms of the agreement, the Marubeni Consortium  comprising Japanese multinational Marubeni and the Oman Gas Company  will undertake the design, procurement, construction, commissioning, financing, operation and maintenance of the plant, with PDO contracted to be the sole buyer for 23 years.

The announcement follows the launch of the first stage of another of PDOs renewables plants in February, a 1000-MW solar facility at Amal in the countrys south.

This project combines both renewable and non-renewable energy sources, using solar power to create steam, which in turn is used to extract oil from nearby deposits. The use of steam injection is expected to extend the life of the field, which has been in operation since 1984, with the enhanced oil recovery technology allowing for the extraction of deposits too difficult or too costly to access though conventional means.

Wind and solar key to meeting renewables targets

The PDO developments come amid further nationwide plans to expand renewables contribution to the energy mix.

In May the state-owned Oman Power and Water Procurement Company (OPWP) unveiled plans to develop six new projects  three solar and three wind  by 2024, with a combined capacity of 2650 MW. All six are to be IPPs: the three PV parks will be located at Ibri, Manah and Adam, two of the wind facilities at Dhofar and one at Duqm. Related: What Explains The Sudden Plunge In Iranian Oil Exports?

With the government having committed to a policy of ensuring at least 10% of electricity output is produced from renewable sources by 2025, OPWP is ramping up efforts to meet this target, Yaqoob bin Saif Al Kiyumi, the companys CEO, told OBG.

That will mean more than 2500 MW of installed renewable capacity by 2025, he said.

This will likely consist of a combination of solar and wind resources, both of which Oman is well placed to utilise.

OPWP is to undertake a wind resource assessment programme to more accurately assess available resources at specific locations, and is monitoring the development of alternative technologies to expand the range of generational and storage options in the future.

In October the company also issued two tenders for consultancy services to develop IPP projects that assess the potential of converting waste into energy. These projects are aimed at both diversifying energy sources and reducing pressure on existing landfill capacity, the company said in a statement released in October.

Downstream segment privatisation

In addition to developments in the upstream segment, Omans downstream operations are also set to provide greater opportunities for private investment.

On October 7 state holding company Nama announced plans to partially privatise two of its downstream energy assets, offering a 49% stake in the Oman Electricity Transmission Company and up to 70% of shares of the Muscat Electricity Distribution Company, with both offers open to international operators.

The privatisation of the two companies, which have a combined asset base of $3.2bn, is expected to take place next year, with Nama also flagging a partial sell-off of three other of its holdings: Majan Electricity Distribution Company, Mazoon Electricity Distribution Company and Dhofar Power Company.

While credit and market analysis firm Fitch Solutions has said the sale of the two downstream utilities are not likely to have a significant impact on Omans fiscal deficit, the move shows the government is committed to broadening the base of the economy and increasing foreign direct investment inflows.

The decision to invite foreign investors thus underlines a broader drive by the government, accelerated since the oil price slump that began in 2014, to diversify the economy away from hydrocarbons production, Fitch Solutions said in a statement released in October.

By Oxford Business Group

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The stock had been suffering earlier this year, which is no surprise given the companys extensive ties to China and the Trump administrations apparent determination to pursue a trade war with that country. That has definitely created a headwind for Canadian Solar, and the President, Chairman and CEO of the company, Xiaohua Qu, acknowledged as much in his opening remarks during the conference call

(Click to enlarge) The point here is that CSIQs move up is not just a move based on trader sentiment or market technicals, it is a readjustment to new information. That came when the company reported Q3 earnings of $1.09 per share, more than double Wall Streets consensus estimate of $0.48. That is reason enough for a stock to gain, but even more impressive was the way they achieved that.

Usually, when a stock has jumped around fifty percent in five months and twenty percent in just the last week or so, I am looking to sell. The market tends to overdo moves like that and it is reasonable to assume at that point that you have missed most of the move up, so playing the retracement is the only logical thing to do. That is what I intended when I started to look at Canadian Solar (CSIQ) this week, but when I started to research the stock, I realized that far from being a sell it was a solid buy, even after such a big recent gain.

Usually, when a stock has jumped around fifty percent in five months and twenty percent in just the last week or so, I am looking to sell. The market tends to overdo moves like that and it is reasonable to assume at that point that you have missed most of the move up, so playing the retracement is the only logical thing to do. That is what I intended when I started to look at Canadian Solar (CSIQ) this week, but when I started to research the stock, I realized that far from being a sell it was a solid buy, even after such a big recent gain.

(Click to enlarge)



The point here is that CSIQs move up is not just a move based on trader sentiment or market technicals, it is a readjustment to new information. That came when the company reported Q3 earnings of $1.09 per share, more than double Wall Streets consensus estimate of $0.48. That is reason enough for a stock to gain, but even more impressive was the way they achieved that.

The stock had been suffering earlier this year, which is no surprise given the companys extensive ties to China and the Trump administrations apparent determination to pursue a trade war with that country. That has definitely created a headwind for Canadian Solar, and the President, Chairman and CEO of the company, Xiaohua Qu, acknowledged as much in his opening remarks during the conference call that followed the earnings release. To quote Qu though, good companies can manage it and the way that they have managed it should be a lesson for others.

They havent wasted time and money whining or trying to influence policy, they have simply gone about reducing costs. That is evidenced by the record margins that enabled the big EPS beat, even as revenues missed. Cutting costs and improving margins is not only the best way to deal with the current, hopefully temporary, adversity, it also sets up CSIQ for greater success when the market improves.

Given that rise in the stock you may think that it would now be priced to perfection, but nothing could be further from the truth. It seems that whichever metric you look at, CSIQ is a bargain. The trailing and forward P/Es, for example, are 5.42 and 7.57 respectively. Admittedly the solar industry typically has lower than average multiples but for comparison, First Solar (FSLR) has a forward P/E of 14.69. Add in forecast growth and you get a PEG ratio of 0.14, which indicates significant value. Even if you look at non-earnings-related data, CSIQ looks way too cheap. The current price values the company at less than a quarter of its sales and around 83% of its book value. If any or all these metrics simply return to the mean, CSIQ has room to double from here.

For that to happen, of course, there would have to be a significant thawing in U.S./China relations, but that is not out of the question. We know that Trump views the market as a measure of economic success, that he is not averse to changing his tune when it is expedient to do so, and that some of his close advisors, including Larry Kudlow, are enduring the trade war policy only because they believe it to be a short-term means to an end. Given all of that, is an announcement of an agreement, accompanied by some appropriate spin of course, that far-fetched?

As the stock market has tumbled, CSIQ has been a rare bright spot, and that too suggests that when things turn it will outperform. So, while I am not normally a buy high, sell higher advocate, in this case I will make an exception. Canadian Solar may be up twenty percent in a week, but circumstances and data both suggest it has a lot further to climb.

By Martin Tillier By Oilprice.com
Just two months ago, fears of plunging Iranian supply had the oil market and analysts wondering how high prices could go and if we are about to see $100 oil again.

Just a few weeks later, no ones talking about $100 anymore, and oil analysts and traders are trying to guesstimate if oil prices will rebound from the current lows, after the sell-off in recent weeks wiped out this years gains.

Many analysts see room for recovery, factoring in expectations that OPEC will announce a sizeable cut in early December to lift Brent Crude prices out of the low $60s into the $70s.

One of the analysts expecting an OPEC-assisted rebound in prices is legendary oil trader Andy Hall, who was nicknamed God for profitably predicting oil prices.

The balance of risk at this point favors some sort of recovery, Hall said in a recent interview with Bloomberg. Its quite likely OPEC will come through with some sort of cut in the next month or two, said Hall.

Citing data from geospatial analytics company Orbital Insight, Hall told Bloomberg that over the past few months, oil inventories have jumped in OPEC countries, Europe, and North America.

On the demand side, stronger U.S. dollar against emerging-market currencies and concerns over the U.S.-China trade war have been weighing on demand, according to Hall.

Andy Hall, the legendary oil trader who had bet on higher oil prices for more than a decade, continued to hold his bullish view even after the 2014 oil price crash. But in the summer of 2017, he closed his main fund Astenbeck after the fund posted double-digit losses.

In short, Opec, the market and oil bulls have run out of runway, Hall said in a letter to investors seen by the Financial Times in July 2017. Related: Trumps Impossible Decision Over Saudi Arabia

Hall now sees prices recovering and OPEC taking a decision at its December 6-7 meeting to cut oil production again to prevent another glut and lift the price of oil.

Both OPEC and the International Energy Agency (IEA) have recently said that oil inventories around the world have been rising lately. However, the two organizations have different views on what growing stockpiles mean. The IEA sees the inventory build as a form of insurance, rather than a threat. OPEC, for its part, is already discussing cuts to prop up prices, after having boosted production to offset what it expected to be a significant Iranian supply plunge. The drop-off hasnt materialized yetat least not as steep as fearedalso thanks to U.S. waivers to eight key customers of Irans oil.

Analysts have started to widely expect OPEC to announce a cut of at least 1 million bpd in December, and anything less could disappoint and sink oil prices further.

However, over the past week, analyst views have become more clouded due to the complicated U.S.-Saudi Arabia ties. Riyadh may be disappointed that it may have been duped by the U.S. into pumping more to offset Iranian losses. But the U.S. Administration this week refused to blame the Saudis for the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, and President Trump thanked Saudi Arabia for the low oil prices and urged for even lower prices. Related: Trump Thanks Saudis For Lower Oil Prices, Wants Even Cheaper Crude



Its impossible now to do fundamental analysis with any form of certainty because of whats going on with the U.S. Administration and their relationship with Saudi Arabia, Amrita Sen, chief oil analyst at Energy Aspects, told Bloomberg on Wednesday.

Based on fundamentals, OPEC is absolutely pushing for a big cutthey know what they need to take off to balance the market, and its about 1.4 million bpd, said Sen. However, Energy Aspects chief oil analyst noted that no one on earth can know whether Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman wont just tell Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih, No, you cant cut.

A no-cuts OPEC meeting may fulfill President Trumps wish for further declines in oil prices, and by extension, lower gasoline prices, but WTI Crude in the low $50s or below is dangerously close to the breakevens in some U.S. shale plays that have been booming with the higher oil prices. Such is the Bakken in North Dakota, where oil production continues to hit new record highs this year, beating the previous record from late 2014.

At current prices, Bakken producers in North Dakota are at real risk, Sen told Bloomberg, adding that even in areas of the Permian, production growth will absolutely slow if the current WTI prices persist.



Oil prices have room to rise if OPEC manages to bring a still hesitant Russia on board and announces a sizeable cut in two weeks. However, geopolitics could trump fundamentals again and depress prices further downward.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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A massive defeat for Taiwan's ruling party in mid-term polls Saturday was seen as an indictment of President Tsai Ing-wen and called into question her approach to China, as well as unpopular domestic reforms. Tsai has pitched herself and her party as champions for democracy in the face of rising pressure from China, which sees Taiwan as part of its territory to be reunified. But some voters say worsening relations with Beijing have harmed business, while others believe she has been too conciliatory. - Why are voters angry? - Cuts to pensions and a reduction in public holidays have compounded frustrations over a stagnant economy where salaries have not kept up with the rise in cost of living. Analysts agree domestic issues were the main reason behind voters' punishment of Tsai's ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which saw its key seats more than halved while the Beijing-friendly opposition Kuomintang more than doubled their share. However, concern that business is being dented by deteriorating relations with Beijing also played a part, including a dramatic drop in tourists from China since Tsai took office in 2016. Beijing has sought to punish Tsai and her pro-independence leaning party by ramping up military drills, poaching allies and successfully persuading international businesses including airlines to list the island as part of China on their websites. - What next for China-Taiwan relations? - With pressure from Beijing at play in the vote result, analysts say Tsai will need to recalibrate her policy. But while voters want assurances of stability and economic prosperity, they will not want Taiwan to move too close to Beijing -- the previous KMT government was ousted after widespread public concerns over its rapprochement with China. "Striking a balance between productive economic relations with China while maintaining a pro-Taiwan stance in terms of identity and status, is elusive," said analyst Jonathan Sullivan of Nottingham University. Tsai also needs to appease pro-independence factions in her own party who dislike her official stance which seeks to maintain the cross-strait "status quo". - How will China respond? - Beijing said the vote results showed "the strong will of the public in Taiwan in sharing the benefits of the peaceful development across the Taiwan Strait" in quotes attributed to Ma Xiaoguang, spokesperson for China's Taiwan Affairs Office, by state news agency Xinhua. Analysts believe Beijing may see the result as proof of the success of its carrot-and-stick approach, which has offered economic incentives to Taiwanese entrepreneurs and businesses and perks to cities and counties that support the notion Taiwan is part of "one China". Huang Kwei-bo, political analyst at National Chengchi University, said China would likely see the KMT triumph "as its propaganda tactics being very effective", and predicted Chinese sabre-rattling could ease. - Dirty tricks campaign? - Accusations of Beijing meddling dominated Tsai and the DPP's pre-election campaigning as they accused China of a "fake news" onslaught, which Beijing has denied. Taiwan's Investigation Bureau is probing Chinese influence on the elections through campaign funding of candidates. "Chinese influence in Taiwanese elections reached a new level of intrusiveness," said Nottingham's Sullivan, adding that interference would be a factor to watch going into the 2020 leadership vote. - What about the US? - Relations with the United States, Taiwan's most powerful unofficial ally and major arms supplier, have warmed under Tsai, another sore point for Beijing. Analysts said the US would not be worried about the outcome of the elections, as issues of reunification or independence had not played a major role. However, National Chengchi University's Huang said Washington may flag the issue of possible China interference in future after the US-based chairman of America's de facto embassy in Taiwan warned of "attempts by external powers" to influence debate and spread false information.
A burnt car at a gas station on November 11, 2018 after the "Camp" fire tore through the region near Pulga, east of Paradise, California

The deadliest and most destructive fire in California's history was finally brought totally under control by firefighters, more than two weeks after it erupted, authorities said on Sunday.

The so-called Camp Fire, which broke out on November 8, is so far known to have killed 85 people.

The Butte County Sheriff's department said that they had mistakenly added two people to an earlier death toll of 87.

However late Sunday they increased the number of missing people to 296 from 249still considerably lower than the 474 reported missing on Friday.

"#CampFire ... is now 100% contained," Cal Fire, the state fire authority, said in a bulletin on Twitter.

Only 54 of the fatalities have been identified, according to the local sheriff's office in Butte County, a rural area north of the state capital Sacramento.

A total of 153,336 acres were affected by the fire, with nearly 14,000 homes and hundreds of other structures destroyed.

Heavy downfalls that have soaked the fire zone in the past days helped douse the remaining flames, but also made it more difficult for crews searching for bodies.

The Camp Fire was the second major blaze to hit California in recent weeks with a fire in the Malibu area near Los Angeles also killing three people.

A home is overshadowed by towering smoke plumes on November 8, 2018 as the Camp fire races through town in Paradise, California

The smoke from the Camp Fire was so intense that schools in San Francisco had to close at one point earlier this month as did the city's famed cable car and Alcatraz Island.

California's governor, Jerry Brown, has warned that the state can expect a growing number of major fires as a result of global warming.

US President Donald Trump, who visited one of the worst-hit towns called Paradise last weekend, caused some consternation by saying that the fires were due in part to forestry mismanagement.

Ahead of the announcement that the fire has been totally tamed, authorities had already begun letting residents return to some of the worst hit areas to inspect the damage to their homes.

In a joint bulletin posted on Saturday, the police and fire service said evacuation orders that had in place for some areas over the last fortnight were being lifted for both residents and non-residents, while warning that essential services were still "very limited."

Firefighters battle flames at a burning apartment complex in Paradise, California on November 9, 2018

"Prior to returning home, residents are encouraged to take steps to ensure they have food, water and fuel for their vehicles," said the statement.

While Brown has warned that mega fires such as those in Butte and Malibu will cease to be "abnormal" events, the state has allocated about $1 billion over the next five years for fire prevention.

Much of the cash will go on education and suppression activities such as clearing grasses and other vegetation, according to officials.

But many experts are calling for more restrictions on housing being built in forests as a means of eliminating danger before the blazes even break out. "I think people are thinking about if there is a way we can design the new Paradise that can look like more of a European village or a ski town, and not have houses out in the forests," Bill Stewart, co-director of the Center for Forestry at the University of California, Berkeley told AFP.

A recent study found that one third of all US houses now are located in what researchers refer to as the wildland-urban interface, where houses and forest vegetation intermingle.

While Trump has repeatedly expressed skepticism about global warming, a new report by his administration warned Friday that climate change will cost the US hundreds of billions of dollars annually by century's end unless drastic action is taken to cut carbon emissions.

Noah Fisher (R) and Dusty Cope (L) look through the remains of their home that was destroyed by the Camp Fire in Paradise, California, in a photo taken on November 22, 2018

Explore further Paradise lost: California fires rage on

 2018 AFP
Carlos Ghosn was sacked as Nissan chairman Thursday, a spectacular fall from grace for the once-revered boss whose arrest and ouster have stunned the business world

Nissan's former chairman Carlos Ghosn has denied allegations of financial misconduct, claiming he had no intention of making false reports, Japanese media said Sunday.

The Brazil-born tycoon, who headed the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance, has not spoken publicly since he was arrested last Monday. He told prosecutors he did not intend to understate his income on financial reports, public broadcaster NHK said.

Meanwhile in France, economy minister Bruno Le Maire Sunday said Renault had launched an internal audit into Ghosn's pay.

"Renault's new governing body has launched an audit (...) into questions of pay and abuse of corporate assets to make sure there is nothing tricky to be found," the minister told BFM television.

The audit which will take "several days" was being carried out "in full agreement with the government" which hold some 15 per cent of Renault's capital, Le Maire said.

Japan has provided no information on the charges against Ghosn, the minister also said.

Ghosn was sacked as Nissan chairman Thursday, a spectacular fall from grace for the once-revered boss whose arrest and ouster have stunned the business world.

Prosecutors accuse Ghosn and fellow executive Greg Kelly of under-reporting the former chairman's income by around five billion yen ($44 million).

Kelly also denied the allegations, saying Ghosn's salaries were paid appropriately, news reports said.

Local media reported that Nissan had formed a "secret" team earlier this year to probe the alleged financial misconduct.

A small team involving Nissan's board members carried out its internal probe confidentially on concerns about possible destruction of evidence by Ghosn, Japan's Kyodo News reported, quoting unnamed sources.

The company speeded up the probe to oust Ghosn swiftly as Nissan officials were increasingly worried about his plan to review the Renault-Nissan capital tie-up, it said.

Ghosn reportedly planned their full-fledged merger although Nissan officials opposed the move due to concerns over Renault's level of control despite the Japanese company becoming the dominant player in the alliance.

Ghosn is being held custody in a Tokyo detention centre.

On Wednesday, prosecutors successfully applied to extend his custody for an additional 10 days as they stepped up their questioning.

Separately, Nissan is considering filing a civil damages suit against Ghosn over his expenses, Kyodo said.

The Yokohama-based company plans to sue him if controversial expenses such as costs of providing luxury residences to him in Lebanon are confirmed improper, it said.

Ghosn's ouster is an astonishing turnaround for a titan of the auto sector who revived the Japanese brand and forged an alliance with France's Renault as well as domestic rival Mitsubishi Motors.

Top executives of the three companies plan to hold a meeting this week, their first gathering since his arrest, local media said.

The meeting will be held in the Netherlands with a video conference available for executives who cannot attend, the Yomiuri Shimbun said.

It had been scheduled before his arrest but executives may discuss the fate of the alliance, Tokyo Broadcasting System said.

Meanwhile, Mitsubishi is to hold a board meeting to discuss his future, as news reports said the firm plans to fire Ghosn as chairman.

Explore further Nissan chief Ghosn arrested over financial misconduct: reports

 2018 AFP
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Michael Hedges November 26, 2018

The Western Balkan states have suffered from democratic deficiencies for decades. As a result, arguably, media serving the region has a spotty reputation. Little improvements are met with precipitous declines. Leadership is often the biggest challenge; that fish-head phrase coming to mind. Birds Of A Feather Or A Fish Rots: A Phrase For All SeasonsMichael Hedges November 26, 2018 Follow on Twitter The Western Balkan states have suffered from democratic deficiencies for decades. As a result, arguably, media serving the region has a spotty reputation. Little improvements are met with precipitous declines. Leadership is often the biggest challenge; that fish-head phrase coming to mind. ...is available for restricted access. You may access this specific article or material for 4 If you are an ftm Member, please go to the home page HERE and log in ftm Members can access all site material at no additional charge. You can JOIN ftm here The ftm newsletter available at no charge to all with registration To register click here.
10 hours ago

Medtronic or Intuitive Surgical: Which is the Better Buy After Earnings?

The future cant arrive soon enough for these two medical device giants Ive been bullish on both Medtronic (NYSE:MDT) and Intuitive Surgical (NASDAQ:ISRG) at different points this year.

Read Article


Everything Around Him Burned. He Stayed Put, and Lived to Tell the Tale.





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Kevin Jeys rode out the Camp Fire in his home in Paradise, Calif., despite orders to evacuate. /
Iranian Expansion After the U.S. withdrawal from the region, the spread of Iranian power created a new strategic dynamic. Saudi Arabia and Israel had a common interest in containing Iran, and Irans connection to Hamas concerned both. The Saudis seemed to support Israels efforts to shift Hamas away from confrontation. As the main supplier of non-lethal aid, the Saudis had massive influence over Hamas, and in recent weeks, the group indicated it was interested in some settlement with Israel and displacing PA as the main representative of Palestinians.

The shift in Hamas posture had to alarm the Iranians. Gaza was not an existential threat to them, but its ability to divert Israels focus and shift logistical support would be an asset in any potential conflict with Israel. I speculate now that the Saudi pressure to accommodate Israel may have resulted in Iranian counter-pressure, and the increasing Israeli probes were in some way connected to this. Gaza would be permanently crippled if it accepted the Saudi status quo and, therefore, continued working with Iran, as covertly as possible.

For Israel, the real strategic problem is that Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa are the heart of the country and where its population is concentrated. If they were to come under massive rocket and missile fire, the losses would likely be unacceptable. Israel, therefore, must pre-empt any possible attack from Iran. U.S. economic pressure on Tehran has weakened the regime, but that has not changed the strategic problem Israel faces.

Gaza is therefore not the real problem. The real problem is the peripheral threat from the north, east and south. The Israeli military has no way to instantaneously destroy all the rockets that can be launched from these positions. Any Israeli attack, therefore, would take an extended period of time and might require ground forces. And once the Israelis begin such an operation, the Iranians would be able to launch a large number of missiles toward the main population hubs. Israel would thus have to engage its entire periphery simultaneously. Its unlikely Israel would use nuclear weapons given the proximity and high probability of nuclear fallout reaching Israel. An Israeli assault must be conventional and very quickly effective. A difficult task, to say the least.

It would also have to be pre-emptive. If Iran were to initiate war, Israel would be in the worst position possible. It cant assume Iran wont act, nor can it assume that a pre-emptive strike would even work. Russian Interests As odd as it seems, the matter may come down to the Russians. If they block Israeli aircraft attacking Syria, then Israel has the choice of backing down or attacking Russian facilities, making the situation even more unmanageable. What Israel needs is for the Russians to force Iran to withdraw its missiles from Syria. Gaza is manageable, and with the Syrian problem eliminated, Israel would face only one remaining threat: Hezbollah in Lebanon. Indeed, without Gaza and Syria involved, Hezbollah might not be willing to begin an exchange.

The Russians dont want to see Israel attacked, and they dont want to face an Israeli assault either. Russia would be at a disadvantage, and it has little desire to deploy more forces to the region. And while it has no love for Iran, it doesnt want to force the Syrians have to choose between Russia and Iran. The Syrian army is far larger than the Russian force in place, and superior training and weapons dont always compensate for numbers. Russias presence in Syria is getting more complicated by the day, but it cant withdraw without giving up the one thing it sought in Syria in the first place: credibility. It can act quietly against Iranian missiles but cant guarantee their withdrawal.

Its for this reason that the U.S. abandoned the nuclear agreement with the Iranians and demanded they halt the construction of missiles. Long-range missiles in Iran would turn Israels problem insoluble without rapid, aggressive action, which the U.S. doesnt want at a time when the situation throughout the region is volatile. The Least Dangerous Force The current fighting in Gaza is part of years of sporadic conflict, but theres more to it. The spread of Iranian power has threatened Sunni Arabs in the region, particularly the Saudis. Now it has reached the point of forcing Israel to consider pre-emptive action, and Gaza is the least dangerous force with which it can deal. The Israelis clearly didnt take Hamas offers for an agreement seriously, likely due to its rocket production capabilities.

The Israelis have warned the Lebanese about Hezbollahs rockets . They have insisted that the Russians permit continued airstrikes against Iranian positions in Syria without warning. And they are taking rocket fire from Gaza. All these events are in some way connected to the massive growth in Iranian power. The Iranians, though, are facing severe economic pressure and may see confrontation with Israel as the kind of national security event that could boost patriotism and allow citizens to forget their economic hardships .

Meanwhile, intense talks are undoubtedly underway. The Americans are using their new favorite weapon  economic warfare  against Iran and avoiding military involvement. The Russians are getting the old sinking feeling of foreigners intervening in the Middle East. The Israelis are contemplating full peripheral warfare. It comes down to how badly the Iranians want to hold their current position, and the extent to which they are willing to back down. The possibility of a defeat might be enough to force them to choose another day.
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There is an immigrant residing in every home

Yes, you read that right. There is an immigrant residing in every home we know. She is someone you can all identify with  she is the daughter-in-law. How is she an immigrant, you may ask? Well, consider this. You are a 20 or 30-year-old woman, and through an
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Australia's embattled minority government has suffered a further blow after a big loss in a crucial state poll ahead of national elections next year. The Labor government for Victoria, Australia's second-most populous state, was returned to power in a landslide after elections on Saturday. Provisional results collated by national broadcaster ABC pointed to a 4.8 percent swing to Labor, and for the left-leaning party to hold 55 seats in the 88-seat state assembly -- a result one minister described as a "bloodbath". "We shouldn't be in this position -- we did a lot of things right but obviously something's gone horribly wrong," Shadow Attorney-General John Pesutto, from the Liberal Party, told the ABC. "We're going to clearly have to do a root-and-branch review, top to bottom, of all of this." The ruling federal Liberal-National coalition is still reeling from having ousted former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull in August. Turnbull's removal saw him quit politics and trigger a by-election in his wealthy Sydney seat in November which the Liberals lost, sending them into a minority government. Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt would not attribute the Victorian defeat to the Turnbull turmoil -- the sixth change of national leaders in the last decade -- and said local issues determined the outcome. The conservative coalition has to call national elections by mid-May next year, with the Wentworth and Victoria losses pointing to a possible crushing defeat against the main opposition party Labor.
Beijing said on Sunday it would welcome more cooperation between Taiwans cities and prefectures and the mainland after the islands independence-leaning ruling party suffered a local election reverse.

The losses suffered by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) may also take some heat off the already strained China-US relations, within which the self-governed island has been a sensitive issue for decades.

In Saturdays poll, the DPP was defeated in seven of the 13 cities and counties it had previously controlled. The results prompted Tawians president Tsai Ing-wen to resign as the partys chairwoman.

The [poll] results reflected the strong wishes of Taiwans general public that they want to continue to share the benefits of peaceful developments in cross-Taiwan Strait relations, as well as improving the economy and living standards, mainland Chinas Taiwan Affairs Office spokesman Ma Xiaoguang said.

The mainland would continue to uphold the 1992 consensus between Beijing and Taipei that they belong to the same country, he was quoted by Xinhua as saying, adding that it would resolutely oppose any separatist forces involved in Taiwan independence and other related activities.

We invite more Taiwan counties and cities to join exchanges and cooperate with their mainland counterparts on the basis that there is a correct understanding of cross-strait relations, Ma said.

However, Taiwans Mainland Affairs Council urged Beijing not to intervene in Taiwans internal affairs or have a one-sided political interpretation of Taiwanese peoples expectations about the cross-strait relationship, as it would not aid its future development.

The election saw the opposition Kuomintang (KMT), which is seen as more friendly towards Beijing, make significant gains, although much of the campaigning had focused on domestic issues such as living standards.

Story continues

The US government on Saturday extended its congratulations to the successful candidates, saying the vote had once again demonstrated the strength of their vibrant democratic system through a successful round of elections.

We look forward to working with our counterparts  new and old  to continue our fruitful cooperation on a wide range of issues of mutual concern, a spokesman for the US State Department told the Central News Agency.

Taiwans democratic institutions continued to serve as a role model for the entire region, and the US looked forward to finding new ways to highlight Taiwans positive example, he said.

Beijing considers Taiwan a breakaway province that must eventually be reunified with the mainland, by force if necessary.

It suspended official exchanges with the island after Tsai was elected president in 2016 and refused to reaffirm the 1992 consensus and accept the one-China principle.

Meanwhile, amid the trade war, the administration of US President Donald Trump has been more assertive than its predecessors on promoting informal ties with Taipei, including deploying its warships in a high-profile sail through the sensitive Taiwan Strait last month.

Tsais government also said it aspired to have a role in the US Indo-Pacific Strategy, which is widely seen as Washington bid to compete with Beijing for geopolitical influence in the region.

With the election defeats and a referendum to change the islands name in international sports event vetoed, some analysts expect Tsais government to soften its tone on the mainland, which could in turn lessen its significance on the China-US agenda.

The mainland expects the DPP to rein in its pro-independence movement after its defeat in the local elections, and that will reduce the negative impact on the negotiations between Beijing and Washington, said Jia Qingguo, head of international relations at Peking University.

Beijing also understands that its impossible to speed up the reunification of Taiwan even with more pro-Beijing Kuomintang candidates in local government, as the two sides still have huge differences.

Arthur Ding, an associate research fellow at the Institute for Security and Development Policy in Stockholm, said the fact that the Peoples Liberation Army had halted its island encirclement patrols in waters and airspace around Taiwan since June suggested Beijing did not want to further upset the Taiwanese people.

It seems like Beijing wants to concentrate on the trade war with Washington, and is confident Tsai wont make any provocative moves either, he said.

Koh, Chin-yee, chief executive of the Longus Research Institute, a think tank in Singapore, said that whoever won the Taiwan elections, the US would still use it for leverage.

The US will still play a key role in cross-strait relations, because even if the KMT wins the 2020 presidential election, Taiwan needs the US support in promoting the island to the international community, he said.

Ma from the Taiwan Affairs Office said that the defeat of a referendum proposition that the island should seek to compete in the 2020 Olympics as Taiwan, rather than Chinese Taipei, showed that putting Taiwanese athletes interests at stake was against the will of the people.

Beijing was opposed to the proposal and the International Olympic Committee had warned Taiwan that its athletes risked being excluded from international competition.

This article Beijing seeks to build ties with Taiwanese cities after ruling party suffers election defeat first appeared on South China Morning Post

For the latest news from the South China Morning Post download our mobile app. Copyright 2018.

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Chinas scientists are feeling the pinch, despite being at the heart of the countrys strategy to become a global powerhouse in science and technology.

While there are generous packages on offer for returning overseas Chinese scientists, the home-grown variety are feeling overworked and underpaid, according to a survey by the China Association for Science and Technology.

Xian Jiaotong University in northwest China offers young scientists an annual salary of at least 450,000 yuan (US$65,000) as well as a one-time bonus of 1 million yuan if they are deemed to be outstanding.

But the financial package comes with a clear requirement: successful applicants must be part of the Young Thousand Talents programme, a recruitment plan to bring overseas Chinese scientists back to the homeland.

Researchers who are not part of the talent plan can expect an annual salary of about 200,000 yuan.

A medical biologist surnamed Liu works at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, where the Chinese college held a career fair in late October to recruit young scientists under 40.

They were only here for the Young Thousand Talents, said Liu, who is in his late 20s.

They wont even consider scientists who dont have that title.

The non-profit China Association for Science and Technology analysed data from 48,099 scientists across China and found dissatisfaction had grown since its last survey in 2013, with a third of respondents admitting their financial burden was the main source of pressure.

Scientists said their income level had declined compared with other professions, while the survey showed they earned an average of 90,985 yuan in 2016, a 23 per cent rise from that of 2012.

That compares with a pay rise of about 50 per cent for Chinas private sector during the same period, according to figures from the National Bureau of Statistics.

The survey also showed scientists working 50 hours a week, 10 more than the legal maximum and slightly higher than the 49 hours a week reported in the previous survey.

Story continues

It could be worse from what I know. Salaries for young scientists have barely changed in the past decade in my university, said a robotics professor surnamed Li at Soochow University in Suzhou, in the eastern province of Jiangsu.

For young scientists whose salary is all his or her income, it can be tough. I dont feel too much pressure to support my family since I also work for corporations, he said.

Li also serves as chief scientist for a robotics company he co-founded and sold to a listed company in China.

For engineering scientists, their salary from research institutes or universities may be just a small part of their income, he said.

Chinas scientists are also burdened by a workload which is increased by an evaluation system which relies heavily on publication of academic papers.

Nearly half of the sampled researchers agreed that there are serious problems in the science evaluation system, while more than 90 per cent admitted the main goal of publishing academic papers was to comply with the rules.

Liu said that Xian Jiaotong University, a C9 college  Chinas version of the Ivy League  still assessed scientists by their titles, which were largely decided by the number of academic papers they have published and their education background.

Chinas science community and policymakers made it clear earlier this year that they were working on the assessment problem.

Our talent assessment system is not reasonable, Chinese President Xi Jinping said in a speech in May at the annual meeting of the nations two biggest research arms, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Chinese Academy of Engineering.

The system still evaluates scientists by numbers of academic papers, titles or education background. We cant let the heavy paperwork distract talented scientists, or have their hands tied by the formalities, Xi said.

Last month, the Ministry of Science and Technology issued a notice to research institutes across China telling them to stop judging scientists solely by number of academic papers, titles, awards or educational background.

A recruiter from Xian Jiaotong University, who requested anonymity, said it was hard for real change to happen in the assessment system.

A biology researcher surnamed Long at Peking University said: We have seen notices like the October one before. I am not sure whether this one could lead to real change.

Robotics professor Li said the notice had sparked debate over whether the number of academic papers was a good indicator of ability.

People are asking, what can we use to evaluate a scientist if we cannot use the academic papers they have published? Shall we just leave that to a committee? he said.

While the number of highly cited papers can be helpful in assessment, the publish-or-perish culture has contributed to rampant academic misconduct in China which has emerged in recent years.

In the latest case, Liang Ying, a sociologist from prestigious Nanjing University, has had more than 100 papers retracted by international and Chinese publications.

She is under investigation after China Youth Daily accused her of plagiarism and the duplicate submission of at least 15 of her papers, the university said last month.

The current assessment system encourages scientists to chase after papers, while eliminating the requirement could lead to a worse system. Its a dilemma, Li said.

Besides conducting scientific research, every scientist in China has to deal with everyday chores: applying for funds and filing various assessment reports.

While it is true that all scientists need to apply for funding and report to certain academic committee, researchers in China are complaining about the rigid rules of laboratory management.

You need receipts for everything, even for consumable items like cables worth just a few bucks, Li said.

Sellers are not willing to give official receipts in China, and that means we have to pay with our own money, which can amount to thousands of dollars a year.

My students in the lab are bored to death doing the claims and reimbursements stuff, he said. But a small lab such as mine cannot afford a full-time accountant.

This article Chinas scientists overworked and underpaid compared with other professions, survey says first appeared on South China Morning Post

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Chinas large privately owned firms are becoming more like state-owned enterprises, as many in recent years have implanted in their businesses cells of the Communist Party, the Communism Youth League and even discipline inspection committees.

The partys organisation department found that 68 per cent of Chinas non-state enterprises had set up party cells by the end of 2016, and that 70 per cent of foreign-funded firms in China had also done so. The ratio is even higher now given the party promotion that has taken place over the past two years.

The proportion is higher in large-scale internet companies. Nearly all of Chinas listed internet firms have set up party committees. Senior executives were appointed to serve simultaneously as leaders of the party organisation.

It may seem strange that internet firms show the highest political loyalty in China, for most online commerce and services are apolitical. But its exactly for that reason that private entrepreneurs need to prove their loyalty and gain support from the party by showing that they can serve the partys political course.

Watch: Chinas economy is slowing, but by how much?

This spread of party cells in private firms is not a good development, for either politics or business.

Party cells in private firms cant enhance the leadership of the party. According to a field survey by the Unirule Institute of Economics, an independent think tank in Beijing that has been shut down by the government, more than 94 per cent of private entrepreneurs believe its useful to have connections to government but fewer than 4 per cent care about the partys development.

In other words, private entrepreneurs are setting up party cells as a tool to secure protection or access rather than because of their belief in the hammer and sickle. But healthy politics isnt based on fear and benefit. Party cells are an extra cost for the private firms and foreign companies who have set them up, which in turn showcases the lack of rule of law.

Story continues

Party cells in private firms, often ironically with the business owner as the party secretary, sometimes devolve into a tool to defend commercial interests  some large companies use their Communist Party status to help them negotiate with local governments, which can result in corruption and damage the legitimacy of the party at the grass-roots level.

From the perspective of the private entrepreneur, setting up a party cell is a good deal when the move reduces interference or secures protection from the local government. But this can lead to unfair competition in exchange for political favours and recognition as a government confidante, which in turn can trap the entrepreneur in a political power struggle, resulting in personal danger.

Its absurd to see Chinas richest tycoons portray themselves as guardians of Communism dogma. To name a few: Richard Liu of JD.com, often known as Chinas Jeff Bezos, once said communism would be realised in his generation and all commercial entities would be nationalised; Xu Jiayin of Evergrande Group, the countrys largest property developer, said everything the company possessed was given by the party and he was proud to be the Communist Party secretary of his company; Liang Wengen of Sany Heavy Industry, another tycoon, said his life belonged to the party.

These highly successful entrepreneurs made these statements out of insecurity, with the Communist Party cells in their businesses becoming their amulets to guard against political threats.

Party cells in private firms show the vulnerability, not the strength, of Chinas private entrepreneurs. They act as if they are being chased by a bear  they are powerless to control the bear, so they are competing to outrun each other to escape the animal.

This behaviour is understandable since most successful private enterprises are beneficiaries of the environment the Communist Party provided. For instance, Chinese internet companies benefited significantly from strict controls of real economy, particularly internet censorship; Chinas manufacturing industry benefits from supportive state policies and subsidies; and Chinas property developers have gained much from the state monopoly of land as well as infrastructure investment from state-owned companies.

But the result is the relationship between business and the party remains very fragile: when the economy rises, they cheer together; when economy declines, they begin to resent each other. As Beijings anti-corruption campaign continues, many officials have been put in prison and private business owners have suffered accordingly  private investment growth started to tumble in 2015 after three years of the campaign. The trade war with the US this year exacerbated the loss of confidence among private entrepreneurs.

As the recession of the downstream private economy starts to spread, the upstream state-owned economy also faces great risks because it needs to sell monopoly resources to downstream firms. Thats why Beijing is busy trying to revive the confidence of private economy through financial support and promises of tax cuts. But the cause of the problem has not been touched: the government and the party need to stay out of private businesses.

It would be a good start if China can stop pushing for party cells in private and foreign companies, a move that would help to restore private investors confidence. It will also reduce the concerns about the Chinese economic model among foreign investors.

Zhang Lin is a Beijing-based independent political economy commentator



This article Chinese Communist Party needs to curtail its presence in private businesses first appeared on South China Morning Post

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By Robert Muller

PRAGUE (Reuters) - The Czech government on Friday survived a parliamentary vote of no-confidence called by the opposition to dismiss centre-left Prime Minister Andrej Babis over a fraud investigation.

The motion fell nine votes short of the 101 needed in the 200-seat lower house.

The result had been expected after the centre-left Social Democrats, partner of Babis's ANO in the minority administration, and the far-left Communists both refused earlier this week to vote with the opposition.

Babis, a billionaire businessman, has since last year battled police charges that he hid ownership of one of his firms, transferring it to his adult children a decade ago so it could receive a 2 million euro EU grant that was meant for small businesses and not big corporations.

He denies any wrongdoing and calls the investigation a campaign to force him out of politics.

If the case is brought to court and Babis is found guilty, he could face several years in jail.

While the vote failed, it exposed the EU and NATO country government's vulnerability stemming from Babis's legal woes.

The Social Democrats, who have five ministers in the cabinet, abstained in the vote rather than voting actively to support it, after pleading in vain with Babis to step down and propose a replacement from his own party.

The opposition demanded Babis to step aside.

"The government should be led by an ethical, moral and honest person who has credit even with his political opponents," Ivan Bartos, head of the opposition Pirate Party told parliament before the vote. "I do not see such person at the helm of this government."

Thousands of people protested last week in Prague against Babis and another protest was planned for Friday evening.

(Reporting by Robert Muller; Writing by Jan Lopatka; Editing by Alison Williams)
Voter turnout on a gloomy, rain-soaked Sunday was expected to make all the difference as Hong Kong held a key legislative by-election marked by candidates making frantic, last-minute appeals for supporters to show up at polling booths.

Only about 200,000 residents  or 40 per cent of registered voters  had cast their ballots in the by-election for a Kowloon West seat in the Legislative Council, as two major contenders blamed the bad weather for the lack in enthusiasm.

Opposition stalwart Lee Cheuk-yan from the Labour Party and former official government official Chan Hoi-yan of the pro-establishment camp were neck and neck in a five-horse race for the final seat in the geographical constituency.

By 9.30pm, turnout stood at 41.51 per cent of the 487,000 registered voters. That was only 0.06 percentage points higher than at the same time for the March by-election in the same constituency, but 11.6 percentage points lower than for the 2016 general election.

Political analysts expected a higher voter turnout to boost Lees chances. Victory for him would restore the pan-democratic blocs veto power in Legco over their political rivals motions, including attempts to introduce changes to the chambers rule book.

Chan was on a mission to extend her camps dominance in the legislature in the run-up to the 2020 general elections.

Surrounded by supporters including veterans and leaders from their respective blocs, the candidates made last-ditch canvassing efforts in the constituency, issuing emergency appeals for people to come out and vote.

Voter fatigue threatens to dampen West Kowloon by-election turnout

Opposing sides occasionally engaged in shouting matches and minor scuffles against each other. Among them was youth group Demosistos Joshua Wong Chi-fung, who chanted anti-Chan slogans through a loudspeaker as they faced off in Whampoa.

Chan was also accused by Lee of employing dirty tricks as pro-establishment volunteers were seen escorting elderly voters to a polling station in Sham Shui Po. Chan denied any knowledge of such arrangements.

Story continues

The Electoral Affairs Commission received at least 214 complaints on Sunday, 98 of which were related to electoral publicity and 37 over the nuisance caused by the use of loudspeakers.

Addressing the public in the rain outside Whampoa MTR station, Lee was contesting his ninth Legco election since entering politics 23 years ago.

This is the toughest election I have ever had throughout my political career, the veteran unionist said.

Last time it was a duel between two camps while this time it is a battle among five candidates.

He was referring to the previous by-election in March, when the pan-democrats lost their bid to win back veto power. Their Kowloon West candidate, Edward Yiu Chung-yim, narrowly lost to pro-establishment rival Vincent Cheng Wing-shun.

That by-election drew only 216,895 voters to polling stations  or 44.3 per cent of those registered. The low turnout was seen as a key reason for Yius defeat.

Campaigning in Mei Foo on Sunday, Chan also warned that her campaign was in a very, very critical situation.

She began her election-day campaigning by visiting Hoi Sham Park in To Kwa Wan with lawmaker Starry Lee Wai-king, chairwoman of the pro-establishment Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong.

I am the youngest candidates of all, and the legislature requires new thinking, Chan said, pointing out that she had experience in public policy after serving as a political assistant to the citys health minister from 2012 to 2017.

Sundays by-election stemmed from the disqualification of six pro-democracy lawmakers after the 2016 Legco polls over improper oath-taking.

The first round of by-elections in March filled four of the seats they left vacant, while two of the disqualified legislators, Leung Kwok-hung and Lau Siu-lai, chose to appeal.

Lau dropped her appeal in May, triggering Sundays poll, although she was barred from running by a returning officer who cited her previous call for self-determination for Hong Kong as grounds for disqualification.

Infighting within the pan-democratic camp saw former member Frederick Fung Kin-kee contest the by-election, directly competing against Lee.

The two remaining candidates, IT worker Ng Dick-hay and independent Judy Tzeng Li-wen, were not expected to cause any upset.

This article Candidates in crucial Hong Kong by-election make frantic last-minute appeals as rain puts dampener on voter turnout first appeared on South China Morning Post

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After breaking two decades of control by Taiwans ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), all eyes are now on the new mayor of Kaohsiung Han Kuo-yu.

The 61-year-old, whose parents came from central Chinas Henan province, won a crushing victory for the opposition Kuomintang (KMT) over the independence-leaning DPP in the polls, which proved to be a difficult midterm test for embattled President Tsai Ing-wen.

Four years on from its own humiliating election defeat, the elections saw the KMT more than double its political control in the self-ruled island to 15 cities and counties, including three special municipalities.

Such a result would have been thought fantastical a few months back, but now it raises the stakes in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election.

Tsai resigned as chairwoman of the DPP after her party lost seven counties and cities, including two special municipalities  the central city of Taichung and Kaohsiung in the south.

Born in Taiwan, Han studied English literature at Soochow University after graduating from the military academy. He then went on to gain a masters degree in law at National Chengchi University.

He is married to Li Chia-feng, a local councillor in Yunlin, southwest Taiwan, and has three children.

After eight years as a lawmaker for the KMT he left politics in 2002 and took up a job as the head of a farm produce marketing association in Taipei.

In May he was nominated to run for mayor of Kaohsiung. But with almost no support from his party  he received neither money nor resources  Han was seen as little more than electoral cannon fodder in the race for a seat his party had no expectation of winning.

But in just six months, his popularity soared. Such was the groundswell of support for his campaign that his fellow candidates from the KMT also benefited. Once shunned, Han became the must-have campaign accessory.

Story continues

On the streets, his supporters shouted slogans like: Han Kuo-yu, get elected! and Kaohsiung, turnaround. Dressed casually, Han used the language of the people to canvass support, and it worked.

In his final campaign rally in Kaohsiung on Friday, a day before voters went to the polls, close to 200,000 supporters filled the park. And when he promised to make Kaohsiung great again, the crowd roared.

In the past 20 to 30 years, Kaohsiung people have led a difficult life in this city drowned by political ideology, full of pathos and grievances, especially at times of elections, he told the rally.

If I was elected mayor, I would return the city to its former glory, when people were rich and young men were able to find a decent job, he said.

Analysts said Han struck the Achilles heel of the DPP, which ran the city on a political, rather than economic agenda.

Speaking in the local tone and dressed like a member of the working class, Han succeeded in making a good impression with the locals who have often found themselves inferior to the citizens of Taipei, said commentator Huang Wei-han.

By not criticising his DPP opponent Chen Chi-mai or anyone else who was critical of him, and by promising to make Kaohsiung rich so that young people dont have to move to Taipei he won the hearts of the old and young, he said.

The race between Han and Chen was described by news media and analysts as a battle between a vegetable vendor and a political elite born out of a rich and political family, or as an unconventional politician versus a conventional politician.

Wang Kung-yi, a political-science professor at Chinese Culture University in Taipei, said it was the ability of Han  who sparred with disgraced president Chen Shui-bian when they were both legislators  to relate to the people that won him the support.

Lin Yu-fang, a former KMT legislator, said people were fed up with the performance of the Tsai government and used their ballots to teach her a lesson.

Han happened to strike a chord with the publics disgruntlement at the Tsai government, which allowed him to solicit huge support, he said.

Observers said another element of the Han phenomenon was his effective use of social media, including live streaming, to air his campaign views and promises to restore Kaohsiungs fortunes.

All he has to do now is deliver on his pledges.

I perfectly understand how big a decision Kaohsiung voters have made to elect me mayor because I have only lived here for a short time, he said on Saturday in his acceptance speech.

I promise to build a clean government, and use whoever is good for the city, regardless of their political affiliations, and do all I can to make Kaohsiung rich and great.

This article From rank outsider to mayor of Kaohsiung: meet the man who wooed Taiwans electorate first appeared on South China Morning Post

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Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was due to visit Bahrain on Sunday on the second leg of a regional tour, his first since critic Jamal Khashoggi's murder. Prince Mohammed, who began his tour Thursday with a visit to Abu Dhabi, will hold talks with Bahrain's King Hamad, the state-run Bahrain News Agency said on Saturday. Quoting a royal court statement from Manama it said that the Saudi crown prince and King Hamad will discuss the "deep-rooted fraternal and historic relations binding the two brotherly countries and peoples, in addition to (the) latest regional, Arab and international developments". Saudi Arabia has been facing intense global criticism over the killing of insider-turned-critic Khashoggi in its Istanbul consulate on October 2. The murder of the journalist who wrote for The Washington Post has tipped the kingdom into one of its worst crises. He was killed and reportedly dismembered in what Saudi Arabia said was a "rogue" operation, but CIA analysis leaked to the US media pointed the finger at Prince Mohammed. Saudi Arabia has warned criticism of the crown prince is a "red line". On Wednesday Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said that calls for the crown prince to be held accountable for the grisly killing would not be tolerated. Prince Mohammed began his regional tour at the request of his father, King Salman, according to the Saudi Press Agency which said he would visit "brotherly" Arab countries. The tour started Thursday in the United Arab Emirates, a close ally that is part of a Saudi-led coalition battling Iran-aligned Huthi rebels in Yemen. And the prince is also set to travel to the Tunisian capital on Tuesday, a presidential source in Tunis told AFP. Prince Mohammed is expected to attend the G20 summit in Argentina next week.
PRAGUE (Reuters) - Slovakia's government will not approve the United Nations to regulate the treatment of migrants worldwide, Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini said on Sunday after the European Union summit.

The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration was approved in July by all 193 member UN nations except the United States, which backed out last year.

It followed the biggest influx of migrants into Europe since World War Two, many fleeing conflicts and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and beyond.

(Reporting by Robert Muller; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle)
After more than three decades together, Wang Tien-ming and Ho Hsiang finally decided to tie the knot when Taiwan's top court ruled last year that same-sex marriage must be legalised. But those wedding plans are on hold after conservative groups won a referendum battle over equal marriage which couples fear could water down their newly won rights. The original landmark court decision in May 2017 made Taiwan the first place in Asia to legalise same-sex marriage - it ruled the change must be implemented within two years and sparked a wave of optimism in the LGBT community. But almost 18 months have already passed as the government drags its feet in the face of conservative opposition. A referendum on whether marriage should only be recognised as between a man and a woman in Taiwan's Civil Code won more than seven million votes Saturday, as did another calling for same-sex unions to be regulated under a separate law. Gay rights activists had proposed that the Civil Code should give same-sex couples equal marriage rights, but only garnered three million votes. Ho said that after the original court ruling he believed he and Wang would be granted rights given to heterosexual married partners, including recognition as next of kin. This made the couple think they could at last buy a house together, Wang told AFP, assured that if one of them died the other would inherit. Wang, 57, is also the main carer for Ho, 75, who suffers from Parkinson's disease. He describes their relationship as "love at first sight". "I want to get married because I want to say to the world: 'I don't want to be deprived of what is my basic right'," Wang said. - 'Second class citizens' - Although the government has made clear the referendum results would not impact the court's original decision to legalise gay marriage, which should automatically be implemented next May, pro-gay marriage campaigners worry that their newly won rights will be weakened. The court did not specify how it wanted gay marriage to be brought in, leaving room for conservative groups to call for separate regulations. As Saturday's conservative referendums passed the threshold of 25 percent of eligible voters, the government must by law take steps to reflect the result. Ho said he would not accept anything less than the amendment of the existing marriage law as laid out in the Civil Code to put gay couples on an equal footing with heterosexual couples. "Having a special marriage law (for gay couples) means we are like second class citizens," he told AFP, adding that having a two-tier system would dent Taiwan's reputation as a trailblazer for equal marriage rights on the international stage. "The Taiwanese value equality and freedom. If the gay community is been treated like second class citizens, where's the equality? This is our soft power," he said. Taiwan's government has not yet responded to the referendum result and what impact it will have. Kuo Huai-wen and her partner of 13 years had also been hoping to marry on the first day that the court's decision was implemented -- a day that is yet to come. Kuo, 40, said she was "saddened and disappointed" over the referendum result, but still felt encouraged that three million people had backed the pro-gay marriage vote. Kuo is pregnant with the couple's second child and said they would be forced to accept a union under a separate law for the sake of their children, even though they do not agree with it and want equal marriage rights. "We have to be practical as we have kids and we can't afford to have all or nothing," said Kuo. "We will register even if it's under a separate law, not because we are satisfied with that but because we need immediate protections."
Asylum seekers hoping to enter the US via its southern border will have to wait in Mexico while they are assessed, President Donald Trump announced Saturday, appearing to confirm a report about a bilateral deal published by The Washington Post. The move was cautiously welcomed by some refugees currently at the border, even as Mexico's incoming interior minister Olga Sanchez Cordero, who was quoted by the Post as confirming the agreement, later issued a denial. "Migrants at the Southern Border will not be allowed into the United States until their claims are individually approved in court," Trump wrote on Twitter. He added that the US "will allow those who come into our Country legally" and emphasized: "All will stay in Mexico." The deal, which would overhaul US border policy, comes with Trump outraged over the presence of thousands of Central American migrants who marched to Mexico's border city of Tijuana hoping to enter the US for a better life free from the poverty and gang violence in their homelands. "For now, we have agreed to this policy of Remain in Mexico," the Post quoted Sanchez Cordero as saying. The government of new President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador will enter office on December 1. But her office later issued a statement saying: "There is no agreement of any type between the future federal government of Mexico and that of the United States of America." Trump has sent almost 6,000 soldiers to the Mexican border in support of Customs and Border Protection agents and National Guard troops already there, to forestall what Trump has called an "invasion" by "very bad people." After a trek of more than a month from Honduras, nearly 5,000 migrants -- including women and children -- are now in Tijuana living in a makeshift shelter. - A potential breakthrough - Trump "is within his right. He is in his government," but he is not like other presidents in his views of migrants, said a resident of the shelter, Carolina Flores, 38, of Honduras. "He sees us as a bug that is going to eat there," she added. "We come for an opportunity!" Another Honduran in the shelter, Orlinda Morales, 31, a housewife, said the reported new asylum rules seem "very good" because migrants will not be in limbo. "We will get work here," she said. Hundreds of the migrants lined up this week at a special jobs fair set up for them in the manufacturing city, but others remain determined to reach the US. No formal agreement has been signed, the Post said, but US officials view the deal, which would see would-be refugees' cases heard by US courts in Mexico, as a potential breakthrough in deterring migration. US asylum officers will begin implementing the new procedures in coming days or weeks, Homeland Security officials cited by the Post said. Asylum seekers will be given an initial screening to determine whether they face imminent danger by staying in Mexico, where violence is widespread. - Deportation to the homeland - American officials will be able to process at least twice as many asylum claims under the new system because they would not be limited by detention space at US ports of entry, the Post report said. It added that under the new rules, an applicant whose asylum claim is denied would not be allowed to return to Mexico but would remain in US custody pending immediate deportation to his or her home country. In a statement issued on Thursday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made no mention of a deal but said that he and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen had "a constructive meeting" with Mexico's future foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard over the caravans. "We have affirmed our shared commitment to addressing the current challenge. The caravans will not be permitted to enter the United States. There are real dangers to the safety and human rights of migrants from those who would prey on them," Pompeo said. He added that he was looking forward to working with Mexico's new government, including on ways to spur job creation "to benefit the government and people of Mexico." In 2018, border patrols registered more than 400,000 illegal crossers, according to Homeland Security, and in the last five years, the number of those requesting asylum has increased by 2,000 percent. Less than 10 percent of cases result in asylum being granted, the government says. Last week, a US federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from denying asylum to people who enter the country illegally. The president issued a proclamation earlier this month saying that only people who enter the US at official checkpoints -- as opposed to sneaking across the border -- can apply for asylum.
2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #47

Posted on 25 November 2018 by John Hartz

Story of the Week... Toon of the Week... SkS in the News... Coming Soon on SkS... Climate Feedback Insights... SkS Week in Review... Poster of the Week...

Story of the Week...

Climate-heating greenhouse gases at record levels, says UN

Carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide are far above pre-industrial levels

A power station in Poland close to the borders with Germany and the Czech Republic. Photograph: Florian Gaertner/Photothek/Getty Images

The main greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change have all reached record levels, the UNs meteorology experts have reported.

Carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide are now far above pre-industrial levels, with no sign of a reversal of the upward trend, a World Meteorological Organization report says.

The last time the Earth experienced a comparable concentration of CO2 was 3-5m years ago, when the temperature was 2-3C warmer and sea level was 10-20 metres higher than now, said the WMO secretary general, Petteri Taalas.

The science is clear. Without rapid cuts in CO2 and other greenhouse gases, climate change will have increasingly destructive and irreversible impacts on life on Earth. The window of opportunity for action is almost closed.

Levels of CO2 rose to a global average of 405.5 parts per million in the atmosphere in 2017  almost 50% higher than before the industrial revolution.

Levels of methane, a potent greenhouse gas responsible for about 17% of global warming are now 2.5 times higher than pre-industrial times owing to emissions from cattle, rice paddies and leaks from oil and gas wells.

Nitrous oxide, which also warms the planet and destroys the Earths protective ozone layer, is now over 20% higher than pre-industrial levels. About 40% of N2O comes from human activities including soil degradation, fertiliser use and industry.

Climate-heating greenhouse gases at record levels, says UN by Damian Carrington, Environment, Guardian, Nov 22, 2018

Toon of the Week...

SkS in the News

The origins of Skeptical Science and its rebuttals to the top 10 climate myth are the focus of the MNPR News article, How to talk climate change with skeptical relatives during the holidays by Cody Nelson & Paul Huttner.

In his New York Times article, Its Cold Outside? Gather Around the Turkey and Argue About Climate Change, John Schwartz refers reader to Skeptical Science in the following paragraph:

If you must rebut, take a deep breath and excuse yourself for research. With the internet on our phones, a quick trip to the bathroom is like visiting the library, and sites like Skeptical Science and the denial response collection at Grist can be helpful.

Coming Soon on SkS...

Discussing climate change on the net (Baerbel)

(Baerbel) Why does CO2 cause the Greenhouse Effect?! (Adam Levy)

(Adam Levy) New findings on ocean warming: 5 questions answered (Scott Denning)

(Scott Denning) Global coal use may have peaked in 2014, says latest IEA World Energy Outlook (Simon Evans)

(Simon Evans) New research this week (Ari)

(Ari) 2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #48 (John Hartz)

(John Hartz) 2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Weekly Digest #48 (John Hartz)

Climate Feedback Insights...

False claims of a coming ice age spread through ecosystem of unreliable news sites, blogs, and social media accounts

Figure  The network of outlets, blogs, and social media profiles who have shared and endorsed the claim that an imminent mini ice age would be coming based on a misinterpretation of the original article at Space Weather Archive. Dot sizes are proportional to the total number of shares and interactions on social media; arrows represent citations from an article/social media profile to its source.

Solar Minimum expected to cool the upper-atmosphere

Recently, a claim that we are heading towards a mini ice age has been popping up across the web. This was the subject of a widely discussed Metro article titled A mini ice age could be on the way which means it will get very, very cold. Similar claims that we would be heading towards an imminent mini ice age were also repeated without verification throughout a network of unreliable outlets for climate news including Sputnik, The Sun, Fox News, and numerous hyper-partisan blogs such as Zero Hedge, Principia Scientific, IceAgeNow, Alien-Star (listed in the table below).

The stories claim to be based on a September 27th article at Space Weather Archive, in which NASA scientist Martin Mlynczak discusses the influence of current low solar activity on the Earths thermospherea layer of the atmosphere that begins about 65 miles above the surface. Mlynczak explained to Climate Feedback that headline claims of coming cold weather are false:

There is no relationship between the natural cycle of cooling and warming in the thermosphere and the weather/climate at Earths surface. NASA and other climate researchers continue to see a warming trend in the troposphere, the layer of atmosphere closest to Earths surface.

Update (22 Nov. 2018):

The Metro article has been updated following publication of our review. The author completely changed the title and the main claim of the article, making it clear that no mini ice age would be imminent. Read the details in our claim review: Metros claims of coming mini ice age have no basis in reality

Update (23 Nov. 2018):

The Sun article has also been updated to clarify that the low temperatures would not influence the Earths climate. See details here.

False claims of a coming ice age spread through ecosystem of unreliable news sites, blogs, and social media accounts by Emmanuel M Vincent, Insights, Climate Feedback, Nov 21, 2018

SkS Week in Review...

Poster of the Week...
A judge rejected the last-ditch effort by former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos to avoid his federal prison sentence. That means Papadopoulos must surrender to authorities on Monday as scheduled to serve his two-week sentence for making false statements to FBI agents who were investigating possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Papadopoulos had asked U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss twice in the last 10 days to put his looming sentence on pause. Specifically, he said that his sentence should wait for the outcome of an ongoing challenge regarding the legality of the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller. But the judge rejected both of the requests Sunday, saying the former Trump campaign adviser hadnt filed any appeals within the appropriate time. In fact, Papadopoulos himself agreed to give up much of his right to appeal as part of his plea deal with prosecutors And besides, the judge said, Papadopoulos sentence cant be affected by an appeal in which he isnt involved.

Papadopoulos waited until the eleventh hour to seek relief; indeed, he did not file his second motionthe stay requestuntil the last business day before he was scheduled to surrender to serve his sentence, Moss wrote. Papadopoulos has not identified any extenuating circumstancesnor is the court aware of anythat would overcome the presumption against granting such an eleventh-hour stay.
On Election Day, voters in three diverse states cast ballots on how the law would treat some of the countrys most stigmatized groups of people: transgender Americans, undocumented immigrants, and individuals who have been convicted of a felony. To the surprise of many, voters overwhelmingly cast their ballots in support of these three communities.

In Florida, 65 percent of voters moved to restore the voting eligibility of those convicted of felonies, returning that right to 1.4 million potential voters. In Oregon, 63 percent of the electorate voted to maintain that states 30-year-old sanctuary law protecting immigrants from being rounded up by local law enforcement. And in Massachusetts, 68 percent of voters rejected an initiative to deny transgender citizens access to public accommodations, including restrooms that correspond with their lived gender.

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Having had the chance to work closely with each of these efforts, and having worked for many years to win marriage equality, I believe that advocates succeeded against the odds because they were effective in strengthening an authentic human connection between voters and each affected group. This allowed voters to practice empathy with their vote and, in the words of Desmond Meade, the leader of the Florida effort, take an act of love.

Many voters approach such issues with deep internal conflict. On marriage equality, voters in California repealed that right in 2008 by approving Proposition 8. In a post-mortem analysis involving 25 focus groups and a lengthy survey, Democratic pollster Amy Simon found that many California voters were powerfully conflicted, caught between two deep-seated sentiments: On the one hand, a desire to be fair and compassionate toward their fellow man; on the other, a loyalty to what they saw as the ironclad teachings of religion, tradition, or culture.

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The flip side of generating empathy in these battles is the need to combat fear.

Our remedy in the marriage battles, and what this years campaigns each did successfully, was to build a connection between the affected group and voters through the sharing of genuine human stories. In Florida, thousands of directly impacted individuals, organized by the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, spoke honestly about how theyd made a mistake in the past, paid their dues to society, and now deserved a second chance to participate in our democracy. FRRC organized people from every walk of lifeRepublicans and Democrats, white, black, Latino, rural, suburban, urbanso that voters could see themselves in at least some of the stories. As citizens heard those personal appeals directly and consistently, they seemed to be much more able to connect to those individuals and apply some of their most deeply held valuesforgiveness, redemption, treating others the way theyd want to be treatedto those who had been convicted of a felony and were now denied the right to vote.

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In Massachusetts, voters got to know the story of 15-year-old transgender teenager Ian and his father, who were the centerpiece of the Freedom for All Massachusetts advertising campaign. The ad opens with Ians father saying, I love my kids and Id do anything to protect them, expressing a notion that most every parent can identify with. For me, he continues, that includes taking care of my transgender son, Ian.

The viewer then sees Ian interacting with his family, playing with his dog, and meeting up with others at a restaurant. Ian closes by asking viewers to protect Massachusetts kids like me. The spot does a great job of universalizing the experience of this family, making them less of an other. Viewers can see Ians family as they arean ordinary one, with parents looking out for their children no matter what adversities they face and children who simply want to be themselves and be happy.

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The deeper the connectionbetween the voter and members of the group in question and their familiesthe more voters seem to be able to see their deepest values reflected in sometimes controversial campaigns for basic equality and dignity.

The flip side of generating empathy in these battles is the need to combat fear. The oppositions most effective approach has historically been to deploy fear in order to sow doubt and prevent feelings of connection. The antimarriage equality efforts of the recent past repeatedly deployed in advertisements the ugly and untrue bugaboo that allowing gays to marry would harm children. As Frank Schubert, the lead strategist behind the Prop 8 campaign, said, California voters would entertain allowing gay marriage, but not if doing so had significant implications for the rest of society.

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The opposition to the Massachusetts law protecting transgender people employed its usual approach in one ad: presenting a scary-looking man lurking in a womens locker room while a young woman is getting dressed. With ominous music playing in the background, the ads voice-over says that under the law, any man who says he is a woman can enter a womens locker room, dressing room, or bathroom at any timeeven convicted sex offenders. As another example of this type of fearmongering, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions visited Oregon in September 2017 to argue against that states sanctuary law, claiming that police may be forced to release pedophiles, rapists, murderers, drug dealers, and arsonists back into communities.

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The respective civil rights campaigns this year countered these fear tactics effectively, enlisting trusted validatorsespecially law enforcementto make the case that these arguments are false and that siding with these marginalized groups strengthens communities rather than making them less safe. For the last several weeks of the campaign, Oregonians saw either a district attorney or a cop arguing against the anti-sanctuary amendment. The district attorney of rural Deschutes County argued that any passage of the anti-sanctuary law makes my job harder because it would make more Oregonians afraid to report crimes or testify as witnesses. That, he argued, would leave  our neighborhoods less safe.

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In Massachusetts, a retired police chief along with an advocate for sexual assault victims argued that since state law began protecting transgender people from discrimination, theres been no increases in public safety incidents in places like restrooms. And in Florida, retired Miami-Dade prosecutor Gary Winston acknowledged that people make mistakes but that when a debt is paid, its paid.

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One additional way these campaigns were able to engender the trust of voters was by consciously demonstrating that they should not be partisan issues. In Florida, this was especially important, as some wondered if backers of the amendment were more focused on re-enfranchising those convicted of felonies or on expanding votes for Democrats. Campaign executive committee member the Alliance for Safety and Justice worked hard to secure strong support from across the ideological spectrum, from the Koch Brothersaffiliated Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce and the Christian Coalition as well as from more expected supporters like the ACLU.* When voters see that kind of cross-partisan showing, it seems that they are much more apt to take off skeptical partisan lenses and really listen to the arguments being presented. In Florida, that was critical to the effort to get the 60 percent the re-enfranchisement law needed to pass.

So many of our deepest political struggles come down to a battle between genuine empathy and fear. By sharing relatable personal stories, fighting back hard against fear tactics, and demonstrating support from unexpected voices, advocates in these three fights were able to win, and win big. In doing so, they provided a road map for those fighting the next round of battles for equal rights in America.
Mexicos soon-to-be government denied that it had reached an agreement with President Donald Trumps administration that would have allowed asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their applications are processed. There is no agreement of any sort between the incoming Mexican government and the U.S. government, future Interior Minister Olga Sanchez said in a statement. On Saturday evening, Trump sent a series of tweets previewing the policy. Migrants at the Southern Border will not be allowed into the United States until their claims are individually approved in court, Trump wrote. No Releasing into the U.S.All will stay in Mexico. He later went on to warn that he was ready to CLOSE our Southern Border if necessary.

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Migrants at the Southern Border will not be allowed into the United States until their claims are individually approved in court. We only will allow those who come into our Country legally. Other than that our very strong policy is Catch and Detain. No Releasing into the U.S...  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 24, 2018

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....All will stay in Mexico. If for any reason it becomes necessary, we will CLOSE our Southern Border. There is no way that the United States will, after decades of abuse, put up with this costly and dangerous situation anymore!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 24, 2018

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The denial from the official of Mexican president-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador came shortly after the Washington Post published a piece claiming the government that will take office next month supported Trumps policy. The Post quotes the same future interior minister who later denied he story saying that for now, we have agreed to this policy of Remain in Mexico. She had called it a short-term solution because the medium- and long-term solution is that people dont migrate.

Despite the denial, the Post is standing by its story saying that while its true that no official deal has been sealed, the incoming Mexican government is amenable to the concept of turning their country into a waiting room for Americas asylum system. The White House is optimistic that, if sealed, the waiting-in-Mexico policy could help deter migration. Senior officials from Mexicos incoming government say the policy would simply formalize what is already happening. And U.S. officials say it could double the number of asylum claims that can be processed because it wont face the current limit imposed by detention space.

Yet the proposal immediately raised the concern of human rights activists who worry the United States could be infringing on the rights of asylum seekers by forcing them to stay in some very violent Mexican border states. We have not seen a specific proposal, but any policy that would leave individuals stranded in Mexico would inevitably put people in danger, said Lee Gelernt, an ACLU attorney. The Administration ought to concentrate on providing a fair and lawful asylum process in the U.S. rather than inventing more and more ways to try to short-circuit it.
Remember that shocking photo that showed a group of Wisconsin teens doing what looked quite unambiguously like a Nazi salute? The school district has now said the students from the Baraboo High School class of 2019 wont be facing any repercussions for their actions that took place before the junior prom. In a letter to parents, the superintendent of the Baraboo School District, Lori Mueller, said that officials couldnt punish the students for their actions because of their First Amendment rights. As previously stated, we cannot know the intentions in the hearts of those who were involved, Ms. Mueller wrote in the letter, which was obtained by The Baraboo News Republic.

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The photo was taken in May by a parent who was not hired by the school district to take photos. The parent, Peter Gust, had the image on his website but he took it down after it became viral when it was posted online by an anonymous Twitter account. Those in the photo include both current and past students at the high school. But despite a 10-day investigation there are still lots of things school authorities dont know. Despite our efforts, we are still unclear about some key details, the superintendent wrote on Wednesday.

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Gust, who took the photo, and several students have insisted the gesture was never intended to be a Nazi salute. But at least some students seem to have recognized immediately what was going on. After like a split second of them having their hand up, I was like, Oh, so, this is whats going on, Jason Ramos, a Baraboo High School junior, said.Ramos, who is now a senior, said he was shocked about the moment that came out of nowhere. And the photo got so much attention that even the Auschwitz Memorials official Twitter account commented on it, noting it is so hard to find words.

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It is so hard to find words...



This is why every single day we work hard to educate. We need to explain what is the danger of hateful ideology rising. Auschwitz with its gas chambers was at the very end of the long process of normalizing and accommodating hatred. https://t.co/13AzZaMGJR  Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) November 12, 2018

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Many were shocked by the news that the students wont face any consequences for their actions. Journalist Jules Suzdaltsev, who was one of those responsible for helping the photo go viral and talked to several Baraboo students about the image, pointed out that the school district seems to have an interesting idea of what is and isnt protected by the First Amendment. In a tweet, Suzdaltsev pointed out that the Wisconsin State Assembly voted last year to automatically suspend students who protest against hate speech. So apparently in Wisconsin if you DO a Nazi salute at a school event, nothing will happen to you, Suzdaltsev wrote, but if you PROTEST against Nazis at a school event, you will be automatically expelled.

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This is utter bullshit. If schools can punish students for saying bullshit, they can punish them for a Nazi salute https://t.co/h2U2ggu8oh  Reza Aslan (@rezaaslan) November 24, 2018

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Dedicated to the Restoration of Progressive Democracy
U23s lose mini-derby to Liverpool

Sunday, 25 November, 2018



Everton U23s featured both Jonjoe Kenney and Kieran Dowell, but went behind to Liverpool after just 11 minutes.

The Reds had swarmed all over the Premier League 2 leaders, hitting the bar twice before they scored off a deflected shot that wrong-footed Virginia in the Everton goal.

After this poor start from Everton, Bowler almost created the equaliser for Broadhead weaving into space in the area, firing a low cross along the 6-yard box but Broadhead couldn't get on the end of it.

The Blues had plenty of quality and experience but too many of their established players were struggling to make any sort of an impact. Everton played with greater urgency in the second-half but were still making daft mistakes.

Sambou had a sight of goal after Dowell played him in but he couldn't find any power in the shot. Everton battled to the end but could not affect the scoreline.

Everton U23s: Virginia, Kenny, Charsley, Markelo, Feeney, Browning, Bowler (46' Sambou), Adeniran (66' Lavery), Evans (81' Gordon), Dowell, Broadhead.

Subs not Used: Hewelt, Astley.

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Mountain Shadows in Wayanad is just the place for a dreamy vacation
Police in the central Vietnamese province of Quang Nam are investigating an alleged sexual abuse against a disabled woman after she was discovered being pregnant about four months ago.

Colonel Nguyen Van Cu, chief of police in Tien Phuoc District, Quang Nam, confirmed to Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper on Saturday that the victim is 28-year-old H.T.P..

According to P.s family members, she only weighs 20 kilograms and has suffed from paralysis since she was 18 months old.

She can only sit in her wheelchair, the family continued, adding that the woman also has speech impairment and heart disease.

P. has to be assisted by her mother in her daily life.

She has a rather low level of cognition.

P.s parents own a cattle farm located away from their home, thus they often leave the house to work during the day.

P. developed some abnormal signs about four months ago before her family took her to a local hospital.

Doctors stated the woman had been 19 weeks into her pregnancy.

The case was then reported to police. However, officers have been having trouble communicating with P. due to her disabilities.

It is now impossible to identify the father of the child.

We have to wait until she gives birth in order to conduct a DNA test, said Col. Cu.

Local authorities have been assisting the family in terms of finance to help take care of P. and her child.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
Two men died and another was injured after a violent confrontation took place between drivers at an eatery in Ho Chi Minh City on early Saturday.

Police said when trailer truck drivers were drinking beer in two groups at around 1:30 am at a restaurant in District 2, an angry disagreement occurred between the sides.

One group kept staying with their fun while the other left the establishment.

Half an hour later, the second returned out of the blue and with weapons rushed to the sitting drivers, causing them to race for safety.

Two from the attacked group were seriously slashed and stabbed, and died in hospital while another was wounded.

Police officers arrested members supposedly from the assaulting group on murder charges later on the same day.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
The latest new Fresh Blood project to hit our screens is Why Are You Like This? about 2 friends navigating life in a world of social outrage.

Fresh Blood seeks to uncover the next generation of Australian comedy talent. Up-and-coming comedy producers were given $15,000 each to produce a comedy project with four chosen to produce a half hour comedy pilot.

Why Are You Like This: Best friends Penny and Mia are navigating their 20s in Melbourne. Guided by their own modern day moral code they confront complex social issues in an outrage driven world, leaving a path of destruction in their wake. Mia is fired from her job for being objectively bad at it, and fights against it until she realises shell be paid out.

Meanwhile, Pennys RUOK day lecture is highjacked by co-worker, Daniel, who turns her feelings workshop into a bros night. After a collective bad day, the girls head out to see Pennys housemate, Austin, perform as his drag alter-ego JonBenet RamsMe.

Once Mia realises her severance pay wont get her as far as she thought, she tries her hand at a few different jobs, but none of them afford her the amount of freedom she demands. After a follow-up conversation with Daniel, Penny is suspicious that he may be homophobic, and is determined to prove it.

Creators Naomi Higgins, Humyara Mahbub, Mark Samual Bonanno, Producer Sarah Freeman,

Directors Jessie Oldfield & Adam Murfet. Executive Producer (ABC) Nicholas Hayden.

9:30pm Tuesday November 27 on ABC Comedy.
The industrialists who bought GKN (Frankfurt: 694194 - news) , the British engineering group, in a controversial 8bn deal this year are weighing options for one of its key divisions after receiving a string of "low-ball" takeover offers.

Sky News has learnt that executives at Melrose (LSE: 136541.L - news) are deciding whether to press on with an immediate auction of GKN Powder Metallurgy following initial bids last week valuing the business at about 1.6bn.

That figure was well below analysts' forecasts that GKN Powder Met would command a price of 2bn, and has raised the prospect that Melrose may halt the sale process.

"They will sell the business, but it may not be through this particular auction," a person close to Melrose said on Sunday evening.

Sources said that Apollo and PAI Partners were among the private equity firms which tabled indicative offers last week.

Any decision to abort the sale of Powder Met would disappoint its new owner's shareholders, who were informed of the plans as part of a trading update several weeks ago.

It would also have consequences for GKN's pension schemes, which were promised part of the proceeds of asset disposals during Melrose's contentious takeover bid earlier this year.

Jefferies and Rothschild are advising on the Powder Met sale, which was put on the agenda by GKN's board as part of its defence against Melrose's hostile bid.

Powder Met makes high-performance components for automotive and industrial applications through two main divisions.

It manufactures for 3,000 customers around the world, producing 13 million parts every day.

Melrose's 8bn raid on one of British industry's most famous names triggered a political firestorm which abated only when Business Secretary Greg Clark secured binding undertakings from the Melrose board about their stewardship of GKN assets.

Under the terms of its deal with the government, Melrose must give ministers "early visibility" of potential bidders for any GKN operations with national security implications.

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Mr Clark or his successors would also have a veto over any such sale.

Melrose also offered a number of other commitments such as retaining GKN's aerospace division for at least five years, and maintaining research and development spending at pre-takeover levels.

The team of businessmen who founded Melrose have enjoyed huge success with their approach of buying, improving and selling poorly performing industrial businesses.

However, their hostile bid for GKN was on an altogether different scale to any of their previous acquisitions.

GKN's board, led by the City veteran Mike Turner, claimed that Melrose's team had insufficient expertise or long-term focus to manage aerospace and automotive businesses with global customers such as Airbus and Jaguar Land Rover.

A fractious battle came to an end in March, when just over 52% of GKN's investors voted in favour of the deal.

The tussle generated more than 100m in bankers' fees, while Melrose has pledged to eliminate GKN's pension deficit with up to 1bn in contributions over the next five years.

Melrose is also progressing plans to sell other GKN businesses such as Off-Highway Powertrains, which is expected to fetch a more modest sum.

The company has also said it will review its boardroom pay policies after a revolt at its annual meeting earlier this year saw nearly a quarter of shareholders oppose payouts of more than 40m to each of its top four executives.

A spokesman for Melrose declined to comment on the auction of Powder Met, while PAI also declined to comment.
Sky News

A man who sent "unsettling" messages and dozens of gifts to singer Sophie Ellis-Bextor has been told he could face full criminal prosecution if he continues. Nishil Patel, 39, was said to have met the singer in passing in July last year, with the City of London Magistrates' Court hearing he sent her hundreds of "concerning" and "upsetting" messages since meeting. Patel also left unwanted presents, such as a wallet with his initials on, with Ellis-Bextor's next-door neighbour, thinking it was the singer's home, and even turned up outside the address in west London between last October and April.
This Sunday, the second season of Hotspots begins on Sky Atlantic.

To mark the return of the show that takes you behind the news , Sky's chief correspondent Stuart Ramsay looks back on the high-risk assignment of crossing borders illegally with migrants.

It's a cold misty morning and we are on the back of a truck with a group migrants illegally crossing from Guatemala to Mexico on a secret mountain road.

Among them two girls, Daniella, 16, and Karla, 14, they are heading to the United States - they hope.

Karla sings as we make our way across the mountains; she is dressed in the clothes my daughter would wear, she has her sunglasses on and her pink back pack, all she owns, lies at her feet.

The girls seem unaware of how dangerous this trip is. Young women are the most vulnerable; they risk abduction and forced sexual slavery. But everyone on the truck faces danger. Rape, robbery and murder are common but this is what thousands risk every single day.

The quest to get to the United States has become a global phenomenon and showing these dangers and investigating the methods and the gangs who move this human cargo was our assignment, and how we cover this story the subject of the Sky News programme Hotspots.

What was not previously known is just how global the movement of people by trafficking gangs has become.

Tapachula, a moody trafficking town in southern Mexico is now full of Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis trying to get to America. There are five curry houses in one street.

They are mainly young men wanting to claim asylum from political persecution at home.

Whether that is true or not is difficult to prove. But what is an undoubted fact is the horror of their journeys. They all talk of migrants, unable to keep up with group, being murdered on the side of the road and bodies strewn along jungle paths.

The gangs and the cartels move people along the same routes as they move drugs.

The crime syndicates that operate this business aren't just in Central and South America, they stretch around the world and they charge people $30,000 (23,000) to $50,000 (39,000) each.

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One young man who started his journey in Delhi says he has been handed over dozens of times to different gangs as he travelled through Ethiopia, Peru, Brazil, Equador, Honduras, El Salvador, Panama, Guatemala and into Mexico. The level of organisation is astonishing.

We met the gang Members who move the people and the drugs on the Northern Mexican border with the US using "Coyotes" or guides who know how to cross and deliver their human cargo to America.

It's a business worth billions of dollars and nobody seems able to stop it.
FILE PHOTO: An aerial view of a tract of Amazon jungle recently cleared by loggers and farmers near the city of Novo Progresso, Brazil September 22, 2013. REUTERS/Nacho Doce//File Photo

Thomson Reuters

By Marcelo Teixeira

SAO PAULO (Reuters) - The destruction of Brazil's Amazon rainforest reached its highest level in a decade this year, government data released on Friday showed, driven by illegal logging and the encroachment of agriculture on the jungle.

Satellite images for the 12 months through the end of July 2018 showed that 7,900 square kilometers (3,050 square miles) of forest were cleared in the Amazon, equivalent to more than half the territory of Jamaica. That was a 13.7 percent increase from the same period in the prior year.

Deforestation is a key factor behind global warming, accounting for around 15 percent of annual emissions of heat-trapping gases, similar to that of the transportation sector.

On Friday, a U.S. government report found that climate change will cost the United States hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the century.

Brazil's environment minister Edson Duarte said in a statement that illegal logging was the main factor behind the increase in deforestation in the Amazon. He called on the government to increase its policing of the jungle.

The states of Para and Mato Grosso were the largest contributors to the deforestation increase. Mato Grosso is Brazil's top grains producer, leading Brazil's booming soybean output.

Brazil's Climate Observatory, a network of non-governmental organizations, said in a separate statement that the increase was not a surprise. Besides illegal logging, it said Brazil's growing commodities sector was contributing to forest destruction as farmers sought to expand.

Marcio Astrini, from the local office of Greenpeace, said the Brazilian government had not done enough to fight deforestation and recent policy moves such as ones reducing areas under federal protection fueled environmental destruction.

Both groups said they were worried that deforestation could increase further during the government of President-elect Jair Bolsonaro, due to take office in January. He has sharply criticized the Brazilian environmental protection agency, and the agriculture sector is one of his main political bases.

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Despite the recent rise, deforestation remains sharply below the levels recorded in the early 2000s, before the Brazilian government launched a strategy to fight forest destruction. In 2004, for example, more than 27,000 square km were cleared, an area the size of Haiti.

Scientists consider the Amazon as one of nature's best protections against global warming, as it acts as a giant carbon "sink" by absorbing the gas. The jungle is also rich in biodiversity, hosting billions of species yet to be studied.

(Reporting by Marcelo Teixeira, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)

See Also:
Sky News

The father of an unvaccinated 27-year-old woman who died from COVID has called for fines to be issued to people who refuse to have the jab. Steve Baird told Sky News he believes his daughter Rashelle would still be alive if she had received the coronavirus vaccine and wants it to be made mandatory. The mother-of-three died on Friday after she put off getting the jab because she was busy caring for her young children, her family say.
FILE PHOTO: U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin speaks during his interview with Reuters in Jerusalem October 21, 2018. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun/File Photo

Thomson Reuters

(Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said in a Twitter message on Friday that he was "extremely happy and proud" with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin's performance, after the Wall Street Journal reported that the president had expressed dissatisfaction with Mnuchin.

"I am extremely happy and proud of the job being done by @USTreasury Secretary @stevenmnuchin1," Trump said in a tweet.

"The FAKE NEWS likes to write stories to the contrary, quoting phony sources or jealous people, but they arent true. They never like to ask me for a quote b/c it would kill their story," he said

(Reporting by Mohammad Zargham in Washington; Editing by Toni Reinhold)

See Also:
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish defence minister Hulusi Akar discussed the latest developments in Syria's Idlib with his Russian counterpart by telephone on Sunday, Turkish broadcaster CNN Turk reported.

No further details were immediately available.

Russia's defence ministry said earlier that its warplanes had carried out air strikes against militants it held responsible for firing shells filled with chlorine gas at the Syrian city of Aleppo.

Russian news agencies cited Major-General Igor Konashenkov as saying that the Russian strikes had destroyed all of their targets and that Russia had warned Turkey of the bombing raid in advance via a telephone hotline.

(Reporting by Daren Butler; Editing by Alexander Smith)
Universal credit accused of pushing people into poverty: Getty

Police Scotland has blamed changes in the UK governments benefit system for a sharp rise in robberies north of the border.

According to a new report by the force, the introduction of universal credit and an increase in the price of illegal drugs may have triggered the 30 per cent increase in robberies over the five-year average.

There were 880 robberies throughout Scotland between April and June this year  a 12 per cent rise on the previous summer.

Police Scotland said that while there was no definitive explanation for the rise in robberies anecdotal evidence from intelligence suggests that a combination of increased drug prices due to police enforcement, and changes to welfare systems, may have contributed to an increase in crimes of dishonesty and robbery.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) said the report was purely based on anecdotal evidence.

A spokeswoman said: We continue to spend 90bn a year on working-age welfare, and 2.4 million households will be up to 630 better off a year as a result of raising the work allowance in universal credit.

In addition, Scotland has the power to top-up existing benefits, pay discretionary payments and create entirely new benefits altogether.

Phased in from 2013, universal credit combines six existing benefits, including Jobseekers Allowance and Employment and Support Allowance. The overhaul has proved highly controversial, with many claiming the roll-out has pushed more people into poverty.

The UK government has faced a backlash over the flagship welfare reform, prompting warnings from two former prime ministers that it could usher in problems similar to the poll tax riots under Margaret Thatcher.

Former Tory prime minister Sir John Major has called for a rethink on the benefit overhaul, while the former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown warned it could cause poll tax-style chaos.

Earlier this month, doctors warned that universal credit was a "complicated, dysfunction and punitive" system which was making people increasingly anxious and depressed.

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Dr Mandy Cheetham from Teesside University, lead author of the research, said: Claimants were under severe stress as a result of the claims process and some people had been so low they said they had considered suicide.

The process of claiming and then trying to survive in the system, with the constant threat of sanctions was making people increasingly anxious and depressed, and worsening existing health problems.
An 88-year-old woman has become the oldest person ever to sue an employer for age discrimination after she was sacked from her job as an NHS secretary.

Bosses at the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading dismissed Eileen Jolly in January last year over claims she did not properly use a computer system.

The NHS trust has admitted she was unfairly dismissed because she was not given the opportunity to appeal, but it said the decision to dismiss her was not made on the basis of her age.

Mrs Jolly says an internal report into her work compiled by a manager included "unpleasant" remarks about her age and health.

She said: "I felt as though he had assumed that at my age and because of my health I was a liability and incapable of change and had to go."

She was particularly upset when one colleague was quoted saying: "It was always a concern that you could walk in and find Eileen dead on the floor."

Mrs Jolly, who has a heart condition and walks with a stick, told an employment tribunal that she had not taken a day off sick in 10 years even though she had a cardiac arrest at work in 2004 and had to be resuscitated by a doctor.

She said: "It had been my intention to continue to work for as long as I could - until I was at least 90 years old."

Her boss, breast surgeon Brendan Smith, said Mrs Jolly was a "reliable and meticulous" employee who was being made a "scapegoat" for management failings.

He accused hospital managers of bullying and said: "Eileen was at the bottom of the tree. I think they made an example of her because heads had to roll."

Mrs Jolly was accused of not uploading details of women waiting for non-urgent breast reconstruction surgery to a new database - an error partly blamed for 14 women having to wait more than a year for surgery.

Mrs Jolly says she had not received adequate training to use the electronic patient record system and had assumed that Mr Smith had uploaded the patients' details while she kept her own version of the waiting list in her drawer.

Story continues

When the error was discovered she was suspended and a tribunal hearing in Reading heard that a report compiled by the trust manager found she had "fundamental misunderstanding of her role".

It concluded that she had broken her contract by failing to ensure that all patients on the database receive treatment.

The report added that she had been dismissed "on grounds of capability" for a "catastrophic failure".

Mrs Jolly, who has worked for the NHS in Berkshire since 1991, said: "It was humiliating. I felt degraded. I felt as if I was being escorted off the premises in case I did something I shouldn't."

Mrs Jolly's barrister Mark Green said her sacking showed her bosses were guilty of "insidious stereotyping about elderly people".

Paul Wilson, representing the Royal Berkshire Health Foundation, said that the fact Mrs Jolly had been given a permanent contract in 2012 showed that the trust did not practise age discrimination.

The tribunal deferred judgement until a later date.
JOHANNESBURG (AP)  Four Finns have died in the crash of a small plane in Zimbabwe, Finland's foreign ministry announced on Saturday, while the prime minister expressed condolences to the families of those killed.

The cause of the crash was not yet known. Zimbabwe's state media reported that the plane had been en route to the popular tourist site of Victoria Falls when it crashed on Friday in Masvingo.

A district administrator, Roy Hove, confirmed five deaths overall, telling the newspaper the bodies were "decapitated and mangled beyond recognition."

Police in a statement said the plane crashed into a hillside.

"This is a horrible tragedy," Finland's honorary consul in Harare, Jim Ward, told Finnish tabloid Ilta-Sanomat. He said the purpose of the group's trip was unknown.

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Associated Press writer Jari Tanner in Helsinki, Finland contributed.

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Follow Africa news at https://twitter.com/AP_Africa
IGAD To Discuss South Sudan Peace Process

Leaders of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) will tomorrow discuss the South Sudan peace process.

JUBA, 15 November 2018 [Gurtong]-The 66th Extraordinary Session of the IGAD Council of Ministers will convene on Friday, November 16, 2018 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, a statement from IGAD South Sudan office said on Wednesday.



On the agenda are the Implementation of the Revitalized Agreement of the Resolution of Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS) and progress in Somalia, it added.



The meeting will be at Sheraton Hotel Addis Ababa.



This will be the first meeting by IGAD leaders to discuss South Sudan peace process after a peace agreement was signed by South Sudan government and opposition leaders in Addis Ababa, in September.



The South Sudan peace monitoring body, the Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission last month late September issued an implementation report noting that some deadlines have been met while others have been missed.



Activities implemented included ratification of the Agreement, nominations and appointment of the National Pre-Transitional Committee (NPTC), the Permanent Ceasefire and Transitional Security Arrangements (PCTSA) workshop, and several declarations of commitment to the R-ARCSS by the Parties.



The NPTC had since that time met in Khartoum and Juba, to coordinate for the implementation of the peace agreement.



Late last month, the government and opposition groups celebrated the signing of the peace agreement in Juba, a move seen by many as confidence building in the implementation process.



In the past two weeks, the forces of the South Sudan Peoples Defense Forces (SSPDF) and Forces of the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army in Opposition (SPLA-IO) met in five different States to discuss ways of coordinating information on implementation of the peace agreement.



Deadlines missed include the reconstitution of the National Constitution Amendment Committee (NCAC), reconstitution of JMEC, and the formation of the Joint Defense Board others.




Steve O'Dwyer Takes Down Winner-Take-All 3-Handed 25k MCOP High Roller

November 25 2018 Milko van Winden

None other than Steve O'Dwyer took down the 25,500 Super High Roller at the Master Classics of Poker in Holland Casino Amsterdam. O'Dwyer defeated Patrik Antonius and Stefan Wolzak to win his first Master Classics of Poker tournament. He took home the first place prize of 74,250 ($84,193) and the decorative MCOP plate.

The tournament was supposed to start at 2 p.m. local time but was delayed. O'Dwyer and Wolzak were both seated at the table; waiting for a third player to join the field. Antonius arrived in the casino and registered around 4 p.m., and they had enough players to start the tournament. A couple of other players were interested in the tournament but opted to play either the 1,600 progressive bounty tournament or they joined the high stakes cash game action instead.

Dutchman Wolzak had a very good start of the tournament. Right before the end of the second level, he managed to win a big pot where he had two pair, holding ace-trey, against Antonius. Wolzak entered the first break of the day with over half of the chips in play. Wolzak continued to put pressure on both of his opponents after the break.

Antonius ended up as the first player out of the tournament. O'Dwyer took Antonius' remaining 10,000 after he had three-bet and Antonius four-bet all in. O'Dwyer made the quick call, and he was well ahead with his pocket aces against the king-queen suited of Antonius. The board ran out eight-deuce-four-deuce-six. It was all over on the turn, and O'Dwyer took down a nice pot with pocket aces to get to about the same stack of Wolzak.

The heads-up battle started out pretty slow; most of the pots were won by a single continuation-bet on the flop. The first big pot of the heads-up went to O'Dwyer after he got full value with a full house against a flush of Wolzak. Wolzak was left with 'just' 63 big blinds. From that moment on, it was Wolzak who was trying to fight back, but in the end, he couldn't make the longed-for comeback.

Dutch high stakes player Stefan Wolzak finished runner-up to Steve O'Dwyer

In the final hand of the tournament, it was Wolzak who raised to 600 from the button. O'Dwyer called to see a deuce-ten-six rainbow flop. O'Dwyer check-called a bet of 700 from the Dutchman to see the king of clubs on the turn. O'Dwyer checked again, and Wolzak put in a bet of 2,800. O'Dwyer called, and the jack of clubs completed the board with the third club. O'Dwyer checked for the final time to Wolzak, and he announced a bet of 4,500. O'Dwyer thought about it for a minute before he moved all in. Wolzak went into the tank and called after about two minutes. O'Dwyer opened up five-deuce of clubs for a backdoor flush, and Wolzak had to show pocket aces with the ace of clubs.

O'Dwyer got to collect 74,250 at the cashier for winning the tournament and got to take home his first MCOP trophy. O'Dwyer is a frequent visitor of the Master Classics of Poker, but he had yet to take down a tournament in Holland Casino Amsterdam. Today he finally did so. While he only had to beat two opponents to do so, the plate he received is all the same. O'Dwyer told PokerNews that it was a tough field, despite the tournament having only three entries. He added that he is very happy to finally take down an MCOP tournament so he can add that trophy to his collection.

PokerNews will be back in Holland Casino Amsterdam tomorrow to provide MCOP live updates for the final day of the massively popular 1,600 progressive bounty event.

Patrik Antonius was the first player to exit
Blac Chyna, a well-known supermodel of America was all set for launching a whitening cream. However, the twist is she doesnt use it herself. She has reached to Lagos coupled with a taste Nigerian Jollof Rice. And she found that rice as the best.

At Murtala Mohammad International Airport in Lagos, the prior Stripper attends and he was equipped with optimum security. The mother of two aged 30 including in 2016 Dream with ob Kardashian and in 2012 King with rapper chose to share over her insta story the Nigerian Jollof Rice picture with a title. Nigerian Jollof is a bomb.

This shows as how much she like the Nigerian dish. However, on the other hand, it is possible she has used this as a tactic to win the hearts of Nigerians.

Knowing the fact that she is coming to Nigeria in order to offer a cream that she doesnt use and just paid for product promotion. This has been taken seriously by Nigerians and they are severely responding hindering her entrance to Nigeria. In order to promote the bleaching cream, she is not using herself.

Apart from a supermodel, she is also a famous entrepreneur. With Whitenicious by Dencia, she has been partnered in order to turn out the product.

She launched an online boutique in the year 2013 that she proposed the name `88fin equipped with fresh clothing and products from her line of clothing with the same title.

Furthermore, Chyna, she launched a new self-own brand of eyelashes, the same month. The brand was entitled as LASHED by Blac Chyna.

Then in 2014, since she had her graduation from JLS Professional Make Up Artist School bought a beauty bar located in Encino, Los Angeles. Therein, she offered a makeup course.

What you say over the whitening cream she is promoting. Would you like to purchase a product sold by a person who doesnt prefer to use it herself?
Shenandoah! A beautiful valley and a winding river -- how fortunate we are to live here! And since I love photography, I'm taking plenty of pictures and sharing them here. You'll find other subjects too. If you like historic sites or gardens or animals, you'll find them on this blog. Please visit often and feel free to comment.
Over two dozen people are facing charges in Cass County for participating, viewing or promoting cockfighting.

The 32 arrests, which included one Lincoln man, were made over the weekend after the Nebraska Humane Society was tipped off to a cockfighting ring at a barn just south of Louisville.

Officials said it was one of the biggest they have ever seen.

Property owner, Marvin Vogler said Cass County deputies showed up to his door just after 1 p.m. Saturday with a search warrant.

Cass County officials said deputies entered the barn and that's when dozens of people scattered. Deputies detained as many as they could.

"We located a very large cockfighting ring in the middle of the barn. A large amount of paraphernalia associated with cockfighting, including the razor blade-type spurs that are attached to cocks during the fight," Mark Langan with the Nebraska Humane Society said.

Vogler said a man named Walter, who he sold chickens to for 15 years, had asked if he could use the barn for a Thanksgiving party that day. He said he had no idea what was really going on.

The humane society was able to rescue 186 roosters. Another 11 were found dead at the scene. One bird had to be euthanized.

"There are slashing injuries. There's blood on the birds. It just makes us sick at the Nebraska Humane Society and it should outrage the community that individuals go to these blood sport events, bet money and put these birds through what they do," Langan said.

The 32 arrested individuals face class 3A felony cockfighting charges. They face up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

The property where the cockfight was taking place was also the location of a shooting investigation in 2014.

Those taken into custody are as follows:

Francisco Almazan, age 32, of Lincoln

Gerardo Manzo Reyes, age 43

Ulises Jacinto, age 32

Emilio Belb, age 35

Juan Aguilar, age 46

Mauro Valente, age 27

Roberto Cabrera, age 42

Pablo Suastegue, age 20

Abel Guerrero, age 29

Estela Moreno Barren, age 29

Migual Cruz, age 38

Juan Pena, age 52

Elias Ramirez, age 33

Jose Lopez, age 40

Abel Chavez-Guzman, age 58

Fernando Gonzalez Balquier, age 46

Jesus Guerrero, age 27

Abel Garcia, age 30

Mario Sandoval, age 38

William Vega, age 24

Efrain Hermosillo, age 58

Victor Ramirez, age 57

Antonia Ozuna-Bernal, age 39

Saleena Robinson, age 24

Victor Perez, age 32

Luis Gomez, age 32

Eanie Heidemann, age 67

Juan Esquivel, age 36

Lucio Ventura, age 57

Rosalio Hernandez, age 37

Sergio Padron, age 29

Antonio Garcia, age 38

2 Juveniles were also detained and released to their parents.
Eight games set for this weekend at Dacotah Bank Classic
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CORRALES  It seems as if everyone who has lived in this village, or in the general vicinity, for a span of time has a story about Casa Vieja, the old Corrales house that dates back at least to the mid-1800s.

Maybe they knew the Harrington family that lived in Casa Vieja in the 1940s, or purchased eggs and milk there when it was a grocery store or worked as a waitress at one of the restaurants housed in the venerable building between 1970 and 2011.

But brother, if Casa Viejas walls could talk the tales wed hear then.

The walls would know if its true that the bodies of two monks were once discovered buried within them. The walls could tell us how the portrait of a 17th-century French duke came to be secreted in another of Casa Viejas partitions.

An adobe contractor found the painting in a wall that had water damage, said Gary Socha, who with his wife, Linda, and daughter, Maria Socha, own Casa Vieja and have operated it as an event center since 2016. The dukes portrait was water-logged and mud-covered.

It had three holes in it, Gary said.

Refurbished and reframed by Santa Fe art restorer Linda Nader, the painting of the duke, since identified as Jean Louis de Nogaret de La Valette (1554-1642), now hangs on one of those silent Casa Vieja walls.

Even though the portraits presence at Casa Vieja remains a mystery, it plays a role in the ever-evolving epic of the old house. Casa Vieja is morphing into a brewery and tap room three days a week starting Dec. 20 and one of the beers offered is the Dukes Red Ale.

Beer nerd

Renovated by the Sochas into a warm, elegant and inviting venue, Casa Vieja, 4541 Corrales Road, has entertained everything from birthday parties and weddings to celebrations of life and anniversaries, over the past 2 years. It is no longer a restaurant. The Sochas removed the commercial kitchen. Meals at Casa Vieja events are catered or provided by food trucks.

And if alcohol was offered at events, it had to be provided by those renting the space.

However, Gary, 63, a mechanical engineer who owns the Socha Company, a manufacturers representative for heating and cooling products, is a self-confessed beer nerd. He started brewing beer about six years ago and won a gold medal for his Hefeweizen in a 2015 New Mexico pro-am brewing competition. Deciding to take advantage of Garys brewing talents and the craft beer craze, the Sochas bought a small brewery license and set about preparing to offer tap room hours a couple of days a week.

Good response

Brewing equipment ordered from China was installed in February and Casa Vieja introduced its tap room on the Fourth of July. Since then, the tap room has been opened mostly from 5 to 8 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays when those hours and days did not interfere with scheduled events.

Considering the challenge of our hours, Ive been floored by the attendance, Gary said.

But there were times when a patron showed up on a Thursday, unaware, despite social media notices, that tap room service had been pre-empted by an event. Not a good thing.

To avoid disappointing customers, the Sochas decided that starting Dec. 20, the tap room will be open from 5-8 p.m. every Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Casa Vieja will also continue to function as an event center.

There are a lot of events we can do in conjunction with the tap room, Maria said.

The tap room offers Garys Dukes Red Ale and Harvest Hefe, an American wheat beer with melon hops, plus other beers and wines from New Mexico breweries and wineries. Gary will soon offer his Loma Lager and will make other beers of his own creation available on a seasonal basis or in response to popular demand. The tap room sells 64-ounce growlers for off-site consumption, and chef Jon Young, who grew up next door to Casa Vieja, provides eats through his food truck on tap room days.

Day of the duke

To kick things off, Dec. 20 is Meet the Duke day at Casa Vieja. From 5 to 8 p.m., the public is invited to witness the unveiling of the restored painting of the duke and to partake of Garys Dukes Red Ale.

The oil portrait of the duke, which now hangs in Casa Viejas Sun Room, is believed to have been painted in Spain in the 1600s. Duke Nogaret de La Valette was an influential member of the French nobility and was awarded the titles of Admiral of France and Governor of Normandy, among others. He was involved in politics and plots throughout his life and was eventually exiled after striking a powerful rival in a public altercation.

The presence of his portrait inside a wall of Casa Vieja is part of the buildings mystique  like the story of the two monks, wearing robes, crosses and folded hands on their chests, said to have been found interred in one of the buildings interior walls.

Linda Socha said they were told where the monks remains had been sent, but there is no record of their bones at that place.

Only the walls know the truth.

One truth the Sochas know is that the romance and legends of Casa Vieja give them a special niche in the growing world of craft beer and tap rooms. Thats why their customers will be permitted to enjoy their beer or wine on the patio or in the rooms of the historic place.

Anyone can make good beer, Gary said. We are selling the experience of a 200-year-old adobe building.
Accordionist Guy Klucevseks most critical gig came at a church service.

In September, he joined soprano Renee Fleming on Danny Boy at the funeral for Sen. John McCain at Washingtons National Cathedral.

I was looking directly across from Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, George Bush, Laura Bush, Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton, he said in a telephone interview from New York. Directly to our left was Cindy McCain and her son and to our right was the coffin.

It was incredibly moving and incredibly powerful.

Klucevsek will perform at Chatter on Sunday, Dec. 2, with pianist Luke Gullickson at Las Puertas Event Center.

Klucevsek starting playing the accordion at age 5.

I didnt know any better, he said with a laugh. It was on TV all the time when I was a kid. I pestered my Dad to buy me one. I wore him out after six months.

There were a lot of great accordion players at the time, he continued. It was still the most popular instrument in America. Then Elvis Presley came along and changed everything.

Klucevsek studied the instrument in college, where he majored in composition. He would go on to play with Laurie Anderson, Bang On a Can, Dave Douglas, Bill Frisell, the Kronos Quartet, Natalie Merchant and John Zorn, among others. He worked with the composer John Williams on four film scores. He most recently collaborated with Anderson on a virtual reality piece.

His Albuquerque date will feature a smorgasbord of his own compositions drawing from tango, boogie and rag traditions, as well as classical themes in Bar Talk (Bartok).

Im something of a punster, he acknowledged.

A selection of solos and duets make up the program. The concert marks the first time he has performed here.

Ive been to Albuquerque many times before, he said. I have friends there. Its my favorite landscape in the U.S.
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The image resembles a gymnast leaping into the void, long hair streaming behind her.

With apologies to Tom Petty, David Lynchs Free Falling is actually an inverted shot of a woman in a yoga pose, the crisp contrast of black and white framing her body.

Lynchs portrait is one of more than 250 featured in the Third Annual Shades of Gray Fine Art Photography Show opening at EXPO New Mexico next weekend.

The juried show lured more than 400 image entries from 130 New Mexico photographers.

Lynch grew interested in photography after vacationing in Alaska in 2006. He spotted and photographed a pod of orcas. But the pictures didnt turn out the way he had expected.

So he studied under a Beverly Hills photographer who had shot the weddings of Steven Spielberg and Christina Applegate.

It changed everything, he said, the way I looked at photography, the way I looked at emotion, they way I looked at everything.

He opened his own studio in 2007, which lasted until about 2014. He blamed its demise on the accessibility of digital photography and social media. Today he supplements his photography as a real estate agent.

He shot Free Falling in his studio with very deliberate lighting to produce the high contrast.

To me it was very intriguing, he said. Shes actually moving backwards and its inverted. You get that juxtaposition of her falling into whatever you want to imagine.
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Gene Kloss created contrasting compositions of light shards and dark shadows coalescing into mythical New Mexico landscapes.

Santa Fes LewAllen Modern will showcase 45 prints by the late Taos artist beginning on Friday, Dec. 7. The exhibition will hang through Jan. 5, 2019.

Alice Geneva Glasier (Kloss was her married name) was born in Oakland, Calif., and educated at the University of California at Berkeley. She married poet-composer Phillips Kloss in 1925.

Gene Kloss arrived in Taos in 1925 while on a honeymoon camping trip, bringing little with her but the 60-pound etching press she hauled across northern New Mexico. The couple camped in Taos Canyon for two weeks, the Sturges press secured with a bag of concrete to a rock.

After her marriage, Kloss shortened her middle name to Gene.

She came to Taos in the 20s; she was really the only woman, Alex Gill of LewAllen Modern said.

The already well-established Taos artists included Ernest Blumenschein, Joseph Henry Sharp, Bert Phillips, E.I. Couse and Herbert Buck Dunton.

They had more than I shared with them because I was younger and a woman, Kloss said in an interview with Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. They all had their own studios and were here summers. They all went away in winter and exhibited somewhere, New York, Chicago. Youd come in the spring and everybody would be greeting the artists when theyd come back.

Kloss captured pueblo and Penitente ceremonies, adobe churches and homes and the endless space of New Mexicos landscapes.

Kloss art earned widespread recognition in the 1930s, during which the couple rented an old adobe below the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in Taos. She produced a series of prints for the Works Progress Administration, which were reproduced and distributed to public schools across the state.

Kloss often said, In this country, everything lifts  the trees, the mountains, the sky.

She was one of the great printmakers in New Mexico history, Gill said. Theres Gus (Gustave) Baumann and Gene Kloss.

The prints show a Spanish woman teaching a young girl how to card wool, a Comanche dance at San Ildefonso Pueblo, a feather dancer, summer fiestas and night masses of the Penitentes, as well as mountains, cliffs and peaks.

Kloss attended Native American ceremonies and dances, went home and committed her memories to paper. Shed return the next day to capture backgrounds and context.

She settled here permanently in the 1940s.

Kloss painted in acid on copper plates, an exacting and difficult technique. The prints reveal a power and simplicity making sensitive use of bold, black areas. She animated her scenes to dramatically focus on the divide between the slightness of figures and the magnitude of the Southwest.

She created scenery without sentiment.

She was really interested in the way this place felt, like it had something that wasnt being affected by modern society yet, Gill said.

ArtNews magazine called Kloss one of our most sensitive and sympathetic interpreters of the Southwest.

Kloss was the first woman inducted into the National Academy of Design as a printmaker. Her work hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Institution, the Carnegie Institution, the San Francisco Museum of Art, the Library of Congress and the National Academy of Design.
In 2015, 55-year-old British explorer Henry Worsley set out to do something no person had ever accomplished  to trek alone across Antarctica  the coldest, windiest, highest, driest continent.

After 71 days enduring whiteouts, ice slopes, below freezing temperatures and unseen crevasses, Worsley completed about 800 of the 900-nautical-mile journey. Exhaustion forced him to end his journey. He called in a rescue plane on his satellite phone. He didnt have the energy to brush his teeth.

Worsley was flown out. The next day he was on another flight to a hospital in Punta Arenas, Chile, where he was rushed into surgery. He was suffering from bacterial peritonitis, an infection of the abdomens lining that, if it spread to the bloodstream, could cause septic shock.

Days later Worsley died.

Worsleys life and his obsession with Antarctica are the subjects of David Granns keepsake of a book The White Darkness. Obsession and endurance are wrapped around other qualities Grann brings out about Worsley, an admired military commander-cum-polar explorer. Qualities of honor, of will, of sacrifice, of leadership and of love, a mans love for his family.

Worsleys shortened solo trek was the third of his three Antarctic journeys.

His first and third expeditions honored the memory of the British polar explorer Ernest Shackleton.

Shackleton had failed to achieve his goals to be the first person to reach the South Pole or to be the first person to cross Antarctica.

But in those attempts he rescued his men from sure death, earning an international reputation as an explorer and a leader.

Shackleton was Worsleys hero. And Worsley happened to be related to one of Shackletons men. In 2008 Worsley and two other descendants of Shackletons men made it to the South Pole to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Shackletons unsuccessful polar attempt.

Weve made it! Worsley yelled to his mates after verifying the coordinates of the pole, Grann wrote. Reading Worsleys journal, Grann noted that all they could see was barren ice  their grail was no more than a geographical data point.

Worsleys second Antarctic trek was in 2012. He launched an expedition with a partner, Louis Rudd, to mark the centennial of the South Pole race that pitted Roald Amundsen against Robert Scott.

(Rudd and Colin OBrady are attempting separate solo crossings of Antarctica, according to a recent New York Times report.)

Grann said hed always been interested in polar explorers, those who ventured into the most brutal environment in the world. Im someone who hates the cold. Id rather be in the living room by a fire.

An earlier Grann book, The Lost City of Z, looked into the disappearance of Percy Fawcett, who in 1925 led an expedition to locate a lost, ancient civilization in the Amazon jungle.

Grann found parallels between Fawcett and Worsley. Certainly the questing aspect, this wanderlust. The story of setting out into unfamiliar realms. Both were worldly, both were British and both very artistic. Both were in the military, Grann said in a phone interview.

But Worsley was very patient and modeled his leadership on Shackleton.  If I were holed up in an expedition, Id rather be with Worsley. He had compassion and patience. Fawcett was contemptuous of anyone who slowed him down.  He might leave you behind.

Grann, a staff writer at The New Yorker, also wrote Killers of the Flower Moon  The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, a National Book Award finalist.
LAS VEGAS  A geology professor from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said he recently identified fossilized tracks from a reptile along a popular trail in Grand Canyon National Park, a newspaper reported.

Professor Steve Rowland theorized that the tracks belong to a primitive reptile the size of a baby alligator and date back about 315 million years, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported Thursday.

The 28 footprints run diagonally across a boulder on the edge of the Grand Canyons Bright Angel Trail.

Rowland shared his findings at the Society of Vertebrate Paleontologys annual meeting last month in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He hopes to submit a scientific paper in January.

He first saw the prints last year during a family vacation and said they turned out to be quite extraordinary. He said he heard about them from another geologist who spotted them during a 2016 hike.

Scientists will likely never know exactly what kind of animal left the tracks, Rowland said, adding that he envisions a lizard-like creature about 2 feet (0.6 meter) in length, similar to a Galapagos iguana.

He said hes talked with park officials about what to do with the boulder with the prints and would like to see it moved from the canyon and added to a museum.

More than likely thats not going to happen, park spokeswoman Kari Cobb said.

She said removing the rock and displaying it elsewhere doesnt align with the National Park Services mission to preserve resources in their natural state.

But we may put up an interpretative sign telling people what theyre looking at, Cobb said.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.  A Colorado sheriffs deputy who was badly wounded in a deadly shootout last February has returned to work, although his injuries still limit him to desk work.

El Paso County sheriffs Deputy Scott Stone has been conducting background checks since returning to the office on Nov. 8, the Colorado Springs Gazette reported Friday.

Stone was shot in the abdomen on Feb. 5 as he and other officers tried to arrest a suspected car thief in Colorado Springs. Deputy Micah Flick was killed, along with the suspect, Manuel Zetina.

Two other officers and a passer-by were injured. The passer-by, Thomas Villanueva, was partially paralyzed.

Stone said the bullet that struck him is still inside his body and complications have limited his range of motion and caused other problems. He says he still hopes to return to patrol but that could take a year or longer.

Knowing Im not on patrol is tough, but it gets me through because I know I still have a job; Im still a sworn peace officer, Stone said, crediting Sheriff Bill Elder for making him feel like part of the team again. I was willing to do whatever for that.

Stone said he still struggles with the emotional and mental trauma from the shooting and from the death of Flick, who was a friend.

I still think about and relive a lot of what happened that day, Stone said. Its still tough, still fresh.

But Stone can still joke about being allowed to wear jeans to work on casual days and the time he had to explain to Transportation Safety Administration officers at an airport why he was setting off a metal detector.

They rubbed wipes all over me to make sure I had no bomb material on me, and Im telling them, Its just a bullet,' Stone recalled with a laugh.

I was like, No, you cant see it, and no, its not in a place where you can feel it.'

Despite the injury and the memories, Stone said he and his family have reasons to celebrate. His wife learned she was pregnant two weeks after Stone was shot, and she recently gave birth to a daughter.

___

Information from: The Gazette, http://www.gazette.com
John Collins, a retired Army colonel and veteran of three wars who founded and led a rollicking national security discussion group that helped inform some of the Pentagons most influential thinkers, died Nov. 22 at his home in Alexandria, Virginia. He was 97.

There was no specific cause of death, said Sean Collins, his son.

Collins enlisted in the Army in 1942 and fought in World War II, the Korea War and in Vietnam, where he served as the senior planner to Gen. William Westmoreland, the commander of U.S. forces. But he was best known in Washington for his achievements after he retired from the Army in 1972.

After he left the Army, Collins worked as a senior specialist in national defense for the Congressional Research Service, where he prepared reports on the U.S. military and national security strategy for members of Congress. There he coined the Five SOF Truths, which today remain the guiding principles for the training and employment of Special Operations Forces, said retired Army Col. David Maxwell.

Among Collins SOF truths was the maxim that humans are more important than [military] hardware. He warned that Special Operations Forces cannot be mass producedand emphasized that Special Operations Forces could not be recruited and trained quickly in response to an emerging crisis.

But Collins greatest contribution to U.S. national security was an online discussion group, called the Warlord Loop, which he founded in 1998 at age 77 and oversaw until illness forced him to cede daily management of it when he was 92. Collins came up with the idea for the group in the late 1970s when he was still at the Congressional Research Service but received repeated rejections from his bosses for more than 20 years.

His vision was a discussion group in which the national security thinkers could debate ideas without being bound by the typical bureaucratic restrictions, such as seniority, budgets and the built-in biases of the various military services. In 1998, the emergence of the internet allowed Collins to start the group on his own without any help from senior national security officials.

The Warlord Loops influence was greatest in the years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, when it became a place where officials from the Pentagon and State Department and troops serving on the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan could debate the best approaches to battling insurgencies.

Collins often chose the topics that were discussed on the Warlord Loop, which eventually grew to almost 500 members. He also enforced rules of civility, declaring himself the groups judge, juror and executioner. Unlike the Pentagon, which relied on a strict chain of command, the Warlord Loop gave equal weight to all ideas regardless of the source. Junior officers and enlisted personnel, who had battled through long deployments at distant outposts, could share their experiences and ideas directly with senior officials working in the Pentagon.

The eclectic online group also included historians, journalists and anthropologists.

He had a deep curiosity and respected peoples ideas regardless of age, rank or experience, said Maxwell, a retired Special Operations colonel.

John Nagl, one of the principal authors of the Armys counterinsurgency doctrine, joined the Warlord Loop shortly after returning from a difficult deployment to Iraqs Anbar province in 2004. He used the online forum as a place to gather and test ideas as he was helping to write the Armys new doctrine in 2006 and 2007.

The Warlord Loop influenced U.S. defense policy in ways that will never fully be understood, Nagl said in an interview with The Washington Post. [Collins] made it OK to be a military intellectual in a military that sometimes sidelined thinkers in favor of fighters.

John Martin Collins was born in Kansas City, Missouri. on May 14, 1921. He dropped out of high school two times before enlisting in the Army as a private in 1942 and shipping out to Europe, where he served as an airfield controller.

Back in the United States Collins graduated in 1949 from what is now the University of Missouri at Kansas City and in 1951 earned a masters degree in geography from Clark University, in Worcester, Massachusetts. He was an intelligence analyst in Korea in the final days of that war and went on to command a secret 800-man signal battalion that monitored Soviet nuclear detonations from Thule, Greenland.

But Collins real passion was military strategy. He headed Westmorelands campaign planning group in Vietnam from 1967 to 1968 as the U.S. military, built for big conventional wars like World War II, struggled to fight an insurgency in which the enemy did not wear uniforms and hid among the people.

After Vietnam, Collins served as the director of military strategy studies at the National War College at Fort McNair in Washington.

My father always said that it wasnt until he was in his 50s when he decided what he wanted to do, said Sean Collins. That was when he said he hit high gear.

Collins influence was evident in the many tributes that poured into the Warlord Loop on Friday morning from current and former military officers, some of whom were 50 to 60 years his junior.

Survivors include his wife of 68 years, Gloria Swift Demers Collins of Alexandria; a son, Sean Collins of Woodbridge, Virginia; and two grandchildren.

Collins home in Alexandria was full of knives, swords and books on military strategy that he collected on travels across the world. On his coffee table he kept a tiger skull that he had brought home from Vietnam.

In person and online, his manner was often courtly and self-deprecating.

Before he died, Collins wrote a final posthumous message that was posted on the Warlord Loop Friday morning. In it, he attributed much of his success in the military, his career and his personal life to dumb luck and his wife.

I would rapidly return to nowhere without her, he wrote in his final message.

Collins many acolytes had a slightly different take on his achievements, especially the wide-ranging influence of the Warlord Loop. It was he who made it so valuable, Nagl said. And it was he who made it possible.
BRUSSELS  The European Union removed the last major obstacle to sealing an agreement on Brexit after Spain said it had reached a deal Saturday with Britain over Gibraltar on the eve of a summit where EU leaders will sign off on the divorce papers.

British Prime Minister Theresa May, who held preparatory talks with EU leaders Saturday evening, will then have the momentous task of selling the terms of the deal to a recalcitrant British Parliament and a nation still fundamentally split over whether the U.K. should leave the EU on March 29 and under what conditions.

May vowed to campaign with my heart and soul to win Parliaments backing for the deal.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who had threatened to oppose the deal, announced Saturday that Madrid would support the divorce agreement after the U.K. and the EU underscored Spains say in the future of the disputed British territory of Gibraltar, which lies at the southern tip of the Mediterranean nation.

Spain wants the future of the tiny territory, which was ceded to Britain in 1713 but is still claimed by Spain, to be a bilateral issue between Madrid and London, not between Britain and the EU.

In a letter obtained by The Associated Press, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and European Council President Donald Tusk assured Sanchez that Spains prior agreement would be needed on matters concerning Gibraltar.

Spain claimed a major diplomatic victory.

Europe and the United Kingdom have accepted the conditions imposed by Spain, Sanchez said. Therefore, as a consequence of this, Spain will lift its veto and tomorrow will vote in favor of Brexit.

But Britain said the statement merely clarified the existing state of affairs. May said Britain had conceded nothing on the sovereignty of Gibraltar.

I will always stand by Gibraltar, May said. The U.K. position on the sovereignty of Gibraltar has not changed and will not change.

The move should allow EU leaders speedily to sign off on the Brexit agreement at a special summit Sunday morning.

May hopes to leave EU headquarters on Sunday with a legally binding agreement on the withdrawal terms for Britains departure from the EU on March 29, as well as an ambitious but vague political declaration on future relations between the two sides.

Winning warm greetings from her 27 fellow leaders on Sunday will likely be easier for May than getting friendly treatment from her colleagues in government and Parliament once she returns. The British leader is under intense pressure from pro-Brexit and pro-EU British lawmakers, with large numbers on both sides of the debate opposing the divorce deal and threatening to vote it down when it comes to Parliament next month.

Brexiteers think it will leave the U.K. tied too closely to EU rules, while pro-Europeans say it will erect new barriers between Britain and the bloc  its neighbor and biggest trading partner.

The leader of Northern Irelands Democratic Unionist Party, on which May relies to get her government majority, on Saturday reinforced her partys rejection of the Brexit deal. The DUP opposes plans for keeping the border between Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland open after Brexit, saying it weakens the ties binding the U.K. by creating separate trade rules for Northern Ireland.

Arlene Foster said in Belfast that the agreement leaves Northern Ireland open to the perils of increased divergence away from the rest of the United Kingdom.

The DUP has said it may drop its backing of the government because of the Brexit plan.

May insists her deal delivers the on the things that matter most to pro-Brexit voters  control of budgets, immigration policy and laws  while retaining close ties to the U.K.s European neighbors.

She plans to spend the next couple of weeks selling it to politicians and the British public before Parliaments vote in December.

In a letter to the nation before Sundays summit, May said she would be campaigning with my heart and soul to win that vote and to deliver this Brexit deal, for the good of our United Kingdom and all of our people.

She said Britains departure from the EU must mark the point when we put aside the labels of Leave and Remain for good and we come together again as one people.

To do that we need to get on with Brexit now by getting behind this deal.

___

Joseph Wilson reported from Barcelona, Spain. Gregory Katz in London contributed to this report.

___

See the APs Brexit coverage at: https://www.apnews.com/Brexit
The bar is rising for whats considered a happy chicken, sparking the hottest trend in the market: the pasture-raised egg.

Pastured eggs come from hens that spend most of their time outdoors, dining on bugs and taking dust baths while also indulging in their favorite activities, like scratching and perching. Thats a step up from cage-free, a label that consumers are finding is slightly less idyllic than they may imagine.

It wasnt that long ago that consumer demands for better animal treatment sparked the rise of the cage-free egg. Hens moved from the confines of 67-square inches (170-square centimeters) to the wilds of the barn, with space to walk and stretch their wings  but rarely, if ever, outside. The pasture movement goes further, sending animals outdoors for ample sunshine and space to spread out. Compared with cage free, pasture is tantamount to bird paradise.

These birds are jammed day in and day out in their own manure, and humans wont go inside because it hurts their eyes  thats cage-free eggs, said Matt OHayer, chief executive officer of Austin, Texas-based Vital Farms, a leading U.S. pastured-egg seller. Give me the mosh pit over the crowded elevator, but its still a mosh pit.

Many consumers seemingly agree. Sales of pastured eggs, which didnt exist as a marketing tool a decade ago, jumped 32 percent this year through Oct. 8, according to Vital Farms, which cited data from researcher IRI. Free-range eggs, similar to pastured eggs except the chickens have less space, increased 8.5 percent. Cage-free eggs were up 3.9 percent, and the standard product from caged birds rose 0.3 percent.

At the same, premiums are coming down. Pasture-raised eggs used to fetch a whopping $12 a dozen at supermarkets. Greater competition among farms and lower costs drove prices down to below $5 recently in some stores.

Some of the biggest shifts in the protein industry in the past decade have come from increased consumer demands over animal welfare and sustainability. Eggs are a microcosm of the trend.

As giants like McDonalds Corp. and Walmart Inc. pledged to upgrade, the cage-free hen population has exploded to 60 million in the U.S., double what it was in 2016. Cal-Maine Foods Inc., the biggest U.S. egg producer, said in June it had increased its cage-free capacity. Voters in California passed a ballot initiative this month ensuring all eggs in the state are cage-free.

Cage-free is going to be a commodity egg, said John Brunnquell, president of Egg Innovations, the biggest pasture-raised and free-range producer with 1.2 million chickens. Increasingly efficient cage-free farms are driving down costs, and soon those eggs will dominate the landscape, said Brunnquell, who supplies Whole Foods Market Inc.s 365 private-label brand.

As that change takes place, demands for better welfare are likely to keep increasing  thats where the pastured egg comes in.

To be sure, even at $5 a carton, pastured eggs still fetch a hefty premium that many consumers arent willing to pay. Standard grade A large eggs averaged $1.78 a dozen in the 10 months ended Oct. 31, government data show. Pastured and free-range eggs are also still a small sliver of total production. Out of 330 million hens in the U.S. egg industry, fewer than 10 million go outside, Brunnquell estimates.

Most giant retailers already sell free-range or pastured eggs, and offerings are increasing, producers say.

There are also incentives for farmers to make the switch. Producers can get higher, more-sustainable incomes and longer contracts by offering pastured eggs, industry executives said. Vital Farms says it has a long waiting list of farmers that want to supply the brand.

Dan Arnsperger, president of Rogers, Arkansas-based free-range producer Happy Egg Co., said the company has 33 small farms in the U.S. and may add 15 to 20 next year. He estimates that 30 percent of shoppers are willing to pay the premium for free-range eggs because of animal-welfare concerns.

In the past, eggs suffered as a commodity where brands didnt matter, said Billy Roberts, a senior food and drink analyst at researcher Mintel. But in recent years, with more premium offerings, theres a market in consumers mind for egg options.
CHICAGO  The sickening photo of dozens of Wisconsin high school boys apparently giving a Nazi salute sparked so much media outrage this month that even Gov. Scott Walker shook his head and said, Theyre just a bunch of idiots.

The well-dressed boys were photographed outside a county courthouse last spring at prom time, and about two-thirds of them had their right arms raised in what looks  to anyone with eyes in their head  to be a Sieg Heil salute. One student also appears to be making the upside-down OK hand signal that white supremacists use to mean white power.

To be fair, the parent who took the photo  who also owns a photography business  said that he had simply asked the boys to wave goodbye for the camera, and that the final result had been misinterpreted. However, several news outlets also reported that some of the boys meant it, possibly as a joke.

Har. Dee. Har. Har.

One student at the school, Jordan Blue, told media outlets that some of his classmates were goofing around. He told CNN that the episode was a scary moment, and it was very shocking and upsetting.

But whats even more upsetting is that some of Blues fellow students at Baraboo High School felt otherwise.

Nate Mathis-Vargas, a white father of two girls who attend the high school, spoke to the podcast Its Been a Minute with Sam Sanders and said that he was appalled by the picture. He also said that he was concerned for his daughters  not only because they go to school with people who either hold white-supremacist beliefs or think its a joking matter, but also because many students didnt even understand the problem.

He discussed the incident with his daughters and found that they werent aware of a lot about the Nazi army itself, so they didnt understand what that meant, which was more shocking to me than the picture itself, Mathis-Vargas said. Its like: How did they not teach that? How do they not know that?

Sadly, those kids are not alone in their ignorance.

A study released last summer by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, which pursues restitution for victims of Nazi persecution and their heirs, delivered the alarming news that 11 percent of all Americans and 22 percent of millennials hadnt heard of the Holocaust or werent sure what it was.

The study also found that 31 percent of all Americans and 41 percent of millennials believe that 2 million or fewer Jews were killed in the Holocaust. The number is actually around 6 million.

Forty-one percent of all Americans and 66 percent of millennials cannot say what Auschwitz was  it was a Nazi concentration and extermination camp  and 52 percent of Americans wrongly think Hitler came to power through force.

As amazing as it may sound, only 10 states  New York, New Jersey, California, Florida, Rhode Island, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Connecticut and Kentucky  have legislative requirements about the teaching of genocide and the Holocaust in their public schools, according to the New York-based Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect.

Its not perfect  not all of those states have a commission or task force to keep genocide education comprehensive, rigorous or up to date. Still, its something, and another 18 states have told the center they are committed to passing or strengthening their legislation.

In the absence of such education, Mathis-Vargas daughters were angry about the backlash over the photo, because they didnt understand what was wrong with what the boys had done. All they saw, according to Mathis-Vargas, was their school being attacked and their friends demonized and even threatened. It opened my eyes about what I need to do as a parent on talking to my kids about these things, the father said. He added that he hoped the school would start offering more instruction to prevent these kinds of misunderstandings in the future.

Hopefully, the future wont be too late. Already, hate crimes in America have spiked by 17 percent over 2017, with a corresponding 37 percent increase in anti-Semitic attacks, according to FBI statistics.

Ignorance fans hatred. On Election Day, a Holocaust denier and white supremacist won 56,000 votes in the western suburbs of Chicago. Thankfully, he lost. But his candidacy is proof that America needs some serious schooling before it relives historys worst mistakes.

E-mail estherjcepeda@washpost.com; Twitter: @estherjcepeda. (c) 2018, Washington Post Writers Group.
The American-Saudi strategic relationship, which began in the 1940s, has reached a critical juncture and should be reset. The two central premises that underpinned the relationship included Saudi Arabia selling its oil to the United States in large quantities at reasonable prices. In return, the United States would protect the survival of the kingdom under the rule of the Al Saud family.

In addition, the United States looked to Saudi Arabia over the years to help maintain regional stability in the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf. Washington also expected Saudi Arabia to push for favorable production and pricing policies through the OPEC cartel.

This relationship has evolved over time as regional threats and challenges became more ominous and more complex. Saudi leadership succession and an intermittent power struggle among different factions of the Al Saud ruling family, which is currently happening regarding Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MbS), has thrust the United States into the uncomfortable position of taking sides among the competing factions.

As MbS hold on power has become more precarious because of the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, it is time to take another look at this special relationship. Such a review would raise several questions. If the United States no longer relies significantly on Saudi oil, should Washington continue to cling to the old oil-for-security formula? As the international community demands that Khashoggis Saudi murderers be brought to justice, can the United States afford to ignore being linked to MbS culpability in this premeditated crime?

Regionally, should Washington maintain this relationship in the midst of MbSs illegal siege on Qatar and his disastrous Saudi war in Yemen? How long can the United States afford to tell the world that values of justice, human rights, and freedom of dissent no longer matter and that bloody autocrats, like MbS, are free to act without accountability? Should the personal relationship between MbS and Jared Kushner be the default substitute for Americas strategic relations with the region?

American presidents have accepted that Saudi kings ascend to the throne through the system of ijma or consensus and baya or allegiance within the Saudi ruling family. Although undemocratic by Western standards, this tribal system has maintained relative stability in the kingdom. American policymakers have tolerated the Saudi governing principle, despite its absolute rule, as long as it maintained family harmony within Al Saud and domestic stability.

MbS has upended this traditional practice by usurping power from his senior and more experienced relatives within the family with no regard for the tribal-religious governing tradition of the kingdom. He has jettisoned family rule in favor of a strongman autocracy leading to mistrust and uncertainty.

His power grab and repression have put American-Saudi relations at risk. MbS feels empowered by his close relationship to the Trump White House. Is Washington becoming complicit in the rise of an MbS-driven absolutism in Riyadh? Will America bring about the collapse of Saudi Arabia in order to save MbS?

Saudi Arabia might be too big to fail but certainly not MbS. If the Trump administration fails to act, what role should Congress play in curbing MbS insatiable thirst for power, bellicosity toward Qatar and his bloody war in Yemen?

The Trump administrations announcement that sanctions will be imposed on 17 Saudis involved in Khashoggis murder is no more than a slap on the wrist of the crown prince. It is inconceivable that MbS wasnt aware of the operation to murder Khashoggi, as the recently leaked CIA report asserts. He should be held accountable. Sanctions dont cut it.

MbS has become a liability for U.S.-Saudi relations, which are more critical than any one leader, especially one like MbS who has usurped power. If the Saudi royal family wants to maintain the relationship with the United States, King Salman should work with the Al Saud family council to devise a new succession plan that would remove MbS from power. American-Saudi relations should not be derailed by a power-hungry young prince who seems to be taking advantage of an ailing king and an amenable president.

Emile Nakhleh is a retired senior intelligence service officer and was awarded the Directors Medal while at the CIA. A longer version of this article was originally published on LobeLog.
Give today  so you wont be taken tomorrow.

At the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government, we work every day to make sure you, the public, is not taken advantage of by officials working behind closed doors.

As the leading expert on the states open meetings and records laws, the nonpartisan NMFOG works to improve and expand public access to information. We do this by educating the public about the importance of transparency and the injurious consequences of secrecy in government. We advocate to protect and strengthen New Mexico laws and policies that guarantee the publics right to know. We act as watchdogs over the states sunshine laws, often weighing in on open-government matters before the courts.

And every year, we answer more than 500 phone calls and emails on our free hot line, helping private citizens, government officials, journalists and members of the business community keep government accountable.

This Nov. 27, the National Day for Giving, is an opportunity for New Mexicans to participate in a worldwide day with one purpose  celebrating generosity by giving back. We ask that you think of FOG on this important day. When you make a donation to NMFOG, even a small one, you show your support for open and transparent government  a basic tenet of democracy.

Why is this so crucial? Take a look at how our efforts have kept New Mexicans from being taken just over the past 12 months.

FOG has been involved in half a dozen legal cases to protect the publics right to know  from advocating that public records remain public even when in the hands of private contractors, to holding officials accountable when they only partially respond to Inspection of Public Records Act requests, to urging officials to release candidates names of those seeking key roles at our universities, as required by law.

This past summer, NMFOG worked with the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission to rescind a new policy that delayed the posting of hearings transcripts  forcing individuals to often pay hundreds of dollars to a private firm for those records.

FOG hosted a gubernatorial forum in February with the goal of getting candidates and their views about transparency on the record.

NMFOG is a respected voice in the Legislature and the courts. A recent Court of Appeals opinion on an important public records issue cited NMFOGs friend-of-court brief.

We hosted another successful William S. Dixon Freedom Awards luncheon that honored several New Mexicans with the William S. Dixon First Amendment Freedom Award for their actions advancing the cause of transparency and First Amendment freedoms. Our 2018 honorees included Jorja Armijo-Brasher, an advocate for senior citizens; the Freedman Boyd Hollander Goldberg Urias & Ward PA law firm; State Sen. Jim White; and KOAT-TVs Nancy Laflin.

Earlier this month, we held our sixth annual Continuing Legal Education seminar to provide attorneys, government officials and the public with updated tools to access open meetings and public records.

FOG relies on a panel of lawyers who donate their time for legal cases and who help with the hotline. But other litigation costs can add up quickly.

To continue these activities and do more, we need your support. On Giving Tuesday we have made it easy for you to contribute. Go the https://nmfog.org and tap on the DONATE button. NMFOG is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization.

We are proud of our work, but NMFOG cant do it alone. Transparent, accountable government is a core value in democracy, which cant succeed without an informed citizenry. Together, you and FOG play a critical role in making that happen.

So please, this Giving Tuesday heed our message to give today  so none of us gets taken tomorrow.
Fasten your seatbelts, Albuquerque. It looks like were headed for a legal bus wreck down at the courthouse.

The rocky relationship between the administration of Mayor Tim Keller and Chinese-owned bus manufacturer BYD (Build Your Dreams), which had struck a deal with Kellers predecessor to provide the city with 20, 60-foot-long electric buses for the controversial Albuquerque Rapid Transit project, veered off the highway and into the ditch this month.

From the perspective of an aerial traffic cam, the two sides narratives are on vastly different paths as both sides threaten legal action. For its part, the city says it still does not have the full fleet BYD promised to have here in late 2017, the buses that are here dont perform as advertised, and many are riddled with safety hazards. Meanwhile, BYD says the buses are fine and the Keller administrations criticism is politically motivated grandstanding that hurts Albuquerque residents and poses a threat to the companys business reputation.

Since taking office, Kellers team has pointed out various problems with the buses. Some problems were to be expected. After all, its a first-of-its-kind product in the U.S.  namely a 60-foot, articulated, five-door electric bus. BYD has vacillated between being defensive and pledging to fix any issues, and the city did have inspectors on-site in California where the buses are assembled  although their work is highly suspect.

Keller upped the ante considerably this month when he announced the city would pull the plug on the BYD contract and search for clean diesel or natural gas alternative buses. He hammered the BYD buses, citing problems with the brakes, doors that open when they arent supposed to, handicap wheelchair locks that release when the driver turns on a cooling fan, two-way radios that go dead, and malfunctioning ramp sensors that could lead to crushed feet on the passenger platforms designed specifically for this bus.

Oh, and he said there was a possibility the battery bank inside the bus could overheat and catch fire. All this on top of operational problems the city says are led by batteries that wont hold anywhere near the charge needed for a bus to go the promised 270 miles. Thats a bigger problem than it sounds, because it means the city doesnt have enough buses to operate on the ART route.

Keller said in a meeting with Journal editors and reporters that BYD has missed every benchmark under the contract and added I just dont trust them anymore. I think they are in way over their head in America. I dont think they have a stable leadership team, (and) were not going to be their test guinea pig for R&D on electric batteries.

The city then fired off a legal shot, telling BYD in a letter that in addition to rejecting the buses it would seek damages, costs, attorney fees and other relief.

It would be an understatement to say the mayors pronouncement didnt sit well with BYD president Stella Li.

Kellers media statements slander and maliciously harm the reputation and good name of BYD, the company said. These statements show the city is not acting in good faith under the contract and further indicate a potential political agenda to discredit and throttle a public works project that the mayor has long criticized as part of his campaign platform.

Its true some of the Keller administrations early criticisms of BYDs products seemed to quickly run out of gas. BYD said the charging station instructions that were reportedly all in Mandarin simply required a user to change the language. Leaking axles had just been overfilled. And mirrors that struck station canopies could be adjusted to clear them.

But the newer issues appear far more serious.

Li promised to hire independent experts to prove the buses work and are safe. The company said it is the worlds largest electric vehicle manufacturer with 36,000 buses in service and City Halls actions have damaged BYDs reputation. Indeed, any potential government customer looking for buses would surely pause given Albuquerques general description of BYDs product as something akin to a rolling death trap  to the extent it will roll at all.

BYD shows no sign of backing down or going away, so at this point Albuquerque is engaged in a high stakes game of chicken with 60-foot electric buses on a collision course for the courthouse. Meanwhile, the city is stuck with $69 million in construction up and down Central Avenue built specifically for a 60-foot, five-door bus. Finding an alternative is expected to take at least a year and could mean the loss of $6 million in federal funds earmarked for the electric buses.

Lets be clear. Whether Keller ever liked this project is irrelevant. What is relevant is he has an absolute duty not to knowingly put an unsafe product on the streets or to pay for buses that dont work as advertised. So IF his team is correct in its assessment of BYDs product, hes done the right thing.

This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.
Things started off so well.

In the fall of 1995, we watched it rise from the southeast embankment off Interstate 25 and Jefferson, a gleaming restaurant of whitewashed brick and wooden deck and a large pond from which fountains sprinkled and the reflection of red neon lights from its marquee sparkled in the water like rubies.

It all looked so grand, so Gulf Coast, so seafood, a welcome and rare sight in this landlocked city of ours. Food gurus talk about how the success of a restaurant depends on location, location, location. Landrys Seafood House had that, or nearly so, situated on the opposite side of the freeway from what is now restaurant chain row.

Thats how it began lo those 23 years ago. Today, at the site of such grandeur is an abandoned, smelly wreck awaiting demolition.

It has been deteriorating like that since the last restaurant to occupy the site shut its doors in July 2017.

Perched as it is above I-25, the place has become one of the most prominent eyesores in the city.

But lets travel back in time to the way it was.

Lets remember how Landrys Seafood House drew huge crowds on its opening day Jan. 29, 1996, without any advertising. We were just so giddy to try out this famous chains fare of fish and bayou fantasy.

Thats the way we like to do it, company president Tilman Fertitta told the Journal then about the brisk business at the 46th opening in his ever-expanding chain of restaurants. They just turned on the lights.

A Journal article described the interior of the 5001 Jefferson NE location as having big, open rooms and vintage signs designed to recreate the airy, energetic atmosphere of 1940s Gulf seafood houses.

Back then, Tillman had promised to open another Landrys restaurant if the Jefferson location did well. A Joes Crab Shack was also on its way, he vowed.

Classified ads in the Journal offered the opportunity of a lifetime to employees looking to join its high volume seafood restaurant chain with unique waterfront locations  ranked No. 5 in Forbes Best 200 Small Companies in America and No. 1 in Nations Restaurant News Hot Concepts of the Nineties.

What could possibly go wrong?

For one thing, Landrys Seafood House faced competition with the arrival in 2001 of Pappadeaux Seafood Kitchen, an even grander version of a Gulf seafood house right across the freeway, minus the pond.

And for another, the food was, well, not so grand. In 2002, the Journal restaurant critic found the fish-camp-cum-theater-lobby atmosphere of Landrys Seafood House charming but the cuisine charmless, describing the fish as excruciatingly salty, the sauces elephantine, the crab dangerous because of the shards of shells buried within the meat like land mines.

And still we kept eating. Maybe we didnt mind elephantine sauces, or maybe we just liked looking out at that pond and imaging we were having big fun on the bayou rather than off the interstate.

The Seafood House kept dishing out its Pontchartrain Tilapia and its Snapper Amore until 2013, when it was replaced by the beefier Claim Jumper Restaurant and Saloon, also a part of the Fertitta chain.

And, then it happened. Claim Jumper employees said they showed up for work as usual July 24, 2017, and were told their services were no longer required.

Just like that, Fertitta and the huge Landrys chain took its frying pans and left New Mexico.

We never got that additional restaurant or that Joes Crab Shack, which still disappoints.

Landrys, it seems, had been good at selling the sizzle, but not the steak. Or the seafood.

And so the grand whitewashed brick facade on the freeway faded into history, leaving behind a carcass of stucco and splinters and stink. The large pond is a crater of stones, trash and ribs of rubber lining, redolent with the briny smell of mildew. The wooden awning that once provided shade on the deck has collapsed. Bricks are chipped away from their mortar moorings, windows boarded up. Yellow notices posted around the property warn substandard building, do not enter. Empty beer bottles, granola bar wrappers and a mottled gray sweatshirt are signs that transients favor the spot.

Even the light poles in the parking lot have been removed, sold at auction in July along with 1,996 other items.

So, what now?

Dont ask the Landrys folks. The company never owned the property, a spokeswoman said in an email. They were, in essence, renters.

The most recent owner listed on a May 15, 2018, city building permit is hotelier Sam Patel, and he has plans. According to the permit, hes looking to build, no surprise, a four-story, 82-suite hotel. The redevelopment plan is under review, said Carmelina Hart, public information coordinator with the citys Planning Department.

A demolition permit was applied for Nov. 7 and granted, she said. The demolition is expected to commence as early as the second week in December.

Soon, the hull of what had been the grand Gulf Coast gastronomical getaway of the 90s will be gone.

And so it goes. Things change. Restaurants come and go. And were still waiting for that Joes Crab Shack.

UpFront is a front-page news and opinion column. Comment directly to Joline at 823-3603, jkrueger@abqjournal.com or follow her on Twitter @jolinegkg. Go to www.abqjournal.com/letters/new to submit a letter to the editor.

Calling all angels

Its time once again for you readers to submit nominations to our 10th annual Angels Among Us, which honors those unsung someones who brighten the community with their selfless acts of kindness. Deadline is Dec. 16.
Copyright  2018 Albuquerque Journal

Katherine McNulty will tell you she is passionate about getting kids necessary special education resources in public schools.

She will also tell you that her experience with her grandson, Brayden, who is living with autism, has shown her what a struggle that is.

The grandmother and advocate is part of a group called Organizing Parents Education Network, or OPEN, where members from across the state seek support and advocate for free, appropriate public education for all kids.

And that parent-led groups frustration came to a boil when its members read the state Public Education Departments application to receive federal funding under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

The first among the pages of questions in the application was whether a free and appropriate public education is available to all children with disabilities. The state said it is.

But OPEN members say that answer doesnt reflect special education in New Mexico as their children are experiencing it.

So they sent a letter to PED Secretary-designate Christopher Ruszkowski to formalize their concerns. OPEN called for change, for a meeting with the secretary-designate and for a louder voice in matters directly affecting their kids.

They traveled to Santa Fe and met with PED staff  Ruszkowski did not meet with them  and also met with Albuquerque Public Schools and Los Lunas Schools board members, but McNulty reported receiving mixed messages.

When asked about the funding to better train the classroom staff to support our special education children, we were told by one APS board member that we would need to reach out to our legislators. When we asked the PED, we were told that each district has the control of the funds to distribute as they see fit, McNulty said.

Where is the buck going to stop? Meantime, our kids continue to be retaliated against, abused, neglected, secluded and restrained, thereby not receiving free appropriate public education.

PEDs special education director, Deborah Dominguez-Clark, said the state has processes in place to receive parental input throughout the year.

Were working with our families, and we are always open to feedback, she said.

Dominguez-Clark also said the IDEA application had a monthlong public comment period for people to weigh in via written feedback.

The state gets gets $98.8 million from the federal government for special education services, and New Mexicos schools have 52,838 students with disabilities, according to PED.

Systemic issues

Before an OPEN meeting, parents, one after another, told the Journal about their children and their families experiences with New Mexicos public schools.

Some said they believed they were being targeted by staff. Some said they were ignored by school staff altogether. Others talked about their kids being expelled from school, which they say is far more common for students with disabilities than those without.

The roughly 40 parents in the group come from districts across the state and have kids in elementary through high school.

Together, they compiled a multi-page list with 45 systemic problems they say they have seen firsthand. Issues mentioned ranged from too much change in their childrens lives to school police officers  rather than trained teachers or counselors  being used when their kids are unable to balance their emotions.

The student with a disability is treated less than the child without a disability, the 11th systemic issue says.

Ultimately, the OPEN parents say, districts and the state arent providing the best possible resources for their children or staff members in special education departments.

Lucinda Sanchez, APS associate superintendent for Special Education, said that the largest school district in the state has become a hub for families with special needs children, and that some move from rural areas. In part, because of this, APS has a high special education population and a shortage of special education teachers, she said.

Every school district in America struggles to find and secure special education teachers, and we are no different. As the special education student population continues to grow, teacher recruitment and safety as well as adequate funding will continue to be areas of concern, she wrote in a statement to the Journal.

APS, which has 18 percent of the student body using special education services, has about 100 openings for special education staff.

PED spokesman Christopher Eide echoed Sanchez, saying one of the primary challenges the state as a whole faces is getting enough qualified teachers in special education classrooms.

Statewide, there are 375 vacancies for special education teachers and ancillary service providers, according to a New Mexico State University report on educator vacancies.

These positions are often filled with long-term substitutes or others who are not licensed or certified to teach special education.

Its an undeniably hard job.

APS surveyed special education staff this year and found that only 13 percent of participants believed that morale was high. Many said their workload was too heavy, and only 45 percent believed that they have a suitable number of duties.

But 85 percent said they had a meaningful job.

Below are the stories of three families who say the public school system hasnt provided for their children. Local district officials were able to talk generally but could not discuss the individual cases.

Brayden

McNulty and her daughter, Jessica Bossier, joined OPEN because they felt helpless and powerless about the education of her grandson, 9-year-old Brayden.

McNulty said the third-grader at Bernalillo Elementary School has had good years and bad years in Bernalillo Public Schools, depending on his teachers and assistants.

I blame lack of training and little to no experience, she said.

In his prior years at Carroll Elementary, McNulty said, her grandson was punished for behavioral issues, such as hitting, kicking or scratching, by not being permitted to go on field trips or being sent away from school.

Bossier also felt punished, as she put her job at risk every time she left work when staff called and said they could not handle him.

These meltdowns are usually triggers, and so ultimately it was the behaviors of staff that triggered his meltdowns in the first place, McNulty said.

McNulty said she believes staff members need better training and resources to help the students more effectively.

Both Bossier and McNulty said they felt embattled at the school.

The principal of Carroll Elementary was not understanding of (Braydens) abilities and on one occasion publicly berated (Bossier) to the point of tears in the library in the presence of other staff, kids and parents because she had tried to offer suggestions, McNulty said.

Blatant retaliation came to a peak, according to McNulty, when someone at the school called the state Children, Youth and Families Department.

She said that, when Brayden was a second-grader, CYFD was called because his fingernails were not being cut and cat urine was on his jacket, because Bossier didnt notice the stain. However, the grandmother felt that the problems could have been resolved with a phone call to her or Bossier.

Through OPEN, McNulty would learn that many parents had been reported to CYFD.

It puts the blame back on the parents, she said. It makes it the parents fault that these kids are acting this way.

Bernalillo Public Schools did not answer requests for interviews from the Journal.

Arnold

Sarah Bateman-Twocrow, a mother of a 7-year-old boy living with high-functioning autism and an OPEN member, calls her son Arnolds time in APS traumatic.

He has attended five elementary schools in his short education career but is now home-schooled due to safety issues with restraint and seclusion, Bateman-Twocrow said.

All the schools secluded Arnold and used restraint continually, which only made attending school that much worse and uncomfortable, she said.

APS Executive Director of Compliance Cindy Soo Hoo said restraint and seclusion are to be used as a last resort in the district, citing a state law that allows for both. That law says the students behavior must present an imminent danger to the student or others.

Soo Hoo said its up to school personnel to determine what constitutes an imminent threat. She emphasized that restraint and seclusion arent part of the discipline process, but rather are used as a safety effort.

She would not answer specific questions about Arnolds case, saying APS officials cant speak about individual children due to privacy laws.

But, legal or not, Bateman-Twocrow said she does not believe restraint or seclusion should be used on kids  with or without disabilities.

The cost of using restraint and seclusion on a child is very detrimental to the childs welfare both physically and mentally, she said.

Rather, she says, ignoring the behavior and staying calm so the meltdown doesnt get worse is more effective in Arnolds case.

Soo Hoo said if parents complain about the use of restraint or seclusion, its up to the school administration to look into it and talk with school staff involved.

Dominguez-Clark said parents who are concerned about their childs treatment can make a formal complaint to PED.

A 2009 investigation by the Government Accountability Office found hundreds of incidents of child abuse nationwide, some even fatal, due to the use of seclusion and restraint practices in schools. That investigation also found that seclusion and restraint practices were used disproportionately on children with disabilities and children of color.

Nationally, there is a push, through a new federal bill called the Keeping All Students Safe Act, to end seclusion and limit how and when restraints can be used.

Payton

Brandy Smotts, who is not an OPEN member, also spoke of the emotional toll of advocating for her 10-year-old daughter daughter, Payton Smotts.

Payton, who has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and a bipolar-like condition called disruptive mood dysregulation disorder, has been adjusting to a new school, after being transferred midsemester.

The 10-year-old has transferred before, from Janet Kahn School of Integrated Arts to Bellehaven Elementary School, where she started school this year.

She had transferred from Janet Khan because a teacher dragged her out of the classroom and locked her out of the classroom, Smotts said. Smotts was hopeful Bellehaven would be a better option.

But during a 3-hour education plan meeting, Smotts was told that Payton should move yet again, this time to Montezuma Elementary School.

Montezuma has a program dedicated to behavioral and emotional support for students, which not all schools have. Smotts said APS personnel wanted Payton enrolled in the program.

I didnt feel it was presented as an option, she said. I felt it was presented as a requirement.

APS spokeswoman Johanna King said the two main routes for a child to be moved to a different school are: a transfer, which is voluntary, or a placement, which is determined by a special education team to best meet the needs of the child.

King was not able to speak to why Payton was moved in the middle of the year, citing privacy laws.

Each child using special education services has regular individualized education program, or IEP, meetings. Before Paytons IEP meeting, Smotts said, she didnt have any indication Payton would have to prep for a new school.

When the mom told her daughter about the move, she said the 10-year-old was very upset.

Its almost like I broke her, she said.

Since then, her daughter has had nightmares and has started sleepwalking, Smotts said.

Smotts said she doesnt believe Bellehaven gave her daughter enough time or exhausted all options.

For instance, the mother, said she told the school that music and art were therapeutic to the fifth-grader and she has seen the benefits of Payton bringing an MP3 player to school, since listening to music is a way for her to calm down during a burst of emotion.

The school didnt allow that, she said, adding that it was taken out of Paytons IEP when she was at Bellehaven.

At Montezuma, the mother is planning to put the music player back into Paytons IEP.

Logistically, the move to Montezuma was difficult for Smotts and Payton.

As a single mom, Smotts relies on transportation provided by the district to get Payton home from school each day. She prepped Payton for a new and longer bus route, which she said was a source of anxiety for the pair.

Emotionally, it was difficult for the two as well.

Payton began to cry on her first day at Montezuma, worrying about making friends at the new school.

I dont cry anymore on the first day of school, Smotts said. But I started when I saw those tears well up in her eyes.

Smotts message to the district: Make special education meetings more dialogue with parent input, and less punishment.

Its a beating, she said about her experience meeting with school staff. You talk about every failure and every aspect of your child.

Until changes are made

For McNulty, meeting with APS, PED and other education officials has become somewhat a part-time job.

But she remains optimistic, saying that, with Braydens story and others  including those of Arnold and Payton  being told to decision makers in education, she is hopeful change will occur.

We will continue to work on this until changes are made, she said.
Copyright  2018 Albuquerque Journal

In June, the state was graded as needs assistance by the U.S. Department of Education for how New Mexicos public schools provide services to students with disabilities.

It was the fifth year in a row the state received this rating.

The needs assistance grade is the second-best of four determinations, but it means the department does not believe New Mexico meets all requirements and purposes of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA.

The four determinations, in order from best to worst, are:

 Meets the requirements and purposes of IDEA

 Needs Assistance in implementing the requirements of IDEA

 Needs Intervention in implementing the requirements

 Needs Substantial Intervention in implementing the requirements

Twenty-two states met requirements in 2018. New Mexico is among 26 that were rated needs assistance two or more consecutive years.

Deborah Dominguez-Clark, special education director for the New Mexico Public Education Department, said the state was marked needs assistance in part because of its lower participation in the National Assessment of Education Progress test, which she said PED is working to improve through a campaign to improve testing turnout. Two other factors that contributed to the determination, Dominguez-Clark said, were that the states measures to address whether students are eligible for special education services werent up to par and those evaluations werent happening in a timely manner.

PED is providing professional development and resources to help school districts determine whether students should be in special education programs, she said. It is also following up on those evaluations.

The aim is to prevent the state from being labeled needs assistance for a sixth year in a row.

Since the state earned that label in consecutive years, New Mexico is required to advertise for technical assistance resources to help address areas in which it needs assistance. Dominguez-Clark said the state will also be required to report on these efforts early next year.

New Mexico receives $98.8 million from the federal government for special education services, according to PED.

Several years ago, the department had a run-in with federal education officials over how it funded special education students, placing $34 million or more in federal funds in jeopardy.

In 2014, a judge ruled that New Mexico did not have the right to reduce special education funding in 2011 while the state received federal special education money at that time.

In early 2016, then-Public Education Secretary Hanna Skandera said her agency and the DOE struck a deal that resulted in no reduction in federal funding to the state.

But PED had to agree to appropriate an extra $45 million in state funds for special education over the next five years  $9 million annually.
U.S. Sen. Tom Udall and Rep. Ben Ray Lujan are critical of President Donald Trumps comments about ordering parts of the border with Mexico closed and authorizing troops to use force against migrants, if necessary.

The president continues to demonize immigrants and militarize our border, but New Mexicans see right through these political  and likely unconstitutional  moves by the Trump administration, Udall told the Journal in an email.

Mexico is our states most important trading partner, and families and businesses across our state have close personal and economic ties to our Mexican neighbors, he said. New Mexicans will continue to reject President Trumps attempt to politicize the border in order to score cheap points.

Lujan said the president needed to stop what he calls damaging, anti-immigrant rhetoric.

Democrats stand ready to work in Congress on bipartisan immigration reform, and will continue to reject these attempts by President Trump to stoke fear, Lujan said in an emailed statement.

Trump said Thursday he signed an order to close the U.S. border with Mexico and authorized troops to use lethal force against migrants to protect U.S. Customs and Border Protection personnel.

If they have to, Trump said at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., claiming without evidence that at least 500 criminals are among migrants trying to enter the U.S.

So Im not going to let the military be taken advantage of. I have no choice. Do I want that to happen? Absolutely not. But youre dealing with rough people.

The White House hasnt released the order and Trump wasnt clear about what the directive entails.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.
The state Public Education Department is pushing back on recommendations to shift the statewide A-F grading system to a dashboard model, calling it a smoke-and-mirrors approach.

On Nov. 14, the Legislative Education Study Committee heard recommendations from a school grades working group, which has met for over a year, to improve school grades.

The main suggestion was to nix A-F labels and go to a dashboard that has an array of info about a school in addition to academic growth.

But PED Secretary-designate Christopher Ruszkowski believes the dashboard isnt what families want and isnt transparent.

Taxpayers should be wary of this type of smoke-and-mirrors approach  it is an underhanded way to reduce public accountability and transparency about how our schools are doing, he wrote in a statement to the Journal.

At the LESC meeting, the working group presenters said the system should shift from focusing on failure, which can demoralize schools, to how districts and the state can help schools.

PEDs statement said the current A-F accountability system, which is grounded on student growth in reading and math measured via PARCC and other tests, was created after a team traveled the state for over a year and got input from thousands of educators, families and taxpayers. PARCC and a tour of highly graded schools called the Straight A Express have been signatures of outgoing Gov. Susana Martinezs administration.

The school grades working group that is recommending the changes to the current system was made up of 26 people, including teachers, superintendents, parents and school board members.

State Sen. Mimi Stewart, an Albuquerque Democrat and chairwoman of the LESC, said PED was also invited to be a part of the group when it started, but she said the agency did not reply to the invitation.

PED spokesman Christopher Eide said there is no record at the senior level of such an invitation.

Stewart did not provide the Journal the email that invited PED to the working group.

A legislative memorial creating the school working group requires two PED representatives and requires the department to work in consultation with the group. For this, Ruszkowski also blasted the team, saying it didnt have that required state representation.

Stewart said Suchint Sarangarm, PED chief data strategist, and Matt Pahl, formerly with the PED and now executive director of the New Mexico Coalition for Charter Schools, were part of the school grades working group. Stewart also said meeting notices and documentation are available online.

Ruszkowski had a different take.

The working group suspiciously met behind closed doors, in secrecy, without any public notice or transparency, without following the memorial, according to his statement.

The divergent perspectives on the school grade working group occurs as Gov.-elect Michelle Lujan Grisham is about to take the helm of the state, including the Public Education Department, which will likely bring changes to school grading, PARCC and the secretary of education position.
A Syrian radio host who satirized both President Bashar al-Assad and opposition insurgents including ISIS has been shot dead in Syria's rebel-held Idlib province, the Syrian Journalists Association said Saturday.

Raed Al Fares and another activist and journalist, Hamoud Junaid, were killed Friday in the town of Kafr Nabl after being hunted by extremist groups, the journalist group said.

Continents and regions Crime, law enforcement and corrections Crimes against persons Criminal offenses Idlib Middle East Middle East and North Africa Shootings Syria Syria conflict Unrest, conflicts and war Bashar al-Assad ISIS Misc organizations Political Figures - Intl Activism Society

"Both of the men who were killed were pioneers of civil society and brought the free voice to the world through the famous banners of Kafr Nabl," a statement from the group said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based human rights group, said unidentified gunmen killed Fares and Junaid in Kafr Nabl, where their US-funded Radio Fresh station was based.

No group has claimed responsibility for the killings.

Fares set up Radio Fresh in 2013 to provide news on Syria conflict's, specifically to northern provinces. He continued until the United States cut funds to rebel-held areas, including the radio station, in June.

The activist saw radio as a way to spread awareness about ideas that he advocated for, including social justice and democracy. Raed Al Fares

Fares, who was born in 1972, often called for protests but stressed they should be peaceful. He was known for famous protest banners in English in Idlib.

As the Syrian war progressed, Fares secretly filmed and released footage showing the suffering of people in Kafr Nabl.

In 2014, he was shot in the chest by ISIS and abducted and tortured several times, according to the observatory.

Fares was interviewed about his work in a video posted on YouTube.

"I have known them for at least four years from the early days of the liberation," Ayman Akkad, 30, a friend of his, told CNN.

"Raed is the one I go to when I want a thorough honest advisory ... totally honest and straightforward. He was always joking about how many times he found hidden bombs around his house, he wouldn't buy a car because it would be his grave," Akkad said.

"He led an everlasting battle for democracy and prosperity of Syria. He advocated for right during the times of fear when everyone was silent. My reaction was like I was waiting for it, I kind of knew it. ... It sounded familiar, but it was heartbreaking that it happened."

In a joint statement on Facebook, Jim Jeffrey, the US secretary of state's special representative for Syria engagement, and Joel Rayburn, US deputy assistant secretary of state and special envoy for Syria, said the two activists "lived their lives as heroes."

They "were patriots and activists who dedicated their lives to building a better future for Syria and the Syrian people. As symbols of the Syrian revolution and the best of the youth for Syria, they were among the first revolutionaries to put their creativity and skills to use to serve their people and their nation."

The statement said "the treasonous, criminal and malicious hands responsible for their assassination cannot and will not succeed in erasing their legacy."

In a tweet Friday, US State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said: "We are saddened by the murder of #RaedFares in Idlib. He was a courageous activist for peace & a better future for Syrian people.

"He was also a longtime friend of @statedept. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family & the family of (Hamoud) Junaid. They inspired," Nauert added.

The State Department also released a statement that said the two men "never shied from speaking the truth upholding the original values of the revolution."

"Syrians and the world will always remember Raed's famous signs in Kafr Nabel, and Hamoud's footage will forever serve as a testament to the crimes the Syrian regime has committed against the Syrian people," the State Department statement reads.

Since the beginning of Syrian revolution in 2011, hundreds of thousands of Syrians were killed, including dozens of activists.
Every week, I offer a glimpse of the kind of intelligence assessments that are likely to come across the desk of the President of the United States. Modeled on the President's Daily Briefing, or PDB, which the director of national intelligence prepares for the President almost daily, my Presidential Weekly Briefing focuses on the topics and issues President Trump needs to know to make informed decisions.

Here's this week's briefing:

Immigration: Relationship goals with Mexico

Your plan to make Central American immigrants wait in Mexico while their asylum claims are processed -- along with your threats to close the border entirely -- could put a serious strain on Mexican resources, and your own budding relationship with President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. While Mexico's incoming government has denied there is an official deal, we assess that any extended "remain in Mexico" policy will have adverse consequences for the bilateral relationship. If your relationship goal is to create tensions with Mexico, extended stays for Central American migrants in Mexico or derogatory statements about Mexico's own border security will do the trick.

Under your new plan, some of the asylum seekers currently at our southern border may be allowed to wait in the US while their applications are being processed. But the majority will likely be forced to stay in Mexico for an indeterminate time. The migrants will need food, housing, healthcare and other basic needs while they wait, and it remains unclear whether the population influx will raise any tensions in Mexico. While the Mexican economy rebounded last quarter, domestic poverty and inequality remain high. Obrador campaigned on giving money to Mexicans in need, not Central American migrants that the US does not want to take.

Over time, Obrador, who takes office December 1, may grow increasingly upset with your decision to place a strain on Mexican resources in order to save on your own. Obrador's left-wing, populist campaign included promises of raising pensions for the elderly and increasing other social spending. So being asked to spend Mexican money on migrants that he thinks should be allowed in the US -- rather than on programs to help Mexicans in need -- could create a major rift.

Some of the migrants will also end up waiting in dangerous border towns, which presents an additional humanitarian risk, given that Mexico experienced its most murderous year on record in 2017. While we do not share your risk assessment that these migrants are themselves dangerous criminals, we do think that thousands of people who are stranded at a border for an extended period of time could be at risk of criminal activity, especially if they are in areas already prone to violence.

You are already deeply unpopular in Mexico and your relationship with Obrador could deteriorate quickly as he shores up his footing early in his term. Despite a warm embrace this summer, he could shift gears and direct his ire at you to maintain a strong standing domestically.

Saudi Arabia: Table for two

According to our analysis, contradicting the CIA's assessment that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's (MBS) ordered Jamal Khashoggi's murder and giving him a free pass will likely distance you from our other allies and impact our intelligence-sharing partnerships going forward.

While the response to Russia's attempted assassination against Sergei Skripal was a multilateral one that resulted in the expulsion of Russian diplomats from more than 20 countries, your unilateral decision not to punish MBS is already causing problems with Turkey. The NATO ally issued a sharp rebuke this week and slammed what they called your "blind eye" approach to assigning responsibility for the assassination.

Many of our European allies have already taken action against Saudi Arabia by issuing their own sets of sanctions, while Germany, Denmark, and Finland have gone a step further and suspended arms deals with Saudi Arabia. We could see further action by the European Union as well as individual member states, especially if any intelligence about MBS's direct role in the assassination becomes public. Additional sanctions could involve expelling Saudi diplomats, curtailing business with the Kingdom and publicly calling out the Crown Prince as a murderer. Despite the fact that the US did sanction over a dozen Saudis for the killing, the US could be left standing with Saudi Arabia while all our other allies take stronger action geared at upholding human rights and safeguarding the physical security of their residents.

Our intelligence-sharing relationships are already strained, and our allies may be even less inclined to share valuable information with us if they think you're uninterested in basing policy decisions on these intelligence assessments.

Assange: Is extradition worth it?

News of the potential criminal charges against Julian Assange broke just days before Jerome Corsi, a Roger Stone associate, confirmed he is discussing a plea agreement with the special counsel's office. Both incidents will likely continue to fuel speculation that a missing link between Russia, WikiLeaks and American individuals may be disclosed in the short term.

Because the Department of Justice has already charged Russians for hacking information and laundering it through a third party -- "Organization 1" (WikiLeaks), charging Assange could be viewed as the first step in a complex process for seeking his release from the Ecuadorian embassy in London. If he is extradited to the United States, he could face trial, potentially on charges related to conspiracy against the US during the 2016 election.

With the recent departure of Ecuador's ambassador to the UK, and Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno's talks with British authorities about Assange leaving the Ecuadorian embassy, the time may be ripe for increased efforts seeking his extradition to the US.

But we assess that any successful attempt to extradite Assange will in large part depend on the way the US government approaches Ecuador about the matter. You have previously attacked US courts and judges, and we assess that any critiques of the Justice Department's decision to charge Assange could weaken the diplomatic outreach seeking his release and extradition.

As you determine whether to personally engage with the government of Ecuador to seek Assange's release or with the British government to seek his extradition, we do want to flag a perception problem. Legal counsel is outside of our purview, so if there is any perception that you are considering curtailing efforts to charge or extradite Assange, those efforts could be viewed internationally as an attempt to interfere with Mueller's investigation into possible links between WikiLeaks and members of your presidential campaign.

Brexit: Why May may need some help

With the EU's historic "yes" vote on the UK's Brexit plan on Sunday, British Prime Minister Theresa May has one final hurdle ahead of her -- her own people. With just months until Britain's official exit date, May now needs to gain Parliamentary approval for the Brexit deal, and we assess that she will face strong opposition to the exit plan from all sides, including from within her own Conservative Party. She may be looking for support wherever she can find it, including from you at the upcoming G20 summit.

Criticisms of May's exit plan traverse a spectrum of complaints, including that the deal is too weak and gives up too much to the EU. In fact, almost no one in the UK or in Brussels is satisfied with the deal.

While there is some chatter about British Members of Parliament still trying to work out an alternative exit plan -- or Brexit Plan B -- you should expect May to decisively state that it's this deal or no deal because of the looming departure deadline and the difficulties of getting a new deal approved in Brussels or in London.

You should expect May to be laser focused on whipping up votes for her deal until she is able to bring it forward for a vote in Parliament, including when you see her at the G20 later this month. She knows that you have been supportive of Brexit in the past, and because the exit deal comes with a hefty price tag for Britain (a $50 billion tab to settle up on its way out of the EU), she may be hoping you talk about a US-UK free trade deal that could ameliorate the financial hit her country will take next year.


The final quarter of 2021 is on its way and theres so much positivity about the rapid growth of the...
Right below this post is yet another study seeming to exonerate the MMR. That sure sounds familiar  the CDCAAPFDAIOMETC have already given it multiple clean bills of health. And manufacturer Merck says no studies show any link to autistic regression.

Of course, thats just one mans opinion  but one whos spent the last three years listening to parents and enlightened pediatricians and combing through adverse events reports and just generally trying to think for himself.

On the right hand side of our home page is a collection of my Age of Autism columns for UPI. The one titled Pox  Part 1 of 7 installments -- sealed the deal for me as far as the MMR is concerned. Im not going to repeat myself here except to say, theres every reason to worry about the interaction among live viruses when you stick em in the same shot and inject em into 12-month-old kids. Especially kids whose immune systems are already shot thanks to vaccine mercury and other toxins, thanks to the selfsame CDCAAPFDAIOMETC.

When Merck decided to toss the chickenpox virus into the MMR mix, kids started developing autism in clinical trials; that wasnt reported to the FDA before the drug was approved because, Merck said, the parents never got around to mentioning that their kids had regressed into autism. A few months after the Pox series appeared, Merck suspended production of that four-in-one vaccine, claiming theyd run low on chickenpox vaccine even as they launched a new shot for shingles that contains gobs of it.

The cluelessly credulous mainstream media did its usual thing  they essentially reprinted the press release about the vaccine shortage. Now they have a new study to report, reaffirming the MMRs safety and reassuring parents.

Never mind that Merck and the pharmaceutical industry are starting to show a pattern and practice that ought to make anyone stop and think before they become stenographers for the drug companies: Theres Vioxx with its $5 billion settlement and suppressed data about the heart attacks that fell just outside the study window, causing the New England Journal of Medicine to complain; and Zetia with its delayed results that showed no protection against heart attacks even as the company convinced millions of doctors and patients to switch from cholesterol-lowering drugs that actually did work; and Eli Lilly with its Zyprexa side effects and the looming possibility of a $1 billion fine and a criminal misdemeanor plea because they tried to get doctors to prescribe it for conditions for which it was not approved. Not very nice. Not very nice at all.

And never mind that the FDA has all but admitted it's so overwhelmed and underfunded it can't reasonably be expected to do its job (the one about making sure drugs, including vaccines, are safe and effective).

The tragedy is that if the people who are supposed to protect our kids had relied less on dubious data produced by experts with blatant conflicts of interest, and more on common sense and the evidence of their own senses, the whole autism debacle of the 1990s through today might have been averted.

In an article titled Adverse Events, I wrote about some of the early warnings on file with the federal governments VAERS database.

Heres a report from 1992, listing Feb. 21 as both "vaccination date" and "adverse event date" for a 1-year-old boy: "Patient received MMR vaccination and experienced fever, autistic behaviors, encephalitic condition, began to tune out; sound sensitivity, hand-flapping, wheel-spinning, nighttime sweats, appetite increase."

The child's diagnoses included autism, encephalopathy (brain swelling), mental retardation, personality disorder and speech disorder.

Another report: Two days after being vaccinated in August 1994 a 1-year-old girl experienced "low fever, much discomfort. Patient lay in bed and cried and moaned; three-four days post-vaccination, rash traveled over patient's body and lasted at least one week. Within six weeks of vaccination patient was observed as losing previously gained language and social skills; diagnosed autistic."

Soon after the article was published I heard from the mother who filed that report, and I wrote a follow-up story (Case Number 88924): The patient so clinically summarized in that report, Mary Jo Silva realized with a start, was her 1-year-old daughter Carmen, who fell ill the same day she got the MMR -- measles-mumps-rubella -- and Hepatitis B vaccinations at age 1.

Thats bad. But here's the killer: A 1994 report filed by a California physician citing 10 -- yes, 10 -- children "who received vaccination and (were) diagnosed with autism and encephalopathy." That doctor reported "there are currently 10 cases of autism in children who received DPT/OPV/MMR at 15-18 months."



The real tragedy here is the dates  1992 to 1994, just as the big wave of new mercury vaccines was crashing into Americas kids. These were but a few of the many, many missed opportunities to do what medical professionals are supposed to do  be alert and suspicious, notice something new and grab hold of it till the truth yells Uncle.

Instead, the person who took that report about 10 kids with autism who shared a specific vaccination pattern took a dismissive tone: "Dr. ... is not treating physician and does not possess any original records; unclear whether reporter [the doctor, who was identified and could have been contacted] is suggesting possible causal association."

Well, its pretty clear to me  doctor is suggesting causal association.

And so am I. Lest the CDC miss the point again, let's repeat it: Yes, the MMR causes autism.

--

Dan Olmsted is Editor of Age of Autism
by John Stone

"However, another authoritative source British National Formulary/National Institutes for Healthcare Excellence (BNF NICE) listing this season's products states that all the suspensions "may contain" thiomersal. The position is ambiguous to say the least."

A row has apparently blown up in the media between a mega star that I have never heard of, Calvin Harris, with 12.7 million twitter followers and British health officials. Harris has apparently claimed that there is mercury in the 2017 UK flu shot. No such claim I would like to make clear has ever been made on this website. While it is difficult to find out exactly which products are being given I have just checked through the ingredients of ten products I was able to identify and none had mercury, thiomersal or thimerosal listed.

Perhaps Mr Harris was basing his claim on the situation in the US where officials seem more inclined to brazen it out. It may be pointed out as well that the same health officials who are out now trying to re-assure people that there is no mercury in the shot are very likely the same ones who were previously trying assure them it was perfectly safe.

Post Script: This appears to be the bottom line. There is a letter 20 March 2017 signed by representatives of the UK Department of Health, Public Health England, NHS England (Dame Sally C Davies, Prof Paul Cosford and Prof Sir Bruce Keogh). On pages 24-6 there is a list of products with one or two additions to those I linked to. Underneath is the statement p. 26:"None of the influenza vaccines for the 2017/18 season contain thiomersal as an added preservative"

The odd wording suggests the possibility that thiomersal may have been used in the preparation of some of the products, perhaps as a sterilising agent, and therefore could be present at trace levels.

Post Post Script: However, another authoritative source British National Formulary/National Institutes for Healthcare Excellence (BNF NICE) listing this season's products states that all the suspensions "may contain" thiomersal. The position is ambiguous to say the least.

Suspension for injection All products
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"Numerous instances" of diversions to armed groups

The Office of the Inspector General of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) has uncovered numerous instances of possible or confirmed diversions to armed groups" in Idlib province in northwestern Syria, including to Hayat Tahrir alSham, which is a designated foreign terrorist organization.

The explosive USAID report released Nov. 14 oddly holds back on naming the cross-border implementers implicated in these numerous diversions. Turkey houses many of the nongovernmental organizations operating in northern Syria. Delivering aid to besieged populations in conflict zones at times requires compromises among warring parties, the use of local intermediaries, and therefore the increased risk and potential for misdirection of funds. USAID ceased use of the Bab al-Hawa border crossing in September because of the tax imposed by Hayat Tahrir alSham on aid convoys.

Khaled al-Khateb reports from the Morek crossing in rural Hama, south of Idlib province, that the Morek City Council is in charge of that side of the crossing and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)  a coalition of Islamist factions  provides protection. The Russian military police, in cooperation with the regimes customs police, supervises administration of the regimes side. The Syrian government closed the crossing again Nov. 17.

The UN estimates that there are 10,000 al-Qaeda linked terrorists in Idlib, intermingled with perhaps tens of thousand more Salafists who are holding 60% of Idlib province hostage, compared with what the US Department of Defense estimates are 14,000 Islamic State fighters remaining in Syria. Fehim Tastekin, based on field reporting, estimates that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham controls two-thirds of Idlib province and has some 15,000 fighters under arms.

Ankara sponsors of the National Liberation Front, a coalition of armed groups in Idlib province. The National Liberation Fronts membership includes two extremist groups, Ahrar al-Sham and Nour al-Din al-Zenki, which have been on-again, off-again partners with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. Tastekin suggests the size of the disparate forces in Syria under Turkish direction as between 85,000-100,000 fighters.

The rightful goal of avoiding a massive humanitarian tragedy in Idlib should not obscure the urgency of dealing with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, and the need to liberate the people living under its brutal so-called Islamic rule. Turkeys position is untenable, as we wrote here, and its ragtag army of jihadis, foreign fighters and hired guns would hardly be considered a liberation force by Syrians, whatever the spin from Ankara and elsewhere. As we wrote two months ago, both the United States and Russia seek to defeat and destroy Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, al-Qaeda affiliates and foreign fighters; prevent a catastrophic humanitarian crisis that would impose a heavy burden on Turkey, Russias Astana partner; deter chemical weapons use; and prevent an inadvertent military escalation. These should be more than enough for a start on a comprehensive solution that leverages the authority of the UN Security Council. That al-Qaeda and their like would benefit, and the people of Idlib suffer even more, because the United States and Russia cant agree on these seemingly self-evident shared interests seems to us an avoidable tragedy.

US sanctions: between Iraq and a hard place

Washington cheered the selections of Barham Salih and Adel Abdul Mahdi as president and prime minister of Iraq. And then, before the new Iraqi government was even fully formed, the Trump administration made their lives impossible by designating Iraq as a front-line battlefield for the American campaign of pressure on Iran.

Iraq does not wish to become part of a struggle to which it is not party, said Abdul Mahdi.

It is not an exaggeration to say that Iran-Iraq relations present the most significant regional axis in West Asia, writes Bijan Khajehpour. One should always keep in mind that the two states fought an eight-year war in the 1980s under Saddam Hussein, but have managed to establish a unique relationship including expanding economic relations. In fact, in the first seven months of the current Iranian year (March 21-October 22, 2018), Iraq was the most important export market for non-crude Iranian exports with close to $6 billion of exports.

Salih has been on a regional tour, including visits to Iran and Saudi Arabia, to cultivate an atmosphere of goodwill for Iraq, to develop options and alternatives for Iraqs trade and energy ties and to buy time, given the risk potential of American demands for destabilizing Iraq.

Salihs visit to Iran was another reminder of the nature of this relationship and its significance for Iran, adds Khajehpour. The two sides agreed to elevate annual trade volume from the current $12 billion to $20 billion, which would be a major boost  especially if it includes a major growth in Iranian exports to Iraq. The question is what opportunities and obstacles are in store for the planned expansion of trade relations.

The United States wants Iraq to sever its energy ties with Iran. Toward that end, it has granted Baghdad a 45-day waiver to end natural gas imports, although no one expects that timeline will be adequate for the massive economic and energy restructuring required to do so, if that is even possible. Washington is pressing Iraq to accelerate its efforts and negotiations with American energy companies to wean Iraq off Iranian energy. One such offer includes a floating liquefied natural gas facility, according to The Wall Street Journal; this has generated little enthusiasm in Baghdad.

There are limited alternatives to Irans current exports to Iraq due to missing infrastructure, continues Khajehpour. Evidently, in the longer run, Iraq could find substitutes, but the question is whether Baghdad would risk the deepening ties with Tehran in order to appease Washington. It will be a difficult balancing act as Baghdad needs both powers, but it is safe to expect that Baghdad will look for ways not to undermine the close ties with Tehran. Interestingly, Russian representative at the UN Security Council Vasily Nebenzya has supported Iraqs decision to continue trading with Iran. He was quoted as saying that Iraq is recovering and Moscow supports a positive Baghdad approach to ensure its security and improve its economy.

Massive protests in Basra linked to inadequate energy availability further constrains Baghdads options. As Basra citizens continue to feel marginalized, despite the financial resources their province offers the Iraqi state, the likelihood of renewed protests and even unrest remain high, writes Hamdi Malik. Renewed protests might persuade more Basra citizens to call for a federal region as a solution to end the tragic situation of their province.

The areas of developing win-win scenarios are not limited to Iranian electricity and natural gas exports. There are also a large number of shared oil fields that are being developed, reports Khajehpour. This platform may also be an opportunity for the Iranian side to inject some of the latest technologies into the development of Irans oil sector by studying how international companies are managing the Iraqi side of the joint fields. There is also Irans role in ongoing oil and petroleum product swaps involving a triangle of Iraq, Iran and Iraqi Kurdistan. The two sides have furthermore signed an agreement to allow Iranian companies to assist Iraqi contractors in the field of expanding the capacity of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) production in Iraq, especially as LPG will play a growing role in the transportation sector and residential energy consumption in the country.

Another important utility of the close ties to Iraq will be the opportunity for Iranian companies to use their subsidiaries in Iraq as a front to secure the products and services that may not be available to Iran directly.  How US sanctions enforcers will try to undercut such paths remains to be seen, but establishing front companies in neighboring jurisdictions is an important lever in Irans attempts not to allow the United States to undermine the countrys economic and technological development. The two sides are also planning to create a joint bank that will facilitate payments and transactions between the two economies in the face of increased US pressure on international banks. Another idea that has been promoted in bilateral relations has included the establishment of an industrial complex in one of the border regions that could house joint ventures and help the private sectors of the two nations to cooperate and develop solutions needed in the region.
NASA hopes to land its first spacecraft on Mars since Curiosity six years ago on Monday afternoon, and an Alabama scientist on the mission team will hold her breath along with people around the world until the InSight lander comes down safely.

Well know relatively quickly whether it survived and is doing OK, Dr. Renee Weber said this month from her Huntsville office. Thats when youll see everybody cheering and hugging.

Mars InSight  the name stands for Mars Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport  should touch down around 2 p.m. CST. It will send a ping that says its alive and ready to begin two years of scientific study.

Landing on Mars isnt easy. Only about 4 in 10 of all the missions sent to the planet have been successful, and America is the only nation to have a mission survive the landing. What makes Mars so tough? It starts with a thin atmosphere  1 percent of Earths atmosphere  and that means almost no friction to slow a spacecraft.

NASA will cover the landing live on its website, social media platforms and NASA television. Live viewing events are scheduled around the country including the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville.

The landing target is the Elysium Planitia, which Weber said is the closest thing Mars has to a parking lot  a very flat, safe space with no rocks and no slopes. What it does have is abundant sunlight to fuel InSights solar panels.

Using a seismometer and heat flow probe, InSight will be the first spacecraft to probe beneath the Martian surface. The probe is designed to measure the heat flux coming out of the planet, Weber said. That tells us about the deep structure and where the planet is in its evolutionary cycle.

Scientists know Mars is further along in that cycle than Earth. Planets start as hot, active, probably molten balls of rock that, as they evolve, lose their heat and contract, becoming less active, Weber said.

Scientists believe Mars and Earth were formed from the same basic primordial stuff more than 4.5 billion years ago. But they evolved differently, and the question is why.

Understanding the internal structure of (Mars) helps us figure out by extension how all terrestrial planets are formed and evolved, Weber said. It gives some context to some observations we have from Earth.

Scientists know from photographs that Mars still has geological faults. It doesnt have moving plates below the surface like Earth, but Weber said, Weve seen rockfalls and landslides that are probably induced by some kind of shaking.

Being able to show that those faults are still shaking today would be a really big deal, Weber said.

Insight will also observe meteorite impacts. If the seismometer can record an impact, that data can be used to fine-tune models for locating other events on the planet.

One of the missions coolest features is that InSights data data will become accessible to the public after a period when only the science team can see it.

The seismic data will actually be incorporated into the same software tools that terrestrial seismologists use to look at earthquake data, Weber said. Anybody that wants to will be able to go into IRIS (iris.edu) and request to download seismic data from Mars the same way you can request seismic data from Earth.

The path that led Weber to the National Space Science Technology Center research center in Huntsville started with studying seismology in graduate school. She began ocean bottom seismology  used heavily by the oil exploration industry  then had a chance to look at seismic information from the moon.

I said, Yes, Im interested Weber said. I didnt know there were seismographs on the moon. (There are thanks to NASAs Apollo program.)

Weber did her first post-doctorate research with with the team in France that actually built the seismometer for InSight, and thats how I got involved.

The team proposed the Mars mission in 2010 to NASAs Discovery program. That program to develop smaller missions for NASA funding is managed at Huntsvilles Marshall Space Flight Center.

The team had been trying to get a seismometer on Mars for the previous two decades, Weber said. So this is really the culmination of an entire careers worth of work from hundreds of people, probably thousands of people at this point, who have all advocated over their careers for seismic missions to other planets.

Weber is a member of the science team that meets regularly during the missions opening weeks and months as decisions are made about what maneuvers the craft should execute next. After that, InSight will sit quietly for two years listening and sending data back to Earth. The

As cool as InSight is, its only one of several NASA probes reaching their destinations in deep space. They include:

- The Parker Solar Probe, which made its first close approach to the Sun Nov. 5 coming within 15 million miles of Earths star and reaching a top speed of 213,000 miles an hour.

- The probe OSIRIS-Rex is scheduled to arrive at the deep space asteroid Bennu Dec. 13 for a year of study capped by a tag-up to collect a sample and return it.

- New Horizons will make the most-distant spacecraft flyby to date Jan. 1 when it encounters the Kuiper Belt object nicknamed Ultimata Thule.
Jay Dunn

ComebackTown is published by David Sher to begin a discussion on a better Birmingham.

David Sher is Co-Founder of AmSher Compassionate Collections and past Chairman of Birmingham Regional Chamber of Commerce, ONB, and CAP.

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The coincidence is pretty remarkable.

I started at Georgetown for my MBA during my last year working for Senator Richard Shelby on the Senate Banking Committee in Congress. As an Evening Student, putting in a long day at work and a three-hour class at night, you tend to bond pretty well with your classmates; fatigue helps melt away the awkward "new kid" phase, and you get to know people pretty quickly.

After the Senator left the Chairmanship of the Committee, I took the opportunity to put my focus squarely on the next chapter of my career.

As a full-time student, I was fortunate enough to get to know a number of folks across both the first and second year classes of 2018 and 2019.

Georgetown's MBA program is home to approximately 1,000 MBAs, mostly between the ages of 23 and 28. Being a part of the Georgetown and Washington, DC communities, future alumni have a unique opportunity go anywhere in the world upon graduation.

It also provides for a diverse student body that only an MBA program built into the heart of DC can offer - I have classmates from across the United States: California, New York, Texas. Not to mention friends in my program from all over the world - Beijing, London, UAE, Mexico, Panama, and Ethiopia; truly a global program.

But here's where the coincidence comes in: throughout my time at Georgetown, I've had the fortune to get to know so many smart, driven, talented people who are without a doubt the future of the business community for my generation.

However, over my two plus years I have only found two other people whose ambition is to head back home and change their hometowns and states for the better - and all three of us are from Alabama, planning to come back to Birmingham to be a part of this revolution that has begun to change this town we call home.

Why is that? Why is it that of all the students that flow through the international melting pot of Georgetown each year, three guys from Alabama are the ones who are making the choice to head home? Maybe the best way to figure out this coincidence is to give a flavor of why I want to be a part of this revolution.

There are a number of reasons to be fond of Birmingham - I grew up here, attended high school and college here, and I have friends and family here. But the drive is more than the lure of the familiar.

Birmingham still carries the stigma of its Civil Rights history, despite making leaps and bounds of progress. We have an Ivy League-quality medical school in UAB, the largest employer in the state and constantly breaking boundaries in research and healthcare, and yet a nascent private equity community who more often looks outside the state for opportunities rather than within.

Across the country, Birmingham still is seen as the big city in Redneck Alabama, despite boasting one of the best restaurant scenes, across the Southeast and arguably the nation, home to the reigning James Beard Award winner.

It's a raw deal, the wrong perception, built likely on the shadows of neighboring cities like Nashville and Atlanta who grow without the challenging reputation to hold them back. It's built on having to fight the perception that we're just a steel town despite strengths in healthcare, financial services, and a burgeoning start-up culture.

News-catching moments like Shipt's sale to Target catch headlines, and certainly do wonders for the city. However, Innovation Depot, Alabama Futures Fund and investors across town are helping spur investment in a city which long ago lost sight of steel as the major economic driver, and yet don't turn heads like they should.

These reasons and tenfold more have attracted three recent and soon-to-be Georgetown MBA grads to come back energized to keep the progress moving. We want to see a city which is renowned for what it offers, not held back by scars of decades past. That is what attracted us.

Considering all that, what are the odds?

Jay Dunn is a soon-to-be Georgetown MBA graduate, returning to Birmingham after seven long years in Washington, DC. He worked for Senator Shelby as a financial services policy advisor both in his personal office and on the Senate Banking Committee before Georgetown. He is currently on the job hunt, where he hopes to find a role in investment finance in Birmingham.




27 December 2018







Image copyright Getty Images Image caption



Germany has pledged to spend increasingly more of its budget on its military Seven years after Germany scrapped conscription, its defence chief has said employing EU citizens is "an option" to fill expert posts.

Army general inspector Eberhard Zorn said the forces had to "look in all directions in times of a lack of qualified personnel", such as doctors and IT specialists.

The armed forces have been beset by years of under-investment.

Germany aims to increase its military by 21,000 personnel by 2025.

It has also pledged to raise its defence budget from 1.2% to to 1.5% of its gross domestic product by 2024, in the face of criticism from President Donald Trump that it does not meet the Nato target of 2% of GDP.

Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen said in an interview on Thursday that 182,000 uniformed soldiers were now employed by the army, a rise of 6,500 in two years. Within seven years, that should reach 203,000.

She said the army was now made up of 12% women and this year alone one in three people applying to be an officer was a woman.



What does the defence chief propose?



Gen Zorn told the Funke newspaper group that "of course the Bundeswehr needs personnel" and the army had to "push hard for a suitable new generation", although EU citizens in uniform were "an option" to be examined only in specialist fields.

The media group said the government had already consulted EU partners and that most had reacted cautiously, particularly in Eastern Europe.



Under post-World War Two laws, soldiers in the German military have to be German.

Parliament's commissioner for the armed forces, Hans-Peter Bartels, said recruiting EU citizens was already a "kind of normality" as many soldiers already had dual nationality or an immigrant background.

According to the Funke group, more than 900 foreign citizens are already employed by the military in civilian roles.

Last month the UK said more foreign nationals would be able to join its armed forces without having lived in the country in a bid to meet a shortfall of 8,200 soldiers, sailors and air personnel.

How unprepared is the German army?



Germany aims to have 70% of its fighting capacity ready for combat at any time, but recent reports show it is falling short:



Only about a third of 97 newly manufactured tanks, fighter jets and helicopters was combat-ready, Die Zeit reported in October (in German)

No submarines or large transport planes were available for deployment at the end of last year, a military report said in February

The same report said existing fighter planes, tanks, helicopters and ships were in "dramatically bad" condition

About 21,000 officer posts remained unfilled, Deutsche Welle reported

How did shortages hit Merkel's G20 trip?



The spotlight fell on military shortages late last month when Chancellor Angela Merkel had to fly to the G20 summit in Argentina by passenger plane because of a technical failure involving one of the military's two long-haul planes.







Image copyright AFP Image caption



Chancellor Merkel's plane lost radio control as it flew over the Netherlands on 29 November and had to land in Cologne Ms Von der Leyen said one or two new long-haul planes would be bought, as the two existing planes aged 18 and 19 were too few.


John Kerry joins Hillary warning Europe of threat of immigration



Its starting to look like some members of the Democrat establishment understand that open borders is a losing issue.



November 24, 2018

By Thomas Lifson



Its starting to look like some members of the Democrat establishment understand that open borders is a losing issue. It would be too dangerous to take on the issue domestically, so acknowledging that Europe is being harmed by mass immigration/asylum and turning to politicians who will control the borders is a first step. When Hillary Clinton warned of the danger of Europe turning to populists in order to stop the influx, it was startling. But now, it is a trend.



John Kerry has joined fellow failed presidential nominee Clinton in warning Europe that its refugee policies have been a disaster. Ryan Saavedra reports in the Daily Wire:

Former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry admitted last week during a trip to Europe that the continent has been "crushed" by a transformation that has taken place due to immigration.

Kerry made the remarks while speaking at a Guardian Live event at Central Hall in London where he weighed in on a number of issues and also used the opportunity to bash President Donald Trump.

"Europe is already crushed under this transformation that is taking place due to migration," Kerry said. "In Germany, Angela Merkel is weakened. Italian politics is significantly impacted."


Thousands of gilets jaunes  yellow vests in French  took to the streets on Saturday, leaving Pariss famed Champs Elysees and surrounding streets it in utter chaos.

After a call on social networks, French citizens from all over the country gathered in the French capital after government officials refused to meet them.

We do not want this, but we will keep fighting for our rights until someone from the government will meet us, said Antoine, a retired man from the western region of Bretagne (Brittany). I hate violence, but this is the only way that we have to be heard, as French citizens we have that right, he adds.

The yellow vest protest movement, named after the high-visibility jackets now required to be carried in any vehicle, began on November 17, 2018, in response to rising fuel prices and taxes.

Not organised by any labour unions affiliated to any political parties, about 244,000 people began by blocking roads and causing a degree of chaos in numerous cities throughout France, albeit in dwindling numbers in the following days; however, on Saturday, about 81,000 people are reported to have mobilised throughout the country, including 8,000 in Paris.

The French Ministry of the Interior has reported that at least eight people, including two police officers, have been injured in todays violence.

Several barricades were set on fire while police forces continuously charged and shot tear gas at protesters.

Although a few confused tourists took this opportunity to take a different type of selfie during their holidays in Paris, others ran, frightened by the situation.

I came here to shop and to visit the Champs Elysees, I did not know this would happen. It is quite scary and it ruined our holidays, a US tourist, who prefered to remain anonymous, said.
Attacks on freedom of expression in Bangladesh continue even after the release of the renowned photojournalist.

Shahidul Alam, the internationally recognised photographer who was detained by the Bangladeshi authorities in August after making allegedly provocative statements in an interview with Al Jazeera, has recently been released on bail after spending over 100 days in prison.

Following his detention, the award-winning photojournalist immediately became a poster child for free-speech advocacy around the globe. #Freeshahidul became a popular hashtag on Twitter, as Nobel laureates signed petitions, prominent newspapers published numerous op-eds, and diplomats from major nations engaged in overt and back-channel negotiations with Bangladeshi authorities to secure Alams release.

The outburst from the international community surprised the Bangladeshi government, given the countrys long and habitually dismal record on human rights. In the eyes of the authorities, Alam was perhaps just another journalist to be thrown into jail, like the many before him, and the more soon to follow. Luckily for Alam, the protestations from the international community eventually became too overbearing for the Bangladeshi authorities to handle.

{articleGUID}

Prior to Alams eventual release, the penultimate flurry of activities from the international community included a full-fledged resolution on the human rights situation in Bangladesh adopted by the European Parliament, in which a special section was dedicated to Shahidul Alam.

Concurrent to the European Parliaments resolution, but perhaps coincidentally, renowned Indian writer Arundhati Roy published an open letter on Shahidul Alam, drawing parallels between the assaults on free speech in India and Bangladesh. India wields significant psychological and literal sway over affairs in Bangladesh, and Arundhatis letter was clearly trying to make an emotional appeal to Bangladesh-watchers within India.

Although it is hard to establish a direct cause-and-effect relationship, it is noteworthy that within just 48 hours of the European Parliament resolution and Arundhatis letter, Shahidul Alam was granted bail by the same Bangladeshi judicial system, which only days earlier had refused petitions for his bail four times, as some judges felt embarrassed to hear his case.

Although Bangladeshi authorities expressed their willingness to pursue an appeal against Alams bail, for the time being, he appears to be free and talking publicly.

Freedom of expression still under threat

The international community played an extraordinary role in securing Shahidul Alams release and in keeping his case alive in the realm of global conscience. However, much work still needs to be done as freedom of expression, particularly when it touches politics, remains as perilous as ever in Bangladesh  a country that is becoming increasingly authoritarian.

Take for example the case of Maidul Islam, an associate professor of Sociology at Chittagong University, one of the largest public educational institutions in Bangladesh. Just weeks after Shahidul Alams arrest, Maidul was detained and jailed for making derogatory remarks about Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Facebook. Maiduls state-run employer chose to quickly suspend him, rather than attempt to protect the freedom of expression of one of its faculty members.

Maidul was victim of the infamous section 57 of the countrys controversial Information Communication and Technology Act (ICT Act), which allows non-bailable arrest of anyone the police considers to have engaged in defamation of the prime minister or her father  the founding president of Bangladesh, also known as the Father of the Nation as per the current constitution of Bangladesh.

One intriguing aspect of Maidul Islams case is that none of the numerous news stories on his arrest spells out the exact phrases he used in his Facebook post to defame the prime minister. This is reminiscent of news reports on blasphemy coming from illiberal societies, where the news media often refrains from quoting the blasphemous words of the accused, due to the fear of themselves being accused of committing blasphemy.

And Islams is not an isolated case, as the jailing of academics, teachers and other ordinary citizens for allegedly defaming authority figures is quite common in Bangladesh.

Earlier in April, the Dhaka University, Bangladeshs premium academic institution, suspended Professor Morshed Hasan Khan for criticising the Prime Minister Hasinas father in a newspaper article. In August last year, 13 high-school teachers were arrested on sedition charges for allegedly making derogatory remarks about the Father of the Nation.

According to statistics from Human Rights Watch, during the first quarter of 2018 alone, Bangladeshi police filed 282 charge sheets accusing people of criticising the government, defamation, or offending religious sentiments. There are instances where people went to jail, not for authoring, but simply liking, sharing or commenting on Facebook content that the government found offensive.

Witnessing the rising tide of intolerance towards political dissent, Bangladeshi civil society, which was once known for raucous political debates, has now grown accustomed to exchanging political messages in guarded whispers.

Silencing the opposition

Amid the backdrop of increasing censorship, Bangladesh is nearing the December 30 parliamentary elections. The countrys beleaguered opposition is already feeling the heat of the governments increasing crackdown on freedom of expression.

Bangladeshi opposition parties have formed an alliance to electorally challenge the well-oiled political machine of Prime Minister Hasina  flush with cash and aided by the ever-oppressive state apparatus hell-bent on perpetuating the status-quo.

As part of the alliances candidate selection process, Tarique Rahman, the exiled heir-apparent of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)  the countrys main opposition party  was conducting interviews with prospective candidates via Skype from London.

Realising Rahman was using Skype to communicate with aspiring MPs from his own party, the Bangladeshi authorities blocked access to the communication platform across the country. All internet-based communication services were temporarily shut down by authorities around the office of BNP Chief Khaleda Zia.

Following the detentions of Shahidul Alam, Maidul Islam and Morshed Hasan Khan, among many others, it is already a well-established fact that the authorities in Bangladesh do not respond well to public criticism of their policies and conduct.

However, on top of silencing and even jailing everyone who publicly criticises the government, the authorities are now trying to prevent opposition figures from even talking privately among themselves. This is an extraordinary development even given Bangladeshs abysmal standards and is likely a sign that further violations of free speech are down the road.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial stance.
3,000 women march against gender-based violence in Madrid

The UNs International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women was particularly poignant in Spain after last week, when judges cleared two men of rape under controversial circumstances.
The quake struck the same area where another tremor killed over 600 people last year.

An earthquake with a magnitude of 6.3 has shaken western Iran near its border with Iraq, the US Geological Survey (USGS) has reported.

USGS on Sunday said the quake was at a depth of 65km and struck 114km northwest of the city of Ilam in Irans Kermanshah province.

Iranian state TV said six rescue teams have been dispatched to the area. No casualty has been reported so far, it said.

At least 115 were injured in Sarpol-e Zahab and the neighbouring Gilan-e Gharb city, Kermanshah governor Houshang Bazvand told Fars news agency, the AFP news agency reported.

No reports of any fatalities yet and most of the injured were hurt while fleeing, not due to quake damage, Pirhossein Koulivand, head of the state emergency services, told state TV.

Morteza Salimi of Irans Red Crescent told state TV that since the area was reconstructed after the last years quake, officials hope there wont be casualties.

Ali Moradi, head of Irans seismology centre, told state TV the quake was not near bigger cities. But it might have caused damage in villages and I hope not that many villages are located where it hit.

The Iraqi state media said the tremor was felt in capital Baghdad and in Erbil in the Kurdistan region.

The earthquake struck near Sarpol-e Zahab in Irans Kermanshah province, where another quake, with a magnitude of 7.3, killed over 600 people last year.

Iran is located on major seismic faults and experiences an earthquake a day on average, according to The Associated Press news agency.

In 2003, a magnitude-6.6 earthquake flattened the historic city of Bam in southern Iran, killing 26,000 people.
Deby meets Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, becoming the first Chadian president to visit Israel.

Chadian President Idriss Deby has met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the first such visit by a leader of the northcentral African nation which severed bilateral ties in 1972.

Both leaders called the visit historic as they met in Jerusalem on Sunday with security issues high on the agenda.

Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Netanyahu said we never fully stopped our contacts  but we are now expanding them at a very rapid rate.

And we wish to do so in all areas, first of all in fighting terrorism, he said, adding that he hoped to visit the Muslim-majority African nation.

Deby spoke of the two countries committing to a new era of cooperation with the prospect of re-establishing diplomatic relations.

But Deby also highlighted the Palestinian cause, saying pursuing relations with Israel did not change his countrys concern for the long-stalled peace process.

Chad remains deeply attached to the peace process between Israel and Palestine, he said.

It was my honor to welcome the President of #Chad, Idriss Deby, to #Israel. This historic visit is yet another diplomatic breakthrough between Israel and #Africa. I hope President Debys time in Israel will be fruitful and lead to stronger relations between our countries. pic.twitter.com/p29yB37qBt  Tzachi Hanegbi    (@Tzachi_Hanegbi) November 25, 2018

Chad is one of several states engaged in Western-backed operations against the Boko Haram armed group and fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group.

The visit is focused on security, one Israeli source told the Reuters news agency, adding that Israel has supplied the Chadian army with weapons this year to help in its fight against rebels.

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The Netanyahu government has been investing in outreach to Africa, where some countries previously warm to Israel have kept their distance since its occupation of the Palestinian territories in the 1967 Middle East war.

In July 2016, Deby hosted the then-director of Israels Foreign Ministry, Dore Gold, for exploratory talks on improving bilateral relations.

Gold told Israel Radio on Sunday that his Chadian host said they cut off ties 46 years ago under Libyan pressure, a factor now removed with the toppling of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

Al Jazeeras correspondent in Chad, Fadoul Abderazak, said the two countries ties had been brewing for nearly a decade, but the visit has drawn criticism from members of the Chadian opposition.

Chads opposition figures have said since 2008 that Israel supplied the Chadian security agencies with electronic listening equipment to spy on their activities, he said.

Chads TV, which normally announces the travels of the president, did not announce the visit to Israel by the president.

Deby, one of Africas longest-serving leaders, took over the arid, impoverished nation in 1990 and won a disputed fifth term in April 2016.

Israel has been lobbying African allies in a bid to become an observer state in the African Union.
US Customs and Border Protection announces traffic at the San Ysidro port of entry has been suspended.

San Diego, California  US Customs and Border Protection temporarily closed all vehicle and pedestrian traffic at the major San Ysidro port of entry between Tijuana, Mexico and San Diego, California on Sunday.

The agency made the announcement as hundreds of migrants and refugees marched towards the border in an attempt to put pressure on the US government to allow thousands of asylum seekers to enter the United States.

According to several journalists in Tijuana, US authorities used tear gas on migrants and refugees, including children, who approached the border fence near the El Chaparral crossing. A small group breached the border, local media reported.

To prepare for the possibility that additional groups would also break off from demonstrations for a possible attempt or attempts to rush illegally through the port of entry, CBP suspended operations at the port of entry, the agency said in a statement.

The port of entry remained closed for about six hours before being re-opened.

The developments on Sunday come as frustration grows in Tijuana over the slow processing of asylum claims by US authorities.

Thousands of migrants and refugees have arrived in the Mexican border city in recent weeks as part of a caravan, dubbed the Central American exodus. Many have told Al Jazeera they are fleeing violence, poverty or political persecution.

More than 5,000 migrants and refugees have been cramped into a Tijuana stadium complex that is more than 2,000 people over capacity. Rights groups have accused to the US government of stalling the processing of asylum claims, allegations CBP denies.

Aerial view of Central American migrants and refugees being stopped by federal police officers near El Chaparral port of entry in the US-Mexico border [Pedro Pardo/AFP]

US President Donald Trump has sought to sow fear over the collective exodus by deploying thousands of US military troops to the border and giving them expanded powers, including the ok to use lethal force.

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The Trump administration also implemented new asylum rules, which have been temporarily blocked by a federal court. Under the new rules, individuals crossing the border between official ports of entry would not be eligible for asylum. A judge last week blocked the rules from being enforced pending further hearings.

Immigrants are welcome

Prior to the border closure, hundreds gathered in San Diego to march in solidarity with the migrants and refugees in Tijuana.

The group, which included a collection of different rights organisations, accused the Trump administration of creating a war-like atmosphere against the Central American exodus in Mexico.

Holding banners that read immigrants are welcome and money for jobs, not walls, more than 200 people marched towards the San Ysidro port of entry.

As a mother, I understand that families have to be together, said 37-year-old Kelly Leon, who attended the march with her family.

For me, its clear that you dont just travel thousands of miles with your whole family, unless there is something that you [are really running] away from, she told Al Jazeera.

San Diegans protesting at the border in solidarity with the Central American asylum seekers in Tijuana: pic.twitter.com/aGoNOntDxD  Jurriaan van Eerten (@JurriaanvEerten) November 25, 2018

While Leon grew up in the US, her husband, 40-year-old Armando Leon, was brought by his parents from Mexico when he was a child.

I think the majority of people in San Diego stand in solidarity with these migrants, thats what we hear around us, Kelly Leon told Al Jazeera. Especially from people who have families themselves.

Protesters supporting the migrants and refugees in Tijuana, Mexico show their solidarity during a march next to the border wall with Mexico in the San Ysidro neighbourhood of San Diego [Mike Blake/Reuters]

Among the groups present at Sundays march was Veterans for Peace.

Paul Ross, 74, who served in the Vietnam War, said he felt compelled to come to the border and make his voice heard.

Latin America has had one dictator after the other, Ross told Al Jazeera. Almost all of which have had support from the United States, in the beginning, to work towards regime change. The poverty and problems they have there now, have a history which we have to understand.

While holding a flag with Veterans for Peace written on it in combination with a logo with a flying dove, Ross told Al Jazeera he believed the current exodus of Central Americans is a result of the involvement of the US in affairs in these countries.

Now these places have become very dangerous and problematic, so the people have no place to go any more. They have no choice.

Other marches in support of migrants and refugees were planned across the US.
Death to America: Iranians say it is only a rallying call

As tensions rise between Iran and US, some Iranians say death to America chant should not be taken so seriously.
European Union leaders formally agreed upon a Brexit deal at a Brussels summit on Sunday, urging Britons to back Prime Minister Theresa Mays package, which faces furious opposition in the British parliament.

After a year and a half of arduous negotiations, the 27 leaders took barely half an hour to rubber-stamp a 600-page treaty setting terms for the UKs withdrawal from the European Union on March 29 and a 26-page declaration outlining ambitions for a future free trade relationship.

President of the European Council Donald Tusk announced the agreement on Twitter.

EU27 has endorsed the Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration on the future EU-UK relations, he said.

EU27 has endorsed the Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration on the future EU-UK relations.  Charles Michel (@eucopresident) November 25, 2018

EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier said now that the first phase was done, the UK and the EU needed to work for an ambitious and unprecedented partnership.

We will remain allies, partners and friends  now is the time for everybody to take their responsibility  everybody, he said.

President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker, meanwhile, said the sign-off on the agreement marked a sad day but backed May to steer the deal through parliament when it is put to a vote next month.

I believe that the British government will succeed in securing the backing of the British parliament, Juncker said, declining to comment on what might happen if May fails.

I would vote in favour of this deal because this is the best deal possible for Britain, he added.

Domestic test

May now faces the arduous task of winning parliamentary backing for the deal, which foresees London following many EU rules to keep easy trade access, with the British leader expected to face fierce resistance in the coming weeks from both supporters and opponents of Brexit within her government and other opposition parties.

For those in favour of Britain remaining in the bloc, the agreement is a watered down, inadequate version of the countrys existing membership arrangement with access to its customs union and single market.

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For those in favour of a definitive Brexit, however, the deal fails to deliver on a clean break with the European project.

On Sunday, May defended the terms of the agreement, saying the deal unlocks a bright future for the UK and claws back control of borders  money  [and] laws from Brussels.

When they (the British people) look at this deal they will see it is a good one for our country and that it is in the national interest for everyone to get behind it, May said in a statement.

The British people dont want to spend any more time arguing about Brexit. They want a good deal done that fulfils the vote and allows us to come together again as a country, she added.

The UK is due to leave the EU on March 29, 2019.

A bad deal for the country

The leader of Britains main opposition Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, said in a statement on Sunday he would oppose the brokered agreement during next months parliamentary vote.

This is a bad deal for the country. It is the result of a miserable failure of negotiation that leaves us with the worst of all worlds. It gives us less say over our future, and puts jobs and living standards at risk, Corbyn said.

Labour will oppose this deal in parliament. We will work with others to block a no deal outcome, and ensure that Labours alternative plan for a sensible deal to bring the country together is on the table, he added.

The Democratic Unionist Party, whose votes from Northern Ireland have helped May to govern since she lost her majority in a snap election last year, also said it would try to block Mays Brexit deal.

Party officials have described it as pitiful  partly because it binds the UK to many EU rules it will no longer help set and partly as the DUP fears it could weaken the provinces ties to Britain.

Wrangling over how to keep open Northern Irelands land border with EU member state the Republic of Ireland without creating potentially disruptive customs barriers dogged much of the 18 months of negotiations between UK and EU officials.

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The deal reached allows for a backstop to be set up in order to prevent a hard border being established if no trade deal is sorted out during the so-called post-Brexit transitional period between March 29, 2019 and December 31, 2020.

Under the terms of the agreement, the whole of the UK will remain in a customs union with the EU unless and until the bloc agrees there is no prospect of a return to a hard border.

On Sunday, DUP leader Arlene Foster said the party would review her partys arrangement with Mays ruling Conservative Party-led government if parliament approves the deal.

If it came to the situation that parliament did decide, and theres no evidence that theyre going to, but if they did decide to back this deal then obviously we would have to review the confidence and supply agreement, Foster told the BBC.

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, meanwhile, backed May to get domestic sign off on the agreement.

The alternative is a no deal, cliff edge Brexit which is something, of course, that we all want to avoid, Varadkar said on Sunday.

Any other deal really only exists in peoples imaginations, he added.

If parliament rejects Mays plan, the government will have 21 days to set out how they intend to move forward.

In such a scenario, the UK leaving the EU without a deal, a renegotiation of the existing proposal, holding a general election or even staging a second referendum on EU membership would all become possible outcomes.

Both May and EU leaders have described the current agreement as the best and only possible deal.

If British legislators back it, then an EU Withdrawal Agreement bill will later be introduced to parliament. That will then need to be ratified by parliamentarians before it can proceed to a European Parliament vote and, if thats successful, an eventual EU Council approval process.
Nineveh and Salahaddin are the most affected regions, with multiple reports of villages being inundated, the UN says.

At least 21 people have died and tens of thousands displaced by torrential rains that have battered Iraq over two days, according to health officials and the United Nations.

Seif al-Badr, spokesperson for Iraqs health ministry, told the AFP news agency on Sunday that women and children were among the dead.

Some had drowned due to floods, but others had died in car accidents, were electrocuted or were trapped when their houses collapsed.

At least 180 more were injured, he added.

Iraqs north has borne the brunt of the heavier-than-average rainfall, and the United Nations Iraq office said the downpour had forced tens of thousands of people out of their homes.

An estimated 10,000 people in the province and 15,000 people in Nineveh are in desperate need of help, including families living in camps for internally displaced persons, the UN said on Saturday.

Losses are still being assessed, but initial accounts from flooded areas include the destruction of homes, livestock and household items, it said in a statement.

Several people have reportedly died due to flash floods in Shirqat town in Salahadin province. #Iraq pic.twitter.com/VvAe3Mwd1A  Baxtiyar Goran (@BaxtiyarGoran) November 23, 2018

In the al-Sharqat district in Salahaddin, about 250km north of the capital, Baghdad, thousands of homes were left totally underwater by the rains.

In Mosul, the heavy storms submerged two floating bridges along the Tigris river, which bisects the city.

They were the only way to move between Mosuls eastern and western halves, after all its bridges were bombed during last years months-long operation to retake the city from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) armed group.

On Friday, new Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi announced the establishment of a crisis cell of security forces and local authorities to coordinate a response.

The ministries of electricity, oil and trade had also indicated their willingness to help.

Iraq is one of the hottest countries on earth but when heavy rains do hit, they can result in casualties because of deteriorating public infrastructure.

In 2015, 58 Iraqis were killed in floods and cases of electrocution due to intense downpours.
Teenager among those dead as India-administered Himalayan region suffers its worst bloodshed in about 10 years.

Srinagar, India-administered Kashmir  At least nine people have been killed in violence in India-administered Kashmir, capping off one of this years deadliest weeks in the disputed region already suffering its worst bloodshed in a decade.

At least six rebels were killed in an early morning gun battle with security forces on Sunday in Kapran village of Shopian district in southern Kashmir. The fighting later sparked clashes in the volatile district between locals and police, during which a 15-year-old civilian was killed by security forces, according to residents.

A senior police official told Al Jazeera that an army officer, who was wounded in the encounter with rebels, later succumbed to his wounds.

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In a separate incident, a foreign rebel was killed in fighting in Awantipora district, taking the total death toll to nine.

The six killed rebels were wanted in various cases and belonged to a combined group of Hizbul Mujahideen and Lashkar-e-Taiba. They included three rebel commanders, the official said, adding that two more Indian soldiers suffered wounds.

Late night operation

Authorities said the operation was launched after receiving information on Saturday night about the presence of rebels in the house of a farmer in Kapran village.

Multiple cordons were laid. The five rebels were locals and one was a foreigner, the police official said.

Residents said the house was blasted during the gun battle, which was the second such operation launched by the security forces in the past three days.

As news about the killing of rebels spread, hundreds of civilians took to the streets, raising anti-India slogans and marching towards the house, resulting in clashes with the security forces.

People at the funeral of Mohd Waseem Wagay, a suspected rebel, at Amshipora village in south Kashmirs Shopian district [Danish Ismail/Reuters]

Residents said a local teenager, Numan Ashraf, was shot dead by the forces in the clashes. Several others were wounded.

Twenty people suffered pellet-gun injuries, four of them in their eyes. Four suffered bullet wounds. Even an 18-month-old girl was hit with pellets in her eye and face, but is in a stable condition, a doctor in Shopian, who requested anonymity, told Al Jazeera.

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As tension grew, authorities suspended internet services in the district to stop the protests from spreading further, officials said.

Meanwhile, separatist groups in Kashmir, who demand an independent state or merger with Pakistan, have called for a shutdown and protests on Monday against the latest killings.

Residents in south Kashmir often come out in the hundreds during an operation by the security forces, helping the rebels to escape.

Still, 16 rebels have been killed in three such operations since Tuesday. Though wary of routine gunfights, residents in south Kashmir continue to back the armed rebels.

People waiting to offer funeral prayers for Wagay, a suspected rebel killed in gun battle with Indian forces [Danish Ismail/Reuters]

They might call them terrorists, but they are our children fighting injustice. That thousands of people come out and face bullets to save these fighters should act as an eye opener for India, 45-year-old Gulshan Nazir told Al Jazeera.

This injustice and oppression does not differentiate between a civilian and a rebel. They did not even spare a child, who was hit with pellets. Was she pelting stones as well, she asked.

Bloodiest year since 2009

India-administered Kashmir has witnessed a spike in violence since the killing of a popular rebel commander in 2016.

Kashmir-based rights group Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS) said 528 people have been killed this year in armed conflicts in the disputed Himalayan territory, including 145 civilians.

The report on Saturday added that at least 234 rebels and 142 Indian security personnel have also been killed so far this year.

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JKCCS coordinator Khurram Parvez said it was the bloodiest year since 2009 and blamed it on the political weakness of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Indias main ruling party.

Federal elections are set to take place in India in a few months and the BJP government is selling the body bags of Kashmiris to gain votes, he told Al Jazeera.

They want to show their might to cover up for their failures in the government.
Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena has ruled out ever reinstating deposed Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, even if the latter is able to prove he has majority support in parliament.

Speaking to reporters from foreign media outlets on Sunday, the president accused his former ally, who he abruptly sacked last month and replaced with former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, of being highly corrupt.

Even if the UNP has the majority, I told them not to bring Ranil Wickremesinghe before me, I will not make him prime minister  not in my lifetime, Sirisena said, referring to talks with members of the deposed leaders United National Party.

He is corrupt. His economic policies are not good for local industries. He pursued an extremely liberal form of government that is not compatible with our culture.

Accusations, investigations

The allegations marked the latest escalation in the dramatic falling out between Sirisena and Wickremesinghe.

The two men had joined forces before presidential elections in 2015 to defeat Rajapaksa, a controversial figure regarded as a hero by the ethnic Sinhalese majority for ending Sri Lankas civil war by crushing ethnic Tamil separatists, but who has also faced allegations of wartime atrocities and corruption.

But after their election victory, Sirisena and Wickremesinghe saw their relations turning south amid disagreements over government administration, economic reforms and an alleged assassination plot against the president.

The tensions boiled over on October 26 with Wickremesinghes firing  a move widely denounced as unconstitutional.

Subsequent attempts by Sirisena to dissolve parliament altogether and order elections for early next year temporarily have been blocked by the countrys Supreme Court. The court is expected to deliver a verdict on the presidents moves on December 7.

Speaking to the foreign media correspondents, Sirisena also said he planned to appoint a commission to investigate corruption and malpractice under Wickremesinghes government.

The UNP was quick to hit back at the presidents comments.

He [Sirisena] can choose any superintendent for his private coconut estate, but in government, he must recognise the leader of the largest single party in parliament, party spokesperson Harsha de Silva told the AFP news agency on Sunday.

De Silva added that the UNP, which holds 106 seats in the 225-member legislature, welcomed any corruption investigation, but insisted that existing inquiries into several high-profile murder cases and corruption scandals allegedly linked to Rajapaksa should also be pursued with vigour.

Earlier, Sirisena had told the foreign media correspondents that ongoing investigations into abductions, killings of journalists and other crimes allegedly committed by those linked to Rajapaksa and his cabinet would not be interfered with.

With a political change of this nature, there could be different thoughts, but my policy is that they should not change, Sirisena said when asked about the fate of the investigations with Rajapaksa now in control of the government.

No one can interfere with the police and courts, he added.

Failed crisis talks

Almost a month into Sri Lankas power struggle, both Wickremesinghe and Rajapaksa have separately continued to lay claim to being the countrys legitimate prime minister, an office subordinate to the presidency.





Wickremesinghe has remained holed up in the prime ministers residence, while Rajapaksa has control of the posts official offices.

The two rivals and Sirisena held direct talks last week aimed at ending the protracted crisis, but the summit failed to produce a breakthrough with neither side shifting their stance following two preceding no-confidence votes against Rajapaksa in parliament.

Both Sirisena and Rajapaksa have rejected the outcome of the November 14 and 18 votes, both of which saw a majority of parliamentarians reject the latters leadership, claiming the chambers speaker had failed to follow appropriate procedures in the holding of the ballots.

The ongoing turmoil has heightened international fears about the stability of Sri Lanka, a country with outstanding foreign debt repayments of more than $50bn.

The countrys parliament is due to convene this week, on Tuesday and Thursday, to discuss a UNP-proposed motion to cut off government spending.

If the UNP wins the vote, it could force Rajapaksa to withdraw his claim to the leadership, and pressure Sirisena into naming a prime minister from the party.
Malian authorities confirm death of Koufa, who was a top deputy in Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin.

A senior Malian member of the Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) armed group has been killed in a raid led by French forces, according to the Malian army.

I confirm that Amadou Koufa was killed during the operation, Malian army spokesperson Colonel Diarran Kone told Reuters news agency on Saturday. He declined to elaborate.

Frances army had said on Friday that Koufa may have been killed in the operation in the central Mopti region that put out of action about 30 of his groups fighters.

General Abdoulaye Cisse told AFP news agency on Saturday that Koufa was killed in the Wagadou forest.

He died of his injuries, he said.

After the military operation the terrorist Koufa was seriously injured and taken away by his supporters before he died, another military official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

JNIM has not commented on the reports of Koufas death yet.

Koufa, a preacher, was one of the top deputies to Iyad Ag Ghali, the leader of Malis most prominent armed group JNIM.

Created from a merger of local groups in March 2017, JNIM was later endorsed by Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

In September, the United States Department of State had designated the group as a foreign terrorist organisation.

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Armed groups affiliated with al-Qaeda took control of the vast desert in northern Mali in 2012, but were largely driven out of the area in a French-led military operation in 2013.

Malis government signed a peace deal with some coalitions of rebels in 2015, but armed groups are still active and vast tracts of the country remain out of government control.

The group has carried out numerous attacks on soldiers and civilians in Mali and neighbouring Burkina Faso.

In a response to those attacks, France and the US deployed thousands of troops across West Africas semi-arid region.
Mauritania: Mbera refugee camps only hospital to close

Fears a refugee camp will be left without medical care after Doctors Without Borders pulls out.
The InSight mission will be the first mission ever to explore the deep insides of the Red Planet.

After a six-month space cruise, NASAs latest Mars mission has landed in Mars with a single goal: explore its deep insides.

InSight Lander  the Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport  is the US space agencys first craft dedicated to peer beneath Mars surface and study its interior.

It landed, at around 20:00 GMT, making it the first US robot to visit the planet since Curiosity in 2012.

Heres everything you need to know about the spacecraft, its landing and the information it has set out to gather.

 Wish you were here! @NASAInSight sent home its first photo after #MarsLanding: InSights view is a flat, smooth expanse called Elysium Planitia, but its workspace is below the surface, where it will study Mars deep interior. pic.twitter.com/3EU70jXQJw  NASA (@NASA) November 26, 2018

What is InSight Lander?

NASA describes the InSight Lander as the first outer space robotic explorer designed to give the billions-of-years-old Mars a thorough checkup by studying its crust, mantle and core.

But there are big challenges before this is achieved  including the seven minutes of terror.

In order to land, the spacecraft will enter the Martian atmosphere at supersonic speed (almost 17 times the speed of sound), then hit the brakes to achieve a soft landing on the planets red plains in a region called Elysium Planitia that has been chosen for its flatness.

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As in all missions to Mars, the challenge is to get the module to operate its instruments and to land into the atmosphere correctly, says Rafael Navarro-Gonzalez, a member of the Curiosity mission and a researcher at the Institute of Nuclear Sciences in the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

NASA engineers consider the agonising seven-minute period between entry, descent and landing the riskiest sequence in the entire mission.

It can take up to about 20 minutes for the spacecrafts signals to reach Earth, leaving mission planners waiting with bated breath to find out about if everything went according to plan. Unable to intervene, they rely on a perfect symphony of pre-programmed tasks, robotic devices and controlled explosions.

After landing it must be properly aligned with the sun to keep producing power and charging its batteries.

When using solar energy, it is important that the rover properly poses on the surface and that there are not big sandstorms that clog the solar panels, Navarro-Gonzalez told Al Jazeera.

What kind of information will InSight gather?

NASA says the mission will measure what it describes as Marss vital signs: its pulse (seismology), temperature (heat flow) and reflexes (precision tracking).

The landers main instruments include a seismometer to track quakes and a thermometer to measure the planets interior temperature by drilling itself five meters deep into the Martian surface.

These instruments  provided respectively by the French and German space agencies  have a novel method of deployment: After landing, the craft will use a robotic arm to place them far enough from it to avoid any pollution of data gathered.

Another instrument, a radio transmitter, will use the Doppler effect  an increase or decrease in the frequency of sound or light  to measure the wobble of the planets rotation axis.

Jose Antonio Rodriguez Manfredi, a scientist at the InSight mission, told Al Jazeera that these instruments will allow NASA to record the planets seismic activity, the movements of the crust caused by meteoric impacts, the heat flow and physical properties of the terrain and the variations that the planet may experience in its rotation period, daily, and in its translation around the sun.

He added that other instruments will register wind and temperature patterns, as well as variations in the atmospheric pressure and magnetic field.

NASAs Insight Mission [Alia Chughtai/Al Jazeera]

Whats the goal behind gathering this information?

According to NASA, there was a time when Earth and Mars were warm, wet and shrouded in thick atmospheres.

However, three or four billion years ago, something changed, causing these sibling planets to take different paths.

By studying Mars at its core, InSight aims to go back in time and shed light on what factors resulted in producing an Earth full of life and a desolate Mars.

The information collected will help us to understand the evolution of rocky planets inside and outside our solar system, Navarro-Gonzalez says, adding that the gathered date will help open a window into understanding life.

Rocky planets like ours are essential for the emergence and evolution of life as we know it.

Our goal is to find a second genesis of life, and we believe that Mars is the [place] where we can find it. In this way, we could revolutionise the biology from terrestrial to universal, Navarro-Gonzalez adds.

How is this relevant to people on Earth?

Manfredi says this type of mission doesnt only contribute to a greater knowledge of the universe and life but also results in improving peoples everyday lives here on Earth.

New materials and new technologies are constantly coming out of this type of projects which are later used in our daily life: mobile phones, the materials with which the bodies of cars or helmets are now built, medical advances that are tested in the Station International Space, among others, he says.

Manfredi adds that these missions also shape humanitys relationship with the universe, predicting that it will not be long until we can see a human crew roaming the Red Planets surface.

Mars still has many surprises to unveil, Manfredi says.

In the future, missions  such as Nasas next M2020 mission  will aim to bring samples back to Earth that will deepen our knowledge of the interior of the planet.

In 2020, three exploration vehicles from the US, Europe and China are already scheduled to attempt to land on Mars.

SpaceX, a private space corporation, has also hinted at a potential cargo mission to Mars in 2022 with the intention of paving a path for future manned missions.

I believe that the human presence in space will continue to grow in the 21st century and the next century, says Miguel Alcubierre, a researcher at the Institute of Nuclear Sciences in the UNAM.

And little by little, we will expand through the solar system, perhaps reaching the next 22nd century to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, he adds.

Our expansion by the solar system is inevitable in the long term and a natural consequence of our technological development and our curiosity.

If in 500 years we have not colonised the entire solar system, I think it would be very depressing and would indicate that something catastrophic happened that stopped us.
Carlos Ghosn has denied allegations that he under-reported his salary, Japanese broadcaster NHK has reported.

Former Nissan chairman Carlos Ghosn, who was arrested on Monday on suspicion of financial misconduct, has denied the allegations against him, Japanese broadcaster NHK has reported.

Nissan voted to remove Ghosn as chairman on Thursday after accusing the 64-year-old of significant acts of misconduct, including under-reporting his salary and using company assets for his personal benefit.

Ghosn, who has not spoken publicly, told investigators that he had no intention of under-reporting his salary on financial documents and has denied allegations against him, NHK said on Sunday, without giving sources.

Japanese prosecutors have said Ghosn and Greg Kelly, a former Nissan executive who has also been arrested, allegedly falsified the formers compensation at Nissan over five years from 2010.

Kelly was quoted by NHK on Saturday as defending Ghosns compensation, saying it was discussed with other officials and paid out appropriately.

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According to the Financial Times, Ghosn was reportedly planning to strengthen a partnership between Nissan and Renault at the French governments request, despite the Japanese firms strong reservations about it.

Ghosn served as CEO of Renault and, according to Reuters news agency, he was reportedly earning $8.4m from Renault, $6.5m from Nissan and $2m from Mitsubishi.
Why Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are denied visa for Hajj

More than 170,000 Palestinians are affected by Saudi Arabias decision, effectively preventing them from pilgrimage.
The blockade against Qatar is being played out in banks in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that have Qatari shareholders, weighing on their business and raising questions about their future.

Some banks and other businesses had been warned by the UAE government against entering into deals with Qatari companies, since the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt began a boycott of Qatar in June 2017, sources, including a senior UAE banker and a UAE business official, told Reuters news agency.

As a result, some UAE companies and banks have shied away from business with United Arab Bank (UAB), Commercial Bank International and Al Khaliji France, sources said.

Qatari nationals face UAE travel restrictions, making it hard for them to manage their investments in the emirates.

On June 5, 2017, Saudi Arabia  alongside fellow Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries Bahrain and the UAE, as well as Egypt  imposed a sea, air and land blockade on Qatar, accusing it of supporting terrorism and destabilising the region, allegations Doha has consistently denied.

Among its list of demands for the resolution of the crisis, the blockading quartet asked that Al Jazeera media network and a Turkish military base be shut down.

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Since the boycott of Qatar, commercial ties have been scaled back and some UAE banks pulled deposits and loans from their Qatari counterparts, while Qatars Doha Bank is cutting its exposure to the UAE via asset swaps with UAE banks.

But Qataris, previously big investors in UAE real estate and other industries, are still the largest shareholders in UAB, 40 percent owned by the Commercial Bank of Qatar, and CBI, 40 percent held by Qatar National Bank (QNB).

UAB and CBI are the only banks of the 15 largest listed lenders in the UAE to experience a fall in assets, customer deposits and loans since the start of the crisis.

CBI and UAB both previously benefited from their respective ownership by Qatari banks, and now this benefit is far less obvious, Redmond Ramsdale at Fitch Ratings said.

Al Khaliji France, which operates in France and UAE and is wholly owned by Qatars Al Khalij Commercial Bank, has seen a drop in demand among its Qatari clients and has not grown its balance sheet, a source familiar with the matter said.

Unlisted Al Khaliji Frances latest full-year financial disclosures show its assets, customer deposits and loans and advances fell between 2016 and 2017.

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UAB and CBI have been cleaning up their balance sheets since before the regional dispute began after a buildup of bad debt, mainly from SME customers hit by a soft economy.

CBI has been reducing the unsecured lending portfolio in its retail banking business, a bank spokesperson said, adding that with lower funding needs it had also reduced its deposits.

UAB, Al Khalij and the UAE Central Bank did not respond to requests for comment.

Disputed deposits

A UAE business official, who declined to be named, said at least one UAE bank with a Qatari shareholder had seen a withdrawal in some government-linked deposits.

However, sources close to the banks said they had not seen any significant outflow in government-linked deposits, adding that they had never been large in any case.

UAB and CBI have had to diversify their funding sources since the dispute, as some Abu Dhabi banks are wary about engaging with them, two sources said.





While Qatari banks Commercial Bank of Qatar and Al Khalij have both attempted to exit their holdings in UAE banks, partly as a result of the row, sale talks also failed in part because of the dispute.

Commercial Bank said in June it had ended talks with UAE-based Tabarak Investment to buy its UAB stake, with a source close to the talks saying Tabarak was unable to secure funding.

Al Khalij said in September that it had dropped the sale of Al Khaliji France.

A source familiar with both sales processes said some of the offers received by both banks were below market value seeking to take advantage of the political situation.

QNB has previously ruled out any sale of its stake in CBI.
The Saudi crown prince is on his first trip abroad since the killing of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has arrived in Bahrain as he continues his first tour abroad since the killing of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The crown prince, widely known by his initials MBS, landed in the capital, Manama, on Sunday and was later received by King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa in Sakhir Palace, Bahraini state television reported.

Quoting a royal court statement from Manama, state TV said the two men would discuss the deep-rooted fraternal and historical relations binding the two brotherly countries and peoples, in addition to [the] latest regional, Arab and international developments.

Prince Mohammed began his tour on Thursday with a visit to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, a close ally that is part of a Saudi-led coalition battling Iran-aligned Houthi rebels in Yemen.

On Tuesday, he is expected in Tunisia, where activists are trying to mount a legal challenge to stop the trip.

The crown prince is also expected to participate in the G20 Summit in Argentina at the end of the month, which will be attended by leaders from the United States, Turkey and other European countries.





Red line

Saudi Arabia, and MBS in particular, have been facing intense global criticism over the killing of Khashoggi in the kingdoms Istanbul consulate on October 2.

The murder of the journalist, who wrote for The Washington Post and was critical of MBS, has tipped the kingdom into one of its worst crises.

He was killed and reportedly dismembered in what Saudi Arabia described as a rogue operation, but CIA analysis leaked to the US media pointed the finger at the crown prince  an allegation Riyadh denies.

Saudi Arabia has warned that any criticism of the crown prince would amount to crossing a red line.

On Wednesday, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said that calls for the crown prince to be held accountable for Khashoggis killing would not be tolerated.

Prince Mohammed began his regional tour at the request of his father, King Salman, according to the Saudi Press Agency, which said he would visit brotherly Arab countries.

In Tunisia, however, several politicians and civil society groups have expressed their reservations over the crown princes upcoming visit.

It is a shame that Tunisia, which has witnessed a democratic transition and a revolution against tyranny and dictatorship, will receive a criminal whose hands were stained with the blood of Saudis and Yemenis, Tunisian activist and former leader of the al-Irada party, Tarek Kahlawi, told Al Jazeera.
Prince Turki al-Faisal says CIA is not necessarily the highest standard of veracity or accuracy in assessing situations.

A senior Saudi prince cast doubt on the reported CIA finding that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul last month, saying the agency could not be counted on to reach a credible conclusion.

The CIA is not necessarily the highest standard of veracity or accuracy in assessing situations. The examples of that are multitude, Prince Turki al-Faisal, a senior member of the royal family, told journalists in Abu Dhabi on Saturday.

The prince, a former Saudi intelligence chief who has also served as ambassador to the United States, said the agencys conclusion that Iraq possessed chemical weapons before the US invasion in 2003 showed it could be unreliable.

That was the most glaring of inaccurate and wrong assessments, which led to a full-scale war with thousands being killed, he said, speaking at an event hosted by the Beirut Institute think tank.

I dont see why the CIA is not on trial in the United States. This is my answer to their assessment of who is guilty and who is not and who did what in the consulate in Istanbul.

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The CIA has concluded that Prince Mohammed ordered the operation to kill Khashoggi, as first reported by the Washington Post, and briefed other parts of the US government on its findings, sources told Reuters news agency last week.

US President Donald Trump has disputed that the agency reached a conclusion on the murder, saying instead they have feelings certain ways.

A Turkish newspaper also reported on Thursday that CIA Director Gina Haspel signalled to Turkish officials that the agency had a recording of a call in which the crown prince gave instructions to silence the journalist.

Khashoggi was killed at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2 in an operation that Turkish authorities have said was ordered by the highest level of Saudi leadership, prompting the kingdoms biggest political crisis in a generation.

After offering numerous contradictory explanations, Riyadh said Khashoggi was killed and his body dismembered after negotiations to persuade him to return to Saudi Arabia failed.

The kingdoms public prosecutor is seeking the death penalty for five suspects charged in the murder, but has said Prince Mohammed had no prior knowledge of the operation.

Prince Turki told the Associated Press news agency the killing of Khashoggi was an unacceptable incident that tars and mars the long record of Saudi Arabias own standing in the world.

We will have to bear that. Its not something that should not be faced. And we do face it, he said.

Dealing with Saudi Arabia

Prince Mohammed embarked late on Thursday on his first foreign tour since the killing with a visit to the United Arab Emirates. He is expected to visit Bahrain and Tunisia before going to Buenos Aires on November 30 for the start of the two-day G-20 summit, where hell come face to face with world leaders.

Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has kept international pressure mounting on the kingdom, are among those expected to attend.

Whether the leaders in that summit will warmly engage with the crown prince or not, I think all of them recognise that the kingdom as a country and King Salman and the crown prince are people that they have to deal with, the prince said.

He said Saudi Arabia will continue to play a role on the world stage and that Trumps statement of support for Saudi Arabia recognises the importance of the kingdom.

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I thought President Trump was expressing what he felt was in the interest of the United States. He emphasised the strategic relationship between the two countries in the same statement and how Saudi Arabia has been helpful in many instances  not just oil, Prince Turki said.

The prince, who led Saudi intelligence for more than two decades and served as ambassador to the US and Britain, worked closely for years with Khashoggi before the writer became an outspoken government critic.

Khashoggi worked under Prince Turki as a spokesperson for the Saudi Embassy in London and later in Washington, DC.

The princes father is the late King Faisal and his brother is Prince Khalid al-Faisal, the governor of Mecca.

Prince Turki said that reports of discontent within the ruling Al Saud family over the crown princes rapid rise to power do not reflect the extraordinary support that King Salman and his son, the crown prince, enjoy.

I see no signs of such disquiet or uncertainty vis-a-vis the king and the crown prince, he said.
An Israeli technology firm specialising in cyber intelligence offered Saudi Arabia a highly advanced system that hacks into mobile phones, months before Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman launched a mass purge, according to Haaretz.

The Israeli daily reported on Sunday that representatives from NSO Group Technologies held negotiations with Saudi officials in Austria capital Vienna in June 2017.

The officials were identified as Abdullah al-Malihi, a close aide to Prince Turki al-Faisal  a senior member of the royal family and a former Saudi intelligence chief  and Nasser al-Qahtani, who presented himself as the deputy of the current intelligence chief.

At the time, NSO was avidly promoting its Pegasus 3 software, an espionage tool so sophisticated that it does not depend on the victim clicking on a link before the phone is breached, Haaretz reported.





According to the publication, this was not the first meeting between the two sides as they had previously held talks in Cyprus via mediators.

NSO was quoted as saying it acted according to the law and its products are used in the fight against crime and terror.

There was no immediate comment from the Saudi authorities.

Saudi purge

Last month, Edward Snowden, who uncovered the classified surveillance programme of the United States National Security Agency, claimed that Pegasus had been used by the Saudi authorities to surveil journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Riyadh, after initial denials, has admitted Khashoggi  a Washington Post columnist critical of Prince Mohammed  was killed inside its consulate in the Turkish city of Istanbul on October 2.

They are the worst of the worst, Snowden said of NSO, whose people he accused of aiding and abetting human rights violations.

The Israeli daily also reported that the system was used to surveil Saudi dissidents living abroad in recent months.

Last year, Saudi security forces arrested hundreds of the richest people in the country, allegedly in an effort to tackle corruption among the higher echelons of the kingdoms bureaucracy.

Those arrested were locked up for weeks in the luxurious Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh, where some were reportedly physically mistreated.

Experts have suggested that the crown prince used the purge to remove people that could potentially pose a political threat to him.
A leader in the National Liberation Front (NLF), an umbrella organisation of Turkey-backed rebels that includes the Free Syrian Army, has dismissed accusations they used poisonous gas to attack government-held Aleppo city.

The head of the NLFs legislative office, Omar Huthayfa, told Al Jazeera the coalition does not possess poisonous gas and said the government is attempting to frame them.

I believe that this is an act carried out by the government. Weve seen it in Ghouta and in Khan Sheikhoun in the past and the international community remained silent, Huthayfa told Al Jazeera.





This is why the government has the audacity to continue accusing the opposition of carrying out such attacks when it knows that the opposition doesnt possess even light weaponry for self-defence.

His remarks came shortly after Russia  a key Damascus ally  and Syrian President Bashar al-Assads government accused opposition fighters of launching chlorine gas attacks on Saturday night.

Russian military spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov told reporters in Moscow that Russian warplanes destroyed rebel positions in northern Syria blaming them for the suspected poison gas attack.

The planes of Russias Aerospace Defense Forces carried out strikes on the detected artillery positions of terrorists in the area, from where the shelling of Aleppo civilians with chemical munitions was conducted late Saturday, Konashenkov said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Thiqa News Agency, an activist collective, said planes pounded rebel-held areas west and south of Aleppo city. The air raids were the first since the truce went into effect on September 17.

State news agency SANA reported 107 cases of breathing difficulties in an updated toll on Sunday.

We cannot know the kinds of gases but we suspected chlorine and treated patients on this basis because of the symptoms, Zaher Batal, the head of the Aleppo Doctors Syndicate, told Reuters News Agency.

Batal said symptoms included difficulty breathing, eye inflammation, shivering and fainting. Hospitals had discharged many patients.

Al Jazeera could not independently verify whether an attack took place.

Earlier on Sunday, Russias foreign ministry said in a statement that the attack had been launched from an area in Idlibs de-escalation zone controlled by Hayet Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a former al-Qaeda affiliate that currently controls more than half of Idlib province.

According to our preliminary information, confirmed in particular by symptoms of poisoning among the victims, the shells used to bombard residential areas of Aleppo were filled with chlorine [gas], Russian Major-General Igor Konashenkov said.





Moscow said it would speak with Turkey as an opposition backer about the incident, the statement added.

For the past two months, the situation in the northwestern region of Syria has remained relatively calm.

In September, the leaders of Russia and Turkey signed a deal to establish a 15-20km de-militarised zone in Idlib, in a move that has put on hold a threatened all-out assault by the government on Syrias last rebel-held stronghold.

As part of the deal, the NLF agreed to clear its heavy weaponry from the zone, which is meant to stretch from neighbouring Latakias northern suburbs all the way to the outskirts of Aleppos northwestern region.

But disarming the zone is only one aspect of the agreement, which also required the withdrawal of all so-called radical fighters from the area, including HTS.

According to Huthayfa, the latest claim made by the government may pave the way for a potential assault on Idlib.

Additional reporting by Farah Najjar.
The move is part of a pilot project to investigate the fate of missing people and release those detained, Ankara says.

The Syrian government and rebel groups have swapped detainees in northern Syria, the Turkish foreign ministry said, describing it as a first step to build confidence between the fighting sides in the war-torn country.

Saturdays move was part of a pilot project prepared by a working group formed under the so-called Astana process by Turkey, Russia, Iran and the United Nations to investigate the fate of missing people and release those who have been detained, the ministry said.

It did not specify how many people were involved in the swap, but the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based war monitoring group, said rebel factions had released 10 hostages in return for the government releasing 10 detainees.

Some people who were held in detention in Syria by rebel groups and the regime were set free in the area, under rebel control, of Abu Zindeyn south of al-Bab, said a written statement from the Turkish ministry.

The aim is to maintain with new initiatives this practice, which represents an important first step in terms of building confidence between the sides, it added.

Syrian state news agency SANA said nine men and one woman were liberated from the fighters who held them in the Aleppo countryside. A video shared by SANA showed them on a bus, clapping and cheering.

Guarantor powers

Russia, Iran and Turkey have been working together to bring about peace in Syria under what is known as the Astana process, named after the Kazakh capital where the talks take place.

Each country plays a key role in the conflict that started in March 2011. Russia and Iran have intervened on the side of Syrias government, ensuring its survival, while Turkey supports rebel groups against Assad in northern Syria also to prevent Syrian Kurds establishing and expanding territory along its border.

Various so-called de-escalation zones were agreed among the three guarantor powers in Syria as a result of multiple rounds of talks.

The Astana process has gradually come to eclipse a UN-sponsored negotiations framework known as the Geneva process whose participants include the United States and European powers that would be key donors in an international post-conflict reconstruction programme for Syria.
Russian ship opens fire on Ukrainian vessels near the Kerch Strait, wounding sailors, as UN Security Council to convene.

Russia seized three Ukrainian naval ships off the coast of Russia-annexed Crimea after opening fire on them and wounding several sailors, a move that risks igniting a dangerous new crisis between the two countries.

Russias FSB security service said early on Monday its border patrol boats captured the Ukrainian naval vessels in the Black Sea and used weapons to force them to stop, Russian news agencies reported.

The FSB said it had been forced to act because the ships  two small Ukrainian armoured artillery vessels and a tug boat  illegally entered its territorial waters, attempted illegal actions, and ignored warnings to stop while manoeuvring dangerously.

Weapons were used with the aim of forcibly stopping the Ukrainian warships, the FSB said in a statement.

As a result, all three Ukrainian naval vessels were seized in the Russian Federations territorial waters in the Black Sea.

President Petro Poroshenko, the Ukrainian leader, met high-ranking military aides early on Monday after the incident. Poroshenko said he would propose that parliament impose martial law.

The United Nations Security Council is due to discuss the developments at the request of Russia, said Deputy Russian UN Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy.

According to the Ukrainian navy, six sailors were wounded when a Russian ship fired on Ukraines vessels near the Kerch Strait, a narrow sea passage close to the Crimean peninsula that separates the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.

Small armoured vessels, the Beryansk and the Nicopol have been damaged by enemy fire and cant move, the navy said in a Facebook post.

The incident followed a naval standoff that escalated on Sunday when Moscow placed a large cargo ship beneath the 19km-long Crimean Bridge, which connects the Russian-annexed peninsula with its mainland, blocking all traffic into the strait, the only passage into the Sea of Azov.

Both countries have the right to use the sea, but following Russias annexation of Crimea in 2014 Moscow controls both sides of the strait.

Photo: Russian RFCGS 354 'Izumrud', a Rubin Class patrol ship, deployed at Kerch bridge has visible damage, reasons not clear https://t.co/u4eNwCseYo pic.twitter.com/JCDMtFvevg via @norestfor #Ukraine  Liveuamap (@Liveuamap) November 25, 2018

While trying to stop the ships, a Russian navy ship rammed the Ukrainian tugboat.

Whats happening now is an absolutely new level of aggression, Ukraines Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin was quoted by Ukrainian media as saying. Russias actions are [about] a real intention to seize the Sea of Azov.

Pro-Russian authorities in annexed Crimea accused the United States of being behind the escalation.

Our American partners who rule Ukraine are behind all this. I am absolutely sure that everything is done following their commands. Whats important for them is to get Russia involved in another confict, Vladimir Konstantinov, head of Crimeas parliament, told Russia media.

Al Jazeeras Rory Challands, reporting from the Russian capital, Moscow, said Sundays events appeared to be a series of escalations that seem to have culminated in extended fire.

This is something that seems to be getting very volatile.

Sea traffic was no longer allowed to pass through the Kerch Strait [VesselFinder.com screenshot]

The Kerch Strait is an important trade route for Ukraine as it gives ships access to the city of Mariupol, a key port located in the Sea of Azov.

Several dozen ships were anchored near the strait as they waited for the standoff to be solved, marine traffic tracker website VesselFinder.com showed on Sunday.

Videos and photos posted on Twitter purportedly showed Russian fighter jets and helicopters flying near the Crimean Bridge.

Video of #Russia|n fighter jets flying at low altitude over the #Kerch Strait, location of todays Russian #military escalation against #Ukraine: pic.twitter.com/TUvhkZFtFx  Alex Kokcharov (@AlexKokcharov) November 25, 2018

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In a statement late on Sunday, NATO said it was closely monitoring developments and called for restraint and de-escalation.

NATO fully supports Ukraines sovereignty and its territorial integrity, including its navigational rights in its territorial waters. We call on Russia to ensure unhindered access to Ukrainian ports in the Azov Sea, in accordance with international law.

Maja Kocijancic, spokesperson for the European Union, said in a statement: We expect Russia to restore freedom of passage at the Kerch strait and urge all to act with utmost restraint to de-escalate the situation immediately.

As clearly stated by the High Representative at the European Parliament recently, the events in the Sea of Azov are a demonstration of how instability and tensions are bound to rise when the basic rules of international cooperation are disregarded, the statement added.

The rising volatility near the Kerch Strait is the latest in an ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine following the developments in Crimea four years ago.

The annexation followed the overthrow of pro-Russian Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich after weeks of protests that descended into a violent conflict.

Later, pro-Russian separatists took over parts of Donbass in southeastern Ukraine.

Since then, fighting in that region has killed more than 13,000 people, including about 3,000 civilians.
New Braunfels, TX (78130)

Today

Cloudy skies. High 76F. Winds SSE at 15 to 25 mph..

Tonight

Periods of rain. Thunder possible. Low 63F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%.
All you have to do is wotk through major headlines over the past few years and youll see theyre littered with stories of cyberattacks, data theft, and privacy concerns. From a political and legal perspective, the folks in Washington have a lot of influence over how/whether this issue is solved.

The Dire State of Data Privacy and Security

Since 2013, the Breach Level Index shows that more than 13.44 billion data records have been stolen. This amounts to an astounding 6.2 million per day, or 73 every second. And out of all of these data records that have been stolen, just 4 percent are considered secure breaches (where encryption was used and the stolen data was rendered useless).

No person or entity is immune to data breaches. According to MyMoid, identity theft accounts for 59 percent of data breaches. After this, financial access and account access are the most popular forms of attack, accounting for 17.8 percent and 9.6 percent respectively.

For businesses, the average cost of a data breach is more than $150 million. It also leads to the erosion of trust of consumers and facilitates a hostile environment where people and businesses are unable to trust one another.

On the citizen side of things, malicious web activity is at an all-time high rate. Apples Mac systems alone saw a 230 percent increase in malware activity last year, and the severity of online attacks doesnt seem to be getting any better for other operating systems.

How the Trump Administration Should Respond

Though it may seem like a private sector challenge that businesses and individuals must deal with on an individual basis, data security is a national issue. As with any other crime or security threat, data privacy must be protected and enforced on a governmental level.

And it just so happens that Donald Trump and his administration are in power at a crucial junction where key decisions must be made. How Trump and others in power respond could impact the trajectory of this issue in America for years to come.

Here are some ways the administration is already dealing with the issue, as well as some thoughts on how they can move forward:

New Data Privacy Policy

On May 25, 2018, the European Union officially began enforcing Europes General Data Protection Regulation, more commonly known as GDPR. This regulation consists of a collection of rules that outline how businesses can gather and use data. And while it only applies to businesses that collect information on customers living in the EU, it appears that American policymakers are paying attention

Earlier this year, it was announced that the Trump administration had begun work on developing a consumer data privacy policy. The Commerce Department also began meeting with big tech companies like Facebook Inc., Alphabet Inc., and Comcast Corp.

In a July Statement, White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said that the administration, with the help of the White House National Economic Council, aims to craft a consumer privacy protection policy that is the appropriate balance between privacy and prosperity.... We look forward to working with Congress on a legislative solution consistent with our overarching policy.

While any American data privacy policy wont be an exact replica of Europes GDPR, its possible that there will be some similar elements -- such as giving consumers more control over what online data they share with companies.

Larger Data Theft Task Forces

While theres already some presence in this area, the White House, Federal Trade Commission, and FBI need to work together to invest more resources into data theft task forces that specifically target criminals who choose to participate in illegal behavior that targets American citizens.

One of the most important challenges will be luring top talent into this area, as opposed to other more traditional task forces that combat violent crimes, drugs, and national security threats. Once professionals see the value in this space, data theft and cybersecurity -- as career tracks -- will be viewed in a more positive light.

Require Two-Factor Authentication

Theres no excuse for lax policies when it comes to conducting sensitive transactions in a hostile digital landscape -- particularly when it comes to filing taxes or applying for credit. Two-factor authentication should be a mandatory requirement in these instances.

Two-factor authentication requires the identification number plus a second element based on something physical in the possession of the consumer. This could be a one-time code sent to the consumer via email or SMS, or some biometric element (such as a fingerprint or iris scan), HexaTier explains. These technologies are already mature enough for widespread implementation today. An identity thief without access to the consumers email account, mobile phone or physical body will be unable to accomplish anything with the identity number alone.

Theres also a case to be made for more single-use/disposable identity numbers for secure transactions. This ensures that information, even if stolen, is unusable by the theft. So while it wont prevent data theft from occurring, it can limit the damage (much like encryption does).

Greater Penalties for Offenders

As things currently stand, there arent a ton of negative ramifications for businesses that fail to properly protect consumer data. Sure, there may be certain fines and slaps on the wrist, but most large organizations see these as nothing but minor speed bumps in the road.

To get businesses to take data privacy seriously, there needs to be a greater sense of responsibility. Serious penalties -- on a legislative level -- can make sure repeat offenders dont have the chance to make similar mistakes three, four, or five times.

Restoring Trust in a 1984-Esque World

In George Orwells famous book 1984, he tells the story of a dystopian world where citizens become victims of perpetual war, government surveillance, propaganda, and an overall lack of personality or privacy. And though it was a fiction novel published in 1949, many of the circumstances Orwell wrote about seem to be coming true.

While the establishment has played a catalytic role in facilitating the progression towards an Orwellian society, its ultimately up to those in Washington to rescue us from the current state of affairs.

President Trump has always prided himself in being anti-establishment. He speaks of draining the swamp and putting people of real experience and value into office to make intuitive decisions that benefit average middle-class citizens. And if there ever were a way to show the American people that privacy and security matter, it would be to place an emphasis on preventing and combatting cyberattacks, data theft, and related concerns.

The time to act is now. Privacy is quickly dissipating, and its up to our current leadership to be proactive about whats a very real concern. The only question is, will they listen?
It's common knowledge that distrust in media is at an all-time high. Despite attempts by anti-Trump pundits to blame these figures on President Trump for popularizing the term "fake news," the media will soon have to reconcile how they have been complicit in their own faltering credibility.

According to the last media survey from McLaughlin & Associates, voters who see anti-Trump bias in the news media outnumber voters who don't at about a 5-to-1 clip. In 2018, the mainstream media aren't even attempting to camouflage their hyper-progressive bias. There was a time when news entities worked hard to remain bipartisan, and even if they weren't, they at least attempted to conceal their biases. Bias is inevitable in today's media climate, but we've reached a point where the media's desire to feed their bias has become mutually exclusive with reality itself.

For starters, modern media are an audience-based machine, catering to content more likely to be consumed by their already loyal viewers and readership. The problem has thus arisen that some media organizations have put themselves in a position where they have to create content to feed their viewers' appetite, even if that content is insincere.

Like many months, this month is a case study for insincere content from media organizations who take it upon themselves to feed their readers disingenuous content. We'll start with the Daily Beast, a left-leaning outlet known for using ultra-sensationalized rhetoric with a strong liberal spin. Like a majority of media outlets, the Daily Beast tries its best to contort the truth without making it obvious that it is advocating, not reporting, but the site got disastrously sloppy attempting to smear conservative author and One America News contributor Jack Posobiec.

In a column about two arrested Washington, D.C. brothers with ties to neo-Nazi movements, the Daily Beast edited a cropped a picture of Posobiec and paired it with an image of racist (and irrelevant) loudmouth Richard Spencer and Charlottesville Unite the Right Organizer Jason Kessler. The worse part about the image is that it's edited to make it appear as though Posobiec were giving a Nazi salute.

What the Daily Beast doesn't mention is that Posobiec has constantly disavowed racism, and what the site cropped is an image of him next to a black Trump-supporter at a rally specifically designed to stand against political violence.

In one fell swoop, the Daily Beast has completely distorted reality. Posobiec had nothing to do with the racist brothers arrested in Virginia on weapons charges, but the Daily Beast couldn't pass up an attempt to smear Posobiec to rile up its reader base and feed into its construction of Posobiec as a right-wing villain.

This anecdote is all too familiar in today's media climate. In 2018, if you're a conservative white male, you're at risk of being labeled a white supremacists (see Steve King) or a flat-out Nazi. You would think left-wing media would have a bright line for whom they won't cast under their Nazi moniker, but like all of their miscues, they're accelerating this phenomenon to ludicrous levels. Last week, the left-leaning media outlet Right Wing Watch linked me, a black Republican consultant, to "white supremacy" as well.

Like the Daily Beast, Right Wing Watch exists to cover the right negatively and tries to leverage the power of weaponized outrage to smear conservative figures. You may remember how the site spearheaded a campaign that convinced HGTV to cancel a house renovation program because the hosts had been quoted on their conservative religious views on homosexuality and abortion.

So when a friend told me I should check out the column RWW had written about the American Priority conference I'm scheduled to speak at in December, I was prepared for the traditional media smears that have become par for the course in today's media climate. I suspected they would call me "anti-immigrant" or even "far-right," but no  given the Posobiec treatment, I was introduced as a figure within the "white supremacist alt right movement."

Giving the author and organization the benefit of the doubt, I emailed them. I expressed my concern with their insinuations and phrasing, to explain that my role at the conference was to participate in a bipartisan panel on political violence. (I was notably attacked at a political event last year.) I even offered the author, Jared Holt, a quote for his story. I copied the editor as well. My email has yet to be answered, and the author, Jared Holt, blocked me on Twitter when I D.M.ed him about it.

To be fair, anyone regardless of race or social class can be guilty of problematic views, but to tie me to white supremacy as a means to score points off an event that conflicts with one's worldview is to abuse one's position a journalist and continue the trend of dishonesty in the media. RWW may not be the most respected media outlet in the country, but it ranks on Google and has been spoken highly of by respected media outlets such as The Washington Post and the New York Times.

The Right Wing Watch article that calls me, the director of Arizona's Black Conservative Federation, a white supremacist is still up. So is the Daily Beast article and image that attempt to link Posobiec to Richard Spencer and two neo-Nazi brothers arrested in a violent plot. These are just two trespasses of many that the media will continue to get away with. Or will they?

If media elites continue to avoid facing the music for their deceit, public distrust in the media will continue to rise. This puts the onus on ethical journalists and outlets to self-regulate and purge unethical actors from their ranks. Could you imagine how much credibility the Washington Post or New York Times could gain by reporting an unpopular truth for once? So far, no one within the establishment media is willing to break from the new norm and call out activists parading around as journalists, which is somewhat surprising. In the old days, when a publication or outlet was caught lying, that would spell disaster. It would be blackballed by not only the public, but by other media entities, who would begin to look down on their competitor for being unethical. Now groupthink is proving difficult to break as the media share a certain camaraderie about their anti-conservative bias.

Proof of the establishment media's refusal to break this cycle is the way they treated the Jim Acosta-W.H. intern tug-of-war for the microphone at President Trump's post-midterm election press conference. Instead of taking the stance that the contact Acosta made with the intern was negligible or initiated by her, CNN took the position that Acosta never touched the intern, claiming that a video of the encounter released by the White House was doctored when it had simply been zoomed in and looped. CNN, which continues to be the most egregious violator of media ethics, has taken it upon itself to counter reality with a special kind of indifference.

Today, CNN finds itself in a legal battle over Acosta and his activism as MSNBC, ABC, and other news agencies are rushing to defend CNN as just, credible, and benevolent. But a few months ago, CNN published and retracted portions of a piece actually heralding the release of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)'s DNA ancestry test as if it were some kind of vindication for the politician. Most left-leaning outlets followed suit, leaving it up to conservative and independent media to deviate from that depiction, blasting Warren for using such low levels of American Indian ancestry to advance her career. If it were up to CNN, Elizabeth Warren would've been deemed the chair of the Native American Caucus, but thankfully, CNN isn't the only media empire. It's just the loudest and most brazen with its intention to engage in "narrative reporting" or "advocacy media."

The percentage of Americans who trust the media is about what the percentage is of Americans who think the FDA is withholding the cure for cancer (40%). Such a predicament is contributing to real problems in the country. The media have been responsible for contributing to sensationalized rhetoric for some time now, but no time is more evident than the past three years.

The media have yet to hold themselves accountable, hyping up both sides of political protests, often sending conflicting groups into an event by riling them up with salacious headlines. The media have also circumvented blame for setting race dialogue back decades by focusing on stories of racial divisions as opposed to stories of racial unity.

There is a long list of societal problems perpetuated by media. This may be a problem created by corporatism, but it's a problem that can be remedied by a few journalists and outlets taking an ethical stand by refusing to complicit in the trend of distorting reality to feed their anti-conservative appetite.

R.C. Maxwell is the director of the Arizona Black Conservative Federation and deputy communications director of the Arizona Republican Party.
To hear the news report it, the migrant caravan is just a spontaneous uprising of women and children fleeing Honduran gangs, and the issue is one of Mexico and the U.S. diplomacy finding a way to accommodate them.

What's lost is just how hard, hard, left the organizers of what has become this humanitarian disaster are. Even the liberation-theology types are getting concerned. The caravan agenda is a hard-left, pro-Chavista one, and drawing the fringiest leftwing groups. To its organizers on the ground, the caravan is not a humanitarian mission, it's a by-any-means-necessary political mission. A look at the caravan organizers and their allies shows that their real aim is to confront the U.S. The moms-and-kids are window dressing.

Take a look at what Puebla Sin Fronteras has on its website, in announcing a border protest today:

The manifesto can be read here. It begins:

We, the San Diego Migrant and Refugee Solidarity Coalition, composed of migrant rights and social justice groups, invite individuals and organizations across the country and globe to organize demonstrations in their cities, and if they have the capacity, to join our rally and march to the border. We call for an action on November 25th to commemorate the anniversary of the 2017 Honduran election stolen by the US government-backed, right-wing military dictator Juan Orlando Hernandez (JOH). We are demonstrating on this day to acknowledge and draw attention to the current social and political crises driving the exodus from Central America. We understand that these crisesdrug wars, military coups, destruction of indigenous lands for the benefit of corporations, and environmental catastrophe in the regionare all symptoms of US foreign policy, corporate profiteering and war-making. Moreover, we see that the Trump administration is creating a warlike atmosphere against the caravan. It should be clear that they are not just acting with the support of a cabinet of white supremacists and a majority GOP in the Senate but are also emboldened by the last few decades of bipartisan militarization of the border, mass raids, expansion of for-profit detention centers, and mass deportationswith more than 2.5 million migrants under Obama and Trump alone. Further, these policies are a continuation of a long history of anti-Indigenous colonial violence and genocide.

Had enough? It just gets worse, with its list of demands, including this beauty:

3. The US government must publicly acknowledge a) its role in Honduran Coup in 2009, b) that the Honduran government is a US supported dictatorship, and c) recognize the political and social crises throughout Central America as caused by US foreign policy.

This is nutbag, far-left stuff. That's not about moms and kids in the slightest, that's about the political demands of Hugo Chavez's Venezuela. And as you read further in the "demands," you can read that they also want American officials prosecuted. This is the caravan agenda as it throws hapless women and children in front of the cameras, leaves Tijuana a humanitarian disaster, and leaves Mexico with the prospect of a completely shut down border. As the leftists say: By any means necessary, and those migrants are their easily expendable pawns. Now is the scenario clearer?

And are there any questions as to why the caravan migrants are overwhelmingly military-aged unemployed young men, as this Univision screengrab from Mexicali unintentionally shows? (Look at how unconfortable the Univision reporter looks).

Meanwhile, pictures from Univision (Spanish only) do expose who the caravan organizers are. The camera shots show that the organizers themselves are far-left activists, quite possibly what remain of the gang-like Chavista shock troops of Latin America who destroyed Venezuela. Smug, smarmy and robotic, they speak a disciplined Marxist party line devoid of individualism. They're obviously experienced community organizers, (which gives you an approximate sense of how Chavez destroyed Venezuela). These are the kinds of people I met in Caracas 13 years ago. It was guys like these who produced Venezuela. And given the caravan thugcraft already seen, look at them how at odds the whole project is with these organizers' peaceable and humanitarian claims.

Source: Univision, via YouTube

Source: Univision, via YouTube

Any question as to why they produced these scenes here?

Source: Univision, via YouTube

Even the liberation-theology priests, the famous rifles-and-cassocks crowd of Latin American Idiot fame, are warning they are a problem. Univision has a report (Spanish only) here, but here is a translation from Google of its YouTube caption below.

Father Solalinde assures that Pueblo Sin Fronteras uses the migrant caravan to its own advantage "Some are extremists", in this way the priest referred to the activists who accompany the mass exodus and assured that they will cause problems as they are already doing internationally between the US and Mexico. The activists refuted the statements, said it is a lie and said that all they do is provide accompaniment.

This is amazing stuff, completely ignored by the mainstream media and available only in the Spanish-language press. And these people are at the heart of the caravan roiling both the U.S. and Mexico, creating a humanitarian disaster in the true Marxist tradition. My question: Why are they completely off the U.S. press radar?

Update: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Sarah Hoyt also has an important link to the origins of the migrant caravan here.
That sets up a potentially contentious several weeks as Democrats continue to pressure Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker to recuse himself from the Mueller inquiry. Mr. Whitaker, who was publicly critical of the investigation before coming to the Justice Department, has so far signaled he will not step aside.

The concerns over the Mueller probe join broader questions about whether Mr. Whitaker, whom President Trump appointed after ousting Jeff Sessions on Nov. 7, can serve without Senate confirmation. Democrats in recent days have called for Mr. Whitaker to testify before Congress, sought a Justice Department inspector generals investigation into his communications with the White House, and asked a federal judge to bar him from serving.

Democrats will gain some power when they take control of the House in January, but they say their most immediate leverage comes from Congresss need to pass spending bills by Dec. 8. Republicans in both chambers say they want to avoid a partial government shutdown, and they need Democratic votes to do so.

Spending bills need 60 votes to clear procedural hurdles in the Senate, where Republicans currently hold 51 seats. The GOP tentatively gained two seats in the recent election, but the newcomers wont take office until January.

If Congress and the White House cannot agree on a spending bill by Dec. 8, many agenciesincluding such high-profile entities as the Department of Homeland Securitywill shut down. Democrats demand to protect the special counsel is just one piece of a complex fight over the spending package; Mr. Trump, for example, has said it must include $5 billion more for construction of a wall along the border with Mexico.
Now comes the hard part.

As expected, European Union leaders approved the plan for Great Britain to exit the EU in March, setting the stage for a crucial vote in the British parliament next month.

CNBC:

May needs a simple majority of the 650 lawmakers that sit in the House of Commons. Her 315 Conservative MPs (Members of Parliament) do represent the largest party in the House, but a significant number are against the plan. The Conservatives operate a majority in the Commons by working in tandem with 10 votes from the DUP. The left-of-center opposition Labour Party has 257 lawmakers and would appear to hold the whip-hand. Labour has indicated they will ask their MPs to vote against May's deal, but there are a number of rebels that May can count on. It's estimated she would need around 40 Labour MPs to cross the divide and vote for her. Despite deep divisions within Labour, political analysts see that as a high threshold. The third-biggest party, the Scottish National Party (SNP), has promised that all 35 of its MPs will reject the deal, calling it an unfair solution for Scotland. Nonetheless, there is some optimism from certain market watchers, including analysts at Nomura. In a detailed research note last week, strategists at the Japanese bank said the alternatives to voting down the deal make it more likely that enough MPs would rather get Brexit done, rather than risk a no-deal or no Brexit at all. Their "base case" is for a deal to be voted through, which they assign with a 60 percent probability.

Crucial to May's chances to pass the plan is support from die hard Brexiteers, many of whom have already indicated their opposition. But May's most potent weapon of persuasion is the massive uncertainty of what would happen if Great Britain just up and left the EU without a negotiated agreement.

Some observers believe that the resulting chaos in the markets might trigger a recession. At the very least, it would complicate trade with other European countries enormously.

Another key to May's success will be to convince enough Labor party members to cross the aisle and support the deal. Given the opposition in her own party, it's believed May might need as many as 40 Labor members to put the deal over the top. This is an unlikely scenario at this moment, so it appears that May has her work cut out for her.
It has been reported that there was a robust WH debate over the scope of empowering the US Military to assist in border protection, as the issue of posse comitatus was being discussed:

The White House late Tuesday signed a memo allowing troops stationed at the border to engage in some law enforcement roles and use lethal force, if necessary  a move that legal experts have cautioned may run afoul of the Posse Comitatus Act.

President Trump has proven to be very respectful of his constitutional role as commander in chief to protect all Americans. So when he orders US military to help secure our safety and security in supporting and assisting civilian law enforcement he is well within his constitutional rights. There are several historical examples of the teaming of law enforcement and the military.

Perhaps two very specific examples of the legal consideration of posse comitatus as our troops engage to protect the southern border will show any legal experts that the military has been there and done that, with honor and success.

Navy Ship COs comment to the crew of a fast mover drug smuggler:

After flying actual combat scrambles from Key West in the seventies our Squadron would often go back to train in flying areas off Key West. During that time USN Pegasus Class hydrofoils began being employed to chase down fasts moving "skunks," navy designation of unknown surface contacts. Hydrofoils had a top end of 48 kits (55 mph)so that they were very capable ships for the drug interdiction mission. These naval engagements were during the famous "Save the Bales" drug wars originating in the Caribbean. An infamous Tee shirt showing floating marijuana bales with that message and was all the vogue as high speed boats made drug runs up the Keys to deliver their products They key to success was having a Coast Guard Law enforcement detachment on board. US Naval ships with a member of the US Coast Guard were then legally allowed to board, inspect and arrest criminal crews. And with an armament of a 75 mike mike cannon woe be to the drug smugglers that wanted a running at sea gun battle with a Pegasus.

Coast Guard Seamen Chris Bedford, Daniel Rowland, Stephen Hartie and Daniel Rowland (left to right) help load one of 37 bales of cocaine the crew of U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Mohawk seized on a drug interdiction patrol. Coast Guard photo

A little-known but brilliant chapter in Navy history was perfectly captured in the Decommissioning message saluting the Pegasus Class hydrofoils;

From the CNO on 2 July 1993 (R1219102 Jul 93):

Over the last ten years they have set an admirable record in counter drug operations representing 3 percent of the surface Navy they accounted for 28 % of all Surface Navy-assisted drug seizures. You have given these proud ships a special place of honor in our Navys history.

With reported drug smugglers, known criminals and unknown possible terrorists intermixed with the central immigrant cohorts, if Blackhawks and HUMVEES are planned to be used as a show of force deterrence mission on US side of border, if one ICE agent or other civilian LE official is on board then the mission falls well within the legal boundaries of Possie Comitatus

Death From Above-a Marine Pilot flies to the sound of the guns

Marine helicopter pilot Charles H. "Chuck" Pitman watched the television in horror on Jan. 7, 1973, as authorities tried to stop a sniper or snipers who had invaded the Downtown Howard Johnson's Motor Lodge that morning and fatally shot seven people, including three police officers. Shots rang out from various spots in the 17-story hotel, making police think there was more than one gunman, but the cops eventually contained the killer or killers to the roof.

Chuck Pitman is one of the most legendary Marine Corps pilots in our illustrious history and he was commanding a Marine Helicopter Squadron of Ch-46 Helos flying out of NAS Belle Chasse just up the river from New Orleans:

During his nearly four decades in the Marines, he earned numerous honors, among them a Silver Star for valor, four Distinguished Flying Crosses, a Bronze Star with Combat "V," a Purple Heart and 65 air medals. Nonetheless, he says he is perhaps most proud of having served alongside the New Orleans police during their clash with Essex on one of the darkest days in the city's history, for which he was made an honorary NOPD captain on Nov. 8, 1991.

Believing in the military saying when that lives are being lost it easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission he entered the fight. Seeing American being killed by a cowardly, but sadly effective sniper, then LtCol Pitman flew his CH-46 flew to the sounds of the guns and into harms way:

So when Pitman flew his helicopter to the hotel with his crew, he exposed himself to a court-martial: He had deployed military personnel and resources to quell a civil matter, and he did not have permission to do so before taking off.

However, a posse comitatus partnership had been immediately formed:

Pitman agreed to fly a group of well-armed officers  over the hotel to better see where the sniper was hiding. They would try to force the sniper out of his lair. The cops aboard the Sea Knight ran out of ammunition a couple of times, and Pitman had to land so they could reload. After one of those pit stops, the sniper hit the Sea Knight with gunfire but vanished when the helicopter began to pass over the hotel. When he fired ... at me, the helicopter jumped," Pitman joked, explaining that he instinctively jerked back on his controls. The bullet struck a little bit above the cockpit, hitting the transmission casing. Pitman steadied the helicopter and kept the searchlight on the sniper. Saacks, his colleagues in the helicopter and the officers in surrounding buildings emptied their weapons at the figure on the roof. The sniper collapsed and died. He was struck more than 200 times.

Now here is where the story takes a very positive turn in recognizing the Military/Civilian partnership during a very dangerous time:

Pitman soon learned that his actions could lead to a court-martial. But he said the issue was dropped after his commander sought out longtime U.S. Rep. F. Edward Hebert, a New Orleans Democrat and at the time the powerful chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

US Democrat representative F. Edward Eddie Hebert was a famous pro-military towering figure of the last century. He fully supported then LtCol Pitmans actions. Lt-Gen Chuck Pitman USMC, now retired, went on to serve as our most senior Marine Aviator. On that day in New Orleans a new chapter of constitutionally protected posse comatitus history was successfully written.

Would there be room today in the new Democrat Controlled Congress for a Chairman Hebert?
A North Carolina illegal alien who had taken "sanctuary" in a local church was arrested by ICE agents when he arrived at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office where he was seeking to defer his deportation.

Samuel Oliver-Bruno was in the US illegally for 22 years. He was detained at the border last year after he returned from a trip to Mexico. He was released pending a hearing, which is when he began living in the church.

Following his arrest, there were demonstrations at the USCIS offices, where dozens of people were taken into custody.

During Oliver-Bruno's arrest, there was a scuffle involving his son and several ICE agents.

WRAL:

"Samuels sudden and inappropriate arrest in the middle of the Thanksgiving season reflects the callous and cruel approach weve come to expect from the Trump administration," the Democratic Congressmen said in their statement. "As Members of Congress representing the Durham community, we will continue to do everything in our power to keep the Oliver-Bruno family together." May said he knew it was possible for ICE officials to arrest Oliver-Bruno at the USCIS appointment, an appointment that an ICE spokesman said would have been made at his request. Oliver-Bruno was trying to go through the process to become a legal resident. This was a bait-and-switch, May said. A legal process was put into place that was used as the bait to pull Samuel out of sanctuary. Outside the USCIS building, he and other protesters formed a human wall around the van Oliver-Bruno was placed in, keeping him and officials from leaving for about two hours. "I hope the world sees this," May said. "They're choosing to show exactly how dehumanizing their agency is. They're choosing to engage in tactics that are devious, to say it lightly." May and 25 other protesters were arrested and charged with failing to disperse on command. Many of the protesters were members of CityWell.

One might gently inquire as to why Oliver-Bruno did not apply to become a legal resident sooner. Twenty two years is a long time to be in violation of the law, and if he had bothered to go through the process of becoming a legal resident sooner, he never would have had to take refuge in a church and never have been subject to arrest.

The notion of "sanctuary" is silly. It might have been recognized during Medievil times, but there's no such thing in modern America. ICE won't arrest anyone in a church, school, or hospital largely because of the bad PR that would ensue.

Oliver-Bruno's story is a tragedy. But what was ICE supposed to do, let it slide? Fail to enforce the law that they have sworn to uphold? All of this wailing and gnashing of teeth by the virtue signallers and moral posturers fails to mention the only salient point; Oliver-Bruno was in violation of the law and it was the job of federal immigration officials to enforce it.

If you believe it to be a bad law, the remedy is to change it. If advocates for illegal aliens spent one tenth the energy they expend in calling ICE and Trump names in trying to change the law, they might have my sympathy.

ICE did absolutely nothing wrong. Advocates for Mr. Oliver-Bruno should accept that fact and, like anyone else, work to change the law according to their own lights.
By late 1963, we were waiting for "el telegrama" to leave Cuba. It was routine for Cubans to announce their decision to leave the country and then be forced to wait for a departure date. It was generally an opportunity for the regime to mock you, for thugs to scream in front of your home and call you traitors, and for your dad to be squeezed out of any way of making a living. My father's employer, a Cuban-owned bank, had been expropriated, so that put him in an even more difficult position.

Our resources were limited, and my parents kept having their differences with the local CDR, or the so-called "Comite de la Defensa de la Revolucion," the local neighborhood spy gang that would watch your every move like a hawk. It was not a fun time for my parents and many other Cubans on the island.

In the middle of this, I recall President Kennedy's assassination and then the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald.

During this past week in 1963, millions of people in the U.S. watched Jack Ruby, a Dallas businessman, shoot Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged killer of President Kennedy. Oswald died shortly after.

Down in Cuba, my father learned about it from the Spanish service of The Voice of America. I remember my father updating my mother, and her shocked face said it all.

As my father recalled, they weren't sure what would happen to Cuba. Would the new President Johnson invade Cuba and blame the assassination on Castro? Would Castro go into panic mode and shut down departures from the island? Would more men be arrested, as happened after the Bay of Pigs or even the Missile Crisis?

Ruby's action also opened the door to a ton of conspiracy theories about the president's assassination.

For the record, I believe that Oswald shot President Kennedy on his own. I came to that conclusion after reading Gerald Posner's Case Closed in the 1990s.

Ruby died of cancer in 1967. As far as we know, Ruby never changed his story about why he killed Oswald. Apparently, Ruby did not want Jackie Kennedy to come to a trial. He took that explanation to his grave.

Down in Cuba, it was a week of extra tension for all of us stuck down there.

PS: You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter.
Fresh after stamping out the first brushfire against her leadership, from far-leftists - and no doubt watching in horror as President Trump, in a masterful Eddie Haskell manner of trolling, endorsed her, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has a brand new challenge from her fractious fellow Democrats for leadership of her party.

Let's excursion over to the rabid left's ThinkProgress news site and see what's cooking:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has even more moderate Democrats to worry about in her bid to become Speaker of the House for the second time. 16 Democratic colleagues, later reduced to 15 when Rep. Brian Higgins (NY) changed course, signed a letter opposing the California congresswoman earlier this week. Now another group of moderate Democrats is threatening to upend Pelosis House Speaker bid. And theyre working with Republicans to do it.

Horrors! They're working with Republicans! What could be more damning.

The story goes on to name a bunch of blue-dog moderate Democrats, such as the Central Valley's Jim Acosta, and something called the "House Problem Solvers Caucus" as mounting a new opposition to Pelosi's leadership bid. Apparently, they're guys who don't intend to follow Pelosi off the far side. They ran as moderates and got elected as moderates, and in their idealism, they think they can keep their promises. Poor idealistic fools, but let's put that aside.

What makes it schadenfreudishly interesting is that it comes just after Nancy Pelosi put down an earlier brushfire from the Bernie Sanders left. She bought them all off easily and cheaply, offering leadership challenger Rep. Marsha Fudge some electoral commission position, and newbie (and dumbie) Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez something or other which has gotten her now marching in lockstep for Pelosi's leadership fresh after telling her voters she had no such intentions. These were the roundheels from among the Democrats.

Now she's got the moderates to fight and they aren't going to be so easy given that they've got Republicans they can work with. They're mounting their own challenge and Pelosi's camp is clearly alarmed. Get a load of these enraged tweets cited by ThinkProgress:

9 Dems are choosing to hold the entire 220+ caucus hostage if we dont accept their GOP-friendly rules that will hamstring healthcare efforts from the get-go.



People sent us here to get things done, not negotiate with an admin that jails children and guts peoples healthcare. https://t.co/ih8ygftjHo  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Ocasio2018) November 23, 2018

The Problem Solvers Caucus is funded by billionaires through a front group, called No Labels. Their super PAC spent millions to elect the handful of Democrats now trying to ally with Republicans and jam everything up https://t.co/JUREwYvLXg  Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) November 24, 2018

Then note how ThinkProgress cites the rebellious moderate Democrats in a hall-of-shame format. They seem ... alarmed.

What a miserable party. They're either easily purchased far-left extremists who fold like a cheap suit when the goodies are held out (disillusioning the Bernie-ites who might just sit the next electionout), or else they're moderates who refuse to go along with the crazies and have some ghost power in the Republicans. This doesn't sound like the old Congress Pelosi once led in lockstep, passing far-left bills such as Obamacare that no one wanted. This sounds like an unstable rodeo. Or more likely, rodeo clown show.

The good part, of course, is that they won't be in a position to do much harm. Fight on, Democrats, fight on.

Image credit: Donkey Hotey caricature, via Flickr // CC BY-SA 2.0
The Trump administration is attempting to negotiate a deal with Mexico over the thousands of Central American caravan migrants camped out in Tijuana and Mexicali, and last night, announced there was one, with asylum applicants having to wait out adjudication of their claims in Mexico, not the U.S. The idea was to disincentivize junk asylum claims from applicants whose real aim is to work in the U.S. for a couple years and remit the earnings until courts get around to dismissing the claims and deports them.

Well, until Mexico said there wasn't a deal.

Which is about par for Mexico, given its weakness. After all, the migrants have already shown that they can bust down Mexico's southern border with little trouble and then shake out bus service and other succor from city, state and national authorities up and down Mexico in the hopes that the migrants will just keep moving northward and become someone else's problem. There's also the presidential transition in Mexico, with the outgoing government perfectly happy to create some problems for the incoming one, and the incoming one holding a leftwing populist stance, although Trump seems to get along well enough with them. Because obviously some talks took place and some kind of "short term" deal was reached, yet Mexico is now saying nothing happened. Yeah, sure. Watch the left cheer...

But here's some reality: Trump holds all the good cards. As Mexico balks and changes its story about whether there was ever a deal, Trump can still squeeze Mexico if it doesn't play ball.

One, he threatened to shut the entire border. That's the one the good people use, the ones who engage in legal trade, not the dusty desert paths of the illegals and the cartel guides they pay. A shutdown would cost Mexico billions, because the San Diego-Tijuana border is literally the most crossed border in the world. No deal, no entry for anyone into the U.S. And that's called "making the economy scream."

Two, Mexican officials, back when the deal was said to be in place, said they were woefully afraid of their country becoming a highway for migrants on their way to easy entry into the U.S. So even though the Mexican government is denying a deal now, we know they know what's coming if the don't stop the caravans. Here's a CNBC report:

Olga Sanchez Cordero, Mexico's incoming interior minister and the top domestic policy official for Lopez Obrador, who takes office Dec. 1, told the Washington Post the plan, known as Remain in Mexico, was a "short-term solution." "The medium- and long-term solution is that people don't migrate," Sanchez Cordero said. "Mexico has open arms and everything, but imagine, one caravan after another after another, that would also be a problem for us."

Now the migrants are holed up in Tijuana where so far, busting into the U.S. hasn't been as easy as the positively Chavista far-left caravan organizers (read this) had advertised. Troops, razor wire and port-of-entry security measures were what the caravaners got instead.

It's all part and parcel of Mexico's fecklessness, sending contradictory signals throughout that such a situation has happened now. Tijuana, meanwhile, is calling for international aid, as crime, disease, and public anger take hold. The caravan organizers, such as Pueblo Sin Fronteras, played Mexico's government like a fiddle, and counted on their army of leftwing lawyers and Obama judges in the U.S. to play the U.S. like one, too. But apparently, President Trump's border reinforcement measures, even in not being his desired wall, were enough of a roadblock.

With more caravans already on the way, and more of the problems created by these mass movements of low-skilled, uneducated, military-aged young men, and single mothers looking for welfare, Mexico can look forward to more of the crime, garbage, and disease such caravan operations would bring. As caravan operations multiply across Mexico, the Tijuana protests would become national protests.

Memo to Mexico: Make a deal with Trump or deal with that.

Image credit: CBS News, via YouTube, screengrab
I have been surprised at the paltry attention paid by the US mainstream media to the arrest and incarceration Monday last week of Carlos Ghosn, who is the head of the worlds largest automobile manufacturing group: the alliance of Renault, Nissan, and Mitsubishi, with 450,000 employees and 10.6 million vehicles annually produced. As Joe Biden would say without resort to initials, this is a BFD.

[Mitsubishi was added to the group two years ago, as its failure to reach sufficient size has left it with a serious cost disadvantage. The cooperative purchasing and technology advantages of the combination presumably have kept it alive, but as a distinctly junior partner. This story is mostly about Renault and Nissan.]

Of course, the Wall Street Journal and other business publications have devoted considerable coverage to the drama unfolding, but the average American news consumer has seen very little, if any, information on the affair that is roiling Japan, France, the EU, and the auto industry.

Ghosn reportedly is denying the charge that he illegally failed to report substantial income to Japanese regulators for his role as President of Nissan. He was fired by Nissan at the time of his arrest, but remains CEO of Renault, which purchased a controlling 43% stake in Nissan when that company was in a financial crisis. The BBC reports:

Public broadcaster NHK, which first disclosed Mr Ghosn's arrest, reported he had told investigators there was no intention to under-report his earnings. He has not spoken publicly. Greg Kelly, a former Nissan executive arrested along with Mr Ghosn, was quoted by NHK as defending his boss's compensation, saying it was discussed with other officials and paid out appropriately. Japanese prosecutors claim the two men conspired to understate Mr Ghosn's remuneration by about half the 10 billion yen ($68m) he earned at Nissan over five years from 2010. The company has also made other allegations about use of company money.

The Wall Street Journal provides additional information on the allegation and a possible line of defense:

Altogether, Mr. Ghosn earned about 8 billion in what Nissan calls unreported deferred compensation in the eight years ended March 2018, these people said. The exact terms and payout period of that money couldnt be learned. The structure was formulated in consultation with Nissan executive Greg Kelly, whom Nissan has publicly called the mastermind of the plan, one of the people said. Mr. Ghosn told colleagues that if he was set to receive the deferred money after retirement, it wouldnt have to be reported in Japanese regulatory filings, but Nissan says it should have been reported, this person said. (snip) In addition to the allegations made by prosecutors, Nissans investigation alleged that Mr. Ghosn used corporate money to buy and renovate residences he used in Beirut and Rio de Janeiro, a person familiar with Nissans investigation has said. Prosecutors have so far not said publicly whether they are investigating that issue. The Ghosn family believed the residences in Rio de Janeiro, Beirut and other locations were corporate housing, whose purchase went through the normal channels for Nissan approval, a person familiar with the family has said.

Mr Ghosn is a Brazilian of Lebanese heritage, which explains his residences in those two countries. He is also the very definition of a jet-setter, commuting between Paris and Tokyo on Boeing Business Jet (an upgraded version of the Boeing 737) outfitted with a complete office for him to conduct business  until his incarceration.

The BBC mentions a suspicion that many close observers of the global auto industry have harbored:

there are suspicions about the timing of Mr Ghosn's downfall, which came amid concerns about the future of the Renault-Nissan partnership He is thought to have planned a full merger of the carmakers, something that some Nissan executives feared could see their company reduced to a junior partner.

That is highly plausible to me because Nissan rebounded from the crisis that made it possible for Renault to gain control and now Nissan is substantially (about 30%) bigger than Renault in car production. Nissan got into trouble because in the face of a downturn, it kept too many factories open and too many models in production. This unresponsiveness was itself the product of a notorious aspect of Nissans corporate culture. The company was formed by a merger of two almost equally-sized manufacturers in the 1960s: Nissan Motors and Prince Motors. For decades, the company was split between former Prince factories/models/personnel and former Nissan factories/models/personnel. I heard stories that the company even had two separate personnel operations to tend to the two sub-organizations. It was factionalism on steroids.

Ghosn and Renault were able to come into Nissan and streamline the operation without regard to the old organizational split, and as a result, along with a rebound in global auto sales, Nissan returned to its former glory and overshadowed Renault. With its corporate history of internal strife following a merger, I can imagine that extreme dread followed the suspicion that another merger was ahead  into a smaller non-Japanese organization.

The prosecution ahead probably will be the trial of the century in Japan. Ghosn has already hired a top lawyer with relevant experience:

NHK reported that former prosecutor Motonari Otsuru, now in private practice, is representing Mr. Ghosn. Mr. Otsurus office previously declined to comment and a call to his office on Sunday wasnt returned. Mr. Kellys family has retained Nashville-based attorney Aubrey Harwell [Nissan USA is headquartered in Nashville - TL] to represent him. Mr. Harwell said in a phone interview that he hasnt had contact with Mr. Kelly yet, but that Mr. Kellys family believes he did nothing wrong. Mr. Kellys family plans to hire a Japan-based lawyer for him, Mr. Harwell said.

I will be following this case as closely as my schedule and location allow. This will be historic in many senses of the word.
UPDATE: It seems like the deal is off, Logitech has confirmed to TechCrunch.

Swiss electronics giant Logitech is presently negotiating a potential acquisition of American audio equipment manufacturer Plantronics, Reuters reports, citing sources familiar with the situation. The deal is understood to be valued at over $2.2 billion, hence being some 20 times more valuable than Logitechs largest M&A move to date  this years purchase of Blue Microphones which set the company back about $117 million. Logitechs latest bid represents a slight premium over Plantronics current market cap of $2 billion but its presently unclear whether the management at the Santa Cruz, California-based company is planning to push for more money. Several insiders claim the talks are in an advanced phase and the deal may even be reached next week. Such a turn of events would likely mark a larger B2B push on Logitechs part, though not even the approximate terms of the alleged agreement are currently known.

Background: Both Logitech and Plantronics have been in the consumer electronics business for a long time, having been founded in 1981 and 1961, respectively. As the two firms are publicly traded in the United States, the gist of their financials is public knowledge, with their latest consolidated reports revealing that Logitech trumps Plantronics in terms of annual revenue, generating some $2.57 billion per year as opposed to $865 million. The companies are much more similar in terms of headcounts  Logitech employs approximately 7,000 people on a global level, whereas Plantronics workforce is roughly 3,800 strong. The Swiss firm has a much more diversified portfolio, dealing in everything from keyboards and mice to headphones and all other kinds of computer peripherals. Their market caps are representative of that fact, with Plantronics currently being valued at some $5.6 billion, more than double Plantronics valuation of $2 billion.

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While Logitech has been rather frugal on the M&A front ever since its establishment, Plantronics has a track record of willingness to spend money. This July, the firm acquired Polycom, an American manufacturer of teleconferencing equipment, having paid approximately $2 billion for the purchase. Both Logitech and Plantronics have recently been fending off increased competition in the consumer electronics segment as established technology giants such as Apple, Google, Samsung, and Microsoft started showing greater interest in developing computer accessories and all kinds of gadgets. Due to that state of affairs, a potential merger is not outside of the realm of possibility, with consolidations being one of the most commonly used strategies aimed at combating rising competition in modern economies.

Impact: A potential tie-up between Logitech and Plantronics could help the two mount a fiercer push against additional competition in the consumer electronics segment thats been rising over the last several years. The deal is unlikely to have major near-term consequences, save for benefitting Plantronics stock; even the very possibility of the thereof already did so, with the firm rising by nearly two points to $50.96 on Friday after the original report on the potential consolidation emerged. In the context of the next several months, both Plantronics and Logitech are likely to post improved commercial results, with the holiday season traditionally being the most lucrative period of the year for consumer electronics companies.
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 25, ARMENPRESS. President Armen Sarkissian has addressed the nation on the occasion of the launch of the campaigning period ahead of the general election.

Dear countrymen,

The campaigning for the early election of the National Assembly starts on November 26th.

This election is the most important event of Armenias political life since the great changes of April-May, the results of which are very significant in terms of the countrys development and prospects.

High responsibility and conscience  whatever office we hold, whatever opportunities we have  is required from each of us.

I therefore address the state bodies: Continue fulfilling your lawful duties and constitutional requirements with dignity. I am sure that free, equal and legitimate elections are from now on an inseparable part of our new history.

I am addressing the political parties and alliances running for parliament: I hope that you have treated the development of your political bids  teams and plans  with utmost responsibility. These will guide the pathways of Armenias further development. Be committed to the values you believe in, and at the same time [be] respectful and courteous to each other.

I wish good luck to all political entities taking part in the upcoming election.

I am addressing our citizens: Be demanding during debates of programs, hear out everyone in order to make your choice in an informed and conscious manner. Make your decision in line with your thinking and values of Armenias development.

Remember, Armenias future depends on all of us, on each and every one of us.

God bless the Republic of Armenia, God bless the Republic of Artsakh, God bless the Armenian people and all citizens of the Republic of Armenia, Sarkissian said, according to his office.

Candidates running for parliament will begin campaigning tomorrow.

Armenia will elect a new parliament on December 9.

Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan
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Do it yourself if you can We accept  in principle  that private equity can deliver (somewhat) excess returns over most other asset classes. But there are a lot of qualifications attached to that, and most of them are very relevant to whether and how pension funds should invest in private equity.
kWh

CRDI

Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, someone on the Worldscoop forum grabbed a screenshot and re-published the photograph in question. The pre-production prototype has black A-pillars that contrast nicely with the black-painted lower grille and lower half of the mirrors. The full-LED headlights also look the part, along with the slim upper grille and aggressive-styled front bumper that incorporates quadrilateral-shaped fog lights.What doesnt look so great are the wheels, which appear lost in the wheel arches of the 2020 Kia Soul . Were guessing the automaker made this choice in order to refine the ride quality, but on the other hand, high-profile tires in combination with these alloys would fit the Soul better.Slotted between the Stonic and Niro, the Soul is understood to arrive in Europe exclusively as an electric vehicle. The crossover is also understood to be offered with the 39.2-battery, leaving the 64-kWh option to the e-Niro and Hyundai Kona Electric. In this configuration, the range of the Soul EV could be rated in the ballpark of 200 miles (322 kilometers).On the internal combustion front, the range could start with the 1.0-liter T-GDI of the Stonic. Higher up and depending on the market, were expecting the 1.6-liter T-GDI with up to 204 PS (201 horsepower), 1.6-literturbo diesel, and the 2.0-liter MPI four-cylinder with natural aspiration.The bold and immediately recognizable design is complemented by uncompromising versatility and a fun-to-drive personality according to Kia, but were having doubts as far as the rear suspension is concerned. In the case of the Kona, front-wheel-drive models are equipped with a trailing torsion beam while all-wheel-drive models come with a multi-link setup.Of course, Kia will be much obliged to up the visual ante with the GT-Line package in Europe and the GT configuration, which will feature the 1.6-liter turbo mentioned earlier.
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Japan Airlines has tightened its rules regarding alcohol consumption by employees in the wake of series of incidents that have caused flight delays and led to the arrest of one pilot. Pilots are now banned from any alcohol consumption within 24 hours of flying a company plane and the airline is also extending its mandatory random breathalyzer tests to some ground crew members. Most airlines have a 12-hour pre-flight alcohol ban and most governments mandate eight hours. Last year the airline began using more modern breathalyzers and there was an immediate spike in flight disqualifications with more than limit of .02 percent alcohol in their blood. According to CNN, at least 19 pilots have tested positive since August of 2017, resulting in 12 flight delays. It should be noted that Japan Airlines operates more than 500 flights a day so the impact of alcohol-related incidents is statistically insignificant.

Nevertheless, a high-profile incident in which JAL pilot Katsutoshi Jitsukawa showed up for his flight from Heathrow to Tokyo in early November with blood-alcohol content of .189 prompted the airline to review its policies. It also led to the company president taking a voluntary 20 percent pay cut. We feel deeply responsible for causing the (Jitsukawa) incident that should never have happened, said Japan Airlines President Yuji Akasaka. JAL announced the new policies after JAL and ANA brass met with government officials earlier this week.
Two adolescent boys, aged 14 and 15, were arrested Thursday in Utah after allegedly taking a light sport aircraft for a Thanksgiving joyride. The duo, who police say had earlier made off with a tractor, took the aircraft from a private airstrip in Jensen in the northeast corner of Utah. They reportedly got it airborne and flew at least 32 miles west along Interstate 40 before turning around and landing successfully at the municipal airport in Vernal. They were arrested at the airport.

The boys walked away from a group home in the Salt Lake City area and were staying with friends in Jensen, about 200 miles east. They got the tractor going and drove it to the private airstrip. They are facing a lot of charges and are being held at a juvenile detention center. There has been no mention of whether either of them has had any flight training or experience.
Alabama police said a 21-year-old who was shot and killed by an officer at a mall in Thanksgiving night "likely did not fire" the shots that wounded two people, retracting an earlier statement, AL.com reports.

The details: Hoover police spokesman Capt. Gregg Rector said in a press release late Friday that Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford Jr. was mistakenly identified as the suspect who wounded an 18-year-old and 12-year-old. Rector, citing new evidence, said that while Bradford may have been involved in some aspect of the altercation, he likely did not fire the rounds that injured the 18-year-old victim.
A new government report released on Friday said the demolition of Brazils Amazon rainforest, driven by illegal logging and the expansion of agriculture in the area, has reached its highest level in a decade, per BBC.

Why it matters, per Axios science editor Andrew Freedman: The trees and soils of the Amazon rainforest make the region a massive carbon sink, meaning that cutting down trees and replacing them with palm oil plantations or mines causes more planet-warming greenhouse gases to be emitted into the air. With the newly elected leader of Brazil pledging to further develop the Amazon, many climate and forestry experts fear the deforestation rate will only increase.

The details: The annual survey, which relied on satellite data from the deforestation monitoring project known as Prodes, said about 3,050 square miles of the rainforest were destroyed between August 2017 and July 2018, BBC reports. That's about five times the size of London.
A Pew survey late last week found that 44% of Americans between 18 and 49 who aren't parents say it is not too likely or not at all likely that they will have children  an increase of 7 percentage points from 2018.

Why it matters: The shift could lead to smaller family Thanksgiving dinners and major social and economic changes, as children become rarer in many parts of the country and more American adults reach old age with little to no family to support them.
Plumes of smoke rise near the Arc de Triomphe on the Champs-Elysees in Paris, decorated with the Christmas lights, during the second weekend of France-wide protests against a rise in the gas tax, and general discontent with fiscal burdens.

The big picture: "Thousands of police were deployed nationwide to contain the eighth day of deadly demonstrations that started as protests against tax but morphed into a rebuke of President Emmanuel Macron and the perceived elitism of France's ruling class," AP reports. "It's going to trigger a civil war and me, like most other citizens, we're all ready," said Benjamin Vrignaud, a 21-year-old protester from Chartres.

Why it matters, from the N.Y. Times' Adam Nossiter in Paris:

"Welling up rapidly from rural and forgotten France, this broad-based, citizen-driven movement is among the most serious challenges yet to President Emmanuel Macrons pro-business government."

Trump tweets this morning: "The large and violent French protests dont take into account how badly the United States has been treated on Trade by the European Union or on fair and reasonable payments for our GREAT military protection. Both of these topics must be remedied soon."
The U.K. Parliament has seized internal Facebook documents in an unusual move to answer questions it feels the company has been dodging, the Guardian reports.

Why it matters: Pressure has been mounting on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify in front of the members of Parliament and other world leaders for weeks, but Zuckerberg has repeatedly turned down such requests.

Details: The files reportedly contain "significant revelations" about Facebook decisions on data and privacy control, as well as correspondence between top executives, per the Guardian.

Damian Collins, chair of Parliament's Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, invoked a rare parliamentary mechanism to force the founder of a U.S. software company to hand over the documents while on a business trip to London.

In a dramatic and unusual move, a serjeant at arms was sent to the founder of Six4Three's hotel and ordered him to hand over the documents or face fines and, potentially, imprisonment, according to the report.

The documents were obtained by Six4Three in a separate legal process, according to the Guardian, which caught the attention of U.K. officials. In its own legal fight, Six4Three alleges Facebook was aware of privacy problems and actively exploited them.

In a comment to the Guardian, Facebook says that Six4Threes claims have no merit, and we will continue to defend ourselves vigorously. It adds, The materials obtained by the DCMS committee are subject to a protective order of the San Mateo Superior Court restricting their disclosure. We have asked the DCMS committee to refrain from reviewing them and to return them to counsel or to Facebook. We have no further comment.

Background: Facebook has faced pressure to be more transparent with officials around the world, and particularly in the U.K. and EU, over how it handles an array of issues, like data privacy, election meddling and terrorist content.

On Friday, The Washington Post reported that Zuckerberg declined to testify at a rare joint hearing with lawmakers from seven countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Ireland, Latvia, Singapore and the U.K.

Lawmakers had been lobbying Facebook to appear for weeks, even launching a Twitter campaign to get people to retweet their plea to have Zuckerberg testify.

Facebook will be sending Richard Allan, vice-president for policy, in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, in Zuckerbergs stead, as confirmed by the Washington Post and TechCrunch.

Last week British members of parliament urged advertisers to boycott Facebook and Google over their alleged inability to contain terrorist content.

Be smart: It's unusual for countries from four different continents to band together in an effort to hold a U.S.-based company accountable for its actions in this way. The move suggests that Facebook's public relations crisis in the U.S. is spilling over globally.

Between the lines: An article published earlier this month by the New York Times suggested that Facebook's top executives sought to deflect blame for a growing number of problems on its platform.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has since denied that the company intentionally ignored or sought to hamper investigations into those problems. But the allegations in the article have so far been enough to rattle lawmakers.

Facebook released a memo the evening before Thanksgiving in the U.S. that conceded executives may know more about the hiring of a controversial public relations firm that top executives initially denied knowing about.

Bottom line: Facebook's year of controversies in the U.S. might be the beginning of many more to come abroad.
Ukraine claimed that Russia opened fire on its navy ships in the Kirch Strait, a sea passage between Crimea and Russia's mainland, on Sunday, damaging one and escalating the ongoing Crimean crisis, per the AP.

The big picture: The standoff led Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to convene his military cabinet. Russia earlier blocked access to the strait after it claimed Ukrainian naval vessels ventured into Russian waters. Ukraine claims it gave Russia advance warning about the movement of its navy ships. Russia's blockade of the strait with a tanker effectively cuts off sea access for Ukrainian cities that lie on the Sea of Azov, reheating the geopolitical crisis that kicked off with Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014.
The Washington, D.C. metro area doesn't have enough affordable housing to meet the needs of its current workforce, and urban leaders fear 25,000 more workers flooding into the area to work at Amazon's new Arlington headquarters will exacerbate the problem.

Why it matters: This was the top concern raised at a recent Axios Expert Voices event on economic issues in D.C. It's already one of the most expensive cities in the country, with high housing prices and a tight labor market. Property rates are expected to rise as demand increases with the influx of new workers, which could push lower-income residents out and worsen the existing economic disparities.

The big picture: The response to Amazon's new headquarters, to be located just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., was mixed. While some locals are excited about the promise of new jobs, others dread the strain those jobs will put on local schools, transportation systems and housing supply.

By the numbers:

Washington, D.C. is the fifth most expensive U.S. city, according to an Inc. ranking. It takes an annual income of about $90,000 to live comfortably, and residents' median income is nearly $73,000.

The average monthly housing cost for a family of 4 in the metro area is $1,693, according to USA Today. In Washington, D.C. itself, typical rents run about $2,170 a month, per Inc.

Last year, Washington D.C. attracted an average of 800 new residents each month, according to the mayor's office.

What they're saying:

Local businesses should pitch in. "If it's not a community-wide and business responsibility, then it's no one's responsibility," said Sunia Zaterman, executive director of the Council of Large Public Housing Authorities.

"If it's not a community-wide and business responsibility, then it's no one's responsibility," said Sunia Zaterman, executive director of the Council of Large Public Housing Authorities. Amazon should invest in affordable housing. "Affordable housing is a crisis here in the D.C. metro area," said Deborah Snyder, president and CEO of Operation Renewed Hope Foundation, which helps homeless veterans. She said she's "concerned people are going to jack up the prices just because Amazon is coming in."

"Affordable housing is a crisis here in the D.C. metro area," said Deborah Snyder, president and CEO of Operation Renewed Hope Foundation, which helps homeless veterans. She said she's "concerned people are going to jack up the prices just because Amazon is coming in." The region needs a strategy to increase the overall housing supply. Polly Donaldson, director of the Washington, D.C., Department of Housing and Community Development, said "the focus on housing and economic development" has never been higher for Mayor Muriel Bowser and efforts are underway to "stop the bleeding of affordable housing."

to increase the overall housing supply. Polly Donaldson, director of the Washington, D.C., Department of Housing and Community Development, said "the focus on housing and economic development" has never been higher for Mayor Muriel Bowser and efforts are underway to "stop the bleeding of affordable housing." The rich areas are a problem, too. The wealthiest areas of D.C., Virginia and Maryland suburbs aren't building their fair share of housing, let alone affordable housing, said Catherine Brown, vice president of education policy at the Center for American Progress.

A big component of affordable housing is how much people earn, said Melissa Boteach, senior vice president of the Poverty to Prosperity Program at the Center for American Progress.

"If you're working at or around the minimum wage, you'd need three full-time jobs to afford housing in this city. That puts it out of reach for a wide swath of the population, who we all rely on for services in this city. That gap is widening and with Amazon coming in, it's set to widen even more."

 Brian Carome, Executive Director of Street Sense Media

The other side: Economic growth is necessary to fund affordable housing, and Amazon is bringing that growth while also diversifying the local economy that remains overly dependent on federal spending, said Mark Vitner, managing director and senior economist at Wells Fargo Securities.

"Amazon is a big win," he said, noting that those jobs will come to the area gradually, not immediately.

Go deeper:
A Wisconsin school superintendent said the high school students who appeared to perform a Nazi salute in a photo that went viral earlier this month will not face punishment because their actions are protected by the First Amendment, reports The Baraboo News Republic.

The details: Baraboo School District Administrator Lori Mueller told parents in a letter that officials can't know the intentions in the hearts of those who were involved. The picture shows dozens of students with their arms raised, palms down and elbows locked straight  a gesture associated with white supremacy. It was reportedly taken before a spring 2018 prom.
By Trend

The World Bank (WB) supports Azerbaijans employment strategy and is eager to support the country's employment action plan, Head of the WB Baku Office Naveed Naqvi told Trend.

He noted that, the bank supports the Labor Ministry of Azerbaijan in this direction, adding that work to improve the existing pension system and targeted social assistance, moreover to create job opportunities, is being implemented.

"Moreover, we carry out work with the Taxes Ministry on tax reforms, the Finance Ministry on budgetary reforms and we hope to continue our technical support in different sectors," Naqvi emphasized.

Speaking of the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), he noted that SMEs form a backbone of any normal economy and it is important to support this area.

According to him, SMEs need good business environment and labor market.

He recalled that Azerbaijan has improved its position in the WB's latest Doing Business report and now holds the 25th place, as a result of the taken measures to improve the business environment in the country.

Naqvi went on to say that in another ranking - Human Capital Index, which indicates how efficient the labor market is, Azerbaijan ranks 71st.

"So, there is a big gap between business environment and labor force. My suggestion is that the government needs to boost education and health systems. The Labor Ministry eyes to reform the labor force of the country and we are happy to support the governments these efforts," he underlined.

Azerbaijan has been a member of WB since 1992. The bank has implemented in the country over 50 projects, in the amount of more than $3 billion. Currently, seven projects, worth about $1.5 billion, are being implemented.
By Trend

Bank Melli Iran has denied reports about telephone and internet cut off by the Deutsche Telekom in its Hamburg branch, due to failure in subscription payment.

The Bank said it has already paid for its telephone and internet subscription fees in advance, IRNA reported.

Handelsblatt newspaper reported that Deutsche Telekom has cut off telephone and Internet access for the German branch of Bank Melli Iran. According to the report, the company pointed out that as a result of the recent US sanctions against Iran, Bank Melli could no longer afford to pay.

The newspaper quoted bank CEO Helmut Gottlieb saying "We are now almost paralyzed.

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By Trend

Issuing entry permit to Russia for Bako Sahakyan, a representative of the illegal separatist regime established in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan, is undermining efforts to advance the negotiation process on Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and contradicts Russia's mediation as co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group, said Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry.

The ministrys remarks came in response to the information about the visit of the "head" of the separatist regime created in Nagorno-Karabakh to Russia.

"This step of the Russian side does not correspond to the high level of current relations between Azerbaijan and Russia and contradicts the legal framework of bilateral relations, in particular the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Security between the Russian Federation and the Republic of Azerbaijan, which reads that "the Parties undertake not to support the separatist movements, as well as prohibit and suppress the activities of individuals, aimed against state sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of the other side".

Such voyages of the head of the illegal regime in the countries of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs can lead to an unpredictable development of the situation around the conflict. In this case, the entire responsibility will be on the Armenian side," the Foreign Ministry said.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.

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By Trend

Overlooking the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in the context of the Draft Resolution of the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum is harmful for the reputation of the EaP CSF in the eyes of the broader Azerbaijani community, reads a statement from the Azerbaijani National Platform of the EaP CSF.

We, the Members of the Azerbaijani National Platform of the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum (EaP CSF), following the widespread discussions of the Draft Resolution of the 10th Annual Assembly of the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum in the Azerbaijani media, feel the need to clarify our position on the following points.

We appreciate the role of the EaP CSF in aiding all EaP countries civil societies in their strengthening of democracy, rule of law and sustainable development, which leads to greater integration with the European community, said the statement.

The Azerbaijani National Platform said it acknowledges the positive role of the EaP CSF in bringing Azerbaijani and Armenian civil society representatives together, helping them to advance their peace agendas on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict; however, the Draft Resolution has failed to uphold the importance of territorial integrity issues for all of the EaP countries.

This position has been stressed by the Joint Declaration of the Eastern Partnership Summit, held on 24 November 2017 in Brussels, Belgium, stating: The European Union remains committed in its support to the territorial integrity, independence and sovereignty of all its partners.

The Azerbaijani National Platform is also concerned regarding the lack of Azerbaijani government representatives in the list of invitees. It wishes to see the active participation of Azerbaijani government representatives in the Forum and calls on the Forum, the government of Georgia and the EU to issue the invitations in a speedy manner.

The Azerbaijani National Platform stresses once more its appreciation for the work of the EaP CSF.

At the same time, it would like to draw attention to the fact that the Azerbaijani government and civil society have developed complementary narratives on the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, which remains a sensitive issue for the country.

Overlooking the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in the context of the Draft Resolution is harmful for the reputation of the EaP CSF in the eyes of the broader Azerbaijani community.

We would like to remind that the core objective of the CSF is to establish mutual cooperation and understanding among the Civil Societies of the Eastern Partnership Member Countries in the best interest of our peoples. Unfortunately, the adoption of such a Draft Resolution within the CSF platform would lead to dissatisfaction among Azerbaijani government and society representatives, undermining the credibility of the Forum, reads the statement.

The 10th Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum Annual Assembly will take place in Tbilisi on 10-12 December. This annual event brings together civil society organizations from all six Eastern Partner countries and the EU. It has been organized every year since 2009.

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By Trend

Military units of the armed forces of Armenia violated ceasefire 29 times throughout the day, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said Nov. 25.

The positions of Azerbaijan Army were fired from positions of Armenian military units located near the occupied Nemirli, Taghibeyli, Marzili villages of Aghdam region, Ashaghy Veysalli, Gobu Dilagharda, Garvand villages of Fuzuli region, Nuzgar and Mehdili villages of Jabrayil region, as well as from positions located on nameless hills in Goranboy, Terter and Aghdam regions.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.

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By Trend

Iranian foreign minister on Saturday expressed his support for peace talks in Afghanistan, IRNA reported.

Iran will use all its capacities to help the Afghan government, Mohammad Javad Zarif said.

He made the remarks in a meeting with Hamid Karzai, former Afghan president.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has always supported the peace talks in Afghanistan conducted by the countries' government, Zarif asserted.

Zarif and Karzai discussed issues of mutual interest as well as the latest developments in Afghanistan.

Iran and Afghanistan held the first round of talks on a 'comprehensive strategic partnership' document in 2017.

Five joint committees were established to draft a 'comprehensive strategic partnership' document to promote two countries' cooperation in fields of security, defense, economy, culture, and education.

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By Trend

US sanctions against Iran undermine equal rights of members of the International Maritime Organization (IMO), said deputy director of Iran's Port and Maritime Organization, Hadi Haghshenas.

IMO members have expressed their disagreement with the US position against Iran," Haghshenas told ILNA.

Iran has officially filed its complaint against US re-imposed sanctions at the 121st Session of IMO Council. It also called on the IMO to conduct a "special review" of the matter at its Assembly.

"IMO is a marine source of reference in the world and all its members have equal rights, he said.

"The foundation of IMO is based on the fact that member states can not threaten security and safety and environment of others,.

Today 170 countries in IMO believe that members don't have a right to threaten ships and vessels of other members, the official said.

" Iran has asked other members of IMO to follow the suit, Haghshenas added.

According to the official, IMO members have expressed their disapproval of US stance against Iran and supported the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

In November, the United States fully re-imposed the sanctions on Iran that had been lifted or waived under the JCPOA. These are the sanctions will target critical sectors of Iran's economy, such as the energy, shipping and shipbuilding, and financial sectors.

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With leftover turkey and gravy nothing but a memory and the key thing taking up refrigerator space, local businesses across Beaumont prepared for their Small Business Saturday debut.

Hundreds of shoppers, not yet tired of holiday shopping after Black Friday, filtered into the Clifton Steamboat Museum to find one-of-a-kind items from nearly 20 different local vendors - many featuring hand-crafted arts.

This is a great way to find those unique items for those hard to shop for people, Sarah Wells the museum manager said.

The events fourth consecutive year highlights the importance of shopping local and gives small shops the ability to get their name in front of potential customers at the beginning of the holiday season.

Some of the vendors included Younique Make Up, C & C Upcycle, Pampered Chef, Thirsty One, Vamptropolis and more.

I have done this all four years, its important to get out and promote my business, Christine Sullivan the owner of Vamptropolis said. I dont have my own store, I sell online or at these events, its important because I get my business out there and make sales.

The museum hosted all sorts of small businesses from pottery, clothing, food and hand crafts.

All the money generated will go back into the museum and into being able to host more events supporting community businesses.

Most people dont know that when you shop local most of your money stays right here in the community. Its also a great way to support your family, friends and neighbors. This event gives small shops who work from home a storefront, Wells said.

The museum isnt the only outlet for the promotion of small businesses. The Greater Beaumont Chamber of Commerce has been running a month-long shop local campaign encouraging the public to spend their money at small businesses.

We are educating residents here in Beaumont to spend money here because the money they spend here stays here and helps us with taxes, sales tax and jobs, Ana Pereda the vice president of economic development said.

Pereda said locally-owned businesses here in Beaumont are going strong and getting ready for the holidays.

In a recent survey conducted by the American Express showed that $.63 of every dollar spent at a local business stays in the community. It also revealed 81 percent of Texas plan to kick big box retailers to the curb and focus on primarily shopping local this holiday season.

Apart from the museum, local businesses around the area participated in the small shop holiday with their own specials and quirks in drawing customers.

Down to Earth, popular for selling bath and body fragrances and soaps, had a line of people waiting for the doors to open early Saturday morning to be a part of the annual sale and local business coupon bag.

I love shopping local, Shavonnie Badall, 18 of Baytown, said. Its so fun to see all the different, unique things that you cant find at other big brand places. Honestly, I shop locally more than at big places. I feel like they have better quality items.

Chelsie Burgins the manager of the shop, said they typically see a big turnout because they hold one-day only sales specifically for Small Business Saturday where they feature buy-one-get-one sales and the only chance to register for a year-long reward program.

Just around the corner with shirts sporting the saying Local is the new black and mimosas was Ella and Scott, who were also in on the shopping holiday.

(Small Business Saturday) means everything to us. Its all about family, support, hard-work, all rolled up into one, Jamie Scott the owner of Ella and Scott said. That is the epitome of what it means to me and a small business.

Erica.Apodaca@Beaumont

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Boris Johnson joined with senior Democratic Unionists to demand the scrapping of the Irish border backstop at a party conference dominated by the draft Brexit deal.

The former foreign secretary, who was guest speaker at the annual DUP gathering in Belfast, also stressed the need for the Tories to protect their faltering confidence and supply agreement with the Northern Ireland party amid ongoing Brexit uncertainty.

Addressing the DUP faithful, Mr Johnson echoed calls from party leader Arlene Foster and deputy leader Nigel Dodds for the Prime Minister to bin the proposals that could see the region operate under different regulatory rules to the rest of the UK post-Brexit.

Unless we junk this backstop, we will find that Brussels has got us exactly where they want us  a satellite state, said the Tory MP.

He warned the draft Brexit deal is in danger of turning Northern Ireland into an economic semi-colony of the EU.

The backstop proposal in the Withdrawal Agreement would see Northern Ireland adopt a different regulatory regime to Great Britain in the event a wider UK/EU trade deal fails to materialise in talks on the future relationship.

It has been included to ensure a free flowing Irish border regardless of what sort of Brexit unfolds.

The DUP is vociferously opposed to it, claiming it would divide up the UK.

In her leaders speech, Ms Foster told DUP delegates that while she believes Theresa May is genuine in her desire to protect the Union, the draft deal fails to do that.

The Prime Minister has not been able to guarantee an outcome that eliminates the risk of the introduction of the so-called backstop arrangements, she said.

The DUP conference appeared more understated than in previous years. The was a markedly different tone, with no party singsongs or mass distributions of Union flags for delegates to wave  usually familiar sights at the annual gatherings.

Expand Close Boris Johnson and DUP leader Arlene Foster shake hands during the conference in Belfast (Michael Cooper/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook

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Whatsapp Boris Johnson and DUP leader Arlene Foster shake hands during the conference in Belfast (Michael Cooper/PA)

Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close Mr Johnson watched on as Ms Foster gave her own address to conference (Michael Cooper/PA) PA Wire/PA Images Boris Johnson and DUP leader Arlene Foster shake hands during the conference in Belfast (Michael Cooper/PA) PA Wire/PA Images Leader Arlene Foster and deputy leader Nigel Dodds pictured with Boris Johnston at the DUP annual conference at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Belfast. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press E Boris Johnson speaking during the DUP annual conference (Michael Cooper/PA) Boris Johnston MP pictured at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Belfast. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press E Boris Johnston MP is greeted at the DUP party conference by Leader Arlene Foster and Deputy leader Nigel Dodds MP pictured at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Belfast. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye October 2018. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press E Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 24th November 2018 DUP Annual Conference Boris Johnston MP pictured at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Belfast. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press E / Facebook

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Whatsapp Mr Johnson watched on as Ms Foster gave her own address to conference (Michael Cooper/PA)

Ms Foster had also used her speech to apologise for her partys role in Stormonts botched green energy scheme  the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI)  after a catalogue of failings by senior DUP figures were laid bare at a public inquiry.

Some of our past decisions and actions have left a lot to be desired and I know that they have personally hurt and offended many of our members, voters and the public, she said.

I make no excuses. Today, as leader of the party, I apologise.

As a party we are deeply, deeply sorry for the mistakes we made and for the things we got wrong during that period.

Turning to Brexit, Ms Foster acknowledged the frustration of many in Northern Irelands business community with the pace of negotiations.

Her DUP has prided itself on its relationship with business leaders, but those links have been strained by the support many of them have voiced for the draft UK-EU deal in recent days.

Ms Foster said the constitutional implications of the deal could not be ignored.

We are not campaigning for a no-deal exit nor do we want barriers to trade between Northern Ireland and our neighbours in the Republic, she said.

The choice is not between this deal and no deal, despite what the Government spin machine may say.

The reality is that if we are to secure a better outcome than is currently on offer, then the only option is to look beyond this current draft Withdrawal Agreement and work in the time ahead for an improved outcome.

Expand Close Mr Johnson watched on as Ms Foster gave her own address to conference (Michael Cooper/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook

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Whatsapp Mr Johnson watched on as Ms Foster gave her own address to conference (Michael Cooper/PA)

The days and weeks ahead will be challenging. We will continue to work in Parliament to achieve the best possible deal for Northern Ireland and the UK as a whole, guided by our principles and objectives.

In media interviews ahead of the conference, Ms Foster, a strong critic of Jeremy Corbyn, claimed Ms Mays deal would be a worse outcome for the UK than a Labour government led by him.

But she also warned the DUP would revisit its confidence and supply deal to support the Conservatives at Westminster if the Brexit agreement is voted through Parliament.

After a week that saw the DUP refuse to support the Government in Commons votes to signal their anger at the draft withdrawal text, Mr Johnson stressed the need to maintain the crucial confidence and supply deal going forward, warning of ruinous consequences for the UK if Mr Corbyn came to power.

And so to our allies in the DUP, I hope that you agree that it is absolutely vital that we keep this partnership going and that we are not so complacent as to abandon the government of this country to a man whose avowed policy is to break up this country, he said.

And we should work together to ensure that the whole UK  Northern Ireland included  can seize the opportunities of Brexit.

In his conference speech, Mr Dodds insisted it is not too late to bin the Brexit deal.

He urged Mrs May to change course, warning the proposed Withdrawal Agreement would see the UK assume a pitiful and pathetic place.

The partys Westminster leader insisted the union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is non-negotiable.

He said: It is still not too late for the Prime Minister to change course.

Dont believe the propaganda that its too late  it isnt.

The DUP wants a deal with the European Union, we understand that businesses, families and communities want certainty.

But it is not this deal. It is not a deal at any price. The Prime Minister used to say that. We still say that.

So Prime Minister, the message from this conference, from every section of this party, is  bin the backstop.

The position of Gibraltar had been one of the issues facing EU states attempting to agree a common position on UK withdrawal, as Spain pressed for guarantees over its say on the future of the British territory.

On Saturday morning, a government minister from Gibraltar told the DUP conference it will not fold in the face of Spains Brexit demands.

Samantha Sacramento was given a rousing reception by DUP members as she insisted Gibraltar will not be bullied by any bid from Madrid to undermine its sovereignty.

Housing and equality minister Ms Sacramento was standing in for Gibraltars chief minister, Fabian Picardo.

He had been due to address the party conference but the renewed focus on the British territory in the Brexit talks forced him to pull out to concentrate on the negotiations.
Prime Minister Theresa May has said MPs will vote on her Brexit deal before Christmas.

The Prime Minister made the comments after EU leaders endorsed her draft withdrawal agreement on Sunday morning.

At a press conference in Brussels, Mrs May said: "Before Christmas, MPs will vote on this deal.

"It will be one of the most significant votes that Parliament has held for many years. On it will depend whether we move forward together into a brighter future or open the door to yet more division and uncertainty.

"The British people don't want to spend any more time arguing about Brexit.

"They want a good deal done that fulfils the vote and allows us to come together again as a country.

"I will take this deal back to the House of Commons, confident we have achieved the best deal available and full of optimism about the future of our country.

"In Parliament and beyond it, I will make the case for this deal with all my heart and I look forward to that campaign."

I will take this deal back to the House of Commons confident we have achieved the best deal available and full of optimism about the future of our country. #BackTheBrexitDeal pic.twitter.com/NBm2kGZU5B  Theresa May (@theresa_may) November 25, 2018

Mrs May ruled out a second referendum on Brexit, saying the British people expected their MPs to vote on the deal.

Asked if she would stand down if the deal is voted down in the Commons, she replied: "I am focusing on ensuring that I make a case for this deal to MPs and I think the point that Jean-Claude Juncker was making, that's been reiterated by others was that if people think somehow there's another negotiation to be done that's not the case.

"This is a deal that's the result of what has been tough and difficult negotiations over a significant period of time and as has been said this is the deal that's on the table, this is the best possible deal, it's the only possible deal."

Asked if she would rule out a Norway-style Brexit as a Plan B - which Cabinet ministers including Philip Hammond are said to be considering - Theresa May said: "I am clear that we have negotiated the best possible deal available.

"Crucially it is a deal that delivers on the vote. I think this is so important to me: the people voted for Brexit ... it's, in a sense, a duty for their politicians, who asked them to make that choice, to then deliver on that choice."
A 38-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of drug-related offences following a PSNI search of a property in Comber.

Officers conducted the planned search at an address in the town during which a number of items were seized, including a quantity of suspected drugs and counterfeit goods. A quantity of money was also sezied.

Inspector David McClements said: "A 38-year-old man was subsequently arrested on suspicion of possession of a class B controlled drug; possession of a class C controlled drug; possession of a class B controlled drug with intent to supply and possession of a class C controlled drug with intent to supply.

"He was also arrested on suspicion of possessing items that breached a registered trademark.

"The man has since been released on bail pending further enquiries."

Inspector McClements added: "We are committed to disrupting criminal activities, including drugs and selling counterfeit goods. People who choose to become involved in this type of criminality are a blight on society and the communities they exert their control over.

I would appeal to anyone who has information, or concerns about these type of criminal activities to get in touch. We will act on information we receive. It may not always be visible and immediate but, please be assured, every piece of information is assessed and acted on.
The scene at Rathmore Road, Newry on Saturday evening as forensics officers from the PSNI collect evidence. Credit: Newraypics.com

A 24-year-old man has been attacked by masked men wielding hammers during an aggravated burglary in Newry.

It was reported around 4.30pm on Saturday that the 45-year-old male occupant of a house on Rathmore Road answered a knock to the door.

Two men, carrying hammers, forced their way past the man and proceed to assault the 24-year-old man in the living room.

The victim sustained injuries to his head, body and limbs.

The suspects are described as wearing dark clothing and one is believed to have worn a dark coloured beanie hat. They are believed to have made off in a dark coloured saloon car with dark, tinted windows.

Police have appealed for anyone with information to contact detectives in Ardmore on 101 quoting reference 932 24/11/18.

Information can also be passed on anonymously to Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
The scene at Creggan Street in Derry where a man was found dead in the early hours of Sunday morning. Picture Martin McKeown.

PSNI officers investigate the scene following the discovery of a body in the early hours of Sunday morning. The victim was found in an alleyway (Thundering Down) between Creggan Street and Bull Park Photo by Lorcan Doherty / Press Eye.

A 35-year-old woman and a 51-year-old man have been arrested under suspicion of murder after a man's body was discovered in the Creggan Street area of Londonderry.

Shortly before 2.45am on Sunday morning, police received a report that the body of a man had been found in an alleyway.

The man had sustained significant injuries to his head and body and a post mortem examination is due to take place to determine the cause of death. Two people have now been arrested by the PSNI's Major Investigation Team.

Expand Close PSNI officers investigate the scene following the discovery of a body in the early hours of Sunday morning. Photo by Lorcan Doherty / Press Eye. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press E / Facebook

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Whatsapp PSNI officers investigate the scene following the discovery of a body in the early hours of Sunday morning. Photo by Lorcan Doherty / Press Eye.

Foyle SDLP MLA Mark H Durkan appealed for witnesses to come forward to the police.

"The city has woken up to the chilling news that a young man lost his life here last night," he said.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with the man's family at this unimaginably difficult time.

"It is vitally important that anyone who knows anything, who saw anything or even thinks they might have seen something related to this tragic incident, come forward with that information to the police."

The @SDLPlive MLA Mark H Durkan says the entire community are in shock after the brutal murder of a man in the Little Diamond area of #Derry in the early hours of this morning pic.twitter.com/s4rDgjHfpa  Leona O'Neill (@LeonaONeill1) November 25, 2018

Detective Chief Inspector Eamonn Corrigan said The 35 year old woman and 51 year old man were arrested in the City earlier today on suspicion of murder and are currently in police custody.

I am continuing to appeal for anyone who was in the Creggan Street or Little Diamond area of the city late last night or early this morning and who witnessed anything or anyone who has any information that can assist with my investigation to contact detectives on 101 quoting reference 244 of 25/11/18.

"Alternatively information can be passed to the independent charity Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111 which is 100% anonymous and gives people the power to speak up and stop crime.

An area between Creggan Street and Little Diamond remains closed while police conduct follow-up enquiries into the incident.

Police thanked members of the public for their patience and asked them to avoid the area while the investigation continues.
Leo Varadkar arrives for an EU summit at the Europa building in Brussels (Piroschka van de Wouw, Pool Photo via AP)

Irelands premier has said there is no plan B if the draft Brexit deal is rejected by the UK parliament and that all those concerned need to get on with the ratification process and start negotiating the future.

Leo Varadkar said the best outcome for everyone would be if the Britain remained in the EU, but given that was not going to happen, the draft agreement was next best thing.

Mr Varadkar made the comments after the 27 EU member states and the UK government endorsed the draft withdrawal text at a special meeting of the EU Council in Brussels on Sunday.

#EU27 endorsed the #Brexit draft withdrawal agreement & approved the political declaration on future EU-UK relations. 

PM @theresa_may joined the meeting to consider the next steps with the EU27 leaders. #EUCO

Find more details + documents here: https://t.co/Rq9FTYJge7 pic.twitter.com/03cHkZi6fw  EU Council (@EUCouncil) November 25, 2018

There isnt a plan B, he said.

The truth is what we have here is the best deal that is available both for the United Kingdom and for the European Union.

He added that the agreement was the only one on the table and people should not be looking for alternative options.

Lets not forget what we have here. We have an agreement that took between 18 months and two years to negotiate, it is in several parts, is over 500 pages long and as of today has the support of 28 governments, he said.

Anyone can have a better deal or an alternative deal in their own minds, but an agreement 500 pages long that 28 member states can sign up to, nobody has that.

Whats on the table is the only deal thats on the table.

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Mr Varadkar said the entire European Union was of the view that the deal could not be renegotiated.

It wasnt easy to get to this point, he said.

The Taoiseach said he had always believed the best outcome for Ireland and for Europe and indeed the United Kingdom would be for the UK to stay in the European Union, the customs union and the single market, but the Irish Government respected the decision of the British people and the UK parliament not to do that.

[It] is the next best outcome, he said. It protects the peace, affirms the rights and freedoms of European Irish and British citizens, ensures there will be no hard border and also insulates our economy from major disruptions in trade.

He added: What we need to do now is to get on with it and get on with the ratification of this agreement by the House of Commons and also by the European Parliament and when thats done, from March, April onwards, to get busy negotiating the future relationship treaty.

The summit was thrown into jeopardy last week over the status of Gibraltar but it went ahead after Spain said the UK and European Union had agreed to its demands for guarantees.

Prime Minister Theresa May held meetings with EU chiefs Jean-Claude Juncker and Donald Tusk on Saturday evening to conclude the negotiations.

Mr Varadkar said the case of Gibraltar demonstrated the difficulty of coming to an agreement.

Once you start opening one issue, you can potentially open up other issues as well, he said.

We saw in the last couple of days the extent to which Gibraltar could have become an issue.

The Taoiseach accused those Brexiteers who were continuing to seek alternatives of not knowing what they want.

They dont agree among themselves what that better deal could be, he said.

He added that realistically he didnt see anyone coming up with an alternative deal that would have the same level of weight behind it.

Despite the UK and EU being much closer to a deal being agreed than they have been, Mr Varadkar said they still had to continue contingency planning for a no-deal scenario.

Asked whether EU leaders had discussed what they would do if the vote in the House of Commons rejected deal, he said the EU 27 had made a conscious decision not to discuss what may happen in such a scenario because it took so long to reach the deal.

He stressed that EU leaders wanted to move onto the future relationship. In addition to the draft Withdrawal Agreement being approved, a Political Declaration on the future relationship between the UK and the EU post Brexit was also agreed during the hour-long meeting in the EU Councils Europa building.

Mr Varadkar said the UK would be more than a third country once it leaves the EU given its close links to the union.

We are determined to make sure that the United Kingdom isnt just another third country that we have a special relationship with the EU and UK afterwards, he said.
The scene of the crash on the Glenshesk Road in Ballycastle.

A person has died and two people have been taken to hospital after a serious crash in Co Antrim.

The accident happened at around 6.10am on Sunday on the Glenshesk Road in Ballycastle.

Inspector Bradley said: "The single-vehicle collision on the Glenshesk Road, involving a white Citroen Berlingo van, was reported to us at 6.05am.

"There were three people travelling in the van at the time.

"Police attended along with the other emergency services. Two of the occupants were taken to hospital for their injuries, which are not believed to be life threatening at this time.

"Sadly, the third occupant in the van was pronounced dead at the scene.

"The Glenshesk Road remains closed at this time.

"I want to appeal to anyone who was on the Glenshesk Road around 6am this morning and witnessed the collision, or anyone who may have captured dash cam footage to contact us. I would also appeal to anyone who believes they saw this vehicle prior to the collision to get in touch.

Police have not revealed if the deceased is a man or a woman.

The Northern Ireland Ambulance Service sent two A&E crews to the incident.

Following assessment and initial treatment at the scene, two men were taken by ambulance to Causeway Hospital.

A spokeswoman for the Northern Trust said both men are in a stable condition.

The PSNI have closed the Glenshesk Road. Diversions are in place at the junction of Glenshesk Road and the Drumavoley Road, as well as the junction with Churchfield Road.
One man has been taken to hospital following a "heavy collision" in Co Londonderry.

The Five Mile Straight was blocked for a time between Lisnamuck Road and the A6 Glenshane Road as emergency services dealt with the crash.

Police described the two vehicle accident as a "heavy collision" and urged motorists to drive to the conditions.

A PSNI officer, posting on the force's Magherafelt Facebook page, said: "A lot of bad smashes the last few days, keep your wits about you in regard to naturally greasy roads at this time of year caused by leaves, damp, mud, ice patches etc and always be alert to a stray animal or two popping out of the hedge."

A spokesperson for the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service said it received a 999 call at 8.37am on Saturday following reports of a road traffic collision.

One A&E crew was sent to the incident and, following assessment and initial treatment at the scene, one male patient was taken taken by ambulance to Altnagelvin Hospital.
Police officers cordoned off Little May Street in Belfast city centre following a report of a sexual assault. Credit: Justin Kernoghan.

Police are investigating following a report of a sexual assault on a woman in Belfast city centre.

The incident was reported to have happened on Little May Street area of Belfast on Sunday morning.

Police said enquiries are ongoing and there are no further details at this time.
Irelands premier has said the approval of the draft Brexit withdrawal agreement by EU leaders at a special summit will allow the talks to move on.

Leo Varadkar said he was pleased to be in Brussels to sign off on the deal, which he said represented the culmination of nearly two years of work.

The Taoiseach made the comments as he arrived at the Europa building for the European Councils special meeting on Sunday morning.

EU leaders from 27 member states approved the draft Withdrawal Agreement and a Political Declaration about the future relationship between the EU and the UK.

Speaking ahead of the meeting Mr Varadkar said: It was a very difficult deal to negotiate.

I anticipate that in the next couple of hours that agreement will get the assent of the 28 governments, 27 member states that are staying and also the government of the UK and that will allow us to move on.

Mr Varadkar said he still regretted the fact that the UK was leaving the European Union.

The best outcome for Ireland, and I think for Europe and Britain, would be for the UK to stay in the European Union, to stay in the single market and customs union, but we respect their decision not to do that, he said.

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Mr Varadkar added: We spent two years trying to negotiate an agreement that protects our interests, our citizens and our economy.

I believe we have that: an agreement which allows for an orderly withdrawal of the UK from the European Union, an agreement which protects the freedoms and rights of citizens, particularly the Common Travel Area, an agreement which provides a transition period during which we can negotiate a future relationship.

He added: If that isnt successful then a backstop that kicks in that assures us that there will be no hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland. And well continue to have tariff free and quota free trade between Britain and Ireland which is very important for our economy.

The summit went ahead after Spain claimed the UK and European Union had agreed to its demands for guarantees over the status of Gibraltar.

British Prime Minister Theresa May held meetings with EU chiefs Jean-Claude Juncker and Donald Tusk on Saturday evening to finalise details.

While not necessary, the deal was also approved in the Irish parliament on Wednesday.
The Donegal hotel ear-marked to welcome more than 100 asylum seekers shortly has been set on fire.

Gardai have cordoned off the Caiseal Mara Hotel in the seaside town of Moville after a blaze broke out in the building at around 4am.

It is understood the fire was started deliberately and that there has been substantial damage caused to the building.

Firefighters rushed to the scene and managed to bring the blaze under control.

Two people, understood to be the owner of the hotel and his daughter, had to be evacuated from the building as the fire took hold.

A full investigation has been launched into the cause of the fire.

A large meeting of local residents concerned about the lack of information on plans to bring the asylum seekers to the town was held last week.

The vast majority of people welcomed the move but some expressed reservations about infrastructure and the lack of information surrounding the plan.

Moville has a population of around 1,300 people and many were concerned about the arrival of another 100 people into the town.

Local county councillor Martin Farren, who lives in Moville, said he was aware of the incident and condemned it outright.

"It is early days but I understand there was a fire and the reception area was badly damaged and there was also a lot of smoke damage.

"If this was an arson attack then I would condemn it outright. People are shocked by what has happened here and everyone simply cannot believe it," he said.

The local community has called a meeting for 3pm today to discuss the situation.

The Minister for Justice and Equality, Charlie Flanagan TD said: "I condemn this attack and those behind it in the strongest possible terms. This was a despicable incident and could have led to very serious tragedy. I send my best wishes for a full recovery to the injured person and all those impacted by the fire. I am urging anyone with any information with regard to this fire to contact the Gardai."
Nicola Sturgeon has hit out at Theresa Mays public plea for Brexit support, saying almost nothing in this desperate letter is true.

In a letter to the nation published before the Prime Minister met the other 27 EU leaders in Brussels, Mrs May said leaving the union on March 29 2019 would mark a new chapter in our national life.

The 800-word message said that the result of the EU referendum in 2016 would be honoured and that freedom of movement would end.

It also stated that the UK would take back control of laws and money which, it suggested, could be spent on the NHS.

Scotlands First Minister described the letter as desperate and reiterated her calls for alternatives such as staying in the single market and customs union or holding a second referendum.

Ms Sturgeon tweeted: I dont say this lightly, but almost nothing in this desperate letter is true.

I dont say this lightly, but almost nothing in this desperate letter is true. This is a bad deal, driven by the PMs self defeating red lines and continual pandering to the right of her own party. Parliament should reject it and back a better alternative - SM/CU or #PeoplesVote https://t.co/TSsXQtVUAZ  Nicola Sturgeon (@NicolaSturgeon) November 25, 2018

This is a bad deal, driven by the PMs self defeating red lines and continual pandering to the right of her own party. Parliament should reject it and back a better alternative  SM/CU or #PeoplesVote.

As EU leaders endorsed the deal on Sunday, SNP MSP Brexit secretary Mike Russell said it does not work for Scotland.

It takes Scotland out of the European Union against our democratic wishes, it removes us from the single market against our economic interests, and it would put us at a competitive economic disadvantage compared to Northern Ireland, he said.

The only thing it guarantees is years of damaging uncertainty, which will cost jobs and hit living standards and, by ending freedom of movement, will make it harder to attract the staff we need for our NHS

That is why the Scottish Government will now work with others to get a better deal for Scotland within the European single market and customs union, which is eight times bigger than the UK market alone, and why we support another referendum on EU membership.

Jackson Carlaw, Scottish Conservative deputy leader, said: The Prime Minister has shown remarkable tenacity and resilience in securing an agreement with the European Union and deserves congratulations for doing so today.

As with every negotiation, nobody has got everything they wanted.

But this deal does offer the prospect of delivering Brexit and allowing the country to move on.

Nicola Sturgeon has already come out to pronounce her opposition to the deal. It is hardly a surprise given that she decided to oppose whatever the Prime Minister came back with weeks ago.

Her plan is to take us back into the CFP, and push through not one, but two more referendums.

The EU has made clear today: this is the only deal on the table.

It will protect jobs, it is backed by business, and it will allow us all to move on.

By contrast, Nicola Sturgeon wants to take us back to yet more constitutional chaos  and we will oppose that every step of the way.

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie said: Now we know the deal that the PM thinks is good enough, now is the time for the people to decide whether it actually is good enough.

This is too important to leave to a bitter, divided Conservative Party. We urgently need a Peoples Vote.
Theresa Mays Brexit deal is a miserable failure of negotiation which will put jobs at risk, Jeremy Corbyn said.

Labour will oppose the package in Parliament and work with MPs from other parties to block a no-deal Brexit, Mr Corbyn said.

His comments came as former prime minister Tony Blair stepped up calls for a second referendum and suggested Labour was shifting towards that position.

This is a bad deal for the country and Labour will oppose it in Parliament. pic.twitter.com/JXoMp19n2l  Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) November 25, 2018

As EU leaders signed off the package thrashed out by negotiators in Brussels, Mr Corbyn said: This is a bad deal for the country.

It is the result of a miserable failure of negotiation that leaves us with the worst of all worlds.

It gives us less say over our future, and puts jobs and living standards at risk.

Shadow justice secretary Richard Burgon said: Theresa May needs to is wake up and smell the coffee, ditch this deal and come back with something better.

Labours policy is to reject the deal and call for a general election.

Challenged on BBCs Andrew Marr Show about the prospect of an election being unlikely, Mr Burgon said: I think the age of the experts is over.

The age of political certainty is over.

If there is not an election, Labour is keeping all options open including the possibility of another referendum on Brexit, although it has not specified what question would be asked.

Mr Burgon suggested another referendum may not even take place until after the UK has left the EU.

He said: We dont know when such a referendum, if it takes place, would take place.

Would it take place before we left the EU? Would it take place after we left the EU?

Shadow Northern Ireland secretary Tony Lloyd told Sky News Sophy Ridge on Sunday there could be a coalition behind a softer Brexit involving a customs union and close single market links.

The British Parliament almost certainly has a coalition of the willing that would work round a customs union, work round single market standards of the kind that Labour has advocated but so have a broad swathe of other parties including a large number of Conservatives, he said.

Speculation about Labours position on another referendum has been stoked by a Sunday Times report that shadow chancellor John McDonnell held talks with Tom Baldwin and Alastair Campbell, the former spin doctors to Ed Miliband and Mr Blair, who are now campaigning for a so-called Peoples Vote.

Mr Blair told the Andrew Marr Show I think its moving that way, adding:  I would be really surprised if the Labour Party doesnt end up in the position of supporting another vote, because theres no other proposition that can get through Parliament.

He suggested another referendum  with the choice between remaining in the EU and a proper Brexit of the kind sought by Leave campaigners such as Boris Johnson  would settle the issue.

Both the Remain campaign and the Leave campaign should jointly agree that this vote is final, doesnt matter how marginal it is, its final, he said.

Once this is resolved then thats it for a generation.

I have respect for Theresa May, says Tony Blair



He tells #marr that shes a decent person surrounded by unreasonable ones



But the former PM says the #Brexit deal is a dodo



Read more: https://t.co/Osi5wVXy4c pic.twitter.com/mlqEiM4XnN  BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) November 25, 2018

He added that he thought Mrs May was a decent person, frankly surrounded by a lot of pretty unreasonable ones but the deals a dodo.

But former minister Caroline Flint hit out at Labour colleagues calling for another referendum.

It is clear. There is an 11th hour attempt to overturn the result of the EU Ref 2016. Even if it means siding with Johnson, Rees-Mogg et al to stop any deal & leave us crashing out. The consequences are dire & a 2nd Ref will lead to far right resurgence, discord & distrust  Caroline Flint (@CarolineFlint) November 25, 2018

It was an 11th hour attempt to overturn the result of the 2016 referendum and would mean siding with Tory Brexiteers to reject Mrs Mays deal  leaving the UK at risk of crashing out without a deal.

She warned the consequences are dire and another referendum would lead to the a far-right resurgence, discord and distrust.

Lisa Nandy MP tells @SophyRidgeSky it's "inconceivable" that she will vote for the PM's #Brexit deal - saying it's "too big a gamble to take" with the futures of her constituents #Ridge



 Get live updates from the EU summit: https://t.co/7H6rGWyTEf pic.twitter.com/29IhYzWWfi  Trevor Phillips on Sunday (@RidgeOnSunday) November 25, 2018

If the Prime Ministers deal is going to get through the Commons, she may be forced to rely on the votes of Labour MPs from Leave-supporting areas.

But Wigans Lisa Nandy said it was inconceivable that she would back the deal, instead telling Sky News that Article 50 should be extended for a process of dialogue and consensus with the public.
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt has said the return of imprisoned Briton Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe to the UK would be the best Christmas present for her and the country.

Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian mother who works for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was arrested at Tehrans Imam Khomeini airport in April 2016.

The 39-year-old, from Hampstead, North London, was later sentenced to five years in jail after being accused of spying, a charge she vehemently denies.

Thanks @Jeremy_Hunt on Andrew Marr for standing firm against Nazanins imprisonment & calling her release this Xmas. The Foreign Sec asked @JZarif to give Nazanin a personalised copy of Mandelas Long Road To Freedom, promising hell do everything to bring her home #FreeNazanin pic.twitter.com/yP0IggRxFG  Free Nazanin (@FreeNazanin) November 25, 2018

Her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, has campaigned exhaustively for her release, saying she is suffering extreme mental and physical hardship at the notorious Elvin prison.

Appearing on the BBCs Andrew Marr Show, Mr Hunt who visited Iran on Monday, said his message to the hardline Islamic regime was to allow her access to medical treatment  adding it is very, very important.

Highlighting the annual campaign of Mr Ratcliffe to try and get his wife home for her birthday on December 26, Mr Hunt said: If she could come home, wouldnt that be the best Christmas present, not just for her but for the whole country?

Expand Close Richard Ratcliffe, the husband of Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe (Stefan Rousseau/PA) PA Archive/PA Images / Facebook

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Mr Hunt pressed his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Zarif about her case in September when they met in New York on the fringes of a United Nations General Assembly.

The month before she had been granted a three-day release but her request for an extension was denied and she was forced to say goodbye to her four-year-old daughter, Gabriella, and return to jail.

Asked whether there are any grounds for optimism in the case of Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, Mr Hunt said it is a more challenging situation.

He said during his visit to Tehran he was refused a meeting with her, and instead met Gabriella, who he revealed drew a picture of him in a bow tie and that she probably thinks he is a Tory toff.

My request to Iran: please please get Nazanin the medical treatment she needs and allow her home for her birthday on 26 Dec https://t.co/kwT5liXDe3  Jeremy Hunt (@Jeremy_Hunt) November 25, 2018

Mr Hunt also held a doll that Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe had made for his own daughter, despite suffering from numbness in her shoulder and hand, which made the process difficult.

During his appearance on The Marr Show, Mr Hunt also reiterated an earlier warning to the regime.

Iran is one of the great civilisations of the Middle East, it wants to be a great regional power, the Foreign Secretary said.

If they want respect then do not start locking up innocent people as a tool of diplomatic leverage  it is totally and utterly unacceptable.

Asked whether they are listening to him, Mr Hunt said he thinks they are, but that whether they are going to do anything is a different matter.
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt has had constructive talks with his United Arab Emirates counterpart over the fate of a British academic jailed for life on a spying charge.

Diplomatic efforts to free PhD student Matthew Hedges are being led by Mr Hunt amid an outcry after the 31-year-old was handed the sentence earlier this week.

The Durham University researchers wife, Daniela Tejada, has lobbied for his release and won assurances from Mr Hunt that the Government is now standing up for her husband, after she claimed it had initially put foreign relations above his liberty.

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Mr Hunt told the BBCs Andrew Marr Show that he thinks Ms Tejada is being incredibly brave in challenging circumstances, and that he is optimistic a way through can be found.

After Mr Hunts latest talks with UAE counterpart Abdullah bin Zayed, a Foreign Office spokeswoman said: They had constructive talks and agreed to keep in close contact over the coming days.

Expand Close United Arab Emirates ambassador Sulaiman Almazroui makes a statement about Matthew Hedges (Dominic Lipinski/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook

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Whatsapp United Arab Emirates ambassador Sulaiman Almazroui makes a statement about Matthew Hedges (Dominic Lipinski/PA)

In a statement at the UAE embassy in London on Friday, ambassador Sulaiman Almazroui praised the closeness between the two nations as he said clemency is being considered for the extremely serious case.

Mr Hedges family have made a request for clemency and the government is studying that request, he said.

Because of the strength of that relationship we are hopeful that an amicable solution can be reached.

He also made efforts to defend the judicial process, denying it was a five-minute show trial and claiming three judges evaluated compelling evidence over three hearings to make their ruling.

He did not address whether the academic was given adequate legal representation throughout the process, which Ms Tejada has said he lacked.

Our thoughts are with Matthew Hedges, his wife Daniela and his family today. We will do everything we can to get him home as soon as possible pic.twitter.com/hE4systClL  Jeremy Hunt (@Jeremy_Hunt) November 21, 2018

She swiftly rebuked the ambassadors defence, saying her husband had been held in solitary confinement for more than five months without charge or lawyer, and when he did receive consular access he was not able to talk openly.

The judicial system in the UAE and the UK cannot be compared, she said in a statement.

We have asked for clemency, we will wait to see what happens.

Mr Hedges, originally from Exeter, was arrested at Dubai Airport as he tried to leave the country on May 5.

Professor Stuart Corbridge, vice-chancellor of Durham University, said there is no reason to believe that Matt was conducting anything other than legitimate academic research.

Mr Hedges was given 30 days to challenge the court ruling, and Ms Tejada has launched a petition on Change.org which has so far garnered more than 238,000 signatures.
The scene outside Ilford Station in east London on Saturday (PA)

A man has been charged with the attempted murder of a police officer over an alleged knife attack at an east London station.

Daniel Adeyemi is accused of trying to kill the officer at Ilford railway station on Friday night.

The 24-year-old will appear before magistrates in London on Monday, British Transport Police (BTP) said.

A man has been charged with the attempted murder of a Police Officer, possession of bladed article and common assault against another Police Officer. https://t.co/ezpFLA7kX6 pic.twitter.com/gVVCEjDHzU  British Transport Police (@BTP) November 25, 2018

Adeyemi, of Bedford Road, Ilford, has also been charged with possession of a bladed article and common assault against another police officer.

He is said to have set upon an on-duty BTP officer at the station at around 9.45pm before being arrested at the scene.

Witnesses described seeing a bloodied officer outside the station as it was put on complete lockdown.

The alleged attack comes amid concerns over the treatment of officers in the city.
David Mundell says there is no credible alternative to Theresa Mays Brexit plan (Jane Barlow/PA)

A rejection of Theresa Mays Brexit deal threatens chaos or more division, according to David Mundell.

The Scottish Secretary has urged MPs to support the EU Withdrawal Agreement when it is put to a vote in the House of Commons.

More than 80 Tory MPs so far have publicly declared they intend to vote against the plan.

EU leaders signed off on the deal in Brussels on Sunday, following extensive negotiations.

There is no credible alternative Deal on offer, only the threat of chaos or more division. And thats what @theSNP want as the backdrop for their #indyref2 agenda. So No Deal Brexit wouldnt just be a disaster for Scotland but also threatens integrity of the UK #BackTheBrexitDeal  David Mundell MP (@DavidMundellDCT) November 25, 2018

Mr Mundell wrote on Twitter: There is no credible alternative Deal on offer, only the threat of chaos or more division.

And thats what @theSNP want as the backdrop for their #indyref2 agenda.

So no-deal Brexit wouldnt just be a disaster for Scotland but also threatens integrity of the UK.

The Prime Minister made clear earlier today, the UK will be an independent coastal state once again, in full sovereign control of our waters, able to decide for ourselves who we allow to fish in them, with that access not tied to any other aspect of our economic partnership.

The key point is that we are NOT leaving the EU with a deal on fisheries already in place. There will be a future deal on fishing to be agreed.

The PM has been clear that she will defend UK fishing interests robustly in that negotiation, just as she has in the Brexit Deal.

Mr Mundell has been criticised in recent weeks after he threatened to quit the Cabinet if the UK remains tied to the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) at the end of the Brexit transition period.

Ill be interested to hear David Mundell explain how this - existing reciprocal access and quota shares - can be squared with the promises made to the Scottish fishing industry. (Hint - it cant). https://t.co/9sO8TBsLVh  Nicola Sturgeon (@NicolaSturgeon) November 25, 2018

Scottish Conservative MP Ross Thomson earlier this month called for Mr Mundell to join other senior Conservatives in quitting the Cabinet over the deal, telling him no unionist could support the proposal.

Mr Thomson described the EUs position on a new fisheries deal with the UK as deeply troubling.

Speaking on BBC Sunday Politics Scotland, he said: That (EU statement) does deeply trouble me.

The current arrangement is very good for the EU, the arrangement we have on fisheries has been devastating for fishing communities across Scotland and the UK.

Its in the interests of the EU to keep it going and they want to build on those existing arrangements so to my mind that can only mean the continuation of some form of the CFP.

It may not be called that but if it looks like the CFP and behaves like the CFP then it is the CFP and thats why we need to resist it as we go into these negotiations.
Facebook said the documents were subject to a court order (PA)

A cache of internal Facebook documents has been dramatically seized using Parliaments legal powers as MPs probe the Cambridge Analytica data scandal.

The documents are said to shed light on the social media giants data and privacy controls before the massive breach was made public.

The documents were intercepted when the boss of US software company Six4Three in possession of the cache visited the UK on business, The Observer reported.

We are in uncharted territory. This is an unprecedented move but its an unprecedented situationDamian Collins

Damian Collins, chairman of the Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Committee, compelled the founder of the firm to hand over the documents using a rare parliamentary mechanism.

In a highly unusual move a serjeant at arms was sent to the businessmans hotel and he was given a final warning and a two-hour deadline to comply with the order.

When the founder failed to do so he was escorted to Parliament and warned he risked fines and imprisonment if the documents were not surrendered, the paper said.

The firm is involved in court action against Facebook in the US, where the documents were obtained through legal mechanisms.

Mr Collins told the paper: We are in uncharted territory. This is an unprecedented move but its an unprecedented situation. Weve failed to get answers from Facebook and we believe the documents contain information of very high public interest.

The materials obtained by the DCMS committee are subject to a protective order of the San Mateo Superior Court restricting their disclosure. We have asked the DCMS committee to refrain from reviewing them and to return them to counsel or to FacebookFacebook

He said Facebook had some very serious questions to answer and accused it of misleading the committee over Russian involvement on the platform.

It has not answered our questions about who knew what, when with regards to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Mr Collins said.

We have followed this court case in America and we believed these documents contained answers to some of the questions we have been seeking about the use of data, especially by external developers.

Facebook told the paper: The materials obtained by the DCMS committee are subject to a protective order of the San Mateo Superior Court restricting their disclosure.

We have asked the DCMS committee to refrain from reviewing them and to return them to counsel or to Facebook.

We have no further comment.

But Mr Collins said he had written back to Facebook stressing the House of Commons had powers to seize documents within UK jurisdiction.

The @CommonsCMS has received the documents it ordered from Six4Three relating to Facebook. I have reviewed them and the committee will discuss how we will proceed early next week. Under UK law & parliamentary privilege we can publish papers if we choose to as part of our inquiry  Damian Collins (@DamianCollins) November 25, 2018

In his email to Facebook public policy vice president Richard Allen, which he posted on Twitter on Sunday evening, Mr Collins said a committee of the House can publish these documents under parliamentary privilege.

He added: The committees interest in the documents we have requested relates to their relevance to our ongoing inquiry into disinformation and fake news.

As you know, we have asked many questions of Facebook about its policies on sharing user data with developers, how these have been enforced, and how the company identifies activity by bad actors.

We believe that the documents we have ordered from Six4Three could contain important information about this which is of a high public interest.

We are also interested to know whether the policies of Facebook, as expressed within these documents, are consistent with the public statements the company has made on the same issues.
Leo Varadkar described the Brexit deal as the next best thing to the UK staying in the EU (Tom Honan/PA)

Irelands premier has said issues remain to be ironed out with the Brexit withdrawal agreement but he is confident that Europe will give it the green-light.

Leo Varadkar described the draft deal as the next best thing to the UK staying in the European Union.

He made the comments before travelling from Dublin to Brussels with European Affairs Minister Helen McEntee to attend a special EU Council summit on Sunday.

The Taoiseach said: There are a few issues to be ironed out but I am confident that we, as 27 countries, will be able give the green light on behalf of Europe to the withdrawal agreement.

The summit will go ahead after Spain claimed the UK and European Union had agreed to its demands for guarantees over the status of Gibraltar.

British Prime Minister Theresa May held meetings with EU chiefs Jean-Claude Juncker and Donald Tusk on Saturday evening to finalise details.

Expand Close UK Prime Minister Theresa May and EU President Jean-Claude Juncker (Etienne Ansotte/EU) Press Association Images / Facebook

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While not necessary, the deal was approved in the Irish parliament on Wednesday.

Mr Varadkar said it protected Irelands interests and gave people and businesses much needed certainty.

He added that there was no other deal on the table.

Ms McEntee thanked the EU for its unwavering support in ensuring the Good Friday Agreement was protected.

She described the unity of the member states throughout the negotiations as outstanding.

No matter what happens anywhere else, Ireland will remain a fully committed member of the European Union. It is our home and it is where we will stay, she said.
French President Emmanuel Macron speaks during a media conference at the conclusion of the EU summit in Brussels (AP Photo/Olivier Matthys)

French President Emmanuel Macron has said the European Union must learn lessons from Britains decision to leave it.

Speaking from Brussels, Mr Macron said that the exit of a major member state for the first time in the blocs history showed Europe is fragile and the EU is not a given.

The French leader said European leaders have a duty to protect it against all those who forget that it is a guarantee of peace, prosperity and security.

Expand Close Mr Macron said the EU was not a given (AP Photo/Olivier Matthys) AP/PA Images / Facebook

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Whatsapp Mr Macron said the EU was not a given (AP Photo/Olivier Matthys)

Mr Macron also paid homage to Prime Minister Theresa May for seeking a path to durable co-operation with the EU, while defending UK interests during negotiations.

Twenty-seven EU leaders have endorsed a deal that sets out the terms of Britains departure on March 29 and sets a framework for future ties.

Meanwhile, Germanys Chancellor Angela Merkel described the deal as a diplomatic piece of art.

Mrs Merkel, also speaking in Brussels, said: Its an historic day, which triggers very ambivalent feelings  it is tragic that the UK is leaving the EU now after 45 years, but we have to, of course, respect the vote of the British people.

Expand Close Angela Merkel speaks with European Union chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier (Geert Vanden Wijngaert/AP) AP/PA Images / Facebook

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Whatsapp Angela Merkel speaks with European Union chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier (Geert Vanden Wijngaert/AP)

She praised the deal struck in an extremely difficult situation, in a situation without any precedence because we havent had it before that a European country leaves the EU.

Mrs Merkel said, while the agreement was based on very hard negotiations, it considers both sides interest.

European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker said the UK could not hope to negotiate better terms before its departure in March.

He said: I am totally convinced this is the only deal possible. Those who think that by rejecting the deal that they would have a better deal will be disappointed the first seconds after the rejection.

Mrs May was in agreement, saying: This is the deal that is on the table. It is the best possible deal. It is the only deal.
The Trump administration has been labelled callous and cruel after an immigrant who sought refuge from deportation in a church was arrested after arriving at an appointment with immigration officials.

Democratic congressmen David Price and GK Butterfield said Mexican national Samuel Oliver-Bruno appeared to have been entrapped by federal officials when he was detained on Friday at an immigration office in Raleigh, North Carolina.

This morning, Samuel Oliver-Bruno was abruptly arrested by ICE agents as he visited local immigration offices to check-in on his status. My full statement with @GKButterfield can be viewed here: https://t.co/4k26pinK2g pic.twitter.com/uEe88Ap6vB  Rep. David E. Price (@RepDavidEPrice) November 24, 2018

The advocacy group Alerta Migratoria NC said Oliver-Bruno went to have fingerprints taken so he could apply to stay in North Carolina with his wife and son.

He spent 11 months in a Durham church to avoid immigration authorities.

North Carolina representatives Mr Price and Mr Butterfield said they will fight to keep Mr Oliver-Bruno with his family and have received assurances from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that he will remain in the US while his case is adjudicated.
People walk outside the Riverchase Galleria shopping centre after gunfire on Thursday night (Carol Robinson/Press-Register/AL.com via AP)

Protesters have marched through an Alabama shopping centre where police killed a black man they later acknowledged was not the gunman in a shooting that wounded two people.

An officer shot and killed 21-year-old Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford Jr of Hueytown while responding to the shooting on Thursday. Police said Bradford was fleeing the scene with a weapon.

Hoover Police initially told reporters Mr Bradford had shot a teenager at the shopping centre, but later retracted the statement.

We knew that was false, said stepmother Cynthia Bradford when she heard police were blaming him for the shooting.

She described her stepson, who went by the name EJ, as a respectful young man who is the son of a Birmingham police department officer.

Hoover Police Captain Gregg Rector said investigators now believe that more than two people were involved in the initial fight ahead of the shooting, and that at least one gunman is still at large who could be responsible.

Rector said police regret that their initial statement about Mr Bradford was not accurate.

More than 200 demonstrators, including several relatives, chanted EJ and no justice, no peace as they marched past Christmas shoppers at the shopping centre. They held a moment of silence at the spot outside a shoe store where Bradford was killed.

They should never have killed him, Emani Smith, seven, Mr Bradfords half-sister said, while other family members cried.

Family members described their horror of finding out from social media that Mr Bradford was dead. Video circulated on social media of Bradford lying in a pool of blood on the shopping centre floor.

Expand Close Police responded to a fight inside the Riverchase Galleria mall (Carol Robinson/AP) AP/PA Images / Facebook

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Whatsapp Police responded to a fight inside the Riverchase Galleria mall (Carol Robinson/AP)

The incident began with a fight and shooting in suburban Birmingham at the Riverchase Galleria, a shopping centre crowded with Black Friday bargain hunters. An 18-year-old was shot twice and a 12-year-old bystander was shot in the back.

Police said while Mr Bradford may have been involved in some aspect of the altercation, he likely did not fire the rounds that injured the 18-year-old victim.

The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency is investigating the incident since it is an officer-involved shooting. The Hoover Police Department is conducting its own internal investigation.

The officer who shot Mr Bradford was placed on administrative leave while authorities investigate the shooting. The officers name was not released publicly. The officers were not hurt.

Mr Bradford is shown in photos on Facebook in an Army uniform and he described himself as a combat engineer. A spokesman for the US army, however, told The Washington Post that he never completed advanced individual training, and so did not serve.

Video posted on social media by shoppers showed a chaotic scene as shoppers fled the shopping centre, which closed for the remainder of Thursday night.
A helicopter searches for victims of a boat which capsized in Lake Victoria (AP Photo/Stephen Wandera)

Ugandan diving teams are retrieving bodies from Lake Victoria where police say at least 30 people died in a boat accident near the capital, Kampala.

The boat overturned and sank at about 7pm local time on Saturday night, said senior police officer Zurah Ganyana.

She said that 27 people were rescued overnight, lower than earlier reports. More than 90 passengers were on the boat, leading officials to believe that the death toll will rise.

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Ganyana said the boat was in poor condition and had been grounded for some time. She said it did not have a valid licence to operate.

The boat was taking passengers on a pleasure cruise on Lake Victoria, a popular weekend activity for young people in Kampala, when it capsized close to shore.

Early on Sunday a police helicopter hovered low over the spot where the boat sank, as a team of divers searched for bodies under calm waters. As the death toll rose, so did the crowd of onlookers at a beach abutting a quiet village outside Kampala.

Police carried victims in tarpaulins and hauled them into a waiting truck, occasionally drawing loud wails from some of the onlookers. One young woman, seeing a victim she apparently recognised, collapsed and was rushed to hospital.

Witnesses who were there on Saturday night said they heard people calling for help as they tried to stay afloat and others tried to swim ashore. Many were women.

Expand Close Relatives look on as police search for the victims of the boat which capsized (AP Photo/Stephen Wandera) AP/PA Images / Facebook

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Whatsapp Relatives look on as police search for the victims of the boat which capsized (AP Photo/Stephen Wandera)

They were shouting Help us! Help us! and the boat was sinking very quickly, said Sam Tukei, one of several local men who used fishermens canoes to rescue people. By the time the police came we had saved many people.

One reason many people died so close to shore was likely intoxication, said Asuman Mugenyi, national director of police operations. Citing the accounts of some survivors, he said there was a good number of life jackets on board the doomed vessel that passengers neglected to wear.

The boats passengers, in a party mood halfway through their journey, are likely to have panicked when the vessel started to sink, he said.

The boat is believed to have been on a routine weekend cruise that is popular among some young Ugandans. Victims include the couple who owned the boat, according to police officer Ganyana.

Boat accidents are increasingly common on East Africas major lakes including Lake Victoria, which is surrounded by Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda.

More than 200 people were killed in a Tanzanian ferry disaster in September, with officials saying it had been dangerously overcrowded.
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The province has re-introduced a bill that would make collective agreements optional for public construction projects and prevent unions from collecting dues from non-unionized employees.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 24/11/2018 (1096 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

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The province has re-introduced a bill that would make collective agreements optional for public construction projects and prevent unions from collecting dues from non-unionized employees.

The Public Sector Construction Projects (Tendering) Act, otherwise known as Bill 4, was given first reading in the Manitoba legislature on Friday, a move Infrastructure Minister Ron Schuler said would ensure freedom of choice.

From day one, our government has been clear that we respect the rights of Manitobans to choose whether or not they join a union or form a union in their workplace, Schuler said in a news release.

Our legislation would ensure all qualified workers and their employers, regardless of union status, have equal access to publicly funded construction projects in the province, and that all workers and employers in this province are treated fairly.

A spokesperson for Schuler said the government expects the legislation to become law this session.

The province introduced the same piece of legislation under Bill 28 during the last session of the house.

The bill would prevent a public-sector entity, including the Manitoba government, Crown corporations, school boards, certain universities and regional health authorities, from issuing tenders for construction projects that require a bidder to enter into a collective agreement, also known as a project labour agreement, or employ members of a specified union.

A bidder will also not be required to employ non-unionized employees or have them pay union dues.

Some groups in the construction industry have welcomed the bill, but labour organizations such as Manitoba Building Trades, which represents 13 unions, have criticized it for undercutting the provinces workforce.

We generally hope that the government would have had an opportunity to reconsider the position that it was taking (with) Bill 28, said Sudhir Sandhu, chief executive officer of Manitoba Building Trades.

He described the argument being pushed by the government as economically flawed and said the legislation will have the greatest impact on local employment by making it easier for out-of-province contractors to bid on Manitoba projects.

While not opposed to outside contractors as a whole, he said, Its only when you start to bring in a workforce that displaces available and ready Manitobans that the damage starts to occur.

Kirk Carr, president of the Brandon and District Labour Council, said the bill could result in a race to the bottom, where basic safety and labour laws arent being followed.

Youd be amazed by the things that some employers, even if they have the best intentions, do to make the employees suffer, and they dont even know their rights, Carr said.

Among those who support the bill are the Progressive Contractors Association of Canada, whose vice-president of public affairs, Darrel Reid, said project labour agreements have been used in Manitoba to bar otherwise qualified companies from working in the province.

We believe that all qualified Manitoba trades people, all qualified companies, should have the right to bid on public work the taxpayers paid for, he said.

Reid dismissed the argument that the bill would undercut pay rates in Manitoba and said labour relations in western Canada need to move into the 21st century.

That old argument is really just made to justify shutting down competition on the workforce and are scare tactics on the part of the building trades to justify basically keeping a closed market for their work, he said.

In a statement, President of Merit Contractors Association of Manitoba Yvette Milner said with over 70 per cent of Manitobas construction industry open shop, or without union representation, allowing them to compete will increase productivity and reduce costs.

We believe that any policy that forces workers to join a designated union in order to work on a project, even though those same workers have rejected joining a union is wrong. This bill eliminates that practice, ensures that procurement practices are fair and equitable and moves Manitoba in the right direction, she said.

Kevin Rebeck, president of the Manitoba Federation of Labour, said it seems strange for the province to pass legislation, when the government itself has acknowledged there is no forced unionization when it comes to project labour agreements  a reference to a comment made by then Infrastructure Minister Blaine Pedersen in the legislature in June 2016.

He suspected the bill was meant to play to the Progressive Conservative Party base and said project labour agreements have been used to provide fair and reasonable wages and good working conditions, as was the case with the Red River Floodway expansion project and Manitoba Hydros Keeyask generating station.

I think the consistency and standard of work becomes at risk and what tends to happen is you have the freedom to pick the cheapest option  which if youve ever done home renovations, you can choose the cheapest option and then youll often have to find a more expensive option to come finish the work  and I certainly dont want to see our public infrastructure be built by the cheapest option, he said.

 mlee@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @mtaylorlee
A 25-year-old woman is missing from her home in Cork.

Mary Ann Delaney is missing from her home in Mallow November 8.

Mary Ann is 5' 7" in height with long black hair and blue eyes.

It is unknown what Mary Ann was wearing when last seen.

Anyone with information on Mary Ann's whereabouts is asked to contact Mallow Garda Station on 022 31450, the Garda Confidential Line on 1800 666 111 or any Garda Station.

Digital Desk
Update - 12.27pm: The Minister for Justice, Charlie Flanagan, has condemned what he described as the "arson attack" on the Caiseal Mara Hotel in Moville this morning.

The blaze happened at the Caiseal Mara Hotel on Foyle Street, Moville, Co. Donegal at around 4.30am this morning.

Gardai are investigating the incident and the Minister has thanked the emergency services for their quick response.

He added that the hotel was due to house asylum seekers in the coming days.

Minister Flanagan said: I condemn this attack and those behind it in the strongest possible terms. This was a despicable incident and could have led to a very serious tragedy.

"I send my best wishes for a full recovery to the injured person and all those impacted by the fire. I am urging anyone with any information with regard to this fire to contact the Gardai.

The Minister of State for Equality and Integration, David Stanton, added: I deplore this attack. The hotel is being prepared for accommodation by persons seeking international protection in Ireland.

"That people would target such a building in this way is deeply shameful. This action is not at all representative of the welcome of the overwhelming majority of people in both Donegal and Ireland as whole."

Earlier: Donegal hotel suffers 'extensive damage' in fire that puts man in hospital

A man is in hospital after a hotel fire in Co. Donegal this morning.

The blaze happened at the Caiseal Mara Hotel on Foyle Street, Moville, Co. Donegal at around 4.30am this morning.

A man in his 50s has been taken to Letterkenny Hospital for treatment, and there has been extensive damage to the premises.

File photo of Letterkenny Hospital.

Gardai are appealing for witnesses, anyone with information or anyone that was in the area of Foyle Street in Moville before or after the fire to contact Buncrana Garda Station on (074) 9320540 the Garda Confidential Line or any Garda Station.
A man has died following a crash between two motorbikes and a 4x4 in Co Meath.

The collision happened on the Johnstown to Edenderry Rd at 1.30pm today.
Update - 10.55am: Arlene Foster has confirmed that her party will not support Theresa May's Brexit deal.

The DUP leader stated that if the UK parliament backs the British Prime Minister's deal, the DUP will "review" the confidence and supply arrangement.

Her comments come an hour after EU leaders backed the draft Brexit withdrawal agreement.

It still needs the approval of the British Parliament and the European Parliament before it's ratified.

Speaking on The BBC's Andrew Marr Show, Arlene Foster re-iterated her party's position, saying: "What I can guarantee to you is, if this is what is coming and it looks very much like it is what's coming to Parliament, we will not be able to support that deal.

"There comes a time when everybody is very tired, everybody just wants to get it done, but we shouldn't just accept an outcome for the sake of it, we should try and get a deal that is good for everybody."

Earlier: Withdrawal agreement approval allows us to move on, says Varadkar

The Taoiseach has said the approval of the draft Brexit withdrawal agreement by EU leaders at a special summit will allow the talks to move on.

Leo Varadkar said he was pleased to be in Brussels to sign off on the deal, which he said represented the culmination of nearly two years of work.

The Taoiseach made the comments as he arrived at the Europa building for the European Council's special meeting on Sunday morning.

EU leaders from 27 member states approved the draft Withdrawal Agreement and a Political Declaration about the future relationship between the EU and the UK.

Speaking ahead of the meeting Mr Varadkar said: "It was a very difficult deal to negotiate.

"I anticipate that in the next couple of hours that agreement will get the assent of the 28 governments, 27 member states that are staying and also the government of the UK and that will allow us to move on."

Mr Varadkar said he still regretted the fact that the UK was leaving the European Union.

"The best outcome for Ireland, and I think for Europe and Britain, would be for the UK to stay in the European Union, to stay in the single market and customs union, but we respect their decision not to do that," he said.

Mr Varadkar added: "We spent two years trying to negotiate an agreement that protects our interests, our citizens and our economy.

"I believe we have that: an agreement which allows for an orderly withdrawal of the UK from the European Union, an agreement which protects the freedoms and rights of citizens, particularly the Common Travel Area, an agreement which provides a transition period during which we can negotiate a future relationship."

He added: "If that isn't successful then a backstop that kicks in that assures us that there will be no hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland. And we'll continue to have tariff free and quota free trade between Britain and Ireland which is very important for our economy."

The summit went ahead after Spain claimed the UK and European Union had agreed to its demands for guarantees over the status of Gibraltar.

British Prime Minister Theresa May held meetings with EU chiefs Jean-Claude Juncker and Donald Tusk on Saturday evening to finalise details.

While not necessary, the deal was also approved in the Irish parliament on Wednesday.

Earlier: EU endorses Brexit agreement, says Donald Tusk

The 27 European Union leaders have endorsed the Brexit deal, European Council president Donald Tusk said.

European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker has warned Britain cannot expect to get a better Brexit deal if the British Parliament rejects the agreement hammered out by Theresa May.

His warning came as EU leaders gathered in Brussels endorsed the terms of the Withdrawal Agreement and the Political Declaration finally agreed with the commission last week.

Mr Juncker told reporters: "This is the deal. It's the best deal possible and the EU will not change its fundamental position when it comes to these issues," he said.

The announcement that the remaining 27 EU leaders had backed the plan came in a tweet from European Council president Donald Tusk barely 40 minutes after the meeting started.

EU27 has endorsed the Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration on the future EU-UK relations.  Charles Michel (@eucopresident) November 25, 2018

Mr Juncker's comments were echoed Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte who urged MPs to give their approval in next month's expected "meaningful vote" in the House of Commons.

"This is the deal on the table. I don't think there is anything more now. I don't want to contemplate a no vote. I think there will be a yes vote," he said.

"I think this is the best we can all do - both Theresa May and her Government as well as the European Union.

"I do think she has everything now to argue for a yes vote in the British Parliament."

The EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier said the deal was a "necessary step" to prepare for the next phase of negotiations which the Government hopes will result in a wide-ranging free trade agreement.

"Now it is time for everybody to take their responsibility. This deal is a necessary step to build the trust between the UK and the EU we need to build," Mr Barnier said.

"The next phase is an unprecedented and ambitious partnership. We will remain allies, partners and friends."

Earlier: Taoiseach 'anticipates' assent from EU and UK for Brexit agreement

European leaders are meeting in Brussels this morning to sign off on the Brexit draft withdrawal agreement, writes Elaine Loughlin.

Arriving at the EU Council meeting, Leo Varadkar said today's meeting is the culmination of nearly two years of difficult talks and negotiations.

"Obviously we still regret the fact that the UK is leaving the European Union, the best outcome for Ireland and I think Europe and Britain would be for the UK to stay in European Union, to stay in the single market and customs union but we respect their decision not to do that so we spent two years trying to negotiate an agreement that protects our interests our citizens and our economy," said Mr Varadkar.

He said the agreement would allow for a transition period to negotiate the future relationship with the EU adding that if that isn't possible there will be a "backstop that kicks in that ensures us that there will be no hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland".

Taoiseach @campaignforleo has arrived in Brussels for the special EU council to sign off on the Brexit draft withdrawal agreement #iestaff via @Elaine_Loughlin pic.twitter.com/vpUa6TJ307  Irish Examiner (@irishexaminer) November 25, 2018

Mr Varadkar said: "A lot of work done over the past two years, a very difficult deal to negotiate, I anticipate that in the next couple of hours that agreement will get the assent of 28 Governments, the 27 members States that are staying and also the Government of the UK and that will allow us to move on."

Earlier: Varadkar confident Europe will approve Brexit deal

The Taoiseach has said issues remain to be ironed out with the Brexit withdrawal agreement but he is confident that Europe will give it the green-light.

Leo Varadkar described the draft deal as the next best thing to the UK staying in the European Union.

He made the comments before travelling from Dublin to Brussels with European Affairs Minister Helen McEntee to attend a special EU Council summit on Sunday.

The Taoiseach said: There are a few issues to be ironed out but I am confident that we, as 27 countries, will be able give the green light on behalf of Europe to the withdrawal agreement.

The summit will go ahead after Spain claimed the UK and European Union had agreed to its demands for guarantees over the status of Gibraltar.

British Prime Minister Theresa May held meetings with EU chiefs Jean-Claude Juncker and Donald Tusk on Saturday evening to finalise details.

While not necessary, the deal was approved in the Dail on Wednesday.

Mr Varadkar said it protected Irelands interests and gave people and businesses much needed certainty.

He added that there was no other deal on the table.

UK Prime Minister Theresa May and EU President Jean-Claude Juncker (Etienne Ansotte/EU)

She described the unity of the member states throughout the negotiations as outstanding.

No matter what happens anywhere else, Ireland will remain a fully committed member of the European Union. It is our home and it is where we will stay, she said.

- Press Association
Update - 1.02pm: Speaking after the EU gave the green light to the agreement Leo Varadkar said there was no plan B if the deal is not approved in the British House of Commons.

The Taoiseach said: "There isn't a plan B. The truth is what we have here is the best deal that is available both for the United Kingdom and for the European Union. We have a backstop in place but we all agree that that's an insurance policy that has to be there, but would only need to be invoked under certain circumstances."

He added that the UK would be "more than a third country" post-Brexit given its close links to the EU.

"We are determined to make sure that the United Kingdom isn't just another third country that we have a special relationship with the EU and UK afterwards," he said.

At a briefing with Irish media following the special meeting Mr Varadkar said that people should not be focusing on alternative options.

"Let's not forget what we have here, we have an agreement that took between 18 months and two years to negotiate, it is in several parts, is over 500 pages long and as of today has the support of 28 governments," he said.

"Anyone can have a better deal or an alternative deal in their own minds but an agreement 500 pages long that 28 member states can sign up to nobody has that.

"What's on the table is the only deal that's on the table."

Mr Varadkar said the "entire European Union" was of the view that the deal could not be renegotiated.

"It wasn't easy to get to this point," he said.

Mr Varadkar continued: "What's being put in front of EU parliament and House of Commons is a deal. Any other deal really only exists in people's imagination."

Asked whether EU leaders had discussed what they would do if the vote in the House of Commons failed, Mr Varadkar said the EU 27 had made a "conscious decision" not to discuss what may happen in such a scenario.

Mr Varadkar said the best outcome for all concerned would be if the UK remained in the EU, but given that was not going to happen the draft agreement was the "next best" thing.

"I've always thought the best outcome for Ireland and for Europe and indeed the United Kingdom would be for the UK to stay in the European Union, the customs union and the single market, but we respect the decision of the British people and the UK parliament not to do that," he said.

"What we have agreed today is the next best outcome. It protects the peace, affirms the rights and freedoms of European, Irish and British citizens, ensures there will be no hard border and also insulates our economy from major disruptions in trade."

"What we need to do now is to get on with it and get on with the ratification of this agreement by the House of Commons and also by the European Parliament and when that's done, from March, April onwards, to get busy negotiating the future relationship treaty."

Earlier: UK must 'move forward' or 'open door to more division', says Theresa May

Theresa May has said British MPs will have to decide whether to back the draft Brexit deal and "move forward together into a brighter future" or reject it and "open the door to yet more division and uncertainty".

It comes after European Council president Donald Tusk confirmed that the 27 European Union leaders have endorsed the Withdrawal Agreement and the Political Declaration finally agreed with the commission last week.

European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker has warned Britain cannot expect to get a better Brexit deal if the British Parliament rejects the agreement hammered out by Theresa May.

At a press conference in Brussels, British Prime Minister Theresa May said: "Before Christmas, MPs will vote on this deal.

"It will be one of the most significant votes that Parliament has held for many years. On it will depend whether we move forward together into a brighter future or open the door to yet more division and uncertainty.

"The British people don't want to spend any more time arguing about Brexit.

"They want a good deal done that fulfils the vote and allows us to come together again as a country.

"I will take this deal back to the House of Commons, confident we have achieved the best deal available and full of optimism about the future of our country.

"In Parliament and beyond it, I will make the case for this deal with all my heart and I look forward to that campaign."

Theresa May said she was not "sad" about Brexit as the UK and EU would remain "friends and neighbours".

Asked whether she shared Angela Merkel's sadness at Brexit, Mrs May said: "No, but I recognise that others do.

"I recognise some European leaders are sad at this moment, but also some people back at home in the UK will be sad at this moment."

But Mrs May said she was "full of optimism about the future of this country".

She added: "We will continue to have that good, close partnership and relationship within Europe, within the European Union and more widely."

Mr Juncker added: "I am totally convinced that this is the only deal possible. Those who think by rejecting the deal that they would have a better deal will be disappointed in the first seconds after the rejection of this deal."

The European Commission president said "divorce is a tragic moment".

"Payments have to be made but the future understanding is one which has to be constructed.

"I don't think Britain will be a third country like other third countries are third countries.

"There is, between us, something which has the remainings of love."
By Sarah Slater

A pair of rugby boots worn by Ireland star Johnny Sexton are being auctioned to raise funds for a seriously ill girl.

These are his lucky boots worn by him when the Irish rugby team won the Grand Slam, the Pro14 and the Champions Cup.

The outhalf was never been beaten in these boots and could become the first Irishman in 17 years to be crowned World Rugby Player of the Year after he was nominated as the only northern hemisphere player on the shortlist.

Sexton has been listed alongside Beauden Barrett (New Zealand), Faf de Klerk (South Africa), Rieko Ioane (New Zealand) and Malcolm Marx (South Africa) after a stellar year which included winning the Grand Slam with Ireland.

He was previously nominated four years ago and Keith Wood is the only Irish player to win the prize.

The pair of well-worn rugby boots will be involved in another battle, as the public aim to outbid each other and acquire the boots of a man who is seen as a national treasure.

All proceeds from the sale of lot 1267, by Shepherds Auctioneers in Durrow, Co Laois, will go towards the medical treatment of eight-year-old Anna Browne, from Mallow, Co Cork.

Her family are trying to raise money to pay for ongoing treatment both in here and in the US to help her cerebral palsy. Annas illness is restricting her mobility and she requires the use of a wheelchair.

The father of threes generous offer came after his godfather, Listowel publican and author, Billy Keane met the Browne family and was deeply touched by Anna's story. Contact was then successfully made with Sexton who unselfishly donated the boots.

The boots are lot 1267 in the auction, which will be held on November 27 and 28.

The auction catalogue details the boots and says: Provenance: Jonathan Sexton. The leather skin of the instep and toe is broken from stamping studs and the pounding of giants, accidental and otherwise.

These boots record the history of every kick and every step. The right shoe is the one that beat the French with the last play, Le Drop, in Paris.

These are his lucky boots: the boots that won the Grand Slam, the Pro14 and the Champions Cup. He has never been beaten in these boots.
And so we have sign off.

During a Sunday morning meeting in Brussels the 27 leaders of the European Union, along with British prime-minister Theresa May endorsed the draft withdrawal agreement.

Although there were a few last minute wobbles - which was to be expected from the UK but less so from Spain - the deal was signed off on without much fuss in the end.

The leaders had barely entered the cocoon of the egg-shaped EU Council room when word rippled out that the single item on the agenda of this special and hasily called meeting had been dealt with.

A momentous occasion.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves, there will still be many more unexpected plot twists in the Brexit saga.

If the Brexiteers, the Remainers and all in between thought the process which led to a finalised draft withdrawal agreement was fraught, wait until they get to the future relationship talks.

It is clear that the UK will go into trade talks with one main aim - to put their own interests first.

In a press briefing, Theresa May used the phrase "in our national interest" six times in her opening statement.

Asked if she shared the sadness expressed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other European leaders, Mrs May said: "Well no.

After the laughter of the mainly British journalists in the room subsided, she added: "But I recognise that others do, I recognise that some European leaders are sad at this moment, but also some people back home in the UK will be sad at this moment.

"The way I look at is actually this is for us to move on to the next stage, I am full of optimism for this country and I believe that we can with this good deal with the European Union we will remain friends and neighbours."

The meeting also got sign off on a political declaration - a rough outline for future talks on a trade agreement, which will only be hammered out during a 21-month transition period that is due begin after Brexit happens on 29 March.

The political declaration "establishes the parameters of an ambitious, broad, deep and flexible partnership across trade and economic cooperation, law enforcement and criminal justice, foreign policy, security and defence and wider areas of cooperation".

But in reality it is only a vague document and barely touches on the nitty gritty of any real trade deal.

Whoever is tasked with steering these trade negotiations faces a difficult and protracted challenge.

While the 36 -page political declaration makes neutral reference to fishing, it merely states that both "parties should cooperate bilaterally and internationally to ensure fishing at sustainable levels, promote resource conservation, and foster a clean, healthy and productive marine environment."

It also notes that the UK will be an independent coastal state.

If only it were that simple.

Fishing and the right to fish in UK waters is just one of many contentious issues that are likely to hit significant roadblocks in any future relationship talks.

Currently, the EU's Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) gives all European fishing fleets equal access to EU waters and fishing grounds and allows fishermen to compete fairly based on a quota system.

The UK and especially the Brexiteers will be fighting hard to claim back their own waters by excluding European trawlers.

Trade deals are notoriously complicated to get across the line.

Earlier this year, Europe agreed an economic partnership agreement with Japan a process that had began back in 2013.

And while talks on an agreement between the United States and the EU also began back in 2013 the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP, still has to be fully hammered out.

Even when a trade deal with the UK is struck, it will then have to face the final hurdle of parliament ratification, which introduces the possibility of another 'Wallonia problem'.

Wallonia - a small region in Belgium which before October of 2016 was virtually unknown to anyone living outside of its territory, became the subject of much attention when its lawmakers voted to block an EU-Canada trade deal.

The small French-speaking enclave in southern Belgium held the already delayed Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) deal to ransom.

An official signing of the CETA pact was cancelled as the endorsement of all EU member states was required. Wallonia eventually backed down and CETA received the approval of all member state parliaments.

Any post-Brexit trade deal that is negotiated between Europe and the UK will face the same process.

But we are all getting ahead of ourselves with talks of trade talks, future relationships and parliament ratification.

Before any of this can happen Mrs May will have to get the withdrawal agreement through the House of Commons.

We may have initial sign-off, but we are still a long way off Brexit lift off.
Tika R Pradhan is a senior political correspondent for the Post, covering politics, parliament, judiciary and social affairs. Pradhan joined the Post in 2016 after working at The Himalayan Times for more than a decade.
Frances Rings has directed an energetic program of dance that spans traditional to hip-hop, but is mostly contemporary in the international language of dance.

StoryPlace is this years offering from NAISDA Dance College in which the focus is on two young Indigenous choreographers and the range of creative talents nurtured by this three-year intensive course in performance.

Bittersweet is choreographed by Deborah Brown, formerly a leading performer with Bangarra Dance Theatre. She tackles a challenging subject: the human body and how it is affected by what it is fed, not only physically but mentally. She brings to the task her developing skills in film direction, which provide a memorable opening sequence, and uses the ensemble well, especially in tight-knit groups.

Louise Potiki Bryant, a New Zealand choreographer of Maori descent, outlines a fascinating and complex story behind her work, Kapehu (Compass). The actual performance of a sequence from it is less clear, with a sameness about the whirling and waving movement of the 11 performers. Their costumes accentuate the restless action, which was well sustained by the dancers.

Kapehu (Compass) by Louise Potiki Bryant. Credit:Lisa Haymes

Among the graduating students, Kallum Goolagong displays welcome technical talents and unwanted self-consciousness in his solo, Yesterday Dreams for Tomorrows Passions. He also wrote the music for it, as did Amy Flannery for My Version of a Heartbeat, one of three pieces to which she contributed useful choreography, the other two with Aroha Pehi. Emily Flannery and Gusta Mara also wrote music for their pieces, Ego and Unwritten Story, which says a lot about the way the college encourages the abilities of its students.

While there is nothing that jumps out of StoryPlace as a leap to instant fame, the mood and collective quality of the production make the program of 12 items an enjoyable experience. And it is good to have the thoughtful celebration of traditional dance at the end: to see the respect it is still given and know it is there as a base for all the new dance to come.
Police and fire crews had just packed up and left the scene of a fire at Canberra's prison on Sunday evening when another blaze broke out.

Emergency services were called twice to Alexander Maconochie Centre on November 25, 2018 following reports of fires at the prison. Credit:Fairfax Media

An ACT Emergency Services Agency spokesman said firefighters were initially called out to the first fire just after 6pm at the Alexander Maconochie Centre.

That blaze was put out by about 7pm but at 8.30pm another had called crews back.

This time ambulance services also attended along with two pumper crews, hazmat and a commander.
"There's smoke everywhere and you can barely see the vehicles on the road," he said. "They've just saved one of multiple houses from fire in the area. "It's fine but there's burnt trees and grass right around it and there's dogs running around getting away from the fire." Mr Cullen said he offered to bring the water tanks when he noticed the smoke in Bundaberg, which had travelled about 100 kilometres from Deepwater. Queensland Fire and Emergency Services had already issued a warning at 12.50pm on Sunday to alert residents and visitors to leave immediately as the fire worsened.

"Follow your bushfire survival plan now," the alert said. "If you do not have a plan, your safest option is to leave now if it is clear to do so. If you are not in the area, do not return, as conditions are too dangerous. Leslie Cullen delivered 26,000 litres to the Deepwater National Park. Credit:Leslie Cullen. "A dangerous and unpredictable fire is travelling in a south south-west direction towards Deepwater." QFES said the Deepwater community, about 60 kilometres north-west of Bundaberg, was expected to be affected by 1.30pm.

"All Deepwater residents should evacuate the township in a westerly direction towards Miriam Vale using Fingerboard Road," the warning said. Earlier on Sunday morning, QFES advised there was a bushfire at Round Hill, about 120 kilometres between Gladstone and Bundaberg, which could worsen because of an unpredictable fire moving towards a national park. "An unpredictable fire is travelling from the Deepwater National Park in a north-easterly direction towards Bousgas Drive, Springs Road and Anderson Way, which includes the Sunrise estate," the 10.20am warning said on Sunday. The warning said the fire was likely to impact the area and fire crews were working to contain the fire. "Firefighters may not be able to protect every property. You should not expect a firefighter at your door," it said.

"People in the area will be affected by smoke, which will reduce visibility and air quality." Residents were urged to urged to stay up-to-date with regular updates on the Rural Fire Service website or their local radio and call triple zero immediately if they believe their property is under threat. Loading They said residents should close windows and doors to minimise smoke exposure and those who suffer from a respiratory condition should keep their medication close by. "Pack important documents and essential items (e.g., passports, birth certificates, prescription medication, food and water, and protective clothing) in case you need to leave the area," QFES said.

"Fill containers such as your bath, sinks, and buckets with water so you have access to drinking water and firefighting water." Other advice included to drive with caution in low visibility conditions, stay hydrated, bring pets inside homes and protect livestock and move flammable materials away from properties. Fire danger eases closer to Brisbane Meanwhile, the danger from a bushfire at Delaneys Creek, north of Brisbane, decreased as crews monitored the blaze burning near Mervyn Cavanagh Court and Settlement Road.

"This fire broke out yesterday and is posing no threat to property at this time," a 9.40am warning said. "Firefighters are monitoring the blaze, which is currently burning within containment lines. "Delaneys Creek residents may be affected by a smoke haze throughout the day. Loading "Residents are asked to close windows and doors and if suffering from a respiratory condition, keep medications close by. "

On Saturday, QFES had issued a warning for people to leave immediately after more than 10 fire crews battled a worsening bushfire in Delaneys Creek. A Queensland Ambulance Service spokesman said a man in his 30s was taken to Caboolture Hospital with heat stress about 3pm. He said it was unclear whether he was an emergency services respondent or other patient. On Sunday, a bushfire warning issued to residents in the Undullah area, south-east of Ipswich, was downgraded to "advice" level. "A bushfire is burning in inaccessible country to the east of Mt Elliot Road, Undullah," an 11.45am warning said.
Julie Bannister is staring down the biggest bushfire of her life, refusing to leave her coastal Queensland retreat even as her neighbours properties burn around her.

Were used to fires, but not as big this, Ms Bannister told Brisbane Times.

Aerial pictures of the bushfire at Deepwater near Agnes Water, which firefighters were battling on Sunday, November 25, 2018.

This is the biggest one weve ever lived through.

You can hear it roaring, it sounded like a jet plane coming.
Hundreds of homes are at risk and two properties have already been claimed as the Deepwater and Round Hill bushfires force hundreds to flee from the central Queensland coast communities.

The Queensland Premier said much of the state was in the grips of "unprecedented" heatwave conditions on Monday, which, combined with high humidity and strong winds was making an already tough battle even harder for firefighters.

A hundred rural NSW firefighters are on their way to help fight the central Queensland bushfires. Credit:NSW RFS

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said the fire had generated flames 10-12 metres high, covered 11,000 hectares and forced the closure of Wartburg State School.

"We expect the fire to turn and head back towards Deepwater and Baffle Creek," she said.
A 60-year-old woman on a mobility scooter was hit in the face with a tree branch as a teenager tried to steal her medication south of Brisbane on Sunday.

Police said the woman was attacked in the Logan suburb of Eagleby about 10.30am on Sunday when she passed two boys while travelling on her scooter down a bike path.

The woman was riding a mobility scooter when she was attacked. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen.

One of the boys then struck the woman in the face with a tree branch while the other attempted to steal a bag of medication located in a basket on her scooter, police said.

When the women tried to stop the theft she was hit in the head again with the branch.
It's been one year since tradesman Bryce Airs was found crawling on the side of the road after being fatally struck by a vehicle in Jamieson in the state's north-east.

The 43-year-old father-of-two was walking home after a night of drinking at the local Courthouse Hotel when he was hit on Mansfield-Woods Point Road, about 190km north-east of Melbourne, shortly after midnight on November 26, 2017.

Bryce Airs, 43. Credit:Facebook

Two hours after he was struck, Mr Airs was found crawling along Mansfield-Woods Point Road by a passerby who stopped to help him.

As he lay dying on the side of the road, he said he thought he had been struck by lightning.
The Morrison government is heading into the federal election flush with cash, with a report predicting federal coffers will swell by an extra $9.2 billion this financial year as the economy steams ahead.

The government is within sight of posting a surplus one year earlier than previously forecast, just as it considers whether to schedule the annual budget in March or April next year instead of the usual early May.

The budget strategy would allow the government to use the major economic statement as the launching pad for the election campaign, which is expected by May 18.

The Deloitte Access Economics report concludes the budget could "squeak into surplus" this financial year if the government made policy changes to build on strong revenue gains, but this would depend on political calculations.
Like the TV audience in the Peter Finch movie Network, who were urged to open their windows and shout, Im mad as hell and Im not going to take this any more, Victorian voters have delivered an emphatic repudiation of a sleazy, bottom-feeding campaign designed to play on their fears.

What they have voted for is a flawed Labor government that is conspicuously grappling with the states infrastructure challenges and appears to be in sync with local aspirations as residents of what Premier Daniel Andrew describes as Australias most progressive state.

Speaking of network moments, we witnessed one such moment on TV on election night when former Liberal premier Jeff Kennett called on state Liberal president Michael Kroger to fall on his sword by midnight.

Kennett was, you might say, mad as hell and not going to take it any more in an exchange that exposes toxic divisions in the Victorian branch.
The fate of Opposition Leader Matthew Guy also remained unclear, with lower house counting to resume on Monday to determine how many of his colleagues would hold on.

The Victorian Liberals were in shock and disarray on Sunday as they waited to see the fate of once tightly held seats now under threat.

Mr Guy did not address the media on the day after his crushing election defeat at the hands of Labor, choosing instead to spend time with family.

By Sunday evening, it remained uncertain whether the Liberals would retain shadow attorney-general John Pesuttos Hawthorn electorate, which he held by a comfortable 8.6 per cent before the election. He currently leads by just 53 votes.

In Bayswater, Liberal frontbencher Heidi Victoria held her lead by only 72 votes.

Shadow Attorney General John Pesutto. Credit:Justin McManus

Back towards the city in Caulfield, sitting Liberal MP David Southwick had extended his lead and looked likely to be returned despite appearing under threat early on Saturday.
Does that mean youre happy for your financial service providers to lose access to the continent? No, no, no, eventually came the response. Meanwhile, Brexiteers dropped out of the UK government like overripe fruit. Loading There is a range of popular childrens books whose titles begin Thats Not My  Most British Brexiteer politicians have fled to the politically safer ground of Thats Not My Brexit, leaving others to sign up to the inevitable compromise.

They never had a majority for their damn the torpedoes Brexit. But they did have a point. This is, undoubtedly, the EUs Brexit. Its lawyers wrote all the drafts of the withdrawal deal, pre-empting the UKs political inability to do so. British Prime Minister Theresa Mays negotiators (her Brexit ministers only occasionally among them) quibbled and did win concessions, most notably in the political declaration accompanying the deal, an aspirational document that describes a vaguely promising trade, customs and security deal to follow in some years time. But the EU had process and reason on its side, and the UK had mostly chaos. The EU 27 were remarkably resolute in their aims and negotiation strategy, while the Conservative government couldn't even agree with itself. Cynics paid little attention to the last-minute panic over Gibraltar. It was the best kind of problem. It sounded like an existential threat to the deal, but really only required some inconsequential, non-binding promises. A Spanish PM facing regional elections needed a win, and he was given enough to be able to claim one.

Of course, May looked like shed caved, yet again. Thats the narrative, and she can wear it. Its her job right now: she takes the political heat, internalises it and just carries on. When Europes leaders came to judge the 585-page Brexit deal and its much shorter political declaration cousin, they barely needed to discuss it. Loading Their biggest problem is how to make it stick, given it must pass the British Parliament, most of whose members have spent the last fortnight complaining about it. Hence the rhetoric on Sunday.

I am totally convinced that this is the only deal possible, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said. Those who do think by rejecting the deal that they would have a better deal will be disappointed in the first seconds after the rejection of this deal. There isnt a plan B, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar insisted. The truth is what we have here is the best deal thats available both for the United Kingdom and for the European Union. "Any other deal really only exists in people's imaginations." May echoed the EU lines.

If people think somehow theres another negotiation to be done, thats not the case, she told reporters after the summit. This is  the result of what [have] been tough and difficult negotiations over a significant period of time. Weve said this is the deal thats on the table, this is the best possible deal. Its the only possible deal. All eyes turn now to the House of Commons, and a vote on this deal due most likely in the second week of December. Some MPs appear to think they can vote against a "no deal" Brexit, just like you can decide not to be prosecuted for theft if you walk out of a shop without paying. In fact the only way MPs can avoid a no-deal is by voting for this deal or for some alternative, such as another referendum or a general election, that might prove grounds for the EU granting a Brexit extension beyond March. But none of the obvious alternatives could win a majority of votes right now, if you take MPs on their word.

Some think that the "backstop", a last-resort section of the deal that would leave the UK subject to the customs union and elements of the single market if a trade deal cant be reached, can be somehow edited out of the deal. Hence the insistence from Brussels that this is the deal, take it or leave it (tarnished slightly by the Lithuanian President's acknowledgement that the British could come back with a "request for renegotiations"). So for the next few weeks its Downing Streets job to, in the words of another masterpiece, whip it, and whip it good. Reportedly, Mays lieutenants are already hard at work wielding sticks and carrots to win Tory votes for the deal. They are offering peerages, promising pet projects, binning policies. The British Chancellor is said to have gone back to the Northern Irish DUP with an open chequebook. They are chucking everything possible out of the basket to keep this Brexit balloon up.
Nayak Paudel is a crime reporter for The Kathmandu Post. Since joining the Post in 2018, he has also written on health issues.
London: UK Prime Minister Theresa May has made a dramatic direct appeal to the British public to support her deal to exit the European Union even as backing from her own party for the agreement remains unclear.

May is meeting EU leaders in Brussels this weekend to sign off on a draft Brexit divorce deal that critics on both sides of the EU membership debate say sells Britain short.

However, the Northern Irish party propping up May's government says it will vote against her withdrawal agreement, which its deputy leader says would leave Britain in a "pitiful and pathetic place".

May, meanwhile says the UK's position on Gibraltar has not changed following claims she caved in to Spanish demands over the territory's future.
Latest News New Adatree COO on Open Banking 'tipping point' for brokers "A year ago, only the Big Four were on Open Banking - now we have 93 connected institutions on our system, sharing data"

Asset finance specialists Nodifi to add personal lending products Move inspired by increasing number of brokers that are dealing in personal loan space

A bank has today announced changes to its upfront commissions to akcnowledge the work of the Combined Industry Forum (CIF).

MyState Bank, whose broker originations account for more than 50% of its loan book, has said it is 100% committed to the broker industry.

Effective 1 January 2019, the calculations for broker commissions on both new home loans and loan increases will be based on the drawn down balance on the tenth calendar day of the month, instead of the initial total approved loan amount.

These changes are in line with reforms agreed to by the CIF and the recommendations of the ASIC Broker Remuneration Review and Sedgwick Report.

MyState Bank group executive broker distribution, Huw Bough, said, "This is the right thing for brokers, the right thing for aggregators, and the right thing for the customer.

Brokers are critical to the health of the Australian mortgage market, with 55% of Australians now choosing to access lenders and their products via mortgage brokers. They provide an invaluable service and guidance to people as they navigate the home loan process.

At MyState Bank, we will continue to work in partnership with our aggregators, brokers, and regulators to ensure we are at the forefront of initiatives that seek to reinforce positive customer outcomes and strengthen the position of the broker channel well into the future."
Latest News New Adatree COO on Open Banking 'tipping point' for brokers "A year ago, only the Big Four were on Open Banking - now we have 93 connected institutions on our system, sharing data"

Asset finance specialists Nodifi to add personal lending products Move inspired by increasing number of brokers that are dealing in personal loan space

The possibilities of data sharing in Australia could include predicting consumer behaviour to assess loan risk, according to a firm in the United States.

A team from US credit scoring company FICO was recently in Brisbane at the Australian Retail Credit Association (ARCA) national conference, which focused on the transition to open data.

While new systems such as comprehensive credit reporting (CCR) and open banking are new to Australians, the United States has been doing it for years.

In Australia, CCR came into effect in July this year and is expected to provide extra credit information, such as credit limits and repayment history, to give banks a better picture on a potential borrowers credit score.

Open banking comes into play in July 2019, when consumers will have the ability to share a wider range of financial data between financial institutions.

According to FICO, these two systems are working together in the United States and allowing people to build a credit score that can better assess risk.

FICO, which was established in the 1950s, created the well-known FICO Score to measure consumer credit risk.

It ensured there was one standardised credit score across the bureaus and lenders, unlike what we are currently seeing in Australia where each credit bureau has a different scoring methodology.

Sally Taylor, Scores vice president, at FICO, said they have recently launched something called an UltraFICO Score, which combines credit scoring with open banking.

Taylor and her colleague David Shellenberger, senior director, Scoring and Advanced Analytics, recently attended the ARCA conference.

Taylor said, The standard credit bureau negative/positive data is the basis of the Ultra FICO score and then the consumer can contribute their current account, savings account type of information through open banking type of connections.

So the typical case would be somebody who might otherwise be turned down for credit. Either their credit report isnt scoreable, theres not enough information or enough history, or they have a lower score and would have otherwise been declined.

So, what does your inflow and outflow of funds look like? Do you ever have negative balances? Do you tend to save? Thats the information thats reviewed there and then it adds to the FICO score.

For the target customers, those who have not had a lot of credit or very negative credit, we see that about 80% then will actually get a higher score.

Sharing this information could also mean predicting behaviour based on specific factors inside borrowers accounts.

Taylor said, What were predicting with the scores is were predicting whether the consumer in the future like one year out two years out will default on any type of credit.

It doesnt just look at delinquency to predict future delinquencies. But we also look at how long youve had credit or picking up a lot of new credit recently. You see that those who have had credit a long time tend to be lower risk than those who havent.

Those opening up a lot of new credit recently tend to be higher risk than those who arent and then in the US because we have balance information, we see people who have a very high balance relative to their limit are risky.

Taylor said there was a specific job for brokers as more data sharing comes into play. Particularly without a credit score industry standard, brokers will have to educate customers on what their score means and how it might affect their ability to get credit.

She added, I think brokers can explain how the credit process works and how the information is going to be used. But also some of the common sense tips around how to improve their scores.

Dont ever take more credit than they feel comfortable affording, make sure they pay all their bills on time and then make sure if theyre getting ready for a mortgage they dont take any more credit than they need.

It used to be only those priming themselves for a loan that would know their credit scores. But now accounts show their FICO score data to the consumer on a regular basis.

So consumers are more and more aware of what their score is and they realise that they keep that score healthy not just right when theyre priming themselves for a loan but over time so that they can afford and get the best rates for a mortgage or a car loan or student loan.
Latest News New Adatree COO on Open Banking 'tipping point' for brokers "A year ago, only the Big Four were on Open Banking - now we have 93 connected institutions on our system, sharing data"

Asset finance specialists Nodifi to add personal lending products Move inspired by increasing number of brokers that are dealing in personal loan space

New analysis has shown applications for online SME loans grew by 145% above the monthly average in November, demonstrating strong cyclical funding patterns.

OnDeck looked at monthly data to understand how funding requests change throughout the year.

The trend was particularly noticeable for service industries such as accommodation and food services, which showed an increase in applications of 190% in November when compared to average monthly demand in 2017.

The data showed the sectors that needed additional funding support at this time of year were retail spaces, cafes and restaurants, and tradespeople.

The data also found some lending patterns in other small business sectors were more evenly distributed around the year.

Challenging the festive season and EOFY trend, retail trade and wholesale trade lending remained more constant throughout the year, despite the obvious spike in consumer demand for retail products around festive periods.

Michael Burke, head of sales at OnDeck Australia, said that brokers could draw two key takeouts from the data.

Speaking to Australian Broker, he said, First, our data confirms that many small businesses have increased demand during November/December. This means they need to be able to access capital to purchase stock, hire staff, promote the business, expand premises and other seasonally-driven funding needs.

Second, the flip side of the coin is that they know their customers will have a slower period around the corner in January, so they need to ensure their cash flow is stable to support the business through that down period.

Brokers have a role to play in this scenario as a trusted adviser to small business owners, helping them to take advantage of the growth opportunities during the high demand periods, and ensuring they are well prepared for the quieter periods

From OnDecks perspective, our aim is build an awareness of these issues with brokers.

Wed like to see them proactively reaching out to customers and communicating with them on this topic and helping them recognise and understand the implications the peak period has for their business.
Stephen M Walt, who teaches international relations at Harvards Kennedy School and writes a column for Foreign Policy magazine, is no stranger to controversy. In September 2002, at a moment when both liberal hawks and neoconservatives were cheering for the George W Bush administration to topple Saddam Hussein, he helped organise an open letter signed by over two dozen international relations scholars that appeared as an advertisement on the New York Times Op-Ed page, declaring War With Iraq Is Not in the US National Interest. Next, in 2006, he and John J Mearsheimer ...
Domestic air passenger traffic soars 16 percent

The demand for air travel continues to be high, with airlines reporting a double-digit growth in domestic passenger traffic in the first nine months of the year.
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Terming VHP's "Dharm Sabha" and visit of Shiv Sena President Uddhav Thackeray to Ayodhya an open "challenge" to Supreme Court, All India Muslim Personal law Board (AIMPLB) Sunday said a situation is being created against the Muslims.

"It is not the matter of giving a mosque but its a matter of principle that how many mosques will we have to sacrifice gradually. If we talk to someone, it will withdraw and another one will come.

"Sri Ravishankar had offered that we should construct a big mosque outside Ayodhya. But later he cornered himself. Just imagine, what had happened, we entered into an agreement with him," AIMPLB General Secretary Maulana Wali Rehmani said while talking to PTI.

"VHP's Dharm Sansad and visit of Thackeray and similar such programmes, a situation is being created against Muslims and its also an open challenge to the judiciary (SC)," he said.

On Samajwadi Party supremo Akhilesh yadav's statement that Army should be brought in Ayodhya, Rehmani said: "his demand is not unjustified especially keeping in mind the role of the state police and biased action against Muslims."



"In such a scenario, it seems Akhilesh is disappointed with the police and has demanded deployment of Army there. Government will be responsible for communal tension, if any," he added.



Yadav had on Friday said, "The Supreme Court should take notice of the situation in Uttar Pradesh. It should seriously consider the matter and bring in the Army, if required... as the and its allies can go to any extent."



On talks to resolve the Ayodhya issue, Rehmani said, "as far as talks are concerned we are asked to make mosque outside Ayodhya. This is like dictating terms".

There is no talk like "kuch tum peeche hato, kuch ham" (Both compromise a little), he added.

Stating that "compromise on Babri mosque" has many drawbacks, Rehmani said, "First, it will be said that if Muslims can leave claim of a mosque when why not on second, third, fourth and so on..Secondly, even if maximum Muslims parties sign for giving mosque's land what's the guarantee that non-signatories will not raise for another mosque."



Asked whether attempts to rake up temple issue is becoming successful, Rehmani said: "There is not doubt the Hindu brothers are taking is as a pure politics. But certainly the foundation movement on which Hindus are being targeted is becoming successful.

"Only the time will tell, how much it succeeds," he added.

Rehmani said an AIMPLB meeting is proposed in Lucknow on December 16 in which the present situation in Ayodhya will be discussed, though it is not in the agenda.

He, however, ruled out any need for emergent meeting of AIMPLB on the issue.
The is practicing a frightening level of communal polarization in election-bound states and this is a huge challenge for the Congress, its strategist and former minister Jairam Ramesh has said.

In an exclusive interview to PTI, parallel to the Ram Temple buildup in Ayodhya Sunday, Ramesh said for every Amit Shah, the chief, there are 10 Amit Shahs of the practicing covert polarization.

He said the modern name of 'tanashaahi' was and that Narendra Modi was "not prime ministerial" in his campaign as he indulged in "falsification of history and abuse of political rivals".

The senior leader also noted that "false news" was the biggest enterprise in "Make in India" under the Modi government, as he accused the of "manufacturing" issues out of non-issues.

"There is a high degree of communal polarization that the BJP is doing in every election and in these states," he told PTI.

Attributing even the "staggering" UP mandate of the BJP to communal polarization, Ramesh said, "The only explanation I have for the UP win of the BJP is the frightening level of communal polarization which incidentally they have been trying to do in these states also. They are doing this in and certainly in MP and Rajasthan."



The 64-year-old former minister, who is a part of the core group for the 2019 Lok Sabha poll planning, said there were two types of communal polarization the BJP was indulging in across the country.

"One is overt polarization, which is the language used by Mr and PM Narendra Modi. Then there is covert polarization done by the and its people through the word of mouth and house to house," Ramesh said.

"Mr is a good example of a person who preaches and practices the politics of overt polarization" and that "for every Amit Shah there are 10 'Amit Shahs' of the who are practicing and preaching covert polarization. That is what happened in UP," he noted.

Ramesh said the Opposition "tends to miss" overt polarization and also the seriousness of covert polarization.

On a query about whether the has managed to address the issue of polarization, Ramesh said, "It is a huge challenge and it is not just an electoral challenge".



"It is a challenge we have to face whether in power or outside," the Congress leader said, describing the battle with the RSS as a "long drawn out" one. "It is not a one-off thing. It is a long drawn out battle," Ramesh added.

He said the RSS had taken years, decades to "infiltrate" the tribal areas.

On why Congress leaders like CP Joshi continue to speak out of turn and make casteist remarks to aid the politics of polarization, Ramesh said Congress chief had come out very clearly against this.

Blaming the BJP for making an issue out of it, he said, "the BJP is very skilled at creating issues out of non-issues, at manipulation of news."



Asked if Congress leaders continued to defy the party chief by making statements that harm the party's interests, he said he does not blame the leaders as their statements, including himself, have been distorted by the BJP.

"I think this is 'Make in India', Make in BJP. Fake news is the biggest enterprise in 'Make in India' during the BJP regime. The fact is that Mr Modi himself, during his election campaign, indulges in falsification of facts, he indulges in falsification of history," he alleged.

"He is not prime ministerial in his campaign. After all Prime Minister is Prime Minister. Whoever the individual, the position of PM must be respected.

"(But) the PM should not demand respect, he should command respect. It is no use Mr Modi demanding respect. He should command respect. The way he distorts history, the way he falsifies facts, the way he abuses his political opponents. And look at the way Mr Amit Shah has been talking of the NRC for example, calling people 'termites'," he said, training his guns on the prime minister for his attacks on the Congress and the Gandhi family.



"Amit Shah is the new word of 'tanashaahi'. The modern phrase of 'tanashaahi' is Amit Shah," he said.

Ramesh also pointed out to the manner in which the Reserve Bank of India has been "bludgeoned into submission" and its rights eroded and how institutional autonomy has been compromised.

"The 'institutional capture' by the RSS and the BJP is bizarre," he lamented.

Ramesh said the Congress did not face anti-incumbency in these elections and the mood of the people was clearly in its favour and it would thus fare well in the elections to these five states.

He also did not consider this as a "semi-final" to the 2019 Lok Sabha election, but said the important decisions of the Modi government like demonetisation, farm crisis and the Rafale deal will certainly have an impact in these state polls.
Minister on Sunday accepted Pakistan's invite to attend the ground-breaking ceremony of a corridor to the Kartarpur Sahib Gurdwara across the border on Wednesday, saying this initiative would open "the borders of hearts and the mind".

The foundation stone of the Dera Baba Nanak-Kartarpur Sahib corridor on the Indian side will be laid by and Chief Minister on Monday.

Singh has declined to attend the ceremony in Pakistan, citing its continuous support to terrorist activities in his state and killing of Indian soldiers by armed forces.

He, however, welcomed the historic occasion and described it as the cherished desire of Sikhs around the world, but said he "must most reluctantly, however, regret his inability to be present".

On Sunday, Sidhu wrote to Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, accepting his invitation for the ground-breaking ceremony, where Prime Minister will also be present.

"It is with great honour and unalloyed joy that I accept your invitation to attend the ground-breaking ceremony at Kartarpur Sahib on November 28. I look forward to meeting you on this historic occasion," Sidhu wrote to Qureshi.

The Local Government, Tourism and Cultural Affairs Minister wrote that his application "for permission to attend (the ceremony) is now lodged with the Ministry of External Affairs".

In the letter, Sidhu said that this day "will indeed break ground."



"As our nations take this first step, the Kartarpur Spirit can make pilgrims of us all, venturing out on a journey that breaks the barriers of history and opens the borders of hearts and the mind," he said.

"A journey that our people can walk together towards, a future of shared peace and prosperity for and Pakistan".

Sidhu was responding to Qureshi's letter to him dated November 24, in which the Pakistani foreign minister had said, "This has been a long-standing demand of the Sikh community, especially those from You remained a steadfast partner in this endeavour."



Sidhu responded, "Good deeds speak for themselves, the hand only interprets their eloquence. Every noble act makes way for itself."The minister had welcomed the Indian government's decision to develop passage from Dera Baba Nanak in Gurdaspur in his state to the historic shrine in the neighbouring country.

The decision coincided with the 549th birth anniversary of Sikhism's founder Guru Nanak Dev on Friday.

The government will build and develop the corridor from Gurdaspur district to the International Border to facilitate Sikh pilgrims from to visit Gurdwara Darbar Sahib Kartarpur on the banks of the Ravi river.

In August, Sidhu had come under fire from opposition parties in Punjab after he visited Islamabad and hugged chief Gen during the swearing-in of as prime minister of that country.

Sidhu had claimed then that Gen Bajwa had told him about "making efforts to open the Kartarpur corridor".

Kartarpur is located in Shakargarh in Narowal district of Pakistan's Punjab. Guru Nanak Dev, the founder of Sikhism, had spent more than 18 years of his life there.

The Kartarpur Sahib Gurdwara is located about three-four km from the border in Pakistan.
Mangalore Devadas Mallya, former chairman and managing director of Bank of Baroda (May 2008 to Nov 2012), passed away in Bengaluru on Sunday morning. He was 66.

He had battled cancer for two years, for which he had taken a sabbatical from the numerous boards of directors he was a part of. Notably, he was chairman of Interglobe Aviation (which operates the IndiGo airline) and was recently considered for the chairmans post of ICICI Bank  he had asked not be considered, because of ill health. He was also on the board of State Bank of India (SBI) and Tata Capital Financial ...
Western Rajasthan's Pokhran assembly constituency is set for a close fight on December 7 between a Hindu religious leader fielded by the BJP and son of Muslim 'peer' pitted against him by the Congress.

The BJP candidate, Pratap Puri, is the head of the Taratara 'math'. The Congress' Shale Mohammad is the son of Muslim religious leader Gazi Fakir, who has a large number of followers both within India and across the border in Pakistan.

Both Puri and Fakir hold considerable sway among their communities, making the Pokhran constituency in Jaisalmer district one of the state's most hotly contested seats.

Uttar Pradesh chief minister and senior BJP leader Yogi Adityanath and Congress President Rahul Gandhi will address rallies in support of Puri and Mohammad, respectively, on Monday, setting the tone for the rest of the campaign in the region better known for the nuclear tests in 1998.

Puri expressed confidence that the BJP will win the Pokhran seat and blamed the Congress for making the contest "communal" by fielding a Muslim candidate against him.



Read more: Rajasthan Assembly Elections 2018

Protection of Hindus and cows has always been an important issue, he said.

"Hindutva is in my veins and the party is going to win the election which has been made communal by the Congress by fielding a Muslim candidate against me," the BJP candidate told PTI.

Religious leaders should be in politics for its purification, Puri (51), who hails from the influential Rajput community, said.

"The people are with the BJP because they have faith in the party's policies and in leaders like Narendra Modi," he said.

His Barmer-based 'math', which holds considerable influence in the entire Jodhpur division, is pulling out all stops to win over the electorate, conducting social and religious activities.

"We hold drug de-addiction camps, provide education to poor children and work for cow conservation, besides conducting several other social activities," Puri said.

The Congress candidate, Mohammad, said his focus was core issues like drinking water and other basic amenities for people in Pokhran, which has a total electorate of 1.94 lakh.

"People here face difficulties in getting drinking water and fodder for cattle. The constituency lacks healthcare facilities and I am focusing on that," he said.

Mohammad (41) had lost the 2013 assembly elections from the same seat to BJP's Shaitan Singh with a margin of 34,444 votes.

Mohammad's father, an octogenarian, boasts of a strong following in the Sindhi Muslim community and has several criminal cases against him.

There are an estimated 55,000 Muslim voters, 45,000-48,000 and Rajput voters in Pokhran. It also has around 35,000 Dalit voters, according to the candidates.

Pokhran is one of the two assembly constituencies of the desert district of Jaisalmer.

The second constituency, Jaisalmer, will also see a direct contest between BJP candidate Sang Singh Bhati and Congress' Roopa Ram.

The BJP chose Sang Singh Bhati over its sitting MLA Chotu Singh Bhati, while the Congress has fielded Ram for the second time after 2013.

A total of 11 and 18 candidates are in the fray in Pokhran and Jaisalmer respectively.
Its been 17 months in the making but -- barring a last-minute hitch -- the U. K. and the European Union will agree the terms of Brexit at a special summit in Brussels on Sunday.

Yet for British Prime Minister Theresa May, whos battled opposition from all sides on her way to a deal, the hardest part is still to come -- winning over critics in her own Conservative Party. Her next task is to take the deal back to London and try to get it through a vote in Parliament. Euroskeptic Tories hate the plan to keep close to the EUs trade rules and are vowing to oppose ...
Prithvi Man Shrestha is a political reporter for The Kathmandu Post, covering the governance-related issues including corruption and irregularities in the government machinery. Before joining The Kathmandu Post in 2009, he worked at nepalnews.com and Rising Nepal primarily covering the issues of political and economic affairs for three years.
European leaders gave Theresa May her Brexit deal but warned that the UK Parliament must vote for the plan it stands because negotiations will not be reopened if British politicians reject it. On Sunday, the prime minister got her agreement on the UKs divorce from the European Union at a special summit in Brussels, when the leaders of the 27 other member countries backed the legal text.

May now faces huge opposition from her own Conservative Party as she tries to persuade Parliament to back it. Even government ministers admit they have work to do to avoid defeat. If ...
The Special Cell of Delhi Police in a joint operation with the Jammu and Kashmir Police arrested three terrorists belonging to the Islamic State of Jammu and Kashmir (ISJK) terror outfit on Sunday. Arms and ammunition were also recovered from their possession.

Three terrorists are identified as Tahir Ali Khan, Haris Mushtaq Khan and Asif Suhail Nadaf, all of them hail from the state of Jammu and Kashmir and were a member of terror outfit ISJK.

Addressing a press conference, DCP, Special Cell, Pramod Kushwaha said, "Delhi Police was working on a J&K terror module. It conducted a joint operation with Srinagar Special Operation Group (SOG). Three terrorists have been nabbed. We have also recovered three grenades and two loaded pistols from their possession."

"The terrorists tried to lob a grenade at a police party in Kothi Bagh's Tourism Reception Centre," the senior police official added. He said that two terrorists were arrested from Delhi's Red Fort area. "During the investigation, it was revealed that an Islamic State-inspired module activity was going on in the capital," he said.

During further investigation, the Delhi Police also got clues about their Kashmir links, following which Srinagar police alerted. "In a joint operation, three terrorists were nabbed and one outfit of this module was also busted near Awantipoora Apple Orchard in Pulwama district," said Kushwaha.

J&K Police have registered a case vide FIR No 93/2018 at Kothi Bagh police station under Section 307 of the Ranbir Penal Code; Sections 16,18 of Unlawful Activities Prevention Act. Further investigation in the matter is in progress.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Four terrorists were gunned down by the security forces on Sunday in an encounter in Jammu and Kashmir's Shopian district.

The security forces have also recovered weapons from the site of the incident.

The encounter that broke out in the Kapran Batagund area of the district earlier in the morning is still underway.

On November 20, an Army jawan was killed and four terrorists were neutralised in an encounter in Nadigam village of Shopian district.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Ten years ago on this day, India's financial capital Mumbai faced the worst terror attack after 10 heavily armed terrorists sailed into the city.

Twenty-Six Eleven, as these attacks are often referred to as, witnessed 10 Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists coming to Mumbai via sea route from Pakistan and carrying out a series of coordinated shooting and bombing attacks across the city.

The ghastly attacks lasted for four days killing 166 people and injuring over 300.

After sailing to the city under the cover of darkness, the terrorists targeted major landmarks of Mumbai with first attack taking place at the crowded Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) railway station. Ajmal Amir Kasab and Ismail Khan carried out the attack at this station, killing as many as 58 people and injuring over 100. Kasab and Khan later entered to attack Cama Hospital, but the same was thwarted with the alertness of the hospital staff. They however killed 6 police officials, including city's Anti-Terrorism Squad Hemant Karkare in an ambush after leaving the hospital.

The second site of the attack was Nariman House business and residential complex where a Rabbi, his wife, and six others, including five Israeli citizens, were killed by the terrorists who first held them as hostage. The two-year-old child of the Rabbi couple, Moshe, survived in the attack. Then 'Baby Moshe' became a face of the innocent victims of ruthless terrorism. In July 2017, Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Moshe during his visit to Israel. Later, in January 2018 the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on also met the survivor of 26/11, Moshe Holtzberg at Nariman House in Mumbai.

The third site to come under attack on 26/11 was the Leopold Cafe followed by Taj Mahal Hotel and Tower. Four terrorists carried out the attack at the famous cafe before entering the iconic Taj hotel, where they killed as many as 31 people after laying a three-day siege at the hotel.

The other site to come under attack during the 26/11 was Oberoi-Trident hotel where another group of two terrorists entered at almost the same time, as other four had entered Taj. At Oberoi-Trident hotel the siege officially ended on the evening of November 28 with as many as 30 being killed in the horrific attack.

The attack and seize finally culminated on the morning of 29th November 2008, after the Security Guards (NSG) secured the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel.

By the time commandos of the Security Guards (NSG) gunned down the last terrorists who had been holed up in south Mumbai's Taj Mahal Palace hotel, over 160 people were killed and hundreds were left injured.

After the attack, it was established that the 10 terrorists had sailed to Mumbai from Pakistan's port city, Karachi. Their voyage to Mumbai involved hijacking a fishing dingy and killing four of the five men crew, leaving one occupant to ferry them to Mumbai coast.

In these gruesome attacks, 9 terrorists were killed and the lone survivor, Ajmal Amir Kasab, was caught and was sentenced to death at Yerwada Central Jail in Pune in 2012.

The Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD) was believed to have plotted the 26/11 attacks. Its mastermind, Hafiz Saeed, has however been roaming freely in Pakistan.

New Delhi has, time and again, protested against Islamabad for harboring Saeed, who is wanted for allegedly plotting the 2008 attack. India's stand on Hafiz has been supported by many International personalities including a former Central Intelligence Agency ( CIA) director and former Afghanistan President.

Former CIA Director David Howell Petraeus in January this year, said that there is substantial evidence against Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD) chief and UN-designated global terrorist Hafiz Saeed for his role in 26/11

A day after in the same month, former Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai also remarked that there is plenty of evidence against Saeed for his role in 26/11 and everyone knows about it.

In May 2018 Former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif also asserted that terrorists sent by Pakistan were responsible for the deadly 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks that claimed over 160 lives.

"Militant organisations are active. Call them non-state actors, should we allow them to cross the border and kill 150 people in Mumbai? Explain it to me. Why can't we complete the trial?" Nawaz noted in an interview to Pakistan's Dawn newspaper in a reference to the Mumbai attacks-related trials which have stalled in a Rawalpindi anti-terrorism court.

Days after Nawaj's not so subtle confessions about Pakistan's involvement in Mumbai attacks, the United States State Department said that Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) founder Hafiz Saeed and 26/11 mastermind is a tremendous concern to Washington.

"We are concerned about the mastermind behind the 2008 Mumbai attacks. And he's a Lashkar-e-Taiba guy who was being held in Pakistan, and he was eventually let out on house arrest, and we have a reward out for," said spokesperson Heather Nauert while responding to Sharif's remark.

Pakistan has so far not completed trial in the 26/11 case.

Ties between India and Pakistan have remained tense since the 2008 Mumbai terror attack and nosedived after the Uri terror attack by Pakistan-based terrorists in September 2016, that claimed lives of 19 Indian soldiers.

As India remembers the victims of 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks on its tenth anniversary today, various events will be organised across the nation, especially in Mumbai, to pay tribute to those who lost their lives in the horrific attacks.

The first phase of a memorial dedicated to the victims of the 26/11 terror attack will be inaugurated Monday at the Nariman House in south Mumbai's Colaba area.

The attack did rattle the country, but failed to touch the spirit of the nation, which in the coming years strengthened all the more .

After combating the attack several policy decisions were taken to strengthen nations anti-terrorism framework. One of the immediate decisions the then government took after the attacks was to deploy the NSG commandos in few metropolitan cities. Later on several NSG hubs were set up for faster response to terror attacks.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while addressing the nation on the golden jubilee of his "Mann Ki Baat" a day ahead of the Constitution Day, on Sunday said that the architect of Indian constitution Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar gave millions of Indians the right to dignified life.

Ahead of Dr Ambedkar's 'Mahaparinirvan Diwas' on December 6, PM Modi reiterated the words of Bharat Ratna, saying, "The democratic values are not imported to India from outside and we must defend our hard-fought freedom through the last drop of blood."

PM Modi said that the balance between the rights and duties in the life of citizens will take the country forward. "If we respect the rights of others, our rights will automatically be protected. Similarly, if we fulfill the duties enshrined in the Constitution, our rights will automatically be protected," said Narendra Modi. "Both rights and duties have been discussed at length in our constitution," he added.

"While remembering the Constituent Assembly we can never forget the contribution of the great person Dr Baba Saheb Ambedkar who was at the centre of Constituent Assembly. December 6 will be his Mahaparinirvan Diwas. On behalf of all the countrymen, I pay homage to Baba Saheb who gave millions of Indians the right to dignified life."

"In just three years, great luminaries like Dr Ambedkar made such an elaborate and extensive Constitution. The extraordinary speed with which they completed the Constitution is an example of effective time management and productivity. It also inspires us to complete our allotted task in record time," he said.

He further said, "I still remember that in the year 2010 to mark the 60th anniversary of our republic in Gujarat we took out the 'Shobha Yatra' of our Constitution on an elephant. It was a memorable way to create awareness among the youths about the constitution."

"In 2020 we will be completing 70 years as a Republic and in 2022 we will be completing 75 years of our independence. Let us take forward the spirit of the Constitution and ensure peace, progress, and prosperity in the nation," added Prime Minister Modi.

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The Telangana Democratic Forum on Sunday protested at city's Dharna Chowk against the arrest of activist Varavara Rao in connection with the Bhima Koregaon Violence case.

Rao, who was under house arrest at his flat in Gandhinagar in the Hyderabad city, was arrested by the Pune police on 16th November, in a case relating to his alleged involvement in Bhima Koregaon Violence.

Expressing anguish over Rao's arrest, Women Activist Sandhya told ANI, "This protest is against violation of human rights. In Bhima Koregan case there are many intellectuals, writers and advocates who are arrested and illegal cases are filed against them. We wanted to register our protest in this context. Protests are going on around the country. But still, Modi government is unable to listen to democratic voices. Modi government has become intolerant towards human rights."

She also attacked both central and state government and blamed them of being fascist and anti-democratic.

She said, "Prime Minister Modi and Telangana caretaker chief minister KC Rao, both these leaders ruling is anti-democratic and fascist. We want to send a message to people that this is an inhuman rule and people should come forward to protest against them. On the name of urban naxals, they want to confine everybody who raises their voice against them. In the long-term process, they want to illegally confine them with a fake allegation, which is against the constitution."

On November 19, Rao was taken to Sassoon Hospital after he complained of difficulty in breathing.

Rao was arrested at the end of his house arrest on November 17 for his alleged involvement in the Bhima Koregaon violence case.

A Sessions Court in Pune had sent the activist to police custody till November 26 in connection with the violence that broke out in January this year during an event organised to commemorate 200 years of the Bhima Koregaon battle.

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BJP president Amit Shah on Sunday said that his party was against giving reservation on the basis of religion and would not allow this to happen too. "He said the BJP is against reservation on the basis of religion and will not allow anyone to do this," he said while addressing an election rally at Warangal in poll-bound Telangana.

Shah said that Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) government led by Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao has proposed 12 per cent reservation for the minorities "which is not possible without taking away the quota share of Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Class people." "Rao has done this under the influence of Asaduddin Owaisi and All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul Muslimeen (AIMIM)," he added.

"Only the BJP can save Telangana from Majlis and Owaisi, and not Congress, TRS and Telugu Desam Party (TDP)," said Shah. "Muslim reservation bill being brought by the TRS government is against the interest of Dalits, Tribes and backward communities. The Constitution has limited 50 per cent as the upper benchmark for the reservation. Thus, 12 per cent to Muslims cannot be given without curtailing the quota of Dalits, SCs, STs and OBC," said Shah.

He promised that if BJP government is voted to power in the state, Hyderabad "Vimochan Diwas" would be celebrated with fervor in every household. "Telangana government did not implement several schemes of the Centre because they believe it will make PM Modi more popular in the state," said Shah.

He also said that if the BJP comes to power, they would fill all 1.7 lakh vacancies in the government departments. TRS government has failed to give employment to the youth. "During the last four and a half years, more than 4,500 farmers have committed suicide due to debt while in the constituency of Chief Minister Rao, 131 farmers have committed suicide," he said.

Polling in Telangana is scheduled to be held on December 7 to elect the representative for 119 assembly constituencies. The counting of votes will take place on December 11. Telangana Assembly was dissolved prematurely in September this year on the recommendation of the ruling TRS government.

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Spain reached an agreement with the United Kingdom on Saturday over the status of Gibraltar.

CNN quoted Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez saying, "I have just told the head of state, the King, that Spain has reached an agreement over Gibraltar."

He further underlined that the agreement excludes the territory from the general negotiation between the EU and UK and "will allow Spain to negotiate directly with the UK over Gibraltar."

"Europe and the UK have accepted the Spanish demands, and as a result, Spain lifts its veto and will vote tomorrow in favour of Brexit," he said in a televised statement. "The question of Gibraltar is of capital importance for Spain," CNN reported.

The British overseas territory of Gibraltar, a rocky projection located at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula, which voted overwhelmingly to remain in the EU. This territory is a subject of territorial claims by Spain, which further threatened a clear passage of the Brexit on Sunday.

"Throughout our history we've stuck with Britain," said Fabian Picardo, the Chief Minister of Gibraltar.

On November 21, Theresa May's Brexit deal suffered a setback after Spain threatened to veto her draft divorce agreement over the handling of Gibraltar.

Spain had objected to part of the deal that covers future trade and security relations between the UK and the EU, insisting that arrangements related to Gibraltar should be discussed separately.

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Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee president Ajay Maken on Sunday wrote to the state Assembly Speaker Ram Niwas Goel, objecting to the Special Session of the Assembly called on Monday over the recent alleged chilli powder attack on Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal at Delhi Secretariat.

In a letter to the Speaker, Maken said, "In Vidhan Sabha, we discuss issues related to public and we discuss to solve these issues or debate over bringing out an ordinance or etc. But calling the Assembly Session to discuss personal issues is a complete wastage of people's money."

"It is very shocking for us that the Delhi government does not have time to call for a special session of Assembly on important issues like dengue, pollution, illegal sealing, and law and order situation in the state. But it is calling a session to debate over personal issues," the letter reads.

On November 22 Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia had announced that a special session of the Assembly would be held on Monday to discuss the alleged attack on Kejriwal and stand of the Centre and the role of Delhi Police in the matter.

Apart from a discussion on the attack, Sisodia said that the Assembly would also discuss the "deletion" of 30 lakh names from Delhi's voter list.

On November 20, the Delhi Police arrested the man who allegedly attacked Kejriwal with chilli powder in the Delhi Secretariat.

The Delhi government and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) had blamed the Delhi Police for the security breach and accused them of lying on record. Sisodia had even alleged that the attack was carried out at the behest of the BJP.

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Kapilvastu man shot dead; locals protest lax security

A gunman shot dead 28-year-old Dipendra Kumar Chaudhary (Rajababu) near his residence at Shuddhdhan Rural Municipality-4, Kapilvastu, on Friday night.
Minister of State for External Affairs, General (retd) VK Singh, cleared the air surrounding External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj not attending the ground-breaking ceremony of Kartarpur corridor, a new border entry and road to allow pilgrims from India to visit a Gurudwara in Pakistan.

Emphasising that New Delhi is committed to making the corridor functional at the earliest, Singh said, "Sushma Swaraj has reasons which must be delinked from it. She is committed because of elections and health issues. To read too much into it is wrong. India is committed to ensure Kartarpur corridor comes up fast and would like Pakistan to cooperate."

Gurudwara Darbar Sahib Kartarpur is one of the holiest shrines where Guru Nanak spent the last 18 years of his life. With the partition of India in 1947, the holy place got into Pakistan's control.

In a landmark decision, on the eve of Guru Nanak Gurupurab, India on Thursday approved building and development of Kartarpur corridor from Dera Baba Nanak in Gurdaspur district to India-Pakistan International Border.

On Saturday, Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi invited Swaraj and other Indian ministers for the ground-breaking ceremony on the Pakistani side on November 28.

Hours later, Swaraj expressed her inability to attend the event, citing "prior commitments including election campaign."

"Since I am unable to travel to Kartarpur Sahib on the scheduled date, Government of India will be represented by my esteemed colleagues Mrs. Harsimrat Kaur Badal and Mr. H.S.Puri," she tweeted.

In September, India called off the planned meeting between Swaraj and his Pakistani counterpart Shah Mehmood Qureshi on the sidelines of United Nations General Assembly New York after three security personnel in Jammu and Kashmir were kidnapped and brutally killed.

General (retd) Singh, who is in the United States to launch the 'Passport Seva' programme at India's Consulate, reiterated India's stand on talks with Pakistan.

"It was made clear by our Prime Minister to (then Pakistani Prime Minister) Nawaz Sharif that creation of an environment conducive to peace is his responsibility. If you are going to aid terrorism it is not possible to talk. For four-and-a-half years we have adhered to it, it's the most uniform policy we have followed," Singh said.

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The leaders of the 27 countries of the European Union (EU) on Sunday endorsed the United Kingdom's withdrawal agreement from the bloc.

The approval of the deal came after European Council president Donald Tusk broke the news and took to his Twitter handle and wrote, "EU27 has endorsed the Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration on the future EU-UK relations."

The EU leaders gave consensus to the pact at a special summit held in Brussels, the seat of the EU, after negotiations which lasted nearly an hour, CNN reported.

British Prime Minister Theresa May, who prepared the Brexit deal, had shown complete support for the draft agreement and reiterated time and again that the pact serves UK's national interest.

With the EU leaders' endorsement of the deal, the Brexit agreement is now slated to go to the UK Parliament for a vote next month, where many opposition MPs, including those from May's Conservative Party, are expected to vote against the deal, owing to various disagreements.

On November 21, the Brexit deal suffered a setback after Spain threatened to veto the agreement over the handling of Gibraltar, a British territory on the Iberian Peninsula.

The Spanish government had objected to part of the deal that covers future trade and security relations between the UK and the EU, insisting that arrangements related to Gibraltar should be discussed separately. However, the problems were resolved following last-minute negotiations by Spain and the UK on Saturday.

In 2016, over 50 per cent of the UK electorate voted to leave the EU, following which the British government had triggered Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, beginning the country's process of its exit from the European bloc.

According to the draft deal, the UK is scheduled to leave the bloc on March 29, 2019, after which it will move into a 21-month long transitionary period (post-Brexit transition).

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In what could be perceived as another setback for Facebook, the British Parliament has obtained a set of internal documents that could malign the image of the social media giant.

The cache of documents is said to include correspondences between Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg and company executives, and information related to a lawsuit filed against the company, the CNN reported.

The documents were retrieved by Member of Parliament Damian Collins, the head of the British parliamentary committee that has been looking into Facebook.

To prevent any damage, Facebook approached the court in California to stop the disclosure of the information. The court ordered that no unredacted copies of the relevant sealed documents should be released until further notice from the court, and that "failure to comply will be considered an act of contempt."

The CNN reported that the documents were originally obtained by a company, namely Six4Three, which is engaged in year-long battle with Facebook over the shutting of its controversial app, "Pinkini".

Last week, Collin approached Ted Kramer owner of Six4Three with a demand to hand over the documents.

Lawyer of Six4Three, Stuart Gross confirmed to CNN that the British committee had obtained materials from the company that are under seal. However, it is not clear when the documents were obtained. Gross said that Six4Three had asked the committee to "refrain from reviewing them and to return them to counsel or to Facebook.

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Indian Navy Chief Admiral Sunil Lanba will head for a 3-day visit to Russia from November 26 to 29. His visit is aimed at strengthening bilateral defense relations and explore new avenues for defense cooperation between the two nations, said Ministry of Defence in a statement.

Lanba will reach St Petersburg on Monday, where he is scheduled to hold bilateral discussions with Commander-in-Chief of Russian Federation Navy, Admiral Vladimir Korolev. The Indian Navy Chief would also lay a wreath at the Piskarev Memorial Cemetery, which is dedicated to the victims of the 'Siege of Leningrad.' Thereafter, Lanba will make a visit to the Nakhimov Naval School and Admiralty Shipyard.

At Moscow, Admiral Lanba will have discussions with the Chief of General Staff of the Armed Forces of Russia, General VV Gerasimov and the Director of Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation (FSMTC) of the Russian Federation, Dmitriy Shugaev.

According to the official statement, Lanba will also visit the Military Academy of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and deliver a talk on "Indian Navy's Perspective on Maritime Security."

The Indian Navy cooperates with the Russian Federation Navy on many fronts, including operational interactions, training, hydrography cooperation and exchange of subject matter experts in various fields through the medium of Navy-to-Navy staff talks.

Since 2003, the Indian Navy and the Russian Federation Navy have been conducting the bilateral Maritime Exercise 'INDRA NAVY' and as well as INDRA Tri-Services Exercise since 2017. The next edition of Exercise INDRA-Navy is scheduled to be held in Visakhapatnam in December 2018.

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In a major success for the security forces in the Kashmir Valley, six top commanders of two terrorist outfits Lashkar-e-Toiba and Hizbul Mujahideen were gunned down in Batagund area of Kapran in Shopian.

Umer Ganai, whose Lal Chowk photo recently went viral, was among those killed in the encounter. The terrorist had escaped from Batmaloo encounter in August and killed several people including cops since 2016, the Jammu and Kashmir Police informed.

"He was involved in Pombai Bank guard attack case in which four policemen and two banks guards had lost their lives in 2017. Several terror cases were registered against him," said the police statement.

The police also confirmed that incriminating material including a huge quantity of arms and ammunition have been recovered from the site of encounter.

"Out of the total six terrorists, four belonged to Hizb-ul Mujahideen while the remaining two were from Lashkar e Taiba (LeT). An investigation in the same is underway," Shopian Senior Superintendent of Police, Sandeep Chaudhary, told ANI.

Other than Ganai, the slain terrorists have been identified as Mohammad Abass Bhatt, Mohd Waseem Wagay alias Saifullah, Khalid Farooq and Mushtaq Ahmad Mir alias Hammad.

Apart from the six terrorists, one civilian, identified as Nouman Ashraf Bhat from Kulgam, succumbed to his injuries at a hospital, while four others injured in the incident are said to be stable.

With snowfall and winters firmly setting in, incidents of terror strikes have been on the rise in the state.

On November 20, an Army personnel was killed and four terrorists were neutralised in an encounter in Nadigam village of the same district.

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Two more terrorists were neutralised by the security personnel in Kapran Batagund area during a gun battle in Jammu and Kashmir's Shopian on Sunday.

Earlier in the day, the forces gunned down four terrorists in the encounter.

"Butagund Kapran #Shopian encounter update. Four bodies of militants recovered. Their identity is ascertained," tweeted the Jammu and Kashmir Police.

The operation is not yet over.

Ahead of snowfall and winters firmly setting in, incidents of terror strikes have been on the rise in the state.

On November 20, an Army personnel was killed and four terrorists were neutralised in an encounter in Nadigam village of Shopian district.

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Kartarpur Corridor featured in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 50th episode of Mann Ki Baat radio programme on Sunday.

"Government has made a very important decision - that of opening Kartarpur Corridor so that people of our nation can easily go to Kartarpur in Pakistan and visit the sacred place of Guru Nanak Dev," the Prime Minister said, while expressing his thoughts with the people through radio.

On November 22, the Union Cabinet approved the building and development of Kartarpur Corridor from Dera Baba Nanak in Gurdaspur district to India-Pakistan International Border.

A day after this landmark decision, Pakistan government also gave a nod to the opening of Kartarpur corridor next year- the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev.

Prime Minister Modi, in his radio programme, further stated that next year, not only India but the whole world will celebrate Guru Nanak's 550th birth anniversary with much fervour.

"Guru Nanak Dev Ji had worked wholeheartedly for the society; he had shown us the path of truth, honesty and goodwill," said Prime Minister Modi.

Prime Minister also said that his government plans to start a train soon to various sacred pilgrimage spots related to Guru Nanak Dev Ji.

He also appreciated the attempts of Gujarat people in constructing a Gurudwara after the tragic earthquake incident occurred in the state in 2001.

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Karnataka Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy has announced that the last rites of the politician and actor Ambareesh will be held near Dr. Rajkumar Smaraka at Kanteerava Studio in Bengaluru, with state honours on November 26.

Special buses have also been arranged from all Talukas of Mandya district to facilitate the public travel Kanteerava Stadium to pay homage to the late leader.

The state government has declared an official mourning of three days as a mark of respect to the departed leader.

This announcement comes after the Chief Minister consulted and discussed with Ambareesh's family members and the film industry over performing the last rites in Bengaluru.

Ambareesh, a Kannada actor, who was popularly known as the 'rebel star' passed away last night after suffering cardiac arrest. The 66-year-old leader was admitted at Vikram Hospital in Bengaluru for multiple ailments.

Superstar Rajinikanth mourned the death of the veteran actor on his official Twitter handle on Saturday calling him his "best friend." "A wonderful human being ... my best friend ... I have lost you today and will miss you ... Rest In Peace #Ambrish," Rajinikanth tweeted.

Ambareesh started his film career with 'Naagarahaavu' in 1972 and had a successful acting career with over 200 films and state honours and other awards.

He had been an MP for three terms from 1998-99, 1999-2004 and 2004-2009 and was also served as the Minister of State in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, from 2006 to 2008. He entered politics in the year 1994.

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Punjab Cabinet Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu has accepted the invitation of Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi to attend the opening ceremony of Kartarpur corridor.

In a letter to Pakistan Foreign Minister, Sidhu stated, "It is with great honour and unalloyed joy that I accept your invitation to attend the ground-breaking ceremony at Kartarpur Sahib on 28 November. I look forward to meeting you on this historic occasion."

Sidhu further said that his application seeking permission to attend the event is lodged with the Ministry of External Affairs.

In his letter, the Punjab Minister said that the opening of the Kartarpur corridor will bring peace and prosperity in both Indian and Pakistan.

"This day will indeed break ground. As our two nations take this first step, the Kartarpur spirit can make pilgrims of us all, venturing out on a journey that breaks the barriers of history and opens the borders of the heart and the mind. A journey that our people can walk together towards, a future of shared peace and prosperity for India and Pakistan," Sidhu's letter read.

On Friday, the Pakistan government decided to open the Kartarpur corridor next year on the occasion of the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev.

Pakistan's decision came a day after the Indian government on the eve of Guru Nanak Guru Purab, on Thursday approved the building and development of Kartarpur corridor from Dera Baba Nanak in Gurdaspur district to India-Pakistan International Border.

The Kartarpur route along the India-Pakistan border is three kilometres away from Gurdaspur, Punjab. If opened, it would allow Sikh pilgrims a direct access to the historic Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Kartarpur, Pakistan, where Guru Nanak died in 1539.

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Bharatiya Janata Party Member of Parliament (MP) Subramanian Swamy on Sunday backed Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh's decision to decline the invitation to attend the stone-laying ceremony of Kartarpur corridor on Pakistan side. "No Indian minister should go to the other side of the border until Pakistan stops cross-border terrorism," he said.

"I don't think any Indian minister should go to attend any kind of event in Pakistan. They are also preventing our diplomats from accompanying the people to religious places. Until Pakistan stops sponsoring cross-border terrorism, we should not allow anyone to go there for any kind of event," Swamy told ANI.

On Sunday, Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh declined an invitation for the stone-laying ceremony on November 28, citing terror attacks in his state and the relentless killing of Indian troops on the Line of Control (LoC).

"Everyday Indian soldiers are either killed or wounded on the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir. Rather than moving towards normalcy, these incidents are escalating," Singh wrote in his letter to Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi.

However, Punjab Cabinet Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu said that he would be attending the stone-laying ceremony of Kartarpur on Pakistan side, while praising the initiative taken by Indian and Pakistan governments to develop Kartarpur corridor.

"It is a commendable step by both the governments of India and Pakistan. If you take a step, they will obviously take it further. Now that we have taken a step, they said that they would be inaugurating the historic corridor. It is a commendable initiative indeed," Sidhu said.

Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan will inaugurate the ground-breaking ceremony of the Kartarpur Corridor, on the Pakistan side, on November 28.

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Anup Ojha is a reporter for The Kathmandu Post primarily covering social issues and human interest stories. Before moving to the social beat, Ojha covered arts and culture for the Post for four years.
Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party (PSP) leader Shivpal Singh Yadav on Sunday said that there should no talks for the construction of Ram temple Mandir at the disputed land in Ayodhya.

Speaking to the media here, Singh said, "In my opinion, there should be no talks of constructing the temple at the disputed land. We have seen the amount of damage that has been done because of this. We were defamed worldwide for not maintaining peace. People will not fall prey to this Mandir-Masjid gimmick again."

Hitting out at Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath led Uttar Pradesh government, PSP leader alleged that the BJP was not focusing on real issues and development. "There is no point in changing names of places and installing statues. There has been no development. Roads continue to be in a bad shape. Corruption is at its peak. People have not been given jobs. I think these things should be the government's priority," added Yadav.

The issue of Ram temple construction got a major push when one of the litigants in Ram Mandir- Babri Masjid case Mohammad Iqbal Ansari said that he would welcome the ordinance and would obey the law.

On October 29, the Supreme Court adjourned the Ram Janambhoomi-Babri Masjid title suit till January 2019 to fix the next hearing date in the matter, challenging the Allahabad High Court ruling of 2010.

The Allahabad High Court in its 2010 verdict had suggested the division of the disputed land in Ayodhya, one for each of the parties the Nirmohi Akhara, the Sunni Waqf Board and Ram Lalla.

It is believed that the Babri Masjid which was constructed by Mughal emperor Babur in Ayodhya in 1528 was allegedly demolished by Hindu activists on December 6, 1992, who claimed that the mosque was built after raging the Ram temple.

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Senior Congress leader Vilasrao Muttemwar launched a personal attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi by saying that while everybody knows Congress president's Rahul Gandhi's ancestors, no one is aware of Prime Minister Modi's father.

Addressing a gathering here, Muttemwar said, "Who knew you (Prime Minister Modi) before you became the Prime Minister? Even today, no one knows your father's name. Everyone knows Rahul Gandhi's father was Rajiv Gandhi and his mother was Indira Gandhi, who was Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru's daughter and his father was Motilal Nehru. Everyone knows five generations of the Gandhi family, but this Narendra, no one knows his father, let alone his grandfather and he is asking for a record (of our work)."

This comes just three days after Raj Babbar, the Congress party's Uttar Pradesh chief compared the rupee's slide with the age of Prime Minister Modi's mother.

The comments sparked furore by Bharatiya Janata Party leaders, with Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani slamming Babbar, saying that the party has stooped below its dignity.

Meanwhile, Subramanian Swamy also castigated Babbar, saying his comments are "the worst thing one can do in Hindu religion, maybe it is alright in Italian religion."

Prime Minister Modi also hit back at the Congress for their personal attacks, saying they stooped to new lows and have abandoned the traditions and etiquettes of because they cannot debate on real issues like development.

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A Pakistan-origin terrorist belonging to Jaish-e-Mohammad was neutralized in a brief exchange of fire with the security forces in Khrew area of Awantipora in South Kashmir's Pulwama district, on Sunday. The slain militant has been identified as Waseem, a Pakistani

"On a credible input about the presence of terrorists, a swift search operation was launched jointly by the police and security forces in Bathien area of Khrew in Awantipora," a police spokesperson said in a statement.

"As the searches were going on, the search party was fired upon by the militant. The fire was retaliated leading to a brief exchange of gunfire," the press release further read. "Consequently, one terrorist was killed in the exchange of fire," added the press release.

The police recovered incriminating materials including arms and ammunition, AK 47 rifle and magazines from the killed militant.

"From the incriminating material recovered, it is learnt that the killed militant is a Pakistani codenamed as Waseem. He was affiliated with proscribed militant outfit JeM," the police said.

A case has been registered. Security forces are currently searching the areas.

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Palvinder Singh, Government Railway Police's (GRP) Assistant Sub-Inspector on Sunday informed that six persons have been detained for interrogation from Pathankot Railway Station on the basis of suspicion.

The six individuals were detained from Pooja express train leaving from Pathankot towards Rajasthan via Delhi.

The detention of six individuals comes two days after four suspected 'terrorists' were spotted in Pathankot's Saidipur village on Friday night, prompting the state police to launch a massive search operation.

On Friday, residents of Saidipur village claimed to have spotted suspicious movement of around four people, suspected to be 'terrorists.' Police had also recovered an abandoned white Alto car, which was found around 25 km away from Pathankot, near Bamiyal area. The car was also spotted by the villagers.

A day later, on Saturday, Punjab Director General of Police (DGP) Suresh Arora said that the owner of the abandoned car which was used by suspected 'terrorists' was from Jammu. "The car owner has been traced. The person hails from Jammu," he told media persons here.

It is worth mentioning that last week the Punjab Police launched massive search operations after its counter-intelligence wing informed that some Jaish-e-Mohammad terrorists reportedly entered Delhi from the state.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while addressing the 50th edition of his monthly radio programme - Mann Ki Baat on Sunday, opened up about why he chose the radio for addressing people.

Prime Minister Modi said it was how he got to know about Pokhran nuclear tests in 1998 that he decided to take up airwaves to connect with people.

"The year was 1998. I was then party worker with the Bharatiya Janata Party organisation in Himachal. I stopped by at a tea stall. The tea-seller took out laddoo from glass container and offered to me. I was taken aback and asked him the reason for distributing sweets. He then told me that India has exploded a bomb!," the prime minister said.

"I exclaimed and questioned him as I couldn't understand what he meant. It was then the tea-seller said, Sir, just listen to the radio. Indeed, that was exactly the topic of discussion on the radio. Then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had announced to media about Pokhran nuclear blasts, making that stall-owner break into dance with joy after getting to know the news through radio," revealed Prime Minister Modi.

"When I became Prime Minister, it was natural for me to turn towards strong, effective medium. And in 2014, when I took charge as Pradhan Sevak, it was my wish to reach out to masses with the glorious saga of our country's unity," he added.

The Prime Minister also spoke about the survey revealing the percentage of people engaged with radio and stated that "70 per cent of respondents on average happen to be listeners who regularly tune in to Mann Ki Baat."

"Most people believe that the greatest contribution of 'MannKiBaat' has been an enhancement of feeling of positivity in our society. The medium of 'Mann Ki Baat' has promoted many mass revolutions. India Positive has been a subject of quite an extensive discussion," he said.

He added that people of India are with this programme through various platforms, like TV, FM Radio, social media and Narendra Modi App too.

Moreover, Prime Minister Modi stated that he has always kept his show apolitical. "Some young friends attempted to study over many episodes of 'Mann Ki Baat'. They did the analysis of all episodes to calculate the frequency of occurrence of particular words; whether words that were oft-repeated! One of their findings was that this programme remained apolitical," he said.

He went on to add that "when Mann K Baat commenced, I had firmly decided that it would carry nothing political, or any praise for the government, nor Modi for that matter anywhere. Modi may come and go, but this country will never let go of its unity and permanence, our culture will always be immortal."

He said that the biggest achievement of 50 episodes of Mann Ki Baat, in a true spirit of democracy, is that one feels like talking to close acquaintance and not to a Prime Minister.

The Prime Minister also elaborated upon the preparations for the show and stated, "Mann Ki Baat is a very simple task for me. Every time before Mann Ki Baat, letters are received from people sharing their ideas and viewpoints on My Gov and Narendra Modi Mobile App and people record messages in their own voice on the toll-free number - 1800117800," informed Prime Minister Modi.

He also lauded his colleagues from All India Radio, FM Radio, Doordarshan, other TV channels and social media for their efforts in rolling out Mann Ki Baat every month. He said that it is due to their hard work that this programme has reached to a maximum number of people.

"Team from All India Radio prepares each episode for broadcast in a number of regional languages. Some of them very aptly narrates in a voice and style resembling that of Modi's. In this way for those 30 minutes they become Narendra Modi," he said.

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Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) leader Rambhadracharya on Sunday claimed a high-level meeting would be held after December 11 in which a decision would be taken about the construction of Ram temple at Ayodhya. "Prime Minister Narendra Modi will take a final call about the construction of Ram temple after December 11," he said while addressing the Dharma Sabha organized by the VHP.

VHP leader said, "On November 23, I spoke to a senior minister in the Central government. He has asked me not to disclose his name. So I can't reveal that. I asked him till when should we wait for the Ram Mandir. To which he said that there would be a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on this issue after December 11. He further told me that during that meeting a decision will be taken, which will lead to the construction of Ram temple."

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), VHP and Shiv Sena on Sunday organized events in Ayodhya, Nagpur, and Bengaluru to muster support for the construction of Ram temple in Ayodhya and mount pressure on the Central government to facilitate the temple construction, which is currently sub-judice in the Supreme Court.

Uttar Pradesh Police have heavily deployed security personnel along with a legion of senior officers to monitor the law and order situation in Ayodhya. The team includes one ADGP, one DIG, three SSPs, ten ASPs, 21 DSPs, 160 Inspectors, 700 Constables, and 42 companies of PAC, five companies of the RAF, ATS Commandos and drone cameras.

On October 29, the Supreme Court had adjourned the Ram Janambhoomi-Babri Masjid title suit till January 2019 to fix the next hearing date in the matter, challenging the Allahabad High Court ruling of 2010.

The Allahabad High Court in its 2010 verdict had suggested the division of the disputed land in Ayodhya, one for each of the parties the Nirmohi Akhara, the Sunni Waqf Board and Ram Lalla.

It is believed that the Babri Masjid, which was constructed by Mughal emperor Babur in Ayodhya in 1528, was allegedly demolished by Hindu activists on December 6, 1992, who claimed that the mosque was built after demolishing a Ram temple that stood there.

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Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Sunday sought the personal intervention of Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari for expeditious clearance of road projects related to the historic towns of Sultanpur Lodhi, Batala and Dera Baba Nanak, associated with the life of Sri Guru Nanak Dev ji, which will be observed in November 2019.

In a letter to Gadkari, the Chief Minister said that he was grateful to the Government of India for acceding to the request of Punjab government about the projects and announcements in this regard, especially the opening of Kartarpur corridor to facilitate smooth and easy access to devotees to Kartarpur Sahib.

In view of the historic importance of these religious towns, Captain Amarinder Singh sought additional allocation of Rs 150 crore under the Central Road Fund (CRF) for the upgradation of the road network in Sultanpur Lodhi, Batala, Dera Baba Nanak and Gurdaspur.

The Chief Minister also sought from the Union Minister four-laning of 21.3-km stretch, which is currently two-laned with 10-meter carriageway, at an estimated cost of Rs 260 crore. This stretch is part of Jalandhar-Kapurthala-Sultanpur Lodhi NH-703-A, an important highway which connects the holy town of Sultanpur Lodhi with the rest of Punjab and beyond.

The Chief Minister also impressed upon Gadkari to immediately declare the Tarn Taran-Goindwal Sahib-Kapurthala Road as Highway, as it is related to the life of Sri Guru Nanak Dev ji and connects Sultanpur Lodhi with Amritsar.

He apprised the Union Minister that the Central government on November 6, 2017 has already given in-principle approval for the declaration of the aforesaid road as Highway.

The Chief Minister further said that in view of the announcement to open Kartarpur corridor, Dera Baba Nanak should be connected with Batala by a four-laned highway to enable the devotees to visit Kartarpur Sahib by a short route.

Notably, Sultanpur Lodhi is of great religious significance as Sri Guru Nanak Dev ji spent 14 years here and attained enlightenment, before embarking on his missionary travels. In addition, other important places linked to Guru Nanak Dev ji are Batala, where his marriage was solemnized and Dera Baba Nanak, where he spent the last days of his temporal life.

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Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA Surendra Singh on Sunday said that the Shiv Sena could not hijack the Ram temple issue.

Speaking to ANI, Singh said, "How can the Shiv Sena hijack the Ram Mandir issue? The people who thrash north Indians, those who don't even have the mentality to serve humanity, how will they serve Lord Ram."

Singh's statement coincides with the mega event being organised by the Shiv Sena in Ayodhya to press for the construction of a Lord Ram temple here. It is also worth mentioning that Shiv Sena is the BJP's ally in Maharashtra government.

Earlier in the day, Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray, who reached Ayodhya on Saturday for a two-day visit, asked the BJP-led Central government not to play with the sentiments of the Hindus.

After offering prayer at the Ram Lalla temple, the Shiv Sena chief addressed the media and said, "If the matter has to be resolved by the Supreme Court, then it should not be made a poll issue during the election campaign. BJP should not play with the sentiments of the Hindus."

He further said that the BJP should tell the people that the Ram temple issue is their 'chunavi jumla' (election gimmick).

On Saturday, Thackeray asked the Central government to announce the date for the construction of Ram temple in Ayodhya. "We want the date when the temple will be made. First, tell us when you will make the temple, then we can talk on other things. Today I want the date. I don't want to take credit for the construction of Ram temple. We want a date," he had said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal on Sunday rubbished Prime Minister Narendra Modi's claim that the Congress was responsible for the delayed verdict in the Ram Temple case. He also challenged the Prime Minister to make allegations against then Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi, who had declared in October this year that the matter was not a priority for the court.

Speaking to ANI, former Union Minister suggested the Prime Minister to start a new programme along the lines of "Mann ki Baat" titled "Jhooti Baate" (false statements) so that the people are aware of the fact that statements that he makes on a weekly basis are "inconsistent with the facts."

Responding to Prime Minister Modi's claim, Sibal, who is also a senior advocate, said that he had not appeared in the Supreme Court since January 2018, adding that neither the Congress nor the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was a party in these proceedings, thus nullifying the prospects of any of his actions in the court being in favour of the Congress.

"Now, we are in November 2018, in between, when I was not there, nothing prevented the court from hearing the matter and disposing it off. So why doesn't he make allegations against the judiciary," Sibal asked.

"When the matter came up in October, the Chief Justice said that this is not a priority matter for the court. So does the Prime Minister have the courage to make a statement against the judiciary and say that they don't want to hear the matter," he said.

"He is targeting me because he doesn't have the courage to make allegations against anybody else, knowing full well that I have not been involved in the matter since January 2018," the senior Congress leader added.

Sibal further accused the Prime Minister of raking up the issue for political gains ahead of the impending state assembly polls and the all-important Lok Sabha elections scheduled for next year.

"Why was the matter not raised during former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's term or after he (Prime Minister Modi) came to power in 2014? Did he forget Ram Lalla in 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017? How has he just remembered Ram Lalla in 2018, because the 2019 elections are near? So who is playing here? It is our great Prime Minister, he did it in Gujarat. He is doing it now because the elections are on, but nothing is going to change the minds of the people. They have made up their minds because they have seen through him," Sibal asserted. (ANI)

Earlier on Sunday, Prime Minister Modi, while addressing a rally in Rajasthan's Alwar district, had accused the Congress of interfering in the Supreme Court's proceedings on the Ram Temple-Babri Masjid case, saying that their Rajya Sabha leaders intimidated Supreme Court judges with the threat of impeachment if they didn't stall the case until the General Elections of next year.

"They (Congress) give Rajya Sabha tickets to prominent Supreme Court advocates, who attend proceedings in the court all day and then sit in the Rajya Sabha. We don't have a majority in that House. So they are using it to their advantage. Those Congress members in the Rajya Sabha have told the Supreme Court to not restart the case till 2019 because of the impending elections," the Prime Minister had said.

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President Maithripala Sirisena on Sunday asserted that he will not appoint Ranil Wickremesinghe as Prime Minister again.

According to The Colombo Page, Sirisena said that he has even apprised his party, the United National Party (UNP) about this decision.

"I will not appoint Ranil Wickremesinghe as Prime Minister in my lifetime. I have told them very clearly not to bring Ranil Wickremesinghe to me even if it's proven legally that the UNF has the majority," The Colombo Page quoted President Sirisena as saying.

President Maithripala Sirisena made this statement at a meeting with foreign journalists this morning at the President's official residence.

The Colombo Page further quoted Sirisena, who stressed on the fact that the removal of Wickremesinghe from the post of Prime Minister, followed by the appointment of a new Prime Minister, the dissolution of the cabinet and the Parliament were done legally.

The Sri Lankan President also stated that the Central Bank bond scam which was exposed three months after Wickremesinghe's appointment derailed Sirisena's plans of providing clean and good governance.

Srisena added that owing to rampant corruption and Wickremesinghe's stubborn attitude, he had to remove him from the ministerial post and replace him with Mahinda Rajapaksa for the good of the country.

"He was very stubborn and was not accommodative. He even exercised my powers. He not only exercised Prime Ministerial powers. He also began using the powers of the President," the President added to his statement.

According to The Colombo Page, Sirisena also hinted towards constituting a commission that would probe the corruption and fraud which took place during Wickremesinghe's tenure.

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Ministry mulls new investment modality law

The government is mulling to bring a new bill to govern the projects to be developed under the public private partnership (PPP) modality and foreign direct investment. The Cabinet meeting, last week, agreed in principal over the Finance Ministrys proposal to draft a new bill related to management of PPP and investment.
A suspected poisonous gas attack by terrorist groups in Syria's government-held Aleppo city has left 107 civilians hospitalised, according to the country's state media.

"Terrorist groups shelled residential areas in Aleppo with explosive projectiles containing toxic gas that led to civilians choking," CNN quoted Commander General Issam al-Shilli of Aleppo Police as saying to the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA).

According to hospital sources, SANA reported that the people hospitalised in the suspected chlorine attack had cases with severity ranging from mild to medium. The state media further said that the Syrian army responded by shelling the "source of the attack".

About 94 people, including dozens of children, suffered from asphyxiation in the aftermath of the toxic gas attack in Aleppo city, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The incident, if confirmed to be a chlorine attack, would invite wrath from other countries, who have previously accused the President Bashar al-Assad regime of staging such attacks on civilians.

The suspected gas attack comes after Russia and Turkey announced the creation of a demilitarised zone in northern Syria, in a bid to prevent a "humanitarian crisis" in September this year.

This is not the first instance of such gas attacks in the war-torn country. In April last year, over 80 people died in a sarin attack in Khan Sheikhoun town, which prompted the United States to launch numerous airstrikes at a Syrian airbase in retaliation.

Amidst international furore over such attacks, the Syrian government, has, however, denied its role and rejected the presence of chemical weapons in the country.

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Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen late on Saturday announced her resignation as the head of Democratic Progressive Party of Taiwan, after enduring a 'crushing defeat' in the local government elections.

CNN quoted Central News Agency (CNA), a state-owned news agency operated by the Government of the Republic of China (Taiwan), reporting that Tsai apologised to the supporters of the party for the 'disappointing performance' in a speech at its headquarters. The Taiwanese President took full responsibility for the party's loss in the local elections.

Tsai further said that while her administration is moving in the right direction, the election results were proof that the Taiwanese people are going to set a higher standard for their government.

The Democratic Progressive Party is expected to undergo a "major reshuffle" soon, Tsai said, to prepare for the challenges ahead, CNN reported.

Tsai Ing-wen, the first woman to be elected as the country's President, scored a landslide victory in the general elections of January 2016. She joined the Democratic Progressive Party in 2004 and became its chairwoman in 2008.

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A public vote held in Taiwan rejected the legalisation of same-sex marriage in the island-nation, despite a 2017 high court ruling in favour of such unions.

Quoting state media, CNN reported that a question which asked "Do you agree that Civil Code regulations should restrict marriage to being between a man and a woman?" received the largest vote-share - more than seven million votes - amongst five referendum questions related to LGBT rights and education.

Out of these, three questions were framed by members from conservative parties while two had been drafted by pro-LGBT activists.

On the other hand, the question on same-sex marriage put forth by gay rights activists only garnered three million votes, sending a wave of disappointment amongst supporters.

"The results of the referendums on Saturday indicate that the three anti-LGBTI rights motions were accepted, with up to 35 per cent of all eligible voters supporting. The two pro-LGBTI rights motions received less than 18 per cent in favour," human rights group Amnesty International mentioned.

The referendum took place regardless of the high court's ruling, as the government failed to implement laws legitimising same-sex marriages in the face of resistance from conservative groups that led to the public vote. The court had given a two-year deadline to the government.

"The regression of gender equality deals the most severe blow to Taiwan's democratic values," Jennifer Lu, Marriage Equality Coalition Taiwan's spokesperson told Al Jazeera.

Nevertheless, human rights groups including Amnesty International are rallying for marriage equality in the island nation. Amnesty tweeted, "Taiwan's referendum results rejecting marriage equality are a bitter blow but despite this setback, we remain confident that love and equality will ultimately prevail!"

This is a major setback to same-sex rights in the nation, in the face of the latest local elections in Taiwan. Current President Tsai Ing-wen turned in her resignation as the chief of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) after the results, where DPP was handed a crushing defeat.

She will, however, serve the remainder of her term as Taiwan's President until 2020.

The Kuomintang (KMT) party, which is believed to be close to the People's Republic of China, obtained a higher vote share in the elections which are being seen as a precursor to the 2020 Presidential elections.

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The White House with the full support of Mexican government has decided to remake a border policy that would require asylum seekers to wait outside the United States border with Mexico while their cases are processed.

Washington Post reported that the plan, known as 'Remain in Mexico', would potentially end the system which US President Donald Trump decries to be "catch and release."

Apart from securing a deeper cooperation with Mexico, the agreement will be breaking with long-standing asylum rules and place a formidable barrier in the path of the asylum seekers from Central America who desperately want to reach the United States in order to escape the poverty and violence in their home countries.

Calling the deal to be a "short-term solution" in an interview to the Washington Post, Mexico's incoming interior minister Olga Sanchez Cordero said, "For now, we have agreed to this policy of Remain in Mexico."

"The medium- and long-term solution is that people don't migrate," Sanchez Cordero added to her statement.

However, no formal agreement has been signed between both the countries as many details are still left for further discussion.

Earlier on November 22, Fox News stated that while talking to reporters in Florida, Trump asserted that if his administration concludes that its southern ally has lost "control" on its side, the borders will be closed.

This comes after thousands of migrants and refugees from Central America have reached the border town of Tijuana seeking asylum in the US.

He further revealed that he has given a nod to thousands of active-duty troops he sent to the border before the November 6 midterm elections to use lethal force against the migrants if needed.

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Minister of State for External Affairs V K Singh on Sunday rebuffed former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav's stance that the Army needs to be deployed in Ayodhya to keep the situation under control and asserted that the Centre will make full efforts to maintain the law and order in the region.

In an exclusive interview to ANI, Singh stated, "I don't think there is any need for the deployment of Army in Uttar Pradesh as there is enough law and order machinery available there. And I am sure that the government that of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), unlike other parties, will ensure that law and order is maintained."

Akhilesh, the Samajwadi Party chief on Friday urged the Supreme Court to deploy Army in Ayodhya, if needed, to keep the situation under control.

Speaking to media, Yadav had stated: "The BJP does not believe in either the Supreme Court or the Constitution. The BJP can go to any extent. The kind of environment there is in Uttar Pradesh, especially in Ayodhya, the Supreme Court should take notice of it and bring Army, if necessary."

His statement comes ahead of two separate mega events being organised by the Shiv Sena and the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) in Ayodhya to support the construction of the Ram temple.

On October 29, the Supreme Court adjourned the hearing of Ram Janambhoomi-Babri Masjid title suit till January 2019.

It is believed that the Babri Masjid which was constructed by Mughal emperor Babur in Ayodhya in 1528 was allegedly demolished by Hindu activists on December 6, 1992, who claimed that the mosque was built after destructing the Ram Temple to the ground.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Yemeni army has liberated the al-Dhaher district here from the Houthi militia, as the armed forces head towards the Hidan directorate, which is another rebel stronghold.

The army's media centre said that the forces, along with the Saudi Arabia-led coalition, liberated the al-Malahit front and the strategic Maran triangle as well. A government building complex has also been freed by the armed forces to take complete charge of the district from armed rebels.

"Following the continuation of advancements in the eastern direction of the Directorate of al-Malahit, our armed forces were able to liberate a major factory, while in the northern side, a number of strategic sites were controlled, including command posts, that represented the most important reinforcements of the Houthi coup militias," Al Arabiya stated while quoting military sources.

The Arab-led coalition's aircrafts targeted numerous Houthi supplementaries throughout the district in Saada, as fighting continued for the second day at Baqim.

The war-torn region has been engulfed in a conflict since 2015, with regular clashes between Houthi militia and the Saudi-led and US-backed Arab coalition. Around 10,000 lives have been claimed in conflict till now as a raging food crisis in the middle-east nation has caused widespread malnutrition and the death of children.

USA's Secretary of State Michael Pompeo has called for a peaceful solution in Yemen, while US Defence Secretary James Mattis has called a ceasefire between both the forces amid an international outcry over the food crisis and continuous war, which has ravaged the nation.

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Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Saturday viewed presentations of number of architectural firms in connection with the construction of 151m tall Lord Ram statue in Ayodhya.

Five firms gave a presentation before the chief minister.

A museum showcasing the history of Ram Janmabhoomi and related subjects will also be constructed.

The location for the construction has not been finalised yet.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on November 7 had made it clear that a statue of Lord Ram will soon be built in Ayodhya.

"One idol (of Lord Ram) will be placed inside the temple for worshipping and another will be constructed outside the temple, for the latter idol, we will decide a place after discussion. We will ensure that everything is done in a manner that people's faith is also respected and Ayodhya gets the needed recognition," he had said.

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A paraglider was killed and another severely injured in a gliding accident in West Bengal's Kalimpong district, police said on Sunday.

"Purushottam, 22, a paragliding pilot from Nepal, died in the accident while the tourist with him was injured in Delo hills on Sunday," a Kalimpong police officer said.

The body has been recovered. The tourist from Patna, Gaurav Choudhary, 35, critically injured is in a private hospital in Siliguri," he added.

Whether any safety measure was flouted was being probed.

--IANS

bnd/mgr/in

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Three public sector oil marketing companies have decided to expand their retail network by adding about 5,125 new outlets in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry over the next two years, a senior official of the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) said on Sunday.

The three companies are IOC, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd., and Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd.

"The three companies plan to add about 5,125 new dealerships as the demand for oil is growing. The demand for petrol is growing at eight per cent per annum and diesel at four per cent," R. Sitharthan, Executive Director, IOC and also the state-level Coordinator for oil industry told reporters here.

He said the new fuel outlets will come up in emerging markets like upcoming highways, agricultural pockets and industrial hubs.

Sitharthan said the process of application for dealerships and its allotment has been simplified.

"For the first time, computerised draw of lots, bid opening would be held under the aegis of an independent agency to bring in more transparency."

--IANS

vj/mag/sed

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Five Finnish nationals -- two business executives a owner of legal firm, a leading IT executive and their pilot -- were killed while on a hunting trip when their private plane crashed in Zimbabwe, police said.

The hunting trip to the southern African country on Saturday included Heikki Vappula, director of the biorefining sector of United Paper Mills, a paper producer, and Pekka Ojanpaa, CEO of the service company Lassila and Tikanoja, Xinhua news agency reported.

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Nepal briefs international community about achievements made in tiger conservation

Nepali officials have briefed the international world about the huge leap in the conservation of tiger, one-horned rhino, vulture and other rare animal species.
If a large magnitude occurs in the near future in the northwest (NW) Himalayas region as predicted by a recent study, the Capital Region (NCR) of would suffer very heavy damage.

The 2001 in Bhuj in Gujarat, which claimed about 10,000 lives, had shown that the destruction by an is caused by two different types of waves: Shear Waves, confined to about 70 to 100 km from the epicentre and which adversely affect the foundations and basements of structures; and Rayleigh Waves that travel with a velocity between 2.5 to 3 km per second and produce a different type of destructive effect.

These Rayleigh Waves from earthquakes of magnitude above 7.5 become active at a distance beyond 150 to 200 km or more from the epicentre and adversely affect tall structures (height more than 17 meters) as was observed at Ahmedabad city located at a distance of about 320 km from the Bhuj earthquake's epicentre. Another very important observation was that all structures with "stilted" floors (where the ground floor is used for vehicle parking) were severely damaged. A similar damaging effect by Rayleigh waves was observed in Mexico City, located about 500 km from the epicentre of the 1985 earthquake.

The Himalayan states had been visited by a number of large magnitude earthquakes and a recent study suggests the NW region (mostly Uttarakhand, and parts of Kashmir) is ripe for one. The escaped major damage from the destructive Rayleigh Waves from past earthquakes because, prior to 1950, there were no high rise buildings there.

But the situation is now different. With its satellite townships of Noida, Greater Noida, Gurugram, Ghaziabad and Faridabad, forms a big cluster of high-rise buildings with flyovers, bridges and elevated roads. It is also known that some of the high-rise structures have collapsed during construction itself. Many high-rise buildings have stilted floors. As was witnessed in Ahmedabad after the Bhuj earthquake, all these structures could suffer heavy damage in case of a large magnitude earthquake in the NW Himalayan region with its epicentre in the range of 270 to 350 km from Delhi.

The Himalayan fault is known to have a potential to generate earthquakes up to a magnitude of 8 or more. The foundations in Delhi are not on solid rock but there is excess of soil and crushed rock (murrum) on the ground. In case of a powerful earthquake in the Himalayas, the long scissors of Rayleigh Waves could wildly chop the tall concrete structures in Delhi and neighbouring areas. The possibility that these buildings may collapse like a pack of cards in "Ahmedabad Fashion" cannot be ruled out.

In the opinion of some international expert seismologists, the world could see an increase in the number of strong earthquakes in 2018 and the next few years due to the periodic slowing of the Earth's rotation. There is a clear correlation between the speed of the earth's rotation and global earthquake activity, said Roger Billham of the University of Colorado and Rebecca Bendick of the University of Montana, who recently presented their research at a conference in the US.

Fluctuations in the Earth's rotation are tiny -- changing the length of the day by several milliseconds -- but could be enough to release vast amounts of underground energy, they have said. It has been reported that on five occasions in the past century, a 25-30 percent increase in annual number of earthquakes (of magnitude 7 or greater) coincided with a slowing in the mean rotation velocity of the Earth.

The slowing down of Length of Day (LoD) normally lasts for six years, after which the earth enters a period of enhanced seismicity. In this century, the LoD started in 2011 and now the year 2018 could be considered a period of higher seismic activity. While the research did not indicate precisely when and where these future earthquakes will occur, it showed that most of the intense earthquakes that responded to changes in day length seemed to occur near the equator.

A destructive earthquake is an extreme geophysical event and 2018 had already been witness to some climatic and atmospheric extremities. These include no water in Johannesburg and to some extent in Rio de Janeiro; thermal high of 48.2 degrees (C) in Churu (Rajasthan) and Gadchiroli (Maharashtra); and an all-time high value (45 degree C) in Vancouver (Canada) that claimed 28 lives. It has also been a record year of snowfall in Europe, and China-Japan, with 20 causalities.

Currently, and Uttarakhand in are experiencing heavy snowfall up to about 1-1.5 meters. The year 2018 also appears to be an extremity as far as air accidents go. Until June, there were four accidents in Havana (Cuba), Algeria, (Nepal) and (Russia) together taking 488 lives.

Considering the expert opinions accounting for climatic and atmospheric extremities and keeping in view the reduction in the length of day due to slowing down of earth rotation, it could be assumed that the predicted large magnitude earthquake in the Himalayas could occur most probably in 2018 or its proximity.

(Arun Bapat is a research seismologist and former chief of earthquake research at the Central Water and Power Research Station in Pune. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at arunbapateq@gmail.com)

--IANS

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A tiny coronation bridge over the swift Beas river connects the Manali-Leh highway to a pristine and quaint village caught in a time warp. Barely a hundred-odd houses and a handful of home-stays comprise Shanag village, a hidden destination in the Himalayas where the residents live in the lap of nature, meditate and reflect upon life amid all its grandeur.

When looked at from the other end, the village is almost hidden behind a few cottages and home-stays that face the river. Just above the highway is a titanic rock, overlooking the Beas and blocking direct sunlight for a large part of the day. On the farthest horizons of the either side are snow-clad mountains, melting like wax from a marble statue.

The rustic iron bridge is at the centre and cuts off from the highway to allow an elevated passage for vehicles -- one at a time -- headed towards the village. The bridge is the busy affair that leads to the almost heavenly, silent world of trees, the murmurings of the bees and the singing of the breeze. Its clanging fades behind you as the first shops -- a little kirana store selling things of everyday use, a vegetable shop with carrots on top of onions and tomatoes behind the herbs, all boxed up in separate columns of greens and reds, and a dark eatery run by a Tibetan woman, selling tea, momos, thukpa and similar fast food -- become visible.

As you pass by the shops, the last of the homestays make their appearance, followed by apple orchards and some houses scattered here and there in the woods. This, for most visitors, is where the excursion ends. Notably, the river is the centre of attraction -- even when it is hidden behind the houses, the sound of its rushing water invites one to sit on the banks and watch it make what Tennyson called "a sudden sally".

But beyond it lies a little universe, unperturbed by habitation.

Walking along the little paths meandering through the woods, silence becomes one's best, and perhaps only, companion. Located as it is at a much higher altitude than the highway, the afternoon sun is comforting. The titanic rock that blocks the sunlight from the highway now appears like one of the many rocks that dot the mountain, and looking beyond it, one can spot the snow at its peak.

This leaves one in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by snow-clad mountains on all sides, a few animals grazing in the open and village women soaking in the sun. Momentarily, birds of multiple colours come and sing their songs, incomprehensible to the human ear but soothing nonetheless.

By mid-November, the village receives its first snowfall every year and that marks the beginning of the time meant for the little pleasures of life. Most of the winter is spent indoors, in the company of loved ones, and in doing simply nothing. It is almost customary to spot a family or two, sitting on the balcony for hours together, and admiring the beauty of nature. Juicy red apples, plucked from the orchards all around, come handy too.

The bridge is not functional for vehicles after snowfall and venturing out means taking the old-Manali road. The residents, however, prepare for the winter well in advance and seldom have a reason to take the route.

The evenings are meant for families to sit together by the fire with large mugs of tea, and snacks to chew on. Almost all meals of the day are consumed together, everybody participates in the daily chores, all of which makes the winter an extremely personal family affair.

It is also during these months that they look back at the year gone by, how their kids performed at school, the successes and setbacks in business and the many issues that vex them. Most houses are equipped with chimneys and just when the dinner is done, the fire is carefully lit to make their rooms cosy and comfortable for a good night's sleep.

And people in the hills rise early, though kids may be reluctant. They watch the sunrise from their windows and balconies -- waiting for another day of nothingness. But the beauty that is lost in our day-to-lives, the little joys that we miss on in our humdrum affairs, the warmth of family and the chill of icy fangs, are best relished by them at this time of the year.

If only time could stand still.

(Saket Suman can be contacted at saket.s@ians.in)

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The 'Super Sunday' in Ayodhya passed off peacefully and turned out to be a win-win for all the stakeholders, with the right-wing outfit Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) managing to mobilise crowds for its "Dharma Sabha" and succeeding in bringing the Ram temple issue to centre stage, and the state government successfully warding off any untoward incident.

The Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh managed to ensure that the day passes off peacefully, even if this meant twisting some rules and bending backwards to accommodate the converging Hindu faithfuls who wanted the Ram temple to be built at the earliest.

The day started with the Shiv Sena (SS) chief Uddhav Thackeray and his family praying before the Ram Lalla, who has been under a tent since 1992. Emerging out of the 30-minute "darshan", Thackeray said he felt blessed to be in Ayodhya but the larger feeling was that of "visiting a prison".

Later at a presser, he told the media that the Narendra Modi government at the Centre and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in Uttar Pradesh were "powerful enough" to ensure that a grand Ram temple was built at the earliest. He announced all-out support if the Modi government introduced a Bill or brought an ordinance favouring an early start of building of the Ram temple at the disputed site.

Taking a dig at its ally BJP, Thackeray however rued the fact that while some people chanted "Ram-Ram" during the elections, they got into "aa-ram" mode (relaxed mode) thereafter, alluring to the fact that the BJP has done precious little in the past four years in power to pave way for a Ram temple, as promised in its poll manifesto as well.

He later flew off in a chartered plane to Mumbai but not before ticking off party workers for their "unruly behaviour" at the Laxman Quila grounds on Saturday. He asked them to leave and a train ferrying them back home left the Ayodhya railway station on Sunday evening, one hour before time. A train was sent on Saturday as well.

In the afternoon, the main event -- VHP's "dharma sabha" -- was convened. According to district administration's estimates, a crowd of over 75,000 had gathered to "strategise on the next step to a grand Ram temple".

VHP's international Vice President Champat Rai announced that they (Hindus) would not cede an inch of land for anything but a Ram temple and demanded of the Sunni Waqf Board that they withdraw their case over distribution of the disputed land, as ordered by the Allahabad High Court.

Rai went on to add that the issue of land was non-negotiable for Hindus. "The distribution of land is not acceptable to us and we want the whole land for Lord Ram," he declared.

He also pointed out that the Hindus would not accept offering of "Namaaz" over any piece of the disputed land. Warning that no one should test the patience of the Hindu community anymore, he said they had been battling the matter for the past 490 years.

"Some intelligent people think that the whole matter began after the destruction of the Babri mosque in 1992...they are ignorant...the matter goes back to 490 years," the VHP leader said.

The "dharm sabha" had to be called after a gap of 25 years because some intellectuals thought that on December 6, 1992 curtains came down on the contentious issue, he said, adding: "The fire has not been extinguished, it continues to simmer inside our hearts."

Rai asserted that this was last such congregation to press for Ram temple and the next logical step for the Hindu outfit would be beginning of construction of a grand Ram temple in Ayodhya. He also demanded that the Muslim litigants withdraw the case from the Supreme Court and pave way for an early construction of the temple.

Another prominent seer Swamy Bhadracharya, however, announced that future plans of the saint community with regard to the Ram temple would be announced after December 11. This is being seen as a wait-and-watch move by the saints as Prime Minister Narendra Modi at an election rally in Madhya Pradesh earlier in the day accused the Congress of trying to thwart an early solution to the Ram Mandir issue.

He also disclosed that at a recent meeting with a senior and powerful minister in the Modi cabinet, he was assured that "good news will come after December 11". "I am assured that only the BJP will construct the Ram temple," he said.

Amid talks of a possible introduction of a Bill by the Modi government in Parliament's winter session that begins on December 11, many seers are of the view that a "last opportunity should be given to the BJP government on the issue".

Earlier, hundreds of thousands of VHP workers and supporters trooped into the venue of the "dharm sabha" and Muslim locals showered flower petals on them. Muslim litigant Iqbal Ansari, who had earlier expressed fear at the growing crowds in Ayodhya for the VHP event, on Sunday thanked the Uttar Pradesh government for "good arrangements".

The police had made heavy deployment of forces to ensure that nothing unlawful happened at Ayodhya. Drones were pressed into service to keep a vigil on the crowds. However, the administration miserably failed in complying to the prohibitory orders in place ahead of the Sunday mega-event as thousands broke the Section 144 to troop into the temple town.

(Mohit Dubey can be contacted at mohit.d@ians.in)

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
will head to the this week to block a group of customers from suing the tech giant for monopoly abuse, media has reported.

The company is battling a group of owners who claim forces them to overpay for apps by forbidding rivals to the multibillion-dollar

After the customers won the right to launch a class action lawsuit against the company in 2017, is now appealing to the Supreme Court to have the decision overturned, The Telegraph reported late on Saturday.

If Apple fails, the business model of the App Store, one of the company's fastest-growing and most profitable divisions, could be threatened, it added.

Apple makes billions each year by taking a 30 per cent cut of apps sold through the App Store, which are created by developers. App revenues grew by around a third in 2017 to $38.5 billion even as sales of Apple's iPhones and iPads stalled.

The customers argue that its sizeable commission is evidence of the company exploiting its monopoly position over users. They argue that " consumers nationwide have paid (Apple) hundreds of millions of dollars more for iPhone apps than they would have paid in a competitive market".

Apple is seeking to dismiss the case by appealing to a Supreme Court ruling made in 1977 that said only "direct purchasers" can seek damages for antitrust abuse.

The company argues that because the app developers themselves set the price of apps in the and not Apple, iPhone users are purchasing the apps from the developers directly.

Its opponents claim that because Apple sets the rules about the App Store, such as the minimum price, it is effectively selling the apps on to users.

The Supreme Court is due to hear the arguments on Monday, although it is likely to take months until its judges announce any decision.

If Apple fails to overturn the previous decision, the company is likely to face years of legal wrangling in a case that dates back to 2011.
Ayodhya is a fortress ahead of the 'Dharma Sabha' organised on Sunday by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) where prominent Hindu seers were likely to spell out their stand and strategy for construction of a grand Ram temple.

The administration has taken over the town. The massive rally is expected to begin at 11 a.m.

Although, there is heavy security deployment, many were violating the prohibitory orders in place with hundreds of thousands of Ram Lalla followers converging to the temple town, police said.

There are 48 companies of the provincial armed constabulary (PAC) and 15 companies of para-military forces deployed on all major roads and intersections.



Barriers have been put on busy thoroughfares to ensure that crowd control is easy in case of any untoward incident.

Close circuit cameras have been installed at more than 150 places in the two along with drone-mounted ones hovering over the streets to keep an eagle eye on the surging crowds.



More than 100 prominent Hindu seers, including Mahant Ravindra Puri, Mahant Suresh Das of the Digambar Akhada, head of the Ram Janmabhoom Trust Mahant Nritya Gopal Das, Jagatguru Ramanadcharya Hansdevacharya from Haridwar, Jagatguru Ramanandacharya Swami Ram Bhadracharya, Swami Gyananad Giri from Odisha were part of the religious congregation.

VHP leaders informed IANS that Hindu devotees and Ram temple supporters from around 50 districts of have been mobilised for the show of strength.



Senior VHP leaders including its international vice-president Champat Rai are camping in the temple town, overseeing arrangements for the 'Dharma Sabha'.

The administration, however, said that the number of devotees coming to pay obeisance to Ram Lalla has dropped in the past few days, apparently because of security concerns and the tension ahead of the rally.

On Saturday, 17,680 people visited Ram Lalla, a number which on Friday was 49,112.
A cargo ship carrying 14 crew members sunk in waters off Bali coast in Indonesia, rescuers said they were searching for seven crew members on Sunday.

KM Multi Prima One cargo ship heading to Waingapu town of East Nusa Tenggara province capsized in Bali Gulf after leaving waters off Surabaya, head of communication for media of national search and rescue office Yusuf Latief told Xinhua.

The search was underway in a radius of 200 nautical miles from the site of the capsize.

The seven crew who survived were rescued by Cahaya Abadi 201 ship, which was passing by the spot, according to him.

Sea water transport is key to Indonesia, a vast archipelagic country home to over 17,500 islands. However, lack of safety standard keeps triggering such incidents.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Bharatiya Janata Party will not allow the Telangana government to implement a 12 per cent reservation for minorities, party President Amit Shah said on Sunday.

Addressing election rallies at four places in the state, he said the BJP would neither provide quota on the basis of religion nor allow its implementation by others.

"As long as the BJP is in power at the Centre, there is no question of giving reservation to minorities," he said at a meeting in Nirmal town.

He was referring to the resolution passed by the Telangana legislature and sent to the Centre, seeking its approval for increasing reservation for Muslims in jobs and education from the current 4 per cent to 12 per cent.

Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) President K. Chandrashekar Rao, during his election speeches, has been targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi for not giving the nod to hike the quota for Muslims.

Terming the TRS government's move as "unconstitutional", the BJP chief pointed out that the Supreme Court has fixed a ceiling of 50 per cent on the overall quota.

He asked the TRS to specify whose quota it proposes to cut to provide reservation to the minorities.

Shah said his party would stand like a rock to protect the reservation for the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and the Backward Classes.

The BJP president, who also addressed rallies in Parkala, Narayankhed and Dubbaka, said that only his party could provide a government in Telangana that would not be dependent on the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) and its President Asaduddin Owaisi.

"Only the BJP can take on Majlis and Owaisi," he said.

Shah said the TRS government had also stopped celebrating Telangana Liberation Day, as it was scared of Owaisi. He said if voted to power, the BJP would celebrate the day on a grand scale in every village.

Recalling that it was in Nirmal that MIM leader Akbaruddin Owaisi had delivered a speech, insulting Hindu gods and goddesses, Shah said the TRS government failed to take action against him.

He said the December 7 election would decide the future of the state. "You have given opportunity to all other parties to form government. Give a chance to us, we will turn Telangana into a model state."

Shah said the TRS chief had imposed the burden of an additional election by going in for early polls to the state Assembly to promote his son and daughter.

He claimed that the TRS chief Rao was afraid of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's impact if the Assembly polls were to be held along with the Lok Sabha elections in 2019.

He claimed that the central government provided over Rs 2.30 lakh crore for the development of Telangana during the last four years. He said half of these funds were allocated under the 14th Finance Commission.

He said Telangana was a revenue-surplus state but the TRS government imposed a burden of Rs 2 lakh crore in the form of loans on the state.

He said that Communists, who were losing ground across the world, and Congress, which was getting wiped out in the country, had come together in Telangana.

The BJP chief alleged that Congress President Rahul Gandhi backed urban Maoists when the Maharashtra government arrested them. "The Maoists have only two options. Either join the mainstream or be ready to go to jail," he added.

--IANS

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(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
First they made robots to do repetitive work in assembly lines; then they made the robots smarter. Now every part of the industrial process -- from wiring to final quality check -- has been imbued with intelligence.

Welcome to the brave new world of industrial automation.

The automation world is facing a manpower crisis. There are not enough trained young staff to replace the retiring maintenance workers in factories in the United States.

"The last recession did not allow many companies to invest in maintenance staff, so knowledge is walking out of the factory doors with every person retiring," said Bill Martin, Programme Manager, Networked Components at Rockwell Automation.

The answer: Technology is stepping in. "The latest devices that are being introduced on the factory floor can make a lot of information available on each and every component and can store this data in computing devices," added Martin, which can then be availed of by untrained staff to complete maintenance and manage downtime of machines.

Martin was sharing details of how technology was reaching every aspect of the factory floor to a group of visiting journalists at the "Automation Fair 2018" organised by Rockwell in Philadelphia last week.

Rockwell, with sales of $6.7 billion, is the world's largest industrial automation company and has 23,000 employees and a presence in 80 countries.

"The next wave of industrial revolution would make manufacturing much more efficient and intelligent. For that, you need to have smart machines, for which data needs to come from somewhere. It comes from the devices that control the basics in an industrial facility," noted Martin.

The DeviceLogix technology -- a platform-independent logic engine -- is embedded in Rockwell devices, such as push button stations, I/O blocks, motor starters and drives.

Take the example of the latest variable frequency drive which controls motors at the heart of most factories' functioning.

"Motor failures lead to extensive downtimes, which are costly. The built-in diagnostic feature not only avoids costly failures but also provides predictive maintenance. A powerflex drive typically monitors real-time data and helps you predict when a critical component needs to be replaced. It is also prescriptive," informed Nisha Chandrasekharan, Global Portfolio Manager at Rockwell.

Paul Whitney, Market Development Manager, Integrated Architecture, explained that several innovative ideas were in the pipeline at Rockwell, in partnership with PTC -- an augmented reality (AR) and IoT solutions provider -- and Microsoft, some of which may or may not become final products. Rockwell entered into an equity relationship with PTC a few months ago.

Whitney said AR was the latest technology which was being adopted at the factory floor level. AR devices, worn on the eyes, would, in future, be replaced by glasses adapted for industrial use -- something like an advanced Google Glass -- to look at which part of machines are likely to give trouble in future, blending the physical and digital worlds.

"The glasses would also tell you where you can safely move on a factory floor. There would be virtual yellow lines where your entry would slow down a machine and red lines where it would stop, enhancing physical safety of workers," said Whitney.

"Working through AR on an iPad is already a reality," explained Patti Vivolo, Commercial Programme Manager, Integrated Architecture at Rockwell. She took the journalists through a mock-up brewery where the mixing, filling and packaging were all done automatically with "Vuphoria" software from PTC, helping keep track through AR.

The software can also provide the visual manual for setting up a plant and track wear and tear of parts, providing predictive maintenance.

The 3D lenses on the packaging floor ensure that if anything goes amiss, for example one beer can in a six-pack, the alert goes out to the manager and the package is taken out of the assembly line for rectification.

Rockwell innovates internally but also is always on the lookout for promising technologies brought out by companies. It buys the companies and adapts and develops the technologies to offer clients complete systems.

Partnership with PTC earlier this year was a major step forward in using AR and IoT tech. "Rockwell also uses its own tech internally, like eating your own cookies," said Mark Galant, Senior Director Marketing, IoT Manufacturing Solutions at PTC.

"People talk of integration of software, but we at Rockwell are also integrating the strong cultures between the two companies. Teams have been working together to offer clients the ability to innovate," noted Paula D. Puess, Global Market Development Manager at Rockwell Software. "It's all about delivering value," she added.

According to Galant, many of Rockwell's clients have seen a 6-8 per cent jump in efficiency by using their hardware and systems, especially in the food and beverage industry. "For a big company, that would mean they don't have to build that many more factories," he said.

So, once you have made parts and machines smart, where do you go from there?

"First dumb machines became smart, then software became even smarter and then smart machines were put together to make factory-wide systems. The future would be all systems talking to other major systems -- or a system of systems. Something like a multi-Cloud architecture," informed Galant.

"We have reached the top of the chasm where a big leap would be taken. Only a handful of companies in automation would take that leap, not hundreds. We at Rockwell and PTC will be among them," added Puess.

(Hardev Sanotra attended Automation Fair 2018 on an invitation by Rockwell Automation. He can be reached at hardev.sanotra@ians.in)

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
European Council President Donald Tusk has recommended that the EU approve the Brexit deal at a summit on Sunday.

It comes after Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez received assurances from the UK government over Gibraltar, and dropped his threat to boycott the summit, BBC reported on Saturday.

He said he had received the written guarantees he needed over Spain's role in the future of the British territory.

UK Prime Minister Theresa May has arrived in Brussels and held talks with top EU officials, ahead of the summit.

Meanwhile, former UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said the UK would become a "satellite state" under the deal.

The UK is scheduled to leave the EU on March 29, 2019.

The terms of the UK's withdrawal have been under negotiation since June 2016 following a referendum in which 51.9 per cent voted to leave the EU.

Even if the EU approves the deal, it still has to be passed by the UK Parliament, with many MPs having stated their opposition.

Spain had raised last-minute objections ahead of the summit about how the issue of Gibraltar had been handled in the Brexit talks so far.

But EU leaders secured a compromise with the Spanish prime minister, who said that Europe and the UK "had accepted the conditions set down by Spain" and so would "vote in favour of Brexit".

Tusk, who represents EU leaders on the world stage, said he recommended "that we approve on Sunday the outcome of the Brexit negotiations" in a letter to members of the European Council.

He added: "No-one has reasons to be happy. But at least at this critical time, the EU 27 has passed the test of unity and solidarity."

May met the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, and Tusk for talks on Saturday evening.

Then on Sunday, EU leaders will meet for the special Brexit summit. They will be asked to approve two key Brexit documents.

The political declaration, which sets out what the UK and EU's relationship may be like after Brexit -- outlining how things like UK-EU trade and security will work.

The EU withdrawal agreement: a 585-page, legally binding document setting out the terms of the UK's exit from the EU.

It covers the UK's 39 billion pounds "divorce bill", citizens' rights and the Northern Ireland "backstop" -- a way to keep the border with the Republic of Ireland open, if trade talks stall.

There is no formal vote on Sunday but the EU expects to proceed after reaching a consensus.

If the EU signs off the withdrawal deal, May will then need to persuade MPs in the UK Parliament to back it.

A vote is expected in December. Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the SNP and the DUP have all said they will vote against the government's deal, as well as many Conservatives.

Spain threatened to derail the Brexit deal over concerns about its role in future trade arrangements involving Gibraltar -- a British Overseas Territory with 30,000 residents.

But the UK published a letter it had sent to Spain reassuring it over the withdrawal agreement.

After holding emergency talks with Tusk and Juncker, the Spanish Prime Minister dropped his threat.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Days ahead of a seven-nation panel hearing on Facebook, the British Parliament has reportedly seized internal company documents that contain revelations on data and privacy controls that led to Cambridge Analytica scandal.

According to a report in The Guardian on Sunday, the internal documents "include confidential emails between senior executives, and correspondence with (Mark) Zuckerberg".

"Damian Collins, the chair of the culture, media and sport select committee, invoked a rare parliamentary mechanism to compel the founder of a US software company, Six4Three, to hand over the documents during a business trip to London," said the report.

"We are in uncharted territory. This is an unprecedented move but it's an unprecedented situation.

"We've failed to get answers from Facebook and we believe the documents contain information of very high public interest," Collins was quoted as saying.

Facebook, however, defended itself, saying that Six4Three's "claims have no merit, and we will continue to defend ourselves vigorously".

Facebook is set to face an international committee consisting 22 members from seven countries in London this week.

Richard Allan, Vice President of Policy for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), will face in London elected members from the Parliaments of Britain, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Ireland, Latvia and Singapore.

"An unprecedented international grand committee comprising 22 representatives from seven parliaments will meet in London next week to put questions to Facebook about the online fake news crisis and the social network's own string of data misuse scandals," TechCrunch reported on Friday.

According to The Guardian report, the struggle to hold Facebook to account has raised concerns about limits of British authority over international companies that now play a key role in the democratic process.

"We have very serious questions for Facebook," Collins said.

The internal documents seized were obtained during a legal discovery process by Six4Three.

The internal documents are "subject to an order of a Californian superior court, so cannot be shared or made public, at risk of being found in contempt of court".

The report comes at a time when Facebook investors have increased pressure on Zuckerberg -- who faced intense scrutiny in US Congress earlier in 2018 -- to step down as Chairman, which he had refused.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Nepali Congress hold crucial meeting today

Senior Nepali Congress leaders will participate in a crucial Central Working Committee (CWC) meeting on Sunday that is expected to discuss the amendment of party statute. The faction led by President Sher Bahadur Deuba and the rival camp of Ram Chandra Poudel could manoeuvre strategically to ensure that the amendments favour their respective sides.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday accused the party of adopting "delaying tactics" in the Supreme Court to create hurdles in the construction of Ram temple at Ayodhya and playing a "dangerous game" of threatening the judges with impeachment.

Addressing an election rally here, the Prime Minister also hit out at the for indulging in "caste and touching a 'new low' in politics".

"The sends senior lawyers of Supreme Court to Rajya Sabha, where we do not have majority...where the numbers are different. That's why Congress had adopted a new tactic.

"When the case of Ayodhya was going on, a Congress leader and Rajya Sabha member was telling the Supreme Court not to hear the case till 2019, because there are several elections till then," Modi said.

He was referring to Congress leader Kapil Sibal, who had urged the Supreme Court to defer hearing in the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid title suit till July 2019.



"Is it fair to drag the country's judiciary into in this way? Is it right to put pressure on the Supreme Court and the judiciary? But the Congress men say this shamelessly in the Supreme Court," he said.

Stating that he is "making a serious allegation" against the Congress, the Prime Minister said: "If a judge of the Supreme Court does not make the judicial schedule in accordance with thier political intentions, they create hurdles in the Supreme Court which wants to hear a serious and sensitive issue like Ayodhya (that aims) to provide justice to the people."

He said that the Congress then launched a new "game" of threatening justices to impeach them.

"This is dangerous game. In the name of impeachment, the Congress is committing the crime of derailing the judicial system. It is stopping the Supreme Court from hearing a sensitive issue.

"The Congress, which has no faith in judiciary and on judges, is trying to capture the country by bringing impeachment on the basis of their strength in Rajya Sabha. They can never be forgiven," Modi said amid chants of "Jai Shri Ram".

The Prime Minister said he wants to assure the judges and the judiciary that till the time Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is in power, it will not allow the Congress' "black deeds" (Kale Kaarname) within the temple of democracy.



"We will stop it with full force. I want to tell the judges not be afraid of impeachment threats. You courageously go on the path of justice. The country will walk with you. I want to assure you," he said.

He also hit out at the Congress for disrupting parliamentary proceedings and urged the intellectuals to "analyse" their deeds.

Accusing the Congress of playing "divisive politics" and indulging into "caste politics", Modi said the opposition party has touched a "new low" and forgotten all courtesies.

He said all this is done under the patronage of Congress President Rahul Gandhi.



"Congressmen are abusing my mother. They are asking my caste. I am not surprised at all. Whoever is speaking is speaking at the behest of 'naamdar'," he said, adding that the Congress which played caste did not confer Bharat Ratna to Baba Saheb Bhimrao Ambedkar because he opposed the party.

Modi said he wants to tell the "naamdars" that when the head of country visits any foreign country, the world doesn't recognise him with his caste or Modi but identifies him with 125 crore Indians.

"Those who till yesterday threatened to drop bombs on India are begging today due to our strategy. Modi's caste was not behind it. It was because of the 125 crore Indians," he said without taking name of Pakistan.
Filmmaker-producer Karan Johar, who is gearing up for the release of his forthcoming film '2.0' as a distributor, feels that the true crossover in films has to happen internally in India.

Karan said this while interacting with the media at the promotional press conference of '2.0' along with film's lead actor Akshay Kumar and director S. Shankar here on Saturday.

In '2.0', Akshay, who is a huge star in Hindi film industry, is making his debut in Tamil film along with southern superstar Rajinikanth.

When asked if after success of 'Baahubali' and anticipated success of '2.0', more pan-India films will be made wherein actors and technicians from various industry work together, Karan said: "I think the true crossover has to happen internally in India. We keep talking about crossover that the films are going out of the country but I think 'Baahubali' is a true crossover film.

"It's a film made in Telugu which worked very well in all the regions of our country. Similarly, '2.0' has that vision of actually working within the country," he said.

He added that people within the film industry need to encourage the crossover movement.

"We have to encourage those crossover movements. Films in all languages whether it is in Marathi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, have to work all across because that should be the true vision eventually," he said.

'2.0' is a science fiction action film, written and directed by S. Shankar, co-written by B. Jeyamohan, and produced by A. Subaskaran.

The film serves as a sequel to the 2010 Tamil film "Enthiran", and features Rajinikanth reprising the roles of Dr. Vaseegaran and Chitti, alongside Akshay Kumar and Amy Jackson.

The film is set for a worldwide theatrical release on November 29.

--IANS

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The Camp Fire -- the deadliest blaze in the history of California that has claimed at least 85 lives and destroyed 14,000 residences -- has been fully contained, authorities announced on Sunday.

Cal Fire, the state's forestry and fire protection agency, made the announcement after spending 17 days beating back a blaze that has roared through 153,000 acres of Butte County, which is north of Sacramento, The Washington Post reported.

The wildfire has charred an area the size of Chicago.

Three straight days of rain helped more than 1,000 firefighters get a foothold.

But the rejoicing was muted. Authorities expect the death toll to continue to rise -- 249 people are unaccounted for. Crews are still sifting through the ash of what used to be buildings, searching for human remains.

Thousands of displaced people in shelters and hotels or camping outdoors in below-freezing temperatures face an uncertain future.

The fire began November 8 in the Sierra Nevada foothills. High temperatures, gusty winds and parched vegetation contributed to its rapid spread.

As crews made incremental gains and Walmart parking lots became impromptu tent cities, the fire became the centre of a debate about global warming.

President Trump argued the fire spread so rapidly because of poor forest management by the state of California. He threatened - again - to remove federal funding from the state.

But state officials shot back, saying Butte County had endured its hottest years on record in the past decade. Those high temperatures had made the vegetation especially parched, officials argued, and turned Butte County into a tinderbox.

A spokesman for Governor Jerry Brown said more federal forest land has burned than state land, adding that the state has expanded its forestry budget while the Trump administration has cut its budget for forest services.

Even though the fire is contained, the nightmare is far from over for displaced residents, who face dangers as some prepare to see their homes for the first time in weeks.

Crews are working to repair power lines and clear debris from roads. Partially burned or hollowed-out trees are an ever-present threat, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Debris and ash could be toxic, full of heavy metals or carcinogens. Just sleeping at a home surrounded by ash and debris could be hazardous.

"You look up, and you see these things hanging in the trees, and now they're blowing around real hard and fall down," Craig Covey of the Orange County Fire Authority told a CNN affiliate.

--IANS

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The death toll in the boat accident on Lake Victoria in Uganda has risen to 30, police said on Sunday.

Joint police and military marine teams, together with local divers, have so far rescued 27 people, Xinhua news agency quoted police as saying.

The boat was reportedly carrying over 120 passengers, beyond its capacity of 100, when it capsized on Saturday. It was travelling from KK beach in the capital city of Kampala to Mukono district.

--IANS

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Unemployment has emerged as the biggest issue in the Betul Assembly constituency in Madhya Pradesh, which has earned the reputation of being a bellwether seat as to which party would win the elections in the state.

Located in the southern part of Madhya Pradesh and lying almost wholly on the Satpura plateau, Betul is witnessing a direct contest between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress. However, a BJP rebel, contesting on the ticket of the newly-formed Sapaks Party, has made the contest interesting.

The ruling BJP has renominated Hemant Khandelwal (54), a former MP and sitting MLA, while the Congress has pitted Nilay Vinod Daga (40) against him. Daga is the son of former MLA Vinod Daga and Khandelwal is the son of four-term former MP Vijay Khandelwal representing Betul parliamentray constituency.

Lata Raju Mhaski, a former Chairperson of the Zila Panchayat, is contesting her first Assembly polls on the ticket of Sapaks (Samanya, Pichhda, Alpsankhyak) Party, a political forum of people opposed to the SC/ST Act and the existing quota policy.

Mhaski, a former office bearer of the BJP, belongs to Kunbi community which has a significant presence in this tribal-dominated Assembly constituency. Her presence is giving sleepless nights to Khandelwal as she has a good support in the community. A total of 13 candidates are in the fray.

Ashok Kumar Raghuvanshi is a post graduate in management and holds an ITI diploma but earns only Rs 3,000 per month. He is the eldest among three brothers and the only breadwinner in the family. He claims that youth of the district are migrating to Maharasthra, Delhi, Andhra Pradesh and other states in search of jobs.

"Unemployment is the biggest issue here. There is no industry. Almost all the mines are closed. Lack of jobs is affecting even the businesses of the locals. Unless people have money, how can they buy anything? People don't have money to fulfill their daily requirements, how would they buy anything," Raghuvanshi told IANS.

He said leaders come to the area only during elections and assure people of jobs. "But after the election, they never come. Every time we vote hoping that someone will work on this front," he said, adding that he has not yet decided whom to vote for but the issue of unemployment will play a major role when he does.

Ghanshyam Rathore, a senior journalist, also acknowledged that the issue of unemployment is haunting the BJP as it failed to address it. "Although the issue of drinking water has been resolved by the BJP, unemployment continues to haunt them," he said, adding that medical and health services in the constituency needed special attention.

Congress' Daga and Mhaski are also raising the issue of unemployment in their election campaigns, while Khandelwal is banking on the development works undertaken by the administration. Mhaski is attacking both her opponents on the issue of dynasty and calling for a Betul that is free of dynasty

While giving an account of his work, Khandelwal says a new Collector's office building and RTO office have been built and a new building for the district hospital is ready. He claims that he has taken a number of initiatives to promote tourism and water conservation.

Manoj Deshmukh, another youth, said that both the Congress and BJP candidates are strong and the contest is likely to be close.

"There is a close contest. No one can say who will win or who will lose. But what is evident is that Daga is attracting the youth while Khandelwal is focusing on the face of Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Narendra Modi," he said.

He also felt that the Sapaks candidate would not win, but she has the capacity to damage the prospects of the BJP candidate.

Rahul Dhurve, a betel shop owner, said Chouhan is still popular, but the lacklustre performance of the local MLA seems to have turned many against his party.

In the 2013 Assembly polls, Hemant Khandelwal won by defeating Congress's Hemant Wagadre by a margin of 24,347 votes. Khandelwal got 82,949 votes while Wagadre got 58,602 votes.

In 2008, BJP's Alkesh Arya won, while in 2003 BJP's Shiv Prasad Rathore defeated Vinod Daga, the father of Congress nominee Nilay Daga, taking revenge for his 1998 Assembly defeat at his hands.

The BJP is in power in Madhya Pradesh since 2003. Betul elected Congress candidates in 1993 and 1998 and the Congress then formed the government in the state with Digvijay Singh as Chief Minister.

In the 1990 Assembly polls, BJP came to power with Sunder Lal Patwa as Chief Minister and the Betul Assembly constituency had then elected BJP's Bhagwat Patel.

Except in the 1980 Assembly election, Betul has always voted for the party which formed the government in state. In that election, BJP's Madhav Gopal Naseri won from Betul but the Congress formed the government by wining 240 seats in the 320-member Assembly.

In the 1977 polls, Betul elected Naseri as an independent candidate and the Janata Party swept the polls by winning 230 seats. Kailash Joshi then became the chief minister.

In the 1967 Assembly polls, Betul elected G. Khandelwal of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS) and Samyukta Vidhayak Dal formed the government in the state. Govind Narayan Singh, who formed a new political party called Lok Sewak Dal after quitting the Congress, became the chief minister.

From 1951 to 1962, Congress had won in Betul and had formed governments during those elections.

The number of educated jobless youth registering with the employment exchange has shot up from 15.6 lakh in 2015 to 23.7 lakh in 2017-- a spike of almost 53 per cent.

(Brajendra Nath Singh can be contacted at brajendra.n@ians.in)

--IANS

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European Council President has recommended that the EU approve the deal at a summit on Sunday.

Tusk, who represents EU leaders on the world stage, said he recommended "that we approve on Sunday the outcome of the negotiations" in a letter to members of the European Council.

"No-one has reasons to be happy. But at least at this critical time, the EU 27 has passed the test of unity and solidarity," he added.

On Sunday, EU leaders will meet for the special summit. They will be asked to approve two key Brexit documents: The political declaration, which sets out what the UK and EU's relationship may be like after Brexit - outlining how things like UK-EU trade and security will work.

Besides, the EU withdrawal agreement: a 585-page, legally binding document setting out the terms of the UK's exit from the EU. It covers the UK's 39 billion pound "divorce bill", citizens' rights and the Northern Ireland "backstop" -- a way to keep the border with the Republic of Ireland open, if trade talks stall.

There would not be any formal vote on Sunday but the EU was expected to proceed after reaching a consensus.

Brexit's move forward comes after Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez received assurances from the UK government over Gibraltar, and dropped his threat to boycott the summit, the BBC reported.

Sanchez received late on Saturday the written guarantees he needed over Spain's role in the future of the British territory.

Even if the EU approves the deal, it still has to be passed by the UK Parliament, with many MPs having stated their opposition.

Former UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, however, has slammed the developements saying the UK would become a "satellite state" under the deal.

UK Prime Minister Theresa May has already arrived in Brussels and has been holding talks with top EU officials, ahead of the summit. She met the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, and Tusk for talks on Saturday evening.

Spain had raised last-minute objections ahead of the summit, but EU leaders secured a compromise with Sanchez saying he would "vote in favour of Brexit", after Europe and the UK "accepted the conditions set down by Spain", the BBC said.

The UK is scheduled to leave the EU on 29 March 2019.

Its withdrawal negotiations have been on since June 2016 following a referendum in which 51.9 per cent voters agreed to leave the EU.
Former Union Minister and veteran Congress leader from Karnataka Jaffer Sharief died at a private hospital here on Sunday following a heart attack, a party official said. He was 85.

"Sharief passed away around 12.30 p.m. at Fortis Hospital in the city centre.

"He was admitted on Friday after he collapsed at home. He was ailing for sometime with age-related problems," party's state unit spokesman Ravi Gowda told IANS.

A veteran parliamentarian from Bengaluru North and Bengaluru Rural Lok Sabha constituencies, Sharief was Union Railway Minister from 1991-1995 under the P.V. Narasimha Rao government at the Centre.

--IANS

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Air pollution may not just lead to respiratory problems, but could also be a leading cause of premature delivery and low birth rate, according to experts.

Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital (GTB Hospital), Delhi, is conducting a research to study the impact of air pollution on foetus.

"It has been seen that exposure of pregnant women to high level of air pollution sometimes leads to premature delivery or affects the birth rate as well. It is not yet substantiated, however, that pollution will cause any type of congenital malformation. The result of the study will help us get a clearer picture," Kiran Guleria, a gynaecologist at the GTB Hospital, told IANS.

She is a part of the research and working at the Department of Biochemistry in the city-based University College of Medical Sciences.

The research is a part of the study titled "DAPHNE" (Delhi Air Pollution Health And Effects), where the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) is also doing a project related to the effect of pollution on children with respiratory problems.

Guleria said that the research primarily focuses on monitoring the foetus and the unborn child, which will involve observing the baby in the womb and mapping its growth.

"The study will help us understand and see the effect of pollution on the unborn child in terms of growth, respiratory problems like asthma or other allergies. After birth, the child will also be observed for two years," the health expert noted.

For the study, a belt has been developed that will be worn by women for 48 hours during each trimester of pregnancy. There will be a continuous mapping of the women involved in the project for 9 months.

"It will give a clear picture on the impact of pollution during different seasons as well. Simultaneously, we will collect blood and urine samples to understand it better. After the child is born, we will even examine the cord blood to see how much transition of air pollution has happened from the mother to child," Guleria added.

GTB Hospital has already started recruiting patients for the project. women aged between 20 and 35 with no other pregnancy complications have been approached by the research team.

Funded by the Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science and Technology, India, and Medical Research Council, Britain, the project is a collaborative effort of the two nations.

In India, apart from the GTB Hospital and AIIMS, Sri Ramachandra University, Chennai, and IIT Delhi are also associated with the research.

--IANS

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India has considerably improved its maritime and coastal security since the Mumbai terror attack 10 years ago, but a comprehensive regulatory mechanism for stakeholders is needed to improve coordination and help make best use of institutional capabilities, experts have said.

The 2008 terror attack, carried out by 10 Pakistani terrorists who came undetected by sea and killed 166 people, had exposed gaps in coastal security. The government had then initiated measures to improve surveillance along the country's 7,516-km-long coastline.

As part of the steps taken, the Cabinet Committee on Security had assigned specific responsibilities to the Navy and Coast Guard in 2009. The Navy was given responsibility of overall maritime security, including offshore and coastal security, and the Coast Guard was entrusted with responsibility of coastal security in territorial waters.

Steps were also taken to enhance capabilities of other stakeholders such as marine police, Central Industrial Security Force, Border Security Force and Customs.

While real-time information-sharing, management and analysis have significantly improved, there remains a gap in tracking of fishing vessels which is sought to be addressed by fitting them with satellite-based transponders.

Admiral Arun Prakash (retired), who headed the Indian Navy for over two years from 2004, told IANS there has been good progress in coastal security in terms of technology ,with coastal radar stations and an integrated information centre being put in place.

"One is not too sure about coordination between intelligence agencies -- Research & Analysis Wing, Intelligence Bureau -- and the armed forces... how good it is at the moment. That was the weakness in 2008. If that is not been resolved, then we will not be very much better off," Adm. Prakash told IANS.

He said the United States passed the Patriot (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism) Act within three months of 9/11.

"In our case, 10 years have passed and there is no Act, no real change in the organisation. These things need to be looked up."

He said coastal police was under the states and police forces are the actual action-taking organisations and a central act can consolidate all the actions to be taken.

"There should have been a central Act of parliament regarding homeland security which would have taken care of all these things -- coordination, who is responsible, who is to take action. That I think is a major loophole," he said.

Vice Admiral Pradeep Chauhan (retd), Director of the National Maritime Foundation, said that both maritime and coastal security have been substantially strengthened and inter-agency coordination has had spinoffs in other areas such as disaster relief and search-and-rescue operations.

"Coming to coastal security, we have done well... but have we done well enough? Of course not. It will be wise to consolidate on the gains we have made over the decade and to also simultaneously address those challenges which remain unresolved," he said.

Chauhan said there are very close linkages between governance, security and development and it would be imprudent to pretend that "we can do one without the concomitant development of others".

He said as economic indicators rise, so does the ability of the government to provide for more public goods of higher quality. "I think that we haven't done badly at all."

He said there is always a need to review the framework of maritime governance to improve coordination and to remove the wholly "artificial" divide between what is a security requirement and what is a development requirement.

Noting that coastal security does not occur at ports but at sea, he said one of the worrying things has been incremental merging of piracy and terrorist groups.

"The first challenge is to maintain security consciousness in a nation that is traditionally not aware of the dangers arising from the sea," he said, adding that coastal security itself is a product of governance.

Emphasising the need of a comprehensive national maritime policy, he said it must rest on two pillars -- pursuit of blue economy and pursuit of holistic maritime security.

"These two pillars rest on foundation which is the legal framework. What you need is a strong legal framework. What is required a strong regulatory mechanism for stakeholders at sea," he said.

He also called for more research studies and putting in place facilitation structures.

Rear Admiral S. Shrikhande (retired) said since 26/11 the Navy has put in place, along with the Coast Guard, mechanisms for surveillance, patrolling and monitoring the movements of vessels.

He said there had been "a very satisfactory degree of coordination" among the multiple agencies, ministries and departments who play a role in coastal security.

"There is need to keep in mind that terrorists and anti-national elements will try looking at gaps and exploit them, and training equipment and readiness and overall effectiveness of marine police and state police has to be constantly exercised.

"Readiness, awareness and alertness by all concerned has to be there," he said.

The government had set up National Committee for Strengthening Maritime and Coastal Security in 2009 and this has been followed by committees at the state and district levels to facilitate focus on security-related issues.

Ten heavily armed Pakistani terrorists had landed in Mumbai's in the Colaba area from the sea Nov 26, 2008, and laid siege to several key locations, including Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, Taj Mahal Hotel, Chabad House and Leopold Cafe. The terror assault ended after three days when security forces killed nine of the gunmen. One of the attackers, Ajmal Kasab, was captured alive. He was hanged after a trial.

(Prashant Sood can be contacted at prashant.s@ians.in)

--IANS

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Jammu and Kashmir Police claimed on Sunday to have busted an Islamic State-inspired module in Srinagar with the assistance of Delhi Police.

The police said it has arrested three militants in Srinagar who were inspired by the Islamic State.

A police spokesman said on specific input, the Srinagar police busted the module and arrested the militants with the assistance of Delhi police.

At a "Naka" (checkpost), a party of Srinagar police intercepted motorcycle-borne militants who were moving through the Kothi Bagh area.

"Police acted swiftly and apprehended the motorcyclist and the other two associates," the spokesman said.

He claimed arms and ammunition were recovered from the possession of the arrested militants.

--IANS

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Nirmalas father barred from flying to Capital

Kathmandu-bound Yagya Raj Pant, who has demonstrated signs of a mental illness after staging days of indefinite sit-in demanding justice for his daughter Nirmala, has been stranded at Geta Airport in Dhangadhi along with his wife Durga Devi and two other relatives after an airline company refused to fly him citing his mental condition.
In a joint operation with Srinagar police, Delhi Police has arrested three terrorists belonging to Islamic State of Jammu and Kashmir (ISJK), including a student of Delhi's Jamia Millia Islamia university from Srinagar, an officer said on Sunday.

The accused have been identified as Haris Mushtaq Khan who is a student of Jamia Millia Islamia, and his accomplices Tahir Ali Khan and Asif Suhail Nadaf. They are residents of different areas in Jammu and Kashmir, he said.

"They were arrested from Srinagar's Kothi Bagh area on a specific input. Police teams on Saturday intercepted their bike near Tourism Reception Center. The accused tried to lob a grenade at the police party," Deputy Commissioner of Police P.S. Kushwah said, adding that two loaded pistols, three grenades, four mobiles and ISIS black flags were recovered from their possession.

"During investigation, the police found that Haris Mushtaq Khan, Tahir Ali Khan and Asif Suhail Nadaf were in touch with some of their accomplices in Delhi for obtaining weapons. They worked for one Aadil Thokar currently in Jammu and Kashmir," Kushwah said.

"They all belong to the ISIS-inspired module and wanted to strengthen their unit in their home state and Delhi for extending their activities. The Srinagar police is interrogating them to get more information out of them," the DCP said.

"On September 6, the Delhi Police had arrested their two accomplices -- Parvaiz Rashid Lone and Jamsheed Zahoor Paul -- from the Red Fort area in old Delhi. They had come to get illegal arms from their contacts," he said.

The accused, along with the other accomplices, had in July this year indulged in a grenade attack at CRPF personnel on guard duty in Anantnag district of Jammu and Kashmir. They had also killed a Sub-Inspector in Kashmir in November 2017, according to the officer.

"They also killed a civilian, Ahad Ahmed, in September this year on suspicion of him being a police informer," he added.

--IANS

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The body of Kannada cinema star M.H. Ambareesh was on Sunday flown from here by an Air Force helicopter to his hometown Mandya in south Karnataka for a last glimpse by his fans and the public, said an official.

"The glass casket containing Ambareesh's body was flown to Mandya in the evening (at 5.00 p.m.) and kept at MV Stadium for the public to see him one last time and pay their respects till Monday morning," an official told IANS here.

Ambareesh, 66, died Saturday night following a heart attack at a private hospital in the city.

His wife and multilingual actress Sumalatha, son Abhishek and a few relatives who accompanied the body, were seated around the body in the stadium.

Mandya is about 100km from Bengaluru on way to Mysuru.

Thousands of people, including children, from Mandya and Mysuru districts thronged the stadium to see the body of their 'rebel star' draped in the tri-colour and the famous Mysuru 'peta' (headgear) crowning his head.

"The body will be flown back to Bengaluru on Monday morning for a State funeral at the Kanteerva Stadium in the city's northwest. It will be kept at the Kanteerva Stadium in the City Centre till afternoon for the public to pay their homage," said the official.

"The state government sought the Defence Ministry's permission to use the Indian Air Force (IAF) helicopter for flying Ambareesh's body to Mandya and bring it back to Bengaluru for the last rites as a special case," added the official.

Among the prominent people who paid floral tributes to Ambareesh were Suttur Mutt pontiff Shivarathri Deshikendra and Adichunchanagiri Mutt pontiff Nirmalananda, who also consoled the bereaved family.

The administration imposed prohibitory orders in Mandya district to maintain law and order and regulate the crowd going to the stadium.

"Sale of liquor has also been banned till Monday night across the district to prevent any untoward incident during the three-day mourning period," Mandya Deputy Commissioner N. Manjusri told reporters.

The administration has also deployed about 2,000 police personnel in and around the stadium to regulate the movement of the people.

--IANS

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With cruise tourism gaining momentum, a trans-border river cruise from the West Bengal capital, through Sunderbans to Bangladesh and then onwards to the Northeast is expected to start in March 2019, an official said.

"There were secretary-level talks between India and Bangladesh in October.

"It has been decided that one of the river cruise operators would be starting operations from March, 2019 from Kolkata through Sunderbans via protocol route to Bangladesh and then to the Northeast," Inland Waterways Authority of India's Member S.V.K. Reddy here.

He said night navigation facility has been placed up to the Indian border and the neighbouring country was supposed to provide the same as per requirement.

Reddy also informed that the Indian government has been funding up to 80 per cent of the dredging cost in some identified stretches within Bangladesh portion in the Indo-Bangla protocol route.

He also said the route up to the Indian border is "navigable" and regularly 15-20 barges carrying fly ash are going to Bangladesh.

--IANS

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The Libyan Army has killed 12 Islamic State militants near Tazerbu, destroyed their vehicles and confiscated weapons and ammunition during a joint operation, a military said.

"Joint forces of military battalions and security elements chased a number of remnants of the terrorists, who were hiding in the uninhabited site west of Tazerbu," it said on Saturday.

The small oasis town, that is the key provider of groundwater in west and south Libya, witnessed the deadly attack on Friday when dozens of gunmen on armed vehicles targeted its police station and a number of government buildings.

Eight people were killed and more than 15 others were injured.

The terrorists also took dozens as hostages before they withdrew from the area. The army then issued orders to "eliminate" the terrorists.

The UN Support Mission in Libya on Saturday condemned the attack, and call on parties in the conflict to "immediately cease targeting civilians and civilian objects in compliance with International Humanitarian Law."

--IANS

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An ex-paramilitary man on Sunday shot his friend dead amid suspicion the deceased had an extra-marital affair with his wife, police said.

The incident happened in West Bengal's Nadia district.

"Bibhash Mondal, an ex-Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) man, allegedly shot his friend Subhas Biwas twice on Sunday morning when he was sitting at a shop near his residence in Nadia's palashipara," a district police official said.

"Biswas sustained two bullet injuries in his chest and abdomen. He was rushed to a hospital by his family members and neighbours where he was declared brought dead," the official added.

According to locals, Biswas and Mondal were close friends for many years but their relationship deteriorated recently after the latter suspected Biswas of having an extra-marital affair with his wife.

"He (Mondal) came and started firing at his friend, when he saw him outside the shop at around 7 a.m. Biswas collapsed on the ground as two bullets had hit him," a witness said.

The accused is absconding, police said.

"Mondal is at large since the incident. We are looking for him. His wife and the rest of the family members will be interrogated," the official added.

--IANS

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Ahead of the Madhya Pradesh Assembly polls scheduled on Wednesday, the police here in Balaghat district was able to avoid a Maoist attack by killing one from a group of seven.

The Left Wing extremist was brought down during a Saturday encounter near the Godri village. There was also a woman insurgent in the group which was mostly in Khaki fatigues. The rest managed to flee, a police officer said.

To avoid any attacks ahead of the upcoming polls there is a huge deployment of security personnel along the borders with Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh, especially in the Balaghat and Mandla districts, a police statement said.

--IANS

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British Prime Minister Theresa May has written a letter to the public pleading for their support for her Brexit deal, as the EU prepares to formally sign it off.

In May's "letter to the nation" -- published on the eve of the EU summit on Sunday, she claimed the deal was "in our national interest" and would work for all parts of the UK.

Leaving the EU on March 29, 2019 will mark "a new chapter in our national life", she said.

"It must mark the point when we put aside the labels of 'Leave' and 'Remain' for good and we come together again as one people. To do that, we need to get on with Brexit now by getting behind this deal," the BBC quoted her as saying.

The Prime Minister said she would be campaigning "with (her) heart and soul" to get members of Parliament to pass the deal in the House of Commons and "honour the result of the referendum".

She said the deal delivers on Brexit by ending free movement of people and "vast" annual payments to the EU.

"With Brexit settled", the government will be able to focus on issues such as the economy, the NHS and building homes, she added.

The prime minister said her agreement promises a "brighter future" for the UK and leaving the EU in 2019, will be "a moment of renewal and reconciliation for our whole country", the BBC reported.

EU leaders are in Brussels for a summit to decide whether to endorse the deal. European Council chief Donald Tusk has recommended all 27 countries to approve it during the Sunday summit.

Spain -- which had threatened to boycott the summit -- has conceded after a last-minute disagreement over Gibraltar was resolved on Saturday.

However, even if the EU agrees to the deal, it needs to be passed by UK Parliament, and many MPs - including May's own Conservative Party - have stated they would vote against it.

--IANS

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Actor-filmmaker Farhan Akhtar on Sunday -- the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women -- launched a short film "She", which takes a look at the various forms of violence perpetrated against women. He says a safer environment for women will be possible when men change their mentality and behaviour.

Farhan's MARD (Men Against Rape and Discrimination), filmmaker Feroz Abbas Khan and Population Foundation of India (PFI) jointly released the three-minute short "She" online.

"For women to feel safe in our society, it is important that men change their mentality and behaviour. This short film 'She' gives the other perspective - of how ignorant men are about this violence. It is imperative that men understand the humiliation that women go through. Only then will they truly make an effort to change," Farhan said in a statement.

Khan, the film's creative lead, added: "Men feel entitled to perpetuate violence against women. They feel it is their right. Director Ranjeeta Kaur exposes that entitlement in 'She'."

PFI Executive Director Poonam Muttreja said: "Though more women are now finding the courage to speak out and report abuse, a large part of society still normalises such crimes, until it reaches the point of really heinous forms of violence. Men need to recognise that the everyday forms of violence and violation faced by women are no less harmful."--IANS

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Temperature across Himachal Pradesh on Sunday showed a rise due to the prevailing dry conditions, which the Met said will be there till Tuesday, when the western disturbances will set in.

"There are chances of rain or snowfall in the high-altitude region on November 28," an India Meteorological Department (IMD) official told IANS.

The western disturbances -- storm systems originating from the Caspian Sea and moving across the Afghanistan-Pakistan region -- would be active in the region from November 27.

Most of the prominent tourist towns located in mid-hills, including Shimla, Narkanda, Kufri, Manali and Dalhousie, have been witnessing long sunny days, he added.

Keylong in Lahaul and Spiti district was the coldest place with a low of minus 2.9 degrees Celsius.

Shimla recorded 12.1 degrees Celsius, five degrees above season's average, while the minimum in Manali was 1.6 degrees, 13 in Dalhousie and 9.2 in Dharamsala.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Mexico's incoming government has agreed to support the US government's plan to remake US asylum policy, the media reported.

Citing Mexican officials and senior members of president-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's transition team, The Washington Post reported on Saturday the US administration had won the support of Mexico's incoming government for a plan to remake US border policy by requiring asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their claims move through US courts.

"For now, we have agreed to this policy of Remain in Mexico," said Olga Sanchez Cordero, Mexico's incoming interior minister, who will take office on December 1, Xinhua news agency reported.

The agreement would break with long-standing asylum rules and create a new barrier to Central American migrants attempting to reach the US and escape poverty and violence.

US President Donald Trump renewed a threat on last Thursday to shut down the entire US border with Mexico as part of his administration's efforts to deter the entry of Central American migrants.

"If we find that it gets to a level where we are going to lose control or where people are going to start getting hurt, we will close entry into the country for a period of time until we can get it under control," Trump told reporters in Palm Beach, Florida.

A group of migrants, many of whom say they are fleeing persecution, poverty and violence in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, are making their way through Central America toward the US border for weeks. Many of them want to claim asylum.

Thousands of US troops have been deployed along the country's southern border with Mexico to help strengthen border security.

--IANS

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Nirmalas father brought to Kathmandu, doctors say no signs of mental illness

Yagya Raj Pant, who has been staging an indefinite sit-in demanding an investigation into the rape and murder of his 13-year old daughter, Nirmala, appeared flustered and showed erratic signs in public. Hours after he was brought to the emergency room at the hospital on Sunday, doctors said early reports showed no signs of mental illness.
US-based space agency NASA's Mars InSight lander, due to arrive on the Red planet's surface on Monday night, may teach us more about Earth.

It is going to use seismometers to study the planet's interior so we can learn more about how it formed and why it's so different from Earth, BBC reported on Sunday.

In less than two days, NASA is landing on Mars with NASA InSight! Thank you to the NASA workforce... Let's get this done and start the next phase!, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine tweeted on Saturday.

InSight will hit the top of the Martian atmosphere at 19,800 kilometres per hour (kph) and slow down to eight kph -- about human jogging speed -- before its three legs touch down on Martian soil.

That extreme deceleration has to happen in just under seven minutes.

"There's a reason engineers call landing on Mars 'seven minutes of terror'," Rob Grover, InSight's entry, descent and landing (EDL) lead, based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, has said in a statement.

"We can't joystick the landing, so we have to rely on the commands we pre-programme into the spacecraft. We've spent years testing our plans, learning from other Mars landings and studying all the conditions Mars can throw at us.

"And we're going to stay vigilant till InSight settles into its home in the Elysium Planitia region," Grover said.

Launched on May 5, Mars Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) lander marks NASA's first Mars landing since the Curiosity rover in 2012.

The landing will kick off a two-year mission in which InSight will become the first spacecraft to study Mars' deep interior.

Its data will also help scientists understand the formation of all rocky worlds, including our own.

About 80 live viewing events for the public to watch the InSight landing will take place around the world. It will be at 1.30 a.m. on Tuesday in India.

People from around the world will be able to watch the event live on NASA Television, the agency's website and social media platforms, including on YouTube.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Navy chief Admiral Sunil Lanba is scheduled to visit Russia from November 26 to November 29 to consolidate bilateral defence relations and also to explore new avenues for defence cooperation.

Lanba will be commencing his official visit from St. Petersburg where he is scheduled to hold bilateral discussions with his counterpart, Admiral Vladimir Korolev, Commander-in-Chief, Russian Federation Navy (RuFN), an official release said on Sunday.

The Admiral is also scheduled to lay a wreath at Piskarev memorial cemetery dedicated to the victims of the 'Siege of Leningrad' and visit the Nakhimov Naval School and Admiralty Shipyard.

In Moscow, he will have discussions with Russia's First Deputy Defence Minister General V.V. Gerasimov and Director of Federal Service for Military Technical Cooperation (FSMTC) Dmitriy Shugaev.

Admiral Lanba will also visit the Military Academy of the General Staff of the Armed Forces and deliver a talk on "Indian Navy's Perspective on Maritime Security".

The Indian Navy cooperates with the Russian Navy on many fronts, including operational interactions, training, hydrography cooperation and exchange of subject-matter experts in various fields through the medium of Navy-to-Navy Staff Talks, the release said.

The Indian and Russian navies have been conducting the bilateral maritime exercise 'Indra Navy' since 2003 and 'Indra Tri-Services Exercise' since 2017.

The next edition of the exercise 'Indra-Navy' is scheduled off Visakhapatnam next month.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
As part of their retail network expansion plan, India's three state-run oil-marketing companies would open 5,125 petrol bunks in Tamil Nadu over the next two years, said a senior official of Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) on Sunday.

The three companies are IOC, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd., and Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd.

"The three companies plan to add about 5,125 new dealerships, as demand for oil is growing. The demand for petrol is growing at 8 per cent per annum and diesel at 4 per cent," R. Sitharthan, Executive Director, IOC, and also the state-level Coordinator for oil industry, told reporters here.

As on April 1, 2018, the three companies had a retail network of 4,844 petrol bunks in Tamil Nadu. The planned retail expansion will take the number of outlets to 9,969.

The three players will populate the market with their retail outlets, giving the private players like Essar a tough time.

He said the fuel outlets will come up along new highways, agricultural pockets and industrial hubs.

Sitharthan said the process of application for dealerships and allotment has been simplified.

"For the first time, a computerised draw of lots would be held, and opening of the bids would be held under the supervision of an independent agency for greater transparency."

Sitharthan also said the three companies would expand their retail outlets in Puducherry by 132 units, taking the total to 262 bunks.

Indian Oil plans to add 2,615 new outlets, Hindustan Petroleum 1,515 outlets and Bharat Petroleum 1,127 outlets in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
State-run Satluj Jal Vidyut Nigam Ltd (SJVNL) on Sunday said it's currently building hydro power projects totalling 1,572 megawatts (MW).

The company said that the Himachal Pradesh government has allotted a 780-MW Jangi-Thopan-Powari Hydro Electric Project in Kinnaur district to it.

In a letter of allotment issued by the state's Directorate of Energy, the project is on a build, own, operate and transfer (BOOT) basis for 70 years.

SJNVL Chairman and Managing Director Nand Lal Sharma said the project would be completed in a time-bound manner.

The current installed capacity of SJVNL is 2003.2 MW, comprising 1,912 MW of hydro, 85.6 MW wind power and 5.6 MW solar power.

The company is in the process of implementing various projects, which are at different stages of development. Upon completion, they will add 4,018 MW capacity, he added.

The company has commissioned the country's largest 1,500-MW Nathpa-Jhakri Hydro Power Station in Himachal Pradesh.

Besides executing projects in Himachal Pradesh, SJVNL is executing hydro projects in Nepal, Bhutan, and Uttarakhand.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
President of the Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party (Lohia) Shivpal Singh Yadav met Uttar Pradesh Governor Ram Naik on Sunday and expressed his concern over the "large and unlawful" gathering of people in Ayodhya.

Emerging out of the meeting, the former state Minister said it was a matter of grave concern that despite prohibitory orders lakhs of people were allowed and even facilitated by the state government to gather in the temple town.

He added that this was an attempt by some forces to stoke communal passions that posed a danger to the state's harmony as well as that of the nation's.

Shivpal Yadav, who is the younger brother of Samajwadi Party (SP) patron Mulayam Singh Yadav, also questioned the silence of the Yogi Adityanath government on the 'Dharma Sabha' being held in Ayodhya by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) on Sunday.

"A similar situation had arisen in 1992 and it is for everyone to see what happened...the matter is before the Supreme Court and everyone should show patience," he said while pointing out that that there was a large stretch of land on the banks of the river Saryu which was under government control and that a Ram temple can be constructed there.

"Why this obstinacy to build a Ram temple at the spot where Babri mosque was razed," the PSP(L) leader said.

He also warned that the BJP and its affiliates should not do anything that threatened the communal fabric and lead to riots and violence.

There are better things for the state and the central governments to do rather than going on name changing spree of districts and installing statues, he added.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Three children were killed when a live bomb they thought was a toy exploded near a firing range of the Indian Army in Arunachal Pradesh's Anjaw district, an official said on Sunday.

The incident occurred on Saturday evening at Chirang village when the children picked up the used shell and began playing with it.

The shell exploded, killing them on the spot.

Chief Minister Pema Khandu expressed shock and grief at the incident, and condoled the deaths of the three children.

He announced an ex-gratia of Rs 4 lakh each to the family of the deceased.

Khandu cautioned the villagers against going near danger zones such as the Army firing ranges.

Also, the Chief Minister asked the Indian Army to issue advisories or put up sign boards depicting danger zones or restricted areas.

"Such incidents should not recur, for which extreme precautionary measures have to be put in place by the Army, the civil administration and the village elders," Khandu said.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Uttarakhand cabinet has ratified a proposal to rename the Jolly Grant airport in the state capital after late prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, an official said on Sunday.

The proposal will now be sent to the Aiprorts Authority of India and the Union Civil Aviation Ministry for approval.

Built by the Birla industrial group in the early 80s, the Jolly Grant airport is now used to operate several flights everyday.

A senior official said that Vajpayee was instrumental in the creation of Uttarakhand and hence renaming the airport after him would be a homage to him.

The state unit of the Congress has, however, disapproved of the move, as the Harish Rawat government had earlier sent a proposal to the Union government to rename the airport after Jagadguru Shankaracharya.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Valencia CF has routed Rayo Vallecano 3-0 at Mestalla Stadium to finally record its first home win of the 2018-2019 La Liga season.

Santi Mina scored a brace for the home side on Saturday night against an opponent that lacked effectiveness and initiative offensively and scarcely put the Bats' defense under pressure, reports Efe news.

The first half was intense and played at a brisk pace, with Valencia trying to impose its will from the opening whistle and Rayo showcasing a crisp passing game.

Valencia took a 1-0 lead 10 minutes before first-half stoppage time on a play in which Rodrigo got his head on a pass and sent it into the opposing area for Mina, who outraced a defender and slotted the ball home past Rayo net minder Stole Dimitrievski.

The hosts then took full control of the contest in the 61st minute when Mina scored on a corner-kick play.

Dimitrievsky managed to save one attempt by Gabriel Paulista, but Mina was there to gather the rebound and bury a shot into the roof of the goal for a 2-0 lead.

French striker Kevin Gameiro, who had replaced Mina in the 67th minute, then gave his side another insurance goal in the 76th minute when he scored on a counter-attack play off a pass from Rodrigo.

With its third La Liga win this season (and first home victory after five draws and one defeat), Valencia has provisionally climbed into the ninth spot in the Spanish-league standings with 17 points, while Rayo is second to last with just seven points.

--IANS

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The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) on Sunday said they will not cede an inch of land for anything but a Ram temple and demanded from the Sunni Waqf Board that they withdraw their case over distribution of the disputed land as ordered by the Allahabad High Court (HC).

Champat Rai, International Vice President of the right-wing outfit, told a large gathering of supporters at Ayodhya that the issue is non-negotiable for Hindus.

"The distribution of land is not acceptable to us and we want the whole land for Lord Ram," he declared before the 75,000-strong cheering crowds. He also pointed out that the Hindus will not accept offering of "Namaaz" over any piece of the disputed land.

Warning that no one should test the patience of the Hindu community anymore, he said they have been battling the matter for the past 490 years.

"Some intelligent people think that the whole matter began after the destruction of the Babri mosque in 1992...they are ignorant...the matter goes back to 490 years," the VHP leader said.

He also said that the "dharm sabha" had to be called after a gap of 25 years because some intellectuals think that on December 6, 1992 curtains came down on the contentious issue. "The fire has not been extinguished, it continues to simmer inside our hearts."

Rai added that this is last such congregation to press for Ram temple and the next logical step for the Hindu outfit would be beginning of construction of a grand Ram temple in Ayodhya.

He also demanded that the Muslim litigants should withdraw the case from the Supreme Court and pave way for an early construction of the Ram temple. Another prominent seer Swamy Bhadracharya, however, announced that future plans of the saint community with regard to the Ram temple would be announced after December 11.

This is being seen as a wait-and-watch move by the saints as Prime Minister Narendra Modi at an election rally in Madhya Pradesh earlier in the day accused the Congress of trying to thwart an early solution to the Ram Mandir issue.

Amid talks of a possible introduction of a Bill by the Modi government in Parliament's winter session that begins on December 11, many seers are of the view that a "last opportunity should be given to the BJP government on the issue".

Earlier, hundreds of thousands of VHP workers and supporters trooped into the venue of the "dharm sabha" and Muslim locals showered flower petals on them. Muslim litigant Iqbal Ansari, who had earlier expressed fear at the growing crowds in Ayodhya for the VHP event, on Sunday thanked the Uttar Pradesh government for "good arrangements".

--IANS

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The World Bank has released its Doing Business 2019 report, which shows that India has done quite well in terms of notching up a healthy score as well as significantly improving its rank. Indias Ease of Doing Business (EoDB) rank has gone up to 77, compared to 100 shown in the previous years report.

Indias EoDB score, which captures its progress under 10 broad parameters, has also seen an increase of 6.63 points. The Indian government has underlined the need for cracking the code that is used by the World Bank to determine the rankings of the 190-odd countries under ...
State 2 government begins preparations for Bibaha Panchami

Province 2 government has been making preparations to perform Bibaha Panchami ceremony.
In late October-early November, the Ministry of Finance (MoF) got into a very public spat with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). Most of us got sucked into debates on Section 7 of the RBI Act, and whether prompt corrective action (PCA) on bad banks and new defaulters is too harsh and whether the RBI needs to provide more liquidity to smaller companies.

Where should you stand on all this? If you are an ordinary citizen or a consumer, the entire debate is pointless. Neither the RBI nor the MoF cares about the many issues that affect us directly or indirectly everyday. The financial consumer ...
The congregation of right-wing activists in Ayodhya for Vishwa Hindu Parishad's mega event for construction of Ram temple has triggered the painful memories of the 1992 tragedy among many residents, with a few Muslim families temporarily leaving the town fearing for their safety.

Some Muslim families had left the pilgrim town for good after the large-scale violence that had erupted here post the demolition of the 16th-century Babri Mosque 26 years ago on December 6, and now many others have temporarily left their homes, say local residents.

Despite high security deployment in Ayodhya and the twin town of Faizabad, many families from minority communities have decided to move out, feeling uncomfortable amid the "din and provocative speeches" surrounding the VHP's 'Dharma Sabha' that is being touted as the largest congregation of "Ram bhakts" in Ayodhya since the 1992 'kar seva', they said.

The memories of 1992 still haunts many people from both the communities who had directly or indirectly suffered in the violence that had erupted after the Mughal-era mosque was razed by a frenzied army of 'kar sewaks' (right-wing activists).

The VHP has claimed that three lakh people, including seers, will attend its 'Dharma Sabha', to be held at Bade Bhakt Mal Ki Baghia, not far from the controversial Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas-run workshop, where work for building a temple has been underway since 1990.

An uneasy calm prevailed in Muslim-dominated areas such as Dharam Kanta, Qaziana and Katra.

"I live here and, many of my Muslim neighbours, who were here till a few days ago, have now left, either to their relatives' places nearby or temporarily shifted to elsewhere, out of Ayodhya," Nisha said, pointing to a locked house in her neighbourhood in the heart of the city.

The situation is similar in Saidwada and Begumpura, and many members of the minority community, who have not left the town, also said that they were feeling a "sense of unease" seeing so many outsiders whipping up communal frenzy in Ayodhya.

Mohammed Azim, a 46-year-old auto-driver in the city, who bore the brunt of the 1992 tragedy, said, "The communally-charged atmosphere in Ayodhya is reminding me of the painful memories of the tragedy and the violence that had ensued".

"Residents of Ayodhya have always lived in peace, and even after the unfortunate Babri demolition episode, people from both communities are still trying to have an atmosphere of peace. But, then these outsider come to our town and vitiate the atmosphere. So, many have decided to move out temporarily," he said.

Mohammed Muslim, 78, who now drives an e-rickshaw, gets perturbed talking about the 1992 incident, and wished, "Politicians and Hindu-outfits would not whip up communal frenzy. We were unsafe then, and today also we feel insecure with so much of crowd in our town."



The streets of Ayodhya Sunday were filled with right-wing activists, many bearing saffron flags, who have poured in from various parts of the county for the VHP grand event to push for construction of a Ram temple here, even as Ayodhya has virtually been turned into a fortress to ensure fool-proof security.

Chants of "Jai Shri Ram" rent the air in the streets near the Saryu river, where the Yogi Adityanath government has also planned to install a towering statue of Lord Ram.

Hotels, inns and lodges are packed in both Ayodhya and Faizabad.

"Naturally, Muslims will not feel secure in such a polarised atmosphere, and with many leaders making provocative statements, they do not want to leave things to fate, and thus moved out due to safety reasons. In Faizabad town, some families have left altogether, while in many cases, women and children have been shifted to relatives' houses in nearby districts," Manzar Mehdi, a local historian told PTI.

Mehdi, a Faizabad resident and also editor of a Faizabad-based bilingual (Hindi and Urdu) publication that promotes communal harmony, said, "Hindus and Muslims have lived and continue to live in peace in Ayodhya. Muslims do not fear for their safety from local Hindus but the outsiders who have gathered here."



Meanwhile, a senior police official said security has been stepped up in Ayodhya, in view of the VHP event and the presence of a large number of Shiv Sainiks in town.

"We are prepared to meet all challenges, all arrangements are in place in the town, the district and its border area to avoid any untoward incident. We are keeping a tight vigil and security around Ram Janmabhoomi site has also been stepped up," the senior official said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
As many as 21 people from Delhi were injuries after their bus fell into a gorge near Kyari in Himachal Pradesh's Solan district Sunday, police said.

The accident took place in the Kandaghat police station area on the Junga-Sadhupul road when the bus was returning to Delhi from a trip to Shimla and nearby tourist places, they said.

Of the injured, 15, including the driver and the conductor, are being treated at a community health centre in Junga, whereas six people, whose condition was stated as critical, were referred to the Indira Gandhi Medical College and Hospital (IGMC) in Shimla, they added.

Police are yet to verify the exact cause of the accident.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Pictures of 26/11 martyr Major are everywhere in his two-storey house tucked in a quiet locality here.

The gallery in the two-storey house of the Security Guard Commando is full of memories and a collection of personal articles stare from the shelves and whisper stories of valour into ears of visitors.

The constant presence of these articles is painful, but also joyful and inspiring for any visitor.

They narrate the winning-attitude, valour and charitable nature of Sandeep, who lost his life while battling the Pakistani Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists during the 26/11 attack on in 2008.

Sandeep always had a winning attitude and liked for the same reason, his father Unnikrishnan said.

"My son always had this attitude of winning in everything that he did. He liked for this reason.

"Sandeep always wanted our country to win. When lost a match, he used to be very disappointed. He also used to console me whenever an ISRO project failed. He did not like defeat," the retired ISRO officer said in an interview at Bengaluru.

Talking about Sandeep's charitable nature, Unnikrishnan said, "I did not know about it.Only after he had gone I realised it. Going through his bank balance, I only found Rs 3,000 to Rs 4,000, though he was drawing a decent salary".

"I thought he could not save much because he could have been buying costly branded products. But his colleagues talked about his charity.One of his colleagues told me that he had borne all health expenses of his mother, who was suffering from a spine problem," he said.

"Also, Sandeep was regularly donating money to a number of charitable institutions.I realised this when I started receiving reminders on renewal of donations after his departure," he added.

Sandeep was a nationalist too.

"He always supported nationalism. For him, nationalism meant that you do something good for the country, not extract benefits from it. Somebody should decide whether you are a nationalist, not that you go around calling yourself a nationalist. He always opposed these people," Unnikrishnan said.

The last message of the braveheart to his personnel while carrying out the operation was, "Don't come up, I will handle them."



These words have left a deep impression on his troop commandos.

"Sandeep used to say he did not want to see a mother weeping over his colleague's body and preferred his mother to bear the loss," said Unnikrishnan, as he recollected the sterling qualities of his braveheart son.

Major Unnikrishnan was leading a team of NSG commandos to flush out terrorists from the Taj Palace Hotel in when he was fatally wounded



He was conferred the Ashok Chakra, the country's highest peacetime gallantry award, on 26 January 2009.
Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) gave "sea training" to 26/11 terror attack convict Ajmal Kasab in the high seas of "Karachi", revealed a new book "Fragile Frontiers: The Secret History of Mumbai Terror Attacks".

The sea training, as per the book written by historian Saroj Kumar Rath, also included "how to fish", something that made Kasab think that "he had got a job and he could earn a respectable living".

"He (Kasab) was not informed by the LeT why he was being prepared as a mariner and as a fishermen," quoted the book from what Kasab told during his interrogation.

According to the book, fearing a leak, the sea route assault plan was kept secret by the top LeT commanders -- Hafiz Saeed, Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi, Abu Hamza and others -- until November 2008.

It also said that before the D-day, the LeT tried to send attackers to Mumbai twice, but "failed on both occasions".

"In September 2008, the boat carrying terrorists hit a rock in the sea and the attackers almost drowned before their handlers rescued them. The other failed attempt was on 7 November 2008, when an alarmed captain of an Indian boat refused to surrender to the LeT and fled," it added.

The book, in one of its essay titled 'Ajmal Kasab: The LeT side of the story', recorded that the 2-year training of the recruits for the 26/11 attacks was a "joint responsibility of the LeT and the ISI".

"Each terrorist had to undergo a series of training and indoctrination sessions organized by the LeT. All the 10 terrorists recruited for the Mumbai attacks had received four stages of training and after that, received sea training as well," read the book.

As part of the sea training the recruits were taught how to read maps, how to measure the depth of the sea, how to use GPS for the sea route, how to use the nets of fishermen and how to operate a ship.

"They were also trained on how to use a fisherman's net just to mislead the Indian navy personnel in case of an enquiry."



Also, other than the sea training, the four stage training received by the ten terrorists under the LeT command was: Daura-e-Sufa (20 Days' Preliminary Training), Daura-e-Ama (21 Days' Combat Course), Daura-e-Khaas (75 Days' Advanced Combat Course), Daura-e-Ribat (30 Days' Training on Intelligence Agencies).

"Kasab received (Daura-e-Khaas) training during May-July 2008. Skills like how to open and close Kalashnikovs, firing of a gun... and how to survive 60 hours without food and still climb a mountain with a heavy load were taught.

"The Mumbai attacks continued for 62 hours and crossing the LoC in Kashmir would take 60 hours as well," it said.

Besides delving into the interrogation and confession report of Kasab, the book, also tried to answer significant questions like "Why do young boys like Kasab become terrorists in Pakistan? What is the root cause of terrorism? Or what motivates them to follow a violent lifestyle?".

Kasab, the lone terrorist captured alive after the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, was hanged at Yerawada jail in Pune on November 21, 2012 after the then-president Pranab Mukherjee rejected his mercy petition.

Published by Routledge India, "Fragile Frontiers: The Secret History of Mumbai Terror Attacks", priced at Rs 995, other than offering a lucid and graphic account of the ill-fated day also traces the changing dynamics of terror in South Asia.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Senior lawyer Ujjwal Nikam, who appeared as special public prosecutor in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack case, on Sunday blamed the Pakistan government for delay in the trial against masterminds of the attack.

On the eve of 10th anniversary of the terror attack, he accused the neighbouring country of providing patronage to those accused in the case.

On November 26, 2008, 10 Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorists had sailed into Mumbai from Karachi and carried out coordinated attacks, killing 166 people and injuring over 300.

Nine of the attackers were killed by police while lone survivor Ajmal Kasab was captured and hanged after he was awarded death sentence by a court.

Dubbing LeT founder Hafiz Saeed and Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi as the "real terrorists" behind the attack in Mumbai in 2008, Nikam said the authorities in Pakistan should make efforts for cancellation of the bail granted to them.

"Still, a decade after the terror attack, there's little to show that Pakistan has acted against the masterminds," Nikam said.

Hewas speaking as the chief guestat a conference on law and justice organised here.

"The Pakistan government is responsible for delay in the trial (against the masterminds)," he said, adding that the neighbouring country needs to fight terrorism emanating from its soil.

In order to bring the guilty to book, the Indian government had in the past written to Pakistan, suggesting ways in which the trial could be expedited by cooperation through the legal channel, he added.

Hafiz Saeed was earlier put under house arrest after the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack, but was freed by a court in Pakistan in 2009.

He carries a reward of USD 10 million on his head, announced by the authorities in the US for his role in terror activities.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
At least three persons were killed and 15 others injured when a bus collided with a motorcycle at Baliasahi in Mayurbhanj district on Sunday, police said.

The bus, which was heading towards Baripada, collided with the motorcycle head on and overturned on National Highway No 49 under the jurisdiction of Jharpokhria police station, police said.

While the motorcycle rider died on the spot, his aunt who was riding pillion, and the cleaner of the bus succumbed to their injuries at the hospital here, Inspector In-Charge of Jharpokhria police station, S C Mallick said.

As many as 15 injured persons are undergoing treatment at the hospital, he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Andamans, under global spotlight after the killing of an American national by members of a highly protected tribe there, has emerged as one of the most sought-after tourist destinations in the country receiving on an average four lakh tourists, including several thousand foreigners, annually.

According to data available with the Union Home Ministry, more than 16 lakh tourists have visited the Andaman and Nicobar Islands since 2015 till October to see the natural beauty, beaches, flora and fauna and historically-significant landmarks in around 38 inhabited islands out of the 572 islets.

The archipelago has received 4,02,393 tourists, including 11,818 foreigners, this year till October while it received 4,87,229 tourists, including 15,310 foreigners in 2017.

In 2016, as many as 4,00,019 tourists, including 15,467 foreigners, had visited the Andamans and in 2015, a total of 3,11,358 tourists, including 14,674 foreigners, had gone to the union territory, the data said.

Andaman and Nicobar Islands is a union territory and comes under the administrative control of the home ministry.

The Andamans is in in the wake of killing of John Allen Chau, 27, by members of the reclusive Sentinelese tribe in North Sentinel Island last week.

The archipelago has been inhabited for several thousand years, at the very least. The earlier archaeological evidence yet documented goes back some 2,200 years; however, the indications from genetic, cultural and linguistic isolation studies point to habitation going back 30,000 60,000 years, well into the Middle Palaeolithic, according to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands tourism department.

In the Andaman Islands, the various Andamanese people maintained their separated existence through diversifying into distinct linguistic, cultural and territorial groups.

In 1850s, the indigenous people of Andamans first came into contact with the outside world. The local people are: Great Andamanese, who collectively represented at least 10 distinct sub groups and languages, including the Jarawa: the jungle (or Rutland Jarawa); the Onge; and the Sentinelese (the most isolated of all the groups). The indigenous peoples of the Nicobars (unrelated to the Andamanese) have a similarly isolated and lengthy association with the islands.

There are two main groups: the Nicobarese, or Nicobari living throughout many of the islands; and the Shompen, restricted to the interior of Great Nicobar.

The Andamans, located in the east of the Indian mainland geographically, float in splendid isolation in the Bay of Bengal. Once a hill range extending from Myanmar to Indonesia, these picturesque undulating islands, islets numbering around 572, are covered with dense rain-fed, damp and evergreen forests and endless varieties of exotic flora and fauna.

Most of these islands (about 550) are in the Andaman Group, 28 of which are inhabited. The smaller Nicobars, comprise some 22 main islands (10 inhabited). The Andaman and Nicobars are separated by the Ten Degree Channel which is 150 km wide.

These islands also boast of India's freedom struggle days' historically significant landmarks -- Cellular Jail, Ross Island, Viper Island, Hopetown and Mount Harriet.

The Andaman and Nicobar Islands have been declared as two of the 218 endemic bird areas of the world.

As many as 270 species and sub-species of birds have been reported to exist in these islands, 106 of them being endemic. The Andaman Wood Pigeon, Andaman Padauk and Dugong are declared as State Bird, State Tree and State Animal respectively.

There are about 96 wildlife sanctuaries, nine national parks and one biosphere reserve in the islands. These islands are blessed with the bounties of both south-west and north-east monsoons.

The North Sentinel Island, where the American was killed, is one of 29 islands in Andamans where till June foreigners had to take special permission -- the Restricted Area Permit (RAP) -- before being allowed to visit them.

Even though one filter (RAP) was withdrawn, any tourist is required to take permission from the forest department and the administration of the island as it is protected under two other acts -- protection of aboriginal people and forest acts, a home ministry official said.

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With happy faces and bodies swaying to drum beats, rainbow revellers took over the heart of Delhi and celebrated 'pride' and their newfound independence, two months after the Supreme Court quashed a colonial-era law that criminalised homosexuality.

At the 11th edition of Delhi Queer Pride Parade, thousands walked from Barakhamba Road to Tolstoy Marg on the warm Sunday afternoon, spreading cheer and colour.

The pride parade was the first one after the Supreme Court decriminalised homosexuality by quashing the draconian Section 377 on September 6.

The parade celebrated the identity and sexuality of the LGBTQ+ community and its allies as they walked with a renewed purpose to work towards the goals of a stronger community.

Wrapped in gauze bandages from head to toe, Sumit, who identifies as a girl, expressed her gratitude towards the apex court's decision, but also said that "for bigger changes you also have to wait longer".

"I am very thankful to the judges, I never expected it to happen in my life, but it did. I am very glad. For more changes you have to wait, a big change will take time. Nothing changes in a second. You make some efforts, you take some time," she said.

Explaining the symbolism of the bandages, she said there she had still a lot to explore as a person and "come out in the open, and want to live my life as I want to, not as people want me to".

Stacy, a Taiwanese woman working in Delhi for the last six years, compared the LGBT situation in India to back home where a majority voted against same-sex marriage in a referendum on Saturday.

"Last year, a high court in Taiwan said that everyone should have the right to marry anyone they choose. It was a success. But this year, with the referendum it's another setback.

"It is somewhat like India, first the 2009 verdict, then repealed it in 2013 and then passed again this year. They have kind of similar situations in Taiwan and India," she said.

She added that the people in Taiwan still don't want to recognise LGBT people as humans.

"With the setback and the discrimination there is no difference between India and Taiwan. They still think you don't deserve the same rights as they do. They are like 'ok, if you are here, but I don't agree you are the same human being. Or I agree you are a human being, but I don't agree you deserve the same rights'," the Taiwanese national told PTI.

The Delhi leg of the pride parade is organised every last Sunday of November since 2008 by the Delhi Queer Pride Committee.

"Our pride is a struggle not just to be free and to love at the level of individuals, but to build love as the only force capable of bringing about our collective liberation," the members said in a statement.

After the Section 377 verdict the community is now reaching out for a hate crime legislation to recognise all forms of anti-minority violence as punishable offenses.

Ishaan Sethi, an LGBT rights activist and founder of Delta, an LGBT dating app, said that the "parade is a celebration of equality and diversity".

"Pride is a celebration of our identities and to be visible as a community. It is a celebration of equality and diversity. This year is especially important because it is also a time to reflect on the past and honour and remember those who have fought this battle for equality and helped us reach where we are today," Sethi said.

The committee also demanded repeal of the Karnataka Police Act 36A and Hyderabad Eunuch Act, anti-beggary, anti-Hijra laws, sedition laws, UAPA, AFSPA and removal of the marital rape exception from rape laws.

While the victory in the name of Section 377 will remain significant, another member of the LGBT+ community, Bobby, a male escort, woefully said that the people still have to go a long way and the parade is just one way of being seen as equal in the society.

"There are no changes in the society towards us, those who don't know still look at us in disgust. And those who do know, they simply don't want to understand. The parade is just another mean to sensitise people about us, that more and more people come to know about us," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Talkot students study in open after landslide destroys school

Students of Bishwonath Primary School at Talkot Rural Municipality-3 in Bajhang district have been forced to study in the open for the past four months after a landslide in August destroyed the school building.
Around 100 Syrians have been hospitalised with breathing difficulties in Aleppo, state media and a monitor said Sunday, after allegations rebels fired "toxic gas" into the regime-held city the previous day.

State agency SANA reported "107 cases of breathing difficulties" in an updated toll on Sunday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor, said a total of 94 people were hospitalised, but most had been discharged and the 31 cases that remained were not critical.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Posters of VHP's 'Dharam Sabha' and Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray's programme in Ayodhya are splashed across the streets of the temple town, and many religious 'akharas' have turned into debating venues to discuss the issue of Ram temple.

The 'Dharam Sabha' is being touted as the largest congregation of 'Ram bhakts' in Ayodhya since the 1992 'kar seva'.

The congregation on Sunday is being held less than two weeks before the 26th anniversary of the demolition of the 16th century Babri Mosque, that had triggered unrest in this town and riots in other parts of India.

Hordes of activists of both the VHP and the Shiv Sena, who have gathered here from various parts of the country, bear saffron flags and chant 'Jai Shri Ram'. In the background posters with images of Lord Ram and the slogan 'Chalo Ayodhya' dot the roads.

At many places, passers-by can see small trucks carrying projectors and a screen to showcase 'Ramayana', a famous 1986 TV series.

The VHP has claimed that three lakh people, including seers, will attend its 'Dharam Sabha' to be held at Bade Bhakt Mal Ki Baghia, not far from the controversial Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas-run workshop, where work for building a temple has been underway since 1990.

Posters of the VHP mega event and Sena proclaiming 'Chalo Ayodhya' compete with each other to grab eyeballs of residents, even as rhetoric takes centre stage in the pilgrim town. From Ram ki Paidi to main market areas, huge hoardings have been put up, some in front of parks, bus stands and other public places.

Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray, who arrived here ahead of Sunday's VHP rally for a Ram temple, Saturday asked the Narendra Modi government to wake up from a "Kumbhakarna-like slumber" and declare the date for its construction.

Amid a growing chorus for construction of a Ram Temple, the Sena leader has also urged the government to bring legislation, or an ordinance, for building the temple on the disputed Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri Masjid site in Ayodhya, but he has not linked his own two-day visit to the VHP event.

'There is no political motive behind my visit to Ayodhya," claimed the Sena chief, who was greeted with slogans of "Jai Shri Ram" when he arrived in Ayodhya with his wife Rashmi and son Aditya.

Mahant Nrityagopal Das, the chairman of the Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas, was among those who welcomed Thackeray at Lakshman Qila, where the Sena leader made the remarks. A drone monitored the event.

The Sena claimed to have brought several thousand supporters to Ayodhya for Thackeray's events.

Many religious 'akharas' have turned into debating venues to discuss the issue of Ram Temple. Electronic media houses have organised debates at various venues, including the 'akharas' attended by large crowds.

Mahant Dharamdas, a prominent seer in Ayodhya, at a debate held at Digamber Akahara said, "The Supreme Court should heed to the sentiments of these people who have arrived in Ayodhaya today, with a pious belief that a Ram temple will be built soon."



At the Bade Bhakt Mal Ki Baghia, near the Karsewakpuram workshop, people have flocked from near and far to attend the event.

"I have come to Ayodhya with just one hope, the temple should be built. And, I am sure it will be built," said an 80-year-old woman from Jaunpur.

Many were seen dressed in saffron robes, some even wearing jazzy accessories, taking selfies, while others danced and sang.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The 'Dharma Sabha' in Ayodhya aims to whip up "communal frenzy" ahead of the Lok Sabha elections next year, Bhim Army chief Chandrashekhar Azad alleged Sunday, and said he will visit the temple town on Monday to urge the authorities to ensure that the rule of law prevails.

Referring to the renaming spree of the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh, he said the Yogi Adityanath dispensation should rechristen Ayodhya to Saket, claiming it was the "name of the area during the Buddhist time".

"What is happening in Ayodhya right now is nothing but another attempt by the BJP and the Sangh Parivar to whip up communal frenzy, instigate violence and then use the bloodshed to polarise voters to benefit the party in the 2019 elections," Azad alleged.

The chief of the Dalit outfit said, the country should be run according to the Constitution and whatever judgement the Supreme Court pronounces on Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid title suit should be respected by all.

But right-wing activists have descended at the temple town, "posing a threat" to law and order, he alleged.

"So, I will visit Ayodhya on Monday, and I will carry a copy of the Constitution with me. I will also meet the district magistrate, and remind him that the rule of law should be ensured, and things should not be allowed to get out of hand," Azad said.

"The BJP-led government has done nothing in the last four-and-a-half years, and now when the election is approaching, its leaders are raking up the Ram Temple issue," he alleged.

The Vishwa Hindu Parishad's 'Dharma Sabha' on Sunday is being touted as the largest congregation of 'Ram bhakts' in Ayodhya since 1992, with the outfit claiming that a large number of people will attend it.

Azad also claimed that for demolishing the mosque, the date, December 6, 1992, was chosen "very strategically".

"December 6 is the Mahaprinirvan (death anniversary) of Babsaheb Ambedkar and November 26 is the country's Constitution Day. It was all done deliberately to hijack the legacy of Ambedkar, as the architect of the Constitution," he told reporters.

Asked on what basis, was he claiming that Saket was the name of Ayodhya region in Buddhist time, Azad said, "Some Buddhists have made a petition in the Supreme Court, mentioning that Buddhist-era artefacts have also been found from digging at the disputed site."



"Since Yogiji is saying that we should go back to original names, why should he not rename Ayodhya to Saket, by the same argument," he said.

The Supreme Court recently fixed the Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri Masjid title suit for the first week of January next year before an appropriate bench, which will decide the schedule of hearing.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The BJP is practicing a "frightening level" of communal polarization in its campaign in election-bound states, senior Congress leader and party strategist Jairam Ramesh has alleged, adding this was more than an electoral challenge for the Congress.

Ramesh also alleged that for every Amit Shah, the BJP chief, there are "10 Amit Shahs" of the RSS practicing covert polarization, comments that came amid renewed calls for construction of a Ram temple at the disputed site at Ayodhya.

The BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi have previously accused the Congress of dividing the society by indulging in caste and religious and appeasement of minorities, in response to allegations of communal polarisation.

Ramesh said the high degree of communal polarization the BJP allegedly resorted to was responsible for the "staggering" mandate for the party in the Assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh last year and it was continuing in the poll-bound states



"The only explanation I have for the UP win of the BJP is the frightening level of communal polarization which incidentally they have been trying to do in the states now also. They are doing this in Chhattisgarh and certainly in MP and Rajasthan," Ramesh told PTI in an interview over the weekend.

Ramesh further alleged that the modern name of 'tanashaahi' (dictatorship) was Amit Shah and that Narendra Modi was "not prime ministerial" in his election campaign as he indulged in "falsification of history and abuse of political rivals". He said Modi should not demand respect but should command respect of people as prime minister.

The senior Congress leader also alleged that "false news" was the biggest enterprise in "Make in India" under the Modi government, as he accused the BJP of "manufacturing" issues out of non-issues.

The 64-year-old former union minister, who is part of the Congress core group for the 2019 Lok Sabha poll planning, said there were two types of communal polarization the BJP was indulging across the country.

"One is overt polarization, which is the language used by Mr Amit Shah and PM Narendra Modi. Then there is covert polarization done by the RSS and its people through the word of mouth and house to house," Ramesh said.

"Mr Amit Shah is a good example of a person who preaches and practices the of overt polarization" and that "for every Amit Shah there are 10 'Amit Shahs' of the RSS who are practicing and preaching covert polarization. That is what happened in UP," he alleged.

Ramesh said the Opposition "tends to miss" overt polarization and also the seriousness of covert polarization.

To a query about whether the Congress has managed to address the issue of polarization, Ramesh said, "It is a huge challenge and it is not just an electoral challenge".

"It is a challenge we have to face whether in power or outside," the Congress leader said, describing the battle with the RSS as a "long drawn out" one. "It is not a one-off thing. It is a long drawn out battle."



On why Congress leaders like CP Joshi continue to speak out of turn and make casteist remarks to aid the of polarization, Ramesh said Congress chief Rahul Gandhi had come out very clearly against this.

Blaming the BJP for making an issue out of it, he alleged, "the BJP is very skilled at creating issues out of non-issues, at manipulation of "



Asked if Congress leaders continued to defy the party chief by making statements that harm the party's interests, he said he does not blame the leaders as their statements, including himself, have been distorted by the BJP.

"I think this is 'Make in India', Make in BJP. Fake is the biggest enterprise in 'Make in India' during the BJP regime. The fact is that Mr Modi himself, during his election campaign, indulges in falsification of facts, he indulges in falsification of history," he alleged.

"He is not prime ministerial in his campaign. After all Prime Minister is Prime Minister. Whoever the individual, the position of PM must be respected.

"(But) the PM should not demand respect, he should command respect. It is no use Mr Modi demanding respect. He should command respect. The way he distorts history, the way he falsifies facts, the way he abuses his political opponents. And look at the way Mr Amit Shah has been talking of the NRC for example, calling people 'termites'," he said, training his guns on the prime minister for his attacks on the Congress and the Gandhi family.

"Amit Shah is the new word of 'tanashaahi'. The modern phrase of 'tanashaahi' is Amit Shah," he said.

Ramesh also pointed out to the manner in which the Reserve Bank of India(RBI) has been "bludgeoned into submission" and its rights eroded and how institutional autonomy has been compromised.

"The 'institutional capture' by the RSS and the BJP is bizarre," he said.

Ramesh claimed that the mood of the people in the states going to Assembly polls was clearly in favour of the Congress and and the Congress would fare well.

He also did not consider this as a "semi-final" to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, but said the important decisions of the Modi government like demonetisation, farm crisis and the Rafale deal ? will certainly have an impact in these state polls.

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BJP chief Amit Shah Sunday attacked the state govenment's proposal to give 12 per cent quota to Muslims, saying his party will never allow it as religion-based reservation is unconstitutional.

Shah hit out at Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) chief and Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao over the issue during campaign rallies at Parkal and Nirmal ahead of the December 7 Assembly polls in the state.

"I want to tell Chandrasekhar Rao, the Supreme Court has fixed 50 per cent ceiling (on total reservations). If you want to provide 12 per cent reservation, from whose quota are you going to carve it out: from Dalits, tribals or OBCs. Decide this first," Shah said.

Shah said Rao promised reservation to the minority community "despite being aware" of the 50 per cent ceiling and forwarded the proposal (bill) to the Centre.

"BJP would stand firmly to protect the reservation of Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Backward Classes," he said.

The Constitution does not allow reservation based on religion, the BJP chief said.

He asked the gathering whether a religion-based reservation should be be given, and said, "You don't worry. Even if KCR, Congress, TDP, communists, all of them come together, I guarantee that till the BJP government is at the Centre, religion-based reservation will not be given."



The Telangana legislature has passed a bill increasing reservations in jobs and education for backward sections of the Muslim community to 12 per cent from the earlier four per cent. The bill is yet to get the Centre's nod.

Meanwhile, speaking at a campaign rally at Shadnagar, Rao said the bill was not yet cleared by Prime Minister Narendra Modi despite repeated requests.

"We want to give reservations to Muslims. But Modi is against that. That is the reason I am advocating a non- Congress and non-BJP front government. You know that I fought for Telangana's statehood. I will get you reservations the same way," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Bombay High Court has come to the aid of a lawyer from Solapur whose registration to practice as an advocate was suspended by the Bar Council of India (BCI) in 2011.

Lawyer Mahendra Kawchale's registration was suspended by the BCI, first, for submitting a fake law degree, and then his application for re-registration was kept pending as he had been convicted in a case of cheating and forgery.

A bench of justices BP Dharmadhikari and Sarang Kotwal directed the BCI to look into Kawchale's application seeking re-registration and take an appropriate decision within a week.

In May 2011, the BCI suspended Kawchale's registration with the council and his enrolment that enabled him to practise law.

The BCI informed him, at the time, that it had come to its knowledge that the law degree submitted by Kawchale for registration was fake.

An inquiry by the BCI had revealed that Kawchale had secured the degree through a correspondence course from a college that was not recognised by the BCI or the University Grants Commission.

Kawchale's lawyer in Bombay HC, however, informed the bench led by Justice BP Dharmadhikari that he accepted the BCI's allegations and went on to get admitted to a recognised college of law in Pune.

In 2015, he completed his three-year law degree from the ILS Law College, Pune, and applied for re-registration with the BCI on the basis of the new degree.

His application, however, has remained pending since then.

Kawchale told the Bombay HC that, in 2016, following repeated queries to the BCI's enrolment committee, he was told that his application had been kept pending not just because of the previous fake degree incident, but, also because it had come to light that Kawchale had been convicted in a criminal case in the past.

In June 2015, a Solapur magistrate court had convicted Kawchale in a case of forgery and cheating.

Kawchale, however, told the HC that he had subsequently been acquitted in the case.

He argued before the HC that since the BCI's rules didn't provide for one's disqualification if one was acquitted of criminal charges, and since he now had a new, valid law degree, he must be granted re-registration.

The bench, accordingly, directed the BCI to look into Kawchale's case.

"It appears that after orders dated August 13, 2018, the trial court has acquitted the petitioner. The counsel appearing for Bar Council of Maharashtra informs that the fact of acquittal is coming on record during today's arguments," the bench said.

"Petitioner to supply the judgment of acquittal to the BCI, and the latter to take suitable decision upon his application for enrolment within further period of one week," the bench said.

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Traders' body CAIT Sunday said it has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi highlighting the need for an e-commerce policy, incentives for digital payments, national policy for retail trade, besides other issues.

In a communication sent to the Prime Minister, the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) has demanded complete overhauling of the country's retail trade.

In the letter, CAIT Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal alleged that the current e commerce is greatly vitiated by online companies by indulging into predatory pricing, deep discounting and loss funding, thereby creating an uneven level playing field and influencing the pricing which is against FDI Policy 2016 Press Note No. 3 of the Government.

Therefore, there is an urgent need of an e-commerce policy by the government and formation of a Regulatory Authority to monitor and regulate e commerce business in the Country and to create a level playing field, Khandelwal said.

Besides, CAIT said bank charges should not be levied either on traders or on consumers and should be directly subsidised by the government to banks. It said relaxation in taxes should be given to traders who conduct their maximum business through digital transactions.

A Digital Payments Promotion Board may also be set up with all stakeholders to ensure that more and more people should use digital payments in order to make India, a less cash nation, CAIT said.

Khandelwal further urged that on the pattern of UP, traders registered with GST should be given an Accidental Insurance of Rs 10 lakh by the Government.

He said a special policy should also be formulated to provide compensation to traders affected by natural calamity.

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The world may know him by the moniker 'mama' but Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan's ancestral village here is possibly the only place in the state where he is addressed as 'bhaiya' as locals remember his rise to power from a humble beginning.

About 86-kms from the state capital Bhopal, Jait is located on the banks of the Narmada and is connected to Chouhan's assembly constituency of Budhni via state highway No. 15.

A broad banked under-construction 3.5-km dust track from the main road, flanked by paddy fields, takes people to Chouhan's house, at the entrance of which is a big photograph of the CM depicting him with folded hands greeting visitors.

Hariom Yadav, a domestic help at the house, informs that the occupants of the house-- the CM's elder brother Narendra Singh, his wife and others are out in Budhni for campaign related work.

"But, they will be back by the evening," Yadav says as he offers tea in the courtyard of the two-storeyed house where an old portrait of Chouhan and his wife Sadhna Singh hangs.

"He (Chouhan) is bhaiya (elder brother) to us. This is the affectionate name this village addresses him with. The entire state may call him 'mama' but locals here hold a very special place for him and vice-versa," village elder 67-year-old Bhagwan Das told PTI.

This small village is known as the CM's home place and people from 'Jait' get together like one family whenever the elder brother visits, he said while supervising work at his under-construction home.

The tiny village has over 260 households and less than 2,000 voters.

"Bhaiya makes sure he comes home for the 'dooj' festival twice a year and locals take it upon themselves that they campaign for him during elections and cover nearby villages along with other members of the Chouhan family," says tailor Santosh Namdev, when asked why the village wore a deserted look.

This is harvesting season so few others are out in the fields, he adds.

Imrati Devi, while performing her daily ablutions at the banks of the Narmada River, says Chouhan has helped the people of his village during every crisis or trouble.

He (Chouhan) lived here during his early days and then moved out for his studies and work in politics. 'Bhaiya' has made sure that he is connected to every big or small development in the village, local Hari Singh Chouhan said.

The CM has had a very humble origin and not only he is connected to the ground but has made his way to the top with great hardwork, he adds.

The village has a panchayat, a public health centre and the roads are made of RCC (reinforced cement and concrete) and locals expect more development will reach the 'special village in Budhni' once 'bhaiya' wins another battle at the hustings.

While there is a school and small health centre in the village, villagers would wish to get more public amenities like toilets, community centre, a larger health centre with yet another victory of 'bhaiya', 28-year-old Vishnu Prasad said.

Chouhan had last visited the village to take the blessings of the Narmada River and his 'kul devta' temple (family deity) on November 5 before he filed his nomination from Budhni.

He was first elected as MLA in 1990 from the Budhni Assembly seat. This would be the fifth time he will be contesting from here.

An year after being elected an MLA in 1990, Chouhan was elected Member of Parliament when he won a bypoll from Vidisha constituency in 1991 after former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee quit the seat.

He went on to win Vidisha LS seat in 1996, 1998, 1999 and 2004.

In 2005, against the backdrop of infighting among state BJP leaders, Chouhan took over as Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister and in 2006 contested from Budhni to get elected to the MP assembly. He beat Congress's Rajkumar Patel, a former minister, by a margin of 36,000 votes.

He won from the seat again in 2008 and 2013 assembly polls, defeating the Congress's Mahesh Singh Rajput and Mahendra Singh Chauhan by a margin of 41,000 and 84,000 votes respectively.

His family and his supporters have given the slogan of 'abki baar 1 lakh paar' this time to ensure victory for him by a margin of over a lakh votes.

Main opposition party Congress hasmade the contest interesting by fielding Arun Yadav, former PCC President and an MP from nearby Khargone seat, from the seat.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Sunday termed the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yoajana (PMFBY), a crop insurance scheme, as a "big scam" and demanded that it be scrapped.

He alleged that the scheme was meant to benefit insurance companies instead of the farmers.

"The (Pradhan Mantri) Fasal Bima Yojana is a big scam. It is betraying the farmers. Without the farmers' consent, the premium gets deducted from their accounts," Kejriwal told reporters in Israna village of Haryana's Panipat district.

"Then when it comes to paying compensation to the farmers for crop damage, conditions of this scheme are such that a farmer keeps paying his premiums, but does not get the claim for his crop loss," he said.

"Till the time the crop loss in a village does not cross 70 per cent, an affected farmer will not get compensation, such are the conditions of this scheme," he added.

The Delhi chief minister said this scheme should be called the 'BJP Kisan Daka Yojana' (BJP Farmer Loot Scheme).

During his visit to Israna, Kejriwal met the family of a farmer, Surjit, who recently died of a heart attack.

He said Surjit suffered a heart attack as he was unable to bear the losses he incurred after his crops were damaged due to unseasonal rains and hailstorm.

He assured the deceased farmer's family of all help and said he would donate a month's salary, which is around Rs 80,000, and ask his MLAs to do the same.

"This Fasal Bima Yojana should be scrapped and the premium collected from the farmers returned," he said.

Kejriwal said a 'Kisan Muavaza' (farmer compensation) scheme, like the one introduced by the Delhi government, should be launched if the farmers are to be given relief.

"In Delhi, we give Rs 20,000 per acre for crop damage within three months and a similar scheme should be introduced. Even if one farmer in a village suffers losses, he should be compensated," he said.

He said the compensation should be given directly to the farmers so that they do not have to run after insurance companies.

"Owners of insurance companies are good friends of Modiji and this scheme has been formulated to extend benefit to them," Kejriwal claimed.

According to recent media reports which quoted RTI information, the insurance companies have collected premium between Rs 15,000 crore to Rs 20,000 crore under this scheme, whereas the value of claims settled is very low, he alleged.

Kejriwal accused the Manohar Lal Khattar-led Haryana government for going back on its promise of waiving farmers' loans.

"When the BJP came to power, it promised to waive loans of the farmers. But it has not done so," he said.

He said if the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) comes to power in Haryana in 2019, it will improve the condition of the state's government schools and hospitals, which are in a bad shape.

Later, he travelled to Jind district, where he expressed solidarity with those protesting against increased enhancement costs levied by Haryana Shehri Vikas Pradhikaran (HSVP), formerly Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA).

The resident welfare associations under the HSVP are up in arms against the state government ever since notices were served to plot holders in 20 districts, asking them to pay enhancement costs on account of additional compensation awarded to farmers by the Supreme Court.

"Not just farmers, labourers, traders, this government seems to have spared no one," Kejriwal told a gathering in Jind.

"This is not enhancement, but in a way it is extortion," he alleged.

He claimed that the enhancement notices were being served to people after every one or two years.

The Delhi chief minister demanded that Khattar give an account of these notices being served repeatedly to people. He threatened to hold a protest and burn the notices next month if his Haryana counterpart does not respond.

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The visiting Churchill Brothers embarrassed Mohun Bagan 3-0 after former Trinidad and Tobago international Willis Plaza made a stunning return to the city, heading in a brace in the I-League on Sunday.

Forced to leave the Maidan after parting ways with East Bengal earlier this year, Plaza looked in ominous form and struck in a space of four minutes (51st and 55th) to become the leading scorer with five goals to his name.

He had scored a hat-trick in their 4-2 win over Shillong Lajong in the previous match.

Captain Dawda Ceesay drew the first blood in the 21st minute with an easy tap-in long before the Goans jumped to second spot with nine points from five matches. Mohun Bagan (8) slipped to fourth in the table.

Mohun Bagan were bolstered by the inclusion of their star Haitian forward Sony Norde who had a fine attempt in the 16th minute but his grounded shot from the edge of the box hit the woodwork.

Five minutes later the Goans went up when Lamgoulen Hangshing's cross for Willis Plaza was cleared by Dalraj Singh, but an unmarked Dawda Ceesay made no mistake to stun the noisy home crowd.

The Mariners found a golden chance to equalise in the 42nd minute but



Yuta Kinowaki was unable to react quickly after Vicky Baskaran's half-hearted punch fell kindly for the Japanese.

Plaza took the match out of Mohun Bagan's equation in the second half with his back-to-back headers.

Israil Gurung's cross into the box was pin point for Plaza and he beat Dalraj Singh to head it home.

Ceesay set up Plaza's brace from the left flank and the Trinidadian found himself completely unmarked before sealing the issue with ease.

In the 90th minute, Ceesay could have also got his second but his long-ranger touched the wrong side of the crossbar before going out of play, saving Mohun Bagan further humiliation.

Churchill Brothers next face Gokulam Kerala in another away fixture on November 30 while Mohun Bagan will host league leaders Chennai City on December 1.

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The graduates

Dalli Maya sat on the handrails of a steel parapet at the entrance of the cafe. The cafe was on a cul-de-sac, with alleys wrung in all directions. She wore a red ribbon around her braids, and locks of her hair shone colourfully in the languid September sun.
BJP president Amit Shah Sunday alleged that the Congress had "neglected" the "son of Telangana" and former prime minister PV Narasimha Rao after his death and sought the response of Rahul Gandhi, the chief of the opposition party, in the matter.

He also alleged that the Congress had not paid appropriate last respects to Rao, who died in 2004, when the party was in power at the Centre.

Addressing a public meeting here in Siddipet district ahead of the December 7 Telangana Assembly polls, Shah asked Gandhi to explain the "kind of treatment" meted out to Rao after his demise.

"Now Rahul Gandhiji is saying everyone should live with love. I want to ask him, when the son of Telangana and our former prime minister P V Narasimha Rao had died, (why) no 'salami' was given to his mortal remains and why were they sent to Hyderabad.

"I want to ask him (Gandhi), why such a treatment was meted out to the son of Telangana," he said.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had accused the Congress in the past also of ignoring the legacy of Rao and humiliating him, which was denied by the opposition party.

During his speech, Shah listed out various welfare schemes launched by the Narendra Modi government in the last four-and-a-half years.

He said the Centre was working for various sections of the society, including the poor, farmers, women, Dalits and tribals.

Crores of toilets and houses were built for the people under the watch of the BJP government, Shah said.

"Our government provided LPG connections to poor women and also ensured electricity. These development works improved the standard of living of over 22 crore families," he added.

Improving the country's security was the biggest work of Prime Minister Modi, the BJP chief said.

"Under the previous UPA government, infiltrators from Pakistan used to enter India but no proper reply was given to them in those 10 years. However, after the Uri terror attack (in 2016), India under Modiji carried out surgical strikes in Pakistan and avenged the killing of our soldiers," he added.

Shah said the respect for India had increased manifold in the world under Modi.

Turning to the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) government in the southern state, he claimed that the ruling party had failed to implement several welfare programmes of the Centre, including its ambitious health insurance scheme, because it was "scared" that the prime minister might become more popular in Telangana.

Shah accused TRS chief and caretaker Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR) of not extending any help to the farmers in the state, due to which, he said over 4,000 of them committed suicide in the last four-and-a-half years.

Shah said KCR had failed to fulfil the promises made to the people of Telangana, including the three-acre land parcel scheme for Dalits.

He appealed to the people to vote the saffron party to power in the upcoming polls as the Congress, the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and the TRS had been elected earlier.

"Give one chance to Modiji and we will transform Telangana into a model state in five years," Shah said.

The 119-member Telangana Assembly will go to the polls on December 7 and the results will be announced on December 11.

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The Congress will return to power in 2019 Lok Sabha elections with a thumping majority, former Himachal Pradesh chief minister Virbhadra Singh said on Sunday.

He appealed to the people to join hands with the party for their welfare and reject the BJP, which, he alleged, had ditched them time and again by giving false slogans.

Speaking at a function here, Singh said the Congress should field Youth Congress leader Abhishek Rana from Hamirpur Lok Sabha seat to upset the applecart of the BJP and the family of its senior leader Prem Kumar Dhumal.

He said the BJP's days are numbered and the party would face a humiliating defeat in the Lok Sabha elections.

Congress leader and Punjab Assembly Speaker K P Singh Rana said though the BJP had once again raked up the issue of building a Ram temple in Ayodhya, this card would not work as people knew that it is only used during elections.

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The construction work for a "grand" Ram temple at Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh will start before the 2019 general elections with the consensus of both Hindus and Muslims, the working president of the Ram Mandir Nyas Board, Ram Vilas Vedanti, claimed Sunday.

Addressing a "Dharam Sabha" organised by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) here, Vedanti said, "We do not want any bloodshed and want to build a grand Ram mandir over 67 acres of land in Ayodhya with the consensus of all, including the Muslims.

"Negotiations are going on in this regard and the construction work for a grand Ram temple will start anytime in December," he said.

The former MP, however, added that if in case the work did not start in December for some reason, it would certainly start before the 2019 Lok Sabha election.

Vedanti said a new masjid will also be built in Lucknow.

He further claimed that the president of the Shia Waqf Board had already given in writing to the Supreme Court, "supporting the construction of a grand Ram temple at the birthplace of Lord Ram."



"We will welcome political leaders across party affiliations to take part in the construction of the temple, which we want to complete with the involvement of all the leaders and communities," Vedanti said.

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The photojournalist who captured the chilling image of 26/11 Mumbai attack terrorist Ajmal Kasab at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus, says police let Kasab and his accomplice flee from the railway station.

On November 26, 2008, Sebastian D'Souza ran out from his office next to the train station armed with nothing more than his Nikon camera and lenses, after hearing the gunfire.

The photo and testimony of 'Saby', as he is known in media circles, was to play a crucial role in the 26/11 trial, which led to Kasab's hanging in 2012.

"Had policemen posted near the railway station killed Kasab and the other terrorist inside the station, so many lives could have been saved," Saby told PTI.

In one of the most horrific terrorist attacks on the soil of India, 166 people were killed and over 300 were injured when ten heavily-armed terrorists from Pakistan ran a rampage in Mumbai 10 years ago.

"There were two police battalions present near the station, but did nothing," said Saby, who retired in 2012 and settled in Goa.

Saby, 67, won the World Press Photo award for the close-up photograph of Kasab, holding an AK-47.

He took the photos using a telephoto lens on his Nikon camera, while hiding inside a train carriage.

"I ran into the first carriage of one of the trains on the platform to try and get a shot, but as I could not get a good angle, moved to the second carriage and waited for the terrorists to walk by. I briefly had time to take a couple of frames. I think they saw me taking photographs, but didnt seem to care," he said.

Having given up photography after retirement, Saby now keep himself busy with carpentry and paintings.

"I don't want to remember what I did that (November 26) night," he said, terming the sequence of events as an 'old film' which he wants to erase from his memory.

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Former TRS leader and Chevella MP Konda Vishweshwar Reddy Sunday hinted at the possibility of a "tacit understanding" between the ruling party in Telangana and the BJP behind Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao's move to dissolve the assembly before completion of its full term.

The dissolution of the Assembly in September this year had paved the way for early polls in the southern state.

The elections to the 119-member Assembly are scheduled on December 7.

Reddy, who recently crossed over to the Congress, said the decision to hold early elections came as a "shock" to the people.

Addressing reporters, he claimed that factors like the chief minister's "tacit understanding with the Bhartiya Janata Party" or "falling popularity of the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samiti" might be behind the chief minister's move to dissolve the House.

"It was a matter of shock for all the people as to why the TRS government didn't complete the five years mandate given to them. Why would any government voluntarily dissolve the House and take the risk of being put under President's rule by the Central government?



"There was either a tacit understanding with the BJP or this step was taken out of fear due to the fast declining graph of the TRS in the state," he said.

Reddy, who had won Chevella seat as a TRS candidate, joined the Congress on November 23 in the presence of UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi in a public meeting at Medchal.

The chief minister had already dismissed reports that his move to dissolve the House was motivated politically.

His daughter and Nizamabad MP MP K Kavitha has denied that her party had a "covert" understanding with the BJP. She has accused the Congress of spreading such rumours to get minority votes.

Meanwhile, referring to his previous stint in the TRS, Reddy said some of his initiatives were appreciated by the national international bodies such as Unicef, but were not recognised by the KCR-led party.

"I was constantly insulted by various means including removal of my flex boards in the constituency (Chevella)," he said.

Reddy said the state government is yet to formally apply to the Centre seeking a national status for the Kaleshwaram project though it has been raising the demand.

The CM had laid the foundation stone for the Kaleshwaram irrigation project, taken up at an estimated cost of Rs 80,500 crore, on May 2, 2016. The project aims to take water to the state's drought-hit regions.

Reddy further said the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management (FRBM) Act, which ensures that no state government goes about spending its budget indiscriminately, has been completely neglected by the state.

"The state government debt is to the tune of Rs 2.20 lakh crore. It works out at around Rs 61,000 per person if apportioned to individual citizens in the state," he said.

Responding to a query, Reddy said the TRS took an ambiguous stand on the Triple Talaq Bill that was passed by Parliament recently.

The Congress had last month forged 'Prajakutami' (People's Alliance) with the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) of Chandrababu Naidu, the Telangana Jana Samithi (TJS) and the Communist Party of India (CPI) to take on the TRS in upcoming polls.

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The Crime branch of Odisha Police will probe the attack on former MP and president of Utkal Bharat party, Kharabela Swain in Rayagada district on Saturday, a top police officer said Sunday.

"A thorough investigation into the incident will be conducted by the Crime branch to ascertain the reason and motive behind the assault on the former MP," Director General of Police (DGP) R P Sharma said.

Attacks on Swain in Kendrapara and Balasore districts recently are also likely to be brought under the purview of investigation to ascertain whether there was any conspiracy, the DGP said.

The president of Utkal Bharat party, met additional superintendent of police, Rayagada, Patitapabana Chaudhury Sunday and lodged a complaint.

He alleged that the ruling BJD was behind the attack when he was attending a street corner meeting at Kashpur on Saturday.

The alleged attacker, identified as Sumanta Nayak (35), was detained by the police on Saturday. Nayak has been arrested, the ASP said adding he is being interrogated and appropriate action would be taken as per law.

Swain, a former Lok Sabha member alleged that BJD workers are attacking him as he has been criticising the ruling party. "I feel BJD has resorted to 'goondaism' as it fears defeat in 2019 elections ... the attacker himself described himself as a BJD man," he claimed.

However, ruling Biju Janata Dal MP N Bhaskar Rao condemned the attack on Swain but denied the involvement of the BJD in the involvement.

BJD spokesperson Sasmit Patra said the BJD should not be blamed for the incident



The incident evoked sharp reactions from political parties with opposition Congress and BJP hitting out at the BJD and alleging that the attack was the handiwork of the ruling party.

"Strongly condemn the attack on former MP Shri Kharabela Swain. Violence has no place in a thriving democracy. Sadly BJD and its Naveen Gunda Vahini don't understand it," Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee (OPCC) President, Niranjan Patnaik said on twitter.

BJP leader and Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said the attack on Swain is proof of deteriorating law and order situation in Odisha. "I strongly condemn such political intolerance. Being in-charge of the Home department, the Chief Minister should refrain from promoting such political intolerance," he said in a statement.

Former MP Baijayant Panda also strongly condemned the attack on Swain.

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Buoyed by successful trial of cargo movement to Bangladesh via the inland waterways protocol route, India is now preparing to exploit the path for the purpose of tourism, an official said.

A transboundary river cruise operation is expected to commence from Kolkata in March next year through Sunderbans to Bangladesh and then to connect the northeastern destinations by private operators, a senior official said.

"Bilateral secretary-level meetings between India and Bangladesh were held in October. It has been decided that one of the river cruise operators would be starting operations from March, 2019 from Kolkata through Sunderbans via the protocol route to Bangladesh and then to northeast," Member, Inland Waterways Authority of India, SVK Reddy said.

Reddy was in the city to participate in a transport seminar organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) recently.

Bangladesh shipping secretary Abdus Samsah had earlier said that private players will be allowed to operate river cruise between the two countries, which will cover about 1,539 km.

Both sides also agreed to allow private operators to run cruise to Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh.

Reddy said night navigation facility has been installed up to the Indian border while Bangladesh is expected to do the same.

He said India has agreed to fund up to 80 per cent of the dredging cost in some identified stretches within Bangladesh in the Indo-Bangla protocol route to make it navigable.

Regularly, 15-20 barges carrying fly ash are now heading to Bangladesh and navigation up to the Indian border is smooth, he said.

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The Customs department Sunday seized nearly two kg gold, valued at around Rs 63 lakh, from six women air passengers, including five Sri Lankan nationals, at the airport here, officials said.

Among the women, one was Indian who arrived from Singapore. The Customs officials found 689 gm of gold, valued at nearly Rs 22 lakh, concealed on her person during a detailed search and put her under arrest, they added.

The officials seized 1,291 gm of gold from the five Sri Lankan women. The yellow metal was found in the form of chains and cut bits and was concealed on their person, they said, adding that the gold was valued at around Rs 41 lakh.

In another incident on the intervening night of Friday and Saturday, an employee of a ground-handling services firm at the airport and an air passenger were detained for allegedly trying to smuggle in 1,200 gm of gold hidden in a power bank, airport officials said Sunday.

A CISF personnel had noticed the ground-handling services firm employee receiving "something" from the passenger at the international terminal. The yellow metal concealed in the power bank was seized during checking, they said.

The 1,200 gm seized gold was valued at around Rs 37 lakh, officials said, adding that the two accused were handed over to the Customs department for a further probe.

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Amidst growing demand for construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya without further delay, Ramji Das of Nirmohi Akhara told VHP's dharam sabha Sunday that dates for the same will be announced early next year during Kumbh in Prayagraj.

Addressing the sabha after the inauguration marked by chanting of mantras at the Badey Bhaktmaal ki Bagia, Ramji Das said:"The date for construction of the Ram temple will be declared in the 2019 Kumbh which will be held in Prayagraj".

"It is only a matter of few days, and I request you all to show some patience," the seer remarked.

The dharam Sabha, the biggest congregation of Ram bhakts in the temple town convened to discuss the way forward for temple construction, witnessed seer after seer stressing the need for construction of the temple at the earliest.

Nritya Gopaldas, President of the Ram Janmbhoomi Nyas, in his address said: "Such a large attendance shows that how much people from different walks of life are attached to the Ram temple.

"We respect the courts. We have great hopes from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. I request Adityanath to pave the way for construction of Ram temple", he said making a call to the government to do the needful in this regard at the earliest.

The dharma sabha venue , which witnessed saffron hue all the way with flags, banners, buntings and head gear in the same colour, also saw the Ram Bhakts taking a pledge for construction of Ram temple, vowing by taking the soil of Ayodhya in their hands.

Religious leader Ram Bhadracharya said: "On November 23, I had called a senior union minister who assured that after the model code of conduct comes to an end on December 11, the PM is likely to sit with them and take such a decision so that Ram temple could be built."



"We were also told we will not be cheated and I feel that ordinance route may be opted in the winter session of Parliament. We should exercise patience... We have been saddened by the court (nyayalaya se niraash ho chuke hai). The court of people will not deceive us" he stressed.

Once Ram temple is built it will become a "ghoshit Hindu raashtra", he told the gathering.

Earlier senior leader Champat Rai declared that no formula dividing the disputed land will be acceptable for temple construction. "We want the entire land for temple construction ... no formula dividing the land is acceptable."



Though Rai did not spell out the details, his assertions are considered to be in reference to the Allahabad High court verdict dividing the land into three parts.

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In the run up to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the Delhi BJP has opened doors to rebel partymen who were expelled during civic body polls last year, after taking an undertaking from them that they will not indulge in any anti-party activity in future.

The party had fielded fresh faces in the elections for the three municipal corporations in 2017, denying tickets to all sitting councillors. Protesting the move, many sitting councillors and those who did not get ticket had revolted against the party and contested elections independently.

Taking action, the Delhi BJP had expelled over 80 partymen.

"We have allowed rejoining of such rebel leaders and workers after taking an undertaking from them that they will not indulge in anti-party activity and obey decisions of top leadership," Delhi BJP general secretary Ravinder Gupta said.

The party is taking an undertaking from the rebels to ensure that they genuinely want to join the party, said Gupta, the in charge for the task of rejoining the partymen.

"Nearly 50 rebels who were expelled last year during municipal corporation elections have rejoined the party after committing in writing to refrain from any anti-party activity," he said.

Majority of these leaders had contested civic polls against the BJP candidates, but many of them lost the elections, paving way for their decision to return back to the BJP, Gupta pointed.

Anita Chaudhary, Niki Singh, Sandhya Verma, Mahesh Atri, Indrapal Rana, Ashok Tayal, Jai Prakash Lohia, Pankaj Singh are some of the leaders who have rejoined the party, he said.

The BJP has started work for the 2019 Parliamentary elections with "Namo Again" slogan and the rejoinings will boost the party in Delhi where it will face the challenge to retain the seven Lok Sabha seats it had won in 2014, Gupta added.

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1. Yes. Nonprofit youth organizations are underfunded in the city. Its a good decision.

2. Yes. In conjunction with city-run programs, it will provide needed opportunities.

3. No. The money should be used to benefit all residents, not just the citys youth.

4. No. The funds should be invested in the area where the project is being developed..

5. Unsure. Its hard to say whether its an appropriate use of the money.

Vote

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The Delhi Police will take strict action against those found smoking in railway stations, officials said Sunday.

All police officers of seven police stations have been given training on the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act (COTPA), Deputy Commissioner of Police (Railway) Dinesh Kumar Gupta said.

The training was imparted with the assistance of Sambandh Health Foundation (SHF) and Max India Foundation.

Police officers were also administered oath not to consume tobacco, he said.

According to railway police, challans will be issued under the COTPA if people do not follow the orders and smoke in railway stations.

'No Smoking' signages will be put as per the law at all railway stations as well as railway police stations, the DCP said.

Officers of New Delhi, Old Delhi, Hazrat Nizamuddin, Anand Vihar, Sabji Mandi, Sarai Rohilla and Delhi Cantonment railway police have been instructed about it.

Sambandh Health Foundation (SHF) Project Manager Somil Rastogi said as per the Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS 2016-17), 12.4 per cent of youths aged 15-24 are tobacco consumers.

"In Delhi, one out of five persons use tobacco and in capital of India, smoking is the preferred form of using tobacco, whereas in the entire country, chewing tobacco is in maximum use," he said.

In last seven years, the average age of tobacco initiation has reduced, Rastogi added.

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Democrats intend to probe US President Donald Trump's financial ties to determine whether they are the "hidden hand" driving US foreign policy on Russia and Saudi Arabia, the incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said Sunday.

Adam Schiff, currently the ranking Democrat on the intelligence committee, accused Trump of being "dishonest" about the role of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

"What is driving this?" Schiff asked, questioning "whether there's a financial motivation; that is, his own personal finances."



"Is his personal financial interest driving US policy in the Gulf? Vis-a-vis the Russians? We don't know, but it would be irresponsible not to find out," he said on CNN's "State of the Union."



Trump this week denied reports that the CIA had concluded that the Saudi crown prince ordered the assassination of Khashoggi, a critic and Washington Post columnist who lived in Virginia.

He was murdered October 2 in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul by a special team flown in for the job.

The Saudis, after changing their version of events as evidence was made public in Turkey, have insisted that Prince Mohammed had no prior knowledge of the assassination -- an interpretation which Trump has accepted.

"The CIA doesn't say they did it," Trump said Thursday. "They do point out certain things, and in pointing out those things, you can conclude that maybe he did or maybe he didn't."



Schiff will have power of subpoena to pursue questions about the CIA's findings as well as about Trump's financial ties when he takes over as chairman of the Intelligence Committee in January as part of a new Democratic majority.

"I think others will also have responsibility of looking at: Are there financial entanglements with the Gulf? Are there financial inducements that the president has to not want to cross the Saudis? That cannot be allowed to drive US policy."



Schiff declined to comment on a report that the committee is recruiting money-laundering and forensic accounting experts in preparation for those probes.

But he said that among the issues that had not been investigated under the Republican leadership of the House "is whether the Russians have been laundering money through the president's businesses and this is the financial hold that the Russians may have."



"Is this the hidden hand in American foreign policy? We ought to be able to tell the American people, yes, it's true or no, it's not.

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The lanes and by lanes of Ayodhya have come alive to the loud chants of "Jai Shree Ram" this bright Sunday morning, with devotees from all walks of life decending here to take part in VHP's "dharam sabha" to discuss the way forward for the construction of the temple.

The surging crowds from not just neighbouring cities but also from far off places, clad in saffron robes and "safas", were seen moving in groups to Badey Bhaktmaal ki Bagia , the venue of the dharam sabha.

While bhajans of Lord Ram are being played at different places all along the route, the involvement of some Muslims led by member of Ayodhya Zila Panchayat , Babloo Khan who has been linked to the movement since the past three years, emphasises the composite culture of the town. Khan is of the view that Ayodhya's Muslim want temple.

Vishwa Hindu Parishad's 'Dharma Sabha' is being touted as the largest congregation of 'Ram bhakts' in Ayodhya since the 1992 'kar seva', with the Hindu outfit claiming a large number of people will attend it.

The congregation is happening less than two weeks ahead of the 26th anniversary of the demolition of the 16th century Babri Mosque, that had triggered unrest in this pilgirm town and riots in other parts of India.

The spectre of 1992 still haunts many people of both the communities who had directly or indirectly suffered in the violence that had erupted after the Mughal-era mosque was razed by a frenzied army of 'kar sewaks' (right-wing activists) on the fateful day of December 6.

The VHP has claimed that three lakh people, including seers, will attend its 'Dharma Sabha' to be held at Bade Bhakt Mal Ki Baghia, not far from the controversial Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas-run workshop, where work for building a temple has been underway since 1990.

An uneasy calm prevailed in Muslim-dominated areas like Dharam Kanta, and the mega event has triggered some apprehension over the safety of the town's Muslim community.

Flower petals were being showered on the Ram devotees moving towards the sabha venue.

If the devotees are shouting slogans like "har ghar bhagwa chaayega, Ram rajya phir ayaegaa" or "tel lagao Dabur kaa, naam mitao Babar ka", the excited youngsters in the crowd cannot resist the desire for clicking selfies to capture the excitement and enthusiasm in the air, much to the surprise of elders in the crowd.

Amidst the surcharged atmosphere , the biggest challenge is being faced by the agencies enforcing law and order who have been on the toes all through, maintaining round the clock vigil.

The state government has entrusted the responsibility of the town to the officials who are well versed with not just the geographical details but also the mood of the temple town.

Fool proof security arrangements are in force with the town being virtually converted into a fortress and multiple layers of security and deployment of drones keeping an eye on possible mischief- mongers.

A UP Police spokesperson said one additional DGP, one deputy inspector general (DIG), three senior superintendents of police (SSPs), 10 additional SPs, 21 deputy SPs, 160 inspectors, 700 constables, 42 companies of PAC, five companies of RAF, ATS commandos and drones have been deployed here.

When contacted, Ayodhya mayor Rishikesh Upadhyay said that adequate security arrangements were made by the police and district administration in the town, located 120 km from state capital, Lucknow.

"As many as 13 parking slots have been provided for the event.

Security was also beefed up at Lakshman Qila on Saturday where Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray was welcomed after his arrival in Ayodhya.

The Sena claimed to have brought several thousand supporters to Ayodhya for Thackeray's events.

Arriving here ahead of Sunday's VHP rally for a Ram temple, Thackeray asked the Narendra Modi government to wake up from a "Kumbhakarna-like slumber" and declare the date for its construction.

"There is no political motive behind my visit to Ayodhya," he claimed.

Meanwhile, VHP media in-charge Ambuj Ojha said, "After staying in a 'taat' (tent), Lord Ram is expecting a revival of bravado among his devotees. The moment has come. The temple must be built where Ram Lalla is currently seated. Also, there should not be any mosque in the cultural boundary of Ayodhya."



On November 18, the VHP had organised a motorcycle rally in different parts of Lucknow in this regard.

Praant Sangathan mantra (Awadh) of VHP Bholendra, in a written statement, said this was the final Dharam Sabha for construction of Ram temple.

"After this, no more Dharam Sabhas will be held and the construction of the temple will commence," he added.

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Sunanda Shinde was 36 when her husband, a ward boy at a south Mumbai hospital was killed by terrorists, who also slayed 165 others during the 26/11 Mumbai attack.

Ten years on, she feels the government discriminated while deciding on compensation for the 26/11 martyrs.

Sunanda's husband Bhagan Shinde worked at the Gokuldas Tejpal Hospital. That fateful night, on hearing gun shots, he had gone to a nearby phone booth to call his wife and kids when he was shot from behind at the hospital gate.

"The government should not have discriminated while giving compensation to the families of martyrs," says Sunanda, who now works as an 'ayah' (maid) in the same hospital.

"Kin of martyrs from police got petrol pumps besides the compensation amount, a house and jobs. But the government did not allot petrol pumps to martyrs who were from government hospitals," she said.

Recalling the events of that tragic night, she said Bhagan had finished his work and was about to leave the hospital. "I was in train, returning to the staff quarters near the hospital from my maternal parents' residence at Chinchpokli in central Mumbai along with my elder daughter," she said.

"My husband had called me and said that he is reaching home in a few minutes. As he reached the gate, he heard heavy firing and saw terrorists heading towards the gate. He tried to close the gate, but before he could do so, collapsed after being shot by terrorists," she said.

Narrating her tale of woe during the last 10 years without the support of her husband, Sunanda said she was unable take care of her children, a boy and a girl, as there was no money left.

"We got a big house from the government, but a major chunk of my salary goes to pay the building maintenance charge and electricity bills, she said. "In an expensive city like Mumbai, how can a family survive with just 10,000 per month," she said.

Pravin Narkar, whose father Bhanu Narkar was killed when terrorists stormed the Cama and Albless Hospital in south Mumbai that night, says no amount of government help can help bring back his father, a security guard at the hospital.

Pravin, 30, appointed as a guard in his father's place after the attack, said his father was on duty on that fateful night. "We all family members were calling him on his mobile phone after the of the terror attack at Cama hospital was flashed on TV screens but his phone was not reachable," he said.

"In the wee hours of November 27, we got a call from the hospital administration about his death in the attack. Our world crumbled," he said.

Pravin said his mother suffered from depression after the tragedy but has recovered since.

"We received a certificate from the then President Pratibha Patil, which mentions his martyrdom. Villagers have installed my father's statue there," said Pravin, whose family hails from Ratnagiti district in coastal Konkan.

For 41-year-old Karuna Waghela, whose husband Thakur Waghela was killed by terrorists, who first asked for water to drink and then sprayed him with bullets, it has been a bleak 10 years after the tragedy.

Karuna, who works as a sweeper at the GT Hospital where her husband was a ward boy, said she could not devote time for her three children when they needed her the most as she was busy shouldering her new responsibility as breadwinner for the family.

"My life has changed in the last ten years and not a single day goes without remembering my husband," Karuna, who stays at Pratikshanagar in central Mumbai's Sion area, told PTI.

"When I got the job at the hospital as part of the compensation, I wasn't aware of the local train timings. Unable to focus on the job, I went in depression sometimes," she said.

Her youngest child, a boy, was at home when terrorists came knocking and asked for water to drink, she said. Thakur Waghela was home for dinner and gave water to the terrorists but was shot at point blank range while he turned to come inside the house, she said.

"My son, who was just four and a half years old when his father was shot, was in shock and hasn't been able to erase the ghastly memory," she said.

The boy was also a witness in the 26/11 terror attack case, in which Ajmal Kasab, the lone terrorist caught alive, was sentenced to death.

Sabira Khan, 50, was injured in the bomb blast at Wadi Bunder on November 26, 2008. Her leg was damaged and she became hearing impaired after the blast.

"I have written around 200 letters to authorities, including the Prime Minister, for financial help but have not received much assistance," she said.

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The 1-1 stalemate is a "fair reflection" of how India and Australia performed in the three-match T20 International series, visiting captain Virat Kohli said Sunday.

India won the third T20 international by six wickets to end the series at 1-1 after the second game was washed out. Australia had won the first match.

"A level series is a fair reflection of how the teams have played," Kohli said at the post-match presentation ceremony.

The skipper lauded the performance of his bowlers, who restricted Australia to 164 for six after the home team was 68 for one in 8.3 overs, and his batsmen alike.

"Overall, skill wise, we were better on the day than Australia. With the ball, we were more professional today. I thought it was a 180 wicket."



"When our openers get into the zone they're difficult to stop. Things become pretty easy when those two guys (Rohit and Shikhar) do the job for us," Kohli said.

Australian T20 captain Aaron Finch said: "India batted extremely well in the power play. It's always tough to bring it back from 1/67. The way that we fought was brilliant. Rohit and Dhawan are totally different styles of batsmen which is tough for bowlers. That's why they've been such a good opening combination."



However, Finch added that the home side is headed in the right direction and are looking forward to the Test series.

"Still fair bit of work to do but we're going in the right direction which is nice. Feeling good for the Tests. Will get down to Brisbane and prepare for 5-6 days."



Man of the Series Shikhar Dhawan, who scored 76 and 41 to provide India with a blistering start in the both the innings, was delighted to have salvaged the series with a win.

"As a batsman, when you score it always feels good. It's good that we were able to draw this series.".

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An e-rickshaw driver has been arrested for allegedly kidnapping a four-year-old boy from New Delhi Railway Station as he wanted a child, police said Sunday.

On November 17, a woman, resident of Jaipur, filed a complaint that her son was kidnapped by a man from New Delhi Railway Station Dinesh Kumar Gupta, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Railways) said.

The woman claimed that a man befriended her at the waiting hall of the station and also brought her and her son lunch. When her son started crying, he took took him outside on the pretext of giving him biscuits and did not return, the officer said.

During investigation, footage of CCTV cameras installed at New Delhi Railway Station were scanned and many autorickshaw and e-rickshaw drivers were questioned, he said.

Acting on an information, an e-rickshaw driver, Vidhya Bhushan, a resident of Siwan district in Bihar, was apprehended from R K Ashram. He confessed to have kidnapped the child, Gupta said.

During interrogation, the accused said that the child was at the house of his brother in Sikar, Rajasthan, following which the was rescued, the officer said.

The accused told police that he has one child and wanted another. Since his wife was ill he kidnapped the boy. The accused intended to shift the child to Siwan, Bihar, where his wife lives with his family, but was arrested before he could do so, Gupta said.

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Using English as medium of instruction for very young and underprivileged children in India -- especially those who speak a different language at home -- may be holding them back from learning basic school skills, scientists claim.

Researchers are trying to decode why Indian children -- who normally know more than one language -- do not enjoy the same cognitive and learning advantages seen in multilingual students in the West.

A four-year project, in collaboration with researchers from the University of Reading in the UK and project partners in Karnataka, Hyderabad and New Delhi, aims to find out why in a country where multilingualism is so common, the benefits and advantages of speaking more than one language, observed in Europe for instance, do not apply.

Rather, Indian children show low levels of learning basic school skills, researchers said.

According to Professor Ianthi Tsimpli from Cambridge University in the UK, the answers to this paradox may lie within the dataset she and her colleagues are compiling with the help of more than 1,000 primary-age schoolchildren across Delhi, Hyderabad and Bihar.

Two years into the project, the team has discovered considerable variation in the provision of across government schools in the three areas, with different teaching practices and standards.

Having tested all 1,000 children, they will now embark on retesting them, looking not only at test results, but also allowing for other variables such as the standard of schooling, the environment and the teaching practices themselves.

It is possible that one of the causes of low performance is the lack of pupil-centred teaching methods; instead, the teacher dominates and there is little room for independent learning.

Although the findings are at a preliminary stage, researchers have found that the medium of instruction used in schools, especially English, may hold back those children who have little familiarity with, or exposure to, the language before starting school and outside of school life.

"Most of the evidence from this and other projects shows that English instruction in very disadvantaged areas might not be the best way to start, at least in the first three years of primary," said Tsimpli.

"What we would recommend for everyone, not just low socio-economic status children, would be to start learning in the language they feel comfortable learning in," she said.

"The medium of instruction should reflect the strengths of the child. When it does, that child will learn better. English can still be used, but perhaps not as the medium of instruction in primary schools," she added.

"It could, for example, be one of the subjects that are being taught alongside other subjects, starting perhaps from the third year of primary school," Tsimpli.

While the preliminary results show that there is no difference in general intelligence among boys and girls from slum versus urban poor backgrounds, scientists found that children from slum backgrounds in Delhi do not seem to lag behind other children from other urban poor backgrounds -- and in some cases perform better.

This unexpected finding may be down to the life experiences of children growing up in slums, where they are likely to mature faster and come into closer contact with the numeracy skills essential for day-to-day survival.

According to the researchers, despite the project only being at its midpoint, the research has caught the attention of Delhi's Minister for Manish Sisodia, who is keen to use the findings to inform and adjust school policy in the capital city.

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West Bengal Minister Partha Chatterjee on Sunday asked the members of Trinamool Congress-controlled primary teachers' association to ensure regular classes in schools.

"I have urged the members of our association to see to it that teachers regularly take classes and students also record regular attendance... We must ensure this," he said.

The minister was speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a conference of the 'Paschimbanga Trinamool Prathamik Sikshak Samity'.

Coming down heavily on Left-backed primary teachers' organisation, Chatterjee said, "Where were these protesters who are now hitting the streets with various demands, when the condition of primary teachers was worse in the tenure of the previous regime?"



He said since the TMC came to power in West Bengal, 73,000 teachers were recruited at the primary level and many para-teachers (contractual teachers at elementary level) were made permanent.

To a question about recruitment of primary teachers in 2019, he said, "We must rationalise the process of recruitment first by ascertaining the exact number of vacancies in (different state-run/state-aided) primary schools.

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European Space Agency's space probe Mars Express has beamed back an image of an intriguing part of the Red Planet's surface -- a rocky, fragmented, furrowed stretch that was shaped by flowing wind, water and ice.

Lying at the boundary of the northern and southern hemisphere, the region is an example of past activity on the planet.

Mars is a planet of two halves. In places, the northern hemisphere of the planet sits a full few kilometres lower than the southern; this clear topographic split is known as the martian dichotomy, and is an especially distinctive feature on the Red Planet's surface.

Northern Mars also displays large areas of smooth land, whereas the planet's southern regions are heavily pockmarked and scattered with craters.

This is thought to be the result of past volcanic activity, which has resurfaced parts of Mars to create smooth plains in the north and left other regions ancient and untouched.

The furrowed, rock-filled escarpment known as Nili Fossae, sits at the boundary of this north-south divide, researchers said.

This region is filled with rocky valleys, small hills, and clusters of flat-topped landforms (known as mesas in geological terms), with some chunks of crustal rock appearing to be depressed down into the surface creating a number of ditch-like features known as graben.

As with much of the surrounding environment, and despite Mars' reputation as a dry, arid world today, water is believed to have played a key role in sculpting Nili Fossae via ongoing erosion.

In addition to visual cues, signs of past interaction with water have been spotted in the western (upper) part of this image -- instruments such as Mars Express' OMEGA spectrometer have spotted clay minerals here, which are key indicators that water was once present.

The elevation of Nili Fossae and surroundings, shown in the topographic view above, is somewhat varied; regions to the left and lower left (south) sit higher than those to the other side of the frame (north), illustrating the aforementioned dichotomy.

This higher-altitude terrain appears to consist mostly of rocky plateaus, while lower terrain comprises smaller rocks, mesas, hills, and more, with the two sections roughly separated by erosion channels and valleys.

This split is thought to be the result of material moving around on Mars hundreds of millions of years ago. Similar to glaciers on Earth, flows of water and ice cut through the martian terrain and slowly sculpted and eroded it over time, also carrying material along with them.

In the case of Nili Fossae, this was carried from higher areas to lower ones, with chunks of resistant rock and hardy material remaining largely intact but shifting downslope to form the mesas and landforms seen today.

The shapes and structures scattered throughout this image are thought to have been shaped over time by flows of not only water and ice, but also wind.

Examples can be seen in this image in patches of the surface that appear to be notably dark against the ochre background, as if smudged with charcoal or ink.

These are areas of darker volcanic sand, which have been transported and deposited by present-day martian winds. Wind moves sand and dust around often on Mars' surface, creating rippling dune fields across the planet and forming multi-coloured, patchy terrain like Nili Fossae.

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European Union leaders on Sunday approved a landmark Brexit deal, the basis of Britain's divorce from the 28-member economic bloc, hours after UK Prime Minister Theresa May vowed to campaign with "heart and soul" to get the agreement approved by Parliament amid stiff opposition.

The leaders of the remaining 27 countries of the European Union (EU) signed off on the controversial Brexit withdrawal agreement.

European Council President Donald Tusk, after a special summit in Brussels this weekend, tweeted: "EU27 has endorsed the Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration on the future EU-UK relations".

May now faces the final and biggest hurdle of getting the deal approved by the UK Parliament where many MPs from her own party remain vehemently opposed to it.

Tusk had signalled on Saturday that the deal would be approved after Spain withdrew last-minute concerns over Gibraltar, a British Overseas Territory on the Spanish coast.

The agreement, which May has described as the best possible outcome for the UK and repeatedly taken to the airwaves to urge public support in the last few weeks, follows more than 18 months of negotiations between the two sides, which began when the UK triggered Article 50 in the wake of the June, 2016 referendum in favour of Brexit.

In a letter to the nation issued by 10 Downing Street this weekend, May once again pleaded with the public to get behind her deal which will mark "a new chapter in our national life".

"It must mark the point when we put aside the labels of 'Leave' and 'Remain' for good, and we come together again as one people. To do that we need to get on with Brexit now by getting behind this deal," she wrote.

She said that "instead of an immigration system based on where a person comes from, we will build one based on the skills and talents a person has to offer.

"Outside the EU, we will be able to sign new trade deals with other countries and open up new markets in the fastest-growing economies around the world".

The UK is scheduled to leave the EU on March 29, 2019, with a 21-month transition period kicking off when all rules will remain unchanged and during which time the Political Declaration will be worked on in finer details to hammer out of free trade agreement between Britain and the EU for the future.

The withdrawal agreement is needed to ensure that the process can take place in an orderly fashion, instead of the UK crashing out of the economic bloc without any arrangements in place for the future.

There was no formal vote required by the remaining 27 members of the EU meeting on Sunday, as the withdrawal agreement was approved by consensus.

Before the meeting, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said the UK's departure was a "tragedy" for the EU and Ireland's Indian-origin Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said the deal allowed for an "orderly withdrawal", in reference to the thorny issue of keeping an open post-Brexit border with the UK's Northern Ireland.

The UK Parliament is expected to vote on the deal in early December, where its approval remains shaky, with Opposition parties Labour, Lib Dems and the Scottish National Party (SNP) as well as government-backing Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and many MPs from the ruling Conservative Party set to vote against it.

"I will be campaigning with my heart and soul to win that vote and to deliver this Brexit deal for the good of our United Kingdom and all of our people," May says in her letter to the nation.

All eyes will now be on the Parliament vote next month, with the agreement going back to the European Council where a majority of 20 out of 27 states will need to vote for it.

It will then need to be ratified by the European Parliament, in a vote expected to take place in early 2019 as part of the tight timeline for the whole process being concluded before Brexit Day of March 29, 2019.

If British MPs reject the deal, a series of scenarios are expected to play out, including the UK leaving with no deal, or an attempt to renegotiate or even a General Election.

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European Union leaders on Sunday approved a historic Brexit deal, holding out hopes of close future ties even as one declared Britain's withdrawal after four decades a "tragedy".

The 27 leaders of the bloc met without Prime Minister Theresa May to endorse the agreement, which sets the stage for Britain exit from the bloc on March 29.

"EU27 has endorsed the Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration on the future EU-UK relations," European Council President Donald Tusk tweeted, as the leaders waited for May to join them.

Arriving for a special summit in Brussels, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, head of the bloc's executive arm, said it was a "sad day".

"To see a country like Great Britain...leave the EU is not a moment of joy nor of celebration, it's a sad moment and it's a tragedy," he said.

Michel Barnier, the former French foreign minister who negotiated the deal on behalf of the bloc, added: "We will remain allies, partners and friends."



May, who arrived in Brussels on Saturday evening for final talks with Tusk and Juncker, was due to join the other leaders later in a highly symbolic moment.

Forged during 17 months of tough negotiations, the withdrawal agreement covers financial matters, citizens' rights, Northern Ireland and arrangements for a 21-month post-Brexit transition phase.

A short political declaration that accompanies the text sets out hopes for future security and trade ties.

But it is not the final stage, as the House of Commons in London must still approve the deal -- and many MPs have warned they will not back it.

Until the agreement is approved, all sides are still planning for the potentially disastrous possibility that Britain leaves the EU with no new arrangements in place.

Media reports in London on Sunday suggested some of May's own ministers were secretly working with EU diplomats on a "Plan B" in case parliament rejected the agreement next month.

But Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, said: "It is important that everyone in the UK is aware that the result that is now available is the result.

"It will certainly not be renegotiated and there will be no further room for manoeuvre." Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte added: "Overall, I think this is the max that we can all do, both Theresa May and her government as well as the European Union.

"No victors here today, nobody winning, we're all losing -- but given that context, this (agreement) is acceptable."



Tusk said on the eve of the summit that "no-one will have reasons to be happy" when Brexit happens, but he said the terms agreed would "reduce the risks and losses".

In London, eurosceptics in May's Conservative party and their Northern Irish allies warn they will not support the agreement, which they argue keeps Britain too close to the EU.

But in an open "letter to the nation" on Sunday, May said it delivered on the 2016 referendum vote to leave, and was a "deal for a brighter future".

Britain remains deeply divided over the decision, but the prime minister said that finally leaving could be "a moment of renewal and reconciliation".

"To do that we need to get on with Brexit now by getting behind this deal," she said.

The summit risked being derailed by a late objection to the deal by Spain over the British territory of Gibraltar.

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez threatened to reject it unless his country kept a veto over future changes to EU ties with "The Rock", which borders Spain and which it has long claimed.

The impasse was resolved when Britain promised to continue bilateral talks with Madrid after Brexit -- although that itself caused further tensions.

Sanchez claimed that discussions would cover the "co-sovereignty" of Gibraltar, but May rejected this.

There are concerns in EU capitals about fishing rights and commercial rules Britain must follow to maintain access to the bloc's markets.

A diplomatic source said the minutes of Sunday's summit meeting of the 27 leaders would record those concerns.

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European Union leaders met Sunday to approve a historic Brexit deal, with one declaring Britain's withdrawal a "tragedy", but holding out hope of close future ties.

Arriving for a special summit in Brussels, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, head of the bloc's executive arm, said it was a "sad day".

"To see a country like Great Britain... leave the EU is not a moment of joy nor of celebration, it's a sad moment and it's a tragedy," he said.

Michel Barnier, the former French foreign minister who negotiated the deal on behalf of the bloc, added: "We will remain allies, partners and friends."



The leaders of the 27 EU states will approve the agreement before being joined by British Prime Minister Theresa May in a highly symbolic moment.

Forged during 17 months of tough negotiations, the deal covers financial matters, citizens' rights, Northern Ireland and a transition phase, and sets out hopes for future security and trade ties.

But it is not the final stage, as the House of Commons in London must still approve the deal before Brexit day on March 29, 2019 -- and many MPs have warned they will not back it.

Until the agreement is approved, all sides are still planning for the potentially disastrous possibility that Britain ends its four-decade EU membership with no new arrangements in place.

Media reports in London on Sunday suggested some of May's own ministers were secretly working with EU diplomats on a "Plan B" in case parliament rejected the agreement next month.

But Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte warned as he arrived in Brussels that there was little point in going back to the negotiating table.

"Overall, I think this is the max that we can all do, both Theresa May and her government as well as the European Union," he said.

"No victors here today, nobody winning, we're all losing -- but given that context, this (agreement) is acceptable."



European Council President Donald Tusk, who has always said he would prefer Britain not to leave, said on the eve of the summit that "no-one will have reasons to be happy" when Brexit happens.

But he said terms had been agreed that would "reduce the risks and losses", and recommended that EU leaders sign off on the deal.

Lithuania president Dalia Grybauskaite said as she arrived: "We will endorse the Brexit agreement, but there is nothing good for any side because it is withdrawal from the EU."



In London, eurosceptics in May's Conservative party and their Northern Irish allies warn they will not support the agreement, which they argue keeps Britain too close to the EU.

But in an open "letter to the nation" on Sunday, May said it delivered on the 2016 referendum vote to leave, and was a "deal for a brighter future".

Britain remains deeply divided over the decision, but the prime minister said that finally leaving could be "a moment of renewal and reconciliation". "To do that we need to get on with Brexit now by getting behind this deal," she said.

The summit risked being derailed by a late objection to the deal by Spain over the British territory of Gibraltar.

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez threatened to reject it unless his country kept a veto over future changes to EU ties with "The Rock", which borders Spain and which it has long claimed.

The impasse was resolved when Britain promised to continue bilateral talks with Madrid after Brexit -- although that itself caused further tensions.

Sanchez claimed that discussions would cover the "co-sovereignty" of Gibraltar, something residents overwhelmingly rejected in a 2002 referendum.

May, who arrived in Brussels on Saturday evening for final talks with Tusk and Juncker, was quick to correct her Spanish counterpart.

"The UK's position on the sovereignty of Gibraltar has not changed and will not change," she said.

In legal terms, Spain's disapproval would not have halted the divorce settlement.

But it would have been an embarrassing split for EU leaders who have proved remarkably united in the painful negotiations.

British MPs are most concerned about an arrangement in the withdrawal agreement to keep open the border between British Northern Ireland and Ireland, which could see the province follow EU rules for years.

But there are also concerns in EU capitals about fishing rights and commercial rules Britain must follow to maintain access to the bloc's markets.

A diplomatic source said the minutes of Sunday's summit meeting of the 27 leaders would record those concerns.

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National Conference (NC) president Farooq Abdullah Sunday expressed happiness over the opening of Kartarpur corridor between India and Pakistan and said he hoped the spirit would replicate itself in Jammu and Kashmir.

He said the initiative would help the Sikh community to realize their long pending demand of paying obeisance at one of their holiest places located across the border.

"The invitation from Pakistan to Indian leaders and legislators on the opening ceremony of Kartarpur corridor will bequeath both India and Pakistan a chance to further the cause of brotherhood and amity," he said.

"The initiative will help the people from across the border to get wind of cultural similarities between the two nations," Abdullah, an MP from Srinagar Lok Sabha constituency, said.

The NC president said Jammu and Kashmir appealed for such initiatives, like opening of borders and greater people to people contact across the border.

"We in Jammu and Kashmir suffer immensely due to the animosity between India and Pakistan. The need of the hour calls for replicating such initiatives as opening of Kartarpur corridor in our state," he said.

He said his party, for past seventy years, has been vouching for affable Indo-Pak relations as they will usher in a new era of peace and prosperity in the peace-craving state.

"We have had four wars since 1947 and we were not able to achieve anything except destruction. I have time and again said that constituency of peace loving people in the two nations far exceeds those who want war.

"Peace loving people should impress upon their respective governments to bridge the divide and rekindle the process of interaction between the two countries which was initiated by late (former PM A B) Vajpayee ji and then Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf and later by PM Manmohan Singh and his counterpart in Pakistan," he said.

Welcoming the brigade commander level meeting between India and Pakistan at a border crossing in Poonch sector, he said such initiatives will bump up the confidence building measures and help the populace across the LoC to live in peace.

"The NC has been a strong votary of 2003 ceasefire agreement. The meeting ended with both sides assuring to adhere to norms of 2003 cease fire. I wish this step towards rapprochement acts as a precursor to more such friendly gestures," he said.

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The negatives of five acclaimed celluloid works of eminent filmmaker Buddhadeb Dasgupta are in very bad shape and need immediate restoration, the director said.

"The master negatives of five of my works - Dooratwa (1978), Phera (1988), Bagh Bahadur (1989), Uttara (2000) and Ami Yasin aar amar Madhubala (2007) are in very poor shape," the 74-year old director told PTI.

Dasgupta is upset that no initiative has been taken by different producers of the films to ensure proper upkeep of the negatives.

'Uttara' won Silver Lion for best director award at the Venice Film Festival (2000), 'Phera' got Golden Bear nomination at the Berlin International Film Festival (1988) and 'Dooratwa' received Critic's Award at the Locarno Film Festival.

All these films were also nominated in other prestigious film festivals, he said.

Dasgupta, who won national award multiple times, said he had on Wednesday (November 21) handed over the negatives of some of the five films to the Film Heritage Foundation "so that the films, which are so close to me, can be kept for the next generations for screening."



He declined to name the films "for some reasons at this stage."



The director also gave the scripts and other jottings he had made on the films during shoot to the Film Heritage Foundation Director Shivendra Singh Dungarpur for preservation and research.

The Foundation is currently busy in the process of restoration and preservation of 100 Bengali films and shortlisting the cult works of different filmmakers in different genres.

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The mother of Indian pilot Bhavye Suneja who captained the ill-fated Indonesian plane that crashed into the sea on October 29 said they have found "closure" after his body was identified by the Indonesian authorities.

The Lion Air flight, with 188 passengers and crew on board, crashed into the sea off Indonesia's island of Java, minutes after taking off from Jakarta Soekarno Hatta International Airport.

Sangeeta Suneja, who is an Air India employee, said her son's colleagues only had good things to speak about him and his skills.

"We have found our closure now. Earlier, we were praying and hoping for a miracle when his body was not found. But now, at least we know what happened to him. Sixty-nine people are still missing," she said.

Sangeeta Suneja said time is a healer and the family will try and come to terms with Bhavye's loss once they return to India.

"The investigative authorities will inform us about the findings of the preliminary report on the crash on November 27. The (Indian) Ambassador came for the cremation yesterday (Saturday) and his colleagues also came and met us.

"They all spoke about him and even the Parliament here was told that he fought till the end," she told PTI over phone from Jakarta.

"The authorities of all the Third-world countries need to assess the airplane parts they are buying from abroad. Just because the parts have been bought from Uncle Sam (US), they accept that they are meeting all the quality controls. I want every country to ensure that there are quality controls," she said.

She said her purpose in life now is to ensure that her son's sacrifice does not go waste.

Captain Suneja, 31, was from Delhi. After completing his studies at Ahlcon Public School in Mayur Vihar, Suneja received his flying licence in 2009. He married in 2016 and was based in Jakarta.

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A signed letter, penned by Mahatma Gandhi a year before India's independence, thanking a British lord for for wishes on his birthday is expected to fetch over USD 20,000 at an online auction.

Signed 'M K Gandhi', the one-page letter to Lord Pethick-Lawrence, Secretary of State for India and Burma, was written from New Delhi on October 10, 1946.

"Dear friend, It was good of you to send me your wishes for my birthday which is synonymous with the rebirth of the spinning wheel in 1918," the letter reads.

Gandhi's reference to the spinning wheel is exceptionally important, as he had adopted it as a symbol of economic independence very early on in his movement, US-based RR Auction said in a statement.

Shortly after World War I, he developed a broad base of support from Indians for peaceful non-cooperation.

After December 1921, Gandhi expanded his nonviolence programme to include the swadeshi policy -- the boycott of British goods.

From this originated his spinning wheel, as he encouraged all Indians to wear khadi instead of British-made textiles.

He furthered this concept by exhorting Indian men and women, rich or poor, to spend time each day spinning khadi in support of the independence movement.

Thus the spinning wheel became symbolic of the movement toward Indian independence.

While Lord Pethwick-Lawrence was involved with the negotiations that led to India's freedom, it was Prime Minister Clement Atlee who made the government's principal decisions in the matter.

The bidding for the online auction ends on December 5.

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Kailash Ghegadmal was the night watchmen on duty at the Cama and Albless Hospital here on the night of November 26, 2008 when two terrorists barged in after killing 52 people at the nearby Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus.

Kailash and Baban Walu, another watchman on night duty, rushed to lock the gates of various buildings within the hospital complex after hearing shots fired behind the main six-storey building.

"I saw Walu getting shot and immediately hid behind a tree as the two terrorists passed by, from just 10 feet. As only the main building was open, the terrorists rushed there and shot dead lathi-wielding guard Bhanu Narkar," he told PTI.

"I first thought the firing was because of a gang war but when Narkar was shot dead in front of me by Mohammad Ajmal Kasab, I realised the gravity of the situation," he said.

After entering the hospital campus Kasab and his accomplice started firing indiscriminately, which petrified the staff, patients and their relatives, he recalled.

Kailash later led the police team to the sixth floor, where they had an encounter with the terrorists, in which two policemen were killed and he and IPS officer Sadanand Date were injured.

Nurses Minakshi Musale and Asmita Choudhary said they used a fridge, an ex-ray machine, medicine trolleys and chairs to lock the door on the second floor to ensure that terrorists were unable to enter the floor.

"Securing babies and their mothers was our duty. We kept all the cradles adjacent to the wall, to avoid bullet injured to the babies," said Sunanda Chavan, who was then the night supervisor.

The hospital now has armed guards and 67 CCTVs to monitor suspicious activity, hospital superintendent Ameeta Joshi said.

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Ten years after the 26/11 terror attacks which left 166 dead, Mumbai police is set to have a dedicated coastal fleet comprising hovercraft and intermediate support vessels to enhance the island city's security.

Mumbai Police Commissioner Subodh Kumar Jaiswal told PTI that a "strong vigil" is being maintained by the coastal police to secure the coastline.

Two hovercraft are being procured to enable security personnel to reach inaccessible areas along the coastline, he said. This will complement the existing fleet of speed boats and patrolling vessels, he said.

Deven Bharti, Joint Commissioner of Police (Law and Order) said, "We are increasing our coastal strength by procuring new boats and intermediate support vessels. We have sent proposals for the same to government".

"In the aftermath of the 26/11 attack, Mumbai police procured speed boats and amphibious boats for coastal patrolling and also set up marine police stations," he said.

The attack was carried by the 10 well-trained terrorists of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, who came to Mumbai by sea.

Coordination between state and central agencies, including the Navy and Coast Guard, tasked with coastal security, has been increased after the attack, he said.

Another official said a post of Inspector General Coastal Security has been created. The incumbent will be the nodal officer for coordination with the agencies to guard the 720 km long coast line of Maharashtra, he said, adding 44 coastal police stations have been set up so far.

"Operation 'Sagar Kavach' was organised to boost the coordination between these agencies. We have also set up 91 check posts on highways connected to the coastline," he said.

The agencies have regular security review meetings, he said, adding the fishermen work as "eyes, ears and nose" of police and alert about suspicious activities in sea and along the coast.

Police have also created 'Sagar Surakhsa Dal', which has around 6,000 fishermen as members. They have saved around 50 people from drowning in sea this year, he added.

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The Brexit deal marks a clear victory for Ireland -- one no-one in Britain saw coming and one which has raised the Irish government's standing at home and abroad.

Ireland is tethered to Britain through a common history, enmeshed economies and a border with the British province of Northern Ireland that held up negotiations for months.

Some British hardliners had argued that Ireland would simply follow along in any exit deal -- a sentiment that caused outrage among many Irish and helped harden resolve.

At the centre of the dispute was a legal guarantee to keep the Irish border open, known as the "backstop", which Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar and his EU allies insisted on and Britain eventually and very reluctantly agreed to.

Ireland was opposed to Brexit and is fearful both of the impact on trade with biggest economic partner Britain and any destabilising influence on the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which ended three decades of sectarian conflict.

When the draft accord was published earlier this month, Irish politicians across the spectrum lauded it as the best possible outcome for the Republic in contrast to the deep divisions in the British parliament over its merits.

"The Irish government's key preferences were all reflected in the divorce settlement," said Etain Tannam, a senior lecturer at Trinity College Dublin.

"Bi-partisan party support in the Irish parliament for the government's Brexit policy has been noteworthy since the withdrawal process began," she said.

In the tug of war of international interests, Ireland's government now has greater traction and is earning a reputation as a shrewd bargainer -- at the same time as Britain's prestige is on the wane.

"The places have changed. Britain, not Ireland, is the relatively small and isolated country," Irish columnist Fintan O'Toole wrote in a column for the Guardian newspaper.

"Ireland, not the British Empire, has on its side the power of a huge multinational bloc," he said, referring to Britain's previous dominant influence over Ireland.

Whilst Britain has been plunged into political turmoil ever since the 2016 Brexit referendum, Irish has been imbued with a sense of unity in the national interest.

Varadkar's centre-right Fine Gael minority government is theoretically vulnerable with its reliance on the centre-left opposition party Fianna Fail through a confidence and supply agreement.

But the two age-old rivals agreed to extend their pact through until the end of Brexit negotiations.

"An election during this critical time would create a dangerous instability," Fianna Fail leader Miche?l Martin wrote in an October letter to the prime minister.

In polls, Varadkar's party holds a firm lead -- making him one of the few clear-cut winners in the Brexit morass.

When the draft withdrawal deal was announced last week Varadkar abstained from a victory lap, issuing the staid remark that it was "one of the better days in politics".

Ireland had four priorities in negotiations -- to preserve the peace process, maintain common travel rights with the UK and minimise the economic impact of Brexit.

The final one was to reaffirm the Republic's "place at the heart of the European Union".

Mindful that it will soon be isolated at the edge of the trading bloc, the Irish government has doubled down on its membership of the union with statements of solidarity.

And opinion polls suggest that calls by Brexiteers for Ireland to follow Britain in leaving the EU have fallen on deaf ears.

A survey by pollsters Red C earlier this year found that 92 per cent of the Irish population now support staying in the EU -- up from 88 per cent last year.

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For the select policemen involved in the covert operation to shift 26/11 terrorist Ajmal Kasab from Mumbai to Pune, the phrase "Parcel reached Fox" signalled that the van carrying him had reached the jail where he was to be hanged the next day.

A senior police official involved in carrying out the operation said this was one of the seven code words/phrases used during the exercise, of which only the then home minister R R Patil and a few top police officials were aware of.

The code "Parcel reached Fox" was the last code exchanged between two senior officials involved in the operation to transport Kasab, he told PTI.

The hand-picked team was tasked with shifting Kasab from the high security 'Anda Cell' of Arthur Road prison in Central Mumbai to Yerwada Central Prison in Pune, he said.

The lone terrorist captured alive during the 26/11 attacks was covered in a 'burqa' while being taken out of his cell on the night of November 20, 2012 and put in a police vehicle, the officer recalled.

"It was a big responsibility to transport him to Yerwada prison to be hanged. A death warrant was served to him seven days before the execution," he said.

The 'Force One' commando team of police, carrying advanced weapons, accompanied Kasab's vehicle. A State Reserve Police Force team trailing the vehicle a little behind, so as not to arouse suspicions, when it was on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway.

Except for two handsets, mobile phones of all officers and other police personnel involved in the operation were switched off and packed in a bag, the official said.

"During the entire three-hour long journey, Kasab did not utter a single word," he said. His demeanour did not change even when he was handed over to the Yerwada prison authorities at around 3 am, the official said.

By the time their mobile phones were switched on again the next day, November 21, the world knew that Kasab was executed, he said.

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Senior Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi on Sunday said if his party is voted to power in Telangana, it will launch a probe into the "wrongdoings" of the state's caretaker chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao and dubbed his family as "thugs".

He said four Ks -- KCR, as Rao is populary known, his son and minister K T Rama Rao, daughter and parliamentarian K Kavitha and 'kutumb' (family) -- had "robbed" the four crore people of Telangana.

Singhvi said KCR's recent remarks that he will sleep at home if his party, Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), loses the December 7 assembly elections showed that he was convinced of his defeat.

"But let me submit to the chief minister and his senior ministers, including members of his family, that when the new government is formed in a few days, it will not allow you to sleep so easily," he said.

"We will seek answers, accounts and accountability of all the wrongdoings and misuse (of power)," the Congress leader warned.

Singhvi said the KCR government's days were numbered and, not just leaders, but even people were deserting the ruling party, which is a sinking ship.

"It is not the beginning of the end, it is the end of the end. The newly born state of Telangana has been looted by TRS thugs. The protectors turned it into a feeding frenzy of four Ks - KCR, KTR, Kavitha and 'kutumb'," he alleged.

"The 'kutumb' of four is robbing four crore people of Telangana. These thugs have created a graveyard of broken promises, a legacy of breach of trust, a betrayal of emotions and a denial of all expectations," the AICC spokesperson said.

Alleging that the TRS government has dismantled the pillars of democracy, Singhvi said people of Telangana can file cases under sections 420 (cheating) and 120 (conspiracy) (of the Indian Penal Code) against the members of the Rao family.

He claimed Telangana ranked second on the "corruption chart" and numerous scams were surfacing in the state, including the Miyapur land scam wherein hundreds of acres of government land seems to have been "grabbed" by influential parties.

"The lid was blown off this mother of all land scams in Telangana when an audit revealed that the Kukatpally sub-registrar in Hyderabad had given 696 acres of government land to private real estate concerns. The illegal deal is reported to have caused a loss of Rs 587 crore to the state exchequer," Singhvi said.

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India is better prepared and better organised since a group of sea-borne terrorists struck at the heart of Mumbai 10 years back, thanks to a string of security measures including a layered maritime surveillance, Navy Chief Admiral Sunil Lanba has said.

We have come a long way since then, he told PTI in an interview in his office in South Block on the 10th anniversary of the 26/11.

The Navy Chief said there has been a paradigm shift in coastal security as vulnerabilities and risks were fixed and a layered maritime surveillance and security architecture was put in place, making the coastline almost impregnable.

"The country is now better prepared and better organised, Adm. Lanba said when asked about possibility of terrorists taking the sea route again to mount a similar attack on India.

He said the India Navy is now a potent multi-dimensional force, safeguarding India's interests in the seas and that it is fully prepared to deal with any security challenge facing the country in the maritime domain.

On November 26, 2008, 10 Pakistani terrorists sneaked into Mumbai through the sea, arriving by boat from Karachi, and went on the rampage, carrying out coordinated attacks on the main Chattrapati Shivaji railway terminus, the iconic Taj Mahal hotel, the Trident hotel, and a Jewish centre all in the heart of the financial capital's downtown area.

Over 166 people including 28 foreigners from 10 nations were killed in the nearly 60-hour assault that sent shock-waves across the country and even brought India and Pakistan to the brink of war.

The terrorist strike, the worst in India's history, was seen as an attack on the country's sovereignty, and it exposed fault-lines in the coastal security network, intelligence gathering while also uncovering the lack of coordination among various agencies.

Adm. Lanba, who is also chairman of Chiefs of Staff Committee, said critical gaps and vulnerabilities in the country's coastal infrastructure have been addressed, and that a robust surveillance network comprising 42 radar stations linked to a control centre headquartered Gurgaon has been put in place.

"We now have a multi-layered security architecture for coastal security, involving various agencies including the Coast guard and the Navy," he said, adding that an overhaul of the coastal defence apparatus was carried out in the last few years.

The radar stations were also fitted with high-resolution cameras with a range of 10 nautical miles. Another batch of 38 radar stations is being set up to keep a hawk eye vigil on activities along India's 7,500-kilometre coastline.

The Navy Chief said that tracking the movement of thousands of fishing boats round-the-clock was a major challenge but now a mechanism has been put into place to track them. He, however, emphasised on the need to improve intelligence gathering to further tighten the existing security apparatus.

He listed colour-coding of fishing boats, their online registration and issuance of biometric cards to the fishermen as some of the important steps as part of enhancing coastal security.

The Navy Chief said data about ships, dhows, mechanized trawlers, fishing boats and all other vessels operating near India's coasts are analysed round-the-clock.

An Information Management and Analysis Centre (IMAC) was set up in Gurgaon which acts as a nodal agency for national command control and intelligence sharing among the Coast Guard and the Navy, he added.

Standard operating procedures have been formulated for coastal and offshore security among various institutions including the Indian Navy, the Coast Guard and agencies concerned of the coastal states to streamline the efforts of multiple stakeholders.

The Navy Chief said 1,500 landing points for fishing boats are being monitored regularly besides making installation of AIS (Automatic Identification System) transponders mandatory for vessels of 300 tonnes and above for their easy tracking.

As part of efforts to further beef up coastal security, Adm. Lanba said a massive coastal security exercise, christened "Sea Vigil", covering the entire coastline as well as island territories is being organised in January next year.

"For the first time, such a mega exercise will be held," he said.

There have been biannual coastal security exercises at the level of states, but for the first time an exercise involving all coastal states, island territories and all central and state agencies is being organised.

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A gang of five fraudsters, including an Indian-origin accountant, who ran a fake Bangladeshi visa scam and falsely claimed nearly 13 million pounds in tax repayments have been sentenced to a total of 31 years in jail by a UK court.

Jalpa Trivedi, 41, was found guilty for facilitating the accounting side of the fraud and was jailed for three years.

London-based Bangladeshi origin law student Abul Kalam Muhammad Rezaul Karim was the ringleader in the organised crime group.

The 42-year-old man set up 79 bogus companies and created fake documentation used by Bangladeshi nationals in fraudulent visa applications, Southwark Crown Court in London was told during a trial that ended last week.

The fraudsters also used the companies to fraudulently reclaim tax repayments from HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) over a six-year period, with 172,000 pounds being paid out and potentially could have amounted to as much as 13-million pounds if the fraud had not been undetected.

An investigation into their wrongdoing was the "longest ever undertaken" by the UK's Immigration Enforcement's Criminal and Financial Investigation (CFI) team.

Judge Martin Griffith said: "The purpose was to fool the Home Office into granting visas and it worked. Eighteen people were granted visas based on false figures. Of those, three were allowed to become naturalised British citizens, and two given indefinite leave to remain."



All five fraudsters were found guilty of conspiracy to defraud by making false applications under the Tier-1 visa category between December 31, 2008 and February 27, 2013.

Karim was sentenced to ten-and-a-half years, his brother-in-law Enamul Karim, 34, was sentenced to nine years and four months and Kazi Borkot Ullah, 39, was sentenced to five years and 10 months behind bars.

All three were absent in court after absconding in July and arrest warrants have been issued for their arrest.

Ullah's lawyer told the court he had "no idea where he is, in this country, Bangladesh or anywhere else".

Mohammed Tamij Uddin, 47, was jailed for two years and six months respectively.

Prosecutor Julian Christopher told the court their offending was on an "industrial scale".

As part of the immigration scam, the five defendants charged some clients on temporary visas wanting to remain in the UK a minimum of 700 pounds in cash for their fraudulent immigration services.

The fraud was uncovered in 2011 when the UK Home Office identified a suspicious pattern in a series of points-based applications for Tier 1 general and entrepreneur visas.

Both routes had a significant financial requirement, with applicants earning points based either on previous earnings or by demonstrating they had access to a minimum of 50,000 pounds to invest in UK business.

The gang claimed their clients were employees as part of their tax and immigration fraud creating fake payslips and providing false information on hundreds of applications to ensure eligibility for a Tier 1 visa.

They transferred money into clients' bank accounts to make them appear well-paid employees. The money was paid back to the fraudsters the following month and, between 2008 and 2013, millions were laundered through the bank accounts as a result.

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Contrary to the belief that people flock to tropical destinations to beat freezing winters, a study has revealed that more Indians are gearing up for a snow filled experience this season.

"With the onset of winter and long breaks during Christmas and New Year, destinations such as Europe and North America are now popular among Indian travellers for a white Christmas with New York topping the list followed by London and Toronto," global travel search engine KAYAK's director of India and Middle East, Abhijit Mishra, said.

The data is based on searches done by Indian travellers on return flights on KAYAK platform during January till November this year for travelling between January and February 2019.

There has been an eight per cent year-on-year surge in searches by Indians compared with the corresponding period in the previous year.

Mishra pointed out this could be due to the fact that off-season travel brings with it some amazing deals, making these countries perfect for winter travel.

The top three international destinations - New York, London and Toronto witnessed a year-on-year increase of 4 per cent, 31 per cent and 50 per cent in travel searches respectively.

This pattern suggests that the holiday-makers are keen to experience a snowy Christmas and New Year's, it added.

Also, winter holidays in Europe are gradually witnessing growth.

Within Europe, Reykjavik in Iceland has witnessed the highest growth of 137 per cent in year-on-year searches owing to its beautiful natural wonders, he added.

According to KAYAK's data, other North American destinations, including Chicago, Boston and Vancouver with 31 per cent, 75 per cent and 43 per cent year-on-year growth in searches respectively, also featured in the list.

These cities have a slightly higher average trip duration period of 15-23 days, compared to European cities ranging from 8-11 days.

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The Jammu and Kashmir Police has busted an Islamic State-inspired module and arrested three suspected militants with the help of the Delhi Police here, an official said Sunday.

Acting on a tip-off, three motorcycle-borne men, who were moving through the Kothi Bagh area, were intercepted at a checkpoint on Saturday, a police spokesperson said.

The three accused, Tahir Ahmad Khan, Tral, Haris Mushtaq Khan, and Asif Suhail Nadaf, have been arrested after arms and ammunition were recovered from their possession, the spokesperson said, adding that a case had been registered.

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Jammu and Kashmir unit of the BJP Sunday called upon its leaders to gear up for the next Lok Sabha polls as well as the state assembly elections, which are expected to be held together.

Chairing a meeting of his state leaders in the party headquarters here, BJP State president Ravinder Raina stressed upon the leaders to double their efforts in establishing contacts with the masses and apprise them of the works done by the Union as well as the state government, which the party had partnered with the PDP till June this year.

Raina also stressed upon them to expedite the setting up of party cells on various issues, saying these cells play an important role in both the Lok Sabha and the state assembly elections.

"We stress upon the importance of cells in coming months and the leaders of the cells have an important role in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections as well as the assembly elections," he said.

The BJP's state unit chief asked the leaders to take all the schemes initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the masses and strive to generate "warm contact" with the prominent people of the society.

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The Jawaharlal Nehru University on Sunday requested the teachers' association not to hold the proposed hunger strike over the rescheduling of the academic calendar and compliance of faculty attendance sent by the administration.

In a circular issued in mid-November, the administration had said seven years in the varsity were necessary for granting sabbatical leave to a faculty member. It announced that proposals for seminar participation, conference travel, project meetings, prestigious fellowships, including those scheduled during vacations, would be allowed if teachers comply with the diktats of the university, the JNU Teachers' Association (JNUTA) said.

"You will be allowed to teach, conduct research and reimburse your medical bills if you fall in line and do not question the diktats of the competent authority," the circular said, according to JNUTA.

The teachers' body gave a call for a 24-hour hunger strike from 10 am on Monday, demanding the restoration of academic and institutional functioning of the university.

In an unprecedented action, the JNUTA said, a large number of teachers would be on the hunger strike and many more would sit in solidarity with those. It accused the varsity administration of destroying the teaching and learning culture at the university.

The JNUTA had submitted a memorandum of demands to the executive council members before the council's meeting last Tuesday, but alleged that it was not discussed in the meeting.

The administration, however, said Sunday such matters needed to be routed through the department concerned, following appropriate procedures. "However. if so needed, the teacher representatives in EC have the opportunity to discuss such issues under any other item with the permission of the chair."



The varsity requested the JNUTA to send two representatives to meet the administration officials. "The university administration firmly believes that any problem can be resolved through mutual dialogue and not by causing disruption in the functioning of the university by way of protests and strikes."



Citing an Delhi High Court order that prohibited protests at the administration block, the varsity said: "In case, the protest is undertaken by you, within 100 metres of the administrative and academic complexes, appropriate action will be taken as per the university rules and regulations."In a reply, the JNUTA said the administration was expressing its interest in mutual dialogue on one hand, while threatening teachers of punitive actions on the other.

It said the high court ruling was for students and the adminstration did not hold any dialogue with them despite repeated requests, adding that they were ready to have a dialogue.

The JNUTA demanded that the administration, in order to demonstrate its earnestness to start a dialogue, must immediately withdraw "arbitrary" circulars regarding the rescheduling of the academic calendar and compliance of faculty attendance.

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Actor-politician Kamal Haasan Sunday condoled the demise of veteran Kannada star Ambareesh, saying the former minister had a 'child-like' heart, while an apex actors' body described his death as an "irreparable loss" for the Indian cinema industry.

DMK president and state Leader of Opposition MK Stalin also expressed grief over the Kannada star's passing away and described him as "legendary".

"Ambareesh was my friend for 42 years. Rugged looks, child-like heart. My heartfelt condolences to his family, fans and friends like me," Haasan said in a tweet in Tamil.

Ambareesh, a former Karnataka minister, passed away at a private hospital in Bengaluru on Saturday. He was 66.

Meanwhile, the South Indian Artistes' Association (SIAA) mourned the loss of the veteran actor, recalling his ascent to stardom, besides his successful stint in politics.

"He had created history in the fields of cinema and politics and his demise is an irreparable loss for the country and the cinema industry," a SIAA statement said.

The association, headed by senior actor M Nasser, pointed out at Ambareesh's cordial relations with the SIAA and recalled that he had made his on-screen debut with a 'small role' in a Kannada movie.

He later played the villain's character in many films before graduating as a hero, it said, adding that he later enjoyed a good fan support.

Ambareesh had acted in a number of movies in Kannada, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam, the statement added.

DMK chief Stalin expressed grief over the actor's death.

"Deeply saddened by the of the demise of legendary Kannada actor #Ambareesh. My deepest condolences to his bereaved family and all his fans," he tweeted.

Tamil Nadu Congress chief Su Thirunavukkarasar also condoled the demise of the veteran star.

On Saturday, Tamil superstar Rajinikanth had condoled the death of Ambareesh, calling him his "best friend".

"A wonderful human being ... my best friend ... I have lost you today and will miss you ... Rest In Peace #Ambrish," he had said on Twitter.

Ambareesh had acted in over 200 films, including a couple of Tamil flicks, and had also served as the Karnataka minister of Housing in the Siddaramaiah-led cabinet.

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The verbal attacks during the ongoing election campaign in Telangana hit a new low Sunday when Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao called his Andhra Pradesh counterpart N Chandrababu Naidu "a mental".

The Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) chief was speaking at a public meeting at Pargi in Vikarabad district ahead of the December 7 state Assembly polls.

"I say Chandrababu is a mental. Why? Because he had once said goats should be banned in order to save the forests (by preventing grazing). When was the goat born (the species came into existence) and when was he born? Who are you to ban the goat, a creation of nature?" Rao asked.

"He (Naidu) claims that he was instrumental in putting Hyderabad on the world map. What should we do with this man," he said, hitting out at the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) supremo.

"If he is that capable, why did he fail in building Amaravati (the upcoming capital of Andhra Pradesh)? Except graphic representations, no real building has come up there.

"This kind of cheats are coming to you, seeking votes. If we are not careful, we will be cheated," Rao said in a scathing attack on the People's Front alliance of the Congress, TDP, Telangana Jana Samithi and CPI.

He claimed that the power situation in Telangana had improved drastically since 2014, but it would worsen again if his party lost in the upcoming polls.

The TRS was going to form the government by winning 103 to 106 of the 119 seats in the state, Rao claimed, citing a survey.

At a public meeting at Devarkadra, Rao alleged that Naidu had filed 35 court cases and "written 40 letters", opposing the irrigating projects in Telangana, and now, he was seeking votes in the state.

Hitting out at the Congress, the TRS chief said, "Don't you see the development here? Are you giving a Rs 1,000 pension to people in the states where your party is in power (as in Telangana)?"



Speaking at Narayanpet, the chief minister said democracy in the country had not reached "enough maturity levels" and that people should not vote carelessly.

"Many parties will come and say many things. Please listen to them and think once again before casting the vote, which is going to change our fate," he said.

Rao also addressed public meetings at Tandur, Shadnagar and Ibrahimpatnam Sunday.

The 119-member Telangana Assembly will go to the polls on December 7 and the results will be announced on December 11.

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Virat Kohli fired the opening salvo on the Australia tour with a match-winning 61, helping India win the third T20 International by six wickets and draw the three-match series 1-1 here Sunday.

Kohli's sublime 41-ball knock and his 60-run unbeaten stand with Dinesh Karthik (22 not out off 18) gave India the much needed series levelling win ahead of the all important Test series beginning December 6 at Adelaide.

The captain's perfectly executed chase in 19.4 overs came after Shikhar Dhawan (41 off 22 balls) and Rohit Sharma (23 off 16 balls) provided a flying start to the innings.

Earlier, Krunal Pandya took career-best figures of 4-36 as Australia were restricted to 164-6 in 20 overs.

Australia won the opening T20 by four runs while the second game was a washout, putting additional pressure on India who came here at the back of winning six T20 series in a row.

Chasing 165, Dhawan and Sharma put on 50 runs off just 28 balls.

Both batsmen took the aerial route with aplomb and hit seven fours and four sixes between them to leave the Australian bowlers clueless. Overall, India scored 67-1 in the powerplay overs.

Mitchell Starc (1-26) had got the breakthrough in the sixth over, trapping Dhawan lbw via DRS referral. It put a momentary break on scoring as no runs were scored off the next eight balls, resulting in Sharma's dismissal, who played on off Adam Zampa (1-22).

KL Rahul (14) started off by scoring a monster six, and added 41 runs for the third wicket with Kohli. India crossed 100 in the 12th over, but the former started struggling for timing and holed out shortly afterwards.

It became a double blow as Rishabh Pant was out for a first-ball duck, gloving behind off a slower short ball from Andrew Tye (1-32).

India were in bit of a bother at that stage, but Kohli and Dinesh Karthik (22 not out off 18 balls) brought out their shots. The latter played a perfect foil to Kohli as he struck a four and a six to bring down the asking rate.

Kohli meanwhile reached his 19th T20I half-century off 34 balls and took India home with two balls to spare.

This was after Pandya's orthodox left-arm spin came in handy during the middle overs after the hosts had sped to 68-0 after winning the toss and opting to bat.

Australia made one change to their line-up, with Mitchell Starc coming in for Jason Behrendorff. India picked an unchanged eleven.

Aaron Finch (28) and D'Arcy Short (33) then provided a cautious start to the innings, albeit they picked up momentum quickly as the Indian pacers struggled in conditions vastly different from Brisbane and Melbourne.

Bhuvneshwar Kumar (0-33) and Khaleel Ahmed (0-35) both proved expensive, while first-change Jasprit Bumrah (0-38) too didn't stem the flow of runs, as Australia raced to 49-0 at the end of powerplay overs.

The Finch-Short partnership put pressure on the Indian fielding, shoddy again, and Rohit Sharma put down a sitter off Finch (on 22) at the start of the eight over off Pandya.

Kuldeep Yadav (1-19) then provided the much-awaited breakthrough as Finch was out caught sweeping at short fine leg.

It opened the doors to the Australian middle order. Glenn Maxwell (13) survived an lbw shout via DRS off Yadav, but Short and Ben McDermott (0) were dismissed lbw off successive balls in the tenth over as Pandya pegged Australia back.

The quick wickets disturbed Australia's momentum and they never really recovered, losing wickets at regular intervals in the second half of their innings. They had held back Chris Lynn (13) but he couldn't provide the requisite impetus, run-out in the 18th over.

In between Pandya also accounted for Maxwell, caught by Sharma in the end, as also the vital wicket of Alex Carey (27) who held the Australian middle order together after the initial setbacks.

Marcus Stoinis (25 not out off 15 balls) played an attacking cameo at the end, and put on 33 runs with Nathan Coulter-Nile (13 not out) as Australia finished with a score just above average (151) at this ground.

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Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena on Sunday made it clear that he would never reappoint ousted prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe even as he accepted that the action of removing his arch-rival has created "some form of political unrest" in the country.

Sirisena last month abruptly sacked Wickeremesinghe and replaced him with former strongman Mahinda Rajapksa in a controversial move termed by many as unconstitutional.

The controversial action on October 26 led to a political crisis in the country with both Wickremesinghe and Rajapaksa claiming to be the legitimate prime minister.

Sirisena, addressing the Colombo-based foreign correspondents, said: "There is no possibility that I will be re-appointing him (Wickeremesinghe).

"There is some form of political unrest in the country due to my decision, but I do not consider it as a serious political crisis".

The President said that he and Wickremesinghe had developed serious policy differences on their approach to governance.

"The first one was on the appointment of the Cabinet. I had entrusted a committee of academics to recommend ways to appoint a cabinet based on a scientific division of subjects. But Mr Wickremesinghe ignored those recommendations," he said.

Sirisena said that Wickremesinghe appointed one ministry to handle both the higher education and the highways.

One of the major issues of conflict was Sirisena's opposition to Wickremesinghe's nominee to the post of Central Bank governor Arjuna Mahendran, a Singaporean national.

"I told him (Wickremesinghe) that he should not be appointed because he is a non Sri Lankan. He insisted that he (Mahendran) be appointed," Sirisena said.

The President said that Mahendran was responsible for the biggest financial scam in the country over the Central Bank's issuance of bonds.

A probe had found Mahendran guilty of providing insider information to a dealer linked to his son-in-law.

"He (Mahendran) is absconding and Ranil Wickremesinghe knows his whereabouts," Sirisena said, adding that he would appoint a special probe on Wickremesinghe's three years as prime minister, accusing his government of being corrupt.

The President described Wickremesinghe as a proponent of destructive neo-Liberal economic policies which are not suitable for Sri Lanka.

"How can I work with a government leader who was ridiculing an attempt on my life," Sirisena said, accusing the ousted prime minister of trying to undermine a probe on an alleged plot to assassinate him.

An Indian national and a senior police officer are currently under the police custody for the plot.

Sirisena claimed that Wickremesinghe's sacking, Rajapaksa's appointment and Parliament's dissolution for fresh elections were all constitutional actions.

"They (the Opposition parties) have only challenged my decision to dissolve Parliament," he said.

Sirisena accused Speaker Karu Jayasuriya of violating Parliament's standing orders in approving the motion of no confidence against Rajapaksa.

He said although the standing orders can be suspended, Jayasuriya's action to approve the motion on the strength of voice was wrong in a matter of changing of a government.

Wickremesinghe has termed his dismissal as invalid and said he still holds a majority in the 225-member Parliament.

Former president Rajapaksa, who ruled Sri Lanka for nearly a decade, was unexpectedly defeated by his deputy, Sirisena, in the presidential election in January, 2015 with the support from Wickremesinghe's United National Party.

However, the power-sharing arrangement between Sirisena and Wickremesinghe became increasingly tenuous on several policy matters, mainly on economy and security.

The country is witnessing a political stalemate since Sirisena sacked Wickremesinghe on October 26.

Sirisena later dissolved Parliament, almost 20 months before its term was to end, and ordered snap election. The Supreme Court overturned Sirisena's decision to dissolve Parliament and halted the preparations for snap polls.

Speaker Jayasuriya then ordered a floor test in the 225-member assembly to end the ongoing political crisis, a move which invited the wrath of the government of Rajapaksa.

The United National Front led by Wickeremesinghe has already moved three motions of no trust against Rajapaksa. Rajapaksa, however, has refused to step down.

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Two lawyers who defended Ajmal Kasab in the 2008 Mumbai attack case on the directions of the Bombay High Court are yet to get their legal fees from the Maharashtra government.

While the state government says they have not submitted any bills, the lawyers say that state prosecutors are not supposed to.

The two lawyers -- Amin Solkar and Farhana Shah -- were tasked with defending Kasab, hanged to death on November 21, 2012 for killing over 166 people in Mumbai, by the Maharashtra State Legal Services Department after they were nominated by then acting Chief Justice of Bombay High Court J N Patel.

A notification about their appointment was issued on June 8, 2010 after Kasab had expressed his desire to contest the verdict of the trial court sentencing him to death in the Bombay High Court.

According to the notification, Solkar was to receive remuneration equivalent to what is sanctioned for a public prosecutor, who conducts a death confirmation appeal, and Shah was to receive fees on par with an assistant prosecutor.

Keeping in tradition with the fairness of the trial, the law allows for appointment of a lawyer from the legal services department if accused is unable to do so.

Solkar and Shah had argued for Kasab in the Bombay High Court against his death sentence almost on a day-to-day basis for nearly nine months before it confirmed the death sentence on the lone gunman, who sprayed bullets barbarically on November 26, 2008.

His conviction was upheld by the Supreme Court a year later and he was hanged to death in 2012 inside the Yerwada prison in Pune.

When contacted by PTI, both Solkar and Shah said they are yet to receive their fees.

Both the lawyers said they had given the case priority as the high court was hearing it on a day-to-day basis from 11am to 5pm.

"I do not know why the state government has not made any efforts to pay us our fees. It has been seven years since the judgment was delivered by the high court. The Supreme Court confirmed the death penalty and Kasab is also dead. But we are still waiting (for the fees)," Solkar told PTI.

He said he was contemplating legal action to get his dues cleared from the state government.

"We are only asking for what is legally due to us. The law says every accused should get a fair trial. To ensure this, we were appointed to defend Kasab... then why this delay in paying us our fees," Solkar said.

Shah, on the other hand, says she has given up hopes that she will get her remuneration for appearing in the case.

"I have now given up. I consider it as a pro bono case (a case taken up voluntarily and without payment)," Shah, who had defended several accused in the 1993 Mumbai serial bomb blasts case, told PTI.

While the exact amount per hearing was not known, sources in the know put the figure somewhere between Rs 1,500 to Rs 2,000 per day.

An official from the state government's law and judiciary department said the government would pay the fees only after the two lawyers submit their bills.

To this, both Solkar and Shah said the need to submit bills does not arise at all as they were appointed by the high court and a notification to this effect was issued by the government.

"Does the government ask for bills from the public prosecutor before giving them their remuneration?" Solkar said.

Abbas Kazmi, a lawyer who had defended Kasab before trial judge M L Tahalayani, claims he has been paid by the government for his services.

"My remuneration was given by the government soon after the completion of the trial," Kazmi said, adding he got his fees without having to submit any bills to the government.

Ten Pakistani terrorists had launched a dastardly attack on key locations in the city on the night of November 26, 2008. The terrorists killed 166 people and injured over 600 others.

The places that were attacked included the CST railway station in south Mumbai, the Taj Hotel and the Trident Hotel in south Mumbai, Cafe Leopold and Chabad House at Colaba in south Mumbai.

The attacks lasted three days. While nine of the terrorists were killed during the siege, Kasab was caught alive by the Mumbai police at Marine Drive in south Mumbai.

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University students who are lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) are at higher risk of self-harm and attempting suicide than their heterosexual counterparts, a study has found.

The study, by researchers from the University of Manchester and Leeds Beckett University in the UK, shows that low self-esteem may explain the increased risk of self-harm in LGB students.

Low self-esteem may result in LGB students who have faced discrimination or have struggled to accept or share their sexuality with others, according to the study published in the journal Archives of Suicide Research.

"This study confirms that lesbian, gay or bisexual young people have elevated rates of suicidality and self-harm compared with heterosexual youth," said Elizabeth McDermott of Lancaster University.

"We know much less about how LGB young people seek help for their mental health problems, or what type of support would be effective," said McDermott.

Of the LGB students who completed an online questionnaire, 65 per cent had carried out non suicidal self-harm over their lifetime compared to 41 per cent of heterosexual students.

Self-harm typically includes behaviour such as cutting, hair pulling, scratching, burning or non-lethal overdoses.

About 35 per cent of LGB students had attempted suicide in their lifetime compared to 14 per cent of non-LGB students.

The study was completed by of 707 students with an average age of 23 from two English Universities of which 119 self-identified as LGB.

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Angry locals blocked the Batote-Kishtwar National Highway at Thathri area Sunday over the death of a retired Army officer, demanding arrest of the accused, officials said.

Retired Army officer Mohd Hafiz (60) was killed and several others were injured in a clash between two groups at a polling booth in Doda district during the third phase of the Jammu and Kashmir panchayat elections on Saturday, police said.

"After post-mortem of the deceased, the villagers joined by locals at Thathri refused to take the body to his native village Joura for last rites. They kept the body on the highway demanding assurance from the district magistrate," Thathri SDM Mohd Anwar Banday said.

The protesters sought the district administration's intervention into the matter and assurance from the Doda deputy commissioner to immediately set up a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to nail down the culprits. They also demanded a government job for the kin of the deceased.

The SDM said he tried to pacify the protesters and assured them of arresting the culprits at the earliest but they are insisting on assurance from the DM itself. Meanwhile, hundreds of vehicles remained stranded on either side of the highway at Thathri town since 9 am.

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After the success of a pilot project, the Maharashtra government plans to extend the chief minister's agricultural solar feeder scheme in the rest of the state.

The pilot project of the scheme was introduced last year in two places in Ralegan Siddhi in Ahmednagar and Kolambi in Yawatmal.

"The scheme is a total success and will be extended to the entire state. This is a game changer and solar units will be set up in the government land where there is evacuation facility," Maharashtra State Electricity Transmission Company (Mahatransco) director Vishwas Pathak said.

Under this programme, the farmers are supplied power during the day with the help of solar generation.

When asked about the privatisation process of power distribution for Malegaon and Kalwa-Mumbra sections, he said the project is on fast track and the tendering process is underway now.

"The entire process is likely to be completed soon," he added.

Pathak further said the privatisation of Bhiwandi is successful and hence we have decided to go in for privatisation of power supply in the two areas, where the bill collection is very low.

"Already a number of companies have participated in the tendering process, including Torrent Power, which manages the powerloom town of Bhiwandi and the best suited one would be picked up," he added.

Pathak also said there has been a growth of power consumers from 2.15 crore to 2.45 crore and to meet this growth, the company is taking every effort.

"There was an acute shortage of meters recently due to the fact that 16 lakh meters supplied by two companies, one from Hyderabad and the other from UP, were found to be faulty and had to be replaced on priority. These two companies have been blacklisted, he said and added that the legal process was underway for "recovery of losses," he said.

When asked about the transmission and distribution losses incurred by state discom Mahavitaran, he said the company could reduce it from the past 17.50 per cent to 14.50 per cent.

"We do not claim that we have achieved and met every target but to a large extent we have performed and brought the power scene to a good position as regards supply, distribution and reducing the problems which were faced earlier," he said.

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West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee Sunday expressed her deep grief over the passing away of veteran Congress leader and former Union minister CK Jaffer Sharief.

Banerjee remembered having met Sharief for the first time after she became an MP.

"Saddened at the passing away of very senior politician and former Union Minister CK Jaffer Sharief. He had a special affection for me. Met him in my first term as MP. My condolences to his family and his many admirers," Banerjee wrote on her twitter handle.

Sharief passed away Sunday at a private hospital in Bengaluru following a cardiac arrest. He was 85.

Family sources said Sharief was not keeping well for quite some time. He is survived by two daughters.

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One person was killed Sunday when a car hit him when he was waiting for a bus on the EM Bypass here, police said.

The car was allegedly driven by a woman fashion designer. She was arrested and was booked under relevant non-bailable sections, they said.

The incident happened at around 3.30 pm when the fashion designer, allegedly drunk, broke the red signal and drove across to hit one person, who was waiting for a bus to reach his workplace at the Leather Complex, a senior officer of Kolkata Police said.

"She is unable to talk properly. It's quite surprising how was she driving the car. The vehicle was running at a very high speed. Initial questioning revealed that she came out of a pub in the Park Street area and was heading towards home after dropping some of her friends. After that the mishap happened," the officer said.

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On his second trip, Christian Bale was determined to discover India but the actor admits that so far he has only managed to explore the tiny scratches of the country.

Bale visited India in 2011 for the shooting of "The Dark Knight Rises" but this time around, he has brought his family and travelled to cities such as Delhi, Agra, Jaipur before arriving here for the world premiere of Netflix's "Mowgli".

"I have just seen the tip of the iceberg. I filmed here before in 2011 in Jodhpur, Rajasthan for 'The Dark Knight Rises'. But I have brought my family here ... We travelled through Delhi, Agra, Jaipur and just arrived here in Mumbai. We have seen tiny-tiny scratches of this incredible country, which is a world within itself. But it was so important for 'Mowgli' to come here," he said at a press conference here.

For "Mowgli", actor-director Andy Serkis' darker take on Rudyard Kipling's classic story, Bale has tried his hand at the art of performance capture.

He said the technology was different for him and Serkis, being an expert in the area and someone who he has known from the age of 19, really guided him through the role of Bagheera, who is sort of an elder brother, mentor to Mowgli.

"We first met when I was 19-years-old. He (Serkis) has always been a phenomenal actor. He has really mastered this whole performance capture thing. You are always looking for elements that you are not sure are priorities but he would guide me on that and eventually it comes down to, it's acting. it's just like anything else."



As someone who completely disappears into his roles, Bale said it is important for actors to enjoy their "down time" and at times walk away from films.

"You've got to walk away from films... Acting itself does not lead to better acting life than living that. So you have to enjoy your down time," Bale said.

The actor praised the film's child star, Rohan Chand, for being more intelligent than he was when he started as a child actor.

"Rohan has got tons of different interests. He is more intelligent than I will ever be in my lifetime."



Bale said he found many similarities between Mowgli, Bagheera and Shere Khan, the antagonist in the story, voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch.

The film starts streaming on Netflix from December 7.

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At least 31 bodies have been retrieved and many are still missing after a boat capsized on Lake Victoria.

The boat, which was occupied by about 120 revelers, capsized in Mpatta Sub-County Mukono District near Mutima beach.

It is reported that the boat was from KK beach to Palm Beach.

According to the deputy army spokesperson Col Lt Deo Akiiki, only 26 people were rescued alive last night while 13 were retrieved dead.

Some of those rescued are prince David Wasajja and dinger Irene namubiru

He meanwhile says chances of rescuing those missing are minimal.

Bodies of the deceased are being taken to Mulago city mortuary where they will be picked by friends and relatives.

So far only two bodies that of Isaac Kayondo and another identified as Sheilah have been given to the relatives.

At the moment, the exercise of giving out of bodies has been halted as the Prime Minister Dr Ruhakana Rugunda is expected to arrive at the mortuary to condole with the bereaved.

The search for those missing continues.

Police and the army are yet to issue a joint statement about the incident.

We shall keep you updated about the details in our subsequent bulletins and social media pages.
Amita Sangma, who was recently assaulted in Meghalaya's East Jaintia Hills district along with rights activist Agnes Kharshiing, Sunday accused National Peoples' Party (NPP) leader Nidamon Chullet of "masterminding" the attack.

The two women had reportedly gone to the district to take photographs of illegal coal mining.

Kharshiing, who received serious head injuries in the attack, is currently undergoing treatment at the North Eastern Indira Gandhi Regional Institute of Health and Medical Sciences (NEIGRIHMS).

"I know him (Nidamon Chullet). He was the first person to have stopped our vehicle. Soon after, his followers attacked us," Sangma, who has lost part of a finger in the assault, told PTI.

One of her family members said Sangma, in a statement, had described the features of one of the attackers to the police, following which pictures of Chullet were shown to him.

"Amita identified Chullet from the pictures provided to her by the police. We found out that the attacker was a local NPP leader," he said.

The woman, a mother of seven children, has also written to Director General of Police R Chandranathan, accusing Chullet of "masterminding" the attack on the afternoon of November 8.

"Agnes and I will continue to live in fear till the time he (Chullet) is arrested," she claimed.

Chullet, working president of the ruling National People's Party (NPP), also functions as the headman of Mynkrem village and looks after the operations of the Jaintia Hills Truck Owners Association.

Seven people, including a woman, have been arrested so far in connection with the November 8 incident.

The Meghalaya High Court has admitted a petition moved by Sangma, directing the investigating officer to file a report in person on November 27.

Recalling the episode, Sangma said, "Chullet stopped our vehicle after I and Agnes took pictures of coal-laden trucks, which probably belonged to him, at Kongong in the district."



Additional Deputy Commissioner S S Syiemlieh, who recorded the statements of Sangma, along with four doctors at the NEIGRIHMS, said he has been given 15 days' time to file a report in the case.

He, however, could not record Kharshiing's statement as her condition was yet to stabilise.

"The medical superintendent at the hospital said her (Kharshiing's) condition was still 'fluctuating' but the victim has regained consciousness and her injuries are healing well," he added.

NPP state president W R Kharlukhi, when contacted, refused to comment, saying Home Minister James K Sangma would be the right person to speak on the issue.

Superintendent of Police S Nongtynger, on his part, said police were on the lookout for Chullet.

"Efforts are on to nab Nidamon Chullet and all those involved in the incident," he added.

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An alleged member of the Neetu Dabodhia gang, who was wanted in connection with several cases, has been arrested from Mehrauli area of the national capital, police said Sunday.

Rahul Sharma (28), a resident of Samalkha in Kapashera was arrested following a raid near Jain Mandir, Mehrauli, they said.

On Friday, police received information that a close associate of gangsters Neetu Dabodhia and Babloo Ghogha would be present in Mehrauli area, police said.

Following this, a raid was conducted and Sharma was apprehended with one country-made pistol and two cartridges, they said.

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Asylum seekers hoping to enter the US via its southern border will have to wait in Mexico while they are assessed, President Donald Trump has announced, appearing to confirm a report about a bilateral deal published by The Washington Post.

The move was cautiously welcomed by some refugees currently at the border, even as Mexico's incoming interior minister Olga Sanchez Cordero, who was quoted by the Post as confirming the agreement, later issued a denial.

"Migrants at the Southern Border will not be allowed into the United States until their claims are individually approved in court," Trump wrote on Twitter.

He added that the US "will allow those who come into our Country legally" and emphasised: "All will stay in Mexico."



The deal, which would overhaul US border policy, comes with Trump outraged over the presence of thousands of Central American migrants who marched to Mexico's border city of Tijuana hoping to enter the US for a better life free from the poverty and gang violence in their homelands.

"For now, we have agreed to this policy of Remain in Mexico," the Post quoted Sanchez Cordero as saying. The government of new President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador will enter office on December 1.

But her office later issued a statement saying: "There is no agreement of any type between the future federal government of Mexico and that of the United States of America."



Trump has sent almost 6,000 soldiers to the Mexican border in support of Customs and Border Protection agents and National Guard troops already there, to forestall what Trump has called an "invasion" by "very bad people."After a trek of more than a month from Honduras, nearly 5,000 migrants - including women and children - are now in Tijuana living in a makeshift shelter.

Trump "is within his right. He is in his government," but he is not like other presidents in his views of migrants, said a resident of the shelter, Carolina Flores, 38, of Honduras.

"He sees us as a bug that is going to eat there," she added. "We come for an opportunity!" Another Honduran in the shelter, Orlinda Morales, 31, a housewife, said the reported new asylum rules seem "very good" because migrants will not be in limbo. "We will get work here," she said.

Hundreds of the migrants lined up this week at a special jobs fair set up for them in the manufacturing city, but others remain determined to reach the US.

No formal agreement has been signed, the Post said, but US officials view the deal, which would see would-be refugees' cases heard by US courts in Mexico, as a potential breakthrough in deterring migration.

US asylum officers will begin implementing the new procedures in coming days or weeks, Homeland Security officials cited by the Post said.

Asylum seekers will be given an initial screening to determine whether they face imminent danger by staying in Mexico, where violence is widespread.

American officials will be able to process at least twice as many asylum claims under the new system because they would not be limited by detention space at US ports of entry, the Post report said.

It added that under the new rules, an applicant whose asylum claim is denied would not be allowed to return to Mexico but would remain in US custody pending immediate deportation to his or her home country.

In a statement issued on Thursday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made no mention of a deal but said that he and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen had "a constructive meeting" with Mexico's future foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard over the caravans.

"We have affirmed our shared commitment to addressing the current challenge. The caravans will not be permitted to enter the United States. There are real dangers to the safety and human rights of migrants from those who would prey on them," Pompeo said.

He added that he was looking forward to working with Mexico's new government, including on ways to spur job creation "to benefit the government and people of Mexico."



In 2018, border patrols registered more than 400,000 illegal crossers, according to Homeland Security, and in the last five years, the number of those requesting asylum has increased by 2,000 per cent.

Less than 10 per cent of cases result in asylum being granted, the government says.

Last week, a US federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from denying asylum to people who enter the country illegally.

The president issued a proclamation earlier this month saying that only people who enter the US at official checkpoints - as opposed to sneaking across the border - can apply for asylum.

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The BJP is practicing a frightening level of communal polarization in election-bound states and this is a huge challenge for the Congress, its strategist and former minister Jairam Ramesh has said.

In an exclusive interview to PTI, parallel to the Ram Temple buildup in Ayodhya Sunday, Ramesh said for every Amit Shah, the BJP chief, there are 10 Amit Shahs of the RSS practicing covert polarization.

He said the modern name of 'tanashaahi' was Amit Shah and that Narendra Modi was "not prime ministerial" in his election campaign as he indulged in "falsification of history and abuse of political rivals". He said Modi should not demand respect but should command respect of people as prime minister.

The senior Congress leader also noted that "false news" was the biggest enterprise in "Make in India" under the Modi government, as he accused the BJP of "manufacturing" issues out of non-issues.

"There is a high degree of communal polarization that the BJP is doing in every election and in these states," he told PTI.

The BJP and Prime Minister Modi have instead accused the Congress of diving the society by indulging in caste and religious and appeasement of minorities.

Attributing even the "staggering" UP mandate of the BJP to communal polarization, Ramesh said, "The only explanation I have for the UP win of the BJP is the frightening level of communal polarization which incidentally they have been trying to do in these states also. They are doing this in Chhattisgarh and certainly in MP and Rajasthan."



The 64-year-old former minister, who is a part of the Congress core group for the 2019 Lok Sabha poll planning, said there were two types of communal polarization the BJP was indulging in across the country.

"One is overt polarization, which is the language used by Mr Amit Shah and PM Narendra Modi. Then there is covert polarization done by the RSS and its people through the word of mouth and house to house," Ramesh said.

"Mr Amit Shah is a good example of a person who preaches and practices the of overt polarization" and that "for every Amit Shah there are 10 'Amit Shahs' of the RSS who are practicing and preaching covert polarization. That is what happened in UP," he noted.

Ramesh said the Opposition "tends to miss" overt polarization and also the seriousness of covert polarization.

On a query about whether the Congress has managed to address the issue of polarization, Ramesh said, "It is a huge challenge and it is not just an electoral challenge".

"It is a challenge we have to face whether in power or outside," the Congress leader said, describing the battle with the RSS as a "long drawn out" one. "It is not a one-off thing. It is a long drawn out battle," Ramesh added.

He said the RSS had taken years, decades to "infiltrate" the tribal areas.

On why Congress leaders like CP Joshi continue to speak out of turn and make casteist remarks to aid the of polarization, Ramesh said Congress chief Rahul Gandhi had come out very clearly against this.

Blaming the BJP for making an issue out of it, he said, "the BJP is very skilled at creating issues out of non-issues, at manipulation of "



Asked if Congress leaders continued to defy the party chief by making statements that harm the party's interests, he said he does not blame the leaders as their statements, including himself, have been distorted by the BJP.

"I think this is 'Make in India', Make in BJP. Fake is the biggest enterprise in 'Make in India' during the BJP regime. The fact is that Mr Modi himself, during his election campaign, indulges in falsification of facts, he indulges in falsification of history," he alleged.

"He is not prime ministerial in his campaign. After all Prime Minister is Prime Minister. Whoever the individual, the position of PM must be respected.

"(But) the PM should not demand respect, he should command respect. It is no use Mr Modi demanding respect. He should command respect. The way he distorts history, the way he falsifies facts, the way he abuses his political opponents. And look at the way Mr Amit Shah has been talking of the NRC for example, calling people 'termites'," he said, training his guns on the prime minister for his attacks on the Congress and the Gandhi family.

"Amit Shah is the new word of 'tanashaahi'. The modern phrase of 'tanashaahi' is Amit Shah," he said.

Ramesh also pointed out to the manner in which the Reserve Bank of India has been "bludgeoned into submission" and its rights eroded and how institutional autonomy has been compromised.

"The 'institutional capture' by the RSS and the BJP is bizarre," he lamented.

Ramesh said the Congress did not face anti-incumbency in these elections and the mood of the people was clearly in its favour and it would thus fare well in the elections to these five states.

He also did not consider this as a "semi-final" to the 2019 Lok Sabha election, but said the important decisions of the Modi government like demonetisation, farm crisis and the Rafale deal will certainly have an impact in these state polls.

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Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Sunil Lanba will begin a four-day visit to Russia on Monday with an aim to explore new avenues for the already close defence ties between the two countries, officials said Sunday.

The Navy chief will hold wide-ranging talks with his Russian counterpart, Admiral Vladimir Korolev, and meet a number of top military officials including General VV Gerasimov, Chief of General Staff and First Deputy Defence Minister of Russia, they said.

"The visit aims to consolidate bilateral defence relations with Russia, as also to explore new avenues for defence cooperation," Navy Spokesperson Capt. D K Sharma said.

Adm. Lanba's visit to Russia comes around a week after the two countries signed a USD 500 million deal for construction of two missile frigates in Goa for the Indian Navy.

Under the deal, Russia will provide design, technology know how and key materials to Goa Shipyard Ltd. for the construction of the ships in India.

Adm. Lanba is also scheduled to visit the Nakhimov Naval School and Admiralty Shipyard.

He will also visit the Military Academy of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and deliver a talk on Indian Navy's Perspective on Maritime Security, Capt. Sharma said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin visited India last month during which both sides had decided to further ramp up bilateral defence and security cooperation.

India is going ahead with mega defence deals with Russia disregarding warnings by the US of sanctions. The Trump administration has put several Russian firms under sanctions under Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA).

The US said countries engaged with Russia's defence firms may also face actions under CAATSA. India has been hoping to get a waiver from the US on the deals with Russia.

Russia has been India's largest defence supplier. The bilateral defence and security cooperation has been on an upswing over the last few years. The Indian and Russian navies cooperate on many fronts, including operational interactions and training.

The Indian Navy and the Russian Navy have been conducting the bilateral Maritime Exercise INDRA NAVY', since 2003 and INDRA Tri-Services Exercise since 2017.

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Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar Sunday unveiled a 70-feet tall statue of Lord Buddha at Rajgir in Nalanda district.

Kumar unveiled the statue of Lord Buddha, the second tallest statue of Buddha in the country, in the presence of Mahabodhi temple's chief monk Bhante Chalinda amid the chanting of hymns, an official release said.

The statue has been installed above a 16 metre radius pedestal in the middle of the lake Ghora Katora and has been made from 45,000 cubic foot pink sand stone, it said.

Kumar took a boat ride in Ghora Katora lake and offered his prayers by circumambulating the Lord Buddha's statue, the release added.

Talking to reporters here, Kumar said that "Ghora Katora lake is a historical place. It is a natural lake surrounded by five hills where Lord Buddha's statue has been installed. People will visit the lake where they can also have the privilege of offering their prayers to Lord Buddha."



"A beautiful park is being developed here from tourism point of view...I am quite confident that Ghora Katora will emerge as an important place for eco-tourism...No petrol and diesel vehicles will be allowed to ply here as only electronic vehicles will ply here. People can visit this particular area either on their foot, or by using bi-cycles and tongas," Kumar said.

Stating that this place is associated with all major religions, the CM said that it is said that Guru Nanak Dev had also visited this place.

Some people belonging to Sikh community had expressed their desire for building a "Gurudwara" near "Guru Nanak Shital Kund", he said adding that the Forest department and the Central government have given their clearances for construction of "Gurudwara", the work for which would complete soon.

He expressed hope that the construction of Gurudwara would be completed by the next year near "Guru Nanak Shital Kund".

The CM later inaugurated a three-day Rajgir Mahotsava in the evening.

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VHP's 'dharma Sabha" commenced in the temple town Sunday afternoon with senior leader Champat Rai declaring that no formula dividing the disputed land will be acceptable for temple construction.

Addressing the sabha after the inauguration marked by chanting of mantras and lighting of lamp, the international general secretary Champat Rai said "we want the entire land for temple construction...no formula dividing the land is acceptable."



Though Rai did not spell out the details, his assertions are considered to be in reference to the Allahabad High court verdict dividing the land into three parts.

The Allahabad High Court had ruled by a majority verdict that the disputed land in Ayodhya be divided equally into three parts among Hindus and Muslims and that the place where the makeshift temple of Lord Ram exists belongs to Hindus.

In their separate judgements on the sensitive 60-year old title dispute on Ramjanambhoomi-Babri Masjid structure, Justices S U Khan and Sudhir Agarwal said that the area under the central dome of the three-domed structure where Lord Ram's idol exists belongs to Hindus.

Rai also said that the delay in the temple construction is not a good sign.

The dharam sabha site wore a festive look with placards, saffron flags and buntings with the head gear of enthusiastic Ram bhakts all over.

The VHP which has claimed that 3 lakh people will be participating in the sabha has made elaborate arrangements including for food and medical facilities.

While hoardings of VHP stalwart late Ashok Singhal were set up at various places, devotees were seen blowing conch shells to express their enthusiasm for the dharma Sabha.

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After Raj Babbar and C P Joshi, another leader has added to the party's embarrassment by making controversial comments about Prime Minister Narendra Modi's lineage.

Former Union minister Vilas Muttemwar made the comments at a party meeting in Rajasthan on Saturday. The video of his speech has gone viral on social media.

"Who knew you (Modi) before you became the PM. Even now, nobody knows the name of your father, but everybody knows the name of ( president) Rahul Gandhi's father," Muttemwar is heard saying in the viral video.

Muttemwar, who hails from Vidarbha region, told PTI that the video in circulation was distorted.

"It was an internal party meeting yesterday. The person who shot the video distorted it and posted it online," he said.

The leader said it was a fact that people of the country knew who Rahul Gandhi's father was but not many knew about Modi's father. "The world knows past generations of but no one knows who Modi's father was," he said.

Babbar had likened the falling rupee to the age of Modi's mother, after Joshi's casteist remark on the PM and Union minister Uma Bharti.

"Before becoming PM, used to say that the value of the rupee has fallen to a level where it is almost the same as the age of the then-PM (Manmohan Singh). Now, it is inching towards the age of Modis respected mother," Babbar had said.

The PMs mother, Heeraben Modi, is 98 years old.

Addressing a poll meeting in Rajasthan on Thursday, Joshi had reportedly said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, MP Uma Bharti and Hindu activist Sadhvi Ritambhara are from "lower castes" and know nothing of Hinduism. He said it is the Brahmins who are learned and know of Hinduism.
A one-day special session of the Delhi Assembly on Monday is likely to be stormy as AAP legislators will discuss the recent attack on Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, while the opposition BJP MLAs will seek to corner the ruling party over issues concerning people.

On November 20, a man threw chilli powder at Kejriwal outside his office in the Delhi Secretariat. On November 22, the Delhi Cabinet decided to convene a one-day Assembly session on Monday to discuss the attack on the cheif minister and the alleged "mass deletion" of names in voters list in the city.

Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia had recently said the decision to convene the special session had been taken in view of the "attitude" of the Centre and the Delhi Police over the incident involving the chief minister.

On the other hand, the Leader of Opposition in the Assembly, Vijender Gupta, hit out at the AAP dispensation for convening the session over the issue.

"Politically motivated issues such as throwing chilly powder at the chief minister and the so-called deletion of lakhs of names from the voters list hardly deserve public time, attention and money. But the Kejriwal government is bent upon raising dust and storm on these non-existent issues," Gupta said in a statement.

He also said, "The government has never deemed it fit to deliberate on serious issues such as control over pollution, providing civic amenities in unauthorised colonies, slum areas, upgrading medical facilities and increasing number of beds in hospitals, opening new schools in hitherto uncovered areas.

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Eight suspected smugglers have been arrested and 100 more than bovines rescued in Jammu district, police said Sunday.

A truck was intercepted at a toll plaza on a highway in the outskirts of Jammu and recovered over 100 bovines, the police said.

Eight people have been arrested and a case has been registered, the police added.

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By Benjamin Jumbe.

President Museveni has commended his Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia counterparts for a timely conclusion of the tripartite agreement.

He was speaking during a meeting with his Somali counterpart Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed who was on a one day official visit to Uganda at State House, Entebbe.

President Museveni said this agreement will ensure peace, stability and boost the economies of the three countries particularly Somalia, given her strategic location.

During the meeting the two presidents reviewed areas of cooperation particularly in peace and security, defence, education, trade and investment, with a commitment to strengthening ties.

Meanwhile Somali President Mohamed commended the cooperation in defense and the support extended by the African Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) in the transformation process of Somalia.
Two persons have been arrested in Pakistan in connection with the recent terror attack on the Chinese consulate here in which seven people, including three militants, were killed, media reports said Sunday.

Those arrested are the brothers of Abdul Razzaq Baloch, who was one of the three militants of the outlawed Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) which claimed the attack on Friday, Dawn reported.

The investigation agencies found that one of the slain militants, Razzaq Baloch, belonged to Kharan district of the restive Balochistan province, it said.

Raids were carried out in different areas of Kharan on Saturday and Mohammad Aslam and Khosti were taken into custory, the report said.

Balochistan Home Minister Mir Saleem Ahmad Khosa said that Razzaq Baloch's name was on the missing persons' list over the past two years.

A large number of people mentioned in the list had gone aboard for terrorism training, he said.

The minister claimed that BLA commander Aslam alias Acho had been injured in a gun battle with security forces last year, but he managed to escape.

On Friday, three heavily-armed suicide bombers stormed the Chinese consulate, killing four people including two policemen before being shot dead by security forces which foiled the daring attack in the high-security zone.

Nine hand grenades, Kalashnikov assault rifles, magazines and explosives were recovered from the possession of the terrorists.

Resource-rich Balochistan is at the heart of the ambitious USD 60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

The CPEC is a string of huge infrastructure investments by China in Pakistan which will link its western Xinjiang province with the Arabian Sea port of Gwadar in Balochistan.

Over the years, construction projects and Chinese workers in Balochistan have been repeatedly targeted by militants but this was one of the most prominent attacks to date.

China's foreign ministry strongly condemned the attack on its consulate and urged its all-weather ally to take "practical measures" to ensure the safety of Chinese citizens in the country, mostly on projects linked to the CPEC.

Hundreds of Chinese nationals are presently working in Pakistan specially in Karachi and the Balochistan.

It was the first major terror strike in Karachi since March, 2016 when 45 Ismaili Muslims were killed in a targeted attack.

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Pakistan on Sunday welcomed India's decision to send its two Union ministers to attend the groundbreaking ceremony of the Kartarpur corridor next week, terming it a "positive response".

Kartarpur Sahib in Pakistan is located across the river Ravi, about four kilometres from the Dera Baba Nanak shrine in Punjab's Gurdaspur district. It was established by the Sikh Guru in 1522. The first Gurdwara, Gurdwara Kartarpur Sahib, was built here, where Guru Nanak Dev is said to have died.

Both India and Pakistan have announced that stretches would be developed in their respective areas, linking Dera Baba Nanak in Punjab's Gurdaspur district with the Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Pakistan.

Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi welcomed India's decision to send Union ministers Harsimrat Kaur Badal and Hardeep Singh Puri, Radio Pakistan reported.

Qureshi termed Indias's decision as a "positive response to Pakistan's move", it said.

"India has responded well to Pakistan's initiative in its bid to bring the Sikh community closer," he told the Associated Press of Pakistan during his visit to the stall of Indian High Commission at the Pakistan Foreign Office Women's Association charity bazar here.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Vice Chancellor of a leading university in Pakistan has come under fire for allegedly making controversial remarks against the country's powerful army saying that terrorists were making up to its top ranks.

A petition was filed Saturday with the Punjab province Governor and Chancellor of the University of Punjab Chaudhary Muhammad Sarwar, seeking the removal of the varsity's VC Niaz Ahmed for the remarks.

In the petition filed by one Muhammad Ali said that Ahmed, in a speech on campus, had claimed that the Pakistan Army was facing the challenge of terrorists making up to its top ranks.

"A terrorist had made up to high rank in the Pakistan Army. In fact, he was working for the Taliban and had killed many of soldiers during the Swat Operation (in 2009)," Ali alleged.

He also said that the VC further claimed that "in Swat, there was an army major, who went on leave three-to-four times and every time he told his subordinate soldiers not to retaliate to the Taliban's firing as per an understanding (undercover deal) between Taliban and the Army.

The petitioner said the VC instead of narrating stories of valour of the Pakistan Army martyrs, mentioned an incident which has no relevance.

He also said that slogans against the Pakistan Army were written on one of the underpasses at the varsity's campus but the VC did not take any action, and alleged that he patronises activists of Islami Jamiat Tulaba.

PU spokesperson Khurram Shahzad told PTI that the Vice Chancellor "did not meant anything that could harm repute of the institution of the army which is defending the boundaries of Pakistan".

He said in the ceremony, the Vice Chancellor highlighted the sacrifices of the Pakistan Army in 1965 War and his speech was taken out of context as all allegations against him are "baseless".

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Pakistan on Sunday welcomed India's decision to send its two Union ministers to attend the groundbreaking ceremony of the Kartarpur corridor next week, terming it a "positive response".

Kartarpur Sahib in Pakistan is located across the river Ravi, about four kilometres from the Dera Baba Nanak shrine in Punjab's Gurdaspur district. It was established by the Sikh Guru in 1522. The first Gurdwara, Gurdwara Kartarpur Sahib, was built here, where Guru Nanak Dev is said to have died.

Both India and Pakistan have announced that stretches would be developed in their respective areas, linking Dera Baba Nanak in Punjab's Gurdaspur district with the Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Pakistan.

Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi welcomed India's decision to send Union ministers Harsimrat Kaur Badal and Hardeep Singh Puri, Radio Pakistan reported.

Qureshi termed India's decision as a "positive response to Pakistan's move", it said.

"India has responded well to Pakistan's initiative in its bid to bring the Sikh community closer," he told the Associated Press of Pakistan during his visit to the stall of Indian High Commission at the Pakistan Foreign Office Women's Association charity bazar here.

India's High Commissioner to Pakistan Ajay Bisaria received Foreign Minister Qureshi at the stall.

Qureshi said Pakistan has won the hearts of millions of Sikhs with a single but significant step and expressed confidence that the Kartarpur corridor would attract members of the Sikh community to Pakistan from across the globe including the United States and the United Kingdom.

He said that the Sikh community will be greeted here amid sentiments of love and would take back positive image about Pakistan and its people.

On Saturday, Qureshi extended an invitation to External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh and state minister Navjot Singh Sidhu to attend the ceremony at Kartarpur on November 28.

Swaraj thanked him for the invite and said that India will send Union ministers Harsimrat Kaur Badal and Hardeep Singh Puri to Pakistan next week to attend the groundbreaking ceremony of the Kartarpur corridor.

Amarinder declined Pakistan's invite while Sidhu accepted the request with "with unalloyed joy".

The corridor, once built, will give Indian pilgrims easy access to the shrine.

Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan will inaugurate the groundbreaking ceremony of the corridor on the Pakistani side on November 28.

The India-Pakistan ties nose-dived in recent years with no bilateral talks taking place. The ties between the two countries had strained after the terror attacks by Pakistan-based groups in 2016.

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Krunal Pandya took a career-best four-wicket haul, helping India restrict Australia to 164 for six against India in the third and final T20 International here on Sunday.

Pandya's orthodox left-arm spin came in handy during the middle overs after the hosts had sped to 68-0 in the ninth over. With figures of four for 36, he was a tad expensive again but got India the timely breakthroughs.

Australia, who opted to bat, made one change to their line-up with Mitchell Starc coming in for Jason Behrendorff. India picked an unchanged eleven.

Aaron Finch (28) and D'Arcy Short (33) then provided a cautious start to the innings, albeit they picked up momentum quickly as the Indian pacers struggled in conditions vastly different from Brisbane and Melbourne.

Bhuvneshwar Kumar (0-33) and Khaleel Ahmed (0-35) both proved expensive, while first-change Jasprit Bumrah (0-38) too didn't stem the flow of runs, as Australia raced to 49-0 at the end of powerplay overs.

The Finch-Short partnership put pressure on the Indian fielding, shoddy again, and Rohit Sharma put down a sitter off Finch (on 22) at the start of the eight over off Pandya.

Kuldeep Yadav (1-19) then provided the much-awaited breakthrough as Finch was out caught sweeping at short fine leg.

It opened the doors to the Australian middle order. Glenn Maxwell (13) survived an lbw shout via DRS off Yadav, but Short and Ben McDermott (0) were dismissed lbw off successive balls in the tenth over as Pandya pegged Australia back.

The quick wickets disturbed Australia's momentum and they never really recovered, losing wickets at regular intervals in the second half of their innings. They had held back Chris Lynn (13) but he couldn't provide the requisite impetus, run-out in the 18th over.

In between Pandya also accounted for Maxwell, caught by Sharma in the end, as also the vital wicket of Alex Carey (27) who held the Australian middle order together after initial setbacks.

Marcus Stoinis (25 not out off 15 balls) played an attacking cameo at the end, and put on 33 runs with Nathan Coulter-Nile (13 not out) as Australia finished with a score just above average (151) at this ground.

Australia lead the three-match series 1-0 after winning the first T20I in Brisbane by four runs (DLS). The second match in Melbourne was washed out.

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The first phase of a memorial dedicated to the victims of the 26/11 terror attack will be inaugurated Monday at the Nariman House in south Mumbai's Colaba area.

The Nariman House, which houses an outreach centre of the Jewish Chabad movement, was one of the theatres of terror on November 26, 2008, its siege ending with NSG commandos storming the building and gunning down two terrorists who had taken its residents hostage.

The first phase of the memorial will comprise a plaque on the roof of the building inscribed with the names of those who died in the 26/11 attack, Rabbi Israel Kozlovsky said Sunday.

Signifying a new chapter of peace and a beacon of light, the building itself would be called the Nariman Light House from Sunday, he informed.

"This is the only place which is dedicated to the victims of the 26/11 attack. The Taj (hotel) has one and the Oberoi (hotel) has a plaque, but those are only for the people killed at those places," the Rabbi said.

"As we know, it was not six different attacks. It was one attack at six different places. We felt that we needed to make a place which will commemorate all those killed," he added.

The plaque would have water constantly streaming from a fountain, signifying the flow of life, and would be surrounded by plants, Kozlovsky said.

Six planks with the paintings of the six places targeted that day -- the Taj and Oberoi hotels, the Leopold Cafe, the Kuber boat, the Cama Hospital and the Nariman House -- would be another feature of the memorial, he added.

"The Nariman House will be called the Nariman Light House from Sunday and will serve as a beacon of light. It will be symbolic of the fact that there is light at the end of every tunnel. It is only through positivity that the message of peace can be spread across all humanity," Kozlovsky said.

The second phase of the memorial, expected to be completed in a year, would be located on the fourth and fifth floors of the building and would be themed "from darkness to light", Kozlovsky said.

It would tell the world that the only way to lead life was to abide by the virtues of humanity, spread positivity and become a harbinger of hope, the Rabbi added.

On the evening of November 26, 2008, two terrorists -- Babar Imran and Nasir -- had raided the Jewish centre at the Nariman House and killed four of its residents, including Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his pregnant wife Rivka.

Their son Moshe, who was two years of age at that time, had survived the attack after being rescued by his Indian nanny, Sandra Samuel.

In the ensuing firefight with the National Security Guard (NSG) commandos, the two terrorists were killed.

Commando Gajendra Singh Bisht had also made the supreme sacrifice during the operation.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Asserting that the existence of the TRS hinges on the popularity of its chief K Chandrashekhar Rao, his daughter and MP Kalvakuntla Kavitha said Sunday only he alone can bring the ruling party to power again in Telangana and rubbished suggestions it had a covert understanding with the

Kavita, 40, also expressed confidence that the Telangana Rashtra Samithi(TRS) will win 100 seats in the 119-member house in the assembly elections scheduled on December 7.

"My leader is my party. His vision is Telangana development. They cannot be separated and looked at in isolation," Kavitha told PTI in an exclusive interview.

"It is KCR's vision which got Telangana state. It is KCR's vision which put Telangana on a development path. That visionary leader is our strength. He is the one who will win us back in the government."



Rejecting suggestions that her party had a "covert" understanding with the BJP, Kavitha accused the of spreading such rumours to get minority votes.



Asked if her brother K T RBJP, congress, ama Rao, caretaker IT and Industries Minister, will be the next chief minister, Kavitha said: "TRS will come to power and all of us in the party including my brother would see as chief minister. We want to lead the government."



is popularly known as KCR



The comments come in the backdrop of widely believed power tussle between KCR's son and his nephew T Harish Rao, a popular leader from Siddipet district and also a caretaker irrigation minister.

Kavitha, a Lok Sabha MP from Nizamabad, said there is no power tussle between these two leaders and even if it exists the prospects of TRS will not be affected.

TRS is certainly going to win 100 seats. Even repeating of all sitting MLAs will not affect as they have been given tickets after vetting their performance," she said.

She also said that post state elections, will "certainly be playing a very big role in national politics."



The newly formed state has 17 Lok Sabha seats.

Rubbishing allegations that the TRS was promoting dynasty politics, Kavitha said, "When political parties do not have any serious issues, then they try to bring non-issues. They try to make an issue out of non-issue."



She mentioned that her family members were deeply involved in the Telangana movement. "Later, we were individually and independently elected by people of Telangana. We are not sitting on nominated chairs but elected by the people. So, these allegations do not make any sense. It is a non-issue."



Dismissing any threat from the Congress-led Mahakutami, Kavitha said, "TDP is practically not present on the ground. till date was a primary organisation but it is very distant for us. Rest two parties have zero cadre. How do you expect these parties suddenly becoming super power?"



The Mahakutami is a grand alliance comprising Congress, Telugu Desam Party (TDP), Communist Party of India (CPI) and the Telangana Jana Samithi (TJS).

Asked about candidates facing backlash from people over the party's unkept promises of the 2014 election manifesto, Kavitha highlighted several promises been implemented including the KG-to-PG education scheme, irrigation projects, pension, scholarships among others.

"There is no backlash from the people. There is backlash from political parties. TRS is the only party which has fulfilled almost each and every promises made in the 2014 polls," she said, and claimed the TRS government also cleared the Rs 11,000 crore debt of the government.

"Opposition may say we have failed (to fulfill promises). We have not failed, we have begun work in all schemes. The schemes which cannot be stalled, the opposition says they are not working. ...The work is in progress in various programmes."



As far as 12 per cent job quota for religious minorities and scheduled tribes is concerned, Kavitha said, "We have passed a resolution in the assembly and it will be sent to the central government for approval.

"If the Centre approves, we will implement. If they reject, then we will appeal in the Supreme Court and get it done just like the Tamil Nadu model," she said.

Attacking the Centre for "neither approving nor rejecting" the state's proposal, Kavitha said: "The reponsiblity now lies on the We have done our job. We fought in Parliament for minority and ST reservation. The government did not budge. It is on them (BJP) and not on TRS."



She, however, said the TRS will keep the promise. "Whichever government comes back to power at Centre, we will continue to fight and make sure we get the reservation."



Rebuking Congress President Rahul Gandhi's allegations on rise in farmers suicides under the TRS rule, Kavitha said, "Farmers suicides were not the result of the TRS rule in Telangana. It is the result of misrule of Congress and TDP. ...After the TRS came to power, I can challenge and tell you that the rate of farmers suicides is on the decline."



The schemes to provide irrigation and incentives to farmers under Rytha Bandhu programme will help farmers come out of debt trap. "Once the debt trap is broken, there won't be difficulties for farmers and suicides rate will automatically come down."



Hitting out at the NDA government , Kavitha said, "We have not got a high court despite asking for it in the last four and half years. The new state was ignored by the Centre which did not give enough grants. The kind of help NDA has given to its allies, certainly not given to Telangana."



If TRS is voted to power again, she said the party will complete pending works.
Punjab Commerce and Industries Minister Sunder Sham Arora said the government was committed to take every step necessary to ensure more investments in the industrial sector and promotion of tourism in the state.

Arora, after inaugurating the Punjab Day celebrations at the ongoing India International Trade Fair here, said the tourism tagline of the state is: 'India Begins Here', and the same is true in more ways than one.

The iconic Golden Temple in Amritsar has been acknowledged as the most-visited destination in the world as per the London-based Guinness Book of World Records. It is also cleanest religious place in India.

Arora announced that the state had notified its first cultural policy and revised the tourism policy, with an aim to promote cultural and natural heritage.

The minister said the Amarinder Singh-led government had notified the business and industrial policy, 2017, under which it signed 143 memorandum of understandings (MoUs) worth Rs 4,335 crore.

Arora said Punjab had taken a big leap in foreign tourist arrivals and now ranks in the seventh position in the country. The state government is also giving special emphasis and providing incentives to the investors for the development and promotion of tourism, he said.

The minister added that the Punjab Bureau of Investment Promotion had been established as an one-stop authority for approving new commercial and investment proposals and a Business First Portal Website had been launched to provide platform for regulatory services.

The cabinet minister said steps had been taken to revive the micro, small and medium enterprises.

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Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis Sunday said Congress chief Rahul Gandhi is a "part-time leader" who doesn't understand issues concerning Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, which is going to polls next week.

Addressing a rally in Barghat (ST) constituency in Seoni district for the November 28 elections, Fadnavis also attacked the Congress for making "lofty promises" in its poll manifesto.

Chhattisgarh, also ruled by the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), had voted in two phases on November 12 and 20.

"Rahul Gandhi is a part-time leader who spends most of his time outside the country. He addresses a couple of meetings when he returns to the country. He doesn't know issues of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. He talks about the issues of Madhya Pradesh in Chhattisgarh and vice versa," he said.

Hailing Dalit icon B R Ambedkar for enshrining right of voting in the Constitution, Fadnavis said power to rule was confined to dynasties in earlier days.

"Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan are the people's leaders who got the popular mandate," he said.

Terming the Congress' poll manifesto as a "bundle of lies", Fadnavis said, "At times, somebody thinks that they are not going to come to power. So, they make lofty announcements. Reality is that Shivraj ji would fulfill these promises".

"If you demand, the Congress can even make an announcement of constructing a Taj Mahal in front of your house," he said in a lighter vein.

Referring to Maharashtra, Fadnavis said the Congress can never fulfill its electoral promises "even though it is given the entire budget of Madhya Pradesh for the last 15 years".

He said, "The Congress had given the slogan of 'Gareebi Hatao' (remove poverty) but instead the poor were eliminated".

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In north-west Rajasthan's Alwar, the BJP would go to the people banking on the developmental works, it claims, its government did in the last five years, amid the Congress' assertion of no growth and progress at all in the area.

The Congress accused the BJP of failing in providing drinking water and roads besides inducing an all out developmental lag in the district, notified as part of the National Capital Region.

The saffron party, however, has countered the Congress' claim citing benefits of the Centre's Ujjwala scheme and state's Bhamashah scheme.

Alwar with its 11 assembly seats, spread across 8,380 sq kms, has a population of 36.74 lakh with females constituting over 17.35 lakh, according to the 2011 census. About 30.17 lakh of them reside in rural areas.

As per the 2013 assembly polls figures, Alwar's eleven assembly segments together had a total of 20,62,966 voters, including 11,08,086 males, 9,54,880 females and 13,572 service voters.

Alwar's total population includes around 9 lakh scheduled castes and scheduled tribes with Mevs of Muslim community having a sizeable presence in constituencies like Tijara and Ramgarh, infamous for mob lynchings by cow vigilantes.

In the 2013 assembly elections, the BJP had won nine out of 11 seats in Alwar but the election figures thrown up after a 2018 Lok Sabha bypolls, necessitated due to the death of Alwar's BJP MP Mahant Chandnath Yogi show that the electoral winds that blew in the favour BJP during the 2013 assembly elections, might have reversed in the favour of the Congress.

The Alwar Lok Sabha seat falling vacant by Yogi's death was grabbed by Karan Singh Yadav of the Congress with a huge margin of over 1.96 lakh votes and he had demonstrated an edge over the BJP in most of the 11 assembly seats within the Alwar Lok Sabha constituency.

Yadav now is contesting the upcoming assembly polls from Alwar, imparting the requisite impetus to the Congress in all assembly segments across Alwar, where it had established a clear lead over the BJP.

"Our only agenda is development, the usual one since beginning. We want to fight the polls on basis of developmental works done in Rajasthan by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje," BJP's Alwar unit chief Sanjay Singh Narooka told PTI.

He said the BJP government has worked for upliftment of the poor, who have been largely benefitted from the healthcare schemes like Bhamashah and government's initiatives on education.

The BJP has provided LPG gas connections to the households and a Rs 1,000 crore worth Amrit scheme was being implemented to resolve the drinking water problem in Alwar, which falls in 'dark zone', he added.

"The Congress only used to talk about working for the poor, but the BJP has positively worked for it," Narooka asserted.

On the issue of civic amenities, he said the focus has been on developing the rural areas with "Gaurav Paths", as well as the urban streets, which had been in bad shape due to improper sewer lines in the city.

The Congress' Alwar unit chief Tikaram Jully, however, sought to enlist a slew of shortcomings in the BJP's governance and developmental works in Alwar district.

He said the previous Congress government in the state had secured the Centre's approval for several projects, including one for the establishment of an ESIC medical college and hospital in Alwar, but the BJP failed to pursue it.

He claimed the medical college plan was cancelled because the BJP could not identify the site for the medical college in five years.

He said the work on a university and 12 paramilitary recruitment and training centres that were brought to Alwar by the previous Congress regime have been going on at a snail's pace for the last five years during the present regime.

Even the height of a mini secretariat which had been proposed to be a five-storey structure has been reduced to a three-storey one by the Raje government, he said.

"These works could have emerged as milestones in the development of Alwar," said Jully, who will be contesting the assembly polls from one of the assembly seats in the Alwar district.

On the national level, he said, the BJP talked of building Ram temple, cleaning the Ganga and making smart cities, but it was the Congress which introduced the schemes like MNREGA, the Food Security Act, Indira Awas Yojna and the Right to Information Act among others.

Additionally, Jully said, former Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot's had distributed laptops to youths under the Digital Education scheme in the state.

"The BJP government has only reduced the number of beneficiaries in various public welfare schemes like the pension schemes and the food security programme.

"Promises of jobs to the youths and doubling the farmers' income have so far remained unfulfilled. They neither waived the farmers' loan nor bought their crops at the enhanced 'minimum support price as promised," he alleged.

Jully said the Congress was now focussing on farmers, youths, middle class and small traders and exuded confidence of adding to the momentum established during its victory in the Alwar Lok Sabha bypoll.

The elections to the 200 assembly seats in Rajasthan would be held on December 7 and its results will be declared on December 11.

In 2013,the BJP had won 8 out of 11 seats in Alwar with a vote share of 41.6 per cent. The Congress had been able to manage victory on a single seat with its vote share being just 26.8 per cent.

Eleven assembly segments of Alwar are Alwar urban, Alwar rural, Tijara, Ramgarh, Behror, Bansur, Kishangarh-Bas, Thanagazi, Kathumar, Mundawar and Rajgarh-Laxmangarh. Two of these assembly seats are reserved.

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Sri Lanka's controversially appointed prime minister Mahinda Rajapaksa said Sunday that stability in the country could only be restored through a fresh round of parliamentary elections.

The country is witnessing a political crisis since President Maithripala Sirisena last month abruptly sacked prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and replaced him with former strongman Rajapksa in a move termed by many as unconstitutional.

Both Wickremesinghe and Rajapaksa have been claiming to be the legitimate prime minister since October 26.

Rajapaksa, in his first televised address since becoming the prime minister, said on Sunday that the purported government, led by Sirisena, was only an interim arrangement and that stability could only be restored through a fresh round of parliamentary polls.

He said that President Sirisena has entrusted him to resurrect the falling economy and living standards of the people.

"It is now barely a month since the change of government on October 26. What we have now is only an interim government. When a downward trend manifests itself, it is difficult to turn things around in a month or two," Rajapaksa said in the address.

Rajapaksa said Wickremesinghe's United National Party is hesitant to face elections unlike all other parties.

He alleged that the Wickremesinghe government borrowed USD 20.7 billion in three years due to which "it will take a while to turn things around".

Rajapaksa has so far failed to prove his parliamentary majority. He has been defeated in at least three no trust motions in Parliament.

However, he has refused to step down and said that these motions are not recognised, accusing parliamentary Speaker Karu Jayasuriya of bias.

Jayasuriya has said that Parliament will not recognise Rajapaksa until he proved his majority in a floor test.

The political crisis began with Wickremesinghe's sacking on October 26.

Sirisena later dissolved Parliament, almost 20 months before its term was to end, and ordered snap election. The Supreme Court overturned Sirisena's decision to dissolve Parliament and halted the preparations for snap polls.

Speaker Jayasuriya then ordered a floor test in the 225-member assembly to end the ongoing political crisis, a move which invited the wrath of the government of Rajapaksa.

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A gritty Sameer Verma pulled off a thrilling three-game victory over China's Lu Guangzu in the men's singles finals to retain the title at the Syed Modi International World Tour Super 300 here Sunday.

The 24-year-old from Madhya Pradesh showed immaculate defence and a never-say-die attitude to eke out a 16-21 21-19 21-14 win in the finals against 22-year-old Lu, who has won the Australian Open and Canada Open this year.

This was Sameer's third title win, following victories at Swiss Open and Hyderabad Open.

The victory will also help him to surpass Japan's Kenta Nishimoto at No.8 in the HSBC Race to Guangzhou Rankings and qualify for the year-ending BWF World Tour Finals to be held in December.

Sameer played patiently, constructing the rallies with his repertoire of strokes to dominate early in the opening game. He led 6-2 initially, before extending it to 8-4.

An error in judgement at the backline followed by Lu's three smashes - - two at his backhand and one at his forehand -- saw the Chinese claw back at 8-8.

Lu unleashed another down-the-line smash to lead 10-8 before he entered the break after winning a fast paced rally.

After the interval, Sameer seemed more positive in his approach as he levelled the scores with three points.

But Lu again turned the tide, stepping up the pace and smashed his way to a comfortable 20-14 lead when the Indian hit wide.

Sameer saved two points before another smash earned Lu the bragging rights.

The second game saw some exciting rallies right from the start with Sameer grinding out a 10-7 lead after spitting the initial 14 points. The Indian grabbed an 11-8 lead at the breather after Lu hit long.

After the break, Lu kept snapping at Sameer's heels, finding gaps in his rival's defence to narrow the lead to 13-14 and then turned the tables when Sameer hit the net.

A wide smash from Lu again gave the lead to Sameer at 17-16. But two precise returns helped Lu to draw parity at 18-18.

Another fast-paced rally ended with Lu hitting wide and he found the net next to hand two game points to Sameer. The Indian missed the line once but produced an accurate return at the backline to take the match to decider.

Sameer strengthened his defence and used the momentum of the second game to dominate early in the decider.

He led 6-7 but Lu once again scripted a recovery, reeling off seven straight points to claw back at 7-7 and then led 10-7.

Sameer unleashed a body smash to break the run of points and then hit two sizzling smashes to make it 10-10. Lu went to the net next as Sameer managed a slender 11-10 advantage at the break.

The Indian took the next two points after the change of sides, before an excellent drop shot left him sprawling on the floor.

The Indian showed immaculate defence and pounced on the chances to eke out a 16-12 lead with the help of better net game and a couple of rasping shots.

Lu crumbled after that, hitting long and wide to hand over six match points to Sameer, who converted them as the Chinese hit the net.

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The Supreme Court has come to the rescue of a divorcee woman by expunging the imputations made on her character by her late estranged husband to ensure that she leads her "rest of her life with a sense of dignity and pride".

The top court, however, refused to interfere with the findings of the Delhi High Court and trial court which had dissolved her marriage with her estranged husband on the ground of cruelty.

A bench of Justices Kurian Joseph and Hemant Gupta noted that her estranged husband is no more and she cannot contest the matter on merit.

"It is also submitted that the petitioner is not concerned about the marital status but is seriously disturbed about the findings rendered by the Courts. Since the petitioner has no objection if the order granted by the Courts on the ground of cruelty is sustained, all other imputations on the character of the petitioner are expunged except the cruelty," the bench said.

The woman's husband has expired during the pendency of appeal before the high court against the trial court order.

Advocate Dushyant Parashar, appearing for the woman, said that the apex court should expunge the finding qua the character of the women as her estranged husband is no more.

"The petitioner being women against whom the estranged husband had alleged her being unchaste...the alleged allegation by him qua her character and finding to that effect may be expunged from the judgment of the courts below, so that she can lead her rest of her life with a sense of dignity and pride," Parashar said.

He said that he prays that the scandalous allegations levelled against the woman may be expunged from the judgment of both the courts below.

The Delhi High Court had on April 9, upheld the findings of trial court given in 2010 and granted the couple, who were married since November, 1987, divorce on the ground of cruelty.

The woman in plea said the high court erred in accepting the respondent/husband's false allegation of adultery and the second marriage.

She said that the photographs produced by the respondent/ husband were not supported by any negative and are morphed, forced and manipulated.

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The staccato bursts of gun fire, smoke plumes billowing out of the iconic Taj Mahal hotel, bullet-riddled bodies at local hospitals and cries of the victims' kin still flash through Vijay Vaidyas mind.

Ten years after the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, which claimed 166 lives and left over 300 injured, the 78-year-old senior journalist recalls the stories of valour by security personnel and the resilience shown by Mumbaikars.

Ten terrorists, armed with automatic weapons and grenades, went about firing indiscriminately, carrying out bomb explosions and holding innocents hostage as a fight back by security forces continued for the next 60 hours.

Vaidya, who lives in north Mumbai suburb Borivali, said he was at his home when he learnt about the terror attack. He rang up then Opposition leader in State Assembly and present Environment Minister Ramdas Kadam and together they headed t south Mumbai from Kadams Kandivli residence.

Vaidya said they saw a taxi damaged in a blast in Vile Parle. They headed towards the GT Hospital in south Mumbai, where bodies of policemen killed in the attack were kept.

The duo was joined by BJP leader and now Maharashtra Education Minister Vinod Tawde and proceeded towards the Gateway of India, near the Taj hotel.

"All the street lights there were off. The Taj was engulfed by fire. Police had cordoned off the area. The injured in the hotel attack were being taken to Byculla-based JJ Hospital," Vaidya recalled.

From the Gateway, the trio moved towards Nariman House in Colaba, where terrorists were suspected to have holed up.

The scene at the JJ Hospital was heart-wrenching with bodies of victims lying there and their kin mourning the dead, he said. Many people had queued up at the hospital to donate blood to victims, he added.

Vaidya said it was a noisy scene at their next stop, the Oberoi Hotel at the Nariman Point which was also a scene of the terror attack. The hotel premises were cordoned off for security purposes, he said.

The journalist, who also recalled the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts, said 26/11 helped change the public perception about Mumbai police. "People started looking at cops as heroes for the way they battled the trained terrorists," he said.

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The working committee of the Himachal Pradesh unit of the Seva Dal, the grassroots front organisation of the Congress, held its first meeting in Dharamshala on Sunday.

Seva Dal state president Anurag Sharma said the organisation would play an important role to ensure the victory of the Congress candidates in all the four Lok Sabha seats of the state.

It was decided in the meeting that the organisation would be strengthened at the booth level in the state and would expose the corruption in the state and central government, the leader told reporters at a press conference.

"Ever since Rahul Gandhi has assumed the charge of the national president (of the party), his efforts has been towards a massive change in the strengthening of Seva dal at the grassroots level to strengthen the Congress party as a whole," he said.

The meeting was attended by Sudhir Sharma, the party national secretary and incharge of Jammu and Kashmir; and Vilas Rawat, the general secretary of the Seva Dal.

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Bharatiya Janata Party chief Amit Shah Sunday accused the Telangana government led by K Chandrashekar Rao of "failing" to keep its promises, and claimed that only the BJP, under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, can ensure the state's development.

He also hit out at Rao for advancing the state polls, claiming that the chief minister did so as he was scared of the "Modi wave".

Addressing a public meeting at Parkal in Warangal district, Shah appealed to people to vote for the BJP in Telangana polls scheduled on December 7, in order to take the state forward.

He said KCR (as Rao is popularly known) failed to fulfil his promise of appointing a Dalit chief minister, and sought to know if Rao would now announce a Dalit as the chief ministerial candidate.

Shah also hit out at All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) leader Akbaruddin Owaisi's claim that his party would be the "kingmaker" after the state election.

"Do you want a government which is dependent on Owaisi and AIMIM? Neither the Congress nor KCR can provide such a governance, only the BJP can provide a government which is not dependent on Majlis," he said.

The assembly election in Telangana was expected along with the Lok Sabha election in May next year, but Rao advanced the polls and put the financial burden on people only because "he is scared of the 'Modi wave' and to promote his son and daughter for the chief minister's post," Shah alleged.

Attacking the Rao-led Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) government in the state over its move to provide 12-per cent reservation to minorities, Shah said the Constitution does not allow reservation based on religion and that it is "unconstitutional".

"The BJP opposes religion-based reservations and will neither allow it nor allow others to grant it," he said.

The senior BJP leader said the Modi government took up several works for Telangana's development and released over Rs 1.15 lakh crore to the state under the 14th Finance Commission, as against Rs 16,596 crore given by the UPA government under the 13th Finance Commission.

"The central government gave over Rs 2.30 lakh crore for Telangana's development in the last four-and-a-half years. Under KCR's rule, a revenue surplus state (when Telangana was formed) has been pushed into a Rs 2 lakh crore debt," he said.

Over 3,500 farmers in Telangana committed suicide under the TRS rule, Shah claimed. And on the other hand, he added, the Modi government announced to provide a higher minimum support price to cultivators for their crops.

Taking a dig at the alliance of parties, including the Congress and the Communist Party of India (CPI), formed in the state ahead of the polls, he said the Communist Party is on a decline across the world and the Congress is on a decline in India.

"The Congress lost power in 14 states and the BJP is in power in 19 states," he pointed out.

The BJP chief also slammed Rao for not celebrating September 17 as 'Liberation Day' "out of fear of Owaisi".

He said if the BJP comes to power in the state, it will celebrate Liberation Day in every village.

The BJP-led government launched the 'Pradhan Mantri Jan Aarogya Yojana for providing health insurance cover, but Rao did not implement the scheme as "he is afraid that Modiji's popularity will further increase," Shah said.

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Rallying behind Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Union Minister Uma Bharti said he is BJP'S USP in the state assembly elections to be held on Wednesday.

Bharti, the former Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh was replaced by Chouhan in 2004, just an year after she was elected to the top post.

As far as Shivraj Singh Chouhan is concerned, he is BJP's USP (unique selling point) in Madhya Pradesh, she told PTI.

Confident of party's victory in the upcoming assembly elections, Bharti said there is pro-cumbency also for the party in the state assembly elections.

She further said the party will continue with its winning run in the state assembly elections as well under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Responding to question on the BJP facing a resurgent Congress in Madhya Pradesh she said:The Congress is a divided house. It has no vision for the state. People of the state are with us, we will win the election.

Bharti said she felt Modi's leadership and party's organisational structure are its biggest strength in the state.

Perhaps this for the first time after 2003 assembly elections, Bharti has been campaigning so vigorously in the state.

BJP has won three consecutive elections in the state. The party won maximum 173 seats 2003 , followed by 144 seats in 2008 and 165 seats in 2013.

Bharti was instrumental in ousting Digvijay Singh-led Congress government in the state in the 2003 state assembly elections.

But an year later, Bharti had to resign in 2004 after an arrest warrant was issued against her in connection with the 1994 Hubli riots. Later on she floated her own party Bharatiya Janshakti Party in 2006 in Ujjain following her explusion from the BJP.

But in 2011 she merged her party with BJP and became Union Minister in 2014.

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In another blow to Pakistan-based Lashker-e-Taiba and Hizbul Mujahideen, six of its militants, including a Pakistani involved in slaughtering of civilians, were killed in an encounter Sunday, along with a soldier and a civilian, in a village of South Kashmir's district, police said.

The police said that based on a credible input about the presence of terrorists in Batagund area of Kapran of district, a cordon and search operation was launched in the night jointly by the police and security forces in the area.

As the searches were going on, the miltants fired upon the search party which retaliated effectively leading to an encounter.

"Initially, one jawan of 34 RR sustained injuries in the exchange of fire. He was evacuated to the hospital and is stated to be stable now," the police said.

"Another jawan identified as Nazir Ahmad of 34 RR who was grievously injured in the final phase of the encounter has succumbed and attained martyrdom," the police added.

One militant was identified Mushtaq Ahmad Mir of who, the police said, was involved in motivating innocent youths into the terrorist fold and also demanding money from public for strengthening Lashker cadre.

The others were identified as Mohammad Abass Bhatt and Khalid Farooq Malik, from Shopian, Umar Majeed from Kulgam, Mohd Hameed Wagey and a Pakistani terrorist, Kafeel.

"It was an intelligence based operation in which six terrorists were eliminated. They were involved in gruesome killing of civilians and security forces," Inspector General of Police ( range) Swayam Prakash Pani said after the encounter.

"We have been able to made a considerable dent in terror groups operating in the Valley," Pani said.

Two days back, a module of six militants of these two terror groups was eliminated in Bijbehara in South which included one man, who was wanted in assassination of Sujaat Bukhari.

In another encounter, a Jaish-e-Moahmmed militant codenamed 'Waseem' was killed in a separate encounter with security forces at Khrew in Awantipura district of South

In the Shopian encounter, the Pakistani militant codenamed Kafeel was involved in the killing of a civilian who was kidnapped from Shopian and his throat was slit. The video of this gruesome act was uploaded on social networking sites.

"All the killed six terrorists were wanted by the law for their complicity in a series of terror crimes, including attacks on security establishments and civilian killings in the area. With their elimination, all notorious terrorists of the belt have been successfully eliminated," the police said.

As per the police records, Mushtaq Ahmad Mir alias Hammad had a long history of terror crimes since 2014. He was a close associate of terrorist commander Zeenat-ul-Islam and was involved in several terror attacks on security establishments and civilian killings.

Mohammad Abass Bhatt was earlier convicted for a murder case and sentenced for five years.

After his release in April 2016 he joined terrorist ranks and was involved in several terror-related crimes and according to police records he was involved in the recent spate of gruesome killings of civilians in Shopian, including the decapitation of 19-years-old Huzaif Ashraf.

He was wanted for killing of young officer trainee Lt Omar Fayaz, advocate Imtiyaz Khan and four police personnel at Shopian in August this year and many other civilian killings in the area.

Umer Majid Ganai, who had escaped from Batmaloo encounter and whose photo was recently circulated on showing him near clock tower Lal Chowk, was involved in the killing of several policemen and civilians in the area since 2016.

He was involved in Pombai Bank guard attack case in which four policemen and two banks guards had lost their lives in 2017.

Mohd Waseem Wagay alias Saifullah was involved in several terror crimes in the area and attacks on the security establishments. He was part of a terror group involved in the killing of four police personnel in August this year at Shopian and so was Khalid Farooq.

Around the encounter site, one civilian identified as Nouman Ashraf Bhat of Bolous Kulgam succumbed to his injuries at a hospital. Four others injured are stable, the police said.
President Maithripala Sirisena on Sunday reignited the political crisis that has crippled Sri Lanka's government for more than a month, vowing never to reappoint arch-rival Ranil Wickremesinghe as prime minister.

Wickremesinghe's party has a majority in parliament and Sirisena's bid to bring back the country's former strongman Mahinda Rajapakse has already failed.

But Sirisena choked back tears in a meeting with foreign correspondents as he accused Wickremesinghe, who he sacked on October 26, of being "highly corrupt".

"Even if the UNP has the majority I told them not to bring Ranil Wickremesinghe before me, I will not make him prime minister," he said, referring to Wickremesinghe's United National Party.

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Sri Lanka limped to 53-4 on Sunday as they battled to reach 327 to win the third and final Test against England and avoid a series whitewash.

Moeen Ali opened the bowling for England and took openers Danushka Gunathilaka for 6 and Dimuth Karunaratne for 23 on the spin paradise pitch in Colombo.

Jack Leach claimed Dhananjaya de Silva, who failed to score, while Ben Stokes took a brilliant catch off fast bowler Stuart Broad to end Angelo Mathews' innings after nine balls which produced five runs.

Earlier England made 230 in their second innings after at one stage looking shaky on 39-4.

Jos Buttler top-scored with 64, while Stokes hit 42 and Ben Foakes 36 not out to leave Sri Lanka facing a mountain to climb with two days left to play.

Dilruwan Perera took Keaton Jennings lbw with the first ball of the day to shake England, and took five wickets in all. But after the top order scare, spinner Lakshan Sandakan made two basic blunders that set the tone for the tourists' recovery.

The left-arm spinner had Stokes caught at cover on 22, then at slip on 32, only for replays to show Sandakan had overstepped the bowling line on each occasion.

England scored 336 in their first innings and Sri Lanka 240.

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Standard Chartered Bank has filed an interlocutory application in the bankruptcy court against a panel of lenders selecting ArcelorMittal to takeover debt-ridden Essar Steel, saying the decision was "illegal" and was taken without considering its claims.

Standard Chartered Bank (SCB), which has more than 7.5 per cent weightage in the Committee of Essar Steel Creditors, in the petition before the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) claimed that ArcelorMittal's revised bid of Rs 42,000 crore was never considered by the CoC.

SCB had lent Essar Steel, which the lenders are auctioning to recover 49,395 crore of unpaid financial dues, a principal amount of Rs 2,646 crore but the Committee of Creditors admitted only Rs 60.71 crore for repayment out of the auction proceeds.

"The manner of conducting the 21st CoC meeting dated October 22, 2018 and e-voting on the voting resolutions approved on October 24, 2018 and October 25, 2018 is non transparent, flawed and illegal and was carried out with an intention to deny legal right to (SCB) to take an informed decision on the Revised Resolution Plan (of ArcelorMittal)," the petition said.

It wanted quashing of the October 24-25 voting by more than 92 per cent of creditors of Essar Steel in favour of handing over the company to ArcelorMittal. It also wanted rejection of the resolution plan of ArcelorMittal and if that was done, the Rs 42,000 crore proceeds be distributed among all financial creditors on pro-rata basis of the amount of claim.

Earlier this month, operational creditors including state-owned gas utility GAIL India Ltd and Gujarat Energy Transmission Corp (GETCO) filed separate applications seeking rejection of ArcelorMittal's bid saying the Rs 42,000 crore project leaves out their claims.

Last month, a committee of Essar Steel lenders picked ArcelorMittal's Rs 42,000-crore proposal to take over the debt-laden company by paying Rs 41,987 crore out of total dues of Rs 49,395 crore of financial creditors. Operational creditors, under the plan, are to get just Rs 214 crore against the outstanding of Rs 4,976 crore.

Aggrieved, over two dozen operational creditors filed separate interlocutory applications in the Ahmedabad-bench of NCLT.

They wanted ArcelorMittal to pay in full all dues of operational creditors, or a Rs 54,389 crore proposal of the owners of Essar Steel to be considered.

Essar Steel Asia Holding Ltd (ESAHL) -- the promoter of Essar Steel -- has proposed to pay Rs 54,389 crore to clear all dues of the financial and operational creditor in a last-ditch effort to avert losing their flagship company.

While ArcelorMittal spokesperson could not be reached for comments, the spokesperson had at the time of operational creditors like GAIL approaching the NCLT stated that "We have followed the IBC process in good faith since first submitting our EOI in 2017. The committee of creditors has clearly decided ArcelorMittal's plan is in the best interests of Essar Steel and we are confident that the process will be implemented correctly and according to the law."



SCB said the details of the Rs 42,000 crore revised resolution plan of ArcelorMittal, including the distribution among the creditors, was not circulated along with the agenda of the meeting. "It is an admitted position that the Revised Resolution Plan was never discussed in the CoC meetings, since there have been no CoC meetings on or after October 23, 2018 (when the Revised Resolution Plan was received)," it said.

It wanted the Rs 42,000 crore ArcelorMittal's Revised Resolution Plan rejected as it was "not complete in all aspects" and it was "not in accordance with the law and hence is un-implementable."



It alleged discriminatory practice by the Committee of Creditors, which has illegally formed a core-committee of CoC (beyond the scope of Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code) to negotiate with ArcelorMittal India Pvt Ltd.

The core-committee included State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, IDBI bank and Edelweiss ARC, which illegally negotiated with ArcelorMittal and retained the right to distribute the amount of Rs 42,000 crores of upfront payment amongst the financial creditors as per the choosing of the core-committee members.

Accordingly, the core-committee members recommended that SCB receive Rs 60.71 crores against its admitted claim of Rs 3487.09 crores (including interest) -- only 1.47 per cent of the admitted claim of SCB. While the SBI and other lenders got 100 per cent of the principal amount due and 40 per cent of the interest amount.

"The basis of the distribution of amounts to secured financial creditors is illegal and biased," the petition said. "The consortium of lenders have acted with continued bias with the applicant (SCB) and such bias is apparent from the decision-making process and the decision on the manner of distribution. Accordingly, both the decision-making process and the decision on the manner of distribution stands vitiated."



SCB has also challenged the Resolution Plan of Arcelor as being incomplete and in violation of the IBC.

It has also sought to bring to the attention of the NCLT the arbitrary practice of the CoC lead by SBI to retain legal firms to send notices to SCB without an authorization from CoC itself.

SCB had loaned Essar Steel USD 500 million in August 2010. This was refinanced to the tune of USD 413 million in January 2014 by granting extended repayment schedule. Also, Essar Steel pledged 71.8 million shares with SCB.

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Ben Stokes and Jos Buttler dug England out of a dangerous hole after another top order collapse saw the tourists in trouble against Sri Lanka on Sunday as they sought a winning lead.

Stokes and Buttler took England's second innings from 39-4 to 110-4 at lunch on the third day, building a strong 204-run lead despite some heart-stopping escapes that may cost Sri Lanka the match.

Buttler was unbeaten on 38 and Stokes 32, having been the beneficiary of two basic blunders by Sri Lankan spinner Lakshan Sandakan.

Left-arm spinner Sandakan had Stokes caught at cover on 22, then at slip on 32, only for replays to show he had overstepped the bowling line on each occasion. Stokes was on his way back to the dressing room when he was recalled both times. He shook his head in disbelief as he walked off for lunch.

Buttler was given out lbw on 27 to part-time off-spinner Dhananjaya de Silva, but the decision was overturned when the ball was projected to be travelling over the stumps upon review.

Sri Lanka started the day brilliantly with Dilruwan Perera taking Keaton Jennings lbw with the first ball of the day when England resumed on three for no wicket.

Perera soon had Rory Burns lbw for seven and first-innings centurion Jonny Bairstow caught at short leg by substitute fielder Kaushal Silva.

Left-arm spinner Malinda Pushpakumara took England captain Joe Root caught and bowled for seven leaving the tourists in trouble.

Buttler made 38 off 39 balls, while Stokes went to lunch on 32 off 53. They struck three boundaries each, but went for sweeps and reverse-sweeps that brought valuable runs and left Sri Lanka facing a mountain when they bat.

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Syria's regime has accused armed groups of carrying out a "toxic gas" attack that left dozens of people struggling to breathe and prompted government ally Russia to launch retaliatory air strikes on Sunday.

Around 100 Syrians were hospitalised with breathing difficulties after the alleged chemical attack in the regime-held city of Aleppo on Saturday, state media and a monitor said.

Russia accused jihadists of being behind the alleged chlorine attack, and carried out the first air raids in months on the outskirts of a major rebel bastion west of the city.

It was the latest accusation of a chemical attack in Syria's grinding seven-year civil war, which has killed more than 360,000 people and displaced millions.

State agency SANA reported "107 cases of breathing difficulties", after what health official Ziad Hajj Taha said was a "probable" chlorine attack on Aleppo city.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor, said a total of 94 people were hospitalised, but most had been discharged, after "the smell of chlorine" was reported in the city.

On Saturday, an AFP photographer saw dozens of civilians, including women and children, stream into an Aleppo hospital, some on stretchers or carried in by their relatives.

The injured seemed to be dizzy and breathing with difficulty. Staff gave them oxygen masks, through which they breathed for 15-minute sessions, either sitting or lying down.

The regime controls Aleppo city, but rebels and jihadists are present to the west in the country's last major opposition bastion of Idlib.

On Sunday, Russian air raids hit a planned buffer zone on the edges of that stronghold, the Observatory and Moscow said.

They were the first air strikes to hit the expected demilitarised area since a September deal between Moscow and rebel backer Ankara to protect Idlib from a massive regime assault.

On Sunday, Moscow accused Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an alliance led by jihadists of Syria's former Al-Qaeda affiliate, of carrying out the alleged toxic attack in Aleppo.

Russian defence ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov on Sunday said "terrorist groups" in an area of the planned buffer zone held by HTS fired shells filled with chlorine on a residential area of Aleppo.

Official media accused "terrorists" of carrying out a "toxic gas" attack on Aleppo, using a term it uses to mean both rebels and jihadists.

A rebel coalition on Sunday denied any involvement.

"We at the National Liberation Front deny the criminal, lying regime's allegations that revolutionaries targeted the city of Aleppo with any missiles and especially not any containing chlorine gas," it said.

Neither HTS nor the Al-Qaeda-linked Hurras al-Deen group, both of which are present near Aleppo, commented on the accusations.

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BJP president Amit Shah Sunday hit out at Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao for not taking action against AIMIM leader Akbaruddin Owaisi in connection with a hate speech.

Akbaruddin, MLA from Chandrayangutta in the dissolved state Assembly, was arrested by Nirmal police in January 2013 for allegedly using inflammatory and derogatory language against a community during his public speeches in Nirmal and Nizamabad in December 2012. He was subsequently released on bail.

Shah also claimed that KCR was afraid of the AIMIM, which he described as a 'Razakars party".

The Razakars were an armed militia of the Hyderabad Nizamate who tried to brutally put down a revolt by peasants opposed to the Nizam's decision to not merge with India following Independence.

Addressing a rally here on Sunday, Shah said: "This is the land (Nirmal) where Akbaruddin Owaisi gave a speech. He insulted Hindu gods. There was also a case against him. But this TRS government failed to take further action."



Taking a swipe at KCR on the issue, Shah added, "I want to ask Chandrasekhar Rao, why are you not taking action? Do it now, otherwise you would lose power to take action (TRS government would be voted out)."



Continuing his tirade, Shah said KCR, as the Telangana CM is popularly known, had no time to visit families of the 60 people who died when a overcrowded state bus plunged into a valley in Kondagattu in the state's Jagtial district in August this year.

"This Chief Minister does not have the time to visit the victims of the Kondagattu (bus) accident. But he has time to eat biryani with Owaisi brothers (AIMIM chief Asaduddin and Akbaruddin)," he said.

Alleging that KCR was "scared" of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul Muslimeen, Shah said, "KCR is scared of this Razakars party (AIMIM). That is why he is not holding (celebrations for) Hyderabad Liberation Day on September17,



Hundreds lost their lives in the crackdown by the Razakars following which the Indian government conducted "police action", codenamed Operation Polo, on September 17, 1948, to merge Hyderabad state into the Indian Union.

Shah also attacked the TRS government over farm distress and claimed that as many as 131 farmers had committed suicide in Gajwel constituency from where KCR is seeking re-election.

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Scores of fans and followers led by top south Indian actors like Rajinikanth and Mohan Babu paid tributes to actor-turned-politician Ambareesh Sunday.

The veteran actor passed away at a private hospital in Bengaluru Saturday due to cardiac arrest, leaving a huge void in the Kannada film industry. He was 66.

Mourners filed past the mortal remains of Ambareesh with occasional outburst of emotions at Kanteerva Stadium here amid tight security with about 1,000 policemen deployed in and around the area.

The state government Sunday announced a three-day mourning and a state funeral for the late leader.

The body of the late film actor was taken from the private hospital where he died to his home in the night and was shifted to Kanteerava Stadium for people to pay homage.

At the Kanteerava Stadium here, superstars Rajinikanth and Chiranjeevi, multi-lingual actress Lakshmi of 'Julie' fame, Telugu star Mohan Babu and Kannada actor Shivrajkumar paid homage to the late actor-politician.

Chiranjeevi and Mohan Babu broke down on seeing the body of Ambareesh, who had shared an intimate friendship with the south Indian actors.

Expressing his sorrow, Rajinikanth recalled that he used to have meals at Ambareesh's home whenever he visited Bengaluru.

"The film industry may get an actor like Ambareesh but it is impossible to get a person like him again. I pray to god to give strength to bear the loss," Rajinikanth said.

The visitors expressed their sorrow to Ambareesh's wife and famous south film actress Sumalatha, who was inconsolable.

Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy, former prime minister H D Devegowda and his wife Chennamma, and former chief minister Siddaramaiah were among those who paid homage.

Wrapped in tri-colour, the body was then flown in an IAF helicopter to Mandya to facilitate the people of his home district to pay their last respect to "Mandyada Gandu" (man of Mandya).

Thousands of people gathered at the Visweswarayya Stadium in Mandya to have his final glimpse of Ambareesh who had endeared himself to the local masses as an actor and a politician with his down to earth nature.

As the body was flown to Mandya, section 144 of the CrPC, which prohibits assembly of more than four persons at a spot, was imposed from Sunday evening to Monday morning to avoid unwanted congregation of people.

In Bengaluru, sale of liquor will be prohibited from Monday midnight. About 8,000 policemen will be deployed Monday in Bengaluru where the body would be taken from Kanteerava Stadium to Kanteerava Studio in a funeral procession.

Government sources said the last rites will be performed Monday at the Kanteerava Studio in Bengaluru.

Ambareesh, a three-time Lok Sabha member and also a former state minister, had not been keeping well in recent years. He is survived by his wife Sumalatha and a son.

Known as a "rebel star", Ambareesh had acted in over 200 films.

Entering the tinsel world through the movie "Nagarahavu" (king cobra) in 1972, Ambareesh had carved a niche for himself in the Kannada film industry, particularly as an "angry man".

Ambareesh also had a successful career in politics, having been an MLA, a Lok Sabha member and a former minister at the state and central levels.

He had been in the erstwhile Janata Dal, JDS and the Congress in his political career that took a hit when he was asked to resign as a minister during the previous Siddaramaiah government.

Ambareesh had served as the Union minister of state for information and broadcasting from 2006-2008, but had quit the post over the issue of the formation of the Cauvery water dispute tribunal.

He had won several state government film awards and was bestowed with the honorary doctorate by the Dharwad University in Karnataka.

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The ruling TRS and the Congress-led grand alliance are trying to woo farmers, youth and those receiving social security pensions to win the Telangana Legislative Assembly polls scheduled for December 7.

The TRS, Congress and the TDP have promised farm loan waivers and monthly unemployment dole besides hike in social security pensions.

The TRS, which has implemented farm loan waiver of Rs one lakh during its rule since 2014, has promised to repeat the scheme.

The investment support to farmers under the "Rythu Bandhu" scheme would be increased to Rs 10,000 per acre per annum from the current Rs 8,000, TRS president and caretaker Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao said at an election rally last week.

He also highlighted the free power given to the farm sector.

"The only state in India to give 24-hour free power (to farm sector) is Telangana. Nobody in the country gives. No state gives. We will give more. As long as KCR is in power, will give free power to farming," he said.

The TRS government has also implemented the "Rythu Beema", the Rs 5 lakh insurance scheme for farmers, Rao said.

The party also promised Rs 3,000 per month dole to all eligible unemployed youth.

The TRS is also banking on social security pensions provided to various sections of the society, including senior citizens, persons with disabilities and single women.

It has promised to increase the pension given to different sections.

The major parties the TRS, the Congress and the BJP however, are yet to formally release their election manifestos.

The Congress, which is leading the grand alliance of opposition parties, has also promised loan waiver for farmers of up to Rs two lakh if voted to power.

Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) president N Uttam Kumar Reddy had alleged that the TRS copied the main points of its manifesto, after ridiculing farm loan waiver and other promises earlier.

The Congress earlier contended that the farm loan waiver implemented by the TRS government did not benefit farmers as it was done in a phased manner.

Focusing on the youth, the Congress has promised financial assistance of Rs 3,000 per month to the unemployed.

It has assured that 20,000 teachers' posts would be filled through the District Selection Committee (DSC).

One lakh jobs in state government departments would be filled up within a year, it said.

The TDP, in its manifesto for the Assembly elections, has also promised up to Rs two lakh farm loan waiver as well as a monthly financial assistance of Rs 3,000 to the unemployed youth.

The manifesto said vacancies in government departments would be filled up every year as per a calender prepared for the purpose.

It has promised free laptop computers to students from intermediate (XI and XII) to university level.

The party has also assured that an additional Rs 5,000 crore would be allocated to the Education budget.

The TDP manifesto said cycles would be distributed for free to girls students from Class VIII to intermediate (XI and XII).

Both the Congress and the TDP have promised hike in social security pensions.

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The Delhi Police's Special Cell has arrested three suspected terrorists associated with Islamic State in Jammu and Kashmir (ISJK), police said Sunday.

Police said the trio were arrested on Saturday from Srinagar.

They have been identified as Tahir Ali Khan, Haris Mushtaq Khan and Asif Suhail Nadaf, they added.

Arms and ammunition have also been recovered from their possession, a senior police official said.

Further details were awaited.

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Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat Sunday said the time for patience was over and a law should be brought to facilitate the construction of a Ram temple at Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh if the matter was not a priority for the apex court.

Speaking at a rally organised by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) on the Ram temple issue here, Bhagwat also said this should be the "decisive phase of the agitation".

"One year ago, I myself had said be patient. Now I say, patience will not work. Now we need to mobilise people. Now we should demand a law," he said.

"If, for whatever reasons, because the court has a busy schedule or maybe it does not understand the sensibilities of the society, the Ram temple case is not a priority for them, then the government should think how to bring a law for the construction of the temple....the law should be introduced at the earliest," Bhagwat added.

"Now this should be the decisive phase of this agitation," he said.

The RSS chief said in 1992, those agitating for the temple at Ayodhya had approached then prime minister PV Narasimha Rao, but he did not take a prompt decision.

"(Then) the karsevaks (volunteers) got angry and what happened, happened," he said, referring to the demolition of the Babri mosque on December 6, 1992.

Asserting that the Ram Janmabhoomi was a matter of faith which could not be questioned, Bhagwat said, "The society does not move only by the words of law, but also by its own wishes."



"In 2010, the court (Allahabad High Court) had ruled in favour of the construction of the Ram temple, but now, indications are clear that it is not a priority of the (apex) court," he added.

The Supreme Court, hearing appeals against the high court's decision, had said earlier this month that it would hear the matter only in January, 2019.

Bhagwat also said people should not fight with the government, but build pressure on it.

The government, if not willing to build the temple, would bow down before such pressure, or if it wanted to build it but could not find a way, would gain "strength from the public pressure", he added.

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Left-hander Haris Sohail cracked a fighting century to take Pakistan to 274-4 at lunch on the second day of the second Test against New Zealand in Dubai on Sunday.

Sohail was unbeaten on 110 for his second Test hundred, and with him Babar Azam was 52 not out for his ninth half century as Pakistan added 67 runs after resuming at 207-4.

Sohail batted with responsibility to anchor the innings after a confusion between him and Azhar Ali in a run out on Saturday, reaching his hundred with a sharp single off spinner Ish Sodhi.

Sohail took 309 balls to reach the three-figure mark and has so far hit 11 boundaries.

Azam ably supported Sohail with the two so far adding 100 for the unfinished fifth wicket stand, taking Pakistan towards a strong first innings total.

Azam has five boundaries and a six to his credit.

Pakistan trail the three-match series 1-0 after losing the first Test in Abu Dhabi by a narrow four-run margin.

New Zealand's pace-cum-spin attack toiled hard on a lifeless Dubai stadium pitch. Medium pacer Colin de Grandhomme is the pick of the bowlers with 2-40.

Left-arm spinner Ajaz Patel, who took seven wickets in the first Test, has figures of 1-71.

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An employee of a ground handling services firm at the airport here and a passenger have been detained for allegedly trying to smuggle 1.2 kg of gold hidden in a mobile power bank, officials said Sunday.

A CISF personnel noticed the staff receiving "something" from the passenger at the international arrival. The yellow metal concealed in a power bank was seized during a check, the officials said.

The incident happened on the intervening night of Friday and Saturday, they said.

The seized gold is worth Rs 37 lakh. The two persons have been handed over to the customs department for further probe, they said.

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Two drug smugglers were arrested with 64 kg of contraband worth Rs 3 lakhs on Karnal-Meerut highway in Shamli district, police said Sunday.

Acting on a tip-off, the police raided a dhaba on the highway and arrested the two accused involved in selling the contraband on Saturday, Shamli Superintendent of Police Ajay Kumar Pandey said.

Police have arrested the accused and registered a case under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, the SP said.

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Two Naxals were killed and a police personnel was injured in encounters in Chhattisgarh's insurgency-hit Bijapur district Sunday, police said.

The gun-battles took place when teams of police's District Reserve Guard (DRG) of and Special Task Force (STF) were out on anti-Naxal operations in Gangaloor and Madded areas.

Superintendent of Police Mohit Garg told PTI that a combined squad of DRG and STF was cordoning off the jungles between Nilamadgu and Korinjed in Madded area, 450 km from Raipur, when it came under fire from the rebels.

The exchange of fire lasted for 40 minutes after which the Naxals fled, he said.

"A DRG jawan sustained a bullet injury in the neck. He is being shifted to hospital," Garg said.

The body of a Naxal was recovered alongwith one .303 rifle and one muzzle-loading gun from the spot, he said.

Elsewhere, an exchange of fire broke out between a DRG team and Naxals around 2.30 pm in a forest near Borje village in Gangaloor area, the SP said.

A reinforcement party was rushed to the spot which too came under fire around 4 pm, leading to a fierce gun battle, he said.

Later, the body of a Naxal along with two rifles and a 'tiffin' bomb was recovered from the spot.

Identity of the killed Naxals was yet to be ascertained, the police officer said.

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The UN has condemned the two terrorist attacks in Pakistan and expressed hope that those behind the acts will be swiftly brought to justice.

Three heavily-armed suicide bombers on Friday stormed the Chinese consulate in Pakistan's largest city of Karachi, killing four people including two policemen before being shot dead by security forces. The attack was soon claimed by the outlawed Baloch Liberation Army (BLA).

In a separate attack the same day, at least 32 people were killed and over 40 injured when a suicide bomber triggered a powerful bomb blast at a crowded marketplace outside a religious seminary in Orakzai district in the country's restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

In a statement by his spokesperson, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres extended his deep condolences to the families of the victims and wished a speedy recovery to those injured.

"He hopes those responsible for the attacks will be swiftly brought to justice," the statement said.

The UN Security Council also condemned "in the strongest terms" the terrorist attacks in Pakistan that claimed dozens of lives and left many more injured.

In a statement, the Council members stressed that "terrorism in all its forms and manifestations" constituted one of the most serious threats to international peace and security.

"Any acts of terrorism are criminal and unjustifiable, regardless of their motivation, wherever, whenever and by whomsoever committed," they said, underscoring the need to hold the perpetrators, organisers, financiers and sponsors of terrorist acts accountable and bring them to justice.

The UNSC members also stressed the fundamental principle of the inviolability of diplomatic and consular premises, and the obligations on host governments, including under international treaties, to protect those premises and their officials.

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The United Nations Sunday officially invited Uttar Pradesh's Noida and Greater Noida to become a member of its initiative which aims to create 25 model cities across the world that will be fully compliant with the sustainable development goals by 2025, officials said.

The twin-cities in Gautam Buddh Nagar district, adjoining the national capital, have been selected in the "University City" category ahead of Mumbai and Bengaluru, which were also under UN consideration for the initiative, as the only invitee from India, a senior UN official said.

"Noida (along with Greater Noida) has been formally invited to participate in this showcase 'Race to Sustainability' among 25 global cities to become fully compliant with the Sustainable Development Goals by 2025 under the UN Global Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) cities initiative," Senior UN Advisor and CEO UN Global Sustainability Index Institute (UNGSII) Roland Schatz told reporters here.

Schatz formally extended the invitation Sunday to Gautam Buddh Nagar District Magistrate Brajesh Narain Singh in the presence of Shubhro Sen, the principal advisor, India, SDG Initiative, and Ajay Davessar, Advisor to UNGSII India.

In September 2015, the UN General Assembly adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development that includes 17 SDGs, otherwise known as the Global Goals, a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity.

Schatz highlighted that the SDG cities initiative will lead to an unprecedented inflow of global knowledge, resources and capacity-building into Noida and Greater Noida via various UN agencies, partners and corporate supporters.

According to the official invitation letter, agreeing to the invitation for the long term project would entitle Noida-Greater Noida for a "multi-million US dollars finance and implementation know-how for each of the 17 SDGs along the defined KPIs (key performance indicators)," among other benefits.

Shcatz said the goal is to work together with other participating university cities like Cambridge, Palo Alto, Trondheim, Espoo and Heidelberg to create Sustainability Innovation and Research Hubs.

"We need to get Noida on the map not only in India but all over the world because if the United Nations is managing together every person on the planet to reach these so called SDG by 2030, we need to understand and learn from each other," he said.

District Magistrate Singh said he would forward the invitation to the government for its approval as he hailed it as a "significant moment" for the district, which has lakhs of students.

"This is a proud moment for Noida and Greater Noida to be selected for this exciting global showcase. Now I will forward this invitation to the Uttar Pradesh government which is very positive about development works," Singh said.

"We are about 600 government schools at primary level, 139 schools which are affiliated with CBSE, eight universities with more than 50,000 students they need direction and to be linked with what is happening elsewhere in the world. This initiative, I think, will also overall growth in both Noida and Greater Noida," he added.

Sen said the 25 cities will be first selected which will serve as role models for other cities in the world towards achieving the SDG 2030 goal.

Noida has the basic infrastructure and is going to the city of future if we bring here the global expertise, knowledge and resources in this sustainable development connection then Noida's can grow even more quickly and become an important city in the world, he said.

"Once the state government agrees to the invitation, the doors of the United Nations would be opened for Noida-Greater Noida under this initiative," he said.

Asked about the measures to be taken during the seven years for achievement of the SDGs, Schatz said the cities would analysts and experts along with data-based evaluation systems to monitor performance every three months.

"We bring a team from UN smart cities programme who have developed a matrix on all the 17 parameters like how much water do you need, who much energy is required, is gender equality there ... and now we have these matrix in place to bring in transparency to find where are we in 2019, 2021 and where are we going to be in 2025, he said.

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The United Nations Sunday selected Uttar Pradesh's Noida and Greater Noida to participate in its Global Sustainable Cities 2025 initiative, officials said.

The twin-cities in Gautam Buddh Nagar district, adjoining the national capital, have been selected in the "University City" category ahead of Mumbai and Bengaluru as the only invitee from India, a senior UN official said.

Overall 25 cities across the world have been selected in five categories by the UN Global Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) cities initiative, Senior UN Advisor and CEO UN Global Sustainability Index Institute Roland Schatz told reporters here.

Schatz formally extended the invitation Sunday to Gautam Buddh Nagar District Magistrate Brajesh Narain Singh in the presence of Shubhro Sen, the principal advisor, India, SDG Initiative.

The SDGs, otherwise known as the Global Goals, are a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity.

"This is a proud moment for Noida and Greater Noida to be selected for this exciting global showcase. Now I will forward this invitation to the Uttar Pradesh government which is very positive about development works," Singh said.

In the "University City" category, Noida-Greater Noida will be competing with elite university cities such as Cambridge, Palo Alto and Heidelberg.

UNGSII's Sustainable Development Goals Commitment Report (SCR) overcomes the limitations of current evaluation systems, such as inadequate transparency on evaluation criteria and methodology, inexperienced analysts, backward looking analysis with limited prognosis, and potential conflicts of interest.

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The then Bush administration had mobilised special forces to neutralise Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorists holding people hostage in hotels during the deadly Mumbai terror attack in November 2008, a former White House official has revealed.

But, before the Indian authorities gave the necessary clearances and the special forces could take off for Mumbai from an overseas regional location, Indian commandos had already completed their job, said Anish Goel, who was part of the White House's 26/11 crisis management group.

"I'm a bit hazy on the details now. It's 10 years out. But, we were offering to send like commando teams to Mumbai to infiltrate the hotels and root out the terrorist cells that were there," Goel, the director of South Asia in the National Security Council of the White House at the time of the 26/11 attack, told PTI.

Some 166 people, including Americans, were killed in the attack carried out by 10 LeT terrorists. Nine of the attackers were killed by police while lone survivor Ajmal Kasab was captured and hanged after handed down death sentence by an Indian court.

Recalling the developments at the White House during the 2008 Thanksgiving weekend, when LeT terrorists went on a rampage in Mumbai for several days, Goel said the US had "some (special forces) teams in the region that we're willing to deploy quickly".

The US also offered forensics assistance to help determine who was the cause of this (attack) and where the attackers were from, he said, adding the White House was ready to help India with "anything" that they might've wanted to deal with the terrorist attack.

"In the very beginning the Indians were reluctant to accepting US assistance because I think they felt that we can take care of this on our own. But, as the attack continued to drag on for two-three day, they became more accepting of US assistance," Goel said.

The Indians "didn't accept it (US offer) in time for the commandos to arrive and make a difference," he said. "I think technically they eventually cleared their (US commandos) arrival, but by the time the team was mobilised, the Indian commando teams had taken over and neutralised the attack," he said.

As a result, the US commandos never landed in India.

"It's hard to recall exact details now, but I don't think the US commandos ever actually made it to India," he said in response to a question, noting that at this time, he does not know how big the team of mobilised American commandos was.

"As the attack dragged on after two, three days, I think they came to the realisation that it was much more sophisticated than they had thought," said Goel, who now is a fellow in think-tank New America's International Security programme.

As the of terrorist attack broke, Goel was driving from Washington DC to his parent's house, some eight hours away.

"On the drive I noticed that my blackberry was filling up with messages, but since as I was driving I didn't check my messages. When I reached my parents' house, I checked my blackberry and that's when I first learned about the Mumbai attacks," he said, recollecting the events of the day 10 years ago. It was immediately clear that it was a terrorist attack, he added.

Though, he did not immediately rush to Washington DC, but he was constantly on his blackberry, phones and conference calls throughout the weekend. The then US National Security Adviser Stephen Headley advised everyone involved in the crisis management team to come back to Washington DC early.

The first reaction, he said, was to try and learn exactly what was going on because there was a lot of misinformation.

"The press was reporting all sorts of things. We didn't know how much of that was true. So the first part was just trying to get a handle on everything, like what actually is happening," he said.

"The second part was to try and understand who is responsible. The third part was to contact leaders in both India and Pakistan to urge restrain and urge calm. The fourth thing we were doing is we were working with the Indian government and offering them as much assistance as they wanted or that we could offer in terms of dealing with the attack," Goel said.

The US, he said, offered technical assistance.

"We were offering law enforcement capabilities. We were offering to send special forces to help bring the attack under control. We were trying to ensure that it didn't result in a larger conflagration in the region. It was very much a multipronged approach, in the first few days," said the former White House official.

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Veteran Congress leader and former Union minister C K Jaffer Sharief passed away Sunday at a private hospital here following a cardiac arrest, doctors said. He was 85.

Sharief was hospitalised after he collapsed while getting into his car for attending the Friday namaz.

Family sources said Sharief was not keeping well for quite some time. He is survived by two daughters.

Hospital sources said Sharief died of cardiac arrest.

"One of @INCIndia's senior most leaders, many times MP and one of India's most successful Railway minister, Karnataka's very own son Sri CK Jaffer Shareef has passed away," Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee president Dinesh Gundu Rao tweeted.

Congress MLA and Sharief's family friend N A Harris told PTI that the doctors had planned to implant pacemaker in his heart Sunday but he died before he could be brought to the operation table.

Born on November 3, 1933 at Challakere in Chitradurga, Sharief had an illustrious political career spanning 50 years.

Launching his career under the tutelage of the then Congress stalwart and former chief minister S Nijalingappa, Sharief had, however, sided with former prime minister Indira Gandhi after the split in the Congress.

He was a seven-time MP from Bengaluru North constituency and served as the Railway minister in the P V Narasimha Rao government between 1991 and 1995.

Karnataka Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy, who rushed to the hospital, said Sharief was close to his father and former prime minister H D Devegowda.

"Jaffer Sharief was not restricted to the minority community but had emerged as a leader of every citizen of the state. He was a great leader who gifted various central government schemes, especially railway projects, to the state," Kumaraswamy said.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi condoled Sharief's death.

He tweeted, "It is a day of tragedy for the Congress party, with another senior, loved & respected member of our family in Karnataka, Shri Jaffer Sharief Ji, passing away today. My condolences to his family, friends & supporters in their time



of grief".

Former External Affairs minister S M Krishna recalled his association with Sharief, saying, "He was a great visionary and was able to very effectively represent all sections of society".

Sharief had on occasions threatened to quit the Congress, sulking over being "sidelined" in the party and being denied ticket to him or his family members, but had withdrawn it on being pacified by the party high command.

The RSS, with which Sharief had maintained cordial relations, condoled his death and said he was well known to many senior sangh functionaries and supportive of social causes.

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Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu and Prime Minister Narendra Modi Sunday attended a dinner hosted by the Chief Justice of India on the eve of Constitution Day.

Chief justices and judges from Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Nepal and Bhutan, who are here to attend the BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation) conference, were also present.

Naidu posted pictures of the event on Twitter, in which he can be seen with Modi and CJI Ranjan Gogoi.

Constitution Day is celebrated every year on November 26 to mark the adoption of Indian Constitution by the Constituent Assembly in 1949.

This is perhaps for the first time that PM Modi attended an event in the Supreme Court complex.

"Attended the dinner hosted by the Chief Justice of India on the eve of Constitution Day Celebrations. Delighted to have met and interacted with Chief Justices from neighbouring countries," the vice president tweeted.

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RLSP chief Upendra Kushwaha Sunday said he was in favour of Narendra Modi returning as the prime minister in 2019, "but will not tolerate any insult" against the party.

Kushwaha, in his series of tweets, did not mention the issue of seat sharing, but demanded "justice and respect".

The Rashtriya Lok Samata Party (RLSP) chief had Saturday sought the prime minister's intervention to resolve the seat-sharing issue in Bihar NDA.

According to a recent announcement , the BJP and the JD(U) had agreed to contest an equal number of seats in Bihar, out of a total of 40, in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. This reportedly would have meant fewer seats for the RLSP.

The RLSP, as an ally of the BJP in the NDA, had won three seats in the 2014 general election.

"Adarniye pradhan mantri Sri @narendramodi jee ko 2019 me fir se pradhan mantri banana chahta hoon. Lekin apman sahkar nahi (We (RLSP) want to see PM Narendra Modi as PM again in 2019 but without tolerating any insult," Kushwaha said in a series of tweets.

He used excerpts from Ramdhari Singh Dinkar's book 'Rashmirathi' to give expression to his thoughts, at times substituting the words of the poet with his words.

Kushwaha said "Do nyay agar to jyada do, par isme yadi badha ho. To de do kewal hamara samman, rakho apni dharti tamam (Give me justice more than what can be, but if there is any problem in it, then give me the respect what I deserve and keep everything with you).

The minister of state for human resource development, had Saturday during a RLSP function in Munger, made a fervent appeal to Mosi, seeking his intervention to resolve the seat-sharing issue in Bihar NDA, in which RLSP is one among the four constituents, along with the BJP, JD(U) and LJP.

"Please do justice with RLSP. We expect justice from you (PM)...I could not meet Amit Shah. I have given additional time of 12-14 days to decide the issue of seat sharing.

"I am ready to meet you (Amit Shah) as per your convenient timing but that (ultimatum) is also running out...I would now seek appointment to meet the PM and I hope that justice would be done to RLSP if PM intervenes in the matter," Kushwaha had said.

Kushwaha had on November 17 given an ultimatum to the BJP to conclude seat-sharing talks by November 30, saying the offer made to the RLSP was not respectable.

Earlier on November 10, the Union minister had demanded that his party be allotted more than three seats in the state by the NDA to contest the 2019 election, given that the RLSP's strength has grown significantly.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The CPI West Bengal unit Sunday said that it would not participate in the January 19 mega rally called by the Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee to oust the BJP in the next general election.

The West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee has called for the mega rally of all anti-BJP parties in Kolkata on January 19.

"We appreciate that she has forwarded her invitation (for the January 19 Brigade Rally). But the state CPI has decided not to participate in it," CPI state secretary Swapan Banerjee told reporters here.

He said that though the party's national executive would take a final decision in connection with the matter, the state body has already decided not to go to be a part of the TMC's mega rally.

He also questioned (Mamata) Banerjee's real intention to fight the BJP in the next general elections saying that "one one side the TMC supremo is inviting the CPI but on another side it is attacking the Left parties".

"On one side Mamata is inviting CPI but attacking left parties, occupying party offices preventing filing nominations," the CPI state secretary alleged.

Further questioning (Mamata) Banerjee's sincerity in fighting the BJP in the next general elections, the CPI leader said that the TMC should decide on who was its "real rival".

"Question arises whether Mamata is sincere in fighting against the BJP. If she is sincere she must not attack Left which is fighting against the BJP tooth and nail. She must decide who is the main enemy (whether the BJP or the Left)," he said.

The CPI leader also asked why (Mamata) was mum on the Rafale scam.

"Doubt arises why Mamata and KCR of Telangana are conspicuously silent on the Rafale scam," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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Former VHP leader Dr Pravin Togadia said Sunday that Prime Minister Narendra Modi failed to enact a law for the construction of Ram temple at Ayodhya despite the BJP having a full majority.

He was reacting to Modi's statement earlier in the day alleging that Congress threatened Supreme Court judges with impeachment when they tried to hear the Ayodhya dispute.

"After sixteen years ofenjoying power, twelve years as Gujarat chief minister and more than four years as prime minister, Modi spoke about Ram temple," Togadia said, referring to Modi's speech at Alwar in Rajasthan.

"Now Modi blames Congress for delay in construction of Ram temple, claiming that Congress lawyer asked the Supreme Court to hear the case after 2019," he said.

The BJP had passed a resolution at Palampur in 1989, promising to build a grand Ram temple in Ayodhya by passing a law in Parliament after securing a majority, Togadia said.

"For four and a half years, why did Modi not pass a law for Ram temple despite having a full majority?" he asked.

It was the BJP which had promised Ram temple at Ayodhya, not the Congress, Togadia said.

The saffron party is raking up the issue ahead of elections as its promise of development has proved to be hollow, he said.

Togadia, who left the Vishwa Hindu Parishad in April this year, said just because other parties are anti-Hindu, one should not assume that the BJP supports Hindu causes.

Speaking at an election rally at Alwar, Modi alleged that the Congress threatened Supreme Court judges with impeachment when they tried to hear the Ayodhya dispute cases earlier this year.

Congress party's Rajya Sabha members, who are also lawyers, tried to scare away the apex court judges to ensure the hearing is delayed until after 2019 Lok Sabha election, he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
US President Donald Trump has said migrants at the southern border will not be allowed into America until a court approves their claims individually.

Trump's comments came in the wake of a caravan of people -- mostly from three Latin American countries El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras -- inching closer to the US-Mexico border with the intention of illegally entering America, a trend that has been going on for the past several decades.

In the last two weeks, approximately 5,000 Central American migrants have arrived in the Mexican border city of Tijuana, just south of California.

"Migrants at the Southern Border will not be allowed into the United States until their claims are individually approved in court," Trump tweeted Saturday.

He said illegal immigrants would be caught and detained and not released inside the country, as was the practice earlier.

"We only will allow those who come into our country legally. Other than that our very strong policy is 'Catch and Detain'. No 'Releasing' into the US... All will stay in Mexico," Trump tweeted.

He said all these years illegal immigrants have been taking advantage of the earlier US' policy of 'catch and release', under which they were released inside the country and asked to come back to report to a court at the next hearing on their asylum application.

Trump, who has announced to end the 'catch and release' policy, argues that those immigrants who were let off never come back to the court hearings and it becomes very difficult to identify them once they mix up with the locals.

"If for any reason it becomes necessary, we will CLOSE our Southern Border. There is no way that the United States will, after decades of abuse, put up with this costly and dangerous situation anymore!" he asserted.

Meanwhile, US media on Saturday reported that the Trump administration has reached an understanding with the leaders of the incoming Mexican government that would allow migrants applying for asylum in the US to remain in Mexico while they await a court's decision.

This would be a sharp reversal of the current policy, which allows asylum seekers to remain in the US until their petition is resolved, The New York Times reported.

A policy in this regard could be rolled out by the US this coming week, officials from the Department of Homeland Security said, it said.

This is "a short-term solution", Olga Snchez Cordero, Mexico's incoming interior minister, was quoted as saying by The Washington Post.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In a one-of-its-kind initiative, a private firm, in association with the state government, is set to build a world-class autism township near Kolkata, where children and adults suffering from the developmental disorder can receive training, treatment and boarding facilities.

The India Autism Center (IAC) - a non-profit organization under Section 8 of Companies Act, 2013 - is expected to come up over a 52-acre plot at Sirakol in South 24 Parganas in the next five years.

A joint effort by Ratnabali Group and the state - the estimated cost for building the township has been pegged at Rs 500 crore, a company official said.

The soft launch of the project has been scheduled for January, next year, the official said.

Suresh Somani, the joint managing director of Ratnabali Investment Pvt Ltd, said the project, announced during the Bengal Global Business Summit (BGBS) earlier this year, will also have provisions for training teachers, who would be dealing with those suffering from the disorder.

West Bengal Finance Minister Amit Mitra, during the BGBS meet in January, had highly appreciated the initiative and promised all support to it, he said.

"It will be the first centre of its kind, not just in India, but globally, with housing facilities for 350 residents and daycare centre for over 200 children, adolescents and adults. The construction work for the township will begin next year," Somani said.

IAC will also have an administrative wing and a guest house, where parents of those receiving training at the institute can put up for a few days, he said.

"There will be international tie-ups and the institute will be absolutely different from any of the centres that we have now. The township, which is expected to come up by 2023, will ensure holistic development of those suffering from autism," he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
By John RevillZURICH (Reuters) - The chief executives of ABB and Siemens are travelling to Saudi Arabia to attend a supplier conference, just weeks after they pulled out of an investment event in the country following the death of a journalist.ABB CEO Ulrich Spiesshofer and Joe Kaeser from Siemens will travel to Dammam for an event organised by Saudi Aramco called In-Kingdom Total Value Add (IKTVA) which is due to take place on Monday and Tuesday.The pair had been among the executives who boycotted an earlier investment conference following the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, a journalist who was ...
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Italy and the European Commission will work in the coming days to bring closer their positions on Italy's 2019 draft budget, which the EU executive says breaks EU laws by not reducing the country's huge public debt.European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker met on Saturday evening with Italy's Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte to discuss the budget on the eve of an EU summit set to approve the terms of Britain's withdrawal from the bloc."Work will continue in the following days to bring closer the respective points of view and seek a future-oriented solution," a ...
With the Supreme Court fixing April 1, 2020, deadline for the sale of only BS-VI-compliant vehicles, Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) is working 'overtime' to make over 40 variants of powertrains across more than 15 models meet the stricter emission norms, according to a senior company official.

The company has also reinforced manpower in its engineering and research and development in order to be able to meet the Bharat Stage (BS) VI norms for its fleet ahead of schedule.

"We are working very hard, we are working overtime. No other manufacturer has this kind of work which they have to do. We have the largest number of model portfolio and the largest number of powertrains," MSI Senior Executive Director C V Raman told PTI.

He was responding to a query on how the Supreme Court's order last month to stop selling BS-IV vehicle across the country from April 1, 2020, has altered MSI's preparation for BS-VI emission norms.

Earlier in 2016, the Centre had announced that India would skip the BS-V norms altogether and adopt BS-VI norms. It had stated that from April 1, 2020, only vehicles complying with the latest emission norms would be manufactured while giving three months to automobile firms for the transition to start selling BS-VI vehicles.

However, citing air pollution issues, the apex court said no BS-IV vehicles would be allowed to be sold across the country from April 1, 2020.

Elaborating on the scale of work MSI is undertaking in order to meet the new stricter emission norm, Raman said, "We have more than 15 models and more than 40 variants of powertrains, which is a combination of engine and transmission. So, we will have to ensure that we have to do all of these ahead of schedule."

When asked if MSI would be able to make all of its existing models meet BS-VI norm, he said, "We are working on it definitely and we will ensure that customers get BS-VI. We will try to do ahead of time."

On manpower reinforcement for the new emission norm, Raman said, "Yes, we have been continuously upgrading our people at our facilities both at Rohtak and at Gurgaon."

He said the company had to deploy more people not to just meet the BS-VI norms but also other safety regulations which had come into effect this year.

While he did not specify the number of people deployed for the project, Raman said, "It is a substantial number, specially on the powertrain (for activities such as) engine design, calibration and testing."

Moreover, additional manpower has been utilised in areas such as transmission design, quality assurance and body changes, he added.

Stating that BS-VI works are simultaneously happening at the company's R&D centre at Rohtak and Gurgaon facility along with Suzuki in Japan, Raman said the company is also working with suppliers such as Dentsu, Bosch and others.

"There is no choice for us, we have to do it. For us, it is do or die," he said.
As Rajinikanth's next magnum opus 2.0 looks set on the path to become a blockbuster across the nation, Bollywood filmmaker Karan Johar has called for vernacular movies which can perform well all over the country to be encouraged. Johar, who will present the 2.0 for the Hindi speaking audience said that the crossover in Indian cinema should happen internally.

Johar's Dharma Productions is one of the distributors for the 2.0, as it was in SS Rajamouli's Baahubali. During an interview, Johar said that the success of Baahubali and 2.0 will pave way for more pan-India films.

"Crossover in cinema should happen internally in India. We keep talking about crossover and that our films going out of the country but the true crossover is like 'Baahubali'. It's a film made in Telugu which worked very well in North, West and East, everywhere," PTI quoted Johar saying.

"2.0 has that vision of working within the country. We have to encourage those crossover movements. Films in all languages, whether it's Marathi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu or Malayalam, have to work all across (the country). That is the true vision. This is quintessential crossover movement phenomenon that needs to be encouraged and leveraged," he further added.

Johar credited South Indian filmmakers for encouraging the crossover movement and expected it to happen in Hindi cinema as well.

Meanwhile, Rajinikanth's 2.0 has managed to recover a substantial portion of its production cost a week for its release. Lyca Productions, the production company behind 2.0 and one of the distributors, has pre-sold satellite rights for Rs 120 crore and the digital rights for Rs 60 crore for all three versions of the movie. The film is the costliest ever in the history of India cinema with an estimated production cost of Rs 550 crore.

The distribution rights were sold to individual distributors in Andhra Pradesh-Telangana, Karnataka and Kerala for Rs 70 crore, Rs 25 crore and Rs 15 crore, respectively. The distributors in Telangana-Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala, won't share their profits with Lyca. The distributors in the northern region will share the profits with Lyca at a pre-defined ratio. The film's pre-distribution rights were sold for Rs 80 crore in northern India. Lyca has kept the distribution rights of overseas and Tamil Nadu for itself.

In 2.0, Rajinikanth and Shankar will be coming together for a third time after Enthiran (Robot) and Shivaji. The film also has Akshay Kumar and Amy Jackson. It will be released on November 29 across 10,000 screens worldwide, along with 6,600-6,800 screens in India. This outdoes the record of Baahubali 2, which released in as many as 6,500 domestic screens and 9,000 across the world.
CAMEROUN :: Cameroon: Ivory trafficking to Nigeria, Three Arrested

Three people have been arrested in connection to ivory trafficking during an operation carried out by the Douala Port Maritime Brigade. The three were arrested during attempts by a wildlife crime syndicate to smuggle 125 tusks and dozens of ivory pieces to Nigeria.

A 31-year old man who was about transporting bales of clothing at the Port des Peches in Douala was stopped by gendarme officers and questioned on the contents of the cargo following prior investigations that revealed that ivory was hidden inside second hand dresses and smuggled to Nigeria.

His reaction raised further questions and the gendarmerie officers decided to check the seven bales of clothing. The contraband was found carefully concealed inside the illicit cargo. He was arrested and taken to the gendarmerie office where two of his accomplices were later arrested as they came attempting to bribe the brigade commander for his release. One of the traffickers who is connected to this ring is still at large.

The case was forwarded to the state counsel who returned the file to wildlife officials of the Littoral Regional Delegation of Forestry and Wildlife with the competence to handling such matters. The legal proceedings in prosecuting wildlife traffickers was carried out with the technical support of a conservation group called LAGA and the traffickers returned to the state prosecutor who indicted them on charges ranging from corruption attempts, illegal possession of parts of protected wildlife species to the killing of protected wildlife species.

Priori investigations provided insights on how the ring operates with connections found in the South Region and Gabon. They were equally connected to traffickers arrested in previous operations including big pangolin scales operations carried out in the past, in Douala. One of the three, is a Nigerian national and several illicit wildlife products heading to Nigeria have in the past been intercepted during crackdown operations

Traffickers use the several small ports littered along the Cameroon  Nigeria coastline to smuggle ivory, pangolin scales and several other products to Nigeria where they are exported to Asia. In December last year, three were arrested by the police with over 158 ivory tusks and thousands of other wildlife products as they were loading the illegal consignment on board a truck for smuggling to Nigeria. The case is currently being tried at the Bonanjo court of first instance.

In 2014, a man was arrested in Edea with 30 ivory tusks hidden in bales of clothing he was transporting to Douala in a consignement that was believed to be heading to Nigeria. Over one ton of ivory was seized in 2009 by wildlife officials as they illicit cargo was heading to Nigeria. The relative ease with which traffickers operate in Nigeria has made the country a preferred destination for big time traffickers seeking to export contraband to Asia.

According to sections 101 and 158 of the 1994 law that governs the forestry and wildlife sector anyone found in possession of parts of protected wildlife species is presumed to have captured or killed the animal and is liable to a prison term of 1 to 3 years and or a fine of 3 to 10 million francs.
news, latest-news

A Canberra man claims he was bullied and intimidated by staff at Commonwealth Bank, less than three hours after he told them he had submitted evidence of his dealings with the bank to the royal commission. As top executives appeared before the commission this week to stress how the bank is overhauling its policies, business owner Neil Hermes said its staff had pressured him to drop his complaint only this month. The bank has denied the allegation of bullying, saying all customers are free to give evidence to the commission, but has acknowledged a call was made in early November to Mr Hermes shortly after receiving a copy of his submission. During that conversation, which lasted about an hour, Mr Hermes alleges a staff member berated him about why he was bringing his complaint forward and repeatedly asked him to reveal the names of bank officials who had disclosed information mentioned in his submission. I hadnt gotten a call from the bank in about nine years, then as soon as I forwarded them the submission and said I would go public with my concerns, they rang to bully me," Mr Hermes said. "They didn't mention the submission directly but it was intimidating. She said she was the decision maker in my case and wouldn't approve any compensation for me, she wanted the names of the people at the bank who [helped] me. That felt threatening. "She kept asking 'why now?' I'd lost everything, my home, my business. I felt pressured to back off, to drop the complaint altogether." The bank did not release the recording or a transcript of the call on request but it is understood management did not consider the conduct of the staffer involved to be aggressive. In correspondence seen by The Canberra Times, staff later apologised for the call, acknowledging it was "disrespectful" and had upset Mr Hermes. "It was not my intention to distress you, rather I had hoped to discuss the reasons for my decision [to dismiss your claim for compensation]," the staff member who made the call wrote. Mr Hermes, now an advisor to the Canberra Liberals in the ACT, was a small business owner who went bankrupt after the Global Financial Crisis. He claims his company was sent into ruin when CBA began deliberately liquidating loans to Bankwest customers, a practice CBA has publicly denied. Mr Hermes' claim for compensation has been repeatedly knocked back by the bank, but his submission revolved around apparent flaws in CBA's complaints avenue, which he described as "deceitful" and "incompetent". While the call was prompted by the submission, it is understood staff claimed this was because the document had mentioned that Mr Hermes had still not been phoned by CBA about his case, and would therefore appreciate contact. "I came to understand that from your perspective this call was inflexible and inappropriate," wrote a senior staffer who had looked into Mr Hermes' subsequent complaint about the call. That manager then assured Mr Hermes she had since given feedback to the staffer involved. A CBA spokesman said staff now had guidelines around talking to customers about the commission and, like other banks, it had waived confidentiality clauses in a number of settled cases to allow customers to give evidence. In correspondence from the bank, customers raising complaints, including Mr Hermes, had been provided with information about how to contact the commission. "We have changed the way we manage customer complaints to ensure theyre resolved quickly, fairly, and compassionately," the spokesman said. That included beefing up resources to the complaints team and introducing an external advisory panel to offer advice on customer engagement. Some of the top brass, including chief executive Matt Comyn, were also personally reviewing a number of long-standing cases. But Mr Hermes said his own experience was even more concerning given it happened just days before Mr Comyn fronted the commission to spruik such reforms as a "fix". This is clearly still a problem and it's now happening on his watch," Mr Hermes said. Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman Kate Carnell, who is looking into Mr Hermes' case, said any reports of bank intimidation were concerning. "We haven't heard any [like this] though, for us, it's more been around people being intimidated into accepting a lower settlement than they felt was reasonable, and then having to sign confidentiality agreements," Ms Carnell said. She stressed the commission needed to take a closer look at the cases of about 2,000 small business owners like Mr Hermes who saw their loans recalled after CBA bought Bankwest in 2008. "There was a definite campaign [by CBA] and there's a whole range of cases like Neil's that appear to have merit but haven't had an opportunity to tell their story or get compensation." Mr Hermes also informed CBA staff of an earlier submission he made to the commission in May but did not receive a follow-up. "But I didn't say I'd go to the media back then. I actually trusted the bank, I thought they were looking at my case properly," he said. "They're called customer advocates, I thought they were someone I could go and talk to, but they're just the bank." Know more? Get in touch: sherryn.groch@fairfaxmedia.com.au

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news, latest-news

Carol Benda was two years shy of her 50th birthday when she enrolled in a law degree at the University of Canberra. Almost 10 years on, she's been named the ACT's Woman Lawyer of the Year for her work in the community sector, particularly for helping vulnerable people access the justice system. It was quite the turnaround for the woman who dropped out of school at 16, moved out of home and worked at the Fosseys - now Target - head office in Sydney. And it came about purely by fluke. The turning point was, after 10 years at Fosseys, starting work at the newly formed Women's Legal Centre in Canberra. Mrs Benda, with her husband Otto and small children, moved to the nation's capital in her early 30s for her husband's work in the public service. With no previous experience in the community legal sector, she was fortunate to get the job. "I was looking after the finances but I didn't have any financial knowledge," Mrs Benda recalled. "I was making it up as I went. So I went and became a bookkeeper. At that stage I had my third child, he was about one." For the next five years, she worked part-time, raised three children and studied finance as a mature age student. "I did it so I could do the books properly for the Women's Legal Centre, to be more useful for them," she said. That's the sentiment at the heart of most things Mrs Benda does. In the nomination for her Woman Lawyer of Year award, Mrs Benda was described by Magistrate Louise Taylor, who was the Legal Aid ACT deputy chief executive at the time, as a force of nature. "The description neatly captures the significant impact she has on the work she performs and the people she engages," the nomination read. "Carol has made an enormous contribution to the ACT legal community in a variety of roles over the years and epitomises in particular the unsung nature of work performed (mostly by women) in the community legal sector." "Carol's commitment to improving access to justice across the Canberra region is seemingly indefatigable." It was during Mrs Benda's second stint at the Women's Legal Centre that she decided to become a lawyer. "The only reason why I wanted to become a lawyer was because I could see the pressures we were under. If you had someone on holidays, someone sick, we weren't coping. We'd have to shut our advice line which meant we weren't speaking to people who needed help. So I thought if I could get a law degree, I could just pitch in and help where needed, lend a hand." That was at 48 years old. Mrs Benda was studying her juris doctor degree while her children were completing their high school studies. "My husband took on most of the stuff at home, like he did with my first degree. He did the running around with the kids, the housework, shopping, cooking, so I could study. He was thrilled, his family were very much about education, he really encouraged me." While she never used her legal qualifications at the Women's Legal Centre, she moved to Legal Aid ACT where she helps people in elder abuse situations. She said the attitude to elder abuse in the community is similar to the attitude to domestic violence 20 years ago. "It is a terrible, terrible area," Mrs Benda said. "I can see, just over the past three years or so, we're starting to have those conversations. It's another really hard area where you've got vulnerable people that are being abused, often by family. It's pretty horrible and hard sometimes." Mrs Benda said working in the community legal sector is difficult and rewarding. She said there needs to be a greater focus on prevention rather than cure, but there are never enough resources to shift that focus. "There's got to be a much better process to fix the problems before they occur. I think a lot of that could be done through training and education. That's a passion of mine, I think it's really important," she said. In accepting the ACT Woman Lawyer of the Year award from the Women Lawyers Association, Mrs Benda stressed the work she did was always as part of a team. "I've had the experience of working with incredible women, and that's pretty special. A lot of what I was able to do was in part because of the fantastic women that I work with. That makes a really big difference."

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Two Canberra prison officers were taken to hospital on Sunday night after an altercation involving an inmate who had started a fire in his cell. ACT Corrections and ACT Policing are investigating the incident, which occurred just two hours before another detainee lit a fire in his room and forced the evacuation of prisoners from nearby cells. A spokeswoman for the ACT's justice and community safety directorate, which oversees the Alexander Maconochie Centre, said a detainee started a small fire in his cell about 6pm on Sunday. The detainee attempted to attack prison officers when they opened his cell, before he was restrained and the fire extinguished, the spokeswoman said. The detainee was not injured, but two officers were taken to Canberra Hospital for assessment of minor injuries suffered in the incident. Both remain in a stable condition. The spokeswoman said in a separate incident, another detainee lit a small fire in his cell about 8pm. "ACT Corrections officers evacuated the detainee from his cell and quickly extinguished the fire," the spokeswoman said. "Several detainees in nearby cells were also evacuated as a precaution due to the presence of smoke." The detainee was taken to Canberra Hospital after the incident, but has since been returned to the prison. Police and emergency services were called out to the Hume prison for both fires. The spokeswoman said staff were trained to respond to a range of emergency incidents, and had been working closely with ACT Fire & Rescue to improve fire management and prevention inside the prison. An ACT Policing spokesman said they were investigating both fires, but could not provide any further information. ACT Justice Minister Shane Rattenbury said the response to the incident showed the prison's fire protection and management systems were "effective and responsive".

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comment

According to Bec Cody ("Why we should change Canberra's worst place names", November 24, Forum, p2) some people wish to change the name of William Slim Drive. Perhaps many more would prefer it remained the same? Perhaps we could retain the name to acknowledge Sir William's achievements whilst recognising he may have done some bad things? Perhaps we are all entitled to be remembered for our best deeds and not our worst? All interesting questions and the basis, no doubt, for some spirited after-dinner debate, but does the ACT Assembly really need to devote time to them? Presumably the ACT Place Names Committee was established precisely to address such issues. Why then does one MLA need to be expending such time and effort on this matter? It would appear that Bec Cody is far more concerned about the names of streets than the fact that we have too many homeless people actually living on the streets and that's just one example of a far more pressing issue. If this is the best the Labor Party can offer then they really don't deserve to be in government. Jim Derrick, Florey Does Bec Cody have any idea of the cost of renaming Canberra suburbs and streets? The change from Blandfordia to Forrest would have cost very little back then as would the change of electorate names, but the cost of changing suburbs and streets would be astronomical: the ACT government, mapmakers, telephone directories, businesses and private citizens would bear the expense of signage, reprinting and advising firms and friends of the change. Ken McPhan, Spence Simon Cowan wrote a reasonable article about the ABC on the basis that the real problem "lies not in accusations of perceived bias but in its duty to 'provide ... comprehensive broadcasting services'." ("Should govt control the ABC's budget?", November 24, Forum p11). Without examining the reasonable concessions made about the ABC's functions including competition, drama and comedy, his ultimate suggestion was that the government "lock in funding on a task by task basis", a manoeuvre which would naturally segue into programming control. This was justified in terms of internet service development costs, without any reference to Michelle Guthrie who was specifically tasked with facilitating that update but complained of board politicisation or bias. It completely glosses over the earlier misdirection that "perceived bias" is not a problem. Three royal commissions precipitated by the ABC's and Fairfax's investigative journalism were running concurrently in 2017 and the financial services commission continues. I'd call that bias, bias against established government denial of serious and pervasive malpractices, against its tacit support for them. Bias extends beyond the simplistic left and right of party politics. The government has not only been seeking to nobble individual ABC journalists. It has been seeking to destroy the recalcitrant ABC with budget cuts and the ultimate threat to sell it off as it did Radio Australia. Gary J. Wilson, Macgregor Simon Cowan's commentary is an ill-disguised but unsurprising attempt to support the commercial media's claim that the ABC is contravening the "competitive neutrality" rules. He says, "The ABC effectively has an obligation to compete with commercial services, the scope of which seems to be only really limited by funding". Therefore, the submission by the ABC to the Senate political interference inquiry to provide guaranteed sufficient funding to the ABC over a set number of years would give the ABC "carte blanche" over expansion "at the expense of the rest of the media industry". Leaving aside his nonsensical "ABC's obligation to compete" argument (I've not heard that one before), Mr Cowan might like to consider the value to the nation of the ABC being guaranteed sufficient funding to hold its highly respected place in our society, free of cuts being imposed at will and for purely ideological reasons by government. Wouldn't it be better for our society's intellectual growth and well-being for, not only the ABC, but SBS and other respected cultural institutions being equally protected (subject to adequate fiscal accountability) from the capricious actions of small-minded politicians. Indeed, we could go further and ensure that equally important science-based agencies like the CSIRO and the Great Barrier Marine Park Authority be similarly protected. That really would be a change for the better. Eric Hunter, Cook Project Wing drones are run by Google's parent company Alphabet. Do we really believe them when they say they care about the "potential for disaster relief" or being able "to deliver defibrillators" (an absurd idea given the three to five-minute window to be of use)? They say it "unlocks the potential in the airspace under 500 feet" which means the 500 feet above my house I don't want unlocked. They say they have been "ferrying packages to alpaca farmers, math professors, equestrians and artists". Do they think this collection of careers somehow validates their product? Forget about delivering dog treats and car parts, it seems more likely that the underlying plan, hidden by the spin, is the development of their unmanned traffic management system for navigation which they hope to sell to third parties. Also, will the data generated be of more value than whatever fees are garnered by deliveries? I won't use drones for deliveries and wasn't asked if I wanted drones in the street and suburb that I carefully selected for its amenity and birdlife. Were you? Greg Carroll, Palmerston Morrison's government should watch John Cleese's exposition of stupid on YouTube. National Party leader Michael McCormack said in relation to moving up to 50 Australian Maritime Safety Authority jobs to Coffs Harbour: "Last time I looked there were not too many boats and ships in Canberra..." ("Maritime Safety jobs set for Coffs Harbour", November 24, p1). A bit like Donald Trump saying that because of the cold spell in the east of US that global warming does not exist. Given that AMSA's functions are entirely supported by telecommunications; that it makes sense to be close to other federal government bodies; that Coffs Harbour is only one point on Australia's vast coast line and that I don't think there are too many ships at Coffs Harbour; and that there are plenty of boats in Canberra etc etc one has to conclude that McCormack fulfills John Cleese's definition of stupid. Rod Holesgrove, O'Connor The final paragraph of the article "Battle lines drawn for next phase of the energy wars" (November 24, Forum p7) should be repeated ad nauseam until accepted by our politicians. We are tired of hearing one party or another claiming they have an energy policy, which in reality is nothing more than a cover for their own ideology. We have long been waiting for a critique of energy policies conducted by engineers and economists which addresses the whole spectrum. When can we expect such a critique of all possible systems, stripped of all subsidies, so we can properly compare them with no hidden costs? When can we, the consumers, be told what the cost per kilowatt-hour (which is what matters to us) would be for each of the differing electricity supply technologies? When can we expect to see a coherent energy policy, devoid of ideology, with a properly assessed mix of technologies contributing to the overall supply? Is it really too much to ask the major parties to provide us with an agreed path to the future which addresses such matters as reductions in carbon emissions, available technologies, and reliability of supply? And can it be one that recognises that there will always be emissions whether we all have electric cars, which merely move the emissions from the car to the power station, or from windmills where the emissions are in manufacturing the turbines, or roof-top or other solar plants where again the emissions are in the manufacture? Alan Parkinson, Weetangera The opposition's energy policy is a dogs breakfast and the Coalition does not appear to have one. In the meantime power prices continue to soar and the only ones benefiting are those feathering their financial nests with investment in the renewable energy market. There appears to be no light at the end of the tunnel for the hapless consumer, with the policy-devoid Coalition wandering in the political wilderness. And Labor promising to bankrupt the country with another pink batts scheme. Perhaps in the new year common sense will prevail and coal will be restored to its rightful place in the energy market. Owen Reid, Dunlop John McKerral writes (Letters, November 20) that South Australia's "wind generators were fully utilised before the wind became too strong and they shut down suddenly". Prior to the black system event, there were some 850 megawatts of wind power on the system. Only 20 megawatts were subsequently lost because of wind turbines tripping to protect against overspeed. Given the severity of the storm, wind power must surely qualify as fair dinkum. The majority of the wind output lost that day was caused by the protection settings on some of the wind farms. The details are well documented in the AEMO final report on the event. Ben Elliston, Hawker The supply of electricity is becoming an expensive situation for consumers as well as governments , who are constantly being pressured to build more expensive power stations, wind turbines and hydro schemes. Maybe federal and state governments could look at a joint scheme to fund 70 per cent of the installation cost of solar to private households. With being in receipt of the 70 per cent subsidy to households, the excess power not used by these households could go into the national grid, as is happening now, with no bonus going back to the householder . This subsidy system would generate more power without having to build new generation systems. This scheme would be subject to already established houses and then make it mandatory that all subsequent new housing to have solar power attached without the 70 per cent subsidy and these households would receive a 50 per cent subsidy on their power bills. Industry could cover the costs of output of power generators as for many many years they have received power at a much cheaper rate than ordinary households. N.W.H. Timms, Bungundarra, Qld Dr Bjorn Sturmberg in "Fair dinkum lingo aids energy debate" (November 17, Forum p2), indulges in the energy babble himself. He redefined baseload generation to suit himself. Baseload is the minimum level of electrical power consumption on a daily basis. It just happens that coal-fired plants are best for providing it, cheaper and more reliable than other options. He stated that many wind and solar generators spread around the country would smooth their output. Data from the Australian Energy Market Operator puts lie to this assertion. If he checked the Aneroid Energy site on the web regularly he would find that the total wind output on the south-east Australian grid falls as low as 3per cent of maximum possible generation. That does not sound encouraging. Also the more duplication you have in generating electricity, the more expensive it will be. He also has a strange idea of what dispatchable means. It means that a particular generating plant will contract to deliver an agreed amount of electricity at a particular time, a day or so in advance. That is something that wind and solar cannot achieve. Let's see wind and solar operate under the same conditions that coal-fired plants do. There are fines for not supplying contracted electricity. Wind and solar just provide electricity when the weather allows. Battery and pumped hydro are a horribly expensive way of backing up unsuitable renewables and just make it more expensive. John Mckerral, Batemans Bay, NSW AMP Capital's chief economist Shane Oliver claims that when world oil prices fall there is a lag in lower petrol prices because the petrol we use now may have been bought a few weeks ago ("'There's just not a lot of competition"', November 22, p2). What a strange claim to make especially when oil prices raise the cost of petrol increases immediately and not when the "cheaper" petrol bought weeks ago runs out. Your argument does not hold up for other cities, regardless that there may be greater competition. Canberra drivers are ripped off whichever way you look at it. Jack Wiles, Gilmore THANKS FOR YOUR WORK Jack Waterford of The Canberra Times ("When nagging doubt turns to inexorable erosion", November 23, p6-7) deserves thanks for highlighting the farce that was the first trial of David Eastman. The late Rod Campbell (legal reporter) and The Canberra Times team have reported thoroughly throughout the first trial, the Commission of Inquiry and second trial. All deserve thanks. Warwick Davis, Isaacs TRANSFER NOT ON Political morality, never gold standard, has reached a blatantly egregious nadir, gouging the public purse for sleazy party-political purposes, with the disastrous, monstrously expensive transfer of APVM to Armidale and planned transfers to  again  Nationals' seats ("Maritime Safety jobs set for Coffs Harbour", November 24, p1). Albert M. White, Queanbeyan, NSW PORK BARRELLING Given that AMSA (Australian Maritime Safety Authority) already has 18 regional offices outside Canberra, including at Newcastle and Port Kembla, what does it need another one for, this time at Coffs Harbour? Looks like an attempt to shore up support in a Nationals electorate. As Senator David Smith has been quoted as saying, "Looks and smells like a pork barrel". Don Sephton, Greenway SCARE CAMPAIGN FAILS I am pleased to see that Ms Laura Norder, a perennial LNP candidate, wasn't successful in the Victorian election. The commonsense and sense of proportion of Victorians have seen through the angry scare campaigns of Dutton, Morrison and Guy. Hopefully the LNP will now realise that inflated attacks on minorities by association and selectively framing mental illness as "terrorism" are not vote winners. David Roth, Kambah FUEL COST HORRENDOUS Thursday 9.15am E10 at 119.9 in Sydney suburbs. Arrive Canberra some three hours later and faced with 165.4 at Coles Express, Greenway. Who can explain this horrendous mark-up? JW Seaborn, Wanniassa RIP-OFFS ABOUND Why are people complaining about "excessive" bonuses paid to bank executives? For years the community expectation has been an individual's contribution to work, community, politics etc should be no more than the bare minimum necessary to receive their "entitlement". Long gone are the days when doing your best was the community expectation. So, the banks and others ripped you off  that's the community standard. Roger Dace, Reid BISHOP GROUNDED Will the portrait of Bronwyn Bishop, to be unveiled this week at Parliament House, have her standing beside a chopper? Pat Tracey, Chisholm Email: letters.editor@canberratimes.com.au. Send from the message eld, not as an attached le. Fax: 6280 2282. Mail: Letters to the Editor, The Canberra Times, PO Box 7155, Canberra Mail Centre, ACT 2610. Keep your letter to 250 words or less. References to Canberra Times reports should include date and page number. Letters may be edited. Provide phone number and full home address (suburb only published).

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A man who was pulled from a Sunshine Coast lake in a critical condition has died after emergency services were unable to revive him. A Queensland Police Service spokeswoman said they were told the man was pulled from the water after having a "medical episode" while he was with family. Queensland Ambulance Services had responded to reports of an unconscious man off Coongarra Esplanade at Wurtulla, about 10 kilometres from Mooloolaba. The incident happened at 7.13am on Sunday. The man had been in a life-threatening condition while Surf Life Savers, paramedics and a rescue helicopter tasked to the area tried to "manage the patient", a QAS spokesman said. A QPS officer told 7 News Brisbane said respondents initially thought it was a drowning. "Surf lifesavers have attended the scene and started CPR on the gentlemen," he said. "Upon further investigation it appears that the gentleman succumbed to a health condition." The officer said despite the sad loss of the man's life, he praised the lifesavers for their excellent response in doing what they could to help the man. "What I am thankful for is the quick response by Surf Life Saving who had turned up on scene and ultimately done about 40 minutes of CPR," he said.

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Photo: CTV Residents of the Blood Tribe in Alberta.

A public warning has been issued by an Indigenous community in southern Alberta after an alarming number of overdoses in a two-day period.

The Blood Tribe Administration issued the warning via social media Friday, following 22 overdoses in a 48-hour period. One of the overdoses was fatal.

The administration believes that carfentanil, which is approximately 100 times stronger than fentanyl, could be to blame for the spike in cases.

We are concerned about the well-being of our tribal members and issue this warning again in hopes of preventing deaths, the community wrote in the statement. We have been informed that more overdoses have occurred in recent days and the alert is not being taken seriously.

According to the Blood Tribe Police Service chief, Kyle Melting Tallow, officers will be working around the clock, even on their days off, in the coming days to help.

"This has an impact on many families whove had to deal with their loved ones dying, or even ending up in the hospital, Melting Tallow told CTV News Channel on Saturday. This also has an effect on our first responders, including our EMS and fire departments, as theyre responding to these calls in increasing numbers.

25 to 30 opioid-related calls each month are received by the Blood Tribe Emergency Services, in a community of fewer than 13,000 people. They have already seen 39 overdoses this month.

Melting Tallow says that policing efforts against drug traffickers have been increased, as well as police efforts to educate the public about the dangers of opioids.

The community is also considering building a safe consumption site.

-with files from CTV Vancouver
Photo: Contributed

A four-year-old girl is dead after a tragic accident at a Santa Claus parade in Yarmouth, N.S., police said Saturday, as a witness described a scene of terror that shattered the small port town's holiday celebration.

The girl, who has not been publicly identified, was running along a passing parade float on one of the town's main thoroughfares when she fell underneath it just before 7 p.m. local time, police said.

She was rushed to a local hospital by paramedics but was pronounced dead a short time later.

Cpl. Dal Hutchinson, a public information officer with the Nova Scotia RCMP, described the event as "very, very tragic  and also very traumatic for everyone there.

"My understanding is there was a large group of people there  families  watching the Santa Claus parade when this incident took place," Hutchinson said in an interview Saturday night.

He added that anyone who may have witnessed the incident should talk about it with others and seek support to deal with the trauma.

"Our thoughts are with this little girl's family during this very, very difficult time."

Vance Webb, a retired machinist who lives on the outskirts of Yarmouth, attended Saturday's parade with his wife, stepson and three grandchildren.

"We were just watching the parade, and then about 30 feet away, I hear  all of a sudden, the float stops, and I kinda see something on the ground," Webb said in a phone interview.

"Then all of a sudden, we just heard screaming. It was pretty close to us."

Webb said the entire scene descended into "mayhem" as people realized what had happened.

"People within 50 feet of it  none of us are OK. All the adults were crying. Everywhere I saw, there were hundreds of people crying," said Webb.

"This is really gonna affect the town."

Parade organizers did not immediately respond to requests for comment Saturday night.
When it comes to Food Network stars we all know and love, Ina Garten certainly comes to mind. Her soothing voice, love for her husband, Jeffrey Garten, and her amazing recipes have made her show, Barefoot Contessa, a huge hit over the years. But, unlike many other Food Network stars, Ina didnt begin her successful career in the food business. She actually had quite a different money-making path before she decided to switch and do what she truly loves.

Heres Ina Gartens net worth today, including details on her New York City apartment that has a seriously amazing kitchen.

Ina started her career in the White House

Long before Ina considered a career in food, she was working in the White House, the Food Network notes. Back in 1978, Ina was working on nuclear energy policy  but after seeing an advertisement for the sale of a small food store, Barefoot Contessa, everything changed. The store was located in the Hamptons at the end of Long Island, and while Epicurious notes Ina didnt have any professional food experience, she bought the specialty shop anyway.

While it started as a small takeout shop, Barefoot Contessa grew over the course of roughly 20 years into a 3,000-square foot food emporium. But Ina had bigger plans on her mind, and she sold the store to the employees. She went on to create cookbook proposals, and even more success came her way.

Her Food Network debut came after the success of her cookbooks

Epicurious reports it took Ina over two years to complete her first book  but it proved to be well worth her time. The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook was one of the best-selling cookbooks of 1999, and shes had several follow-up cookbook successes since then. And, of course, her first books success helped her launch her career with the Food Network. Her long-standing show, Barefoot Contessa, began in 2002 and is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, show still on the networks schedule. Not only does this speak to Inas talent, but it also speaks to her timelessness as a host.

Today, Ina is still one of the most respected cooks on the Food Network  and she hasnt stopped producing her books, either. The Huffington Post notes she was promoting her 11th cookbook just recently in October 2018.

Details on her multimillion dollar apartment in New York City

With a successful career in both the book and TV world, Ina and her husband, Jeffrey, certainly can afford a swanky place to live. InStyle notes Ina bought an apartment in Manhattan for $4.65 million. The place includes two bedrooms and three bathrooms  and, of course, the kitchen is phenomenal. Not only does Ina have top-of-line appliances, but it was also recently renovated, so we know its beautiful.

As for what else their beautiful apartment includes, Jeffrey has a study complete with a library and a home office, which makes perfect sense considering hes a dean emeritus at the Yale School of Management. The dining room also has plenty of spacious seating, which is perfect for when the Gartens choose to entertain. And when we get a closer look at the kitchen, its clear theres ample counter space and more than enough room for any of Inas personal cooking ventures.

Inas total net worth

From her career in the White House to her successful path into the food world, Ina is a lot wealthier than fans might expect. Celebrity Net Worth notes her total net worth is $50 million. The bulk of her wealth certainly comes from her show, Barefoot Contessa, but her books prove to bring in plenty of money as well.

Food Network viewers aside, Ina has plenty of other fans in the food world as well. We cant forget that Giada De Laurentiis, Tyler Florence, and Michael Symon all look up to Ina and cook with her, too. The Food Network isnt just a job for these cooks. Theyve definitely proved theyre more like family.

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Legislation focuses on increasing supply of housing to help reduce regions homelessness

OLYMPIA  Senate Republicans announced Nov. 13 that they will introduce a package of bills in 2019 to address one of the main causes of Washingtons homelessness problem: the lack of affordable and available housing.

At a news conference held at Quixote Village, an Olympia-based community of 30 tiny cabins for the homeless, three Republican senators discussed their concerns about affordable housing and shared how the proposals would help reduce homelessness in the state.

Homelessness continues to be a serious problem in Washington, and one of the key factors causing it is the lack of affordable, available housing, Sen. Randi Becker, R-Eatonville, said in a news release. Many people assume this problem exists only in the Seattle area, but the lack of affordable and available housing is evident in many other communities across the state. Our affordable-housing package can help remove obstacles that are preventing more housing options from becoming reality.

The affordable-housing proposals will include planning-stage reforms that affect urban growth areas and the Growth Management Act, reforms related to appeals of Growth Management Act decisions, tiny house reforms, property-tax reforms for seniors, disabled veterans and disabled persons, and connecting the homeless with services.

Solving homelessness is a very challenging and complex issue, but simply throwing money at it isnt going to work, 7th District Sen. Shelly Short, R-Addy, said. According to a recent news report, nearly $200 million a year is spent on homelessness in King County, but the problem there is very far from over, Short continued. Here at the state level, its time to try a different approach to provide more available housing, including making needed changes to urban growth area boundaries and the Growth Management Act. More available housing will mean more affordable housing.

Short, who serves the 7th Legislative District in northeast Washington, plans to introduce legislation that would give planning jurisdictions flexibility to adjust urban growth area boundaries in response to development pressures. Short also intends to sponsor a bill to create an opt-out process for counties that originally opted in to the Growth Management Act but are suffering economically.

Sen. Hans Zeiger, R-Puyallup, will sponsor bills to reform rules related to tiny houses and tiny-house villages. They include legislation allowing tiny houses to be detached from the primary dwelling unit and utilized as additional housing, enabling jurisdictions to more easily permit tiny-house villages, and helping local jurisdictions streamline the permitting process for tiny-house villages and manufactured home parks to exist outside an urban growth area under limited circumstances.

Tiny houses and villages are becoming more common throughout the country, and they are innovative ways to help provide more housing for those who need it, but there are rules and restrictions that keep them from being utilized as a meaningful part of an overall solution to homelessness, Zeiger, who serves the 25th Legislative District in Pierce County, said. My bills would offer common-sense reforms so more tiny houses and tiny-house villages can be built and help reduce homelessness.

Becker, whose 2nd District includes Eatonville, Yelm and parts of Lacey and Puyallup, will introduce legislation that aims to provide a valuation freeze and state property-tax exemption for the primary residence of a disabled veteran, senior citizen or disabled individual, if the homes value is below the county median value or the combined household income is below $100,000.

According to the state Department of Commerce, there are more than 22,000 homeless people at any point in time in Washington. A recent news report said sales of single-family homes in King County fell 16 percent in October, while months of inventory, which had been extremely low during the summer, has increased to more than two months. A health housing market that doesnt favor sellers or buyers is considered to have an inventory range of four to six months, the news story reported.

The 2019 legislative session begins Jan. 14 and is scheduled to last 105 days.
AME Church leader was in dark about Jamal Bryants decision to take job at New Birth until days ago

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Like many in his congregation at Empowerment Temple, controversial megachurch pastor Jamal Bryant said Bishop James Levert Davis, who leads the Second District of The African Methodist Episcopal Church which oversees his church, knew nothing about his decision to resign from his church until just days ago.

In an extended video statement on Facebook Live on Wednesday, Bryant thanked Davis for giving his blessing even though he had no idea about this transition, about this shift, or this change until I called him this weekend to let him know that the call has been made from this new station.

He sighed with shock and with disappointment but said Let me pray on it. He prayed on it and said if this is what God is calling you to do, then I am standing with you and Im going to support you, Bryant said.

In an earlier interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Bryant revealed that he only told his parishioners at the 10,000-member Empowerment Temple in Baltimore that he was resigning on Sunday but did not tell them it was to take over as senior pastor at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Georgia, once led by his former benefactor, Eddie Long.

He noted that people were not very happy about the shock announcement made by New Birth publicly on Monday but insisted on Wednesday that his decision was made by God.

I am mindful that many of those of you who have been privileged to serve and to lead for 18 years are disillusioned and dizzy, frustrated, upset, many of you are angry, I want you to know that this was not my choice, not my decision but this is what it is that God has dictated over my life. And because Ive always followed God into the realms of the ridiculous, the unseemly, this is no different than that, Bryant told his supporters.

He also explained that he first began hearing from God that it was time for him to leave Empowerment Temple about a year ago.

About a year ago, started feeling a pull from God that was unsettling and unnerving that was tapping me saying your season is coming to an end. And it made absolutely no sense to me because we were about to become the first black megachurch in the country to go completely green. Made absolutely no sense ..., Bryant explained while citing a host of other projects his church was involved in.

In the middle of that, God tapped me on my shoulder and says, your season is coming to an end almost like Hezekiah. Get your affairs in order. Almost reminiscent of Abraham. He didnt tell me where I was going, what I was going to do or where I would be. Then a few months ago, God shifted something. He said Im getting ready to take you to a place outside of what Alice Walker calls the temple of your familiar to go away from the city in which you were raised, the denomination in which youve always been a part of three generations in, he continued.

Bryant said he was challenged by God to see whether you can trust me and be obedient even when its inconvenient.

Bryants ministry at Empowerment Temple was almost destroyed after he admitted to an extramarital affair while he was married to now ex-wife Gizelle Bryant, who stars on Bravo TVs Real Housewives of Potomac. Since his divorce, he was also alleged to have fathered a child with Latoya Shawntee Odom. His ministry remained intact and he thanked his church for supporting him.

Through all of that, Empowerment Temple saw me get married, saw me go through divorce, saw me live through embarrassment, through shame, through depression, through all of that, Empowerment stuck with me. They loved me not just as a pastor but even as a  shepherd. [They] said in spite of your frailty, in spite of your brokenness, we still see the God in you, he said.

With all of your transitions, with all of the shifts, with all of the changes, all of the shame, all of the demonic attacks, all of the negative press, Empowerment stood with me. We have the anointing of the phoenix and we kept rising through the ashes, he continued. If I live a thousand years, I wouldnt be able to thank Empowerment Temple enough and the people of Empowerment Temple.

Bryant said in helping to make the decision to move to New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, he consulted his father, John Richard Bryant, a retired presiding bishop in the AME Church, who advised him that when God called him to preach he didnt call you to a denomination, he called you to service.

That meant the world to me as a third-generation AME, Bryant said, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The Baltimore preacher said even though he is moving to lead a church which is part of a different denomination, he wasnt abandoning the AME church or leaving Empowerment Temple completely until his successor has been found.

I am not abandoning the AME church. It is the oldest black Christian denomination in this country. They have supported me, invested in me, prayed for me and pushed me. So the larger AME church, know that while it is I am shifting locations, demographics and construct, as long as there is breath in my body, I honor the AME Church and my denomination. Theres absolutely nothing that Ive attempted to do in innovative ministry that the AME Church has stifled, Bryant said.
Less Santa, more Jesus; Churches observing Bless Friday instead of Black Friday

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On a day when many Americans are crowding the stores for Black Friday bargains, a group of churches will instead do acts of charity as part of an annual observance called Bless Friday.

Were here to help connect individuals, groups and churches to the service opportunities that can transform our communities and our hearts, noted its website.

If you dont find an activity on our website in which you can participate, please allow the Spirit to lead you and your family and friends to a need in your community.

First begun in 2010, this year for the first time a Christian-owned business will be joining the churches taking part, according to Bless Friday organizer and founder Chuck Fox.

In an interview with The Christian Post, Fox explained that RE/MAX Legacy Living of Richmond, Texas was going to be involved.

For the first time we are partnering with a Christian owned, small business, RE/MAX Legacy Living. Jemila and Patrick Winsey learned about Bless Friday on November 5, less than three weeks before Bless Friday, and they asked if they could participate, explained Fox.

According to Fox, Jemila Winsey has been helping with social media outreach, with her sending out promotional videos created by the Bless Friday organizers.

The quickness, professional use of social media and partnership with a business are all new. We are happy to have anyone involved who honors Christ and keeps the focus on Him at Christmas, noted Fox.

In total, ten churches are taking part in this years Bless Friday observance, which is an increase of two congregations from the year before.

We have ten churches participating this year  up from eight last year. We added two churches in Cotulla, Texas. Cotulla is a small town with about 3600 residents. The local Catholic Church and Church of Christ are visiting a nursing home, Fox explained.

We hope that by beginning their Christmas celebration with service participants will place their focus on Jesus. We especially hope that Bless Friday connects Christmas and service in the minds of children, less Santa and more Jesus.

Bill Bray, organizer of the Bless Friday volunteer efforts for The Woodlands Community Presbyterian Church in Texas, told CP in a 2016 interview that he considered Bless Friday a much better way of ushering in the Christmas season than Black Friday.

Roger Patterson, senior pastor of the Houston-area West University Baptist Church and Crosspoint Church, told CP in an earlier interview that his congregation participated because of the beauty of the idea and the desire to keep generosity at the forefront of the Thanksgiving and Christmas season.

We feel practical pathways of giving help us combat the ease by which we can fall into the trap of greed, Patterson told CP in 2016.
Comedian battling drug addiction credits rehab, prayer for helping him reach 18 days sober

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Comedian Artie Lange has struggled with substance abuse for decades and recently revealed that prayer has been helping him as he's now been sober for more than 18 days.

Lange took a break from rehab this week to perform a show before heading back to a rehab center on Thanksgiving Day. He admitted that hes been fighting hard.



Guess whos clean?!! Been clean 18 days! The rehab Im at let me use my phone to check things. I still have more time here but Im doing great. Im humble. Not bragging. Just feel well. Tons of work ahead. Sunrise detox in Sterling, N.J., helped save my life!!! Theyre great!! Lange tweeted on Wednesday.

The longtime Howard Stern sidekick went on to reveal in a series of tweets how praying to God has been a part of his recovery.



Im at The Retreat by Lancaster PA. This place is a Godsend! Theyre not payin me. No free stay. They do it right. Im so grateful to them. The nurses are Angels. Im not saying I will never relapse. I pray every day!! Just happy to be alive. I aint checkin out yet! I love u all! he continued.



God. Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. The courage to change the things I can. And the wisdom to know the difference, he added.



According to NJ.com, Lange is facing possible jail time for a prior drug charge where he allegedly violated the terms of his probation on multiple occasions by testing positive for drugs.



The vulgar comic pleaded guilty in 2017 after getting caught by police with 81 decks of heroin. He was sentenced to four years of probation and ordered to enroll in outpatient rehab but it wasnt enough to keep him sober.



Earlier this month, Lange announced that he was checking himself into an inpatient rehab program.

Im about to take a big step to help myself To save my life. Im sure u will hear about it. I feel like Im not done. I have another run of laughing w u all. I want to thank u fans the way u thank me. U have saved my life. U are special to me. Wish me luck  Artie Lange (@artiequitter) November 6, 2018



In his memoir, Wanna Bet? A Degenerate Gambler's Guide to Living on the Edge, Lange gave some insight into his troubling past. He admitted attempting suicide in 2010.



After the comedy gig on Wednesday, the comedian said that he'd be back in action by the end of the month.
American evangelicals give $58K to save persecuted Muslim family; US still denies asylum

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Afghan interpreter Muhammad Kamran said he felt like he was part of a brotherhood when he aided the United States military in its fight against terrorism in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2014.

Kamran, a Muslim father of four and a teacher, served as a mission interpreter who helped recruit and train other Afghan nationals to interpret and translate for U.S. troops as they fought to eradicate al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

As a 19-year-old at the time he began, Kamran felt called to assist the Americans as they fought the radical extremists he considered to be the enemy of humanity.

They were calling me brother, Kamran said of U.S. soldiers during his 10 years of service aiding various branches of the U.S. military and the United Nations. They were another nationality and another culture. I was from another country and of another religion but there was no difference for us. We were living with each other. We were eating with each other. We were sleeping in one room. There was no problem for us.

But four years later, Kamran is among thousands of Afghan translators struggling to receive help from the U.S. government and the international community as they face death threats and violence for aiding the fight against terror.

As for Kamran, his wife and four girls, they have been forced into hiding and are living as illegal immigrant refugees trapped in neighboring Pakistan because of his decision to aid the U.S.  a sacrifice that he says he is proud of despite the fact that it has cost him his home, his cars, his wealth, and nearly his life.

Because he aided the U.S. mission, the Taliban is looking to kill Kamran. The Sunni radical terror organization that calls itself the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan spread lies throughout Kamrans community in the Nangarhar Province that he's a Christian looking to convert Muslims to Christianity  a charge that put a large target on his back inside his home village.

Today, the Kamrans live under the constant threat of Pakistani military and police raids. If Kamran is caught, advocates fear, he risks being killed by the Pakistani military or turned over to the Taliban.

Despite this, Kamran and his family were denied asylum by the very government he risked his life to assist.

Even though a generous American evangelical Christian family has spent over $58,000 to help keep the Kamran family alive over the last couple of years and offered to shelter the family at their California farm, a request for the Kamrans to receive even a one-year humanitarian stay was denied last November by the Department of Homeland Security.

The denial comes as tens of thousands of Afghan and Iraqi citizens are on a waitlist for Special Immigrant Visas designed to allow translators and interpreters who worked with the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan to seek refuge in the U.S.

Yet, preliminary State Department data indicates that there was a slowing in Special Immigrant Visas issued for Iraqi and Afghan interpreters in 2018.

The number of Afghan SIVs issued in fiscal year 2018 is nearly 9,000 fewer than in 2017, and about 500 more than the number of Afghan SIVs issued in fiscal year 2015 under the Obama administration, and about 1,800 fewer than the Afghan SIVs issued by the Obama administration in 2014.

Kamran's case was first denied under the Obama administration in 2016 and the ensuing appeal and application for humanitarian parole have been denied by the Trump administration.

The Kamran family was denied humanitarian parole by the U.S. government without a thorough review of the case or an explanation as to what the governments security concern with his family is, according to the familys advocate, Kristy Perano, who along with her parents and brother have financially sacrificed to help keep the Kamran family alive.

I have worked 10 years for the security of the people," Kamran said. "I did not care about the religion. I work for every religion. I work for every human and every country. But now, they say we are a security problem and I dont know why. How did I become security problem? I dont know this still.

Fighting the war against terror

Shortly after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. got involved in the fight against terrorism in Afghanistan in which the U.S. sought to push the Taliban from power.

Being strictly against terror, Kamran began helping the U.S. Army in 2004. He worked out of the Kabul Military Training Center, where he helped interpret for Army troops in charge of training recruits for the Afghan National Army.

My English was very good and the American people liked me a lot, Kamran recalled. They decided that they should push me to the missions and I should become a mission interpreter. So they gave me a good post and also make me mission interpreter.

In 2006, Kamran began working with the U.S. Navy at Camp Lightening in Gardez Province where he worked on many training and humanitarian missions.

One of those was an assignment to assist the Navy in its efforts to institute a training program to teach the Afghan recruits to drive trucks. It was during this time that Kamran worked a lot with former Navy Lieutenant Karsten Daponte, who spent six months stationed in Gardez.

He and I spent hours and hours in the truck and having some laughs, Daponte, who retired from the military and now works in the energy sector, told CP. Being in the front of the truck with Muhammad there with me, it was a shared experience and I will never forget that in my life.

Also in 2006, Kamran was transferred to the Jalalabad Air Base in his home province of Nangarhar. There he worked with different branches of the U.S. military and went on night missions with U.S. Army 10th Mountains teams to arrest Taliban insurgents.

I come to my province and I knew all the places that were [bad] and which were [good], he explained. I was providing information to the U.S. troops and U.S. Army. They were doing the operation and I was participating in that. The people know me very well. Taliban got a lot of information about me.

Kamran said that over time he was becoming a little famous within the Taliban.

The 'enemy of Islam'

The terrorists, he said, would frequently call his phone and threaten him. He was even forced to change his number and block callers.

They were trying hard and hard to find me and get me, Kamran explained. They were asking people [in my community] to help them.

[Muslim clerics] told them that they should announce me as a Christian  not only a Christian but a dangerous Christian who is converting the people from Islam to Christianity, Kamran said. These people accepted it.

Kamran said that the Taliban eventually began threatening people by telling them that if they have any relationship with him, they will be killed.

They announced all our family as Christians and that our family should be killed. They would say, They are Christian and their son is also Christian, and he is converting people to Christianity. He is the enemy of Islam and enemy of Muslims, Kamran recounted. They directly announced me as the enemy of Islam. They sent letters to the mosque and said that I killed a lot of Taliban. I did not do that but they were blaming me a lot and they were making a lot of problems for me.

Kamran said that the most dangerous time for his family began in 2014 after most U.S. troops had been withdrawn from Afghanistan. He said that people in his village and even people who he helped tutor were no longer friendly with him anymore.

The Americans had gone and the job had gone and everything was finished, Kamran explained.

Although there were around 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan at one point, that number now stands at over 14,000 even after President Donald Trump's troop increase.

They (U.S.) did not care about me because they left Afghanistan. Then, my house got burned. [The Taliban shot] my brother. My two friends were killed. One man who I trained, they killed him also. The other friends who took a job as an interpreter, they arrested him, break his hand and feet and take all his money, his home and his car. Now he is a U.N. refugee in Canada, I think. I dont have any contact with him. Finally, my dad and my mom told me that you dont have to stay here anymore.

Kamran turned to the government for help. He went to the district governor who offered him little help other than telling him to seek help from the United States.

Fleeing Afghanistan

With their lives in danger in Afghanistan, Kamran and his family fled Afghanistan on a five-day journey to Pakistan in 2014. According to Kamran, his family went without food for two days and only had dirty water to drink.

I was walking in the mud for five days without boots and without shoes, he said. At that time, one of my daughters was only 6 months [old]. In different places, I got arrested but I was giving a bribe and I was giving the [officers] money.

Although Kamran said that he feels fortunate to have fled Afghanistan, the situation in Pakistan is rough.

My home has been raided by the police and by the military. Whatever I had here, the police took that from me, he detailed. I could not even buy one tablet when my kid got sick. I did not have the money to pay the rent of my house.

Kamran has to regularly flee his house because of frequent immigration and anti-terrorism raids. Through connections, Kamran is tipped off when there is going to be a raid in his area. In some instances, Kamran has been caught by authorities but has paid officers with bribes so he wont be processed and they wont learn his identity.

At one point, Kamran and his family were kicked out of their home by a landlord because they couldnt pay the rent. The Kamrans cant leave their house out of fear of being arrested. This means that Kamran isn't able to work and make a living.

The Kamrans initiated a refugee case with the U.N. in July 2014 and the case was referred to the U.S. in March 2015. In February 2016, the Kamran family was denied asylum by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for discretionary reasons.

Later that month, the Kamrans filed a request for the agency to review the denial of his case, which was eventually denied without review.

It was in a very critical situation I was in, Kamran said. There were a lot of problems I was facing. Then I met Kristy.

The Perano family

Perano, a 29-year-old Cornell University Ph.D candidate from California, has dedicated her time and money to aid the Kamran family over the last couple of years.

Perano has teamed up with her parents (Ken and Susan Perano) and her brother and sister-in-law (Tim and Julianne Perano) to provide money to the Kamran family to pay rent, legal fees, food, and living costs.

Because the Kamrans cant work, the Peranos pay for nearly everything.

For food, the Peranos pay a friend of Kamran who buys groceries and delivers them to the family.

The Peranos have also paid for a doctor to come provide emergency surgery when Kamran was stabbed by thieves and seriously wounded when he fled the house during a military and police raid. As an illegal immigrant, Kamran could not go to a hospital.

Split nearly three-ways between the family, the Peranos have aided the Kamrans with over 18 months' worth of living expenses and medical bills.

Should the Kamrans ever be allowed to come to the U.S., the family would live on the Perano family's farm in Jackson, California.

Now residing in Ithaca, New York, for school, Kristy Perano has dedicated her time to advocating on the Kamran familys behalf as she completes her degree in biological and environmental engineering.

She initially heard about the Kamran familys ordeal through her volunteer work with the organization No One Left Behind, an advocacy nonprofit founded by a military vet whose life was saved by an Afghan interpreter who was denied asylum.

Perano was able to get connected with Kamran after learning more about his situation. She tracked down an immigration attorney who specializes in refugee cases to take on Kamrans case at a reasonable cost.

For me, I see it as a fight for justice. There is a repeated theme in the Bible about fighting for justice for oppressed people, Perano, who attends Bethel Grove Bible Church in Ithaca, said. I am spending 30 percent of my income on this now and 10 percent is kind of a traditional guideline but not a cap.

If we stop, they are going to die and we know that, Perano added. We have gotten to know them well. Muhammad isnt a Christian but has a high opinion of Christians. I dont have the expectation that he is going to convert to Christianity, but I also have a belief that he deserves to live in a free society that Jesus would want [us] to protect and not leave [the Kamran family] to be murdered by the Taliban.

Perano has created a GoFundMe online fundraising page to assist the Kamran family.

Filed for humanitarian parole

With the help of Seattle-based attorney Danielle Rosche, the Kamran family filed for humanitarian parole in August 2017.

Humanitarian parole is a discretionary authority that allows for the temporary entry of individuals into the U.S. for urgent humanitarian reasons or for significant public benefit.

The program enables citizens to submit an application on behalf of someone who is outside of the U.S. and has an urgent need to enter the country.

We are asking USCIS to let them just come here on this temporary basis and we can kind of re-evaluate the asylum claim at our leisure, Perano explained. We tried that and USCIS just denied the case. First, they lost it for a few weeks and then they denied it after two days of consideration.

The case was denied last November over discretionary security concerns that have not been disclosed by the agency.

Perano said that she was somewhat optimistic when they retained Rosche because the attorney had past success in getting humanitarian parole for interpreters and family members who were previously denied asylum.

After the denial, they pressed USCIS Humanitarian Affairs Branch Chief John Bird to see if Muhammad's young daughters could be allowed to enter the U.S. to live with an aunt and uncle who have received asylum. However, Bird claimed last November that the children were also a security concern.

The case was closed, Perano said. That just depressed a lot of people in Congress. As far as I know, that is the only time that USCIS put in writing that they were denying a one-year visa to a 2-year-old child on the basis that she was a security concern.

The agency said that since their cases were denied before, they were denying it again because they have security concerns, she added. Our lawyer pushed back and said, What are your security concerns? They said, We will actually have to go review the refugee case to answer that question. They admitted that they hadnt bothered [to review the case]. They denied the humanitarian case because he had been denied before without even reviewing the original denial themselves.

Because the denial was discretionary, the agency isnt legally required to reveal its reasons for thinking that Kamran and his family are a security concern.

Perano lobbied members of Congress to sign a bipartisan letter sent in July to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen demanding to know more about why Kamrans asylum and humanitarian parole cases have been denied and to voice concern with the fact that the case was denied on a discretionary basis.

The 38 Congress members are also seeking information on how many interpreter cases have been denied for discretionary reasons and how many refugee cases overall are denied for discretionary reasons.

Despite giving the agency a mid-August deadline, DHS has yet to respond to the congressional inquiry, Perano said.

The Christian Post reached out to USCIS for comment on the congressional inquiry and was told that the agency does not offer public comment on Congressional correspondence and will respond as appropriate.

A source with knowledge of the issue told CP that USCIS explained last month that it was still waiting on additional information from the State Department before responding to the letter.

Perano explained that if the agency doesnt respond by January when the new Congress starts, then Congress will take further action to get answers from USCIS.

Perano launched a Change.org petition calling on USCIS Humanitarian Affairs Director John Bird to re-open and approve the Kamran familys case. Over 50,000 people have signed the online petition.

As she has had success getting humanitarian parole for interpreters under the Obama administration, Rosche couldnt say whether denials for humanitarian parole for interpreters who worked with the U.S. government or military were more common under the Trump administration.

[These discretionary denials] seem nonsensical and random to me, Rosche told CP. I have worked on cases like Mr. Kamrans. I have worked cases of elderly Christian women from Mosul who have fled ISIS who were denied refugee status as a matter of discretion.

Daponte is also perplexed by the situation that the U.S. government has put the Kamran family in.

They really were putting a lot on the line in good faith to help us help them, he said of Afghan interpreters. If we treat people in this circumstance this way and basically cut them loose in a sense, that is a really bad signal to send to our partners whether current or future. Partners and allies might second guess working with us.

Slowing of visas

The Afghan Special Immigrant Visa program was created through the Afghan Allies Protection Act of 2009 to provide visas to Afghans who worked at least one year as a translator or interpreter for or on behalf of the U.S. government in Afghanistan in order to allow them to resettle in the U.S.

A similar program was created in 2008 for Iraqis working on behalf of the U.S. forces in Iraq.

Preliminary State Department data indicates that the number of Afghan SIV visas issued were cut in half during fiscal year 2018 even though as many as 17,000 Afghans are on an SIV waiting list.

In fiscal year 2018 (Oct. 1, 2017 - Sept. 30, 2018), only 7,234 Afghan SIVs were issued with 1,649 being principal applicants and 5,585 being dependents. By comparison, 16,170 Afghan SIVs were issued in fiscal year 2017 (4,120 being principal applicants) and 12,086 Afghan SIVs were issued in fiscal year 2016.

In future conflicts, if the United States cannot show that we have protected our interpreters and local aides in the past, when we go into future conflicts, we are going to receive less aid from locals, Rosche told CP. From a national security perspective, that is very dangerous for our soldiers going into our future. Its a moral aspect of helping [them] because [they] helped us but there is also the point that for future conflicts we need our local people to be able to rely on our word.

Advocates have raised concern about how the National Defense Authorization Act for 2019 passed without the inclusion of additional Afghan SIVs because of budget constraints.

In June, the Trump administration voiced its disappointment with the fact that the bill does not include a provision allowing for 4,000 additional Afghan SIVs in the fiscal year 2019.

Without allocating additional visas, there will be no authority to fully address the current pipeline of eligible individuals estimated at approximately 16,700 or any further eligible individuals who apply before the December 2020 deadline, a June 26 statement from the White House Office of Budget and Management reads.

Activists and lawmakers have called for a measure authorizing an additional 4,000 Afghan SIVs to be included in the fiscal year 2019 State, Foreign Operations and Relations Programs appropriations bill that funds the State Department.

Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., sent a letter in August to the leaders in the Senate Appropriations Committee asking for the measure to be included in the legislation. Additionally, a group of veteran organizations sent a letter to Congress in September also calling for the allocation of 4,000 Afghan SIVs for 2019.

Advocates are unsure what will happen in the final weeks of the bills negotiations. The group Veterans for American Ideals is continuing to lobby Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Richard Shelby, D-Ala., and others on the committee.

Since both the House and Senate subcommittee reports deemed the SIV program critical, we're optimistic that it's going to happen, Christopher Plummer, senior media relations associate with nonprofit organization Human Rights First, told CP. This is a lifeline for our Afghan allies  many whose lives are at risk for their service to us  so the committee needs to step up.



In August, military leaders reportedly spoke out about the drop in admission of Iraqi interpreters admitted under the Direct Access Program, which replaced the SIV program, during a closed-door meeting at the White House on Iraq, according to Reuters.

According to the State Department data, only 152 Iraqi SIVs were granted to principal applicants and 372 were granted to their dependents in the fiscal year 2018 for a total of 524. In fiscal year 2017, a total of 2,134 Iraq SIVs were issued.

Other nations turning asylum seekers away

In the midst of a global refugee crisis, Western European countries have seemingly taken a harder stance against Afghan asylum seekers in recent years.

According to The Washington Post, Western European nations have rejected hundreds of thousands of Afghan asylum applications in the last two years and deported thousands of Afghan immigrants back to Afghanistan even though the Taliban still controls much territory.

Having been denied asylum by the U.S., Kamran said that he has asked the U.N. to refer his case to another Western nation.



They told me that it was my fault because I emphasized them to give my case to the U.S. They said that You worked for U.S and even your brothers are not accepting you, he recalled. They said that if they give my case to Canada or Australia or another country, they will ask this question: This person worked for the Americans for about 10 years and they are not accepting him. Why should we accept this person?

Abandoned

What makes the situation even more perplexing to Kamran is the fact that other members of his family have been granted asylum in the U.S. in the past several years.

I dont know how my brother and my sister and my nephew were cleared and I was not cleared, he explained. I was one of the most important persons for the Americans. As I told you before, they were not calling me by my name. They were calling me brother. They were telling me that I was their brother but now I am a security issue.

Kamran said that it was he who trained his brother, brother-in-law and many other Afghan nationals when they were assisting the U.S. government.

The government, the friends and family  everybody has left me alone, Kamran explained. If I go back to Afghanistan, they will take revenge from me and I will not be alive.
European Christians launch movement to increase awareness of religious freedom

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The European Platform against Intolerance and Discrimination (EPRID) has launched a new movement to increase awareness among people of their rights to freedom of religion and belief.

The #FoRBDefender movement aims to make people more informed about freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief.

The motto for the campaign is "Believe it or not, it's my Right!"

The movement is being spearheaded by the EPRID in partnership with Christian Solidarity Worldwide, the European Humanist Federation, the International Humanist and Ethical Union, and the Nordic Ecumenical Network on Freedom of Religion or Belief.

They are working together to support people who may be experiencing discrimination, oppression and violence because of their religion or beliefs, including non-religious beliefs.

Part of their efforts will include lobbying politicians to ensure that the right to freedom of religion or belief is defended and protected at the national and international level.

Amy Shepherd, CSW's EU Advocacy Manager, saidt: "Across the world, people's freedom to choose, manifest, change and abandon their religion or belief is under threat. There is an urgent need to stand up for FoRB and press decision-makers for more concrete and visible protective action. EPRID hopes that by reaching out to politicians, diplomats, media, business, civil society activists and others, the #FoRBDefender movement will show that FoRB protects everyone, and that everyone has a role to play in protecting FoRB."

The movement has been launched partly in response to the guidelines on the promotion and protection of freedom of religion or belief adopted by the EU in 2013.

The guidelines state: "Freedom of religion or belief protects every human being's right to believe or to hold an atheistic or non-theistic belief, and to change religion or belief. It does not protect a religion or belief as such."

EPRID founding member the European Evangelical Alliance (EEA) is encouraging its supporters to get involved with the movement, which has set up the website, www.forbdefenders.org, to provide more resources and information.

The EEA said: "Freedom of religion or belief is way too precious a human right to take for granted. We have to stand united in defending and promoting it, close to home but also in the rest of the world."
Over 100 Christian Asylum Seekers Arrested in Bangkok Immigration Raid; School 'Destroyed'

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Over 100 Christian asylum seekers fleeing persecution from their native Pakistan were arrested in an immigration raid in Bangkok, Thailand.

A community of Pakistani Christian asylum seekers living in a low-rent condominium facility in the nation's capital found themselves in the middle of the Thailand government's ongoing immigration crackdown on Tuesday morning.

The Rev. Tim Eady, who pastors the only English-speaking Church of England congregation in Bangkok, told The Christian Post that as many as 80 Pakistani Christian asylum-seeking adults were arrested in the raid on the blockwide complex. At least 30 children were also detained in the raid.

"We are all devastated," the Christ Church pastor explained in an email. "Many asylum seekers have become close friends of other church members. We fear for them."

Wilson Chowdhry, chairman of a London-based charity assisting the asylum seekers called British Pakistani Christian Association, told CP that many of those arrested in the raid fled Pakistan after being persecuted or harassed over their faith. Some of them, he added, have even been accused of blasphemy, which is a crime punishable by death in Pakistan.

"The building itself belonged to a government official," Chowdhry explained. "A lot of the Pakistani Christians decided to move there because they thought it was under some form of protection."

But when the raid began, there was "no way out" for most of the asylum seekers who tried to flee from authorities because dozens vehicles completely blockaded the apartment complex.

Those detained in the raid are being held in Bangkok's Immigration Detention Center.

"The IDC has limited space. When it is full, they stop doing the arrests," Chowdhry said. "They treat these people so badly that after two to three years, many start thinking that they don't want to stay in the IDC. Many of them start to filter away. Many of them think if they are going to have indefinite imprisonment here, they might as well go back to Pakistan and try their chances. They have a choice of having indefinite imprisonment in Thailand or the potential for indefinite imprisonment in Pakistan or the ability to hopefully live under the radar."

Renting out a flat in the same apartment complex that was raided on Tuesday, the BPCA runs an unregistered two-classroom school to provide the asylum seeking children (ages 5 to 16) with at least some form of education. However, the school was also raided by authorities.

According to Chowdhry, eight computers were stolen from the school.

Chowdhry, who says that the number of children arrested in the raid is closer to 40, explained that about 30 of those children arrested attended the BPCA school.

One of the school's teachers, Mona Sumbal, managed to survive the raid because she hid in a boiler room.

"I had not even woken up when I heard shouts and screams as people began to warn others to escape," she said in a statement. "Our community is protective of one another and for many, the first thought was help others slip the arrest that would place them into brutal incarceration in Bangkok IDC."

"I heard the children I teach weeping and my heart was broken," she continued. "I wanted to help but knew that if I came out of hiding I would be arrested too and the end result would be a return to Pakistan where my life is at threat."

Sumbal waited an hour to come out only to discover that the school had been "destroyed."

"[N]o one was around from the community everyone was arrested," Sumbal explained. "About 20 minutes later, my cousin appeared. She is only 18. Now from such a large community, only the two of us remain free."

According to BPCA, those arrested during the raids also included United Nations registered refugees and retirement visa holders.

The raid on the apartment complex was followed by other raids in the city.

According to UCA News, five other Pakistani Christian families were rounded up during a raid in Bangkok's outlying district of Min Buri. At least 20 people were detained in that raid.

Eady explains that many asylum seekers come to Thailand from Pakistan, Africa or surrounding Asian countries on tourist visas that he says are "easy to obtain upon entry." He warns that what many asylum seekers might not realize is that they are fleeing violence or persecution and coming to a country that has not agreed to the U.N. Convention on Human Rights.

"They become illegal within a few weeks of arrival; where Thai law does not permit them to work or earn any income; where they have to live 'under the radar' and stand little chance of a quick exit, with the constant threat of arrest and internment in the Immigration Detention Centre  a fate worse than prison," Eady wrote in a detailed statement.

Christ Church has a team of volunteers who visit with the detained asylum seekers at the IDC. According to Eady, these once-per-week visits are likely the only time that detained asylum seekers who are married are able to see their spouses.

"The one good thing about visiting is that team members can 'call out' a husband and wife at the same time, and so enable them to see each other," Eady shared. "[It's] probably the only time in the week that they can do so, and even then it is only within the large throng of hundreds of people, for half an hour a week."

Eady told CP that Christ Church, which is home to five different congregations, offers asylum seekers the opportunity to worship. With the help of the BPCA, the church also hosts Thai classes for asylum seekers.

"Many refugees, looking for a 'third' country to accept them, can expect a stay of at least 10 years, some may never be able to leave this city," Eady added.

Eady explained that many of the refugees he meets are also "well educated."

"They have skills and aspirations. They would be an asset to any community. But they have fled for their lives," he said. "Sadly, I meet young people who should be at university completing degrees and doctorates living in fear for their survival, not sure where even the next meal will come from."

Many asylum seekers in Bangkok make ends meet through black market employment.

"How do I answer a 19-year-old girl when I ask her why she has come here?" Eady asked. "Surely she would be better off in the land that she calls home? At least there she would speak the language and have a hope for employment. Then she tells me, 'If I go back to Pakistan my Muslim uncles will either rape me or murder me, or probably both.'"

Pakistan ranks as the fifth-worst country in the world when it comes to Christian persecution, according to Open Doors USA's World Watch List.

Christ Church is also working with an organization called LifeRaft, a Christian charity that works with local churches to support urban refugees.

"LifeRaft asks refugees to register with them, and to complete a monthly financial statement, and to demonstrate that they are seeking to use their time profitably, by working with a local 'advocate' within the church, and engaging in some form of learning or social activity," Eady detailed. "This may involve taking part in language learning, a Bible study group, or service within the church or community, or some form of 'online' learning. The intention is to encourage the asylum-seeker to move his mindset away from one of dependence to seeking to discover some form of useful purpose within their daily lives."

BPCA is attempting to raise $9,247 (7,000) to pay the fines for each of the Pakistani Christian adult asylum seekers arrested for overstaying their visas. A fee of $132 (100) per person keeps families from being held in cells with rapists and murderers.

"It is to prevent them from going into central jail," Chowdhry said. "It is very brutal."

Last week, 319 people were arrested in earlier immigration raids that targeted several locations across Thailand. Many of those arrested for overstaying their visas were from Myanmar, India, Laos and Vietnam.
Scientists: 'superheated blast from the sky' destroyed Dead Sea cities, pointing to Sodom in Bible

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Scientists have found that a "superheated blast from the skies" destroyed cities near the Dead Sea 3,700 years ago, which biblical analysts are saying echoes the destruction of Sodom.

Science News reported that the new findings were revealed at the annual meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research last week by archaeologist Phillip Silvia of Trinity Southwest University in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The scientists discovered radiocarbon dating and unearthed minerals that instantly crystallized at high temperatures at what used to be cities and farming settlements north of the Dead Sea, suggesting that a massive air-burst, possibly by a meteor, destroyed communities in a 15-mile-wide circular plain.

Silva said that following the cataclysmic event, people did not return to the region for 600 to 700 years.

Researchers have been studying five large sites in Middle Ghor in present day Jordan, which are believed to have been continuously occupied for at least 2,500 years, until they suddenly collapsed at the end of the Bronze Age.

Some of the strongest evidence for a low-altitude meteor explosion was found at the remains of the city of Tall el-Hammam, where radiocarbon dating shows that the mud-brick walls of nearly all structures were suddenly wiped out 3,700 years ago.

Other remarkable finds show that the outer layers of pieces of pottery seemed to have melted into glass, as a result of extremely high temperatures.

The Times of Israel pointed to other archaeological research, such as a 2013 Biblical Archaeology Review article by TeHEP co-director Dr. Steven Collins, revealing that the Tall el-Hammam site offers evidence it could have been the Biblical city of Sodom.

The fiery destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is famously depicted in Genesis 19 of the Bible, which says that "God destroyed the cities of the plain," with "dense smoke rising from the land, like smoke from a furnace."

The Biblical account also mentioned that God overthrew "all those living in the cities" along with "the vegetation in the land.

Collins said in his article back then that he witnessed similar destruction first-hand.

The violent conflagration that ended occupation at Tall el-Hammam produced melted pottery, scorched foundation stones and several feet of ash and destruction debris churned into a dark gray matrix as if in a Cuisinart," he stated at the time.

He suggested that the event was preserved in the Book of Genesis and ultimately incorporated into a traditional tale that, drawing on the layer of ash that covered the destruction of one of its major cities, remembered a place consumed by a fiery catastrophe.

What is more, Silvia and Collins authored the paper The Civilization-Ending 3.7KYrBP Event: Archaeological Data, Sample Analyses, and Biblical Implications" back in 2015, which argues that "the physical evidence from Tall el-Hammam and neighboring sites exhibit signs of a highly destructive concussive and thermal event that one might expect from what is described in Genesis 19."

The destruction not only of Tall el-Hammam (Sodom), but also its neighbors (Gomorrah and the other cities of the plain) was most likely caused by a meteoritic airburst event, the authors added.
This Week in Christian History: Luis Palau Born, Pope Attacked, Thanksgiving

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Christianity is a faith with a long and detailed history, with numerous events of lasting significance occurring throughout the ages.

Each week brings the anniversaries of great milestones, horrid tragedies, amazing triumphs, and everything in between.

Here are just a few things that happened this week, Nov. 25 to Dec. 1, in Church history. They include the birth of Luis Palau, an attempted assassination of Pope Paul VI, and the first national observance of Thanksgiving.

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Trump DHS Reopens Dozens of Iranian Christian Refugee Cases After Denying Asylum

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The United States Department of Homeland Security has reopened the asylum applications of dozens of Christian refugees who were denied resettlement earlier this year.

In compliance with a federal court order from last month, the agency is reevaluating the cases of 87 religious minorities who fled their homes in Iran to travel to Vienna, Austria on the invitation from the U.S. government to seek asylum through the U.S. Lautenberg-Spencer refugee resettlement program.

Kate Meyer, an attorney litigating the group's class action lawsuit against the government, told The Christian Post that the cases were officially reopened last Tuesday after all 87 refugees stuck in limbo in Vienna for months were given a mass notice of ineligibility in February.

The mass denials were done so without individualized reasoning and sparked fears that the group of religious minorities could be deported back to the Shia-majority Iran. However, a federal judge in California ordered DHS on July 11 to either reopen the asylum applications or provide detailed reasoning as to why each Iranian applicant was being denied within 14 days.

Now that the applications of all 87 refugees have been reopened, Meyer said that each application will be reprocessed.

"They notified our clients of the reopenings at the end of the 14-day period," Meyer, a staff attorney for the International Refugee Assistance Project, told CP. "We're very happy to hear that they have reopened their cases and giving our clients another chance at resettlement in the United States."

Meyer said that she is hopeful the federal government will take this opportunity to resolve the cases.

The 87 refugees  who have family members in the U.S. and range from Armenian and Assyrian Christians to Mandeans and Zoroastrians  are those who have been stalled in the Lautenberg Program since December 2016.

"We know that in year's past, processing would only take about three months and was a very successful and straight forward program that had nearly 100 percent acceptance rates," Meyer said. "We are hopeful that the government will give our clients a chance to reunite with their families in the United States and be able to practice their faith in piece here."

It is still possible, however, that DHS could reissue denials as long as they provide individualized reasons for each refugee. If that were to happen, the refugees would be given 90 days to submit a request for the DHS to reconsider their applications.

"There is no explicit time estimate at the moment for how long they could take to adjudicate the cases," Meyer explained. "Our clients are in really dire circumstances. They have suffered so much since leaving their homes in Iran due to religious persecution. They are eager to reach the United States to reunite with their family."

The Lautenberg Amendment was was originally enacted in 1990 to help facilitate the resettlement of Jews from the former Soviet Union. The statute was later extended to include religious minorities in Iran.

According to Meyer, the program was successful until applications began to stall around December 2016. IRAP believes that there were "program changes" that could be responsible for the mass denials.

In a March op-ed, prominent human rights lawyer Nina Shea pointed out that there was a new security layer instituted to the program under the Obama administration in 2016.

"We don't know exactly what caused the mass denials. We have a remaining claim in the lawsuit that challenges the program changes that led to the mass denial. We are hoping to get more information about what exactly those programing changes were," Meyer explained. "We are continuing to pursue that claim in the litigation."

The struggles for the Iranian refugees in Vienna comes as the Trump administration has greatly reduced the number of of refugees resettled to U.S. The New York Times reported this week that the administration is considering further cuts to the U.S.'s already historically low refugee resettlement ceiling.

While the Obama administration resettled close to 85,000 refugees in its final full fiscal year (2016), the Trump administration is on pace to settle about 22,000 in its first full fiscal year despite having a refugee ceiling of 45,000 for fiscal year 2018.

Last week, the State Department hosted the first-ever Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom and issued a statement of concern condemning Iran for its human rights abuses and religious freedom violations.

"We were very glad to hear that the administration acknowledges the importance of religious freedom," Meyer said. "We are hopeful this will be reflected in how they treat this group of Iranians stranded in Vienna who had to flee Iran due to this religious persecution and hope that extends to other refugees in similar situations."
Up to 120,000 Trapped in North Korean Labor Camps: State Dept. Religious Freedom Report

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Between 80,000 to 120,000 people are trapped in North Korean gulags with many of them being imprisoned for their faith, the U.S. State Department has said.

On Tuesday, the agency released its congressionally-mandated 2017 International Religious Freedom report, an annual document describing the status of religious freedom in every country.

This year's report labels the Rohingya refugee crisis in Burma as "ethnic cleansing." It also places an estimate on the number of people subjected to North Korea's notorious system of prison camps.

Escapees over the years have shared the horrors of torture, forced labor and abuse they have experienced inside North Korea's prison camps. People are imprisoned in what the Kim regime likes to call "re-education camps" for crimes such as worshiping in a church that's not state-recognized or for defecting from the country.

"The government continued to deal harshly with those who engaged in almost any religious practices through executions, torture, beatings, and arrests," the report states. "An estimated 80,000 to 120,000 political prisoners, some imprisoned for religious reasons, were believed to be held in the political prison camp system in remote areas under horrific conditions."

The State Department relied on the expertise of NGOs like Christian Solidarity Worldwide to state that a "a policy of guilt by association was often applied in cases of detentions of Christians, meaning that the relatives of Christians were also detained regardless of their beliefs."

"Religious and human rights groups outside the country continued to provide numerous reports that members of underground churches were arrested, beaten, tortured, and killed because of their religious beliefs," the report states. "According to the [Database Center for North Korean Human Rights], there was a report in 2016 of disappearances of persons who were found to be practicing religion within detention facilities. International NGOs and North Korean defectors reported any religious activities conducted outside of those that were state-sanctioned, including praying, singing hymns, and reading the Bible, could lead to severe punishment, including imprisonment in political prison camps."

According to the report, one Christian who defected after spending eight years in prison for attending church in China for four months told a U.S.-based NGO that she was charged with "practicing Christianity" and learning of its "disgraceful nature."

"During her imprisonment, authorities told her up to a dozen times a day to repent of her past and try to 'wash' her mind," the report reads. "She reported six other women who were in prison for attending church were either beaten to death or died from diarrhea because they did not have access to medicine."

The report also states that Christians are "restricted to the lowest class rungs of the songun system" as they are seen as a "means of foreign, Western encroachment." The songun system classifies individuals on the basis of social class, presumed support of the Kim regime, religious views, family background and other identifiers.

Although North Korea has ranked for the last 16 years as the world's worst persecutor of Christians, the regime also targets Buddhists and their worship networks.

During a press briefing Tuesday, Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback offered more details on North Korea's political prison system.

"[W]hat we know is that you've got a gulag system operating in North Korea, and it's been a terrible situation for many years," Brownback said. "You can go on satellite, open-source satellite, and see some of these camps and the situation. You have people that have gotten out and have written about the situation in North Korea."

The release of the report comes as officials from both the U.S. and North Korea are trying to resurrect a potential meeting between President Donald Trump and dictator Kim Jong Un. Brownback was questioned about the likelihood that religious freedom conditions would be brought up in any potential meeting between U.S. and North Korean officials.

"Well, in a sense it already has with the three people that were released that [Secretary of State Mike Pompeo] brought back, and I do expect the president is right on point on North Korea," Brownback said, mentioning the release earlier this month of the three American prisoners in North Korea. "He's very engaged on this, as you know. The secretary is very engaged on this. And I think they're raising all of these issues. But the first three people they brought out were people that had been imprisoned in North Korea, and so this is a matter of discussion."

Brownback, a former U.S. senator and Kansas governor, also commented on how things have changed over the last several years when it comes to trying to have negotiations with North Korea.

"I remember when I was back in the Senate, I was raising the issue of North Korea at that time, but you couldn't get anybody to act," he said. "Well, this president is acting and he's taking this issue on even though it's threatened us for years, if not decades."

Also at the press conference, Pompeo announced that the State Department will host the first-ever Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom in July.

The meeting will feature Pompeo's "counterparts from like-minded governments" and representatives from international organizations and religious communities. Pompeo said the meeting will "reaffirm our commitment to religious freedom as a universal human right."

"This ministerial, we expect, will break new ground. It will not just be a discussion group," Pompeo said. "It will be about action. We look forward to identifying concrete ways to push back against persecution and ensure greater respect for religious freedom for all."

Commenting on the July meeting, Brownback assured that while it will be mostly "like-minded" countries, it could also include countries that are "working towards a greater religious freedom now in their nation."

"We'll work to get some actionable items coming forward out of it and also follow-on meetings," he said. "The intent is really to drive the issue of religious freedom more aggressively globally, and the outcomes are really twofold that we intend to get out of it: less terrorism, more economic growth."

Brownback would not give additional details on which countries would be invited to participate.
West 'turning a blind eye' as religious hatred, violence punishes Christians, minorities: report

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A comprehensive report by Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need has blamed Western countries for turning a blind eye to the violence Christians and other faith minorities are facing.

The Religious Freedom in the World 2018 Report analyzes all 196 countries around the world and the dangers that faith minorities face, both at the hands of the government and hardline or terror groups.

The biannual report found some positive developments, such as the defeats and loss of power suffered by the Islamic State terror group in Iraq and Syria, but at the same time warned that ultra-nationalism around the world is causing a rise in hatred against minorities.

Nationalism  especially from governments  became increasingly aggressive, with profoundly disturbing consequences for minority faith groups. This development, which can be termed ultra-nationalism, is especially significant because it is now dominant in China, Russia and India, world powers with growing influence around the world, ACN says in its summary.

Other governments are increasingly ultra-nationalist in their hostility to minority groups, notably the regime in Burma whose violence against the Rohingya Muslims has shocked human rights observers the world over. This publicity is the exception to the prevailing trend; a cultural curtain has fallen, behind which religious minorities suffer as the religiously illiterate West turns a blind eye, it adds.

It warns that Europe and other Western countries have failed to initiate an agenda to defend religious liberty, and are displaying apathy toward the importance that people place on religion around the world.

The Catholic charity has also blamed Western media for failing to cover the dangers and consequences of Islamic extremism, other than the focus on IS and its affiliated groups. It accuses media of having ignored the spread of militant Islam in parts of Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

Two countries examined by the report, namely North Korea and Saudi Arabia, were found to have such a bad record on religious freedom that it could hardly get worse.

Two other nations, Russia and Kyrgyzstan, were among those where religious freedom was deemed to be getting worse in the two-year period of analysis.

The report warned that Christians and other believers continue being subjected to violence, with danger from terrorists at an universal, imminent and ever-present level.

Religious Freedom in the World 2018 further argued that Islamophobia and anti-Semitism are on the rise in the West.

Aggressive ultra-nationalism  be it by hard-line governments or violent extremist groups  means many minority faith groups feel like aliens in their own country. They are easy targets in a new era of ignorance and intolerance, said Editor-in-Chief John Pontifex.

True, there are some like the Rohingya Muslims, whose plight has received due attention in the West, but so many others  such as Christians in Nigeria, Ahmadis in Pakistan and Bahais in Iran  feel abandoned by the West where religious freedom has slipped down the human rights priority rankings, he added.

Back in July, the United States State Department hosted its first-ever Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom, which included numerous testimonies from people of faith about the persecution they suffer in their countries.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo vowed at the time that the ministerial would be "more than just talk," and would lead to concrete steps of action.
Who were the Gentiles in the Old Testament?

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The story of the Jews throughout Hebrew Scripture is one where God sets them apart for His purposes  that they would be light to the nations, particularly those peoples known as "Gentiles."

The term Gentile refers to someone who is not Jewish. It's an identifier about who a person is not, not his or her specific ethnicity. Derived from the Latin gentilis, the word literally means belonging to a tribe or clan, a non-Jewish one. In the English Bible, the word is used to distinguish peoples from the Israelites since the original Greek and Hebrew words used apply to Israelites and non-Israelites.

While the Gentiles are often people groups and tribes that practiced many things offensive to God  and His people were instructed not to adopt their ways nor intermarry with them  Scripture is punctuated with notable Gentiles, non-Israelites who were followers of Yahweh, and the prophets foretold a time when salvation would come to them.

As Biola University theology professor Charlie Trimm noted in a 2014 post, examples of such persons include Jethro, the Midianite father of Moses; Rahab, the Canaanite prostitute who helped the spies in Jericho as told in the book of Joshua; Jael, the Kenite women who killed Canaanite commander Sisera in the book of Judges; Naaman, a Aramean commander who washed in the Jordan River seven times to be cleansed per the instructions of the prophet Elisha; and Obed-Edom, the Gittite whose tent housed the Ark of the Covenant for three months following the death of Uzzah, who had touched the Ark while attempting to steady it in 2 Samuel 6.

The Gentile sailors who threw Jonah overboard into the sea after he had disobeyed God's command to go to Nineveh also feared God, as did the people of Nineveh when Jonah finally went and preached there.

Other Gentiles seem to fear God like the Samaritans in 2 Kings 17 yet still worshiped other deities. The Queen of Sheba, who was amazed by King Solomon in all his splendor, also appears to have some recognition of God, Trimm notes.

Although some were noble, repeatedly throughout the Old Testament God condemns the idolatry of the Gentiles and ultimately judges those who persist in them, including his own people. The captivity of the southern kingdom of Judah was as a direct result  as explained in 2 Kings 22  of the Israelites forsaking God and worshiping false gods.

Yet as to the salvation of the Gentiles, perhaps most famously, Isaiah prophesied that "the sons of the foreigner who joined themselves to the LORD to serve Him, and to love the name of the Lord, to be His servants  everyone who keeps from defiling the Sabbath, and holds fast My covenant  even them I will bring to My holy mountain, and make them joyful in My house of prayer."

God's house of prayer would be one for "all nations," the prophet declares, Israelite and nonIsraelite alike.

And in Jesus the prophetic foreshadowing and promises are revealed and fulfilled.
Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III

FINANCE Secretary Carlos Dominguez III said the government of Japan is playing a key role in the development of the New Clark City in Capas, Tarlac, which is the centerpiece of the ambitious Build, Build, Build infrastructure program of the Duterte administration. Dominguez said at a seminar held Nov. 21 at the Philippine International Convention Center in Pasay City the New Clark City was a new metropolis being prepared for the future and driven by technology and the most forward-looking industries. The new city we are building here will be the icon for the dynamic urban centers that we intend to nurture as we march confidently towards the future. This new city will foster innovation, he said.It will showcase our capability to harness new technologies to build vibrant and sustainable communities. It will demonstrate the great progress that international partnerships make possible, he said. The seminar dubbed New Clark City With Japan aimed to encourage new Philippine and Japanese business partnerships and introduce smart city solutions in developing NCC.It was organized by the Japan External Trade Organization in partnership with the Bases Conversion and Development Authority, which is overseeing NCCs development. Dominguez said New Clark City and the rest of the flagship projects under the Build, Build, Build program had been made possible by a fortuitous combination of factors. These factors, he said, include a decisive political leadership and a strong initiative to build a competent bureaucracy capable of executing large visions, the adequate fiscal space generated as a result of years of tough reforms, the continuing effort to reform the countrys revenue systems, and the generous support of our international friends and development partners, notably the Japanese people. The economic strategy we pursue seeks to achieve rapid, investments-led growth that raises productivity across the board throughout the archipelago. This is the way to achieve truly inclusive growth and dramatically bring down poverty rates among our people, Dominguez said.
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One of the puzzling paradoxes of the Christian life is that a believer is both a "saint" and a "sinner" at the same time. The apostle Paul unraveled this mysterious union in a way that no theologian has ever been able to surpass. After all, Paul was inspired by the Holy Spirit to write much of the New Testament, and the book of Romans represents the creme de la creme of Paul's epistles.

Paul had a deep and profound understanding of both Law and Gospel. And he understood that we "would not have known what sin was except through the law." (Rom. 7:7) Paul even went so far as to say, "I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death." (7:10) So who or what "died" as a result of God's Law? Well, Paul had already written in the previous chapter that "our old self was crucified with Christ so that the body of sin might be rendered powerless, that we should no longer be slaves to sin - because anyone who has died has been freed from sin." (6:6,7)

That is to say, the old nature of a believer has been crucified with Christ and no longer controls the individual who has been converted through faith in Christ. Unfortunately, our old nature (also referred to as our "old man") didn't get the memo and continues to fight for life within us even though we "have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God." (6:22) I addressed this issue five years ago in an article titled, "The 'Inner Zombie' of the Christian Life."

Here is the deal. A Christian is a forgiven sinner who is now free to live for Christ. A Christian no longer has to give into temptation. Freedom from sin means among other things the freedom to choose that which is right and holy. Even then, the only good choices we make are the result of Christ living in us. I addressed this matter in the article, "Jesus Is a Believer's Justification and Sanctification."

So what gets in the way of a Christian living a fully devoted life of discipleship? Simply put, our old nature fights to stay in control of our life even though our soul has come under the authority of "new management." The apostle Paul was no exception to this inner struggle. He wrote, "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do." (7:15) In other words, even the apostle Paul was not a perfect man. He still experienced thoughts and behavior that didn't come from the Lord, but rather, from his sinful nature. And how did Paul explain this apparent discrepancy between his profession of faith and his less than perfect life? "As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature." (7:17,18)

The inner zombie of the apostle's life had been crucified when Saul was converted, (Acts 9:1-18) and yet the apostle still experienced the rumblings of sin coming from his old nature within him. And let's be honest here. Is this not also the experience of every single Christian today? Who among us can honestly say, "I never think a sinful thought even for a few seconds. I never speak an unwise or unkind word. I never give into temptation of any kind." In reality, our struggle is very similar to what Paul experienced, and our weaknesses are just as real. This spiritual dynamic led Paul to write, "I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do - this I keep on doing." (7:18,19)

All of us who know Christ experience the same thing. For example, we hate to think unkind thoughts of others, and yet we continue to experience such thoughts at times. Where do these evil thoughts come from? They come from our sinful nature as it fights to maintain some measure of influence in our life. When we get to heaven one day, we will not experience any of these evil thoughts or sinful desires. But for now, the inner zombie is a daily reality we must constantly guard against. Paul wrote, "When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law, but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind....what a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God - through Jesus Christ our Lord!" (7:21-25)

Paul was sold out to Jesus and he had been "set free from sin." (6:18) At the same time, he was still a sinner who experienced daily temptations and ongoing spiritual battles against his own sinful inclinations. In summing up this conflict within the soul of every believer, Paul wrote, "So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin." (7:25) Every Christian should be able to proclaim the same thing. "I want to do God's will, but at the same time I am still involved in a daily struggle against sin. I long to obey Christ, but I also find myself coming up short on a regular basis." This is the confession of every believer who is honest with himself and who sincerely seeks to please the Lord in everything. (Eph. 5:10)

Certain religious leaders seem to feel it is their duty to cast doubt upon the salvation of some sincere Christians in their midst. Those who employ this legalistic tactic constantly push people to do more, while they themselves don't have much of a clue as to what actually constitutes biblical Christianity. True Christian discipleship is rooted in the Gospel. Compare the misguided approach of some to what Paul wrote to the believers in Rome: "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." (8:1) This powerful declaration came after Paul's extensive presentation about how God "justifies the man who has faith in Jesus" (3:26) and that believers "have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness." (6:18) Paul included himself in this group of people "who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit." (8:4)

It really boils down to what a person chooses to focus upon. "Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace; the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so." (8:5-7)

So where is your focus today? Are you fixing your eyes upon sinful things, or upon Jesus? If your mind has drifted away from the things of God and the cross of Christ, this would be a perfect time to repent and refocus

How else could we ever hope to please God? After all, "those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God. You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ." (8:8,9) In other words, the Lord lives within every Christian. As Paul made abundantly clear, "But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness." (8:10) And this explains why believers "have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God." (6:22) Jesus Christ truly sets the captives free!

This doesn't mean, however, that a life of discipleship is easy. The apostle Paul endured far more than his share of suffering. (2 Cor. 11:23-33) And yet it was this insightful servant of Christ who wrote, "I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us." (8:18) Paul was able to see the big picture, and he knew that Jesus had already won the victory for everyone who places their faith in the Messiah. In addition, Paul wrote: "We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose." (8:28) This particular passage has brought much comfort to Christians over the centuries, especially when going through trials and difficulties. And it was our Lord Himself who said, "In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." (John 16:33)

This eternal perspective allowed Paul to realize that Christians can "rejoice in our sufferings" (5:3) even as we "groan inwardly and wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies." (8:23) The Holy Spirit lives within every believer (1 Cor. 6:19) and thankfully, "the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express." (8:26) Not only that, but Jesus is "also interceding for us" (8:34) as our "mediator of a new covenant." (Heb. 12:24) It is only through faith in the blood of Christ shed on the cross that "we have redemption" and "the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace." (Eph. 1:7) "Christ loves us and has freed us from our sins by His blood." (Rev. 1:5)

"What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all - how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns?" "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?" (8:31-35) Paul wanted the saints in Rome to understand that "in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us." (8:37)

This article on chapters 7 and 8 of Romans wraps up the series I have written for Catholics, Protestants and every Christian. The 8th chapter sums up the Gospel message which Paul laid out beautifully in Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Romans. Along with all of Scripture, these five epistles present a message of power, peace and perfect redemption in Christ alone. Jesus not only changed the life of the apostle Paul, but also millions like him over the centuries. It was Paul's "new birth" (1 Peter 1:3) and his confidence in Jesus' sacrifice on the cross that led this faithful apostle to constantly extol the love of God in Christ:

"For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:38,39) "To the only wise God be glory forever through Jesus Christ! Amen." (Rom. 16:27)

Other articles in this series:

"Romans 1 and 2 for Catholics, Protestants and Every Christian"

"Romans 3 and 4 for Catholics, Protestants and Every Christian"

"Romans 5 and 6 for Catholics, Protestants and Every Christian"

"Galatians for Catholics, Protestants and Every Christian"

"Ephesians for Catholics, Protestants and Every Christian"

"Philippians for Catholics, Protestants and Every Christian"

"Colossians for Catholics, Protestants and Every Christian"
Emergency call handlers told to drop 'Mr' and 'Mrs' in favour of gender neutral terms

Emergency call handlers in London may soon be told to stop using 'Mr' and 'Mrs' to address callers.

According to The Telegraph, the London Ambulance Service is considering changing its policy to make the language used in 999 calls more inclusive and gender-neutral.

If the changes are adopted, it would also mean that call operators would no longer be able to use 'Sir' or 'Madam' to address callers.

The proposals were reportedly disclosed at a recent ambulance services conference hosted by LGBT campaigners.

Jules Lockett, head of emergency operations centre training at London Ambulance Service, and joint head of its LGBT network, told the conference that terms like 'Sir' and 'Madam' were a reflection of 'old fashioned customer service'.

She said the London Ambulance Service was looking into different words that could be used by the call operators and that they were being actively 'steered away' from addressing callers as 'Mr' or 'Mrs'.

The London Ambulance Service is not the only organisation embracing gender neutral terms on the grounds of being more inclusive.

Northern Ireland's Commissioner for Children and Young People, Koulla Yiasouma, told BBC Radio Ulster's Talkback programme last week that teachers should 'try to use gender-neutral language to be welcoming of all the children'.

She made the comments after it emerged that the Education Authority is sending out 'non-statutory' guidance to schools across Northern Ireland to help them support transgender students.

Ms Yiasouma said: 'It's much easier to say good morning children than it is to say good morning boys and girls.'

But she added that teachers would be free to choose whether they used the recommended gender neutral language or not.

'I am not going to condemn a teacher for not doing it,' she said.
God is not male or female, says Archbishop of Canterbury

The Archbishop of Canterbury has weighed in on the debate over God's gender by saying He is neither male nor female.

The Most Reverend Justin Welby said descriptions of God were 'to some degree metaphorical' and that His characterisation as 'Father' could not be understood in exactly the same way as an earthly father.

The Archbishop made the comments during a conversation on encountering God at St-Martins-in-the-Fields Church in London last week.

Speaking to the church's vicar, the Rev Dr Sam Wells, the Archbishop said: 'It is extraordinarily important as Christians that we remember that the definitive revelation of who God is was not in words, but in the word of God who we call Jesus Christ. We can't pin God down.'

He added: 'God is not a father in exactly the same way as a human being is a father. God is not male or female. God is not definable.'

When a member of the audience asked what it meant to him to call God 'Father', he said he understood it to express the unconditional love and companionship of God through life.

'So, what does it mean for me to call God father, having had a rather confusing experience of fathers? It means that here is one that is perfect, that loves me unconditionally, that reaches out to me and knows me better than I know myself and yet still loves me profoundly,' he said.

'That loves me enough to make redemption and blessing possible and open. That offers me a way through life that can be very complicated and painful, and can be overwhelming and wonderful, but is always father... is always the one who in love embraces, draws, heals, blesses and will eventually call me to be present to God.'

The debate in the Church of England over the gender of God was reignited recently when its first female diocesan bishop, the Rt Rev Rachel Treweek, said ministers should avoid referring to God in exclusively male terms and be 'mindful of our language'.

'I don't want young girls or young boys to hear us constantly refer to God as he,' she said.
The proposal to build a 140-foot tall cell tower near their master-planned community galvanized residents of Grand Lakes.

They are circulating petitions, collecting proxy votes and doing research on cell tower impacts on health and property values. They are preparing for a Dec. 3 meeting of the Grand Lakes Homeowners Association board where they intend to present their information to sway board members to oppose the project.

The proposed tower is a project of Vertical Bridge Holdings, based in Boca Raton, Fla. A company spokesman could not be reached for comment by presstime.

The cell tower is proposed for vacant commercial property west of Home Depot and behind the McDonalds off Sout Fry Road, according to the homeowner associations website.

According to www.grandlakeslife.com, The cellular tower proposed will look like a pine tree like the one across from Seven Lakes Junior High School on Katy-Gaston Road.

T-Mobile would be the initial user of the tower.

However, it is anticipated that once the tower is constructed and under power most, if not all, major providers will lease space to provide improved reception to the area. It is estimated that the tower would provide better cell reception within roughly a 2 miles radius from the tower, according to the website.

Ten-year Grand Lakes resident Lijuan Wang and 12-year Grand Lakes resident Lillian Taylor are among those residents objecting to the tower and working toward stopping its construction.

To prepare for the meeting, we are trying to collect information to support our concerns regarding the impact of the tower, said Wang, referring to health risks associated with cell tower radiation and how it might lower property values. Grand Lakes has more than 2,700 homes.

She was among residents who protested the tower on Nov. 17 when a subcontractor conducted advance tests related to the project.

We have signatures from 400 households, she said. By the time of the meeting, she anticipates having more. When she started on Nov. 4, she said she went door to door talking to neighbors and collected 60 signatures in one afternoon.

Both she and Taylor noted many residents were unaware of the project and they are working to promote awareness.

Wang said alternatives to cell towers exist that allow cell phone users to improve their reception.

While Taylor calls the proposed project an eyesore, she said the priority is the potential adverse health risk to pregnant women and their babies, children or any person. She noted that the subdivision is home to two elementary schools, two junior highs and one high school.

Taylor said the tower project has unified neighbors. It took us to the point of recognizing that were going to take care of each other.

karen.zurawski@chron.com
For four years, Deysi Crespo has served as executive director of Katy Christian Ministries.

The nonprofit based at 5504 First St. began providing social services in 1984. Its social services office helps families with emergency financial assistance, vouchers for clothing and referrals. Through the Crisis Center, victims of family violence and sexual abuse can receive emergency crisis intervention, shelter placement and assistance through the legal system. Clients can shop in the KCM food pantry. Clients and the public can shop in the resale store, which is a source of revenue for KCM.

Hurricane Harvey provided one of the biggest challenges for KCM which worked to repair its flooded offices while it continued to help clients.

Upon the recommendation of Katy Mayor Chuck Brawner, Katy Christian Ministries recently received a donation from the Hurricane Harvey Relief Fund at the North Texas Community Foundation. The proceeds came from the Nov. 28, 2017 Helping Texans: A Hurricane Harvey Benefit organized by Ed Bass and held in Fort Worth that featured Clint Black, Lyle Lovette and Don Henley. Black, a Katy native, donated his portion of the concert proceeds, $323,322, to Katy Christian Ministries.

How will Katy Christian Ministries use the donation received from Clint Black?

These funds are designated for the families to help them recover from Harvey. We will continue to conduct assessments and case management to families. There is a vetting process to ensure good stewardship of the funds. Financial assistance with rent/mortgage for displaced families:

Cost of furniture and applicants replacement such as mattresses, stoves, refrigerators

Vehicle replacement and/or repair

Relocation fees and cost

Cost of home repairs and materials through Home Depot, Lowes and/or Ace Hardware

Fence repair and sod replacement cost

Our case managers have done a phenomenal job. They are working continually. Thats what were here for. Their goal is to help as many families as possible.

How has Katy Christian Ministries changed/grown since you became executive director?

I can honestly tell you we have changed to being a transparent and financially healthy organization, with great policies and procedures in place. Our Financial Statements have proven to reflect full transparency and are in compliance with GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles). The financial position of Katy Christian Ministries as of Dec. 31, 2017 and 2016 and the changes in its next assets and ts cash flows for the years then ended are in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the U.S. No recommendations from auditors for two consecutive years. This is fantastic! It also reflects the improvement in our efficiencies to attain 89 cents of every dollar is to help our families in need.

Many thanks to the hard work in conjunction with the Board of Directors, KCM has achieved many milestones: Accredited by BBB of Greater Houston for three years, GuideStar-Gold Status for three years and Evangelical Council of Financial Accountability for two years.

Every even year, KCM goes through a rigorous assessment utilizing a rigorous tool designed to capture the organizations infrastructure, growth and sustainability. Here is our historical growth for which I am very proud of!

In 2014, KCM scored 79 percent

In 2016, KCM scored 93.4 percent

In 2018, KCM scored 97.6 percent

We continued to be in good standing with the Houston Food Bank. In 2018, KCM was selected to become a referring pantry for the Food for Change Program administered by the Houston Food Bank in an effort to permanently improve peoples lives by addressing the root causes and downstream effects of food insecurity. With the implementation of the most recent Client Choice Model this year and Food for Change program, along with with other programs implemented and measured, KCM is looking forward to serving our families utilizing the strengths-approach with an empowerment framework.

What are your goals for the next four years?

Our goal for the next four years is to own our own property. I do not know when or how this will happen, but the Board of Directors and I do not want to be paying rent forever. Strategically, we are moving in the direction of assessing our current growth and assessing our communitys needs. In years to come, in collaboration with the Alliance of Community Assistance Ministries, we will have a model that will prove best practices for family independence.

We are goal-oriented. We focus on specific programs that meet our goal - how can we help our families. I believe in just being there for one another. We saw it through Harvey. We needed help but we were there to help families.

How long have you lived in the Katy area and how has it changed?

Ive lived in the Katy area since 2003=15 years. I see it growing right in front of my eyes year after year. New developments and more people moving to this side of town. Likewise, the need has grown exponentially.

What is your background and how did it help you when you came to Katy Christian Ministries?

I first started as a volunteer. Then I held various positions as a leader in different capacities. With that skill set, I worked with various teams and various groups of people. My background is in social work. I have a huge heart to help people in need. Being at KCM is like a home for me.

karen.zurawski@chron.com
The sun shined down on Oakwood Cemetery in Conroe Saturday as the Daughters of the American Revolution honored a fallen American hero with his family.

Nearly 50 years ago, Air Force Captain Donald Wayne Lowe of Conroe died along with Captain James J. Crawford of Missouri. The two were serving in the Vietnam War with the 56th Special Operations Wing, 7th Air Force when their T-28 Trojan plane crashed on Feb. 3, 1972 during a combat mission in Thailand.

We are proud and honored, said his now-remarried widow Jerry Mills, who remains devastated by the loss but felt humbled by the ceremony honoring the late Vietnam veteran.

Born December 12, 1939, the late Conroe High School and Texas A&M graduate was only 32 years old when he died. Mills shared Lowe worked offshore every summer to pay for college. He worked at the Allen Military Academy and was in the Texas A&M Corps of Cadets. He was commissioned as an officer into the Air Force after graduating from college.

Also a CHS graduate, Mills shared she met Lowe on a blind date with another couple at Baytown Seafood that used to be a Shipleys Donuts. They were together for eight years.

He engaged me right away with a paper straw that you could wrap around your finger, Mills laughed. I thought he was so beautiful and smart.

Mills remembers him as an honorable, dedicated man of faith, a smart and hard worker, who loved to fly.

He wanted to be up in the air every day, Mills said. He wanted to be a military pilot. Back then, it was an honor to serve the country in that capacity.

Today, she passionately believes it is important for people to remember the service of those lost and to honor those who serve their country, including by respecting the flag and government regardless of who is in office.

These men are very, very brave because they dont know if they will come home and so many didnt they went in knowing that, Mills said. That is braverywhen you know there is a risk and you go ahead and do it.  I think every man over there is a hero.

Lowe and Mills had two young children, Meredith Lowe (Carter) who was one-and-a-half years old and Jennifer Lowe, who was 3, when he died. Mills and her daughters joined her family along with Lowes siblings and their children at the ceremony at the Oakwood Cemetery off Texas 105. DAR and the American Legion Post #618 Color Guard presented the family with folded American flags, a salute, certificates, including from U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady, RThe Woodlands, who confirmed a flag was flown over the U.S. Capitol in remembrance of Lowe.

Also at the ceremony was his granddaughter Madison Carter, who read the High Flight Poem in remembrance of his life, legacy, and service. She is one of four grandchildren, along with Joshua Carter, 2, Duke Carter, 1, Layla Carter, 1. His great-nephew Zachary Rogers, 13, placed flags around his grave. The national anthem was performed by Jean Marie.

I just appreciate it, his sister B.J. Butts said as she fought back the tears. He was so great.

The ceremony also featured a moment of remembrance with his friend U.S. Air Force Captain John Millhollon, who remembered Lowes lessons on how to be a cool pilot such as by the way he wore his hat, placed his feet on the desk, or propped his leg on the wall with a coke and a candy bar. He also remembered the playful side of Lowe who loved to pull pranks, but also showed great concern for his students, who he said respected him, that he taught to be the best along with safe practices. The stories brought some tears to the eyes of the nearly dozen family members whose laughter rose above of Lowes headstone in admiration.

As he loved his students and the Air Force, most of all he loved his family, Millhollon said. Its sad today that we had to bid farewell to Don nearly 50 years ago, but if he were standing here today I know he would be thinking who could he play a joke on and how could he make you laugh.

This is the first ceremony the DAR chapter has held with family present. The organization has marked Vietnam veterans graves at five cemeteries with small American flags for the past three or four years, including at the Willis Wreath Ceremony each year, which is traditionally held in the spring.

Hes an American hero and one we are proud to recognize, said Meg Mendeck, who hopes the ceremony gives a chance for the family and new generation to honor their late loved one and to find some closure.

mellsworth@hcnonline.com
Trevor Meshell of Conroe reached out his hand on Saturday with a big smile on his face to pet a large animal with big ears wearing a Santa Claus hat, but it wasnt Rudolph.

While Santa Claus may have reindeer to pull his sleigh, the Montgomery County Precinct 2 Constables Office is spreading the holiday cheer with horses like Houdini, Buckshot, and Sonny Claus.

They are really soft, he said beaming at the horses wearing Christmas decorations at Target off Texas 105 and Interstate 45.

The horses appeared happy to visit with Mechell and his siblings, as well as to munch on a few peppermint treats, but the horses have a big job to do this year as part of Operation Ho Ho Ho.

For nearly 20 years, Constables Office deputies and mounted posse have run the operation to help keep the community safe during the holiday season. Its a time of year that Captain Landon Blum says the community often sees a significant increase in shoplifting, stolen cars, and car burglaries. But fighting crime can have its fun moments.

Its such a great feeling (to be a part of the operation), said Marilyn Kinney with Sonny Claus. We get people who have never touched a horse before that we are able to introduce to the horse because they are calm. Its great for the kids, to see their faces, and to make them feel safe. Its a win-win scenario.

Isnt that right, Buckshot? she added with a laugh addressing the horse next to hers--decorated in blue to back the blue.

The shopping center patrol kicked off for the 17th year Saturday and will run through Christmas with the hope the increased presence will help deter crime as it has in the past.

Thats really nice of them, Meshell said before a deputy handed him a badge sticker.

Precinct 2 Constable Gene DeForest shared the operation currently has about 11 horses and volunteers involved in the operation that rotate at some of the busiest shopping centers in town, including Target and Walmart in Conroe. Some feedback DeForest has received include businesses that have claimed shoplifting dropped by well over 50 percent and some shoppers felt safer shopping and returning to their cars.

I wanted to do something for the community and people, DeForest said. The outcome was not only did shoplifting go down but kids wanted to take pictures. This is a great tool.

The horses also offer approachability, a higher vantage point and maneuverability in the shopping center parking lots, the officials said.

Since we are so visible some people will voice concerns, Laura Alexander said with Buckshot and noting a member of the community once felt comfortable enough to seek assistance when his car broke down.

The community appeared jolly about Operation Ho Ho Ho too.

The horses are beautiful, Debra Holmes said, noting some children dont always have a chance to see horses. How honorable it is of them to take the time from their day for the children. Nobody gives them enough credit for this type of service.

For those interested in more information about how to support the operation or for the service, contact the Montgomery County Precinct 2 Constables Office, who wishes the community a safe and happy holiday season.

mellsworth@hcnonline.com
A teen was shot in the head while walking down the sidewalk in west Houston, according to police.

At first, Houston police took in the 17-year-old's friend as a person of interest, but later described the gunfire as a "possible drive-by" with no suspects.
A federal audit found that Lone Star College improperly disbursed close to $14 million in grants and federal loans to ineligible students over a four-year period, the school system said this week.

A Department of Education program review discovered that from 2012 to 2016, the Houston-area career training college gave out $13.8 million in Pell, Supplemental Education Opportunity Grants and federal loans to students who shouldnt have received them, according to a Lone Star College news release.

The audit found that the money went to students from ineligible high schools, and that the institution didnt prevent students with unsatisfactory academic progress from receiving aid, under certain regulations.

In all, the improperly distributed funds accounted for 2 percent of the $663 million awarded over the same time period, according to the news release.

Chancellor Stephen C. Head said the college, which enrolls 99,000 students per semester, is cooperating with the Department of Education.

"I'm obviously disappointed in the findings. We take great pride in our business practices and our obligations to the community, Head said in a news release. We take full responsibility for implementing the appropriate actions to ensure we adhere to best practices moving forward."

In response to the audits findings, Head has launched a full audit of the colleges financial aid practices, with assistance from outside specialists.

The Houston Chronicle has contacted the Department of Education and Lone Star College for comment. It's unclear how the audit's findings will affect the students who shouldn't have received the funds.

Lone Star College operates six college campuses, eight centers, two university centers, Lone Star Corporate College and LSC-Online.
Banana growers eye Aussie, Korean marts

posted November 25, 2018 at 07:05 pm by Othel V. Campos November 25, 2018 at 07:05 pm

The Pilipino Banana Growers and Exporters Association is set to send delegations to markets that still impose restrictions on Philippine banana exports. PBGEA officials are set to personally explore the banana markets of South Korea and Australia and negotiate with counterparts on how better to proceed with a request to allow the entry of Philippine bananas into these markets. Former PBGEA president Steve Antig will lead a group of banana growers to South Korea to convince their counterparts and the South Korean government to ease tariff and non-tariff restrictions on Philippine bananas.Antigs group aims to convince the South Korean government to agree on a bilateral agreement with the Philippines to lower the tax from 30 to zero percent. Other PBGEA executives led by Benny Corcolon are scheduled to go to Canberra on November tomorrow to meet with government officials there and raise the possibility of allowing Philippine banana exports during the lean months so as not to compete with Australian banana growers.

COMMENT DISCLAIMER: Reader comments posted on this Web site are not in any way endorsed by Manila Standard. Comments are views by manilastandard.net readers who exercise their right to free expression and they do not necessarily represent or reflect the position or viewpoint of manilastandard.net. While reserving this publications right to delete comments that are deemed offensive, indecent or inconsistent with Manila Standard editorial standards, Manila Standard may not be held liable for any false information posted by readers in this comments section.
A motorcyclist died early Saturday morning when he struck a concrete barrier on the elevated Interstate 45 freeway entrance at Pease Street and toppled over the edge, police said.

The man fell nearly 20 feet from the entrance ramp and died at the scene, Houston police Sgt. David Rodriguez said. Investigators did not believe other vehicles were involved in the accident.
A police chase ended with a flooded street in southwest Houston early Sunday after a fleeing driver crashed into a fire hydrant.

Houston police tried pulling over a car near Hillcroft and South Main around 1 a.m., but instead the driver sped off. It was a short chase at a high speed, headed eastbound along the service road, according to authorities.

DEADLY WRECK: Motorcycle rider killed in high-speed wreck with SUV

The pursuit ended when the driver lost control and skidded off the roadway and into the grass, running over and breaking fire hydrant.

Water spewed out into the street and sparked minor flooding in the roadway.

The driver was treated for minor injuries by paramedics at the scene, and is expected to face unauthorized use of a motor vehicle and evading charges.

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PH gets Chinese grant for two infra projects

posted November 25, 2018 at 07:10 pm by Darwin G. Amojelar November 25, 2018 at 07:10 pm

The Department of Public Works and Highways said it obtained a grant from the Chinese government to finance two infrastructure projects in Visayas and Mindanao. The DPWH said the Philippines and Chinese governments signed the implementation agreement for the conduct of feasibility study on the Davao City Expressway Project and the Panay-Guimaras-Negros Island Bridges. The implementation agreement for the 26 kilometers Davao City Expressway Project covers full-scale geological survey and topographic map measurement, thematic research on roads and bridges, engineering programs, socio-economic, engineering geology, hydrological surveys, environmental and social impact assessments, and feasibility study reports.The study will be undertaken within a period not exceeding 12 months by CCCC Highway Consultants Co. Ltd., chosen by AIECO as the Chinese project implementation company. The feasibility study for the Panay-Guimaras-Negros Island Bridges will be carried out within 14 months also by CCCC Highway Consultants Co. Ltd.

COMMENT DISCLAIMER: Reader comments posted on this Web site are not in any way endorsed by Manila Standard. Comments are views by manilastandard.net readers who exercise their right to free expression and they do not necessarily represent or reflect the position or viewpoint of manilastandard.net. While reserving this publications right to delete comments that are deemed offensive, indecent or inconsistent with Manila Standard editorial standards, Manila Standard may not be held liable for any false information posted by readers in this comments section.
A man was shot after a suspected road rage incident ended in gunfire outside a Burger King, according to the Harris County Sheriff's Office.

Two drivers got into some sort of altercation just before 1 a.m. Sunday near Veterans Memorial and North Sam Houston. Afterward, one driver followed the other as he pulled off and into a Burger King parking lot.
Two men with outsized personalities, both intent on bringing dramatic change to their societies. Two countries, side by side, with a long history of friendly trade and sometimes hostile diplomacy.

As the leftist politician Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador takes the mantle of the Mexican presidency Dec. 1, political experts, former diplomats and business leaders are bracing for a potential collision with self-styled nationalist President Donald Trump.

The anticipated confrontation between Trump and Lopez Obrador  commonly called by his initials, AMLO  could affect Texas more than any other state given the billions of dollars in Lone Star products that are sold south of the border.

MANEUVERS: Cuellar questions Border Patrol shift to California, troops in Texas

The possible flash points include a changing energy policy, trade protections, increased heroin and methamphetamine trafficking and an abrupt reversal of the Mexican governments costly campaign to confront the powerful drug cartels. But perhaps the biggest is the bitterness engendered by Trumps harsh immigration policies and his plan to erect an impenetrable wall along 1,200 miles of U.S.-Mexico border.

There is a rocky road ahead for the relationship between the U.S. and Mexico and the two presidents, said Duncan Wood, the director of the Wilson Centers Mexico Institute, during in a recent visit to Houston.

Lopez Obrador is a skilled politician who was mayor of Mexico City from 2000 to 2005 and national party leader, running twice for the presidency prior to winning. He and Trump are forceful, charismatic leaders with a populist, anti-establishment bent to their politics and are adept at inflaming the passions of their base supporters. And perhaps more to the point when it comes to a personality contest, Neither of them likes to be contradicted, said Wood.

Indeed, Trump had reportedly referred to the Mexican president-elect as Juan Trump, a recognition of the similarities between him and the populist Mexican politician, according to a story in Americas Quarterly.

SHORED UP: Galveston company wins second contract for Texas border wall

Both leaders have taken unexpected steps to demonstrate their resolve. Lopez Obrador has put Mexicos $218 million presidential jet up for sale, while Trump earlier renegotiated the price tag of two Air Force One replacements and claimed savings of $1.4 billion.

But Lopez Obrador has distanced himself from any semblance to Trump, who, in his opinion, fuels racism  as a political strategy and a leader who has done Mexico much damage, according to an interview with the Spanish language TV network Univision.

Vice President Mike Pence will lead the U.S. delegation to Mexico to attend Lopez Obradors inauguration.

New course for Mexico?

Observers say the Mexican leader has already given some key indications of the course he will steer.

Lopez Obradors plan to cancel the construction of the Mexico City airport, a $13.3 billion project with a third of the work already completed, sent shock waves through the investment and business sectors. With U.S. foreign direct investments in Mexico of $110 billion last year, concerns rose about Mexico as a reliable business partner.

We are already getting a sense of what an AMLO presidency might look like, since the administration has named many of the key policy personnel and moved forward on some campaign promises, such as its consultation for whether or not to keep building the new Mexico City airport, said Antonio Tony Garza, a former U.S. ambassador to Mexico.

Lopez Obrador was able to easily wrest power from outgoing President Enrique Pena Nieto, whose Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) had supported global open markets and free trade. But Pena Nietos presidency was also hamstrung by unchecked corruption and what was perceived by the Mexican populace as a submissive stance when Trump met with the president and insisted that Mexico would pay for the border wall.

Trumps nationalism looks outward; it manifests in attacks on international institutions and the leaders and people from other countries, said Tony Payan, the director of the Baker Institutes Mexico Center.

Lopez Obradors nationalism looks inward to restoring Mexicos working class with subsidized policies. He is seeking to restore the state as a central economic agent, and his criticism of globalization and the (North American) free trade agreement has to do with his belief that previous administrations implemented a neoliberal economic model that punished the poor, Payan said.

Key energy policy changes

The stakes are high for the future of the U.S. economic relationship with Mexico, its third-largest trading partner with combined trade of $616 billion.

Mexico was the second largest export market for U.S. products in 2017, while becoming the largest provider of fruits and vegetables and other agricultural products, according to the Office of the United States Trade Representative. Cross-border trade between Texas and Mexico was $187 billion.

Wood agreed that Lopez Obradors appointees so far signal a cabinet that is committed to unraveling the energy reforms signed into law in August 2014 by the previous administration, with AMLO already announcing a plan to suspend auctions for oil production contracts in the Gulf of Mexico. I am particularly worried about the energy sector and what happens next with it, Wood said.

So far, 110 oil and gas contracts representing about $200 billion in foreign investment have been granted under Mexicos reform of its energy sector and the national PEMEX oil monopoly, with U.S. companies winning the second highest number of contracts after private Mexican firms.

The energy reforms were considered to be particularly beneficial to Houstons economy, given its leadership in offshore oil exploration and production technologies.

At a minimum, the airport pullout signaled that Lopez Obrador plans to deliver on campaign promises.

In a recent speech, he pledged to rescue the oil and gas industry, from a decline in production that he blamed to the historic opening of PEMEX to foreign investment. When enacted, Lopez Obrador accused the current president of being a traitor to the country for handing over the countrys natural resources to foreigners.

The likelihood of the next (Mexican) administration impacting how business is done in the energy sector is high, said Garza, whos now counsel to the law firm of White & Case in Mexico City. The question is how disruptive will it be and if returns will be seen as justifying the additional risk.

So far AMLOs party has proposed legislation aimed at the new regulatory framework, said Garza, adding that the president-elect has been all over the board on issues having to do with gas and power, and essentially come out against fracking, all of which, if hes serious about, have the potential to impact Texas.

Gov. Greg Abbott, through a press aide, said he welcomes working with Mexicos new administration to build on economic and cultural bonds.

Governor Abbott believes that a strong relationship with Mexico, our largest trade partner, is essential to Texas economic success, said Ciara Matthews, deputy communications director. Through cooperation on infrastructure, energy, trade, and security, Texas and Mexico will continue to strengthen our long-standing relationship and bring even greater prosperity to both sides of the border.

Differences over immigration

Differences with Mexico regarding Trumps immigration policies, analysts said, could be another contentious topic.

As caravans of migrants departed Central America to seek asylum at the U.S. border in the weeks before midterm elections, Trump moved quickly to politicize the caravan by branding it an invasion and claiming that Middle Eastern terrorists and gang members were among their ranks.

Trump ordered the U.S. military to the border and meanwhile threatened to withhold foreign aid to Mexico and the Central American countries whose citizens are fleeing economic hardship and violence.

Mexico chose not to halt the migrants by force, and instead offered visas and asylum to the Central Americans in an effort to induce many to abandon the long trek to the north. Trump has declared the migrant caravans a national security threat, and ordered border agents not to accept asylum seekers who enter the U.S. away from legal ports of entry.

Lopez Obrador has repeatedly criticized Trumps xenophobic and disrespectful depiction of migrants and insisted they should receive humanitarian treatment.

During his presidential campaign, Lopez Obrador introduced a petition before the Inter American Commission on Human Rights condemning Trump for allegedly persecuting immigrants and implementing hate speeches and policies, such as the border wall, in violation of human rights, as he and a lawyer explained the action.

War on drugs

Earlier this month, Lopez Obrador said his administration will de-emphasize the fight against drug cartels, focusing instead on roots of crime, according to a Bloomberg report.

Main points of the strategy include creating a national guard and stressing regional coordination of security efforts, eradicating corruption, rethinking the prohibition of some drugs and creating job opportunities, Lopez Obrador and cabinet members have said.

This marks a dramatic departure, since both countries have intensively and extensively collaborated in a fight against the drug cartels, noted Payan of the Baker Institute.

The Mexican government launched a bloody battle against the cartels in 2006 when conservative president Felipe Calderon ordered military forces into the fight, leading to a protracted campaign that has left since an estimated of around 200,000 thousand dead and missing, including civilians, journalists, and politicians.

The new president supports the decriminalization of marijuana recently approved by the Mexican supreme court, and has discussed offering amnesty to drug cartels as part of his pacification process.

This can produce a serious disagreement between Washington and Mexico, Payan said. The war on drugs has given the U.S. agencies such as the CIA and the DEA unprecedented access to the Mexican government apparatus and its migration and security policies. Lopez Obrador doesnt like that kind of interference in Mexico, he said.

Pragmatism over confrontation

The top Mexican diplomat in Houston predicts the two presidents will avoid public disputes and instead concentrate on accomplishing their own domestic agendas.

Lopez Obrador was the head of Mexico City before and has a good track record in government, said Oscar Rodriguez Cabrera, who leaves his post as general consul of the Mexican Consulate in Houston at the end of this month.

Rodriguez Cabrera doesnt buy pessimistic views about the future relations between the U.S. and Mexico and notes that both Lopez Obrador and Trump are pragmatic politicians.

Garza, the former U.S. ambassador, notes that Trump is unpredictable and AMLO sends occasionally troubling signals.

Garza, along with experts and the business leaders, hope that the pragmatism of the two presidents will prevent a conflict that could have a ripple effect on both economies.

Payan expects Lopez Obrador will ignore the expected harsh reactions from Trump as he implements his presidential policies. He could follow with a strategy resembling a quiet resistance, reminiscent of Mexicos colonial era of obeying but not complying with mandates from Spanish rulers, Payan said.

In other words, avoiding public stridency while staying on his course, Payan said.

Business leaders, including Laura Murillo, head of the Greater Houston Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, are intent on maintaining commercial ties estimated at $20 billion in direct trade between Houston and Mexico.

Business at the Port of Houston, the Medical Center and trade rely on import and exports between our countries, said Murillo, who has been invited to the Mexican presidential inauguration.

Wood, the Mexico expert at the Wilson Center, thinks the two leaders should continuing to exchanged official correspondence, in the form of letters as they have already and successfully interchanged to talk about their priorities, and avoid direct and public exchanges.

Forge a pen pal relationship, he advises.

olivia.tallet@chron.com

Twitter: @oliviaptallet
Texas has a doctor shortage. The latest report by the Texas Medical Board, which licenses the states physicians, lists at least one doctor in 227 of Texas 254 counties, but 24 counties have just one physician. Seventeen others only have two, and 15 counties have three doctors.

The Association of American Medical Colleges ranked Texas 47th out of the 50 states in having enough physicians to serve its population. More doctors are especially needed in medically deprived rural areas. Unfortunately, Texas seems to be taking the same approach to its doctor shortage as it did by building more roads to address its snarled traffic: Its building more medical schools. That alone wont solve the problem.

The University of Houston and Sam Houston State University will by 2020 open medical schools. Already recently opened are the new Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Texas Rio Grande School of Medicine in Edinburg and the University of the Incarnate School of Osteopathic Medicine in San Antonio. Thats not all: Texas Christian University and the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth have partnered to start teaching medicine in 2019.

All that activity will bring up-to-date medical care to more Texans. But graduating more medical students is only part of the prescription for Texas physician shortage. Doctors cant practice until they complete a residency, and Texas hospitals dont have enough slots for all the residency requests they receive. If you dont have a Graduate Medical Education position for residents, they will go someplace else for training and thats where they will stay, said Dr. George Santos, president of the Harris County Medical Society.

This isnt just a Texas problem. There is a shortage of residencies across the United States. Cost is the main culprit, followed by Congress inability to walk and chew gum at the same time when it comes to repairing Americas health care system.

Most of the cost to pay about 115,000 residents at the nations 1,000 teaching hospitals is provided by the Department of Health and Human Services through an annual Medicare allocation of $9.5 billion and an additional $2 billion from Medicaid.

Those amounts have remained relatively unchanged since a cap was put on federal funding for medical residencies in 1997 as a budget-balancing measure. The budget still isnt balanced, but a lot has changed in 21 years. Medicare is adding almost 10,000 new Baby Boomer enrollees every day, and the Affordable Care Act has meant medical insurance for more than 30 million additional potential patients.

Student Doctor Network, a nonprofit that supports medical education, points out that a surplus of 70,000 physicians was being predicted when the 1997 cap was placed on funding residencies. The Association of American Medical Colleges now estimates the country will be 121,000 physicians short by 2030. The Texas Department of State Health Services predicts that by 2030 the Lone Star State will have 3,375 fewer primary physicians than it needs.

A bill that has languished in a House subcommittee since 2017, the Resident Physician Shortage Reduction Act, would increase the number of Graduate Medical Education slots nationally by 3,000 each fiscal year from 2019 to 2023. About half the slots would be for residents practicing in high-demand areas such as primary care, which is also a recommendation of the Congressional Research Office.

Other recommendations made by the CRO make a lot of sense, too, and should be part of any reform that is reintroduced in the new Congress. For example, the CRO pointed out that GME allocations to hospitals do not reflect the income generated by residents specializing in a particular field. Hospitals shouldnt be allowed to use the GME program to boost profits. The report also noted that Medicare and Medicaid are not collecting data to assess whether their GME allocations are well spent. Its that type of poor stewardship of taxpayer money that has blemished those programs reputations. Heres a chance to address one aspect of it by requiring them to collect that information.

The Texas Legislature and the states hospitals also should find ways to fund more residencies. In North Texas, the UNT Health Science Center, Medical Center Healthcare and HCA Healthcare announced in June that they would create 500 new residencies over the next five to seven years. Similar partnerships already exist, but Texas needs more. Without additional resident slots, the state stands to lose many of the graduates from its new medical schools. They will leave the state for post-graduate training and never return. Preventive steps should be taken now to avoid an avoidable outcome.
What should we do during the next two years of divided government? We could spend them as weve spent the last two: React to every Trump outrage. Keep Trumps narcissistic provocations at center stage. Express daily contempt from within the safety of our political silos.

This seems to be the business model for cable news and online media. Theres a big, reliable audience of people who will tune in to feel appalled by and superior to President Donald Trump, and who are addicted to their daily rituals of moral onanism.

On the other hand, we could put the Trump soap opera off to the side and pay attention to actual Americans and actual solutions. We could acknowledge that we are an evenly divided country. We could build the bipartisan governing coalitions and agendas suited to that reality.

Fortunately, many people are opting for plan B. For example, the Convergence Center for Policy Resolution gathers stakeholders across the political spectrum and gets them working together on common visions  union bosses with Walmart executives, teacher union leaders with charter school heads.

Washington think tanks are undergoing a fundamental evolution. A lot of them, like the American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution, were built to advise parties that no longer exist. They were built for a style of public debate  based on social science evidence and congressional hearings that are more than just show trials  that no longer exists. Many people at these places have discovered that they have more in common with one another than they do with the extremists on their own sides.

So suddenly there is a flurry of working together across ideological lines. Next week, for example, the group Opportunity America, with Brookings and AEI, will release a bipartisan agenda called Work, Skills, Community: Restoring Opportunity for the Working Class.

Written by a wide array of scholars, the report starts with the truth that the working class has been mostly ignored by the rest of society. Government has welfare programs to serve the poor and they have programs like 529 savings accounts to subsidize the rich. But theres very little for families making, say, $50,000 a year.

Businesses like Amazon will invest in rich places like New York and Northern Virginia, but they wont invest much in working-class communities in Ohio or Kentucky. Universities, religious organizations and activist groups will recruit from the affluent suburbs and serve those in dire poverty, but they barely touch the working class.

What you get is a layer of society that has been denuded of institutions and social bonds. Working-class men have been dropping out of the labor force at alarming rates. A generation ago, working-class families were about as likely to be part of religious communities as affluent Americans, but now their participation rates have plummeted. A generation ago, working-class families were nearly as likely to be married as affluent people, but now only half the children in working-class families will be raised in adolescence by stably married parents. From the 1970s to the 2000s, the share of working-class people aged 25 to 60 who were involved in a neighborhood organization fell from 71 percent to 52 percent.

As the authors of the Opportunity America report lay out the evidence, you see how the debate has evolved over the past few years. First, there used to be relatively little research attention paid to the working class at all. Now its the epicenter. Second, there used to be a silly debate over whether economics or culture explained social breakdown. Now these two elements are woven seamlessly together. Third, geography plays a much bigger role. Social problems are concentrated in specific places.

The authors of this report dismiss the policy slogans coming from the extremes. Building a wall is not a policy. Universal basic income degrades the work ethic that is at the core of working-class life. Free college is a massive subsidy for the upper middle class.

Instead, the authors come up with a broad left/right agenda that 70 percent of Republicans and Democrats could support: wage subsidies, improved parental leave, work requirements for some federal benefits, child care tax credits.

I especially like their point that we have overemphasized four-year colleges as the only route to success. In 2016, the federal government spent $139 billion on postsecondary education and training. Only a sliver, 14 percent, went to career education and training. Private sector employers fetishize the college degree even where its unnecessary. Two-thirds of the job postings for production supervisors now require a college degree. But only 16 percent of the people currently holding those jobs have such a degree.

One of the core questions before us is this: Who is going to lead this country? Is it perpetual outsiders like Trump, with no governing or policy competence, who say the establishments have forfeited all credibility? Or are there enough chastened members of establishments, who have governing experience, who acknowledge past mistakes, who take the time to reconnect with the country and apply their expertise in new ways?

I dont know about you, Ill take a chastened establishment any day.

Brooks is a New York Times columnist.
AKRON, Ohio  Summa Health isnt the Cleveland Clinic or University Hospitals. It doesnt want to be. It wants to be the go-to community hospital for its corner of the state.

After a tumultuous 2017 plagued the Akron-based health system, the challenge in turning around Summa will be in regaining the medical and greater Northeast Ohio communitys trust, hospital officials say.

In response to the challenge, Summa is expanding its footprint. Its preparing to open a new $223-million tower on the main campus and new ambulatory and intensive outpatient units for opioid and other addictions.

The system is investing and doubling down to serve the needs of the community and to attract new patients, said Dr. Cliff Deveny, who was named president and CEO of the system in October.

About 21 percent, or 30,000, of those who need hospitalized from Summas coverage area travel to Cleveland instead of going to a local hospital.

That means they dont go to Akron General; they dont go to Crystal Clinic; they dont go to Western Reserve.

Deveny wants those people to choose Summa instead of traveling north to Cleveland.

A healthy rebound

After restructuring and consolidation throughout 2017 and recouping more than $32 million it expected to lose, Summa still ended last year $28 million in the red. But through the first nine months of this year, the system had an operating income of $18.7 million and is on trend to finish the year in the black.

The short-term goal is to continue to increase profitability, Deveny said. Were very much continuing to focus on operational metrics, financial metrics.

In addition to improved metrics, the hospital system has been working to rebuild its reputation after a series of events last year left employees and many in the community questioning its stability.

In June 2017, Summa eliminated 300 positions to stave off a projected $60-million year-end budget deficit. Earlier that year, its then-CEO Dr. Thomas Malone stepped down after receiving a no-confidence vote from Summas doctors over fallout from severing a longtime contract with emergency physicians. Summa later lost its accreditation for its emergency medicine residency program, a program it has yet been able to get reinstated.

Despite all of the setbacks, Deveny, an Akron native and former Summa executive who returned in early 2017, thinks the system is now on an upward trajectory.

We feel confident that we can be here for another 125 years. We know financially we are in a good situation to go it alone if needed, Deveny said.

But Summa doesnt plan to go it alone. In September, Summas board announced that it was searching for a potential partnership or merger with another health system to help ensure long-term financial stability. At the time, Deveny said he wanted to find a partner while Summa was in a strong financial position to do so.

Things will never be stable in healthcare; the business model is changing so rapidly. As weve stated, part of the reason for the partnership is the instability and unpredictability, Deveny said. Were going to have to be just comfortable with change and the dynamics of change and constantly making sure that were nimble enough to make the moves we have to but always keeping focused on the mission, which is being the steward of the communitys health.

The system initially identified about 30 regional and national health systems as potential partners, Deveny said. The board expects to finalize a deal by late 2019.

As consolidation in the national healthcare market continues, independent hospital systems are partnering with larger players to invest in electronic medical records and in better equipment and facilities, said Allan Baumgarten, a Minnesota-based healthcare consultant who tracks the Ohio market. And to remain competitive.

The Cleveland Clinic in recent years took over Akron General Hospital, bringing the Cleveland powerhouse system into more direct competition with Summa.

And independent hospitals are struggling to attract talent, Baumgarten added.

They have a hard time recruiting and retaining doctors, especially specialists, who dont want to work in small town Ohio, Baumgarten said.

Its hard to recruit in this community, Deveny said.

To combat that, Summa is expanding its existing obstetrics, medicine and surgery residency programs and looking at potential fellowships it can offer.

In Northeast Ohio, people who train here or live here are more apt to stay, Deveny said.

Meeting the need

Deveny and the board want to make sure Summa remains in the community, a community where the need for services is growing.

In Summas five-county area  Medina, Portage, Stark, Summit and Wayne counties, there is a demand for behavioral health and opioid addiction treatment, Deveny said. And Summa wants to meet that need.

[Those services] are not only expensive but theyre the chronic things that affect our community, and they dont pay very well. They dont very often get reimbursed at the level of cost, Deveny explained.

He said Summa is one of the few providers in the area offering behavioral health and opioid addition treatment. Three behavioral health facilities in Canton said changes this year in how the state reimburses for Medicare contributed to either their closing or sale.

Meanwhile, Summa opened two new intensive outpatient programs for addiction treatment  one at its St. Thomas campus in Akron and another in Hudson.

Summa also is in the midst of a $350-million facility transformation plan to modernize its buildings. The $270-million phase one involves the creation of a new 300,000-square-foot patient tower set to open in July 2019 and the renovation of the Akron and Barberton campuses.

With the new tower, roughly 80 percent of Summas patient rooms will be private, up from 30 percent, said Dr. David Custodio, president of Summas Akron campus.

The new tower will feature larger operating rooms and modernized rooms, as well as a new Womens Health program, including four birthing rooms for tub births. Birthing units are often one of the first things cut by hospitals looking to save money.

While construction crews still wander the grounds and ladders and drills fill every floor, Custodio and other hospital executives already see the future of Summa taking shape next door.
Guest columnist Daniel Levin is an associate professor of photography at Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C). He is a documentary photographer, curator and conceptual artist. One of Levins most recent projects focused on violins of the Holocaust restored by luthier Amnon Weinstein. He is currently working on an extended photography project exploring our times through conceptual tableaus.

Bernardt Pichel lived at 72 First Ave. in Pittsburgh. He was an immigrant from Vienna, Austria. He was a cigar maker. He was poor. He was a Jew, and he was my great-great-grandfather.

Early in the Civil War, Bernardt volunteered for the Union, joining the Pennsylvania Volunteers 74th Regiment, Company G. He and his fellow soldiers spoke German in the field -- Pittsburgh had a large immigrant population from Germanic nations. Bernardt did what he could to help stop our country from continuing with its dark participation in the machine of slavery.

Last month, I discovered that Bernardts regimental flag, pole and finial still existed and were held in an archive of the State House of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg. I made a few phone calls and eventually reached the proper archivist, who kindly agreed to meet me the following morning. Road trip.

Daniel Levin, associate professor of photography at Cuyahoga Community College.  Angelo Merendino Photography 2017

This flag, or whats left of it, was always kept in the middle of Bernardts line of his regiment during battle. It was the radio of the day. If a soldier fell down, or was separated from his fellow soldiers, he would have to somehow find his regimental flag to continue on.

I wonder what Bernardt would think of his chosen nation today, just over 150 years since he risked everything so that America could be a free nation. Lincoln was his president. Lincoln was assassinated.

Last month, two of his -- our -- nations recent past presidents faced assassination attempts. Two African-American men in Kentucky were killed while grocery shopping because of the color of their skin. And in my great-great-grandfathers chosen city, the largest massacre of Jews in American history unfolded in an act of anti-Semitism.

Somehow, we have arrived at this place.

America was a radical idyllic experiment when founded, unique in history. The umbrella over the experiment was, at a minimum, a general acceptance -- if not a celebration -- of the other.

As a nation, we learned that we dont lose ourselves when we appreciate the other. In fact, we get stronger. Thats the unifying power of the melting pot that defines the American experiment.

Today, our umbrella may be broken. If we dont repair it, we must look in the mirror and ask, Who am I? Who are we?

We can get back to who we know we are, but only if we have a mindful appreciation of the other.

What would Bernardt think of todays America? Id rather not think about it. Its too painful. I can only take solace that I can still see and touch the flag he looked for when he needed it most.

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Panay Electric Co. refuted the claim of businessman Enrique Razon against the electricity distributor, saying his bid to take over the franchise to operate Iloilos power distribution needs is being railroaded in Congress. PECO said in a statement that it had provided the power needs of Iloilo City households and business establishments for nearly a century. PECO alleged that Monte Oro Resources & Energy Minerals Corp., which Razons Prime Metroline Holdings Inc. partly owns, was attempting to take over PECOs franchise. Our company stands out among over 140 distribution utilities in the Philippines, a fact duly recognized by the Energy Regulatory Commission when we were awarded 100 percent fully compliant in securing and insuring reliability of power supply in our franchise area, PECO said. It added, only four other distribution utilities had received that award. PECO said Razon had claimed 1,800 customer complaints were registered against the power distributor. But PECO said only 194 complaints were validated with the ERC out of 64,000 customers, or 0.003 percent of total subscribers. To date, only 25 complaints were pending with the ERC, with some involving power pilferage, PECO said. PECO cited that ERC records showed that as of 2017, the Province of Siquijor Electric Coop. Inc. charged P14.0763 and was the most expensive in Visayas, compared with PECOs rate of justy P8.2079. There are 19 other utilities in the Visayas alone with higher rates than PECO. VECO (Visayan Electric Co.) of Cebu charges P8.1387, which is not much less than the rate of PECO, PECO said in a statement.Mr. Razon can easily check data from the Distribution Management Committee of the ERC regarding the electric reliability figures of the country, PECO said. The data clearly states that the country averages for SAIDI (System Average Interruption Duration Index) are at 5,135.43 minutes, contrary to Razons claims of 54 minutes and SAIFI (System Average Interruption Frequency Index) are at 40.31 incidents, contrary to his figure of 2.18 incidents, Peco said. This puts Iloilo Citys total SAIDI of 1552.86 minutes and SAIFI of 31.71 far below the national averages. PECO said its systems loss for 2017 was pegged at 8.37 percent, or below the ERC cap of 8.5 percent.
CLEVELAND, Ohio  After Lance Mason got out of prison for choking and biting and hammering his wife Aisha Fraser in the face, he was hired by City Hall.

And Aisha? She drew up a will.

She felt that he would try to kill her, George Fraser told me, hours before Mondays vigil for his murdered niece at Woodbury Elementary, where she taught 6th grade.

Of all the awful details surrounding her stabbing a 10-minute drive from my house, thats the one that haunts me most.

I imagine two scenes happening at once on a split screen.

In the first, Mason strides through the halls of Cleveland government, many months before Shaker Heights police named him as the prime suspect in Aishas murder. He has been restored. Not to his former, six-figure glory as a Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge but to a position of power, helping minority-owned businesses  including those headed by women  compete for city contracts.

I wonder what women working inside the Jackson Administration thought the first time they saw him rounding a corner? I know what the move signaled to me: If you hit your wife so hard you break her orbital rim, an injury so severe she needs reconstructive surgery and suffers nerve damage, you might be rewarded with a city job.

In the second scene, Aisha meets with her best friend  somewhere quiet, away from her daughters so they wont hear. The women talk about what will happen to Aishas girls if Aisha doesnt survive long enough to raise them.

The two make a pact in case Lance decides to finish the job he started in August 2014, when he pummeled Aishas face with his fists, sunk his teeth into her and strangled her as their girls looked on from the back seat.

Aisha was smart, uncle George said. He told me she left nothing to chance so she made sure the assets of her estate would transfer to her best friend, including her most precious assets of all  Audrey, 11 and Ava, 8.

The restraining order was a piece of paper, good as long as Lance chose to obey it.

When they first arrested him, he had an arsenal in his house including [smoke] grenades  who the hell does that? Fraser asked. Also seized from Mason: A stockpile of ammunition. Handguns, shot guns, assault rifles and a bullet proof vest.

There were red flags all over the place.

Mason served nine months of a two year sentence for attempted felonious assault even though there was nothing attempted about it. The courts, said Fraser, gave him too little time and let him out too soon.

We thought that he needed to be in prison longer, observed and going through therapy and analysis, said Fraser. What about Aisha?

She thought he was beyond help, said Fraser. When he was beating her the first time  and biting her  she said, I knew that he was crazy and something bad was going to happen. 

Mayor Frank Jackson told the cameras that no one could have predicted that Mason would be arrested for killing his estranged wife.

But the Ohio Board of Professional Conduct, the disciplinary arm of the Ohio Supreme Court, feared he would attack her again, the reason it refused to reinstate Masons law license in 2017.

The Mayor sends his condolences, especially to Aishas girls, who can be heard screaming and crying on the 911 tape summoning police to their mothers murder scene. But he stands by the hire, because everyone deserves a second chance and, again, who can predict such things?

Cops in his own department.

In 2016, thanks to a federal grant, some 270 Cleveland police officers in the citys 1st and 5th districts were trained to ask victims a series of 11 questions drawn from more than two decades of research into domestic violence cases that escalated into homicides. Among them:

Has he ever tried to choke you?

Does he own a gun?

Do you believe he is capable of killing you?

If a woman answered yes to seven or more questions, her case was considered high risk, deserving of more police attention. Given what we know of Aishas ordeal prior to her murder, hers was one of those cases likely to turn deadly.

The idea of the Q&A is to prevent tragedies from happening. Researchers say its working but once the grant is up, the program will go away. Expanding it would be shrewd public policy.

Jackson isnt responsible for Aisha Frasers death.

If he doesnt want to use this moment to rail against the cancer of domestic violence, he doesnt have to.

He doesnt even have to admit he gave a second chance to the wrong man.

But to suggest that no one could have seen this coming, as though it were a freak weather event, is a fiction that perpetuates the widespread myth that the problem is too big to solve. So why even try?

Its an insult. Rather than defending himself and, astonishingly, praising Masons job performance, he should act, putting high risk teams in every Cleveland police district.

Thats the best way to honor Aishas memory.
NORTH OLMSTED, Ohio - Possession of marijuana, Dover Center Road: Officers stopped a car on Dover Center near Macie Lane about 6:50 p.m. Nov. 18 for having a nonfunctioning rear license plate light.

A driver and passenger were in the car. The officer noticed a marijuana smell and saw a small bag of marijuana in a cup holder.

Police cited the driver for having a nonfunctioning license plate

Drinking and driving, Walter Road: Officers about 10.20 p.m. Nov. 11 responded to a report of a possibly impaired driver whose vehicle was weaving on Walter Road and struck a sign.

Officers located the car and tried to make a traffic stop. They report the driver did not initially respond but later drove off the right side of the road and into a ditch. The male driver appeared intoxicated, slurred his speech, was having difficulty with his balance and smelled of alcohol, according to police. He admitted to drinking a few beers, according to a police report.

The driver told officers he was unable to perform a field sobriety test, and officers arrested him for operating a vehicle while impaired. He failed to blow into a device for measuring blood alcohol, according to police. Officers cited him for operating a vehicle while impaired, failing to drive within marked lanes, having expired plates and failure to control.

Petty theft, Brookpark Road: Police went to Macy's department store about 4 p.m. Nov. 17 on a shoplifting complaint.

A store loss prevention officer said he saw a 23-year-old woman take several items of clothing and attempt to leave the store without paying. Store security recovered the items, valued at $240. Police charged the suspect with petty theft.

Petty theft, Brookpark Road: Officers at 6:40 p.m. Nov. 17 returned to Macy's on a report of a second suspected shoplifter being held in custody.

A store loss prevention officer said he spotted the male suspect place multiple items, including three watches and four sweaters, inside a bag and attempt to leave the store. The value of the items was estimated at $678.

Officers charged the suspect with petty theft and possessing criminal tools.

To comment on this story, visit Saturday's crime and courts comment section.
Some Ohio General Assembly members seem to have their Dockers in a bunch over statewide ballot issues that let Ohios voters amend the Ohio Constitution without the legislatures help.

Thats funny. General Assembly members take an oath to support the federal and Ohio constitutions. And heres what the Ohio Constitution says: All political power is inherent in the people. Government is instituted for their equal protection and benefit, and they have the right to alter, reform, or abolish the same, whenever they may deem it necessary.

Trying to overrule the U.S. Supreme Courts Roe vs. Wade abortion ruling doesnt faze Ohios House. And our (mostly white guy) legislature wants virtually everybody in Ohio to carry a handgun. (What could possibly go wrong?) But when Ohioans want to readily exercise their constitutional right to propose ballot issues  hey: Thats a problem.

Since 1912, Ohioans, if they gather enough signatures, have been able to put proposed Ohio Constitution amendments directly on the statewide ballot for voters to ratify or reject, without any legislative action. Ohioans can also petition the legislature to pass a specific law (initiated statute). If the legislature wont pass that law, Ohioans can gather more signatures and put that proposed law directly on the statewide ballot, for voters to pass or reject. Voters may also petition to place on the statewide ballot  for Ohio voters to pass or reject  a bill the legislature has ready passed.

Thats called a referendum. A memorable example came in 2011, when the General Assemblys Republicans passed, and Republican Gov. John Kasich signed, Senate Bill 5, a measure that aimed to gut Ohios public employee labor unions (teachers, cops, firefighters, school bus drivers, etc.).

Funny thing about the Senate Bill 5 referendum: Down at the Alibi Lounge, big-fee political consultants who lose Ohio elections keep telling anyone wholl listen that because Ohio has gone red, Democrats just cant win in the Buckeye State. (Its never your candidates or issues, is it guys?)

Still, 2011  seven years ago  almost 62 percent of those Ohioan voting in a referendum on SB 5 stomped the union-buster dead. And among the counties whose voters killed SB 5 were Putnam (which cast 80 percent of its vote for Republican Mike DeWine for governor on Nov. 6); Mercer (79 percent for DeWine); Auglaize (78 percent for DeWine); and Darke (77 percent for DeWine). Ohio isnt red, blue, purple, pink, teal or grey. Ohio is Ohio.

True, some statewide ballot issues, backed by big money, are out-and-out grabs, such as Dan Gilbert and Penn National Gamings 2009 casino monopoly amendment, a $50 million campaign. Then there was last years so-called Drug Price Relief Act, a petition-proposed (initiated) law, not a constitutional amendment. It took aim at scandalously high prescription drug prices. The 2017 drug-price campaign is believed to have been the most expensive in Ohio history, thanks to vote no spending by prescription drug manufacturers.

Long story short, the legislatures Republican leaders have implied it might be a keen idea to make it harder to place petition-proposed constitutional amendments on Ohios statewide ballot. Why? Because the legislature is a more thoughtful forum than a ballot box for setting state policy.

It is blatantly hypocritical for GOP ballot-issue critics to fret that hijacking Ohios ballot-issue mechanism for brazenly selfish reasons is mainly an Election Day thing. Lobbyists throng the Statehouse when the legislatures in session, and not because of intellectual curiosity. They aim to get results for the clients. Often as not, they do, especially if they lobby for banks, insurance companies or utilities, who, year after year, seem to do pretty much what they please in Ohio. Yet ballot issues are the problem?

Thomas Suddes, a member of the editorial board, writes from Athens.

To reach Thomas Suddes: tsuddes@cleveland.com, 216-999-4689

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WESTERVILLE, Ohio -- In the post-election chatter, not enough people are talking about the U.S. economy. It was recently reported that business optimism is at a record high in this country. And on the international front, the United States officially has the worlds most competitive economy.

According to a recent report from the World Economic Forum, Americas economy surpassed those of Singapore, Germany, Switzerland, and Japan  140 countries overall. To add some perspective, the United States hasnt had the No. 1 spot on this list since 2008. Our competitive labor market and productive financial system have resulted in the United States being closest to the ideal state.

Jim Burgess is a longtime business manager and member of the Ohio Republican Central Committee.

You know what else helps? Public policy that prioritizes business expansion  the very expansion that drives economic growth over the long haul. Since President Donald Trumps inauguration, White House officials and congressional Republicans have made it their mission to cut taxes, slash regulations, and foster a culture of entrepreneurship that makes job creation possible. As Republicans know, only when job creators have the opportunity to hire can businesses grow and economic output rise.

And this happens when local, state, and federal governments get out of the way. President Trump has stuck to his pledge to cut two federal regulations for each new regulation issued. According to the White House, this guiding philosophy has resulted in dropping regulatory costs by roughly $23 billion in the 2018 fiscal year. President Trump  a successful businessman for decades  knows that less red tape is a blessing for entrepreneurs. When employers have to spend less time and money on compliance, they have more time and money to spend on investment.

Tax cuts have done their part, too. Last years Tax Cuts and Jobs Act reduced rates across the board, in addition to introducing new deductions for small businesses. Small business owners now have an easier time writing off business expenses, which makes investment more affordable.

This is no small feat  because small business is the backbone of our economy. According to the Small Business Administration, America is home to more than 30 million small businesses, which employ about 60 million workers  nearly half of the private-sector workforce. Dive a little deeper, and small businesses account for 99.9 percent of all U.S. businesses. Thats right: 99.9 percent!

Small business also contributes to the global economy. The United States lays claim to roughly 288,000 small business exporters, which send goods across the world.

Ohio is part of this picture, too. Even in our state, the Small Business Administration reports there are nearly 945,000 small businesses, employing 2.2 million workers. Without small business, Ohios economy would just not be the same.

Thats why tax relief is so important, and its why the Ohio Legislature has pursued tax cuts. Small business owners need lower rates and increased deductions to make it easier to invest  invest in growth. The more resources that Uncle Sam takes from them, the less cash on hand they have for private investment. Without private investment, we dont see new products or new services or new jobs. Yes, the career opportunities that Ohios families depend on do not come about unless employers create them.

There is a common thread between the U.S. economy and Ohios, and thats the pro-business policies that boost them both. Limited government equals economic prosperity  in Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and across the country.

Jim Burgess is a longtime business manager and member of the Ohio Republican Central Committee. On Nov. 6, he was the Republican candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in Ohios Third Congressional District, losing to incumbent Democrat Joyce Beatty.

************

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Live-out scheme for OFWs sought

posted November 25, 2018 at 11:20 pm by Rio N. Araja November 25, 2018 at 11:20 pm

The government has to push for a live-out arrangement between overseas Filipino workers and their foreign employers to prevent possible commission of abuse and exploitation . Many of our domestic workers overseas, especially in the Middle East, are prone to maltreatment because they live with their employers,ACTS-OFW spokesperson Francisco Aguilar Jr. said. To counteract this vulnerability, we have to encourage live-out schemes for our domestic workers once they have completed their job shift, he added. To allow OFWs to stay out of their employers home would enable them to enjoy adequate rest and sleep, and greater privacy, he noted.Japan allows Filipino professional housekeepers to leave their workplace after their eight-hour work, Aguilar said. The party-list raised concern over a Filipino domestic helper, Emerita Gannaban, 44, who died at the Prince Mahammed Bin Abdulaziz Hospital in Riyadh due to an illness, saying she earlier complained of maltreatment from her employer.

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Amazon hasn't even moved in yet, but Long Island City's housing is already seeing a surge of interest.

Locally, the retail giant's decision to build two new headquarter locations has been controversial, and met by growing backlash over the incentives provided by the city and state.

Yet in the weeks following the announcement, the Queens waterfront neighborhood  lined with shiny glass condo towers  has experienced growing demand in what's been an already hot market. An influx of would-be residents appear to be trying to get a head start on Amazon's expected move.

Real estate in Queens has been booming over the past decade, but startups have increasingly taken up residence in Long Island City (LIC) over the last few years. Conveniently located directly across the East River from Manhattan, LIC has become a home for people who've been priced out of Brooklyn and Manhattan.

As a result, it's also been deemed one of the hottest spots for young people to live in  and that's helping to drive up residential prices. The area's "extensive development" has propped rental prices well above Queens' median, according to StreetEasy.

Silvette Julian, an agent with Compass Real Estate, characterized a recent open house event in LIC as "a madhouse," with requests for showings and offers surging in the last 2-3 weeks.

Amazon's arrival would have a tremendous impact on the neighborhood and others nearby, according to Stephen Albonesi, an urban planner with Localize.city, a real estate analysis platform.

"If any area in New York is poised for a major influx in residents, it's Long Island City," Albonesi said, citing a "building boom [that's] already remaking much of the area and where residents have been grappling with how to meet the demands of thousands of new people."
Emmanuel Dunand | AFP | Getty Images

EU leaders backed Theresa May's Brexit withdrawal agreement on Sunday, setting up a showdown with lawmakers in her own country as the U.K. leader nears a crucial vote on her proposals. European leaders gathered in Brussels officially endorsed her plan on how the U.K. will leave the bloc in March of next year. The special summit was largely symbolic and the agreement was widely expected to be approved, despite last-minute concerns from Spain on whether it will have a say on the future of Gibraltar  a disputed British territory that lies on the southern tip of the Mediterranean nation. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker reiterated his sadness at the U.K.'s departure, telling reporters in the Belgian capital that it was a "tragedy." But he backed May's plan and said it was the best deal possible for Britain. Other European leaders also spoke favorably of the agreement, with Dutch leader Mark Rutte saying it was balanced on both sides. But the EU's acceptance of the deal has enraged some pro-Brexit politicians in the U.K. who believe that May is making too many concessions to the EU. May faces a tough challenge next month when she needs to gain Parliamentary approval for the deal in Westminster. The vote  likely to be on December 11  is crucial for May to move forward with Brexit and failure could lead to her being toppled as leader or even the U.K. crashing out of the EU without a deal. On Sunday, she appeared to swerve questions from reporters on whether she would resign if the deal was rejected by Parliament.

Lawmakers in the opposition Labour party, the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National Party have all indicated that they will vote against the deal. The Northern Irish DUP (Democratic Unionist Party) party, which is propping up May's government in Parliament, also said it would vote against it, with its deputy leader saying Saturday it would leave Britain in a "pitiful and pathetic place." Even pro-Brexit and pro-Remain lawmakers within May's own Conservative Party have said they will vote against her, meaning approval is anything but assured. But May has resolutely defended her plan at every stage. She has called on business leaders and U.K. citizens to back her, even if many politicians will not. On Sunday, May wrote a letter to the British public pleading for support, promising a "brighter future" for the U.K. "It will be a deal that is in our national interest  one that works for our whole country and all of our people, whether you voted 'Leave' or 'Remain'," she said in the letter. "It will honor the result of the referendum."

What's been approved?

The endorsement from the 27 EU leaders follows more than 18 months of negotiations between the two sides. Talks began when the U.K. triggered Article 50 in the wake of the 2016 referendum vote and the country is due to leave the EU on March 29, 2019. There was no formal vote at the fairly short Brexit summit on Sunday morning. But the leaders approved May's withdrawal agreement, which is a 585-page, legally-binding document setting out the terms of the U.K.'s exit. It does not address any future relationship between the U.K. and the EU but rather issues such as citizens' rights, a 39 billion ($50 billion) "divorce bill" and a backup plan for the Irish border if upcoming trade talks stall. Also on Sunday, the 27 EU leaders agreed on a separate political declaration which loosely outlines future issues such as U.K.-EU trade and security.

Parliament will decide

May needs a simple majority of the 650 lawmakers that sit in the House of Commons. Her 315 Conservative MPs (Members of Parliament) do represent the largest party in the House, but a significant number are against the plan. The Conservatives operate a majority in the Commons by working in tandem with 10 votes from the DUP. The left-of-center opposition Labour Party has 257 lawmakers and would appear to hold the whip-hand. Labour has indicated they will ask their MPs to vote against May's deal, but there are a number of rebels that May can count on. It's estimated she would need around 40 Labour MPs to cross the divide and vote for her. Despite deep divisions within Labour, political analysts see that as a high threshold. The third-biggest party, the Scottish National Party (SNP), has promised that all 35 of its MPs will reject the deal, calling it an unfair solution for Scotland. Nonetheless, there is some optimism from certain market watchers, including analysts at Nomura. In a detailed research note last week, strategists at the Japanese bank said the alternatives to voting down the deal make it more likely that enough MPs would rather get Brexit done, as opposed to risking a no-deal or no Brexit at all. Their "base case" is for a deal to be voted through, which they assign with a 60 percent probability.

"Whatever way the MPs are split, if the deal is approved the vote will still be a close call. The market could be convinced of having more success if the 50 or so Brexit ultras back the deal. It could help convince other Brexit-backing groups from Labour to get the deal over the line," the Nomura analysts said. Carsten Nickel, the deputy director of research at consultancy Teneo Intelligence, had a similar view. "A second referendum and early elections remain unlikely. Eventual sign-off should therefore be the base case, but this might not be achieved in the first attempt," he said in a note on Sunday.

Market reaction
A general view shows Syrian pro-government forces walking in the ancient Umayyad mosque in the old city of Aleppo in the foreground and the city's citadel in the background on December 13, 2016, after they captured the area.

Russia on Sunday accused insurgents in Syria of bombarding the city of Aleppo with shells filled with chlorine gas, poisoning 46 people, including eight children it said were being treated in hospital.

Russia's Ministry of Defence said in a statement the chemical attack had been launched from an area in the Idlib de-escalation zone controlled by Nusra Front militants and that it planned to talk to Turkey about the incident since Ankara was a guarantor of how the armed opposition there upheld a ceasefire.

"According to our preliminary information, confirmed in particular by symptoms of poisoning among the victims, the shells used to bombard residential areas of Aleppo were filled with chlorine (gas)" Russian Major-General Igor Konashenkov said in the statement.
Swiss voters have clearly rejected a proposal to give the neutral country's laws priority over international law, a move that critics claimed would have deeply damaged its global standing and hurt its economy.

Some 63 percent of voters in a national referendum on Sunday voted against the "Swiss law, not foreign judges" measure, according to the second round of projections by broadcaster SRF.

The measure, backed by the right-wing Swiss People's Party (SVP), called for a provision to be added to the national constitution giving it explicit precedence over international agreements.

Where there is a clash between the two, Switzerland would have had to alter its international obligations so they complied with its constitution or quit the international agreement.

Backers argued that neutral Switzerland's historic autonomy was being watered down by its participation in international agreements covering areas like environmental protection, police cooperation, air transport and trade.

Their campaign said such arrangements endangered the long tradition of direct democracy in Switzerland, where citizens have the final say on political decisions via referendums.

Debate over whether sovereignty has been eroded has intensified in recent years, as Switzerland struggles to clarify its relationship with the European Union, currently governed by a tangle of bilateral pacts.

The SVP, the largest party in the Swiss parliament, said its proposals - also called the self determination initiative - would empower citizens and free them from interference from international bodies like the EU.

They were opposed by the Swiss government, business groups and most other parties, who said the proposal would force Switzerland to cancel existing treaties, weaken human rights protections and hurt its economy.

They said a "yes" vote would mean Switzerland having to renegotiate thousands of treaties it has signed, undermining an open economy which is highly dependent on global trade.

Jan Atteslander of business lobby group Economiesuisse, said he was pleased with the outcome.

"The result shows that Swiss voters are happy with the institutions we have and there is no need to change them. If this had passed it would have been a disadvantage to the economy and damaged Switzerland's standing in the world.

"We have to stick to our words internationally and be a good and reliable partner in good times and bad times."

Tania Ovanne-Erias, from the canton of Geneva, said: "I voted against the initiative because I don't think we have to vote again on treaties that have already been voted. I think this initiative is absurd.

"I don't think we can just think only of our country, Switzerland, we are part of a continent and a world."

Switzerland also rejected a proposal to subsidize farmers who let cows and goats grow their horns naturally, amid debate over whether the practice of removing horns harms the animals.
The European Union, the Council of Europe and the Supreme Court through the Office of the Court Administrator held a training on cybercrime and electronic evidence for prosecutors and state attorneys in the Associate of Southeast Asian Nations in Makati City. In his keynote address, Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra stressed that crime and criminals respect no state boundaries. In this virtual and interconnected world, our collective defense against cybercriminals and cybercrime is only as strong as our weakest link. A critical mass of trainers is necessary if we are to establish a web of experts that can contain, neutralize and protect our entire region from the pernicious effects of cybercrime, Guevarra said. Prosecutors and state attorneys from 9 ASEAN member-states attended the four-day training held last November 20 to 23. The training focused on cybercrime legislation, procedural powers in relation to electronic evidence and tools for international cooperation. As crime is increasingly moving into the cyberspace, any type of criminal activity may nowadays entail evidence in electronic form. Securing such evidence to bring offenders to justice has become a major challenge as it may be stored on servers in foreign, multiple or unknown jurisdictions that are somewhere in the cloud.The European Union and the Council of Europe, through the joint project on Global Action on Cybercrime Extended (GLACY+), are working with countries worldwide to develop sustainable training programs on cybercrime and electronic evidence, both for the judiciary and for the law enforcement. The Philippines has been one of the priority countries of this capacity building initiative since 2014, benefitting from training courses, legislative advice and exposure to regional and international conferences and workshops on cybercrime. In March this year, the Philippines has joined the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime, the only international treaty that provides a framework for cooperation between countries on cybercrime and electronic evidence. For his part, EU Ambassador Franz Jessen congratulated the Philippines for its achievements and called on the other ASEAN countries to become ambassadors for the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime...resulting in an easier common fight against cybercrime by having this convention as a common tool.
Brexit 1) May writes letter to the public as she prepares to sell her deal

Taking rebels to the abyss could clinch it for May  Adam Boulton, Sunday Times

Security and defence threat posed by the deal  Richard Dearlove, FT

Brussels is shafting us for this calamitous deal  Daniel Hannan MEP, Sunday Telegraph

Giving the UK a way out will save both it and Europe  Tony Blair, Sunday Times

It is a deal for a brighter future, which enables us to seize the opportunities that lie ahead. Outside the EU, we will be able to sign new trade deals with other countries and open up new markets in the fastest-growing economies around the world. With Brexit settled, we will be able to focus our energies on the many other important issues facing us here at home: keeping our economy strong, and making sure every community shares in prosperity; securing our NHS for the future, giving every child a great start in life, and building the homes that families need; tackling the burning injustices that hold too many people back; and building a country for the future that truly works for everyone. On March 29 next year, the United Kingdom will leave the European Union. We will then begin a new chapter in our national life. I want that to be a moment of renewal and reconciliation for our whole country.  Sunday Times

Editorial:

This is the very opposite of what we voted for  Sunday Telegraph

Time for leavers and remainers to get real  Sunday Times

Brexit 2) Claims of whips dangling peerages and honours for votes

Tory MPs are eagerly sharing anecdotes about approaches to senior back-bench Brexiteers by the Tory whips. In one encounter, a veteran Eurosceptic was told: We need more people in the House of Lords I think youd be a strong voice. The Brexiteer was one of those members of the hardline European Research Group (ERG) counselling his colleagues not to put in a letter demanding a vote of no confidence in the prime minister. Now he had good reason to back Mays Brexit deal as well. Tory MPs say a peerage has also been dangled under the nose of a former cabinet minister who was asked to consider your future at a meeting with one of Mays henchmen. Even the optimists, however, do not think patronage and strategic use of the carrot will be enough. She cant just offer 90 peerages, said one Tory. Mays team are still seeking a sweetener for constructive rebels such as the former leader Iain Duncan Smith and cabinet Brexiteers such as Andrea Leadsom.  Sunday Times

May copying Blairs propaganda tricks to sell her deal  Sun on Sunday

Prime Minister offers 40 reasons to endorse the agreement  Sunday Express

More:

Former donor denounces May as incompetent arch-Remainer  Sunday Telegraph

Brexit 3) Remainer ministers form new Gang of Five

Cabinet members and EU draw up 11th-hour Plan B  Sunday Telegraph

The prime minister is facing a fresh cabinet mutiny after remain ministers began secret talks behind her back to force her to adopt a new plan B for Brexit. Senior ministers are also in private discussions with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to draw up an alternative Brexit blueprint in the event that her deal is voted down by parliament A majority of cabinet ministers believe she will lose the meaningful vote pencilled in for December 12 and are plotting to force her to change tack. Five remainer ministers  Philip Hammond, David Lidington, Amber Rudd, Greg Clark and David Gauke  have agreed they will try to get May to adopt a softer Brexit if she cannot get her plan through the Commons. They are prepared to threaten a walkout if May contemplates giving way to Brexiteers who want her to pursue a no-deal departure Hammond hosted a meeting without pizza on November 14 at which leading remainers agreed they could not serve in a government that was pursuing no deal. They are also in talks with Brexiteers Michael Gove and Liam Fox and with the DUP in a bid to find a solution.  Sunday Times

Analysis:

If the deal is rejected, what next?  David Smith, Sunday Times

What the EU will do when Parliament votes no  Peter Foster, Daily Telegraph

Comment:

Anti-Brexiteers can do without a leader, but not a plan  Andrew Rawnsley, The Observer

>Yesterday: Nick Hargraves column: If we join the EEA, others might follow  thus creating a Europe-wide, non-federalist alternative to the EU

Brexit 4) Prime Minister caves in to Spain over Gibraltar trade

Theresa May faced claims of capitulation last night as Britain gave way to Spanish demands over Gibraltar to clear the way for her Brexit deal to be approved today. Sir Tim Barrow, Britains ambassador to the EU, sent a letter clarifying that the Rock would be covered by a future trade deal with the EU only with Madrids consent. The statement was arranged after Pedro Sanchez, the Spanish prime minister, threatened to force the summits cancellation and veto Brexit. But Sanchez immediately inflamed the situation, claiming the UK would now have to open talks on joint sovereignty of Gibraltar. He declared: Europe and the UK have accepted the demands put forward by Spain. May responded by saying she would stand by the citizens of Gibraltar Officials said the statement offered a way for Sanchez to save face without changing UK policy. All member states will have a veto over any EU-UK trade agreement.  Sunday Times

May faces new Brexit dilemma after Madrid plays hardball  Sun on Sunday

Brexiteers accuse Downing Street of betrayal under cover of darkness  The Observer

>Today: ToryDiary: Gibraltar rocked?

Brexit 5) Johnson urges DUP to sink Titantic agreement in speech to conference

but to maintain their pact with the Tories  FT

Johnson bedazzled the Unionists on a cold Belfast night  The Observer

Raab says deal can be salvaged without backstop  Sunday Telegraph

Boris Johnson compared Theresa Mays Brexit deal to the Titanic yesterday as he used a platform provided by the Democratic Unionist Party to savage the prime ministers draft withdrawal agreement. In a blistering attack at the DUP conference in Belfast, he declared: Now is the time to point out the iceberg ahead. Watched by Arlene Foster, the DUP leader, the former foreign secretary was given an enthusiastic reception as he said the deal threatened the Union and would leave Northern Ireland ruled by the EU. He stopped short of calling for May to be ousted but warned the UK was on the verge of making a historic mistake. Johnson called on the government to tear up the Irish backstop plan and use technology to avoid a hard border with the Republic. He also suggested creating a secretary of state for no deal on World Trade Organisation terms, insisting the UKs future trade with the EU should be based on a Canada-plus model that ensured it could strike deals elsewhere.  Sunday Times

Comment:

Parliament should put a sunset clause on the Withdrawal Agreement  Thomas Sharpe QC, Sunday Telegraph

>Today: David Scullion and George Jackson in Comment: Voting down the Withdrawal Agreement wont lead to a Corbyn Government

>Yesterday: ToryDiary: Its possible to trade across the Northern Irish border without simply swallowing EU regulation whole

Brexit 6) Hayes mocked by Eurosceptics, but insists he wont vote for the current deal as it stands

After picking up a surprise knighthood on Friday, Tory Eurosceptic John Hayes should be celebrating. Instead hes found himself being mocked by a fellow party Brexiteer who suggested that some colleagues believed he got it from the Prime Minister to persuade him to back her in next months crucial EU vote. Sir John was teased by Tory MP Mark Francois who said MPs took his shock award as a sign of the Governments desperation to stave off a defeat. In a sarcasm-laden letter, Mr Francois mocked the staunch Eurosceptic MP, saying: Do not be alarmed  your colleaguesknow you are made of sterner stuff! He heaped ridicule on Sir John, suggesting he could write down his political principles on the back of an old postage stamp Sir John hit back by dismissing Mr Francoiss letter as a comic turn and insisted his knighthood made no difference to his refusal to vote for the EU withdrawal agreement as it stood. He told The Mail on Sunday: As Ive made very clear before my honour, I cannot support the deal as it now stands.  Mail on Sunday

May bypassed vetting committee to honour Brexiteer  Sunday Telegraph

Brexit 7) McDonnell in secret talks with Peoples Vote campaign

John McDonnell held secret talks with the Peoples Vote campaign last week amid growing signs that Labour might support a second Brexit referendum. The shadow chancellor hosted Tom Baldwin and Alastair Campbell, the former spin doctors to Ed Miliband and Tony Blair respectively who are now campaigning for a new vote, in his Commons office on Thursday. It is understood McDonnell saw polling figures that showed Labour voters overwhelmingly supported a second vote, something that grassroots activists and Labour MPs are pressing the leadership to agree. The Sunday Times has also learnt that Laura Parker, national director of Momentum, the campaign group that acts as a version of the praetorian guard to Jeremy Corbyn, also attended a rally this month in support of a new

referendum.

Re-run possible if deal is thrown out, says Lithuanian prime minister  Sun on Sunday

Mandelson bonds with enforcer Milne  The Times

A YouGov survey commissioned by the Peoples Vote found that by a margin of 53% to 47%, people think there should be another nationwide vote if the Commons rejects Theresa Mays Brexit deal in a crunch vote due next month.  The Times

Comment:

Shadow Chancellors enmity serves the Tories better than friendship  Stephen Bush, Sunday Times

Is Labour secretly conspiring to let a Tory Brexit happen?  Sherelle Jacobs, Daily Telegraph

>Yesterday: Lucy Woodcock in Comment: By backing a Peoples Vote, May could save the Conservatives

Mordaunt vows to crack down on antisemitic abuse of female MPs

Penny Mordaunt has vowed to stamp out the vicious anti-semitic abuse hurled at her parliamentary colleagues amid fears it could become a barrier to women entering public life. Speaking on the eve of a conference on anti-semitism and misogyny, the women and equalities minister said the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre last month was a warning of what could happen in Britain if the abuse experienced by Jewish MPs such as Luciana Berger and Ruth Smeeth was tolerated. All of us have faced misogyny and abuse, and many also have faced danger. But I think the venom that my Jewish female colleagues are having to endure is something else, she said. The Sara Conference, to be held in London tomorrow, will hear evidence that Jewish women in public life are a magnet for online persecution.  Sunday Times

Tugendhat joins calls for land purchase reform

C

Calls to deselect Chope for blocking FGM bill

ouncils should be able to buy up agricultural land at dramatically reduced prices to help solve the housing crisis, a coalition of local authority leaders and MPs have said. More than two dozen council leaders, mayors and MPs urged ministers to radically overhaul reform compulsory purchase laws to capture a greater amount of landowners profits. The signatories, including nine Conservative council leaders, and Tom Tugendhat, the senior Tory backbencher, want the state to be able to buy up land at its true market value, rather than current rates, which generally include a speculative uplift based on planning permission the site could gain for future development. The money saved by local authorities could be to help fund improved landscaping, green spaces, affordable housing and local services, they said in a letter to James Brokenshire, the Housing Secretary. The intervention marks a significant boost for a campaign, led by Onward, a new centre-right think tank, and Shelter, the housing charity, for radical reform of rules governing the purchase of land.  Sunday Telegraph

He achieved notoriety when he blocked plans to make upskirting a crime  now Sir Christopher Chope has provoked fury by objecting to a bill intended to help prevent female genital mutilation (FGM). The Conservative MP for Christchurch in Dorset shouted object on Friday afternoon during the second reading of an anti-FGM bill, blocking its progress through the Commons. FGM is the custom of removing all or part of the female external genitalia, including the clitoris. It was made illegal in the UK in 1985 but the crime has never been successfully prosecuted. Chopes behaviour sparked criticism from across parliament, including calls for the MP to be deselected. The bill, introduced by the crossbench peer Lord Berkeley of Knighton, sought to amend the Children Act 1989 so that courts would be able to use their strongest protective powers to help girls at risk of FGM. The bill had gone through the House of Lords unopposed and had won the support of the government. However, Chope, 71, defended his decision, describing the bill as an act of virtue signalling.  Sunday Times

News in Brief:
David Scullion is the Deputy Editor of BrexitCentral. George Jackson is a researcher at the European Foundation.

Government Whips have been telling MPs that voting down the draft Withdrawal Agreement will lead to the collapse of the Government, a general election  and the possibility of Jeremy Corbyn walking into Number 10. But the Fixed Term Parliaments Act (FTPA) means that the next election is scheduled for 5 May 2022. Voting down the Withdrawal Agreement wont change that date.

The FTPA stipulates two ways a general election can be held early.

First, two thirds of all MPs  including the ones that dont take their seats, meaning Sinn Fein in this instance  must vote for the motion: there shall be an early parliamentary general election. Two thirds of all MPs means that 434 MPs would be needed to vote down the government. The combined opposition, including the DUP, is 334. So unless 100 Conservative MPs are feeling exceptionally brave, Irish republicans flock into London to swear allegiance to the Queen and pigs begin sprouting wings, there wont be an early general election.

Second, a general election could be triggered by a simple majority if the Commons votes for an explicitly worded confidence motion. But were this to happen, there would be a 14-day window during which the Government could regain the confidence of Conservative MPs by, say, offering concessions, or by by ousting Theresa May. Two weeks is a long time in politics.

And thats it. Since the FTPA abolishes the power of the Prime Minister to request a dissolution under the royal prerogative, any conventions apply only to the Government, not to Parliament. This means that votes conventionally seen as matters of confidence, such as the Budget or the Queens Speech, would not lead to the dissolution of Parliament were the Government not to win them.

But could Downing Street not claim that the vote on the Withdrawal Agreement is a matter of confidence (as John Major did in the Maastricht debate)? Again, since an explicit motion of no confidence would not have been passed, there would be no early general election. The Governments best bluff available would be to table a confidence motion straight after losing a Brexit vote in the hope of linking the two. But were this to happen, and it lost the first vote and win the second, the manoeuvre would have no constitutional effect.

At present, it looks as though the Commons will reject the Prime Ministers proposed deal with the EU. If May then resigns, there will then be a Conservative leadership election. After a new Prime Minister is in place, the deal could be renegotiated or the country would leave the EU on the 29th of March without a deal. There is no majority for a second referendum in the Commons, despite the support of some Conservative MPs. Labour are far from united on the subject, and pressure from campaign group Momentum has made Labour moderates nervous of supporting a Conservative government.

Similarly, the European Union has made it clear that Labours proposals for a softer Brexit  full Customs Union and Single Market membership without freedom of movement (for which there may be a hypothetical Commons majority)  is not on the table, since this would amount to unacceptable cherry picking of aspects of EU membership.

Conservative MPs should therefore be confident that voting down the Withdrawal Agreement will neither trigger a general election nor see Jeremy Corbyn take power. It is a baseless claim spread in the hope of frightening MPs into backing Mays flawed deal. Vote with your conscience, Tory MPs, because the FTPA has got your back.
Theresa Mays concession over Gibraltar does not allow negotiations to be opened between the UK and Spain over which country should have sovereignty over the Rock.

However, the difficulty for the Government is that it could allow such discussions to take place in future. In essence, it says that Gibraltar wont be covered by the proposed Brexit deal. So the Rock wont automatically be included in any future free trade agreement between Spain and the UK  and may not be at all.

Mays present retreat follows a previous advance. The Government seems to have pulled a fast one over Spain by doctoring a section of the draft Withdrawal Agreement  Article 184  to allow the deal to cover exactly such a future trade agreement. This represented a reverse of the EUs previous position, and a loss of face for Pedro Sanchez.

So Spains Prime Minister cut up rough  threatening to veto not only the Withdrawal Agreement, but Brexit itself. Spain is in no better a position to veto the first than the second: the Agreement and Political Declaration will be approved by majority. But disharmony at summit level is anathema to the EU. And so it comes about that May, having apparently got one over Spain, has now backed down.

So far, so meaningless. The problem for the UK and Gibraltar is that Spain really will have a veto if a trade deal is eventually put on the table. It could then, if it wished, seek to hold any such agreement up until or unless discussions over sovereignty were opened  which would present a very serious problem for Mays Government, assuming that she and it are still there.

She has been busy covering herself with two statements from the EU27, a letter from the president of the European Council and one from the president of the Commission, all providing assurances about Gibraltars status. On the one hand, Fabian Picardo has rowed in behind the Government. (He supports the draft deal, and Gibraltar voted Remain.) On the other, some Brexiteers are claiming a sell-out.

The key question arising from all this is: were Sanchezs protests about more than face-saving? How likely is it that his government, or a future Spanish one, would seriously imperil British-Spanish relations over the future of the Rock? There is simply no way of knowing.
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This CoolSocial report was updated on 2021-10-15, you can refresh this analysis whenever you want.
Mounting consumer complaints from Iloilo City residents over a utility firms penchant for overbilling its own customers, that companys attitude in dealing with such complaints and the danger posed on people by its obsolete transmission facilities and the spaghetti wires that dot the citys skyline are what caused Panay Electric Co. to lose its bid to renew its congressional franchise, a city official said yesterday. Iloilo City Councilor Joshua Alim said Ilonggos have given the controversial utility firm all the chance in the past 96 years to improve its services, but it ignored consumer complaints and went on providing low quality of service arrogantly because of its status as a monopoly, Alim said. He said PECO has been the subject of almost 1,800 consumer complaints these past years on issues of overbilling, frequent power outages that forced the citys business community to pay for a study that identified what PECO should do to make its operation more efficient and lower its rates, and the companys arrogant attitude towards addressing its own customers complaints. Despite constant criticisms aired on radio, despite many complaints about the bad quality of its service, and despite frequent power outages, PECO has done nothing to be a better service provider. The complaints appear to be all for naught. It has no heart for consumers, it has no concern for providing good service. (And) to think that they only have the privilege given by the government, Alim said. He pointed out that among complaints against PECO was that of ship captain Hazel Fernandez, who because he is frequently out of the country on maritime assignments, put a video camera to monitor the electric meter in his household so he could determine if indeed PECOs roving meter readers are actually checking electricity consumption and not just guessing as many suspected. Fernandez noted that since he is abroad most of the time, there should have been no electricity consumption in his house. He feels bad because PECO still send him high monthly bills. Alim cited the case of Mildred Jaromahum, a retired teacher from Barangay Sinikway whose household of three had been trained to be sparing in the use of their electric appliances so their monthly electric bill will always be around P3,000. One month in 2017, Jaromahum got the shock of her life when her monthly billshot up to P178,000. Plagued by sleeplessness and stressed out by concern her electricity connection could be arbitrarily cut by PECO, Jaromahum tried to reach any PECO employee in the companys Facebook page, but there was no response. Finally realizing no one in PECO might be reading her missive, Jaromahum motored to PECOs billing section to press for her claim she did not use P178,000 worth of electricity the previous month. Alas, the companys billing section staff did not listen to her complaint and was told instead to just pay the electricity bill on installment, Alim noted.Alim noted that even media entities like Aksyon Radyo Iloilo and Love Radio Iloilo also filed complaints of being overbilled by PECO. In the case of Love Radio, its transmitter conked out and Love Radio had to stop broadcast for 15 days, but the following month it received an electric bill much, much higher than previous months bills. Aksyon Radyo aired the first complaint of a PECO customer, Edcel Castor, in 2017 that his usual monthly bill of P8,000 suddenly became P180,000, Alim also noted. Despite insisting he did not consume that much electricity, PECO still told Castor to pay the bill in installment. Its so unfair. Its too much for consumers to go to PECO to insist they did not consume the amount of electricity being billed them, and then PECOs personnel will act as if they heard nothing, and the consumer will be told the electricity was indeed consumed and payment could be made on an installment basis. Why will the consumer pay that kind of bill if it did not really use the electricity being charged to him? Alim said. Enough is enough, Mr. PECO. The people have spoken. Congress has spoken. Kayo lang ang hindi nakikinig eh. Tama na, napagbigyan naman na kayo ng 96 years eh. (Its only you that dont listen to your own customers. Enough is enough, since you have been given 96 years) You were given your time to improve and to step up, but you just simply refused because of your arrogant attitude, Alim said. He said the Iloilo City Council will be briefed on Monday (Nov. 26) by officials of More Electric Power Corp. on the companys plans to improve electricity service and lower electricity rates in Iloilo City when it takes over PECOs operations when the 95-year-old utility firms current franchise expires on January 18, 2019. More Power, a company with a capitalization of P2 billion and owned by business tycoon Enrique K. Razon Jr., secured the legislative franchise from the House of Representatives and the Senate to distribute electricity in IIoilo City. PECOs own application for a new franchise has been ignored by the House after the chambers Committee on Legislative Franchises received tons of complaints from Iloilo City residents, including a City Council resolution asking Congress to deny the 95-year-old utility firm a new congressional license to operate. Razon said in a statement last week that the ton of consumer complaints against PECO and even the City Councils own resolution asking Congress to deny PECO a new franchise because of its record of bad service, its bad habit of overbilling its customers and its high electricity rates that the group Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC) said was the highest not only in the Philippines but in the entire world, are what convinced him and More Power to launch a bid to take over electricity distribution in Iloilo City by applying for a franchise from Congress.
CORNWALL, Ontario  Grade 11 and 12 students of St. Josephs Secondary School hosted a spaghetti supper on Saturday, Nov. 24 at Blessed Sacrament Parish.

Community members could indulge in vegetarian or non-vegetarian spaghetti, salad and a variety of sweets for $10. Several silent auction items were also available to bid on.

All proceeds from the supper will support students through a mission trip to Guatemala in the new year.

Our spaghetti supper and silent auction is to help raise funds for our students going to Guatemala, explained school Chaplin, Gordie Vanputten. They will be spending just about 10 days there in February doing a service trip. We will work on painting and building roads in one of the villages through the One By One program.

Vanputten explained that the school has been hosting the program for the past 20 years.

I think the trip is very important because we are going to be making impacts on small communities there who usually dont have the same opportunities as us, said Erica Joyce, a student who will be attending the trip. Joyce thinks that it is especially important for young individuals to experience a trip like this.

Andrea Uhr, another student who will travel to Guatemala, said that her and a few fellow students reached out to local businesses for silent auction donations during their free time on weekends. Some sponsors include Echo Trends, Fence Depot, Best Buy and more.

Some of the students are feeling nervous but excited for the trip and they are eager to make a difference.
The Commission on Human Rights (CHR) said Sunday incidents of lawless violence in Samar, Negros Occidental and the Bicol region need to be thoroughly investigated as it expressed caution against theto those areas. Incidents of violence demand thorough investigation and expedient justice for the victims. This is the more immediate clamor that needs to be addressed to truly stop the cycle of violence, CHR spokesperson Jacqueline de Guia said in statement. The statement followsto those provinces following incidents of lawless violence and acts of terror. The CHR said themight worsen violence instead of solving it, and that increasing the presence of security forces might escalate tension and fuel fear in the community. We urge the government to pursue development solutions rather than military approach to truly address the long standing problems that impact the basic rights and dignity of the people, the commission said. READ: Rody deploys more troops Also on Sunday, Senator Panfilo Lacson said the President, as commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, could have called for the deployment of more troops even without issuing a memorandum order. READ: Memo 32 upholds habeas In an interview over radio dzBB, Lacson said troops from areas with no problems can be deployed to places that need them.He added that he saw nothing wrong into address lawless violence. Under the 1987 Constitution, he said the President, as commander-in-chief, may call out the Armed Forces of the Philippines to prevent or suppress lawless violence, rebellion or invasion covering the entire or any part of the country. Memorandum Order 32 provides that the deployment of additional soldiers and policemen to suppress lawless violence and acts of terror in the provinces of Samar, Negros Oriental, Negros Occidental and the Bicol region and prevent such violence from spreading and escalating elsewhere in the country. MO No. 32 also reinforced the guidelines under the state of national emergency, which Duterte declared in September 2016 on the ground of lawless violence, following a deadly bomb attack in Davao City. The AFP declined to comment on the memorandum order, saying it needed to meet first with the Defense and the Interior and Local Government departments to hammer out how to carry out its provisions on the ground. We say we support MO 32s intent primarily because to protect the people and secure the state is the AFPs constitutional mandate, AFP spokesman Brig. Gen. Edgard Arevalo said. READ: Task force eyed to quell violence, terror acts
"I want to look like Ivanka Trump," Houston resident Sarah Schmidt told Inside Edition before undergoing a total of nine surgical procedures, with a price tag of more than $20,000, on September 14.

To perform the surgery, the 34-year-old technology analyst enlisted Houston cosmetic surgeon Dr. Franklin A. Rose, who is no stranger to the spotlight.

RELATED: Ivanka Trump tours NASA's Johnson Space Center on Thursday

Not only did his daughter Erica Rose appear as a contestant on ABC's reality TV series, "The Bachelor," but his roster of high profile clients includes Claudia Sierra, whose appearance was transformed to resemble First Lady Melania Trump, and Lady Walker, the late J. Howard Marshall's lover before he moved on to Anna Nicole Smith, whose face and body were enhanced.

RELATED: Cypress mom undergoes eight surgeries to look like first lady Melania Trump

Rose also performed a three-hour surgery involving five procedures on Ashley Horn, who shares the same father as actress Lindsay Lohan, to make her look more like her famous half-sister.

In 2016, Rose performed surgery on Houston mother of two, Jenny Stuart, then 36 years-old, who wanted to bear a resemblance to none other than ... Ivanka Trump. Accompanying her to the office visits to see Dr. Rose was her friend, Sarah Schmidt.

The Houston Chronicle spoke with Sarah Schmidt and Dr. Franklin A. Rose in two separate phone calls on Wednesday for more details about Schmidt's surgical procedures.

"The whole thing happened organically," Dr. Rose tells the Houston Chronicle of his client's request. "She would come with Jenny Stuart, and also wanted to look like Ivanka."

Of her desire to resemble Donald Trump's eldest daughter, Schmidt said, "Nothing about her political affiliations inspired me. It's a 100 percent looks based. She is very pretty and I like her features."

For Dr. Rose, the request to make someone look like a famous person is familiar territory.

"For years, people wanted to look like Jaclyn Smith, wanting her nose. Patients come in and want Jennifer Lopez's buttocks. This has been going on since I've been in practice," Rose said.

RELATED: Ageless Angel: Houston native Jaclyn Smith turns 73

"They pull up an image, celebrity or not, on their cell phones and ask for what they want. Ivanka is very pretty and in the media, so it's not uncommon that we get that request."

Schmidt did just that, bringing a photo of Trump to her consultation to use as a guide. "I felt like I kind of looked like her anyway, and told him I really like her nose," she said.

During the surgery, which took about four hours, Schmidt had a nose job, cheek contouring, lip filler, lipo under her chin, bra fat lipo, a Brazilian butt lift and lipo on her stomach, hips, and thighs.

Now, nearly eight weeks post surgery, Schmidt says she is recovering well.

"The first five days were brutal. I could barely get out of bed. It took about four weeks before I wasn't in bad pain, although I am still a little swollen with slight pain," she said.

Last Thursday, Schmidt's family and friends gathered for a reveal party at Montrose's Emmaline restaurant.

Erica Rose made the big introduction as Schmidt, wearing a long form-fitting gown, entered the room to cheers.

"Even with the swelling, there is a definitely a difference in how I look. My friends and family were all so positive and supportive," she notes.

"I am thrilled with the results. Dr. Rose did an excellent job. All the pain was absolutely worth it."

As for Dr. Rose, he is planning a "Meghan Markle Reveal" on ABC's Nightline featuring two girls undergoing procedures to look like The Duchess of Sussex. Rose says the episode is set to air early next year.

Marcy de Luna is a digital reporter specializing in social media, the famous, and food. You can follow her on Twitter @MarcydeLuna. Read her stories on our breaking news site, Chron.com, and on our subscriber site, HoustonChronicle.com. | Marcy.deLuna@chron.com | Text CHRON to 77453 to receive breaking news alerts by text message
BRIDGEPORT  Officers are investigating after a shooting at a State Street bar early Sunday morning.

Police received a report of shots fired at Tiagos Bar and Grill around 1:15 a.m., spokesman Av Harris said.

Officers discovered a small amount of blood, as well as two bullet holes in the wall and bar, Harris said. Shell casings were also found.

Police have not found the victims of the shooting, but have checked hospitals in Bridgeport and the larger surrounding area, Harris said.
The day following a fine Thanksgiving meal with our family, Im OK with eating a little crow.

Maybe Gov.-elect Ned Lamont didnt have to help with peeling potatoes, as I did, the day before Thanksgiving  had I Neds riches, I would have staff doing that, too, I suppose  but whatever the case, there he was at the Church of the Blessed Sacrament on Union Avenue in Bridgeport on Wednesday morning helping to distribute Thanksgiving turkeys and groceries.

It was a gesture, of course, a gesture of recognition to a community that helped put him over the top in his run for governor.

This was the same neighborhood Lamont worked with Bridgeport Mayor Joseph P. Ganim a few days before the Nov. 6 gubernatorial election.

Ganim had been a Lamont opponent in the August Democratic primary and had painted Lamont, a wealthy Greenwich entrepreneur, as an out-of-touch-with-the-hood, horse country effete more comfortable in the posh surroundings of a country club than with, say, the environs of a Taes Lounge, a working mans bar on Stratford Avenue.

After the primary, though, Ganim and Lamont made their peace. It was forged more from pragmatism than affection, to be sure.

Were pretty different cats. Theres no question about that, Lamont said in the primarys aftermath. But he wants to turn around his city, and he wants to get re-elected in his city.

We dont party together, the victor offered.

Lamonts visit on that October Friday, with Ganim as his guide, attracted a lot of cameras. The two were accompanied by a platoon of candidates, including U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, D-Fourth district, and U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., both of whom also won big on Election Day.

Nearly 23,000 Bridgeport Democrats voted on Nov. 6, contributing substantially to Lamonts 40,177 margin of victory over Republican Bob Stefanowski.

Theres no question that the Bridgeport Democratic machine, its levers, pulleys and other machinations guided behind the curtain by the steady hand of the wizard himself, town chairman Mario Testa, did indeed go all out for the country club guy.

The day after the October visit, when the cameras and the politicians were gone, I visited the neighborhood and noted that the long-ignored East End of Bridgeport looked pretty much the same.

Some guys in the neighborhood that I talked to that day were, shall we say, skeptical about what would likely change on The Avenue, Stratford Avenue, when the election was over. I had to count myself among them.

The East End has seen candidates come in those electric days before an election ... and disappear when all the shouting was over. And any reporter who has covered Bridgeport for a long time, has seen the same.

On that October morning, after the whirlwind tour, Lamont told Hearst Connecticut Media reporter Brian Lockhart that he would be back to the neighborhood.

So, certainly, this was an encouraging gesture from the man who will soon become the governor of Connecticut.

Lamont, of course, doesnt have to visit the East End of Bridgeport regularly throughout his coming four-year term.

He will have many ways to make his presence known.

Its impossible to drive through the East End of Bridgeport and not recognize the issues that trouble the inner precincts of all the states cities, perhaps chiefly the idleness of groups of young men outside bodegas and on street corners, schools that are struggling to create a future for kids from families that are also struggling to keep their heads above water.

Lamont can make his presence known by supporting programs for young people in the neighborhood, like the Ralphola Taylor Community Center at 790 Central Ave.

A central part of his successful campaign was his identifying himself not as a country club guy but rather as someone who became successful through his business acumen and close relationships with the business community, businesses both large and small.

Lamont, for instance, volunteered time not so long ago teaching business classes at Harding High School.

He can make his presence known, as he said he would do during the campaign, by steering some of those small businesses into Bridgeport.

Its good that he came back to say thank you. Helping all the East Ends of Connecticut is just the right thing to do.

Michael J. Daly is retired editor of the Connecticut Post editorial page. Email him at edit@ctpost.
Earlier this month, Americans went to the polls and sent a powerful message: The election not only was a resounding verdict against Republicans' assault on Americans' health care and wages, but also it was a vote to rescue our broken democracy.

In the face of a torrent of special-interest dark money, partisan gerrymandering and devious vote-suppression schemes, voters elected a House Democratic majority determined to bring real change to restore our democracy.

During the campaign, Democrats declared unequivocally that we would clean up corruption to make Washington work for the people. We pledged to reduce the role of money in politics, to restore ethics and integrity to government, and to strengthen voting laws.

We now have our marching orders. The new Democratic House is ready to deliver with H.R. 1: a bold reform package to restore the promise of our democracy - a government of, by and for the people.

First, let's end the dominance of money in politics. For far too long, big-money and corporate special interests have undermined the will of the people and subverted policymaking in Washington - enabling soaring health-care costs and prescription drug prices, undermining clean air and clean water for our children, and blocking long-overdue wage increases for hard-working Americans.

So let's rein in the unaccountable "dark money" unleashed by the Supreme Court's Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision by requiring all political organizations to disclose their donors, and by shutting down the shell game of big-money donations to super PACs. We must also empower hard-working Americans in our democracy by building a 21st-century campaign-finance system - combining small-donor incentives and matching support - to increase and multiply the power of small donors. Wealthy special interests shouldn't be able to buy more influence than the workers, consumers and families who should be our priority in Washington.

Next, let's make sure that when public servants get to Washington, they serve the public. Restoring the public's trust means closing the revolving door between government and private industries, and imposing strong new ethics laws to stop officials from using their public office for personal gain. To do so, we will expand conflict-of-interest laws, ban members of Congress from serving on for-profit boards, revamp the oversight authority of the Office of Government Ethics, and prohibit public servants from receiving bonus payments from their former employers to enter government. We'll curb the influence of high-powered Washington insiders by closing lobbyist registration loopholes that allow big-money power brokers and foreign actors to operate in the shadows. That way, well-connected special interests won't be able to steer the policy agenda away from the priorities of the American public.

Finally, let's make it easier, not harder, to vote. Since the Supreme Court took the teeth out of the Voting Rights Act, Republican political operatives have increasingly turned to blatant schemes to make it more difficult for the Americans left behind to participate in elections - a narrow agenda all too often targeted at communities of color.

We must renew the Voting Rights Act to protect every citizen's access to the ballot box and restore the vital safeguard of pre-clearance requirements for areas with a history of voter suppression. We will promote national automatic voter registration, bolster our critical election infrastructure against foreign attackers, and put an end to partisan gerrymandering once and for all by establishing federal guidelines to outlaw the practice. No American should face hours-long lines, broken voting machines or rules rigged to keep their vote from being counted in our elections.

These are the reforms that will ultimately change the balance of power in Washington. When we get dark money out of politics, clean up corruption and ensure fair elections, we will dismantle the ability of special interests to stack the deck of our democracy and our economy against hard-working Americans.

And with a system that works for the people, we will deliver policy outcomes that make life better for all Americans: We will lower health-care costs and out-of-control prices for prescription drugs. We will rebuild the United States' infrastructure, raise the minimum wage and put leverage back in the hands of workers and consumers. We will finally advance common-sense, bipartisan solutions to prevent gun violence. We will confront discrimination with theEquality Act, pass the Dream Act to protect the patriotic young undocumented immigrants who came here as children, and take the first step toward comprehensive immigration reform.

We have a responsibility to honor the vision of our founders, the sacrifices made to expand the right to vote and our duty to the American people. With bold action to fix what is broken in our democracy, we can make progress for working families and renew Americans' trust in Congress to tackle the issues that matter most.

---

Pelosi represents California's 12th Congressional District and is Democratic leader in the House of Representatives. Sarbanes, a Democrat, represents Maryland's 3rd Congressional District.
"I do not envy the President for his job."

The government is deploying more policemen and soldiers to places tagged as election hot spots. Mayors, vice mayors and other local officials have been killed in ambushes in the last quarter of the year leading to the run-up of the mid-term elections in May 2019. President Rodrigo Duterte ordered the Philippine National Police and the Armed Forces of the Philippines to deploy more men to Samar, Negros Oriental and the Bicol region where pre-poll violence has been reported. Concerned citizens, however, voiced apprehension that this move could lead to a piecemeal placement of the entire country under martial law. Mindanao rocked by terrorist attacks highlighted by the ISIS siege of Marawi last year has been placed under martial law. This has been extended three times. But what is the President to do when the exercise of free election is endangered by private armies with the communist New Peoples Army also doing their share of violence to ensure that friendly local politicians win? With the Presidents hands already full in his relentless war on illegal drugs trafficking, throwing more manpower to protect the election process would spread thin law enforcement. And then hes also harnessing the military to stop corruption in the Bureau of Customs.I do not envy the job of this President. He has his hands full, not only with keeping the elections orderly and peaceful, but also ensuring that Customs does not allow the smuggling of shabu. In between these concerns, President Duterte is also confronted with illegal Chinese workers who are displacing Filipinos in the job market. These illegal Chinese, police raid showed, are also involved in the operation of Shabu laboratories in the country. This is an illegal operation that is a threat to national security as it destroys our youth who are supposed to be the countrys future leaders. Meanwhile, Duterte is also being accused of falling into the Chinese debt trap/ China is pouring in billions of funds in grants and loan to bankroll Philippine infrastructure projects roads, bridges, and railways. But why should we worry? That to me seems more the problem of the lender than the borrower, The United States alone owes China trillions of dollars in debt accumulated by previous presidents before Trump. Chinas own people are concerned that their country is spreading its resources thin with loans to Africa and South American countries. This, with its gargantuan military expenditure to advance its aggressive ambition in the region, could sap Chinas strength. Chinas manpower and resources could suffer a setback if the United States in protecting the freedom of navigation, finally challenges Chinas military buildup in the CSC. Already, the US and China are locked in a trade war following President Donald Trumps America first policy which imposes higher tariff on Chinese products. It is not remote for the European Union to follow the lead of their American cousins across the Atlantic. Without the US and the EU, the Chinese market will be confined to the African and South American countries China has been assisting with huge loans through these years. But unless Africa and South America can really grow themselves into a large consumer market, it would not make sense to flood these countries with no money to spend for with Chinese goods This, as anyone knows, is the law of supply and demand.
Pa. election audit: Private company vows to protect voters' information

The company contracted by state Senate Republicans pledged to be fair and protect voters' sensitive information in its election, but didn't elaborate.
"That is only part of the story as far as the Malampaya Project is concerned."

P146 billion is the amount ordered by the Commission on Audit to be reimbursed to the government by the foreign contractors, Shell Exploration B. V. (SPEX) and Chevron Malampaya LLC, operating the Malampaya Deepwater Gas-to-Power Project, one of the biggest industrial projects in the country, for underpayments of the governments share in the projects net earnings since its operation in 2001. This amount is as of January 24 this year. It is bound to increase annually until the end of the concession period less than 10 years from now. Unless the Supreme Court and the arbitration tribunals in Singapore and Washington DC decide otherwise in the cases which SPEX and Chevron filed contesting the 2015 COA ruling ordering them to pay P53 billion in income taxes which were heretofore absorbed by government on the mistaken notion, as now ruled by the auditors, that it forms part of governments 60-percent share in the projects net earnings. Since 2001, the contractors have passed on, as it were, and insisted that their income tax payments form part of the governments share. Indeed, the Arroyo and PNoy administrations actually supported the contractors claim that the deduction of income taxes from the governments share was a .. tax assumption, not a tax exemption, since the provision governing their case, Section 12 (b) of PD 87 issued by then President Marcos specified that the contractor is granted ...exemption from all taxes except income tax... This thinking was reinforced by a legal opinion issued by the lawyers of the Petroleum Association of the Philippines, but of course, that the corporate income taxes was supposed to be taken from the governments 60-percent share rather than from the contractors 40-percent share of net earnings in consideration of the huge investments they injected to make the project a reality. Why the past administrations allowed themselves to be suckered into this highly irregular proposition is beside me. But that is another story. What is important is the auditors flatly rejected this pro-contractors proposition.Said COA: There is no provision in the law which specifically provides that the income taxes of the contractors will be part of the government. PD 87 and 1459 issued during the Marcos administration ere clear that the minimum government share was 60 percent of the net earnings of the Malampaya gas project. It can go up but it cannot go down without violating the law. Indeed, the COA clarified that under Section 8(2) of PD 87, it was made clear that the contractors service fee shall not exceed 40 percent of the balance of the gross income after the required deductions, including Filipino participation incentives and operating expenses. Thus, the auditing body insisted that the contractors income taxes should not have been passed on to the government as it decreased its share from the project to 34.03 percent while the contractors share increased to 65.97 percent. But that is only part of the story as far as the Malampaya Project is concerned. Service Contract 38 under which it the foreign contractors undertook the project and its subsequent interpretations including opinions and related implementation instruments are awash with stories of fraud, abuse of political power, usurpation of authority, illegal arrangements and, worse, violation of the Constitution.
Imagine discovering Mr Kellogg had barred his cereals from his familys breakfast table. Or the makers of Calpol wouldnt give it to their own feverish youngsters.

Well, thats exactly whats happening now among the super-rich technology titans who develop the phones, tablets and apps our children are glued to.

These are the people whove witnessed first-hand how much ingenuity goes into engineering devices and games to make them as addictive as possible to young minds  and the damage that can do.

Waldorf School (pictured) is a proudly tech-free institution right in the middle of Silicon Valley

Naturally, they dont want their own precious little ones frazzling their brains hour after hour, so theyre banning them from using the screens theyre selling to everyone elses children.

Remarkably, a school that trumpets traditional teaching  blackboards, text books, pencils, paper and outdoor play  has become the most sought after destination for the offspring of the digital elite in America. Waldorf School is a proudly tech-free institution right in the middle of Silicon Valley.

Because the growing consensus among those at the heart of the tech revolution is that trawling endlessly through phones  they call it zombie scrolling  or spending hours staring at screens, stunts young minds and destroys attention spans. Not to mention causing sleeplessness, social isolation and depression.

While delighted to hook your children and mine, those gliding up to the Waldorfs school gates in Teslas and Range Rovers each morning are choosing not to risk it with their own.

Chamath Palihapitiya, a billionaire former Facebook executive, refuses to let his three youngsters use mobiles or tablets. He says: I do not want children that only know how to interface with the world through a screen. Well, neither do the rest of us.

I rue the day I absent-mindedly let my children  aged five and 14  kill time playing on my phone. Its now our number one source of friction, often turning bedtime and homework into a battleground.

The full impact of this screen addiction is not known, but research suggests limited periods exploring the internet with a parent is fine, as are things that stretch the mind, such as writing code. Building-type games are better than zombie scrolling. Yet, when I asked a child psychotherapist to recommend a safe number of minutes a day, she shot back: How about zero?

A former Google executive has revealed how tech companies employ the worlds brightest minds to engineer their apps to be as unputdownable as possible. YouTube learns the videos your child likes  then queues up a stream of similar ones to play automatically.

Technology titans who develop the phones, tablets and apps our children are glued to aren't letting their kids use them because they know how harmful and addictive they are

Snapchat has a feature called Streaks which shows the number of consecutive days children send snaps to each other. An hourglass pops up if youre close to 24 hours without a snap and then bang, your score is back to zero. I was in the car with a friend when her 11-year-old became hysterical, squealing my streaks, as she realised we had no signal and she was close to the 24 hours cut-off point.

The favourite in our house is an online game called Fortnite. Its so insidiously clever that my eldest says abandoning a game before the end is like ripping up a book manuscript in front of the author as hes on the final paragraph.

To him and his buddies, its that bad. Psychologists say these games release the pleasure hormone dopamine  the same one that gets people hooked on drugs. Think of the pleasure as more akin to cocaine than sweeties, said one.

To me, this all feels like a repetition of the multi-billion-pound marketing strategies once employed by big tobacco companies to snare the young, knowing theyd be hooked for life.

Learning that the very people who brought us this technology are shunning it in their own homes is galling beyond words. The hypocrisy is as outrageous as their bank balances.

Sorry Ant, its a big thumbs down

I hope Ant McPartlin hasnt been watching Im A Celebrity on his hols. For hed see his 30-year partner- in-crime, Dec Donnelly, soaring to new heights as a solo star.

Suddenly Ant and Dec seems very cold potatoes as Dec reveals himself to be not only the brains but the comedic heart of our most successful TV double act. My family has been in fits of laughter at his impromptu flights of fancy, not least his dad-dancing to the Spice Girls.

Ant McPartlin has had to watch his TV partner Dec Donnelly soaring to new heights without him on I'm A Celebrity since battling addictions following a split from his wife Lisa (together at their wedding in 2006)

Ants downfall is a textbook case of how fame and fortune can be lost in a nanosecond. Troubled Ant struggled with painkiller addiction, saw the collapse of his marriage to Lisa Armstrong and quickly moved on to the couples former PA. Far worse, he could have killed a young family after drunkenly crashing his Mini. After a record drink-drive fine, some ham-fisted spin and a my hell story with a tabloid, the whole saga was tied up in a nice PR package.

What Ant and his publicists had not counted on was the crazed world of social media where the mob rules. Like at Romes Colosseum, the masses have the final word. The thumb is either up or down. In Decs case its up  but its definitely down on Ant.

No Prince Charming

Princess Beatrice is dating millionaire property developer Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, who was living with the mother of his child when he met the royal

Princess Beatrice has been whisked off her feet by dashing millionaire property developer Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, known to friends as Edo, after romance blossomed at Eugenies wedding.

Fergie is thrilled and dreaming of another big day. It all seemed too good to be true  and it is...

According to friends, Edo, 35, has a two-year-old son and was living with the mother, a gorgeous Chinese-American architect called Dara Huang (pictured) when he went to the Royal Wedding.

He and Dara, 37, had been engaged for three years. Now shes left his London home, but races back there after work each night to cuddle and bath her little boy.

If I were Fergie, I wouldnt be planning a return to St Georges Chapel with this Prince Charming any time soon

Unflappable Fiona

Its not just Fiona Bruces clipped head-girl tones and impish humour that make her a perfect Question Time host. Its that nothing fazes her  not even an unexpected intervention as she gave birth to daughter Mia.

She recalls: The labour went on for ages, and they asked if they could bring some students in. My legs are in stirrups, right at the point of the pushing  so a bit of huffing and puffing goes on, then theres a little silence when you catch your breath before the next contraction.

BBC newsreader Fiona Bruce is set to replace David Dimbleby as host of Question Time

And just in that little well of silence this voice plopped into it, from somewhere around my feet, saying, This probably isnt the right time to mention it, but you are my favourite presenter. 

Ever the pro, Fiona replied: Thats nice to hear, thank you.

Shell find the Question Time bear pit a total doddle.

This breathless passage from Michelle Obamas autobiography, about falling for her President-to-be, tickled me so much I read it out loud to my husband. As soon as I allowed myself to feel anything for Barack, the feelings came rushing  a toppling blast of lust, gratitude, fulfilment, wonder. Is that how it was for you, my husband chortled. I wont share my reply

After his success in the BBC drama Bodyguard, Richard Madden is fighting off producers, as well as female fans.

Hes had talks with show creator Jed Mercurio about a sequel, but says he will only do it if theres a strong enough storyline. Thats actor speak for: If the cheques big enough
An Australian woman who started drinking when she was in her early teens has revealed how she fell into the grips of a severe alcohol addiction that lasted for a staggering nine years.

Samantha Hoult, 32, from Cairns, Queensland, started drinking as a 14-year-old and by the time she was 18 she was addicted to alcohol and drinking on a daily basis.

Now four years sober, it took a harrowing warning from doctors when she was 27 to spark her recovery.

'My liver was giving up and the doctors said I was lucky to be alive. They said if I had one more drink I would be dead.'

By 27 years old, Ms Hoult (pictured) said she was told by doctors if she had another drink she would wind up dead

The recovered alcoholic, said that as a 14-year-old drinking became a way to deal with issues and emotional problems she struggled to face.

'Because I started so young, I didn't actually learn how to deal with issues without alcohol,' Ms Hoult told FEMAIL.

She said that although she and her friends started drinking together, the difference between her and others around her was that they knew when to stop.

Life after the bottle: Samantha Hoult has now been sober for four years, an achievement that has allowed her live life to the fullest

The life and soul of the party: Ms Hoult explains that unlike her peers who knew when to stop, once she started she needed to keep going

'I was always the last one at the party, the one who wanted to keep drinking. Everyone else seemed to know when enough was enough,' she recalled.

It didn't take long for 'alcohol to become number one' and once she'd start drinking, she simply couldn't, and wouldn't, stop.

The doctor said I had 30 minutes to get to the emergency department of my local hospital.

Although Ms Hoult found a way to complete her last year at school and go on to start a nursing degree, her drinking caused her to drop out after her first year.

Once 18, alcohol started to affect every area of her life and there was nothing she could do to stop the nightmare that had become her world.

'I lost multiple jobs due to always calling in sick and I went bankrupt after I stopped paying my bills to fund my drinking habit,' she said.

At her worst, Ms Hoult would drink a dozen beers and a 1.25L bottle of vodka. She was also spending upwards of $150 a day.

Ms Hoult says she started drinking as a 14-year-old as a way to deal with issues and emotional problems she struggled to face

At her worst she would drink a dozen beers and a 1.25L bottle of vodka and would spend in the vicinity of $150 a day

'I suffered multiple injuries from drunken falls, I lost my drivers' licence, I lost relationships with family and friends. All of my romantic relationships ended due to alcohol,' she said.

'It got to the point where I was drinking from the minute I woke up. Otherwise, I would get the delirium tremens [severe alcohol withdrawal symptoms].'

When she was 27, Ms Hoult said her body was starting to pay the price for her drinking in a terrifying way.

She explained the turning point, one that saw her give up alcohol for good, came after a particularly boozy weekend - a bender that left her feeling sick for days.

'I put it down to alcohol poisoning, however, when I was still unwell a few days later I went to see the doctor,' she said.

Ms Hoult said it took being hospitalised with alcohol-induced hepatitis and warning she could die in order for her to turn her life around

'He did some blood tests and rang me the next morning to tell me I had 30 minutes to get to the emergency department of my local hospital.'

The results were shocking: her liver enzyme count was 14,380 and a healthy count is between 0 - 45.

I had to learn how to do everything sober again including eating, sleeping, socialising and dating.

'I arrived at the hospital in a haze of terror and I was rushed straight in and immediately put on a drip to try and clear my liver of toxins,' Ms Hoult said.

Ms Hoult was diagnosed with alcohol-induced hepatitis and would spend the next week suffering from withdrawals including delirium tremens, migraines, nausea, vomiting, insomnia and fevers.

'After a week I was sent home to continue my recovery, she said, 'but not before I was told the words I really needed to hear: "If you have one more drink, you will die".'

The wake-up call was enough for the 27-year-old to decide she would turn away from alcohol for good but she admits her early days of sobriety weren't easy.

Ms Hoult (pictured right, with her mother pictured left) said her addiction cost her so much include her relationships with her family

While support workers, including a psychologist from a community health organisation, helped her understand why she drank, Ms Hoult said learning how to live life sober was 'incredibly difficult'.

'I had to learn how to do everything sober again including eating, sleeping, socialising and dating.

'And I suffered from migraines, nausea and insomnia for months.'

She said that throwing herself into work, university and volunteering with State Emergency Services (SES) not only kept her busy but also gave her a purpose and helped rebuild her shattered life.

Turning away from drinking meant discovering how to live life without alcohol as a crutch, something Ms Hoult said was extremely difficult in the beginning

She revealed throwing herself into work, university and volunteering with State Emergency Services (SES) not only kept her busy but also gave her a purpose

Young Australians and alcohol: the stats Most drug related deaths of young Australians are due to alcohol 58 per cent of the time alcohol is the drug involved for substance related admission into hospitals for 15-34 year olds. Just under 70 per cent of teenagers between 14-17 get alcohol from friends or relatives. Just under 50 per cent of girls and 44 per cent of boys buy alcohol from shops. 30 per cent of 13-17 year olds participated in unsupervised drinking at a sports club and 71% of these had never been asked for proof of age. Source: Salvation Army Advertisement

Now Ms Hoult can proudly say she has been sober for four years.

In that time has managed to complete her nursing degree - although this isn't a profession she has returned to.

Instead, she now heads up an online clothing business, a venture that sees her manage a team of 12,000 sales representatives.

Then there is her ongoing volunteer work with SES and she also plays competitive eight ball.

'I'm debt free, I have my licence and a car, have a great circle of friends. I have rebuilt relationships with family members and I'm in a loving relationship with an amazingly supportive man,' Ms Hoult said.

The now 32-year-old believes by sharing her story it might be possible to also help others who may be battling a serious drinking problem at a young age.

Although chocolate and tea have replaced beer and vodka, Ms Hoult declares life sober couldn't be more worthwhile

'My life started when I put down the bottle; I have achieved more in my four years and three months of sobriety than I did in the whole 14 years I was drinking.

'Sobriety was the greatest gift I ever gave myself and I can honestly say I do not miss my old life at all.

'To those that are struggling, please know that there is light at the end of the tunnel, there is hope. Life is so much better sober, and if I can do it, so can you!'

Where to get help: Alcoholics Anonymous, contact: 1300 222 222 or visit aa.org.au

Try ReachOut NextStep to learn about support options available for you.
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With summer just around the corner in the southern hemisphere, weddings are front and centre of mind for many.

And with a new year on the horizon, there are countless trends set to dominate the next twelve months, from sleek silhouettes to gowns with less structure and more.

Here, speaking exclusively to FEMAIL, designers including Steven Khalil and Grace Loves Lace share the bridal trends set to dominate over the next year.

Here, speaking exclusively to FEMAIL, designers including Steven Khalil and Grace Loves Lace share the bridal trends set to dominate over the next year (pictured: the Grace Loves Lace Honey dress)

For Megan Ziems, the brains behind the world's most pinned wedding dress and the Grace Loves Lace label, a more natural bridal aesthetic is set to be in vogue come January - she said that dresses 'will feature lots of sheer and contrasting elements'

DRESSES WITHOUT STRUCTURE

'Less structure and more natural glamour will be a highlight,' Megan said (pictured: the Grace Loves Lace Honey gown)

For Megan Ziems, the brains behind the world's most pinned wedding dress and the Grace Loves Lace label, a more natural bridal aesthetic is set to be in vogue come January:

'Less structure and more natural glamour will be a highlight,' she explained to FEMAIL - adding that 'creative and luxurious fabrics will also come into play'.

'Dresses will feature lots of sheer and contrasting elements, with hidden yet decadent trims and details,' Megan added.

'I feel that the truly modern and adventurous bride will take reign - she shows a nod to tradition through colour and details like pearls, yet she's confident with wearing a sexy and powerful dress.

'Comfort will be key as women continue to appreciate that being a bride for the day isn't about wearing a corset or heavy gown.

'Cowl necks and A-line skirts will be a huge silhouette feature along with pearl detailing. It's all about making a timeless and classic dress exciting!'.

Megan highlighted Grace Loves Lace's $1,900 Honey style as indicative of this trend - explaining it's her new 'favourite dress of all time'.

For Sydney-based designer, Moira Hughes, the Meghan Markle effect is certainly set to trickle down to everyday brides in 2019 - with many opting for high necklines and sleek silhouettes (pictured: one of her styles)

'The trend we see as set to be huge this year is sleek silhouettes without too much detailing,' Moira told FEMAIL (pictured: one of her dresses)

'Modern brides are taking inspiration from Meghan Markle's wedding and channeling sleek, clean designs created in beautiful fabrics,' the designer explained (pictured: two of her designs)

SLEEK SILHOUETTES

For Sydney-based designer, Moira Hughes, the Meghan Markle effect is certainly set to trickle down to everyday brides in 2019.

'The trend we see as set to be huge this year is sleek silhouettes without too much detailing,' she told FEMAIL.

'Modern brides are taking inspiration from Meghan Markle's wedding and channeling sleek, clean designs created in beautiful fabrics.

'Today's brides are strong and independent, opting for strong and feminine silhouettes that represent who they are now over the traditional princess gowns.'

Among her gowns that fit the bill is the Freya wedding dress and the Penelope style.

The Penelope has been crafted in silk and also features a low back, which is set to be another on-trend style.

While romantic bridal styles never date, Steven Khalil said that they will be on trend more than ever in the next 12 months (pictured: his Greta and Charlotte styles)

'Less obvious structure, sheer and luxurious fabrics with more feminine detailing,' Steven told FEMAIL is something we are likely to see a lot more of (pictured: one of his designs)

ROMANTIC STYLES

While romantic bridal styles never date, Steven Khalil said that they will be on trend more than ever in the next 12 months.

'I think a big trend that we will see more of in the coming seasons is a return to a more romantic feeling,' he told FEMAIL.

'Less obvious structure, sheer and luxurious fabrics with more feminine detailing.'

He highlighted the Greta and the Charlotte gowns as indicative of this movement.

The high neckline, a la Meghan Markle's Stella McCartney evening dress, will also be big with brides, after it jumped by 351 per cent in searches on Pinterest - backless styles will also be big (pictured: a Moira Hughes style)

Statement sleeves and transparent fabrics (pictured: a Moira Hughes style) also offer an update on the classic bridal style

OTHER TRENDS SET TO DOMINATE

The high neckline, a la Meghan Markle's Stella McCartney evening dress, will also be big with brides, after it jumped by 351 per cent in searches on Pinterest.

Meanwhile, others will try statement sleeves and transparent fabrics for a new take on the classic bridal style.

Some designers even cite bridal jumpsuits as set to be the next big thing, and off white might just be set to have a moment according to others.

Among their top 2018 wedding trend searches, Pinterest found that comfort was key for brides.

For a little extra coverage, women sought out sleeves, where searches were up by 75 per cent, and flats for their special day.

The 'naked' wedding dress trend may also continue to be in fashion.
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Flex your fingers and sharpen your online shopping elbows  were in the middle of Black Friday weekend and its not too late to grab a bargain.

In fact, we can reveal some of the best deals are yet to come today and tomorrow, on Cyber Monday.

Traditionally, Black Friday is an American shopping extravaganza held on the first day after Thanksgiving  which is celebrated in the US on the fourth Thursday of November.

Its called Black Friday because it was originally the day stores first moved into the black and had enough money to lower prices while still covering their costs.

The term Cyber Monday was coined recently and refers to the first Monday after Black Friday when retailers started noticing a leap in sales online.

Brands then started stretching their discounts across the entire weekend from Black Friday to Cyber Monday, for four days of bumper deals.

This years Black Friday weekend is the biggest the UK has ever seen  with many sales starting as early as last Monday and not finishing until Tuesday.

Research reveals 64 per cent of Britons will be shopping this weekend, both in stores and online, spending a staggering 8.29 billion  thats 13.41 million per minute  with the average shopper expected to spend between 200 and 300 each.

Black Friday is definitely no longer just one day, says retail analyst Zoe Mills. The discounts are continuing for over a week, with big names such as Amazon and Currys offering discounts well in advance.

She adds: A lot of it is to do with logistics. By spreading out deliveries over several days, retailers are more able to meet demand and avoid disappointing customers, as well as avoiding problems such as websites crashing because theyre suddenly flooded with orders.

Of course, its also a way of building up hype  for example, some retailers such as Amazon release new deals throughout the day all day, encouraging people to stay online, constantly browsing.

So, what will we all be buying this year?

Black Friday has usually been an electrical event, but thats levelling off now. Clothing, health and beauty products will be big as the price points are lower, explains Mills.

And whats even better about this years event is you dont have to move from the comfort of your sofa to shop for bargains.

Our guide is packed with the best and the newest online deals  including 50 per cent off everything at Gap starting today, 20 per cent off at Selfridges and, of course, Amazons top Cyber Monday deals.

So, grab a cup of tea, open up your laptop and get ahead with your Christmas shopping...
Fans say Princess Charlotte looks just like a young Lady Kitty Spencer, after Princess Diana's niece shared a childhood snap of herself.

Lady Kitty, 27, shared a sweet black-and-white picture of herself on Instagram, which she captioned: 'First day of school #tbt'

The photograph shows young Kitty, believed to be around four-years-old, posing in a gingham dress and black dolly shoes.

Royal watchers quickly pointed out the similarity between her and Charlotte, three - with some saying that they even mistook the picture as being one of the young princess.

Fans have pointed out the resemblance between a young Lady Kitty Spencer and Princess Charlotte, after Princess Diana's niece shared a snap of herself on her first day of school (above)

Royal watchers said Charlotte, three, (pictured on her first day of nursery) looks just like Lady Kitty, now 27, in the photograph

One fan commented: 'Princess charlotte looks like you!' while another added 'I thought it was princess Charlotte for a moment'.

Another posted: 'Princess Charlotte has the Spencer genes. You look so similar on this.'

Meanwhile, others wrote 'how much does she look like Charlotte' and 'Split image of Charlotte'.

In the picture of Kitty on her first day at school, Diana's niece is seen with her hair clipped back - just like Charlotte on her first day of school.

Kitty (pictured at Prince Harry and Meghan's wedding in May) is the eldest daughter of Earl Spencer, Diana's brother, and his first wife Victoria Lockwood

Royal watchers quickly pointed out the similarity between Kitty as a child and Charlotte, three

Charlotte is also seen wearing similar-style shoes in burgundy in the snap taken by the Duchess of Cambridge, as the young princess left for her first day at the Willcocks Nursery School in January.

Kitty is the eldest daughter of Earl Spencer, Diana's brother, and his first wife Victoria Lockwood.

She has remained close to Prince William and Prince Harry since Diana's death, attending both their weddings.

The model wowed in a green floral dress by D&G as she attended Harry and Meghan's wedding at Windsor Castle in May.

The comments on the resemblance between Kitty and Charlotte comes after comparisons between the young royal and Diana.

Meanwhile, other fans have remarked on how much Charlotte looks like the Queen in official portraits.
A woman who issued a plea for Twitter to help her find her 'best friend' she met on a Hawaiian cruise in 2006 was reunited with her within 11 hours, leaving people in tears at the sweet online reunion.

Brianna, from Mississippi, who goes by the Twitter handle Briannacry, posted a photo of her smiling younger self wearing a lei garland alongside another girl in a blue floral dress, asking for help finding her.

She had no name for the girl but said she missed her and wanted to know how she was doing.

Within a matter of hours the girl named Heidi, an artist who appears to live in California, responded to her with a picture of herself holding a holiday snap as proof, along with the comment 'I heard you were looking for me'.

People who had been closely following Brianna's search said that the result had them 'crying' with another sharing the post saying 'I love the internet'.

Brianna, left, from Mississippi as a young girl posted the photo on Twitter asking for help finding her mystery 'best friend' she met in 2006 on a cruise to Hawaii

Now living in Mississipi Brianna was interested to know how the girl was doing and that she missed her after becoming fast friends on their family holidays

Within a matter of hours the mystery girl named Heidi had been found and she responded to Brianna with a photo of herself as she looks now and a snap from the same holiday to prove it was really her

Heidi replied to Brianna's tweet with many of their new followers asking whether the two were planning on meeting in person to recreate their photo

Brianna was pleased with the outcome thanking people of social media and saying that her 'heart is so happy'

'Oh my god!! This is amazing!! I am crying right now!!' gushed one person.

'Y'all found her wtf! Twitter is literally amazing,' wrote another in capital letters.

'I wanted it to happen but I wasn't ready when I saw it happen,' said one.

Brianna, pictured as she looks now, was delighted that she had located her friend

Brianna had written: 'Hey twitter, I met this girl on a dinner cruise in Hawaii in 2006.

'We were basically best friends for that night so I need yall to help me find my best friend cause I miss her and I need to see how shes doing now. Please retweet this so we can be reunited.'

After Heidi responded she explained that she hadn't been on Twitter in a while and it was her school friends who told her she was being looked for.

'Bruhhh its been literal years since I was last on Twitter and the first thing I see is a search party for my a**,' she wrote.

Answering how she found out she said: 'Most of the friends that alerted me Ive known since middle school!! I dont think I changed much in the time span between elementary and middle school, so thats why.'

She also revealed that she still had the blue dress and that her mother, who was also in the holiday snap, had handed down hers.

'I still have the dress!! My mom gave me hers so I wear it sometimes.'

Many of their new followers wanted to know what was going to happen next, with some asking the girls if they were planning on meeting in person.

Heidi explained that she wasn't in the position financially to make a trip to meet Brianna but confirmed the two were talking via a private message.

It seemed people were hopeful they would meet as a GoFundMe page appeared on Twitter, but Heidi warned her new followers from donating.
"Mobile analytics company OpenSignal bared a huge disparity in the video experience scores of Smart and Globe."

Constant reports about the dismal state of telecommunication services in the Philippines have tarnished the countrys reputation as a viable destination for tech-savvy industries. Instead of innovation or cutting edge, the images that come to mind are slow internet, dropped calls and congested networks. Last year, Jack Ma verbalized it for all investors and tourists that came before him. Internet speed in the Philippines is not good, he said. A recent report by mobile analytics company OpenSignal bared a huge disparity in the video experience scores of Smart Communications and Globe. Measuring video experience on a scale of 0 to 100 where 100 is the best video experience possible, OpenSignal rated the average overall video experience of Smart subscribers at 42.21, placing it on par with the performance of United States carriers AT&T and Sprint. Globe, on the other hand, came in with a score of 29.22, lagging behind Smart by almost 13 points and the second-lowest among the nine countries in Asia-Pacific monitored in the OpenSignal report. Using real-time measurements from actual smartphone users in the country, the report is based on the LTE connectivity of 76,034 test devices from May 1 to July 29 this year. LTE, which stands for Long Term Evolution, is better known as 4G. It refers to high-speed mobile connectivity that is 10 times faster than whats provided by conventional handsets. The quality of video experience is an important metric because it is the true test of network power. Among the details OpenSignal analyzes in order to determine a telecom carriers overall performance are download and upload speeds, latency and availability on both 3G and 4G spectrums.The report for the months of May to July showed Smart LTE download speeds ahead nationwide at 13.09 Mbps (vs Globes 7.34 Mbps), as well as across all measured areas: at 15.24 Mbps in National Capital Region (vs. 8.43 Mbps); 13.48 Mbps in North Central Luzon (vs. 6.02 Mbps); 10.59 Mbps in South Luzon (vs 6.47 Mbps); 10.49 Mbps in the Visayas (vs 7.42 Mbps); and 12.23 Mbps in Mindanao (vs 6.95 Mbps). Smart also has lower 3G and 4G latency at 98.28ms and 53.48ms, respectively. Earlier this year, OpenSignal also awarded Smart for having the fastest LTE network, and gave it four citations: Best in 4G LTE download speed; Best in overall download speed; Best 4G latency performance; and Best 3G latency performance. These numbers matter because Filipinos are the most avid video consumers of the world, as shown by a separate study done by Limelight Networks in August. Not only are more Filipinos viewing videos on their mobile phones, viewers in the Philippines spend about eight hours and 46 minutes each week on streaming videos. This exceeds the global average and beats the record for India and the U.S. where people watch close to eight hours and 30 minutes of videos online. It also marks a shift in the viewing habits of Filipinosat this level, they are spending more time watching streaming videos on smartphones than TV broadcasts, especially among the population under 46 years old. Another notable trend is that professionally produced content on social media sites and user-generated content attract the most viewers in the Philippines than in any other country included in the Limelight Networks study. In fact, Smart has noted an almost 400-percent increase in the number of YouTube users and a whopping 850 percent surge in the volume of YouTube traffic between April and October this year. The period coincides with a promo that allowed free YouTube viewing for an hour daily with the purchase of various mobile data packages. With so many eyes now riveted to online content, quality expectations are on the rise globally. Video rebuffering, or when the video pauses during playback in order to reload, is becoming unacceptable. The study has noted that for 2018, almost 70 percent of viewers will stop watching a video after a second rebuffering, or 2.2 times. Just two years ago, the global tolerance level for video rebuffering stood at 2.7 times, or almost three times of rebuffering before viewers skip the video altogether. Apparently, video rebuffering isnt a problem among Smart subscribers with the telcos technical qualifications. Is it safe to say the same for the subscribers of Globe? Sadly, the numbers show otherwise, to the detriment not only of its subscribers but of the entire country as well. And while Smart so far, has been outsmarting Globe in terms of internet speed, the latter has to do so much to improve its service. Not only for the sake of competition, but in the service of its subscribers, ironically, to which I belong.
Syringing used to be done by a nurse or doctor using a large ear syringe to squirt water into the ear, then suck the water and the wax out together

For many years I have had a problem with a lot of ear wax clogging up my ears. Ive been told ear syringing is unsafe, so what other treatments are available?

Syringing used to be done by a nurse or doctor using a large ear syringe to squirt water into the ear, then suck the water and the wax out together.

The problem was controlling the pressure of the water jet. Too forceful, and you could damage the eardrum.

These days we use ear irrigation performed by a machine which is able to accurately squirt the water into the ear at a safe and consistent pressure.

The ear wax is dislodged and then travels out with the water. This is routinely done in GP surgeries.

Ear softening drops containing either olive oil or almond oil are also considered very effective. After a week of putting these in, any compacted ear wax may well dislodge.

If neither drops nor ear irrigation work, micro-suction is available at some NHS hospitals: the wax is sucked out using a safe, very thin suction device and no water or syringing.

Avoid cotton buds  they jam built-up wax into the ear even harder.

Why is there no information anywhere about polymyalgia rheumatica? I was diagnosed just over three months ago and have never been in so much pain.

I am 74 and was previously fit and active, but now I feel a cripple. I am on prednisolone but it doesnt seem to be helping.

Polymyalgia rheumatica, or PMR, is a the most common of the rheumatic diseases  conditions that lead to inflammation, pain and stiffness in the joints, tendons, ligaments, bones and muscles.

Avoid cotton buds  they jam built-up wax into the ear even harder

In PMR, which is also sometimes just called polymyalgia, aching is felt in the muscles and there is stiffness, particularly around the shoulders and neck, the hips and the pelvis. Pain may travel to the knees and the elbows.

Its thought to be caused by the immune system turning inward and attack the bodys healthy tissues. It is usually diagnosed in older adults, particularly those over 70.

Patients complain of morning stiffness, difficulty rolling over in bed, getting up from a chair or raising the arms, and tiredness, lack of appetite and ankle swelling.

Prednisolone, a steroid, dampens the inflammatory processes in the body. This is the standard treatment and symptoms should ease after three to four weeks. If things dont improve, an increased dose and a referral to a rheumatologist should be considered.

A lack of response to treatment may indicate false diagnosis. PMR can mimic other joint conditions including arthritis, lupus or even thyroid conditions, so it is important to suggest these to your GP if treatment is ineffective.

A royal engagement last week reminded me that no one is immune to mental-health problems  not even a prince

Mental trauma can hit everyone, even a prince

A royal engagement last week reminded me that no one is immune to mental-health problems  not even a prince. I shared a stage with the Duke of Cambridge and a team of experts to discuss mental-health strategies in the workplace.

At the This Can Happen conference, dedicated to improving mental-health support at work, the Duke, above with the Duchess of Cambridge, revealed the impact of the traumatic incidents he witnessed when working with the air ambulance, admitting that the toll nearly took him over the edge.

The Prince applauded his colleagues for giving him the vital space to talk honestly about the trauma and tragedy he witnessed.

And this theme was hammered home by all the experts: relationships at work are essential to boosting both mood and productivity.

Mental-health support at work isnt only good for employees, it makes good business sense.

EastEnders actor Rita Simons opened up about her OCD diagnosis on Im A Celebrity last week, declaring herself a fully diagnosed sufferer of the mental illness.

The 41-year-old clearly distinguished herself from those who insensitively claim to be a bit OCD just because they like things to be tidy.

I share her frustrations at this gross misunderstanding of the illness. In fact, Rita and other sufferers of OCD are gripped by their obsessions and compulsions to the detriment of their daily life. The obsessional thoughts can be haunting, bringing overwhelming anxiety and often depression.

Thankfully, Rita has her camp-mate Anne Hegerty  who was recently diagnosed with autism  for support; its been heartwarming to watch the women speak openly about mental health with one another.

A nearby friendly and understanding ear is not only helpful for those with mental health issues, its vital for us all.

Boost for smokers... but don't forget the dangers

You may have been surprised to learn last week that smoking could protect you from Parkinsons disease. According to new research, ex-smokers are 20 per cent less likely to develop it, while current smokers see their risk slashed by half.

Proceed with caution. We do not yet know why this association occurs. Indeed it is just that, an association, rather than a clear-cut cause and effect. Charity Parkinsons UK suggest that the answer may lie in nicotine-based botanicals, which may be associated with a reduced risk.

What we can be sure of is the succession of significant health harms associated with smoking. The risk of lung cancer is almost doubled, for instance, and there are many more widely accepted medical reasons to stay well away from cigarettes.

Worried about Alzheimers? Drink slow-roast coffee

Its known that coffee can be good for brain health  but the secret may lie in the roasting rather than in the caffeine.

Moderate coffee consumption could lower the risk of Alzheimers disease by up to 20 per cent, according to research by the Institute for Scientific Information on Coffee.

The study suggests the brain-protecting qualities lie in phenylindanes, compounds released during the process of roasting.

These were shown to inhibit the amalgamation of toxic proteins that are a key factor in neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimers and Parkinsons disease. The longer the coffee is roasted, the more phenylindanes are produced.

THE VLOG

Nikki Lillys YouTube channel.

THE VLOGGER

Nikki, 13, below, has the genetic blood condition arteriovenous malformation and has become a YouTube sensation with her videos on harnessing self-confidence for those with visible disabilities.

WHATS IT ALL ABOUT?

Nikkis vlog (video blog) has garnered 348,000 viewers since she launched the channel when she was just eight. Her fan base watch her bake delicious cakes, give bargain shopping tips and advise how to handle cruel online bullies. The Junior Bake Off winner is on a mission to inspire others with disabilities to love themselves, regardless of the way they look.

We greet people with a smile?

For modern-day humans, a smile is a greeting, but it wasnt always so. The evolutionary purpose of a smile was to communicate a danger or threat to the wider group. If primates, from which we evolved, feel threatened, the lips are curled back and the teeth are apart  they are ready to bite, says Professor Frank Andrews of Knox College in Illinois. But the smile is now so ingrained in human evolution that it exists from birth.

Prof Andrews says: Children who are born blind never see anybody smile, but they show the same kinds of smiles under the same situations as sighted people.
Holly Willoughby has become a high-street fashion powerhouse, whose every sartorial choice is a sellout. This woman is the reason why. Amy E Williams catches up with super-stylist Angie Smith

Holly Willoughby can cause clothes to sell out in minutes  from Topshops polka-dot dress to Anthropologies rainbow sequined skirt. Its a sartorial superpower that makes her one of the few things that can shift high-street clothes right now. But she doesnt work alone.

You may not have heard of Angie Smith, but the 37-year-old stylist from Bedfordshire is credited with transforming Holly from a beloved TV star into a bona fide fashion icon. Not so long ago the presenter and former model, also 37, was stuck in a style rut, always looking nice enough but, in hindsight, drifting dangerously close to dull, possibly even dowdy territory.

Angie Smith, a 37-year-old stylist from Bedfordshire is credited with transforming Holly Willoughby from a beloved TV star into a bona fide fashion icon

Holly was open to new ideas, Angie tells me of their fateful first meeting almost three years ago, which involved her turning up on Hollys doorstop with a rail of clothes. The main thing I wanted to do was get her into more colour  so we tried everything on and went from there. I remember her saying, Ive had my kids. I just need to change it up.

The looks Holly began wearing for her day job on This Morning  and religiously posting on her Instagram account  quickly developed a fanbase all of their own, and it has become perfectly usual for an item that Holly has tagged to sell out instantly, with brands reporting the sort of web traffic normally reserved for items worn by a certain two duchesses. The bosses at Marks & Spencer cottoned on to a very good thing, and this season hired Holly as an ambassador and the face of their Christmas campaign.

Hollys edit of the M&S fashion collection  Hollys must-haves, which Angie was closely involved with behind the scenes  barely had time to get comfortable on the hangers before it was flying out of the door.

And Holly, it seems, now wont make a move without Angie. We speak the day before shell join Holly on the set of Im A Celebrity to supervise all her wardrobe choices while hosting the show.

The pair were introduced through Davina McCall, a fellow TV presenter on Angies starry roster, which also includes TV and radio host Rochelle Humes, Geri Horner, Emma Bunton and her first client Christine Lampard. When I met Holly in the flesh I remember being bowled over by how lovely and pretty she is, says Angie. All I was doing was bringing a fresh pair of eyes. Nothing we do is too crazy  when I work with people I just want them to be a better version of themselves. Davina McCall told me that she now tries on everything Angie suggests, Because sometimes I look at something and think, yuck! But then I put it on and think, wow!

Christine Lampard; Davina McCall; Rochelle Humes

Christine Lampard This sleek black Isabel Sanchis gown makes Christine look like a contemporary Audrey Hepburn, says Angie

Davine McCall Davina has amazing shiny hair and gorgeous skin, says Angie, and this white dress by Cushnie et Ochs flatters them perfectly

Rochelle Humes This navy blue velvet Raquel Balencia number was a standout for Angie: Rochelle looks super elegant

With Holly it was about suggesting elevated high-street options, such as Hobbs and LK Bennett, and encouraging her to mix labels, teaming, say, a Miss Selfridge blouse with a high-end Ganni skirt, or an H&M dress with a cashmere jumper. Angie describes what she has created for Holly as a working wardrobe  effectively a uniform in disguise. The colours, fabrics and brands may change, but the shapes will repeat. Holly looks best in pencil skirts and shorter A-line skirts, so thats what we often go for. She has amazing legs  I remember saying to her early on, We have to get your legs out!

Angie also wanted to steer Holly away from anything low-cut. The only outfit I could recall seeing her in was that plunging white gown, she says, referring to a dress Holly wore presenting ITVs Dancing on Ice that led her Celebrity Juice co-star Keith Lemon to nickname her Holly Willough-boobie. There was also, with Holly, the art of less is more. I think this is true for everybody. Sometimes you need another layer or accessories, but more often you have to look at what youre wearing  say a dress and a pair of nude heels  and know that its all you need.

ANGIES TOP 10 HIGH STREET STORES J Crew for jumpers, logo T-shirts and loafers.

for jumpers, logo T-shirts and loafers. Jigsaw for suits, winter coats and knitwear.

for suits, winter coats and knitwear. Rag n Bone The best spot for denim and a plain white tee.

The best spot for denim and a plain white tee. Arket Great value for blazers.

Great value for blazers. Karen Millen Always does a great black suit.

Always does a great black suit. LK Bennett for dresses.

for dresses. All Saints for leather biker jackets.

for leather biker jackets. John Lewis for cashmere.

for cashmere. Marks & Spencer for underwear.

for underwear. Massimo Dutti Brilliant for leather accessories. Advertisement

I wonder if Angie is ever too nice to tell her famous clients when they get a look wrong? You have to be honest. Im not very good at hiding what I think, she says. But if someone really wants to wear something Ill try to make it work.

I remember dressing a young British actress for a red-carpet event in the States. We were choosing dresses and she said, I want to feel as though Ive just got off the beach and still have sand between my toes. When she said it I knew the dress for her. It made me realise that as soon as you focus on how people want to feel, not just what they want to look like, youll get it right.

According to Davina, she never gets it wrong. Angie always makes me feel amazing. In fact, now when I have a red-carpet do, she just turns up with three choices for me and always nails it.

Born in Chester, Angie puts her ability to adapt to different people and work anywhere down to the fact that she moved schools and countries five times as a child, the highlight of which was five years living on a British airbase in Cyprus. Her father, Ray, was in the RAF and spent most of his career being posted around the globe. Her mother, Laura, would pick up secretarial jobs wherever they were. I have my mum to thank for my love of a fashion find. She has always adored charity shops.

When Angie was a teenager, the family settled in Bedfordshire, where Angie soon introduced her friends to the thrill of a car-boot sale. We were really into those, she says, but I did buy high-street fashion. I remember seeing a denim skirt in Miss Selfridge that I had to have. My mum said that if I wanted it Id have to buy it myself, so she got me a job cleaning her friends house and I bought the skirt. In fact I have a similar one today, so I should have hung on to it!

Angie styled Holly in this Ashish rainbow dress for an appearance on The Jonathan Ross Show. Retailing at 1,400, it still sold out within 30 minutes of the show being screened. Her influence didnt stop there: soon after, high-street brand Littlewoods rushed out an affordable copy

The Pinterest-friendly London flat Angie shares with her fiance Gavin reflects her visual flair, but her gift for great style is matched by her willingness to work hard. Angies big break came about thanks to a few chocolate muffins. While studying for a fashion promotion degree in Southampton she applied for summer internships on magazines by sending her CV and a muffin in a bag to fashion editors, with a note saying Enjoy your breakfast. And it worked. I got a placement at [the mens magazine] FHM; thats the first time I realised that being a stylist is a job. I loved every second of it  from steaming the clothes to travelling to LA for a cover shoot. Eventually they offered me a job as a fashion assistant  with pay! I couldnt believe it. Meanwhile she continued to do her degree part-time, and got a first.

Following FHM, Angie moved into celebrity styling after realising that she liked working with real people rather than models. I love personalities with their own style and opinions. In 2010 she got a call to say that Dannii Minogue was looking for help with her wardrobe for The X Factor. Angies edit of elegant outfits went down so well that she was soon fielding calls from other TV stars seeking the same treatment, and in 2011 Glamour magazine named her as one of its most influential women under 35, an accolade that still leaves her open-mouthed.

5 WARDROBE STAPLES EVERY WOMAN NEEDS A dress that fast-tracks you to fabulousness the second you put it on.

Jeans to make the most of what God gave you.

A blazer that you can throw on over jeans and a tee to deliver an instant put-together look.

A standout coat that transforms you into Superwoman.

A piece of jewellery that means something and makes you feel special when you wear it. Advertisement

Angies own fangirl moment came last month, when she styled the newly reformed Spice Girls for the promotional shots for their tour. As a 90s teenager, that was a big pinch-yourself moment!

Next on Angies list is sourcing Hollys gowns for the new series of Dancing on Ice, which starts in January  all of which will be Instagrammed as demanded now by her followers. What does she think is the secret to Hollys appeal? What I admire is her discipline. Every day she will take a photo of what she is wearing and tag each element. Then people message her saying things like, I bought this dress for my sisters wedding, or I love these trousers. She gets such an incredible response  sometimes it feels as though we are styling the nation! Angie pauses, not wanting to oversell herself. Well, I mean of course were not, but

Its fine, I say  I think we all wish you were.
Christmas can be costly for those who have to post presents for family and friends. Most will rely on Royal Mail to deliver gifts. But as the deadlines loom for the last postal dates for overseas destinations, queuing at a Post Office is not the only option.

The last postal date for Royal Mails international economy service has already passed. But there is still time to make use of Royal Mails Parcelforce division service  with December 17 the cut-off date for all parcels going abroad.

As a rule of thumb, for parcels sent within the UK or overseas, it makes sense to check out any Royal Mail deal first  and then use the quote to see if it can be bettered on a courier comparison site.

Money off: Depending on the size and weight of your item, you could cut a third or more off your postage

Websites such as My Parcel Delivery, Parcel Monkey, ParcelHero, Parcel2Go and ParcelCompare all scour the market to find the best value deal.

They will provide quotes from a range of courier services such as Hermes, DHL, UPS, TNT, DPD, Parcelforce, DX, CitySprint and Collect+.

Once you have picked a courier firm or broker, check out cashback websites such as TopCashback and Quidco. These often offer deals that can cut delivery costs further if you click through from their website to the chosen courier.

For example, TopCashback currently offers discounts ranging from 3.15 per cent with ParcelHero, 5.25 per cent with ipostparcels, through to 10.5 per cent with Parcelforce, My Parcel Delivery and ParcelBroker.

Andrew Hagger, a financial expert at website Moneycomms, says: Most people plump for Royal Mail without realising there are cheaper alternatives. Depending on the size and weight of your item, you could easily cut a third or more off your postage costs.

Christmas presents: Royal Mail is among the most competitive for smaller parcels, but it is expensive for the delivery of heavier items

Many couriers make life easier by letting people drop off goods at local shops  for example Asda, CostCutter, Nisa and Spar  as well as some independent stores. Hagger adds: With Hermes and ipostparcels, costs are even more competitive if you are able to drop off a parcel at a depot  rather than having it collected from your home.

With Royal Mail, sending a parcel within the UK weighing up to 1kg (measuring 45cm x 35cm x 16cm) costs from 2.95 second class and 3.45 first class. For a parcel weighing up to 2kg (same measurements), the price is 2.95 second class and 5.50 first class. All prices include up to 20 cover for loss or damage.

But while Royal Mail is among the most competitive for smaller parcels, it is expensive for the delivery of heavier items. For a 20kg parcel measuring 61cm x 46cm x 46cm prices start from 28.55 second class and 33.40 first class.

Via comparison website Parcel2Go, the 20kg parcel could be posted for as little as 5.85 using InPost 24, 5.85 with UPS Access Point, and 6.79 with DX24.

All these prices are for next- day delivery and include 20 protection.

There is also the option to send the same 20kg parcel to a UK address with ParcelForce. Royal Mail uses ParcelForce Worldwide to post many items to customers both in the UK and overseas.

A 20kg parcel delivered to a UK address would cost 28.80 via ParcelForce Worldwide express 48. This guarantees delivery in two working days and includes up to 100 for loss or damage. But this is still more expensive than Parcel2Go.

Civil servant Neil Saunders has saved a fortune by using a courier rather than Royal Mail.

Neil, 47, from Burgess Hill in West Sussex, has sent packages via ipostparcels  part of DHL  for the last few Christmases to his young nephews in New Zealand. This Christmas, Neil is planning to send two parcels.

He says: Royal Mail quoted me between 120 and 180 to send the two items. By contrast, ipostparcels quoted between 80 and 100  a potential saving of 100.

With ipostparcels, you have to create the label and postal dockets yourself using the website but it hardly takes any time.

There is also the handy option to get packages picked up from your home.
A relentless drive to paperless billing by energy suppliers, telecoms providers, banks and insurers has prompted an outcry from readers of The Mail on Sunday who say the trend is disgraceful and discriminatory.

Companies are desperate to cut costs by emailing bills or statements rather than delivering hard copies in the post. So much so that many customers are now charged a fee if they choose to continue receiving a paper bill.

Though some consumers are happy with the move away from paper bills, many are not. It penalises people who do not use a computer, have poor internet connection at home or just like analysing their household expenditure on paper.

Paperless bills: Companies claim they are saving the planet, but customers says it's a rip off

Companies typically suggest consumers can print bills at home. But this contradicts their argument that axing paper bills helps save the planet, and many households do not have a printer.

Since The Mail on Sunday highlighted the issue three weeks ago, dozens of readers have contacted us to tell how they have suffered from companies drive to wipe out paper bills and statements.

HOW CUSTOMERS ARE UNFAIRLY PENALISED

Robert and Marjorie (names have been changed) are pensioners in their 80s and are outraged at the inflated prices energy suppliers charge for offline accounts.

They live in Surrey and use EDF Energy for electricity and gas. When Robert enquired about a cheaper tariff earlier this year he was told they were on the best deal for offline customers.

But the difference between their deal and the cheapest for online customers receiving bills via email was 438 a year  amounting to a monthly paper penalty of 36.50.

EDF Energy says it is more cost-effective to run online-only accounts, particularly when customers pay by direct debit.

Barred: Dave Pettifer could not get TalkTalk bills by email

And it says the annual difference in cost for an average household on the keenest paper-based tariff compared to an online-only alternative is just 20.

But Robert says: The truth is that customers who do not use the internet are being ripped off. It is unregulated discrimination and profiteering and unacceptable that we should be penalised in this way.

A spokeswoman for EDF Energy says: The differences individual customers see in price will be based on a range of factors, including how much energy they consume.

We offer our customers a diverse range of tariffs with different servicing and payment options to suit their needs. A wide range of factors affect how our prices are set.

The company also points out that its electricity is backed by low-carbon generation.

In another glaring example, pensioner Dave Pettifer, 73, told how he is being prevented from going paperless by his phone and broadband provider TalkTalk because, incredibly, it says it is unable to send bills to his TalkTalk email address.

He agreed to paperless billing to eliminate the 2-a-month charge for receiving communication by post.

Dave, who lives near Hastings in East Sussex, says: I have no idea why this is the case as I have never been given an explanation.

He provided an alternative email, but this was also rejected because TalkTalk said it was already in use on another account. He suspects this may be from a previous contract he had with the company.

Many customers are now charged a fee if they choose to continue receiving a paper bill

The telecoms firm asked for a third email address before it could waive the paper bill fee. Dave refused and complained to the company, but he has yet to get anywhere, being met with several apologetic letters and correspondence with different complaint reference numbers.

He adds: I am disappointed, not only in the shambolic way my complaint has been handled but also how it is that TalkTalk cannot seem to send out bills to me by email.

A spokesman for TalkTalk says: We apologise for Mr Pettifers recent experience. The email address has now been updated and we have provided credit to cover the paper bill charges applied.

Reader Pauline Quail was angered by Nationwide Building Societys decision to cease annual paper statements for savers.

She was also recently informed her travel insurer would no longer send policy documents in the post. Pauline says: This lack of choice, forcing people to rely on the internet, is relentless.

Meanwhile, another reader, Susan Cowley, says the lack of a paper bill from her water company means she now owes a considerable debt.

Realising she had not received a bill for a while, she contacted the utility provider, only to discover that her account had been cancelled in error because it thought she had moved house. Others call the ruthless promotion of bills by email disgraceful and an erosion of choice.

FINAL WORD

Judith Donovan is chairwoman of Keep Me Posted, a campaign seeking to protect and promote choice in how customers receive bills.

She argues that the cost of paper bills  estimated at between 30 and 45p  is not a reasonable excuse for axing them.

She says: Companies offering paper bills often charge significantly more than it costs them. It represents a penalty to vulnerable customers who have no alternative. All customers should have the right to choose how they receive information from providers.

She adds: Businesses incur costs  that is how markets work. There is also a cost for maintaining branches, stores and phone lines.

To find out more about the fight to protect choice visit keepmeposteduk.com or write to the campaign for an information pack at Keep Me Posted, PO Box 72064, London EC4P 4DZ.
Let me ask you a question. How would you feel if your bank said it was withdrawing an offer of a credit card it had accepted you for? A little miffed, for sure.

How about if a day later it then said it no longer wanted to do any business with you?

Push aside for one moment the fees you have paid over the years for inadvertently slipping into the red, the paltry interest paid on your savings balances, and the pretty unimpressive service you have received (constantly left on the telephone waiting for your call to be picked up by non-existent customer services).

Factors that should have prompted you years ago to have transferred your money to a newish, more customer-focused provider (Metro Bank or Nationwide)  but inertia kicked in.

Unexplained account closures: NatWest is acquiring an unwanted reputation for being one of the more aggressive closers, says Jeff Prestridge

If I am not mistaken, I imagine you would be pretty angry at this stage, especially if no reason was given for the banks decision, other than some glib reference to a section buried away in its terms and conditions authorising it to act in such a heavy-handed way.

Just 14 days to find a new bank before your credit and debit cards are cancelled, direct debits rejected, any overdraft has to be paid off, and your salary has no banking home.

How about if your bank then applied two more doses of salt to your already open financial wounds by a) rejecting an appeal for your accounts to be re-opened; and then b) denying access to your money. All the time, refusing point blank to explain its draconian actions.

Unbelievable? No, this is what has just happened to one young NatWest customer whose father I met last week. Not surprisingly, the episode has left them both angry and upset.

Eight years a customer and an impeccable one at that  no debt or student loans  and then treated like a leper. Without reason or explanation.

For more than two months, this 24-year-old customer has been trying to get NatWest to explain why it abruptly closed the door on her  and then froze her accounts, leaving her unable to access the 17,000 she had tied up in the bank.

Even a letter sent by solicitors acting on her behalf failed to ellicit a response.

She is not alone. Figures just published by the Financial Conduct Authority show that banks last year terminated 375,000 existing customer relationships  as well as denied services to more than a million prospective customers.

In most cases, concerns over financial crime  money laundering for example  were the triggers for the terminations and rejections. In banking jargon, such actions are known as de-risking operations.

In presenting its research, the regulator said every termination should be done right and on a targeted, individual basis. It said any bank failing to treat customers fairly would face a fine.

Unexplained account closures are a growing problem as evidenced by the number of complaints ending up at the door of the Financial Ombudsman Service  some 50 a week. And NatWest is acquiring an unwanted reputation for being one of the more aggressive closers.

For our 24-year-old NatWest customer, there is a happy ending. Some two-and-a-half days after The Mail on Sunday intervened, the bank overturned its decision to close her accounts. It also apologised for the distress caused.

It said its initial decision to close had been triggered by information obtained from fraud prevention agency Cifas  material it accepts is no longer valid.

Right result in the end. But wrong on every other level. NatWest should go back to the drawing board and reassess its approach to closing accounts.

Have you had your bank account closed without rhyme or reason? Drop me an email. jeff.prestridge@mailonsunday.co.uk
Step back from all the stuff about Theresa Mays date with Brussels today and consider this. The UK is staging its economic Brexit and has been for 15 years. That is not a political decision. It is a reaction to economic forces.

Until the early 2000s our economy gradually grew closer to Europe. That was, after all, the idea of joining what became the European Union. But since then the focus has gradually been shifting away.

Back in 2000, 56 per cent of UK exports of goods and services went to Europe. That fell to 50 per cent in 2009. Now it is down to 43 per cent and looks like slipping below 40 per cent by 2020. Why?

Brexit discussions: Theresa May and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker

This was not a policy decision. It is simply because other markets have grown faster. Back in the early 1990s, the EU  including the soon-to-become members  was a larger economy than the US. Now it is smaller, even before the UK leaves.

While the EU as a whole does take more exports than the US, the US buys more than Germany and France combined. We sell more to Switzerland than we do to Italy. Add in the growing importance of China, about to become our fifth biggest export market, and the shift seems inexorable.

None of this means we should have a punch-up with Europe. Inward investment from the Continent is about the same size as that from America, some years a little larger. Indeed countries should not have punch-ups with anyone if they want to retain open trading conditions.

It is not a policy decision, it is simply that other markets have grown faster

It would be very difficult to undo the complex supply chains with Europe, with 42 per cent of the components that go into a British-assembled car coming from the EU. About a quarter of our food comes from Europe.

But what it does mean is that in the long-term we will probably drift further away. Whatever view you take on Brexit, we seem to be moving to a world where culture and language matter more than physical proximity. The US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand will become more important, Europe less.

If that seems sweeping, consider this. When even the most Europhile of British politicians meet a career reverse and want to leave the country, what do they do? They dont go to Europe. They go to America. David Miliband runs a charity in New York and Sir Nick Clegg is heading out to Facebook in California.

Arrested: Nissan chairman Carlos Ghosn is accused of significant acts of misconduct

The importance of culture is evident in business mergers too. The trigger for the sacking of Carlos Ghosn as chairman of Nissan was his arrest by the Japanese authorities.

He is accused of significant acts of misconduct, including under-reporting his pay. We should not prejudge him until more is revealed, but what is clear is that the Nissan-Renault alliance has been under huge strain. He is French-Brazilian and remains, for the time being at least, chairman of Renault.

The point here is that when he pulled the alliance together, Renault was the dominant partner. It has 43 per cent of Nissan shares, whereas Nissan owns only 15 per cent of Renault. But now Nissan is making most of the group profits, while Renault struggles.

He apparently wanted to engineer a complete merger  the Japanese understandably baulked at this. If, as I think they will, the two groups separate, the reason will be broader than a clash of cultures but that will be part of it.

There is a wider message here. Anglo-American mergers seem to work, witness GlaxoSmithKline or BP (which is really half a US company) now pulling back from a troubled decade.

But others? Alliances where there is no dominant partner bite the dust. The Dunlop-Pirelli Union of the 1970s was such a catastrophe they use it as a case study in business schools. Nissan-Renault has done much better, thanks largely to Mr Ghosn, but I expect it will become a case study of a failed marriage too.

Consumer festival

Even the most unobservant will be aware that this is a consumer festival weekend, sandwiched between Black Friday and Cyber Monday. That is fine  who are we to be sniffy about people spending money? But we need to save too. So heres an idea. We have a weekend, perhaps in February, where we save. We could call it In The Black Weekend...
One of the countrys top fund managers, dubbed by some financial experts as son of Neil Woodford, insists his well-tested investment process will eventually come good.

The claim, made by Mark Barnett of major investment house Invesco, comes as the latest performance statistics show he is delivering returns for fund investors way below those of all his immediate rivals bar Woodford.

Barnett replaced Woodford as head of UK equities at Invesco in early 2014 after the latter set up his own investment group. He now manages Invesco Income and High Income, the two multi-billion pound funds previously run by Woodford, as well as two other UK-focused funds and investment trusts Edinburgh and Perpetual Income & Growth.

Losses: Mark Barnett replaced Neil Woodford at major firm Invesco

Data from financial information group Citywire confirms that over the past three years, the average return generated on the UK equity income investment funds Barnett manages is minus 1.4 per cent. This ranks him 84th out of the 85 equity income managers embraced by Citywires analysis.

Over the same period, the best managers have achieved total returns in excess of 30 per cent, comfortably outperforming the FTSE All Share Index. Woodfords average loss is a dismal 12 per cent.

Frank Talbot, head of investment research at Citywire, says that Barnetts average performance has been bottom decile  in the worst 10 per cent of his peer group  on a rolling three-year basis for all of the past 12 months.

Over the summer, wealth manager Tilney included High Income, Income and Strategic Income on its list of spot the dog (serially underperforming) funds.

The fact that Barnett and Woodford occupy the bottom two positions has led to claims that Barnett has done little to change the way the funds he inherited are run  hence the son of Woodford label.

This is vehemently denied by Invesco which insists each fund he runs reflects his own convictions and is actively managed.

Others describe him more cruelly as the David Moyes of Invesco, as big a let-down as Moyes was when given the job of succeeding Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United.

Patrick Connolly, a chartered financial planner with Chase de Vere, continues to hold Invesco Income and High Income for clients. But he has not recommended the funds for more than a year.

He says: Barnett has underperformed significantly. This is for a number of reasons including a focus on domestic UK companies that have been hurt by a weak sterling.

On Friday, Invesco acknowledged that Barnetts underperformance had resulted from the funds exposure to sterling and UK-sourced revenues, a refusal to invest in mining companies (which had performed strongly), and isolated stock challenges.

But it remains convinced the most compelling investment opportunities within the UK stock market are be found in the domestic sectors that Barnetts funds are heavily exposed to.

It added: Mr Barnett continues to evaluate and re-evaluate the holdings in the funds, seeking the best opportunities to create a sustainable flow of dividend income. He believes at a time of irrational market pricing, it is vital he remains rooted to his investment strategy.
Although it is still early days for investment house Blue Whale Capital, it has got off to a rather good start.

Set up in 2016 by investment manager Stephen Yiu and billionaire Peter Hargreaves, the companys flagship fund  Blue Whale Growth  is quietly doing what it set out to do.

That is to outperform most of its 300-odd global fund rivals and its main benchmark, the MSCI World Index  a proxy for the performance of world equities.

Promising start: Blue Whale Growth outperforms most of its 300-odd global fund rivals

Since launch in September last year, the fund has delivered a return of 12 per cent  in excess of the index (up five per cent) and the average global fund (up two per cent).

For Yiu, it is vindication of his investment process based on a mix of hard work and meticulous research.

For Hargreaves, it represents a handsome paper profit on the 25million of family money he invested in the fund at launch  and confirmation that the wily co-founder of Hargreaves Lansdown is backing a winner in Yiu.

The paths of Yiu and Hargreaves crossed at Hargreaves Lansdown in the early 2000s when Yiu was employed as an investment analyst. Yiu then decided to become a fund manager at investment house New Star (now absorbed into Janus Henderson), Artemis and latterly at hedge fund Nevsky Capital.

When Martin Taylor, founder of Nevsky, decided to call time on the hedge fund in 2016, Yiu set up Blue Whale Capital in partnership with Hargreaves as senior partner.

He also brought on board three investment colleagues from Nevsky  Rob Lloyd, Dan Allcock and Matt Stonebridge  plus Xiao Cai to form the companys investment team.

Although Hargreaves is Blue Whale Capitals chairman, he is not involved in how the investment fund is managed. As for the companys name, Yius choice, it signifies his ambition to be a significant investment fish in an ocean swarming with others that most of the time provide investors with mediocre returns.

Today, Blue Whale Growth has 80million of assets under management. The fund is invested worldwide with two thirds of its exposure being in the United States. It has just 28 holdings.

While the fund only holds companies in the hope of their share price rising in value  unlike Nevsky which often bet on share prices falling  Yiu says Blue Whale Growth is run on many of the investment processes that were key at his former employer.

He says: What we are trying to do is buy good companies at good prices. But we dont then just sit back. We are constantly re-evaluating all our holdings to assess whether they continue to remain attractive. If they do not  maybe because their business model has been disrupted by a rival  we sell out and look elsewhere for value.

The result is that ten holdings have been sold since the fund launched. Companies Adobe, Alphabet and Microsoft have remained top ten holdings throughout.

For those wondering whether Blue Whale Growth represents a good investment, the fund offers pluses and minuses. On the positive side, it provides diversification outside the UK stock market. Also Hargreaves does not back losers.

On the negative side, Blue Whale is an unknown quantity so as an investor you are treading a little into the unknown.

Its emphasis on technology stocks also means the funds performance will suffer when stock markets slide as has happened over the past three months  and last week. At most, it should represent a slither of a broad investment portfolio.
Stepping down: SSP boss Kate Swann

In 1996, people living in the UK took 26million holidays abroad. The number rose to 45million last year and it will almost certainly be higher still in 2018.

Most of those travellers ate or drank at an outlet run by SSP Group, which operates bars, restaurants and cafes ranging from Upper Crust and Ritazza to Yo! Sushi and Burger King to the James Martin Kitchen and Le Grand Comptoir.

Originally focused on UK train stations and airports, the company now operates around the world including the US, Brazil, the Philippines and most of Europe.

Floated on the stock market at 2.10 in 2014, the shares were recommended by Midas a year later at 3.03. On Friday, they closed at 6.46 and are likely to continue gaining ground.

SSP has been led for the past five years by Kate Swann, who is one of the most highly-regarded chief executives in the retail trade.

Swann gained her spurs at WH Smith, transformed under her tenure from a struggling high street group into a fast-growing chain, focused on airports, motorway service stations, railways and hospitals.

Last week, as Swann unveiled robust annual results at SSP, she said she is stepping down next year and handing over to Simon Smith, who runs the group's UK and Irish business. The shares fell in response, losing almost 10 per cent in three days.

SSP has been led for the past five years by Kate Swann

This seems unfair. Smith has worked with Swann for 15 years, initially at WH Smith and latterly at SSP. At WH Smith, he helped mastermind the growth of the travel division. At SSP, he has made the business more efficient and improved profits here and in Ireland.

It is also worth noting how Smiths has fared since Swann's departure. Having decided to move on when the company was in rude health  much like SSP  she left it in the capable hands of her sidekick, Stephen Clarke.

Smiths' shares have more than trebled under his tenure. Today, Swann will be hoping that Simon Smith can do something similar at SSP, particularly as she is one of the largest shareholders with 4.6million shares.

MIDAS VERDICT: Investors who bought in 2015 have had a good run and may be tempted to sell or reduce their holdings. Now is not the time, however. SSP has plenty of growth potential, Smith should prove an able successor to Swann and most analysts believe the shares should rise to almost 8 in the next year. New investors may even view last week's dip as a buying opportunity.
Stockwatch takes a look at the shares in the news. This week Restaurant Group's Wagamama deal, Intertek's slide, Thomas Cook profit warnings and concerns over M&S dividend.

The food fight at Restaurant Group comes to a head this week as shareholders get the chance to vote on its takeover of Wagamama.

The embattled company, which owns Frankie & Bennys and Garfunkels, has divided opinion over its drastic plan to spend 559million on buying the Asian food chain.

Shareholders get the chance to vote on Restaurant Group's takeover of Wagamama this week

Major investors such as Columbia Threadneedle, which has an 8 per cent stake, have come out and publicly opposed the deal, expressing concerns about the high price and Restaurant Groups debt levels.

They feel the company should address its own problems, such as getting more bums on seats in its own eateries, before going out and spending big on another chain.

Others such as Schroders and Royal London Asset Management have come out in support of the deal.

The takeover will be funded by a 315million rights issue at a steep discount to Restaurant Groups share price.

It closed at 2.35p on Friday.

If the deal goes through at Wednesdays vote, expect the shares, which have lost two-thirds of their value since 2015, to come further off the boil.

Intertek shares under pressure

Bosses at testing giant Intertek are likely to be grilled by investors this week over the impact of Donald Trumps trade war with China.

Shares in the FTSE 100 firm, which tests the safety of everything from pesticides to cookers, have come under pressure amid concerns about a slowing global economy and trade tariffs, especially since it has a large Chinese business.

Analysts say the hit from the US Presidents trade war wont feed into the numbers quite yet  so Tuesdays update should show that the company grew at around 4 per cent over the four months ending October.

Thomas Cook profit warnings

This year has been anything but a holiday for Thomas Cook shareholders. It was capped off in September by a second profit warning in two months as chief financial officer Bill Scott headed for the exit, just eight months into the role.

The full-year results on Thursday will shed light on whether business has improved since then. UBS scribblers say that after two profit warnings, now might be a good time for chief executive Peter Fankhauser to unveil plans to cut more costs which, they suggest, could include some of its high street shops.

However, City sources say thats unlikely.

M&S dividend fears

Marks & Spencer may have defied the sceptics earlier this month when it reported a rise in first-half profits. But the cloud over the former high street bellwether has not yet passed.

There are still fears the dividend is under threat. Tony Shiret, a veteran retail analyst who works for brokers Whitman Howard, has told clients the dividend is becoming increasingly vulnerable as profits continue to slide.

Forecasts are getting into the zone where the dividend must be under question, he said.

Could a poor Christmas spell the end of bumper payouts for loyal M&S shareholders?

Contributor: Neil Craven
"What's important is we continue to Build, Build, Build minus the graft and corruption that characterized our sordid past."

Even while a visitor, in this case President Xi Jinping, was still in Manila, we got a slew of dire warnings from everybody and his mother about the dangers of a debt trap in the offing as our governments signed a number of trade and investment deals. Never mind the political opposition. With the forthcoming elections in mind, expect noises from them. They will always play to their perceived peanut gallery. And never mind the Left and their anti-foreign hysteria. For the longest time, they have been crying out loud against American influence, labeling every president a US puppet. Now they have found another straw man, this time Americas competitor for economic dominance, China. And dont even bother reconciling the Lefts conflicting stance vis-a-vis US and China. To them, Duterte is a puppet of both the US and China. Sign loans with Japan, and they would also call him a Japanese puppet, except that at this time, they would rather focus on the US and China. Buy arms from Russia, and they will shout as well that Duterte is a Russian babushka. A certain Capital Economics, that London-based think-tank headed by Oxonian Roger Bootle, along with an all-white bevy of economists suddenly trots out warnings of impending doom, fatuously saying that the Philippines would be better off without Chinese investments. And they pick the most egregious examples of foreign aid gone wrongthe Hambantota port in Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan leadership put up a huge port in the Indian Ocean without properly studying its economic prospects or viability. Saddled with a huge debt, they leased the property to the Chinese for 99 years. Has Duterte and his economic team been as reckless? Do we need to revive the Bicol Express, which several administrations left to decay into uselessness for decades? Is a train service transporting humans for mobility and cargo to bring food prices down necessary or not? Do we have the wherewithal to finance such a huge undertaking? Not unless Duterte puts all his predecessors, their customs and other officials in Bilibid and gets them to open their bank accounts here and abroad, with the threat that Bato would do them in otherwise. We also want to have a railway to Clark, and this time we are asking Japan to help us, but is anyone crying out against the Japanese? We want to improve our telco service, which is probably the worst in Asia by now. A young businessman whose grandparents came here from Fujian a century or so ago partners with Chinas giant telecom firm and bids fair and square for the project. Again, everybody and his mother warns us about the national security peril of being enmeshed with China Telecoms. Assuming for the sake of argument that China Telecoms would have access to the impure thoughts of our government officials and every civil servant, thus pitting national security at risk, will the third telco bother to snoop on each Juan and Juana de la Cruz as well? So let government use the internet and cell phone service of Globe and Smart, if we are afraid of perils to national security. Maybe they would feel more secure with Singapores Singtel and Indonesias Salim, who are the Globe and Smart operators anyway. For years and years, nay, decades, our governments looked the other way around as needs of a Malthusian-burgeoning population multiplied. Now we decry the absence of such services, from mass transport to better roads to telecommunications, absolute necessities in this day and age.Why even the most basic of needs water. Metro Manila stands the risk of a water crisis in another twenty years, so we need a dam to trap the rains cascading down the Sierra Madre. Weve been talking and talking about this Kaliwa Dam for ages, and now, because the Chinese government volunteers to finance the project, we throw all kinds of brickbats and fears. A neighbor trying to be friendly after being shunned by a previous leader and milked of commissions by previous others approaches a new president in the person of Duterte, who willingly accepts their assistance, and we cry out against both of them. Is it fear that motivates these? Or is more a case of prejudice? I cannot for the life of me understand where the hugot comes from. The Americans colonized us for half a century yet we idolize them. The Japanese occupied us for four years (my own grandfather and an uncle were massacred by retreating Japanese troops in February 1945 which is why I never knew them personally), with thousands upon thousands of our people dead and suffered, but how quickly we have forgotten and forgiven. A few graft-tainted reparations in yen, and we open our legs. The Americans sell obsolete war materiel to us for overpriced amounts and we shout hallelujah. Little brown Americans! The Chinese, whose forebears came to our shores as friendly traders, and never colonized an inch of our territory even during the apex of their ruling dynasties, and whose succeeding generations have lived amongst us in peace, and inter-married with our different tribes, mindless of religion or cultural differences, are treated differently vis-a-vis the white Americans, the yellow Japanese, and even the similarly white-skinned and hairy-bodied Katsila. Is that fear? Or prejudice? Or is it simply because our Chinoy classmates always excelled in math subjects where for some strange reason we Pinoys hated, driving many of us to become lawyers because all that profession needs is a little logic and a lot of laway? Is it because for some strange reason, that Chinoy who owns a big grocery in our hometown from where we buy our goods, only used to hawk and peddle in the wet market, while we are still slaving in our eight-hour lowly-paid jobs? Is it because Lucio Tan and John Gokongwei, Henry Sy and now Dennis Uy are getting as rich, if not richer than the Spanish Zobel-Ayalas who we used to equate along with the Sorianos as business royalty? Its more like inggit. Pure old-fashioned envy. But coming from the white-skinned run think tanks, and the never-say-anything-good Left along with their fellow travelers in opportunism amongst the political opposition, never mind. Whats important is we continue to Build, Build, Build, minus the graft and corruption that characterized our sordid past, and thus enable our saling-lahi to reap the fruits of our labors and our vision.
It is seen by many as a gravy train for retired company bosses keen to feather their nests while doling out advice to busy executives.

But major shareholders are finally shining a light on the shadowy company committees that decide vast executive pay deals behind closed doors.

The Investment Association has rounded on executive paymasters for failing to look out for shareholders and handing out rewards that are far out of kilter with the rest of us.

Golden touch: Lloyds boss Antonio Horta-Osorio and his wife Ana

In a letter sent to London Stock Exchange-listed boards last week the representative of the Citys major shareholders said some pay committees had become unresponsive to investor concerns and that too often remuneration committees are overly considerate of the management perspective, often at the expense of their shareholders views.

That comes perilously close to accusing bosses of failing in their duties to shareholders, which would be a serious dereliction under company rules.

It is a warning shot that follows a year in which corporate governance and pay concerns at companies including BT, Lloyds, Royal Dutch Shell, Royal Mail and Persimmon have been in the spotlight. Shareholders, it seems, have reached the end of their tether.

High on the list of grievances in the letter are the huge pension payouts for bosses.

The ten worst offenders collectively received contributions to their pension pots of 5.1million last year  an average of more than half a million pounds each.

They include Lloyds Banking Group chief executive Antonio Horta-Osorio, who received 565,000, or 46 per cent on top of his salary. Alistair Phillips-Davies, chief executive at energy firm SSE, received 446,000, or 52 per cent in addition to his salary.

Other bosses who did not make the top ten still received huge payouts. A quarter of the FTSE100 received an extra 30 per cent or more on top of their salary, well above that of the rank and file where less than 10 per cent is more normal after many gold-plated schemes were scrapped.

Now The Investment Association says it intends to apply pressure to ensure that a fresh view of perks and pay is applied to new appointments. It even suggested that current contracts should be reviewed.

A statement said: Executive remuneration is a growing reputational issue for companies, individual remuneration committee members and now the executive directors who receive the remuneration in question.

It said company boards can no longer rely solely on the contractual nature of a remuneration payment and should from now on consider the issue of fairness.

Bob Dudley, chief executive of BP (left) and Erik Engstrom, the boss of Relx

A new UK Corporate Governance Code includes details of the gap between the average pay of their staff and the salaries of bosses, it added.

Companies argue that long-serving bosses are only awarded such high pensions because they belong to standard defined benefit schemes. However, some admit bosses get membership of the schemes plus additional payments on top.

Firms also highlighted that many of the worst cases have been approved by a majority of shareholders at annual meetings.

Tool rental group Ashtead said it makes a payment to Geoff Drabble in lieu of providing him with any pension arrangements. This was agreed prior to his joining in 2006 and reflected the fact that he was leaving a generous defined benefit arrangement at his previous employer.

Alison Cooper, the boss of Imperial Brands (left) and Alistair Philips-Davies of SSE

Energy supplier SSE said of Alistair Phillips Davies: Alistairs pension is provided in two different ways. Part of it is provided through the Southern Electric Scheme and part of it through an additional pension arrangement.

Royal Mail is among firms that have already taken action and made changes to executive pay following pressure from shareholders. In 2016 the company said it recognised that executive pensions were high, and that it would adopt a lower percentage for newly appointed executive directors.

It has since slashed pension contributions to directors from 36.5 per cent to 17.5 per cent, which it says is based on the average for FTSE 100 bosses. Its 110,000 postmen receive 13.6 per cent employer contributions, announced in February, plus 2 per cent towards death in service and sickness benefits.

However, non-executive director Orna Ni-Chionna admitted last month management was embarrassed by its failure to win over shareholders on pay, resulting in a major revolt in July.

Nearly three quarters of investors complained about the 5.8million golden hello paid to the chief executive Rico Back.

Called before the cross-party Business Select Committee, Ni-Chionna said: Obviously, that was a huge disappointment and a shock to us. We thought wed explained it well [to investors]. That is the mistake that we made.

Publisher Pearson, which faced a major shareholder revolt over pay in 2017, said it has cut pension payments to chief executive John Fallon from 40 per cent to 26 per cent which it said was now in line with industry averages.

Contributions for new board members will be reduced further to 16 per cent of salary, which is the standard rate applicable to all employees.

Building materials company CRH declined to provide a statement while a source close to information group RELX said Engstroms contributions were expected to fall in the current year.

Travel company Tui said: The maths is generally correct, however, a more complete reflection would be to take into account full remuneration package  the simple base salary can distort.
Australian entrepreneurs of all ages and experience are making millions by exporting muesli bars, red wine and baby formula to China.

The Asian superpower with the world's second biggest economy is expected to see its middle class double in the next decade.

For Australian businesses big and small, that will mean turbocharged demand for upmarket beverages and specialty treats as 600 million wealthier Chinese consumers demand better quality food.

Australian entrepreneurs of all ages and experience are making millions by exporting to China (pictured are Blue Dinosaur founders Mike and Tina Watts-Seale with their daughter April)

Tasmanian-grown cherries, Blackmores and Swisse herbal supplements, a2 milk and Queensland-produced beef are also in demand, with Chinese consumers valuing Australia's higher agricultural and environmental standards.

Then there are muesli and protein bars, which are being consumed by Australia's biggest trading partner in a nation that is home to 1.4 billion people.

The Sydney-based husband-and-wife founders of Blue Dinosaur Mike and Tina Watts-Seale, who are both 30, six months ago began exporting protein bars to China.

The former firefighter and events manager started their company in 2011, several years before their first child April was born.

The husband-and-wife run Blue Dinosaur company six months ago began exporting protein bars to China (pictured is a Paleo Bar exported to Asia)

Before making the leap into the Chinese market with their Paleo Bars and Super Bites, they attended trade shows over there and tested samples.

'Australian made products, and especially Australian made health food products, are highly desirable in China at present,' Tina Watts-Seale told Daily Mail Australia.

'We saw an opportunity to offer our products into the Chinese market via small distributors into the health and fitness industry.'

Entrepreneur and author Jessica Rudd, the daughter of Mandarin-speaking former Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd, this month made $5 million selling her remaining 55 per cent stake in her company, which specialised in selling Australian wine and infant formula to China.

Jessica Rudd (second right in 2013) this month made $5 million selling her remaining stake in her company which specialised in selling Australian wine and baby formula to China

Jessica's Suitcase (pictured is Jessica Rudd with daughter Josie) has been acquired by Hong Kong-based company eCargo, which in January bought a 45 per cent share

Jessica's Suitcase, an e-commerce platform, has been acquired by Hong Kong-based company eCargo, which in January bought a 45 per cent share in Jessica Rudd's business.

Baby formula certainly isn't the only Australian product popular with the Chinese.

Carolyn Creswell, the Melbourne-based millionaire founder of Carman's, last year began exporting to China for the first time - 25 years after she bought a struggling muesli business for $1,000 as an 18-year-old university student.

The cereal entrepreneur and mother of two young children said expanding into China was a major milestone for the business she took over in 1992.

'I am beyond thrilled that we are enjoying success with the Carman's brand in the China market,' she told Daily Mail Australia.

After a year of preparation, Carman's began selling 10 products to China, including berry muesli bars, almond nuts bars and protein snacks - but no cereal just yet - making it the company's 34th export market.

Carolyn Creswell (pictured) the millionaire founder of Carman's, last year began exporting to China for the first time

Carolyn Creswell (fourth from the left) exports muesli bars to 34 countries, after last year expanding into China

Carman's Chinese exports 1. Dark Choc & Cranberry Protein Bars 2. Almond, Cashew & Cranberry Nut Bars 3. Greek Style Yoghurt & Blueberry Nut Bars 4. Super Berry Muesli Bars 5. Cranberry & Blueberry Oat Slice 6. Golden Oat & Coconut Oat Slice 7. Honey Roasted Nut Crunchy Clusters 8. Cranberry, Apple & Roasted Nut Crunchy Clusters 9. Super Berry Muesli 10. Original Fruit Free Muesli Advertisement

'It's been a long road to finally see our products in now over 1,000 stockists, but we believe the appetite for healthy Australian snacking will only continue to grow and are very excited to see how the next few years develop in market,' Ms Creswell said.

The Hamilton family from South Australia's McLaren Vale region, south of Adelaide, are another business sending quality Australian products to China.

The fifth-generation winemakers behind Leconfield Wines began exporting to China in 2013, a great leap forward for the family company founded in 1881.

Family patriarch and business owner Richard Hamilton said he hoped to sell even more wines in coming years, with China the company's biggest export market of the 17 countries it does business with.

'While we are already achieving great success in China, we expect to experience much more growth over the next few years,' he told Daily Mail Australia.

Australian entrepreneurs of all ages are making millions by exporting muesli bars and red wine (Leconfield Wines vineyard in South Australia pictured) to China

The Hamilton family (pictured are Thomas, Jette, Richard and Annasofia) from South Australia's McLaren Vale region are also exporting Australian quality to China

'They are staggered that Leconfield Wines has a history going back 181 years, from 1837.

'They find that difficult to fathom given that Australia is a young country but they value that sense of history in our wines.'

Dr Hamilton said Australia had a reputation for quality, with Chinese consumers favouring red wine in particular.

'Our premium reds, whites and sparkling are very popular,' he said.

Leconfield Wines (South Australian vineyard pictured) exports seven products to China, including Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon, McLaren Vale Shiraz and a Watervale Riesling

Leconfield Wines exported to China 1. Leconfield Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon 2. Leconfield McLaren Vale Shiraz 3. Richard Hamilton McLaren Vale Centurion Shiraz 4. Richard Hamilton McLaren Vale Little Road Shiraz 5. Richard Hamilton Watervale Riesling 6. Syn Cuvee Blanc 7. Syn Rouge Advertisement

'In particular, China buys a lot of our premium red wines, in particular our super premium iconic red wines such as Centurion Shiraz.

'The Chinese value quality and like to know about the wine making process, the flavours of the different grape varieties, all the traditions of wine and the best way to serve wine.'

David Thomas, a consultant on doing business with China, said Australia's biggest trading partner was like the United States during the 1960s.

'I see China as coming to what I call the beginning of the end of the first chapter of China,' he told Daily Mail Australia. 'A bit like post-war America.'

The president of the Australia China SME Association, which caters for small and medium enterprises with turnover of less than $10million a year, said China's middle class was likely to double to 600 million during 'the next decade or so'.

'A massive number if you think about it,' he said, describing Australian exporters to China as 'chillionnaires'.

Dr Hamilton said Australia had a reputation for quality, with Chinese consumers favouring red wine in particular (pictured are grapes at the Leconfield vineyard in the McLaren Vale region)

'There's going to be a lot of opening up, there's going to be a lot of encouragement of foreign influence and lots of people are going to make lots of money in the next 20 or 30 years.'

'The potential is virtually unlimited.'

Mr Thomas, who also runs the Think Global consultancy, advised Australian businesses wanting to export to China to build a reputation with Australia's Chinese community first.

He also suggested focusing on second-tier cities with room to grow, such as Chongqing in central China, instead of focusing on the larger cities of Shanghai and Beijing where competition is fierce.

David Thomas, a consultant on doing business with China, said Australia's biggest trading partner was like the United States during the 1960s (pictured is Shanghai by night)

'They're less glamorous, they're still in development, some of it looks a bit old-fashioned,' he said.

'Shanghai and Beijing, it's highly competitive.

David Thomas (pictured), who also runs the Think Global consultancy, advised Australian businesses wanting to export to China to focus on cities other than Shanghai and Beijing

'If you're a winemaker, you're up against the French, the Spanish, the Americans - they're people with deep pockets who are competing with you.

'In some of these second-tier markets, there are another 50 I could rattle off, there's going to be less competition from foreigners and you're more likely to get the red carpet rolled out for you.'

China rolled out the red carpet for Australia in December 2015 when it signed a free trade agreement eliminating customs duty on Australian exports.

It has been Australia's biggest two-way trading partner every year since 2009, and last year was Australia's biggest export destination, buying $116 billion worth of Australian goods and services.

Food certainly wasn't the only Australian product in demand with skincare and medical equipment on the list with coal and iron ore.
Australian families are being torn apart as the ice epidemic takes a tighter grip on the country.

Methamphetamine, also known as ice, is a highly-addictive drug that has become a mounting problem across Australia over the past few years.

The ice scourge has a ripple effect across communities. The families struggle just as much as the addict  if not more, a former addict revealed.

Deborah Osborne, from Adelaide, has been left raising her three grandchildren because of her daughter's out-of-control meth addiction.

The children all have disabilities because of their parents' drug use.

'Our retirement has been put off for 10 years, we're aging fast but we have to take care of our family members,' she told Daily Mail Australia.

Tracey Reedy (pictured left) saw her saw her good, honest and hardworking son Jamie (pictured right) became angry and troubled because of ice.

Deborah Osborne (pictured with one of her granddaughters) has had to delay her retirement as she is forced to care for her grandchildren due to her daughters drug habit

Tracey Reedy saw her saw her good, honest and hardworking son became angry and troubled because of ice.

The mother from Bathurst, New South Wales, told Daily Mail Australia she cried just about every day for two years because of her son Jamie's addiction.

She was left feeling powerless as her son's life unraveled before her eyes.

'It was like grieving every day for someone who was still alive,' she said.

'He would ring me and threaten to take his own life and then not answer my calls and then when he did he was like nothing had ever happened.'

The father-of-three became homeless because of his addiction, his relationships with his family deteriorated.

Father-of-three Jamie (pictured) became homeless because of his addiction, his relationships with his family deteriorated

Tracey Reedy has seen her son's life spiral after becoming addicted to ice. She is happy as he seems to be turning his life around

His former partner said he turned into an 'emotionless a**hole'.

She said she's blocked out a lot of the mental and physical abuse she suffered while they were together and he was using.

'It basically turns them into monsters that only have one thing on their mind - that's ice.

WHAT IS ICE? Crystal methamphetamine (ice) is a stimulant drug, which means it speeds up the messages travelling between the brain and the body. Its stronger, more addictive and therefore has more harmful side effects than the powder form of methamphetamine known as speed. Source: Alcohol and drug foundation Advertisement

'He just walked away from everything he knew and loved to hang around scum.

'They don't care who they hurt or what they do to achieve that stuff sadly. He was a really good person, quiet, very family orientated but we were the enemy in the end.'

She said there were still of broken pieces and unanswered questions.

About seven months ago Jamie turned his life around thanks to help from his sister.

He has a job and he has his own place to live. He's also started putting on weight.

'He smiles now,' his mother said. 'He's one of the lucky ones. He wanted to live.'

Sadly, Jamie's story is one of many.

Deborah Osborne (pictured) has been left raising her three grandchildren because of her daughter's addiction

Tammy Kloot knows first hand the impact of ice. Her life started spiraling and she couldn't stop it. She had her children taken from her and lost her home because of the drug

People have shared their tales on how the drug has destroyed their families, often leaving children without parents.

Tammy Kloot knows first hand the impact of ice.

Speaking to Today she said the first time she touched ice, she was hooked.

The mother of five children, then aged between 10 and 15, started using once a week. Her life started spiraling and she couldn't stop it.

She lost her children and her home.

'I started using it to numb my pain. The turning point was losing everything. I couldn't do it anymore.'

Recovery was very hard, she said. She has been clean for two years.

'It's not easy. It's what you put into it. I've been clean for 20 months. I've got a home, I've got a car.

'I've got my children back in my life, (I'm) heading to uni next year.'

Ms Kloot is part of the Queensland government's five year, $100 million Ice Strategy.

There are two targets: cutting supply and treating those who need help.

The governments plan to address use and harms caused by crystal methamphetamine follow an extensive consultation process that began in 2017.
Australia's most notorious prisoners are housed behind bars where stabbings, gang factions and ice binges are part of life in the shadows.

The Goulburn Correctional Centre, in southern New South Wales, houses the worst criminals this country has produced during the past three decades.

The Super Max section of the prison is home to serial killer Ivan Milat, who murdered seven backpackers during 1980s and 1990s.

Muslim gang rapist brothers Bilal and Mohammed Skaf, who terrorised a string of Sydney women a month before the 2000 Sydney Olympics, are also in the slammer there.

The Goulburn Correctional Centre (pictured), in southern New South Wales, houses the worst criminals this country has produced during the past three decades

Australia's most notorious prisoners are housed behind bars where stabbings, gang factions and ice binges are part of life in the shadows. Pictured are gang rapist Mohammed Skaf (left) who was just 17 when he joined his brother Bilal, then 18, in terrorising Sydney women

Brothers for Life gang leader Bassam Hamzy lives there too.

So do the sex criminals who disgusted Australia during the 1980s.

Anita Cobby killers Michael and Leslie Murphy and Janine Balding's murderer, Stephen Wayne 'Shorty' Jamieson are doing life for their depravity.

Even before Australia's highest-level maximum security wing opened in 2001, Goulburn Goal, an hour's drive north of Canberra, was notorious for being a 'human zoo'.

Since it was built in 1884, the original prison complex has been a hive of tension among bored inmates crowded into pens smaller than a zoo enclosure.

The prisoners have colloquially referred to the caged prison yard as 'Goulburn Main' .

During one afternoon some time before 2015, a fight broke out in the compound, also known as 'The Circle'.

Serial killer Ivan Milat, who murdered seven backpackers during 1980s and 1990s, has locked up in Goulburn's Super Max for most of the two decades he has been in jail

Senior Correctional Officer Jamie Buck was on the ground near G Block when he heard the commotion and rushed over.

Through the gate of the yard, he could see one of the notorious K brothers, 27-year-old MSK, punching and wrestling with murderer, Shannon William Daley.

MSK was the eldest of four brothers convicted of raping eight girls aged between 13 and 18 years old at Ashfield in Sydney's inner west in 2002, and who were sentenced to between 15 and 24 years prison, a fifth rapist in their gang having hanged himself in jail.

The brothers are immigrants from Pakistan's violent former north west frontier province and identify in the Goulburn prison files as Afghani.

Mr Buck recalled receiving a call over the radio to the prison's central control at 12.30pm.

Since it was built in 1884, the original Goulburn Correctional Centre (pictured) complex has been a hive of tension among bored inmates crowded into pens smaller than a zoo enclosure

'Fight in 2 Yard - two inmates down,' a message said.

The details of this vicious attack - which involved four rapists and violent sex offenders and three murderes with multiple victims - was the subject of an internal report which Daily Mail Australia obtained exclusively in 2015.

The Circle has its own jail yard pecking order and has been the scene of murders, stabbings with prison-made shivs and bashings of feared or hated inmates.

While Goulburn has Australia's most notorious criminals, Silverwater in Sydney's west, is Australia's largest prison.

Bassam Hamzy (pictured) is the highest security risk inmate in Australia and is housed in Goulburn's Supermax prison where he has converted other criminals to Islam

The Metropolitan Remand and Reception Centre, 20km west of the city, locks up 18,000 men a year.

Last year marked the 20th anniversary of this wing opening within the Silverwater Correctional Complex.

Since 1997, it has seen most of the notorious killers, rapists and bikies to have been refused bail in NSW.

Corrupt politicians, paedophile priests and drug barons who have made headlines have also seen its walls, which Daily Mail Australia last year visited.

The MRRC houses 1,179 inmates and employs 322 staff. Most inmates are awaiting court hearings or classification to other jails.

Silverwater in Sydney's west, is Australia's largest prison. The Metropolitan Remand and Reception Centre (pictured), 20km west of the city, locks up 18,000 men a year

Since 1997, the Silverwater complex (pictured) has seen most of the notorious killers, rapists and bikies to have been refused bail in NSW

The prisoner population is transient, but some of the staff have served much longer than the average murder sentence. Almost 50 have been there from the start.

Senior Correctional Officers Sindy Lesko, Vesna Mijatovic and Ian McLuckie were all at the MRRC when it opened on July 4, 1997.

Since that time, there has been an increase in gang-affiliated inmates, prisoner numbers and offending attributed to drugs  particularly ice.

The inmates still wear green. The officers still wear blue. Many of those in green present a constant danger. All of those in blue are permanently on guard.

Prison modernisation has seen new programs to address mental health but not all of Australia's worst criminals can be rehabilitated.
Australians who spent years locked up in south-east Asian jails have issued stark warnings to convicted drug mule Renae Lawrence as she attempts to adjust to life outside prison.

Lawrence, 41, spent 13 years behind bars - including spending time at the infamous Kerobokan prison - after acting as a smuggler for the notorious Bali Nine.

She was arrested at the airport after arriving in Bali in April 2005 with 2.7kg of heroin strapped to her body.

Originally sentenced to life in prison, she had her jail term reduced for 'good behaviour'.

As Lawrence returns from incarceration in Asia to freedom in Australia, those who have experienced the transition first hand have expressed how tough the change can be.

Australians who spent years locked up in south-east Asia have issued stark warnings to convicted drug mule Renae Lawrence as she attempts to adjust to life outside prison

Adrian Simon's (right) father Warren Fellows (left) was arrested along with rugby league star Paul Hayward in Bangkok, Thailand in 1978 after being caught trying to smuggle 8.5kg of heroin into Australia

Mr Simon was just two years old at the time, and told Daily Mail Australia his relationship with his father is now non-existent

Adrian Simon's father Warren Fellows was arrested along with rugby league star Paul Hayward in Bangkok, Thailand in 1978 after being caught trying to smuggle 8.5kg of heroin into Australia.

Mr Simon was just two years old at the time, and told Daily Mail Australia his relationship with his father is now non-existent.

'I put this down, not so much to his having been arrested, but mainly due to the damage done to him in prison, his resulting and subsequent behaviours and mental health,' Mr Simon said.

Fellows received a royal pardon from the King of Thailand and was released from Bankwang prison - known for its cruel treatment towards inmates and nicknamed 'Big Tiger' because it 'eats those on the inside' - in January 1990.

He became addicted to heroin while in prison, and had trouble getting used to technological advancements in the outside world.

'He was still living in the 70s in what was the 90s,' Mr Simon said.

Fellows received a royal pardon from the King of Thailand and was released from Bankwang prison (pictured)

Lawrence, 41, spent 13 years behind bars - including spending time at the infamous Kerobokan prison - after acting as a smuggler for the notorious Bali Nine

'I believe my father was unprepared for how the world had moved on, how my mother and myself had been living our lives, and that in many ways, we had moved on as best we could.'

Mr Simon offered some advice to Lawrence's friends and family, telling them not to expect her to be the same person as she was before her imprisonment.

'There is no doubt going to be a huge transition period for her - and with that will come all the connected emotions,' he said.

'My advice to friends and family would be to allow her some leeway. She will need some space to heal and time to prove herself, but will need those close to her to be around to support. It's not a time for judgement - those days are passed.

'I hope her transition is more successful that my father's, especially in regards to looking after her health. I'd ask those around her to support her and be empathetic as to what she's facing right now.

'I also hope she has deep understanding of the resentments and anger that her loved ones would no doubt feel due to her arrest, and time incarcerated.

Fellows (left, with Mr Simon as a baby) received a royal pardon from the King of Thailand and was released from Bankwang prison in January 1990

Kay Danes and her husband Kerry (couple pictured) were imprisoned in Laos in December 2000

'These are really complex emotions all round. I wish her well.'

Mr Simon wrote a book, Milk-Blood, about his experience growing up as the child of a drug trafficker.

Kay Danes and her husband Kerry were imprisoned in Laos in December 2000.

The couple were convicted of embezzlement, tax evasion and destruction of evidence, sentenced to seven years each in prison and ordered to pay $1.1million in fines and compensation.

They were released from prison almost a year later after the Australian government intervened and the pair were granted a presidential pardon.

Mrs Danes said she saw someone being tortured every day she was in prison, which she described as 'hell'.

'Having been subjected to torture and mock executions, and seeing many other prisoners tortured, the hardest thing coming home was coping with a new normality,' she told Daily Mail Australia.

'Everything was foreign to me, the language, the sights, the smells, the customs. It was as if I had been transported to an alien world. I didn't know that 9/11 had happened.

Mrs Danes said she saw someone being tortured every day she was in prison, which she described as 'hell'

'No-one told us because in my present mental state, I couldn't handle being exposed to any further trauma. When I heard about what had happened to all those people, I really felt the world had changed even more than what I was experiencing there and then.'

During a phone conversation from prison with her mother on Christmas Day, Mrs Danes told her she thought she was going to die.

'I traded two bottles of Absolut vodka for that phone call to my mum. It seemed important to say what was most on my mind... Happy birthday mum - she was born on Christmas Day - and I think they're going to kill me.

'I'm so sorry I said that to my mum because she didn't see me or hear my voice again for almost a year. That must have been torture for her, always wondering if I was OK. I think we never fully appreciate what our families must endure when we are in such difficulty.'

Mrs Danes said she was unprepared for the intense media scrutiny that would meet her once she touched down in Australia

Mrs Danes said she hopes Lawrence (pictured) will 'find her way as she begins another chapter of her life'

Mrs Danes said she was unprepared for the intense media scrutiny that would meet her once she touched down in Australia.

'We arrived home to a 200-strong media conference in Brisbane. I was shocked because for almost a year, I had no idea what the media had been reporting about us.

'Not once during our unlawful detainment were we able to speak with any media, to confirm or refute what was being reported. It was incredibly damaging to our reputations.'

Mrs Danes said she hopes Lawrence will 'find her way as she begins another chapter of her life'.

'If I could give her advice, I'd say don't look back. Move forward and make your life count for something amazing,' Mrs Danes said.

'It's hard when people judge you, and they will. But just remember that even in the darkest place, there is always hope. Surround yourself with people who will support you.

'Remember that it's up to you what happens next.'
An adorable husky named Sinatra disappeared from his home in New York and turned up in a Florida neighborhood 18 months later.

No one knows what Sinatra the brown and white Husky did in between the time he went missing from Brooklyn and traveled 1,200 miles to end up on the streets of Seffner near Tampa.

He was taken in by Rose Verrill, 13, who found him wandering near her Lenna Avenue home and her family launched a search with help from friend Jeanne Baldi.

Sinatra vanished from his New York home and turned up in a neighborhood outside Tampa

Sinatra was taken in by Rose Verrill, 13, who found him wandering near her home after travelling for 18 months and 1,200 miles from his home in Brooklyn

A local veterinarian removed an identification chip from Sinatra but couldnt recover much information.

They turned to the Hillsborough County Pet Resource Center and came up with a possible owners name and a phone number.

Sinatra once belonged to 16-year-old Zion Willis, who died in a gun accident in Brooklyn, New York, in 2015. He will be reunited with her family in Baltimore on Sunday.

The Tampa Bay Times reports that while the dog has been found and no one knows how he traveled that distance and managed to survive with food and water.

Sinatra was a 14th birthday gift for Zion, who was an avid dancer and an animal lover.

The blue-eyed dog loved to chase raccoons and squirrels, the teen's father told the newspaper.

Sinatra belonged to Zion Wilis, 14, (right) who died in a gun accident at a friends house in November 2015.

Animal welfare groups in the area issued a number of alerts for information on Sinatra's whereabouts but no information emerged until he suddenly appeared last week

One day, a year-and-a-half after Zion's death, the dog never came home. It was a tragic loss for Zion's grieving parents.

Some 18 months passed before the Florida teen found Sinatra near her home.

'He's been such a wonderful guest and such a sweet dog,' said Rose's mother, Denise Verril. 'I can see why they love him so much'.

The Verills and a family friend Jeanne Baldi started trying to find Sinatra's owners.

They took him to a veterinarian who was not able to retrieve much from an identification chip.

In Brooklyn, the grieving Willis family had suffered an added blow when Sinatra disappeared 18 months after Zions death in 2015

The Verills and a family friend Jeanne Baldi started trying to find Sinatra's owners.

They took him to a veterinarian who was not able to retrieve much from an identification chip.

They turned to the Hillsborough County Pet Resource Center, which came up with a possible name - Willis Les - and a phone number that was off by one digit.

Sinatra will be reunited with the Willis family this weekend in Baltimore

That's when Baldi took to social media and reached out to Lesmore Willis with the information she had.

'I never would have thought he was from Brooklyn. I messaged Lesmore over Facebook and didn't think it would lead to anything when I saw where he was from'.

A few days later, Willis messaged back. As they compared notes, they both spoke of a dog that had a problem with its right foot.

Baldi sent along a photo and Willis confirmed it was Sinatra.

'I told him that he was safe and well taken care of with Denise,' Baldi said.

Lesmore Willis spoke of his daughter's love for the dog. She said: 'That was her dog and their bond was strong. She loved to take him on her walks to the store.

'The love was obvious. When he was gone, it was like losing a part of her'.

After Sinatra disappeared, they put up flyers and spent months searching.

A friend of Verrill's is taking Sinatra to Baltimore for the Thanksgiving weekend reunion.

In his temporary home, Sinatra, like his blue-eyed namesake, seems to enjoy breaking into song. He does a duet with another family dog.

It's not known what Sinatra got up to on his mammoth 1,200 mile journey from New York to Florida or how he managed to get food and water for the 18 months he was missing

Denise added: 'Its the funniest thing. Hes been such a wonderful guest and such a sweet dog. I can see why they love him so much'.

In Brooklyn, the grieving Willis family had suffered an added blow when Sinatra disappeared 18 months after Zions death.

Wilis said: 'Hes known throughout the neighborhood as the dog who runs off to chase raccoons and squirrels.

'Hes done it before, but usually he comes back no more than 30 minutes later, and he never came back'.
A grandfather lost 20,000 to an African fraudster posing as an American porn star.

Simon Frost, 75, was overjoyed after he matched with Eva two months after signing up to the dating site Real Sex Contacts.

Eva, who said she was a hospital worker from the Ghanaian capital Accra, sent Mr Frost a picture of herself in April 2017 and spoke of settling down with the single grandfather - whose wife had left him 10 years earlier.

The couple agreed to meet up and exchanged details. Eva even managed to convince the smitten pensioner to part with information about his bank cards, The Mirror reported.

Simon Frost, 75, was overjoyed after he matched with 'Eva' two months after signing up to the dating site Real Sex Contacts

He and his online sweetheart used pet names for each other including 'babe' and 'husband'

But on the date they were due to meet in August this year, Eva did not show up, and heartbroken Mr Frost did not hear from her again - even though he had been convinced by his new love to part with almost 20,000.

The reality was that Eva was not interested in starting a new life with Mr Frost - she was actually an African fraudster using images of US porn star Briana Lee and made up stories to dupe the diabetic British pensioner out of his savings.

Mr Frost, a retired dentist from Soham, Cambridgeshire, is now speaking out to warn others of the scam.

The reality was that Eva was not interested in starting a new life with Mr Frost - she was actually an African fraudster using images of US porn star Briana Lee (pictured) to dupe British pensioners out of their savings

Mr Frost now faces monthly bills of 595 a month in order to clear his debts - and his daughter is having to chip in to keep him afloat

He and Eva had used pet names for each other including 'babe' and 'husband', and he had 'genuinely believed' they had a legitimate relationship.

Eva convinced him to part with his money by claiming she needed it in order to access a 5million inheritance left to her by her father.

Mr Frost took the bait and sent her 6,000 of his savings, 3,000 from credit cards and two 5,000 advances from loan service Amigo - along with the 1,600 for Eva's flight to the UK.

Ms Lee urged people not to send money to people they had never met

He now faces monthly bills of 595 a month in order to clear his debts - and his daughter is having to chip in to keep him afloat.

'I was sold a complete sob story and was completely used,' Mr Frost told The Mirror.

'I believed everything she said. I thought I'd be able to clear my debts and we'd be able to enjoy the money and buy a house together.

'But she clearly had no intention of coming here. I was lonely, and I still am, and I was looking for company. Eva seemed genuine. But I was obviously an easy target.'

Adult model Briana Lee, 28, said this wasn't the first instance of someone using her pictures to scam people out of money.

She urged people not to send money to people they had never met.

An inquiry into the growing threat of online fraud last year found that while most victims of online fraud are under 65, this may be a reflection of the lower use of the internet when compared to the rest of the population.

In a letter to Meg Hillier MP, Director of Policy & Research at Age UK Jane Vass said: 'Only two-fifths (41%) of people aged 75+ are recent internet users, compared to four-fifths (78%) of people aged 54-74 and nine tenths (89%) of all adults.

'Our concern is that this lower exposure to risk may change. There is steady growth in the number of older people online: the percentage of people 75+ who have used the internet has doubled since 2011.

'However, older people may lack the skills to keep safe when using new technology. For example, people aged 75+ are less confident in knowing how to manage access to their personal data online, and less likely to use security features, except for antivirus packages and passwords.

'Finally, some online frauds particularly affect older age groups, such as pensions and investment fraud, dating fraud, and computer software fraud.'
Rowdy Schoolies celebrations have spiralled out of control, resulting in as many as 100 heavily armed police descending on young revellers.

Riot squad officers armed with shields and batons were called to the Mornington Peninsula in Melbourne's southeast on Saturday night after uniformed officers were allegedly attacked by swarms of school leavers.

Sergeant Chris Russo told the Herald Sun officers were attending to 'sporadic fighting' and general anti-social behavior among young party-goers.

But those close to the scene said the cause for unrest was older men - known colloquially as 'toolies' - harrassing teenagers and inciting the violence.

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Swarms of police descended on out of control Schoolies revellers in southeast Melbourne (pictured)

The seaside suburb of Rye was at the centre of the brawl, a popular Schoolies destination for Melburnians not inclined to make the trek to the Gold Coast.

Locals estimated more than 300 youths filled the streets on Saturday night.

Small fights began to break out within the crowd at 9:30pm, locals say.

However, when police tried to break up the fights, youths threw glass bottles at them.

'The initial police unit that arrived were met with bottles being thrown at them, so for safety they withdrew and we recalculated our response,' Sergeant Russo said.

Riot police armed with shields and batons were called to the scene after youths threw glass bottles at officers trying to break up brawls (pictured)

The cause of the fights is unknown, but one man says he experienced it firsthand.

'Bunch of older guys just going around starting fights and stealing from innocent kids,' he wrote on Facebook.

Another woman wrote there were 'Schoolies everywhere' and they were 'out of control'.

Schoolie Peter Sepsakos, 17, blamed what he says was an unnecessary police presence for sparking the violence.

'It was quiet, people were meeting up and then police rocked up and then it just escalated,' he said.

The tension broke up after more than 100 riot squad officers swarmed the area.

Lines of officers blocked the road as more than 300 school leavers fought in the streets of Rye

The fighting comes just days after the main Schoolies event on the Gold Coast came to an end, with dozens of young revellers ending the week in handcuffs.

However, despite 36 arrests made on the last night, Queensland's police chief praised the teens for their general behaviour.

'I'm going to give them an A, we won't give them an A+ because we did have a couple of stupidity acts,' Gold Coast District Inspector Mat Rosevear said.

Sergeant Russo had a different message for school leavers celebrating their end-of-year exams.

'People need to appreciate, police certainly aren't trying to ruin anyone's time, but we certainly don't need that sort of thing from members of the public.'

Further brawls were reported throughout the night, though a Victoria Police spokesman confirmed no arrests were made and no one was injured.

Locals said more than 100 armed officers, the dog squad and a helicopter attended

School leavers have flocked to the area in past years, with a number of AirBnB owners adamantly closing their homes from rent during the period.

One man, speaking to the Herald Sun, said his home was damaged last year and those trying to book this year were 'toolies'.

Those reacting to the fights on social media questioned why it wasn't better organised like the event on the Gold Coast or Byron Bay.

Though no official event was planned, a sign at the entrance to Rye warned party-goers that police knew what they were there

'Welcome schoolies, respect our home,' it reads.

'Schoolies, police out in force.'
A man is accused of killing his girlfriend on the same day he was released from an Arizona state prison.

David James Bohart, 34, was arrested at a hotel on Friday on suspicion of second-degree murder in the death of Marika Jones, 49.

Tucson police said they found the mother-of-one with stab wounds at a house two days earlier as well as a file of prison records on Bohart.

He had been released on Monday from the Tucson state prison complex, where he served a three-year sentence for possession or use of dangerous drugs, according to the Arizona Department of Corrections website.

When he failed to check in to a court-ordered treatment facility in Cottonwood days later, a warrant was issued for his arrest, police said.

David James Bohart, 34 (left and right in undated mugshots), is accused of killing his girlfriend Marika Jones, 49, on the same day he was released from an Arizona state prison. He was arrested at a hotel on Friday on suspicion of second-degree murder

Tucson police said they found the mother-of-one (pictured) with stab wounds at a house two days earlier as well as a file of prison records on Bohart.

Jones had given herself his last name on Facebook, identifying herself as 'Marika Jones-Bohart', even though there is no indication the two were married.

In fact, her last relationship update was made on July 2016 in which she chose the 'It's Complicated' option.

However, Bohart appears in several of Jones's pics, dating back to at least July 2014. She also repeatedly refers to him as 'my man' and 'my prize'.

Police say Jones's body was discovered after a man identifying himself as an attorney from out of state called police on Wednesday around 3pm with information about a possible killing at a Tuscon home.

Authorities have not released the caller's identity.

When police arrived at the home on the 5700 block of East 24th Street, they found Jones's body with traumatic injuries.

Tucson police say a man using a false name called 911 to report he had just been released from prison and killed his girlfriend. Bohart (left and right, with Jones's daughter) served two previous stints in prison, one for a forgery conviction and the other for possession or use of dangerous drugs

Jones (pictured) had given herself his last name on Facebook, identifying herself as 'Marika Jones-Bohart', even though there is no indication the two were married

Police said they were already investigating in the same area after a man using a false name called 911 to report he had just been released from prison and killed his girlfriend.

The man didn't provide an address, and police weren't able to immediately find anything.

Bohart is currently in the Pima County Adult Detention Center with bond set at $100,000.

Online court records don't list an attorney who could comment on his behalf.

Bohart served two previous stints in prison, according to the corrections department website.

One was for a forgery conviction, and the other was another conviction for possession or use of dangerous drugs.

Anyone with information is asked to call the Tucson Police Department at 520-88-CRIME (909-88-27463).
The wildfire in Northern California has almost been extinguished after several days of rain, and those in Southern California are returning home after the worst case in a century continued for two weeks.

But searchers are still completing the meticulous task of combing through now-muddy ash and debris for signs of human remains in the worst-hit city of Paradise.

Crews looked through destroyed neighborhoods for a second time trying to identify telltale fragments, bone or anything that looks like a pile of cremated ashes as 475 were still on a missing persons list when the blazes were 95 percent contained.

After a brief delay to let a downpour pass, volunteers resumed their search for human remains at a mobile home park in Paradise Friday

In Southern California, more residents were allowed to return to areas that were evacuated due to the 151-square-mile (391-square-kilometer) Woolsey Fire as crews worked to repair power, telephone and gas utilities

The deadliest wildfire for a long time in the United States killed at least 84 people after flames ignited November 8 in the parched Sierra Nevada foothills.

Named the Camp Fire, it then quickly spread across 240 square miles (620 square kilometers), destroying most of Paradise in a day.

The fire burned down nearly 19,000 buildings, most of them homes, and displaced thousands of people, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said.

But the fight against the infernos got a boost Wednesday from the first significant winter-like storm to hit the state.

Steven McKnight (right) and Daniel Hansen saw through large pieces of sheet metal so they can be moved to allow cadaver dogs to search beneath them for signs of human remains

Search team members move sheet metal to allow cadaver dogs to search beneath them for signs of human remains at a mobile home park in Paradise

Eric Darling and his dog Wyatt are part of a search team from Orange County in Southern California who are among several teams conducting a second search of a mobile home park

It dropped an estimated 7 inches (18 centimeters) of rain over the burn area over a three-day period without causing significant mudslides, said Hannah Chandler-Cooley of the National Weather Service.

Despite the inclement weather, more than 800 volunteers kept searching for remains.

Crews worked on-and-off amid a downpour Friday. While the rain made everybody colder and wetter, they kept the mission in mind, said Chris Stevens, a search volunteer who wore five layers of clothing to keep warm.

Steven McKnight and Daniel Hansen were pictured sawing through large pieces of sheet metal so they could be moved to allow cadaver dogs to search beneath at a mobile home park.

'It doesn't change the spirits of the guys working,' he said. 'Everyone here is super committed to helping the folks here.'

Craig Covey, task force leader for the Orange County search team, left, with David Harper, middle talk to resident Stewart Nugent outside his Paradise

Resident Stewart Nugent stayed in his home during the Camp Fire

National Urban Search & Rescue Response System Orange County CATF-5 team members Imelda Cordova, third from right, talks to Andrew Ricker and Chris Stevens

High winds and heavy rains temporarily halted the work of some search teams out looking for remains of people caught up in the deadly wildfire

In Southern California, more residents returned to areas evacuated as crews repaired power, telephone and gas utilities.

Los Angeles County sheriff's officials said they were in the last phase of repopulating Malibu and unincorporated areas of the county. At the height of the Woolsey fire, 250,000 fled their homes.

But the scene around Malibu State Park was a shadow of itself with some burned bushes now standing in place of the usually green landscape in the Golden States.

On the same day as the Northern California fire sparking off, one in Los Angeles burned through suburban communities and wilderness parklands to the ocean.

Two oak trees stand on a rain-soaked, burned-over hillside following the Woolsey Fire in Agoura Hills, California

The Malibu State Park area is known for its green landscape in the Sunshine State

Three people died down there, and 1,643 buildings, most of them homes, were destroyed, officials said.

In Northern California, searchers tried to keep their minds on the task rather than the tragic situation.

'The guys will never say it's hard,' crew member David Kang said. 'But it is.'

Craig Covey, task force leader for the Orange County search team and David Harper, spoke to resident Stewart Nugent outside his Paradise, California home on Friday.

Covey and several team members took two giant brown bags full of lunch to the 64-year-old, who stayed in his home and fought off flames.
King Mohammed VI has called on African cities and local governments to deal urgently with the rapidly growing problem of street children in Africa wherein more than 30 million children are homeless and living in appalling conditions.

Of the 120 million street children in the world, more than 30 million are scraping a living on our continent. One in four street children in the world is therefore African, said the Monarch in a message addressed on Saturday, on the occasion of the launch of African Cities without Street Children Campaign.

The campaign was launched officially by Princess Lalla Meryem, Chairwoman of the National Observatory for Childrens Rights, at the close of the 8th Africities Summit convened in Marrakech Nov.21-24.

This figure is not only shocking, it also runs contrary to the time-honored values of our African societies, which are based on solidarity and the pre-eminence of the family, added the Sovereign in his message read out by Princess Lalla Meryem.

Just like other countries in Africa and other parts of the world, Morocco is unfortunately not immune to the problem of homeless children, underlined king Mohammed VI, calling for an effective and sustainable commitment of cities to reduce child vulnerability within a three-year period.

He said that he hopes through this campaign to mobilize as many African cities and territories as possible so that tangible actions are taken and a concrete national and continental dynamic set in motion.

In Morocco, there is a national consensus and a strong commitment to protect childs rights. In partnership with United Cities and Local Governments of Africa, and with the support of UNICEF, the National Observatory for Childrens Rights pledges to support this large-scale initiative, stressed the royal message.

At the domestic level, the mobilization of national stakeholders has already led to far-reaching legal, institutional, economic and social reforms. This has resulted in the adoption of the Integrated Public Policy for Child Protection in Morocco and of the 10-year framework of action, in addition to other initiatives, such as the Indimaj program, which is aimed at eradicating the phenomenon of children living or working on the streets, explained the Monarch.

He recalled in this regard the child protection units and the SAMU social which provide emergency assistance and the second chance schools & vocational training institutes which offer sustainable solutions to the issue of street children.

Despite the commendable progress made, much remains to be done. Child protection is not merely about tackling the violation of childrens physical, moral and psychological integrity. It also implies creating the right conditions for their economic, social and cultural development, underlined King Mohammed VI.

He called on Africans to build on the international partnership focusing on Agenda 2030 in order to make progress towards sustainable development and the achievement of public well-being, particularly that of children.

Rising to this challenge is within our reach. It requires awareness of what is at stake, a coherent, inclusive approach as well as immediate, effective mobilization of officials and elected representatives to make sure the rights of every child are respected, said the Sovereign, affirming that the proper place for children is in school, not on the streets. This means that childrens education is a top priority and where their protection starts.

Thus, education is our main challenge as well as our greatest chance to address the street children problem, said King Mohammed VI, noting that its multiplier effect is undeniable and its promotion a necessity.

In a final declaration adopted at the end of the 8th Africities Summit, participating African local governments and their partners pledged to support the implementation of continental and global development agendas for a prosperous and peaceful Africa.
A political party established by frustrated taxi drivers is likely to win two seats in the Victorian election - despite only securing a tiny percentage of votes.

The Transport Matters Party, run by hire car owner Rod Barton, is expected to claim the final seat in the Eastern Metropolitan district from the Greens.

This is despite securing only 0.6 per cent of the vote, compared to the Greens' 9.3 per cent.

The Transport Matters Party, run by co-founder Rod Barton (pictured), is likely to win two seats in the Victorian election - despite only securing only 0.6 per cent of the vote

Transport Matters, run by co-founder Rod Barton, (pictured) is likely to win two seats in the Victorian election - despite only securing a tiny percentage of votes

The party also looks likely to snatch the final seat in South-East Metropolitan region from the Greens.

The stunning success can be linked to a series of labyrinth deals organised by Glenn Druery, better known as the 'preference whisperer.'

Druery's success has been his clever ability to persuade the smaller parties to exchange preferences with one another, rather than directing them to the major parties.

The result was a number of smaller parties winning up to nine of the 40 seats in the new council.

One of the biggest winners was the party of Druery's employer, Senator Derryn Hinch.

The Transport Matters Party is likely to win two seats in the Victorian election - despite only securing 0.6 per cent of votes

The Hinch party will certainly take the final seat in Western Metropolitan region from the Greens, after Catherine Cumming won 6 per cent of the vote.

The Shooters party retained its seats in Eastern Victoria and Northern Victoria, and are poised to win the final seat in Western Victoria.

Labor scored huge swings across the state, exceeding 10 per cent in most seats, and is on track to win 19 of the 40 seats in the new chamber.
The man behind the iconic sex scene in the classic 1973 film Dont Look Now has died at the age of 90.

Nicolas Roegs compelling direction of the film  which tells the story of a married couple who travel to Venice after the death of their daughter  led many viewers to believe its stars, Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland, were actually having sex. Tributes to Roeg were last night led by Jenny Agutter, who starred in his 1971 film Walkabout.

He was a magician and an absolute original, she told The Mail on Sunday. He would say, We are all going to walk to the top of the mountain and we are going to do these extraordinary things and thats what we did. Film-making is a commercial media and it has to be, but Nic never gave in to commerciality. He saw film- making as an art form and his films reflected that.

Nicolas Roeg at the London Film Critics' Circle Awards in 2012

Donald Sutherland described Roeg as a fearless visionary and added: He was a liberating joy to work for.

Film-maker Duncan Jones, whose father David Bowie starred in Roegs 1976 film The Man Who Fell to Earth, tweeted: What an incredible body of work hes left us with! All my love to his family.

Julie Christie revived speculation about the sex scene in Dont Look Now three years ago when she told the BBC: It was flesh squirming and rolling and touching, and God, I thought it was absolutely lovely.
After picking up a surprise knighthood on Friday, Tory Eurosceptic John Hayes should be celebrating.

Instead hes found himself being mocked by a fellow party Brexiteer who suggested that some colleagues believed he got it from the Prime Minister to persuade him to back her in next months crucial EU vote.

Sir John was teased by Tory MP Mark Francois who said MPs took his shock award as a sign of the Governments desperation to stave off a defeat.

In a sarcasm-laden letter, Mr Francois mocked the staunch Eurosceptic MP, saying: Do not be alarmed  your colleaguesknow you are made of sterner stuff!

He heaped ridicule on Sir John, suggesting he could write down his political principles on the back of an old postage stamp.

Conservative Eurosceptic MP John Hayes was told he would be receiving a knighthood ahead of the crucial Brexit vote in Parliament

He added: Its entirely up to you but could I cheekily suggest a crest with an utter cock rampant on one side and a big chicken on the other.

Sir John hit back by dismissing Mr Francoiss letter as a comic turn and insisted his knighthood made no difference to his refusal to vote for the EU withdrawal agreement as it stood.

He told The Mail on Sunday: As Ive made very clear before my honour, I cannot support the deal as it now stands.

Friends rallied to Sir John, insisting that, as an MP for over 20 years and Government Minister for more than seven years, he entirely merited his honour.

They claimed Mrs May had sanctioned the award even though Sir John saw her earlier this month to tell her he could not vote for the withdrawal agreement as it stood.

But No 10 surprised MPs by choosing to announce the Lincolnshire MPs award last Friday  rather than wait till the usual New Years Honours.

Mark Francois, Conservative MP for Rayleigh and Wickford, mocked Sir John and suggested he could write down his political principles on the back of an old postage stamp

The move, so close to the crucial Commons EU vote, sparked immediate Brexiteer suspicions that potential Tory critics were being enticed into not opposing the PMs plan.

Mr Francois, claiming to be writing on behalf of the Tories Brexiteer European Research Group, congratulated Sir John but said: I must confess this came as a bit of a shock to many of us outside of the normal honours cycle.

Mr Francois, ERG vice-chairman, added that some colleagues are unkindly suggesting this award is a signof absolute desperation by a Government which has effectively abandoned Brexit.

Those unkind suggestions were that the Government was now reduced to handing out knighthoods to malleable colleagues, in a doomed attempt to stave off an almost certain defeat in the EU vote.

Mr Francois stood by his letter yesterday. But ERG chairman Jacob Rees-Mogg effectively rebuked him, insisting it was not issued on behalf of his group and making clear Sir John deserved the award.
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Britain could face its coldest winter for eight years, forecasters have warned.

With icy gales from Siberia predicted to sweep the country next month, councils have stockpiled 1.4 million tons of salt in a bid to keep roads clear.

In 2010, the UK experienced its coldest December since Met Office records began in 1910, with a mean temperature of -1C and deep snow covering major city centres, including London.

Forecasters have warned that bitter winds this year could make temperatures feel as low as -10C.

In 2010, the UK experienced its coldest December since Met Office records began in 1910 (pictured: The snow-covered statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square, December 2010)

Eight years ago the nation endured a mean temperature of -1C and deep snow covering major city centres (pictured: Traffic makes its way through the centre of York, December 1, 2010)

Bookmakers have slashed the odds of a White Christmas to 5/4 after parts of northern England saw snow last week (pictured: The Snake Pass in Derbyshire, November 21, 2018)

Rain is forecast along much of the west side of Britain and parts of Northern Ireland this coming Tuesday (pictured: Millennium Bridge during heavy rain, November 10, 2018)

Eleanor Bell, principal meteorologist for the Weather Company, said last night: We expect this winter to be different to the past seven milder winters we have had, with an increased risk for colder intrusions across the northern half of Europe and below-normal temperatures through January and February.

Bookmakers have slashed the odds of a White Christmas to 5/4 after parts of northern England saw snow last week.

A study by the Local Government Association found 94 per cent of councils will have the same or more salt in stock than they did last year.

The Met Office and Cabinet Office have issued a notice, warning of a severe winter on the way.

Oliver Dowden, Minister for Implementation at the Cabinet Office, said: Our public services and emergency responders continue to prepare for severe weather, as they do every year, but everyone can take simple actions to prepare themselves and support their friends and neighbours.

The winter storms will be preceded by wet and windy conditions this week. Met Office meteorologist Dean Hall said: Conditions into mid-December will become drier and there will be an increased risk of fog and frost. It will gradually become colder as we draw air from the near-Continent.

In 2010, the UK experienced its coldest December since Met Office records began in 1910, with a mean temperature of -1C and deep snow covering major city centres, including London (pictured: Trafalgar Square, December 18, 2010)

Pictured: A snow-covered UK taken from a NASA satellite named Terra from Tuesday December 7, 2010
Shocking footage has captured the moment officers surrounded and arrested a man who led them on two separate police chases.

The footage, shot from a mobile phone, shows police surround the man's white truck while it is stopped in heavy traffic in Sydney's CBD.

The 20-year-old man was travelling in a stolen vehicle when he failed to stop at a roadside breath test in Tenterfield, northern NSW, at 10.45pm on Friday night, police said.

This led police to initiate a chase, however, it was stopped a short time later due to dangerous driving.

At 7pm on Saturday, officers again spotted the stolen Toyota Landcruiser on the Pacific Highway in North Sydney and police initiated another pursuit, which led across the Harbour Bridge and into the CBD.

Eventually the man, originally from Queensland where the vehicle was reported stolen, had to stop due to traffic, allowing police to surround the vehicle and apprehend the man.

Police allege the man, at one point, drove onto the footpath to try to avoid traffic.

Shocking footage has been captured of the moment police surround and arrest a man who led them on two separate police chases

Police smashed a window to get to the driver and ammunition was also found during a search of the vehicle.

Noone was injured although several vehicles were damaged in the pursuit.

The driver has been charged with offences in connection with stealing a vehicle, the police pursuits, driving dangerously, and unlicensed driving.

He was refused bail to appear before Parramatta Bail Court on Sunday.
Two fishermen had a narrow escape after getting stuck in a mudflat in a crocodile-infested creek.

The pair's boat sunk on Saturday night, leaving the men at the mercy of the incoming 9.8m tide and the saltwater crocodiles that are known to inhabit the waters of Crab Creek in Broome.

Luckily they were rescued by a helicopter and pulled to safety, avoiding a potentially tragic situation.

Two fishermen had a narrow escape after becoming stuck chest deep in a mudflat, in a crocodile-infested creek

Luckily they were rescued by a helicopter and pulled to safety, avoiding a potentially tragic situation

The men were suffering from exhaustion when they were found, according to Broome Police.

The helicopter picked up the two men, who were roughly 1km off shore, at 5.48pm, The West Australian reported.

Police described the incident as an 'urgent sea rescue' and posted dramatic footage of the operation on Twitter.

Video footage shows the two men being lifted to safety as the sun sets over the creek in Western Australia.

The pair are now recovering from their ordeal.
Nearly two tons of elephant ivory has been shipped into Britain over the past decade by hunters exploiting a legal loophole to bring back tusks as trophies of their controversial kills.

A shocking 729 elephant tusks and body parts are among the gruesome catalogue, including 400 trophies from the worlds most endangered species.

The animals are slaughtered by hunters who spend tens of thousands of pounds on safari expeditions.

According to the UN, hunters also brought back trophies of 337 hippos, 298 black bears, 193 baboons, 159 leopards, 142 zebras and 91 lions to Britain as mementoes between 2007 and 2016.

The Government was last night criticised for failing to follow Australia, France and Holland in halting such imports and for breaking a 2015 promise to ban lion trophies following outrage over the killing of Cecil the lion in Zimbabwe by a US dentist.

A source close to Environment Secretary Michael Gove last night said that he was sympathetic to banning trophy imports.

The Joint Nature Conservation Committee, a public body that advises the Government, is understood to have been asked to look at the issue following action by celebrities and wildlife campaigners.

A shocking 729 elephant tusks and body parts are among the gruesome catalogue, including 400 trophies from the worlds most endangered species

And dozens of MPs have united behind an early day motion tabled by Conservative MP Zac Goldsmith calling for a trophy ban.

Eduardo Goncalves, from the Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting, said: This is grotesque slaughter on a massive scale and is pushing threatened species closer to the edge of extinction.

But supporters of big game hunting argue the revenue it raises pays for anti-poaching units and funds the conservation of the worlds most endangered species.

The Government was last night criticised for breaking a 2015 promise to ban lion trophies following outrage over the killing of Cecil the lion (pictured) in Zimbabwe by a US dentist

Diggory Hadoke, a gun merchant from Ludlow, Shropshire, has posted pictures on Facebook posing with a buffalo he shot in Tanzania in 2015.

Mr Hadoke, 51, said: The anti-hunting witch-hunt is really prejudicial. It is akin to homophobia in my view.

Defra said: The Government will not issue an import permit for a trophy unless the importer can show there has been no detrimental impact on endangered species and the trophy has been obtained from a sustainable hunting operation.
More than 10,000 blood sample results may have been potentially doctored

Britain's biggest ever forensics scandal has deepened with a third scientist now under suspicion of tampering with test results.

The laboratory worker has been questioned by detectives investigating the potential doctoring of more than 10,000 blood sample results.

It has led to innocent motorists losing their licences after being wrongly convicted of drink and drug driving and may have resulted in children being wrongly removed from their parents.

The laboratory worker has been questioned by detectives investigating the potential doctoring of more than 10,000 blood sample results [File photo]

Like the two previous men arrested, the latest suspect worked for both Trimega and Randox Testing Services where the alleged manipulation of toxicology tests for police and social services is believed to have taken place over many years.

The widening of Operation Churchill  the codename for the criminal investigation  was revealed last week by Justice Minister Lucy Frazer.

Greater Manchester Police are undertaking an ongoing, expansive criminal investigation into alleged manipulation of toxicology results now by three individuals who were employed at Trimega and later Randox Testing Services after Trimegas liquidation in 2014 and this matter is being treated with the utmost seriousness, she said.

As the police are now treating all results obtained by Trimega between 2010 and 2014 as unreliable, and because Trimega provided toxicology testing for civil and family court cases, it is possible that some civil cases may have been affected by manipulation.

Mrs Frazer said that at least one family court case has been reopened because it was based on a fabricated Trimega test. The Mail on Sunday has established that it involves a father forced to undergo a hair alcohol test in 2011 as part of divorce proceedings.

It has led to innocent motorists losing their licences after being wrongly convicted of drink and drug driving [File photo]

Due to the inaccurate findings, he was ordered not to drink when he saw his child. But when the forensics scandal emerged and the sample retested, the order was altered at Worcester County Court in June.

The Mail on Sunday revealed last year that 10,000 cases were being re-examined due to fears about the reliability of Randox tests. The firm is having to pay the estimated 2.5 million cost for other forensics firms to retest samples that are considered unreliable.

The Crown Prosecution Service has informed a number of motorists over the past year that their convictions have been set aside or that they will not have to face trial.

Britain's biggest ever forensics scandal has deepened with a third scientist now under suspicion of tampering with test results [File photo]

A spokesman for Richard Silver Solicitors in Manchester said it was handling several Randox cases. Following retesting, one of these cases has just been dropped by the prosecution, he said. Had we not spotted the issue, the motorist would have been disqualified from driving and faced a heavy fine.

Greater Manchester Police confirmed that the third man had been interviewed under caution in February and that the two previous suspects, aged 47 and 31, remained on police bail.

Randox said it was unable to comment on an ongoing police investigation, but added that it had agreed to cover the cost of retesting as a matter of good faith.
Patients at a maximum security hospital are amassing five-figure fortunes from the benefits they receive even while they are imprisoned for heinous crimes.

The revelation comes from a police officer drafted into Ashworth High Security Hospital in Merseyside to help combat spiralling levels of violence against staff.

Speaking at a recent conference, Detective Constable Samantha Keaton said: The majority of patients at Ashworth receive around 70-100 per week and they have no outgoings either.

Some patients at Ashworth Hospital in Merseyside continue to receive between 70 and 100 a week in benefits while being treated at the high security facility which was once home to Moors murderer Ian Brady

Some of them have savings of tens of thousands of pounds as they receive benefits but nothing is going out.

Current rules mean patients who are given hospital orders because a court deems them unfit to stand trial remain eligible to claim benefits, regardless of their crimes.

According to data provided under Freedom of Information rules, 90 patients at Ashworth received an average of 88.33 in Employment Support Allowance (ESA) payments in 2014-15. ESA is paid to those unable to work due to illness or disability. It is understood the number of recipients has now risen to more than 110, leaving the taxpayer with an estimated annual bill of more than 500,000.

Criminals detained under hospital orders who would be eligible for benefits include Humphrey Burke, who killed a woman in London in 2016 by repeatedly stamping on her head, and Dean Cotton, who tried to kidnap a 17-year-old girl last May as she walked along a street in Stoke-on-Trent.

Ashworth holds up to 228 patients in 14 wards and has housed some of Britains most notorious criminals, including Moors murderer Ian Brady, who died last year, and double cop killer Dale Cregan. Neither was eligible for benefits as they were convicted of their crimes.

Moors murderer Ian Brady, left, who died last year, and double police killer Dale Creegan, right, were not entitled to benefit payments despite being resident at Ashworth as they had been convicted of their crimes and were not subject to a hospital order

At the mental health and policing conference, DC Keaton admitted some Ashworth patients had been known to high-five each other after being let off by the courts for attacks on nurses and staff committed with impunity.

Suggesting that judges had wrongly assumed patients stayed at Ashworth for life  rather than the true average of around five-and-a-half years  and that prison sentences were therefore academic, she added: They had a very blinkered view of mental health patients. They assumed they had no money without checking, that they were unwell in hospital and would consistently just give out conditional discharges and nothing else.

Murderer Humphrey Burke, pictured, is entitled to benefits as he was issued with a hospital order following his court case

We have the situation where the patients would go into court and high-five each other as they come out. Being giving a conditional discharge means absolutely nothing.

DC Keaton said the permanent presence of a police officer at the hospital meant violent offenders were finally being brought to justice for crimes committed while locked up.

In the past year, 75 of the 103 reported crimes inside the hospitals walls had led to patients being given additional custodial sentences or fines. They include paranoid schizophrenic Kyle Moores, 30, whose indefinite hospital order for an attempted murder was renewed after he almost bit off a nurses nose.

A spokesman for Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust said: All our patients within Ashworth Hospital are entitled to regular benefits depending on their personal circumstances, which are paid by the Department for Work and Pensions according to their rules and regulations.
Jeremy Corbyn will rattle the tin at a meeting of the elite Thousand Club where financiers and lawyers are asked to pay 1,200 to 5,000 a year to hobnob with politicians

Jeremy Corbyn was last night branded a hypocrite after relaunching Tony Blairs exclusive fundraising club for New Labours city slicker backers.

His team have written to former donors begging them to come back and telling them they are not forgotten despite the Lefty leader attacking bankers for giving to political parties.

Mr Corbyn will rattle the tin at a meeting of the elite Thousand Club where financiers and lawyers are asked to pay 1,200 to 5,000 a year to hobnob with politicians.

He will be the star turn at a meeting of the club on December 5 and will address them at the ornate grand hall of the Honourable Society of Grays Inn in the heart of Londons legal establishment.

The group was launched in the 1990s by New Labour as part of its prawn cocktail offensive to win over the City but has withered as the party shifted to the hard Left.

The fundraising drive comes as Mr Corbyns radical agenda has left the party almost entirely reliant on membership fees, trade union donations and taxpayer funding rather than large individual donors.

When he seized control in 2015 it was reported that the Thousand Club had 764 members, with 98 who gave more than 5,000 to the party, totalling 1.2 million.

He will be the star turn at a meeting of the club on December 5 and will address them at the ornate grand hall of the Honourable Society of Grays Inn in the heart of Londons legal establishment (pictured)

The Thousand Club was launched in the 1990s by New Labour as part of its prawn cocktail offensive to win over the City but has withered as the party shifted to the hard Left

By 2017 that had plummeted to 437, with 31 choosing to donate more, raising 592,000. Membership numbers fell amid bitter party civil war over anti-Semitism and Mr Corbyns plans for sweeping nationalisation.

Mr Corbyns team has tasked frontbench ally and former lawyer Emily Thornberry with launching an ambitious new recruitment drive for the club.

She has already reached out to members who quit the group to beg them to return. In a gushing email to all former members she insisted their commitment and support had not been forgotten.

But one former donor told The Mail on Sunday: This party member wouldnt give Corbyn money in a thousand years.

The fundraising drive comes as Mr Corbyns radical agenda has left the party almost entirely reliant on membership fees, trade union donations and taxpayer funding rather than large individual donors

Last year Mr Corbyn launched a blistering assault on the Tories for fundraising from the City, saying: Bankers should not run our country, but they think they do, adding it was because the party they fund and protect, the Conservative Party, is in Downing Street.

Last night the Tories leapt on Mr Corbyns about turn, with MP Chris Philp hitting out: This is typical hypocrisy from Jeremy Corbyn whos now gone with a begging bowl to the very people hes spent a lifetime slamming.

Earlier this year Labour notched up a record low in first quarter donations, raising just 1,535,218 in the first three months of 2018.

Tony Blair raised 5,487,567 in the same part of the year in 2003.

A Labour Party spokesman said: We, of course, welcome larger donations from those who can most afford it.
Flight Lieutenant Alexander Eveson (pictured), 34, and his Chinook crew dashed to Dominica to rescue the seven-month-old girl, who was struggling to breathe

An RAF pilot has been awarded a top military honour for saving the life of a baby as Hurricane Irma ripped through the Caribbean.

Flight Lieutenant Alexander Eveson, 34, and his Chinook crew dashed to Dominica to rescue the seven-month-old girl, who was struggling to breathe.

With no other aircraft available for the mission, Flt Lieut Eveson flew to the island through treacherous conditions. He said: 'It was quite a lonely and frightening flight because all the air traffic control and radar services were down.'

At the peak of the relief efforts, 2,000 UK troops were in the Caribbean and some have now been decorated in the latest round of military honours.

Flt Lieut Eveson, who is part of 27 Squadron at RAF Odiham in Hampshire, receives the Queen's Commendation for Valuable Service.

He said his daughter Olivia was about the same age as the baby he and his crew rescued in September 2017, which made him relate to the situation personally.

Describing the award as an 'incredible honour', he stressed that the rescue was 'undoubtedly a crew effort'.
Vast fortunes are spent portraying the UAE as a caring, benevolent, modern society. Then something like last weeks draconian sentence handed out to PhD student Matthew Hedges for allegedly spying blows that public relations construct to smithereens.

This time last year I visited the UAE to speak at the enormous Sharjah Book Fair. Sharjah is one of the smallest and most conservative of the Emirates but the ruling family are very keen on the pursuit of literacy.

No alcohol can be drunk anywhere and the only beach where Emirati women can bathe in a swimsuit is overseen by a female lifeguard.

Alexandra Shulman visited the UAE to speak at the Sharjah Book Fair (pictured) last year

Up the road is the more lenient Dubai, where I met up with a group of young women in the Dubai Malls Armani cafe to discuss life in the UAE. They all arrived modestly dressed, in flowing gowns (abayas), trousers covering the ankle, headscarves  and wonderful eye make-up.

They were a sophisticated, highly educated and well-travelled group; fashion designers, journalists, a financier. But nonetheless I found them baffling.

When I asked about the traditional dress code they insisted that they werent under any pressure to dress this way and that it was entirely their choice not to be disrespectful to Emirati tradition. It marked them out from the masses of tourists and expats wandering around with their cut off denims and sleeveless dresses.

Indeed, they didnt voice a word of complaint about a single aspect of the society they inhabit, unlike us Westerners for whom complaining about our lot is a way of life. Most striking of all was their total acceptance of  indeed praise for  the staggering degree of surveillance in the UAE where the state monitors their every movement.

When asked about the traditional dress code women insisted that they werent under any pressure to dress this way and that it was entirely their choice (stock picture)

Rather than finding the wall- to-wall CCTV cameras and the interception of their texts, WhatsApp and email a chilling invasion of their privacy, they lauded it as empowering.

Far from objecting to the scrutiny, they all agreed it made them feel safer to go about their work and lives. I can walk home alone from my studio at five in the morning without any fear, one explained. In fact, I dont know what Id have to do to be raped here. Not a sentiment that I imagine is shared by the thousands of female, migrant workers locked into abusive domestic employment in the region.

My dads tax tip: Just blow the lot

Once again theres talk of reforming inheritance tax because the current system is too confusing. Its a subject that generates a great deal of heat  despite the fact that, of the 570,000 people who die each year, only 30,000 leave large enough estates to qualify for it. Partly this is because inheritance tax tends to hit middle-class media commentators like me and partly because its distressing to have to deal with at a time of grief.

There is, however, one way to avoid it which is the method adopted by my father.

He felt that, in providing his offspring with a good education and comfortable childhood, he had fulfilled his financial obligations and there was no need for us to inherit anything.

So he cheerfully spent every penny he had. My sole takeaway after his death was a white Perspex 1960s cigarette box which I nabbed as a nostalgic memento from the rented flat where we all lived.

Whats the emoji for I havent got a clue?

Last month Apple introduced 70 more emojis to the iPhone, including grey hair and bald heads so that nobody feels left out.

But all those darling little symbols are wasted on me.

I dont speak emoji and can never understand whats being said. With my slightly dodgy eyesight I cant work out the different nuances of expression and I can never judge whether the tears streaming down the little face are of laughter or misery.

These days its hard enough trying not to say the wrong thing to some constituency or other, without also having to worry whether youve posted an emoji thats going to cause offence.

Misery of a saggy bottomed Christmas

Its official. This Christmas jumpsuits are neck and neck with party dresses as the festive wear of choice, according to the John Lewis womenswear team who know such things. Dismal news was the verdict of one man I shared this information with, as he contemplated the party season ahead, peopled with wall-to-wall saggy bottomed unisex all-in-ones.

Why jumpsuits should have become quite so popular is unclear, since they are deeply inconvenient to get in and out of and most inefficient at parties where speedy trips to the loo are at a premium. Even stranger is the fact that the newest styles are essentially dresses in disguise  made in floral prints with girlish wrap waists, and legs so wide they look like skirts. But nobody ever said fashion made sense. Thats why we love it.

Were commuters  not happy hippies

Something very odd is going on with the Tube in Central London. Zone One stations at rush-hour used to resemble nothing so much as the stampede towards the last copter out of Saigon. Now emollient voices over the Tannoy preach soothing instructions intended to minimise the every-man-for-himself mentality.

If we work together then no one will be disappointed, one suggested the other day, followed by the plain weird edict to Get a nice even spread throughout the car as if there was any question of spreading even a finger as you squeeze on to a jam-packed carriage on the Piccadilly line.

'Trust me Meghan. Make the most of it. It doesnt last,' says Shulman about Meghan and Harry's look of love

Sorry Meghan, that look of love wont last

Every time I see pictures like this one of Prince Harry gazing with such admiration at his new wife, theres a trace of something I vaguely recognise.

Years back, when I was first with my boyfriend, a mutual pal accused him of wimpishly wallowing in cow-eyed devotion. Trust me Meghan. Make the most of it. It doesnt last.
Criminals are stealing 500 car numberplates every week  leaving innocent motorists suspected of offences including armed robbery and burglary.

Many have received penalty notices for driving offences after CCTV cameras picked up their stolen plates on cars actually being driven by reckless criminals.

Vehicles with stolen plates are also used by thieves who fill up with petrol and drive off without paying.

Nearly 25,000 plates were snatched last year, according to new figures obtained by the AA, and the number so far this year is 22,000. Police have urged drivers to report stolen plates immediately.

Criminals are stealing 500 car numberplates every week  leaving innocent motorists suspected of offences including armed robbery and burglary. File photo

Mariam Castle, 73, from Shoreham, West Sussex, had the plates taken from her VW Polo in July. Despite notifying police, she received two 60 penalty notices from Brighton and Hove City Council for driving in a bus lane.

She said: It really shook me up, receiving those penalty notices. Finally they were dropped, but it was a lot of hassle and the whole ordeal left me incredibly upset.

Other drivers have been visited at home by police or pulled over. Tia Kinnaird, 24, from Dunstable, Bedfordshire, was boxed in by two police cars while she was driving her Mini on the M1.

It transpired her plates had been cloned by a criminal gang and used during burglaries in and around London. It was a horrible experience, said Ms Kinnaird.

Using freedom of information laws, the AA found that more than 104,000 number plates have been stolen since 2015. File photo

Using freedom of information laws, the AA found that more than 104,000 number plates have been stolen since 2015. Scotland Yard recorded 32,307 thefts while the West Midlands force had more than 12,000.

A DVLA spokesman said: Anyone who has had their numberplates stolen should contact police, who will record the crime. If they receive any fines or penalties as a result of the theft they should contact the issuing authority to let them know what has happened.

AA president Edmund King said: Numberplate theft is an incredibly serious issue but more than a quarter of drivers say that if one plate went missing from their vehicle they wouldnt report it to police.

Hertfordshire Chief Constable Charlie Hall, the National Police Chiefs Council spokesman on automated numberplate recognition, said: A report alerts forces to a stolen plate and ensures car details are flagged throughout the police network.

It would also provide a layer of security to victims, he said.
The UK rate is one of the highest in the developed world, according to a charity

The NHS could save 1 billion a year  and alleviate huge suffering  by screening women for their risk of giving birth prematurely, says a leading doctor.

Labour wards across the country could dramatically reduce dangerously early births, said obstetrician Andrew Shennan, who has pioneered the approach St Thomass Hospital in London.

Each year 60,000 babies in the UK are born prematurely  before 37 weeks  equating to one in every 13 births.

Labour wards across the country could dramatically reduce dangerously early births, said obstetrician Andrew Shennan, who has pioneered the approach St Thomass Hospital in London [File photo]

The UK rate is one of the highest in the developed world, according to the sick baby charity Bliss  worse even than Egypt or Peru.

Babies born early need neonatal support, costing more than 800 a day. On average, each needs eight days in neonatal care means an immediate cost to the NHS of at least 6,000.

Those born before 28 weeks spend three months on average in neonatal care, so cost much more. They are also more likely to suffer lifelong disability and require ongoing NHS support.

Professor Shennan said taking relatively simple steps such as routinely asking pregnant women questions about their risks could better identify those likely to give birth too early. Measures can then be taken to prevent premature labour.

Prof Shennan is now in talks with NHS England to roll out an approach where midwives in all antenatal services will ask women screening questions [File photo]

Women who have experienced a premature birth or suffered a late miscarriage before are at a higher risk, Prof Shennan said. But too often, staff tell such women: Dont worry, its not likely to happen again.

As a result, obstetricians frequently find themselves firefighting  trying to delay childbirth once premature labour has started.

Seriously underweight women and those who have undergone a caesarean after a long labour are also at higher risk, he said.

Premature birth causes huge suffering, both to the children and their mothers, who often wrongly blame themselves.

But few people realise the vast financial cost to the Health Service  comparable to that caused by smoking, obesity or alcohol.

Prof Shennan recently told BBC Radio 4: If you can keep babies in [the womb] just for seven days longer, on average that will save the NHS 1 billion a year.

He told The Mail on Sunday: Thats roughly one per cent of Englands NHS budget, the sort of money we spend in total on research.

The 1 billion saving was based on robust analysis by an Oxford University economist, he said. The bulk would come from lower neonatal costs, but reductions in long-term care currently needed for children with conditions linked with premature birth would also have a big impact.

Despite the size of the challenge, Prof Shennan said: Im quite certain it is do-able.

At St Thomass Preterm Surveillance Clinic, women concerned about giving birth early are asked questions, scanned for abnormalities and undergo a test for levels of a protein called foetal fibronectin.

The method means 70 per cent can be reassured they are highly unlikely to give birth prematurely, leaving the clinic free to concentrate on the 30 per cent at higher risk.

The NHS could save 1 billion a year  and alleviate huge suffering  by screening women for their risk of giving birth prematurely, says a leading doctor [File photo]

These women are intensively monitored and, if necessary, undergo preventative treatment to stop premature labour.

Prof Shennan is now in talks with NHS England to roll out an approach where midwives in all antenatal services will ask women screening questions to better identify their risk of premature birth. Those at raised risk will then be put forward for clinical tests.

Dr Matthew Jolly, national clinical director for maternity and womens health at NHS England, said: The NHS has been working closely with national experts to improve care for prospective mothers at risk of pre-term birth and their babies.

We will build on this excellent work to make maternity services in England among the safest in the world.
Danyal Bashir, pictured arriving at Birmingham Magistrates Court. He was handed a nine-month jail term

Victims campaigners last night condemned a nine-month jail term for a thug who battered a traffic warden in a gang attack as soft justice.

Danyal Bashir, 20, was one of six men who dragged the warden off his moped and repeatedly stamped on him and kicked him in the head.

The gang then made off with the mans moped while bystanders filmed the attack on their mobile phones.

Footage of the horrific assault in Birmingham in September later went viral online.

Afterwards, the victim Charlie Weston, 21, said: I feel lucky to be alive.

But Bashir, who had a previous conviction for assault, was jailed for only nine months after he admitted assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

He will be out of prison in about 18 weeks time.

Harry Fletcher, of Victims Rights Campaign, said: This is an extraordinary lenient sentence. The punishment does not fit the crime and ought to be urgently reviewed.
salve is a paste that burns and destroys skin tissue, often resulting in scars

Australian doctors and dermatologists have warned against using a dangerous alternative treatment for skin cancer that can leave holes in their skin.

Black salve, which retails for just $50 a tub, is a dark topical paste that burns and destroys skin tissue, often leaving huge scars.

The salve contains zinc chloride, a toxic dehydrating agent and skin irritant.

Australian actor Tony Barry (pictured) is an advocate of the controversial black salve lotion - which has been known to leave holes in the side of patient's nose and heads

The damage black salve can have when patient's (pictured) apply the lotion as an alternative to skin cancer treatment

Esteemed Australian actor Tony Barry is an advocate of the black salve, despite having his leg amputated in 2013 after years of applying the lotion.

Supporters of the salve believe health professionals criticise the lotion because they are frightened the illegal treatment is a 'threat to medical industry profits.'

In Australia, black salve is illegal to supply, sell or import - but it is not illegal to use.

Regular users say it is a quick, easy and natural way to treat skin cancers.

Doctors, dermatologists and the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) disagree - they say the product is dangerous and deadly.

Actor Tony Barry (second from left) is an advocate of black salve - a controversial alternative to skin cancer treatment

A TGA spokeswoman said there is no 'credible, scientific evidence' that black salve cures or treat cancer.

'Black salve products can destroy large parts of the skin and underlying tissue, and leave significant scarring. The TGA strongly advises consumers against purchasing or using these products,' the spokeswoman told news.com.au

According to Professor Sanchia Aranda, the CEO of Cancer Council Australia, a qualified medical professional should always be consulted for the diagnosis and treatment of skin cancer.

'Black salve is a corrosive substance that burns off layers of skin and surrounding tissue and there is no evidence that it is effective in treating skin cancer. The treatment has been shown to have severe adverse effects including destroying large chunks of skin and leaving heavy scarring,' she said.

'Surgery or a medically proven cream offers a far better chance of getting rid of the skin cancer without damaging surrounding skin.'
The university of the British academic who has been jailed for life in the United Arab Emirates for spying has cut all ties with the Gulf state.

Durham University, where Matthew Hedges, 31, is a PhD candidate, has suspended all field research in the UAE until he is released. It joins two other British universities in a boycott over the case.

There was outrage in Britain last week after Mr Hedges was found guilty following a five-minute trial. Lecturers at Exeter University, where Mr Hedges did a masters degree, have also voted in favour of an academic boycott.

Matthew Hedges, pictured with his wife Daniela Tejada, has started a life jail term in the United Arab Emirates after he was convicted of spying

British universities have started announcing boycotts of the country following Mr Hedges' conviction and jail sentence for spying - a charge that he and his family strongly deny

Staff at Birmingham University voted in favour of a boycott of its new Dubai campus last week.

There is hope that Mr Hedges could be released on Thursday, the Gulf states National Day, when as many as 1,000 people serving jail sentences are pardoned.
Climate change could force tradies and other outdoor workers in Australia's warmest regions to pick up their tools before the sun rises.

A study published in the American Geophysical Union journal Earth's Future has revealed that outdoor workers will need to start before the crack of dawn in the future to avoid excessive heat stress.

The study by researchers at the National Institute for Environmental Studies in Japan found excessive heat stress reduces the capability of physical labor and leads to economic loss.

Tradies would be clocking on before the crack of dawn by the end of the century due to climate change (stock image)

Researchers said a work shift of 5.7 hours would be required by the end of this century.

'Although a working time shift was shown to be effective to reduce the effect of heat stress, the required amount of shift was beyond the realistic range unless stringent climatechange mitigation was achieved,' the report states.

The study also examined the feasibility of evening shifts.

'Night shift work has been adopted in a number of industries and daylight saving time has been implemented in many countries,' it states.

'Epidemiological studies have indicated that night shift work can increase the risk of disease and occupational accident rates which is caused by the dissociation between the human internal biological clock and activity patterns.'

Australia's rising temperatures are taking a toll on outdoor workers

The study concluded that a single adaptation measure was not a beallandendall solution to climate change.

'It is obvious that up to around six hours of working time shift is unrealistic and we need to find alternative ways to adapt to climate change,' lead researcher Jun'ya Takakura said.

'Perhaps most importantly, climate change mitigation by reducing greenhouse gas emissions certainly contributes to alleviating the challenges to adaptations.'

Excessive heat stress for outdoor workers such as builders reduces capability of physical labor and leads to economic loss (stock image)

With summer just days away, most of Queensland will see temperatures in the mid 30s this week, with Cairns in the state's north expected to reach 38 degrees on Tuesday.

OzMistNT co-owner Luke Hoolihan welcomed the move if it was proposed in the Northern Territory

'Starting 4am wouldn't bother us in the slightest, if it's cooler, that's great,' he told the NT News.

'Our business is about heat mitigation, so during our installations generally it is a lot cooler anyway.'
A truck is engulfed by flames on one of the most recognisable streets in the world as masked protesters clash with police.

And when the violence finally abated and the fog of teargas lifted yesterday, the Champs-Elysees in Paris resembled a battlefield.

A second weekend of demonstrations began with a peaceful protest against rising fuel prices but was soon hijacked by a hard-core bent on rioting against the backdrop of the Arc de Triomphe.

A truck is engulfed by flames on one of the most recognisable streets in the world in Paris as masked protesters-wearing hi-vis jackets- clash with police

A man throws a bike in a burning truck during a protest of Yellow vests (Gilets jaunes) against rising oil prices and living costs near the Arc of Triomphe on the Champs Elysees

Water cannons sent many demonstrators scattering. Elsewhere others called on French President Emmanuel Macron to resign.

Around 5,000 people had converged on the avenue, which was carpeted with rocks and missiles. At least 18 people were arrested.

Organisers of the yellow jacket movement billed the latest protests as act two in their rolling campaign. Named after their distinctive high-visibility vests, the protesters oppose an increase in fuel duty on diesel.

Around 5,000 people had converged on the avenue, which was carpeted with rocks and missiles. At least 18 people were arrested

Yellow vests (Gilet jaune) protestors block streets during a protest against rising oil prices

Theyre breaking up traffic obstacles to create missiles to throw at us. Its getting very violent, said a police officer at the scene.

French ministers claimed both far-Right and hard-Left elements hijacked the protests.

Two road deaths have been linked with the violence in the past week  both at illegal road blocks.

There have also been 553 injuries, while more than 95 police officers have been hurt in disturbances, including during an attempt to storm the Elysee Palace last weekend.

The protests were soon hijacked by a hard-core bent on rioting against the backdrop of the Arc de Triomphe

Two road deaths have been linked with the violence in the past week  both at illegal road blocks, like this fire above

The Champ de Mars  the field next to the Eiffel Tower  had been set aside by the Paris authorities for the demonstration yesterday, but it was ignored by protesters.

Were not here to do what officials tell us, said Max Lefevre, a 22-year-old student.

Were here to oppose a government that is completely out of touch with the lives of ordinary people. This is a peoples revolt.

Mr Macron has insisted that fuel prices have to rise in line with green initiatives made necessary by the Paris Climate Change agreement.

When the violence finally abated and the fog of teargas lifted yesterday, the Champs-Elysees in Paris resembled a battlefield

Anarchist protesters wearing hi-vis jackets stormed the Champs Elysees in Paris. This protester is wearing a Guy Fawkes mask
Nurses are being advised on how to help randy care home patients watch porn to relieve their frustrations.

A guide from the Royal College of Nursing discussing how pensioners can use prostitutes, sex toys and masturbation to satisfy their needs has been handed out to care homes to break the taboo of OAP's sex lives.

It recommended that patients 'should be supported' in accessing porn movies in their rooms, so long as they wear headphones and the 'sound or visual material would not be able to be heard or viewed by residents or staff.'

Nurses are being advised to let care home patients watch porn and masturbate in private (file image)

One of case studies included a patient who asked nurses to help with masturbation, but was refused because staff felt 'ill-equipped to deal skillfully' with their request.

The leaflet advised giving the pensioner a mechanical masturbation device and explaining how to use it.

Another example looked at an incident where a resident wanted to bring a prostitute into the home.

It suggested that patients should be able to use the services of a sex worker to satisfy their desires.

The 44-page guide, Older People in Care Homes: Sex, Sexuality and Intimate Relationship, aims to help patients with issues of sexual and intimate relationships in a sensitive and legal way.

It advised staff on how to deal with patient's sexual requests in an attempt to tackle the taboo subject (file image)

The Royal College of Nurses also recommends that they have a space in the home where they can be completely naked if they wish.

It also states that old people have a 'strong desire' to maintain 'their usual sexual practices which might include cross dressing (and) sadomasochism.'

A RCN spokeswoman Dawne Garrett told the Daily Express: 'Just because people live in a care home doesn't mean they lose the same rights, choices and responsibilities they once enjoyed in their home.'
Christmas shoppers have been told to avoid buying cheap counterfeit electrical goods as they haven't passed vital safety tests, police have warned.

Launching a new social media campaign called Shocking Fakes, City of London Police said power supplies, hair stylers and lithium-ion batteries for phones and laptops are among the most popular for counterfeiters.

They said these pose the greatest safety risk to consumers because they have not been subject to vital safety tests.

A counterfeit hair straightener at the launch of City of London Police's counterfeit campaign. Consumers are at risk of identify fraud and safety hazards by buying fake electrical goods

A selection of counterfeit hair dryers and hair straighteners. Police said these pose the greatest safety risk to consumers because they have not been subject to vital safety tests

And using counterfeit websites could also compromise personal banking details.

Detective Chief Inspector Teresa Russell, of the force's intellectual property crime unit (Pipcu), said: 'We are empowering people to take action and accept nothing less than a safe electrical item.

'A counterfeit may be cheaper but peace of mind and safety are so important.'

Using the hashtag #shockingfakes on its Twitter account, the unit will provide tips on how to avoid fake goods, including asking people to trust their instincts and check the spelling and grammar on websites and in the URL.

A counterfeit Apple iPhone charger. Using counterfeit websites could also compromise personal banking details

A selection of counterfeit goods including laptop adaptors and lithium batteries. Police warn that if an offer looks too good to be true, then it probably is

They say if an offer looks too good to be true, then it probably is.

A London Fire Brigade spokesman warned: 'Cheap can often mean fake, which will always mean dangerous to use at home.'

According to the Intellectual Property Office, which has funded the unit since its launch in 2013, 4 per cent of goods entering the UK are counterfeit, which amounts to 9 billion pounds worth of trade per year, with most fakes coming from China.

More than 60,000 counterfeit websites have been suspended over the past five years and the unit has investigated intellectual property crime worth more than 100 million, police said.

The Pipcu campaign is in partnership with BaByliss, Electrical Safety First, the Intellectual Property Office, the City of London Corporation's Trading Standards, the consulting and certification company UL and London Fire Brigade.
The angry mother, from Aigburth, took to social media after Liverpool-based company Host So Simple turned her  and her children  down for the two-night stay

When Connie Grime tried to book an Airbnb apartment in Liverpool, she thought shed be guaranteed a warm Scouse welcome.

But the mother-of-two was shocked to learn her request to stay at the luxury flat had been turned down  because she comes from Liverpool herself.

The firm that manages the apartment explained that it refused to accept bookings for the converted warehouse from Liverpudlians because previous guests from the city had caused thousands of pounds worth of damage.

The angry mother, from Aigburth, took to social media after Liverpool-based company Host So Simple turned her  and her children  down for the two-night stay.

Writing online, Ms Grime said: Bit shocked, just tried to book this apartment in Liverpool for me and my children and they dont accept booking from Scousers.

Ms Grime, 42, posted a screenshot of the reply she received when she tried to book the 55-a-night apartment.

The firm that manages the apartment explained that it refused to accept bookings for the converted warehouse from Liverpudlians because previous guests from the city had caused thousands of pounds worth of damage

It read: Unfortunately, we cannot accept guests who are from Liverpool themselves as we have had a lot of issues with this in the past, where guests had told us they were coming as a family and were not.

Host So Simple, which manages and lists properties on Airbnb for owners, said: Last-minute local bookings have created issues for us in the past and the owner has stipulated that for this property we should be on high alert.
Al Pacino will play King Lear in a major movie production of the Shakespeare's classic tragedy.

The 78-year-old actor, who made his name playing gangsters in The Godfather and Scarface, will now try his hand at performing one of the English playwright's most recognisable characters.

Oscar nominated screenwriter Michael Radford will direct the film, according to the Guardian, with filming set to start next year.

Al Pacino starred in a remake of The Merchant of Venice in January 2004

Pacino and Radford have previously worked together on a remake of Shakespeare classic The Merchant of Venice back to 2004. Pacino played Shylock and he is now set for another starring roll.

Radford told The Observer: 'Lear is the one that everyone aims for. Al has been toying with the idea for a long time. There's a difference between Shylock, who's only in five scenes, and Lear, who is in every scene, pretty much. It's enormous. I think [Pacino] would like to have that kind of kudos because he's a terrific actor.'

Pacino has expressed his admiration for Shakespeare's plays in the past, stating they should be 'tried more often' in film', in order to 'take the humanity that Shakespeare writes into characters and express it'.

The American film star's career stretches back 50 years, with perhaps his most famous roll which catapulted him to fame was his starring roll as Michael Corleone in The Godfather.

Producer Barry Navidi, who worked with Pacino and Radford on The Merchant of Venice, has also been enlisted as part of the lastest Shakespeare reboot.

Al Pacino made his name in a number of American gangster films, notably Scarface (pictured) and The Godfather

He noted Pacino's previous success in The Merchant of Venice as cause for optimism for the upcoming film.

Navidi said: 'The theatrical box-office, together with DVD, was close to $32m, which is pretty good considering most Shakespeare films gross between $10m to $25m.'

He added: 'Before, we had the passion and the desire, but we never had a start date. We all have the energy to do [King Lear] now. We're creating, hopefully, an epic.'

The adaptation is due to stay 'very faithful' to the original text.

'A lot is to do with the delivery and the visuals. How Michael combines it and makes it more accessible, it becomes naturalistic rather than forced,' Navidi added.

Filming is expected to start next autumn and will be shot in the UK.
Prince Harry and Meghan are planning to move into a bigger home so her mother can become a regular 'live-in' nanny.

It emerged yesterday that Harry and his wife Meghan are to move out of Kensington Palace next month to set up home at Frogmore Cottage on the Windsor estate.

The royal couple currently live in Nottingham Cottage in the ground of Kensington Palace and are upping sticks to accommodate their expanding family.

This move would also allow Meghan's mother Doria Ragland, who has just moved to the UK, to join them, and there would be room for a live-in nanny.

The 62-year-old, who lived in Los Angeles, is said to want to be a hands on gran and it is believed to the couple want her to have a wing of their next home.

Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex will move out of Kensington Palace next month to set up home at Frogmore Cottage

Doria Ragland is said to be staying with her daughter and Prince Harry when they move into Frogmore Cottage on the Windsor estate

Frogmore has ten bedrooms compared to just two at Nottingham Cottage, the Kensington Palace property where they currently reside.

Grade II listed Frogmore is said to be undergoing a multi-million pound refit, paid for by the taxpayer, in preparation for the birth, which is expected next spring.

It is believed Doria will stay with the Sussexes on a regular basis when she comes to visit her new grandchild.

The couple chose Windsor because 'it means a huge amount to them  it is where they got married', a source said.

Former social worker, Doria, was the only member of Meghan's family to attend her wedding and held back tears as Prince Charles walked her daughter down the aisle.

Frogmore House on the Windsor estate, where the couple are said to be moving next month. It ten bedrooms compared to just two at Nottingham Cottage

She spent much of her the summer with Harry and Meghan and described the prince as 'amazing'.

Palace sources said there was 'nothing available as an official residence in London'.

One said: 'They are expecting a baby early next year and obviously need a bit more space. It is not like this has just come up.'

News of the move comes after reports that the princes, who both have homes at the Palace, may be ready to set up separate courts.

Rumours of tensions between the Sussexes and Cambridges have been bubbling away for months.

In contrast to Meghan and Harry's cottage at Kensington Palace, Kate and William have a 22-room home recently refurbished at a cost of 4.5 million.

The Sussexes wanted to move into a Palace apartment currently used by the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, but the current inhabitants are said to 'want to stay put'.
A police officer was stabbed while out on duty outside Ilford station in London

Two people have been murdered and a policeman stabbed in another night of violence across Wild West Britain.

The British Transport Police officer was on duty outside Ilford railway station in East London when he was attacked by a man with a knife.

He was rushed to hospital by ambulance after the shocking assault on Friday night and is now recovering from his injuries at home, while a suspect has been arrested.

The British Transport Police officer was on duty outside Ilford railway station in East London when he was attacked by a man with a knife [File photo]

Colleagues leapt in to restrain the knifeman. Nigel Goodband, chairman of the British Transport Police Federation, said: I wouldnt like to have imagined what could have happened if they werent in close proximity.

Early yesterday morning, a man was fatally stabbed in one of the capitals most fashionable districts.

The victim, in his 20s, was found by paramedics suffering from stab wounds in Kingsland Road, Shoreditch, at 6.30am.

He was taken to hospital but died later in the morning, leading to what is thought to be Londons 123rd murder investigation this year.

And a woman was also found stabbed to death at a house in St Helens, Merseyside, yesterday morning. Police believe the 29-year-old was killed by someone she knew and are now hunting for the suspect.

Detective Chief Inspector Ian Warlow said: We believe the offender is known to the victim and a search is ongoing to find him. After the knife attack on the British Transport Police officer, Chief Constable Paul Crowther said: This is an example of the disturbing reality our officers face every day.

We would like to thank the public for their many get-well messages and support.

Police and forensic officers could be seen on Kingsland Road following the stabbing, as they looked for evidence

I know this will have had an impact on his family, friends and colleagues. The safety of our officers is extremely important to us and Im in discussions with my senior team to see what needs to be done to ensure these incidents are kept to a minimum.

Elsewhere, four young men were seriously injured in Leicester in the early hours of yesterday.

A 19-year-old suffered life-threatening injuries, while a 21-year-old and two 18-year-olds were also badly hurt in what police said was a multiple assault.

Forensic officers could be seen combing the scene of a killing that saw a man brutally stabbed to death

Detective Inspector Jim Hatton said: An investigation has been launched to find out how these men suffered serious injuries.

Meanwhile, three burglars armed with guns and knives broke into a pensioners home in Doddinghurst, Essex.

Police said they left empty-handed following a scuffle with an elderly man and his neighbours. Two men were taken to hospital with cuts.
These are the shocking moments corrections officers were attacked by inmates at one of the worst jails in the United States on Wednesday.

In footage obtained from inside the New York facility that floats in the East River between the Bronx and Queens boroughs  Rikers Island detainees pounce on guards in two separate incidents the day before the Thanksgiving holiday.

One of the clips show a man walking up to the officer and punching him in the face with his right hand before following up the brutality with his left fist and going in for a third.

Scroll down for videos

Corrections officers were attacked by inmates at Rikers Island in New York Wednesday

One clip shows and officers being hit but showing restraint by not fighting back

The incident occurred around 11.51pm and security video shows the jail mate chasing the worker down the hall.

It's not clear what happened next as the footage comes to a halt as other inmates follow the action.

In the second surveillance video a different man pushes an officer against a wall in the corridor, choking and punching him in a position that limits his ability to escape.

The member of the corrections team does however manage to break free, this time hitting back at the inmate, but the jailed man hit him twice more.

Although they then appear to threaten to restart the altercation, both eventually walk away.

It's not clear whether the fights stemmed from earlier arguments or if it was a deliberate ploy to be moved to another area of the huge jail which takes up 413 acres.

Rikers Island is known for being one of the worst jails in the United States

According to the New York Daily News, incident number three occurred with a jailed man attempting to hit staff at around 10.15am Friday.

However the corrections officer ducks and takes him to the ground by way of gaining control of his waist.

Corrections Department spokesman Peter Thorne praised the guards for showing restraint in the videos.

'After they were violently assaulted, these brave officers followed their training, showed restraint, and successfully de-escalated the situation,' he told the New York Post. 'We are processing these inmates for re-arrest, and they are being placed in restrictive housing.'

However a source told the publication that incidents like these are far too common and noted how inmates may be aware they can take advantage of guards because they're told not to fight back.

'This stuff is happening all the time now after the 'culture' change of defending yourself to being a punching bag for the department of confusion,' a department insider said.

The officer appears to be choked by the inmate in one of the incidents while pinned against a wall

Another clip shows the guard who was attacked fleeing the scene as another officers joined him

Elias Husamudeen, president of the correction officer's union, agreed: 'These videos show exactly what happens when inmates have no fear of consequences for assaulting correction officers, because the City of New York's criminal justice reforms have permitted a culture of violence against correction officers.'

He says at Rikers Island inmates outnumber guards 100 to one.

Husamudeen added about plans to get rid of punitive segregation: 'Every legislator in Albany should watch these videos closely and ask themselves if they want to have the blood of correction officers on their hands as well.'

Those under 21 are no longer allowed to be placed in solitary confinement in New York City.

Husamudeen doesn't agree with the call by Mayor de Blasio that came in 2015, despite the mayor saying in July this year he was somewhat relaxed about the rule and approved of occasionally putting those underage in isolation.

A big reason for the ban on solitary for youngsters whose brains have not fully developed, was inspired the story of the late Kalief Browder

A big reason for the ban on solitary for youngsters whose brains have not fully developed, was inspired the story of Kalief Browder who died by suicide in 2015 after trying to start a new life for himself once he was cleared of robbery charges in 2013.

From 2012, the Bronx teenager spent three years with no other human contact while he was stayed in jail on suspicion of stealing a backpack.

As a jail and not a prison, Rikers Island - where Browder spent a significant amount of time - is only supposed to hold inmates for up to a year while they await trial.

Browder's family could not afford the bail money when he was initially arrested and his trial date was constantly pushed back, forcing the boy from a low-income family to remain locked up.

The solitary confinement stemmed from Browder becoming involved in fights with officers, some initiated by himself and others seemingly an attack from the guards' side.

By the time the youngster was free, the damage had already been done and he badly suffered from depression which led to him taking his own life. He had attempted suicide six months after his jail release date and other times at home.

Officers are under strict instruction not to fight inmates but the rules are not always followed which adds to the bad reputation of Rikers.

After Time: The Kalief Browder Story was aired in 2017 on Netflix there have been calls for the facility, believed to house 10,000, to be shut down.

One has come from Browder's brother Akeem who Cuomo told during a speech in January: 'Your brother did not die in vain.'

At Rikers Island about 85 per cent of the inmates have not been convicted of a crime and are either being held on bail or remanded to custody, according to the City of New York.

Like Kalief, at least 1,500 people locked up at the over populated jail have waited more than a year for their criminal trials to begin.

The Post reports an independent monitor found that violence in the Department of Correction hit an all-time high in January.

Guards used force in a whopping 550 incidents.
Bookies have reportedly stopped taking bets on Meghan Markle having twins after 'an unprecedented amount of bets' were placed.

It is thought an insider with knowledge of the situation may have placed money on the couple have twins.

Odds were slashed from 5/1 to odds-on on Friday night after the flurry of high stakes and the market was later suspended after more money piled on Meghan having two children.

Paddy Power believes someone, possibly a punter, has inside information after the sudden stream of 'big money' wagers.

The bookmakers say they have been forced to refuse to take any further bets with the price was as high as 5/1 before the suspension.

Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, could be expecting twins after odds were suspeded by bookies

Paddy Power even hinted an inside source may 'know something more than we do'.

A spokesman for the Irish bookmakers said: 'We had to suspend betting. We saw an almost identical pattern of betting before the announcements of the couple's engagement and pregnancy.

'An unprecedented amount of bets on Meghan and Harry to have twins has forced us to stop taking bets on the market altogether this morning.

'Since the day began, the stream of bets has led us to believe that perhaps the punters - or an insider source - knows something more than we do.'

At 8/1 Diana remains the favourite name for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex's firstborn should it be a girl.

But the name Arthur has become a popular bet for the bookies at 12/1, suggesting the royals could use either.

The name Alice is also popular and at the same odds as Arthur, with Edward and Elizabeth following closely behind at 16/1.

It emerged yesterday that Harry and his wife Meghan are to move out of Kensington Palace next month to set up home at Frogmore Cottage on the Windsor estate.

The royal couple currently live in Nottingham Cottage in the ground of Kensington Palace and are upping sticks to accommodate their expanding family.

This move would also allow Meghan's mother Doria Ragland, who has just moved to the UK, to join them, and there would be room for a live-in nanny.
A mosque in London that hosts a community kitchen visited by the Duchess of Sussex was accused yesterday of having links to 19 Islamist terrorists.

The Al-Manaar mosque was once the place of worship for Mohammed Emwazi, the executioner known as Jihadi John who beheaded five Western hostages in Syria. But now the Henry Jackson Society, a Right-wing think-tank, has claimed links to other jihadis. It has also been reported that one of the imams, Samer Darwish, has suggested women are at risk of becoming strippers if they listen to music.

The Duchess wrote a foreword to a recipe book produced by women at the kitchen and has been making regular visits. The latest came last Wednesday.

Facilities at the Hubb Community Kitchen, located inside the North Kensington mosque, have been improved using proceeds from sales of the Together recipe book. It has sold 39,000 copies, raising 210,000 for the victims of the fire at nearby Grenfell Tower.

Mosque director Abdulrahman Sayed said last night: Our mosque is an open space, so anyone can come in here and pray.

If these individuals [terrorists] came in, there was no way to check them, but these extremists never had a platform or a class in our mosque. We do not allow extremists to have a platform.
British police believe Hashem Abedi, 20, (pictured) conspired with his brother Salman to commit mass-murder in Manchester

Britain's 'FBI' has agreed to train Libya's security forces just three days after the north African state said it would extradite the brother of the Manchester Arena bomber.

National Crime Agency officials will head to Libya, which is dominated by armed militia, under a deal signed off last week by British ambassador Frank Baker and Libya's interior ministry.

British police hope to bring Hashem Abedi, 20, back to the country to stand trial on charges of murder and conspiracy to cause an explosion.

They believe he conspired with his brother, Salman, 22, to obtain equipment for the suicide bomb which killed 22 and injured 112 others at the Manchester Arena in May 2017.

Last night, a Foreign Office spokesman told The Mail on Sunday there was 'not likely' to be a connection between the training offer and extradition.

But Libyan sources said plans to extradite Abedi had been deadlocked for 18 months until the NCA deal was signed.

This picture of Hashem Abedi posing with an automatic weapon was posted on Facebook

Salman Abedi, 22, killed himself and 22 others, half of them children, at the Manchester Arena on May 20, 2017

This month Parliament heard damning evidence that security services moved 'too slowly' to establish the threat presented by Salman Abedi in the runup to the horror in Manchester (pictured above)

Last week, Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee heard how MI5 admitted it had 'moved too slowly' to establish how dangerous Salman Abedi was and to monitor him in the days leading up to the bombing.

The brothers, who were born in Manchester, had spent time in Libya before the blast, with Salman returning alone.

Hashem was arrested at his parents' home in Tripoli a day after the attack.

A spokesman for RADA, the militia group holding Hashem Abedi, said: 'The Attorney-General says we must hand him over. We are no longer against that idea. We do not know when he will leave Libya.'
Australian world champion surfer Stephanie Gilmore has opened up about a vicious assault that almost cost her her life, as well as her career.

Gilmore has proved herself as a talented surfer and six-time world champion.

But a traumatic incident in her past put her career on the rocks and haunted her with sleepless nights and horrific flashbacks, she told The Australian.

Gilmore became the victim of a violent attack outside her apartment block in Tweed Heads, New South Wales, on the night of December 27, 2010.

World champion surfer Stephanie Gilmore (pictured) has opened up about a vicious assault that almost cost her her life as well as her career

Gilmore (pictured) became the victim of a violent attack outside her apartment block in Tweed Heads, New South Wales, on the night of December 27, 2010

Gilmore has proved herself as a talented surfer and six-time world champion

Gilmore said on the night of the attack she noticed a strange figure loitering outside the building and immediately felt something was wrong.

'He's tinkering with a piece of wood, something like that. I remember thinking, 'That's a bit weird',' she told The Australian.

'Human intuition is an incredible thing, hey?'

She went on to recall: 'He has a crowbar in his hand and he's running at me... I can't get away -- there's nowhere to go.'

The man proceeded to hit her four times repeatedly with a metal bar in the building's stairwell while she pleaded with him to stop.

He left her bleeding and confused, fleeing the scene on a BMX bike.

Gilmore's friends would spend the night tracking down her attacker. Later that night, she heard the news from hospital they had found him.

Her attacker emerged as Julius Sterling Fox, 27, a homeless man who was sentenced to four years behind bars. He was released from prison in 2014.

Many speculate that the unprovoked and shocking assault cost Gilmore a record fifth consecutive world title.

the brave surfing star did not let the cruel attack get the better of her or her glowing career

Gilmore's friends would spend the night tracking down her attacker. Later that night, she heard the news from hospital that they had found him

Many speculate that the unprovoked and shocking assault cost Gilmore a record fifth consecutive world title

She admitted to The Australian: 'I'm pretty shaken for the next year and a half. Don't want to be in dark areas. Home almost feels like the most unsafe place to be.'

However the brave surfing star did not let the cruel attack get the better of her.

She went on to win further world titles in 2012 and 2014. Gilmore claimed the Bells Beach title in March of this year, aged 30.

'Time goes on. You heal. You start being able to talk about it without wanting to cry,' she said.

She went on to win further world titles in 2012 and 2014. Gilmore claimed the Bells Beach title in March of this year, aged 30
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Mental health patients have filmed themselves threatening to assault hospital staff in shocking footage shared to Facebook.

In a 15-minute live video stream from the mental health unit at Townsville Hospital, Queensland, the male patients discuss rioting and threaten Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk.

The men are filming themselves as they sit in a yard and smoke. Mobile phones are not allowed in the unit.

'Are youse boys ready to do a riot?' one of the men said.

Mental health patients have filmed themselves threatening to assault hospital staff in shocking footage shared to Facebook

'Are we ready to do a riot? I'm ready to do a riot. We're going to knock these c*** out,' said the man filming the video who then turned the camera on himself.

'The police should be rocking up here shortly.'

According to the Townsville Bulletin, the video recorder then riled up the other patients by telling them to get everyone ready for the proposed riot.

The patient said he made a death threat to Ms Palaszczuk, claiming that the list of names on his hit list 'goes on'.

He also used vile language toward doctors and nurses at the mental health unit, saying he was out to get the mental health workers.

The horrific footage comes after the hospital was forced to hire extra security to deal with the threat of violent patients at the mental health unit.

A number of violent assaults have led to a review of the unit, which is currently under investigation by the Townsville Health and Hospital Service.

Townsville Hospital Mental Health Service Group Clinical Director Dr Jason Lee said most of the patients are not only unwell but ave a history of criminal offending and exhibit difficult behaviours.

'The behaviour in the video is clearly inappropriate and staff have been supported following the incident,' Dr Lee said.

'Staff are routinely supported to make complaints to police.'

In a 15-minute Facebook live stream from the mental health unit at Townsville Hospital (pictured), Queensland, the male patients talk about rioting and threaten Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk

Dr Lee said staff were well trained in violence prevention techniques.

'I want to acknowledge the committed and courageous work our mental health staff do every day in caring for extremely complex and challenging consumers,' he said.

Three staff members needed medical treatment between April 30 and June 18 after three violent incidents at the unit.

In 2017, there were 202 violent incidents recorded at the hospital.
Mississippi Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith attended an segregated high school that was solely created so white people could avoid being educated with black people, then sent her daughter went to a majority white school.

After images of the 59-year-old - who is running for re-election this month - surfaced showing her sporting a Confederate Army hat and a video emerged revealing her support for voter suppression, more of her controversial background has come to light.

In a page from her 1975 yearbook from the Lawrence County Academy established in 1970, she appears with a group of cheerleaders and a mascot holding the Confederate flag.

Appointed Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith attended a segregated school in the 70s

Hyde-Smith's daughter Anna-Michael graduated from a majority white school until 2017

Brookhaven Academy was set up after whites-only Lawrence County Academy was closed, under the guise of a Christian school

The black-and-white image shows her third from right with short hair, smiling at her institution that was formed in response the 1969's call for desegregation, reports the Jacksonville Free Press.

A former student who wished to remain anonymous supplied the evidence.

With her graduation year being 1977, it means Hyde-Smith would have had to move from another school to join those aiming to bypass a new racially-integrated society.

While the senator regularly talks about attending Copiah-Lincoln Community College and the University of Southern Mississippi, it's no wonder she failed to mention her choice of high school.

Mississippi is known for its strong opposition to integration despite the US Supreme Court demanding it in 1954 and 1955 as the state argued black people were genetically inferior to white people.

Governor John Bell Williams at the time shifted his priority to helping Caucasian families attend white-only private schools and even handed out vouchers to make them more affordable.

Hyde-Smith has come under fire for a 2014 Facebook post that shows her wearing a Confederate Army hat

'So let us accept the inevitable that we are going to suffer one way or the other, both white and black, as a result of the court's decree,' he said in 1970.

Lawrence County NAACP President Wesley Bridges on Saturday called Hyde-Smith 'a product of that school'.

'Lawrence County Academy started because people didnt want their kids going to school with minorities,' he told the Jackson Free Press.

While it shut in the 80s due to a lack of attendees, the Brookhaven Academy her daughter Anna-Michael graduated from last year was set up afterwards under the guise of a Christian school.

Located in a majority African-American neighborhood and only accepting pupils of color later on, 386 students from the 2015-2016 academic year were white but only five were Asian and one black.

Twitter users were outraged on Saturday after it was learned that Major League Baseball made a campaign donation to the Republican Mississippi senator.

A political action committee created by Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred donated $5,000 to Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, the web site Popular Information reported.

The news comes after Hyde-Smith apologized for her infamous 'public hanging' comment at a debate Tuesday night against Democrat Mike Espy  but then accused her African-American opponent of using the controversy as a 'weapon.'

She apologized for wearing the Confederate Army hat at a debate Tuesday against Democrat Mike Espy (left) that was televised in the race for the Mississippi US Senate

Smith's apology was a new tack since her videotaped remark blew up last week, drawing criticism from inside and outside the state. It followed the emergence of photos of Hyde-Smith, who was appointed to the seat of ailing former Sen. Thad Cochran, posing in confederate garb at a museum.

She apologized hours after President Trump, who heads to the state Monday to try to boost her campaign, said the comment was 'just sort of said in jest,' and that it was a 'shame that she has to go through this.'

Hyde-Smith's remark was caught on video that was released last week, and drew condemnation coming from Mississippi, a state with a dark history of lynchings and discrimination.

'For anyone that was offended by my comments, I certainly apologize. There was no ill will, no intent whatsoever in my statement,' Hyde-Smith said Tuesday during the televised debate.

The apology was a new tack for Hyde-Smith, who repeatedly refused to answer questions about the hanging comment at a news conference November 12, the day after the publisher of a liberal-leaning news site posted the video on Facebook and Twitter.

The clip shows Hyde-Smith praising a cattle rancher at a November 2 campaign event in Tupelo by saying: 'If he invited me to a public hanging, I'd be on the front row.'

Shortly after the video's release, she said in a statement that the expression was an 'exaggerated expression of regard' and said it is 'ridiculous' to read any negative connotation into it.

But the same day she also was captured on video saying she was for voter suppression.

'And then they remind me, that there's a lot of liberal folks in those other schools who that maybe we don't want to vote,' she was heard saying in a video. 'Maybe we want to make it just a little more difficult. And I think that's a great idea.'

Cindy Hyde-Smith on voter suppression: "And then they remind me, that there's a lot of liberal folks in those other schools who that maybe we don't want to vote. Maybe we want to make it just a little more difficult. And I think that's a great idea." Nov 2nd in Columbus, MS. pic.twitter.com/OxNY77XCft  Lamar White, Jr. (@LamarWhiteJr) November 15, 2018

Espy is seeking to become the state's first African-American senator since Reconstruction

'There has never been anything, not one thing, in my background to ever indicate I had ill will toward anyone,' Hyde-Smith, a former state agriculture commissioner, said Tuesday night. 'I've never been hurtful to anyone. I've always tried to help everyone.'

Then she went after her opponent: 'I also recognize that this comment was twisted and it was turned into a weapon to be used against me, a political weapon used for nothing but personal and political gain by my opponent. That's the type of politics Mississippians are sick and tired of.'

Espy responded during the debate: 'No one's twisted your comments because your comments were live, you know, it came out of your mouth. I don't know what's in your heart but I know what came out of your mouth. It went viral in the first three minutes around the world. And so it's caused our state harm. It's given our state another black eye that we don't need. It's just rejuvenated those stereotypes that we don't need anymore.'

Hyde-Smith is the first woman to represent Mississippi in Congress. Espy is a former congressman and US agriculture secretary, is seeking to become the state's first African-American senator since Reconstruction.

At other points in the debate, Hyde-Smith embraced Trump, calling for construction of a border wall and other elements of his agenda.

President Donald Trump defended Hyde-Smith as he prepares to campaign for her in her run off election

Trump, who will hold two rallies for Hyde-Smith on Monday, the day before voters go to the polls in the runoff election, defended her as a 'spectacular senator' Tuesday.

Walmart asked Hyde-Smith to return a $2,000 campaign contribution because of the hanging remark.

Trump is traveling to Mississippi for two Hyde-Smith rallies Monday on the eve of the election. Former Vice President Joe Biden has endorsed Espy.

Hyde-Smith was appointed to the Senate to temporarily succeed longtime Senator Thad Cochran, who retired in April amid health concerns.

Hyde-Smith and Espy each received about 41 percent of the vote when four candidates were on the ballot November 6.

If she wins the November 27 runoff, Hyde-Smith would give Republicans a 53-47 majority in the Senate.
A search is underway for four men after several grave-sites were desecrated at a cemetery over the weekend.

Just before 6pm on Saturday, a group of four males were seen causing significant damage on Awaba Rd, Toronto, in northern NSW.

Four males are wanted by police after several grave-sites were desecrated over the weekend in Toronto, in northern NSW (stock image)

The cemetery at Toronto, in northern NSW, (pictured) - police want to speak to four men after several grave-sites were desecrated on Saturday night

Police have been told a woman walking in the area at the time was approached and intimidated by the group.

Officers from Lake Macquarie Police District attended the scene and discovered a number of ceramic angels and statues had been smashed, and pot plants and statues were thrown on graves.

Detectives investigating the incident are seeking information from the public.

They would like to speak to four males, not further described, who may be able to assist with their inquiries.

Anyone with information about the incident is urged to contact Crime Stoppers.
A man arrested for killing a young teacher in a hit and run was out on bond for an assault charge dating back to 2017 in El Paso.

El Paso Police arrested and charged 24-year old Joel Velazquez with Accident Involving Death killing Amanda Ferguson Weyant in a hit and run on Thanksgiving Day.

KFOX14 reported that at the time of the crash he was out on bond from a 2017 assault charge.

Police arrested and charged Joel Velazquez (left) with Accident Involving Death killing Amanda Ferguson Weyant (right) in a hit and run on Thanksgiving Day

He appears to be in the country illegally and is now currently on an ICE detention hold, related to his immigration status, meaning he cannot bond out of jail.

If he could, his bond is set at $125,000. On Friday police identified Weyant, 28, as the pedestrian killed by the alleged hit-and-run driver.

Police said Velasquez struck and killed Weyant at 1.45 am on November 22, 2018 at Mesa and Cincinnati street, police said.

Weyant was using a crosswalk when she was hit by Velazquez' car, police said.

The vehicle suspected of striking Weyant, a 1996 Chevrolet Cavalier, was abandoned farther east on the 1300 block of Cincinnati, police said.

The vehicle had damage to its hood and a shattered windshield. Investigators dusted the vehicle for fingerprints.

Mandy was a sixth grade teacher at Eastwood Heights Elementary School.

The community has been mourning her throughout the holiday weekend.

Amanda's family want the man responsible for their daughters death to be held accountable

Amanda's parents said their family life has been destroyed by the loss of their daughter

Amanda's family explained that they learned Velazquez had a criminal past and was in the country illegally

Her family wants the man responsible for their daughters death to be held accountable.

Her father Dan Ferguson told Kfox14: 'Hes destroyed my family. My daughter, Mandy, was the glue that held my family in place, she was my everything,' said Dan Ferguson.

On Saturday morning, he received a call from EPPD telling him the man who hit Mandy turned himself in two days after fleeing the scene.

'I saw where my daughter was hit and where her body was 50 feet from the point of contact. He didnt even attempt to stop to render aid, said Ferguson.

'This man, because of his careless actions, has destroyed a complete family, said Ferguson.

A towel lies at the scene where Joel Velazquez struck Amanda Ferguson Weyant in a hit and run

Investigators search for evidence after the hit and run incident which killed Amanda Ferguson Weyant

The family explained that they learned Velazquez had a criminal past and was in the country illegally.

'It just doesnt add up, it doesnt seem to be fair', said Ferguson.

Mandys parents are trying to find peace in the memories and the joy their daughter brought to so many people.

'She was my world, she was my wifes best friend but she was my baby girl,' said Ferguson

But they also want accountability and justice for Mandy.

'Everything was perfect in her life and to have it all taken and senselessly destroyed this is something no parent should go through', said Ferguson.

A funeral services for Mandy will be on Wednesday, November 28 from 5pm to 7pm at Crest View Funeral Home 1426 Zaragoza.
A brave young man has chosen to be the sole guardian of his two teenage brothers after their parents died within a month of each other.

After a difficult three months Brisbane man Jacob Smith, 22, has made the bold decision to take on guardianship of his younger brothers Riley, 17, and Kane, 15.

Their mother Karen Stagg, 48, died in August after battling health issues before their father Adam Smith, 53, died unexpectedly a month later.

Jacob (pictured right), has taken legal guardianship of his brothers Kane (left) and Riley (centre) after both their parents died only months ago

Karen Stagg (pictured left), 48, died after battling health issues, and less than a month later her husband Adam Smith (right), 53, died unexpectedly

Jacob told Yahoo News he didn't hesitate when he was faced with the choice.

'I had to do it. I love them, theyre my brothers,' he said.

He quit his job as a fly-in, fly-out electrician to find a job in the Park Ridge area to be closer to his brothers.

Despite grieving over the death of their parents, who were high-school sweethearts, the trio have found strength with each other.

Jacob said his upbringing has helped him to step into his new role.

'They gave us good morals, which led us to leading a life of success thanks to them,' Jacob said.

'Theyve shaped us the way we are, theyve done so much for us.'

Their cousin Jessica has set up a GoFundMe page to help the trio financially.

The Brisbane-based Smith brothers have banded together after their parents' deaths
A young Australian woman has shared a warning for sunbathers after a shock skin cancer diagnosis.

Amy Jackson, 32, thought her olive complexion was safe from cancer, and spent much of her teenage years sunbaking on Adelaide beaches.

Thinking that she was safe because she never got sunburnt Amy was horrified after her dermatologist told her a suspect looking-spot was a melanoma.

Amy Jackson, 32, (pictured) was diagnosed with skin cancer at age 29 and wants to share her experience to urge young Australians to be more sun safe

'I didn't think it was anything sinister, so when I found out that it was melanoma I was in complete shock and disbelief and so were my friends and family. Telling them was really hard,' Ms Jackson told nine.com.au.

The melanoma was then removed, but the ordeal was far from over.

Ms Jackson then had to endure a lymph node biopsy, a procedure where doctors inject radioactive dye in the melanoma to see where its travelled in the body.

After more than a week of waiting, she finally received the test results and was relieved to be given a positive result, but the process has given her new perspective on how she looks after her skin.

'I still like to go outside and I haven't let the experience change my love of the Australian lifestyle, but I'm now much more careful. I now wear a hat and sunscreen and protect my skin when outdoors.' she said.

Ms Jackson's wake up call comes as a recent cancel council survey found over 38 per cent of teens like to tan, with a worryingly high 67 percent thinking a tan is healthy.

Ms Jackson's wake up call comes as a recent cancel council survey found over 38 per cent of teens like to tan, with a worryingly high 67 percent thinking a tan is healthy (stock image)

In a video shared to Cancer Council's Facebook page, Ms Jackson aims to tell her story to warn young Australians who believe their skin will be forever defensible.

'I think it is important for younger people to know that most of the damage done to your skin is often in your childhood and teenage years, and that cannot ever be reversed.' Ms Jackson says in a Cancer Council video.

According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, the estimated number of diagnosis for skin cancer in 2018 is 14,320 a number which is growing year by year.

In 2017, there were 13,941 skin cancer cases and 1,839 deaths.

According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, the estimated number of diagnosis for skin cancer in 2018 is 14,320 a number which is growing year by year
Australians have reacted to an urgent poisoning warning that taps could be contaminated with lead.

The federal Government's Department of Health released a guidance statement in July warning about the risks of lead poisoning from plumbing fittings.

But the warning was not widely publicised until The Sunday Telegraph started asking questions about it.

Taking to social media, members of the Australian public were quick to comment on the claims tap water was contaminated - with many adults arguing they had faced bigger battles while growing up.

Australians have reacted to an urgent poisoning warning that taps could be contaminated with lead

Taking to social media, members of the Australian public were quick to comment on the claims tap water was contaminated - with many adults arguing they had faced bigger battles while growing up

'We grew up drinking water out of the hose in the middle of summer - still here!!' one person wrote on Facebook.

'Suck it up and have another can of coke princesses!'

The risk of poisoning will vary 'depending on the amount of water consumed', but Australians are urged to run their taps for 30 seconds or more before drinking.

One social media user said the 30 second recommendation was a ploy for the government to earn more cash.

'I think the government just want us to spent a bit more on the bill by running water 30sec everyday!?' they wrote.

The report also warns babies who drink water prepared with lead-contaminated water are at a higher risk because of the large volume of water they consume compared to the size of their bodies.

'What a load of crap if you have filters on your taps there is no reason to run your water for this long,' wrote another social media user

A 60-year-old Facebook user admitted they still drink tap water amid the governmental warning

'What a load of crap if you have filters on your taps there is no reason to run your water for this long,' wrote another social media user.

'I'm 55 and have always drunk tap water when we were kids we use to drink water from the blubbers.

'I have never had a problem with tap water.'

Others drew attention to bigger social issues including the struggle for water in drought stricken areas and the environmental implications of bottled water.

'Told to run water for 30sec every morning the day after we were told water bills are expected to rise due to the drought haha,' one person said.

'Proudly sponsored by the bottled water business, who wants to triple the single use plastic waste in our seas in the next 10 years,' wrote another.

Other social media users drew attention to bigger social issues including the struggle for water in drought stricken areas

One social media user drew attention to the environmental implications of consuming bottled water

Conversely, other Australians admitted they avoid drinking tap water or ensure they let the tap run before consuming the water.

'This is why we haven't drunk tap water in our house for years tastes like someone soaked old coins over night even our skin has started to react if we have a bath,' one person said.

'I dont drink tap water, only filtered water. Our water tastes like chlorine!' said another.

Macquarie University Dr Paul Harvey told the Sunday Telegraph that it's 'something that has been a problem for years' and said the public should have been better informed.

Tap water is considered lead-free by most Australians because health regulations require routine monitoring of lead levels in the water.

But the guidance statement says that lead is still used to manufacture plumbing products - including the the brass fittings used for taps, the statement reads.

Conversely, other Australians admitted they avoid drinking tap water or ensure they let the tap run before consuming the water

Householders have been warned to run their tap water for 30 seconds in an extraordinary warning about the risks of lead poisoning (stock image)

'These products are widely used in drinking water systems in homes, buildings and associated water supply points, such as drinking water fountains.'

The risks were mostly with older homes because lead-based solder is no longer permitted to be used by licensed plumbers in Australia.

Lead dissolves into water from some brass plumbing fittings 'particularly where water has been sitting in contact with these brass plumbing products for long periods'.

'Hot water systems may result in more dissolved metals in water, including lead, compared with cold water systems,' the statement said.

'Rainwater systems may also dissolve more metals from plumbing products. The slight acidity of rainwater can make rainwater corrosive to plumbing.'

enHealth is supporting all efforts to reduce the risks of lead poisoning by encouraging the updating of plumbing products - which is being overseen by plumbing regulatory agencies, the statement said.

LEAD POISONING IN INFANTS Children younger than six years old are most at risk from developing lead poisoning, with the most extreme cases proving fatal. Mental and physical development can be stunted as a result of lead poisoning, with even small amounts of lead causing complications. While it can be difficult to spot the early signs of lead poisoning, parents should be aware of these symptoms: Developmental delay, learning difficulties, irritability, loss of appetite, weight loss, sluggishness and fatigue, abdominal pain, vomiting, constipation, hearing loss, seizures and eating things, such as paint chips, that aren't food Source: The Mayo Clinic Advertisement

Householders are warned lead dissolves into water from some brass plumbing fittings 'particularly where water has been sitting in contact with these brass plumbing products for long periods' (stock image)

Public drinking fountains also carry some risk according to the guidance statement because in some cases water could have been sitting in the piping stagnant for an extended time (stock image)

Public drinking fountains also carry some risk according to the guidance statement because in some cases water could have been sitting in the piping stagnant for an extended time and residents are advised to flush the water.

'It is therefore good practice to flush the public drinking water fountains and publicly accessible taps for about 30 seconds to draw fresh water to the outlet,' the statement said.

Property owners and building managers are also advised that they are responsible for knowing the condition of the plumbing in their properties.

'Best practice measures should be adopted to maintain the quality of water, including a regular flushing regime to remove stagnant water and the progressive replacement of lead-containing plumbing products,' the statement said.

There is no need for households to have their water tested for lead.
Spain's Prime Minister has claimed Brexit could mean splitting the sovereignty of Gibraltar between Westminster and Madrid.

Leader Pedro Sanchez said that 'everyone loses' when it comes to Brexit, but Spain has 'won' on the issue of Gibraltar after receiving assurances from other EU leaders.

He said the UK's withdrawal from the EU would 'open talks on joint sovereignty' of the Rock, which has been a British overseas territory since 1713.

Speaking in Brussels today he said of Theresa May's divorce deal: 'We are going to resolve a conflict that has been going for over 300 years.

'This puts Spain in a position of strength in negotiations with the United Kingdom over Gibraltar that we have not had until now.

'We all lose [with Brexit], especially the United Kingdom, but regarding Gibraltar, Spain wins.'

His comments have been met with fury by the island's chief minister Fabian Picardo, who likened Mr Sanchez's tactics to the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco.

Mrs May's fellow Tories are also angry, claiming she has 'caved in' to European leaders on Gibraltar and 'sold out' the 30,000 British citizens who live there.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez (pictured in Madrid yesterday) has claimed Brexit could mean splitting the sovereignty of Gibraltar between Spain and the UK

Asked if he would seek a discussion over joint sovereignty once Britain leaves the bloc on March 29 2019, Mr Sanchez added: 'We will discuss all issues.'

But Mr Picardo said: 'We do not need to wait until the start of the talks.

'I can tell Spain now: we are not interested in any dilution of our sovereignty, we are not interested in allowing for even the remotest concession to Spanish sovereignty, jurisdiction or control.'

Spain will vote in local, regional and European Parliament elections on May 26 2019, with talks of a general election as well to make a 'super Saturday' of voting.

Mr Sanchez, who only has a minority government, propped up by other parties, has been accused of trying to strengthen his position on Gibraltar ahead of voting next year.

Mr Sanchez's comments have been met with fury by Gibraltar's chief minister Fabian Picardo, who likened his tactics to the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco (pictured)

After promising Britain will 'always stand by Gibraltar', Mrs May told reporters at today's EU summit: 'I am proud that Gibraltar is British and its constitutional status will not change.'

But the other members of her party are not convinced, with former Deputy Commons Speaker Nigel Evans saying yesterday: 'To sell out 17.5 million people [who voted to leave the EU] with her Brexit deal is one thing, to go against the wishes of the DUP who keep us in power is another.

'But to sell out the utterly patriotic British people who live on Gibraltar is simply beyond the pale.'

The Ribble Valley MP added: 'Theresa May is dining in Brussels with people who are delighted with her deal  in fact they could have written it themselves.

'But on Monday she will return to a very different atmosphere in Westminster  one of betrayal.'

Romford MP Andrew Rosindell also slammed her over Spanish negotiations, saying: 'The Prime Minister has to show that she will be utterly true to her words that there will be no compromise on Britain's right to defend and negotiate on behalf of Gibraltar.

'She must vow that Spanish attempts to use this constitutional weapon to try somehow to divide the Rock and the UK will not work.'

Tory Eurosceptic Nadine Dorries said: 'May has capitulated to every single EU demand. She's abandoned Northern Ireland, and now Gibraltar. At no time does she push back.'

Liberal Democrat Brexit spokesman Tom Brake claimed the Prime Minister had 'caved in' and 'appears to have cast the people of Gibraltar aside'.

Theresa May (pictured in Brussels making a statement on her deal today) she had reassured Spain over Gibraltar and they will vote for her EU withdrawal agreement at today's summit. But MPs warn she is 'selling out' the residents of the Rock

Theresa May said on Saturday talks with her Spanish counterpart had been 'sensible and constructive' after he threatened to boycott today's all-important Brexit summit.

But Mr Sanchez's apparent stepping up of his bid to gain more influence over Gibraltar is causing mass controversy there and at home.

He implied that assurances from EU leaders could mean Spain's relationship with the the British territory radically changes after Brexit.

He said yesterday: 'The European Council and the European Commission have backed Spain's position, and backed it as never before.'

Spain's Europe Minister Josep Borrell Fontelles further inflamed tensions this week by saying the UK leaving the EU poses the biggest shake-up to the sovereignty of the island peninsula since it was handed to the British in 1713 with the Treaty of Utrecht.

Almost all of Gibraltar's residents voted to stay in the EU and are nervous about what Brexit will mean for them, as the local economy is propped up mainly by customs duties and offshore finance.

Tory doubts over Theresa May's (pictured with EU Council President Donald Tusk in Brussels yesterday) Brexit plans for Gibraltar could make her battle to get her deal through the House of Commons even more difficult

Even with EU President Jean Claude Juncker saying the Commission will give Mrs May's withdrawal agreement the green light, MPs back at home are still likely to have objections.

On top of the Northern Ireland backstop, the Gibraltar issue could make getting Brexit through the House of Commons even more difficult.

Tory MP Andrew Rosindell warned it could also threaten her leadership.

He said: 'If there is any sign of any backtracking or watering down on this issue, that alone will inspire huge numbers of people to lose confidence in her leadership'.

Mr Sanchez was elected to office this summer, when he became the first Spanish politician to take over as a Prime Minister through a vote of no confidence.

He unseated his long-term enemy Mariano Rajoy, despite not being an MP and having to resign from his party, the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) in 2016 over his refusal to accept Rajoy's return.

Before coming into politics he worked for the UN in Bosnia and as an economics professor.

He has had a difficult year with the outbreaks of violence in Catalonia and anger from his opposition parties about Spain's long-term economic problems.

Gibraltar is a haven for all kinds of funny business but 'The Rock' is British to the core and its people are determined to remain so

By Brendan Carlin, political correspondent for The Mail on Sunday

With fish and chips and warm beer galore, modern Gibraltar looks for all the world like a little bit of Britain on the Med.

But perched on the very tip of the Iberian peninsula, its omnipresent Union Jacks and souvenir 'Her Majesty' mugs are seen as a daily affront by many of its Spanish neighbours.

For decades now, UK-Spanish relations have been dominated by the Rock and Madrid's repeated claims to sovereignty.

And more recently, it has come under fire for its low-tax regime and financial rules, with over 60,000 companies reportedly registered there  roughly two for each of its 30,000 or so residents.

With no large-scale agricultural or industrial activity, much of the Rock's income comes from customs duties, offshore finance, internet gambling and provisioning of ships.

For decades now, UK-Spanish relations have been dominated by the Rock of Gibraltar (pictured) and Madrid's repeated claims to sovereignty

It is also coveted by Royal Navy crews as the ultimate stop-off point after long voyages as a 'little piece of home'.

Gambling giant Bet365  whose UK boss Denise Coates last year earned 265 million  has based its international operations there since 2014.

Financial services, tourism, low-tax goods and online gambling are key sectors of the local economy.

This imposing limestone outcrop  home to those famous barbary macaque monkeys  with its strategic position on the western gateway to the Med, has been British for more than 300 years.

It was formally ceded in perpetuity to Britain in 1713 under the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht which brought an end to the War of the Spanish Succession.

Named in Arabic 'Jabal Tariq', after the Muslim commander Tariq Ibn-Ziyad who turned the Rock into a fortress in 711, it has been an important naval base for more than 1,000 years.

That long maritime history explains its diverse population, with many residents of mixed Genoese, British, Spanish and Maltese descent.

Most Gibraltarians can speak both English and Spanish.

As a British overseas territory, it is home to a military garrison and has a naval base. But over the past few decades, the EU has sought to put pressure on London and Madrid to resolve its future status. Both sides have tried to arrive at an agreement.

However, Spain's insistence on eventually obtaining total sovereignty over the territory, allied to the UK's determination to keep full control of Gibraltar's military bases, have proved serious stumbling blocks. So too has the local population's determination to remain British.

The Rock's 2006 constitution stipulates that there can be no transfer of sovereignty to Spain against the wishes of its voters.

In a referendum in 2002, Gibraltarians resoundingly rejected the idea of joint sovereignty between the UK and Spain.

Free travel between Spain and Gibraltar was fully restored in 1985, but travellers continued to suffer delays at the border.

Gambling giant Bet365  whose UK boss Denise Coates (pictured) last year earned 265 million  has based its international operations on Gibraltar since 2014

In late 2006, passenger flights between Spain and Gibraltar resumed for the first time in nearly 30 years, though seven years later there were renewed border checks by Spain in response to a Gibraltarian plan to build an artificial reef.

The 2006 air link was restored after Gibraltar, Spain and Britain signed agreements aimed at improving living conditions on the Rock.

In the 2016 EU referendum, the Rock voted overwhelmingly against Brexit.

And even though the UK overall did not, Gibraltar's leaders have made clear they prefer to follow the motherland out of the EU.

But for Madrid, Brexit represents a golden opportunity to overturn three centuries of history and stage their own bid to 'take back control'.
Theresa May was last night urged to hand back almost 300,000 in Tory party donations received from a property tycoon who is profiting from an apartment block rife with prostitution in one of the wealthiest areas of London.

More than 100 prostitutes are reportedly working from the Chelsea Cloisters block which is owned by multi-millionaire Christopher Moran, 70, who has attended many events with members of the Royal Family and is worth more than 404 million.

The block of 670 apartments  where Mr Moran has an office  earns him millions of pounds in rent and service charges every year.

Undercover reporters from The Sunday Times were able to make 40 bookings with prostitutes using 23 apartments in the building  15 of them in flats rented directly from Mr Moran's company Realreed.

Multi-millionaire Christopher Moran, 70, is pictured alongside Prince Harry in Belfast in 2017

There is no suggestion that Mr Moran has any involvement with the prostitution. In a statement through his lawyers, he made it clear that his management took a 'zero-tolerance' approach to prostitution.

Men who have visited the building are said to have referred to it as having 'ten floors of whores' with others boasting on prostitution forums about the lewd acts they took part in whilst inside the cloisters.

One man said on a prostitute review website that he pushed a woman by the throat against a wall in a property before performing a sex act on her that left her 'gagging'.

One escort agency, Diva Escorts, boasted that it had 100 women available at the premises on a single night. The women charge between 100 and 300.

A simple Google search for the agency shows just how widespread and blatant prostitution has become.

Another agency, called 24hr London Escort, gives its office address as Chelsea Cloisters. Its introduction to the building on the website makes for grim reading for Moran and his sons, Charles and Jamie, who manage the building.

'For the punters that knows best, the Chelsea Cloisters in London SW3 has always been notorious place for accommodating sexy London escorts in London. And the tradition continues today,' it reads.

Three women listed on the Divas website as being available in rooms at Chelsea Cloisters

Another agency, called Caprice also claims to be based in the building.

Describing how to find the building, the website says: 'You can't miss it. It's the building teeming with escorts and rosy-cheeked men with empty wallets.'

And angry residents agree that you can't miss it. One said she was embarrassed to call it her home while an elderly female resident who has lived in the building for ten years said 'someone used to come and collect money once a week' and that one woman banged on her door desperately seeking help because she was being threatened and another was being bullied by two men who she assumed were traffickers.

Another man posted a frustrated online post: 'There are gangs of pimps laughing, joking threatening whilst their 'property' is inside being abused by wealthy men.

I've complained about this activity many times to local mps, mayor of London, police, newspapers, etc, and nothing is being done.'

The police did acknowledge to the Mail on Sunday that the building was ' a well-known cause of concern to us.' They did so whilst declining to confirm claims of prostitution.

Chelsea Cloisters has been described as 'hookers heaven' and '10 floors of whores'

While police won't say whether their investigations in the building have concluded, there seems to be little doubt that prostitution takes place there.

Chelsea Cloisters features regularly on UK Punting, an online forum for men who use prostitutes. They repeatedly refer to the extensive availability of women in the building.

It has also been described as 'hookers heaven' and '10 floors of whores'.

The adverts for girls available in South Kensington listed their breast size and hire prices

One resident said it was 'obvious' what was going on and had been warned about it by his landlord when he moved in

One user even allegedly speculated that it 'probably has the highest population density of hookers per square mile in London'.

'This past week alone, I have been to three different addresses in Chelsea Cloisters. Probably most of the flats in the past 10 years or so. In London terms, it's akin to a battery farm,' another man reportedly boasted.

Another resident said it was 'obvious' what was going on and had been warned about it by his landlord when he moved in.

'You see lots of Eastern European girls walking around in dressing gowns and then loads of sleazy businessmen leaving their rooms at weird times of the day looking embarrassed. When you're in the lift with them you can see them putting their wedding rings back on.'

Mr Moran, 316th in the Sunday Times Rich List, has previously donated 290,000 to the Tories on a personal and company basis.

According to the Mail on Sunday just over 140,000 came directly from his company which owns and rents out rooms in the block.

Up to 250 of the 670 apartments in the block can, it is claimed, be rented short-term, between a day and a year. This makes it an easy target for prostitution.

There is no suggestion that Mr Moran has any involvement with the alleged prostitution

The Chelsea Cloisters block (pictured) of 670 apartments  where Mr Moran has an office  earns him millions of pounds in rent and service charges every year.

Last night, leading anti-prostitution campaigner Julie Bindel said: 'These are horrific revelations. Many, if not most, of the women being abused in prostitution in London will have been trafficked into the country and are working against their will.

This is a vast sum of dirty money that makes a mockery of Theresa May's campaigning against sex slavery.

'The Tory party should hand over the money immediately to be used to convict pimps and traffickers, to support trafficked women and to help them find a new life outside the horrors of the sex trade.'

The Prime Minister has pledged to eradicate human trafficking in the UK by 2030.

Labour MP Gavin Shuker, who chaired an all-party Parliamentary group which wrote a report on the sex trade last summer, said: 'Theresa May must now give that money to charities that assist victims of human trafficking and use her powers to change the law and to tackle demand.'

His Rolls-Royce, with its personalised number plate, is often parked outside the front while he works alongside his two songs, Charles and Jamie, who manage the building. The management's ground floor office is just yards from the reception where men file in each day with wallets full of cash for the women upstairs.

This woman, named Guadalupe, was listed as being available in the Chelsea Cloisters block

But Greg Hands, the Tory MP for Chelsea and Fulham, said a constituent had claimed to have alerted the building's management about prostitution there  but that staff appeared not to have done anything.

Mr Hands then said to have reported the matter to the police.

Mr Moran, chairman of Co-operation Ireland, a charity that campaigns for peace, is a well-known Tory donor who masterminded the 30million sale of the party's former Smith Square headquarters in 2007.

Last night, leading anti-prostitution campaigner Julie Bindel said the 'revelations' are 'horrific'

He has held fundraisers for the party at his 15th Century 30- bedroom home Crosby Hall on the banks of the River Thames and hosted the Queen there two years ago at a private function.

Describing himself as 'astronomically wealthy,' Mr Moran made money on the insurance market Lloyd's of London and on the stock market  adding to his fortune in property in recent years. He also owns the 40,000-acre Glenfiddich estate in the Scottish Highlands.

A property and finance tycoon, he had made his first million by the age of 21. But he has had a chequered career.

In 1982 he became the first person to be thrown out of Lloyd's of London for 'discreditable acts' and was censured by the London Stock Exchange in 1986.

He also paid a 1.15million settlement after being accused of insider trading on the New York Stock Exchange in 1992, which he denied.

Mr Moran's lawyers 'categorically denied' he had acquiesced with or tolerated any prostitution in Chelsea Cloisters and said he had not profited from its proceeds.

Lawyers for Christopher Moran also released the following statement:

'Dr Christopher Moran strongly rejects the allegations concerning the Chelsea Cloisters complex.

'Chelsea Cloisters constitutes a very small fraction of Dr Morans business interests and he has little or no involvement in its management.

'Nevertheless, Dr Moran takes any allegations of this kind extremely seriously. As such he has investigated the position fully with the management of Chelsea Cloisters.

'Chelsea Cloisters operates a zero tolerance policy towards prostitution on its premises. Neither Dr Moran nor the management of Chelsea Cloisters has in any way knowingly allowed or even tolerated the premises being used for prostitution, nor would ever do so.

'On the very few occasions that incidents involving prostitution have come to their attention previously, the management always acts swiftly  but humanely  to bring such activities to an end, and will continue to do so, proactively involving and cooperating fully with the police and other authorities where necessary.'
An urgent warning over the dangers of synthetic cannabis has been sparked as shocking figures reveal that children are being hospitalised due to the drug.

Cannabinoids were banned in New Zealand in 2014 after a slew of social issues but since then, a black-market version has sprouted and the drug continues to wreak havoc.

At least 67 children have been admitted to hospitals throughout New Zealand with cannabis or synthetics poisoning in the past five years.

Synthetic cannabinoids were banned in New Zealand in 2014 after a slew of social issues. Since then, a black-market version has sprouted and the drug continues to wreak havoc (stock image)

Three children, the youngest only 5, became severely ill in September after ingesting synthetic cannabis. They were all hospitalised and one was in a critical condition, Stuff reported.

An investigation found they accidentally ingested the drug after eating food that had been contaminated by cooking utensils.

Figures, released under the Official Information Act, revealed that about 45 people have died as a result of synthetic cannabis in the past 12 months.

Sergeant Greg Wilson told Stuff there was evidence that kids were using the drug, and it was having a devastating impact.

'It turns them into zombies, but the effects vary. You'll find some people absolutely passed out and seizing, others are very aggressive but can barely speak and there's no getting through to them,' he said.

National MP for Pakuranga Simeon Brown has called for a crackdown on suppliers. He wants the maximum jail term for psychoactive drug suppliers to be increased from two years to 14 years.

'When children are hurt and children are harmed, it shows we really need to crack down on the suppliers of these drugs.'
David and Victoria Beckham (pictured) have been targeted by burglars at their second home in the Cotswolds for the second time in a month

The Beckhams' Cotswolds mansion has been targeted by burglars for the second time in a month.

The couple were not home when a man was chased off by seven security guards and two attack dogs in the early hours of November 14.

David, 43, and Victoria, 44, were left shaken after the second threat to their countryside retreat in the space of a month, reports The Sun.

The last attempted-break in happened on October 19 when the couple were travelling to Australia.

Both crimes are believed to be the work of a gang who appear to be targeting their 6million luxury home when the couple are away.

A source told the newspaper: 'Luckily they had laid on extra security after the last incident  including several staff and dogs  who were able to protect the property.

'Otherwise this could have had a very different outcome. They are re-evaluating their security again and will bring in more if they need to.'

A spokesman for Thames Valley Police confirmed they were called to reports of a 'man behaving suspiciously' near the property at 6.15am and are investigating.

No arrests have been made.

The last attempted-break in at their home in the Cotswolds (pictured) happened on October 19 when a gang of masked men were caught on CCTV

Officers were last scrambled to the Beckhams' home four weeks ago after their 24 hour security surveillance team noticed a balaclava-clad gang of men on the property's CCTV.

They were spotted by neighbours, who ran after them before they could get any closer.

David and Victoria are understood to have been on their way to Australia with son Romeo, 16, Cruz, 13, and Harper, 7, when the attempted break-in happened.

Hours later, Victoria was pictured looking distressed and speculation grew.

The gang used a ladder (pictured) to look into the windows of the upstairs of the house before running from the scene

It has now been revealed the mother-of-four was terrified over how close the gang came to getting inside her home.

A source said: 'David and Victoria are absolutely devastated by this. They are extremely protective of their family and their home life so the thought that people would intrude on that is just so upsetting for them.

'This has hit them hard. Victoria has been upset for the last couple of days about this, it has been so though for her.

'It is frightening and dreadful to think someone would be intruding on their personal space.

'David hates the fact he has to have such high tech and extremely tight security around him.

'He would love to be normal but his number one priority is to protect his wife, children and wider family.

'He is absolutely furious that he has now has to increase his security even more.'
A family of four are safe and well following a terrifying ordeal when their catamaran capsized.

Emergency services were called to Long Jetty on the New South Wales Central Coast north of Sydney just before 5pm on Sunday following reports that a boat had overturned one kilometre from the shore.

Three NSW ambulance crews and the Toll Ambulance Rescue helicopter attended the scene of the dramatic rescue, along with the NSW Police Marine Rescue Unit.

A family of four had to be rescued from this sinking catamaran on the NSW Central Coast

Two adults and two children were pulled from the water and returned to dry land, where they were assessed at the scene by paramedics and given the all clear.

Their ages are unknown.

A NSW Ambulance spokesman told Daily Mail Australia all people on board the vessel were accounted for and that there were no reports of injuries.

NSW Police were unable to provide any further details.

Earlier this week, a US tourist spent 12 hours on his overturned vessel as it drifted on the tide.

Levi Verwoest, 29, was sailing his 23-foot catamaran 'Isis' 25 miles off the Queensland coast on Wednesday evening when he realized the vessel was taking on water.

Two adults and two children were pulled from the water and returned to shore by the NSW Police Marine Rescue unit

The family were assessed by paramedics when they returned to shore at Long Jetty




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Theresa May told MPs to do their 'duty' and vote for the Brexit deal as she promised she will fight 'with all my heart' to get it through the Commons.

After an historic Brussels summit to seal the deal, the Prime Minister said the deal took back control of 'our laws, borders and money' while protecting jobs and security - meaning it was in the 'national interest'.

At a press conference to mark the landmark day on the road to Brexit, Mrs May began a two week battle to persuade fractious MPs the deal was the best available - but the PM's hopes look bleak.

Mrs May told her MPs: 'I think we have a duty as a Parliament ... to deliver Brexit.'

The Prime Minister repeated her vow to never allow a second referendum on Brexit while she is No 10 - but again swerved questions about whether she will quit if her deal is voted down in Parliament.

Echoing the leadership of the EU, Mrs May insisted that what she was bringing home was the 'best deal possible' and warned her rebels that voting no would 'open the door to even more division and uncertainty'.

She said: 'Crucially it is a deal that delivers on the vote. I think this is so important to me: the people voted for Brexit ... it's, in a sense, a duty for their politicians, who asked them to make that choice, to then deliver on that choice.'

EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker warned MPs the Brexit divorce is the 'only deal possible' today as Brussels signed off on the plans. Effectively telling MPs to take it or leave it, Mr Juncker used his press conference to underline Mrs May's fight in the Commons.

Mr Juncker said anyone hoping to vote down the deal and get a better deal 'will be disappointed', while EU leaders put on a united front to insist there was nothing else on the table.

EU Council President Donald Tusk insisted Britain and the EU would 'remain friends until the end of days and one day longer' as the bloc agreed the terms of its first ever exit.

The 27 national leaders met for just 40 minutes today to rubber stamp both the divorce deal and the political declaration outlining a future trade deal. They claimed Brexit is a 'tragedy' and 'not a moment for celebration'.

The divorce documents have triggered a furious row in the UK and an attempt to oust Mrs May but the EU's negotiator Michel Barnier insisted MPs must 'take responsibility' and vote the deal today.

He said that after 20-months of painstaking talks, the controversial divorce deal had to be agreed as the basis for rebuilding trust between Britain and Europe.

Mrs May's troubles have been escalated by a row over Gibraltar as she was forced to hand Spain the chance to claim a victory over the Rock. Spain's PM Pedro Sanchez claimed today 'we all lose with Brexit but Spain wins on Gibraltar'.

As she begins her new battle, Mrs May's hopes of winning the Commons vote in around two weeks look bleak. The package is opposed by more than 90 of her own MPs, her DUP allies and the Opposition Labour Party.

The Prime Minister has vowed to take her deal out to the country in a bid to persuade MPs but since it was published opposition has mounted rather than diminished.

The DUP hinted today at backing for an alternative deal while former PM Tony Blair insisted the widespread loathing of the package fuelled demands for a new public vote.

Theresa May promised the country she will fight 'with all my heart' to get her divorce through the Commons as she held a press conference to close a landmark day in Brussels (pictured)

Jean-Claude Juncker (left at a press conference with Donald Tusk and Michel Barnier today) warned MPs the Brexit divorce is the 'only deal possible' today as Brussels signed off on the plans at an historic summit

The EU's leaders embraced at the end of today's summit (pictured) as (from left) Donald Tusk, Jean-Claude Juncker and Michel Barnier insisted there was nothing left on the negotiating table

EU Council President Donald Tusk confirmed the 27 national leaders had adopted both the divorce treaty and a political declaration on the future relationship in a Tweet (pictured)

Following today's summit, speaking on his LBC show, Nigel Farage condemned the deal.

He said: 'I've decided on balance, no. I'm going to vote against it.'

'This deal is an absolute disaster,' he said.

'It's a betrayal of everything we voted for in Brexit and if the risk was that the other side could force us to vote again, right now I think that risk is worth it.'

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said: 'This is a bad deal for the country.

'It is the result of a miserable failure of negotiation that leaves us with the worst of all worlds. It gives us less say over our future, and puts jobs and living standards at risk.

'That is why Labour will oppose this deal in Parliament. We will work with others to block a no-deal outcome, and ensure that Labour's alternative plan for a sensible deal to bring the country together is on the table.

Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt admitted Mrs May could be doomed if she was defeated.

Pressed by the BBC's Andrew Marr on whether the Government could collapse, he said: 'It's not possible to rule out anything.'

As the summit convened today Mr Barnier said: 'Now it is time for everybody to take their responsibility.

'This is a necessary step to build trust between the UK and EU.'

What has been agreed in Brussels today? The Brexit deal comes in two parts, both of which were signed off in Brussels today: The Withdrawal Agreement is a 585-page legal text that sets out the terms of the UK's departure. Among its contents are arrangements for the contentious Northern Ireland backstop and the 39 billion 'divorce bill'. It is a full blown treaty which must be written into both UK and EU law to a apply. There is also a political declaration agreed between Britain and the EU. The 26-page document sets out a framework for the future relationship between the UK and the EU. It outlines a spectrum of possible trade deals and what each option might mean. The final deal will be subject to years more negotiation in Brussels. Advertisement

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz says: 'It is important that everyone in the UK is aware of the fact that this agreement is the final result. It will definitely not be renegotiated and there will be no further leeway.'

Earlier in the day, Mr Juncker said the EU's position would not change its 'fundamental position' and predicted the Commons would eventually endorse the deal insisting it was the 'best deal that could be achieved'.

He said today's events were a 'tragedy' and a 'sad day' as the bloc finalised the first ever exit of a member.

France's President Emmanuel Macron arrived insisting it was 'not a day for celebration' and said it showed the need for the EU to reform.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte warned the EU could not offer 'anything more' if the Commons votes down the deal as he arrived at the summit.

He said this is the 'this is the max we can all do' and warned: 'Nobody's winning - we are all losing.'

Lithuania's president predicted Dalia Grybauskaite 'anything could happen' if the deal is voted down in the Commons, including a new referendum.

When she arrives later, Mrs May will be more upbeat, insisting the two part agreement is the right one for Britain as she faces a bigger battle to make the case at home.

She wrote an open letter to the British public today appealing for support for her deal, insisting it meant a 'brighter future' for the country.

Theresa May sat alongside Donald Tusk at today's historic summit (pictured) to finalise the terms of Britain's divorce ahead of the crucial Commons vote

German Chancellor Angela Merkel (pictured today in Brussels) was among the EU leaders who voted for the Brexit deal today

EU negotiator Michel Barnier was embraced by Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker as EU leaders gathered in Brussels today (pictured) to finalise the divorce

The EU's leaders, including (from left) Austria Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, Michel Barnier and Donald Tusk, are striking a somber tone as they finalise the British divorce today

EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker (pictured embracing Lithuania President Dalia Grybauskaite today) said the EU's position would not change its 'fundamental position' and predicted the Commons would eventually endorse the deal. He said the UK's departure was a 'tragedy' for the bloc

Despite her positive tone, the Prime Minister faces an uphill battle in the run-up to the Commons vote in around two weeks time.

What happens now the Brexit deal has been signed off in Brussels? Brexit passed a major milestone in Brussels today as EU leaders agreed the negotiated divorce deal. This is what the next steps are: Tomorrow, November 26: Theresa May will make statement to MPs on the summit and launch her push to win the 'meaningful vote' on the deal. She can expect another furious response from MPs. Around December 11: The meaningful vote itself. This is the absolutely crucial moment and could make or break the Prime Minister and her deal. MPs will vote after a debate that could last as long as five days. If the vote carries, Mrs May survives and Brexit is on track as she plans. If she loses, she could resign. December 13-14: The next EU summit. If the deal has been rejected by MPs, Mrs May could use this to try and secure new concessions. January 2019: The European Parliament is due to vote on the deal - but will only do so if it has been agreed in the House of Commons. March 29, 2019: Exit day. This is written in law so unless there is a dramatic shift Britain will leave the EU, deal or no deal. Advertisement

Arlene Foster, the leader of the DUP propping up the Tories in Government, said there were 'no circumstances' she would order her 10 MPs to vote for the deal.

And Mrs Foster dangled Mrs May's political mortality in front of her insisting if she managed to force the deal through, the DUP would 'review' the confidence and supply deal keeping her in No 10.

Insisting the deal was likely to fail anyway, Mrs Foster told the BBC's Andrew Marr: 'Why waste time? Why not look for a better deal now?'

Asked if Mrs May had broken promises on the Union, Mrs Foster said: 'This deal goes against everything she has said around all of that.'

Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith - who Mrs May had hoped to win round - doubled down on his opposition today, insisting the deal does not deliver Brexit.

He told Sky News's Sophy Ridge on Sunday: 'I don't believe that, so far, this deal delivers on what the British people really voted for, take back control of your borders, your laws, your money. I think it has ceded too much control.

'I believe the Government needs to go back and say things like 'the backstop, we simply cannot agree it and you must take all of that reference out' and things to do with the Court of Justice.

'That would make this a better deal, but right now the balance is definitely tilted against this being a deal, I'm afraid, that delivers on what the Government said they would deliver.'

In another blow for Mrs May, Labour MP Lisa Nandy - who had hinted she would vote for the deal on behalf of her Brexit supporting Wigan constituency - confirmed she would vote no.

She told Sky News: 'It's inconceivable that I'll be voting for it - I won't be voting for the withdrawal agreement.'

A final breakthrough yesterday paved the way for today's summit when Spain dropped its threat to vote against the deal.

Ministers 'draw up secret Plan B' in case May's deal is rejected in Commons vote Ministers are making a secret 'Plan B' for Brexit if Mrs May's deal is rejected in the Commons, it was claimed last night. The PM faces an uphill task to win over Brexiteer MPs, many of whom are furious about the withdrawal agreement and in particular the Irish backstop. Her DUP allies are also poised to desert her in the showdown vote. The backup plan being formulated by ministers would be a 'Norway option' in which Britain stays in the European Economic Area, the Sunday Telegraph reported. Sources said the plan would give the UK a more definite exit procedure from EU rules. Such a mechanism would appease Brexiteer fears that the current deal would tie Britain to Brussels rules indefinitely. However, the Norway option would reportedly not allow an end to free movement of people. Advertisement

Madrid claimed Mrs May had caved in to demands to take Gibraltar out of UK-EU trade talks.

The PM insisted the UK's position on Gibraltar had not changed, saying she would always 'stand by' its citizens, while the territory's chief minister denied that Spain had secured new guarantees.

The agreement means Mrs May will take the completed deal back to Westminster for a Commons vote, expected early next month.

With a battle looming to win over Brexiteer MPs, Boris Johnson yesterday fired up the DUP - which has propped up Mrs May's government but is set to vote against her - with a pot-stirring speech in which he savaged the PM's 'humiliating' deal.

It has been claimed today that ministers are making 'Plan B' proposals for a new Brexit deal if Mrs May's agreement is rejected by Parliament.

As EU leaders arrived, Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite predicted there could still be an 11th hour reversal after today's summit.

She said: 'Everything could happen, at least four possible scenarios could be in place, but it's up to the British side to decide what path to choose.

'It could be a second vote of the people, it could be new elections, it could be a request for renegotiations, there is at least four scenarios, I calculate.'

Spanish PM Pedro Sanchez earlier withdrew his threat to boycott the EU summit and said Spain will vote in favour of Brexit after clinching a last-minute deal on Gibraltar.

The row over the British territory at the southern tip of Spain had threatened to derail the Brexit deal.

Madrid has insisted on keeping the issue under its control in bilateral talks with London rather than leaving Brussels to decide its future in a UK-EU trade deal.

Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez (pictured arriving at the summit in Brussels today) has withdrawn his vow to vote against the deal after claiming concessions over Gibraltar

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte (pictured arriving at the summit today) warned the EU could not offer 'anything more' if the Commons votes down the deal

Mr Sanchez announced that Brussels and the UK had 'accepted Spain's demands', providing Madrid with what was described in Spanish media as 'triple protection'.

The triple shield is said to consist of guarantees from EU bosses Juncker and Tusk; the 27 remaining member states; and the UK, according to The Local.

'I have just announced to the King that Spain has reached an agreement on Gibraltar,' Mr Sanchez told a news conference.

'The European Council will therefore be held tomorrow. Spain has lifted the veto and will vote in favour of Brexit.'

Madrid's foreign minister Josep Borrell went further, saying the agreement is 'highly positive for Spain' and 'the most important' since the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 under which Gibraltar was ceded to the UK.

Britain has agreed that bilateral talks will continue with Spain on the future of Gibraltar.

But Mrs May and Gibraltar's chief minister Fabian Picardo cast doubt on Madrid's claim it had won new guarantees.

Speaking in Brussels Mrs May said: 'We have worked through the withdrawal issues for Gibraltar with Spain in a constructive and sensible way.

'We have ensured that Gibraltar is covered by the whole Withdrawal Agreement and by the implementation period and we will always negotiate on behalf of the whole UK family, including Gibraltar, and in the future relationship we will stand up for their interests.

'The UK's position on the sovereignty of Gibraltar has not changed and will not change. I am proud that Gibraltar is British and I will always stand by Gibraltar.'

Madrid has claimed Mrs May had caved in to demands to take Gibraltar (pictured) out of UK-EU trade talks - but the PM insisted the UK's position on Gibraltar had not changed, saying she would always 'stand by' its citizens

Mr Picardo said: 'What you have heard from the Spanish Prime Minister today was not a reflection of any new position, however much he tried to present it as such.

'Pedro Sanchez has achieved no guarantees whatsoever in respect of the future of Gibraltar.

'But I can guarantee Pedro Sanchez one thing in respect of the future of Gibraltar: It is an entirely British future that will suffer no dilution.

As Mr Sanchez was speaking, European Council president Mr Tusk issued a letter inviting leaders of EU member states to approve the deal at Sunday's summit.

'I will recommend that on Sunday we approve the outcome of the Brexit negotiations,' he said, saying the deal on the table reduces 'the risks and losses resulting from the United Kingdom's withdrawal.'

He said: 'Although no-one will have reasons to be happy on that day, there is one thing I would like to stress: at this critical time, the EU27 has passed the test of unity and solidarity.'

Liberal Democrat Brexit spokesman Tom Brake claimed the Prime Minister had 'caved in' and 'appears to have cast the people of Gibraltar aside'.

After battling to an agreement with Brussels Mrs May now faces a fierce battle to steer her deal through the House of Commons.

She has so far survived an attempted coup from Tory backbenchers but a defeat in Parliament could trigger a no-confidence vote or general election.

The Sunday Telegraph reported that ministers are secretly preparing a backup 'Norway option' as an alternative if Mrs May's deal is voted down.

Boris Johnson blasts May's deal at DUP conference Boris Johnson today spoke at the DUP conference in Belfast to fire up the party faithful in a bid to scupper Theresa May's Brexit plans. The former foreign secretary warned that the PM was heading for an 'iceberg' and her package would leave Northern Ireland 'ruled by the EU'. He said Mrs May was giving away the 39billion divorce settlement too easily  suggesting half should be withheld until after a final trade agreement is sealed at the end of 2020. Mr Johnson said the country was 'on the the verge of making a historic mistake'. 'If we are not careful we are going to stay in the customs union, we are going to stay in the single market, we are going to be rules takers,' he said. 'Unless we junk this backstop, we will find that Brussels has got us exactly where they want us  a satellite state. But Mr Johnson again stopped short of calling for Mrs May to be ousted today, despite dozens of other Eurosceptics putting in no-confidence letters. Advertisement

That deal would reportedly create a more definite exit mechanism from EU rules, but would not allow an end to free movement.

In a sign of the trouble she faces, her former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson spoke at the DUP conference to demand the scrapping of the Irish backstop.

The DUP has propped up Mrs May's government since she lost her majority at last year's election but the alliance has come under strain over the Brexit deal and the party has suggested it will vote against the agreement.

Mr Johnson said yesterday: 'Unless we junk this backstop, we will find that Brussels has got us exactly where they want us - a satellite state.

He warned the draft Brexit deal is in danger of turning Northern Ireland into an 'economic semi-colony' of the EU.

The backstop proposal would see Northern Ireland adopt a different regulatory regime to Great Britain in the event a wider UK-EU trade deal fails to materialise in talks on the future relationship.

DUP leader Arlene Foster told delegates that while she believes Theresa May is 'genuine' in her desire to protect the Union, the draft deal fails to do that.

A Gibraltar housing minister also spoke at the DUP conference demanding that Spain be given no hope of taking away its sovereignty in Brexit talks.

Samantha Sacramento insisted that Gibraltar will not be 'bullied' by any bid from Madrid to undermine its sovereignty.

France's President Emmanuel Macron arrived (pictured) insisting it was 'not a day for celebration' and said it showed the need for the EU to reform

Ireland's Prime Minister Leo Varadkar predicted the deal would be accepted at today's summit as he arrived (pictured)

She was applauded as she told DUP conference delegates in the Crown Plaza Hotel: 'Gibraltar will not fold.

Arlene Foster says May's deal is 'worse than Corbyn in charge' Arlene Foster has said that Theresa May's Brexit deal is a worse outcome for Britain than a government led by Jeremy Corbyn. Mrs Foster dismissed claims that the DUP is merely playing a game of brinkmanship and would cave in and support Mrs May if the alternative was a general election and a possible Labour government. Asked if Mrs May's Brexit is a greater threat than a government led by Jeremy Corbyn, Mrs Foster told the Times: 'I think it is. 'The reason I say that is on day one of us leaving the EU there would be no difference, we would be exactly the same as the rest of the UK but in year five or ten we would be different. 'If people [in Northern Ireland] are looking to Dublin for representation in Europe because we're the subject of EU rules, that is so dangerous in terms of the Union. 'All the things we build the Union on  the economic unit, the cultural, social, political and historical - start to diverge.' Advertisement

'The Union Jack, our precious Union Jack, is not a mere flag. To those of us who have endured hard times to secure the continuity of our British heritage, our British values and freedoms, the Union Jack encapsulates all we are as a people.'

Ms Sacramento said Gibraltar was committed to making Brexit work, despite the fact that 96 per cent of its citizens voted Remain.

'It is critical that the United Kingdom remains firm in the defence of our right to self-determination and that Spain is given no hope in its campaign to take our sovereignty from us,' she told the DUP faithful.

'Our borders and our history are very different but our solidarity in defence of our democratic right to preserve our British way of life is unshakeable.'

She concluded: 'Gibraltar greatly appreciates the support that the DUP has expressed in support of Gibraltar and its right to remain British and, as my chief minister so often says, we are red, white and blue, we are red, white and proud.'

Prime Minister Theresa May has insisted the proposed EU withdrawal deal is in the interests of 'the whole UK family', including Gibraltar.

The DUP's Nigel Dodds also savaged the deal, saying: 'The DUP wants a deal with the European Union, we understand that businesses, families and communities want certainty.

'But it is not this deal. It is not a deal at any price. The prime minister used to say that. We still say that.

'So Prime Minister, the message from this conference, from every section of this party is - bin the backstop.'

EU leaders gathered for a meeting to formally sign off the deal this morning. Pictured are Jean Claude Juncker sitting left with Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz and standing second right Irish Premier Leo Varadkar

EU Council President Donald Tusk (pictured arriving at the summit this morning) will recommend to EU leaders that they adopt the deal

He added: 'In the coming weeks Parliament will be faced with a clear choice on the future of our country.

'To be a free independent trading nation leaving the EU as one United Kingdom or to be locked into an EU straitjacket, divided and diminished.

'The published Withdrawal Agreement portrays a pitiful and pathetic place for the United Kingdom.

'Hundreds of pages are devoted to a backstop which will bind the United Kingdom into taking the rules of the EU with no right to leave and no end date.'

On Thursday Mr Tusk sent a draft of the political declaration to the EU 27 countries.

The document sets out the framework for the future relationship between the UK and the EU.

It has been agreed at negotiators' level and agreed in principle at political level.

The Withdrawal Agreement is the 585-page legal text that sets out the terms of the UK's departure.

Among its contents are arrangements for the contentious Northern Ireland backstop and the 39 billion 'divorce bill'.

The declaration states how trade, security and other issues will work in broader terms.

In an interview with BBC's Emma Barnett on Friday Mrs refused to say if she would quit if she fails to win backing for her deal.

She said the deal would protect jobs and allow Britain to get on with Brexit in March.

But asked repeatedly whether she will resign if she loses in the Commons - as seems inevitable - Mrs May swerved the question to insist: 'No... I'm focusing on ensuring that we get this deal through Parliament.

'I believe this is absolutely the right deal for the UK. This is not about me.'

A draft Brexit deal agreed - but how WILL Theresa May persuade her Cabinet, Brussels and Parliament to back it (and save her job)? Theresa May (pictured at the Lord Mayor's Banquet on Monday) has struck a Brexit deal with Brussels - but now has to sell it to her Cabinet and then Parliament Emergency EU Summit, Brussels, November 25 What will happen? If the divorce package is agreed between the two sides, it will need to be signed off by EU leaders. EU council president Donald Tusk will convene a summit where formal approval will be given by EU leaders. This is expected sometime between November 22 and 25. Will the whole deal be agreed? The Brexit deal is due to come in two parts - a formal divorce treaty and a political declaration on what the final trade deal might look like. The second part may not be finished until a regular EU summit due on December 13-14. Assuming the negotiations have reached an agreement and Mrs May travels to Brussels with her Cabinet's support, this stage should be a formality. What if there is no agreement? If EU leaders do not sign off on the deal at this stage, no deal becomes highly likely - there is just no time left to negotiate a wholly new deal. German Chancellor Angela Merkel (pictured) is still a crucial figure in the Brexit drama The so-called 'meaningful vote' in the UK Parliament, December 2019 What will happen: A debate, probably over more than one day, will be held in the House of Commons on terms of the deal. It will end with a vote on whether or not MPs accept the deal. More than one vote might happen if MPs are allowed to table amendments. The vote is only happening after MPs forced the Government to accept a 'meaningful vote' in Parliament on the terms of the deal. What happens if May wins? If the meaningful vote is passed, there will be a series of further votes as the withdrawal treaty is written into British law. It will be a huge political victory for the Prime Minister and probably secure her version of Brexit. What happens if she loses? This is possibly the most dangerous stage of all. The Prime Minister will have to stake her political credibility on winning a vote and losing it would be politically devastating. Brexiteers do not want to sign off the divorce bill without a satisfactory trade deal and Remainers are reluctant to vote for a blind Brexit. She could go back to Brussels to ask for new concessions before a second vote but many think she would have to resign quickly. The Prime Minister (pictured at the EU Council in June) has made clear the UK will leave without a deal if MPs reject her package Ratification in the EU, February 2019 What will happen? After the meaningful vote in the UK, the EU will have to ratify the agreement. The European Parliament must also vote in favour of the deal. It has a representative in the talks, Guy Verhofstadt, who has repeatedly warned the deal must serve the EU's interests. Will it be agreed? In practice, once the leaders of the 27 member states have agreed a deal, ratification on the EU side should be assured. If the deal has passed the Commons and she is still in office, this should not be dangerous for the Prime Minister. Exit day, March 29, 2019 At 11pm on March 29, 2019, Britain will cease to be a member of the European Union, two years after triggering Article 50 and almost three years after the referendum. Exit happens at 11pm because it must happen on EU time. If the transition deal is in place, little will change immediately - people will travel in the same way as today and goods will cross the border normally. But Britain's MEPs will no longer sit in the European Parliament and British ministers will no longer take part in EU meetings. Negotiations will continue to turn the political agreement on the future partnership into legal text that will eventually become a second treaty. Both sides will build new customs and immigration controls in line with what this says. Transition ends, December 2020 The UK's position will undergo a more dramatic change at the end of December 2020, when the 'standstill' transition is due to finish. If the negotiations on a future trade deal are complete, that could come into force. But if they are still not complete the Irish border 'backstop' plan could be triggered. Under current thinking, that means the UK staying in the EU customs union and more regulatory checks between mainland Britain and Northern Ireland. Eurosceptics fear this arrangement will prevent the country striking trade deals elsewhere, and could effectively last for ever, as Brussels will have no incentive to negotiate a replacement deal. Advertisement
A man who led police on a dramatic chase through the streets and homes of a Perth suburb has been found hiding in the roof of a house after leaving an alleged crime spree in his wake.

The 21-year-old man is alleged to have been recklessly driving a stolen Holden Captiva in Perth's north on Beryl Street in Balcatta about 6.30pm on Saturday.

The driver allegedly failed to stop for police, crashing at the intersection of Main Street and Amelia Street before running from the scene.

A man who led police on a dramatic chase through the streets and homes of a Perth suburb has been found hiding in the roof of a house after leaving an alleged crime spree in his wake

He jumped a nearby fence - assaulting a resident on his way through - before jumping another fence into a second property, where a man and his four-year-old child were home.

An onlooker who went to help the man and his child was also allegedly assaulted by the driver.

When police arrived, officers found the house had been vandalised and the driver was found hiding in the roof.

Police allegedly found weapons, drug paraphernalia, stolen property and a disguise during a search of the allegedly stolen car, WA police told Daily Mail Australia.

Meth Enforcement Taskforce officers have arrested the 21-year-old man from Banjup.

He was charged with breach of bail, car theft, reckless driving to escape police, failing to stop, driving without authority, reckless driving, common assault, aggravated common assault and criminal damage or destruction of property.

He was refused bail and was due to appear in Perth Magistrates Court on Sunday.
Parliament has exerted 'unprecedented' powers to seize private documents from Facebook that allegedly reveal its knowledge of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

The secret cache is believed to include emails between Mark Zuckerberg and other executives that shows the firm knew about flaws in its privacy policy and allowed them to be actively exploited.

MPs discovered the documents were in the possession of an American software executive visiting London on a business trip and sent an official from the House of Commons to his hotel to retrieve them.

He was given two hours to hand them over to an appointee of Kamal El-Hajji, the House of Common's serjeant-at-arms, who is responsible for the security of the parliamentary estate.

However the executive refused, and was then hauled to Parliament and warned he could face imprisonment if he did not comply.

Damian Collins, chairman of the Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Committee, told the BBC: 'We felt this [information] was highly relevant to the inquiry... and therefore we sent an order to Mr [Ted] Kramer through the serjeant at arms asking that these documents be supplied to us. Ultimately, that order was complied with.'

Mr Collins said he had read over the documents and his committee would decide this week what it intends to do with them.

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Parliament has exerted its legal powers to get hold of private Facebook documents following Mark Zuckerberg's repeated refusal to answer MPs' questions

A member of staff from the office of Serjeant at Arms Kamal El-Hajji was dispatched to the hotel of Ted Kramer and demand he hand over the documents

It comes as MPs attempt to hold Zuckerberg and his firm to account over data breaches that affected more than 87 million Facebook users.

The documents were taken from Ted Kramer, founder of the US company Six4Three, which is currently fighting its own lawsuit with Facebook.

A US judge in California had ordered the files, obtained from Facebook via a legal discovery process, could not be revealed to the public earlier this year.

However, MPs from the culture committee, headed by MP Damian Collins, drew up an 'unprecedented' order after discovering that Mr Kramer was due to visit the UK.

It is believed they show how the firm created and effectively drew attention to a privacy loophole later used by Cambridge Analytica to collect the data of millions of users.

The legal move comes less than a year after the company fell into turmoil for harvesting data from 87million US users without their knowledge.

It is more bad news for Zuckerberg, who last week refused to stand down after his company was found to be using lobbyists to smear critics by calling them anti-semitic and linking them to George Soros.

Last Monday, Damian Collins, chair of the culture, media and sport select committee, demanded US software company Six4Three hand in documents during a business trip in London

Tweets by Mr Collins show his ongoing battle with chief executive Mark Zuckerberg and his company handling of data

The common's armed enforcer: Who is the serjeant-at-arms? The serjeant-at-arms is responsible for the order and security of the House of Commons. This includes maintaining order in the chamber, galleries and committee rooms of the House and controlling access to the parliamentary estate. Whoever holds the role is responsible for carrying out the orders of the House of Commons, including making arrests. Hes also responsible for security during sittings and can be instructed by the Speaker to escort people out of the chambers - if they refuse to leave when the Speaker asks them. They also perform ceremonial duties, including carrying the mace in the Speaker's Procession each day. The Serjeant at Arms is the only person allowed to carry a weapon, namely a sword, in the House of Commons. The unique role dates back to 1415, when Henry V appointed one of his royal Serjeants to keep order in Parliament. In 2015, the current serjeant-at-arms, Kamal El-Hajji, was awarded the British Empire Medal 'for services to the Ministry of Justice'. Mr El-Hajii has been the head of Front of House and VIP Relations at the Ministry of Justice since 2010. The British Moroccan was the first non-white person to hold the title when he was elected in 2016. El-Hajji made the news in June this year when he spoke out in defence of the Speaker John Bercrow. The Serjeant at Arms said the allegations were part of a witch-hunt by 'disgruntled staff members' who want to oust him. Advertisement

The US software company alleges that Facebook was aware of the loopholes in its privacy policy and exploited them.

On Friday night, Stuart Gross, a lawyer for Six4Three, confirmed to news group CNN that the British committee had obtained the sealed documents.

Mr Collins told The Guardian: 'We are in uncharted territory.

'This is an unprecedented move but it's an unprecedented situation. We've failed to get answers from and we believe the documents contain information of very high public interest.'

Six4Three are the makers of the controversial app Pinkini, that allowed users to find pictures of friends wearing bikinis online.

In 2015, Facebook changed its policies on how information was shared and this meant developers of the app were restricted in accessing data and culminated in the loss of business for Pinkini.

It was at this point the software company began their yearlong bitter feud with US social media giant.

The company claims Facebook misled developers by encouraging them to build applications based around promised access to data controls and privacy settings.

Zuckerberg had allegedly sold expensive ads to developers under the guise that they would have long-term access to users' personal information.

It happened when Facebook shifted its advertising business' focus from desktops to smartphones, the lawsuit claimed.

The recent move by Parliament comes amid the ongoing scrutiny that Facebook has fallen under regarding private data.

Since it was exposed by the Observer in March, the American company has lost more than $100billion in value.

The documents are believed to include decisions that senior executives made at the company in the years before the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

The Serjeant at arms is rarely called upon to carry out their 'enforcer' duties and there have only been a few instances reported over the years.

In 2009, the then-Serjeant at arms Jill Pay gave the green light for police to search the Westminster office of Conservative frontbencher Damian Green as part of an investigation into leaks of sensitive information from the Home Office.

She was able to give consent to police because it was her role to protect 'security in the House of Commons'.
A remote island of just 4,500 people wants to beef up its police force by hiring a 38,000-a-year detective who specialises in historic sex abuse cases - although officials say there aren't actually any cases to investigate.

Most famous for being the place of Napoleon Bonaparte's exile and death, St Helena is a British overseas territory in the South Atlantic Ocean and is one of the world's remotest islands.

In 2014, there were claims of a child abuse cover-up in the island, after allegations that a police officer raped a four-year-old girl while another mutilated a two-year-old.

St Helena, a British overseas territory in the South Atlantic Ocean, wants to hire a detective that specialises in historic sexual abuse cases

St Helena has a police force of just 27 that serves a population of 4,534 on the 10 by five mile island.

Island officials insist that there aren't any historic sex abuse cases for a new detective to look into - but they want to replace their outgoing specialist detective.

The advert says that the new role will pay a detective constable 38,000 per year and they will also enjoy a tax-free international supplement.

The role description says that the new detective will look into both current and historic sexual abuse cases against children and vulnerable adults.

They will also be expected to support the victims of abuse throughout an investigation.

The 2014 scandal led to social workers on St Helena alleging that the British Foreign Office were involved in covering up the historic abuse.

Although there are no current cases to investigate, in 2014, there were claims of a child abuse cover-up in the island, after allegations that a police officer raped a four-year-old girl

This prompted an inquiry by the UK government a year later, which found that the claims had been exaggerated and there was no evidence of corruption.

A spokeswoman for the St Helena Police Directorate said the island was advertising for the post to fill an existing vacancy and told the Express: 'The current postholder will be leaving us in 2019 and this advert is to provide continuity of available expertise on-island.

'There is no historical abuse enquiry ongoing, or anticipated.'
A British soldier who rushed to the aid of those injured in last year's Las Vegas massacre has been decorated in the latest round of military honours.

Trooper Ross Woodward, from 1st The Queen's Dragoon Guards, has received the Queen's Commendation for Bravery - something he said has come as a 'total surprise'.

He had been enjoying a trip to the US gambling capital following a desert training exercise in Nevada when gunman Stephen Paddock opened fire on concert-goers at the Mandalay Bay Hotel.

Paddock unleashed more than 1,100 rounds of ammunition that night, killing 58 and injuring 851 in America's worst-ever mass shooting.

But even as gunfire strafed the concert arena, Trooper Woodward - who was off-duty and had been nearby - turned towards danger and despite the chaos guided people to safety and tended to those who had been injured.

Trooper Ross Woodward, 24, of 1st The Queen's Dragoon Guards, received the Queen's Commendation for Bravery for running towards gunfire and helping guide concertgoers to safety in Las Vegas in October 2017

The 24-year-old from Beeston, Nottinghamshire, said: 'Anyone in the military would have done the same.

'To me it just felt like the right thing to do, because people were there and needed my help, I just did not want to walk away and leave them.

'If I ever need help, I hope and pray that someone would help me.'

Just weeks before they deployed on the training exercise, Trooper Woodward said they had undertaken a team medic course, meaning the skills were fresh in his mind.

Describing the incident, the father-of-one (to 11-week-old Arlo) said there were people 'screaming, shouting, looking for loved ones' and that it was 'a lot of chaos'.

He said his most striking memory was of the first casualty he treated - a man who had been shot in the back, who died in his arms.

'I came across a man who was in distress, in a lot of discomfort - he was on the floor,' he said.

With the man in pain and struggling to breathe, Trooper Woodward discovered he had been shot in his lower left back and proceeded to try and help stop the bleeding.

Concertgoers were pictured fleeing heavy gunfire at the Mandalay Bay Hotel on October 1, 2017

Gunman Stephen Paddock fired more than 1,100 into the dense crowd, killing 58 and injuring 851 in America's deadliest-ever mass shooting.

In his award citation Trooper Woodward's actions alongside American first responders were deemed to have saved lives

'I tried to reassure him that I wasn't going to leave him, he thought I was going to go - I promised I wasn't going to go anywhere,' he said.

'I stayed by him, and a few moments passed and there was no response from him - I found out that he had passed away.'

Six soldiers from 1st Queen Dragoon Guards were caught up and helped in the wake of the shooting.

Trooper Woodward's award citation states he 'displayed conspicuous bravery, outstanding leadership and unwavering selflessness' during the incident.

'He consciously, deliberately and repeatedly advanced towards danger, moving people to safety and treating casualties,' it adds.

'There is no doubt that his assistance to the US first responders saved lives. His actions were exceptional and he is fully deserving of nation-wide recognition.'
An out-of-control brawl has been captured on video as Schoolies celebrations continue to escalate.

Packs of young men were filmed spitting at one another before a violent brawl spilled out onto the streets of Kuta, Bali, in the early hours of Saturday morning.

Shirtless men fall over in the road, throwing wild kicks and punches as traffic comes to a standstill and shocked onlookers stare in disbelief at the chaos.

One man is seen protecting his head with his hands as another three jump on him, attempting to punch him from all angles.

The fight continues until undercover police eventually break it up.

In the same street, Schoolies are also seen riding bikes without helmets.

When a Nine News cameraman asks them why they aren't wearing a helmet, one young woman yells back: 'Because it's f***ing Schoolies b*tch'.

'Yolo, it's Bali, who gives a f**k,' another young man says.

The worrying display comes as it is revealed more Schoolies party-goers are heading overseas without travel insurance.

With more than 6,000 Schoolies descending on Bali's shores, as many as one in five may not have travel insurance at all.

An out-of-control brawl was captured on video (pictured) as Schoolies partygoers show no regard for safety while their celebrations escalate

A man in a white singlet is seen hitting another man as stunned onlookers watch and traffic comes to a standstill

Meanwhile, rowdy Schoolies celebrations have spiralled out of control in Victoria, resulting in as many as 100 heavily armed police descending on young revellers.

Riot squad officers armed with shields and batons were called to the Mornington Peninsula in Melbourne's southeast on Saturday night after uniformed officers were allegedly attacked by swarms of school leavers.

Sergeant Chris Russo told the Herald Sun officers were attending to 'sporadic fighting' and general anti-social behavior among young party-goers.

While the fight continued, Schoolies were seen driving bikes through the chaos. When cameramen asked them why they weren't wearing a helmet, one young woman (pictured right) replied: 'Because it's f***ing Schoolies b*tch'.

But those close to the scene said the cause for unrest was older men - known colloquially as 'toolies' - harrassing teenagers and inciting the violence.

Small fights began to break out within the crowd at 9:30pm, and when police tried to break up the fights, youths threw glass bottles at them.

On the Gold Coast, many Schoolies ended the second week of festivities with a bang, with over 36 people leaving the main event in handcuffs.

Schoolies week continues for its third and final week.

The chaos in Bali comes after rowdy Schoolies celebrations spiralled out of control in Victoria, resulting in as many as 100 heavily armed police descending on young revellers (pictured)

Small fights began to break out within the crowd at 9:30pm, and when police tried to break up the fights, youths threw glass bottles at them from rooftops (pictured)
Crisp packets featuring a caricature of 'Rhodri the coal miner' have been axed after complaints the character offends the Welsh.

The Welsh rarebit-flavoured snacks, sold by REAL Crisps, have been delisted amid suggestions that the concept is 'stereotyping' and 'racist.'

The design features an illustration of 'Rhodri' staring out of the stark black packet - the miner wearing a headlight with coal smeared across his face.

The packets of Welsh rarebit-flavoured snacks, sold by REAL Crisps, have been axed amid suggestions that the concept is cultural appropriation

But the controversy stems from the back of the crisp packet, on which a short description of the coal miner is written.

It said: 'Meet Rhodri. Or Rhondda Rodders to the lads down the Lamp & Helmet.

'Like his father, his father and his father before him, this "Real" Welshman was born to swing a pick.

'But after work he'd rather pick a pack of his favourite Collier's Powerful Welsh Rarebit crisps.'

The company goes on to describe the snack as having a 'taste so strong it'd put a canary on its back.'

The crisps, which were launched four years ago, have now been deemed 'racist'.

Sion Tomos Owen pointed out that there hasn't been a coal mine in Rhondda since the 1980s

Sion Tomos Owen pointed out that there hasn't been a coal mine in Rhondda since the 1980s.

He wrote on Twitter: 'Dear Real Crisps, I know a Rhodri from the Rhondda & not even his "real Welsh" father "swung a pick" because there avn bin a pit in the Rhondda since the 80s (sic).

'No one's buying nostalgia crisps cause your grandfather died of pneumoconiosis.

'Be "Real". Sell crisps not bull****.'

Director Clare Sturges said: 'Shoot the copywriter and sack the marketing agency for this offensive, BS rehash of a tired Welsh stereotype.

Others took to Twitter to express outrage at the packets - suggesting the crisps are 'stereotyping' and 'racist'

'And cull all the other caricatures knocking about the brand. Utter tripe.'

Jean Smith said: 'Not only stereotyping and racist, but implying you can't be a real Welshman unless you worked down a pit!!!'

REAL Crisps, owned by parent company Tayto, has since apologised for the product and said it was meant to be 'tongue-in-cheek,' the Daily Express reported.

Matthew Smith, the director of marketing, said: 'We are sorry for any distress that has been caused by the wording.

'Recent comments pointing out how the story on the packet could be interpreted now seem really obvious but, unfortunately, we didn't pick this up when we were designing the pack.

'We have taken the comments on board and would like to apologise wholeheartedly. We have also started delisting the product.'
Eight paramedics are assaulted each day as shocking figures show 1,400 homes are too dangerous for crews to approach without police protection.

Attacks on emergency crews have risen by 36 per cent in five years - with paramedics reporting being stabbed, throttled and even sexually assaulted.

Alcohol, drugs, and a lack of effective court sentences could be the cause of these attacks, a Sunday Mirror investigation revealed.

Attacks on emergency crews have risen by 36 per cent in five years - with paramedics reporting being stabbed, throttled and even sexually assaulted (file photo)

But it is also likely paramedics are now put at greater risk because they more often work alone through staff shortages, a union boss said.

The figures, collected from ten of England's 11 ambulance trusts, revealed more than 2,800 paramedics were attacked on duty last year.

This is a huge increase from just over 2,000 five years ago.

South East Coast Ambulance service, which covers Kent, Surrey, West Sussex and East Sussex, said the number of assaults on crews had doubled from 113 to 220 in five years.

A huge 69 per cent of ambulance workers in Yorkshire reported sexual assaults last year - with many also being kicked, punched, slapped, and spat at.

Reported attacks in London included asphyxiation, spinal damage, burns, and dislocations.

Around 72 police officers were attacked every day last year on average  or one every 20 minutes (pictured, an attack on a policewoman in south London)

A North West Ambulance service spokeswoman said the area's high number of 'no-go' addresses was down to the trust encouraging paramedics to report violence at work.

The service's area, Greater Manchester, Cheshire, Merseyside, Lancashire and Cumbria, includes more than half of England's 1,400 red-flagged homes.

One paramedic in the area, Amanda Beames, was injured in September after Paulius Zacharovas threatened her inside in an ambulance. He was sentenced to eight months for assault and battery.

Another emergency worker in Manchester was attacked so violently she developed post traumatic stress disorder.

Paula Kudray, who was drunk at the time, punched, kicked, spat and bit the paramedic - she was given a 12-month community order for common assault.

A heroic moped rider (pictured in helmet) eventually manages to get one of the attackers off the officer who had been thrown into the road

Rehana Azam, national secretary for the GMB union, said the figures prove how emergency service crews are 'forced to work under an increased threat of violence.'

She also said cuts to police services often meant back up wasn't available for paramedics - with around 20,000 officers having been axed since 2010.

Ms Azam said: 'Once again it comes down to the Conservatives failed austerity project putting lives in danger.'

Martin Flaherty, managing director of the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives, suggested a rise in alcoholism and drug use may also be behind the surge in violence.

Traffic warden Charlie Weston, 21, said he was lucky to be alive after being dragged off his moped and repeatedly kicked in the head by a gang in Alum Rock, Birmingham, in September

He said: 'Almost none of the perpetrators receive custodial sentences when they are prosecuted for assaulting our staff.'

But a law introduced this year, which created a new offence of assaulting an emergency worker, doubled the maximum sentence for attacking paramedics and police officers from six to 12 months.

The Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Bill, put forward by former Labour minister Chris Bryant, will require judges to consider the fact a victim is an emergency worker as an aggravating factor in more serious assaults  putting it on a par with hate crimes.

Mr Bryant said: 'The growing tide of attacks on emergency workers  including ambulance workers, NHS staff, fire officers, prison officers and police  is a national scandal.

The figures, collected from ten of England's 11 ambulance trusts, revealed more than 2,800 paramedics were attacked on duty last year

'All too often attackers get away with little more than a slap on the wrist. I hope this new law will help put a stop to that attitude.'

The law will also apply to police officers, who were assaulted more than 26,000 times in England in Wales in 2017/18, according to Home Office statistics.

That means around 72 police officers were attacked every day last year on average  or one every 20 minutes.

The total number, however, is likely to be higher because many officers dont report some attacks as crimes.

One such attack occurred last Saturday - when a hooded yob lept into the air to 'kung-fu' kick a policewoman into the path of an oncoming double-decker bus in south west London.

She was attempting to help a colleague who was being attacked himself at the time.
Residents claim a disgusting odour from a local factory is making them sick.

Brisbane suburbs Moorooka and Salisbury have experienced the strange smell for about 20 years, according to local community members.

Locals gathered on Sunday to rally against the owners of the EGR manufacturing plant, claiming the factorys emissions are affecting the health of their community.

Residents have complained of a range of symptoms from the stench including vomiting, difficulty breathing, chest pain, nausea and rashes.

Residents claim they're suffering from a number of symptoms brought on by a local factory which makes the suburb smell like 'cats piss'

Mother-of-four Liz O'Neill said her family has been dealing with the ramifications of the emissions for about five years.

In pictures provided to Daily Mail Australia, Ms O'Neill's children were left with bloodshot and burning eyes - claiming the symptoms all link back to EGR.

'They get peeling around their mouths and it's really bad when they wake up in the morning,' Ms O'Neill said.

Ms O'Neill said the stench smells like 'cat p*ss' and pumps into her property at about 11.30pm and lingers until about 6am or 7am when a breeze comes through.

'It sits down in Moorooka State Primary School, it affects quite a large area,' she said.

'People have moved out of the suburb because it's so bad.'

Residents have complained of a range of symptoms including vomiting, difficulty breathing, chest pain, nausea and rashes

Mother-of-four Liz O'Neill said her family has been dealing with the ramifications of the emissions for about five years (pictured)

Ms O'Neill said her family's experience wasn't the only horror story.

'There's another family, her child was hospitalised with this horrible rash and she went into hospital and they said ''have you had chemical exposure?'',' Ms O'Neill said.

'And she went ''omg yes, we have this stuff pumping through the air'', and it was at the time the smell was really bad.

'We had a rally like this four years ago and there was a doctor there who moved his wife out of Moorooka because she was pregnant and he was so worried about what the long terms affect would be on his family.'

At Sunday's rally about 100 concerned community members gathered to discuss the issue.

'There's another family, her child was hospitalised with this horrible rash and she went into hospital and they said ''have you had chemical exposure?'',' Ms O'Neill said

'Despite this ongoing regulatory failure, in 2017 the QLD Government approved a new Environmental Permit, allowing EGR to increase production with no cap on production levels,' the rally organisers said in a statement.

'In July 2018, the QLD Government gave EGR a taxpayer-funded grant for this expansion, even though EGR was being prosecuted by the ACCC for Cartel-type behaviour.'

Ms O'Neill said the community is 'terrified' about what could happen in the future.

'They've (EGR) just been given a grant by the government, or an advance, of a significant amount of money to expand their operations and emissions which is what we're terrified about,' she said.

'We're already having these problems at the emissions they're doing now, we can only imaging how bad it's going to be when they 10 times increase their emissions.'

On Sunday, local residents rallied against local manufacturer EGR due to their industrial emissions that are affecting the health of the community

Brisbane suburbs Moorooka and Salisbury have experienced a strange odor for about 20 years, according to local community members

Ms O'Neill's husband suffered from eczema for about six months and when he visited a skin specialist he was asked if he had been exposed to a chemical.

Ms O'Neill said she has developed sinus from the emissions and when the smells were particularly bad her sinus turned into pneumonia and she was forced to take off work for two weeks.

The couple live in a great area and don't want to move.

'I live in this beautiful spot, I'm in this pristine location backing onto the forest. It's so beautiful and then I just get this stuff pump into my house,' Ms O'Neill said.

'On the Moorooka grapevine their have been so many people who have been breaking their leases and moving.'

Ms O'Neill said the community is 'terrified' about what could happen in the future

The state government said it is investigating and would be willing to threaten action, Seven News reported.

'This has been an issue that has occurred before, it's regrettable that its flared again and if there's offences that are being committed then I absolutely support penalties being handed out,' said Transport Minister Mark Bailey.

Daily Mail Australia has attempted to contact EGR Group for comment.
Portuguese police are investigating the theory that Madeleine McCann disappeared after waking up and walking out of her parents' Algarve holiday apartment.

Sources close to the probe into the three-year-old's 2007 disappearance say investigators are revisiting the possibility something happened to her after she left the flat - and not inside.

The news comes after Scotland Yard's Operation Grange team told her parents Kate and Gerry McCann they are pursuing two vital new leads and not one 'final line of inquiry'.

The British and Portuguese efforts to find out what happened to the toddler are being carried out separately - but the two are believed to have met to discuss the theory.

Portuguese police are re-investigating the theory Madeleine McCann (pictured) got up and walked out of her parents' Praia da Luz holiday apartment in 2007 before she disappeared

A spokesman for Portugal's Attorney General's Office refused to comment, but a well-placed source said: 'The heads of the two police investigations are corresponding with each other directly and have combined their efforts without resorting to rogatory letters like before.

'A meeting took place recently at the HQ of the General Attorney's Office in Portugal, which was attended by the prosecutor from Portimao who is in charge of the Portuguese inquiry.

'One of the lines of investigation that continues to be pursued is that the child could have walked out of the holiday flat herself.'

Rogatory letters are ones sent to a foreign court to help in the pursuit of justice.

The last of the six sent to the Portuguese police by their British counterparts was answered on October 25 2016, but none have been sent since.

Another well-informed insider added: 'Despite the fact there are two investigations and two different teams, the relationship between both is very healthy and well-informed and benefits from shared intelligence.'

Hinting both forces may have gone cold on the idea the youngster had been the victim of a botched burglary or a paedophile who had forced entry to snatch her, the insider said: 'The theory that Madeleine left the flat of her own accord to go looking for her parents is not something that hasn't been discussed before.

'But the Portuguese process tends to value lines of investigation that are put forward.

'Until we know for sure what happened though, no scenario is likely to be ruled out.'

It comes after Scotland Yard's Operation Grange team told her parents Kate and Gerry McCann (pictured together) they are pursuing two vital new leads and not one 'final line of inquiry'

A third source, referring to the absence of new rogatory letters, said: 'The pattern of direct cooperation that now exists means formal requests for international cooperation are not necessary.

'The Portuguese inquiry is still open, meaning that any new work can be executed as part of that investigation without the needs for rogatory letters.

The theory Madeline may have lost her way in the dark and taken a wrong turn as she went looking for her parents in Praia da Luz was one of the early hypotheses put forward to explain her disappearance.

It has also been suggested a panicking drink-driver might have run her over and sped off with her body before hiding it in the countryside.

The British and Portuguese efforts to find out what happened to the toddler (pictured) are being carried out separately - but they are reported to be working together on this line

Portuguese police have made no secret of their rejection of the theory championed by a British detective about Madeleine being kidnapped by thieves during a bungled burglary.

In July 2014 four Portuguese men faced a barrage of more than 250 questions while being quizzed as arguidos or formal suspects in interviews on the Algarve conducted at Scotland Yard's request.

They were questioned as part of the theory Madeleine, three when she disappeared from Praia da Luz, may have been killed during a botched break-in and her body buried on waste ground nearby.

More recently it has been suggested officers are keen to identify a woman in purple seen hanging round the holiday flat around the time Madeleine went missing.

The Home Office announced last week it would grant an extra 150,000 to Operation Grange to keep the investigation going until spring next year.

It is understood police recently told her parents during a meeting at their Leicestershire home that they were 'hopeful' of a result and were focusing on 'two specific and active' lines of inquiry, not just one as was initially thought.

Scotland Yard has refused to go public with details on what they are looking at.
DUP leader Arlene Foster hinted she could back a 'plan B' Brexit that ministers are said to be considering if Theresa May's deal is destroyed in the Commons.

Mrs Foster told the BBC's Andrew Marr she would consider any plan that did not separate Northern Ireland from the mainland UK.

She insisted the deal negotiated by Mrs May in Brussels, endorsed by EU leaders at an historic summit this morning, clearly breached the red line.

The backup plan being formulated by ministers would be a 'Norway option' in which Britain stays in the European Economic Area (EEA), the Sunday Telegraph reported.

DUP leader Arlene Foster (pictured today on the Marr show) hinted she could back a 'plan B' Brexit that ministers are said to be considering if Theresa May's deal is destroyed in the Commons

Mrs Foster told the BBC's Andrew Marr (pictured) she would consider any plan that did not separate Northern Ireland from the mainland UK

The idea already has support among some Tory MPs and has been promoted by former minister Nick Boles. It also meets some of Labour's tests for a Brexit deal.

Brexiteers insist EEA membership is the worst of all worlds because it would require Britain accepting most EU rules while having no say in how they are written.

But Mrs Foster told Marr: 'I believe we should use the time now to look for a third way, a different way, a better way.'

She added: 'We shouldn't just accept an outcome for the sake of it - we should try to get a deal that is good for everybody.'

The DUP leader said there were no circumstances she would order her 10 MPs to vote for the current deal.

She said: 'There is very much a border down the Irish Sea as a result of this and that's way we can't support this deal.'

She insisted the deal negotiated by Mrs May (pictured at today's EU summit) in Brussels, endorsed by EU leaders at an historic summit this morning, clearly breached the red line

Despite the row, Mrs Foster said the DUP's confidence and supply agreement with the Conservatives remained 'live'.

She again warned that her party would 'review' the arrangement if the Brexit deal gained parliamentary support, but she stopped short of saying she would definitely end the relationship with the Tories in those circumstances.

'We have to see where we are when that vote is taken,' she said.

Asked if she would support the Prime Minister if a parliamentary defeat triggered a confidence vote in the Government, Ms Foster added: 'We will have to see what happens at that time. I think this last couple of weeks should tell all of us that you shouldn't jump ahead of ourselves.

'What we should do is wait to see what develops in that respect.'

Chancellor Philip Hammond (pictured in Belfast on Friday night) is said to be among the ministers who have discussed the 'plan B option' for EEA membership

The backup plan being formulated by ministers would be a 'Norway option' in which Britain stays in the European Economic Area, the Sunday Telegraph reported.

Sources said the plan would give the UK a more definite exit procedure from EU rules.

Such a mechanism would appease Brexiteer fears that the current deal would tie Britain to Brussels rules indefinitely.

However, the Norway option would reportedly not allow an end to free movement of people.
An 'exhausted' Duchess of Sussex has pulled out of a visit to Zambia over fears about the Zika virus - deciding to spend quality time with her mother Doria instead.

Prince Harry will now complete the two-day tour of the African country alone while his pregnant wife rests up with her mother, who is visiting Britain.

Officially, Harry was always supposed to make the trip alone but palace insiders say that it was intended to be a joint visit.

Meghan will not be joining Harry on a two-day tour of Zambia (pictured are the Duke and Duchess of Sussex in Tonga in October)

The Duke, 34, left last night and is expected to attend an official reception with Zambian officials later today.

His trip will also see him visit the Burma Barracks in the capital Lusaka, where he will commemorate the country's World War veterans.

Meghan, 37, is believed to have been told to avoid foreign trips that risk exposing her to the Zika virus.

The Duke's latest foreign trip comes less than a month after he and Meghan (pictured) visited Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Tonga

An insider told the Sun: 'As far as those on the ground in Zambia were concerned both Meghan and Harry were going. But Meghan is exhausted and, understandably, expressed serious concerns about travelling to a country with even the smallest Zika threat.

'In the end it was agreed Harry would go it alone and Meghan could rest-up and spend some quality time with Doria, who is down in the UK visiting.'

The latest foreign trip comes less than a month after the Duke and Duchess of Sussex visited Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Tonga.

In October, Public Health England warned pregnant women not travel to a region of India amid fears they could be struck down with Zika.

Zika can cause microcephaly for children in the womb, causing babies to be born with abnormally small skulls.

Meghan is said to be 'exhausted' and will be spending some quality time with mother Doria instead
An Iraq war veteran has won a court battle against energy drink giant Monster over the name of his new healthy drink.

Daniel Smith launched his business, Thirsty Beasts, to sell low-sugar and caffeine-free drinks to adults and children.

But US-based Monster Energy objected, claiming the name was too similar to the 'Unleash the Beast' and 'Rehab the Beast' slogans on their products.

Daniel Smith (pictured with wife Shona and daughters Elizabeth and Olivia) launched a business called Thirsty Beasts to sell low-sugar and caffeine-free drinks

The company hired top Wall Street lawyers to fight the father-of-two - who is now celebrating following his victory in the two-year legal battle.

Mr Smith, who fought in the Iraq War, can now register Thirsty Beasts as his trademark.

The former soldier said the name came to him when he realised there were few healthy drinks available for his daughters Elizabeth and Olivia.

He said: 'I would be extremely surprised if any regular or new customer of Monster Energy would confuse the brands as there are distinct differences between them.

Monster Energy objected, claiming Thirsty Beasts' name was too similar to the 'Unleash the Beast' and 'Rehab the Beast' slogans on their products

'Consumers are clever enough to know the difference between a healthy drink and an energy drink.

'We don't believe Thirsty Beasts is similar to their branding at all.'

Mr Smith, who lives with his wife Shona and two daughters in Newbury, Berkshire, funded the start up independently.

He has so-far spent 75,000 on the launch, website, and developing the branding.

The father-of-two was ready to unveil the product in 2016 when Monster Energy opposed the trademark application, claiming customers would confuse the brands.

Mr Smith (pictured in Iraq) won the lengthy legal battle and can now register Thirsty Beasts as his trademark

Monster said the words 'Monster' and 'Beast' were too similar to the 'Unleash the Beast' or 'Rehab the Beast' slogans found on the reverse of some of their drinks cans.

The Trademark Office ruled in Mr Smith's favour in November last year - and he was awarded costs of 1,100.

But this wasn't the end of the lengthy legal battle, as Monster Energy appealed the decision.

Monster Energy's parent company, Monster Beverage Corporation, has been involved in similar trademark disputes in the past

The company, however, lost again when the final decision went in Mr Smith's favour.

Now Mr Smith, who claimed Monster Energy was 'hell-bent on ensuring Thirsty Beasts is stopped dead in its tracks', is looking for investors and a base in Newbury.

He said: 'I could have chosen the easy route and dropped this at the beginning, picked a new name and started all over again.

'But I had already committed so much time, effort and my own money into my passion that I simply could not turn my back on this.

'It's also a matter of pure principle - why should they tell me or any company start-up that we don't have the right to exist?'

Mr Smith was helped by European trademark and design attorney Dale Campbell, who filed his case to the Intellectual Property Office.

Monster Energy's parent company, Monster Beverage Corporation, has been involved in similar trademark disputes in the past.

It has been criticised for its policy to sue companies or groups which use the word 'Monster' or the letter 'M' in their marketing.

They dropped a lawsuit against a Vermont micro-brewery which marketed a beer named 'Vermonster' after getting negative publicity.
Shoppers are set to break all Cyber Monday records tomorrow on deals including this dress which is 85 per cent off at Debenhams

A tsunami of online shopping is set to overwhelm retailers and crash websites tomorrow in a 1.4billion Cyber Monday online spree even bigger than Black Friday  amid price cuts of up to 85 per cent.

Spending on Cyber Monday  traditionally one of the busiest internet shopping days of the year - is projected to set a new record.

It will beat the 1.04bn taken on Black Friday, which was down on last year's 1.15bn, a Centre for Retail Research (CRR) study for VoucherCodes has predicted.

Christmas bargain-hunters will splurge online tomorrow after spending the weekend checking prices on high streets, analysts said, adding that many shoppers held their fire on Black Friday because studies showed the special deals often get discounted even further.

But tomorrow shoppers will open their wallets with pay day just days away and only four weeks until Christmas Day.

The peak times for ecommerce traders are expected to be 8am and 6pm, as rush-hour commuters shop by phone. An additional 1.55billion will be spent in stores for a total spend for the day of almost 3bn.

The four-day 8.29bn spending bonanza, from Black Friday to Cyber Monday, will be even bigger than the splurge in the days before and Christmas, CRR and Financial Conduct Authority research showed.

Debenhams has cut the price of one Oasis dress by 85 per cent, from 55 to just 8. And savings of 100 or more can be found across its range from womenswear from Hobbs.

But experts warned of websites crashing tomorrow after shoppers on Friday found the websites including Debenhams, Game and Gym Shark freeze and become unresponsive.

VoucherCodes director Jimmy New predicted sites, many of which implemented a queueing system on Friday, would 'buckle under the pressure' on Cyber Monday.

'Those worried about missing deals due to websites going down should set their alarms for 7am to avoid the virtual crowds,' he warned.

As part of its Black Friday / Cyber Monday offer, Debenhams has slashed the prices of many items of womenswear from Hobbs by more than 100

Gavin Lowther of retail website software firm Visualsoft said retailers would lose out because they are 'not learning from embarrassing website crashes' and failing to get the basics right.

Mintel director of retail research Richard Perks said: 'There are signs shoppers are disillusioned with Black Friday. People may check high street prices over the weekend.'

But, he warned, 'It's crazy that retailers are training shoppers to wait for late November discounts before spending. Retailers are undermining their own business.'

Three days ago, Black Friday saw shoppers queue outside Tesco from 5am, with Carphone Warehouse receiving an order every 4.3 seconds and Currys PC World's computer purchases six times higher than on Black Friday last year.

John Lewis sales peaked from 6-7am in a pre-work rush and Amazon had queues at its pop-up store in Shoreditch, London.

The John Lewis website's most searched-for products were Apple AirPod earphones, down 100 to 269, and Apple Watch Series 3, down 60 to 249. Amazon big-sellers included cut-price classic games and toys such as Monopoly and Lego.

It's not too late to bag a bargain! The best Cyber Monday deals revealed so you can splurge from your sofa TODAY

Flex your fingers and sharpen your online shopping elbows  we're in the middle of Black Friday weekend and it's not too late to grab a bargain.

In fact, we can reveal some of the best deals are yet to come today and tomorrow, on Cyber Monday.

Traditionally, Black Friday is an American shopping extravaganza held on the first day after Thanksgiving  which is celebrated in the US on the fourth Thursday of November.

It's called Black Friday because it was originally the day stores first moved 'into the black' and had enough money to lower prices while still covering their costs.

The term Cyber Monday was coined recently and refers to the first Monday after Black Friday when retailers started noticing a leap in sales online.

Brands then started stretching their discounts across the entire weekend from Black Friday to Cyber Monday, for four days of bumper deals.

This year's Black Friday weekend is the biggest the UK has ever seen  with many sales starting as early as last Monday and not finishing until Tuesday.

Research reveals 64 per cent of Britons will be shopping this weekend, both in stores and online, spending a staggering 8.29 billion  that's 13.41 million per minute  with the average shopper expected to spend between 200 and 300 each.

'Black Friday is definitely no longer just one day,' says retail analyst Zoe Mills. 'The discounts are continuing for over a week, with big names such as Amazon and Currys offering discounts well in advance.

She adds: 'A lot of it is to do with logistics. By spreading out deliveries over several days, retailers are more able to meet demand and avoid disappointing customers, as well as avoiding problems such as websites crashing because they're suddenly flooded with orders.

'Of course, it's also a way of building up hype  for example, some retailers such as Amazon release new deals throughout the day all day, encouraging people to stay online, constantly browsing.'

So, what will we all be buying this year?

'Black Friday has usually been an electrical event, but that's levelling off now. Clothing, health and beauty products will be big as the price points are lower,' explains Mills.

And what's even better about this year's event is you don't have to move from the comfort of your sofa to shop for bargains.

Our guide is packed with the best and the newest online deals  including 50 per cent off everything at Gap starting today, 20 per cent off at Selfridges and, of course, Amazon's top Cyber Monday deals.

So, grab a cup of tea, open up your laptop and get ahead with your Christmas shopping...
Rubbish from around the world is washing up on a beach in the Channel island of Guernsey.

Beach cleaners have found rubbish from South Korea, Argentina, Turkey, Russia, Spain and Malaysia - stark evidence that our shores are becoming a dumping ground for the world's rubbish.

Some of the rubbish that has been found includes heaps of discarded plastic, rubber, netting, polystyrene, utensils, tubing and sacks.

Janet Unitt with the discarded plastic, rubber, netting, polystyrene, utensils, tubing and sacks she found on the beach

Other finds include a can of WD40, which had floated 5,880 miles from South Korea, and a rusty can from Argentina - 7,000 miles away from the isle.

Other finds include a bottle of Russian moisturiser, bottles from Turkey, a food wrapper from Spain and litter from China and Malaysia.

Photographer Richard Lord has been part of a beach cleaning group for 10 years and posted pictures of the washed up rubbish on social media.

Speaking to The Sun he said: 'Beach cleaners have seen products from the US, Spain, Canada, Argentina, France, China, South Korea, Indonesia, Greece, Tunisia, Turkey, Singapore, Nigeria, South Korea, Malaysia, Russia, Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands. Marine debris is a major hazard for wildlife.'

Fellow beach cleaner and Investment company worker Janet Unitt, 40, also posted pictured of items on social media.

She said: 'I remember the first time I found an item from the Far East washed up. It was an empty bottle of orange juice. I was amazed it had come so far.

'Then the more I started to clear rocky headlands, the more I started to regularly find items from Europe and the Far East sadly appearing.

'Why is a tiny island in the middle of the English Channel getting Far Eastern litter? It does make me angry.'

The rubbish is traceable by serial codes and language on labels.

Julian Kirby, of Friends of the Earth, said Coastal communities across the world 'have to deal with daily tides of plastic pollution'.

She added that governments need to introduce legislation 'which will finally stop use of unnecessary plastic'.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison is struggling to win back Coalition voters as primary votes fall for the third poll in a row.

In another Newspoll conducted for The Weekend Australian, results show Coalition falling to a near-record low of 34 per cent.

Their dismal two party preferred performance sits at 55-45 for the second poll in a row as the next federal election could be called as early as March.

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Prime Minister, Scott Morrison (pictured) is struggling to win back Coalition voters as primary votes fall for the third poll in a row

The less-than-stellar results will no doubt reignite allegations that the unceremonious departure of Malcolm Turnbull and the thrashing suffered in the Wentworth by-election has heavily influenced the Victorian results.

The results in the poll, which equals to a loss of 21 seats, mirrors the result for the Victorian Liberal Party after Labor Premier Daniel Andrews shock second term win.

The numbers also suggest that the core Liberal and Nationals voters have abandoned the Coalition as votes swing to One Nation, which showed a significant two-point increase to 8 per cent.

Labor however, maintained their primary vote of 40 per cent and reflecting an improvement of 5.3 per cent in primary vote support since the previous election.

The results in the poll, which equals to a loss of 21 seats, mirrors the result for the Victorian Liberal Party after Labor Premier Daniel Andrews shock second term win (stock image)

The Coalition's primary vote is now down 8.1 percent from the July 2016 result.

But despite the continued decline for the party, its leader, Mr Morrison, seems to have escaped unscathed as he has doubled his lead as preferred prime minister over Bill Shorten in the past fortnight.

Mr Morrison's record four-point jump in approval ratings come as his debate on terrorism and renewable energy plans continue to dominate.

After losing Wentworth in the by-election to independent Kerryn Phelps, Mr Morrison has returned to a net positive approval rating, having previously dipped in negative terrority in the past two polls.

While his approval rating increased by 43 per cent, the number of people who disapproved of his performance fell five points to 42 per cent, now giving the Prime Minister a net positive satisfaction rating on plus one.

While Mr Morrison extended his lead, Mr Shorten lost his grip on preferred prime minister rating, falling two points to 34 per cent.

Mr Shorten was previously the preferred prime minister after the August 24 leadership spill.

However, as the Opposition Leader's approval ratings also raised two points to 37 per cent, the Labor party will argue that it's Mr Shorten's energy policy, which was released last Thursday, is to thank for the slight jump.

The energy policy proposed by Labor last week promises subsidies for household solar batteries and billions of dollars in taxpayer- funded handouts to large-scale renewable energy projects.

Despite the positive results, Mr Shorten was absent for celebrations in his home state on Sunday, with federal Coalition ministers warning him the results will be short lived.

While Mr Morrison extended his lead, Bill Shorten (pictured) lost his grip on preferred prime minister rating, falling two points to 34 per cent. Mr Shorten was previously the preferred prime minister after the August 24 leadership spill
A mother-of-two was impaled after she tried to scale a US-Mexico border fence in San Diego on Friday night.

According to US Border Patrol, the 26-year-old woman from Guatemala was with her two children, aged three and five, when she climbed the fence near the San Ysidro Port of Entry.

The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that she climbed a fence east of the port and where construction crews were putting up a new barrier to replace the old fencing.

The mother lost her balance and fell, and pieces of rebar pierced her side and buttocks.

A 26-year-old mother of two was impaled by pieces of rebar as she attempted to scale a fence on the US-Mexico border wall on Friday night. Pictured: US Marines deploy concertina wire at the border in preparation for the arrival of a caravan of migrants at the San Ysidro border

Border Patrol told the Union-Tribune that it was dispatched to give medical aid around 8.30pm and asked for help from the San Diego Fire Department.

The woman was taken to the hospital by paramedics with non-life threatening injuries.

Her children were also evaluated for trauma and, when they were cleared, were released to the custody of Border Patrol.

No information was available on whether the woman was planning to claim asylum in the US.

Border Patrol Agent Eduardo Olmos told City News Service that the woman told agents she was not part of the migrant caravan that arrived in Tijuana last week.

'Entering our country illegally, particularly over our walls is not only dangerous, but also very foolish,' San Diego's Chief Border Patrol Agent Rodney Scott said on Saturday.

'This woman placed her own life and her children's lives in peril. She could have easily died if not for the quick response by our agents and EMS.'

Officials say the rebar was part of ongoing construction and not related to the US military's recent mission to fortify the fence from the caravan.

Border Patrol Agent Eduardo Olmos told City News Service that the woman told agents she was not part of the migrant caravan that arrived in Tijuana last week. Pictured above, an aerial view of the temporary shelter set up for members of the caravan in Tijuana

Seven-year-old Honduran migrant Genesis Belen Mejia Flores waves an American flag at U.S. border control helicopters flying overhead near the Benito Juarez Sports Center serving as a temporary shelter for Central American migrants, in Tijuana, Mexico

According to the Union-Tribune, the fortification has primarily involved stringing concertina wire at the top of the fence.

As of this weekend, about 5,000 migrants are in Tijuana waiting to enter the US with most of them planning to claim asylum.

Mexico's incoming government has agreed to back the Trump administration's plan to change US border policy by requiring asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their claims move through US courts, the Washington Post reported on Saturday.

Citing Mexican officials and senior members of president-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's transition team, the newspaper said the agreement would break with long-standing asylum rules and mount a new obstacle to Central American migrants attempting to reach the US and escape poverty and violence.

The paper said that, according to the outlines of the plan, asylum applicants at the border will have to stay in Mexico while their cases are processed, potentially ending the system President Donald Trump decries as 'catch and release' that has until now generally allowed those seeking refuge to wait on safer US soil.

Trump has been seeking to block thousands of Central Americans traveling in caravans from entering the US and has ordered that immigrants who enter the country illegally from Mexico are ineligible for asylum.

That order has been temporary suspended by a US judge.
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Brexit protestors in Brussels burned copies of the EU withdrawal agreement as European leaders gave it the green light at today's all-important summit.

Members of the British campaign group Our Future Our Choice were seen setting fire to a copy of the divorce document in the Belgian capital this morning, while others hacked away at them with scissors and shredded them into ribbons.

Elsewhere a man dressed as Brexiteer Boris Johnson wore a 'Stop Brexit' T-shirt and waved a placard saying 'Demand a #FinalSay on the Brexit Deal'.

Demonstrators were also equipped with a blue 'battle bus' similar to the one that notoriously claimed to invest 350million a week in the NHS if the UK left the EU.

This one, however read: 'Dear MPs, 77 per cent of us don't want Brexit,' read the side of the bus. 'Please stand up for our future.'

Belgian police were drafted in as pro-EU campaigners flooded Brussels to protest the signing of the Brexit withdrawal agreement by the 27 EU leaders today. They waved signs saying 'Keep Europe together' and '#People's Vote'

Members of the Our Future Our Choice hacked away at copies of the 585-page Brexit agreement with large scissors

A giant copy of Theresa May's Brexit agreement is pictured being put in a bin or 'giant shredder' in Brussels today

Protestors spray a fire distinguisher after one person set fire to a draft Brexit agreement, as others cut and shredded them

Near the European Commission building the Boris Johnson impersonator was seen jumping on a mini trampoline designed to look like a red 'stop' button, wearing an EU flag.

Another banner read: 'It's time to back Britain not Brexit #FinalSay', while slogan hats branded the words: 'B******* to Brexit'.

Today Mrs May succeeded in getting the EU leaders to sign off her EU withdrawal agreement, which she will have to get passed the House of Commons in a vote scheduled for mid-December.

The 27 national leaders met for just 40 minutes in Brussels today to rubber stamp both the divorce deal and the political declaration outlining a future trade deal. They claimed Brexit is a 'tragedy' and 'not a moment for celebration'.

A blue and yellow Brexit beret is worn by a Remain protestor in Brussels. People's Vote campaigners were out in force today

Members of the British campaign group Our Future Our Choice were seen setting fire to a mock Brexit agreement in the Belgian capital this morning, while others hacked away at them with sledgehammers and shredded it into ribbons

Elsewhere in Brussels a man dressed as Brexiteer Boris Johnson wore a 'Stop Brexit' T-shirt and waved a placard saying 'Demand a #FinalSay on the Brexit Deal'

A pro-European protestor is pictured wearing a superwoman costume with her hair dyed in the colours of the EU as fellow demonstrators wave placards saying #StickTogether

The divorce documents have triggered a furious row in the UK and an attempt to oust Mrs May but the EU's negotiator Michel Barnier insisted MPs must 'take responsibility' and vote the deal today.

He said that after 20-months of painstaking talks, the controversial divorce deal had to be agreed as the basis for rebuilding trust between Britain and Europe.

There are still huge issues over the border between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland and Spain's position on Gibraltar.

MPs will vote on the withdrawal agreement in the House of Commons in December. The exact date of the debate is yet to be decided.

Near the European Commission building the Boris Johnson impersonator was seen jumping on a mini trampoline designed to look like a red 'stop' button

Demonstrators were also equipped with a blue 'battle bus' similar to the one that notoriously claimed to invest 350million a week in the NHS if the UK left the EU
Pantomime bosses have been criticised by dwarf actors for turning to cheaper child actors for Christmas productions of Snow White.

The cost-saving switch has been made for pantomimes in Durham, High Wycombe, Guildford and Liverpool in a move described as 'horrendous' and a 'cop-out.'

In some cases, children donned cartoon-inspired masks as they performed in productions of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

The cast of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, starring Dani Harmer, at the Anvil Arts theatre in Basingstoke

Hayden Parker, a judge for the British Pantomime awards, told the Sunday Times he doesn't like seeing children in the role.

He said: 'Very few productions use dwarf actors nowadays and I've sat through productions where they use children wearing dwarf masks, which is horrendous.'

But Mr Parker, who hosts the Panto podcast, said he believes dwarf actors may have priced themselves out of a job.

He said: 'It boils down the fact that in this cost-cutting day and age dwarfs are expensive.'

Dwarf actors can ask for more than double the minimum recommended pay rate of 471 a week in pantomime performances.

This could leave theatre production companies spending more than 10,000 a week on all seven dwarfs.

Dwarf actors can ask for more than double the minimum recommended pay rate of 471 a week in pantomime performances

Guidelines, on the other hand, state child actors should be paid 50 per cent of this rate - and there is no legal minimum for those under the age of 16.

It was revealed in 2012 that child actresses playing the lead role in Matilda on the West End earned as little as 60 per show - but it is unknown what the current children are paid.

The Epstein theatre in Liverpool, the Guildford Spectrum, The Gala in Durham and the Wycombe Swan will all feature children as the seven dwarfs in productions of Snow White this year.

The Epstein Theatre in Liverpool will feature children as the seven dwarfs in its pantomime production this Christmas (pictured, the cast starring Kim Woodburn, centre)

Another production, at the Towngate Theatre in Basildon, Essex, has written dwarfs out of its show entirely.

Dean Whatton, who appeared as a dwarf in Snow White at the Bristol Hippodrome, said anyone else in the role 'destroys the magic.'

Steve Redford, who runs the Minimen agency for dwarf actors, said he has stopped supplying actors to pantomimes because of plummeting demand.

He said: 'A lot of dwarf actors do think it is stealing their work. As someone who has been in the industry a long time, I think it takes the magic out of the production. When you speak to audiences afterwards, they say it is better when dwarfs are in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The clue is in the name.'
A Houston realtor is under fire after she used half-naked fitness models to help promote a listed home.

Kristin Gyldenege wanted to do something out of the box to help get one of her homes more attention on a listing website.

So Gyldenege hired two fitness models to act as a couple in the home, posing them in various photos where the man was shirtless and the woman was in her underwear.

In one photo the woman is topless and only wearing panties and knee-high socks as the man gives her a massage

Houston realtor Kristin Gyldenege is under fire after she used half-naked fitness models to help promote a listed home

Gyldenege wanted to do something out of the box to help get the home more attention on a listing website

Other photos feature the couple in the kitchen and the woman in the bathroom and laundry room.

'I didn't want anything slutty,' Gyldenege told the Houston Chronicle.

'I wanted to represent a young couple who was on top of their game all the way around and who had just moved into this great house.'

Gyldenege said she felt it looked more realistic to show the young couple only partially clothed while they went about daily tasks in their home.

So she hired two fitness models to act as a couple in the home, posing them in various photos where the man was shirtless and the woman was in her underwear

Gyldenege said she felt it looked more realistic to show the young couple only partially clothed while they went about daily tasks in their home

Gyldenege uploaded the pictures to Har.com, a website for Texas real estate, and they were picked up by multiple listing services

She uploaded the pictures to Har.com, a website for Texas real estate, and they were picked up by multiple listing services.

Gyldenege, who received permission from the homeowner before posting the photos, said Har.com took down the images after receiving more than 100 complaints.

But the photos have definitely helped bring more attention to the home, which is in a flood-prone neighborhood in Conroe.

Gyldenege said the pictures, which she took herself, helped her book six showings the day after they went live.

Gyldenege, who received permission from the homeowner before posting the photos, said Har.com took down the images after receiving more than 100 complaints

Gyldenege (pictured) said the pictures, which she took herself, helped her book six showings the day after they went live

Views on the listing for the home, which had been on the market for 40 days before the pictures went up, also jumped from less than 1,000 to more than 20,000.

'In the end, that's what matters - doing what's best for my client,' she said.

While Gyldenege hasn't received any serious offers on the house yet, she said she doesn't regret her edgy idea.

'[Potential buyers] may not look like [the models],' she said. 'But if they think they could look like that in this house, they would be more attracted to at least see it.'
Australian taps are allowed to contain 18 times more lead than those in the US but the cost of replacing them could cost householders billions.

The revelation comes after an urgent lead poisoning warning was issued by the Department of Health in July, with infants said to be the most at risk from contaminated tap water.

As much as 4.5 per cent lead is allowed in Australian fittings currently, compared to just 0.25 per cent in the US and Canada.

Australian taps are allowed to contain 18 times more lead than those in the US but the cost of replacing them could cost householders billions (stock image)

The World Health Organisation has warned even low levels of lead poisoning can lead to serious neurological damage, particularly in children.

The government has urged Australians to run their cold water taps for 30 seconds or more before drinking to help avoid as part of a new 'guidance statement'.

But for those households looking to completely eradicate lead from their drinking water, the cost of buying lead-free taps could cost a collective $2.7 billion.

The Daily Telegraph estimated that if each of Australia's 9.5 million households was to buy Bunnings' cheapest lead-free tap - costing $280 including installation - the total bill would reach the eye-watering figure.

The official advice has, however, recommended the amount of lead in standard Australian plumbing products be changed to fit international norms.

The risk of poisoning, according to the report by enHealth, will vary 'depending on the amount of water consumed', but Australians are urged to run their taps for 30 seconds or more before drinking.

The guidance also warned babies who drink water prepared with lead-contaminated water are at a higher risk because of the large volume of water they consume compared to the size of their bodies.

The World Health Organisation has warned even low levels of lead poisoning can lead to serious neurological damage, particularly in children, and the government is now urging Australians to run their taps for 30 seconds or more before drinking (stock image)

Macquarie University Dr Paul Harvey told the publication that it's 'something that has been a problem for years' and said the public should have been better informed.

Tap water is considered lead-free by most Australians because health regulations require routine monitoring of lead levels in the water.

But the guidance statement says that lead is still used to manufacture plumbing products - including the the brass fittings used for taps, the statement read.

'These products are widely used in drinking water systems in homes, buildings and associated water supply points, such as drinking water fountains.'

The risks were mostly with older homes because lead-based solder is no longer permitted to be used by licensed plumbers in Australia.

LEAD POISONING IN INFANTS Children younger than six years old are most at risk from developing lead poisoning, with the most extreme cases proving fatal. Mental and physical development can be stunted as a result of lead poisoning, with even small amounts of lead causing complications. While it can be difficult to spot the early signs of lead poisoning, parents should be aware of these symptoms: Developmental delay, learning difficulties, irritability, loss of appetite, weight loss, sluggishness and fatigue, abdominal pain, vomiting, constipation, hearing loss, seizures and eating things, such as paint chips, that aren't food Source: The Mayo Clinic Advertisement

Lead dissolves into water from some brass plumbing fittings 'particularly where water has been sitting in contact with these brass plumbing products for long periods'.

'Hot water systems may result in more dissolved metals in water, including lead, compared with cold water systems,' the statement said.

'Rainwater systems may also dissolve more metals from plumbing products. The slight acidity of rainwater can make rainwater corrosive to plumbing.'

enHealth is supporting all efforts to reduce the risks of lead poisoning by encouraging the updating of plumbing products - which is being overseen by plumbing regulatory agencies, the statement said.

Householders are warned lead dissolves into water from some brass plumbing fittings 'particularly where water has been sitting in contact with these brass plumbing products for long periods' (stock image)

Public drinking fountains also carry some risk according to the guidance statement because in some cases water could have been sitting in the piping stagnant for an extended time (stock image)

Public drinking fountains also carry some risk according to the guidance statement because in some cases water could have been sitting in the piping stagnant for an extended time and residents are advised to flush the water.

'It is therefore good practice to flush the public drinking water fountains and publicly accessible taps for about 30 seconds to draw fresh water to the outlet,' the statement said.

Property owners and building managers are also advised that they are responsible for knowing the condition of the plumbing in their properties.

'Best practice measures should be adopted to maintain the quality of water, including a regular flushing regime to remove stagnant water and the progressive replacement of lead-containing plumbing products,' the statement said.

There is no need for households to have their water tested for lead.
The face of the only person to have ever assassinated a British Prime Minister has been revealed for the first time through a facial reconstruction.

John Bellingham, an angry businessman, shot dead PM Spencer Perceval in the lobby of the Palace of Westminster in May 1812, before later being convicted and hanged.

The assassin's skull has been on display at the Queen Mary Pathology Museum in London and experts have now used it to reveal what the killer looks like - 206 years later.

Forensic experts at the Queen Mary University of London used computer software to reveal John Bellingham's face (pictured) for the first time - the only person to have killed a British PM

A portrait of Spencer Perceval who became British Prime Minister in October 1809 and was killed less than three years later

Forensic experts at the Queen Mary University of London used computer software and a database of high-res photos to create the haunting image.

Prime Minister Perceval was shot dead by Bellingham while on the way to the House of Commons on May 11, 1812.

The disgruntled businessman shot him in the heart with the Prime Minister's last words believed to be: 'I've been murdered'.

After the killing, Bellingham sat down on a bench and calmly waited to be arrested.

He was hanged for the murder just a week later.

Bellingham's assassination of Perceval came after years of trying to get the British government to redress the financial losses he'd suffered in Russia.

They used the assassin's skull (pictured), which has been on display at the Queen Mary Pathology Museum in London

Bellingham was jailed in Russia in 1803 after he tried to leave the country without repaying his debts.

He accrued the debts after a business venture broke down - though he claimed that the authorities were mistaken.

Bellingham returned to the UK in 1809 after securing his release and petitioned for the government to compensate him - which they politely refused to do.

The research team used a large database of high resolution photographs of other human faces to create Bellingham's own facial features (pictured is a drawing of the killer)

Eight years later, he waited in the lobby of parliament with a gun in a secret pocket in his coat before shooting Perceval dead.

The university came into possession of the skull because the punishment at that time for murder was to be hanged and anatomised.

The research team used a large database of high resolution photographs of other human faces to then create Bellingham's own facial features.

Each specific facial feature was adjusted to fit with the underlying anatomy of Bellingham's skull and facial muscles.

Finally, computer software combined the two together to complete the face.

Conservative MP Henry Bellingham (pictured in 1989) is believed to be a descendant of John

Hew Morrison, forensic expert behind the portrait said: 'I found the skull to be rather unusual looking, with quite a bulbous cranium and noticeable asymmetry of the chin.

'John Bellingham would have had a long, narrow, slightly downturned nose.

'This was apparent when I saw the skull as the nasal aperture was indeed quite significant in length with a downward nasal spine.

'I gave him a neutral expression as I treated this like any other facial reconstruction. Despite committing the crime that he was found guilty of and subsequently executed for, I did not feel the need to make him look bad or mean in any way.'

They later added sideburns to the face because of old drawings that showed him with them.

The hair and eye colour were added later as they can't be determined through a skull.

Bellingham is pictured wearing a Jabot-type necktie and a dark woolen overcoat with his collar turned up, the style that men dressed in at the time.

He is believed to have been 42 when he was hanged.

Current Conservative MP for North West Norfolk, Henry Bellingham, is believed to be a descendant of the businessman.
French President Emmanuel Macron has vowed to force Britain into the Irish border backstop if it does not give up access to UK fishing waters.

Mr Macron said maintaining the customs union would be used as 'leverage' in the next phase of talks on the final UK-EU trade deal.

Prime Minister Theresa May has insisted Britain will leave the customs union, which is essential to striking trade deals, after Brexit.

But under the divorce deal agreed in Brussels today this can only happen if there is an alternative for keeping open the Irish border.

If France refuses to agree a trade deal because of a dispute over fishing, entering the backstop - which is hated by Brexiteers, Unionists and the DUP - could be inevitable.

Mr Macron's intervention sparked a ferocious backlash from both sides of the Brexit divide.

French President Emmanuel Macron (pictured today in Brussels) has vowed to force Britain into the Irish border backstop if it does not give up access to UK fishing waters

The French President made his inflammatory remarks during his press conference at the end of today's summit in Brussels

Mr Macron (pictured right today with other EU leaders including the Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, left) has vowed the EU will take a tough line on fishing in trade talks

At a press conference in Brussels today, Mr Macron said: 'An agreement assumes that each side promotes its position.

What happens now the Brexit deal has been signed off in Brussels? Brexit passed a major milestone in Brussels today as EU leaders agreed the negotiated divorce deal. This is what the next steps are: Tomorrow, November 26: Theresa May will make statement to MPs on the summit and launch her push to win the 'meaningful vote' on the deal. She can expect another furious response from MPs. Around December 11: The meaningful vote itself. This is the absolutely crucial moment and could make or break the Prime Minister and her deal. MPs will vote after a debate that could last as long as five days. If the vote carries, Mrs May survives and Brexit is on track as she plans. If she loses, she could resign. December 13-14: The next EU summit. If the deal has been rejected by MPs, Mrs May could use this to try and secure new concessions. January 2019: The European Parliament is due to vote on the deal - but will only do so if it has been agreed in the House of Commons. March 29, 2019: Exit day. This is written in law so unless there is a dramatic shift Britain will leave the EU, deal or no deal. Advertisement

'We as 27 have a clear position on fair competition, on fish, on the subject of the EU's regulatory autonomy, and that forms part of our lines for the future relationship talks, which is a lever, because it is in our mutual interest to have this future relationship.

'I can't imagine that the desire of Theresa May or her supporters is to remain for the long term in a customs union, but to define a proper future relationship which resolves this problem.'

He added: 'It is leverage because it is important as to our future relationship and I do not understand that Mrs May and those who support her very much wanted to stay in the Customs Union, they would rather favour new rules.' '

A joint EU statement set out how fisheries was a 'priority' in the next phase of talks.

It said: 'A fisheries agreement is a priority issue, and should be based on principles of reciprocal access and existing quotas.'

A future fisheries agreement 'must be concluded well before the end of the transition period' after Brexit, which should last until the end of 2020 but may be extended for up to two years, the statement said.

'For us access to British waters is a priority,' said a source close to French President Emmanuel Macron.

Brexiteer Ross Thomson said: 'There can be no ifs and no buts on returning full sovereignty over our waters.

'We must decide who fishes in our waters, when they fish and what they fish. Fishing is still a clear red line for me which is why I cannot support the PMs deal.'

Prime Minister Theresa May (pictured today in Brussels) has insisted Britain will leave the customs union, which is essential to striking trade deals, after Brexit

British fishermen (including at Brixham Harbour, pictured) have been promised UK control of fishing waters after Brexit

Remain supporter Sarah Wollaston said: 'So many false promises were made to the fishing community by Brexiteers.

'Future Framework spells out the Brexit reality that access & quotas will be in the context of the overall economic partnership.

'This is not what fisherman were led to expect.'

Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said the EU position could not be 'squared' with promises made by Scottish Tories to fishing communities.

The divorce agreement approved by EU leaders on Sunday assures that European fishermen will retain access to British territorial waters during the transition period.

During the transition, Britain will continue to apply EU rules and contribute to its budget, but without participating in its decision-making.

Scottish Tory Brexiteer Ross Thomson said: 'There can be no ifs and no buts on returning full sovereignty over our waters'

Remain supporter Sarah Wollaston said: 'So many false promises were made to the fishing community by Brexiteers'

Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said the EU position could not be 'squared' with promises made by Scottish Tories to fishing communities

May tells MPs it is their 'DUTY' to back Brexit deal because constituents' jobs depend on it as she vows to fight 'with all my heart' in Commons as Juncker warns it's 'only deal possible'

Theresa May told MPs to do their 'duty' and vote for the Brexit deal as she promised she will fight 'with all my heart' to get it through the Commons.

After an historic Brussels summit to seal the deal, the Prime Minister said the deal took back control of 'our laws, borders and money' while protecting jobs and security - meaning it was in the 'national interest'.

At a press conference to mark the landmark day on the road to Brexit, Mrs May began a two week battle to persuade fractious MPs the deal was the best available - but the PM's hopes look bleak.

Theresa May promised the country she will fight 'with all my heart' to get her divorce through the Commons as she held a press conference to close a landmark day in Brussels (pictured)

Mrs May told her MPs: 'I think we have a duty as a Parliament ... to deliver Brexit.'

The Prime Minister repeated her vow to never allow a second referendum on Brexit while she is No 10 - but again swerved questions about whether she will quit if her deal is voted down in Parliament.

What has been agreed in Brussels today? The Brexit deal comes in two parts, both of which were signed off in Brussels today: The Withdrawal Agreement is a 585-page legal text that sets out the terms of the UK's departure. Among its contents are arrangements for the contentious Northern Ireland backstop and the 39 billion 'divorce bill'. It is a full blown treaty which must be written into both UK and EU law to a apply. There is also a political declaration agreed between Britain and the EU. The 26-page document sets out a framework for the future relationship between the UK and the EU. It outlines a spectrum of possible trade deals and what each option might mean. The final deal will be subject to years more negotiation in Brussels. Advertisement

Echoing the leadership of the EU, Mrs May insisted that what she was bringing home was the 'best deal possible' and warned her rebels that voting no would 'open the door to even more division and uncertainty'.

She said: 'Crucially it is a deal that delivers on the vote. I think this is so important to me: the people voted for Brexit ... it's, in a sense, a duty for their politicians, who asked them to make that choice, to then deliver on that choice.'

EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker warned MPs the Brexit divorce is the 'only deal possible' today as Brussels signed off on the plans. Effectively telling MPs to take it or leave it, Mr Juncker used his press conference to underline Mrs May's fight in the Commons.

Mr Juncker said anyone hoping to vote down the deal and get a better deal 'will be disappointed', while EU leaders put on a united front to insist there was nothing else on the table.

EU Council President Donald Tusk insisted Britain and the EU would 'remain friends until the end of days and one day longer' as the bloc agreed the terms of its first ever exit.

The 27 national leaders met for just 40 minutes today to rubber stamp both the divorce deal and the political declaration outlining a future trade deal. They claimed Brexit is a 'tragedy' and 'not a moment for celebration'.

Jean-Claude Juncker (left at a press conference with Donald Tusk and Michel Barnier today) warned MPs the Brexit divorce is the 'only deal possible' today as Brussels signed off on the plans at an historic summit

The divorce documents have triggered a furious row in the UK and an attempt to oust Mrs May but the EU's negotiator Michel Barnier insisted MPs must 'take responsibility' and vote the deal today.

He said that after 20-months of painstaking talks, the controversial divorce deal had to be agreed as the basis for rebuilding trust between Britain and Europe.

Mrs May's troubles have been escalated by a row over Gibraltar as she was forced to hand Spain the chance to claim a victory over the Rock. Spain's PM Pedro Sanchez claimed today 'we all lose with Brexit but Spain wins on Gibraltar'.

As she begins her new battle, Mrs May's hopes of winning the Commons vote in around two weeks look bleak. The package is opposed by more than 90 of her own MPs, her DUP allies and the Opposition Labour Party.

The Prime Minister has vowed to take her deal out to the country in a bid to persuade MPs but since it was published opposition has mounted rather than diminished.

The DUP hinted today at backing for an alternative deal while former PM Tony Blair insisted the widespread loathing of the package fuelled demands for a new public vote.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel (pictured today in Brussels) was among the EU leaders who voted for the Brexit deal today

Theresa May sat alongside Donald Tusk at today's historic summit (pictured) to finalise the terms of Britain's divorce ahead of the crucial Commons vote

Following today's summit, speaking on his LBC show, Nigel Farage condemned the deal.

He said: 'I've decided on balance, no. I'm going to vote against it.'

'This deal is an absolute disaster,' he said.

'It's a betrayal of everything we voted for in Brexit and if the risk was that the other side could force us to vote again, right now I think that risk is worth it.'

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said: 'This is a bad deal for the country.

'It is the result of a miserable failure of negotiation that leaves us with the worst of all worlds. It gives us less say over our future, and puts jobs and living standards at risk.

'That is why Labour will oppose this deal in Parliament. We will work with others to block a no-deal outcome, and ensure that Labour's alternative plan for a sensible deal to bring the country together is on the table.

Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt admitted Mrs May could be doomed if she was defeated.

Pressed by the BBC's Andrew Marr on whether the Government could collapse, he said: 'It's not possible to rule out anything.'
A 54-year-old man will face court accused of having sexual intercourse with a seven-year-old girl in a dance studio toilet in Sydney's south earlier this month.

Police will allege that Anthony Sampieri, 54, physically and sexually assaulted the girl in the bathroom of a Kogarah dance studio, assaulting a man and stabbing another who came to her aid.

About 7.55pm on Thursday November 15, two men confronted and attempted to detain Sampieri after concerns were raised for the girl's welfare.

A struggle ensued, resulting in one of the men being left with several stab wounds.

Sampieri was taken to hospital, where he remained under police guard and in the custody of Corrective Services NSW during treatment.

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Anthony Sampieri (centre) will face more than 10 charges after he was arrested by detectives from the Child Abuse and Sex Crimes Squad at Maroubra Police Station on Sunday afternoon

The 54-year-old physically and sexually assaulted the girl in the bathroom of a Kogarah dance studio, assaulting a man and stabbing another who came to her aid, police will allege (pictured is the studio's bathroom)

After being deemed fit by doctors, Sampieri was transported to Maroubra Police Station on Sunday afternoon where he was arrested by detectives from the Child Abuse and Sex Crimes Squad.

An investigation led by detectives from the Child Abuse and Sex Crimes Squad under Strike Force Berliet resulted in a string of charges.

Among the charges are sexual intercourse with a child under 10 years old, wounding or grievous bodily harm with intent, aggravated kidnapping and attempting, or assaulting with intent, to have sexual intercourse with a child under 10.

Additional charges included choking a person with an intent to commit an indictable offence, using a child under 14 to make child abuse material, aggravated act of indecency being filmed, aggravated indecent assault and assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

The man was refused bail to appear at Waverly Local Court via video link on Monday.

Investigations under Strike Force Berliet are continuing.

Sampieri (left), who had been under police guard in hospital, was transferred to Maroubra Police Station just before 4pm after doctors determined he was fit to be released
Adults 65 and older will soon outnumber children for the first time in America's history, it has been revealed.

The US Census Bureau released new projections this year that showed the country's changing - and aging - demographics.

By 2030 all baby boomers will be older than age 65 and one in every five Americans will be retirement age.

The Census Bureau said that deaths will 'rise substantially' between 2020 and 2050, meaning the country's population will naturally grow very slowly.

Adults 65 and older will soon outnumber children for the first time in America's history, the US Census Bureau has revealed

Projections also revealed that America will become more racially and ethnically diverse, with the country's share of mixed-race children set to double.

The non-Hispanic White-alone population is projected to shrink from 199 million in 2020 to 179 million in 2060.

Meanwhile, the 'Two or More Races' population will be the fastest growing over the next several decades.

While the projections did touch on race, this time the Census Bureau did not mention when white Americans will fall below half the population.

'It was just us getting back to sticking to data,' a Bureau spokesman told the New York Times.

The Census Bureau made headlines in 2008 when it projected that non-Hispanic whites would drop below half the population by 2042.

And three years ago the Bureau released a new graphic that showed white Americans would lost their majority status by 2044.

The Census Bureau said that deaths will 'rise substantially' between 2020 and 2050, meaning the country's population will naturally grow very slowly

Many academics criticized how the Bureau was presenting its data, fearing it could stoke white nationalism.

Former Census Bureau director Kenneth Prewitt was so concerned by the graphic that he organized a meeting with the chief US statistician.

'Statistics are powerful,' Prewitt said. 'They are a description of who we were as a country.'

'If you say majority-minority, that becomes a huge fact in the national discourse.'

A 2014 study also found that white Americans who were assigned to read about the changing demographic were more likely to report negative feelings toward racial minorities.

While the projections did touch on race, this time the Census Bureau did not mention when white Americans would fall below half the population as it did in 2014 (pictured)

They were also more likely support restrictive immigration policies and more likely to believe that white people would lose status and face discrimination in the racial shift.

A number of researchers don't even agree with the Bureau's projections, arguing that it uses an outdated classification system.

New York sociologist Richard Alba said the Bureau classifies someone as a minority even if they have both white and minority ancestry and may identify as white or partly white.

'The census data is distorting the on-the-ground realities of ethnicity and race,' he said. 'There might never be a majority-minority society, it's unclear.'

A study published earlier this year also found that presenting the Bureau's data differently can have a much more positive reaction.

It discovered that when people read about how the white category was getting bigger by absorbing multiracial people through intermarriage, they did not report negative reactions to the Bureau's projections.
A tiny robot hit the streets of Milton Keynes as supermarket giant Co-op trialled an automated home delivery service.

The self-driving robot, created by Starship Technologies, was pictured navigating the town's numerous roundabouts as it delivered groceries on Friday.

The pods were created by two of Skype's founders to carry out a number of logistical tasks - and have the ability to travel up to two miles.

The self-driving robot, created by Starship Technologies, was pictured navigating Milton Keynes' numerous roundabouts on Friday

The pods were created by two of Skype's founders to carry out a number of logistical tasks - and have the ability to travel up to two miles

They can avoid obstacles while negotiating people as they move with a compartment full, in this case, of food.

Milton Keynes is set to become one of the first areas to experience automated delivery on a large scale.

It was confirmed earlier this year that the firm had partnered with the Co-op to deliver groceries in the town.

The service is available through a mobile phone app, where residents can choose to have packages delivered to an address of their choice.

They can avoid obstacles while negotiating people and cars as they move with a compartment full of groceries

Milton Keynes is set to become one of the first areas to experience automated delivery on a large scale

It was confirmed earlier this year that the firm had partnered with the Co-op to deliver groceries in the town, with trials taking place in May

Customers will pay a monthly subscription fee of 7.99 for an unlimited number of deliveries.

The supermarket ran a series of practice deliveries throughout a four-week period in May.

A store near Starship's headquarters in Monkston used the six-wheeled 'ground drones' to deliver around 200 different products.

Customers can pay a monthly subscription of 7.99 for an unlimited number of deliveries

Customers paid the usual in-store price plus 1 for the delivery which went directly to Starship.

A Co-op member of staff - known as a 'picker' - selected the items and put them in a cooler box compartment inside the robot.

The machine drives using GPS and customers are sent a unique code to their smartphones so they can access their shopping.

Starship's bot is purely functional with a large compartment to hold deliveries, the equivalent size of two grocery bags.

Starship Technologies has also worked with JustEat and has made 'thousands of deliveries' to customers in London.

The slow-moving bots have also been trialled across the world, including in Hamburg, Washington and California, delivering everything from groceries to takeaway pizza.

The commercial roll-out is an extension of a pilot scheme which began on a 4.3 acre campus in Mountain View in February.

Each vehicle is 55cm (22 inches) high by 70cm (28 inches) long.

The service is available through a mobile phone app, where residents can choose to have packages delivered to an address of their choice

Starship's bot is purely functional with a large compartment to hold deliveries, the equivalent size of two grocery bags

Starship Technologies has also worked with JustEat and has made 'thousands of deliveries' to customers in London

It has a secured compartment where parcels with a maximum weight of 10kg (22 pounds) can be transported, accessible to consumers via a link generated by a smartphone app.

They have six wheels and can travel at speeds up to 4mph (6.4kmh) per hour.

If a thief attempts to tamper with the robot, or snatch it, the operator can take over - talking directly to the wrongdoer and sending police to the drone's location.

The drone's nine cameras can also capture the criminal's face.

A delivery robot travels along a pavement as it makes a home delivery of groceries from the Co-op food store

The slow-moving delivery bots have also been trialled across the world, including in Hamburg, Washington and California

The company said in May it hopes to launch 1,000 bots to corporate and academic campuses in Europe and the US within the year

In any case, the bot's 'cargo trunk' is sealed throughout the trip - only the customer can open it using a specific app upon the drone's arrival.

The app also allows shoppers to track the robot's location in real time.

One of Starship's main selling points is the battery-powered bot's zero direct CO2 emission, as opposed to the pollution brought about but too many, short shopping car trips.

The company said in May it hopes to launch 1,000 bots to corporate and academic campuses in Europe and the US within the year.
Criminals from the as old as 16 could soon escape charges scot-free if a radical new plan is passed by Australia's top lawmakers.

Federal Attorney General Christian Porter has signed off on a 12-month investigation where he and his state colleagues will assess the possibility of raising the age of criminal responsibility from its current age of ten.

The startling plan is part of measures aimed at reducing the number of kids in juvenile detention.

The plan would extend the current law in place that sees kids under the age of 10 banned from prosecution as they have not yet developed a full understanding of right and wrong

Current laws means children under the age of 10 cannot be prosecuted based on the assumption they have not yet developed a full understanding of right and wrong.

The Attorney General has discussed the possibility of raising the age to as high as 16, depending on how severe the crime is, The Daily Telegraph reports.

Human rights groups have long rallied for the age to be raised after research showed that adolescent brain development shows kids don't have the same ability to determine reasoning.

They also claim that the earlier someone enters the justice system, the more likely they are to become repeat offenders.

NSW Children's Court president Peter Johnstone told the NSW inquiry that he is supportive of the idea, however, only up to the age of 12.

There are currently around 300 kids aged ten-17 in juvenile justice detention in NSW.

With his support, Mr Johnston wants to see a process implemented that see's the child understand why what they've done would normally be considered a crime.

'Otherwise, they are only going to continue to do what they are doing, come back at the age of 12 and commit worse crimes' he said.

In all Australian states, the current law states that prosecution of children aged up to 14 can only proceed if if it successfully argued the child understood their actions.

There are currently around 300 kids aged ten-17 in juvenile justice detention in NSW.
A 41-year-old man succumbed to his wounds a week after being shot eight times when checking up on an neighbor's house following a burglary attempt at a nearby home.

Patrick Smith, a married father of a five-year-old boy from Barstow, California, died on the evening of Thanksgiving, according to the Daily Press of Victorville.

On November 14, a burglary call came into police at a nearby residence. During the incident, Patrick Smith was asked by an elderly neighbor to check on her property after she heard noises outside, according to police.

'Patrick and I waited out front of our home for a while until we thought everything was clear. An elderly neighbor that lives next door asked me if Patrick could come and check her house because she was scared to go back in,' wrote Elizabeth Smith, Patrick's wife, on his GoFundMe page.

'Patrick being a gentleman went and checked her home which was clear but once he entered the backyard the suspect shot Patrick 8 times.'

Elizabeth Smith (right) provided the tragic update that her husband Patrick Smith (left) succumbed to his multiple gunshot wounds on Thanksgiving Day

Smith was on one side of her home when the fleeing suspect, identified by Barstow police as 18-year-old Leslie Hawkins, is thought to have confronted him.

Officers arrived on the scene after the shots were fired where they found four teen suspects in the vicinity, one with stolen property on his person, and the wounded Smith.

Police also found a gun that they say matched the caliber of bullets fired at the shooting scene.

The victim was airlifted to Arrowhead Regional Medical Center where he was in critical condition, the Daily Press reported.

Leslie Hawkins, 18, seen on his wanted poster, is sought by Barstow Police as the suspect in the shooting of Patrick Smith on November 14

'He went in with 8 gunshot wounds, a broken thumb/wrist, fractured jaw, split tongue, missing teeth, two collapsed lungs, and almost completely void of blood,' Elizabeth wrote detailing his graphic injuries.

'His first surgery went well, they got him stable through blood transfusions, removing 3 ft of intestines, and repairing his colon. In his second surgery they removed his appendix, stitched his face and tongue, and were finally able to get him off breathing ventilators.

Initially it appeared that he might survive his ordeal, but on Thursday night, Patrick Smith expired.

'He was making a miraculous recovery and was surprising doctors and staff every day with his progress,' Elizabeth posted. 'On Thanksgiving Day, surrounded by family, his health took a turn for the worst.'

'My husband succumbed to his injuries early afternoon Thanksgiving Day,' Elizabeth wrote in the latest update. 'His heart and body could not longer take the stress.'

The GoFundMe campaign has since switched to collecting funds for outstanding medical and funeral expenses, the total as of Sunday was up to nearly $38,000.

The GoFundMe campaign was initially set up to aid in the 41-year-old father's recovery, but unfortunately will have to go towards outstanding medical bills and funeral expenses

Elizabeth, for her part, is not surprised at the outpouring of generosity.

'He's best friends with everyone he knows,' his wife told the Daily Press. 'He draws people in. He doesn't care if you're a janitor, like him, or whatever you are. I'm always like, 'how are you so amazing all the time?'

The four black teens arrested during the break-in were booked into the San Bernardino County High Desert Juvenile Detention Center on a burglary charge.

Barstow police are still searching for the suspect, Leslie Hawkins, who they say can be seen fleeing the area of the shooting on a surveillance video.

Elizabeth Smith described Patrick as 'everything' to her and her son and can't imagine her 'life without this man'

Anyone with information regarding the investigation or Leslie Hawkins can contact Detective Thomas Lewis at (760) 255-5187.

Anonymous tipsters can contact We-Tip at 1-800-78-CRIME (27469) or leave information on the website at www.wetip.com.
The father of a black man killed by a police officer during an Alabama mall shooting says his son had a permit to carry a weapon for self-defense, after police mistakenly thought he was the suspect.

Meanwhile, the shooter still remains at large after Emantic 'EJ' Bradford Jr., 21, was killed by police who believed he was the gunman who injured two people in the shooting at the Riverchase Galleria mall in Birmingham on Thanksgiving night.

Saturday a group of 200 protesters took to the mall to demand answers from Hoover Police.

On Saturday night, Bradford's father, Emantic 'EJ' Bradford Sr., told the Associated Press his son was 'a very good kid' and added that it was hurtful police portrayed his son as the shooter.

'They were so quick to rush to judgment. I knew my son didn't do that. People rushed to judgment. They shouldn't have done that,' Bradford Sr. said.

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Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford Jr., a combat engineer in the US Army, and the son of a Birmingham cop, was shot dead by officers responding to a shooting at a Birmingham mall

Bradford's father Emantic Bradford Sr. (pictured with mother April Pipkins) says he knew his son wasn't the shooter and that it was hurtful for people to jump to conclusions after police had shot him dead

Justice for EJ: About 200 protesters gathered at the Riverchase Galleria Mall in Alabama demanding answers from police after a Hoover officer shot and killed Bradford

Elijah King holds a sign during the protest at the Riverchase Galleria mall in Hoover, Saturday. Thursday police were responding to a shooting that wounded an 18-year-old and 12-year-old. Police initially said Bradford was the shooter, but later said he was not the gunman

About 200 people marched through the shopping mall protesting Bradford's slaying after police admitted they originally believed he was the gunman who shot and wounded an 18-year-old and a 12-year-old who was caught in the crossfire.

The protesters held a moment of silence for Bradford at the spot where he was killed. Bradford's stepmother Cynthia described him as a respectful young man and said he was the son of a Birmingham police officer.

An 18-year-old was shot twice after getting into a fight with the gunman, and a nearby 12-year-old girl was also injured when struck by a stray bullet.

On Friday evening, Hoover Police Department revealed evidence showing that Bradford may have been involved in an altercation with the 18-year-old, and at least one other individual, 'he likely did not fire the rounds' that injured the victims.

Investigators now believe that several people were involved in the original fight, which broke out at 9.30pm on Thursday, and it's unclear whether Bradford was attempting to break up the altercation, or if he was involved from the beginning.

Video footage from passerby shows the Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford Jr's body laying on the ground in a pool of blood at the Riverchase Galleria in Hoover, Alabama Thursday night

Police says Bradford was fleeing the scene while brandishing a handgun when he was shot and killed by a uniformed Hoover police officer.

Bradford was pronounced dead at the scene at 10.11pm.

The officer involved has been placed on administrative leave.

Hoover police say the evidence, which came from witness statements and crime scene technicians, means that the real gunman is still at-large. A weapon was later recovered from inside the mall's Santa's Village.

Footage taken from inside the mall showed Bradford's body lying in a pool of blood moments after he was shot dead by police.

The video, filmed from within the Footaction store, also captured people frantically shouting for customers to leave the premises where Bradford's body was positioned on its side.

'Everybody out!' one person can be heard yelling.

A weapon was later recovered from inside the mall's Santa's Village

Bradford's stepmother, Cynthia Kenniebrew Bradford, shared this family photo in a post where she wrote how she was devastated to lose her son

Another shouts: 'Let's go! Everybody out of the store.'

Bradford's devastated stepmother, Cynthia Kenniebrew Bradford, hopes to clear her son's name, writing that she was 'sick of all the lies going around.'

'To loose(sic) a mom and dad was a terrible thang(sic), but to loose a innocent child is beyond words. My heart is so heavy right now. RIP EJ.'

Bradford, known to friends and family as E.J., was a graduate of Holy Family Cristo Rey Catholic High School in Birmingham and enlisted in the U.S. Army, his old teacher Carl Dean told the Hoover Sun.

Dean said he didn't believe that Bradford was capable of shooting a teen in the mall.

'He was a super sweet, funny, kind and goodhearted young man who never had a bad word to say to anyone' Dean said. 'When I saw this morning that he was allegedly involved in causing the tragedy at the mall last night, I was shocked and in disbelief as well as heartbroken that this young man is no longer with us.'

Mother April Pipkins posted on her Facebook page an image of herself with the victim Friday

Cops say a fight broke out between multiple people, which escalated quickly.

Hoover police Capt. Gregg Rector said: 'During the fight, one of the males produced a handgun and shot the other male twice in the torso.

'Two uniformed Hoover police officers providing security at the mall were in close proximity and heard the gunshots.

'While moving toward the shooting scene, one of the officers encountered a suspect brandishing a pistol and shot him. That individual, a 21-year-old male from Hueytown, was pronounced dead on the scene.'

Bradford, 21, (left and right) is reported to have enlisted in the US Army after school and was described by an old teacher as 'super sweet, funny, kind and goodhearted'

Social media users criticized the way the incident was initially handled by police

A friend said Bradford didn't have a 'bad trait about him' and was 'murdered wrongly'

Both victims were taken to hospitals and are expected to survive. The 12-year-old girl, named by family as Molly Davis, was shot once and was reported to be 'alert' and 'talking' by WBRC Friday afternoon.

Julie Moore Bennett, the mother of Molly, posted on social media that her daughter - who was shopping with family - didn't immediately realize the pain in her back was from a bullet.

'She was hurting a lot, but very brave and positive as always,' the Washington Post reports she wrote after visiting her in hospital.

The 18-year-old has not been named.

By 6am the mall back reopened for Black Friday shopping.

The shooting sparked horror and panic among the crowds of bargain hunters who had flocked to the mall after Thanksgiving dinner to snap up discounts.

Videos posted to social media showed shoppers fleeing in terror as shots rang out at the mall following a fight between a young gunman and a teenage boy

An 18-year-old was taken to hospital in a 'serious' condition while a 12-year-old girl had to have emergency surgery
Julian Assange's lawyers say they have been barred from seeing him at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Assange has living in the embassy since 2012 when he was accused of sexual assault by two women in Sweden.

The Australian denied their claims but refused to travel to Sweden to face them, because he claimed it was part of a ruse to extradite him to the US.

Julian Assange has been living in the Ecuadorian embassy in London since 2012. He is pictured speakin on the balcony of Ecuadorian embassy on May 19, 2017

Assange, pictured speaking at the balcony of the Ecuadorian embassy denied sexual assault claims but refused to travel to Sweden to face them. It was revealed this month the US has placed secret charges on Assange

Assange's lawyers, Aitor Martinez and Jen Robinson have been refused entry to the embassy this weekend, WikiLeaks tweeted.

Assange, 47, faces a US court hearing on Tuesday and needs to meet with his legal team to prepare, WikiLeaks reported.

Ecuador removed a UK ambassador who had been negotiating Assange's fate at its London embassy this week - sparking fears the country is preparing to boot Assange out of the embassy and hand him over to police.

'The hearing is on Tuesday in the national security court complex at Alexandria, Virginia,' WikiLeaks tweeted, adding it is to 'remove the secrecy order on the US charges against him.'

A US court document leaked in November finally revealed the US has already placed secret charges on Assange.

Ecuador's President Lenin Moreno is now said to have terminated the credentials of his British ambassador, Carlos Abad Ortiz, according to a decree published by WikiLeaks on Wednesday.

Julian Assange's lawyers say they have been barred from seeing him at the Ecuadorian embassy. It comes amid fears the embassy are going to kick him out and hand him over to authorities

Assange has recently been allowed access to visitors again after seven months of being cut off from both the outside world, Russia Today reported.

Ecuador announced it was restoring Assange's communications in October, but this came with conditions restricting his communications and placing visitors under greater scrutiny.

A US court document leaked in November finally revealed the US has already placed secret charges on Assange.

One of Assange's lawyers said the WikiLeaks founder will not willingly travel to the United States to face charges filed under seal against him.

Assange, who has taken cover in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he has been granted asylum, has speculated publicly for years that the Justice Department had brought secret criminal charges against him for revealing highly sensitive government information on his website.
Former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos has been ordered to report to federal prison on Monday as a federal judge rejected his last-minute bid to avoid his two week jail sentence.

Papadopoulos must surrender to agents on Monday to start his 14-day sentence for lying to FBI agents working on special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation.

U.S. District Court Judge Randy Moss said Papadopoulos's legal arguments fell short of what was needed to justify delaying the sentence that was handed down in September, Politico reported.

Former Donald Trump campaign foreign policy aide George Papadopoulos was ordered to report to federal prison on Monday to serve his two week sentence

George Papadopoulos and his wife Simona Mangiante Papadopoulos arrive at US District Court for his sentencing in Washington, DC on September 7, 2018

Papadopoulos lawyers argued that the former Trump adviser should be granted a 'modest stay' until an appellate court rules in a separate case challenging the legality of Mueller's appointment.

But Moss rejected that argument, which he called an 11th hour request, writing in a 13-page ruling that even if the challenge to Mueller's appointment was successful - and he doubted it would be - that would unlikely give Papadopoulos cause to undo his own conviction, according to The Washington Post.

Papadopoulos 'has failed to demonstrate that the D.C. Circuit is likely to conclude that the appointment of the Special Counsel was unlawful - and, indeed, he has failed even to show that the appeal raises a 'close question' that 'very well could be decided' against the Special Counsel,' Moss wrote.

Muellers team had opposed Papadopoulos' request for a delay in his prison sentence, arguing he had waived his right to challenge Muellers appointment when he agreed to plead guilty.

They also argued his recent public arguments contradicted what he said at his sentencing trial in September, when he convinced Moss to less his jail sentence by telling the judge he was remorseful over his lies.

In recent weeks, Papadopoulos has said on Twitter he regretted his plea deal with Mueller's team and had hired a new legal team in his quest to avoid jail time.

'I NEVER flipped against the president. What I did do, however, is expose the corruption of this 'investigation' for the world to see. The legacy is what matters now, how history remembers these days. Silence during these critical days was never an option. All must be exposed,' he wrote on Nov. 21.

Simona Mangiante Papadopoulos has been pressing President Trump to pardon her husband

Robert Mueller's team fought Papadopoulos' request to stay his sentence

Papadopoulos also has spun government conspiracy theories on his Twitter feed, accusing prosecutors of 'entrapment' in an international setup. 'Biggest regret? Pleading guilty,' he wrote earlier this month.

His wife Simona Mangiante Papadopoulos has been pressing President Trump to pardon her husband.

At his original sentencing Papadopoulos admitted to lying to the special counsel's team and expressed remorse.
Some of the best state schools in the country are bridging the grades gap between themselves and their independent rivals, new ranking reveal.

Following the introduction of last summer's more taxing GCSE exams, state schools have proved they are able to compete with students from private institutions.

According to new Parent Power rankings published in the Sunday Times today the amount of state schools with children achieving A* equivalent has doubled, despite initial fears the more difficult exams would widen the results gap between state and private schools.

Student's exams are now graded 1-9, with nine being the top end of the scale with the brightest students achieving these grades.

Some of the best state schools in the country are bridging the grades gap between themselves and their independent rivals, new ranking reveal

Previously there were 16 state schools where half of all of grades awarded to students were A*, but since the exams were altered that has now more than doubled to 38.

All of the state schools that achieved these outstanding grades were grammar schools, now accounting for almost a third of the 128 school's in the country where the students are being awarded top grades.

Top of the independent tables was St Paul's Girls School in west London while leading the state tables was Queen Elizabeth's School in north London.

Professor Alan Smithers, from the University of Buckingham, said: 'There are signs that at last state schools are beginning to make inroads into what looked to be an impregnable lead held by independent schools.'

Top of the independent tables was St Paul's Girls School in west London

Leading the state tables was Queen Elizabeth's School in north London

These rankings are the first indication that state schools are closing in on private schools since the introduction of the new GCSEs, which will sat by the masses for the first time last summer.

However it is not just grammar schools who have shown a significant improvement, ten leading comprehensive schools also increased their proportion of level 8 and 9 grades.

Before the change of exam style these schools, including St George's School, in Harpenden, Hertfordshire, had around a quarter of top grades but that figure has now increased to more than a third.

Headmistress of St George's, Helen Barton, said that while the schools had 'risen to the challenge' of the new style exams, they haven't had an entirely positive response.

She added that although the highest achieving students had exceeded expectation, some students had had increased anxiety due to the increase in difficulty.
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt is embroiled in talks with the United Arab Emirates over the fate of a British academic jailed for life on a spying charge.

Diplomatic efforts to free 31-year-old Matthew Hedges are being led by Mr Hunt amid an outcry after the PhD student was handed his jail sentence earlier this week.

The Durham University researcher's wife, Daniela Tejada, must now wait to see if her husband is one of 785 prisoners being released by the President of the UAE Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan ahead of the nation's 47th National Day celebrations.

Despite initially claiming the UK government had put foreign relations above his liberty she has now won assurances from Mr Hunt that the Government is 'standing up for' her husband.

Wife of 31-year-old PhD student Matthew Hedges, Daniela Tejada, must now wait to see if her husband is one of 785 prisoners being released by the President of the UAE

Mr Hunt told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show that he thinks Ms Tejada is being 'incredibly brave in challenging circumstances', and that he is 'optimistic' a way through can be found.

Mr Hunt said: 'The UAE is a very long-standing friend of the UK, and I have had very good conversations with their foreign minister. I am going to speak to him again this afternoon.

'I am very much hoping we can find a way through that.'

Mr Hunt held talks with foreign minister Abdullah bin Zayed on Friday and said he believed the Emirati authorities were 'working constructively to find a solution to this problem'.

Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt is also engaged in talks with the United Arab Emirates over the fate of British academic jailed for life on a spying charge

In a statement at the UAE embassy in London on the same day, ambassador Sulaiman Almazroui praised the closeness between the two nations as he said clemency is being considered for the 'extremely serious case'.

'Mr Hedges' family have made a request for clemency and the government is studying that request,' he said.

'Because of the strength of that relationship we are hopeful that an amicable solution can be reached.'

Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan recently announced the release of prisoners ahead of the nation's 47th National Day celebrations

He also made efforts to defend the judicial process, denying it was a 'five-minute show trial' and claiming three judges evaluated 'compelling evidence' over three hearings to make their ruling.

He did not address whether the academic was given adequate legal representation throughout the process, which Ms Tejada has said he lacked.

She swiftly rebuked the ambassador's defence, saying her husband had been held in solitary confinement for more than five months without charge or lawyer, and when he did receive consular access he was not able to 'talk openly'.

'The judicial system in the UAE and the UK cannot be compared,' she said in a statement.

'We have asked for clemency, we will wait to see what happens.'

Mr Hedges, originally from Exeter, was arrested at Dubai Airport as he tried to leave the country on May 5.

Professor Stuart Corbridge, vice-chancellor of Durham University, said there is 'no reason to believe that Matt was conducting anything other than legitimate academic research'.

Mr Hedges was given 30 days to challenge the court ruling, and Ms Tejada has launched a petition on Change.org which has so far garnered more than 238,000 signatures.
A school in Brighton labelled as 'the coolest state secondary in town' has 40 children who do not identify with their sex at birth with another 36 saying they are 'gender fluid'.

Dorothy Stringer School in Brighton was previously praised by Tatler magazine for its 'liberal vibe' and for having the 'perfect balance between work and fun'.

Headteacher Richard Bradford has revealed that the figures were found in a council survey and they are the highest at any school in the country.

Dorothy Stringer School in Brighton has 40 children who do not identify with their sex at birth with another 36 saying they are 'gender fluid'

Mr Bradford told the Sunday Times: 'The number of ''openly trans children'' who had approached us with their families to say that they are transgender [was] much lower.'

The news marks a huge increase in the number of children in Britain seeking to change their gender.

The NHS has a specialist service for children wanting to change genders and referrals to it have risen by 700% over the past five years.

One Brighton charity, called Allsorts Youth Project, launched the UK's first-ever group for 'trans or gender-questioning' children aged five to 11.

Allsorts is believed to have 27 members with an average age of nine.

The group received 166,000 in public and lottery funding and runs awareness courses state secondary schools all over Brighton - including Dorothy Stringer.

And Allsorts isn't the only group to receive funding with several activists groups being supported by the public sector, the national lottery and the BBC's Children in Need.

NHS England has also signed an agreement not to suppress the expression of gender identity.

Polly Carmichael, director of the NHS gender service for youngsters, says some children are caught up in gender change rather than doing it out of their own

These influential groups combine with YouTube vloggers, activism and awareness classes to create, as one American academic puts it, 'rapid onset gender dysphoria'.

Lisa Littman's theory is that teenagers are turning to gender transition as a way of coping with experiences and stresses they are faced with - and they are encouraged by friends and widespread information on gender issues.

Polly Carmichael, director of the NHS gender service for children, told the Sunday Times that 'without a doubt there are some young people who are finding a community, friends and all sorts of things through joining a group who have an interest around gender. It's probably the case that [some] are caught up in something rather than it being an expression of something that has arisen from within.'

And the NHS area of Surrey, Kent and Sussex - which includes Brighton- has sent more children to the NHS gender service than the whole of Greater London combined.

A Brighton teacher said: 'What's happening is worrying and many of us know it, but nobody wants to speak up and get shot.'
The deadliest wildfire in California history that destroyed the northern part of the state is 100 percent contained, state fire officials say.

The so-called Camp Fire killed at least 85 people, and 249 are on a list of those unaccounted for after burning for more than two weeks.

Starting on November 8, the fire burned nearly 154,000 acres and destroyed nearly 14,000 homes.

The deadliest wildfire in California history that destroyed the northern part of the state is 100 percent contained, state fire officials say. Pictured: An American flag hangs at a burned out mobile home park in Paradise, California on November 18

Starting on November 8, the so-called Camp Fire burned nearly 154,000 acres and destroyed nearly 14,000 homes. Pictured: The Camp Fire burns east of Highway 70 near Yankee Hill, California, on November 10

Crews continued sifting through ash and debris for human remains. Nearly 19,000 buildings, most of them homes, are gone.

According to SF Gate, two rainstorms brought a great amount of precipitation to the area, which helped slow the fire.

Despite fears of mudslides and debris flow, neither occurred in the burn areas where rain fell.

The National Weather Service reported that Paradise received 3.22 inches of rain, Concow received five inches and Magalia received 5.41 inches.

However, Brigitte Foster, a spokeswoman for the Camp Fire unified command unit, said that full containment does not mean the fire has been extinguished.

'They're going to be working on it for months,' Foster told SF Gate.

'Within the perimeter, there are stumps and burning roots that are underground, and we still need to try to pull those up and remove the heat.'

Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea has warned that remains of some victims may never be found.

The fire killed at least 85 people, and 249 are on a list of those unaccounted for after burning for more than two weeks. Pictured: A view of home destroyed by the Camp Fire on November 22 in Paradise, California

Two rainstorms brought a great amount of precipitation to the area, which helped slow the fire without causing any mudslides or debris flow. Pictured: Brandy Powell pauses as she looks through the remains of her home on November 22 in Paradise, California

The town of Paradise was a popular destination for retirees, with people aged 65 or older accounting for a quarter of its 27,000 residents. Most of the victims of the fire identified so far were of retirement age.

Just days earlier, fire officials in southern California pronounced the Woolsey fire that so and other areas is 100 percent contained.

In southern California, more residents returned to areas evacuated in a destructive fire as crews repaired power, telephone and gas utilities.

Los Angeles County sheriff's officials said they were in the last phase of repopulating Malibu and unincorporated areas of the county. At the height of the fire, 250,000 fled their homes.

Three people died, and 1,643 buildings, most of them homes, were destroyed, officials said.
Eight suspected migrants have been rescued from a dinghy in the Channel including one man wrapped in clingfilm to protect him from the cold.

The man, who is thought to be Iranian, was picked up by the French coastguard after an alarm was raised at about 2am on Saturday.

French authorities said helicopters and coastal patrols including a British RNLI crew scoured the water for the group who were all suffering from hypothermia.

They were sent to find the men, who were all wearing life jackets, and picked them up ten miles off the coast of Calais, reports the Sun.

One of the suspected migrants is thought to have been wrapped in cling film to protect themselves from the elements

Translators were brought in to get more information on their location and they were found by a fishing boat at 4.20am, the BBC reported.

Since November 3, there now been 109 migrants - most claiming to be Iranian - who have been rescued or detained in the past month after being found in small boats or dinghies in UK waters in the Channel.

The French authorities have not given any more information about where the latest group set off from.

In a statement the Prefecture Maritime de la Manche said the group were taken to Boulogne to be taken care of by firefighters and police, adding their small boat was recovered by a French vessel.

The RNLI confirmed its Dover crew went out to help the French coastguard.

France has been accused of 'turning a blind eye' following a huge rise in the number of migrants entering Britain this month.

A fishing boat picked up the group who were all suffering from hypothermia. Pictured, the migrants' small boat on the deck of the French vessel Abeille Languedoc

After eight 'migrants' were picked up from a dinghy near Dover on Friday, MP for Dover Charlie Elphicke warned the French authorities and the Home Office must 'do more' to stop the crossings amid an unprecedented surge in recent weeks.

Ingrid Parrot, a spokeswoman for the French maritime police, puts the 'worsening' situation down to the people smugglers - who can makes thousands of pounds per journey - using Brexit as bait to get more migrants over quicker.

French officials believe gangs are telling migrants Britain's borders will be tightened once Brexit happens next March, so they must get into the country quicker.

Warnings have been issued by UK authorities about the dangers of taking small boats on the Dover-Calais route.

According to experts dinghies will not show on radars of larger vessels in the Channel but crowded dinghies are not equipped to make the crossings.
Republican Congressman Trey Gowdy said on Sunday lawmakers would do their due diligence when it comes to the investigation into Ivanka Trump's private email use.

Gowdy, who head the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which has the investigatory power, also noted his concern that President Donald Trump has been dismissive about his daughter's actions.

'I am concerned any time any president prejudges the outcome of an investigation, whether it's President Obama, whether it's President Trump,' he said on CBS' 'Face the Nation.'

Republican Congressman Trey Gowdy said lawmakers would do their due diligence when it comes to the investigation into Ivanka Trump's private email

President Donald Trump defended his daughter Ivanka's private email use on Thanksgiving Day 'much different' from Hillary Clinton's

Ivanka Trump's email use is being investigated by lawmakers

Gowdy noted he's already spoken to Ivanka Trump's attorney and to his Democratic counterpart, Elijah Cummings, who will head the committee next year, about the matter.

'Congress has a responsibility to make sure that the records and the presidential records act is complied with. And this is true no matter who the person is, whether it's Secretary Clinton ... or whether it's Ivanka Trump,' he added.

'But we need the information and we need it quickly, and then the public can judge whether or not those two patterns are similar,' Gowdy said.

Gowdy last week sent a letter to White House Chief of Staff John Kelly asking for information about the first daughter's email use, saying it may 'implicate the Presidential Records Act and other security and recordkeeping requirements,' and set a Dec. 5 deadline to respond to the request for more information.

Cummings and House Democrats plan to investigate the first daughter's actions, a House Democratic aide told DailyMail.com last week.

'We want to know if Ivanka complied with the law,' a Democratic aide told DailyMail.com on Tuesday.

Cummings said on Sunday the American people want the Trump administration looked at.

'Let's be abundantly clear. The American people said to us through this election, 'We want accountability. We want to check on this president of the United States.' But they also said something else. They said, 'We want you to solve our problems,' Cummings said Sunday on NBC's 'Meet the Press.'

'Now as far as President Trump and his administration, again, the American people have said to us, 'They want robust, transparent investigations with integrity. So I haven't figured out exactly what order they're in, because they're all important. But I guarantee you, we will look at it quite a bit,' he added.

President Donald Trump defended his daughter Ivanka Trump's private email use on Thanksgiving Day, saying it was 'much different' from Hillary Clinton's.

It's 'much different from the other situation I've talked about for a long time,' he said to reporters after calls with U.S. troops for the holiday.

He said Ivanka's use was 'very innocent.'

'It's another fake news story,' he added.

'There was no deletion of e-mails like the 33,000 plus probably another 100,000 that Hillary Clinton did after she got a subpoena,' Trump said. 'There was no bleach bit. There was no anything. Just innocent e-mails. No classified e-mails. A much different deal.'

He also argued his daughter was a privately employed person until she took a job in his administration as an adviser.

'She is a private person and ultimately she transitioned out from private to government. And I believe all of her records are in the historical society, the historical records,' he said.

Trump last week all but dared House Oversight and Government Reform Democrats, including their top dog Rep. Elijah Cummings, to investigate her.

'Ivanka can handle herself,' Trump told DailyMail.com as he left the White House on Tuesday for the Thanksgiving break, responding to a question about whether he would ever let partisan Democrats interview his elder daughter.

He said the emails Ms. Trump sent and received on her personal account to conduct government business 'weren't classified like Hillary Clinton. They weren't deleted like Hillary Clinton, who deleted 33 [thousand]  she wasn't doing anything to hide her emails.'

House Democrats, led by Elijah Cummings, have said they will investigate her email use

Ivanka's private email account came from a domain she shares with her husband, Jared Kushner

President Donald Trump defended his daughter Ivanka last week as Democrats threaten to probe her use of a personal Internet domain to conduct government business

'They're all in presidential records,' he said, confirming that his daughter's lawyer has forwarded the messages from her personal account to her government account.

The panel, likely to be led by Cummings in 2019, plans to revive an investigation into the White House's use of private emails, which can violate federal records-retention laws.

The powerful committee has investigative oversight of the executive branch and the power to subpoena witnesses and documents.

'We plan to continue our investigation of the Presidential Records Act and Federal Records Act,' the Democratic aide said.

Trump used her personal email account to send hundreds of emails last year to White House aides, government officials and her assistants - most of which were in violation of federal rules, it was revealed on Monday by The Washington Post.

The revelation sparked immediate comparisons to Hillary Clinton, who famously used a private email server while secretary of state that became subject of a federal investigation and the target of criticism from President Donald Trump, who dubbed her 'Crooked Hillary' and said he would lock her up for it.

But Ivanka Trump's lawyer's office slammed any comparisons to Clinton.

'Ms. Trump did not create a private server in her house or office, no classified information was ever included, the account was never transferred at Trump Organization, and no emails were ever deleted,' Peter Mirijanian, a spokesperson for Trump's attorney and ethics counsel, Abbe Lowell, to The Washington Post.

Clinton had denied having classified emails on her private server.

'I did not send classified material, and I did not receive any material that was marked or designated classified,' she said on the campaign trail in August 2015.

The FBI investigation later found that 110 messages contained information that was classified at the time it was sent.

White House ethics officials learned of Ivanka Trump's personal email use when reviewing emails gathered last fall by five Cabinet agencies to respond to a public records lawsuit, sources familiar with the matter told The Post.

Trump said she was not familiar with all the rules.

The private email account came from a domain she shares with her husband, Jared Kushner.

They set up personal emails with the domain 'ijkfamily.com' through a Microsoft system in December 2016, after Trump won the presidency and the couple was preparing to move to Washington D.C.

Mirijanian said her use was mainly around her logistics and her family's schedule. The couple, both of whom serve as advisers to President Trump, have three children.

'While transitioning into government, after she was given an official account but until the White House provided her the same guidance they had given others who started before she did, Ms. Trump sometimes used her personal account, almost always for logistics and scheduling concerning her family,' he said in a statement.

He noted she had turned over all her government-related emails months ago so they could be stored permanently with other White House records as part of requirements by federal law under the Presidential Records Act.
A mother at home with her 14-year-old in the Bronx was slain by a bullet through her door's peephole Saturday night.

Wendy Martinez, 45, went to her door in her Concourse Village apartment sometime around 9.45pm when she was shot in the head through by a masked gunman, the New York Post reported.

Her teenage son called 911 from a closet to alert authorities, but she was pronounced dead at the scene.

Martinez, an employee at Lincoln Medical Center and Red Sox fan living in the Bronx, likely was not the intended target, according to police.

'She was a very hardworking lady. She would do anything for her kids,' Maris Valdez, a coworker for more than 20 years with Martinez, said to the New York Daily News.

Wendy Martinez, a hospital worker at Lincoln Medical Center, was killed after a gunman shot through her peephole at her apartment door in the Bronx

'That's a gang-related hit,' a source told the New York Post. 'This is street justice. Everyone on the streets knows that Solano killed that kid.'

Wendy's older son, 25-year-old Brian Solano, is accused in the murder of Willie Lora. He allegedly fired a gun into an apartment building lobby, striking and killing Lora on December 8, 2014.

Solano spent three years on Rikers Island and a month in Downstate Correctional Facility in Fishkill, New York, before the surprise release.

Solano was freed from jail in 2017 following an investigation by a private investigator, Manuel Gomez, casting doubt on prosecution witnesses and potentially exonerating the former inmate, according to PIX-11.

''Mr. Solano, you're being released on recognizance,'' Solano recounted to PIX-11 what corrections officers told him. 'I was shocked. I was shocked.'

The shooting of Martinez at he Concourse Village apartment in the Bronx may not have been intended for her

A lawyer for NYPD Detective David Terrell, whose is ccused by Gomez of falsely arresting two dozen people, believe the private investigator bears some culpability in the death of Wendy Martinez.

'Gomez's actions have real consequences,' he told the Daily News. 'He shouldn't have his license in the first place.'

Neighbors in the Bronx apartment building were shocked and saddened by the violent incident.

Brian Solano seen in a courthouse in 2017. Police believe his case may be connected to his mother's murder

'It's such a quiet building and nothing ever happens,' Juan Sanchez, 54, a building resident for over 25 years told the Daily News. 'It's like in the movies.'

Meanwhile, the murder trial for Brian Solano is slated to continue on Monday.

'Now I still got this charge open, and the judge and the D.A. knows I ain't do it' Solano told News 12 back in February.
Police say Michael Porter, 24, turned himself in on Sunday after police searched for him following Saturday's incident

A fight broke out on a bus in Florida that ended with a man shooting another passenger, leaving terrified commuters running for their lives. Police say the suspect has turned himself in.

The incident unfolded in broad daylight Saturday afternoon on a Broward County Transit bus.

Plantation police say 24-year-old, 5'1, Michael Porter took out a gun and shot the other passenger after the two had been locked in a violent fist fight.

It is unknown what had sparked the fight, but the men were heard screaming at each other in the video, as a woman shouts 'Please! Please!'

As the argument escalates, the passenger tells Porter, 'I will crush you.'

Porter responds: 'I will kill you. I swear to God. I have a gun,' and then points his hand to mimic the shape of gun and blurts out 'Bang, bang, bang.'

When he actually took out the gun, passengers ran for their lives.

The fellow passenger punched Michael Porter in the violent fist fight on a Broward Transit bus on Saturday

The men were locked in a brutal altercation, as passengers looked on in Florida Saturday afternoon

Porter pulled a gun (circled in red) which sent the other passengers running for their lives. Police say he shot the man- but he is likely to survive the incident

'One guy got on top of another guy and started choking him, and then the other guy pulled out a gun and shot a round off,' passenger Stephone Robinson told ABC10.

'Everybody just panicked, got off the bus and followed the suspect with the gun. He got off the bus after and the guy that got shot chased after him,' Robinson said.

However, Porter managed to escape.

Police kept some residents out of the Westport and Nob Hill Estates neighborhoods from about 3.30 until 8.30pm.

Meanwhile the man who was shot was taken to Broward Health Medical Center and is expected to survive.

Police say Porter turned himself in Sunday morning, according to the Miami Herald.

He's in Broward Main Jail on a charge of attempted premeditated murder.
A cross-dressing pilot who was put in charge of a major airbase was in fact a double killer who was unmasked by a detective in an interview which finally undid his double life.

Russell Williams, 55, a British born Colonel in the Canadian air force, was known among peers as an exemplary serviceman but a murder investigation unveiled the dark secrets he had hidden.

The incredible true story of the decorated pilot's double life is not being told in a new documentary, detailing how he went from breaking into women's homes and posing in their underwear  to rape and murder.

Criminologist David Wilson will tell how the pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force rose to the commander of CFB Trenton, Canada's largest military airbase  before his crimes were revealed.

Colonel Russell Williams salutes at a parade in Canada before being discovered in 2010 as a rapist and murderer

Colonel Russell Williams, former Commander of Canadian Forces Base Trenton, is escorted from Belleville court after being sentenced October 21, 2010

Williams poses in lingerie taken during a break-in committed in 2008. HE eventually confessed to dozens of fetish break-ins for lingerie

Bizarrely the Colonel took pictures of himself in underwear that he stole and kept it at home

During his military service the pilot born in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, even flew the Queen and Prince Philip when they visited the country, the Daily Record reported.

In 2010, it was discovered he killed Corporal Marie-France Comeau, 38, and Jessica Lloyd, 27, when he finally confessed.

His story will be told by Scottish criminologist David Wilson, Emeritus Professor of Criminology at Birmingham City University in CBS Reality TV special Voice of a Killer  The Colonel, which is on Tuesday at 10pm.

Talking of his criminal timeline from break ins to killings, Mr Williams said: He said: 'He was incredibly fascinating from a number of different aspects. This is somebody who is commanding Canada's largest military air base until his arrest in 2010. He had been flying the Queen, he's decorated, he's British.

William's victims Cpl Marie France Comeau (L) and Jessica Lloyd (R)Colonel Russell Williams

'Whenever I have worked with people who have committed comparable offences, there is always a progression.

'You don't wake up one morning and just decide that you are going to murder somebody or abduct them or tie them up.

'Those kind of sexual deviancies have been present in your past for a very long period of time. What you see with Williams is almost a case book progression.

'He would steal women's underwear, he would then start wearing that underwear, he would then break into homes in order to be able to steal that underwear, then photograph himself in that home whilst wearing the stolen underwear.

'He would then do home invasions whereby he would tie the women up until he is eventually committing murder.'

Williams' crimes shook Canada.

He was a high-profile role model who went from overseeing ceremonies for bodies of soldiers killed in Afghanistan to killing.

He was found eventually to have committed dozens of break-ins, which began in 2007.

In 2009, he committed two sexual assaults.

Colonel Russell Williams, seen in this evidence photo released by the court, poses in lingerie taken during a break-in committed in 2007

The British born Colonel broke in to one home and tried on a pink and white swimming set

Articles of lingerie, stolen and catalogued by Colonel Russell Williams in 2009 who eventually admitted to rape and murder

But his crimes took a sinister twist later that year when he broke into the home of Corporal Marie-France Comeau, who was under his command at Canadian Forces Base Trenton.

He attacked her and killed her  and captured the whole horrific assault on camera  before heading back to base and alter sending his condolences to her father.

Years later, in January 2010, he claimed his next victim.

Jessica Lloyd was reported missing, and a massive search took place.

Despite dumping her body the pilot had not cleared his tracks and tyre prints matching his car were found in a field near her home.

Detective Sergeant Jim Smyth of the Ontario Provincial Police led the investigating team.

DS Smyth spent hours breaking the pilot down from military man to red handed murderer.

Roxanne Lloyd, mother of murder victim Jessica Lloyd, arrives for the sentencing hearing of Colonel Russell Williams, former Commander of Canadian Forces Base Trenton, at Belleville Court October 19, 2010

Andy Lloyd and Roxanne Lloyd, brother and mother of murder victim Jessica Lloyd in 2010

He said: 'Over the course of 10 hours he is literally revealing to Williams the evidence that is going to tie him to the two murders.

'When Williams first enters the interview scenario, he is a very powerful man, he's highly decorated.

'He's filled with power and he kind of presumed, I think, that he would just be able to overcome this quietly-spoken police sergeant, who asked him to come in on a Sunday to talk about one or two things that he wanted to get clarified.

'You begin to see the tables turn in the course of the interview when you see the scales fall from Williams's eyes and Smyth gets him to not only confess to the murders but also tell them where he has buried the body of Jessica.'

In North America the controversial Reid Technique allows officers to lie and say DNA has been found at the crime scene to force a confession whereas in the UK evidence should be found first.

Jim Smyth was highly praised for not using the Reid technique  and getting a confession anyway, through skilful questioning.
Here's one way to get out of speeding ticket: a North Carolina state trooper helped deliver a baby on the side of the road after pulling over a speeding van on the highway.

WRAL-TV reports that State Highway Patrol Sgt. Brian Maynard pulled over a van going 85mph late Saturday.

The couple in the van, Jimmy and Laura Baker, were headed to the hospital so she could give birth, but the baby girl had other plans and started coming before they could get there.

Sgt. Brian Maynard of the North Carolina State Highway Patrol used his training to help deliver a baby

Maynard's police cruiser dash cam shows video of the van speeding around 11 p.m. They vehicle was pulled over on NC-64, just west of Exit 429.

When stopped, the Bakers in the midst of giving birth, asked the officer for help.

'I was telling them the baby was in my pants and he needed to help me,' laughed Laura Baker.

The newborn was actually arriving four days earlier than the couple had been expecting.

Maynard called an ambulance but with little time remaining, he helped deliver the baby at roadside, calling the experience both 'scary' and 'rewarding'.

'I just relied on my training that I had been given during some of our classes,' the trooper told WRAL, 'and did the best I could do with what I had available'.

Sgt. Maynard's dash cam caught the Bakers doing 85 mph on a North Carolina highway

Jimmy, Laura and Halyn Baker all were doing well in the hospital following the emergency

Baby Halyn was later taken to a hospital, and apparently shares a birthday with her great grandfather. Jimmy Baker says his wife and their newborn are both doing well.

'Yep, she's good, mom's good and daddy's good,' Jimmy said.
Outgoing Ohio Gov. John Kasich said on Sunday his 'very seriously' considering a challenge to President Donald Trump in 2020.

'Very seriously,' he said on ABC's 'This Week.' 'These are earnest conversations that go on virtually every day with some of my friends, with my family.'

Kasich added: 'We need different leadership, there isn't any question about it. And I'm not only just worried about the tone and the name calling and the division in our country and the partisanship, but I also worry about the policies.'

He visited the early primary state of New Hampshire earlier this month and said his traveling is his way of weighing his options when it comes to facing a sitting president.

John Kasich said he is 'very seriously' considering a challenge to President Trump

President Trump beat Kasich in 2016 for the GOP presidential nomination

'I'm worried about our country and not just in the short term, but I'm worried about our country in the long term. So the question for me is what  what do I do about this?' Kasich said.

'Do I run because I've determined that I can win or is it important for me to make such a good showing that I can send a message that can disrupt the political system in this country?,' he added.

'So yes, I have to think about it, I think about it seriously. As you know, I still travel, I make, you know, I'm out there trying to do what I can do. I don't know when I will have to make a decision, but let's be clear, I'm not being coy, I'm not trying to do this for kind of a game. This is really, really serious to me.'

It's difficult to challenge a sitting president for the nomination. Ronald Reagan tried - and failed - against President Gerald Ford in 1976. Reagan went on to win the GOP nomination and the White House in 1980.

Kasich, 66, unsuccessfully ran for president in 2000 and 2016. He is term-limited out of office in his home state of Ohio.

Kasich lost to Trump in 2016, but ran a campaign touting an optimistic message of hope and being above the fray, refusing to lobby shots at his rivals.

He came in second in New Hampshire to Trump's first place but his campaign never caught fire and his only won his home state of Ohio in the primary campaign.

He claimed the Trump campaign offered him the vice presidency, which they denied.

Kasich, in the past, has weighed a third-party challenge to the president, an idea he did not dismiss on Sunday.

'Let's just say that Donald Trump is nominated and Elizabeth Warren is nominated, and you have this ocean of people who sit in the middle. Is there a legitimate opportunity for a third party,' he said, referring to the possibility the progressive senator from Massachusetts may run for the Democratic nomination in 2020.

Kasich said he did not have a time table on making a decision.

'I don't know where this is all going to lead,' he said.
Billionaire Democrat Tom Steyer, who is obsessed with bringing impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump, said he is undecided about whether to challenge the president himself in 2020.

'I haven't decided to run for president,' he said Sunday on NBC's 'Meet the Press.'

Steyer has been visiting early 2020 voting states like New Hampshire, holding town halls with voters. He's also invested $110 million in the midterm campaign, helping Democrats win back control the House of Representatives.

Billionaire Democrat Tom Steyer, who is obsessed with bringing impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump, said he is undecided about whether to challenge the president himself in 2020

President Trump has called Steyer 'wacky'

'During 2018, I was full-time working on grassroots organizing Americans to get their voices heard in the country. What I'm doing right now is putting out an agenda, a framework for a social contract for the 21st century, which I called the Five Rights, which are the rights that Americans need to be free to pursue their own life and their own destiny,' he said.

Steyer said his agenda pushing isn't necessarily a means for him to run his own campaign but a message he wants to see Democratic presidential contenders support.

'I'm putting it out there for all the people who are running for president to look at and get behind. Because what's missing in American politics is a positive vision of what this country stands for and what the social contract is with American citizens so they can be protected in the world and have the freedom to go forward and live out the lives they want to live,' he said.

His 'five rights' focus on education, the environment, voting rights, the economy and health care.

He'll got a tour to promote these rights starting on Dec. 4 with stops in Charleston, S.C.; Fresno, Calif.; Nevada; New Hampshire; and Iowa.

The potential Democratic field is filled with big names such as former Vice President Joe Biden and Sens. Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker and Bernie Sanders.

Steyers would be a major contender if he runs because of the money he could put behind his bid. But another billionaire, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, is also mulling a bid.

Steyer wants House Democrats to take up impeachment proceedings when they control the chamber in January.

'I think it's an absolute first step to getting towards a positive vision for the country,' he said.

'I think there's no question that this president has both met the grounds for impeachment and that it's urgent to get him out of office and everything,' he added.

Trump called Steyer 'wacky' on Twitter, a bout of name-calling that came after the California billionaire received a pipe bomb similar to ones that were sent the president's political rivals.

And, before the 2018 election, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi sounded a note of caution about what the Democrats would do if power swung back their way, saying she didn't like the word 'impeachment' - something that would disappoint the far left in the party, who are eager to see impeachment proceedings being against Trump.

Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren are two names mentioned as possible Democratic presidential candidates in 2020

Michael Bloomberg and Bernie Sanders are also said to be considering 2020 bids

Democrats would 'make sure we are exercising our balance of power,' she said, adding she hears on the campaign trail that people want 'checks and balances' in the federal government.

She dismissed talk by liberals that Trump should be impeached - either over any potential finding that his campaign colluded with Russia in 2016 or over something in his financial records, which she has Democrats will request should they take control of the House.

'Impeachment - to use that word - is very divisive. That isn't a path I would like to go down,' she said.

In October 2017, Steyer spent around $10 million for a television ad campaign advocating for Trump's impeachment and founded the group: Need to Impeach.

And he sank at least $110 million in the midterm elections, making him the biggest investor on the left in campaign cash.

Steyer founded Farallon Capital and made his fortunes through the hedge fund, which was managing $20 billion by the time he left the company in October 2012 to work on clean energy issues.

His wealth and political involvement has stirred up talk he may make his own bid for public office: such as a 2020 presidential challenge.

Adding to the talk, Steyer was in New Hampshire in July arguing for Trump's impeachment.

He argues Trump has violated the emoluments clause of the Constitution and has obstructed justice.

'He's met the criteria to be impeached. He's dangerous to our democracy. He's dangerous to the safety and health of the American people,' Steyer said in New Hampshire.
An earthquake with a magnitude of 6.3 has struck western Iran close to the border of Iraq, leaving at least 200 people injured.

The tremors hit Sarpol-e Zahab in the Kermanshah province on Sunday. No fatalities have been reported.

Six rescue teams were immediately deployed to the quake-hit area and most people were hurt while 'fleeing', Iranian TV reported.

Houshang Bazvand, the governor of Kermanshah province, told state TV: 'About 200 to 210 people have been injured ... but we have had no fatalities'.

Damage caused by the earthquake which struck western Iran with a magnitude of 6.3

People gather outside shops and apartment apartment buildings after the earthquake

United States Geological Survey (USGS) showing the location of the 6.3 earthquake in Sarpol-e Zahab in Iran's Kermanshah province

Fears of aftershocks sent people in several cities in the western province of Kermanshah out onto the streets and parks in cold weather, Iranian media reported.

The quake triggered landslides but officials said all the roads in the area remained open to traffic and electricity had been restored in most of areas hit by the tremor.

The tremors were felt in at least seven provinces in Iran and was strongest in Kermanshah.

Pirhossein Koulivand, head of the Iranian emergency services, told state TV: 'No reports of any fatalities (have been reported) yet and most of the injured were hurt while fleeing, not due to quake damage.'

He said that the number of those hurt could rise as 18 emergency teams dispatched from neighbouring provinces were still assessing the damage.

Footage and photos of the incident show damage to buildings and terrified locals gathering in the streets following the tremors.

People arrive for medical treatment at Suleymaniyah Hospital after many were injured fleeing the earthquake

EARTHQUAKE TREMORS OF 6.3 MAGNITUDE FELT IN KUWAIT



Kuwait City, Nov 25: A huge crowd from apartments came on street when they felt the earthquake tremors of 6.3 magnitude around 7.40PM local time.



The similar tremors are felt in neighboring Iraq border & Northern Iran. pic.twitter.com/wFL3YE9DIf  Kuwait 24x7 (@Kuwait24x7) November 25, 2018

People gather on the streets in Kuwait outside apartment buildings after feeling the tremors

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said the quake occurred at a depth of 65 km (40 miles) and struck 114 km northwest of the city of Ilam.

Ali Moradi, head of Iran's seismology centre, told state TV: 'Fortunately, the quake was not near bigger cities. But it might have caused damage in villages and I hope not that many villages are located where it hit.'

It comes after the area had to be reconstructed following a major earthquake last year.

In November 2017, an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.3 hit western Kermanshah province, killing at least 620 people and injuring thousands mainly at Sarpol-e Zahab town.

Iran sits astride major fault lines and is prone to frequent tremors. In 2003, a quake of a magnitude of 6.6 in Kerman province killed 31,000 people and flattened the historic city of Bam.

Local officials said reconstruction undertaken after that strong quake should mean there would not be casualties.
One of New York's most iconic views is in danger of disappearing completely.

Tourists have headed to Brooklyn's Dumbo neighborhood for decades to photograph the Empire State Building from afar, perfectly framed by the Manhattan Bridge arch.

But this beloved landmark could be ruined due to a new city proposal for three brand new high-rise buildings in Manhattan's Two Bridges neighborhood.

The Municipal Art Society has found that two of the proposed skyscrapers would block the iconic view that has become an extremely popular Instagram spot.

This iconic view of the Empire State Building in the arch of the Manhattan Bridge could soon be blocked by a new proposed development

'A person standing on the street...where previously you would see the Empire State Building, you will now see part of this development', Municipal Art Society spokesman Tara Kelly told the New York Post.

The group said that the project, now under consideration by the City Planning Commission, would bring a 'myriad' of 'dire consequences' to the neighborhood.

Known as the Two Bridges Large-Scale Residential Development (LSRD) Proposal, the project would result in over 2.5 million gross square feet of new development, including over 2,500 new dwelling units that would bring in 6,000 new residents.

'It is clear the development will permanently change the Two Bridges neighborhood,' the group argued in a Testimony to the Mayor's Office of Environmental Consideration.

The Municipal Art Society has found that two proposed skyscrapers would block the iconic view that has become an extremely popular Instagram spot

The project proposes three towers. Two of the towers would share the same four-story base and one would reach 62 stories while the other would be 69 stories.

A third 'super tall' 1,008-foot tower would reach 79 stories.

'You have 6,000 new people coming to the neighborhood that was inundated by Sandy,' Kelly said.

'We really think that this is something that requires much more community input, much further study.'

The Municipal Art Society is also arguing that the proposed developments do not comply with the New York City Zoning Resolution regulations.

'The proposed developments will result in unmitigated adverse impacts on socioeconomic conditions, community facilities, open space, shadows, transportation, parking, and construction,' it argues in the testimony.

The project proposes three towers. Two of the towers would share the same four-story base and one would reach 62 stories while the other would be 69 floors

A third 'super tall' 1,0008-foot tower would reach 79 stories in the Two Bridges neighborhood

It also argues that the developments would cause 'major impacts on local traffic congestion' and would 'substantially change the essential character of the neighborhood'.

'The proposed development under the Minor Modification to the Two Bridges LSRD will have serious, long-term, adverse consequences on the Two Bridges community,' the testimony reads.

'This neighborhood has been largely left out the planning process for a development that will have far-reaching ramifications.'

The City Planning Commission will vote on the projects, but a date has not yet been set.
A baby who had pioneering surgery on her spine while still in the womb to stop her being disabled has been born completely healthy.

Georgia Axford, 19, and Tyler Kelly, 21, discovered their daughter Piper-Kohl had spina bifida - a gap in the spine - during the 20-week scan.

The couple, from Yate, South Gloucestershire, were told the only treatment available in the UK was surgery by a doctor who'd never performed the op before, so they paid 9,000 to have it done in Germany.

Piper-Kohl Kelly was born prematurely at 30 weeks and four days - and now shares a birthday and name with Proffessor Thomas Kohl, the surgeon who did the operation.

Georgia Axford, 19, and Tyler Kelly, 21, took out a 9,000 loan to go to Germany so that baby Piper-Kohl's spine could be operated on while she was still in the womb

The operation took three hours and surgeons attached a 3.5cm collagen patch over Piper's spine (scar pictured left.) Piper's parents (right) said they won't know for certain whether the operation has been a complete success until she starts to walk but so far she's totally healthy

They won't know for certain whether the operation has been a complete success until she starts to walk - but so far doctors can't see any signs of a problem and she's totally healthy.

Spina bifida causes weakness or paralysis in the lower limbs, leaving sufferers dependent on supports or crutches and in severe cases wheelchair-bound.

Proud mum Georgia said: 'She was covered in wires when she was first born but it was just the best feeling to see her. She was just so tiny.

'You could really see the mark on her spine when she was first born. It really makes you think how incredible the procedure was.

'We named Piper after the surgeon as a thank you for all he has done.

'I would honestly recommend the surgery to anyone who is a similar boat to us.

'It was a bit scary at the time and was a lot of money but it was absolutely worth it.'

Piper-Kohl was born nine weeks premature and spent two months in intensive care in Bristol

Medics told Georgia and Tyler treatment was available in the UK, but the procedure would be carried out by a surgeon who had never done the operation before.

In a race against time they took out a 9,000 loan and travelled 570 miles to Germany for the intricate operation, which has to be carried out before 26 weeks.

What is spina bifida? Spina bifida is when a baby's spine and spinal cord doesn't develop properly in the womb. This causes a gap in the spine and the condition is a type of neural tube defect. The neural tube is the structure that eventually develops into the baby's brain and spinal cord. In spina bifida, part of the tube doesn't develop properly, leading to defects in the spinal cord and vertebrae. Source: nhs.co.uk Advertisement

The three-hour operation saw surgeons insert a 'fetoscope' - a small telescope with a camera and light and two instruments - through a hole in Georgia's abdomen.

Surgeons attached a 3.5cm collagen patch used to treat burns victims over Piper's spine when she was just 2.1oz.

The patch covered the exposed nerves and will repair cognitive and lower limb development, to stop the baby being paralysed.

After the successful operation on June 13 the couple returned home where Georgia was told to rest up until her due date on October 2.

But on their day of their follow-up scan, six weeks later, Georgia went into an early labour.

She was rushed to Southmead Hospital, Bristol, where doctors performed an emergency C-section delivering Piper-Kohl at 9:31am, on July 28, weighing 3lb 10oz.

Georgia and Tyler named their daughter after doctor Professor Thomas Kohl who performed the operation in Germany. They said one day they'd love to take Piper to meet him

Born nine weeks premature she spent the next two months in intensive care, before being allowed to go home.

In a touching nod to Professor Thomas Kohl the first-time parents named their daughter after the pioneering doctor.

Proud mum Georgia, who was also born early, said: 'I woke up about 11pm and just thought it was back ache so went back to bed.

'But by 12:30am I was having full blown contractions. Tyler drove me to the hospital and he was great because he just remained really calm.

'It was weird because we had a scan that day and she was right up in my rib cage.

'Looking back on it she was probably getting herself ready to come out.

'I didn't get to hold her until 5pm that evening as the nurses said I needed to get some rest.

'We won't know if the operation completely worked until she starts walking, but all looks good at the moment.

The family from Yate, South Gloucestershire, hope that in a few months when Piper can sit up by herself they'll be able to know if the procedure was a complete success

'In a couple of months she'll be able to sit up by herself so that might help show if it worked.'

Proud dad Tyler said: 'We were a bit anxious when Georgia went into labour but Piper was actually a lot bigger than we were anticipating.

'When she was first born there was a little open red wound from the operation.

'It wasn't until we took her home that we felt like proper parents. Beforehand we had all the nurses around us so we didn't feel alone.

'Professor Thomas Kohl is an amazing bloke. She was also born on his birthday so it all just fell into place.

'We're still in contact with him and keep him posted on Piper's progress. We'd love to take Piper to Germany so she could meet him.'

Georgia and Tyler have set up a fundraising page to help pay off the loan they took out for the operation.
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This is the extraordinary moment a Russian coast guard vessel rammed a Ukrainian navy tugboat under the orders 'squash him' during an unprecedented stand-off in the Black Sea that has prompted fears of military escalation.

Crew on the Russian ship were told to 'hold on tight' as it ploughed in to the Ukrainian tug in the Kerch Strait, a narrow channel of water separating annexed Crimea from mainland Russia.

The same Russian ship later opened fire on and seized three of Ukraine's vessels, injuring at least six crew members in what is a key shipping route in the region, Kiev officials said.

The crisis began on Sunday after Russia stopped the three Ukrainian ships from entering the Sea of Azov - a shared territorial area that Moscow has aggressively tried to claim after seizing the peninsula in 2014. Russia's FSB security service said the ships had illegally entered its territorial waters and ignored warnings to stop.

Yesterday's confrontation is a dangerous development in a conflict pitting Ukraine against Russian-backed rebels the country's east. Thousands have died in fighting between Ukrainian troops and separatists since 2014.

There were angry protests outside Kiev's Russian embassy where a car was torched overnight. The Ukrainian parliament will today consider whether to impose martial law for 60 days while President Petro Poroshenko has demanded that the seized ships and crews are released and called for a 'de-escalation' of the crisis.

The Kremlin, meanwhile, has today accused Ukraine of using 'dangerous methods' in Kerch Strait, where Moscow has constructed a multi-million pound bridge connecting the Russian mainland with the Crimean Peninsula.

Tensions were heightened earlier on Sunday when a Russian coast guard vessel rammed a Ukrainian navy tugboat and blocked off the strait. In audio from a clip of the incident, a man can be heard shouting: 'Squash him, well done, squeeze him from the right, push from the right!

Flashpoint: Extraordinary footage captures the moment a Russian coast guard vessel rammed a Ukrainian navy tugboat under the orders 'squash him'

Crew members on board the Russian ship were told to 'hold on tight' as it ploughed in to the Ukrainian tug in the Kerch Strait, a narrow channel of water separating annexed Crimea from mainland Russia

The conflict took place in the Kerch Strait (pictured) - where Russia said Ukrainian ships made 'unauthorised crossings'. Russia blocked the passage using a huge cargo ship (pictured) under the Kerch Bridge connecting the Russian mainland with the Crimean Peninsula

A small armoured Ukrainian artillery ship and a tug boat are seen anchored in the Black Sea port of Kerch, Ukraine, after being seized by Russia

Russia says three Ukrainian Navy vessels (pictured) illegally crossed the Russian border and intruded into Russia's territorial waters

One Ukrainian navy tugboat was travelling with two artillery boats from Odessa on the Black Sea to Mariupol in the Sea of Azov

Russian fighter jets were seen flying low over the Kerch Bridge as tensions increased on Sunday. Yesterday's confrontation is a dangerous development in a conflict pitting Ukraine against Russian-backed rebels the country's east

Three of those hurt in the conflict have been named as Andrey Artyomenko (left), 24, Andrey Eyder (right), 18, and Vasily Soroka, 27

'Push, I'll get him here ****! Push him! Straight ahead! Yes to straight ahead. Go, go ****! Push him!! Straight ahead! (Midships!) Yes to straight ahead.'

He then warns crew members to 'hold on tight'.

Three of those hurt in the conflict have been named as Andrey Artyomenko, 24, Andrey Eyder, 18, and Vasily Soroka, 27.

This morning, EU President Donald Tusk condemned Russian use of force in the clash while France added its voice to international calls for Russia to release the ships.

'Nothing appears to have justified the use of force by Russia,' the French foreign ministry said in a statement.

'We urge Russia to release the Ukrainian sailors and hand back the seized naval vessels as soon as possible.'

Mr Poroshenko had a phone call with Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg to discuss the situation, and Nato later said that, at Mr Poroshenko's request, its ambassadors and Ukraine's envoy will hold emergency talks in Brussels later.

Nato said Mr Stoltenberg expressed the US-led military alliance's 'full support for Ukraine's territorial integrity and sovereignty, including its full navigational rights in its territorial waters under international law'.

Russia and Ukraine have traded blame over the incident, which further escalated tensions that have soared since Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and backed a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine.

A 2003 treaty designated the Kerch Strait and Sea of Azov (shown) as shared territorial waters, but Russia has been asserting greater control over the passage since 2015

The incident began earlier on Sunday when a Russian coast guard vessel rammed this Ukrainian navy tugboat (pictured)

Tensions: A Ukraine army APC moves towards a position at an undisclosed location in eastern Ukraine a day after the Black Sea confrontation

The Ukrainian parliament will today consider whether to impose martial law for 60 days after high level talks on Sunday night

Ukraine said its vessels were heading to the Sea of Azov in line with international maritime rules, while Russia claimed that they had failed to obtain permission to pass through the Kerch Strait separating Crimea from the Russian mainland.

The narrow strait is the only passage between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. It is spanned by a 11.8-mile bridge that Russia completed this year.

'There is no doubt that it was done by blessing or, perhaps, even a direct order from the top,' said Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov.

'While planning that provocation, Ukraine had undoubtedly hoped to get additional benefits from the situation, expecting the US and Europe to blindly take the provocateurs' side.'

He urged the West to 'calm down those in Ukraine who are trying to unleash a military hysteria to get political gains in connection with the planned elections' - a reference to Ukraine's presidential vote in March.

A motion to introduce martial law in Ukraine requires a simple majority of votes in the 450-seat parliament, which Mr Poroshenko's party controls.

If martial law is introduced as proposed for 60 days, it will derail the presidential election campaign, which was expected to start on December 30 with the vote in March.

Some politicians hit out at Mr Poroshenko's move as an attempt to influence the vote. Polls show Mr Poroshenko trailing far behind Yulia Tymoshenko.

'Martial law in Ukraine would present a wonderful chance to manipulate the presidential elections,' said Oksana Syroid, a deputy speaker of parliament who is a member of the Samopomich faction.

A Ukrainian National Guard serviceman extinguishes a torch thrown by a protester during a rally against the seizure by Russian special forces

About 50-100 people gathered outside the Russian Embassy in Kiev overnight to protest Moscow's actions. A man is pictured trying to put out a fire after one of the embassy's cars was torched

A man places a paper boat outside the Russian Embassy in Kiev, Ukraine, during a protest against the seizure by Russian special forces of three of the Ukrainian navy's ships

She noted that martial law was not introduced in 2014 or 2015 despite large-scale fighting between Ukrainian forces and Russia-backed separatists in the east.

President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said that Mr Poroshenko's initiative to introduce martial law 'clearly smacks of electoral intrigues'.

'We believe that it's wrong and dangerous to solve electoral tasks by waving a flag of war,' he said.

Russia claims it was forced to cut off the Kerch Strait with a cargo ship because the Ukrainian navy ships had made an 'unauthorised crossing through Russian territorial waters'. The Kerch Strait was reopened by Monday morning, according to the RIA news agency.

Though a 2003 treaty designates the Kerch Strait and Sea of Azov as shared territorial waters, Russia has been asserting greater control over the passage since 2015. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry in a statement said Russia's actions were a violation of the UN Charter.

The statement added Russia was informed in advance about the planned transit. The Ukrainian navy said its tugboat's engine, hull, side railing and a lifeboat had been damaged in the conflict.

'Intercepted video' showing the tugboat being rammed by the Russian border service ship was shared by Ukraine's Interior Minister Arsen Avakov.

In a tweet, he described it as a an 'act of aggression' that 'will be used as proof in international court'.

Russia's FSB security service justified its actions in a statement: 'Having breached this morning the Russian border, the three Ukrainian ships - the Berdyansk, the Nikopol and the Yani Kapu - tried again on November 25 at 19:00 (Moscow time) to conduct illegal actions in Russian territorial waters.'

The paper boats have been placed just metres away from security guards policing the entrance to the Russian embassy

The boats have been placed along the walls that surround the consulate in the Ukrainian capital

The protest comes after three crew were injured in conflict in the Kerch Strait and tensions between Ukraine and Russia heighten

The FSB, which oversees the border guard service, also said the Ukrainian ships had failed to respond to the 'legal demands' of the Russian authorities and that they were aiming 'to create a conflict situation in this region'.

Pro-Kremlin media suggested Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko sent the ships through the Kerch Strait in a provocative attempt to boost his approval ratings in the upcoming presidential elections.

The European Union issued a statement saying: 'We expect Russia to restore freedom of passage at the Kerch strait and urge all to act with utmost restraint to de-escalate the situation immediately.'

NATO in a statement also urged 'restraint and de-escalation', and called on Russia 'to ensure unhindered access to Ukrainian ports in the Azov Sea, in accordance with international law'.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called a meeting of his military cabinet to evaluate and determine his country's next steps.

Ukraine's foreign ministry said it considered 'these aggressive actions' a violation of international law that would be met with 'an international and diplomatic legal response', and its envoy to the United Nations said on Twitter that the country will make an immediate appeal to the Security Council.

Russian politicians accused Ukraine of acting at the behest of its Western allies and deliberately attempting to escalate the conflict.

Crimean leader Sergei Aksyonov wrote on Facebook that he 'was sure the Western masters of the Kiev regime are behind this act of provocation'.

Police officers stand near smoke flares which were thrown by protesters during a rally against the seizure of Ukrainian ships

Flares were hurled over the fence at the embassy upon the news that three crew members had been injured in the conflict

Crowds gather outside the consulate in the Ukrainian capital to protest the violence in the Kerch Strait

Two Ukrainian forces navy ships are seen near Crimea in a photo handed out by the Ukrainian Navy Press Service

Pyotr Tolstoy, deputy speaker of the Russian parliament, warned on Facebook that 'the Ukrainian puppet authorities... are risking unleashing a large military conflict'.

'One thing is clear: Russia won't allow military provocations in its territorial waters,' he said.

The office of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko described the Russian action against the Ukrainian navy ships as 'an act of aggression aimed at deliberately escalating the situation in the waters of the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait,' and called for international condemnation of Moscow and new sanctions.

It follows months of growing tensions between Ukraine and Russia, which annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and has steadily worked to increase its zone of control around the peninsula.

Transit under the bridge has been blocked by a tanker ship and dozens of cargo ships awaiting passage are stuck.

Russia's Federal Security Service, known as the FSB, told Russian news agencies the Ukrainian ships held their course and violated Russian territorial waters, which were temporarily closed.

The FSB accused the Ukrainian navy of staging a provocation against Russia.

'Their goal is clear,' an FSB statement said, 'to create a conflict situation in the region'.

The statement did not mention ramming a Ukrainian tugboat.
Betty Bumpers, a former first lady of Arkansas, who mounted a tireless national campaign to ensure children received pre-school immunizations, has died at the age of 93.

Bumpers, who was from Grand Prairie, Arkansas, and an elementary school teacher, died from complications of dementia on Friday, according to The New York Times. She had been in failing health and had recently sustained a hip fracture.

Her work to prevent children contracting common but potentially fatal diseases like measles, mumps and diphtheria began when her husband, Dale L. Bumpers, a liberal Democrat and a relative unknown, became Arkansas governor in 1970.

Betty Bumpers, a former first lady of Arkansas, who mounted a tireless national campaign to ensure children received pre-school immunizations, has died at the age of 93

Starting out as first lady of Arkansas, Bumpers was shocked to learn that tens of thousands of Arkansas children had not been inoculated against a number of diseases.

She pioneered an immunization campaign called Every Child by 1974 which was credited with increasing vaccination rates in Arkansas.

In the mid and late 1970s Bumpers expanded her mission outside of Arkansas and to other states.

Bumpers and then first lady, Rosalynn Carter, led a state-by-state campaign promoting pre-school immunizations. Programs were enacted and proof of vaccinations became mandatory before children could enroll in kindergarten in public schools.

She pioneered an immunization campaign called Every Child by '74 which was credited with increasing vaccination rates in Arkansas

Former President Bill Clinton, a former Arkansas governor, paid his respects on Friday

The Centers for Disease Control in 1980 reported that disease among public school children was 'at or near record low levels.'

Bumpers galvanized her efforts along with former first lady Rosalynn Carter after the measles outbreak in 1991 that infected 55,000 people and led to the deaths of over a 100.

They started a nonprofit campaign, Every Child by Two, to encourage immunizations for mumps, measles, rubella and other illnesses by the age of 2.

Later she worked on immunization programs with fellow former Arkansas first lady Hillary Clinton.

Former President Bill Clinton tweeted on Friday: 'Hillary and I treasured our friendship with Betty Bumpers.'

Bumpers galvanized her efforts along with Rosalynn Carter. They started a nonprofit campaign, Every Child by Two to encourage immunizations at a younger age. Later she worked with fellow former Arkansas first lady Hillary Clinton

Bumpers' endeavors earned her numerous accolades from humanitarian organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Bumpers was also concerned about the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the risks of nuclear war as relations became strained between Washington and Moscow.

In 1982, she founded Peace Links with other congressional wives. Peace Links sought to bring together women in the United States and in the then-Soviet Union to help reduce the proliferation of nuclear weapons and to promote diplomatic efforts to world conflicts.

Dale Bumpers died aged 90 in 2016. Betty Bumpers is survived by her sons, Brent and Bill, and seven grandchildren.
Corey Lewandowski believes that he would win if things ever got physical between him and Chief of Staff John Kelly.

TMZ caught up with President Trump's former campaign manager in Washington, DC as he promoted his new book Trump's Enemies: How the Deep State is Undermining the Presidency.

Lewandowski has been dogged by rumors that, earlier this year, he and Kelly got into a physical altercation so intense that Secret Service agents had to break it up.

'Would you bet on yourself against John Kelly if it ever got that physical?' a photographer asked Lewandowski.

'I always bet on me,' Lewandowski replied with a grin before getting into his car.

Corey Lewandowski (left, December 2017) has denied that he and Chief of Staff John Kelly (right, January 2017) have gotten into a fight, but says that he could win if things ever got physical

The New York Times reported that Lewandowski and Kelly got into a heated argument at the White House in February so intense that Secret Service agents had to break it up. Pictured: President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump pardon the National Thanksgiving Turkey on November 20

The New York Times reported that Lewandowksi and Kelly got into the heated argument at the White House in February.

When asked about the incident on Fox News Sunday, Lewandowski said: 'John and I had a very candid discussion.'

According to The Times' article, Lewandowski criticized how Kelly had handled accusations of domestic violence against a former staff.

In response, Kelly allegedly shoved Lewandowski into a wall.

The retired Marine Corps general then 'grabbed Mr Lewandowski by the collar and tried to have him ejected from the West Wing', according to The Times.

Lewandowski disputed that the Secret Service had to break up the altercation.

He has refused to refer to Kelly as Trump's enemy both in public or in his book like he has with former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer and former director of the National Economic Council Gary Cohn.

Both men are referred to in the book as members of the 'November 9th Club', suggesting that they only became Trump supporters after he won the 2016 presidential election.

However, both he and co-author David Bossie have complained that they were kept under a watchful eye whenever they were in the White House.

'Well, I respect John Kelly for his service to the country and for as long as the president wants to keep him as chief of staff that will be his prerogative,' Lewandowski told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday.

He then continued: 'But to say that Dave and I - two people who have been unresolved in our support for the president - to have an escort, which almost nobody else has to have, I think is a little bit out of bounds.'

The former campaign manager also made it clear that since Kelly replaced Reince Priebus as chief of staff in July 2017, he has limited who has access to Trump.

'I also think you have a president that wants access to individuals, who wants to take phone calls. In our book, we interview him and he says: "Nobody calls me, I don't get my messages",' Lewandowski said.

Lewandowski (pictured, June 2018) has not referred to Kelly as one of the president's 'enemies' in his new book Trump's Enemies: How the Deep State is Undermining the Presidency.

However, he does lament that since Kelly (pictured, January 2017) replaced Reince Priebus as chief of staff in July 2017, he has limited who has access to Trump

'That is a failure somewhere in the staff chain that the president doesn't have the right to get to the people that are trying to reach him.'

This is not the first time it has been reported that Kelly has gotten physical with other White House staffers and foreign dignitaries.

The Wall Street Journal reported last month that Kelly and Secret Service agents 'got into a physical altercation' with a Chinese official who was trying to gain unauthorized access to the briefcase that allows Trump to launch nuclear missiles remotely.

And it was widely reported last month that Kelly and national security adviser John Bolton were engaged in a shouting match outside the Oval Office over the migrant caravan.

Bolton was reportedly in favor of Trump's idea to shut down the Southern border while Kelly urged a more restricted approach.

Allegedly the fight reached a boiling point when Bolton criticized Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, Kellys former deputy, for not doing enough about the border crisis, which set Kelly off.
Downing Street signalled a climbdown on a Brexit TV debate tonight insisting the PM was already challenging Jeremy Corbyn in the Commons.

No 10 sources played down the prospect of a prime time TV battle despite the Labour leader already taking up the idea after rumours yesterday.

Mr Corbyn made no mention of the idea of a debate during Mrs May's appearance in the Commons today - but the PM swerved questions from the SNP and Lib Dems.

The idea of a TV showdown emerged yesterday but Downing Street has refused to say whether the PM would in fact take part.

Sources said tonight: 'The Prime Minister has just been debating Jeremy Corbyn in the House. I don't have anything further to add.

'The House of Commons is not the only thing she will be doing.

'She will be in all four nations of the UK just this week.'

The situation was also at risk of descending into farce this afternoon as the SNP, the Lib Dems, the Green Party and Plaid Cymru all insisted they should be involved in any TV clash.

Theresa May (left) and Jeremy Corbyn (right) could face off in a TV debate as the focal point of an 'election style' campaign on the Brexit deal

Mrs May kicked off a PR drive to win support for her deal today, urging mutinous MPs to get on board after holding a Cabinet meeting.

Mr Corbyn has condemned Mrs May's agreement as 'a miserable failure of negotiation'.

He claimed his party would 'work with others to block a no-deal outcome', advancing its own 'sensible' deal as an alternative.

But critics point out that Mr Corbyn's favoured position is similar to the Irish border 'backstop' arrangements hammered out by Mrs May, and the EU has already insisted it would not offer a different UK government a better settlement.

Mr Corbyn said of the PM's withdrawal agreement, which was rubber-stamped by EU leaders yesterday: 'This is a bad deal for the country.

A spokesman for the Labour leader said: 'Jeremy would relish a head-to-head debate with Theresa May about her botched Brexit deal and the future of our country.'

'It is the result of a miserable failure of negotiation that leaves us with the worst of all worlds. It gives us less say over our future, and puts jobs and living standards at risk. That is why Labour will oppose this in Parliament.

What happens now the Brexit deal has been signed off in Brussels? Brexit passed a major milestone in Brussels today as EU leaders agreed the negotiated divorce deal. This is what the next steps are: Today:Theresa May will make statement to MPs on the summit and launch her push to win the 'meaningful vote' on the deal. She can expect another furious response from MPs. Around December 1: The meaningful vote itself. This is the absolutely crucial moment and could make or break the Prime Minister and her deal. MPs will vote after a debate that could last as long as five days. If the vote carries, Mrs May survives and Brexit is on track as she plans. If she loses, she could resign. December 13-14: The next EU summit. If the deal has been rejected by MPs, Mrs May could use this to try and secure new concessions. January 2019: The European Parliament is due to vote on the deal - but will only do so if it has been agreed in the House of Commons. March 29, 2019: Exit day. This is written in law so unless there is a dramatic shift Britain will leave the EU, deal or no deal. Advertisement

'We will work with others to block a no-deal outcome, and ensure that Labour's alternative plan for a sensible deal to bring the country together is on the table.'

However, the Labour leader failed to mention the debate as he confronted Mrs May in the Commons this afternoon.

As the argument widened, Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon tweeted: 'I can't speak for Jeremy Corbyn, but I'd be up for a full leaders' debate on the 'deal'.

'So, how about it PM Theresa May?'

And the SNP's defence spokesman Stewart McDonald said his party must be included, claiming a debate between Mrs May and Mr Corbyn 'would represent the worst type of Westminster carve-up'.

He tweeted: 'Any TV debate that takes place on Brexit must include all parties represented in the UK parliament.'

Agreeing to a TV debate would be a radical reversal for Mrs May, who memorably turned down head-to-head appearances during the last election campaign.

She was savaged by other party leaders for dodging a debate during the election in June last year - instead sending Amber Rudd.

The plan would stoke nerves among senior Tories, as Mr Corbyn could be free to attack the premier's position while batting away criticism of his own by saying he is not currently in power.

The PM's deal is likely to come before the Commons for the crunch vote on December 12 - the day before an EU summit.

Mrs May was accused of lacking 'guts' when she declined to appear in a TV debate with all the major party leaders last year.

After an historic Brussels summit to seal the deal, Mrs May said her plan would take back control of 'our laws, borders and money' while protecting jobs and security - meaning it was in the 'national interest' over the weekend.

Despite gaining approval in Brussels, Mrs May's toughest battle may yet be fought in the Commons as she tries to pass the deal through a divided parliament.

Criticism of her deal has come from several key figures aside from Mr Corbyn, including DUP leader Arlene Foster, who hinted that her party could support a 'plan B' Brexit for Norway-style relations.

Former foreign secretary Boris Johnson said if signs off by Parliament the agreement would serve as a 'ghastly gaping warning' to all other member states considering leaving.

British Prime Minister Theresa May (R) and European Union Council President Donald Tusk during the extraordinary EU leaders summit to finalise and formalise the Brexit deal - but it has a long way to go to get through Parliament

In his regular Daily Telegraph column today, he said: 'The other EU countries have signed the deal immediately, because they know that they have us exactly where they want us. We are a satellite state - a memento mori fixed on the walls of Brussels as a ghastly gaping warning to all who try to escape.'

In the piece he continued his calls for the backstop to be scrapped, the full payment of 39billion to be withheld until a trade deal is done, and intensified planning for a no-deal Brexit,

Arlene Foster says May's deal is 'worse than Corbyn in charge' Arlene Foster has said that Theresa May's Brexit deal is a worse outcome for Britain than a government led by Jeremy Corbyn. Mrs Foster dismissed claims that the DUP is merely playing a game of brinkmanship and would cave in and support Mrs May if the alternative was a general election and a possible Labour government. Asked if Mrs May's Brexit is a greater threat than a government led by Jeremy Corbyn, Mrs Foster told the Times: 'I think it is. 'The reason I say that is on day one of us leaving the EU there would be no difference, we would be exactly the same as the rest of the UK but in year five or ten we would be different. 'If people [in Northern Ireland] are looking to Dublin for representation in Europe because we're the subject of EU rules, that is so dangerous in terms of the Union. 'All the things we build the Union on  the economic unit, the cultural, social, political and historical - start to diverge.' Advertisement

Mr Johnson said: 'We cannot go on any more with this hopeless can't-do spirit; this reflexive negativity and defeatism that so woefully underestimates the courage and creativity of the British people.

'Yes, there will be some logistical and technical challenges, and yes they will require some effort.

'But it is disgraceful that the Government is - deliberately - allowing those short-term challenges so to dominate the debate that we are ready to consign ourselves to decades as the impotent captive of the EU's over-taxed, badly regulated, low-growth economic model.'

It came a day after Mr Johnson spoke at the DUP conference in Belfast to fire up the party faithful in a bid to scupper May's Brexit plans.

The former foreign secretary warned that the PM was heading for an 'iceberg' and her package would leave Northern Ireland 'ruled by the EU'.

Mrs May is now set to engage in a charm offensive to convince the public she has delivered on what her team considers to be the main message of the referendum - tackling immigration.

But she addressed criticism of her plan by saying: 'In any negotiation you do not get everything you want... I think the British people understand that.'

She will also have to win over her own MPs.

Commons leader Andrea Leadsom and International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt have been placed on 'resignation watch' by No 10 again after Mrs May failed to secure any new concessions on the controversial Irish 'backstop', which critics fear could keep the UK locked in the customs union.

Sources close to Mrs Leadsom, a key player in Vote Leave, said she was 'weighing up options' but her spokesman insisted she was not resigning.

Her Brexiteer colleagues Penny Mordaunt and Chris Grayling also declined to comment on whether they would back the plan.

Fellow Brexiteers including Transport Secretary Chris Grayling and International Trade Secretary Liam Fox also failed to join a push by ministers to sell the deal on social media last night, as did Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson.

Boris Johnson blasts May's deal at DUP conference Boris Johnson spoke at the DUP conference in Belfast on Saturday to fire up the party faithful in a bid to scupper Theresa May's Brexit plans. The former foreign secretary warned that the PM was heading for an 'iceberg' and her package would leave Northern Ireland 'ruled by the EU'. He said Mrs May was giving away the 39billion divorce settlement too easily  suggesting half should be withheld until after a final trade agreement is sealed at the end of 2020. Mr Johnson said the country was 'on the the verge of making a historic mistake'. 'If we are not careful we are going to stay in the customs union, we are going to stay in the single market, we are going to be rules takers,' he said. 'Unless we junk this backstop, we will find that Brussels has got us exactly where they want us  a satellite state. But Mr Johnson again stopped short of calling for Mrs May to be ousted today, despite dozens of other Eurosceptics putting in no-confidence letters. Advertisement

EU leaders warned they would not reopen negotiations if MPs reject the deal.

And French President Emmanuel Macron threatened to lock Britain into the customs union unless Mrs May allows access to the UK's fishing grounds  causing major concerns for Scottish Tory MPs.

Many of Mrs May's fellow Conservatives also claimed the Prime Minister has 'caved in' to European leaders on the issue of Gibraltar and 'sold out' the 30,000 British citizens who live there.

The furore came after Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said 'everyone loses' when it comes to Brexit but Spain has 'won' on the issue of Gibraltar after receiving assurances from other EU leaders.

Speaking in Brussels today the Spanish leader said of Theresa May's divorce deal: 'We are going to resolve a conflict that has been going for over 300 years.

'This puts Spain in a position of strength in negotiations with the United Kingdom over Gibraltar that we have not had until now.

'We all lose [with Brexit], especially the United Kingdom, but regarding Gibraltar, Spain wins.'

For now, the odds of the Prime MInister securing Parliamentary approval seem stacked against her, with criticism of the deal from all sides.

But Mrs May has already set loose her party whips to ensure she has as much backing as possible in the make-or-break vote, likely to be held in the next few weeks.

Now for Mrs May's frantic fortnight of Brexit arm-twisting: Prime Minister offers Rebel MPs 'sweetners' including peerages and changes to bills in bid to get her plan through parliament

Mrs May (pictured in Brussels today) has vowed to 'make the case for this deal with all my heart' to persuade MPs to back her

Theresa May is preparing for a frantic fortnight of arm-twisting - with rebel MPs set to be offered peerages and other sweeteners in a bid to force the Brexit deal deal through Parliament.

With more than 90 Tory MPs indicating they will not back it, and the Democratic Unionist Party withholding support, the Prime Minister faces an uphill struggle.

Mrs May has vowed to 'make the case for this deal with all my heart' to persuade restless MPs to back her. But it appears she will also resort to horsetrading.

Some Brexiteers were said to have been offered peerages while other MPs are being bought off with changes to bills, according to reports.

Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom has been placed on resignation watch by No 10 after failing to back Mrs May's deal publicly.

Sources close to Mrs Leadsom, a key player in Vote Leave, said she was 'weighing up options' but her spokesman insisted she was not resigning. Her Brexiteer colleagues Penny Mordaunt and Chris Grayling also declined to comment on whether they would back the plan.

It is now crunch time for the Cabinet Brexiteers after the withdrawal agreement was formally signed by EU leaders at a summit Mrs May attended in Brussels yesterday. EU chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier was kissed by European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker as European Council president Donald Tusk joined in the congratulations.

A Commons vote on the deal will be held shortly  most likely on December 12.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, center, kisses European Union chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, right, as European Council President Donald Tusk looks on after the withdrawal agreement was formally signed by EU leaders in Brussels on Sunday

Leader of the House of Commons Andrea Leadsom (pictured) has been placed on resignation watch by No 10 after failing to back Mrs May's deal publicly

Mrs May has conceded she may have to approach Opposition MPs to win support. She was even forced to deny in Cabinet that she had attempted to win support from Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in exchange for the promise of a general election.

Yesterday there were reports that Mrs May's team were setting up a 'war room' in the Cabinet Office to win the votes they need.

Chief of staff Gavin Barwell and spin doctor Robbie Gibb are expected to give the Cabinet a class in 'selling the deal'.

Sources said Mrs May's aides were approaching MPs to ask what they wanted to secure votes. One veteran Eurosceptic was said to have been told: 'We need more people in the House of Lords... I think you'd be a strong voice.'

However, some MPs have clearly been written off as lost causes, with one Brexiteer saying he would be lucky to receive a lump of coal.

Many Tories are unconvinced Mrs May can win the votes she needs or will have the scope to deliver on promises. One MP said: 'She can't just offer 90 peerages.'

Veteran Eurosceptic John Hayes yesterday insisted he will not vote for the deal despite Mrs May promising him a knighthood.

He told The Mail on Sunday: 'As I've made very clear before my honour, I cannot support the deal as it now stands.'

Mrs May's team are said to be thinking up sweeteners for rebels such as former party leader Iain Duncan Smith and Mrs Leadsom. The Commons Leader is said to have met Mrs May last week to demand technological solutions to the Northern Irish border issue, rather than the backstop.

UK could be '1,000 per person worse off' with May's deal Theresa May's Brexit deal could be bad news for Britons  leaving the UK's GDP about 1,000 lower per person, it is suggested. A report by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research think tank said GDP would still fall significantly under the proposed plans which include leaving the customs union. The NIESR told The Times GDP would be 3.9 per cent lower than if the UK had remained in the EU in twelve years' time. However, GDP would be 5.5 per cent lower in 2030 if there was 'no deal' the report said. Sir Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat leader, said: 'If anything, the bleak predictions in this report are an underestimate of the severe damage our economy will suffer if this deal goes ahead because it takes no account of the draining away of confidence in business and the impact on investors who no longer see the UK as a gateway to Europe.' The independent report was commissioned by the People's Vote campaign. Advertisement

'There's a big effort going on to try and find something that for the Andrea Leadsoms, the Iain Duncan Smiths, is a little bit of a victory,' a loyalist Cabinet minister told the Sunday Times. Plans are also in place to win over rebels by tweaking legislation making its passage through Parliament.

Ministers are expected to back plans to ban men accused of domestic violence from cross-examining their accusers in court.

This is thought likely to be met with approval by female MPs including Remainers Sarah Wollaston and Heidi Allen, who favour a second referendum. Britain may also pledge to take more child refugees to win over MPs who have championed their cause, including Mrs Allen. Government support for a private member's bill banning hospital parking charges, put forward by MP Robert Halfon, who opposes the deal, may be given.

Similarly, a cut in air passenger duty could be introduced after backbench Tories and the DUP backed it. When Chancellor Philip Hammond spoke at a private DUP dinner on Friday, a source said he was 'taking his chequebook'.

Meanwhile, it was claimed last night that Britain could run out of clean water within days in the event of 'no deal' as purification chemicals could be stopped at the border. The doomsday scenario was said to have convinced Environment Secretary Michael Gove to back Mrs May's deal.
eartbroken friends took to social media to share their tributes to Jardine

Tributes have flooded in to a 'one in a million' young woman after her sudden death left friends and family devastated.

Jardine Garvey, 25, from Liverpool, is understood to have passed away on Friday night, prompting an outpouring of grief from those who knew and loved her.

The popular waitress, who worked at The Quarter in Liverpool city centre, was described by friends as being 'one in a million' and 'a lovely soul inside and out'.

Tributes have flooded in to a 'one in a million' young woman, Jardine Garvey, 25, from Liverpool, after her sudden death left friends and family devastated

Heartbroken friends took to social media to share their tributes to Jardine, known to friends as Jardina Maria, who was from Liverpool.

Johnny Sands said: 'Jards! Where do we start! I love you! I will miss you so much, you brightened up the world and those around you... You are an angel forever now.'

Jason Fitzgibbon said: 'Can't believe I would ever write this - absolutely devastating. Such a lovely soul inside and out.

'I'm lost for words - had so many good times and laughs together. Rest in paradise baby girl. Love you always.'

Sophie Ward said: 'I am shocked and devastated and can't even begin to imagine what your family are going through. You were one in a million -there will never be anyone like you. Rest in peace.'

John Morton said: 'Shine bright up there queen.'

The popular waitress, who worked at The Quarter in Liverpool city centre, was described by friends as being 'a lovely soul inside and out'

The Gluten Free Pie Company, who worked with Jardine in her job at The Quarter, shared a photo of the young waitress at work, posting: 'Heartbroken to hear the news that my favourite coffee angel is no longer with us.

'With a mutual love of Maria Carey this girl was one in a million. Funny, intelligent and just a style icon. She always looked a million dollars.

'Rest in peace Jardina - I still can't quite believe it. My heart goes out to all my friends at the The Quarter.'
The brother of a missing Navy veteran is appealing for new information on the tenth anniversary of her Thanksgiving disappearance.

Taveta Hobbs vanished without a trace in November 2008, leaving behind her car, diary, computer, jewelry, and glasses.

The 44-year-old never even picked up her last paycheck.

Taveta's husband Phil Hobbs has maintained that she packed up all her things one night and decided to move from their North Carolina home to Burbank, California.

But Taveta's family haven't heard from her since, and police say there is little evidence to suggest she is still alive.

Navy veteran Taveta Hobbs vanished without a trace in November 2008, leaving behind her car, diary, computer, jewelry, and glasses. She was 44 years old

Taveta's younger brother Clinton Crier (pictured together) is appealing for information on the tenth anniversary of her Thanksgiving disappearance

Taveta and her younger brother, Clinton Crier, were extremely close while growing up.

'She was a sweetheart,' he told NBC's Dateline. 'We had a huge love for each other because I was her younger brother and she really looked after me.'

They grew apart after Taveta joined the Navy in 1982 and began moving around a lot, but the siblings still talked on the phone whenever they could.

But everything changed in 2007, when the pair had a fight during a family gathering.

'It was a stupid argument,' Crier recalled. 'And some other frustrations boiled over.'

The siblings stopped speaking frequently and thus a few months went by before Crier realized he hadn't heard from his sister in months.

In December 2008, Crier called Hobbs to see how she was doing. That's when he found out she had disappeared over Thanksgiving.

In December 2008, Crier called Taveta's husband Phill Hobbs to see how she was doing. That's when he found out she had disappeared over Thanksgiving

Hobbs told Crier that she had left behind her car and taken a small amount of money to move from their North Carolina home (pictured) to Burbank, California

Crier said he had never heard his sister discuss plans to move back to California, where he also lives.

Hobbs told Crier that she had left behind her car and taken a small amount of money. The story struck him as strange.

'She loved that car, and she wouldn't have just left it,' he said. 'None of it sounded right.'

Crier kept in touch with Hobbs through the new year to see if Taveta had gotten in touch. In October 2009, he filed a missing person report with the Wake County Sheriff's Office. The Raleigh Police Department is now working on the case.

Authorities discovered that the last correspondence anyone received from Taveta was a text sent from her phone to her boss at Salesforce on November 24, 2008.

The text read that she was quitting her job.

Authorities discovered that the last correspondence anyone received from Taveta was a text sent from her phone to her boss at Salesforce on November 24, 2008 saying she was quitting. Taveta is pictured here with Crier and their mother

'The text came from her phone. As to who sent that text? That's still a question that we have,' said detective Eric Gibney.

'Her boss would definitely say that her quitting was not foreseen as coming. She was very happy in her profession. For her to up and quit randomly is kind of suspicious.'

Taveta's phone was not used again after that final text.

Authorities have little hope that Taveta is still alive today

Investigators canvassed neighborhoods and reached out to Taveta's friends, but struggled to find out more information due to her small social network.

'It was hard to find anyone who had intimate details of what happened behind closed doors with her,' Gibney said.

The case remains open and the Raleigh Police Department has not disclosed if there are any suspects or persons of interest.

But authorities have little hope that Taveta is still alive today.

'As of right now, this very moment, there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that she is alive,' Gibney said.

'It's very difficult for us to believe that Taveta just voluntary said "I'm leaving" and just disappeared without a trace. She didn't have the financial means to disappear.'

To this day, Crier regrets that last big fight he had with his sister.

'I want justice,' he said. 'I don't think my sister is alive. I want her to be alive. I love her and I miss her. I want the person who did this to be held accountable.'

If you have any information surrounding Taveta's disappearance, please call Raleigh CrimeStoppers at (919) 834-HELP (4357).
More than 800 people have been told to flee their homes as a massive out-of-control bushfire closes in on properties on Queensland's coast.

Several homes have reportedly been lost and an emergency situation has been declared, with firefighters urging residents north of Bundaberg to follow bushfire survival plans or leave immediately.

Police, fire crews and State Emergency Service volunteers went from door to door in Deepwater and Baffle Creek on Sunday night to tell people to evacuate as 12-metre-high flames tore through bushland, The Courier-Mail reported.

'Everything was just red, it was so red. My clothesline, probably 100m away from my back door I couldn't even see my clothesline,' one Deepwater local said.

'We knew the fire was right on us, we could hear it, we could see it. Then all of a sudden my phone went off and it said ''Evacuate Now''.'

More than 800 people have been told to flee their homes as a massive out-of-control bushfire closes in on properties on Queensland's coast. One resident shared this picture taken in the state's far north on Sunday

A emergency situation has been declared, with firefighters urging residents north of Bundaberg to follow bushfire survival plans or leave

Queensland Fire and Emergency Services Commissioner Katarina Carroll said about 600 people were tipped to evacuate from Deepwater Creek, plus 200 from Baffle Creek.

'The intensity of this fire covers some 9000ha and the flames are more than 10 to 12m high,' she told the paper.

On Monday morning the 'dangerous and unpredictable' fire at Deepwater National Park was moving south-southwest and many properties were 'still potentially at risk', QFES said.

Ms Carroll told Channel 9 on Sunday the scale of the blaze had not been 'seen in this part of the world before'.

At 8.15pm on Sunday the 'dangerous and unpredictable' fire at Deepwater National Park was moving south-southwest

The warning came as the QFES told the Deepwater community to evacuate immediately with the fire racing towards the populated area in a south-westerly direction

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said: 'The intensity of this fire covers some 9,000 hectares, and the flames are more than 10 to 12 metres high.'

An evacuation centre has been set up at nearby Miriam Vale, with police assisting with evacuations from the community.

The Wartburg State School at Baffle Creek is closed due to the fire, the Department of Education said.

Residents to the north of the national park around the suburb of Round Hill are being advised to prepare to leave.

At 8.20pm on Sunday the fire was moving north-northeasterly towards homes, with firefighters warning they would not be able to protect individual houses.

Several homes have reportedly been lost and an emergency situation has been declared

The Bureau of Meteorology said the hot weather was being driven by an inland low-pressure trough coming from central areas - and would remain high until at least Wednesday

To the southwest, firefighters were monitoring a blaze at Lowmead and other fires at Mt Urah, southwest of Maryborough, Googa Creek, south of Blackbutt, and Injune, north of Roma. All posed no threat to property.

Another fire south of Brisbane near Undullah is burning within containment lines and residents are being advised to keep up to date with the blaze.

Hot westerly winds, high temperatures and low humidity are making most of the state like a tinderbox, fire authorities said.

Residents in rural areas have been urged to take the usual precautions, including avoiding using machinery and power tools if possible, and to call triple-0 immediately if they spot a fire.
Authorities said two men were killed and two others were injured in a shooting outside a Papa John's restaurant in Florida.

Orange County Sheriff's deputies said one man was found dead by a car near the pizza restaurant.

Deputies said the man had been shot 'several times'.

Authorities said two men were killed and two others were injured in a shooting outside a Papa John's restaurant in Florida. Deputies said one of the men had been shot 'several times'

Orange County Sheriff's deputies said one man was found dead by a car near the pizza restaurant. Deputies said the man had been shot 'several times'

Another man, who managed to make it inside the restaurant to ask for help, was taken to the hospital, where he died a short time later, according to WKMG.

Two other men were rushed to the hospital.

One of the men underwent surgery, but officials didn't release any information on the second survivor's condition.

Authorities later arrested a 21-year-old man who was caught fleeing the scene after crashing his car at an intersection of Sand Lake Road and Orange Avenue.

The man was taken into custody on fleeing charges.

Deputies believe that he could be connected to the shooting. No other arrests have been made. It's unclear what led up to the incident.
Amazon has denied allegations it asked Spanish police to patrol inside one of its warehouses to make sure workers were productive as a strike took place outside.

Employees at a warehouse in the outskirts of Madrid staged Black Friday protests due to 'inhumane' working conditions.

And when Amazon caught wind of it, the retail giant asked police to ensure productivity remained high, according to Spanish media.

Police at the San Fernando de Henares depot near Madrid, Spain, after workers protested at working conditions on Friday

Protesters at the Madrid warehouse (above) were stopping others going to work during the strike

Amazon denied the allegations and dismissed them as 'ludicrous' and the 'worst kind of misinformation'.

An Amazon spokeswoman told Business Insider: 'Amazon is a responsible business that puts its customers and associates first. We always work with public authorities, including the police, to ensure the safety of our people and our operations.

'However any suggestion that we have used this relationship in an improper way is categorically wrong. Anyone who understands the way businesses and local authorities work will know that these ludicrous suggestions are the worst kind of misinformation.'

Spanish newspaper El Confidencial reported that Amazon approached police officials after thousands of Spanish workers announced they would be striking.

Elsewhere, staff at the firms's Milton Keynes warehouse in the UK wore T-shirts that read: 'We are not robots'

A handful of protesters gathered at the depot in Swansea, Wales, as they protested 'in-humane' conditions

The paper said Amazon wanted local officers 'to force employees to go to their respective jobs and ensure their performance was identical to that of a normal working day'.

Amazon's request 'dumbfounded' police, who denied their request because 'controlling labour doesn't fall within its powers,' according to El Confidencial.

Police officials reportedly emphasised that Spanish law protects workers' right to strike and said they would attend the strike but only to keep the peace.
First-time buyers are saddling themselves with record levels of debt as banks launch super-sized mortgages for up to six times people's salaries.

Britons buying their first home now borrow an average of 3.68 times their annual income  the highest since records began in the 1970s.

In the summer of 2007, the lead-up to the financial crisis, people typically borrowed 3.39 times their salary.

A quarter of mortgages are now for 4.5 times someone's salary or higher, compared to a fifth just three years ago, according to Bank of England data.

First-time buyers are saddling themselves with record levels of debt as banks launch super-sized mortgages for up to six times people's salaries. File photo

Some banks are lending as much as six times borrowers' salaries  rates branded 'irresponsible' and 'alarming' before the housing crash a decade ago.

Britain's super-sized mortgages revealed Most banks currently have a maximum loan-to-income ratio of between x4 and x4.75 a homeowners salary. However, some mortgage providers are offering as much as SIX times borrowers' salaries: Darlington Building Society x6

Barclays x5.5

Santander x5.5

Sainsbury's x5

Virgin x5 SOURCE: Moneyfacts Advertisement

Families are already a record 25billion in the red  equivalent to more than a fifth of the annual NHS budget.

With house prices soaring by a third in just five years, to an average of 233,000, mortgages are helping to push up debts to levels never seen before.

This week, Darlington Building Society launched a mortgage offering professionals up to six times their salary. It last offered loans for up to six times' income in 2007, just before the housing crash.

Barclays and Santander are also offering loans of up to 5.5 times income to high earners, while Clydesdale Bank offers the same rate for some newly-qualified professionals.

Some banks are lending as much as six times borrowers' salaries  rates branded 'irresponsible' and 'alarming' before the housing crash a decade ago. Stock photo

Sainsbury's and Virgin offer up to 5 times people's income. Most other banks have a maximum loan-to-income ratio of between 4.0 and 4.75, according to financial data site Moneyfacts.

A spokesman for debt charity StepChange said: 'Super-sized mortgages reflect the real problem, which is the cost of housing and the difficulty of accessing it affordably as a result.

'The more borrowing you have relative to your income, the higher the risk you face if either the cost of your borrowing rises or your income falls.'

... AND SUBPRIME DEALS ARE BACK TOO Banks are piling back into the risky subprime mortgages that caused the financial crisis amid a war for customers. There has been a surge in the number of deals which target customers with a poor credit history, data shows. Lenders involved include established banks and a firm set up by the ex-boss of collapsed bank Northern Rock. And in a shocking echo of the last crisis, this mortgage debt is even being packaged up and sold on to other investors in complicated financial products. Labour MP John Mann, a member of the Treasury select committee, said: 'The return of subprime mortgages is deeply concerning and suggests banks have not changed at all since the crisis.' A total of 850 subprime mortgage deals are now available, says research group Moneyfacts  up from 725 in February. One of the key subprime lenders in Britain was Northern Rock, which suffered the first bank run in over a century and collapsed into the hands of taxpayers. But several former senior staff now work for a new subprime lender called Belmont Green. The firm is controlled by US private equity firm Pine Brook, which set Belmont up in 2016 with the help of Adam Applegarth, who was boss at the Rock. Belmont declined to comment. Advertisement

Since 2014, banks have had to analyse everything from spending habits and utility bills to career prospects to determine whether you can afford a loan.

They are also banned from offering more than 15 per cent of new lending at or above 4.5 times' income. But the Bank of England has noticed lenders are offering growing numbers of loans just below this threshold.

David Hollingworth, of L&C Mortgages, said: 'Given the high house prices and demanding deposit sums required as a consequence, it's no surprise that first-time buyers may be tempted to push their mortgage borrowing to the limits.

'It's crucial that the mortgage doesn't stretch borrowers too far which is why the key test of affordability takes account of outgoings as well as income.'

In its recent Financial Stability Report, the Bank of England said: 'Banks' risk appetite in mortgage lending has increased over the past few years, possibly in response to weak demand.' However, it added: 'In the past few months, the trend to looser lending standards has shown some signs of reversing.' Earlier this year, it said there were 'pockets of risk' in the economy, including 'risks relating to household indebtedness and mortgage underwriting standards'.

Its data reveals first-time buyers now typically borrow 145,000. This is almost a quarter  or 28,000  more than just five years ago. At the same time, deals where buyers need less than a 10 per cent deposit have risen by 50 per cent since 2013.

Chris Hunter, of Darlington Building Society, said: 'We will be individually underwriting every case. This is not a computer saying yes or no. We will not lend to anyone who cannot afford it.' Santander said it only offered higher loan-to-income ratios to 'a select few customers and, as always, on the basis of affordability and credit scoring'.

A spokesman for UK Finance, which represents lenders, said: 'High loan-to-income mortgages are only likely to be available to those who have good prospects for wage increases, such as those in certain professional roles. Before they are able to offer any mortgage, lenders must undertake a strict affordability assessment in accordance with the rules outlined by the regulator.'
An 18-year-old man has been stabbed and robbed inside New York's busy Times Square subway station.

According to authorities, the victim got into an argument with a group of seven men around 4.45am on Saturday in the station's mezzanine near 42nd Street and 7th Avenue.

The group began to physically hit the teen before one of the men pulled out a knife and stabbed him in the stomach.

He was taken to the hospital by paramedics and is said to be in stable condition.

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Police say an 18-year-old man was stabbed and robbed inside New York's Times Square subway station. According to authorities, the victim got into an argument with a group of seven men around 4.45am on Saturday in the station's mezzanine. Pictured: The assailants exiting the subway

The group began to physically hit the teen before one of the men pulled out a knife and stabbed him in the stomach. Pictured: The assailants after the attack

Police say that, after the stabbing, the attackers took the teen's coat, book bag and UPS vest.

It remains unclear if the victim works for the delivery service, which has a store just a few blocks away.

Officers say it is also unclear what sparked the argument and that no arrests have been made.

The suspects are described as Hispanic males between ages 17 and 25.

Police say that, after the stabbing, the attackers took the teen's coat, book bag and UPS vest. It remains unclear if the victim works for the delivery service, which has a store just a few blocks away. Pictured: The assailants exiting the subway

The suspects are described as Hispanic males between ages 17 and 25, but police have made no arrests so far

NYPD Transit sent out a tweet on Sunday morning with a video showing the assailants fleeing the subway station with the victims' belongings.

'Take a close look at this video - These guys are wanted for robbery/stabbing yesterday at about 4:50am at the #TimesSquare 42nd St subway station,' the accompany caption wrote.

'Recognize them? Have info about the crime? 800-577-TIPS or DM @NYPDTips - You can even remain anonymous.'
David Attenborough's Dynasties distressed and impressed the nation in equal measures once again - this time - with an incredible episode on a female-led lion pride.

The third episode of BBC One's landmark Dynasties series follows the famous Marsh Pride of Kenya's Masai Mara, led by 14-year-old lioness 'Charm'.

Viewers took to Twitter as hunting scenes played out over the hour-long show, with the lions becoming both predator and prey.

However, it was when the pride was poisoned by humans, tearful TV fans revealed their heartache on social media.

To protect livestock farmers in Africa sometimes use toxic meat where the lions graze, in a bid to kill them off.

In the show, Charm's one-year-old son was poisoned by the toxic meat. The mother, and leader of the pride is forced to leave him to die, as she moves forward with the rest of her hungry cubs.

The show ended with Attenborough's narration saying: 'Eventually, it becomes clear, nothing more can be done for him'.

Charm returns to her sick baby cub but she cannot remain with him or the others in the pack will starve without her

Charm looks over her shoulder as she makes the heartbreaking decision to leave her one-year-old son

The Marsh Pride - led by Charm - are a close-knit family of mothers and their growing cubs

The lion cub reportedly died despite his mother returning to him - before leaving again. The BBC camera crew attempted to help him but there was no antidote for the poison. However, conflicting reports say he survived

'She will never see her son, or Sienna, alive again,' David Attenborough says as the mother leaves her son, looking back over her shoulder as she parts ways with him.

Tearful Twitter users said they were crying at home.

One man said: 'F****g humans again!!!'

Another added: 'Is there ever going to be an episode of Dynasties which doesn't have me crying? Every Sunday is an emotional rollercoaster.'

Chelsea Nugent said: 'Every week I watch Dynasties and every week I end up in tears.'

Camerawoman Sophie Darlington said she and the rest of the crew  who filmed the lions for two years  were left 'absolutely devastated' by the poisoning, which affected most of the pride.

However, a question now remains over whether or not the lion cub which broke viewers' hearts did actually die. After interviewing Kiprotich Limo, a vet with a mobile clinic in Kenya which treated the cub, The Times reported the BBC intervention did lead to the cub's survival.

The Marsh Pride is lef by females after the males leave the pack as soon as they are grown up

An emotional highlight in Charm's life is also filmed - when her son and his cousin leave the pride aged four to start their own life as a powerful pair.

The lioness successfully raised the male cubs to become strong hunters.

Minutes earlier in the show, Charm's son Red narrowly avoided being eaten by 20 Hyenas.

'He's trapped by over 20 of them,' whispers Sir David.

'The pack tries to wear him down. This number of hyenas could kill him. It's impossible to fight them all at once'

Luckily for Red, his cousin Ta-Tu comes to the rescue.

Twitter users praised the bond between the two lions.

One man said: 'There is literally not one nice thing about Hyena's. Glad Red's mucker Ta-tu was there to back him up.'

Paul Morris added: 'I HATE hyena's'

A BBC Camera crew report to rangers that one of the lion cubs is unwell. The animal dies despite vets giving the animal medical attention

The BBC revealed this week their camera crew tried to save the abandoned lion cub, which Charm left during the show.

No mention is made during the programme of the BBC calling in vets for help. But the Mara Mobile Veterinary Unit recorded what happened in an incident report.

It noted that the pride 'were seen during the morning behaving strangely by a BBC crew filming them. They informed Masai Mara National Reserve Management and Governor's Camp management, who in turn sought the veterinary unit's help.'

Last week viewers were left in tears as penguins were saved by the BBC crew.

The second episode of the wildlife series, narrated by Sir David Attenborough, followed the birds as they battled a harsh winter in Antartica's Atka Bay.

In a particularly heartbreaking scene the crew caught the moment a group of birds had fallen over the edge of a chasm after a white-out, and were left trapped with their young in bitter -60C (-76F) conditions.

Horrified viewers watched as one bird was forced to abandon her chick who couldn't make it out of the steep ravine, and took to Twitter to share their heartbreak over the traumatic scenes.
We may be footing the bill, but the public have been kept in the dark about the details of a multi-million-pound refit to Prince Harry and Meghans new home.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are to move into Frogmore Cottage, in the grounds of the Windsor Estate, after it was given to them by the Queen.

The couple, who are expecting their first child in April, are likely to arrive from Kensington Palace in the spring.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are to move into Frogmore Cottage, in the grounds of the Windsor Estate, after it was given to them by the Queen

Meghan and Harry, who are expecting their first child in April, are likely to arrive from Kensington Palace in the spring

The 19th century cottage has been used as rented accommodation for members of the royal staff and had fallen into disrepair.

Now a planning application for the Grade II-listed building has been lodged with the council ahead of the move by Harry, 34, and Meghan, 37. But security concerns mean the plans have been kept private.

A special note on the application states it contains sensitive information and that the usual plans, architects drawings and other documents have not been made public.

Similar levels of secrecy surrounded plans for renovations at Anmer Hall in Norfolk before the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge moved into the Georgian manor on Sandringham Estate.

Frogmore Cottage in Windsor, which is located near Frogmore House on the Frogmore Estate, will be the new residence of Harry and Meghan from early 2019

The 19th century cottage has been used as rented accommodation for members of the royal staff and had fallen into disrepair

Harry and Meghan held their wedding reception at Frogmore House, which overlooks the two-storey, stucco-faced cottage, and their engagement pictures were taken in the grounds.

It is understood that Harry and Meghan hope to turn Frogmore Cottage into a five-bedroom family home, with space for a nursery and a live-in nanny. They currently live in two-bedroom Nottingham Cottage at Kensington Palace.

A Kensington Palace spokesman said the costs of any substantial building work would be covered by the Sovereign Grant, which is ultimately funded by the taxpayer.

Decorative work inside the cottage is expected to be paid for by Harry and Meghan, whose wedding cost the public purse 3.4million.

The newly married Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, leaving Windsor Castle after their wedding to attend an evening reception at Frogmore House

Frogmore is currently divided into five flats, meaning there would be space for separate accommodation for Meghans mother Doria Ragland

Frogmore is currently divided into five flats, meaning there would be space for separate accommodation for Meghans mother Doria Ragland.

The 62-year-old former social worker is expected to be a hands-on grandmother, and to stay with the Sussexes on a regular basis.

Frogmore is also less than half a mile from Windsor Castle, meaning the new babys great-grandmother the Queen would be close at hand.

Officials from the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead have already approved a planning application to refit the cottage and install two orangery extensions.

The Royal Family - including Prince Edward, Queen Elizabeth II, Duke of Edinburgh, Princess Anne, Prince Andrew, and Prince Charles - in the grounds of Frogmore House, Windsor, Berkshire

The plans, approved in July, also included permission for a bedroom to be built above a studio in the grounds of the cottage, meaning it could potentially be used as a luxury granny flat.

A further planning application was submitted in October after it was announced that the duchess was pregnant, and it has yet to be approved.

The application seeks the councils permission for internal and external works at the cottage, and landscaping in its grounds but no further details have been made public.

A note on the file states: The the application contains sensitive information and therefore the public register is not accompanied by any forms, drawings or supporting documents. The application will be advertised in the usual way but there is no additional information that is publicly disclosable.

A planning officer who approved the first application noted that parts of the cottage and the studio had fallen into disrepair.

The official said original features including fireplaces had been removed and internal stud walls added to divide the cottage into five rented units, used by Royal Household staff.Security is expected to be stepped up before Harry and Meghan move in.
The Spanish company behind Sydney's delayed multi-billion-dollar light rail construction has been awarded a $7.9 million government contract.

New South Wales government body Health Infrastructure has given construction giant Acciona another project despite the company admitting that the light rail system will be finished at least 14 months late. It was initially meant to be ready by March 2019.

The company will build an entry road at Macksville Hospital on the northern New South Wales coast.

The contract was awarded straight to Acciona and wasn't put up for tender, the Daily Telegraph reported.

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Spanish company Acciona, which is behind Sydney's delayed light rail construction, has been awarded a $7.9million government contract

News of the second state government contract comes as businesses continue to experience disruption caused by the light rail.

Barriers that were supposed to come down 'by November' are still blocking off roads and pavements in the CBD and the inner-eastern suburb of Surry Hills.

The CBD and South East Light Rail, connecting the city with Randwick and Kensington, has been plagued with delays, and won't launch until at least 2020 - five years after construction work started in the city.

Acciona will work alongside fellow Spanish multinational Ferrovial and will complete light rail works under the name Pacificio Acciona Ferrovial (logo pictured)

City of Sydney Councillor Angela Vithoulkas, who organised action against the Sydney light rail project, has blasted the NSW government for awarding Acciona another contract.

'I have to wonder how the government could go to Acciona again and behind closed doors, indicating they are deliberately hiding it from the voters of NSW,' she said.

Councillor Vithoulkas' 17-year-old city cafe Vivo on George Street shut down after construction began.

Opposition transport spokeswoman Jodi McKay blamed Transport Minister Andrew Constance for awarding Acciona another contract

Opposition transport spokeswoman Jodi McKay blamed Transport Minister Andrew Constance for awarding Acciona another contract.

'Andrew Constance can't have it both ways - publicly blaming and shaming a constractor for his own failures while his colleagues are quietly awarding the same company more contracts,' she said.

Mr Constance clarified that the government does not have a direct contract with Acciona for the light rail project.

'Our contract is with Altrac,' he said.

Acciona sued the state government for $1.1billion in damages in the supreme court in April, alleging the company was misled about the costs of relocating electricity infrastructure.
Mrs May (pictured in Brussels today) has vowed to 'make the case for this deal with all my heart' to persuade MPs to back her

Theresa May's team are said to be offering rebel MPs peerages and other sweeteners in a bid to buy votes to get her Brexit deal through Parliament.

With more than 90 Tory MPs indicating they will not back it, and the Democratic Unionist Party withholding support, the Prime Minister faces an uphill struggle.

Mrs May has vowed to 'make the case for this deal with all my heart' to persuade restless MPs to back her. But it appears she will also resort to horsetrading.

Some Brexiteers were said to have been offered peerages while other MPs are being bought off with changes to bills, according to reports.

A Commons vote on the deal will be held shortly  most likely on December 12.

Mrs May has conceded she may have to approach Opposition MPs to win support.

She was even forced to deny in Cabinet that she had attempted to win support from Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in exchange for the promise of a general election.

Yesterday there were reports that Mrs May's team were setting up a 'war room' in the Cabinet Office to win the votes they need.

Chief of staff Gavin Barwell and spin doctor Robbie Gibb are expected to give the Cabinet a class in 'selling the deal'.

What happens now the Brexit deal has been signed off in Brussels? Brexit passed a major milestone in Brussels today as EU leaders agreed the negotiated divorce deal. This is what the next steps are: Tomorrow, November 26: Theresa May will make statement to MPs on the summit and launch her push to win the 'meaningful vote' on the deal. She can expect another furious response from MPs. Around December 11: The meaningful vote itself. This is the absolutely crucial moment and could make or break the Prime Minister and her deal. MPs will vote after a debate that could last as long as five days. If the vote carries, Mrs May survives and Brexit is on track as she plans. If she loses, she could resign. December 13-14: The next EU summit. If the deal has been rejected by MPs, Mrs May could use this to try and secure new concessions. January 2019: The European Parliament is due to vote on the deal - but will only do so if it has been agreed in the House of Commons. March 29, 2019: Exit day. This is written in law so unless there is a dramatic shift Britain will leave the EU, deal or no deal. Advertisement

Sources said Mrs May's aides were approaching MPs to ask what they wanted to secure votes. One veteran Eurosceptic was said to have been told: 'We need more people in the House of Lords... I think you'd be a strong voice.'

However, some MPs have clearly been written off as lost causes, with one Brexiteer saying he would be lucky to receive a lump of coal.

Many Tories are unconvinced Mrs May can win the votes she needs or will have the scope to deliver on promises. One MP said: 'She can't just offer 90 peerages.'

Veteran Eurosceptic John Hayes yesterday insisted he will not vote for the deal despite Mrs May handing him a knighthood.

He told The Mail on Sunday: 'As I've made very clear before my honour, I cannot support the deal as it now stands.'

Mrs May's team are said to be thinking up sweeteners for rebels such as former party leader Iain Duncan Smith and Mrs Leadsom.

The Commons Leader is said to have met Mrs May last week to demand technological solutions to the Northern Irish border issue, rather than the backstop.

'There's a big effort going on to try and find something that for the Andrea Leadsoms, the Iain Duncan Smiths, is a little bit of a victory,' a loyalist Cabinet minister told the Sunday Times.

Plans are also in place to win over rebels by tweaking legislation making its passage through Parliament.

Ministers are expected to back plans to ban men accused of domestic violence from cross-examining their accusers in court.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, center, kisses European Union chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, right, as European Council President Donald Tusk looks on after the withdrawal agreement was formally signed by EU leaders in Brussels on Sunday

This is thought likely to be met with approval by female MPs including Remainers Sarah Wollaston and Heidi Allen, who favour a second referendum.

Britain may also pledge to take more child refugees to win over MPs who have championed their cause, including Mrs Allen.

Government support for a private member's bill banning hospital parking charges, put forward by MP Robert Halfon, who opposes the deal, may be given.

Similarly, a cut in air passenger duty could be introduced after backbench Tories and the DUP backed it. When Chancellor Philip Hammond spoke at a private DUP dinner on Friday, a source said he was 'taking his chequebook'.

Meanwhile, it was claimed last night that Britain could run out of clean water within days in the event of 'no deal' as purification chemicals could be stopped at the border.

The doomsday scenario was said to have convinced Environment Secretary Michael Gove to back Mrs May's deal.
Theresa May's joy at finally agreeing a Brexit deal in Brussels was short lived today as critics - and former allies - have rushed to brand it a 'humiliation'.

Leading the pack on Sunday was former foreign secretary Boris Johnson who said it was such a bad deal the agreement will serve as a 'ghastly gaping warning' to all other member states considering leaving.

In his regular Daily Telegraph column, he blasted the proposed deal struck after 20 months of negotiations.

He said: 'The other EU countries have signed the deal immediately, because they know that they have us exactly where they want us. We are a satellite state - a memento mori fixed on the walls of Brussels as a ghastly gaping warning to all who try to escape.

In the piece he continued his calls for the backstop to be scrapped, the full payment of 39 billion to be withheld until a trade deal is done, and intensified planning for a no-deal Brexit,

Mr Johnson said: 'We cannot go on any more with this hopeless can't-do spirit; this reflexive negativity and defeatism that so woefully underestimates the courage and creativity of the British people.

Boris Johnson has slated the May Brexit deal insisting the prime minister has signed Britain up for 'humiliation'

'Yes, there will be some logistical and technical challenges, and yes they will require some effort.

'But it is disgraceful that the Government is - deliberately - allowing those short-term challenges so to dominate the debate that we are ready to consign ourselves to decades as the impotent captive of the EU's over-taxed, badly regulated, low-growth economic model.'

The Prime minister now has two weeks to win over Johnson and an army of other critics after EU leaders signed off the agreement in less than 40 minutes.

As of Sunday, more than 90 Tory MPs threatened to join forces with Labour and vote down the deal in a fortnights time.

The prime minister faces an even tougher battle in the Commons -with disastrous consequences for own career if it does not go her way. Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt acknowledged that the Government could collapse if the deal is heavily defeated.

Speaking in Brussels, Mrs May yesterday made a direct appeal to voters to support her vision in the hope that

public pressure will force her mutinous MPs to fall in line. She insisted her deal delivered on the referendum pledge to take back control of the UKs borders, money and laws while maintaining close economic ties.

She warned MPs that voters were tiring of in-fighting at Westminster, saying: The British people dont want to spend any more time arguing about Brexit. They want a good deal done that fulfils the vote and allows us to

on the referendum pledge to take back control of the UKs borders, money and laws while maintaining economic ties.

Mrs May must work to get her deal through parliament although Brexiteer MPs have already indicated they will not accept it

UK could be '1,000 per person worse off' with May's deal Theresa May's Brexit deal could be bad news for Britons  leaving the UK's GDP about 1,000 lower per person, it is suggested. A report by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research think tank said GDP would still fall significantly under the proposed plans which include leaving the customs union. The NIESR told The Times GDP would be 3.9 per cent lower than if the UK had remained in the EU in twelve years' time. However, GDP would be 5.5 per cent lower in 2030 if there was 'no deal' the report said. Sir Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat leader, said: 'If anything, the bleak predictions in this report are an underestimate of the severe damage our economy will suffer if this deal goes ahead because it takes no account of the draining away of confidence in business and the impact on investors who no longer see the UK as a gateway to Europe.' The independent report was commissioned by the People's Vote campaign. Advertisement

She said: The British people dont want to spend any more time arguing about Brexit. They want a good deal done that fulfils the vote and allows us to come together again as a country.

Jeremy Corbyn was critical of the deal.

The leader of the opposition said: 'The Labour leader claimed his party would 'work with others to block a no deal outcome', advancing its own 'sensible' deal as an alternative.

His criticism comes as Theresa May secured approval in Brussels for her Brexit plan.

Mr Corbyn said: 'This is a bad deal for the country. It is the result of a miserable failure of negotiation that leaves us with the worst of all worlds.

'It gives us less say over our future, and puts jobs and living standards at risk.

'That is why Labour will oppose this deal in Parliament. We will work with others to block a no deal outcome, and ensure that Labour's alternative plan for a sensible deal to bring the country together is on the table.'

Mrs May must yet get her deal through parliament.

The Conservative leader was under fire over Gibraltar, on Sunday, hours after the deal was announced.

Spain's Prime Minister claimed Brexit could mean splitting the sovereignty of Gibraltar between Westminster and Madrid.

Pedro Sanchez said that 'everyone loses' when it comes to Brexit, but Spain has 'won' on the issue of Gibraltar after receiving assurances from other EU leaders.

He said the UK's withdrawal from the EU would 'open talks on joint sovereignty' of the Rock, which has been a British overseas territory since 1713.

British Prime Minister Theresa May (R) and European Union Council President Donald Tusk during the extraordinary EU leaders summit to finalise and formalise the Brexit agreement in Brussels, on Sunday

Former Deputy Commons Speaker Nigel Evans said: 'To sell out 17.5 million people [who voted to leave the EU] with her Brexit deal is one thing, to go against the wishes of the DUP who keep us in power is another.

'But to sell out the utterly patriotic British people who live on Gibraltar is simply beyond the pale.'

The Ribble Valley MP added: 'Theresa May is dining in Brussels with people who are delighted with her deal  in fact they could have written it themselves.

'But on Monday she will return to a very different atmosphere in Westminster  one of betrayal.'

Criticism of her deal has come from several key figures aside from Mr Corbyn, including DUP leader Arlene Foster, who hinted that her party could support a 'plan B' Brexit.

Mrs May is now engaging in a charm offensive to convince the public she has delivered on what her team considers to be the main message of the referendum - tackling immigration.

But she addressed criticism of her plan by saying: 'In any negotiation you do not get everything you want... I think the British people understand that.'

Commons leader Andrea Leadsom and International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt have been placed on resignation watch by No 10 again after Mrs May failed to secure any new concessions on the controversial Irish backstop, which critics fear could keep the UK locked in the customs union.

Sources close to Mrs Leadsom, a key player in Vote Leave, said she was weighing up options but her spokesman insisted she was not resigning. Her Brexiteer colleagues Penny Mordaunt and Chris Grayling also declined to comment on whether they would back the plan.

Fellow Brexiteers including Transport Secretary Chris Grayling and International Trade Secretary Liam Fox also failed to join a push by ministers to sell the deal on social media last night, as did Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson.

EU leaders warned they would not reopen negotiations if MPs reject the deal.And French President Emmanuel Macron threatened to lock Britain into the customs union unless Mrs May allows access to the UKs fishing grounds  causing major concerns for Scottish Tory MPs.

Mr Johnson delivered a scathing attack on Mrs May's Brexit plan on Saturday afternoon at the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), Annual Conference in Belfast

EC chief Jean-Claude Juncker said: This is the best deal possible  this is the only deal possible.

DUP leader Arlene Foster, whose partys ten MPs provide the Governments majority, said there were no circumstances in which her party would back the deal.

The EUs chief negotiator Michel Barnier suggested it was time for MPs to take responsibility and vote for the deal.

Holyrood Brexit Secretary Mike Russell said: The proposed Brexit agreement negotiated by the UK Government does not work for Scotland.

That is why the Scottish Government will now work with others to get a better deal for Scotland within the European single market and customs union and why we support another referendum on EU membership.

However, others have been more supportive.

Scottish Secretary David Mundell said there was no credible alternative deal on offer and urged MPs to vote in favour of it, and against the threat of chaos or more division.

He also warned that the SNP was using Brexit to frustrate in hopes of getting a second independence referendum.

Mr Mundell said: A no-deal Brexit wouldnt just be a disaster for Scotland but threatens the integrity of the UK.

Asked if the Government could collapse, Mr Hunt told the BBCs Andrew Marr: Its not possible to rule out anything.
New York City's diverse beauty has been captured through a man's personal mission to walk every single street in the five boroughs, stretching over 8,000 miles, in a new documentary.

'The World Before Your Feet' follows the journey of Virginia native, Matt Green who first set out on New Year's Eve 2011 to begin his nomadic adventure after leaving his desk job as a civil engineer.

With a small budget, Green's walk starts off as a solo mission. Occasionally he has dinner with his friend of over a decade, Jeremy Workman.

'Matt talked about the wonders of New York in a way that I had never heard. I had lived in New York for most of my life (I was born in New York City and have lived here since college), but Matt talked about the city as if it was some faraway land of adventure and discovery,' Workman says of Green's wanderings.

Matt Green walked over 8,000 miles through all five boroughs of New York City, without a real goal beyond posting about it to his blog. He began his journey New Year's Eve 2011

He would have dinner with Jeremy Workman (pictured right, with Green) who suggested he join on the journey to film

During his ramblings, Green meets various New Yorkers from all over the city

Green originally thought the project would take a couple of years- he says now- he still isn't quite finished

'The very nature of it puts everything on the same footing. It makes some random dead end at the edge of Queens near Nassau County the same as Times Square. You have to go everywhere once,' Green said in a recent interview (pictured of course, Times Square)

'He talked about the locals in a deeply compassionate and personal way. Just by walking, it seemed that Matt was drawn closer to people of all stripes,' Workman added.

'Finally, I couldn't take it. I just emailed him with a simple question: ''shouldn't I be filming your walk?'' He thought that perhaps Green would say no, so he gave his friend some assurances.

He told Green it would only be him and his camera, no crew, walking as if he was a 'fly on the wall buzzing through an entire city. Somehow (I'm still shocked), Matt said okay.'

Green's rambling journey covered streets, avenues, cemeteries and alleys, beaches and shores, parks and well, just about everything you can walk on in the city.

With no job, he lives on $15 a day. He does not rent a home and gets by staying with friends and acquaintances and usually cats and dog-sits.

Green said he thought his stroll would take a couple of years. They took longer, in fact he's still walking. Green estimates he'll complete his New York journey sometime in 2019.

New York's laid bare streets are featured in the film- places unfamiliar to even the most seasoned, native New Yorkers

His travels take him on back roads, through small parks, cemeteries and more

'The point isn't to know everything about every street,' he told the New York Post during a recent walk in northern Flushing.

'The very nature of it puts everything on the same footing. It makes some random dead end at the edge of Queens near Nassau County the same as Times Square. You have to go everywhere once.'

He spends his night's looking up historical notes of interest like the significance of the different names for little parks he discovers along the way.

He passes through some places more than once, according to his blog, noting the differences in locations from year to year.

He is also obsessed with food from tress, and observes how the fig trees fared better one year over another.

And the people. He connects with people from every walk of life in a city that is as diverse as arguably any other in the world.

The Social Network star, Jessie Eisenberg, produced The World Before Your Feet.

'The movie serves as an almost academically rigorous walking tour of one of the great cities of the world but also depicts the human drama of one man's quixotic quest to accomplish something few can understand,' says Eisenberg, who admits he was reluctant to bother watching when he was first sent the movie to preview.

He says he watched it in its entirety, twice that day.

Eisenberg continued, 'He reminded my parents of their generation, a kind of Jack Kerouac spirit that's been lost to GPS. My activist, socially progressive wife said, ''Finally, we get to see parts of the world and people that are overlooked and forgotten in big cities.'' My little sister wanted to tweet at Matt.'

He meets a young man in Long Island City, Queens, who asks him what he is doing. A smile comes across the guy's face as Green tells him what he is up to

Green is particularly fond of 9/11 memorials, and is pictured at the largest one in New York City, the 9/11 Tribute In Light which emanates from the site of the World Trade Center attacks

Through blizzards, rain, sun and heat Green continues to walk and meet all types of kinds of people on his way through arguably the most diverse city in the world

Shores, beaches and back roads are not immune to Green's presence as he delves into the furthest out-skits of New York terrain

Jackie Robinson's headstone in Cypress Hills Cemetery, in Queens is one of several historical points of reference that Green visits

'Seeing it through other people's eyes, the movie became, to me, a rejection of much of the way we experience the world today, blind to our surroundings. It's a commentary on the way we have cloistered ourselves in bubbles and routines, missing the history and beauty that lurk beside us.'

'Matt's world perspective is so unusually profound, he seems both cockeyed optimist and wizened philosopher.'

'Most interesting is how the movie depicts people interacting in a diverse metropolis: Matt meets people from every class, race, nationality and somehow finds commonality. It's unintentionally prescient and surprisingly heartwarming. It is the ultimate New York movie in that it, paradoxically, seems like it's about the entire world,' Eisenberg continued.

In the film's trailer, Green is on a muddy desolate back road. A man in a white pick-up truck asks him if he has ever 'gotten beat up?'

You can't see Green's face, but you can hear he's smiling when he says 'I've never gotten beat up, I've never gotten mugged, unless you're about to mug me.'
There is nothing like a trip to the Big Apple, but it can easily cost a small fortune.

Yet there are ways to enjoy a fantastic holiday without breaking the bank.

Scroll down for some top money-saving tips, from cheap sleeps to economical eats.

Fly budget

There is nothing like a trip to the Big Apple, but it can easily cost a small fortune

More airlines than ever fly to New York and fares have never been so competitive. For the cheapest prices, book as early as you can and look at the new generation of budget airlines.

Flights with established carriers such as British Airways and Virgin can set you back close to 500 but return trips with WOW (wowair.co.uk) cost from 205 and include a short stopover in Reykjavik, while Norwegian (norwegian.com) has non-stop flights from Gatwick to JFK from 164.

If youre flying from Manchester, consider Thomas Cook Airlines (thomascookairlines.com)  prices start at 229. From other parts of the UK, check out Aer Lingus (aerlingus.com). Flights cost from 190 and youll have to change in Dublin, but depending on your flight time, you may be able to clear US customs and immigration before you fly, saving time on arrival.

Take the train

Take a taxi from JFK to Manhattan and youll pay a minimum of $65 (about 51), including a tip  its impossible to avoid paying tips in New York.

Flying into Newark allows you to then catch a train costing $12.50 (about 10) to Penn Station (panynj.gov), but at JFK you are better off getting a shuttle bus.

NYC Airporter (nycairporter.com) has regular services between JFK and Times Square/Grand Central from $19 (about 15) and can take just over an hour if the traffic is good. Alternatively, take the AirTrain to Howard Beach and join the subway from there. The AirTrain costs $7.75 (about 6).

Cheap sleeps

Value for money: A cosy bedroom at The Hoxton in Brooklyn

Be wary of Airbnb in New York as it is likely to be illegal unless the landlord lives in. This doesnt stop people listing their apartments, nor the authorities kicking out bewildered tourists. A Midtown hotel can easily cost $350 a night (275), but you can find better-value rooms if you head to Brooklyn. Try the Aloft group (marriott.co.uk/hotels/travel/nycyl-aloft-new-york-brooklyn) or The Hoxton in Williamsburg (thehoxton.com/new-york/williamsburg/hotels)  both have rooms starting at $160 (about 125) a night.

If youre in a group, some of Manhattans trendiest hotels, such as Ace (acehotel.com/newyork) or Freehand (freehandhotels.com/new-york), incorporate low-cost bunk-bed rooms. They may be designed for avocado-munching millennials to hang out in, but theyre also great for families. Expect to pay around $220 a night (about 172) for four people.

Getting around

Make sure you buy a seven-day pass for the subway. It costs $32 (25) for adults or $16 (12.50) for concessions and covers buses too

Make sure you buy a subway pass. Single-trip fares cost $2.75, so a seven-day pass is better value. It costs $32 (25) for adults or $16 (12.50) for concessions and covers buses too. Visit web.mta.info.

Join the culture club

The Museum of Modern Art (moma.org) charges up to $25 (about 19.50) for entry, but on Fridays between 4pm and 8pm youll be able to see its paintings by Monet for free. Then head across town from 8pm to 10pm to see artworks by Edward Hopper at the Whitney Museum of American Art  dig into your pockets for a few cents because you have to give some sort of donation (whitney.org).

Six of the best

Entry to some of the citys biggest attractions isnt cheap  adult tickets to the top and main deck of the Empire State Building alone cost $58 (about 45). Visitors are better off booking a multi-attraction sightseeing pass in advance. Pre-book the New York City Pass, which includes entrance to six famous sites such as the Empire State, Top Of The Rock, Statue of Liberty and the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, and youll save about 40 per cent. The pass costs from 95 per adult and 78 per child (attraction-tickets-direct.co.uk).

Fancy a feast?

Trapizzino has acclaimed stuffed pizza for $7.50 (about 5.80) and rice balls for $3.50 (2.75)

Eating out in New York can be pricey  the average cost of a meal for two with wine is $100 (77). However, you can feast on some brilliant (and cheap) pizza and Chinese if you know where to look. In the hip Lower East Side, Trapizzino (trapizzinousa.com) has acclaimed stuffed pizza for $7.50 (about 5.80) and rice balls for $3.50 (2.75). In neighbouring Chinatown, you can gorge at Vanessas Dumpling House (vanessas.com) for under $10.

At the Corner Bistro (cornerbistrony.com), between the trendy West Village and Meatpacking District, the burgers (about 10) are famous across New York. A pint of beer  the locally renowned McSorleys  will cost you $4.25 (about 3.30).

A close encounter - for free

The Staten Island Ferry gives you a close-up look at the Statue of Liberty and costs nothing

Why pay $15 (about 12) on a New York Harbour tour when you can do it for free? The Staten Island Ferry (siferry.com) gives you a close-up look at the Statue of Liberty and costs nothing. Entrance to Central Park (centralparknyc.org) is also free, and so are some of the events, including performances of Shakespeare each summer.

A donation of a cent will get you into the American Museum of Natural History (amnh.org). And the Brooklyn Brewery (brooklynbrewery.com) offers free tours every Saturday and Sunday between 1pm and 6pm.

Bargain hunts

Visitors can run up a huge credit-card bill in the designer boutiques of Fifth Avenue, but a true New Yorker never pays full price for fashion. Just off Wall Street, Century 21 (c21stores.com) has seven floors of heavily discounted designer stock  all clothing is at least 50 per cent off.

Union Square, on 14th Street, is another strong location for fashion fans, with Designer Shoe Warehouse (dsw.com) and Nordstrom Rack (nordstrom.com).

On the Upper West Side at 2085 Broadway, Bloomingdales Outlet (bloomingdales.com) opened in 2015, while Saks Off Fifth (saksoff5th.com) does equally smart fashion and accessories on 57th Street. If you can wait until next April, Empire Outlets (empireoutletsnyc.com) opens on Staten Island with factory shops for Nike, Gap, Brooks Brothers and Levis.

It's showtime!

Some of the biggest hits in New York have lotteries for tickets, including Hamilton ($10), pictured, and Book Of Mormon ($32)  you can enter from your phone or laptop

Buy from the TKTS booths in Times Square, Lincoln Center and South Street Seaport and save up to 70 per cent on theatre tickets. Downloading the TKTS app will let you see which shows are on offer first (tdf.org/nyc/7/TKTS-ticket-booths). Some of the biggest hits in New York have lotteries for tickets, including Hamilton ($10) and Book Of Mormon ($32)  you can enter from your phone or laptop.

Broadway For Broke People (broadwayforbrokepeople.com) has the most up-to-date information on shows.
It's official. Im a whistleblower. And I have to say, it feels good. Dont get me wrong  I havent taken the moral high ground or uncovered a wrongdoing. Simply, I have fulfilled a lifelong ambition to stand at the throttle of a steam engine and pull that whistle until its shriek let everyone on the Isle of Man know there was a train a-steamin and a-rollin their way.

Hands up if youve ever wanted to do the same. Take a trip with Great Rail Journeys and you might just end up behind that blazing coal firebox with a big grin all over your face.

The six-day Vintage Railways Of The Isle of Man guided tour is just one of the many adventures you can take with the York-based firm.

Vintage sight: The Douglas to Port Erin train trundles through the countryside

Although I live in the Yorkshire Dales, Id never thought to head to neighbouring Lancashire and catch the Isle of Man Steam Packet ferry (steam-packet.com) from Heysham.

Sailing into the quaint seaside port of Douglas felt like stepping back in time. Yet I was delighted to discover that our hotel, the Claremont (claremonthoteldouglas.com), offered a contemporary feel, with stylish decor, sea-view rooms and an excellent restaurant.

Our first stop the next morning was on the Douglas Bay Horse Tramway (douglashorsetramway.im), which has run since 1876. We headed to Derby Castle, where we clickety-clacked on the 125-year-old Manx Electric Railway (manxelectricrailway.co.uk) to Laxey.

Enthralled by the evocative sounds and stunning scenery, no wonder the Reverend W. Awdry, creator of Thomas The Tank Engine, is said to have got inspiration here for his locomotives location, the fictional island of Sodor.

Swapping seamlessly to the electric Snaefell Mountain Railway at Laxey, I was overwhelmed by this master of Victorian engineering as our vintage wooden train bravely tacked its way up seemingly impossibly steep gradients to the islands highest summit, 2,036ft above sea level. The name Snaefell (or Sniaull in Manx) comes from the Norse for Snow Mountain. Even in April, there is still a dusting of snow and a bracing wind here but you also get a breathtaking panoramic vantage point over seven kingdoms  England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Mann, Heaven and Neptunes Realm.

Sarah gazed upon windswept seascapes from the top of the Great Laxey Wheel (pictured)

We never tired of the wild and windswept seascapes, whether from the top of the Great Laxey Wheel or from the ramparts of Peel Castle.

Our group enjoyed learning about the quirky history of this self-governing, family-friendly island in interactive attractions such as the Old House of Keys and House of Manannan.

And its one of the few places in the world where, on the narrow-gauge Isle of Man Steam Railway (iomsrsa.org), which puffs 15 miles from Douglas to pretty Port Erin, you may be lucky enough to step up to the footplate, stoke the fire and blow the whistle until your hearts content.
Neighbours star Sarah Ellen came dangerously close to an embarrassing wardrobe malfunction as she posed on the red carpet at an exclusive Tiffany & Co. event on Thursday evening.

The blonde beauty bravely went braless in a revealing jumpsuit that showed off quite a bit of sideboob.

As she posed side on, the 21-year-old gave onlookers an eyeful.

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One false move! Neighbours star Sarah Ellen almost suffers an embarrassing wardrobe malfunction as she goes braless in revealing jumpsuit

The actress turned fashion blogger looked incredible in the pinstripe all-in-one, which was belted at the waist to accentuate her tiny midsection.

She teamed the attire with a matching blazer and accessorised with delicate jewels.

The stunning star attended the event with her handsome tattooed boyfriend Caleb Jackson.

The pair shared a romantic kiss and sipped on champagne while walking around the Hornby Lighthouse in Watson's Bay, where the event was held.

Stunning: The actress turned fashion blogger looked incredible in the pinstripe all-in-one which was belted at the waist to accentuate her tiny midsection

As she posed side on, the 21-year-old gave onlookers an eyeful

Sarah is a former Neighbours star turned model and blogger who's cementing her status in the fashion world.

After starring on the popular soap, she launched her own website, Perks of Her, to keep her fans up-to-date with all of her pursuits in the world of fashion.

Sarah rose to fame at age 14 with a video that saw her 'dancing her eyebrows' to music on YouTube.

Style star: Sarah is a former Neighbours star turned model and blogger who's cementing her status in the fashion world

The 30-second clip went viral and established the teen as an Internet Queen.

She later went on to star as Madison, the daughter of Scott (Jason Donovan) and Charlene (Kylie Minogue) on long-running Channel Ten soap Neighbours.

The blonde beauty has also landed endorsement deals with Maybelline and Bonds Australia.
There's no chance of Sam Dastyari's feud with Studio 10 dissipating anytime soon.

Speaking to Daily Mail Australia on Friday, the 35-year-old former politician said he was in the middle of a war of words with the Network Ten program.

Sam said the feud started following his appearance on the program on Thursday to promote Triple M's The Night Shift program, for which he's currently hosting

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'Studio 10 changes hosts quicker than Australia changes Prime Ministers!' Former politician Sam Dastyari has slammed the Network Ten program amid his ongoing feud with host Joe Hildebrand

'I went on their show yesterday, and they had a go at Triple M saying they'd hire anybody,' he told Daily Mail Australia.

'Fancy being told by Studio 10 that Triple M would hire anybody! Studio 10 changes hosts quicker than Australia changes prime ministers.'

Sam discussed his controversial appearance on the TV program during The Night Shift in the early hours of Friday morning, claiming he was simply there to 'plug' the radio program.

'All I got was a barrage of criticism... Screw them,' he said on air.

Where it all started: Sam said the feud began following his appearance on the program on Thursday to promote Triple M's The Night Shift program, which he is currently hosting

Following his inflammatory comments, Sam said Studio 10 came back swinging, with a few choice remarks of their own during Friday's program.

Although he hadn't yet seen the footage, he was looking forward to hearing what they had to say.

'All I know is Joe Hildebrand sent me a text message saying, "I've settled the score with you on-air,"' he told Daily Mail Australia.

Past tensions? Sam admitted he and Studio 10 host Joe Hildebrand have a history, after the 42-year-old journalist interviewed him for a story

Annoyed: 'Fancy being told by Studio 10 that Triple M would hire anybody! Studio 10 changes hosts quicker than Australia changes prime ministers,' Sam said

'I want to have a go at Joe Hildebrand, but with Studio 10's track record, there's no guarantee that he'll be there next week.'

Sam admitted he and Joe have a history, after the 42-year-old journalist interviewed him for a story in The Daily Telegraph's Stellar Magazine in August.

'Baby-faced Labor powerbroker Sam Dastyari had a secret plan to become premier of NSW before he was spectacularly brought down by his ties to shady Chinese figures,' began Joe's profile of the disgraced former senator.

Taking a swing: 'I want to have a go at Joe Hildebrand, but with Studio 10's track record, there's no guarantee that he'll be there next week,' joked Sam

Also fighting: Sam isn't the only notable Australian currently caught up in a feud with Studio 10. The program is also in the middle of an ongoing argument with Nova FM's Sam Pang

Meanwhile, Sam isn't the only notable Australian currently caught up in a feud with Studio 10.

The program is also in the middle of an ongoing argument with Nova FM's Sam Pang, 45, after the radio host claimed the show helps him to sleep.

'How many radio stations do they want to fight with? He's Nova. So they're fighting with Nova and Triple M right now,' Dastyari told Daily Mail Australia.
She's set to tie-the-knot with her hunky photographer fiance Kate Vato in an extravagant ceremony next month.

And on Thursday, lawyer turned social media influencer Pia Muehlenbeck, 26, shared details of her surprise hen's party in Sydney.

Posting a video to her popular YouTube channel, she took fans inside the event, which was held at a chic beach-side restaurant.

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A couture gown, free flowing rose and childhood friends flown from the Gold Coast: See inside 'Bridezilla' Pia Muehlenbeck's recently enjoyed a hen's brunch ahead of her nuptials

The video starts with Pia unaware she was heading to her own hen's party after the Slinkii CEO was initially forced to cancel the bash due to time constraints.

Pia believed only Kane would be having a buck's party on the day, however her husband-to-be had flown in her sister, cousin and childhood friends from the Gold Coast.

Arriving at a restaurant in Sydney's eastern suburbs, Pia was in utter shock as she was greeted by 15 friends and family members.

Surprise: Pia was surprised with a hen's party by fiance Kate Vato after the stunning beauty was forced to cancel her planned party due to time constraints

Immediately handed a white garment bag from Pallas couture, she slipped into something more appropriate for the event.

'I know what this is,' Pia she said excitedly.

Pia was then gifted presents from lingerie brand Victoria's Secret before she and her gal pals sat down to enjoy savoury boards of salami, olives and cheeses.

Surprise: Pia believed only Kane would be having a buck's party on the day, however her husband-to-be had flown in her sister, cousin and childhood friends from the Gold Coast

Her guests also enjoyed free flowing glasses of rose and champagne.

Pia and Kane are set tie-the-knot next month, with the chestnut haired beauty remaining tight-lipped about details before the big day in Byron Bay.

However she was recently branded a 'bridezilla' after it emerged that the model has requested that all of her guests wear 'earth tones' for the big day.

Fit for a princess: Pia and Kane are set tie-the-knot next month, with the chestnut haired beauty remaining tight-lipped about details before the big day in Byron Bay

Guests will also not know the location until they are picked up half an hour before the couple exchange vows.

In October, Pia gave her near two million Instagram followers a glimpse of the style of dresses she was taken with.

Standing in Sydney bridal store Pallas Haute Couture, Pia posed in a number of dresses with hefty price tags between $7,000 and $12,000.

'It's going to be a few days of celebration, and the theme will be summery, natural, rustic and a Byron Bay sort of theme,' Pia said.
She's newly single, but Paris Hilton says she'd still like to have children one day.

Speaking to Today on Saturday, the 37-year-old heiress and businesswoman said she hopes to become a mum in the future.

'I would love that one day,' she told the program.

'I would love that one day': Paris Hilton (pictured), 37, talked about wanting to start a family on Saturday... just days after announcing her split from fiance Chris Zylka

'I'm so busy, I'm literally in a different country almost every other day, so I really don't have time for a family right now, but eventually, I would love that.'

It's not the first time Paris has spoken about wanting children.

In an interview with People back in April, the star said she was looking forward to having kids of her own some day.

'I loved growing up in a big family with four kids, with two brothers and a sister. I want at least two,' she told the publication.

Sister act: Paris' sister, Nicky Hilton Rothschild (right) has boasted about the star being a great aunt to her two children, Lily Grace, two, and Teddy, 11 months

And in a 2017 interview with E! News, Paris' sister, Nicky Hilton Rothschild, 35, boasted about the star being a great aunt to her two children, Lily Grace, two, and Teddy, 11 months.

'Whenever she comes over, she comes bearing sweet gifts, clothing, toys, dolls,' Nicky told the publication.

'So Lily Grace gets very excited when Auntie Paris walks in the door.'

Paris announced her split from fiance Chris Zylka earlier in the week after getting engaged to the 33-year-old actor in January during a holiday to Aspen, as reported by TMZ.

Over: Paris announced her split from fiance Chris Zylka (pictured) earlier in the week after getting engaged to the 33-year-old actor in January

Speaking indirectly about the break up, Paris took to Instagram shortly after news broke to make a somewhat cryptic statement.

'My favorite Marilyn Monroe quote: "I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go. Things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they're right. You believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself. And sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together,"' Paris wrote.
Pop star Cheryl has had better weeks. After her new single Love Made Me Do It stalled at No 45 in the charts and her X Factor performance sparked a flood of complaints, she needs a change of luck  and this is her attempt at making it happen.

Here she is getting ready for her role in The Greatest Dancer, Simon Cowells forthcoming new show for the BBC, on which she will be a judge. The only thing is Cheryl, 35, looks less Darcey Bussell and more Vicky Pollard.

Former Girls Aloud star Cheryl wore thigh-high boots and her hair in a topknot  the style made famous by Little Britains chav.

She may have the hairstyle, but can Cheryl come up with a catchphrase to rival Vickys yeah but no but?

Here she is getting ready for her role in The Greatest Dancer, Simon Cowells forthcoming new show for the BBC, on which she will be a judge. The only thing is Cheryl, 35, looks less Darcey Bussell and more Vicky Pollard

Im afraid there wont be any more FAB-U-LOUSLY indiscreet comments by Craig Revel Horwood about his fellow Strictly stars after BBC bosses slapped a ban on him. Last month Craig claimed head judge Shirley Ballas had fake boobs and labelled host Tess Daly dull. Now Craig tells me: Im not allowed to answer any Strictly questions. If the BBC dont approve what I say then I will be in deep s***.

How many heiresses does it take to make sage and onion stuffing from a packet? Two, says Tamara Ecclestone. She tells me she and sister Petra will make the Paxo for their Christmas lunch  even though the mix only requires hot water. I dont like cooking but I like doing that, says Tamara. Her culinary skills are improving: four years ago she said she didnt understand the difference between toast and bread!

Sir Philip Green is set for another headache as Steve Coogan is using him as inspiration for his role as a retail mogul in a new film. I dont think Im his biggest fan, the actor told me when we met at a Help Refugees charity event last week. Im interested in the redistribution of wealth and I dont think he is! The character is based on him and a few others. We are nearly done  were filming for one more week in a sweatshop in Sri Lanka.
Rose Byrne, 39, has discussed the importance of portraying the grittier side of parenthood in an age of 'aspirational' social media.

The actress stars in the new film Instant Families, which sees her and on-screen husband (played by Mark Wahlberg) dealing with the downside of fostering three children.

Speaking to Sunday Life magazine this weekend, the Sydney-born star said she appreciates the film's honest portrayal of raising children, as: 'There is so much aspiration around motherhood and fatherhood and families, particularly around social media.'

'I am supposed to feel uncomfortable and that's OK': Rose Byrne, 30, has discussed the importance of portraying the grittier side of parenthood in an age of 'aspirational' social media. Pictured here with Rocco

'Presenting these sorts of ideas is what life is like in reality,' she insisted.

Rose also admitted that she felt 'uncomfortable' playing scenes in Instant Family where her character admitted that she hated her foster children, saying: 'I felt so exposed. Then I realised that's what it's supposed to feel like, I am supposed to feel uncomfortable and that's OK.'

The Hollywood star is the mother of two children, Rocco, two, and Rafa, one, who she shares with partner Bobby Cannavale.

'I felt so exposed': The Sydney-born actress said she had to realise that parenting isn't always perfect

She is also step-mother to Bobby's son Jake, from a previous marriage.

Rose remains one of the few Hollywood actresses still known for her body of work, rather than her celebrity.

The actress made her screen debut in her native Australia in 1992 in Dallas Doll, before her first leading role in the 2000 film, The Goddess of 1967.

'Presenting these sorts of ideas is what life is like in reality': Rose (above) said of the importance of telling gritter stories about motherhood on the big screen

Instant family: Rose will star in the offbeat comedy Instant Family with actor Mark Wahlberg, with the pair forced to contend with the challenges of being foster parents to three children

Making the leap to Hollywood in 2006, Rose found success almost immediately after being cast opposite Glenn Close in the TV series Damages from 2007 to 2012.

Talented Rose then scored a major role in the smash hit comedy Bridesmaids in 2011, which led to a string of roles comedies like Get Him To The Greek and Neighbours.

The actress, however, has taken the success in stride with her preferring to keep a firm focus on her own family life.

Speaking to The Daily Telegraph back in 2016, Rose spoke of the huge joy and responsibility of parenthood with former Will & Grace star, Bobby.

'You have this huge responsibility you didn't have before - there's someone you have to keep alive. I also like to think Rocco has brought out better qualities in me.'
Paige Butcher enjoyed a mommy-and-me outing with her toddler Izzy on Saturday.

The expecting star was every bit the adoring mother as she held hands with her two-year-old daughter while leaving a cafe in Los Angeles.

Looking relaxed and happy, Paige was inseparable from the toddler as the duo made their way through the parking lot.

Girl time! Paige Butcher enjoyed some quality one-on-one time with her daughter Izzy during a coffee run in Los Angeles on Saturday

Paige mixed her sporty and stylish sides as she rocked a pair of black leggings, sneakers, and an olive green bomber jacket.

She pulled her blonde hair up into a neat and trendy high ponytail.

Paige's daughter looked extra precious in an ice cream print dress as she carried a dinosaur puppet.

It won't be long until Izzy becomes a big sister.

Adoring mother: Looking relaxed and happy, Paige was inseparable from the precious toddler as the mother-daughter duo made their way through the parking lot

Paige and Eddie Murphy are expecting their second child together - a son.

It will be baby number ten for the comedian.

Eddie shares his firstborn, Eric, 29, with Paulette McNeely.

He shares five childrendaughters Bella Zahra, 16, Zola Ivy, 18, Shayne Audra, 24, and Bria, 28, and son Miles, 26with ex-wife Nicole Mitchell.

Eddie also has son Christian, 27, with Tamara Hood and 11-year-old daughter Angel Iris with former Spice Girl Mel B.

A representative confirmed Eddie was engaged to his longtime love Paige in September, two years after the couple welcomed baby Izzy.
He's starring in the latest big screen adaption of the Dr Seuss classic, The Grinch.

And now, Benedict Cumberbatch, 42, has confessed that he once became a real-life Grinch after destroying his family's presents ahead of Christmas.

'I have ruined other people's Christmases,' the British actor confessed to The Sunday Telegraph this weekend.

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'I have ruined other people's': Grinch actor Benedict Cumberbatch, 42, (above) has revealed how he 'stole' Christmas while celebrating with his family

the Intimation Game actor revealed that as a child, he once woke up at 5am to rip into a Christmas stocking, which was something they usually did as a family.

He went on to say he felt 'bored', prompting him to start exploding party poppers at the plastered ceiling of his grandmother's house.

'It was so painfully early that when I got to the party poppers I decided to launch them point blank at my grandmother's ceiling and great chunks of plaster came off,' he explained.

'Not only did the noise of the party poppers wake everyone up, they came in to see all of the presents unwrapped and me covered in plaster.'

He finished: 'I was not very popular.'

Benedict also told the publication that the Christmas tale was timely, given that a lot of people are feeling 'cut off' from their communities at this time.

Ruined: 'It was so painfully early that when I got to the party poppers I decided to launch them point blank at my grandmother's ceiling and great chunks of plaster came off,' he said

The Oscar-nominated actor, who last starred in drama series Patrick Melrose, is set to bring the Grinch to life in another telling of the classic Christmas tale.

Benedict recently said he felt pressure in voicing the iconic character, which was famously portrayed by comedian Jim Carrey in the 2000 film version.

'I like a challenge,' he told CNN, adding; 'It's not the first iconic character I've done, and hopefully it won't be the last.'

New role: It comes as the actor brings the Dr Seuss classic The Grinch back to the big screen, starring as the misanthropic villain who stole Christmas

While the 2000 film adaptation told the story of Grinch's Christmas-time antics, Benedict's version will include more background on the reason why the green misanthropic character grew so bitter.

'He's an outsider who's isolated and angry and full of vengefulness and hate, understandbly given the circumstances -- as we explain in this film -- that he was an orphan', Benedict told CNN of the film's titular character.

The Grinch also features the voices of Rashida Jones, Kenan Thompson, Angela Lansbury and Pharrell Williams.
Michael Turnbull's girlfriend Natasha Candyce turned down starring on the upcoming season of Married At First Sight, in order to be with him.

And the pair looked to be going strong while enjoying a day out in Brisbane's Southbank on Sunday.

The 37-year-old former Bachelor In Paradise star enjoyed a ride on a scooter, before sharing an intimate embrace with the stunning blonde.

Need a room? Michael Turnbull, 37, got frisky with runaway Married At First Sight star girlfriend Natasha Candyce, 27, after enjoying a romantic scooter ride in Brisbane on Sunday

Michael dressed for Brisbane's sunny weather in a white tank that revealed his arm tattoos, blue abstract shorts and coordinating thongs.

While enjoying a ride on an electric scooter, the former Channel Ten personality concealed his gaze behind tinted sunglasses and made sure to wear a helmet.

Natasha, 27, showed off her svelte figure in a skimpy black crop top, teamed with distressed Daisy Dukes and white sneakers.

She swept her blonde extensions into a half-up, half-down do with scrunchie, and added oversize sunglasses to the look.

Hiding his famous face: While enjoying a ride on an electric scooter, the former Channel Ten personality concealed his gaze behind tinted sunglasses and made sure to wear a helmet

PDA: The lovebirds found a spot on a grassy knoll for a bit of canoodling

Carrying two takeaway cups of coffee while Michael rode on his scooter, the pair later found a spot on a grassy knoll for a bit of canoodling.

Michael, who failed to find love on the last season of Bachelor In Paradise, sat behind Natasha, and at one stage placed his hand on her toned tummy.

Speaking to Who magazine in September, Natasha confessed she traded a shot at fame for an official relationship with Michael.

'[The producers] flew me up to Sydney to meet with them... They were going to shoot my backstory this weekend, so Michael had to take a decision fairly quickly!' she told the publication at the time.

Michael added: 'I certainly wouldn't deny Natasha an opportunity like MAFS if I wasn't 100 per cent serious. And that was one of the things I had to figure out as well.'

Michael, who also starred on Sam Frost's season of The Bachelorette, said he was happy with his decision on taking their romance to the next level.

'I just needed to make sure that we were serious and that's why we've made the decision to be a couple and that's something I'm really happy about,' he explained.

Natasha also told Who in September that the lovebirds were looking to move in together, and that it was likely she would join Michael in Brisbane.
Halle Berry was spotted out and about in Los Angeles on Saturday.

The 52-year-old actress rocked a grey poncho that she paired with slouchy denim and suede booties.

Berry recently returned from Morocco, where she was filming John Wick 3 for nearly a month.

So chic: Halle Berry was spotted out and about in Los Angeles on Saturday. The 52-year-old actress rocked a grey poncho that she paired with slouchy denim and suede booties

'Its a wrap...CHEERS! A huge thank you to all the beautiful people of Morocco! Thank you for opening your hearts to me and making me feel so at home,' she wrote on Instagram.

'John Wick has been a truly memorable experience! I have so much respect for Keanu Reeves and this franchise, its been my honor to be apart of it!'

The film is slated to premiere in May 2019.

Leading lady: Berry recently returned from Morocco, where she was filming John Wick 3 for nearly a month

Halle is a mom-of-two.

She shares her daughter Nahla, age 10, with ex Gabriel Aubry.

And she co-parents her son Maceo, age five, with ex-husband Olivier Martinez.

'Its a wrap...CHEERS! A huge thank you to all the beautiful people of Morocco! Thank you for opening your hearts to me and making me feel so at home,' she wrote on Instagram

Along with being a mom and one of Hollywood's leading actresses, Berry finds time to workout with trainer Peter Lee Thomas five days a week.

'What keeps me motivated is my kids. I want to see my grandchildren,' she said during her new Instagram series #PHITtalks. 'I also want to model healthy living for my kids. I think what we do matters much more than what we say.'

Halle added: 'It's a lifestyle that I'm living. Do something everyday for the body, it's the only one you got.'
Rosie Jacobs and boyfriend Matt looked the picture of domestic bliss on Saturday.

The ex-wife of Today weatherman Steve Jacobs and her new partner were spotted in Sydney's Bronte tending to two dogs while she smoked a cigarette.

Their laid-back outing comes after Steve admitted he had been 'thrown a few curve balls' after his 11 year marriage ended, while discussing custody arrangements.

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Domestic bliss! The ex-wife of Today weatherman Steve Jacobs and her new partner Matt were spotted in Sydney's Bronte tending to two dogs while she smoked a cigarette

Rosie, 39, and Matt appeared carefree and still in the honeymoon phase of their new relationship while enjoying the sunshine in the affluent Sydney beach-side suburb.

The brunette was dressed comfortably in a baggy white-and-yellow pin-striped shirt, cut off denim shorts, panama hat and sunglasses as they sat on some concrete stairs.

Barefoot Matt wasn't as covered up, stepping out simply in a pair of swimming shorts while joining Rosie.

Casual outing: Rosie and her new partner were spotted in Sydney's Bronte tending to two dogs while smoking a cigarette break and spot of food

Keeping it real: Despite heading out with two bowls of food and a cigarette in hand, it appears Rosie's al fresco dining was interrupted by their four legged friends

Despite taking a seat with two bowls of food and a cigarette in hand, it appeared Rosie's al fresco dining was interrupted by their four legged friends.

The two dogs appeared to brawl at one point, with Rosie using her foot to restrict the larger canine from escaping their immediate area.

Matt clutched the smaller of the pair, presumably attempting to settle the pint-sized pet from disturbing their romantic outdoor date.

Play nice! The two dogs with them appeared to clash while interrupting their outdoor date

Not a good boy? Matt clutched the smaller of the pair, presumably attempting to settle the pint-sized pet from disturbing them further

Steady on: Rosie used her foot to restrict the larger canine from escaping their immediate area

Moving on: The 51-year-old Today show weatherman admitted last week he had 'been thrown a few curve balls' recently (Rosie and Steve pictured with their two daughters)

Last week Steve spoke about his devastating split from ex-wife Rosie.

The 51-year-old Today show weatherman admitted that he had 'been thrown a few curve balls' recently, but has been forced to come to terms with them.

He also revealed details of their custody arrangement, saying that he now sees their two children every two weeks.

Loved-up: Rosie and Matt appeared carefree and still in the honeymoon phase of their new relationship while enjoying the sunshine in the affluent Sydney beach-side suburb

Casual: The brunette was dressed comfortably in a baggy white-and-yellow pin-striped shirt, cut off denim shorts, panama hat and sunglasses as they sat on some concrete stairs

Soaking up the sun: Matt wasn't as covered up, stepping out simply in a pair of swimming shorts while joining Rosie

Speaking to WHO magazine, Steve said: 'I've been thrown a few curve balls, which were unexpected and unwanted.'

'But I suppose these things happen in life and they give you character and make you stronger and you move forward. What else can you do?'

He added that he has their daughters, Isabella, seven, and Francesca, five, every two weeks and loves spending time with them.

Struggles: Steve and Rosie relocated to Vanuatu with their two daughters in mid-2017, in what friends reportedly said was a 'last-ditch attempt' to save their marriage, but it did not work

Rosie and Steve are both settling back into their separate lives in Sydney after returning from Vanuatu following their devastating split.

The couple relocated to Vanuatu with their two daughters in mid-2017, in what friends reportedly said was a 'last-ditch attempt' to save their marriage.

However the relationship broke down within a matter of months and after the couple split, Rosie began dating Canadian commando, Dylan Nash, 32.

Rosie and Dylan, who reportedly met through mutual friends in Vanuatu, also parted ways in recent months.

Making it work: Steve said that he has their daughters, Isabella, seven, and Francesca, five, every two weeks and loves spending time with them

Since then Rosie has moved on with her new 'viking' boyfriend Matt.

Last month, a close friend of the brunette confirmed the new relationship to Daily Mail Australia, saying: 'Yes, they are super happy!'

'Me and my Ragnar,' Rosie captioned one Instagram image of herself and Matt, clearly referencing the renowned Danish and Swedish Viking hero and ruler - Ragnar Lodbrok.
She just finished hosting an epic Thanksgiving.

So Chrissy Teigen had to restock the kitchen with supplies on Saturday, with a little help from daughter Luna.

The duo were spotted on a shopping trip together to Bristol Farms in Los Angeles.

Little helper: Chrissy Teigen had to restock the kitchen with supplies on Saturday, with a little help from daughter Luna

The mom of two rocked furry black slides with jeans, a low cut black top and long cardigan, with a snazzy black Panama hat.

She carried her eldest  wearing a cute blank and white striped dress  as she pushed a cart full of groceries back to the car.

Among her items was a roll of Christmas wrapping paper, while two-year-old Luna seemed content with a helium balloon.

Absent for the grocery run were Chrissy's husband John Legend, their six-month-old son Miles, and he mother Vilailuck Teigen, who also lives with the family.

Shopper chic: The mom of two rocked furry black slides with jeans, a low cut black top and long cardigan, with a snazzy black Panama hat

'So my mom lives with us,' Teigen told Us Weekly back in January, when explaining her family living arrangements.

Chrissy's dad Ron Teigen lives just minutes away and is a regular guest at their Beverly Hills mansion.

'He comes by every day and theyre married,' Chrissy added. 'It just works for them. Its a good family life. Were all very close, very tightknit.'

The Teigen ladies are clearly very close and enjoy hanging out with the kids by the looks of the many social media posts over the last couple of years.

Chrissy and John have been married since 2013; they met in 2007 on the set of his music video Stereo.
She's in the midst of renovating her Los Angeles home.

But Tallulah Wilis took a break on Friday to go for a coffee run at her local Beverly Hills Starbucks while decked out in black attire.

The 24-year-old youngest daughter of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore showed off her slim legs in tight leggings during the outing.

Back in black: Tallulah Wilis took a break on Friday to go for a coffee run at her local Starbucks while decked out in black attire

The Bandits actress paired the flattering garment with a long-sleeved black top.

She covered her auburn tresses with a pink cap that bore the words 'Roy Orbison'.

The Los Angeles native shielded her eyes against the Californian glare with dark shades and carried her keys and a large cold brew iced coffee.

Slim pins: The 24-year-old youngest daughter of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore showed off her slim legs in tight leggings during the outing

Tallulah's Striptease star mom was on hand to help during her baby girl's recent home renovations.

She was seen holding a pair of small dogs while Tallulah directed workers amid the process.

The 56-year-old actress was married to Bruce Willis for 13 years, during which time they had three daughters together.

Tallulah's big sisters are Rumer, 30, and Scout, 27.
Whether she's on stage or along the boulevard, she's known for her chic retro sartorial choices.

And Dita Von Teese was true to form on Saturday as she stepped out in blue embroidered skirt.

The 46-year-old burlesque dancer was spotted while out shopping with her boyfriend Adam Rajcevich.

Classic: Dita Von Teese was true to form on Saturday as she stepped out in blue embroidered skirt

The full, A-line skirt had a 50's vibe and was adorned with burlesque dancer, who cancan-ed across it.

She sported a simple black blouse on top and matched it with little sable flats.

Her dark tresses were in an intricate updo and she painted her lips a robust red, adding to the looks classic feel.

Chic: The 46-year-old burlesque dancer was spotted while out shopping with her boyfriend Adam Rajcevich

Not ready to be out done by his girlfriend, Adam looked smart in an all black ensemble that included a suit and a scarf.

He added a pair of matching loafers to complete the classy look.

Earlier this month, Dita returned to her Burlesque roots as she performed an intimate show at central London venue The Box Soho.

Keeping busy: Earlier this month, Dita returned to her Burlesque roots as she performed an intimate show at central London venue The Box Soho

The show was part of her The Art of the Teese tour, which took place in city across Europe in October and November.

The Michigan-born beauty wrapped up the tour earlier this week with a show in Prague.

She also said she be hitting the road again in 2019.
She's the Australian-born beauty who is returning home for the birth of her baby girl.

And on Sunday, Teresa Palmer was just like any over traveller as she took a long-haul flight Down Under with her family of four.

In photographs posted to Instagram, the 32-year-old revealed she is flying economy with sons Bodhi, four, Sage, two, and husband Mark Webber despite her star status.

'Late night travel with two small kids!' Pregnant Teresa Palmer reveals flies economy with her family of four despite her star status as she takes a long-haul back to Australia. Pictured with sons Bodhi, four, Sage, two, husband Mark Webber (right)

'Giggling our way through late night travel with two small kids, a bumpy and an exorbitant amount of economy friendly travel pillows,' she penned in the caption of on photo where she lays down on the floor of the airport.

Teresa added the hashtag, '#Australiaherewecome'.

The blonde beauty further documented the family adventure to her Instagram Stories.

Restful: 'Giggling our way through late night travel with two small kids, a bumpy and an exorbitant amount of economy friendly travel pillows,' she penned in the caption of on photo where she lays down on the floor of the airport

Homeward! The blonde beauty further documented the family adventure to her Instagram Stories. Pictured: Another photograph of the family preparing to board the plane to Australia

She shared a photograph of her two sons Bodhi Rain, four and Forest Sage, two peacefully sleeping on the plane.

'One of us is excited for this flight... one of us is not!' she wrote alongside the photo, which showed Teresa sporting a wide grin as her husband Mark looked on.

The trip comes after the stunner told TV Week that she will be returning to Adelaide for the birth of her first daughter.

'She will be an Aussie baby': Teresa, who is expecting the arrival of her third child, told TV Week last week that she is planning to return to Adelaide for the birth of her first daughter

'The good news is she will be an Aussie baby,' Teresa revealed to the publication. 'We'll come back for a while and she'll be born in Adelaide,' she added.

The Discovery of Witches actress also recalled her reaction upon finding out that they will be having a baby girl.

'I almost fell out of my chair when the doctors told me [it was a girl]. I thought, ''What? We don't have girls,'' she reflected, adding that Mark 'burst into tears' of joy.

The couple, who have been married since 2013, are already parents to two sons, Bodhi and Forest, as well as another boy, Isaac, from Mark's previous relationship with actress Frankie Shaw.
Roxy Jacenko appeared alongside her husband Oliver Curtis on Channel Seven's Sunday Night on Sunday, and she did not hold back.

The PR maven revealed that she 'went rogue' after her husband was jailed for insider trading in 2016, indulging in all-night partying, drugs and alcohol.

The 38-year-old told the program: 'I think I started living a life very quickly as soon as Ollie went to jail that was fast. And that was drinking too much and consuming things that I shouldn't have been consuming... I went rogue, basically.'

'I went rogue, basically': Roxy Jacenko reveals she 'smashed up' husband Oliver Curtis' car while he was in jail and 'didn't remember how she did it' after indulging in drugs and alcohol

She continued: 'I would go out, and I'd come home at all hours of the morning. I basically lost my marbles.'

The 'nights out' culminated in a car accident which Roxy doesn't remember.

'I remember driving Ollie's car and parking it and then the next day going downstairs and looking at it, and it was all smashed up.

'And I was like, "I don't even remember how I did it".'

The 38-year-old told the program: 'I think I started living a life very quickly as soon as Ollie went to jail that was fast. And that was drinking too much and consuming things that I shouldn't have been consuming... I went rogue, basically'. Pictured; Roxy and Oliver (right)

The Sweaty Betty founder goes on to admit that she was 'living on alcohol and drugs'.

And Oliver, who was in jail at the time, was helpless to stop his wife's decline.

'I knew what was happening. She wouldn't listen to me. I'd try and bring her into line, and it was just ridiculous,' he told the program.

Oliver, who was in jail at the time, was helpless to stop his wife's decline: 'I knew what was happening. She wouldn't listen to me. I'd try and bring her into line, and it was just ridiculous' he told the program

Roxy admitted that the behaviour was a 'coping mechanism' and she 'isn't sure' how she survived that period unscathed.

The blonde businesswoman has openly discussed having a 'nervous breakdown' after Oliver was jailed in 2016.

The businessman spent 12 months in jail for conspiracy to commit insider trading.

Oliver served the majority of his time at Cooma Correctional Centre, before his release in June 2017.

'It's not something to be ashamed of': Roxy revealed she is taking antidepressants after begging a doctor to 'admit her to a clinic' following the imprisonment of her husband Oliver

It's okay: 'It's not something to be ashamed of. If that's what I need to do to make sure that I am a good mother, a good boss,' Roxy says

The PR mogul admitted that she was given antidepressant medication when she 'reached a 'breaking point' 11 months after Oliver was imprisoned.

She told the Sunday Night program she'd reached such a low point, she'd considered suicide, with only thoughts of her two children stopping her.

'I was very close to standing at The Gap. I wouldn't have coped,' Roxy revealed.

The PF mogul added: 'The only thing that stopped me was the fact that they needed me'.

Speaking to the Financial Review, Roxy revealed she begged a doctor for help during her darkest days.

Help: The PR mogul has admitted that she was given anti-depressant medication when she 'reached a 'breaking point' 11 months after husband Oliver (right) was imprisoned and she continues taking it to this day

Out: The businessman spent 12 months in jail for conspiracy to commit insider trading. Oliver served the majority of his time at Cooma Correctional Centre, before his release in June 2017

Roxy told the publication that he said to her GP: 'You need to admit me to a clinic.'

At that time she was prescribed her the antidepressant Effexor, which the Sweaty Betty founder has continued to use.

Candid about her experience, Roxy says that receiving the help she needs is nothing to be ashamed of.

'It's not something to be ashamed of. If that's what I need to do to make sure that I am a good mother, a good boss, I deliver on the job that I have to do, and that I'm happy and confident, so be it,' she told the publication.

Tough: Roxy has said that raising her two children, Pixie, four, and Hunter, six, alone while managing her business empire, made her 'lose her marbles'. Roxy is pictured with her family

Difficult days: 'I had a nervous breakdown. I had cancer in 2016, 2017. My husband went to jail. I was raising two children on my own, [I had] four businesses I was running. I lost my marbles,' Roxy has said. Pictured are Roxy's children Hunter, four, and Pixie, six

Roxy admitted she was 'resentful' of her husband for 'placing her' in a bad situation when he was jailed, leaving her to cope alone.

Roxy has previously said that raising her two children, Pixie, four, and Hunter, six, alone while managing her business empire, was extremely tough.

'I had a nervous breakdown. I had cancer in 2016, 2017. My husband went to jail. I was raising two children on my own, [I had] four businesses I was running. I lost my marbles,' she candidly told the crowd at the Business Chicks event.

Difficult: In April, Roxy told Daily Mail Australia that Oliver was still struggling to overcome his time behind bars. Oliver is pictured attending court in Sydney in 2016

The family is now reunited, and mending their wounds, however the fallout of their difficult days has continued.

In April, Roxy told Daily Mail Australia that Oliver was still struggling to overcome his time behind bars.

At the time, she said the former investment banker got emotional when they drove past Sydney's Surry Hills holding cells.

'We don't really talk about (his sentence). Oli has said previously it's something he has blocked out of his mind,' Roxy said.

Blocked out: 'We don't really talk about (his sentence). Oli has said previously it's something he has blocked out of his mind,' Roxy said. Oliver and Roxy are pictured attending court in 2016

'When we drove past Surry Hills holding cells after a meal and he was quite distressed, he mentioned being in there was the worst two weeks of his life.'

She added: 'I'm told these cells are usually for prisoners for 24 to 48 hours. For him, it was two weeks and something he never wants to remember.'

The pair are doing their best to put the jail stint behind them, with Roxy and Oliver looking carefree while holidaying with family and friends in Europe in July.

Moving on: The pair are putting the jail stint behind them, with Roxy and Oliver looking carefree while holidaying with family and friends in Europe in July

Speaking to Daily Mail Australia, Roxy remarked how the lavish break is 'so nice for Oli. A Far cry from his last holiday!'

As well as their immediate family, they had a sizable entourage with them, including Roxy's mother Doreen and friends, among whom is chicken heiress Jessica Ingham.

Roxy Jacenko made a joke about Oliver's jail stint during their holiday aboard the $376,000-a-week superyacht off Capri.

Speaking to Daily Mail Australia, Roxy remarked how the lavish break was 'so nice for Oli. A Far cry from his last holiday!'

For confidential support call the Lifeline 24-hour crisis support on 13 11 14
She's expecting the arrival of her second child in the next few weeks.

And on Sunday, actress Tammin Sursok shared her pregnancy exercise regime with her legions of fans on social media.

The 35-year-old revealed that she has been working out four to five times a week and keeps her sessions 'light'.

The mummy workout! Tammin Sursok (left) revealed her pregnancy exercise regime as she prepares for the arrival of her second child with husband Sean. Pictured with five-year-old daughter Phoenix (right)

'Four to five times a week I've been doing light workouts,' she wrote alongside a video posted to Instagram that showed the mother going for a walk with her five-year-old daughter, Phoenix.

'It has helped me so much mentally and physically. Ask your OB first. I highly recommend being active if you don't have a high risk pregnancy,' she added.

In the video, Tammin sported a glow-from-within as she flaunted her burgeoning baby bump by lifting up her grey T-shirt.

'Four to five times a week I've been doing light workouts,' she wrote alongside a video posted to Instagram on Sunday that showed the mother going for a walk with her daughter, Phoenix

The brunette beauty wore a pair of denim shorts and sneakers for the occasion.

The workout comes after Tammin shared the difficult journey behind her latest pregnancy, recalling her devastating miscarriage last year in an emotional social media post on Thursday.

Sharing a touching picture with her husband Sean McEwen and their daughter Phoenix, the mother bravely wrote: 'Last year on Thanksgiving I was pregnant.'

Candid: The workout comes after Tammin shared the difficult journey behind her latest pregnancy, recalling her devastating miscarriage last year in an emotional social media post on Thursday

'I've actually been pregnant for a VERY long time (more on that later) but this year looks different,' she added.

'And I'm so grateful that our tears have turned to smiles. Remember.....'the path from dreams to success does exist.

'May you have the vision to find it, the courage to get on to it, and the perseverance to follow it. Happy Thanksgiving my loves.'

Tammin first announced that she was expecting her second child with husband Sean in early September.
Bachelor In Paradise lovebirds Keira Maguire and Jarrod Woodgate went through an extremely public and contentious split back in August.

But now it looks like the pair may have buried the hatchet and rekindled their romance, with Keira taking to social media on Sunday to share clips of herself getting brunch with Jarrod.

Keira added further fuel to the fire by playing Halsey's hit Without Me in a video posted to Instagram, which features the lyrics: 'Does it ever get lonely / Thinking you could live without me.'

Back together? Bachelor In Paradise rejects Keira Maguire and Jarrod Woodgate have sparked rumours that they've rekindled their romance

The socialite's decision to document her reunion with Jarrod on social media is awkward, given that Jarrod cited Keira's obsession with Instagram as the reason he dumped her.

'Her Instagram following is overwhelming and it was taking over our relationship,' he told Who magazine after their split.

'Shes purely Instagram-focused, and that takes up a lot of time,' he continued.

Are they back on? Keira shared a video of Jarrod driving her to brunch on Sunday

Keira added further fuel to the fire by playing Halsey's hit Without Me in an Instagram video, which features the lyrics: 'Does it ever get lonely / Thinking you could live without me'

'Id spend two days a week with her and it was basically all Instagram-based,' he added.

Last month, it was claimed by NW magazine that the Bachelor In Paradise pair had reunited after Keira tagged herself online at Jarrod's vineyard in mid-October.

'Keira was devastated when they broke up,' an insider told the publication.

'Shes purely Instagram-focused': Keira's decision to document her reunion with Jarrod on social media is awkward, given that Jarrod cited her obsession with Instagram as the reason he dumped her in the first place

'She would definitely be willing to start over,' the magazine's source continued, seemingly suggesting they're still working out the details of their reconciliation.

After calling time on their relationship in August, the pair endured a very public slanging match through the media.

Keira and Jarrod met while filming Bachelor In Paradise in Fiji last November, and quickly moved in together in Melbourne before splitting in August this year.
Pamela Anderson has responded to Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison's 'smutty and lewd' comments on The Sunday Project.

The Baywatch star turned activist told co-host Lisa Wilkinson that his comments were 'typical of a politician' and likened his actions to US President Donald Trump.

Earlier this month, the actress called for Morrison to support WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has been holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for six years.

Pamela Anderson (left) has responded to Scott Morrison (right), after the Australian Prime Minister made 'smutty and lewd' comments about her quest to free WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange

'Defend your friend and get Julian his passport back and take him back to Australia and be proud of him and throw him a parade when he gets home,' Anderson requested of Morrison through the Nine Network's 60 Minutes.

Anderson told Wilkinson that Morrison has not made contact with her following his 'smutty and lewd' remarks.

'It's typical of a politician [to make sexist comments]. It's very Trump-ian actually to use a sexist remark to divert from the actual issue or question, so it was not shocking,' the 51-year-old said.

Candid: Speaking to Lisa Wilkinson (left) on The Sunday Project, Anderson, 51, said 'it's typical of a politician (to say sexist comments)'

Similar? Anderson remarked that Morrison's comments were similar to something US President Donald Trump (pictured) would say

'I assumed he was doing it on purpose so he could shift the attack... focusing on the issue of Julian which is most important,' Anderson added.

The Prime Minister chuckled loudly in an interview after being asked if he intended to heed the star's advice, before simply replying: 'No.'

'I've had plenty of mates who have asked me if they can be my special envoy to sort the issue out with Pamela Anderson,' he told Gold Coast radio station Hot Tomato FM.

Talking: Anderson appeared on Nine's 60 Minutes Australia (pictured) earlier this month, where she raised her concerns about the treatment of Australian WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange

Refuge: Assange (pictured) took refuge in Ecuador's embassy in 2012, after British courts ordered his extradition to Sweden to face questioning in a sexual molestation case

'But putting that to one side, the serious issue is no, our position on that hasn't changed.'

In an open letter published on her website, Anderson said the comments were 'disappointing'.

'You trivialized and laughed about the suffering of an Australian and his family. You followed it with smutty, unnecessary comments about a woman voicing her political opinion,' she wrote.

Scott Morrison (pictured) was quick to shoot down the suggestion of bringing Assange to Australia: 'I've had plenty of mates who've asked me if they can be my special envoy to sort the issue out with Pamela Anderson,' he said

Anderson said people deserve better from their political leaders and that Assange is not 'getting a fair go'.

'Rather than making lewd suggestions about me, perhaps you should instead think about what you are going to say to millions of Australians when one of their own is marched in an orange jumpsuit to Guantanamo Bay - for publishing the truth. You can prevent this.'

Assange took refuge in Ecuador's embassy in 2012, after British courts ordered his extradition to Sweden to face questioning in a sexual molestation case.

Plea: Anderson appealed to Prime Minister Scott Morrison to defend her friend Julian Assange

The case was dropped but supporters have said Assange fears leaving the embassy in case he's extradited to the United States over WikiLeaks' publication of US diplomatic and military secrets.

Court filings made public by mistake in the US earlier this month indicate that Assange has been indicted in secret by federal prosecutors in Alexandria, Virginia.

In October an Ecuadorian judge ruled against the 47-year-old's request to loosen new conditions of his ongoing stay at the embassy.

The new rules require the Australian pay for services like internet and laundry and care for his cat.
Strictly's Shirley Ballas has responded to 'fix' claims after she and her fellow judges read the Lindy-hopathon scores off a 'blank' piece of paper following a technical blunder.

In the wake of the mishap, Shirley posted a photo of her in a glamorous monochrome gown on Twitter and called the technical blunder, as 'live TV'.

She began: 'Hysterical, computers went down, well that's live TV, amazing show this evening. @DarceyOfficial @BrunoTonioli @CraigRevHorwood great team. Thank you to all who tuned in. X'.

Strictly's Shirley Ballas has responded to 'fix' claims after she and her fellow judges read the Lindy-hopathon scores off a 'blank' piece of paper following a technical blunder

The furore began when the celebrities and their professional partners were left confused after their energetic Lindy-hopathon was left in disarray when the judges mixed up their ranking.

At one point, Shirley confused Karen Clifton, 36, for fellow pro Dianne Buswell, 29, when reading out the scores - which led to viewers taking to Twitter in their droves to comment on Karen's 'waspish stare' and 'fix' claims.

Shirley read off a tablet device, that had frozen, and said: 'After an amazing performance, and thank you all for that, I've conferred with my fellow adjudicators...

'Hold on we've lost the board. But anyway I'll keep going.'

Confusion: The celebrities and their professional partners were left confused after their energetic Lindy-hopathon was left in disarray when the judges mixed up their ranking

Blunder: In the wake of the mishap, Shirley posted a photo of her in a glamorous monochrome gown on Twitter and referenced the gaffe, calling it "live TV"

Craig Revel Horwood was handed a piece of paper from a producer and passed it to Shirley, who read: 'Getting seven points, will be Ashley!'

However, the scores were meant to be read from lowest to highest, with Darcey whispering into the head judge's ear: 'Seventh place is for Lauren, read from the bottom'.

Taking the lead, Bruno announced: 'We apologise the board went all berserk so we have to read off the paper. So we start on seventh place. Sorry.'

The blunder caused many to take to Twitter and claim the technical challenge was a 'fix', despite the foursome explaining that they had been blighted from retrieving the marks from an iPad.

Claims: The blunder caused many to take to Twitter and claim the technical challenge was a 'fix'

One wrote: 'How can the judges cock up the scoring? Where did the piece of paper come from? Why did Claudia think Graeme was 7th? Seems like a lot suspicion. Fix?'

'That hopathon thing is such a scam,' another shared. 'Supposed to be picking at that point in time and yet they havent got the paper, which comes from someone else, and then they have got in a right middle, what an absolute fix and shambles.'

A third said: 'What a fix how did the judges who supposedly made the decision not know who they placed where.'

A Strictly spokesperson told MailOnline: 'Once the judges had scored the Lindy-hopathon, the marks were successfully electronically recorded on a tablet and fed to the gallery who received an accurate record of the judges marks.

Annoyed: Viewers took to Twitter in their droves to comment on Karen's 'waspish stare' on Strictly Come Dancing on Saturday night

'When Head Judge Shirley had to read the marks out live on air, the tablet she was reading from malfunctioned and went blank so she was unable to read out the final order.

They added: 'Bruno therefore read out the results from a back up, which is a paper template and had been filled in by the judges.'

The social media post comes hours after the judges were left in disarray when a disastrous technical mishap blighted them from retrieving the marks from an iPad.

The incident lead Shirley to forget Karen all together, as she said; 'in fifth place is Charles and Dianne'.

Oops: The incident happened when head judge Shirley Ballas confused the Venezuelan beauty for fellow pro Dianne Buswell

Shambles: A disastrous technical mishap blighted the judges from retrieving the Lindy-hopathon marks from an iPad

For the challenge, all couples had to compete at the same time on the dancefloor, with the judges ranking them in order of ability.

But things soon turned into chaos when the judges' iPad failed, with Craig Revel Horwood scrambling to find the marks on a piece of paper.

Ashley won the Lindy-hopathon, scoring the maximum seven points, while Lauren scored the lowest mark, retrieving just one point from the dance.

Dance-off: For the challenge, all couples had to compete at the same time on the dancefloor, with the judges ranking them in order of ability

Confused: Shirley started off by saying Ashley Roberts came in seventh place, but had meant to say Lauren Steadman was the one who had scored the lowest marks in the dance

Entertained: Following the disaster, viewers took to Twitter to comment on Shirley's regal connection, blasting it as a 'complete shambles'

After the scores were totaled up with their individual dances of the evening, Faye Tozer came out top of the leaderboard with 45 points, with Stacey Dooley following closely behind with 44.

Following the disaster, viewers took to Twitter to comment on Shirley's regal connection, with dozens posting pictures of Prince Charles and the late Prince Diana, while others blasted it as a 'complete shambles'.

One wrote: 'Shirley Ballas is chuffin useless, while another added: '@bbcstrictly whats up with Karen Clifton? Looked like she swallowed a wasp...'

Chaos: With Shirley making such a hash of the leaderboard, Bruno Tonioli was forced to takeover, reading over all the results again

Another viewer typed: 'You had one job Shirley and you couldn't even get their names right let alone in the right order. Charles and Diane! Matron, Shirley needs an early night.'

'What was going through Shirleys mind when she awarded marks to Charles and Diane....#awkward ' a fifth fan chimed.

Strictly Come Dancing Week Ten: The Leaderboard 1. Faye Tozer and Giovanni Pernice's Waltz and Lindy-hop- 45 2. Ashley Roberts and Pasha Kovalev's Samba and Lindy-hop - 44 3. Stacey Dooley and Kevin Clifton's Pasa Doble and Lindy-hop - 42 4. Joe Sugg and Dianne Buswell's Street Dance and Lindy-hop- 40 4. Charles Venn and Karen Clifton's Viennese Tango and Lindy-hop - 33 5. Graeme Swann and Oti Mabuse's Quickstep and Lindy-hop - 26 6. Lauren Steadman and AJ Pritchard's Salsa and Lindy-hop - 24 Advertisement
She recently hosted gourmet food festival Margaret River Gourmet Escape during her trip Down Under.

And Nigella Lawson made a low-key arrival to Sydney Airport, Australia, on Sunday afternoon.

The TV chef, 58, nailed casual chic as she strolled along the terminal in an all-black ensemble, which featured a cosy midi cardigan, a plain tee and wide-leg trousers.

Effortlessly chic: Nigella Lawson made a low-key arrival to Sydney Airport, Australia, on Sunday afternoon

Maintaining her cool display, the host donned a pair of white platform trainers and toted a black shopper bag.

Nigella injected a hint of glamour into her appearance with stylish square-framed sunglasses.

Last week, the brunette hosted a $100-a-head meet and greet, where she signed copies of her latest book At My Table alongside a glass of wine.

Off she goes: The TV chef, 58, nailed casual chic as she strolled along the terminal in an all-black ensemble, which featured a cosy midi cardigan, a plain tee and wide-leg trousers

In an interview with PerthNow during the event, she said: 'I'm someone who always wants to eat well, and you do eat well here because the produce is so good, but everywhere you look is so beautiful.'

Nigella recently finished her UK 20 year anniversary tour of the publication of her first book How To Eat.

Meanwhile, the TV personality revealed she struggled financially following her publicised split from advertising boss Charles Saatchi after ten years of marriage.

Cosy: Maintaining her cool display, the host donned a pair of white platform trainers and toted a black shopper bag

In an interview with Noble Rot, she said: I had to start my life again at 53, get a mortgage at an age when youre supposed to be paying it all off.

I do have to work. But I only do a TV programme every other year. Its not like Im there all the time.

She was previously married to the late journalist John Diamond, with whom she has two children.
He sent fans wild as he and Martin Lawrence confirmed Bad Boys 3 is in the works.

But Will Smith took a break from filming as he threw his support behind pal Lewis Hamilton, ahead of the sportsman's race during Abu Dhabi Formula One Grand Prix at the Marina Circuit on Sunday.

The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air star, 50, looked every inch the professional driver as he sported a white racing suit while toting a helmet.

High spirits: Will Smith threw his support behind pal Lewis Hamilton, ahead of the sportsman's race during Abu Dhabi Formula One Grand Prix at the Marina Circuit on Sunday

Hitch actor Will and F1 ace Lewis, 33, couldn't contain their excitement as they shared glimpses of their day on social media.

The racing driver showed the screen star the ropes around the sport while they donned identical outfits.

Taking to his Instagram Story ahead of Lewis' race, Will documented: 'I'm here with my man in Abu Dhabi!'

Beaming: The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air star, 50, looked every inch the professional driver as he sported a white racing suit while toting a helmet

Documenting: Hitch actor Will and F1 ace Lewis, 33, couldn't contain their excitement as they shared glimpses of their day on social media

Poking fun at the Made In America star's appearance, Lewis chimed in: 'Are you racing or am I racing?'

Will joked: ''I'm here just in case you wanted someone to step in, I'm here for you!'

'Well, you're the one who taught me how to drive!' Stevenage native Lewis responded.

So nice they wore it twice! The racing driver showed the screen star the ropes around the sport while they donned identical outfits

Grinning from ear-to-ear: Taking to his Instagram Story ahead of Lewis' race, Will documented: 'I'm here with my man in Abu Dhabi!'

Identical: Poking fun at the Made In America star's appearance, Lewis chimed in: 'Are you racing or am I racing?'

Showcasing his support, Will ended the clip: 'This is the fastest man in the world, this is my guy! Let's get it!'

Will, an avid motorsports fan, visited the Grand Prix to meet up with the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport driver, who recently became a five-time World Champion at the Mexican Grand Prix and is only the 3rd person in F1 history to achieve this.

The Bad Boys actor, with his eldest son Trey, 26, joined Lewis for a personal tour of the Mercedes garage and accompanied him on the traditional pre-race Drivers Parade.

Impressed: Showcasing his support, the Made In Chelsea star ended the clip: 'This is the fastest man in the world, this is my guy! Let's get it!'

Fan favourite: Proving to be in good company, the actor was stopped by fans for selfies

Will will become the last-ever person to signify the end of a race by waving the iconic chequered flag, which will return next season but for symbolic reasons only.

When asked why he was at the Grand Prix, Will said: 'Hanging with my boy Lewis Hamilton for the last race of the F1 season!'

Lewis has set himself up for the finale to his greatest season by taking pole position for the event. It was the Briton's 11th pole as he chases his 11th win of the year on Sunday.

Exciting: Preparing to experience 55 laps of adrenaline-fuelled excitement, Will met Force Indias Estban Ocon and Williams Martini Racings Lance Stroll in the pit lane

Working hard: Lewis has set himself up for the finale to his greatest season by taking pole position for the event

Support: Having sent Lewis a message over team radio when he won his fifth championship title at the Mexican Grand Prix, the international megastar congratulated him in person at the games

With the title settled long ago, there is nothing riding on the final round of the 21-race season except pride, but British fans still waved their Union Jacks triumphantly under the night sky as Hamilton put himself top of the time sheets.

On Saturday, he led a Mercedes one-two: Valtteri Bottas was 0.162sec behind, with the Ferraris of Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen third and fourth.

'I am quite emotional because this is the last time I will qualify in this car. I am closer to this car than any other', Lewis said.

Talented: Lewis recently became a five-time World Champion at the Mexican Grand Prix and is only the 3rd person in F1 history to achieve this

Making history: Will will become the last-ever person to signify the end of a race by waving the iconic chequered flag, which will return next season but for symbolic reasons only

Speaking out: 'I am quite emotional because this is the last time I will qualify in this car. I am closer to this car than any other', Lewis said on Saturday

'The first lap wasn't spectacular, but the last one I started off calm and got more and more aggressive. The final sector was the killer  where I made the difference', he added.

On Saturday, he led a Mercedes one-two: Valtteri Bottas was 0.162sec behind, with the Ferraris of Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen third and fourth.

'I am quite emotional because this is the last time I will qualify in this car. I am closer to this car than any other', Lewis said.

'The first lap wasn't spectacular, but the last one I started off calm and got more and more aggressive. The final sector was the killer  where I made the difference', he added.

Hilarious: Will was also seen helping get Lewis motivated for his race in the best way, tying him up with tape as he joked about making sure he would win

Charismatic: Will also said in a social media video that he wanted to make sure Lewis was ready for the big deciding race

Lewis has won on the desert track three times, a record he shares with his vanquished title rival Vettel.

Meanwhile, Bad Boys 3 star Martin recently confirmed Bad Boys 3 as he shared a snap of a reunion with movie star Will.

Alongside the image, the former Martin star, 51, penned: 'Its official. Bad Boys for Life. #teammartymar #badboysforlife @willsmith #weback.'

This comes just weeks after Variety reported Smith is on board to return as Miami detective Mike Lowrey from 1995's Bad Boys and the 2003 sequel Bad Boys II.

In good company: Chairman Emeritus of the Formula One Group Bernie Ecclestone was spotted at the Paddock with his wife Fabiana

Looking good: The brunette, 41, stunned in a red floral dress as she walked arm-in-arm with the business magnate, 88

Smith's on-screen partner Martin has not yet 'come to terms' with the studio, but the comedic actor, 'continues to circle' the project.

This project has been in the works for years, which was at one point called Bad Boys For Life, but the plans have recently gained new life, thanks to a new draft of the script.

Chris Bremner (The Wedding Ringer) wrote the most recent draft of the script, which has been with production penciled to begin in early 2019.

While not yet confirmed by Sony, the current plan is to have Bad Boys 3 in theaters in January 2020, over the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend.
She's known for her witty humour on social media.

And Kate Beckinsale, 45, once again left her Instagram followers in hysterics as she shared rib-tickling throwback black and white image of herself with her mother on Sunday.

In the childhood photo, the Underworld actress could be seen tightly gripping around her mother Judy's neck and also showcase her missing front tooth as she grinned.

Having fun: Kate Beckinsale, 45, once again left her Instagram followers in hysterics as she shared rib-tickling throwback black and white image of herself with her mother on Sunday

Hilariously poking fun at her childhood photo, Kate captioned the shot from yesteryear: 'If someone didnt shout "Katy, why is your mother so cold in only a light breeze?" or, "Katy-why do your dungarees feature a lowish but horribly realistic vagina pleat?"

'Or, "Katy, why do your eyes glitter with madness when you grip your mothers carotid artery?" then I felt like we had failed.

Adding: 'Here we are winning on every level #mama'.

The photo garnered a lot attention from her 2.2million followers, who commented in their droves about her hilarious commentary.

Snap shot: The Underworld actress hilariously poked fun at her childhood photo while simultaneously paying tribute to her mum, Judy Loe

Hilarious: The photo garnered a lot attention from her 2.2million followers, who commented in their droves about her hilarious commentary

A fan shared: 'I read this with your British accent. Hysterical!'

'Sense of humour is on point,' a second wrote. 'You have the best posts, love the dissection of the photo!'

Another said: '@katebeckinsale I love that your filter is broken! Keep not taking life seriously. We all need to be more like you.'

The funny post comes after Kate became the focus of heightened attention, after she was spotted enjoying a passionate smooch with Jack Whitehall at a Los Angeles karaoke earlier this month.

The Hollywood actress and comedian Jack, 30, were seen in a steamy embrace as they partied the night away at the exclusive Blind Dragon nightclub.

Lip lock: The actress was photographed kissing Jack Whitehall at a Los Angeles bar on Friday

During their date night, Kate was seen relaxing into Jack as he wrapped his arm around her lovingly to hold her close to him.

As the evening progressed, the pair put on a loved-up display as Jack placed a kiss on Kate's head in a loving way.

The actress was later seen lounging in front of him as they chatted to each other, before they gave each other a smooch.

Kate and Jack then fell into the throes of romance as they shared a passionate kiss, and the actress could be seen draping one arm across his shoulder as she placed her other hand on his chest.

The ex factor: The screen star was in an eight-year relationship with Michael Sheen until 2005

Earlier that night, the pair dined at celeb hotspot Craig's in West Hollywood, but left separately  likely to avoid being photographed together.

They then reconvened at the karaoke lounge, where they were seen laughing and joking around with each other before their passionate display.

Following their date, the pair were pictured heading back to a 2,000-a-night West Hollywood hotel together.

An onlooker told The Sun: 'They were like a pair of loved-up teenagers and werent trying to hide their feelings, they were practically sitting on top of each other in the booth of the nightclub and were laughing with each other.

Split: Kate divorced director Len Wiseman in 2016 and has a daughter Lily from her relationship with Welsh actor Michael Sheen

'Kate rested her hand on Jacks shoulder and she kept laughing and smiling at his jokes, as the night progressed, he seemed to be growing in confidence and put his arm around her and gave her a hug.

'Then he decided to put his hand around the back of Kates neck and pulled her across him, where they started to passionately kiss.'

Kate divorced director Len Wiseman in 2016 after 12 years of marriage. She has previously been linked with on-off American toyboy Matt Rife.

She has a 19-year-old daughter Lily with her former husband, the actor Michael Sheen, 49, who she split from in 2003.

Jack meanwhile was in a relationship with actress Gemma Chan, 35, but the pair called time on their relationship after six years together in 2017.
He's been single since splitting with his girlfriend of two years Kendall Bora in September.

And now Dr Chris Brown has sparked rumours that he may have moved on with his Channel 10 colleague Liv Phyland after the pair were spotted together at a truck stop in Wyong on the Central Coast on Friday.

'They left together in a white range rover, he was driving and she was in the passenger seat,' a source told Adelaide Now.

New flame? Dr Chris Brown (L) has sparked rumours that he may have found love with his Channel 10 colleague Liv Phyland (R)

'The boot was packed with surfing gear that looked like they were headed off for a weekend away.'

Daily Mail Australia has reached out to Chris Brown for comment.

Liv, 28, currently hosts the music show The Loop on Channel 10's digital channel, 10 Peach.

'They left together in a white range rover, he was driving and she was in the passenger seat': The pair were spotted together at a truck stop in Wyong on the Central Coast on Friday. Pictured: Chris Brown and Liv Phyland

Chris, 40, confirmed his split from ex-girlfriend Kendall back in September during an appearance on Have You Been Paying Attention?

During a light-hearted exchange with funnyman Ed Kavalee, Chris joked about being '40, still single [and] with no children.'

It was the first time the I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! host had acknowledged he was single.

Work it! Liv, 28, hosts the music show The Loop on Channel 10's digital channel, 10 Peach. Pictured: Liv Phyland

Afterwards, he was gently ribbed by the HYBPA panel about whether he would accept an offer to be the next Bachelor.

'Would you do The Bachelor?' comedian Celia Pacquola asked, as the studio audience cheered and applauded.

'Let's not start that!' Chris replied, brushing off the speculation.

Mingling? Chris recently joked about being '40, still single [and] with no children'. Pictured: Chris Brown and Liv Phyland

The handsome veterinarian is known for keeping his private life out of the public eye.

'I've never been that guy going around boasting, especially about who I'm dating,' he explained to TV Week earlier this year.

'My attitude is that the people closest to me know everything that's going on. They're the ones who count, and if other people want to speculate that's up to them.'
She's become an inspiration for young girls since as Wonder Woman, and now lends her voice to another strong female character in Ralph Breaks The Internet.

And Gal Gadot was on hand to support her cast-mates at the premiere for the Disney animated feature, for the film's premiere at the at Curzon Mayfair in London.

The actress, 33, looked fierce as she power-dressed in a sleek red suit jacket and matching flared trousers on Sunday.

Glamorous: Gal Gadot looked fierce as she power-dressed in a red suit for the London premiere of Ralph Breaks The Internet at the Curzon Mayfair on Sunday

The Israeli model boosted her height in a pair of pointed black heels, while she kept her accessories simple with a pair of dangling earrings.

Her raven tresses were styled into a side-swept parting and into loose waves, which fell elegantly over her shoulders.

Gal decided to rely on her natural beauty as she brushed on light touches of make-up, which included a slick of black eyeliner and nude lipstick.

Simple is best: Gal kept her accessories simple with a pair of dangling earrings

Towering tall: The Israeli model boosted her height in a pair of pointed black heels

Stylish: Her raven tresses were styled into a side-swept parting and into loose waves, which fell elegantly over her shoulders

Strike a pose: Gal worked every angle when she stepped out on the blue carpet

Stunning: Gal decided to rely on her natural beauty as she brushed on light touches of make-up, which included a slick of black eyeliner and nude lipstick

Sarah Silverman opted for a more Gothic look, as she donned a black tank top over a chiffon maxi-skirt.

She kept warm by wearing a black blazer, while she added a punk chic flair to her ensemble with a pair of statement boots.

The comedian added a glittering touch to the look by accessorising with an array of silver necklaces, one of which dangled low over her ensemble.

Edgy: Sarah Silverman opted for a more Gothic look, as she donned a black tank top over a chiffon maxi-skirt

Glittering: The comedian added a glittering touch to the look by accessorising with an array of silver necklaces, one of which dangled low over her ensemble

Rocker: Sarah kept warm by wearing a black blazer, while she added a punk chic flair to her ensemble with a pair of statement boots

Supportive: Gal and Sarah were joined by John C. Reilly, Rich Moore (L), Phil Johnston (second right) and Clark Spencer (right)

Co-stars: Sarah was joined at the event by her fellow leading actor John, who looked sharp in a chequered yellow, red and green suit

Sarah was joined at the event by her fellow leading actor John C. Reilly, who looked sharp in a chequered yellow, red and green suit.

He teamed up his ensemble with a crisp white shirt, a burgundy tie, and a pair of black brogues.

Every the funnyman, John was keen to put on a show on the blue carpet, as he pulled a few funny poses with the help of his green fedora hat.

Having fun: John was keen to make the public laugh with his funny poses

Suited and booted: He teamed up his ensemble with a crisp white shirt, a burgundy tie, and a pair of black brogues

Hilarious: Every the funnyman, John was keen to put on a show on the blue carpet, as he put on an animated display with the help of his green fedora hat

New project: Ralph Breaks The Internet is the sequel to the 2012 film Wreck-It Ralph and the 57th Disney animated feature film

Ralph Breaks The Internet is the sequel to the 2012 film Wreck-It Ralph and the 57th Disney animated feature film.

The plot follows the characters six years after the events of the original as Ralph and Vanellope discover a wi-fi router in their arcade, leading them into a new adventure.

It is directed by Rich Moore and Phil Johnston and written by Johnston and Pamela Ribon with John Lasseter executive producing.

Sarah, John, Jack McBrayer, Jane Lynch, and Ed O'Neill reprise their roles from the original film.

Taraji P. Henson, Gal, and Alfred Molina lend their voice talents as new additions.

Cosy: Shanie Ryan looked warm in a white knitted shirt and skirt

Sparkling: Naomi Isted dazzled in a black sleeveless top and dazzling sequinned trousers

Striking: Sarah Cawood stood out in a yellow plaid jacket and pink leopard-print shoes

Dressed up: The film's director Phil Johnston looked dapper in his black suit
I'm A Celebrity's Nick Knowles was reportedly reunited with the estranged love child he fathered with a backing dancer, after the tot fell ill at the age of four.

Ex-dancer Paula Beckett claimed to The Sun that the 56-year-old DIY SOS presenter had an illicit affair with her that led to the birth of Tyrian-J, now 22, but has been in regular contact with him after he was diagnosed with a mystery illness.

Paula, now 48, went onto explain that Nick has been a 'great dad' despite going onto marry his first wife Gillian, and even paid for TJ to attend a top private school.

Emotional: I'm A Celebrity's Nick Knowles was reportedly reunited with his estranged love child Tyrion-J (above left now 22) after the tot fell ill at the age of four

She explained: 'Our son was in hospital and in so much pain.

'He was only four but Nick hadn't seen him since he was a newborn baby.

'I wrote to his PA and was delighted when Nick wrote back saying he wanted to be part of TJ's life.'

Paula continued to speak highly of Nick by saying that he is a gentleman like her son, as he has been appearing on-screen to millions every night as a star of I'm A Celebrity.

MailOnline has contacted representatives for Nick Knowles for further comment.

Shocking: Ex-backing dancer Paula Beckett (right) told The Sun Nick has been a 'great dad' to TJ, staying in touch with him ever since he suffered the mystery illness

This comes as it was also revealed that Nick's cover of Make You Feel My Love made it into The Official Big Top 40 on Sunday, reaching number 32 due to his appearance in the jungle.

During the week Nick's single made it to number one on iTunes after revealing his music career began thanks to a rooftop jam session with rock band Biffy Clyro.

Radio X DJ Chris Moyles then started a campaign to get one of Nick's singles to number one, as his debut album had only previously made it to number 92.

He said: 'Let's see if we can get Nick Knowles into the chart. Let's see if we can get him into the top 100, and anything after that is a bonus. The dream would be the top 40.'

Big hitter: It comes as Nick has been wowing viewers this week as a star of I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here

Of his move into singing, Nick told MailOnline last year: 'I used to be the guitarist at school in a band but it was never going to turn into a career.

'And then I started to do acting. That then led to TV work - mostly factual and news stuff. So I was busy trying to build a TV career.

'But with my TV work I went to Australia and Africa  and I took my guitar with me, to the a**-end of nowhere. I was always playing. It kept the wildlife awake.'
She's often seen at the most prestigious of award ceremonies with her husband Charlie Brooker, the creator of hit series Black Mirror.

But Konnie Huq appeared without her beau when attending the British Academy Children's Awards at Roundhouse, London, on Sunday.

The former Blue Peter host, 43, exuded elegance as she donned a sophisticated velvet suit while joined on the red carpet by actor Rufus Hound, 39.

Stylish: Konnie Huq looked sensational in a velvet suit at the British Academy Children's Awards at Roundhouse, London, on Sunday

The presenter boosted her physique in a pair of simple brown heels, and carried her possessions in a white clutch.

Keeping her accessories to a minimum, Konnie sported a silver bangle and a pair of pearl stud earrings.

The mother-of-two went for her signature minimal make-up look, which featured light touches of foundation and glossy red lipstick.

Pals: The former Blue Peter host, 43, exuded elegance as she donned a sophisticated velvet suit while joined on the red carpet by actor Rufus Hound, 39

Rocking the look: Opting for a similarly trendy ensemble, comedian Rufus donned a grey checkered suit with an edgy scarf while debuting his more rugged look

BRITISH CHILDRENS AWARDS WINNERS 2018 SPECIAL AWARD CLIVE JUSTER CHANNEL CBBC CBEEBIES - WINNER HOPSTER TRUETUBE COMEDY THE AMAZING WORLD OF GUMBALL Ben Bocquelet, Mic Graves, Sarah Fell  Turner/ Cartoon Network GRANDPAS GREAT ESCAPE Production Team - King Bert Productions/BBC One HORRIBLE HISTORIES Production Team - Lion Television/CBBC SO AWKWARD Sally Martin, Ian Curtis, Anthony MacMurray - Channel X North/CBBC - WINNER CONTENT FOR CHANGE MY LIFE  HIKE TO HAPPINESS Production Team  Nine Lives Media/CBBC NEWSROUND INSPIRATIONAL STORIES Heather Clancy, Alex Bath, Kirsti Adair - BBC Childrens In-House Productions for CBBC/CBBC REPLY WITH A FULL STOP IF YOU GET THIS Adam Tyler, Toby Lloyd, Emily Harrison  CTVC/TrueTube WHAT DO YOU MEAN I CANT CHANGE THE WORLD? Adam Tyler, Kim Roden, Toby Lloyd  CTVC/TrueTube - WINNER DIGITAL CBBC BUZZ Andrew Swanson, Dominic Atherton, Dave Coulson  BBC Childrens In-House Productions and Chunk for CBBC HEY DUGGEE: THE COUNTING BADGE Production Team - Scary Beasties, BBC Studios, Studio AKA -WINNER IVANDOE: THE ADVENTURE GAME Production team - Turner/ Playerthree PABLOS ART WORLD ADVENTURE Grainne McGuinness, Gavin Halpin, Bob Price - Paper Owl Films Ltd DIRECTOR MIC GRAVES  The Amazing World of Gumball  Cartoon Network GRANT ORCHARD  Hey Duggee  Cbeebies - WINNER BERYL RICHARDS  Joe All Alone  CBBC ADAM TYLER  What Do You Mean I Cant Change the World? - TrueTube DRAMA HETTY FEATHER Matt Evans, Sallie Aprahamian, David Collier - BBC Childrens In-House Productions/CBBC JOE ALL ALONE Production Team - Zodiak Kids Studios/CBBC - WINNER KATY Jonathan Wolfman, John McKay, Tom Bidwell - BBC Childrens In House Productions/CBBC THE WORST WITCH Delyth Thomas, Neil Jones, Kim Crowther - Co-produced by BBC Childrens In House Productions and ZDFe/CBBC ENTERTAINMENT - WINNER THE DOG ATE MY HOMEWORK Chris Hulme, Pati Marr, Sara Harkins - BBC Childrens In House Productions/CBBC PROSIECT Z Production Team  Boom/S4C SAM & MARKS BIG FRIDAY WIND UP Steve Ryde, Emma Carroll, Andy Potter - BBC Childrens In House Productions/CBBC SWASHBUCKLE Philip Cooper, Geoff Coward, Helen Sheppard  BBC Childrens In House Productions/CBeebies FACTUAL FINDING MY FAMILY WINDRUSH: A NEWSROUND SPECIAL Kirsti Adair, Georgina Bowman, Chris Whyatt - BBC Childrens In-House Productions/CBBC MISSING DAD (MY LIFE) Rebecca Lloyd-Evans, Natasha Dack, Jennifer Monks  Tigerlily Productions/CBBC MY GAY LIFE Production Team  Glasshead/Channel 4 MUMBAI STREET STRIKERS (MY LIFE) Production Team - Drummer TV/CBBC - WINNER FEATURE FILM COCO Lee Unkrich, Darla K. Anderson - Pixar Animation Studios/Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures THE GREATEST SHOWMAN Michael Gracey, Laurence Mark, Peter Chernin, Jenno Topping - Twentieth Century Fox/Twentieth Century Fox INCREDIBLES 2 Brad Bird, John Walker, Nicole Grindle - Pixar Animation Studios/Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures PADDINGTON 2 Paul King, Simon Farnaby, David Heyman - StudioCanal, HeyDay Films/StudioCanal - WINNER YOUNG PERFORMER CHLOE LEA as Katy in Katy  CBBC - WINNER DANIEL FROGSON as Joe Holt in Joe All Alone  CBBC BELLA RAMSEY as Mildred Hubble in The Worst Witch  CBBC TASHA LAWRENCE as Sarah in Sarah & Duck - CBEEBIES GAME EVERYBODYS GOLF Development Team - Japan Studio, Clap Hanz/ Sony Interactive Entertainment FRANTICS Lau Koresgaard, Tim May, Claire Bromley - Napnok Games/ Sony Interactive Entertainment Europe KNACK 2 Development Team - SIE Japan Studio/Sony Interactive Entertainment Europe MARIO + RABBIDS KINGDOM BATTLE Development Team - Ubisoft Paris & Ubisoft Milan/ Ubisoft - WINNER INTERNATIONAL ANIMATION THE DEEP Tom Taylor, Trent Carlson, Steven Wendland - DHX Media, A Stark Productions, Technicolor/CBBC THE HEROIC QUEST OF THE VALIANT PRINCE IVANDOE Christian Bving-Andersen, Eva Lee Wallberg, Daniel Lennard  Turner/Cartoon Network/Sun Creature SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS Stephen Hillenburg, Vincent Waller, Marc Ceccarelli - Nickelodeon Animation Studio/Nicktoons - WINNER TROLLHUNTERS Guillermo del Toro, Marc Guggenheim, Rodrigo Blaas - DreamWorks Animation Television/Netflix INTERNATIONAL PRE-SCHOOL DOC MCSTUFFINS Production Team - Brown Bag Films/Disney Junior THE STINKY AND DIRTY SHOW Production Team - Brown Bag Films/Prime Video TUMBLE LEAF Kelli Bixler, Drew Hodges - Amazon Studios and Bix Pix Entertainment/Prime Video - WINNER VAMPIRINA Chris Nee, Norton Virgien, Nicky Phelan - Brown Bag Films / Disney Channels Worldwide/Disney Junior INTERNATIONAL LIVE ACTION ANDI MACK Terry Minsky, Michelle Manning, Greg Hampson  Disney Channels Worldwide/Disney Channel HUNTER STREET Melle Runderkamp, Rogier Visser, Frank Jan Horst  Blooming Media/Nickelodeon THE NEXT STEP Production Team - Radical Sheep Productions, a division of Boat Rocker Studios/CBBC NOWHERE BOYS  TWO MOONS RISING Beth Frey, Tony Ayres, Rowan Woods - Matchbox Pictures/CBBC - WINNER PERFORMER TOM COURTENAY as Grandpa in Grandpas Great Escape  BBC One - WINNER ANNABELLE DAVIS as Sasha Bellman in The Dumping Ground  CBBC JENNIFER SAUNDERS as Miss Dandy in Grandpas Great Escape  BBC One TOM STOURTON as Henry VIII in Horrible Histories - CBBC PRE-SCHOOL  ANIMATION CLANGERS Production Team - Coolabi Productions, Factory, CBeebies, BBC Worldwide/CBeebies HEY DUGGEE Grant Orchard, Janine Voong, Sander Jones  Studio AKA/CBeebies - WINNER OCTONAUTS Production Team - Vampire Squid Productions Limited, a Silvergate Media company, in association with Brown Bag Films/CBeebies SARAH & DUCK Tim OSullivan, Sarah Gomes Harris, Jamie Badminton  Karrot Entertainment/CBeebies PRE-SCHOOL  LIVE ACTION APPLE TREE HOUSE Production Team - Five Apples/CBeebies CBEEBIES THE TEMPEST Tony Reed, Angela Young, Ian Russell - BBC Childrens In-House Productions/CBeebies GET WELL SOON HOSPITAL Helen Sheppard, Helen Scott, Trevor Neal - Kindle Entertainment/CBeebies - WINNER WAFFLE THE WONDER DOG Production Team - Darrall Macqueen Limited/CBeebies PRESENTER STEVE BACKSHALL Deadly Dinosaurs  CBBC JUSTIN FLETCHER Something Special  CBeebies - WINNER SAM NIXON & MARK RHODES Sam & Marks Big Friday Wind Up - CBBC DR CHRIS VAN TULLEKEN & DR XAND VAN TULLEKEN Operation Ouch!  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Opting for a similarly trendy ensemble, comedian Rufus donned a grey checkered suit with an edgy scarf while debuting his more rugged look.

The actor is currently performing in the West End's Garrick Theatre as he stars in Don Quixote until February this year.

The British Academy Childrens Awards, which celebrates the very best in children's media, will be hosted by Marvin Humes and Rochelle Humes.

Konnie's appearance comes after she attended this year's Emmy Awards, where she looked on proudly as her husband Charlie, 47, picked up his third Emmy for his hit series Black Mirror.

Strong team: Meanwhile, the presenter was every inch the doting wife as she supported her husband Charlie Brooker at the 70th Emmy Awards in Los Angeles in September

The sighting delighted viewers who reminisced about Konnie's days as a children's TV favourite.

Konnie, who looked gorgeous in a black lace dress, gave her husband a kiss as he and his co-writer William Bridge were announced as the winners in the category of writing for a limited series, movie or dramatic special.

Charlie thanked Konnie in his acceptance speech, along with a mention for their sons Covey, six and Huxley, four.

Touching: Charlie thanked Konnie in his acceptance speech, along with a mention for their sons Covey, six and Huxley, four

'And our wives, we have to thank our wives, Konnie's out there and Jules. Jules went for a wee then came back just in time,' Charlie quipped of William's wife.

'And I need to to thank my children, I don't know why, they're only four and six years old so it turns out they're not really into Black Mirror.'

Fans were ecstatic to see Konnie, who was the longest-serving female presenter of Blue Peter from 1997 until 2008, back on screens, with one fan tweeting: 'Seeing Konnie Huq on American TV at the #Emmys is something I'll never quite get over.'
She is reprising the role as unlikely Disney princess Vanellope in Ralph Breaks The Internet.

And Sarah Silverman opted for a punk chic look, as she stepped out in a Gothic ensemble for the film's premiere at the Curzon Mayfair in London on Sunday.

The actress, 47, looked striking in her dark attire as she donned a black tank top over a chiffon maxi-skirt.

Alternative: Sarah Silverman rocked a punk chic look in a black tank top and chiffon maxi-skirt for the Ralph Breaks The Internet premiere at the Curzon Mayfair in London on Sunday

She kept warm by wearing a black blazer, while she added a rocker flair to her ensemble with a pair of statement boots.

Sarah styled her raven locks into a loose waves, while she kept her make-up simple as she wore a slick of black eyeliner and nude lipstick.

The comedian added a glittering touch to the look by accessorising with an array of silver necklaces, one of which dangled low over her ensemble.

Striking: Sarah kept warm by wearing a black blazer, while she added a punk chic flair to her ensemble with a pair of statement boots

Stunning: Sarah styled her raven locks into a loose waves, while she kept her make-up simple as she wore a slick of black eyeliner and nude lipstick

Sarah was joined at the event by her fellow leading actor John C. Reilly, who looked sharp in a chequered yellow, red and green suit.

The pair reprised their roles as now-BFFs Ralph and Vanellope in the sequel to Disney's Wreck It Ralph animated movie.

Ralph Breaks the Internet takes place six years later when the duo discover a wi-fi router in their arcade which leads them on an exhilarating adventure.

Stars for animated movies often record on their own and rarely meet their co-stars until they join forces to promote the film on the red carpet.

However, John was insistent on recording his lines in the same booth as his co-star Sarah to ensure they forged a close bond which they could bring to their characters.

Supportive: Sarah was joined at the event by her fellow leading actor John C. Reilly, who looked sharp in a chequered yellow, red and green suit

They're back! The pair reprised their roles as now-BFFs Ralph and Vanellope in the sequel to Disney's Wreck It Ralph animated movie

During his Good Morning America appearance earlier this month, the actor gushed over his co-star saying she was both 'fun' and 'creative'.

He said: 'I figured if you're gonna work with someone as fun and as creative as Sarah Silverman, why not have them in the room there with you?

'A lot of the time actors go in for animated movies they're just alone, they're playing someone's best friend but they never lay eyes on them, and I thought, "We gotta be in the room together so we can find stuff and improvise".

'Sarah and I definitely did a lot for this movie, so I think this movie has an extra soulful quality because we're actually in there looking at each other, talking to each other. We riffed like crazy!'
This time last year she was in the Australian jungle for I'm A Celebrity.

Yet Georgia Toffolo was enjoying a rather more glamorous atmosphere on Sunday as she attended the British Academy Children's Awards held at the Roundhouse in London.

Clad in a ruffled baby pink gown, the reigning Queen Of The Jungle, 24, lead the glamour on the evening as she posed up a storm on the red carpet.

Dazzling: Georgia Toffolo looked sensational on Sunday as she attended the British Academy Children's Awards held at the Roundhouse in London

The ethereal dress featured ruffled detailing across the bodice and hemline, adorned with a gold trim that complemented her tanned complexion.

The demure pink gown cinched in at her tiny waist before flaring out into a full skirt that skimmed over a pair of nude pointed court heels.

Keeping her accessories simple, the Made In Chelsea starlet toted a beaded white clutch bag and donned a gold 'G' necklace.

Chic: Clad in a ruffled baby pink gown, the reigning Queen Of The Jungle, 24, lead the glamour on the evening as she posed up a storm on the red carpet

Stunning: The ethereal dress featured ruffled detailing across the bodice and hemline, adorned with a gold trim that complemented her tanned complexion

Pretty in pink: The demure pink gown cinched in at her tiny waist before flaring out into a full skirt that skimmed over a pair of nude pointed court heels

She finished off the look by styling her glossy golden locks in loose waves, and bearing a slick of pink gloss on her plump pout.

The reality star's hair and make-up look was created by celebrity favourite, luxury mobile beauty app Secret Spa.

Georgia's red carpet appearance comes after she exclusively set the record straight to MailOnline, revealing that she is single and that she was never 'really together' with Jack Maynard.

All about the accessories: Keeping her accessories simple, the Made In Chelsea starlet toted a beaded white clutch bag and donned a gold 'G' necklace

Blonde bombshell! She finished off the look by styling her glossy golden locks in loose waves, and bearing a slick of pink gloss on her plump pout

Talking exclusively to MailOnline about her love life and Jack, Georgia, otherwise known as Toff, said: 'We weren't really ever together, we just went on a date. I think on social media it looked like we were really, really together, so yeah.

'We're so close, I DM him most days, I adore him, but it's just not, you know, in the romantic sense. Nothing has changed, he still comes over most days, everything is really good.'

The reality star met Jack on the 2017 series of I'm A Celebrity before he had to leave the jungle and she went on to win the show.

Beaming: Backstage at the event, Georgia seemed to be in high spirits

Hosting: Georgia presented the Presenter Award to Justin Fletcher for Something Special on CBeebies

All smiles: The presenter couldn't help but beam when holding his award on the red carpet

Pals: David Walliams and Paul Elliott backstage at the British Academy Children's Awards

Fun times: David was quick to have a photo with the award he picked up on behalf of Tom Courtenay

Since appearing on the ITV series, Toff has gone on to become one of the nation's sweethearts, so it was no wonder she had bagged herself an invite to the Children's BAFTAs.

Konnie Huq put her best fashion foot forward for the event, as the former Blue Peter host, 43, exuded elegance in a sophisticated velvet suit while joined on the red carpet by actor Rufus Hound, 39.

The presenter boosted her physique in a pair of simple brown heels, and carried her possessions in a white clutch.

Keeping her accessories to a minimum, Konnie sported a silver bangle and a pair of pearl stud earrings.

The mother-of-two went for her signature minimal make-up look, which featured light touches of foundation and glossy red lipstick.

Stylish: Konnie Huq looked sensational as she put her best fashion foot forward in a velvet suit

Pals: The former Blue Peter host, 43, exuded elegance as she donned a sophisticated velvet suit while joined on the red carpet by actor Rufus Hound, 39

Chic and cheerful! The presenter boosted her physique in a pair of simple brown heels, and carried her possessions in a white clutch

Rocking the look: Opting for a similarly trendy ensemble, comedian Rufus donned a grey checkered suit with an edgy scarf while debuting his more rugged look

Suave: David Walliams was also looking sharp at the awards showcase

What a gong! David collected Tom Courtenay's Performer award for his role as Grandpa in Grandpas Great Escape, which was presented by Maddie Moate

Warwick Davis also made an appearance alongside his wife Sammy and their daughter Annabelle.

Sammy looked in good spirits as she made her first red carpet appearance since overcoming a deadly sepsis battle.

Beaming broadly, she cosied up to Warwick, who looked dapper in a navy suit, whilst daughter Annabelle looked glamorous in a khaki gown with a lace overlay.

On the mend: Sammy Davis (M) looked in good spirits with husband Warwick and their daughter Annabelle, 21, after overcoming a deadly sepsis battle

Three's company: Beaming broadly, she cosied up to Warwick, who looked dapper in a navy suit, whilst daughter Annabelle looked glamorous in a khaki gown with a lace overlay

Strictly sensational! Vlogger Joe Sugg and his professional Strictly Come Dancing partner Dianne Buswell made for a handsome pair on the red carpet

Dressed to impress: Dianne looked phenomenal in a high-necked black lace gown

Cosy: The dancing duo put on a cosy display at the awards event

Doctor Dapper! Dr Ranj looked suave on the red carpet as he rocked a fitted black suit

Warwick was born with an extremely rare condition called spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia congenita (SED), where the bone endings fail to form. It meant he never grew taller than 3ft 6in.

Daughter Annabelle and their son Harrison - who was not present at the event - have inherited their father's condition and are both aspiring actors, having appeared in Harry Potter.

Sammy's appearance at the event comes after she was struck down by sepsis, meningitis and Strep B following surgery in July.

Still smiling: Also at the event were The X Factor stars Bella Penfold and Shan Ako - who were eliminated from the competition last weekend

Furry nice! Bella Penfold dazzled in an eye-catching lilac fur jacket layered over a sequinned purple mini dress that she teamed with black biker boots

Stunning in stripes: Shan looked sensational in a striped co-ord teamed with a white bodysuit and toweringly high heeled patent boots

Glamorous duo: The X Factor's Giovanni Spano arrived with a glamorous brunette companion

Appearing on Good Morning Britain last month, Sammy revealed that she felt so ill as a result of the infection, she was convinced that she was going to die and even planned her own funeral.

She said: 'For four days I cried, I didnt want to die. The fifth day I was like, "Im going and I cant do anything about it."'

Sammy revealed that she had planned a 'bucket list' and even words for her gravestone because her condition kept deteriorating even after four days in hospital.

Sassy in sequins! London Hughes looked glamorous in a plunging sequinned mini dress that she teamed with a leather jacket and black suede sock boots

Glamorous gals: Actress Rosie Day (L) looked stunning a black velvet shift dress whilst Arielle Free injected some colour on the carpet in a hot pink halter neck gown

Radiant in red: Dani Harmer looked stylish in a glittering scarlet dress with batwing sleeves

Stylish: Lauren Layfield (L) looked chic in a plunging bodysuit and sequinned mini skirt whilst Game Of Thrones actress Bella Ramsey also looked chic in a black jumpsuit

Delighted: Chloe Lea - who received the Young Performer - got to pose with X Factor's Giovanni Spano after getting her prize

Star-studded: Bella Penfold from X Factor got the chance to meet many of her fans

Beaming: Paul Chuckle was also seen making his arrival at the event

Lavish: Fans at the event got to meet all manner of celebrities on the red carpet

Looking good: Giovanni showed off his sartorial sense of style in a black suit

Happy: Dr Ranj also didn't stop smiling as he arrived at the event
Doctor Who fans got a dose of good old-fashion history on Sunday night, as the TARDIS gang encountered the sinister Witchfinder trials of centuries old.

But of course all was not as it seemed, as the so-called witches had a far more sci-fi origin, in an episode, which saw Alan Cumming's incarnation of King James I steal the show.

It came in an episode which touched on the dark times in England when thousands of women were wrongly tried for witchcraft under the staunchly Puritan rule, and one such person is our time-travelling heroine who is brutally 'ducked' herself.

Tense: Doctor Who fans got a dose of good old-fashion history on Sunday night, as the TARDIS gang encountered the sinister Witchfinder trials of centuries old

The episode began with our gang travelling to a remote Lancashire village in the midst of a witch-ducking ceremony, led by the sinister Mistress Becka Savage (played by Siobhan Finneran).

Despite the Doctor's best efforts, a young Willa's grandmother is tried for the crime and ducked into the water where she drowns instantly, leading our gang to reveal themselves as official 'witchfinders.'

As we discover the true fear that Satan can bring to such a small village dominated by a Puritan rule, King James I makes his arrival, even playing the Highwayman of sorts as he travels incognito.

Terrifying: The episode began with our gang travelling to a Lancashire village in the midst of a witch-ducking ceremony, led by Mistress Becka Savage (played by Siobhan Finneran)

Darker forces at work: Despite the Doctor's best efforts, a young Willa's grandmother is tried for the crime and ducked into the water where she drowns instantly

From the offset we see that the monarch is the true influence over the town who lives in fear of the devil, who they claim sends witches to make them sick and kill their crops.

The episode also pays homage to the rumours that King James was a homosexual, as he is seen endlessly flirting with Ryan - and later even offering him a job as his protector.

And in what has been a running theme throughout the series, we also see the brutal sexism of the era play out as His Majesty automatically assumes that Graham is the Witchfinder rather than the Doctor herself.

Sensational: Alan Cumming steals the show as King James, and the show even played on his rumoured homosexuality, as he puts on a flirty display

Unveiled: It is then revealed that an alien force is inhabiting those tried for witchcraft

We then get a glimpse of the alien force at work as a mud-coated tentacle emerges from the grave where Willa's grandmother lies, before she herself rises from the dead clearly overtaken by the extraterrestrial force.

This leads to our weekly 'The Doctor trying to convince the village they are in danger but they instead turn on her' moment, leading our time lady to be tried as a witch herself.

As she is tied ahead of the ducking, a poignant moment unfolds when we see the Doctor deliver a rousing speech about how religion should be a driving force in moral thinking - relevant now more than ever in a world of religious extremism.

Don't drown! This leads to our weekly 'The Doctor trying to convince the village they are in danger but they instead turn on her' moment, leading her to be tried as a witch herself

Transformed: But of course it is then revealed that Becka herself is behind the whole operation, as she herself was inhabited by an alien force

Creepy: With black tears dripping from her eyes the staunch lady is then unveiled to be a Morax - the leader of an alien army who has been trapped on earth

But of course it is then revealed that Becka herself is behind the whole operation, as she herself was inhabited by an alien force after chopping down the tree that has kept them imprisoned underground.

With black tears dripping from her eyes the staunch lady is then unveiled to be a Morax - the leader of an alien army who has been trapped on earth and are trying to escape by inhabiting the bodies of the dead.

With the tension at its peak, bizarrely the episode blacks out in the standard 'time has passed and things happened off-screen' moment, with the Doctor then explaining that the ducking tree is in fact the thing that will helped in re-trapping the aliens.

Big plan: Bizarrely the episode then blacks out, with the Doctor then explaining that the ducking tree is in fact the thing that will helped in re-trapping the aliens.

Of course the plan succeeds when King James pushes Becka into the fiery green vortex of alien matter, destroying her and sending the creatures back to their prison.

But as a man of death this ends the episode on a slightly murky note, as the Doctor clearly disapproves as she and the gang head back to their TARDIS, again seemingly robbing the show of some resolution and closing character development.

Doctor Who continues on Sunday 2nd December at 6:30pm on BBC One.

Fighting back: Of course the plan succeeds when King James pushes Becka into the fiery green vortex of alien matter, destroying her and sending the creatures back to their prison
Director Nicolas Roeg didnt just capture the moment that was the Seventies. He helped to create it and reflect it in cinematic form.

Think of the androgynous David Bowie as the extra-terrestrial in The Man Who Fell To Earth, naked virginal 17-year-old Jenny Agutter in the Australian wilderness in Walkabout and the stricken, doom-beckoning features of Donald Sutherland in Dont Look Now and you have movie-making at its most provocative.

And we havent even got to Mick Jagger in the melange of rock music, sex, crime and drugs that was Performance, which he co-directed with Donald Cammell.

Think of the doom-beckoning features of Donald Sutherland in Dont Look Now and you have movie-making at its most provocative

Roegs career is revered wherever cinema is taken seriously. Not that it was an easy one.

The director, who died aged 90 at the weekend, battled with the major studios, who never understood the often kaleidoscopic and fragmented nature of his films.

Which meant, as he liked to wryly recount, that  as famous as some of those movies became  none of them ever resulted in his being sent a royalty cheque by the studios who financed them.

This may, of course, be a reflection of Hollywoods creative accountancy, but its also an admission that Roeg didnt make movies solely to fill his pockets.

Nick didnt give a damn about making the biggest, most profitable film ever, his friend and producer Jeremy Thomas told me yesterday.

Nor did he want to send messages. He was fabulously intense about examining life in a non-judgmental way.

Mick Jagger and Anita Pallenber in The Performance. Most first-timers might have played it safe and given Warners, which paid for the film, a happy Mick Jagger pop movie  a Rolling Stones version of A Hard Days Night, if you like

Although Roeg embraced, Thomas says, the youthful counter-culture of the Sixties and Seventies, so darkly depicted in his directing debut Performance in 1970, he was hardly a young revolutionary.

Already in his early 40s, he had been in the movie business for 23 years by then, having worked his way up from being a runner at Marylebone Studios after doing his National Service.

Hed only gone there because the studio had been across the road from where he lived in Central London.

Roegs rise was slow and steady, reaching the role of camera operator on David Leans Lawrence Of Arabia and cinematographer on Dr Zhivago  until he and Lean fell out.

Nicolas Roeg, who died aged 90 at the weekend, battled with the major studios, who never understood the often kaleidoscopic and fragmented nature of his films

Both men had their own opinions on how things should be done. Lean was old school . . . and Roeg wasnt.

Soon came his opportunity to direct, with Performance. Most first-timers might have played it safe and given Warners, which paid for the film, a happy Mick Jagger pop movie  a Rolling Stones version of A Hard Days Night, if you like.

But Roeg didnt see it that way. Shooting mainly in a decadently outfitted basement in North Kensington, where Jaggers character was accompanied in bed by both Anita Pallenberg  the girlfriend of Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards  and Michele Breton, as well as countless drugs, Roeg managed to enrage the films American financiers.

Performance, they said, was unreleasable.

The Witches starring Anjelica Huston as Miss Eva Ernst. Nicolas Roeg directed the movie in 1990

The most completely worthless film I have ever seen, was one printable comment. And they wanted their money back  relenting only two years later after a change of management.

The rows actually helped made Roegs name. Looking back on that troubled production, producer Sandy Lieberson sees it now not only as a moment when film-making in Britain changed, but the point when Nick Roeg altered with it.

Nick had gone to work all those years in the established collar-and-tie way things were done in those days, and then he got his opportunity to direct, and it changed him.

Jeremy Thomas suggests Roegs personality would have altered in line with whatever movie he was making  similar to how method actors live their parts.

For Roeg, stories didnt have to be told in chronological order, leaving it up to the viewer to think about what was going on. It made some of his films seem like jigsaws, and ensured they were never less than intriguing if unsettling.

Roegs career is revered wherever cinema is taken seriously. Not that it was an easy one

Unsurprisingly, he wasnt asked to direct any Hollywood family hits with happy endings. Instead, he became one of the most admired and influential film directors of his age, an influence that ranges from young directors experimenting with YouTube videos to the masters of our age.

Danny Boyle, the prizewinning director of Trainspotting and Slumdog Millionaire, considered Roeg his favourite film maker, classing him alongside Hitchcock.

Dont Look Now is permeated with a feeling of dread, he says, of impending doom, which we all feel, instinctively about our soul, our future, our families.

Not everyone wanted to see films about impending doom. But that was Roeg, always pushing at societal boundaries, often making waves with notorious sex scenes.

Think of the androgynous David Bowie as the extra-terrestrial in The Man Who Fell To Earth

For years, rumours circulated that a long sex scene in a Venice hotel between Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland in Dont Look Now  in which they play a married couple whose daughter drowns  appeared so realistic because the sex was actually real.

It wasnt, of course, and Roeg found it flattering that audiences thought it must be.

From then on, other directors would make their sex scenes more realistic, too. For better or worse, because the lovemaking was so beautifully and emotionally filmed, Roeg had broken through to a new sexual realism.

This, of course, was tough on the stars. Both Art Garfunkel and Theresa Russell wanted to leave his 1980 psychological thriller Bad Timing after a few days filming.

The Man Who Fell To Earth in 1976 was David Bowies first movie starring role and would come to be viewed as a science fiction classic

In the end, they didnt quit and Theresa Russell would became Roegs second wife  he was divorced from actress Susan Stephen in 1977. His great days, however, were in the Seventies, with the locked-in feeling of Performance being followed by a story of sibling rivalry in Walkabout, set in the Australian outback.

Again, it was a dark theme, after their fathers suicide, two teens are left to fend for themselves.

The Man Who Fell To Earth in 1976 was David Bowies first movie starring role, and would come to be viewed as a science fiction classic in which an innocent space man who is marooned on Earth is corrupted by civilisation and alcohol.

But when cuts were made for U.S. release, Roeg spoke of sabotage.

He continued to make movies, most notably The Witches in 1990, based on a Roald Dahl book and starring Anjelica Huston

He continued to make movies, most notably The Witches in 1990, based on a Roald Dahl book and starring Anjelica Huston, and Castaway in 1986, with Oliver Reed and Amanda Donohoe as two people who agree to be abandoned on a desert island in Lucy Irvines true story.

But increasingly there seemed to be little new ground for Roeg, a true original, to break.

Always amazed that film schools now exist to teach young people how to make films, he learned the grammar of film on the job.

And when he had the chance, he changed some of that grammar to suit and portray a moment of rapidly shifting attitudes in relation to sex, drugs and life in general.

After a gloriously long life, he is survived by his third wife, Harriet Harper, and his six children. His films will also live on, for Nicolas Roeg was a man who created movies as memorable and unsettling as they were beautiful.

RAY CONNOLLYS biography, Being John Lennon  A Restless Life (W&N, 13.03), is now on sale.
Troubled cattle exporter Wellard says moving away from livestock trading has brought it closer to profit, with its $9 million in first-quarter earnings nearly outpacing the total previous year after an increased focus on external shipping charters.

Newly installed chairman John Klepec told Wellard shareholders on Friday the financial year had started well despite tough market conditions.

He said first-quarter results continued the trajectory of a vastly improved 2017/18, when net losses almost halved to $36.4 million after the change in strategy.

Mr Klepec pinned the turnaround on the company's shipping division now treating its live cattle export division as any other customer, with 70 per cent of Wellard's shipping capacity chartered to third parties in last year, versus 15.6 per cent in 2016/2017.

"A higher percentage expected in FY2019, and I cannot see this changing given the expected continued strong Brazil to Turkey trade volumes, and the Indonesian market remaining flat," Mr Klepec said.

"In the financial year to date, every one of our vessels has been utilised either on charter or with our traded cattle, which provides more consistent and visible earnings."

Mr Klepec said the company's $115 million in first-quarter revenue was up 57 per cent on same time last year, with 55 per cent of the 64,000 cattle shipped from external charters.

Net loss for the first quarter of 2018/19 was $1 million.

He said Wellard's trading focus had narrowed solely to Australian-sourced feeder and slaughter cattle for South East Asia.

Mr Klepec also weighed in on the live sheep export drama, an industry the company has itself moved away from.

He said a lack of adequate self-regulation and government processes were to blame for poor welfare.

"It is now the pressing responsibility of all involved in the live cattle trade to complete the cultural change that is required to ensure that the live cattle trade's social licence to operate is retained, and that the industry rebuilds its reputation as an important economic and social contributor to both Australia and to the international markets," he said.

Shares in Wellard jumped 25 per cent to 5.0 cents at 1415 AEDT, but were still down from 15 cents at the same time last year, and well short of the $1.35 high after the company's December 2015 float.

Mr Klepec said the second quarter outlook was positive, with short cattle supply and increasing prices expected during the third quarter due to drought.
Iran? David Keyes, Prime Minister Netanyahu's spokesman, on reaching out to the Iranian people.

The quake's tremors were felt from as far away as Iraq's capital Baghdad and in Erbil in the Kurdistan region, according to the Iraqi Geological Survey.

The natural disaster struck near Sarpol-e Zahab in Iran's Kermanshah province, where another quake, with a magnitude of 7.3, killed over 600 people a year ago.

There were no initial reports of casualties or damage.

The quake was about 12 miles from Sarpol Zahab, Kermanshah province, the USGS said.

The location of the quake in Western Iran on Sunday.

The western province was also hit by a 6.0-magnitude quake in August that killed two people and injured more than 250.

The quake had a depth of 10 kilometers (6.2 miles), making it very shallow. Iran state TV gave the depth as 3.1 miles. Shallow earthquakes have broader damage.

50 people were injured in the town of Sarpol-e Zahab, close to the border, and 50 more in the nearby town Houshang Bazvand.

Iran is located on major seismic faults and experiences an quake per day on average. The region, nestled in the Zagros Mountains, largely rebuilt in recent decades after Iran and Iraq's ruinous 1980s war, saw many buildings collapse or sustain major damage in the 2017 quake.

Sunday night's natural disaster struck near Sarpol-e Zahab in Iran's Kermanshah province, which suffered half of the casualties from last year's quake and where some still remain homeless.

The country's deadliest quake was in 1990, a 7.4-magnitude natural disaster in northern Iran that killed 40,000 people, injured 300,000 and left half a million homeless, reducing dozens of towns and almost 2,000 villages to rubble.
Canberra police are investigating the national arm of the RSL over fraud allegations.

An ACT Policing spokesman confirmed to AAP on Friday that an investigation has been launched into RSL National.

It follows a report earlier in the year by the Australian charities watchdog which found the RSL failed to comply with its charity obligations after outgoing president Rear Admiral Ken Doolan was gifted a car worth nearly $28,000 in June 2016.

The ACT probe comes as NSW Police continue to investigate the misappropriation of funds within the RSL NSW branch.

It follows a public inquiry in 2017 which revealed former NSW president Don Rowe used his RSL credit card between 2009 and 2014 to pay for his mortgage, family phone bills, flights and meals.

RSL National has been contacted for comment.
A record 40 per cent of Victorians have voted early for tomorrow's state poll.

As early voting centres closed and final figures came in from the Victorian Electoral Commission, a total of 1,639,202 votes had been cast - this figure being made up of 1,388,799 early votes and 250,403 postal votes.

These figures are in line with Victorian Electoral Commission forecasts that 40-50 per cent of the 4.1 million enrolled Victorian voting population would cast their ballot before November 24.

Tomorrow's election will be the biggest in the state's history, by voter numbers, the VEC said.

There will 1,795 voting centres across the state which will be open from 8am and close at 6pm.
Newly recruited Afghan policeman train outside Jalalabad in Nangarhar

After losing countless comrades to better-equipped Taliban fighters and having his salary stolen by superiors, Afghan soldier Beg is fed up and plans to quit the army. He is not alone.

Afghanistan's beleaguered security forces have long seen high rates of attrition. But now, as the Taliban maintain the upper hand in the 17-year conflict, casualties are reaching what experts warn are unsustainable levels.

Since the start of 2015, when local forces took over from US-led NATO combat troops to secure the country, nearly 30,000 Afghan soldiers and police have been killed, President Ashraf Ghani revealed this month -- a figure far higher than anything previously acknowledged.

New police recruits listen to an instructor. The shocking mortality rate among security services has sent already shaky morale to new lows

That is an average of around 20 soldiers killed per day.

"If the casualty rate continues like this, the day will come when we will have no one left to recruit," warned military analyst Atiqullah Amarkhail.

The shocking mortality rate has sent already shaky morale to new lows, with many soldiers questioning how much further they should push their luck.

In the third quarter of 2018 the number of soldiers and police deployed across the war-torn country fell to 312,328 -- nearly 9,000 fewer than just one year ago, and the lowest level for any comparable period since 2012, a US watchdog said in October.

Reasons for attrition included fatalities, and soldiers going AWOL or declining to re-enlist, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) said, citing the US defence department.

Experts warn casualties among security forces are reaching unsustainable levels

Beg is one who has no intention of going back.

"There have been days when I have lost five to 10 colleagues in fighting," said the 26-year-old, who is based in the northern province of Jowzjan. As with other military sources in this story, AFP is using only his surname to protect his identity.

"I have survived two Taliban sieges of our unit and God helped me escape," he continued.

"I will not re-enlist. I will go and do labour work if I survive."

It's an increasingly big "if", as the number of security forces killed in action appears to be accelerating. Estimated figures for 2015 show 5,000 killed that year, with the remainder of the 28,529 casualties revealed by President Ghani dying since then.

Some soldiers say that in a country with rampant unemployment, they have no other options if they want to support their families

Casualty figures for Afghan forces have been kept under wraps since 2017 at the request of Kabul, but NATO's Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan recently told SIGAR that this summer's toll was worse than ever.

That would come as no surprise to Ashiqullah, a police officer in the eastern province of Nangarhar, an IS stronghold that also has a heavy Taliban presence.

"Every day we are seeing our comrades being killed," Ashiqullah, 24, said.

"We don't have proper equipment and most of our friends have been killed or quit the service."

- No choice but to fight -

The growing number of dead and wounded has made it harder to recruit police in some areas, interior ministry recruitment chief Mohammad Daud admitted.

The interior ministry recruitment chief said the growing number of dead and wounded has made it harder to recruit police in some areas

A police recruitment centre in the northern province of Balkh has seen a near 80 percent drop in the number of recruits this year, an official told AFP on the condition of anonymity.

But a centre in the Nangarhar provincial capital of Jalalabad said the number of people registering to fight remained high.

Defence ministry spokesman Jawed Ahmad Ghafor said the number of people signing up to the army "has not decreased at all".

Fazlullah, 24, said it had been his dream "to protect and defend my country", as he signed up in Nangarhar.

"I am not joining the police force to have a peaceful life," he said.

The Taliban is intensifying attacks on Afghan forces, scoring significant battlefield wins

"I go to sacrifice myself for my country."

Others say that in a country with rampant unemployment, they have no other options if they want to support their families.

"I joined the security forces... to provide food and a salary for my family," said Sapai, 27, a soldier in Nangarhar.

Salman, 27, a police officer in the northwestern province of Faryab, said he had not been paid in three months and air support during attacks by the Taliban "were not effective".

"But we don't have any choice except to keep fighting," he said.

- 'Never rejoin' -

The bleak figures come as the Taliban intensify attacks on Afghan forces, scoring significant battlefield wins and maintaining control or influence over swathes of the countryside.

In the third quarter of 2018 the number of soldiers and police deployed across the war-torn country fell to 312,328

Afghan and US forces say the militants are suffering heavy casualties too.

But the losses do not appear to have eroded their desire to fight, even as international efforts to engage them in peace talks gather pace.

"They attack us every night," said Enayatullah, a 29-year-old police officer in the southeastern province of Ghazni, who has been wounded twice by landmines.

"My service in the police will finish in a few days and I will never rejoin."

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Brazil-born tycoon Carlos Ghosn is now reportedly set to face a new charge from Japanese prosecutors

Nissan's disgraced former chairman Carlos Ghosn under-reported his income by a total of $71 million -- much more than initially suspected -- Japanese media reported Friday.

The Brazil-born tycoon is now reportedly set to face a new charge from prosecutors, after he was sacked as Nissan chairman Thursday to top a spectacular fall from grace for the once-revered boss whose fall has stunned the business world.

Prosecutors arrested Ghosn Monday, accusing him and fellow executive Greg Kelly of understating the former chairman's income by around five billion yen ($44 million) between June 2011 and June 2015.

But Ghosn is now suspected of under-reporting his income by another three billion yen for the following three fiscal years, the Asahi Shimbun and the Nikkei business daily reported.

Prosecutors are now planing to re-arrest him on charges of understating his income by a total of eight billion yen ($71 million) since June 2011, the Asahi said.

Immediate confirmation of the reports was not available.

Under Japanese law, suspects in jail can face additional arrest warrants, which can impose heavier charges.

Ghosn is also suspected of failing to report a profit of four billion yen through stock appreciation rights -- a method for firms to give management a bonus on strong earnings, the Nikkei said.

Separately, the Kyodo news agency has reported that Nissan had paid $100,000 a year since 2002 to Ghosn's sister who had no record of doing advisory work for the group.

Deputy chief prosecutor Shin Kukimoto said the Ghosn case is "one of the most serious types of crime" under Japan's Financial Instruments Act, and Ghosn could face a 10-year prison sentence.

His ouster is an astonishing turnaround for a titan of the auto sector who revived the Japanese brand and forged an alliance with France's Renault as well as domestic rival Mitsubishi Motors.

The French and Japanese finance ministers reiterated their "strong support" for the alliance at a meeting in Paris on Thursday.

In a joint statement, Bruno Le Maire and Hiroshige Seko said they both wanted "to maintain this winning cooperation".

Asked about the fate of the alliance, Seko told reporters in Paris: "It is important for people concerned to deal with it after they agree and fully understand."
Some 600,000 pigs have been culled since African swine fever was first detected in August in the world's biggest consumer and producer of pork

China's agriculture ministry on Friday confirmed the first cases of African swine fever in Beijing, a disease that has spread across the country despite efforts to contain it.

The disease was found on two farms in the Fangshan District in southwest Beijing where 86 out of more than 1,700 pigs died, the ministry said in a statement.

A special task force has since sealed off the farms for culling and disinfection while live pigs and pork products are barred from leaving the area.

Separately, senior ministry officials said during a briefing that 600,000 pigs have been culled since African swine fever was first detected in August in the world's biggest consumer and producer of pork.

It surfaced in northeastern Liaoning province but has now spread to 20 provinces with 73 cases reported.

"As you can see right now, the situation... is still very severe," said deputy director of the bureau of husbandry and veterinary medicine Feng Zhongwu.

"China has frequent trade with affected countries with a huge amount of goods exchanged. Coupled with the long incubation period of the disease and the difficulty of detection, there is a high risk of the disease getting reintroduced."

The ministry has also blamed the spread on backward farming methods, a lack of hygiene and the need to transport pigs long distances for sale.

In early September, government-controlled media said African swine fever had been discovered in just five provinces, with the agriculture ministry saying that the situation was "generally under control".

But it has steadily moved south into pork-producing districts despite efforts to contain it, including culling over half a million livestock and banning the transport of live pigs in affected areas.

Swine fever has already caused a spike in pork prices in China and fuelled growing fears of a major impact on the world's largest pig producer.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned in August that the disease could spread to other parts of Asia.

African swine fever is not harmful to humans but causes deadly haemorrhagic fever in domesticated pigs and wild boar.

With no antidote or vaccine, the only known control method is to cull animals.
Viju Chavan, shown here with her daughters, gave birth in hospital as two armed gunmen prowled the corridors

As India marks the 10th anniversary Monday of the Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people, five survivors recall their ordeal and reflect on how it has impacted their lives.

- 'I gave birth in silence' -

Viju Chavan went into labour at the Cama and Albless Hospital on the night of 26 November, 2008, as two armed gunmen stalked the building's corridors.

As eight other attackers laid siege to India's commercial capital outside, Chavan quietly gave birth to a girl, Tejaswini, who was immediately nicknamed "Goli", which means "bullet" in Hindi.

"We heard the sound of bullets. We were very scared and my four-year-old son was shivering with fear. My husband and I thought we wouldn't make it home alive," recalls Chavan, 38.

Viju Chaven's daughter Tejaswini, born during the attacks, was nicknamed 'Goli', or 'bullet' in Hindi

"We couldn't make any noise so I delivered silently in pain. The nurses took care of us very well. They used beds to shield patients from getting hit by any stray bullets.

"Every time I look at 'Goli' I think of 26/11. She was born amidst so much tragedy. On her birthday we cut a cake and remember all the families that suffered."

- 'I got married with shrapnel in my brain' -

Nirmala Ponnudurai was on her way to get married when two attackers unleashed a barrage of bullets and hand grenades at Mumbai's main railway station, killing 52 people.

Nirmala Ponnudurai was badly injured in Mumbai's train station where two gunmen fired bullets and threw hand grenades

"It feels like it happened yesterday, it is that fresh in my memory," says Ponnudurai.

"It sounded like firecrackers. I felt a tremendous heat come into my body and blood all over my face. There was so much smoke and chaos.

"A kind man put me and an elderly person on a wooden handcart and pulled us to hospital. I had pieces of shrapnel in my head, including one in my brain.

Pictured outside Mumbai train station, Nirmala Ponnudurai says her face was paralysed for six months after shrapnel entered her brain

"I wanted my wedding to go ahead so I flew to Chennai, got married on November 30 with shrapnel in my brain and was operated on afterwards. My face was paralysed for about six months.

"Today I am much stronger and more independent. I live for right now. I don't give the anniversaries much importance because if I do, then I'm giving importance to the terrorists."

- 'TV news reported me dead' -

Sourav Mishra was enjoying a beer with friends at Leopold Cafe when two gunmen lobbed grenades inside and opened fire, killing 10 people, including some foreigners.

Sourav Mishra was in Leopold Cafe when he heard a blast and people started screaming and howling

"The atmosphere in the restaurant was very happy and positive. Then suddenly there was a blast and people started screaming and howling," says the 39-year-old.

"I could hear the "ta-ta-ta" of a machine gun and realised I'd been hit. People dived under tables but for some reason I stood up and stumbled out onto the street.

"In the taxi to the hospital I thought I was going to die and started thinking about life and whether I'd been a good person.

"The bullet touched but didn't puncture my lung and I was operated on to remove it immediately. In the hospital there were dead bodies everywhere.

Sourav Mishra says he appeared on a deaths list and TV channels reported he had died

"I appeared on a deaths list and many TV channels reported that I had died. My parents got a shock when a journalist came to interview them.

"I used to get angry around the anniversary because it brought back traumatic memories, but you can't keep brooding about the experience. You have to move on and heal yourself. I was one of the lucky ones."

- 'We tried to protect every guest' -

Hemant Oberoi was head chef at the five-star Taj Palace Hotel where militants set off explosions, took hostages and shot dead more than 30 guests during a three-day siege.

Hemant Oberoi and other staff at the Taj Palace Hotel helped save dozens of lives by leading guests to safety

Staff, including Oberoi, helped save dozens of lives by leading guests to safety.

"It had been a normal night with lots of functions on when the gunmen suddenly barged in," recalls the 64-year-old.

"We tried to protect every guest as if they were in our own home. We knew the routes better than anybody else so we tried to bring them into one area.

"We then blocked it so we could take guests out. We were evacuating until the gunmen forced their way into the area.

Some of Hemant Oberoi's colleagues were shot and killed during the attacks

"It was good enough that we were able to rescue most of the guests but some of my brave colleagues were shot and killed when the gunmen barged into kitchens.

"Going from one funeral to another was such a difficult time. After 10 years when the flashbacks come we still remember them and their sacrifices."

- 'My father died fighting the terrorists' -

Divya Salaskar was 21 when her policeman father Vijay Salaskar, a seasoned crime fighter, was shot dead while chasing the militants.

Divya Salaskar's policeman father was posthumously awarded India's highest military award for acts of bravery in peacetime

He was posthumously awarded India's highest military award for acts of bravery in peacetime.

"He wasn't just my father, he was my best friend and my mentor. I would share everything with him," says Salaskar.

Map of the Mumbai attacks, which left 166 people dead and injured hundreds more

"Initially I couldn't digest that he was no longer around; I was angry with the world but slowly, slowly I've been growing over the past 10 years.

"He died fighting terrorists. I live the loss of him not being with me every day, but at the same time I think that if someone has to pass over this is one of the best ways to go, because you'll always be remembered forever.

"I am extremely proud of my father and I miss him terribly."
The few photos that exist of the Sentinelese, including this handout photo from 2004 provided by the Indian Coast Guard and Survival International, show them all but naked carrying spears, bows and arrows

Indian police reinforcements on Friday took up position near the island where isolated tribal hunters killed an American missionary, though no effort was to be made to recover his body, officials said.

Hampered by restrictions on going to North Sentinel and the hostility of the Sentinelese people, Indian authorities are counting on the expertise of anthropologists and tribal welfare specialists to access the remains of 27-year-old John Allen Chau.

Chau was killed by arrows fired by the Sentinelese hunter-gatherers last week after he illegally went ashore in an apparent attempt to convert the tribe to Christianity.

Indian police have used a helicopter and a ship to get close to the protected island but failed to spot Chau's body or identify the place where he was killed.

"To make the picture better and clearer another police team is being sent to the North Sentinel island waters," Dependra Pathak, Andamans chief of police, told AFP.

- Missionary mystery -

Seven people, including six fishermen, have been arrested for leading Chau to North Sentinel.

John Allen Chau was killed by a tribe untouched by modern civilisation in India's remote Andaman Islands

Police hope the fishermen can give more clues to the place where he was slain.

"Police have obtained seven days custody for three of the accused," Pathak said.

"They will be interrogated on various aspects of the case including the sequence of events, the sea route followed for the island, the location where the victim landed, the place of incidence and location where Chau was last seen," he added.

Foreigners and Indians are banned from going within five kilometres (three miles) of the island, to protect the Sentinelese, believed to number about 150, from outside disease.

While a murder case has been registered experts have discounted any possibility of action against the tribe for the death.

Indian authorities say Chau paid the fishermen to take him as close to the island as possible and then took his own kayak to North Sentinel.

"It will also be ascertained whether the victim had taken the help of these fishermen or others to venture to the island on an earlier occasion," the police chief said.

Pathak said police will also take a new look at Chau's personal journal, in which he expressed fears that he might be killed.

He said he told the tribe after arriving: "My name is John. I love you and Jesus loves you...Here is some fish!"

Fishermen saw the tribe burying his body on the beach the following day, another missionary wrote in an email to the dead man's mother, according to the Washington Post.

Recovering the body could take days, if it happens at all, as Indian authorities insist they cannot disturb the tribe or their habitat in the highly sensitive zone.

The few photos that exist of the Sentinelese show them all but naked carrying spears, bows and arrows.

The tribe reportedly killed two fishermen whose boat drifted onto the island in 2006. They also fired arrows at a helicopter checking for damage after the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
The populous southern state of Rivers and its capital Port Harcourt are at the centre of Nigeria's multi-billion-dollar oil and gas industry and as such are seen as a key prize

Fears are growing about a rise in political violence in Nigeria's oil-rich Rivers State as general elections approach next year after a series of incidents targeting parties and voters.

Nigerians go to the polls to elect a new president and parliament on February 16, with a vote for state governors and assemblies taking place two weeks later.

The populous southern state of Rivers and its capital Port Harcourt are at the centre of Nigeria's multi-billion-dollar oil and gas industry and as such are seen as a key prize.

But too often political ambition spills over into violence, earning the state the title "Rivers of Blood" -- and with next year's vote being seen as close-run, few expect that to change.

"There's a lot of violence going on already and it's under-reported," security analyst Don Okereke told AFP. "We will likely see more of it."

In September, an explosive device blew up near the Port Harcourt headquarters of the All Progressives Congress (APC), which is in power nationally but in opposition locally.

The following month there was sporadic shooting as the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) held local primaries. Shots were also fired as the PDP held a rally last week.

The incidents came against a backdrop of violent crime, including kidnappings for ransom and armed robbery, which have stoked local concerns about security.

State police commissioner Zaki Ahmed has said 12 of his officers and two soldiers were killed in July and August. Security sources said even more have lost their lives since.

Dozens of weapons have been seized, including assault rifles, pump-action shotguns and locally-made pistols and guns, as part of a crackdown on illegal firearms.

- 'Miscreants and hoodlums' -

The last presidential and parliamentary vote in 2015 saw protests in Rivers from APC supporters over claims of massive fraud, calls for the result to be cancelled and the vote re-run.

There was bloodshed even before any ballots were cast, when explosions and gunfire at an APC rally killed a police officer and injured several others.

The National Human Rights Commission said nearly 100 people were killed in the run-up to the last election, as well as hundreds of acts of violence, including vandalism and arson.

Minister of Transport Rotimi Amaechi (R) heads President Mohammadu Buhari's re-election campaign

There is no love lost between the PDP governor Nyesom Wike and his predecessor Rotimi Amaechi, who is transport minister and also head of President Muhammadu Buhari's re-election campaign.

Much of the fear about violence has been prompted by events at a by-election for a state assembly constituency in Port Harcourt in August.

Nigeria's Independent National Election Commission (INEC) suspended the vote, with the tactics seen locally as a "dry run" for the general election.

"Miscreants and hoodlums, accompanied by security personnel, stormed the various polling units and registration areas," said resident electoral commissioner, Obo Efangha.

"They carted away election materials, including smart card readers and ballot boxes. In addition, many electoral officials were manhandled, injured and held hostage," he added.

Both parties blame the other.

Locals see the situation as a taste of what is to come.

Albert Alobari, who lives in the Choba area of Port Harcourt, said there was widespread uncertainty, just days into the start of the official election campaign.

"The violence that rocked the recent by-election is a clear indication that everyone should be security conscious," he added.

- Gang violence -

Port Harcourt has a longstanding reputation for gangs -- or "cults" as they are known locally.

They are blamed for kidnapping, armed robbery and a string of other crimes, which typically increase ahead of Christmas and New Year in Nigeria.

Gangs straddle the line between crime and politics, and their members are frequently hired by unscrupulous politicians as enforcers around election time.

"They go hand-in-hand," said Okereke, who predicted a "massive" influx of security personnel between now and polling day.

Dennis Des-Dokubo, a retired army officer, blamed the recent kidnappings and killings of police on thugs hired by politicians.

Politicians "need more weapons to gather enough money for Christmas and perpetrate their evil deeds during the 2019 elections hence the easiest targets for them are the police," he said.

Leroy Animaka, a political science lecturer at the state-run Rivers State University of Science and Technology, said the problem was only likely to get worse.

"Port Harcourt is the capital of the state and a battle ground for the two major political parties... so more of this violence would be experienced," he said.
Kwon Yang-sook, widow of former South Korean president Roh Moo-hyun, mourns at the memorial altar at Roh's home village in 2009

A woman pretending to be a former South Korean first lady was arrested Friday on suspicion of swindling a politician out of nearly $400,000, a report said.

Claiming to be late president Roh Moo-hyun's widow Kwon Yang-sook, the fraudster allegedly persuaded the then mayor of Gwangju to transfer her 450 million won ($398,000), saying she needed it for her daughter and promising to repay it quickly.

At the time Yoon Jang-hyun, a member of the Democratic party of both Roh and current President Moon Jae-in, was seeking the organisation's nomination for a second term as leader of the southern city.

Corruption allegations are commonplace in South Korean politics, and its last two presidents Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye are both serving prison sentences for graft.

Roh himself committed suicide by jumping off a cliff in 2009 after he was questioned over a corruption case involving Kwon.

Her alleged impersonator texted around 10 prominent figures in Gwangju in December but Yoon was the only one to pay out, Yonhap news agency reported.

In the event he did not secure the mayoral nomination and has left the political scene.

Friday's arrest came after a man was held earlier this week on charges of pretending to be close to a presidential aide in charge of managing Moon's supposed slush funds.

The 65-year-old allegedly persuaded his victim to hand over 550 million won, promising him some of the proceeds of bars of gold bullion he claimed were stashed in a secret warehouse.

Moon -- who previously worked as a top aide to Roh -- last month warned South Koreans against people impersonating his family or staff.

"If you meet anyone who calls for money, citing the names of presidential relatives or Blue House officials, consider all of them as swindlers and report them immediately to authorities," he said in a statement.
Taiwan's top court legalised same-sex marriage in 2017, in a first for Asia

Activists in Taiwan, which has earned a reputation as a regional trailblazer on gay rights, fear that an upcoming referendum could turn back the clocks on marriage equality.

Liberal and conservative groups will do battle in an island-wide vote Saturday that taps in to one of the island's most incendiary social issues.

Taiwan's top court in May 2017 legalised same-sex marriage -- the first place in Asia to do so -- and called for it to be implemented within two years.

But the government has made little progress towards bringing in the mandatory change as it comes under pressure from conservative campaigners.

"Pro-family" activists have put forward three referendums calling for marriage to be legally defined as between a man and a woman, for a separate law to be enacted for same-sex unions, and for education on LGBT issues not to be compulsory in schools.

Although the government has made clear the referendum results will not impact the court's original decision, LGBT campaigners fear a defeat could mean their new rights will be more limited when they come in to force.

Pro-gay groups have brought two rival referendums calling for equal marriage rights and promoting education on gender equality -- including different sexual orientations.

"We are very nervous, it's like a tug-of-war war," said Jennifer Lu, a spokeswoman for the Marriage Equality Coalition which is backing the votes.

"We hope that love and equality will win," added Suki Chung, East Asia Campaigner at Amnesty International.

"However, if the opposite happens then the government must not use the result as cover to water down same-sex marriage proposals," she said.

Conservative campaigners accuse the court of making a political decision that did not take into account public views.

"We think the Constitutional Court's ruling has created more problems rather than resolving them," said Yu Hsin-Yi, spokesman for the Coalition for the Happiness of our Next Generation, adding he was "cautiously optimistic" about the vote.

A survey released by the Taiwan Public Opinions Foundation last week showed 77 percent agreed with the referendum proposal that a marriage should be between a man and a woman, with 65 disagreeing that the current Civil Code should be amended to include same-sex unions.

If more than 25 percent of around 19.75 million eligible voters across the island vote in favour, and providing the "yes" votes surpass "no" votes, the government must draw up a bill that reflects the results -- which then goes to a parliamentary vote.

Celebrities including famous Taiwanese dancer Lin Hwai-min have voiced support for the pro-gay referendums.

Local and international firms including Google and Deutsche Bank have also said they support full equality.

Conservative groups have created YouTube videos explaining their stance but insisting they are not anti-gay rights.

Social media forums have been rife with posts arguing that allowing gay marriage would increase the number of foreigners with HIV coming to Taiwan to take advantage of its healthcare system.

The votes are among 10 referendums on a raft of issues which will run alongside Taiwan's local elections Saturday.
Long-delayed parliamentary elections were held last month, but the voting was marred by widespread mismanagement and major attacks by the Taliban.

A suicide bomber blew himself up inside a packed mosque on an Afghan army base during Friday prayers, killing at least nine soldiers, officials said, in the latest bloody violence to rock the war-torn country.

Ashraf Ghani said that those responsible for the terror attack would be punished.

In a statement issued by the presidential palace, Ghani ordered an investigation into the incident and demanded the punishment of negligent officials.

"There were soldiers lying everywhere and the smoke was so thick, it was hard to see", said Abdullah, a spokesman at the base.

"When the explosion happened my leg and hand started bleeding", Mufti, who like many Afghans uses only one name, said from his hospital bed in Khost city. The Taliban denied involvement in that bombing, which also wounded 94 people.

Khost has been among the relatively calm provinces since the fall of the Taliban regime but the security situation of the province has deteriorated comparatively during the recent years.

Parwan police chief Muhammad Mahfuz Walizada told RFE/RL that the operation overnight by Afghan and worldwide forces in Jebul Siraj district targeted a local warlord, but killed the other people by mistake.

However, NATO spokeswoman U.S. Sgt. 1st Class Debra Richardson says no NATO or American activity took place in Parwan in the past three days. Ten people died but it's unclear how many were civilians.
Washington and Beijing have failed to reach any agreement to resolve a dispute that escalated after Trump slapped huge tariffs on Chinese goods, prompting tit-for-tat responses

China said Friday it hopes US President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping can find a solution to the trade war when they meet at the G20 summit next week.

The talks in Argentina come as the two countries have failed to reach any agreement to resolve a dispute that escalated after Trump slapped huge tariffs on Chinese goods, prompting tit-for-tat responses.

"We hope that both sides can work together on the basis of mutual respect, balance, honesty, and mutual benefit and finally find a solution to solve the problem," Wang Shouwen, Chinese vice minister of commerce, said at a press briefing in Beijing.

Wang said global trade faces a "complex situation", with "unilateralism and protectionism on the rise" creating uncertainty for economic development.

China hopes the G20 will uphold its backing of multilateralism at the summit, which will take place from November 30 to December 1 in Buenos Aires.

Beijing also backs reform of the World Trade Organization to enhance its authority and effectiveness, he said.

Trump said Thursday he was "very prepared" for the meeting with Xi.

Washington has threatened to toughen measures even further if the issue is not resolved before January.

"China wants to make a deal. If we can make a deal, we will," Trump said.

The United States has imposed punitive tariffs on Chinese goods worth $250 billion per year. In retaliation, China imposed tariffs on $110 billion of US goods.

Earlier this month, Xi and Trump discussed the US-China trade conflict, as well as North Korea's nuclear programme, during a phone conversation that Trump called "very good".

Xi said he was "very happy" to talk to Trump again.

But tensions came to the fore again at an APEC summit last weekend, when Xi and US Vice President Mike Pence delivered competing speeches criticising each other's trade and investment practices.

Xi lashed out at "America First" trade protectionism, while Pence warned smaller countries not to be seduced by China's massive Belt and Road infrastructure programme.
Show me the money: Tourists could be forced to shell out $500 to enter the national park where komodo dragons live, if one Indonesian governor gets his way

Tourists keen for a close-up look at komodo dragons in their natural habitat could be hit with an alarming bill, if one Indonesian politician gets his way.

The governor of East Nusa Tenggara province -- home to the world's biggest lizard -- has proposed charging visitors $500 to see the endangered species, about 50 times the current entrance fee for foreign tourists at Komodo National Park.

Komodo dragons are powerful carnivores that dominate their eco system

And if Viktor Bungtilu Laiskodat prevails, the park would be off limits to all but "extraordinary" visitors with cash to burn.

"(Komodo dragons) are very unique, but sadly they come cheap," the governor said this week, during a speech to university administrators.

"Only people with deep pockets are allowed to (see the komodo dragons). Those who don't have the money shouldn't visit the park since it specifically caters to extraordinary people," he added.

Komodo dragons can grow to around three metres in length, and weigh up to 70 kilograms

The governor -- who also suggested recreational boats should be charged a $50,000 entrance fee -- said he would talk with the central government, which administers the national park.

The provincial government and federal environment ministry did not respond to requests for comment on the proposed fee hike.

Rough edge of that tongue: komodo dragons can be dangerous to humans, but deadly attacks are rare

Indonesian politicians have a long history of announcing plans that rarely come to pass, including the former drug czar's proposal to build a prison surrounded by moats filled with piranhas and crocodiles to tighten security.

Thousands of tourists annually descend on the cluster of islands in eastern Indonesia that are the only place in the world where komodo dragons can be seen in their natural habitat.

My bloody dinnertime: thousands of tourists flock to see the slavering carnivores every year, making komodo dragons one of Indonesia's top attractions

Previously, the government planned to limit the number of tourists over concerns that the influx was putting pressure on the environment and endangering the giant lizard's habitat.

The slavering carnivores, which can grow to around three metres (10 feet) in length and weigh up to 70 kilograms (154 pounds), can be dangerous to humans although deadly attacks are rare.
Squalid desperation is forcing Rohingya refugees in Cox's Bazar to turn to people smugglers as they search for a way out of overcrowded refugee camps

As desperation swells in the squalid camps that are home to a million Rohingya refugees, long-dormant -- and often deadly -- trafficking networks are being revived, Bangladeshi officials warn.

Smugglers operating rickety fishing boats prey on the hopes of people who fled violence in Myanmar, charging them small fortunes for a dangerous journey to Southeast Asia, offering an empty promise of a fresh start.

The first vessel to depart Bangladesh for Malaysia since the end of the monsoon was intercepted by law enforcement, who warn others will follow.

Many in the heaving Rohingya ghettos of Cox's Bazar feel they have no other option but to try to escape, community leaders and aid workers say.

A deal to safely return the persecuted Muslims to Myanmar has failed, condemning them to limbo and deprivation in fetid camps where they are barred from leaving or looking for work to improve their lot.

Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya poured over the border into Bangladesh fleeing violence in Myanmar-

Sensing a surge, coastguard patrols have been stepped up since the first boat was detected in November in the Bay of Bengal, said Ikbal Hossain, deputy police chief in Cox's Bazar.

Another boatload of refugees who fled a camp in Myanmar were found off the country's southern coast in November after spending 15 days at sea in a failed attempt to reach Malaysia.

"As the sea turns calm, the smuggling rackets have resumed their activities. But we have a zero tolerance attitude toward human trafficking," Hossain told AFP.

But he said traffickers were difficult to detect in the teeming hills where more than 720,000 Rohingya sought refuge after a brutal crackdown by the Myanmar military in August 2017.

- Terrifying journey -

Shabeda Begum, a 30-year-old widowed in what UN investigators called ethnic cleansing, said she was approached by another refugee offering to reunite her with a sister and brother-in-law in Malaysia.

The Muslim-majority nation hosts one of the largest overseas Rohingya communities, many of whom arrived by boat from Cox's Bazar until that smuggling pipeline was closed in 2015.

Begum was introduced to a Bangladeshi handler in the coastal town of Teknaf and arranged to get the required $120 from family in Kuala Lumpur.

Shabeda Begum paid smugglers $120 for her family's places aboard an ill-fated vessel

That secured Begum and her two children a spot aboard the crescent-shaped fishing boat crammed with 33 other refugees above and below deck.

"They promised my life would change if I could reach there with my kids," she told AFP despairingly from a plastic-roofed shanty.

Her son, seven-year-old Mohammad Riaz, recounted his terror as the creaking boat was tossed about in the churning sea.

"I was scared because the boat was bouncing on the waves. I thought I would fall overboard and into the sea," he told AFP.

Six traffickers were arrested in connection with the failed voyage, police said.

One told AFP the fishing trawler had been due to transfer the Rohingya to a bigger Malaysia-bound ship out at sea.

- False promises -

At its peak, transnational smuggling networks passed refugees from boat to boat before docking in Thailand and moving them overland to secret campsites in Malaysia.

That route collapsed in May 2015, when shallow graves were found at migrant holding camps along the Thai-Malaysia border.

As authorities closed in, traffickers abandoned boats in the Andaman Sea, leaving starving and dehydrated passengers to drift south.

No one knows exactly how many died in the transit camps or at sea.

Local authorities fear another exodus is looming, as traffickers return to old tricks to lure vulnerable refugees onto ships.

Mosammat Khadiza, a 16-year-old refugee, said her mother put her on board after traffickers promised that a wealthy Rohingya man in Malaysia would marry her.

"We were kept in a fish refrigerator inside the boat's hull for hours. We couldn't move inside the tight space," she told AFP.

The UN refugee agency UNHCR is running awareness campaigns in the camps about the dangers of trusting people smugglers and taking flimsy boats into the open ocean.

The refugee camps at Cox's Bazar are ill-equipped to deal with the hundreds of thousands of people living there

"We recognise that the continued maritime movements, despite the serious dangers, illustrate the desperation that people feel," UNHCR spokeswoman Caroline Gluck told AFP.

"Unless they believe there are other tangible solutions to their plight, Rohingya will continue to risk their lives on boats."

But amid grinding hardship, with little prospect of a brighter future, camp leaders say the promise of a better life elsewhere would be difficult to counter.

"This is not a life anyone would prefer," said Rohingya community leader Mohammad Osman.

"That's why they jump on boats without a second thought when approached by traffickers."

Despite her first setback, Begum has vowed to try again.

"I will look out for another chance. My brother-in-law promised to take care of us if we could only reach Malaysia," she said.
A handout picture provided by the Saudi Royal Palace on April 16, 2018, shows Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (L) shaking hands with Bahrain's King Hamad at the closing ceremony of the "Gulf Shield 1" military drills in eastern Saudi Arabia

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was due to visit Bahrain on Sunday on the second leg of a regional tour, his first since critic Jamal Khashoggi's murder.

Prince Mohammed, who began his tour Thursday with a visit to Abu Dhabi, will hold talks with Bahrain's King Hamad, the state-run Bahrain News Agency said on Saturday.

Quoting a royal court statement from Manama it said that the Saudi crown prince and King Hamad will discuss the "deep-rooted fraternal and historic relations binding the two brotherly countries and peoples, in addition to (the) latest regional, Arab and international developments".

Saudi Arabia has been facing intense global criticism over the killing of insider-turned-critic Khashoggi in its Istanbul consulate on October 2.

The murder of the journalist who wrote for The Washington Post has tipped the kingdom into one of its worst crises.

He was killed and reportedly dismembered in what Saudi Arabia said was a "rogue" operation, but CIA analysis leaked to the US media pointed the finger at Prince Mohammed.

Saudi Arabia has warned criticism of the crown prince is a "red line".

On Wednesday Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said that calls for the crown prince to be held accountable for the grisly killing would not be tolerated.

Prince Mohammed began his regional tour at the request of his father, King Salman, according to the Saudi Press Agency which said he would visit "brotherly" Arab countries.

The tour started Thursday in the United Arab Emirates, a close ally that is part of a Saudi-led coalition battling Iran-aligned Huthi rebels in Yemen.

And the prince is also set to travel to the Tunisian capital on Tuesday, a presidential source in Tunis told AFP.

Prince Mohammed is expected to attend the G20 summit in Argentina next week.
Kashmir-based rights monitors say 528 people have died this year from armed conflict in the disputed Himalayan territory claimed in full by both India and Pakistan, including 145 civilians

Eight people were killed Sunday in violence in Indian-administered Kashmir, capping off one of the deadliest weeks this year in a region already suffering its worst bloodshed in a decade.

Kashmir-based rights monitors say 528 people have died this year from armed conflict in the disputed Himalayan territory claimed in full by both India and Pakistan, including 145 civilians.

It is the deadliest year since 2009, said the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Societies, underscoring a worsening security situation in the Muslim-majority region controlled by India and half a million of its troops.

Police said Sunday that six alleged militants and a soldier were killed in a shootout in Shopian, a southern district of the Kashmir Valley.

A civilian was also killed when Indian forces fired shots into a crowd of protesters that gathered near the scene of the shootout, senior police official Munir Ahmad Khan told AFP.

Elsewhere in Kashmir 10 suspected militants and four others -- including a teenage girl and a prominent separatist activist -- were gunned down in separate clashes, taking the week's total death toll to 22.

Police said the activist was killed by rivals but separatist leaders said the government orchestrated his assassination.

The police official, Khan, said the high number of casualties in 2018 was the result of "good actionable information" leading them to armed rebels and their hideouts.

But critics said Indian forces were escalating tensions in the restive region ahead of general elections next year in order to look tough on Pakistan and militancy.

"Dead bodies of Kashmiris unfortunately sell well in Indian elections," said Khurram Parvez, programme coordinator at the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Societies.

"The mindset dominant in India now is that by escalating violence, the people of Kashmir will be pressured to surrender."

The UN human rights chief, in a first-of-its-kind report in June, called for a major investigation into abuses in Kashmir and the "chronic impunity" for violations perpetrated by troops there.

The findings accused Indian troops of 145 unlawful killings, far surpassing the 20 people estimated to have been killed by militant groups over the study period.

New Delhi rejected the report, blasting it as "fallacious".

India has long accused Pakistan of arming rebel groups in Kashmir, which has been split between the rivals since 1947.

Rebel groups have long waged an armed insurgency against Indian forces in Kashmir, demanding an independent state or merger with Pakistan.
Hardline Islamists have launched several attacks in the majority-Muslim province during the last year, stoking unrest just as Maputo pushes ahead with oil and gas development in the region

Twelve people have been killed in a suspected Islamist militant attack in northern Mozambique, with thousands of villagers fleeing into neighbouring Tanzania, police sources said Sunday.

Hardline Islamists have launched several attacks in the majority -Muslim province during the last year, stoking unrest just as Maputo pushes ahead with oil and gas development in the region.

Early Friday, "there was an attack in Nangade district, where there are no security patrols. The attackers killed 12 people, mostly women and children," a police source in Cabo Delgado province, who asked not to be named, told AFP.

The attack took place in the village of Chicuaia Velha, just a few kilometres (miles) from Tanzania, forcing several thousand people to seek safety cross the border, police said.

A local journalist said the villagers were hacked to death with machetes or died after the attackers torched their homes.

"The district of Nangade is far from the sea where the police have focussed their efforts, which allowed the assailants to enter and attack and then retreat," another police source said.

"They use guerrilla tactics and attack several points simultaneously. It's hard to control the situation," he said.

It was the third such incident in the last month in Cabo Delgado, leaving a total of 20 dead.

Analysts say the nascent insurgency staged its first attack in October 2017 year hitting a police station and military outpost in the northern town of Mocimboa da Praia, killing two officers.

- 'Strong local dimension' -

Originally known as Ahlu Sunnah Wa-Jama -- Arabic for "followers of the prophet" -- the group is commonly referred to by locals and officials as "Al-Shabaab," although it has no known link to the Somali jihadist group of the same name.

Its links to other West Africa militant groups such as Boko Haram in northern Nigeria are also unclear.

"The current insurrection is a small affair, literally barefoot, with a very strong local dimension," said Eric Morier-Genoud, a specialist in Mozambique at Queen's University Belfast.

It is believed to have formed in Cabo Delgado in around 2014 when its leaders called on followers to adhere to a more extreme form of Islam.

Experts believe the militants -- most of whom are members of the Kimwani ethnic group -- are also motivated by grievances over perceived discrimination in favour of the Makonde people, the tribe of President Filipe Nyusi.

Over the last year, the insurgency has claimed more than 50 lives in gun, grenade and knife assaults.

The authorities have already prosecuted more than 200 suspects, including some Tanzanians and Somalis, and shut down several mosques as part of a crackdown.

The violence has shaken government plans for Cabo Delgado, a coastal province in the far north that will be a base for development since natural gas reserves were discovered.

US oil and gas giant Anadarko earlier this year temporarily evacuated workers from the area and halted operations after the US embassy in Maputo issued an alert warning of imminent attacks.

The government has been using the potential energy bonanza from estimated reserves of 180 trillion cubic feet (5.1 trillion cubic metres) of gas off the northeastern shores to predict strong future growth for the former Portuguese colony.
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) - China's pressure campaign looms large as Taiwan holds local elections Saturday in what is seen partly as a referendum on the policies of independence-leaning President Tsai Ing-wen.

Driven from power two years ago, the opposition Nationalists are hoping to regain territory by leaning on their pro-business image and a more accommodating line toward Beijing, which detests Tsai for her refusal to endorse its stance that the self-governing island democracy is a part of the Chinese nation.

The China factor and the potential impact on the next presidential election are giving added weight to the polls, said Alexander Huang, strategic studies professor at Taiwan's Tamkang University.

"It's more important than the usual local elections," Huang said. "Confidence has been disrupted by the overall environment and the difficult relationship with the mainland."

Key races include mayoral offices in the capital Taipei and southern port of Kaohsiung, where the Nationalists and ruling Democratic Progressive Party are fighting for votes alongside independent candidates and those from smaller parties. The elections are being portrayed as the largest ever on the island of 23 million, with about 19 million voters casting ballots for more than 11,000 local officials.

Economic growth, employment and pension reforms are also major issues, but while local concerns may be of greatest importance to voters, the outcome will be presented nationally by both major parties as a "status check on the Tsai administration," said Derek Grossman, who studies Taiwan-China ties at the RAND Corporation.

In this Nov. 20, 2018, photo, Democratic Progressive Party Kaohsiung mayoral candidate, Chen Chi-mai at left reacts to supporters during a rally in Kaohsiung, central Taiwan. China and its growing pressure campaign loom large as Taiwan holds elections for mayors and other local officials Saturday, in what is partly seen as a referendum on the policies of independence-leaning President Tsai Ing-wen. (AP Photo)

Since her election in 2016, Tsai has walked a fine line on relations with China, maintaining Taiwan's de facto independent status that the vast majority of Taiwanese support, while avoiding calls from the more radical elements of her party for moves to declare formal separation from the mainland, from which it split amid civil war in 1949.

But she's also emphasized the importance of Taiwan's sovereignty, rejected Beijing's "One China" principle and sought to strengthen relations with the U.S. and other countries similarly skeptical of China's motives. She's also worked to diversify the island's economy away from the Chinese market by bringing businesses home and encouraging investment in Southeast Asia and beyond.

While ties between Washington and Beijing are at their lowest ebb in years, Taiwan is benefiting from greater U.S. diplomatic and military assistance. Those come despite the lack of formal diplomatic ties that were broken in 1979 when the U.S. switched recognition to China.

Beijing's response has been to sever contacts with her administration, cut numbers of Chinese tourists and further the island's diplomatic isolation by barring it from multinational forums and wooing away its dwindling number of diplomatic allies, now reduced to just 17.

China's authoritarian leader Xi Jinping - who has said "unification" with Taiwan can't be put off indefinitely - has also stepped up military intimidation with war games and aerial training near the island, all aimed at advertising Beijing's threat to bring it under its control by force if necessary. Taiwanese officials have also warned that Beijing is seeking to sway voters through the spread of disinformation online similar to Russia's interfering in U.S. elections.

The impact of those moves on Taiwanese voters is hard to gauge and by law, no public opinion surveys can be published within 10 days of the elections.

However, Timothy Rich, an expert on Taiwan electoral politics at Western Kentucky University, says his research on Taiwan's diplomatic relations and public opinion shows that, rather than blaming Tsai, voters are angry at Beijing for limiting Taiwan's international breathing space.

Yet, there's little doubt that Beijing is hoping diplomatic, economic, and military pressure will erode support for Tsai, who is also party chairwoman and faces re-election in 2020.

"If the DPP loses ground, it will serve as confirmation for Beijing that its strategy of undermining the DPP and Tsai is working ... and thus it'll likely proceed apace," Grossman said.

Still, the campaign has been a tough slog for the Nationalists, who ruled the island for half a century after Chiang Kai-shek relocated his government here following the victory of Mao Zedong's Communists in China. After losing both the presidency and their legislative majority, they have struggled to find candidates who can both fire up their pro-China supporters and win over young Taiwanese who have increasingly turned to the DPP.

The Nationalists' best chance appears to be in the mayoral race in Kaohsiung, a DPP stronghold that has nonetheless appeared to be in play this year.

"What I expect is that the DPP will lose some key races, but it won't be a game changer unless the DPP does very poorly in the south," Rich said, adding that losing Kaohsiung would be "symbolically problematic."

A result that ends in Tsai stepping down as party chair could also energize the Nationalists and create problems for the DPP in the 2020 elections, he said.

Despite relatively healthy growth estimated at around 2.6 percent this year, many Taiwanese say they fear the impact of China's continuing undermining policies.

"The shortage of confidence across the Taiwan Strait and the lack of communication between the two governments have made Taiwan's business environment become more difficult," Huang said.

Performance in office, especially on the economy, is the most important factor for Taipei voter Giyun Lihang.

"Those elected need to act properly so people can earn more money, not like now where people are having a hard time," Giyun said.

Violence and vote buying have been factors in previous local elections and the Criminal Investigation Bureau said Thursday they had questioned a man who allegedly called for the assassination of Nationalist Kaohsiung mayoral candidate Han Kuo-yu.

Voters will also cast ballots on 10 referendums, including one on whether to amend the civil code to include same-sex marriage - which was legalized last year - and on whether to uphold a commitment to ban nuclear energy by 2025.

And in a highly symbolic but potentially impactful referendum, voters will be asked whether they wish to compete in future international sporting events including the 2020 Tokyo Olympics as "Taiwan" instead of "Chinese Taipei" - they name the island is required to use at China's insistence.

Although the IOC has already ruled out any changes and warned Taiwan could even lose its accreditation, many see the vote as a test of support for independence and a means to fire up the DPP base.

China has already responded. Earlier this year, it forced a vote at the Asian Olympic Committee to withdraw the right of the city of Taichung in central Taiwan to host a youth competition scheduled for next year.

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Bodeen reported from Beijing.
Laborers stand on scaffolding while working at a construction site for a hospital near New Delhi, after such work was suspended for several days in the capital region to try to ease its severe air pollution.

In other images from the Asia-Pacific region this week, a fighter jet lands on the deck of the USS Ronald Reagan in the South China Sea. The carrier's battle group was making a port call in Hong Kong in what was seen as a friendly gesture amid tensions between Beijing and Washington over trade and territorial disputes over the regional waters.

Papua New Guinea greeted global leaders attending the APEC summit, and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte met with Chinese President Xi Jinping, who was making the first state visit to Manila by a Chinese leader in 13 years.

Nissan Motor Co. fired Carlos Ghosn as chairman, curtailing his nearly two-decade reign at the Japanese automaker after his arrest for alleged financial improprieties.

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This gallery was curated by Associated Press photo editor Shuji Kajiyama in Tokyo.

In this Nov. 22, 2018, photo, Indian laborers standing on scaffolding shift steel rods from the ground to the top of an under construction hospital building in Greater Noida, near New Delhi, India. Building work in the capital region has resumed after authorities last week lifted a ban on construction activities they had imposed to combat air pollution. (AP Photo/R S Iyer, File)

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In this Nov. 16, 2018, photo, workers repair an illuminated advertising hoarding in Ahmadabad, India. (AP Photo/Ajit Solanki, File)

In this Nov. 20, 2018, photo, an F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jet lands on the deck of the U.S. Navy USS Ronald Reagan in the South China Sea. China is allowing a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier and its battle group to make a port call in Hong Kong after it turned down similar request amid tensions with Washington. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung, File)

In this Nov. 17, 2018, photo, performers in traditional dresses pass through a security screening at Jacksons International Airport in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, ahead of a visit by U.S. Vice President Mike Pence. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)

In this Nov. 16, 2018, photo, Merolyn Abel from Chimbu province, Shuave district, wears their traditional costume as they participate in a cultural show as part of APEC 2018 activities at Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila, File)

In this Nov. 20, 2018, photo, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, right, proposes a toast to Chinese President Xi Jinping during a state banquet at Malacanang Palace in Manila, Philippines. President Xi Jinping is on a two-day state visit, the first by a Chinese leader in 13 years. (Mark R. Cristino, Pool Photo via AP, File)

In this Nov. 22, 2018, photo, a security guard stands near the logo at Nissan Motor Co. Global Headquarters in Yokohama near Tokyo. Nissan's board of directors will meet Thursday to decide whether to dismiss its chairman Carlos Ghosn following his arrest on suspicion of underreporting his income. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, File)

In this Nov. 20, 2018, photo, an unidentified Kashmiri Muslim kisses the body of rebel Bashrat Ahmad during his funeral at Shopian, south of Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir. Four rebels and an Indian army commando were killed in fighting in disputed Kashmir on Tuesday, triggering anti-India protests and clashes in the restive region. (AP Photo/Mukhtar Khan, File)

In this undated photo provided on Nov. 22, 2018, by South Korea Defense Ministry, a South Korean soldier, right, and North Korean soldier, left, shake hands as they meet to open a road connecting the two sides across the demilitarized zone in a project to excavate Korean War remains near the military demarcation line inside the Demilitarized Zone in Cheorwon, South Korea. (South Korea Defense Ministry via AP, File)

In this Nov. 18, 2018, photo, visitors watch a light show inside the installation "Triangle Mirror Video Kaleidoscope" at a shopping mall in Hong Kong, to celebrate the upcoming Christmas festival season. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung, File)

In this Nov. 21, 2018, photo, Kashmiri Muslims raise their hands in prayer as a head priest displays a relic of Prophet Muhammad at the Hazratbal shrine on Eid-e-Milad, the birth anniversary of the prophet, in Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir. Thousands of Kashmiri Muslims gathered at the Hazratbal shrine, which houses a relic believed to be a hair from the beard of the prophet. (AP Photo/Dar Yasin, File)

In this Nov. 19, 2018, photo, a Sikh boy reacts to a jovial comment from another as he prepares to display his martial art skills during a religious procession ahead of the birth anniversary of the first Sikh guru, Guru Nanak, in Hyderabad, India. The birth anniversary of Guru Nanak will be marked on Nov. 23. (AP Photo/Mahesh Kumar A., File)
WASHINGTON (AP) - Senate Republicans are working to soon fill the nation's longest judicial vacancy with a North Carolina lawyer whose nomination has raised objections from black lawmakers and civil rights groups concerned about his work defending state laws found to have discriminated against African-Americans.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has helped push 84 of President Donald Trump's nominees over the finish line and is itching for more. With just a few more weeks to go before Congress adjourns for the year, he has teed up a vote on the nomination of Thomas Farr, 64, to serve as a district court judge in North Carolina.

The Senate Judiciary Committee advanced Farr's confirmation with a party-line vote back in January, meaning McConnell has waited about 10 months and until after the midterm elections to hold a vote on the floor.

Senators tend to save their biggest fights in the judicial arena for Supreme Court and appeals court nominees, but Farr's nomination has proved an exception.

"It's hard to believe President Trump nominated him, and it's even harder to believe the Senate Republicans are considering it again," said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York in one of about 20 tweets he has sent out in recent days concerning Farr.

Farr has the backing of home-state Sens. Richard Burr and Thom Tillis, both Republicans. They have noted that Farr was also nominated to the same position by former President George W. Bush and has a "well qualified" rating from the American Bar Association. They have protested the implication that Farr is racially insensitive or biased.

FILE - In this Sept. 20, 2017, file photo, Thomas Farr is sworn in during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on his nomination to be a District Judge on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

"I think absolutely destroying a good man's reputation is inappropriate," Tillis said before the committee advanced Farr's nomination.

In introducing Farr last year, Burr said the judiciary needs good people and he "fills every piece of the word good."

But Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., described Farr as "probably the worst of the litter" when it comes to Trump's judicial nominees.

"Could this administration have picked an individual who is more hostile to the rights of minorities than this man? It is hard to imagine," Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said in the same committee hearing.

GOP leaders in charge of the North Carolina Legislature hired Farr and others at his firm to defend congressional and legislative boundaries that the Legislature approved in 2011. A federal court eventually struck some boundaries down as racial gerrymanders and the Supreme Court affirmed that decision.

Farr also helped defend a 2013 law that required photo identification to vote, reduced the number of early voting days and eliminated same-day registration during that period.

North Carolina Republicans said that requiring voter ID would increase the integrity of elections. But the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the state provided no evidence of the kind of in-person voter fraud the ID mandate would address. The Richmond, Virginia-based court said the law targeted black voters "with almost surgical precision."

Farr told lawmakers that, as an advocate, he vehemently disagreed with the argument that the North Carolina Legislature sought to curtail the voting rights of people of color or any other voter. But, said, "I am obligated to follow the decision by the 4th Circuit and pledge that I will do so."

The history of the particular judicial opening Farr would fill has also contributed to the acrimony.

President Barack Obama nominated two African-American women to serve on the court, but neither was granted a hearing and their nominations stalled. If confirmed, they would have been the first blacks to serve in that particular district, which is about 27 percent black.

Farr also served as a lawyer for the re-election campaign of Republican Sen. Jesse Helms in 1990. The Justice Department alleged that about 120,000 postcards sent overwhelmingly to black voters before that election was intended to intimidate them from voting.

Farr said he was not consulted about the postcards and did not have any role in drafting or sending them. He said that after he had been asked to review the card, "I was appalled to read the incorrect language printed on the card and to then discover it had been sent to African Americans."

The explanation has failed to win over the NAACP.

"The courts are supposed to be where we can find and seek justice. But Farr's lifetime crusade is to disenfranchise African Americans and deprive them of their rights," said Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP's Washington bureau. "He belongs nowhere near a bench of justice."

Democratic lawmakers called on the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, to schedule Farr for another round of testimony about his role in the Helms' campaign, but Grassley declined.

With a 51-49 majority, Republicans will have little margin for error in confirming Farr.

Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., has already pledged to oppose all judicial nominees until he gets a vote on legislation to protect special counsel Robert Mueller.
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Donald Trump disputed that U.S. intelligence officials had concluded that the de facto leader of American ally Saudi Arabia ordered the killing of a U.S.-based journalist critical of the kingdom's royal family.

Citing vehement denials by the crown prince and king that they were involved, Trump said Thursday that "maybe the world should be held accountable because the world is a vicious place. The world is a very, very vicious place."

Critics in Congress and high-ranking officials in other countries are accusing Trump of ignoring human rights and giving Saudi Arabia a pass for economic reasons, including its influence on the world oil market.

Trump said this week he would not impose harsher penalties on Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman over the death and dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul last month.

"My policy is very simple: America first, keep America great again and that's what I'm doing," Trump told reporters after a Thanksgiving Day telephone call with members of the military.

The crown prince and his father, King Salman, said they did not commit "this atrocity," Trump said.

President Donald Trump talks with troops via teleconference from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

"It's a terrible thing. I dislike it more than you do. But the fact is ... they create tremendous wealth, really tremendous jobs in their purchases and very importantly, they keep the oil price down."

American intelligence agencies have concluded that the crown prince ordered the killing in the Saudi Consulate in Turkey, according to a U.S. official familiar with the assessment. The official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Others familiar with the case caution that while it's likely that the crown prince was involved in the death, questions remain about the extent of his culpability.

Several lawmakers have indicated that the U.S. has no "smoking gun" that proves the crown prince was responsible. They have called on the CIA and other top intelligence agencies to share publicly what they told the president about the slaying.

"I hate the crime," Trump said while on vacation in Florida. "I hate what's done. I hate the cover-up and I will tell you this - the crown prince hates it more than I do."

He said the CIA "points it both ways and as I said, maybe he did, maybe he didn't. But I will say very strongly that it's a very important ally and if we go by a certain standard, we won't be able to have allies with almost any country."

He also has pushed back on the idea that his refusal to punish the Saudis more will embolden other governments to go after journalists and commit other human rights abuses.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has noted that the U.S. has imposed sanctions on 17 Saudi officials suspected of involvement in the killing.

"We've sanctioned 17 people - some of them very senior in the Saudi government," Pompeo said Wednesday in a radio interview with KCMO in Kansas City, Missouri. "We are going to make sure that America always stands for human rights."

Saudi prosecutors have said a 15-man team sent to Istanbul killed Khashoggi with tranquilizers and dismembered his body, which has not been found. Those findings came after Saudi authorities spent weeks denying Khashoggi had been killed in the consulate.

Some lawmakers have triggered investigations into Khashoggi's death and specifically whether the crown prince was responsible. The investigations were requested under provisions of the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act.

The act requires the president to report back to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee within 120 days - in this case by Feb. 7 - on whether the crown prince was responsible for an extrajudicial killing, torture or other gross violation of internationally recognized human rights against someone exercising freedom of expression and the administration's decision on whether sanctions are warranted.

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Colvin reported from Palm Beach, Florida.

FILE - In this Dec. 15, 2014, file photo, Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi speaks during a press conference in Manama, Bahrain. President Donald Trump says the U.S. will not levy additional punitive measures at this time against Saudi Arabia over the killing of Jamal Khashoggi. (AP Photo/Hasan Jamali, File)
US President Donald Trump is set to discuss the trade issues with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on the sidelines of a Group of 20 summit in Argentina, which starts on November 30. "China wants to make a deal".

"We hope the United States will stop its words and deeds that damage bilateral economic and trade ties and adopt a constructive attitude to return relations to the right track", Gao told reporters.

Washington is demanding Beijing improve market access and intellectual-property protections for USA companies, cut industrial subsidies and slash a US$375-billion trade gap.

And US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has played down the likelihood of a breakthrough and said the US still plans to increase tariffs on $250 billion worth of Chinese exports on New Year's Day.

"I can say this, China wants to make a deal very badly - because of the tariffs", Trump told reporters in the town of Palm Beach in Florida.

China "hopes the Xi-Trump meeting goes smoothly", Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Chao said during the briefing.

WTO reforms should follow three fundamental principles: the reform should uphold the organization's core values of non-discrimination and opening, protect development interests of developing members and address their difficulties in integrating into economic globalization, and follow the mechanism of decision-making by consensus, Wang said.

"China supports necessary reforms of the WTO to strengthen its authority and effectiveness", he said.

The Commerce Ministry on Thursday accused Washington of destroying trade relations and rejected the U.S. Trade Representative's report as "groundless accusations".

The ministry is also evaluating the potential effects of a separate US proposal this week to increase control over technology exports, and said it would take the necessary steps to uphold Chinese firms' legitimate interests.

Citing security concerns, the US government on Monday also proposed stepping up scrutiny over technology exports in 14 key areas, including artificial intelligence and microprocessors, a move many analysts view as directly targeting China. The author has made every effort to ensure accuracy of information provided; however, neither Kitco Metals Inc. nor the author can guarantee such accuracy. Kitco Metals Inc. and the author of this article do not accept culpability for losses and/ or damages arising from the use of this publication.
BEIJING (AP) - The suspect in a car crash that killed five children wanted to kill himself and deliberately targeted a crowd walking outside a primary school in northeastern China, officials said Friday, in what appeared to be the latest in a pattern of vehicle attacks.

The 29-year-old driver is an introvert and wanted to kill himself because he was having a row with his wife, according to a Jianchang county statement that an official read over the phone to the AP. The suspect was identified only by his surname, Han.

Security camera footage of Thursday's attack showed a vehicle swerving into children who had almost finished crossing a street in front of their school before driving off. In addition to the dead, 19 people were injured, three of them seriously, the Jianchang statement said. Most of the victims were between 5 and 7 years old.

The school is in the city of Huludao in Liaoning province.

The driver was arrested shortly after the crash. Photos posted by the police online showed him being taken from his vehicle, which appeared to have crashed into a ditch, and being brought to a police station restrained by several officers.

He chose to target the children randomly, the statement said.

China has seen a series of attacks in which people described as mentally ill or alienated and angry have targeted pedestrians with vehicles.

Last month, a knife-wielding man drove a vehicle into a crowd in the eastern city of Ningbo, killing two people and wounding 16.

And in September, 11 people were killed and 44 hospitalized after a man drove an SUV into people at a plaza in the central province of Hunan then jumped out and attacked victims with a dagger and shovel.

Other deadly attacks have occurred at or just outside schools, including several in 2010 in which nearly 20 children were killed, prompting schools nationwide to beef up security.

Despite that, in June, a man used a kitchen knife to attack three boys and a mother near a school in Shanghai, killing two of the children. Last year, a man set off an explosion at the front gate of a kindergarten in eastern China, as relatives gathered to pick up their children at the end of the day. That attack killed eight people.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - The South Korean government must pay 80 million won ($70,700) to three men who were enslaved on salt farms in remote islands off the country's southwest coast for several years, a court ruled Friday.

The Seoul High Court said the government was responsible for their ordeals because local officials and police failed to properly monitor their living and working conditions. The court said the government should pay 30 million won ($26,500) each to two of the men and 20 million won ($17,700) to the third plaintiff.

More than 60 slaves, most of them with intellectual disabilities, were rescued from the islands following an investigation led by mainland police in 2014.

The Associated Press documented some of their stories in a yearlong investigation.

Dozens of farm owners and job brokers were indicted, but no police or officials were punished despite allegations some knew about the slavery.

Eight former slaves sued the government last year, seeking a combined 240 million won ($212,000) in damages. But the Seoul Central District Court in September last year awarded compensation to only one of them, saying that the government's responsibility was unclear in the other seven cases. Three of the plaintiffs who were rejected appealed to the high court.

FILE - In this Feb. 19, 2014, file photo, lawmakers and human right activists look at salt farms as a part of human rights inspection on Sinui Island, South Korea. A South Korean court has ruled on Friday, Nov. 2, 2018, that the government must pay 80 million won ($70,000) to three men who were enslaved on salt farms in remote islands off the country's southwest coast for several years. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon, File)

Lawsuits against the government in human rights cases are rarely successful in South Korea because the burden of proof in non-criminal cases is entirely on the plaintiffs, who often lack information or resources. The plaintiffs' lawyers had submitted to the high court written testimonies by the islands' administrative and police officials who admitted to knowing that the plaintiffs were working against their will although they did not act to protect them.

Most of the salt farm slaves rescued in 2014 had been lured to the islands by job brokers hired by salt farm owners, who would beat them into long hours of backbreaking labor and confine them at their houses for years while providing little or no pay. The slavery was revealed when two police officers from Seoul came to the island of Sinui disguised as tourists and pulled off a clandestine operation to rescue one of the slaves who had been reported by his family as missing.

One of the Seoul police officers who rescued the man told the AP they went undercover because of concerns about collaborative ties between the island's police and salt farm owners. That man did not appeal after his compensation was rejected last year, according to lawyers.
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) - A supporter of the Islamic State group who helped a teenager kill a police accountant in Sydney was sentenced to 38 years in prison on Friday, as Australia's prime minister argued for greater government power to strip extremists of citizenship.

Milad Atai had pleaded guilty to assisting and encouraging Iranian-born Farhad Jabar, 15, to shoot Curtis Cheng as he walked from the police building on Oct. 2, 2015.

Atai also pleaded guilty to helping Jabar's older sister Shadi Jabar Khalil Mohammed fly to Syria a day earlier. Jabar was shot dead by police, and a year later the sister died with her Sudanese husband in an airstrike in Syria.

Justice Peter Johnson of the New South Wales state Supreme Court ordered Atai, 22, to serve a minimum 28  years behind bars before he becomes eligible for parole. Johnson said Atai had supported extreme jihad for several months before the shooting and appeared to still hold radical views.

As Atai was led away from court, he raised an index finger in the direction of the judge in an Islamic State salute. A fellow member of his Islamic State cell, Raban Alou, gave the same judge the same salute when he was sentenced in March to 44 years in prison for giving Jabar the .38 revolver used to kill Cheng. The 20-year-old must serve at least 33 years in prison.

Talal Alameddine, the 25-year-old who supplied Alou with the gun, was sentenced in May to 17 years in prison and must service at least 13  years.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Thursday outlined legislation to strip Australian citizenship from any dual national convicted of a terrorism offence. He wants the legislation passed before Parliament goes into recess for the year on Dec. 6.

He also wants to reduce the onus on his government to prove that an extremist is eligible for citizenship in another country. Since laws were enacted to revoke citizenship from extremists in 2015, nine dual nationals have lost citizenship and the government says another 50 are eligible to follow them. It currently applies to Australians who visit war zones controlled by the Islamic State group or those who are sentenced in an Australian court on terrorism charges to at least six years in prison.

The chief prosecutors of every Australian state and territory have signed a letter to the government raising concerns about the new draft legislation.

Morry Bailes, president of the Law Council of Australia, said the proposed changes were significantly different from the changes to citizenship law agreed by Parliament in 2015. The council warned the amendments could breach Australia's international obligations by leaving people stateless.

"These are quite radical proposals to strip away citizenship, so we would strike a note of caution, ask for a proper and consultative process so if these laws are to be entertained, they are gotten right," Bailes said.

Morrison said on Friday that extremists stripped of their citizenship could languish indefinitely in immigration detention if they could not be deported.

"If they are in a position not to be deported, they will remain in immigration detention," Morrison told the Seven Network television. "Their citizenship should go if you commit a terrorist act in Australia."

Attorney-General Christian Porter acknowledged some countries would refuse to take their citizens back.

Cheng's son Alpha Cheng attended Atai's sentencing and declined to comment to reporters on the government's citizenship bills.

"Regardless of sentences, nothing will take away the pain and the trauma that our family has been put through by these really twisted and depraved individuals," the son said.

Atai's behavior in court and his words showed "he is still a tremendous risk to society," he added.

The extremist threat to Australia was highlighted two weeks ago when a Somali-born Australian, whom police say was inspired by the Islamic State group, fatally stabbed one man and injured two others before police shot the assailant dead on a downtown Melbourne street.

This week, three Australian men of Turkish descent were charged with planning an Islamic State group-inspired mass-casualty attack in Melbourne, which would likely have happened over the busy Christmas period. Police said the plot had been thwarted with the arrests.
PRISTINA, Kosovo (AP) - There's a widespread tradition among many Muslims that it's better for women to pray at home than in the mosque. But in Kosovo, an old Ottoman-era tradition is bucking that trend, with religious authorities seeking to establish the training of women as spiritual teachers in mosques.

Each day, scores of women gather around Agime Sogojeva, a spiritual teacher known as a mualime, in the Haxhi Veseli mosque in Kosovo's northern town of Mitrovica. They discuss the Quran, their rights as women and daily practices, in a scene unthinkable as little as a decade ago.

Sogojeva is one of some 100 female theologians aiming to revive Muslim traditions in Europe's newest country. They teach at three Muslim high schools, at Muslim centers, or they work voluntarily.

The move to establish the religious training of women in mosques - where women are allocated places in a separate room from the men - is seen by some as a way to make Kosovo's approach to Islam more gender-balanced at a time when many in the West view Islam as oppressive toward women.

Although in much of the Muslim world women teach other women, it is more common for that to occur at home or in event halls rather than in the mosques themselves. In some very conservative Islamic societies, women are generally distanced from mosques for social rather than religious reasons.

In Kosovo, there has been a significant increase in the number of women attending mosques in the past 20 years, said Besa Ismaili, a 43-year-old professor of English at the Faculty of Islamic Studies in Pristina.

Enisa Bekteshi student of Islamic Studies studies a book inside the library of the Faculty of Islamic Studies in Kosovo capital Pristina on Friday, Nov. 9, 2018. In Kosovo religious authorities are going against old Ottoman-era traditions, and seeking to establish the training of women as spiritual teachers and theologians in mosques. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)

"The women were not only denied access, but their contribution was not recognized sufficiently," she said. "We try to break up those stereotypes, those misconceptions."

Kosovo has a strongly patriarchal society but also a long secular tradition, with religious identity significantly weakened during decades of communist rule. Most of its ethnic Albanian majority population is Muslim, but religious expression was generally lax even after the fall of communism in the late 1980s. The country declared independence from Serbia in 2008, nearly a decade after a 1998-1999 war against Yugoslav forces by ethnic Albanian fighters.

Recently, however, it has seen a rise of religiously-inspired violent extremism, with more than 300 Kosovo citizens joining the Islamic State group as foreign fighters in Iraq and Syria since 2012. A quarter of those were women and children, often forced to follow their husbands into the war zone. About 180 Kosovo citizens are still active with extremist groups in Syria and Iraq, and the women are held in camps.

But Kosovo authorities claim no citizen has joined a fundamentalist group over the past two years, a development partly attributed to the empowering of women through the creation of female Islamic teachers.

"Extreme nationalism becomes less present when Islam is explained to women," Ismaili says.

Funding for about a dozen of the female theologians comes from Turkey's Directorate of Religious Affairs, or Diyanet, which assists the Islamic Community of Kosovo, or BIK, the country's executive for Muslims.

These female preachers are active members in about 800 mosques countrywide, said Resul Rexhepi, BIK secretary general, modernizing women's life and increasing their role in society.

"Mualime are good for the whole society," he said.

BIK officials claim that the introduction of the female Muslim preachers in the mosques has reduced sexual violence at home, assisted women who were raped during the war, helped mothers with their children's education and increased the participation of women in voting in elections. There are no official figures to support such claims.

During the past decade or so some 1,100 girls have graduated from three Muslim high schools and 300 women from the Faculty of Islamic Studies.

Enisa Bekteshi, a 21-year old student, says it is easier for a female teacher to explain "some delicate issues a woman is reluctant to ask an imam, a man."

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Sarah El Deeb in Beirut and Mohammed Daraghmeh in Ramallah, West Bank, contributed.

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Follow Llazar Semini on twitter: https://twitter.com/lsemini

Student Enisa Bekteshi, stands inside the library of the Faculty of Islamic Studies in Kosovo capital Pristina on Friday, Nov. 9, 2018. In Kosovo religious authorities are going against old Ottoman-era traditions, and seeking to establish the training of women as spiritual teachers and theologians in mosques. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)

Muslim women pray before they attend a class inside the Haxhi Veseli mosque in the northern Kosovo town of Mitrovica on Monday, Nov. 12, 2018. In Kosovo, the move to establish the religious training of women as spiritual teachers and theologians in mosques, is seen by some as a way to make Kosovo's approach to Islam more gender-balanced.(AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)

Enisa Bekteshi, student takes a book inside the library of the Faculty of Islamic Studies in Kosovo capital Pristina on Friday, Nov. 9, 2018. In Kosovo religious authorities are going against old Ottoman-era traditions, and seeking to establish the training of women as spiritual teachers and theologians in mosques.(AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)

Muslim women pray in a balcony inside Hasan Beg mosque during the Friday prayer at Kater Llullat neighbourhood of Kosovo capital Pristina on Friday, Nov. 9, 2018. In Kosovo, the move to establish the religious training of women as spiritual teachers and theologians in mosques, is seen by some as a way to make Kosovo's approach to Islam more gender-balanced.(AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)

Besa Ismaili, an English teacher at the Faculty of Islamic Studies in Kosovo during an interview with The Associated Press in Kosovo capital Pristina on Friday, Nov. 9, 2018. In Kosovo religious authorities are going against old Ottoman-era traditions, and seeking to establish the training of women as spiritual teachers and theologians in mosques.(AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)

Agime Sogojeva, 2nd from right, a professor of Islamic studies holds a class inside the Haxhi Veseli mosque in the northern Kosovo town of Mitrovica on Monday, Nov. 12, 2018. In Kosovo, the move to establish the religious training of women as spiritual teachers and theologians in mosques, is seen by some as a way to make Kosovo's approach to Islam more gender-balanced.(AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)

Agime Sogojeva a professor of Islamic studies holds a class inside the Haxhi Veseli mosque in the northern Kosovo town of Mitrovica on Monday, Nov. 12, 2018. In Kosovo, the move to establish the religious training of women as spiritual teachers and theologians in mosques, is seen by some as a way to make Kosovo's approach to Islam more gender-balanced.(AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)

Best Ismaili, left, an english teacher talks to her students at the Faculty of Islamic Studies in Kosovo presents her work during an english class in Kosovo capital Pristina on Friday, Nov. 9, 2018. In Kosovo, the move to establish the religious training of women as spiritual teachers and theologians in mosques, is seen by some as a way to make Kosovo's approach to Islam more gender-balanced. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)

An Imam leads the congregation during the Friday prayer as muslim women attend in a secluded balcony inside Hasan Beg mosque at Kater Llullat neighborhood of Kosovo capital Pristina on Friday, Nov. 9, 2018. In Kosovo, the move to establish the religious training of women as spiritual teachers and theologians in mosques, is seen by some as a way to make Kosovo's approach to Islam more gender-balanced.(AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)

Agime Sogojeva, a professor of Islamic studies enters the Haxhi Veseli mosque in the northern Kosovo town of Mitrovica on Monday, Nov. 12, 2018. In Kosovo, the move to establish the religious training of women as spiritual teachers and theologians in mosques, is seen by some as a way to make Kosovo's approach to Islam more gender-balanced. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)

Rineta Nitaj, a 2nd year bachelor student at the Faculty of Islamic Studies in Kosovo presents her work during an English class in Kosovo capital Pristina on Friday, Nov. 9, 2018. In Kosovo religious authorities are going against old Ottoman-era traditions, and seeking to establish the training of women as spiritual teachers and theologians in mosques.(AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - A Democrat running for U.S. Senate in Mississippi says he would bring experience of "diversity" and "inclusion" to the job, and he thinks the Republican he's trying to unseat has a background lacking in those qualities.

Democrat Mike Espy spoke Saturday about how he and his twin sister were among the 17 black students who integrated the all-white Yazoo City High School in 1969, graduating in 1971.

An independent newspaper, the Jackson Free Press, reported Friday that Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, who is white, attended a white private school founded in 1970, the year many Mississippi public high schools integrated. She graduated from Lawrence County Academy in 1977.

Hyde-Smith campaign spokeswoman Melissa Scallan responded to the report about Hyde-Smith's high school attendance by saying: "In their latest attempt to help Mike Espy, the gotcha liberal media has taken leave of their senses. They have stooped to a new low, attacking her entire family and trying to destroy her personally instead of focusing on the clear differences on the issues between Cindy Hyde-Smith and her far-left opponent."

Espy said he was called "the N-word" many days during integration.

"I guess you could juxtapose my experience with her experience," Espy told The Associated Press between his campaign appearances Saturday in Jackson.

Several dozen people stand in line outside the Hinds County Courthouse in Jackson, Miss., on Saturday, Nov. 24, 2018, waiting to cast absentee ballots in a U.S. Senate election runoff between Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith and Democrat Mike Espy. Saturday was the deadline for people to cast absentee ballots at circuit clerks' offices, and it is unusual to see lines on the absentee deadline day. The runoff election is Tuesday, Nov. 27, 2018, and the winner will serve the final two years of a six-year term started by longtime Sen. Thad Cochran. Mississippi's Republican governor appointed Hyde-Smith to serve temporarily when Cochran retired because of health concerns. (AP Photo/Emily Wagster Pettus)

"If the story is correct, she consciously made a decision to separate, and my parents consciously made a decision to be inclusive," Espy said. "So, that's a Mississippi I want to be a part of - one of diversity, one of inclusion, one of different experiences. ... I decided to use that very difficult time to learn from and try to reach out to people of all races. So, if you compare me and that experience to Cindy Hyde and her experience, I'd rather have my experience."

The hard-fought Senate race is expected to drive a higher-than-usual turnout for a runoff in Mississippi. President Donald Trump is set to travel to the state for two rallies with Hyde-Smith on Monday.

More than 43,000 absentee ballots have been requested for the runoff, and that number could increase as circuit clerks continue compiling information, the Mississippi secretary of state's office said Saturday.

About 69,000 absentee ballots were requested before the Nov. 6 election. There's typically a large decrease in ballots cast between the first election and a runoff.

Saturday was the deadline for in-person absentee voting. Several dozen waited in a line that stretched out of the Hinds County Courthouse in downtown Jackson, including retired home economics teacher Illinois Cox Littleton, 92, who said she voted for Espy because she considers him "a highly intelligent man."

Hyde-Smith was appointed as a temporary successor to longtime Republican Sen. Thad Cochran, who retired in April. The winner of Tuesday's runoff gets the final two years of a term he started.

She is the first woman to represent Mississippi in Congress, and Espy is seeking to become the first African-American to represent the state in the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction. Mississippi last elected a Democrat to the Senate in 1982.

Mississippi has a history of racially motivated lynchings and violence against people who sought voting rights for black citizens, and Hyde-Smith has been sharply criticized after two videos surfaced this month. One showed her praising a supporter at a Nov. 2 campaign event by saying: "If he invited me to a public hanging, I'd be on the front row." Another showed her Nov. 3 talking about "liberal folks" and making it "just a little more difficult" for them to vote.

Her campaign said the remark about voting was a joke.

Hyde-Smith said the "public hanging" comment was "an exaggerated expression of regard" for a fellow cattle rancher. During a televised debate nine days after that video was published, said she apologized to "anyone that was offended by my comments," but also said the remark was used as a "weapon" against her.

Yearbook photos from Lawrence Academy, which is now closed, show Hyde was a cheerleader for a team that had a rebel mascot who carried a Confederate battle flag.

The school photos surfaced days after other photos circulated on social media of Hyde-Smith wearing a gray Confederate military-style hat in 2014 when she was state agriculture commissioner and visited Beauvoir, the beachside home in Biloxi, Mississippi, that was the last home for Confederate president Jefferson Davis. Hyde-Smith posted the photos of herself at Beauvoir in Facebook at the time with the caption: "Mississippi history at its best!"

Scallan said the Hyde-Smith campaign had no comment about the Beauvoir photos.

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For AP's complete coverage of the U.S. midterm elections: http://apne.ws/APPolitics . Follow Emily Wagster Pettus on Twitter: http://twitter.com/EWagsterPettus .

Illinois Cox Littleton, 92, of Jackson, Miss., seated, went to the Hinds County Courthouse in Jackson on Saturday, Nov. 24, 2018, to cast an absentee ballot in a U.S. Senate runoff election. Littleton, a retired home economics teacher, says she voted for Democrat Mike Espy because she considers him "a highly intelligent man." Littleton is accompanied by her grandson, Justin Austin, 25, and her daughter, Jacqueline Austin, 54, both of Jackson, Miss., who say they will cast ballots when polls are open Tuesday, Nov. 27, 2018. Espy is challenging Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, who was appointed to serve in the Senate temporarily when longtime Republican Sen. Thad Cochran retired in April. (AP Photo/Emily Wagster Pettus)

Democrat Mike Espy responds to a statement from his opponent, appointed U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., during a televised Mississippi U.S. Senate debate in Jackson, Miss., Tuesday, Nov. 20, 2018. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, POOL)
BRUSSELS (AP) - The Latest on the Brexit deal (all times local):

5:45 p.m.

Hungary's prime minister says it's a "gloomy Sunday" because of the Brexit agreement between Britain and the European Union.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on state TV that "no matter how well a divorce is organized, it remains a divorce."

Orban said the EU leadership bore responsibility for Brexit, adding that if Britain, a rich country, had remained in the EU, Hungary would have received more EU funds in the future.

Orban said: "That is to say, the loss suffered by the EU can be measured in money, as well, besides the political and economic losses suffered."

British Prime Minister Theresa May walks past the EU flag at the conclusion of an EU summit in Brussels, Sunday, Nov. 25, 2018. European Union leaders gathered Sunday to seal an agreement on Britain's departure from the bloc next year, the first time a member country will have left the 28-nation bloc. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

Orban also said that had the countries in Western Europe not allowed migrants in, the British would have stayed in the EU.

"Gloomy Sunday" (originally "Szomoru vasarnap") is a 1930s Hungarian song written by Rezso Seress.

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4 p.m.

A former leader of Britain's Conservative Party says he cannot support the Brexit deal negotiated by Prime Minister Theresa May.

Michael Howard said Sunday that May's deal has many shortcomings, adding "It's not a deal that is a good deal for the U.K."

Howard says the biggest problem is the way Britain would have to seek European Union permission to sever all ties to the EU if a "backstop" agreement comes into force.

"That seems to me to be an absolute negation of taking control, that would put us in a worse position than we are now," he told BBC Radio.

Howard was party leader when the Conservatives were defeated by Tony Blair and Labour in 2005. He serves in the House of Lords.

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3:25 p.m.

Romania's president has welcomed the Brexit agreement saying it will protect the rights of hundreds of thousands of Romanians in Britain.

President Klaus Iohannis said Sunday that while most EU members were sad that Britain was leaving the bloc, if the agreement passes it "will protect Romanians and other Europeans who are in Britain." He also said after the summit that "it guarantees all their rights ... they can work, study, receive pensions, health insurance and so on. "

"We were very concerned about these issues, and we successfully pushed for these things to be clearly defined."

He welcomed the fact that Romanians wouldn't need visas to travel to Britain after it leaves the bloc.

Romanian officials estimate about 500,000 Romanians live in Britain, although just 190,000 are officially registered there.

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2:45 p.m.

The leader of Britain's main opposition party says that it will vote against the Brexit deal when it comes before Parliament.

Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn said after the EU summit Sunday that the arrangement agreed to by Prime Minister Theresa May is a "bad deal for the country" that "leaves us with the worst of all worlds."

He said that Labour's goal is to vote this deal down in Parliament and then "work with others to block a no-deal outcome" that many believe would badly damage Britain's economy.

The party would instead fight for a "sensible deal" that would include a permanent customs union, a single market deal and guarantees on workers' rights and other issues.

Labour's opposition to May's proposal will make it harder for her to win majority support in Parliament.

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2:30 p.m.

French President Emmanuel Macron has said the European Union must "learn lessons" from Britain's decision to leave it.

Speaking from Brussels, Macron said that the exit of a major member state for the first time in the bloc's history showed "Europe is fragile" and the EU "is not a given."

The French leader said European leaders have a duty to "protect it against all those who forget that it is a guarantee of peace, prosperity and security."

Macron also paid homage to British Prime Minister Theresa May for seeking a "path to durable cooperation" with the EU, while defending UK interests during negotiations.

Twenty-seven EU leaders endorsed a deal Sunday that sets out the terms of Britain's departure on March 29 and sets a framework for future ties.

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2 p.m.

British Prime Minister Theresa May says she is not sad about leaving the European Union even though she recognizes some Britons and some European leaders feel that way.

May said Sunday she is "full of optimism" about Britain's future outside the EU bloc, after leaders finally signed off on a Brexit deal in Brussels after months of negotiations.

"The way I look at it, actually, this is for us now to move on," she told a press conference, asserting Britain had reached a "good deal" with many benefits for Britain and its people.

She spoke after German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other European leaders expressed sadness about Britain's planned departure.

May said Britain will continue to have warm, friendly relations with European countries after it leaves the EU bloc.

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1:50 p.m.

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar is welcoming the Brexit agreement, saying that anybody who believes a better deal can be found is deluding themselves.

Varadkar said that "the entire European Union today was very much of the view that there couldn't be a renegotiation."

He said those who oppose the deal "don't agree among themselves what that better deal could be. They probably wouldn't have a majority in parliament for an alternative deal either, and they certainly wouldn't have 28 member states signed up to it."

He added: "Any other deal really only exists in people's imaginations."

Varadkar said he believes British Prime Minister Theresa May's chances of getting the agreement through parliament are strong.

British lawmakers, he believes, will see that "the alternative is a no deal, cliff edge Brexit which is something of course that we all want to avoid."

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1:40 p.m.

British Prime Minister Theresa May said the Brexit deal that European Union leaders signed off on Sunday was the best and "only possible deal" for the British parliament to vote on, warning lawmakers there would be no option to renegotiate anything.

May told reporters after a Sunday morning summit she agreed with EU leaders saying that there would be no other options on the table before Britain leaves the bloc on March 29.

"If people think somehow there is another negotiation to be done, that is not the case," she said.

"This is the deal that is on the table. This is the best possible deal. It is the only possible deal."

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1:30 p.m.

British Prime Minister Theresa May says the U.K. Parliament will vote on the divorce deal with the European Union before Christmas.

May says Sunday's signing-off on the agreement by the EU marks the end of one phase and the start of a "crucial national debate" on Britain's future.

May says she will fight "heart and soul" to get backing for the deal, which faces huge opposition among her Conservative lawmakers as well as the opposition.

She says "I think we have a duty as a Parliament ... to deliver Brexit."

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1:25 p.m.

The Spanish prime minister says that Spain's position on the disputed British overseas territory of Gibraltar has emerged stronger in the Brexit deal signed off Sunday by European Union leaders.

"With the departure of the U.K. we all lose, especially the U.K.," Pedro Sanchez told reporters at a news conference Sunday after the EU leaders meeting. "But in relation with Gibraltar, Spain wins, and Europe wins."

Spain claims Gibraltar even though it was ceded to Britain in 1713. The country was the last to agree to the Brexit deal, saying it would only back it on condition of a guarantee of Madrid's say in the future territory at its southern tip.

Asked whether Spain would seek co-sovereignty of Gibraltar during future negotiations, Sanchez said that his government planned to "talk about everything."

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1:20 p.m.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel tells reporters in Brussels the Brexit deal brokered between the EU and Prime Minister Theresa May is a "diplomatic piece of art."

Merkel says "it's a historic day, which triggers very ambivalent feelings ... it is tragic that the UK is leaving the EU now after 45 years, but we have to, of course, respect the vote of the British people."

She praised the deal struck "in an extremely difficult situation, in a situation without any precedence because we haven't had it before that a European country leaves the EU."

Merkel said while the agreement was based on very hard negotiations, it "considers both sides' interest"

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12:40 p.m.

The European Commission chief is urging the British parliament to back the Brexit deal brokered between the EU and Prime Minister Theresa May, saying "this is the only deal possible."

At the end of a largely ceremonial summit to rubber-stamp the U.K. withdrawal agreement from the bloc and a draft text on the future relations, Jean-Claude Juncker made it clear the British House of Commons should not count on starting a renegotiation.

"It would not be a good idea to lecture the House," Juncker said, but insisted that it was only deal possible.

The deal must still be endorsed by the British parliament and EU parliament. Opposition parties and many in May's own Conservative Party have opposed the agreement.

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12:15 p.m.

The leader of the Democratic Unionist Party in Northern Ireland says there are no circumstances under which her party would support the current Brexit deal.

Arlene Foster said minutes after the deal was endorsed by European Union leaders in Brussels on Sunday that her party is firmly opposed to its provisions because it would separate Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom.

She stopped short of saying her party would end its support of Prime Minister Theresa May's Conservative Party, a key point because the DUP supplies the votes needed to prop up May's minority government.

Foster is calling for more talks to come up with a better plan.

"I believe we should use the time now to look for a third way, a different way, a better way," she told the BBC.

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12:10 p.m.

European Parliament President Antonio Tajani has used the EU Brexit summit to highlight a separate issue - violence against women.

Tajani sported a red swipe under his left eye as he addressed a press conference at the EU summit. In Italy, the mark stands for support of the UN's International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

Tajani said in a Twitter post that "Nothing can justify violence against women. My mother taught it to me. I taught it to my children."

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10:45 a.m.

European Council President Donald Tusk says the European Union has approved a Brexit deal with Britain.

Tusk tweeted that 27 EU leaders meeting in Brussels "endorsed the Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration on the future EU-UK relations."

The deal sets out the terms of Britain's departure on March 29 and sets a framework for future ties.

Now British Prime Minister Theresa May faces the tough task of selling the deal to a skeptical U.K. Parliament.

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10 a.m.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker says it's a tragedy that Britain is leaving the European Union but that the country is walking away with the best deal it could hope for.

Juncker said that "it's a sad day," as he arrived Sunday for an EU summit in Brussels to endorse the Brexit agreement.

He told reporters that the summit "is neither a time of jubilation nor of celebration. It's a sad moment, and it's a tragedy."

Asked whether a better agreement can be found, should the U.K. Parliament reject it, Juncker said: "This is the deal. It's the best deal possible. The European Union will not change its fundamental position."

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9 a.m.

Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite says European Union leaders will agree Sunday on the terms of Britain's departure from the bloc, but that "it is up to Britain what is next."

Asked at an EU summit Sunday what would happen if the U.K. Parliament rejects the Brexit deal, Grybauskaite said: "it's not now our concern, it's a British concern."

She says several things could happen in that case, including a new referendum on Brexit, new elections in the U.K., or a request to renegotiate the deal with the EU.

Britain leaves on March 29, but future relations and trade will be tackled during a transition period lasting at least until the end of 2020.

Grybauskaite said "the process will still be long."

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8:30 a.m.

European Union leaders are gathering to seal an agreement on Britain's departure from the bloc next year, the first time a member country will have left the 28-nation bloc.

At a summit in Brussels Sunday, the leaders are due to endorse a withdrawal agreement, which would settle Britain's divorce bill, protect the rights of citizens hit by Brexit and keep the Irish border open.

They will also rubber stamp a 26-page document laying out their hopes for future relations after Britain leaves at midnight on March 29.

The last big obstacle to a deal was overcome on Saturday, when Spain lifted its objections over Gibraltar.

The deal must still be endorsed by the British parliament and EU parliament.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban arrives for an EU summit at the Europa building in Brussels, Sunday, Nov. 25, 2018. European Union leaders are gathering to seal an agreement on Britain's departure from the bloc next year, the first time a member country will have left the 28-nation bloc. (Piroschka van de Wouw, Pool Photo via AP)

British flags frame a lectern set for a media conference by British Prime Minister Theresa May in Brussels, Sunday, Nov. 25, 2018. European Union gathered on Sunday to seal an agreement on Britain's departure from the bloc next year, the first time a member country will have left the 28-nation bloc. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

British Prime Minister Theresa May drinks from a glass during a media conference in Brussels, Sunday, Nov. 25, 2018. European Union gathered on Sunday to seal an agreement on Britain's departure from the bloc next year, the first time a member country will have left the 28-nation bloc. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, right, embraces European Union chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier during a round table meeting at an EU summit in Brussels, Sunday, Nov. 25, 2018. European Union leaders are gathering to seal an agreement on Britain's departure from the bloc next year, the first time a member country will have left the 28-nation bloc. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert)

European Parliament President Antonio Tajani wears a red stripe under his eye to signify violence against women day during a media conference at an EU summit in Brussels, Sunday, Nov. 25, 2018. European Union leaders are gathering to seal an agreement on Britain's departure from the bloc next year, the first time a member country will have left the 28-nation bloc. (AP Photo/Olivier Matthys)

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker speaks with the media as he arrives for an EU summit at the Europa building in Brussels, Sunday, Nov. 25, 2018. European Union leaders are gathering to seal an agreement on Britain's departure from the bloc next year, the first time a member country will have left the 28-nation bloc. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, left, gestures as he arrives for an EU summit at the Europa building in Brussels, Sunday, Nov. 25, 2018. European Union leaders are gathering to seal an agreement on Britain's departure from the bloc next year, the first time a member country will have left the 28-nation bloc. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, right, shakes hands with British Prime Minister Theresa May prior to a meeting at EU headquarters in Brussels, Saturday, Nov. 24, 2018. British Prime Minister Theresa May is kicking off a big Brexit weekend by traveling to EU headquarters in Brussels for talks on Saturday with key leaders. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert)

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, right, shakes hands with British Prime Minister Theresa May prior to a meeting at EU headquarters in Brussels, Saturday, Nov. 24, 2018. British Prime Minister Theresa May is kicking off a big Brexit weekend by traveling to EU headquarters in Brussels for talks on Saturday with key leaders. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert)

British Prime Minister Theresa May, left, walks ahead of European Union chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier prior to a meeting with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker at EU headquarters in Brussels, Saturday, Nov. 24, 2018. The European Union removed the last major obstacle to sealing an agreement on Brexit after Spain said it had reached a deal Saturday with Britain over Gibraltar on the eve of an EU summit. (AP Photo/Olivier Matthys)

A member of protocol carries the Union Flag, right, and EU flag prior to the arrival of European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and British Prime Minister Theresa May at EU headquarters in Brussels, Saturday, Nov. 24, 2018. British Prime Minister Theresa May is kicking off a big Brexit weekend by traveling to EU headquarters in Brussels for talks on Saturday with key leaders. (AP Photo/Olivier Matthys)

British Prime Minister Theresa May speaks during a media conference at the conclusion of an EU summit in Brussels, Sunday, Nov. 25, 2018. European Union gathered Sunday to seal an agreement on Britain's departure from the bloc next year, the first time a member country will have left the 28-nation bloc. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert)
Citizens Advice has warned buyers to beware of online marketplaces ahead of Black Friday as thousands report being ripped off.

More than 13,000 problems with purchases on online marketplaces were reported to the charitys consumer service last year, it said.

Recent polling suggests three quarters (76%) of UK adults now use online marketplaces, which are websites where traders and private individuals list and sell products.

However Citizens Advice warned consumers planning to spend in the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales to be aware of the dangers.

Analysis of calls to its service found that those reporting issues with online marketplaces last year lost an average of 215.

Half of those who had a problem (50%) had further issues trying to resolve it, while calls about problems with purchases on online marketplaces have increased by 35% over the past four years.

Citizens Advice warned about the dangers of online marketplaces (John Stillwell/PA)

In one case, a woman bought two Gucci childrens coats from an online marketplace, only to spot reviews saying the coats were fake after she had paid.

The mother-of-two said: The coats arrived and I was absolutely devastated. They looked absolutely awful. They looked so cheap, smelt like wet dogs and looked nothing like the picture.

She has laid a formal complaint with the payment company about getting her money back.

But Citizens Advice said more than half of customers did not know they had fewer rights when they buy from a private seller compared with a business.

It recommends that consumers check all the product information carefully before buying on an online marketplace and take extra care such as reading previous reviews and saving screenshots of their purchases.

Citizens Advice chief executive Gillian Guy said: Far too many people are being ripped off on online marketplaces. This National Consumer Week, we want to make sure customers know what to look out for when making a purchase  and their rights if something goes wrong.

With millions of people trying to find a bargain online on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, buyers need to beware when purchasing items through online marketplaces.

Before clicking the buy button, it is really important people check the product information available otherwise they risk being left out-of-pocket.

Consumer Minister Kelly Tolhurst said: The UKs consumer protection regime is one of the strongest in the world, but there is always more to do to ensure shoppers know their rights.

We are clear that online marketplaces must ensure consumers are aware of the rights they have. With 76% of us now using these marketplaces this campaign from Citizens Advice will play a valuable role in helping ensure consumers can shop with confidence and know what their rights are should things go wrong.
The government of the UAE stressed compelling and powerful evidence was shown in support of prosecuting British academic Matthew Hedges for spying amid an outcry in the UK over his sentencing to life imprisonment.

A law chief in the Gulf federation said the case had been thoroughly investigated and warned the government does not attempt to interfere in court cases.

Jeremy Hunt is leading efforts to apply diplomatic pressure on the country to release the 31-year-old PhD student, who could face a life behind bars after being convicted of espionage.

The Government should state that the British academic accused of spying in the United Arab Emirates is innocent of the charges, his wife has said (Daniela Tejada/PA)

On Thursday the Foreign Secretary said he had a constructive conversation with his opposite number, Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed, tweeting: I believe & trust hes working hard to resolve the situation asap.

According to the BBC the UAEs ambassador in London, Sulaiman Almazroui, will issue a statement on Friday morning that could give an update on the case.

After returning to the UK on Thursday, Mr Hedges wife, Daniela Tejada, met with Mr Hunt and later said she had been assured that UK officials are doing everything in their power to bring her husband home.

Our thoughts are with Matthew Hedges, his wife Daniela and his family today. We will do everything we can to get him home as soon as possible pic.twitter.com/hE4systClL  Jeremy Hunt (@Jeremy_Hunt) November 21, 2018

However a frank statement by Abdulla Al Naqbi, head of the Department of Legal Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, set out the UAEs position.

The UAE respects the rule of law and is committed to upholding the highest judicial standards. Like all countries with an independent judiciary it is vital that the government does not attempt to interfere in court cases, the statement said.

We cannot give assurances to other countries about the outcome of trials.

Mr Hedges shock sentencing during a five-minute hearing at an Abu Dhabi court on Wednesday prompted a furious response by UK officials.

Mr Hunt said he had seen absolutely no evidence to support prosecutors allegations that Mr Hedges was spying when he visited Dubai earlier this year.

He also threatened serious diplomatic consequences if the student, who is originally from Exeter, is not freed.

However Mr Al Naqbi defended the courts decision, stressing the crimes Mr Hedges is accused of are extremely serious and protecting the UAEs national interests must be our first priority.

The case against Hedges was thoroughly investigated by the public prosecutor, the statement said.

Compelling and powerful evidence was presented in court. That included information extracted from his personal electronic devices by expert forensic analysis techniques; evidence provided by UAE intelligence agencies; witness testaments and Hedges own confession.

The statement rejected claims that Mr Hedges was forced to sign a document in Arabic that has been used as the confession and said he was provided with translators.

The minister also rejected claims that Mr Hedges had been mistreated while held in custody.

Contrary to media reports, Matthew Hedges has been treated fairly and according to the constitution of the UAE. We are proud to have a system of justice that gives everyone the right to a fair trial, it said.

A family representative said Mr Hedges was held in solitary confinement for more than five-and-a-half months, during which his mental and physical health seriously deteriorated.

The UAE statement rebutted claims that the student had been denied visits by his family or British embassy staff and said he had access to medical and psychological care throughout.

Mr Hedges, a Middle Eastern studies specialist, was arrested at Dubai Airport as he tried to leave the country on May 5.

Professor Stuart Corbridge, vice-chancellor of Durham University, said there is no reason to believe that Matt was conducting anything other than legitimate academic research.

Case of Mathew Hedges extensively discussed with UK colleagues over last 5 months. Unusual & embarrassing revelations about friends & allies. With reluctance of UK authorities to address matter thru common channels,due legal process needs to take its course.  .   (@AnwarGargash) October 12, 2018

After a hearing in October UAE Foreign Minister Anwar Gargash said attempts had been made to address the case though common channels, although reluctance of UK authorities meant it was passed to the courts.

He tweeted: Case of Mathew Hedges extensively discussed with UK colleagues over last 5 months. Unusual & embarrassing revelations about friends & allies.

With reluctance of UK authorities to address matter thru common channels,due legal process needs to take its course.

Mr Hedges was given 30 days to challenge the court ruling, and Ms Tejada on Thursday started a petition on Change.org which has gathered more than 150,000 signatures.

She wrote: Matthew may be able appeal his sentence in one months time. Before then I am begging as many people as possible to back my petition calling on the British Government to do everything in their power to ensure the UAE let my husband come home.

Mr Al Naqbi said officials had discussed the matter regularly over recent months.

Both sides hope to find an amicable solution to the Matthew Hedges case, he said.
Samsung Electronics has apologised for the sickness and deaths suffered by some of its workers.

The South Korean technology giant said it failed to create a safe working environment at its computer chip and display factories.

The announcement came weeks after the company and a group representing ailing Samsung workers agreed to accept compensation terms suggested by a mediator and end a highly-publicised standoff that went on for more than a decade.

Kinam Kim, president of Samsungs device solutions division, said the company failed to sufficiently manage health threats at its semiconductor and liquid crystal display manufacturing lines.

Hwang Sang-gi, right, father of former Samsung semiconductor factory worker Hwang Yu-mi who died from leukemia in 2007, shakes hands with Kinam Kim (Lee Jin-Man/AP)

Dozens of employees who worked there have experienced grave illnesses such as leukaemia and brain tumours.

We offer our sincere apology to our workers who have suffered with illnesses and their families, Mr Kim said during a news conference in Seoul, which was also attended by activists and relatives of the workers.

The standoff began in 2007 when taxi driver Hwang Sang-gi refused to accept a settlement after his 23-year-old daughter died of leukaemia after working at a Samsung factory.

Mr Hwangs efforts to clarify the cause of her death and hold Samsung responsible for problems related to working conditions galvanised a broader movement to hold businesses and the government accountable for safety lapses in the chip and display industries, which use huge amounts of chemicals.

No apology would be enough when considering the deception and humiliation we experienced (from Samsung) over the past 11 years, the pain of suffering from occupational diseases, the pain of losing loved ones, Mr Hwang said at the news conference.

But I take todays apology as a promise from Samsung Electronics, to improve the safety of its workplaces, he said.

According to the settlement, Samsung will compensate for various illnesses of employees who have worked at its chip and LCD factories since 1984, including as much as 150 million won (100,000) for leukaemia.

The compensation also covers miscarriages and congenital illnesses of the workers children such as child cancer.

But while cutting a deal to end the standoff and loosely admitting to lapses in safety standards, Samsung has yet to fully acknowledge its workplace environment as the direct cause of the illnesses.
Dolce And Gabbana goods have disappeared from Chinese e-commerce sites after remarks insulting to China that were apparently made by two of the firms Instagram accounts.

Searches for Dolce And Gabbana turned up no items on major online retailers such as Alibabas Tmall and JD.com.

The company has blamed hackers for the Instagram activity.

A duty-free shop at the Haikou Meilan airport on Chinas Hainan island posted a photo of empty shelves on its social media account, saying that it had pulled all Dolce And Gabbana products.

Dolce And Gabbana products have disappeared online in China (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

It wrote in another post that Even if our power is small, we have to show our stance. We are proud of being Chinese.

The moves by retailers came a day after several screenshots were circulated online showing co-founder Stefano Gabbana referring to China with crude terms and emoji as he defended promotional videos that had sparked controversy earlier.

The comments were made in a private message exchange with another Instagram user. Separately, the Dolce And Gabbana account used offensive language in another exchange.

The Italian luxury fashion house apologised and said both accounts had been hacked.

We have nothing but respect for China and the people of China, it wrote.

The apology was too late to save a major extravaganza in Shanghai that Dolce And Gabbana had billed as one of its biggest shows ever outside of Italy.

Major Chinese celebrities threatened to boycott the event, which had been scheduled for Wednesday night, and the company finally called it off.

Actress Zhang Ziyi, who starred in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, said the Italian brand had disgraced itself.

An analyst said the bad publicity will have a lasting effect.

Shaun Rein, founder and managing director of China Market Research Group in Shanghai, said: Its the kiss of death for Dolce And Gabbana. I expect them to have a real tough time over the next six to 12 months.

The three promotional videos that led to the Instagram fiasco showed a Chinese woman using chopsticks to eat pizza and other Italian food.

Many in China called them racist and full of outdated stereotypes. The videos were previously deleted from the companys account on Weibo, a Chinese version of Twitter.

Mr Rein said it is a big mistake when westerners come up with creative content but do not understand how the campaigns will be received by Chinese consumers.

He noted a trend of rising nationalism in China. So if you, as a western brand, do anything that looks like you are mocking or making fun of Chinese culture, thats a big no-no, he said.

The ruling Communist Partys Peoples Daily newspaper wrote on Weibo: China has always been friendly to foreign businesses. But it doesnt mean theres no bottom line. There is a deal only when there is respect.
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu presents a flag to Igor Korobov, chief of Main Directorate of the General Staff of Russian Armed Forces, formerly known as the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), during a ceremony in Moscow in this February 2, 2016 handout photo obtained by Reuters November 22, 2018.

Korobov, 62, had served as chief of the Main Intelligence Directorate, commonly known by the Russian acronym GRU, for almost three years.

The ministry said he died on Wednesday after a "long and serious illness", with analysts suggesting it was a code word for cancer.

"The dear memory of this great man, a faithful Russian son and a patriot of the Motherland. will remain forever in our hearts", the defence ministry said.

The US and its allies have accused the GRU of hacking the 2016 US presidential campaign, orchestrating the March nerve agent attack on a Russian ex-spy in the United Kingdom, and disrupting anti-doping efforts in world sports. Korobov was sanctioned by the Treasury Department for the release of emails stolen from the Democratic Party in support of Donald Trump's campaign in 2016.

Russian President Vladimir Putin offered condolences to Korobov's family but did not immediately name his successor. He said Gen. Korobov led "a "legendary agency".

Although the Twitter feeds of numerous Russian Federation watchers in the West filled with black humour about the short life expectancy of any GRU leader, especially after a string of bungled overseas operations, Korobov's death was not considered all that untimely in Russian Federation.

His predecessor had died two years earlier, aged 58. Some reports said he was killed in Lebanon while on a mission.

Sergei Skripal, a former GRU agent, and his daughter were both targeted with Novichok attacks earlier this year.

London identified the suspected attackers as GRU agents.

With Korobov no longer at the helm, Putin is most likely to appoint a successor that will be closer to the traditions of the GRU, which has typically worked in the shadows. with few public appearances by any of its agents or those who are in charge.

"I am sure of your professionalism, personal bravery and decisiveness", he told the GRU staff.

It has an extensive spy network overseas and its highly trained "spetsnaz" special forces have fought in various conflicts, including in Afghanistan and Chechnya. Its emblem is a black bat flying above a globe.
A Peruvian Airlines Boeing 737 suffered a collapsed landing gear when it arrived at an airport in Bolivia, forcing closure of the runway for 10 hours.

Officials say none of the 122 passengers or five crew members were hurt.

Officials say they were unable to move the plane, prompting a 10-hour closure that delayed several other flights into and out of the El Alto airport near the Bolivian capital on Thursday.

The plane was arriving on a flight from Cuzco, Peru.

The airline said in a statement that the cause of the incident is under investigation.
A teenager is dead and two others have been injured following a shooting at an Alabama shopping centre prior to Black Friday shopping.

Authorities say the shooting happened about 9.30pm local time on Thursday at the Riverchase Galleria in Hoover, a nearby suburb of Birmingham.

Police say a fight between two teenagers, including an 18-year-old, resulted in an exchange of gunfire. One teenager fled but was confronted by two Hoover police officers.

Captain Gregg Rector said at a news conference that a Hoover officer did engage that individual, shot him and he is dead on the scene.

The second teenager was taken to hospital and is in a serious condition.

Police said a 12-year-old girl also struck by gunfire was in hospital.

One person has died following the shooting (Peter Byrne/PA)

The Riverchase Galleria said the shopping centre is closed until further notice.
Ben Stokes and Jos Buttler rode their luck as England battled back from four cheap wickets to build a 206-run lead at lunch on day three of the final Test against Sri Lanka.

The possibility of a major collapse had been on the cards at 39 for four, with Englands top order blown away in the first 11 overs of the day, but Stokes (32no) and Buttler (38no) hit back with an vital, incident-packed stand of 71.

Stokes was caught twice off Lakshan Sandakan no-balls, at cover on 22 then slip moments before the interval, with the spinner guilty of egregious sloppiness. Buttler was also given out on 27 but a seemingly sound decision was overturned when ball-tracking showed it skipping over middle stump.

Opener Keaton Jennings started the rot, propping forward unconvincingly at the first ball of the day from Dilruwan Perera and was given lbw as it slid straight on with the arm.

Rory Burns had been looking on from the non-strikers end but departed almost identically as the off-spinner willed another wicket-to-wicket delivery into the front pad.

First-innings centurion Jonny Bairstow was Pereras third scalp of the day, making 15 before being bravely caught at short-leg by Kaushal Silva off a forceful on-side punch.

Dilruwan Perera celebrates the dismissal of Jonny Bairstow (Eranga Jayawardena/AP)

When captain Joe Root fed a leading edge back to left-armer Malinda Pushpakumara just nine balls later England appeared to be in a tailspin. The fifth-wicket duo restored equilibrium, Stokes and Buttler tipping the scales back in their sides favour.

The pair knocked Sandakan off his length, with the wrist spinner shipping four boundaries in two costly overs to release the pressure.

Sri Lanka could scarcely believe their fate when Sandakans wandering front foot and Buttlers DRS gamble denied them another wicket before lunch and already face a hefty chase with six batsmen still to remove.
The ruling elite today knows that without an umbilical cord to the West, its status among the liberal classes is open to serious doubt

Indians are globally acknowledged for their talking. Think of an Israeli, the image of an uncompromising doer is conjured (consider the fact that in an era of endemic threats of hijack, the Israeli Airline El-Al has never figured in the media for any attempt at hijack). Think of a Taiwanese, the image of an insatiable learner is conjured (even the book shops in Taipei are converted into virtual libraries with voracious readers sitting at any place inside the shop browsing or reading). Think of an Indian and you picture someone who is expressing an opinion or aggressively advocating some point of view. It is believed that the Indian delegation in the UN holds the record for the longest, continuous talk. It is reported that KV Krishna Menon set that record.

This is not to offer an opinion on whether our well-acknowledged trait of ceaseless talk is good or bad. The profession of the writer of these lines discourages him from being judgmental. But Indians do talk in restaurants, homes, offices, while commuting and in any other place where there is somebody to talk and another person to listen. If there are two or more persons together, there is often a competitive bidding for talk time even though neither may be listening. The more popular topics are of course politics  national politics, state politics, local politics, family politics, and much more. Such themes merit much attention and endless energy. Witness many Indian couples trying to beat out each other for talking space. The conversation often begins in a local language and when the conversationalists believe they are losing the edge, they often try to switch over to English  at least to what they believe is English. When this does not win the joust, the pitch of the voice is raised. Usually, the bout ends with one or the other or both the parties getting exhausted. Once they recoup their energies, they are back at it.

Among the current favourite of political themes, clearly the idea of India is a frontrunner. Put simply, the flashpoint is of whether Hinduism  whatever content that may have  should have primacy or not. Columns, books, conferences, agitations and whatever else one can think of as handy are at use. One can notice even otherwise quite worthless thinkers occupying spaces as great intellectuals reflecting on history, sociology, or for that matter, even economics. This national sport of talking sometimes carries the trophy of political power. So be it. It is obvious, however, that whichever way this debate on the idea of India may or may not go, it does give some visibility to the talker in an otherwise status-bound society.

In India, status essentially comes out of cloning Western norms or intellectual traditions. Recently, after 2014, there has been some rearguard action of those who avow tradition to enter the sacrosanct space of eminence and prominence. The battle has not yet quite been won. Time will tell. Meanwhile, even in this regime, intellectual traditions with pedigree in Western tradition are highly valued. Someday, someone may file an RTI asking, How many Government contracts or contracts from the so-called autonomous bodies of the Government for consulting were awarded to consultancy firms of Western pedigree?

The answer would be not just interesting but illuminating. In many small and big ways, with all the trappings of indigenous glorification, the ruling elite of 2018 knows that without an umbilical cord to the West, its status among the Indian classes is open to serious doubts. This situation was foreseen by many even in pre-Independent India. Several thinkers of the independent Liberal Party of Britain, who were essentially for Indian independence, had voiced their anxieties. George Lansbury, for example, as an intellectual frontrunner, in his private papers had voiced serious doubts. Looking at the trend of the Indian leadership of certain political parties, his worry was that once the British left India, they would only be handing over power to another set of sahibs, the brown ones at that. They would claim to represent India but be totally steeped in intellectual prejudices of the British ruling elite. This would cover social mores, norms and styles of representation. Realistically, indigenous-based traditions would never grow.

Today the protagonists of the idea of India debate seem to have inherited this mantle. They seem to be the 21st century version of their forerunners in the Indian political leadership in the second half of the 20th century. Yes, several of them dress in Indian ethnic clothes but their mentality, intellectual standards and ideals are still rooted in a strange modern version of post-Victorian ideals of what a society is all about. Who knows, one day India will also be over the hump.

(The writer is a well-known management consultant)
Seven terrorists, an Army jawan, and a civilian were killed in separate incidents of violence in south Kashmir on Sunday amid a massive counter-insurgency offensive launched by security forces. Separatists have called for a shutdown on Monday against what they called killing of 18 Kashmiris in past three days. Police said that six ultras killed in Shopian village were involved in several heinous crimes, including murder of three policemen.

Official sources said a joint team of security forces cordoned off Batagund village in Shopian district of south Kashmir during the night hours to launch an attack on a house where suspected terrorists were hiding. The security forces had specific tip-off on their presence.

During the initial bout of firing, a soldier of 162 Territorial Army Nazir Ahmad was hit by bullets along with another soldier. They were shifted to hospital for treatment where Ahmad, a resident of Ashmuji village in neighbouring Kulgam district, succumbed to his injuries. Sources said four ultras were killed in the first round of firing. There was a lull of more than an hour when terrorists again opened fire. In the retaliatory firing, two more ultras were shot.

The group belonged to Hizbul Mujahideen (HM) and Lashkar-e-Tayyeba (LeT) outfits and all but one slain terrorists were local residents, including Abbas Bhat, who had recently taken over as the groups district commander to replace Zeenatul Islam, who has joined Al Badr group in the area. The Sunday gunfight was the fourth encounter in south Kashmir region in a weeks time. During these gunfights, 12 ultras, including top commanders of HM and LeT, were killed, six each in Anantnag and Shopian districts.

Armys Srinagar-based spokesman Colonel Rajesh Kalia confirmed the casualties in Shopian encounter. OpHipuraBatagund (#Shopian). Two more #terrorists killed. Total Six terrorists killed. Weapons and warlike stores recovered. One soldier also martyred. Operation over, Kalia tweeted.

Locals said after the daybreak when the news about the encounter spread in the area, hundreds of villagers marched towards the encounter site. The security forces fired teargas shells and automatic weapons to stop protesters. During the security forces action, several protesters were injured. Among the injured, one civilian Noman Ashraf Bhat succumbed to his injuries. Another youngster Faizan Ahmad was admitted to hospital with a bullet injury.

A health official in Kulgam said they received a 25-year-old youth with firearm injury and a five girl with pellet injury.

A police spokesman identified the slain ultras as Mushtaq Ahmad Mir, Mohammad Abass Bhatt, Umar Majeed Ganaie, Mohammad Waseem Wagay and Khalid Farooq Malik. Intelligence reports said that one terrorist was a suspected foreigner.

It was a combined group of HM and LeT, as per police records, Mushtaq Ahmad Mir was affiliated with LeT and was operating as district commander for Shopian, while Mohd Abaas, Waseem Wagay, Umar Majeed Ganai and Khalid were with HM. Mohammad Abass was known as District Commander of HM for Shopian and Umar Majed was operating as district commander of HM for Kulgam, said the police spokesman.

All the six killed terrorists were wanted for their complicity in a series of terror crimes including the attack on security establishments and civilian killings in the area. With their elimination, all notorious ultras of the belt have been successfully eliminated, said the police spokesman.

He said Umar Majeed had escaped from an encounter in Batamaloo area of Srinagar a few months ago. His picture clicked in front of famous Clock Tower in Srinagar had gone viral a few days ago.

In another incident, a Jaish-e-Muhammad terrorist was killed in a brief shootout in Khrew area of Pampore in south Kashmirs Pulwama district on Sunday afternoon. He was identified as Waseem, a resident of Pakistan.

A police spokesman said that on credible input about the presence of ultras, a swift search operation was launched jointly by police and security forces at Bathien area of Khrew in Awantipora.

As the searches were going on, the search party was fired upon by the ultra. The fire was retaliated leading to a brief exchange of gunfire, he said.

Consequently one terrorist was killed in the exchange of fire, he added.

Incriminating materials including arms and ammunition and an AK-47 Rifle with magazines were recovered from the killed ultra.

Sources said thousands of people took part in the funeral of slain Class X student Nouman Ashraf Bhat at his native village of Bolsoo of Kulgam district.

Meanwhile, separatist Joint Resistance Leaders (JRL) -- Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Mohammad Yasin Malik -- called for a complete shutdown against the killing of about 18 Kashmiris in last 3 days and injuring hundreds by the indiscriminate use of bullets, pellets and other oppressive measures by Indian occupational forces.

Police said that a module inspired by Islamic State was arrested from Kothibagh area of Srinagar with the assistance of Delhi police. At a naka checkpoint, a party of Srinagar Police intercepted a motorcycle borne terrorists who were moving through the Kothi Bagh area. Police acting swiftly apprehended the motorcyclist and the other two associates. Arms and ammunition were recovered from the possession of the trio. They have been identified as Tahir Ahmad Khan, Haris Mushtaq Khan and Asif Suhail Nadaf resident of Rainawari Srinagar.
The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) sponsored Dharm Sabha did not announce any date for the construction of Ram Temple, but one of its senior seers claimed that the Centre will take some decision on this issue after results of Assembly polls were out on December 11.

Amid growing demand for the construction of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya without further delay, Ramji Das of Nirmohi Akhara told VHPs Dharm Sabha on Sunday that dates for the same will be announced early next year during Kumbh in Prayagraj.

Addressing the sabha after the inauguration marked by chanting of mantras at the Badey Bhaktmaal ki Bagia, Ramji Das said, The date for construction of the Ram Temple will be declared in the 2019 Kumbh which will be held in Prayagraj.

It is only a matter of a few days, and I request you all to show some patience, the seer remarked.

The seers at the Dharm Sabha administered oath to the crowd and asked people to take back soil of Ayodhya and make pledge that they will not let die down struggle for making a grand Ram temple at Ayodhya.

The Dharm Sabha underlined the strong sentiment for Bill or Ordinance for Ram Temple by the Centre. Chairman of the Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas Mahant Nritya Gopal Das, who presided over the Sabha, said that people still have faith in the BJP Governments at the Centre and Uttar Pradesh.

This congregation proves the point that people want temple at Ayodhya. Till Modi is PM, and Yogi is Chief Minister of UP, I am sure that they will find a way out, he said. This sentiment was also echoed by Swami Rambhadracharya, who disclosed, I spoke to a senior Minister in the Central Government regarding this issue on November 23. He assured me that after December 11, we will sit with the PM and will take a decision on this issue. I am hopeful that a legislation will come for temple construction.

The Swami further said the Minister had asked us to keep patience. The Government will respect our sentiments this is what a senior Minister told me. I am a devotee of Lord Ram and Ram Janmabhoomi is our right, he said.

He further said he also spoke to RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat who assured me that pressure will be mounted on the Government for bringing in a legislation in Parliament for temple construction. We want all MPs to be united and the Bill be passed with 2/3rd majority, the Swami said.

The congregation was amalgamation of sants, RSS, VHP and BJP leaders. The sants took the lead while others followed.

We will abide by the decision of this Dharm Sabha. We will not keep quiet till Mandir construction is achieved, RSS Sah Karyawah Krishna Gopal said.

Earlier, welcoming the sants VHPs national vice president Champat Rai said the fight for Ram Janambhoomi is on for past 500 years. This issue is dominating the energy of this country. Hindu Samaj wants the Janmabhoomi back. We dont want division of the land and want entire land, he said.

He also demanded that Muslim side should take back its case from the Supreme Court for early solution of the case.

He announced that next most important Dharm Sabha will be in Delhi on December 9.

Several sants and seers of Ayodhya participated in the Dharm Sabha but several seniors also gave it a miss.

The city is drenched in saffron - the colour of Hindu parties - with group of supporters chanting Jai Sri Ram on the streets. They danced to the beats of drums and made a vow to sacrifice their lives for Ram Temple.

Elaborate security has been made for the meeting with over 60 companies of para-military forces have been rushed to maintain law and order. ADG (Law and Order) Anand Kumar told reporters in Lucknow the Dharm Sabha concluded in a peaceful manner. We were taking the help of drone cameras to monitor the crowd, he said.

The official claimed that around 75,000 people are attending the Dharm Sabha while 25,000 people are at different temples. However, in the first half around 27,000 pilgrims had darshan of Ram Lalla at the makeshift temple at Ram Janmabhoomi, Kumar said.

The ADG also denied about threat by terrorist on Ayodhya. He said it was just a rumour after the Punjab incident.
Governor Anandiben Patel said at the 70th Foundation Day function of the National Cadet Corps (NCC) that the National Cadet Corps is a Triangular Service Organization of the Army, Navy and Air Force, engaged in grooming the youth of the country as disciplined and patriotic citizens.

It is a medium that develops a sense of unity among the youth by making them stay in discipline through military training and military activities. The Governor presented certificates to the cadets and released the magazine 'Spandan'.

Patel said that the basis of development of our country is coordinated efforts and unity. Cadets coming from different regions of the country get familiar with our valuable cultural heritage through the NCC camps.

The 'Youth Exchange Programme', takes the rich cultural heritage of our country not only throughout the country but also abroad and make the country proud.

She said that the participation of girls in NCC is a matter of immense pride for us. The NCC operates six girls battalion in the state through which the girls have led NCC in the state, country and abroad.

The Governor said that it is necessary for the youth to link up with NCC to play an active role in the spirit of patriotism, development and creative work.

The activities of the NCC show that the hearts of youth of our country are full of the spirit of unity and patriotism. Lauding the officers, jawans and associates NCC Officers the Governor said that they have trained the cadets with hard work and helped them reach the highest level. Additional Director General of NCC Directorate of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, Major General Mukesh K Dutta highlighted the activities of NCC.

On this occasion, Bhopal Group Commander, Brig Anil Hooda, Director, Group Captain AK Upadhyaya, Air Force Medal and families of NCC cadets besides dignitaries were present on the occasion. NCC Cadets presented cultural programme on the occasion.
Punjab Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh on Sunday sought the personal intervention of Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari for expeditious clearance of road projects related to the historic towns of Sultanpur Lodhi, Batala and Dera Baba Nanak, associated with the life of Guru Nanak Dev, whose 550th parkash purb (birth anniversary) is being observed in November 2019.

Amarinder in a letter to Gadkari said he was grateful to the Central Government for acceding to the Punjab Governments request related to the projects and announcements in this regard, especially the opening of Kartarpur Corridor to facilitate smooth and easy access to devotees to Kartarpur Sahib.

In view of the historic importance of these religious towns, Amarinder sought additional allocation of Rs 150 crore under the Central Road Fund (CRF) for the upgradation of the road network in Sultanpur Lodhi, Batala, Dera Baba Nanak and Gurdaspur.

He also sought from the Union Minister four-laning of 21.300 km stretch (from RD 16.800 to 38.100, which is currently two-laned with 10-meter carriageway), at an estimated cost of Rs 260 crore. This stretch is part of the Jalandhar-Kapurthala-Sultanpur Lodhi NH-703-A, an important highway which connects the holy town of Sultanpur Lodhi with the rest of Punjab and beyond, he said.

He added certain stretches of this highway (0.0 to 16.800) are already four-laned and byepass Kapurthala town through a circular road, but due to the expected increase in pilgrim traffic during the upcoming celebrations, it is imperative to four-lane the stretch of 21.300 kms, he added.

The Chief Minister also impressed upon Gadkari to immediately declare Tarn Taran-Goindwal Sahib-Kapurthala road as National Highway, as it is related to Guru Nanak Devs lige and connects Sultanpur Lodhi with Amritsar.

He apprised the Union Minister that the Central Government, vide letter dated November 6, 2017, has already given in-principle approval for declaration of aforesaid road as National Highway.

The Chief Minister further apprised Gadkari that in view of the announcement to open the Kartarpur Corridor, Dera Baba Nanak should be connected with Batala by a four-laned Highway to enable the devotees to visit Kartarpur Sahib by a short route.

Notably, Sultanpur Lodhi is of great religious significance as Guru Nanak Dev spent 14 years here and attained enlightenment, before embarking on his missionary travels. In addition, other important places linked to Guru Nanak Dev are Batala, where his marriage was solemnised, and Dera Baba Nanak, where he spent the last days of his temporal life.
Punjab Governor and Chandigarh Administrator VP Singh Badnore inaugurated the third mega health check-up camp organised by the Joshi Foundation here on Sunday.

More than 10,000 patients were examined free of cost and given treatment at the mega health check up camp held at Sector 15 Patel Market in association with the Heart Foundation, supported by PGIMER, Homeopathic College and Hospital, Bharat Vikas Parishad and Indian Red Cross Society turning the venue into a mini hospital.

The Governor while addressing the gathering after inaugurating the camp said that it is the dream of the Prime Minister Narendera Modi to provide affordable and quality health care facilities to the every nook and corner of the country thereby evolving a healthy India. This mega health check up camp is a step forward in realising his dream of a healthy nation, he said.

Referring to the Ayushman Bharat, National Health Protection Mission launched by the Prime Minister, the Governor said that this scheme is not only providing health care facilities to approximately 50 crore beneficiaries but also extending an insurance cover to the family per year for secondary and tertiary care hospitalisation.

The Governor appreciated the efforts of Vineet Joshi, chairman of Joshi Foundation, for putting up an enormous camp in the memory of his late brother Navneet Joshi and his father Jai Ram Joshi, of involving everybody in this mammoth task of providing health care facilities.

The Governor also took a round of the camp and visited different stalls represented by Allopath doctors, practitioners of Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, Homeopathy, specialists in neurology, ophthalmology, orthopaedics, ENT, cardiology, urology, chest, gastroenterology, hip and joint replacement, gynaecology and obstetrics, dermatology, endocrinology, child specialist, cancer, dental care, general medicine, general surgery and kidney transplant.

Various diagnostic tests including blood, urine tests, ECG, spirometry tests, mammography etc were conducted free of cost.

The health check up camp witnessed huge participation of doctors, paramedics and patients. Renowned Cardiologist Dr HK Bali, Dr Atul Joshi, General and Laparoscopic Surgeon Surgical Oncology of Fortis Health Care, Doctors from PGIMER and other health institutions of both Government and private sectors were present at the camp.
Devendra Singh Panwar, a retired assistant engineer of Uttarakhand Power Corporation Limited (UPCL), was pleasantly surprised when his pending pension arrears, stuck up in the bureaucratic red tape for the past two years, were paid to him soon after he complained on the CM App. He had superannuated from the service in April 2016, but his pension arrears amounting to Rs 17.78 lakh had not been paid to him.

Panwar had submitted applications to the UPCL and the state treasury, requesting for prompt clearance of his pension arrears. But disappointment was what he faced over the two years with his due eluding him.

Acting on suggestion given by someone, he lodged an online complaint on the CM App.

Panwar, who had lost faith in the system, was surprised when he was contacted by an officer of the CM's office soon after he lodged the complaint and the full details of the matter were received from him.

On the instructions of the CM office, the UPCL and treasury swung into action and within days, his pending arrears were paid.

The chief treasurer, Dehradun, confirmed that the outstanding payment of the pensioner Devendra Singh Panwar has been made.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is shown speaking during a press conference in NY on September 26, 2018, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.

In addition to the U.S., Rouhani also criticized Israel, calling it a "cancerous tumor" established by Western nations to advance their interests in the Middle East.

Iran's leaders frequently condemn Israel and predict its demise, but Rouhani rarely employs such rhetoric. But the decision by U.S. President Donald Trump earlier this year to withdraw from a nuclear deal between Iran, the U.S. and major world powers - and to consequently restore some sanctions on Iran that were removed when the deal was struck in 2015 - has further inflamed those tensions.

Speaking at the annual Islamic Unity Conference in Tehran, Rouhani said the US wants to enslave the Middle East.

Iran has always been identified by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as "Israel's greatest threat" due to its nuclear weapons and support of anti-Israel terrorist groups, the report states.

He said bowing to U.S. pressure amounts to "treason".

Iran supports terror groups like Lebanese Hezbollah and Palestinian Hamas that are pledged to Israel's destruction.

Rouhani urged Shiite Iran's Sunni rival Saudi Arabia to end its dependence on "insulting" USA military aid.

"We do consider the people of Mecca and Medina our brothers", he added, referring to Islamic cities in Saudi Arabia.

"We have a choice to either roll out red carpets for criminals, or to forcefully stand against injustice and remain faithful to our Prophet, our Koran and our Islam", Rouhani said.

It accuses Tehran of fomenting unrest among Shiites in the Gulf Arab states and the two governments have supported opposing sides in devastating civil wars in Syria and Yemen. The two nations haven't had diplomatic ties in almost three years, following Iran's execution of a Shi'ite cleric.

"We do consider you as a brother", he said.
Hitting out at the Congress party over the article published in the National Herald, Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan here on Sunday said that that the Congress party was spreading lies as it was scared of defeat in the ensuing Madhya Pradesh assembly polls.

His comments come days after the media house published an audio clip of an alleged conversation between BJP candidate from Vidisha constituency Mukesh Tandon and state-unit chief Rakesh Singh, where the former allegedly said that he had to incur huge expenses to attract crowds for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's rallies in Madhya Pradesh as the people do not want to listen to him anymore.

Pradhan labelled the article as fake and added that the BJP had filed an official complaint in this regard with the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of the state. "Cyber Cell is conducting an inquiry in this regard," Pradhan said.

"Congress mouthpiece National Herald printed the conversation on Saturday.

The website has published the audio tape. It is clear that the Congress party and National Herald released this fake CD. The Election Commission has started looking into the matter," Pradhan added.

Pradhan said the Congress was making "failed attempts to spread lies" as they were scared of the prospects of an "imminent defeat" in the poll-bound state.

"It is their failed attempt to spread lies. They are scared of their imminent defeat due to which they have resorted to such measures," he added.

Later, a delegation of the BJP lodged a complaint with the Chief Electoral Officer VL Kantha Rao.Madhya Pradesh will go to polls on November 28 to elect 230 members of the state legislative assembly. The results will be declared on December 11.
The two main political parties in Punjab  the ruling Congress and the regional party Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD)  are making all out effort to outdo each other, and claim credit for the construction of the proposed Kartarpur Sahib corridor.

While the Congress Government in Punjab is patting its back for development claiming that it was the Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singhs repeated meetings and the Cabinet Minister Navjot Singh Sidhus initiative that led to the corridor, the SAD-BJP combine is giving all the credit to BJP-led NDA Government at the Centre for taking the historic decision.

For Mondays function to lay the foundation stone of proposed corridor, both the parties are ensuring the maximum presence of their leaders.

Vice-President M Venkaiah Naidu and Capt Amarinder are scheduled to lay the foundation stone on Monday in the presence of State Cabinet Ministers, Congress leaders, among others. At the same time, SAD declared that the partys leadership and workers will also participate in the ground-breaking ceremony.

SAD leadership and workers will take part in the ground-breaking ceremony of the proposed corridor to Kartarpur Sahib on the Indian soil while singing hymns of gurbani on November 26. This is an auspicious occasion for everybody who believes in the way to God shown by our great Guru Nanak Dev, as a long standing demand of the Sikh community has been fulfilled due to a bold initiative taken by the NDA Government at the Centre, said SAD senior vice-president and spokesperson Daljit Singh Cheema.

Cheema informed that the entire SAD leadership, under the leadership of party president Sukhbir Badal, would reach at Durbar Sahib, Dera Baba Nanak, in the morning, and after listening to shabads from the holy gurbani, a prayer of gratitude will be made to the akal purkh (God).

After the prayer, the sangat will march on foot to the ceremony site while singing auspicious shabads from the gurbani. SGPC president Gobind Singh Longowal, SAD core committee members, district presidents, MPs, legislators, former legislators, former ministers, all SGPC members and entire party leadership will grace the occasion, he said while appealing to the Sikh sangat to reach at Durbar Sahib, Dera Baba Nanak at 8 am.

Irked over the arrangements by the Central Government for the event, Punjab Cabinet Minister Tript Rajinder Singh Bajwa demanded the Punjab Congress leadership and the area Ministers should be accorded due space in the function.

Bajwa, the State Rural and Urban Development Minister, strongly reacted to the protocol for the Mondays function to lay the foundation stone for Kartarpur Sahib corridor while ignoring Punjab Congress leadership and the area ministers.

The list of speakers and those who would share the stage had been prepared at the Centre in which the Punjab leaders and local Ministers have not been given any space, he pointed.

He said the local religious leaders were objecting to the duties assigned to Union Minister and SAD MP from Bathinda Harsimrat Kaur Badal, who would propose vote of thanks. This duty should be assigned to Punjab Congress president Sunil Jakhar who is also the local MP. The Sant Samaj has threatened to walk out in case she is given such role, he said.

Bajwa added not only local leadership but even the Ministers from this district had been ignored.

SGPC chief Gobind Singh Longowal too would be there along with SGPC members that might create security problems keeping in view of the resentment among people against these leaders on the issue of sacrilege of Guru Granth Sahib, he warned.

Lashing out at the Central Government for going in for laying the foundation stone two days before Pakistan without preparing the layout, Bajwa said that the hurry was only to pre-empt the ground-breaking ceremony by Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan on November 28.

What supports Bajwas claims regarding unpreparedness of ground-breaking ceremony is the fact that the venue for the same has been changed twice. As per the information, the event will now be held at a venue where Punjab Cabinet Minister and Dera Baba Nanak MLA Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa was to hold a thanksgiving function.

Meanwhile, Gurdaspur Deputy Commissioner and the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) officials are also engaging in a blame game over preparations.

While the Deputy Commissioner Vipul Ujwal argued that the Centre has given the responsibility to NHAI for making arrangements, NHAI on the other hand, maintained that it was DCs duty as they knew nothing about the area.

In such a short span of time, things are really difficult for both the district administration and the NHAI. The function is to be presided over by the countrys second-most important constitutional head. Everything has to be in order which is not the case right now. The authorities should take the help of the army or otherwise things may turn bad, said a local Congress leader.
Union Minister on Sunday severely criticised the attack on Utkal Bharat president Kharabela Swain at Kashipur in Rayagada district on Saturday.

Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik looks tolerant outside, but he gets pleasure by disrespecting people who disagrees with him and criticises him, alleged Pradhan in a video message posted in the social media.

Pradhan said he has conveyed his protest against the attack on Swain to the Chief Secretary and the Director General of Police.

Agreement, disagreement and discussions in politics are parts of a democratic process. Swain and other opposition political persons have the right to criticise the Chief Minster and vice-versa. Bus use of the Biju Yuva Vahini, which is formed with the taxpayers money, to attack opponents is very disappointing, said Pradhan.

He wanted to know why a Crime Branch investigation ordered into the incident and why police didnt provide protection to Swain at the meeting venue despite his prior request.

He alleged that advisors of the Chief Minister have turned out to be cruel ahead of elections.

BJP general secretary Bhrugu Baxipatra alleged that the State Government has ordered a Crime Branch investigation into the incident only to protect the attackers.

The BJP is condemning the attack on Kharabela Swain. An Emergency-like situation has emerged in the State now. The State Government has adopted a path of violence to suppress the voice of opposition parties, he alleged.
Once upon a time there was a village called Raigoda in the heart of the Satkosia Wildlife Sanctuary and Tiger Reserve forests. The Odisha Tourism Department promotes Satkosia as Seven Miles of Smile for the tourists. Satkosias Raigoda tribals are popularly known as Zamindar Kondhs.

In the lap of the dense forests, the lives of these tribals were completely in harmony with the nature. Agriculture in the forest land, abundance of the forest produces and the forest works offered by the Forest Department from time to time provided their livelihoods. They had enough for their need. These simple sons and daughters of nature lived there happily.

Now Raigoda is the epicenter of tiger conservation efforts in Satkosia reserve. The tribal inhabitants of Raigoda had to clear their village to make way for the habitat of the tigers. For the first time in India, for the interState tiger relocation project, jointly implemented by the Ministry of Forests and Environment, the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the Odisha Forest Department, special enclosures have been set up in the erstwhile Raigoda area where the tigers to be relocated are acclimatized and made used to the environs.

Forest and tiger conservation officials believe that inside the tiger project sanctuary local tribal habitations are an anathema to wildlife conservation. Satkoshia was declared as a tiger reserve in the year 2007. A tiger reserve warrants that there should not be any habitation within the Satkoshia core area. The Odisha Forest Department started working hard on the relocation of the village Raigoda.

The villagers of Raiogoda were informed that they have to make way for the tigers and other wildlife. Promises were galore. They will be rehabilitated in another area, near the forests. A new village will be set up for them replete with the facilities like community toilets, community hall, school, hospital, temple, drinking water facilities, a pond for their use etc. Each of the households will be given land for agriculture, apart from the homestead land for their houses and an amount of Rs 10 lakh as compensation. The villagers of Raigoda agreed. Actually, they could not but agree, as there was no way out.

On the fateful day of December 8 2017, the Zamindar Kondhs of Raigoda bid farewell to their ancestral place with tearful eyes. They left behind their worship places, perennial streams, the piece of geography around which their lives as well that of their ancestors unfolded. Their cremation ground also left behind with the memories of their ancestors and their near and dear ones. It was not an easy task for the tribals. But they had to make way for conservation, which is so important for the nation. The Forest Department shifted around 80 households of Raigoda to New Raigoda, place near village Saruali under Bantala block of Angul district.

It is one year since the villagers were shifted from Raigoda and settled in New Raigoda. They were housed in temporary one room sheds in New Raigoda. A community hall has been erected there. There also has been a common kitchen, a bathing cum toilet complex has been constructed. A tube well has been dug there. And after one year the villagers have all the reasons to feel cheated and let down by the forest department and the district administration.

The core of the contention of the villagers of New Raigoda, their new reference, is about the land.

Binod Pradhan president of Raigoda says, The boundary of the New Raigoda has not yet been demarcated by the Government authorities. That is leading to conflict with the neighbouring villages Saruali and Nuakheta. They are the local people and we are the outsiders for them. In the absence of a proper demarcation, we are not able to assert our right. As promised by the Forest Department, we were to be provided with a burial ground. But it has not been provided to us. And a few months back, we had a serious conflict with the villagers of Saruali and Nuakheta over the cremation of the first person to die in this new village. We are being bullied here and we have to play the underdog. Old persons like Ghasia Pradhan, Budhia Behera, Padan Pradhan and Kuni Pradhan have not been provided with any land for house. Out of 80 families more than 25 have not been given any homestead land.

Mita Dehury, a tribal girl in class V, in her inherent simplicity spelt out her sorrow. She says, We were very happy in our village within Satkoshia. We were climbing trees, playing there, bathed in the stream water, collected fruits and flowers from the forest to eat and play. We had bigger houses there, where we were getting ample opportunity to play. We do not have any of those things here. Even the water here stinks. Water from the tube well has dust in it and it cannot be drunk. But, we have to drink it, as no alternative is there.

Mita is too young to understand that they have been uprooted and they have to take roots in the new world with a different set of rules and norms. New Raigoda has been provided with a tube well. But, dust particles come out with the water extracted. And the water is iron contaminated. During the summer months this tube well does not yield any water.

Old woman Puni Pradhan laments, We are here since a year. Yet there is no place for our deity. The promised ritual places and the pond are nowhere to be seen. How can we live in a village without our presiding deities? We are struggling really hard for water. We are not used to taking bath in the enclosed spaces. We are used to streams and rivers. Where is the pond?

Little does Puni know that in the modern days of development the deities are not as important as for the Kondhs. Actually for a village of 80 households the toilet complex constructed has limited number of utilities. And water availability to these complexes also is an issue.

The displaced tribals of Raigoda have the compensation money to fall back on for the time being. But they do not know what they will be doing once this money is exhausted. They do not have agricultural land. In the old village of Raiguda each of the families had land in the valley as well as in the up land. They earn their six months livelihood only from mustard crop. The perennial streams allowed them two crops of paddy and vegetable cultivation. Apart from paddy, mustard, vegetables, they also were cultivating ragi and other minor millets in the upland and the return was good. During the summer months the Forest Department engaged them for dousing forest fire. In the New Raigoda all these livelihood options are not available. Agriculture land is not provided to them as yet.

The biggest conflict and controversy arise when the displaced tribals are preparing their agricultural land. Nearby their resettlement colonys periphery, in their hard work they clean the bushes and roots of trees and develop the land for their cultivation. At the same time the people from the adjacent villagers claim the land to be theirs. So the effort of the new settlers to develop or acquire their agricultural land has not yielded any results. Now they have to wait for the Forest or the Revenue Department to show them a piece of land to develop. In such a situation, the villagers do not know what they will be doing for their livelihood.

Raigoda Kondhs have a belief that they are the descendants of the King and that is why identifying them as Zamindar (Landlord) Kondh. That is what they have strongly believed in and lived with. Even in the land records their caste column has the entry Zamidari Kandha. They working as wage labourers is not going to be easily acceptable to them. For the tigers they have left behind everything that they had. May be now they have to shed their special identity Zamindar Kondh, that they were so proud of.
Union MoS approves national herbal institute in principle

Sunday was a historical day for the border village of Ghes in Chamoli district as after about 70 years of Independence, this village finally received electricity supply. Chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat turned a switch on to formally inaugurate power supply at a programme held in the village. Responding to Rawats request, the Union minsiter of State for AYUSH, Shripad Naik, who was also present on the occasion, accorded his assent in principle to establishment of a national herbal institute in this area. Naik also assured necessary support from his ministry to develop this village into an AYUSH Gram.

A Kutki Jadi Booti Mahotsav was held at Ghes for conservation, improvement and marketing of herbs at Ghes. However, the occasion was historic as seven decades after the nation gained independence this village was electrified. Speaking on the occasion, Rawat said that the purpose behind creation of Uttarakhand state was to facilitate development of remote villages of this mountainous state. He was visiting Ghes for the second time in 13 months, which should make the intentions of the government clear, said the CM. By facilitating development in villages like Ghes in Chamoli and Pipli in Pithoragarh, the government is aiming to strengthen the livelihoods of the people. Rawat directed the Chamoli district magistrate to prepare a detailed project report for facilitation of planned development in Ghes, Balan and Himni villages of this region. A detailed plan should be made on how to use local resources and double the income of locals considering their requirements. These villages are to be developed as model villages, for which the active participation of the villagers is also essential. The CM also directed that organic farming certification should be started in the area. Bamboo and hemp can also be used to increase the income of farmers considerably. On being told about problem of telecommunication network in the area, Rawat said that permission had been granted for using electricity poles for optical fibre. He also said that industrialist Mukesh Ambani had spoken of facilitating free WiFi in hospitals and schools of Uttarakhand.

Speaking on the occasion, the Union minister of State for AYUSH expressed happiness at the Kutki fest, adding that his ministry will provide all possible assistance for encouraging herbs. The Central Government will provide the required financial assistance for developing Ghes into an AYUSH Gram. According his approval in principle to opening of a national herbal institute here, he said that such a demand is valid considering the major scope for herbs in the Himalayan region.

On the occasion, the CM also inaugurated various developmental schemes in the area. Local public representatives, villagers and officials were also present on the occasion.
In a musical treat for the students of Dehradun and Mussoorrie, the world- renowned violin player, N Rajam, recipient of countless awards, including Padma Bhushan, Sangeet Natak Academy Award and Academy Ratna, would perform for three days from Wednesday at several venues across the city and also at Mussoorrie . Providing information, the coordinator of SPIC MACAY which has invited the legendary Hindustani violinist to perform Abhishek Aggarwal said on Sunday that she would be accompanied by Pt Vinod Lele on Tabla and Prashant Mishra on violin.

The secretary, SPIC MACAY Vidya Vasan said that the series of the musical performance by the legendary violinist would commence at Rashtriya Anusandhan Vidhyalaya at 1.30 pm on November 28 and another one would be held on the same day from 7.15 pm at Instruments Research and Development Establishment. On November 29, the performance would be held at Doon Business School, Selaqui from 10 am and the same would be held at Lal Bahadur Shashtri National Academy of Administration, Mussoorrie from 4.15 pm. The celebrated violinist would again perform at Mount Fort Academy from 11 am on November 30 and the series of her performance here would end at Indian Institute of Remote Sensing on the same day where the performance would start at 6.30 pm.

The senior functionaries of SPIC MACAY said that they expected a large gathering of the students and others at each of the programmes.

N Rajam who was born in Chennai in a musical family started her initial training in carnatic music under the guidance of her father. She was also trained under Massurri Subramanium Iyer and learned raga development from the vocalist Omkarnath Thakur. Rajam started playing violin at age four. By the age of nine, she was a professional musician. She has performed in various countries in Europe. Besides, she extensively toured USA and Canada and performed in countries like Australia, New Zealand, Russia, Netherlands, to name a few.
Residents of the Shivaji Marg located near Bindal river were shocked on Sunday morning when some of them spotted a newborn baby girl thrown near the river. The baby, badly injured, was heard crying. The baby was rushed to the Government Doon Medical College (GDMC) Hospital by the local councillor Vishal Kumar. However, despite all efforts of the doctors, the baby died later in the day.

The medical superintendent (MS) of GDMC Hospital, Dr K K Tamta said that the baby was kept in the Neo Natal Intensive Care Unit ( NICU) of the hospital but the child died during the course of the treatment. The cantonment police under whose jurisdiction the area where the child was found is has registered a case. The police officers said that they were trying to identify the person who had thrown the baby there.
The indefinite Ghera dalo dera dalo agitation called by Ekikrit Para Sikshak Sangarsh Morcha members in support of their demands passed off peacefully in Ranchi on Sunday.

Elaborate security arrangement was in place in front of VIP residences and offices in the state capital in view of the protest. Notably, the teachers body has threatened to gherao the residences of MLAs and MPs to press for their demands which include regularization of services and increase in honorarium paid to them.

In view of the agitation, security force was posted at the residences of elected representatives including deputy chairman of Rajya Sabha Harivansh, state Assembly Speaker Dinesh Oroan and other MPs, Ministers and MLAs of the state. Barricading was also put up at several parts of city including Zakir Hussian Park, State guest house, Sidho Kano park, Ram Mandir, Judges colony, Randhir Verma Chowk and near the CM residences.

The administration also posted magistrates along with police at all the sensitive places of the city. Besides, 75 bike-borne quick reaction teams patrolled near the schools, educational institutions railway stations, bus stand, petrol pumps and other places across the city.

Officers-in- charge of all police stations would be on the move to ensure that security arrangement was in place. The circle officers are instructed to carry out surprise inspections in this regard, stated the order issued by the administration in this regard.

The administration had also banned gathering and procession on the Mahatma Gandhi route in view of the High Court order. The agitation has fizzled out. We had already arrested a large number of para-teachers which has depleted their strength. In addition, the administration has started taking disciplinary action against them which includes dismissal from work, said Ranchi deputy commissioner Rai Mahimapat Ray in this regard
Ending over eight months of suspense, the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party are likely to announce their political alliance for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections on December 14. The announcement of the formal alliance may be made either in Lucknow or Delhi and may be made jointly by BSP chief Mayawati and SP president Akhilesh Yadav.

The date has been chosen as kharmas is commencing from December 15 and will last till January 15 on Makar Sankranti. In north India as per the Indian calendar during the duration of kharmas, no auspicious tasks are undertaken during this period. Some specific activities are strictly prohibited and people do not initiate any new tasks and making any new beginning is not considered favourable.

The BSP had extended its support to SP candidates for byelections to the Gorakhpur and Phulpur Lok Sabha seats held in March this year and SP had wrested both the seats from the BJP. Later, in May, SP-supported Rashtriya Lok Dal candidate had wrested the Kairana Lok Sabha seats from the BJP and also the SP had wrested the Nurpur Assembly seat in Bijnor district in the byelection.

The Samajwadi Party sources said the alliance would also include the Rashtriya Lok Dal and Apna Dal (Krishna Patel faction) and two Lok Sabha seats are proposed to be offered to the Congress. Both SP and BSP have fielded their candidates in all 230 Assembly seats in Madhya Pradesh  thus damaging the electoral prospects of the Congress locked in a direct fight with the incumbent BJP. The BSP further damaging the Congress and benefiting the BJP has entered into alliance with former Chhattisgarh chief minister Ajit Jogi-led Janata Congress and contesting all the seats in Naxal-infested state.

We are waiting for the poll results of Assembly elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh and as per our assessment the Congress will do reasonably well in all the three states, said a senior SP leader adding we apprehend that the Congress will outrightly reject the offer of two Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh but we wish to keep the channels of communication open with the grand old party. Congress sources said the offer of two seats is ridiculous and the party rejects it with the contempt it deserves.

Regional parties are known for their habit of punching beyond their weight in states where they barely exists while they are cagey in sharing their political space in their parent state, said a Congress leader, adding in all the three poll-bound states of MP, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh , both the SP and BSP made unrealistic demands for the number of seats from us where they exist for the namesake while they want to give us only two Lok Sabha seats in UP where in 2009 Parliament election we had won 21 seats on our own strength, said a Congress leader.

Moreover, the Congress leader said: The regional parties must realise that a viable and stable national political alternative needs an anchor to sustain which can only be provided by the Congress with nationwide catchment area. He added: The same applies on the BJP with nationwide catchment area is an anchor of the National Democratic Alliance.
Three suspected terrorists allegedly affiliated with the terror organisation Islamic State of Jammu & Kashmir (ISJK), an ISIS inspired module were arrested on Saturday in a joint operation by the Delhi Police Special Cell with Jammu and Kashmir Police from Tourist Reception Center, Srinagar.

Their interrogation revealed that ISJK was planning a major terrorist strike in the national Capital. Delhi Police, Jammu & Kashmir Police and Punjab Police were working inn tandem after they were alerted by the security agencies about terrorist outfits active in the Kahsmir Valley planning to target New Delhi and other areas, sources said.

The Punjab Police was already on alert after its counter-intelligence wing suggested that six to seven Jaish-e-Mohammad terrorists could be moving towards Delhi from the Valley.

Police recovered two loaded pistols and three hand grenades with their arrest. An underground hideout in the middle of an apple orchard in Awantipora belonging to the ISJK was uncovered and half a dozen over ground workers (OGW) were also detained, police said.

The three active terrorists were identified as Haris Mushtaq Khan (24), who was a graduate in arts from Jamia Milia Islamic University in Delhi and is currently pursuing his Masters degree, Tahir Ali Khan (23), and Asif Suhail Nadaf (22).

On September 6 this year, two militant of ISIS inspired module of J&K namely Parvaiz Rashid Lone and Jamsheed Zahoor Paulwere arrested by Special Cell near Red fort, New Delhi along with arms and ammunitions. Following which, information was received about the ISJK terrorists in Srinagar, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Special Cell) Pramod Singh Kushwah stated.

Based on specific input, a trap was laid near Tourist reception centre in Srinagar led by Inspector Satish Rana, Sunil Rajain & Ravinder Joshi to nab the three terrorists, said the DCP.

The active terrorists came fully loaded with three grenades and two loaded sophisticated pistols on a bike. The swiftness of Police team in identification of militants averted a grenade blast in the heart of Srinagar and it also resulted in the arrest of three active militants. Arresting active and alive militants in Srinagar is a precious catch as they carry a plethora of valuable information about their hideouts, weapons, and future planning, DCP added. In this operation one underground hideout frequented by ISJK members was also busted at the sprawling apple orchard at Awantipora, Jammu and Kashmir by Army after an overnight operation. Half a dozen OGWs were picked up for questioning, he said.

Police revealed that the organization ISJK has been involved in several cases of attack in Jammu and Kashmir. In July, 2018 three security personnel were reportedly injured in a grenade attack carried out by the module in Anantnag district. In November 2017, in an encounter, a sub-inspector was killed in the shoot-out and on September 9 this year, a civilian Ahad Ahmed believed to be a police informer was killed.

It may be recalled that after Dawood Sofi, the social media-savvy head of the ISJK, was eliminated in Anantnag district of Jammu and Kashmir, the then Director General of Police (DGP) SP Vaid had said that as such there is no infrastructure of Islamic state or something like (in the Valley) but these days people do get influenced by radical material available online.
President Trump and incoming Mexican President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador have reportedly struck a deal to ensure that the days of asylum seekers crossing the U.S. -Mexico border without being vetted first, are over.

The plan, according to the newspaper, foresees thousands of migrants staying in Mexico while their asylum claims in the United States are being processed. "All will stay in Mexico".

Sanchez ruled out that Mexico would be declared a "safe third country" for asylum claimants, following a Washington Post report of a deal with the Trump administration known as "Remain in Mexico", which quoted her calling it a "short-term solution".

The AP also quoted future Interior Minister Olga Sanchez as saying, "There is no agreement of any sort between the incoming Mexican government and the US government".

Trump took to Twitter again Saturday to reiterate that he plans to do away with the US catch-and-release system, which allows asylum seekers to work and study sometimes for years while their cases are pending.

For now, we have agreed to this policy of Remain in Mexico. No formal deal has been signed between Mexico City and Washington so far, as the new Mexican administration led by the President-elect Lopez Obrador will only take office only on December 1.

"The medium- and long-term solution is that people don't migrate", she said.

But she said they could not make any agreement on the issue, since they are not yet in government. He has expressed determination to stop the caravan from reaching the USA, deploying troops to the border and warning of consequences should countries assist the caravan in its journey. The mayor of the border city of Tijuana, which now hosts some 5,000 migrants from a caravan seeking to cross into the U.S., has recently declared the situation in his city a "humanitarian crisis". "We come for an opportunity!"

Central American migrants arrive in a bus at a shelter for migrants in Tijuana, Mexico, Nov. 20, 2018.

Hundreds of the migrants lined up this week at a special jobs fair set up for them in the manufacturing city, but others remain determined to reach the US.

The agreement would break with long-standing asylum rules and place a formidable new barrier in the path of Central American migrants attempting to reach the United States and escape poverty and violence.

United States asylum officers will begin implementing the new procedures in coming days or weeks, Homeland Security officials cited by the Post said.

Sanchez, who said the situation of migrant caravans was "very delicate", did not explicitly rule out that Mexico could keep caravan migrants on its soil while their United States asylum claims are processed. "Central Americans have faced serious harm in Mexico".

"The Trump administration should focus on providing a fair and lawful asylum process in the United States rather than seeking more ways to undermine it".

The Wall Street Journal, in its own report on the agreement, said it strives to control how many migrants are allowed to stay on the American side of the border during the asylum process.

Julieta Vences, a congresswoman with Lopez Obrador's Morena party who is also president of Mexico's congressional migrant affairs commission, told the AP that incoming Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard has been discussing with us officials how to handle a deluge of asylum claims at the border.

A migrant man pushes a child in a stroller past a cordon of riot police as he joins a small group of migrants trying to cross the border. Mexico's incoming foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, said officials there may meet as early as Sunday morning to address the growing crisis, according to The New York Times.
Irans President Hassan Rouhani on Saturday called Israel a cancerous tumour established by Western countries to advance their interests in the Middle East.

Irans leaders frequently condemn Israel and predict its demise, but Rouhani, a relative moderate, rarely employs such rhetoric.

Addressing an annual Islamic Unity Conference on Saturday, Rouhani said one of the ominous results of World War II was the formation of a cancerous tumor in the region.

He went on to refer to Israel as a fake regime set up by Western countries.

Iran supports militant groups like Hezbollah and Hamas that are pledged to Israels destruction.

Iran has never threatened to attack Israel, but has vowed to retaliate if it is attacked.

Israel views Iran as an existential threat.

Rouhani said the United States cultivates close ties with regional Muslim nations to protect Israel, an apparent reference to Irans regional rival Saudi Arabia and the kingdoms Sunni Arab allies.

He said bowing to American pressure amounts to treason.

He added, however, that Iran was prepared to defend Saudi Arabia from terrorism and superpowers.

We do consider you as a brother, he said.

We do consider the people of Mecca and Media our brothers, he added.
Microsoft has become the most valuable US company with $753.3 billion in market capitalisation, riding past Apple for the first time since 2010 when it came close to the Cupertino-based tech giant.

Apple, which became the first $1-trillion US company in August, came down to $746.8 billion on Friday, owing to lower-than-expected iPhone sales amid reports of its suppliers cutting cost and workforce.

Amazon with $736.6 billion is currently at third and Alphabet (the parent company of Google) with $725.5 billion is at the fourth spot.

"With Microsoft now overshadowing all three, including Alphabet Inc, the firm now looks to be the most valuable tech company of the Silicon Valley giants," mspoweruser.com reported.

The investors are now betting big on companies with robust Cloud services and software services which are witnessing an increased demand from big and small enterprises the world over for their digital journey, at a time when giants like Facebook and Google face intense scrutiny for users' data practices.

Riding on its growing Azure Cloud, gaming and Surface laptop portfolio, Microsoft posted a revenue of $29.1 billion and net income of $8.8 billion for the first quarter of its 2019 financial results.

Revenue was up 19 per cent while net income increased by 34 per cent. Operating income was $10 billion and increased 29 per cent.

"We are off to a great start in fiscal 2019, a result of our innovation and the trust customers are placing in us to power their digital transformation," CEO Satya Nadella said in a statement.

Revenue in Intelligent Cloud was $8.6 billion and increased 24 per cent. Server products and Cloud services revenue increased 28 per cent driven by Azure revenue growth of 76 per cent, Microsoft informed.

Revenue in More Personal Computing was $10.7 billion and increased 15 per cent.

"Windows commercial products and Cloud services revenue increased 12 per cent," said the company.

Microsoft's gaming revenue increased 44 per cent with Xbox software and services revenue growth of 36 per cent while Surface revenue increased 14 per cent.

On the other hand, slower-than-expected demand has reportedly led Apple to direct its top phone assemblers, Foxconn and Pegatron, to halt a planned production boost for iPhone XR, a relatively cost-effective model that hit the shelves late last month.

Foxconn, a Taiwan-based company, would produce around 100,000 fewer units daily to reflect the new demand outlook, down 20-25 per cent from the original optimistic outlook, Japanese financial paper Nikkei reported earlier this week.

The estimates of iPhone XR have been cut by nearly 30 million shipments, according to an Apple analyst.

Ming Chi-Kuo, an Apple analyst working with TF International Securities, said earlier this month that shipment forecast for the iPhone XR has been cut from 100 million units to 70 million units during the product lifecycle.
Pet Lovers Association (PLA) launched a two-day protest against Prevention of Cruelty against Animals Act (Dog Breeding, Marketing and Pet Shops) at Delhi's Jantar Mantar on Saturday. Aam Aadmi Party politician Somnath Bharti also joined the protest.

The Association claimed that the rules dealing with the dog breeding, marketing and pet shops have adversely affected the business of poor breeders and pet shop owners and the rules are sometimes used against them by some animal welfare societies while some NGOs denied the allegations.

"Human rights and animal rights should be balanced. If we involve pet shop owners and breeders concerns and then draw a conclusion and come out with a law, then it would be feasible," said Bharti.

The Association claimed that round 2,500 people joined the protest on Saturday including the politician. The protests will be joined by Salman Kurshid and Sandeep Dikshit however the association claimed the protest to be non-political.

Ashok Pratap Rai, President, PLA, said, "While the intention to regulate pet trade and prevent cruelty to dogs and animals is largely welcomed, major parts of both legislatures are deeply flawed, anti-human, and are resulting in grave cruelty to the people engaged with the trade."

Similarly, Ajay Pratap Singh, General Secretary, PLA said that the rules pertaining to the space are unreasonable as many developed countries do not have such strict rules.

"Another highly unreasonable clause is the length and breadth of the enclosure for a dog which has been prescribed as four times to two times the length of the dog," Singh said.

The prescribed area is unreasonable in a country like India when the rules are lenient in some developed countries, he added.

The members of the association further alleged that this is largely affecting many breeders and those related to the trade, putting many out of the job and is leading to the harassment of self-employed people and making them vulnerable at the hands of some NGOs that sometimes confiscate the animals and harass the traders.

Amidst this, some NGOs talking to The Pioneer have completely denied the allegations made by them.

Gauri Maulekhi, representative of People for Animals, said, "Breeding and trade of animals has been completely unregulated and outside the ambit of tax leading to rampant cruelty and fraud withcustomers. The industry is simply resisting any regulation and wants to continue with the old ways." Many other NGOs also denied the allegations made by PLA.
Taiwan has rejected same-sex marriages, in a blow to the island's reputation as a rights trailblazer in Asia.

The referendum results came despite a high court ruling in March 2017 in favour of such unions that had given parliament two years to amend laws or pass new ones.

It was unclear how Saturday's voting would affect the legislation, the BBC said.

The government earlier said the Saturday referendum would not affect it bringing in the changes required by the court ruling.

Conservative groups asked whether the legislation -- defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman in Taiwan's Civil Code -- should remain unchanged, while the Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) activists demanded equal marriage rights.

Initial results suggested the conservatives received overwhelming support, while gay rights activists failed.

The authorities now were expected to pass a special law, without amending the Civil Code.

Campaigners fear the eventual legislation would be weaker, the BBC reported.

One possible outcome could be that gay couples would be given legal protection -- but not allow to marry, the Taiwanese media said.

At a news conference on Saturday, President Tsai Ing-wen, who quit as leader of Taiwan's governing party after defeats in local elections, admitted that her party DPP suffered on key local issues.

"Our efforts weren't enough and we let down all our supporters," the president said.

The marriage issue was part of three separate referendums on Saturday, which were put forward by Tsai's rival camps.

Tsai's pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is set to lose more than half of the 13 cities and counties it won in 2014, the Taiwanese media reported.

Taiwan's relations with China have deteriorated since Tsai came to power in 2016. Beijing has refused to deal with her because she does not recognise an agreement reached between the two sides in 1992 that both sides are part of one China.

Meanwhile the China-friendly former ruling party KMT made a dramatic comeback, winning 15 of the 22 cities and counties in Taiwan.

Nearly 21,000 candidates were vying for 11,000 elected positions, from mayors to city councillors and township chiefs.
At least 21 people have died and tens of thousands displaced by heavy rains that have battered Iraq over two days, the Health Ministry and United Nations said on Sunday.

Women and children were among the dead, health ministry spokesman Seif al-Badr told AFP. Some had drowned, but others had died in car accidents, were electrocuted, or were trapped when their houses collapsed. At least 180 more were injured, he added.

Iraq and neighbouring countries have been hit by heavier-than-average rainfall in recent weeks, resulting in deaths and widespread damage.
Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA engages in the traditional banking businesses of retail banking, asset management, private banking, and wholesale banking. It operates through the following segments: Spain, the United States, Mexico, Turkey, South America, and Rest of Eurasia. The Spain segment includes mainly the banking and insurance business that the group carries out in Spain. The United States segment consists of the financial business activity of BBVA USA in the country and the activity of the branch of BBVA SA in New York. The Mexico segment refers to banking and insurance businesses in this country as well as the activity of its branch in Houston. The Turkey segment reports the activity of Garanti BBVA group that is mainly carried out in this country and, to a lesser extent, in Romania and the Netherlands. The South America segment comprises of operations in n Argentina, Colombia, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. The Rest of Eurasia segment includes the banking business activity carried out by the group in Europe and Asia, excluding Spain. The company was founded in 1857 and is headquartered in Madrid, Spain.

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CYBG PLC, through its subsidiaries, provides retail and business banking products and services to individuals and businesses under the Clydesdale Bank, Yorkshire Bank, B, and Virgin Money brands in the United Kingdom. It operates through SME Banking and Retail Banking segments. The SME Banking segment offers a range of banking products and services, including business current accounts; and secured and unsecured term loans, business overdrafts, and invoice and asset financing products and services. It also provides international trade services, such as import loans, export loans, documentary collections, currency guarantees, and letters of credit for securing trade; and current account facilities comprising debit cards, cheque books, regular statements, direct debits, and standing orders, as well as day to day and online banking services. This segment serves business customers in the small business, commercial, corporate, and structured finance markets. The Retail Banking segment offers personal current accounts, savings accounts, and term deposits; occupied mortgage loans and BTL loans, unsecured personal loans, and overdrafts, as well as credit card products; and insurance and investment products. The company was founded in 1838 and is based in Leeds, the United Kingdom.

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The following companies are subsidiares of Continental Aktiengesellschaft: A-Z Formen- und Maschinenbau GmbH, ADC Automotive Distance Control Systems GmbH, ALPHALOR 3 EURL, AZ-CZECH s.r.o., Adam Touring GmbH, Advance Tyre Company Ltd., Advanced Imaging Technologies, Advanced Imaging Technologies (Pty) Ltd, Advanced Scientific Concepts, AlMutlak Continental Company Limited Liability Company, Application Solutions (Electronics and Vision) Ltd., Argus Cyber Security Ltd, BENECKE-KALIKO S.A., BENECKE-KALIKO S.A., BEST DRIVE CTM S.A. de C.V., BV Environmental Limited, BV F1rst Limited, Bandvulc Tyres Limited, Belt Concepts of America Inc., BeltTrade Inc., Benecke Changshun Auto Trim (Zhangjiagang) Co. Ltd., Benecke Changshun Eco Trim (Changzhou) Co. Ltd., Benecke-Kaliko AG, BestDrive LLC, BestDrive Sverige AB, Bestdrive Benelux B.V.B.A., CAC Philippines Inc., CAS Munchen GmbH, CAS UK Holding Ltd., CAS-One Holdinggesellschaft mbH, CGH Holding B.V., CGT Referral Resources Inc., CONTINENTAL CPM S. DE R.L. DE C.V., CONTINENTAL ENGINEERING SERVICES PORTUGAL UNIPESSOAL LDA, CONTINENTAL IBERIA SALES AND SERVICES S.A.U., CONTINENTAL INDUSTRIAL SERVICES S A (Pty.) Ltd., CONTINENTAL SURFACE SOLUTIONS INDIA PRIVATE LIMITED, CONTITECH Chile S.A., CPT Automotive Changchun Co. Ltd., CPT GUADALAJARA S. de. R. L. de C.V., CPT MANUFACTURING MEXICO S. de R. L. de C.V., CPT MAQUILA MEXICO S. de R. L. de C.V., Carrel Grundstucksverwaltungsgesellschaft mbH Co. Vermietungs KG, Changshu ContiTech Trading Ltd., Conseo GmbH, Conti Automotive Servicios S.A. de C.V., Conti Temic microelectronic GmbH, Conti Trade Australia Pty. Ltd., Conti Trade Italia S.r.l., Conti Versicherungsdienst Versicherungsvermittlungsges. mbH, Conti-Gummi Finance B.V., ContiTech (Shandong) Engineered Rubber Products Co. Ltd., ContiTech AG, ContiTech AVS France, ContiTech Africa (Pty.) Ltd., ContiTech Anoflex SAS, ContiTech Antriebssysteme GmbH, ContiTech Australia Pty Ltd, ContiTech Belgium BVBA, ContiTech Canada Inc., ContiTech China Rubber & Plastics Technology Ltd., ContiTech Consulting Mexicana S.A. de C.V., ContiTech Dae Won Airspring Systems Ltd., ContiTech Elastomer-Beschichtungen GmbH, ContiTech Finland Oy, ContiTech Fluid Automotive CZ s.r.o., ContiTech Fluid Automotive Hungaria Kft., ContiTech Fluid Automotive Maroc SARL, ContiTech Fluid Distribuidora S.A. de C.V., ContiTech Fluid Korea Ltd., ContiTech Fluid Mexicana S.A. de C.V., ContiTech Fluid Mexicana Servicios S.A. de C.V., ContiTech Fluid Monterrey Servicios S.A. de C.V., ContiTech Fluid Oil & Marine Middle East FZE, ContiTech Fluid Serbia D.O.O., ContiTech Fluid Shanghai Co. Ltd., ContiTech Fluid Technology (Changchun) Co. Ltd., ContiTech France SNC, ContiTech Global Holding Netherlands B.V., ContiTech Holding (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, ContiTech Holding Netherlands B.V., ContiTech IMAS A.E., ContiTech India Pvt. Ltd., ContiTech Japan Co. Ltd., ContiTech Kautschuk- und Kunststoffvertriebsges. mbH, ContiTech Kuhner Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, ContiTech Kuhner GmbH & Cie. KG, ContiTech Lastik Sanayi ve Ticaret AS, ContiTech Luftfedersysteme GmbH, ContiTech MGW GmbH, ContiTech Magyarorszag Kft., ContiTech Maroc SARL, ContiTech Mexicana S.A. de C.V., ContiTech North America Inc., ContiTech Oil & Marine Corp., ContiTech Power Transmission (Ninghai) Ltd., ContiTech Power Transmission (Sanmen) Ltd., ContiTech Power Transmission Korea Co. Ltd., ContiTech Print Service (S) Pte. Ltd., ContiTech Printing Blanket Shanghai Ltd., ContiTech Roulunds Rubber A/S, ContiTech Rubber Industrial Korlatolt Felelossegu Tarsasag, ContiTech Scandinavia AB, ContiTech Schlauch GmbH, ContiTech Services (Pty.) Ltd., ContiTech Shanghai Rubber & Plastics Technology Ltd., ContiTech Singapore Pte. Ltd., ContiTech Slovenija druzba za proizvodnjo gumenih tehnicnih izdelkov d.o.o., ContiTech South Africa (Pty.) Ltd., ContiTech Techno-Chemie GmbH, ContiTech Thermopol LLC, ContiTech Thermopol Romania S.R.L., ContiTech Tianjin Conveyor Belt Ltd., ContiTech Transportbandsysteme GmbH, ContiTech USA Inc., ContiTech United Kingdom Ltd., ContiTech Vibration Control France SAS, ContiTech Vibration Control GmbH, ContiTech Vibration Control Slovakia s.r.o., ContiTech Vibration Control s.r.o., ContiTech-Universe Verwaltungs-GmbH, ContiTrade (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., ContiTrade Africa (Pty) Ltd, ContiTrade France Rechapage, ContiTrade Services s.r.o., ContiTrade Slovakia s.r.o., Conticlub SAS, Continental - Industria Textil do Ave S.A., Continental Adria pnevmatike d.o.o., Continental Advanced Antenna Automotiva LTDA, Continental Advanced Antenna GmbH, Continental Advanced Lidar Solutions US LLC, Continental Aftermarket & Services GmbH, Continental Aftermarket GmbH, Continental Automotive AB, Continental Automotive Aguascalientes S.A. de C.V., Continental Automotive Austria GmbH, Continental Automotive Bajio S.A. de C.V., Continental Automotive Bangkok Co. Ltd., Continental Automotive Benelux BVBA, Continental Automotive Brake Systems (I) Private Limited, Continental Automotive Changchun Co. Ltd., Continental Automotive Components (India) Private Ltd., Continental Automotive Components Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., Continental Automotive Corporation, Continental Automotive Corporation (Lianyungang) Co. Ltd., Continental Automotive Czech Republic s.r.o., Continental Automotive Electronics LLC, Continental Automotive Engineering (Chongqing) Co. Ltd., Continental Automotive France SAS, Continental Automotive Funding Corp., Continental Automotive GmbH, Continental Automotive Grundstucksges. mbH, Continental Automotive Guadalajara Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Continental Automotive Holding Netherlands B.V., Continental Automotive Holding Spain S.L., Continental Automotive Holdings UK Ltd., Continental Automotive Hungary Kft., Continental Automotive Inc., Continental Automotive Instruments Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., Continental Automotive Interior Wuhu Co. Ltd., Continental Automotive Italy S.p.A., Continental Automotive Japan K.K., Continental Automotive Jinan Co. Ltd., Continental Automotive Korea Ltd., Continental Automotive Lithuania UAB, Continental Automotive Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., Continental Automotive Maquila Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Continental Automotive Mexicana S. de R.L. de C.V., Continental Automotive Occidente S.A. de C.V., Continental Automotive Parts (Suzhou) Co. Ltd, Continental Automotive Rambouillet France SAS, Continental Automotive Romania SRL, Continental Automotive SLP S.A. de C.V., Continental Automotive Singapore Pte. Ltd., Continental Automotive Spain S.A., Continental Automotive Systems (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Continental Automotive Systems (Tianjin) Co. Ltd., Continental Automotive Systems Changsha Co. Ltd., Continental Automotive Systems Changshu Co. Ltd., Continental Automotive Systems Costa Rica S.A., Continental Automotive Systems Inc., Continental Automotive Systems SRL, Continental Automotive Systems Slovakia s.r.o., Continental Automotive Trading France SAS, Continental Automotive Trading Italia S.r.l., Continental Automotive Trading Nederland B.V., Continental Automotive Trading UK Ltd., Continental Automotive Trading Osterreich GmbH, Continental Automotive UK Ltd., Continental Automotive Wuhu Co. Ltd., Continental Automotive d.o.o. Novi Sad, Continental Automotive do Brasil Ltda., Continental Barum s.r.o., Continental Benelux SPRL, Continental Bicycle Systems GmbH & Co. KG, Continental Bicycle Systems Verwaltungs GmbH, Continental Brake Systems (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Continental Brakes Italy S.p.A., Continental Brasil Industria Automotiva Ltda., Continental Caoutchouc-Export-GmbH, Continental ContiTech de Chihuahua S. de R.L. de C.V., Continental ContiTech de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Continental Daek Danmark A/S, Continental Dekk Norge A/S, Continental Digital Services France SAS, Continental Dack Sverige AB, Continental Engineering Services & Products GmbH, Continental Engineering Services GmbH, Continental Engineering Services Ltd., Continental Finance GmbH, Continental France SNC, Continental Global Business Services Manila Inc., Continental Global Holding Netherlands B.V., Continental HT Tyres s.r.o., Continental Holding China Co. Ltd., Continental Holding France SAS, Continental Hungaria Kft., Continental India Private Limited, Continental Industrias del Caucho S.A., Continental Industria e Comercio Automotivos Ltda., Continental Industria e Comercio de Pecas de Reposicao Automotivas Ltda., Continental Intelligent Transportation Systems (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Continental Intelligent Transportation Systems LLC, Continental Investment Ltd., Continental Italia S.p.A., Continental Lemmerz (Portugal)-Componentes para Automoveis Lda., Continental Llantera Potosina S.A. de C.V., Continental Mabor Industria de Pneus S.A., Continental Matador Rubber s.r.o., Continental Matador Truck Tires s.r.o., Continental Middle East DMCC, Continental Opony Polska Sp. z o.o., Continental Pneus (Portugal) S.A., Continental Pty Ltd, Continental Reifen Deutschland GmbH, Continental Rengas Oy, Continental Rubber of America Corp., Continental Safety Engineering International GmbH, Continental Secure Data Germany GmbH, Continental Secure Data Headquarter B.V., Continental Secure Data USA LLC, Continental Servicos de Vulcanizacao do Brasil Ltda., Continental Suisse S.A., Continental Temic Electronics (Phils.) Inc., Continental Teves AG & Co. OHG, Continental Teves Portugal - Sistemas de Travagem Lda., Continental Teves UK Ltd., Continental Tire Andina S.A., Continental Tire Canada Inc., Continental Tire Chile SpA, Continental Tire Colombia S.A.S., Continental Tire Corporativo S.A. de C.V., Continental Tire Holding US LLC, Continental Tire Japan Co. Ltd., Continental Tire Korea Co. Ltd., Continental Tire Sumter LLC, Continental Tire West Africa Limited, Continental Tire de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Continental Tire the Americas LLC, Continental Tires (China) Co. Ltd., Continental Tires (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Continental Tires Espana S.L., Continental Tires Holding Singapore Pte. Ltd., Continental Trebbin GmbH & Co. KG Sondermaschinenbau, Continental Trebbin Verwaltungs- und Beteiligungs-GmbH, Continental Tyre AS Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., Continental Tyre Group Ltd., Continental Tyre Investment UK Ltd., Continental Tyre Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., Continental Tyre Management Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., Continental Tyre Marketing Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., Continental Tyre North Africa SARL, Continental Tyre PJ Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., Continental Tyre Services Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., Continental Tyre South Africa (Pty.) Ltd., Continental Tyre Technology Centre Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., Continental Tyres (Thailand) Co. Ltd., Continental Tyres Ltd., Continental Tyres of Australia Pty Ltd, Continental UK Group Holdings Ltd., Continental VUK s.r.o., Continental do Brasil Produtos Automotivos Ltda., Continental of Taiwan Co. Ltd., Continental vyroba pneumatik s.r.o., Contitech Argentina S.R.L., Contitech Botswana (Pty) Ltd, Contitech do Brasil Produtos Automotivos e Industriais Ltda., Contitrade Espana S.A.U., Contitrade Holding, Contitread Renovado Morelia S.A. de C.V., Correx Handelsgesellschaft fur Kautschukprodukte mbH, Custom Machining Services Inc., DRUST, Dekkmann A/S, Dunlop Oil & Marine Ltd., DynaGen Inc., EPD Holdings Inc., Eddelbuttel + Schneider GmbH, Elektrobit, Elektrobit Austria GmbH, Elektrobit Automotive Americas Inc., Elektrobit Automotive Finland Oy, Elektrobit Automotive GmbH, Elektrobit Automotive Korea Limited, Elektrobit Automotive Romania SRL, Elektrobit Automotive Software (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Elektrobit France SAS, Elektrobit India Private Ltd., Elektrobit Nippon K.K., Emitec Denmark A/S, Emitec France SAS, Eu-Retec (Private) Ltd., FSC Franchising Service Company S.p.A., Formpolster GmbH, General Tire International Company, Granite Investments Limited, Holding ContiTech SAS, Hoosier Racing Tire Corp., Hornschuch (Shanghai) Surface Technology Co. Ltd., Hornschuch Consulting GmbH, Hornschuch Group GmbH, Hornschuch Italia S.r.l., Hornschuch Stolzenau GmbH, Hornschuch UK Ltd., Hornschuch-Markt GmbH, INTECH Thuringen GmbH, Kathrein Automotive, Kathrein Automotive Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Kathrein Automotive North America Inc., Kathrein Automotive Portugal Sociedade Unipessoal Lda., Kim Holdings Scotland Limited, Kolubara-Univerzal D.O.O., Konrad Hornschuch AG, Konrad Hornschuch International GmbH, Legg Company Inc., Libra Associates (Properties) Limited, MISA GmbH & Co. KG, MISA-Beteiligungs GmbH, Merlett Belgie B.V.B.A, Merlett Benelux B.V., Merlett Deutschland GmbH, Merlett France SAS, Merlett Group, Merlett Iberica 2016 S.L., Merlett Norway As, Merlett Plastics UK Ltd., Merlett Polska Sp. Z o.o., Merlett RUS LLC, Merlett Tecnoplastic S.p.a., Noviteck SA, O'Sullivan Films Inc., OOO "ContiTech Rus", OOO "Continental Automotive RUS", OOO "Continental Automotive Systems RUS", OOO "Continental Kaluga", OOO "Continental Tires RUS", OOO Hornschuch RUS, OTA Grundstucks- und Beteiligungsverwaltung GmbH, OTA keys, OTA keys S.A., Omitec Group, Otomotiv Lastikleri Tevzi AS (OLTAS), POWERTRAIN MAQUILA MEXICO S. DE R.L. DE C.V., PT Continental Tyre Indonesia, PT Quantum Inventions Indonesia, Parkpocket, Phoenix Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, Phoenix Compounding Technology GmbH, Phoenix Conveyor Belt India Private Ltd., Phoenix Conveyor Belt Solutions Inc., Phoenix Conveyor Belt Systems GmbH, Phoenix Fluid Handling Industry GmbH, Phoenix Oil & Marine Ltd., Phoenix Service GmbH & Co. KG, Phoenix Shanxi Conveyor Belt Co. Ltd., Phoenix Vermogensverwaltungsgesellschaft mbH, Pneu Egger AG, Profi Reifen- und Autoservice Gesellschaft mbH, Prazisionstechnik Geithain GmbH, QUANTUM INVENTIONS SDN. BHD., Quantum Inventions, Quantum Inventions Private Limited, R & J Strang Tyre Services Limited, REG Reifen-Entsorgungsgesellschaft mbH, REPARATION PNEUMATIQUES DU SUD EST (REPNEU) SAS, ROSEA Grundstucks-Vermietungsgesellschaft mbH & Co. Objekt Hannover-Stocken KG, Reifen Apel GmbH, Reifen Kauffmann GmbH, Reifen-John GmbH & Co KG, Reifen-Service Clemens & Hegel GmbH, Rengasmaailma Oy, Road-Broad Automotive Electronics (Qufu) Co. Ltd., Rundpneu Beteiligungsges. mbH, S.C. ContiTech Fluid Automotive Romania S.R.L., S.C. ContiTech Romania S.R.L., S.C. Continental Automotive Products SRL, SAS CONTITRADE FRANCE, STEINEBRONN BETEILIGUNGS-GMBH, Semperit (Ireland) Ltd., Semperit (UK) Ltd., Semperit Reifen Gesellschaft mbH, Senior Experts Services GmbH, Siemens VDO Automotive S.p.A., Specialised Belting Supplies Ltd., Specialty Fabrics & Converting Inc., Specialty Yarn & Converting Inc., Stable One Insurance Company LLC, Synerject Taiwan Co. Ltd., Syrma A.E., TON Tyres Over Night Trading GmbH, TOO "Continental Matador KZ", Temic Automotive (Phils.) Inc., Tikka Spikes Oy, Tyre Maintenance Limited, Tyre Reinsurance (Ireland) DAC, Tyre and Auto Pty Ltd, UMG Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, Union-Mittelland-Gummi-GmbH & Co. Grundbesitz KG, Unterstutzungskasse mbH der Goppinger Kaliko- und Kunstleder-Werke GmbH, VIVAX Trading GmbH, Vanvulc Tyres Limited, Vaysse SAS, Vergolst GmbH, Veyance Distribuidora de Produtos de Engenharia Ltda., Veyance Hong Kong Co. Ltd., Veyance Industrial Services Inc., Veyance Qingdao Engineered Elastomers Company Ltd., Veyance Technologies, Veyance Technologies Australia Pty. Ltd., Veyance Technologies Canada (NS) ULC, Veyance Technologies Hong Kong Co. Ltd., Veyance Technologies Zambia Ltd., Viking Tyres (UK) Ltd., Vitesco Technologies (Thailand) Co. Ltd., Vitesco Technologies 1. Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG, Vitesco Technologies 1. Verwaltungs GmbH, Vitesco Technologies 2. Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG, Vitesco Technologies 2. Verwaltungs GmbH, Vitesco Technologies Automotive Cuautla S.A. de C.V., Vitesco Technologies Canada ULC, Vitesco Technologies Czech Republic s.r.o., Vitesco Technologies Delavan LLC, Vitesco Technologies Eisenach Verwaltungs GmbH, Vitesco Technologies Emitec GmbH, Vitesco Technologies Engineering Romania SRL, Vitesco Technologies France S.A.S., Vitesco Technologies GDL S. de R.L. de C.V., Vitesco Technologies Germany GmbH, Vitesco Technologies GmbH, Vitesco Technologies Group Aktiengesellschaft, Vitesco Technologies Holding 1 Canada Inc., Vitesco Technologies Holding 2 Canada Inc., Vitesco Technologies Holding China Co. Ltd., Vitesco Technologies Holding Netherlands B.V., Vitesco Technologies Hungary Kft., Vitesco Technologies India Private Limited, Vitesco Technologies Italy S.R.L., Vitesco Technologies Japan K.K., Vitesco Technologies Korea, Vitesco Technologies Lohmar Verwaltungs GmbH, Vitesco Technologies Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Vitesco Technologies Roding GmbH, Vitesco Technologies Romania SRL, Vitesco Technologies Singapore Pte. Ltd., Vitesco Technologies UK Ltd., Vitesco Technologies USA LLC, Vitesco Tecnologia Brasil Automotiva Ltda., Vogtlandische Reifenwerke Sitz Bad Nauheim GmbH, Vulcanite Holdings Pty Ltd, Vulcanite Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., Vulcanite Pty Ltd, Wohlfahrtseinrichtung fur die Arbeiter und Angestellten der Semperit Reifen AG GmbH, Zonar, Zonar Systems Inc., Zytek Automotive, Zytek Automotive Ltd., Zytek Group Ltd., balance GmbH Handel und Beratungsservice im Gesundheitswesen, co-pace GmbH, inotec Innovative Technologie GmbH, and kek-Kaschierungen GmbH.
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Medtronic or Intuitive Surgical: Which is the Better Buy After Earnings?

The future cant arrive soon enough for these two medical device giants Ive been bullish on both Medtronic (NYSE:MDT) and Intuitive Surgical (NASDAQ:ISRG) at different points this year.

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Russia's coast guard ships on November 25 carried out attacks on the ships of the Ukrainian Navy that were engaged in planned relocation from the port of Odesa to the port of Mariupol of the Sea of Azov, the Ukrainian Navy said.

The incident happened when two Ukrainian navy artillery boats and a tugboat were transiting from Odessa on the Black Sea to Mariupol in the Sea of Azov, via the Kerch Strait, a narrow passage between Crimea and the Russian mainland.

The Sea of Azov lies east of the Crimean peninsula, which was annexed by Russia in 2014, and south of regions held by pro-Russian separatists.

A Reuters witness said on Sunday that a bulk cargo ship had been used to block the channel beneath the bridge and that he had seen two Russian Sukhoi Su-25 warplanes flying overhead.

The ships "illegally entered a temporarily closed area of Russian territorial waters", Russia's state security service the FSB reportedly said in a statement.

The Sea of Azov has been an area of heightened tensions between Moscow and Kyiv since Russian Federation seized Ukraine's Crimea region in March 2014 and shortly thereafter began supporting separatists in the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in a conflict that has killed more than 10,300 people.

It later said Russian helicopters had also flown on an attack course at the vessels before veering off.

Ukraine's navy has said Russia's border guards rammed one of its tugboats in the Black Sea off Moscow-annexed Crimea in an "openly aggressive action".

Ukraine's foreign ministry said in a statement it wanted a clear response to the incident from the global community.

Ukraine said it gave Russian authorities advance warning of its ships' route. It said Ukraine's ships were carrying out "provocative actions" and "their aim is clear - to create a conflict situation in this region".

Both countries accused each other of breaking global law after Russian border guards tried and failed to stop two Ukrainian armoured artillery vessels circumnavigating Crimea en route to a Ukrainian port.
Covestro AG develops, produces, and markets polymer materials for various industries. The company operates in three segments: Polyurethanes; Polycarbonates; and Coatings, Adhesives, Specialties (CAS). The Polyurethanes segment develops, produces, and markets chemical precursors, such as diphenylmethane diisocyanate, toluene diisocyanate, and polyether polyol, which are used primarily in the furniture, construction, and automotive industries. The Polycarbonates segment provides high-performance plastic polycarbonates in the form of granules, composite materials, and semi-finished products for use in the automotive, construction, electrical and electronic, medical technology, and lighting industries. The CAS segment offers precursors for coatings, adhesives, and sealants, as well as specialties. This segment also provides polymer materials and aqueous dispersions for use in automotive and transportation, infrastructure and construction, wood processing, and furniture applications. The company markets its products through trading houses and distributors. It operates in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, the United States, Canada, and the People's Republic of China. The company was founded in 1863 and is headquartered in Leverkusen, Germany.

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Fiore Gold Ltd. operates as a gold production and development company in the United States. The company's projects include the Pan Mine, an open pit, heap leach mine located in White Pine County, Nevada; the Gold Rock project, which covers an area of approximately 20,300 hectares of contiguous land package on the Battle Mountain-Eureka Trend; and the Golden Eagle project that covers an area of approximately 339.3 acres located in Ferry County, Washington. Its projects also include the Rio Loa property, which covers an area of approximately 1,000 hectares in Chile. The company is based in Toronto, Canada.

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5 Wall Street equities research analysts have issued "buy," "hold," and "sell" ratings for Surge Energy in the last twelve months. There are currently 4 hold ratings and 1 buy rating for the stock. The consensus among Wall Street equities research analysts is that investors should "hold" Surge Energy stock. A hold rating indicates that analysts believe investors should maintain any existing positions they have in ZPTAF, but not buy additional shares or sell existing shares.

View analyst ratings for Surge Energy or view top-rated stocks.
The following companies are subsidiares of Abbott Laboratories: 3A Nutrition (Vietnam) Company Limited, ABON Biopharm (Hangzhou) Co. Ltd., AGA Medical Belgium, AGA Medical Corporation, AGA Medical Holdings Inc., ALR Holdings, AML Medical LLC, APK Advanced Medical Technologies LLC, ATS Bermuda Holdings Limited, ATS Laboratories Inc., Abbott, Abbott (Jiaxing) Nutrition Co. Ltd., Abbott (UK) Finance Limited, Abbott (UK) Holdings Limited, Abbott AG, Abbott Asia Holdings Limited, Abbott Asia Investments Limited, Abbott Australasia Holdings Limited, Abbott Australasia Pty Ltd, Abbott B.V., Abbott Bahamas Overseas Businesses Corporation, Abbott Belgian Investments, Abbott Bermuda Holding Ltd., Abbott Biologicals B.V., Abbott Biologicals LLC, Abbott Bulgaria Luxembourg S.a r.l., Abbott Capital India Limited, Abbott Cardiovascular Inc., Abbott Cardiovascular Systems Inc., Abbott Delaware LLC, Abbott Diabetes Care Inc., Abbott Diabetes Care Limited, Abbott Diabetes Care Sales Corporation, Abbott Diagnostics GmbH, Abbott Diagnostics International Ltd., Abbott Diagnostics Technologies AS, Abbott Doral Investments S.L., Abbott Equity Holdings Unlimited, Abbott Equity Investments LLC, Abbott Established Products Holdings (Gibraltar) Limited, Abbott Finance Company SA, Abbott Financial Holdings SRL, Abbott France S.A.S., Abbott Fund Tanzania Limited, Abbott Gesellschaft m.b.H., Abbott GmbH & Co. KG, Abbott Health Products LLC, Abbott Healthcare (Puerto Rico) Ltd., Abbott Healthcare B.V., Abbott Healthcare Costa Rica S.A., Abbott Healthcare LLC, Abbott Healthcare Luxembourg S.a r.l., Abbott Healthcare Private Limited, Abbott Healthcare Products B.V., Abbott Healthcare Products Ltd, Abbott Holding (Gibraltar) Limited, Abbott Holding GmbH, Abbott Holding Subsidiary (Gibraltar) Limited, Abbott Holding Subsidiary (Gibraltar) Limited Luxembourg S.C.S., Abbott Holdings B.V., Abbott Holdings LLC, Abbott Holdings Limited, Abbott Holdings Poland Spoka z ograniczona odpowiedzialnoscia, Abbott Hungary Korlatolt Felelossegu Tarsasag, Abbott Iberian Investments (2) Limited, Abbott Iberian Investments Limited, Abbott India Limited, Abbott Informatics Asia Pacific Limited, Abbott Informatics Canada Inc, Abbott Informatics Corporation, Abbott Informatics Europe Limited, Abbott Informatics France, Abbott Informatics Germany GmbH, Abbott Informatics Netherlands B.V., Abbott Informatics Singapore Pte. Limited, Abbott Informatics Spain S.A., Abbott Informatics Technologies Ltd, Abbott International Corporation, Abbott International Enterprises Ltd., Abbott International Holdings Limited, Abbott International LLC, Abbott International Luxembourg S.ar.l., Abbott Investments Luxembourg S.a r.l., Abbott Ireland, Abbott Ireland Financing Designated Activity Company, Abbott Ireland Limited, Abbott Japan Co. Ltd., Abbott Kazakhstan Limited Liability Partnership, Abbott Knoll Investments B.V., Abbott Korea Limited, Abbott Laboratories (Bangladesh) Limited, Abbott Laboratories (Chile) Holdco (Dos) SpA, Abbott Laboratories (Chile) Holdco SpA, Abbott Laboratories (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., Abbott Laboratories (Mozambique) Limitada, Abbott Laboratories (Pakistan) Limited, Abbott Laboratories (Philippines), Abbott Laboratories (Puerto Rico) Incorporated, Abbott Laboratories (Singapore) Private Limited, Abbott Laboratories A/S, Abbott Laboratories Argentina Sociedad Anonima, Abbott Laboratories B.V., Abbott Laboratories C.A., Abbott Laboratories Finance B.V., Abbott Laboratories GmbH, Abbott Laboratories Inc., Abbott Laboratories International LLC, Abbott Laboratories Ireland Limited, Abbott Laboratories Limited, Abbott Laboratories Limited - Laboratoires Abbott Limitee, Abbott Laboratories NZ Limited, Abbott Laboratories Pacific Ltd., Abbott Laboratories Poland Spoka z ograniczona odpowiedzialnoscia, Abbott Laboratories Products B.V., Abbott Laboratories Residential Development Fund Inc., Abbott Laboratories S.A., Abbott Laboratories SA, Abbott Laboratories Services Corp., Abbott Laboratories Slovakia s.r.o., Abbott Laboratories South Africa (Pty) Ltd., Abbott Laboratories Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Abbott Laboratories Trustee Company Limited, Abbott Laboratories Uruguay S.A., Abbott Laboratories Vascular Enterprises, Abbott Laboratories d.o.o., Abbott Laboratories de Chile Limitada, Abbott Laboratories de Colombia S.A., Abbott Laboratories de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Abbott Laboratories druzba za farmacijo in diagnostiko d.o.o., Abbott Laboratories s.r.o., Abbott Laboratories(Hellas) Societe Anonyme, Abbott Laboratorios S.A., Abbott Laboratorios S.A., Abbott Laboratorios del Ecuador Cia. Ltda., Abbott Laboratuarlari Ithalat Ihracat ve Ticaret Ltd.Sti, Abbott Laboratorios Lda, Abbott Laboratorios do Brasil Ltda., Abbott Limited Egypt LLC, Abbott Logistics B.V., Abbott Management GmbH, Abbott Management LLC, Abbott Manufacturing Singapore Private Limited, Abbott Mature Products International Unlimited Company, Abbott Mature Products Management Limited, Abbott Medical (Hong Kong) Limited, Abbott Medical (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., Abbott Medical (Portugal) Distribuicao de Produtos Medicos Lda, Abbott Medical (Schweiz) AG, Abbott Medical (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Abbott Medical (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., Abbott Medical (Thailand) Co. Ltd., Abbott Medical Australia Pty. Ltd., Abbott Medical Austria Ges.m.b.H., Abbott Medical Balkan d.o.o. Beograd (Novi Beograd), Abbott Medical Belgium, Abbott Medical Canada Inc./ Medicale Abbott Canada Inc., Abbott Medical Danmark A/S, Abbott Medical Devices Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Abbott Medical Espana S.A., Abbott Medical Estonia OU, Abbott Medical Finland Oy, Abbott Medical France SAS, Abbott Medical GmbH, Abbott Medical Hellas Limited Liability Trading Company, Abbott Medical Ireland Limited, Abbott Medical Italia S.p.A., Abbott Medical Japan Co. Ltd., Abbott Medical Korea Limited, Abbott Medical Korlatolt Felelossegu Tarsasag, Abbott Medical Laboratories LTD, Abbott Medical Nederland B.V., Abbott Medical New Zealand Limited, Abbott Medical Norway AS, Abbott Medical Overseas Cyprus Limited, Abbott Medical Sweden AB, Abbott Medical Taiwan Co., Abbott Medical U.K. Limited, Abbott Medical spoka z ograniczona odpowiedzialnoscia, Abbott Middle East S.A.R.L., Abbott Molecular Inc., Abbott Morocco SARL, Abbott Nederland C.V., Abbott Nederland Luxembourg S.a r.l., Abbott Netherlands Investments B.V., Abbott Norge AS, Abbott Nutrition Limited, Abbott Nutrition Manufacturing Inc., Abbott Operations Singapore Pte. Ltd., Abbott Operations Uruguay S.R.L., Abbott Overseas Cyprus Limited, Abbott Overseas Luxembourg S.a r.l., Abbott Overseas S.A., Abbott Oy, Abbott Point of Care Canada Limited, Abbott Point of Care Inc., Abbott Poland Luxembourg S.a r.l., Abbott Procurement LLC, Abbott Products (Philippines) Inc., Abbott Products (Spain) S.L., Abbott Products Algerie EURL, Abbott Products B.V., Abbott Products Distribution SAS, Abbott Products Egypt LLC, Abbott Products Limited, Abbott Products Limited Liability Company, Abbott Products Luxembourg S.a r.l., Abbott Products Operations AG, Abbott Products Operations LLC, Abbott Products Romania S.R.L., Abbott Products Tunisie S.A.R.L., Abbott Products Unlimited Company, Abbott Resources Inc., Abbott Resources International Inc., Abbott S.r.l., Abbott Saudi Arabia Trading Company, Abbott Scandinavia Aktiebolag, Abbott Sociedad Anonima de Capital Variable, Abbott South Africa Luxembourg S.a r.l., Abbott Strategic Opportunities Limited, Abbott Trading Company Inc., Abbott Universal LLC, Abbott Vascular Devices (2) Limited, Abbott Vascular Devices Limited, Abbott Vascular Inc., Abbott Vascular Instruments Deutschland GmbH, Abbott Vascular International, Abbott Vascular Japan Co. Ltd, Abbott Vascular Limitada, Abbott Vascular Netherlands B.V., Abbott Vascular Solutions Inc., Abbott Ventures Inc., Abbott West Indies Limited, Abbott drustvo sa ogranicenom odgovornoscu za trgovinu i usluge, Advanced Neuromodulation Systems Inc., Alere, Alere (Shanghai) Diagnostics Co. Ltd., Alere (Shanghai) Healthcare Management Co. Ltd., Alere (Shanghai) Medical Sales Co. Ltd., Alere (Shanghai) Technology Co. Ltd., Alere A/S, Alere AB, Alere AS, Alere AS Holdings Limited, Alere BBI Holdings Limited, Alere Bangladesh Limited, Alere China Co. Ltd., Alere Colombia S.A., Alere Connect LLC, Alere Connected Health Limited, Alere Connected Health Ltd., Alere Diagnostics GmbH, Alere DoA Holding GmbH, Alere GmbH, Alere GmbH (Austria), Alere GmbH (Germany), Alere HK Holdings Ltd., Alere Health B.V., Alere Health BVBA, Alere Health Corp., Alere Health Sdn Bhd, Alere Health Services B.V., Alere Healthcare (Pty) Limited, Alere Healthcare Connections Limited, Alere Healthcare Inc., Alere Healthcare Nigeria Limited, Alere Healthcare S.L., Alere Holdco Inc., Alere Holding GmbH, Alere Holdings Bermuda Limited, Alere Holdings Pty Limited, Alere Home Monitoring Inc., Alere Inc., Alere Informatics Inc., Alere International Holding Corp., Alere International Limited, Alere Lda, Alere Limited, Alere Limited (New Zealand), Alere Medical BVBA, Alere Medical Co. Ltd., Alere Medical Pakistan (Private) Limited, Alere Medical Private Limited, Alere North America LLC, Alere Oy Ab, Alere Philippines Inc., Alere Phoenix ACQ Inc., Alere Pte Ltd, Alere S.A., Alere S.r.l., Alere S/A, Alere SAS, Alere San Diego Inc., Alere Scarborough Inc., Alere Spain S.L., Alere Switzerland GmbH, Alere Technologies GmbH, Alere Technologies Holdings Limited, Alere Technologies Limited, Alere Toxicology AB, Alere Toxicology Inc., Alere Toxicology S.r.l., Alere Toxicology Services Inc., Alere Toxicology plc, Alere UK Holdings Limited, Alere UK Subco Limited, Alere ULC, Alere US Holdings LLC, Alere s.r.o., Alisoc Investment & Co, Amedica Biotech Inc., Ameditech Inc., American Generics S.A.S., American Medical Supplies Inc., American Pharmacist Inc., Antares S.A., Apica Cardiovascular Limited, Aquagestion Capacitacion S.A., Aquagestion S.A., Arriva Medical LLC, Arriva Medical Philippines Inc., Arvis Investments Limited, Atlas Farmaceutica S.A., Avee Laboratories Inc., Axis-Shield AD III AS, Axis-Shield AD IV AS, Axis-Shield AS, Axis-Shield Diagnostics Limited, Axis-Shield Ltd., BBI Animal Health Limited, BBI Diagnostics Group 2 Public Limited Company, Banco de Vida S.A., Bioabsorbable Vascular Solutions Inc., Bioalgae S.A., Biohealth LLC, Biosite Incorporated, Bosque Bonito S.A., Branan Medical Corporation, Brandex Europe C.V., British Colloids Limited, CFR Chile S.A., CFR Interamericas EL Salvador Sociedad Anonima de Capital Variable, CFR Interamericas Nicaragua Sociedad Anonima, CFR Interamericas Panama S.A., CFR Pharmaceuticals, California Property Holdings III LLC, CardioMEMS LLC, Caripharm Inc., Cephea Valve Technologies, Cephea Valve Technologies Inc., Colibri Medical Aktiebolag, Comercializadora y Distribuidora CFR Interamericas Honduras S.A., Concateno South Limited, Concateno UK Limited, Consorcio Tecnologico en Biomedicina Clinico-Molecular S.A., Continuum Services LLC, Cozart Limited, Dextech S.A., Diagnostik Nord GmbH, Distribuciones Uquifa S.A.S., Domesco Medical Import-Export Joint-Stock Corporation, Duphar International Research B.V., Endocardial Solutions, Epocal (US) Inc, Esprit de Vie S.A., European Chemicals & Co, European Drug Testing Service EDTS AB, European Services S.A., Evalve Inc., Evalve International Inc., FARMINDUSTRIA S.A., Fada Pharma Paraguay Sociedad Anonima, Fadapharma del Ecuador S.A., Farmaceutica Mont Blanc S.L., Farmacologia Em Aquicultura Veterinaria Ltda., Farmacologia en Aquacultura Veterinaria FAV Ecuador S.A., Farmacologia en Aquacultura Veterinaria FAV S.A., Fernwood Investment S.A., First Check Diagnostics LLC, Focus Pharmaceutical S.A.S., Forensics Limited, Forestcreek Overseas S.A., Fournier Pharma Corp., Fournier Pharma GmbH, Fournier Pharmaceuticals Limited, Framed B.V., Gabmed GmbH, Garden Hills LLC, Global Analytical Development LLC, Globapharm & CO LP, Glomed Pharmaceutical Company Limited, Golnorth Investments S.A., Gynocare Limited, Gynopharm Sociedad Anonima, Gynopharm de Centroamerica S.A., Gynopharm de Venezuela C.A., Hi-Tronics Designs Inc., IDEV Technologies Inc., IG Innovations Limited, IMTC Finance B.V., IMTC Holdings B.V., IMTC Technologies Inc., Ibis Biosciences LLC, Igloo Zone Chile S.A., Igloo Zone S.L., Inmobiliaria Naknek S.A.C., Innovacon Inc., Instant Tech Subsidiary Acquisition Inc., Instant Technologies Inc., Instituto de Criopreservacion de Chile S.A., Integrated Vascular Systems Inc., Inverness Canadian Acquisition Corporation, Inverness Medical (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Inverness Medical Innovations Australia Pty Ltd., Inverness Medical Innovations Hong Kong Limited, Inverness Medical Innovations SK LLC, Inverness Medical Investments LLC, Inverness Medical LLC, Inverness Medical Shimla Private Limited, Inversiones K2 SpA, Inversiones Komodo S.R.L., Ionian Technologies LLC, Irvine Biomedical Inc., Kalila Medical, Kangshenyunga S.A., Knoll UK Investments Unlimited, LLC VeroInPharm, Laboratoires Fournier S.A.S., Laboratorio Franco Colombiano Lafrancol S.A.S., Laboratorio Franco Colombiano del Ecuador S.A., Laboratorio Internacional Argentino S.A., Laboratorio Synthesis S.A.S., Laboratorios Lafi Limitada, Laboratorios Naturmedik S.A.S., Laboratorios Pauly Pharmaceutical S.A.S., Laboratorios Recalcine S.A., Laboratorios Transpharm S.A., Laboratory Specialists of America Inc., Lafrancol Dominicana S.A.S., Lafrancol Guatemala S.A. Sociedad Anonima, Lafrancol Internacional S.A.S, Lafrancol Peru S.R.L, Lake Forest Investments LLC, Lightlab Imaging Inc., Limited Liability Company Abbott Laboratories, Limited Liability Company Abbott Ukraine, Limited Liability Company VEROPHARM, Lung Fung Hong (China) Limited, Mansbridge Pharmaceuticals Limited, MediGuide LLC, MediGuide Ltd., Medscreen Holdings Limited, Metropolitana Farmaceutica S.A., Midwest Properties LLC, Murex Argentina S.A., Murex Biotech Limited, Murex Biotech South Africa, Murex Diagnostics Inc., Murex Diagnostics International Inc., Natural Supplement Association LLC, Negocios Denia Sociedad Anonima, Neosalud S.A.C., Nether Pharma N.P. C.V., NeuroTherm LLC, Normann Pharma-Handels GmbH, North Shore Properties Inc., Novamedi S.A., Novasalud.com S.A., Nutravida S.A., OJSC Voronezhkhimpharm, Omnilab Iberia Sociedad Limitada, OptiMedica, Orgenics France SAS, Orgenics International Holdings B.V., Orgenics Ltd., PBM-Selfcare LLC, PDD II LLC, PDD LLC, PT Alere Health, PT. Abbott Indonesia, PT. Abbott Products Indonesia, Pacesetter Inc., Pantech (RF) (PTY) LTD, Pembrooke Occupational Health Inc., Penagos S.A., Pharma International Sociedad Anonima, Pharmaceutical Technologies (Pharmatech) S.A., Pharmatech Boliviana S.A., Polygon Labs S.A., Quality Assured Services Inc., RF Medical Holdings LLC, RTL Holdings Inc., Ramses Business Corp., Recben Xenerics Farmaceutica Limitada, Redwood Toxicology Laboratory Inc., Rich Horizons International Limited, SC VEROPHARM, SJ Medical Mexico S de R.L. de C.V., SJM International Inc., SJM Thunder Holding Company, SPDH Inc., Saboya Enterprises Corporation, Salviac Limited, Scanax AS, Sealing Solutions Inc., Selfcare Technology Inc., Shandong Abbott Dairy Product Co. Ltd., Shanghai Abbott Medical Devices Science and Technology Co. Ltd., Shanghai Abbott Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd., Shanghai Si Fa Pharmaceutical Company Limited, Sinensix & Co., Spinal Modulation LLC, St. Jude Medical, St. Jude Medical AB, St. Jude Medical ATG Inc., St. Jude Medical Argentina S.A., St. Jude Medical Asia Pacific Holdings GK, St. Jude Medical Atrial Fibrillation Division Inc., St. Jude Medical Brasil Ltda., St. Jude Medical Business Services Inc., St. Jude Medical Cardiology Division Inc., St. Jude Medical Colombia Ltda., St. Jude Medical Coordination Center, St. Jude Medical Costa Rica Limitada, St. Jude Medical Europe Inc., St. Jude Medical Export Ges.m.b.H., St. Jude Medical GVA Sarl, St. Jude Medical Holdings B.V., St. Jude Medical India Private Limited, St. Jude Medical International Holding, St. Jude Medical LLC, St. Jude Medical Luxembourg, St. Jude Medical Luxembourg Holdings II, St. Jude Medical Luxembourg Holdings NT, St. Jude Medical Luxembourg Holdings SMI S.a r.l., St. Jude Medical Luxembourg Holdings TC S.a r.l., St. Jude Medical Mexico Business Services S. de R.L. de C.V., St. Jude Medical Middle East DMCC, St. Jude Medical Operations (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., St. Jude Medical Puerto Rico LLC, St. Jude Medical S.C. Inc., St. Jude Medical Systems AB, St. Jude Medical Turkey Medikal Urunler Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Standard Diagnostics Inc., Standing Stone LLC, Swan-Myers Incorporated, TC1 LLC, Tendyne Holdings Inc., Tendyne Medical Inc., Thoratec Delaware LLC, Thoratec Europe Limited, Thoratec LLC, Thoratec Switzerland GmbH, Tobal Products Incorporated, Topera GmbH in Liquidation, Topera Inc., Tremora S.A., Tuenir S.A., TwistDx, UAB Abbott Laboratories, UAB Abbott Medical Lithuania, Union-Madison Realty Company Inc., Unipath Limited (dba Alere International/aka Cranfield), Unipath Management Limited, Unipath Pension Trustee Limited, Veropharm, Veropharm Limited Liability Partnership, Vida Cell Inversiones S.A., Vida Cell S.A., Vivalsol, W&R Pharma Handels GmbH, Western Pharmaceuticals S.A., X Technologies Inc., Yissum Holding Limited, ZonePerfect Nutrition Company, eScreen Canada ULC, eScreen Inc.,      ( ), and Abbott Laboratories Baltics.
The following companies are subsidiares of AES: 25 Ashdown Road Solar LLC, AES (India) Private Limited, AES (NI) Limited, AES Abigail S.a.r.l., AES Accabonac Solar LLC, AES Africa Power Company B.V., AES AgriVerde Holdings B.V., AES AgriVerde Services (Ukraine) Limited Liability Company, AES Alamitos Development Inc., AES Alamitos Energy LLC, AES Alamitos L.L.C., AES Alicura Holdings S.C.A., AES Americas International Holdings Limited, AES Andres (BVI) Ltd., AES Andres BV, AES Andres DR S.A., AES Andres Holdings I Ltd, AES Aramtermelo Holdings B.V., AES Argentina Generation S.A. (1), AES Argentina Holdings S.C.A., AES Argentina Investments Ltd., AES Argentina Operations Ltd., AES Arlington Services LLC, AES Armenia Mountain Holdings LLC, AES Armenia Mountain Wind 2 LLC, AES Aurora Holdings Inc., AES Aurora Inc., AES BES Jordan B.V., AES Bainbridge Holdings LLC, AES Bainbridge LLC, AES Ballylumford Holdings Limited, AES Baltic Holdings BV, AES Barka Services Inc., AES Barry Limited, AES Barry Operations Ltd., AES Beaver Valley L.L.C., AES Belfast West Power Limited, AES Belleville Solar LLC, AES Big Sky L.L.C., AES Botswana Holdings B.V., AES Brasil Ltda, AES Brazil Inc., AES Brazil International Holdings Limited, AES Broadalbin Solar LLC, AES Bulgaria B.V., AES Bulgaria Energy Solutions EOOD, AES Bulgaria Holdings BV, AES Bussum Holdings BV, AES CC&T International Ltd., AES CLESA Y Compania Sociedad en Comandita de Capital Variable, AES Calaca Pte. Ltd., AES Calgary Inc., AES California Management Co. Inc., AES Caracoles SRL, AES Carbon Exchange Ltd., AES Carbon Holdings LLC, AES Caribbean Finance Holdings Inc., AES Caribbean Investment Holdings Ltd., AES Cartegena Holdings BV, AES Cayman Guaiba Ltd., AES Cayman Pampas Ltd., AES Central America Electric Light LLC, AES Central American Holdings Inc., AES Central American Investment Holdings Ltd., AES Central Asia Holdings BV, AES Ceprano Energia SRL, AES Changuinola S.R.L., AES Chhattisgarh Energy Private Limited, AES Chigen Holdings Ltd., AES China Generating Co. Ltd., AES Chivor & Cia S.C.A. E.S.P., AES Chivor S.A., AES Climate Solutions Holdings I B.V., AES Climate Solutions Holdings I LLC, AES Climate Solutions Holdings II LLC, AES Climate Solutions Holdings L.P., AES Climate Solutions Holdings LLC, AES Colon Development S. de R.L., AES Columbia Power LLC, AES Communications LLC, AES Communications Latin America Inc., AES Connecticut Management L.L.C., AES Coop Holdings LLC, AES Costa Rica Energy SRL, AES Costa Rica Holdings Ltd., AES DE AssetCo VI LLC, AES DE Class B Holdings LLC, AES DE Class B I LLC, AES DE Class B II LLC, AES DE Class B III LLC, AES DE Class B IV LLC, AES DE Class B V LLC, AES DE Class B VI LLC, AES DE Class B VII LLC, AES DE Construction LLC, AES DE DevCo I LLC, AES DE DevCo NC LLC, AES DE Holdings I LLC, AES DE Holdings III LLC, AES DE Holdings IV LLC, AES DE Holdings V LLC, AES DE Holdings VI GB LLC, AES DE Holdings VI GB Owner LLC, AES DE Holdings VI LLC, AES DE Manager LLC, AES DE RS IX LLC, AES DE RS VI LLC, AES DE RS VII LLC, AES DE RS VIII LLC, AES DE RS X LLC, AES DE RS XI LLC, AES DE RS XII LLC, AES DE Residential Holdings I LLC, AES DE Solar Access Holdings I LLC, AES DE-GIE LLC, AES DPL Holdings LLC, AES DPP Holdings Ltd., AES Deepwater LLC, AES Desert Power L.L.C., AES Development de Argentina S.A., AES Disaster Relief Fund, AES Distribuidores Salvadorenos Limitada, AES Distribuidores Salvadorenos Y Compania S en C de C.V., AES Distributed Energy Inc., AES Dominicana Cooperatief UA, AES Drax Financing Inc., AES Drax Power Finance Holdings Limited, AES EDC Holding L.L.C., AES ES Alamitos LLC, AES ES Deepwater LLC, AES ES Gilbert LLC, AES ES Holdings LLC, AES ES Tait LLC, AES Ecotek Europe Holdings B.V., AES El Faro Electric Light Ltd., AES El Faro Generating Ltd., AES El Salvador Electric Light LLC, AES El Salvador LLC, AES El Salvador S.A. de C.V., AES El Salvador Trust, AES Electric Ltd., AES Electroinversora B.V., AES Elpa S.A., AES Empresa Electrica de El Salvador Limitada de Capital Variable, AES Endeavor Inc., AES Energia SRL, AES Energy B.V., AES Energy Developments S.L., AES Energy Ltd., AES Energy Services Inc., AES Energy Solutions LLC, AES Energy Storage Arizona LLC, AES Energy Storage Holdings, AES Energy Storage Holdings LLC, AES Energy Storage LLC, AES Energy Storage UK Limited, AES Energy Storage Zeeland B.V., AES Engineering LLC, AES Europe Services EOOD, AES Finance and Development Inc., AES Florestal Ltda., AES Fonseca Energia Limitada de C.V., AES Forca Ltd., AES Foreign Energy Holdings LLC, AES GEI US Finance Inc., AES GEO Energy OOD, AES GPH Holdings Inc., AES Gabreski Solar LLC, AES Gas Supply & Distribution Ltd., AES Gener S.A., AES Generation Development LLC, AES Global Insurance Company, AES Global Mobility Services LLC, AES Global Power Holdings B.V., AES Globales B.V., AES Grand Dominicana Ltd., AES Grid Stability LLC, AES Griggs Solar LLC, AES Guaiba II Empreendimentos Ltda, AES Guayama Holdings BV, AES Hawaii LLC, AES Hawaii Management Company LLC, AES Highgrove Holdings L.L.C., AES Highgrove L.L.C., AES Hispanola Holdings BV, AES Hispanola Holdings II BV, AES Holdings B.V., AES Holdings B.V. - Vietnam Rep Office, AES Holdings Brasil Ltda., AES Honduras Generation Ventures Ltd., AES Honduras Holdings Ltd., AES Horizons Holdings BV, AES Horizons Investments Limited, AES Hungary Energiaszolgaltato Kft., AES Huntington Beach Development L.L.C., AES Huntington Beach Energy LLC, AES Huntington Beach L.L.C., AES IB Valley Corporation, AES Ilumina Holdings LLC, AES Ilumina LLC, AES Ilumina Member LLC, AES India Holdings (Mauritius), AES India L.L.C., AES Indiana Holdings L.L.C., AES Integrated Energy LLC, AES Intercon II Ltd., AES Interenergy Ltd., AES International Holdings II Ltd., AES International Holdings III Ltd., AES International Holdings Ltd., AES Investment Chile SpA, AES Italia S.r.l, AES James Baird Solar LLC, AES Johnsville Solar LLC, AES Jordan Holdco Cayman Limited, AES Jordan PSC, AES Jordan Solar B.V., AES Juniper Point Holdings LLC, AES K2 Limited, AES Kalaeloa Venture L.L.C., AES Kekaha Solar LLC, AES Keystone L.L.C., AES Keystone Wind L.L.C., AES King Harbor Inc., AES Kuihelani Solar LLC, AES LA FIT Dedeaux LLC, AES LA FIT Francisco LLC, AES LA FIT Sun Valley LLC, AES LATAM Energy Development Ltd., AES Landfill Carbon LLC, AES Latin America S. de R.L., AES Latin American Development Ltd., AES Laurel Mountain LLC, AES Lawai Solar LLC, AES Levant Holdings B.V., AES Levant Holdings B.V/ Jordan PSC, AES Lion Telecom Investments B.V., AES Lumos Holdings LLC, AES Maritza East 1 Ltd., AES Maritza East 1 Services Ltd., AES Mayan Holdings S. de R.L. de C.V., AES Merida B.V., AES Merida III S. de R.L. de C.V., AES Merida Management Services S. de R.L. de C.V., AES Merida Operaciones SRL de CV, AES Mexican Holdings Ltd., AES Mexico Farms L.L.C., AES Mexico Generation Holdings S. de R.L. de C.V., AES MicroPlanet Ltd., AES Mid East Holdings 2 Ltd., AES Mong Duong Holdings B.V., AES Mong Duong Project Holdings B.V., AES Monroe Holdings B.V., AES Mount Vernon B.V., AES NA Central L.L.C., AES NEXT Ltda. de C.V., AES Nejapa Gas Ltda. de C.V., AES Nejapa Services Ltda. de C.V., AES Next LLC, AES Nile Power Holdings Ltd., AES North America Development LLC, AES OPGC Holding, AES Oahu LLC, AES Oahu Wind Holdings LLC, AES Oasis Holdco Inc., AES Oasis Ltd., AES Oasis Mauritius Inc, AES Ocean Springs Trust Deed, AES Odyssey L.L.C., AES Ohio Generation LLC, AES Operaciones Laguna del Rey S. de R.L. de C.V., AES Operadora S.A, AES Orissa Distribution Private Limited, AES Overseas Holdings (Cayman) Ltd., AES Overseas Holdings Limited, AES Pacific Inc., AES Pacific L.L.C., AES Pacific Ocean Holdings B.V., AES Pak Holdings Ltd., AES Pakistan (Pvt) Ltd., AES Pakistan Operations Ltd., AES Panama S.R.L., AES Parana Gas S.A., AES Parana Holdings Ltd., AES Parana IHC Ltd., AES Parana II Limited Partnership, AES Parana Operations S.R.L., AES Parana Propiedades S.A, AES Parana Uruguay S.R.L, AES Pardo Holdings Ltd., AES Pasadena Inc., AES Peru S.R.L., AES Phil Investment Pte. Ltd., AES Philippines Power Partners Co. Ltd., AES Platense Investments Uruguay S.C.A, AES Puerto Rico Inc., AES Puerto Rico L.P., AES Puerto Rico Services Inc., AES Redondo Beach L.L.C., AES Renewable Power Group S.R.L., AES Renewables (India) Private Limited, AES Riverside Holdings LLC, AES SACEF Investment LLC, AES SEB Holdings (Delaware) LLC, AES SEB Holdings Ltd., AES Saint Petersburg Holdings B.V., AES San Nicolas B.V., AES SellCo III LLC, AES Services Inc., AES Services Ltd., AES Services Philippines Inc., AES Servicios America S.R. L., AES Servicios Electricos S. de R.L. de C.V., AES Servicos TC Ltda., AES Shady Point LLC, AES Silk Road Energy LLC, AES Silk Road LLC, AES Solar Energy B.V., AES Solar Energy Holdings B.V., AES Solar Energy LLC, AES Solar Espana S.L., AES Solar Holdings LLC, AES Solar Power PR LLC, AES Sole Italia S.r.L., AES Soluciones Limitada de Capital Variable, AES Solutions LLC, AES Solutions Management LLC, AES South America Holdings Cooperatief U.A., AES South America Holdings I B.V., AES South America Holdings II B.V., AES South American Holdings Ltd., AES South Point Ltd., AES Southland Development LLC, AES Southland Energy Company Holdings I LLC, AES Southland Energy Holdings II LLC, AES Southland Energy Holdings LLC, AES Southland Energy Investment LLC, AES Southland Energy LLC, AES Stonehaven Holding Inc., AES Strategic Equipment Holdings Corporation, AES Sul L.L.C., AES Summit Generation Ltd., AES Swiss Lake Holdings B.V., AES TEG Holdings I LLC, AES TEG Holdings LLC, AES TEG II Mexican Holdings S. de R.L. de C.V., AES TEG II Mexican Investments S. de R.L. de C.V., AES TEG II Operations S. de R.L. de C.V., AES TEG Management Inc., AES TEG Mexican Holdings S. de R.L. de C.V., AES TEG Mexican Investments S. de R.L. de C.V., AES TEG Operations S. de R.L. de C.V., AES TEG Power Investments B.V., AES TEG Power Investments II B.V., AES TEGTEP Holdings B.V., AES TEP Holdings I LLC, AES TEP Holdings LLC, AES TEP Management Inc., AES TEP Power II Investments Limited, AES TEP Power Investments Limited, AES Tamuin Development Services S. de R.L. de C.V., AES Texas Funding III L.L.C., AES Thames L.L.C., AES Thomas Holdings BV, AES Tiete Eolica S.A., AES Tiete Inova Solucoes de Energia I Ltda., AES Tiete Inova Solucoes de Energia II Ltda., AES Tiete Inova Solucoes de Energia Ltda., AES Tiete Integra Solucoes em Energia Ltda, AES Tonawanda Solar LLC, AES Transgas I Ltd., AES Treasure Cove Ltd., AES Trinidad Services Unlimited, AES Trust III, AES Tucano Holding I S.A., AES Tucano Holdings II S.A., AES U&K Holdings B.V., AES U.S. Holdings LLC, AES U.S. Investments Inc., AES U.S. Solar LLC, AES UCH Holdings (Cayman) Ltd., AES UK Datacenter Services Limited, AES UK Holdings Limited, AES UK Power Financing II Ltd, AES UK Power Financing Limited, AES UK Power Holdings Limited, AES UK Power L.L.C., AES UK Power Limited, AES US Distributed Solar Holdings LLC, AES US Generation Holdings LLC, AES US Generation LLC, AES US Services LLC, AES US Wind Development L.L.C., AES US Wind Generation Holdings LLC, AES Union de Negocios S.A. de C.V., AES Uruguaiana Empreendimentos S.A., AES Venezuela Finance, AES Volcan Holdings B.V., AES WR Limited Partnership, AES Waikoloa Solar LLC, AES Warrior Run L.L.C., AES West Oahu Solar LLC, AES Western Power Holdings L.L.C., AES Western Power L.L.C., AES Western Wind L.L.C., AES Western Wind MV Acquisition LLC, AES Wind Bulgaria EOOD, AES Wind Generation LLC, AES Wind Generation Limited, AES Wind Investments I B.V., AES Wind Investments II B.V., AES Yucatan S. de R.L. de C.V., AES Zephyr 2 LLC, AES Zephyr 3 LLC, AES Zephyr Inc., AES- IC Ictas Enerji Uretim ve Ticaret A.S., AES-3C Maritza East 1 Ltd., AES-RS Spanish Holdings LLC, AES-RS Sunshine Cooperatief U.A., AES-RS Sunshine Holdings LLC, AES-VCM Mong Duong Power Company Limited, AESCom Sul Ltda., AESEBA Trust Deed, AGV Solar IV Geradora de Energia S.A., AGV Solar V Geradora de Energia S.A., AGV Solar VI Geradora de Energia S.A., AM Solar B.V., AM Solar B.V. - Jordan Co., APR Walden Solar 1 LLC, ARNIKA Beteiligungsverwaltungs GmbH, AZ Solar I LLC, AZ Solar II LLC, AZ Solar Phase Zero LLC, AgCert Canada Co., AgCert Canada Holding Limited, AgCert Chile Servicios Ambientales Limitada, AgCert International Limited, AgCert Servicios Ambientales S.R.L., Agilion Energy Private Limited, Allis Medina Solar LLC, Altai Power Limited Liability Partnership, Alto Maipo SpA, Amaterasu LLC, Andes Solar SpA, Arizona B&GC Solar LLC, Assonet Solar 1 LLC, Atlantic Basin Services Ltd., B.A. Services S.R.L., Bakersfield Industrial PV 1 LLC, Bakersfield PV I LLC, Beals Medina Solar LLC, Boa Hora 1 Geradora De Energia Solar S.A., Boa Hora 2 Geradora de Energia Solar S.A., Boa Hora 3 Geradora De Energia Solar S.A., Bolton Solar I LLC, Brasiliana Participacoes S.A., Bridgeport Solar LLC, Buffalo Gap Holdings 2 LLC, Buffalo Gap Holdings 3 L.L.C., Buffalo Gap Holdings LLC, Buffalo Gap Wind Farm 2 LLC, Buffalo Gap Wind Farm 3 L.L.C., Buffalo Gap Wind Farm 4 L.L.C., Buffalo Gap Wind Farm LLC, Bullock Freetown Solar 1 LLC, Bosforo de Responsabilidad Limitada de Capital Variable, CCS Telecarrier, CDEC-SING Ltda, CIA.TRANSMISORA DEL NORTE CHICO S.A., CO-CA Wholly Owned LLC, Camille Ltd., Camille Trust, Cavanal Minerals LLC, Cayman Energy Traders, Cemig II C.V., Centrais Eolicas Ametista S.A., Centrais Eolicas Borgo S.A., Centrais Eolicas Caetite S.A., Centrais Eolicas Dourados S.A., Centrais Eolicas Espigao S.A., Centrais Eolicas Maron S.A., Centrais Eolicas Morrao S.A., Centrais Eolicas Pelourinho S.A., Centrais Eolicas Piloes S.A., Centrais Eolicas Seraima S.A., Centrais Eolicas Serra do Espinhaco S.A., Centrais Eolicas Tanque S.A., Centrais Eolicas Ventos do Nordeste S.A., Centrais Eolicas da Prata S.A., Centrais Eolicas dos Aracas S.A., Central Electricity Supply Company of Orissa Limited, Central Termoelectrica Guillermo Brown S.A., Cerulean Properties LLC, Clean Wind Energy Ltd., Coastal Itabo Ltd., Colon LNG Marketing S. De R.L., Compania de Alumbrado Eletrico de San Salvador S.A. DE C.V., Compass Circle Solar LLC, Compania Transmisora Angamos SpA, Compania Transmisora La Cebada S.A., Compania Transmisora del Norte Grande SpA, Costa Norte LNG Terminal S. de R.L., Cronin Road Solar 1 LLC, DPL Capital Trust II, DPL Inc., Daggett Ridge Wind Farm LLC, Delano PV1 LLC, Diamond Development Inc., Distribuidora Electrica de Usulutan Sociedad Anonima de Capital Variable, Domi Trading S.L., Dominican Power Partners, Dublin Solar I LLC, Dunstable Solar 1 LLC, EMLP Controladora S. de R.L. de C.V., ENERAB S. de R.L. de C.V., ENERGEN S.A., Eloy ESD Solar Holdings LLC, Empresa Electrica Angamos S.A., Empresa Electrica Campiche S.A., Empresa Electrica Cochrane II SpA, Empresa Electrica Cochrane S.A., Empresa Electrica Guacolda S.A., Empresa Electrica Ventanas S.A., Empresa Electrica de Oriente S.A. de C.V., Empresa Generadora De Electricidad Itabo S.A., EnerAB Cogeneracion I Laguna del Rey S. de R.L. de C.V., EnerAB Suministro Calificado S. de R.L. de C.V., EnerAB Tenedora S. de R.L., Energetica Argentina S.A., Energia Eolica Los Olmos SpA, Energia Eolica Mesamavida SpA, Energia Verde S.A., Energy Trade and Finance Corporation, Energia Eolica Curauma SpA, Energia Eolica Paposo SpA, Energia Natural del Este Enadom, Eolica Mesa La Paz S. de R.L. de C.V., FTP Power LLC, Finchville Solar LLC, Fluence Energy LLC, Founder's Homestead Farm Solar LLC, Fundacion AES Dominicana Inc., Fundacion AES Gener, GENERGIA S.A., GNRY Holdings & Investments Limited, Gas Natural Atlantico II S. de R.L., Gas Natural Atlantico S. De R.L., Gasoducto GasAndes Argentina S.A., Gasoducto GasAndes S.A., Gener Argentina S.A., Gener Blue Water Ltd., Genergia Power Ltd., Georgia Solar Holdings LLC, Georgia Solar Parent LLC, Global Energy Holdings C.V., Goller Enerji Uretim Ltd. Sti., Gray Springs Vista Solar LLC, Greenwich Solar 1 LLC, Guacolda Energy S.A., Guaimbe I Parque Solar S.A., Guaimbe II Parque Solar S.A., Guaimbe III Parque Solar S.A., Guaimbe IV Parque Solar S.A., Guaimbe Solar Holding S.A., Guaimbe V Parque Solar S.A., Health and Welfare Benefit Plans LLC, Hipotecaria San Miguel Limitada de Capital Variable, Hipotecaria Santa Ana Limitada de Capital Variable, INVERSIONES NUEVA VENTANAS S.A., IPALCO Enterprises Inc., Indianapolis Power & Light Company, Indimento Inversiones S.L., Instituto AES Brasil, InterAndes S.A., Inversiones Cachagua SpA, Inversiones Energia Renovable Limitada, Inversiones LK SpA, Inversiones Termoenergia de Chile Ltda., Inversiones Zapallar Limitada, Inversora de San Nicolas S.A., Itabo III S.R.L., Jemeiwaa KaI S.A.S., Johnstown Solar 1 LLC, KA Energy OOD, KMR Power Company, Kazincbarcikai Iparteruletfejleszt Kft., Kings Rooftop PV LLC, La Plata I Empreendimentos Ltda., La Plata II Ltd., La Plata III C.V., Lane Ave Solar LLC, Lemoore PV 1 LLC, MFP CO Holdings II LLC, MFP CO Holdings LLC, MFP CO I LLC, MFP CO II LLC, MFP CO III LLC, MFP CO Parent LLC, MM Solar Holdings I LLC, MM Solar Parent LLC, MSP Master Tenant I LLC, MSP Master Tenant II LLC, MacGregor Park Inc., Manteca PV 1 LLC, Maple Solar LLC, Maui 17-2 LLC, Mauka FIT Twenty LLC, Mercury Cayman Co II Ltda Agencia en Chile, Mercury Chile Co. 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Sulaiman Hamid Almazroui, the UAE ambassador to the United Kingdom, said he was "hopeful that an equitable solution can be reached" in Mr Hedges's case.

The Durham University researcher's wife, Daniela Tejada, has lobbied for his release and won assurances from Mr Hunt that the Government is "now standing up for" her husband, after she claimed it had initially put foreign relations above his liberty.

Shezanne Cassim, who was jailed for nine months by the UAE for posting a satirical video on Youtube which parodied teenagers in Dubai, said: "The feelings of terror and utter helplessness are constant because there's no room in the UAE justice system to defend yourself - due process simply does not exist there".

"We hope the UAE now looks favourably on the family's request for clemency", a spokeswoman for Britain's Foreign Office said.

Speaking earlier in London, Mr Almazroui said: Matthew Hedges was not convicted after a five-minute show trial, as some have reported. "We live in a unsafe neighborhood and national security must be a top priority", said Almazroui, adding that everyone had the right to request a pardon.

Mr Hedges, 31, was arrested in May at Dubai Airport, having spent two weeks in the UAE carrying out research for his PhD on security in the region.

The Emiratis say Hedges made a full confession, but his family says he did not understand the document he signed, which was written in Arabic.

A life sentence for a non-Emirati entails a maximum of 25 years in jail followed by deportation, according to UAE state-run media.
Allergan plc, a pharmaceutical company, develops, manufactures, and commercializes branded pharmaceutical, device, biologic, surgical, and regenerative medicine products worldwide. The company operates in three segments: US Specialized Therapeutics, US General Medicine, and International. It offers a portfolio of products in various therapeutic areas, including medical aesthetics and dermatology, eye care, neuroscience, urology, gastrointestinal, women's health, and anti-infective therapeutic products. The company also offers breast implants and tissue expanders; and RM-131 (relamorelin), a peptide ghrelin agonist for the treatment of diabetic gastroparesis. In addition, it develops medical and cosmetic treatments; therapies for non-alcoholic steatohepatitis and other liver diseases; inhibitor for the treatment of psoriasis and other autoimmune disorders; atopic dermatitis drug candidate; peri-ocular rings for extended drug delivery and reducing elevated intraocular pressure in glaucoma patients; and treatments for neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer's disease. Further, the company develops RST-001, a novel gene therapy for the treatment of retinitis pigmentosa; small molecule therapeutics for inflammatory and fibrotic diseases; topical medicines for fat reduction; and delivery system and botulinum toxin-based prescription products. It has collaboration, option, and license agreement with Lyndra, Inc.; and strategic alliance and option agreement with Editas Medicine, Inc. Allergan plc also has licensing agreements with Assembly Biosciences, Inc.; MedImmune; and Heptares Therapeutics, Ltd. The company was formerly known as Actavis plc and changed its name to Allergan plc in June 2015. Allergan plc was founded in 1983 and is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland.

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The following companies are subsidiares of Thermo Fisher Scientific: 236 Perinton Parkway LLC, 27 Forge Parkway LLC, ABR--Affinity BioReagents, ACI Holdings Inc., ARG Services LLC, ASPEX Corporation, Abgene Inc., Abgene Limited, Acoustic Cytometry Systems Inc., AcroMetrix LLC, Acros Organics B.V.B.A., Advanced Biotechnologies Limited, Advanced Scientifics (ASI), Advanced Scientifics Inc., Advanced Scientifics International Inc., Affymetrix Biotech Participacoes Ltda., Affymetrix Biotech Shanghai Ltd, Affymetrix Inc, Affymetrix Japan K.K., Affymetrix Pte Ltd, Affymetrix UK Ltd, Afora S.A.U., Ahura Scientific, Alchematrix Inc., Alchematrix LLC, Alfa Aesar, Alfa Aesar (China) Chemical Co. 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V, FS (Barbados) Capital Holdings Ltd., FS Casa Rocas Holdings LLC, FS Mexicana Holdings LLC, FSI Receivables Company LLC, FSII Sweden Holdings AB, FSII Sweden Holdings I AB, FSIR Holdings (UK) Limited, FSIR Holdings (US) Inc., FSUK Holdings Limited, FSWH Company LLC, FSWH II C.V., FSWH International Holdings LLC, Fermentas China Co. Ltd, Fermentas Inc., Fermentas International, Fermentas Sweden AB, Fermentas UK Limited, Fiberlite Centrifuge LLC, Finesse Scientific Equipment (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Finesse Solutions AG, Finesse Solutions Inc., Finnzymes Oy, Fisher Alder S. de R.L. de C.V., Fisher Asia Manufacturing Ventures Inc., Fisher Bermuda Holdings Limited, Fisher BioImage ApS, Fisher BioPharma Services (India) Private Limited, Fisher BioSciences Japan G.K., Fisher BioServices Inc., Fisher Bioblock Holding II SNC, Fisher CLP Holding Limited Partnership, Fisher Canada Holding ULC 1, Fisher Canada Holding ULC 2, Fisher Canada Holding ULC 3, Fisher Canada Limited Partnership, Fisher Chimica BVBA, Fisher Clinical Logistics LLC, Fisher Clinical Services (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Fisher Clinical Services (Bristol) LLC, Fisher Clinical Services (Colombia) LLC, Fisher Clinical Services (Korea) Co. Ltd, Fisher Clinical Services (Mexico) LLC, Fisher Clinical Services (Peru) LLC, Fisher Clinical Services (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., Fisher Clinical Services Colombia S.A.S., Fisher Clinical Services GmbH, Fisher Clinical Services Inc., Fisher Clinical Services Japan K.K., Fisher Clinical Services Latin America S.R.L., Fisher Clinical Services Limited Liability Company, Fisher Clinical Services Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Fisher Clinical Services Peru S.R.L, Fisher Clinical Services Pte Ltd., Fisher Clinical Services U.K. Limited, Fisher Emergo B.V., Fisher Germany Holdings GmbH, Fisher Hamilton China Inc., Fisher Hamilton Mexico LLC, Fisher Holdings ApS, Fisher Internet Minority Holdings L.L.C., Fisher Laboratory Products Manufacturing (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, Fisher Luxembourg Danish Holdings SARL, Fisher Manufacturing (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Fisher Maybridge Holdings Limited, Fisher Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Fisher Scientific (Austria) GmbH, Fisher Scientific (Hong Kong) Limited, Fisher Scientific (M) Sdn Bhd, Fisher Scientific (SEA) Pte. Ltd., Fisher Scientific A/S, Fisher Scientific AG, Fisher Scientific Australia Pty Limited, Fisher Scientific Biotech Line ApS, Fisher Scientific Brazil Inc., Fisher Scientific Central America Inc., Fisher Scientific Chile Inc., Fisher Scientific Colombia Inc., Fisher Scientific Company, Fisher Scientific Company L.L.C., Fisher Scientific Costa Rica Sociedad de Responsabilidad Limitada, Fisher Scientific Europe Holdings B.V., Fisher Scientific GTF AB, Fisher Scientific Germany Beteiligungs GmbH, Fisher Scientific GmbH, Fisher Scientific Holding Company LLC, Fisher Scientific Holding HK Limited, Fisher Scientific Holding U.K. Limited, Fisher Scientific Holdings (M) Sdn Bhd, Fisher Scientific Holdings (S) Pte Ltd, Fisher Scientific International LLC, Fisher Scientific Investments (Cayman) Ltd., Fisher Scientific Ireland Investments Unlimited, Fisher Scientific Ireland Limited, Fisher Scientific Japan Ltd., Fisher Scientific Jersey Island Limited, Fisher Scientific Korea Ltd, Fisher Scientific Latin America Inc., Fisher Scientific Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Fisher Scientific Mexicana S. de R.L. de C.V., Fisher Scientific Mexico Inc., Fisher Scientific Middle East and Africa Inc., Fisher Scientific Norway AS, Fisher Scientific Operating Company, Fisher Scientific Oxoid Holdings Ltd., Fisher Scientific Oy, Fisher Scientific Pte. Ltd., Fisher Scientific S.A.S., Fisher Scientific S.L., Fisher Scientific SPRL, Fisher Scientific The Hague I B.V., Fisher Scientific The Hague II B.V., Fisher Scientific The Hague III B.V., Fisher Scientific The Hague IV B.V., Fisher Scientific The Hague V B.V., Fisher Scientific U.K. Limited, Fisher Scientific UK Holding Company 2, Fisher Scientific UK Holding Company Limited, Fisher Scientific Unipessoal Lda., Fisher Scientific Venezuela Inc., Fisher Scientific Worldwide (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Fisher Scientific Worldwide Holdings I C.V., Fisher Scientific Worldwide Inc., Fisher Scientific de Mexico S.A., Fisher Scientific of the Netherlands B.V., Fisher Scientific spol. S.r.o, Fisher Servicios Clinicos (Chile) LLC, Fisher Servicios Clinicos Chile Ltda, Fisher WWD Holding L.L.C., Fisher Worldwide Distribution SPV, Fisher Worldwide Gene Distribution SPV, Flux Instruments, Fuji Partnership, G & M Procter Limited, G V Instruments Limited, GV Instruments Canada Ltd., GV Instruments Inc, Gatan Inc, General Scientific Company Sdn Bhd (M), Genomed molekularbiologische und diagnostische Produkte GmbH, Gerhard Menzel B.V. & Co. KG, Gold Cattle Standard Testing Labs Inc., Golden West Indemnity Company Limited, Goring Kerr Detection Limited, Greenville Service Company Inc., HENO GmbH i.L., Hangar 215 Inc., Helmet Securities Limited, Henogen, HighChem, HyClone International Trade (Tianjin) Co. Ltd, Hybaid Limited, I.Q. (BIO) Limited, IDnostics AG, ILS Laboratories Scandinavia AB, Inel Inc., Inel SAS, InnaPhase Inc., InnaPhase Limited, IntegenX, Intrinsic BioProbes Inc., Intrinsic Bioprobes Inc., Invitrogen (Shanghai) Investment Co. 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Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific (China) Holding Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific (China-HK) Holding Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific (DE) Holding S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Ecublens) SARL, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Finance I) B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Finance I) S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Finance II) S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Finance III) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Finance III) S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Fuji) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Guangzhou) Co. Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Holding II) B.V. & Co. KG, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Hong Kong) Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific (IVGN) B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific (IVGN) Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Johannesburg) (Proprietary) Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Mexico City) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Milwaukee) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Mississauga) Inc., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Monterrey) S. De R.L. De C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific (NK) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific (PN) Austria Holding GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific (PN) UK LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific (PN) UK Limited Partnership, Thermo Fisher Scientific (PN-I) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific (PN-II) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific (PN1) UK Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Panama) B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Panama) Dutch LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Praha) s.r.o., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Real Estate 1) GmbH & Co. KG, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Real Estate 1) S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Schweiz) AG, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Shanghai) Instruments Co. Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Shanghai) Management Co. Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Suzhou) Instruments Co. Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Thailand) Co. Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific AL-1 LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific AU C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific AU II Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific AU LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific AU Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Africa Proprietary Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific Aquasensors LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Australia Pty Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific B.V.B.A., Thermo Fisher Scientific BHK (I) Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific BHK (II) Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Baltics UAB, Thermo Fisher Scientific Beteiligungsverwaltungs GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific Biosciences Corp., Thermo Fisher Scientific Brahms LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Brasil Instrumentos de Processo Ltda., Thermo Fisher Scientific Brasil Servicos de Logistica Ltda, Thermo Fisher Scientific C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Cayman Investments LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Chemicals Inc., Thermo Fisher Scientific China (C-I) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific China (S) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific China Holdings I B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific China Holdings II B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific China Holdings III B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific China Holdings IV B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Chromatography Holdings Aps, Thermo Fisher Scientific Chromatography Holdings S.a r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Cyprus I C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Cyprus I Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific Cyprus II C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Cyprus II Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific Cyprus III C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Cyprus III Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific Cyprus IV C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Cyprus V C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Denmark Senior Holdings ApS, Thermo Fisher Scientific Erie 1 Financing (Barbados) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific Erie Financing (Barbados) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific Erie Financing S.a r.l, Thermo Fisher Scientific Europe GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific FLC B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific FLC Finance C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific FLC II B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific FLC LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific FSIR Financing (Barbados) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific FSIR Financing S.a.r.l, Thermo Fisher Scientific FSUKHCO Financing (Barbados) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific Falcon Senior Holdings Inc., Thermo Fisher Scientific Finance Company BV, Thermo Fisher Scientific GENEART GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific Germany BV & Co. KG, Thermo Fisher Scientific GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific HR Services Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Holdings (Cayman) I, Thermo Fisher Scientific Holdings (Cayman) II , Thermo Fisher Scientific Holdings Europe Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific IT Services GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific India Holding LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific India Pvt Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific Investments (Luxembourg) S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Investments (Malta) Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Investments (Sweden) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Investments (Sweden) S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Investments Malta (Sweden Financing) Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Invitrogen Financing (Barbados) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific Japan Holdings I B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Japan Holdings II B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Japan Holdings III B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific K.K., Thermo Fisher Scientific Korea Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific LSI Financing (Barbados) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life CV GP Holdings II LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life CV GP Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Enterprises C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Enterprises GP LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Financing (Barbados) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Financing (Cayman), Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Financing C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Financing Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Holdings I C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Holdings II C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Holdings III C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Holdings Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life International GP Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life International Holdings I C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life International Holdings II C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments GP LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments I S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments II S.a r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments III S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments IV S.a.r.l, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments Malta Holding I LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments Malta Holding II LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments Malta I Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments Malta II Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments US Financing I LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments US Financing II LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life NL Holdings GP LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Netherlands Holding C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Senior GP Holdings II LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Senior GP Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Senior Holdings C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Senior Holdings II C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Senior Holdings Inc., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Switzerland Holdings GP LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Tech Korea Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Enterprise Holding Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Investment I LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Investment II LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Investment UK I Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Investment UK II Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Investments Holding LP, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Israel Investment I Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Israel Investment II Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Luxembourg Holding LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Luxembourg Enterprise Holdings S.a r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Luxembourg German Holdings S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Luxembourg Life Technologies UK Holding S.a r.l, Thermo Fisher Scientific Luxembourg Sweden Holdings I S.a r.l, Thermo Fisher Scientific Luxembourg Sweden Holdings II S.a r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Luxembourg Venture Holdings I S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Luxembourg Venture Holdings II S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., Thermo Fisher Scientific Malta Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Messtechnik GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific Mexico City S. de R.L. de C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Middle East Holdings Inc., Thermo Fisher Scientific Milano Srl, Thermo Fisher Scientific NHK Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific New Zealand Holdings, Thermo Fisher Scientific New Zealand Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Norway Holdings AS, Thermo Fisher Scientific Norway US Investments LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Odyssey Financing (Barbados) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific Odyssey Holdings Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Operating Company LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Oy, Thermo Fisher Scientific PN2 C.V, Thermo Fisher Scientific PN2 LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific PRB LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific PRB Malta Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific PRB S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Panama I Cayman Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific Peru S.R.L., Thermo Fisher Scientific Pte. Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific Re Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific SL, Thermo Fisher Scientific Senior Financing LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Senior Holdings Australia LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific South Africa Proprietary Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific SpA, Thermo Fisher Scientific Spectra LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Spectra Malta Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Spectra S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Spectra-Physics Holdings Luxembourg I S.a r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Spectra-Physics Holdings Luxembourg II S.a r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Spectra-Physics Investments Malta Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Switzerland Holdings C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific TR Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Taiwan Co. Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific Vermogensverwaltungs GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific West Palm Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Wissenschaftliche Gerate GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific Worldwide Investments (Cayman), Thermo Fisher Scientific eCommerce Solutions LLC , Thermo Fisher Senior Canada Holdings LLC, Thermo Foundation Inc., Thermo Gamma-Metrics Holdings Pty Ltd., Thermo Gamma-Metrics LLC, Thermo Gamma-Metrics Pty Ltd, Thermo Holding European Operations LLC, Thermo Hypersil Ltd, Thermo Hypersil-Keystone LLC, Thermo Informatics Asia Pacific Pty Ltd., Thermo Instrument Controls de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Thermo Kevex X-Ray LLC, Thermo Keytek LLC, Thermo LabSystems Inc., Thermo LabSystems S.A., Thermo Life Science International Trading (Tianjin) Co. Ltd., Thermo Life Sciences AB, Thermo Luxembourg Holding S.a.r.l., Thermo Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Thermo MF Physics LLC, Thermo Measurement Ltd, Thermo Measuretech Canada Inc., Thermo Neslab LLC, Thermo Nicolet Limited, Thermo Onix Limited, Thermo Optek (Australia) Pty Ltd., Thermo Optek Limited, Thermo Optek S.A., Thermo Orion Inc., Thermo Portable Holdings LLC, Thermo Power Corporation, Thermo Process Instruments GP LLC, Thermo Process Instruments L.P., Thermo Projects Limited, Thermo Quest S.A., Thermo Radiometrie Limited, Thermo Ramsey Italia S.r.l., Thermo Ramsey LLC, Thermo Ramsey S.A., Thermo Re Ltd., Thermo Scientific Microbiology Pte Ltd., Thermo Scientific Microbiology Sdn Bhd, Thermo Scientific Portable Analytical Instruments Inc., Thermo Scientific Services Inc., Thermo Securities Corporation, Thermo Sentron Canada Inc., Thermo Sentron Limited, Thermo Shandon Inc., Thermo Shandon Limited, Thermo Suomi Holding B.V., Thermo TLH (UK) Limited, Thermo TLH L.P., Thermo Trace Pty Ltd., Thermo-Fisher Biochemical Product (Beijing) Co. Ltd., ThermoLase LLC, ThermoSpectra Limited, Trek Diagnostic Systems LLC, Trek Diagnostic Systems Ltd., Trek Holding Company II Ltd., Trek Holding Company Ltd., Trex Medical Corporation, USB Corporation, Union Lab Supplies Limited, United Diagnostics Inc., VG Systems Limited, Westover Scientific Inc., ZAO PE Biosystems, eBioscience GmbH, eBioscience Ltd, eBioscience SAS, and picoSpin LLC.
The U.S. military said Saturday that a service member has been killed in Afghanistan, while in a separate incident two Afghan soldiers died when their helicopter failed to land properly.

In a release announcing the death, NATO Resolute Support, the alliance's mission in Afghanistan, said the soldier was killed in the country Saturday. The president is yet to visit military members in Afghanistan or Iraq. The brief statement did not provide additional information on the service member's identity or the time or place of death. It also comes just weeks after Major Brent Taylor, the mayor of North Ogden, Utah, was killed in an insider attack in Kabul.

More than 2,400 USA forces have died in the 17-year-old war, America's longest conflict. The U.S. military's mission is focused mainly on guiding and aiding Afghan forces battling the Taliban, which was ousted from power in 2001.

The death comes after President Donald Trump hinted at a possible visit to Afghanistan - which would be his first to US troops in a combat zone in his two years as president. In recent months, American and global forces deployed to Afghanistan have suffered from insider attacks - instances where Afghan military personnel or police open fire on partner forces.

Taylor, a father of seven, was on his fourth deployment and a second tour of Afghanistan. Gen Jeffrey Smiley was wounded during an insider attack on October 18, in Afghanistan.

"We're going to do some interesting things".
The following companies are subsidiares of Sysco: 2234829 Alberta ULC, 2234842 Alberta ULC, A. M. Briggs Inc., A.M. Briggs, Almacen Fiscal Frionet Caldera S.A., Almacen Fiscal Frionet Limon S.A., Appert's Foodservice, Arnotts (Fruit) Limited, Asian Foods, Bahamas Food Holdings Limited, Bahamas Food Services Limited, Brake Bros, Brake Bros Foodservice Ireland Limited, Brake Bros. Foodservice Limited, Brake Bros. Holding I Limited, Brake Bros. Ltd., Brakes Foodservice NI Limited, Buchy Food Service, Buckhead Beef Co., Buckhead Meat & Seafood of Houston Inc., Buckhead Meat Company, Buckhead Meat Midwest Inc., Buckhead Meat of Dallas Inc., Buckhead Meat of Denver Inc., Buckhead Meat of San Antonio LP, Buzztable Inc., CAKE Corporation, Central Seafood Co., Christys Wine & Spirits Limited, Clafra Aktiebolag, Colorado Boxed Beef Co - Specialty meat-cutting division, Corporacion Frionet Sociedad Anonima, Crossgar Foodservice, Crossgar Foodservice Limited, Crown I Enterprises Inc., Cucina Acquisitions (UK) Limited, Cucina Finance (UK) Limited, Cucina French Holdings Limited, Cucina Fresh Finance Limited, Cucina Fresh Investments Limited, Cucina Lux Investments Limited, Curleys Quality Foods Limited (Third Party), Davigel Belgilux S.A., Davigel Espana S.A., Desert Meats & Provisions, Distagro, Doerle Food Service, Doughtie's Foods Inc., Dust Bowl City LLC, Eko Fagel Fisk o mittemellan AB, Enclave Insurance Company, Enclave Parkway Association Inc., Enclave Properties LLC, European Imports, European Imports Inc., Figg Inc., Freedman Meats, Freedman Meats Inc., Freedman-KB Inc., Fresh Direct (UK) Limited, Fresh Direct Group Limited, Fresh Direct Limited, Fresh Holdings Limited, FreshPoint, FreshPoint Arizona Inc., FreshPoint Atlanta Inc., FreshPoint California Inc., FreshPoint Central California Inc., FreshPoint Central Florida Inc., FreshPoint Connecticut LLC, FreshPoint Dallas Inc., FreshPoint Denver Inc., FreshPoint Hawaii LLC, FreshPoint Inc., FreshPoint Las Vegas Inc., FreshPoint North Carolina Inc., FreshPoint North Florida Inc., FreshPoint Oklahoma City LLC, FreshPoint Pompano Real Estate LLC, FreshPoint Puerto Rico LLC, FreshPoint San Francisco Inc., FreshPoint South Florida Inc., FreshPoint South Texas Inc., FreshPoint Southern California Inc., FreshPoint Tomato LLC, FreshPoint Vancouver Ltd., Freshfayre Limited, Fruktservice i Helsingborg AB, GHS Classic Drinks Limited, Gilchrist & Soames Inc., Gilchrist & Soames UK Limited, Guest Packaging LLC, Guest Supply, Guest Supply Asia Limited, Guest Supply Singapore Pte. Ltd., International Food Group, Isakssons Frukt & Gront AB, J & M Wholesale Meats, J. Kings Food Service Professionals, J. Kings Food Service Professionals Inc., Kent Frozen Foods, Les Ateliers Du Gout, Liquid Assets Limited, M&J Seafood Holdings Limited, M&J Seafood Limited, Manchester Mills LLC, Mayca Autoservicio S.A., Mayca Distribuidores S.A., Menigo Foodservice AB, Mitshim Etatu Supply LP, Newport Meat Company, Newport Meat Northern California Inc., Newport Meat Pacific Northwest Inc., Newport Meat Southern California Inc., Newport Meat of Nevada Inc., North Star Holding Corporation, North Star Seafood, North Star Seafood Acquisition Corporation, North Star Seafood LLC, PFS de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Palisades Ranch Inc., Pallas Foods, Pallas Foods Farm Fresh Unlimited Company, Pallas Foods Unlimited Company, Pauleys Produce Limited, Promotora del Servicios S.A. de C.V., Restaurangakdemien AB, Restaurant of Tomorrow Inc., Rohan Viandes Elaboration SAS, SMS Bermuda Holdings, SMS GPC International Limited, SMS GPC International Resources Limited, SMS Global Holdings S.a.r.l., SMS International Resources Ireland Unlimited Company, SMS Lux Holdings LLC, SOTF LLC, SYY Netherlands C.V., SYY Panama S. de R.L., Serca Foodservice, Servicestyckarna I Johannes AB, Servicios Ameriserve S.A. de C.V., Shenzhen Guest Supply Trading Co. Limited, Societe Civile Immobiliere (SCI) Bianchi Montegut, Societe Civile Immobiliere (SCI) De Boiseau, Societe Civile Immobiliere (SCI) De Garcelles, Societe Civile Immobiliere (SCI) J.D. Lanjouan, Societe Civile Immobiliere (SCI) Le Dauphin, Specialty Meat Holdings LLC, Stockflag Limited, Stockholms Fiskauktion AB, Supplies on the Fly, Sysco Albany LLC, Sysco Asian Foods Inc., Sysco Atlanta LLC, Sysco Autoservicio S.A., Sysco Baltimore LLC, Sysco Baraboo LLC, Sysco Bermuda Partners L.P., Sysco Boston LLC, Sysco Canada Holdings S.a.r.l., Sysco Canada Inc., Sysco Central Alabama LLC, Sysco Central California Inc., Sysco Central Florida Inc., Sysco Central Illinois Inc., Sysco Central Pennsylvania LLC, Sysco Charlotte LLC, Sysco Chicago Inc., Sysco Cincinnati LLC, Sysco Cleveland Inc., Sysco Columbia LLC, Sysco Connecticut LLC, Sysco Corporation, Sysco Corporation Director's Deferred Compensation Plan Trust, Sysco Corporation Employee's 401(k) Plan Trust, Sysco Corporation Executive Deferred Compensation Plan Trust, Sysco Corporation Good Government Committee Inc., Sysco Corporation Retirement Trust, Sysco Corporation Supplemental Executive Retirement Trust, Sysco Corporation Supplemental Unemployment Benefits Plan Trust, Sysco Detroit LLC, Sysco Disaster Relief Foundation Inc., Sysco EI VI S. s.r.l., Sysco EU II S.a.r.l., Sysco EU III S.a.r.l., Sysco EU IV Capital Unlimited Company, Sysco EU IV S. s.r.l.., Sysco EU V S. s.r.l., Sysco Eastern Maryland LLC, Sysco Eastern Wisconsin LLC, Sysco Foundation Inc., Sysco France Holding SAS, Sysco France SAS, Sysco George Town II LLC, Sysco George Town Limited S. s.r.l.., Sysco Global Finance LLC, Sysco Global Finance LLP, Sysco Global Holdings B.V., Sysco Global Resources LLC, Sysco Global Services LLC, Sysco Grand Cayman Company, Sysco Grand Cayman II Company, Sysco Grand Cayman III Company, Sysco Grand Rapids LLC, Sysco Guernsey Limited, Sysco Guest Supply Canada Inc., Sysco Guest Supply Europe Goods Wholesalers LLC, Sysco Guest Supply Europe Limited, Sysco Guest Supply LLC, Sysco Gulf Coast LLC, Sysco Hampton Roads Inc., Sysco Hawaii Inc., Sysco Holdings II LLC, Sysco Holdings LLC, Sysco Indianapolis LLC, Sysco International Food Group Inc., Sysco International Inc., Sysco Iowa Inc., Sysco Jackson LLC, Sysco Jacksonville Inc., Sysco Kansas City Inc., Sysco Knoxville LLC, Sysco Labs Europe Limited, Sysco Labs Pvt. Ltd., Sysco Leasing LLC, Sysco Lincoln Inc., Sysco Lincoln Transportation Company Inc., Sysco Long Island LLC, Sysco Los Angeles Inc., Sysco Louisville Inc., Sysco Memphis LLC, Sysco Merchandising and Supply Chain Services Canada Inc., Sysco Merchandising and Supply Chain Services Inc., Sysco Metro New York LLC, Sysco Minnesota Inc., Sysco Montana Inc., Sysco Nashville LLC, Sysco Netherlands Partners LLC, Sysco North Central Florida Inc., Sysco North Dakota Inc., Sysco Northern New England Inc., Sysco Philadelphia LLC, Sysco Pittsburgh LLC, Sysco Portland Inc., Sysco Raleigh LLC, Sysco Resources Services LLC, Sysco Riverside Inc., Sysco Sacramento Inc., Sysco San Diego Inc., Sysco San Francisco Inc., Sysco Seattle Inc., Sysco South Florida Inc., Sysco Southeast Florida LLC, Sysco Spain Holdings SLU, Sysco Spokane Inc., Sysco St. Louis LLC, Sysco Syracuse LLC, Sysco Technologies Cayman Ltd., Sysco Technologies LLC, Sysco UK Holdings Limited, Sysco UK Limited, Sysco UK Partners LLP, Sysco USA I Inc., Sysco USA II LLC, Sysco USA III LLC, Sysco Ventura Inc., Sysco Ventures Inc., Sysco Virginia LLC, Sysco West Coast Florida Inc., Sysco Western Minnesota Inc., The SYGMA Network Inc., Upsys, Victua SAS, Walker Foods Inc., Waugh Foods, and Wild Harvest Limited.
There is not enough analysis data for BlackRock Muni Intermediate Duration Fund.

4.1 Community Rank

Outperform Votes BlackRock Muni Intermediate Duration Fund has received 78 outperform votes. (Add your outperform vote.)

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Community Sentiment BlackRock Muni Intermediate Duration Fund has received 61.42% outperform votes from our community.

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

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Cenovus Energy Inc., together with its subsidiaries, develops, produces, and markets crude oil, natural gas liquids, and natural gas in Canada, the United States and the Asia Pacific region. The company operates through Oil Sands, Conventional, and Refining and Marketing segments. The Oil Sands segment develops and produces bitumen in northeast Alberta. Its bitumen assets include Foster Creek, Christina Lake, and Narrows Lake, as well as other projects in the early stages of development. The Conventional segment holds assets primarily located in Elmworth-Wapiti, Kaybob-Edson, and Clearwater operating areas of British Columbia and Alberta, as well as various interests in natural gas processing facilities. The Refining and Marketing segment transports and sells crude oil, natural gas, and NGLs. This segment owns a 50% ownership in Wood River and Borger refineries located in the United States; and owns and operates a crude-by-rail terminal in Alberta. Cenovus Energy Inc. was founded in 2009 and is headquartered in Calgary, Canada.

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CMC Markets plc, together with its subsidiaries, provides online retail financial services to retail, professional, stockbroking, and institutional clients in Australia, the United Kingdom, and internationally. The company provides its clients with the ability to trade contracts for difference and financial spread betting on a range of underlying shares, indices, foreign currencies, commodities, and treasuries through its trading platform. It also offers Australian clients the opportunity to trade Australian and selected international instruments, including shares, options, managed funds, warrants, and exchange traded funds. In addition, the company provides its clients a range of education opportunities through weekly and monthly webinars and seminars, as well as Trader Development programme, which provides a range of in-platform, on-demand education, and tailored market commentary. CMC Markets plc was founded in 1989 and is headquartered in London, the United Kingdom.

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High winds and heavy rains are temporarily halting the work of some teams searching for remains in the aftermath of a deadly Northern California wildfire. Add California Wildfires as an interest to stay up to date on the latest California Wildfires news, video, and analysis from ABC News.

When rain finally came down across Northern California on Wednesday, after a long period of dry weather, the downpour brought relief to those battling the ongoing blaze, assisting in "extinguishing hot spots", per Cal Fire.

The so-called Camp Fire all but obliterated the town of Paradise, 280km northeast of San Francisco, on Nov 8, killing at least 84 people and destroying almost 14,000 homes.

The agency says the massive blaze killed at least 84 people and destroyed almost 19,000 buildings, a lot of them homes.

The nation's deadliest wildfire in a century has killed at least 84 people, and 475 are on a list of those reported missing. It dropped an estimated 7 inches (18 centimeters) of rain over the burn area over a three-day period without causing significant mudslides, said Hannah Chandler-Cooley of the National Weather Service.

At least 84 people died in the so-called Camp Fire which started more than two weeks ago, and as many as 560 are believed missing.

More than 800 volunteers searched for remains on Thanksgiving and again on Friday, authorities said.

The weather service issued a warning for possible flash flooding and debris flows from areas scarred by major fires in Northern California, including the fire in Paradise and surrounding communities.

Irma Corona (R) comforts neighbor Gerryann Wulbern in front of the remains of Wulbern's home after the two returned for the first time since the Camp Fire in Paradise, California, November 22, 2018.

"I'm emotionally traumatised by what happened", said Wilken, who keeps in close contact with co-workers, some of whom lost family, to help work on his grief.

Paradise is about 140 miles north of San Francisco.

In Southern California, more residents have returned to areas evacuated in a destructive fire as crews repaired power, telephone and gas utilities.

The rain helped extinguish hotspots in smoldering areas, and containment increased to 95 percent.

Los Angeles County sheriff's officials said they were in the last phase of repopulating Malibu and unincorporated areas of the county.

Flames erupted November 8 just west of Los Angeles and burned through suburban communities and wilderness parklands to the ocean.

"The guys will never say it's hard", said David Kang, a member of a search team.
The following companies are subsidiares of Ingersoll Rand: 211 E. Russell Road LLC, Air-Relief, Belliss & Morcom Brasil, Belliss and Morcom, Boardwalk Enterprises, Charm Merger Sub Inc., CompAir, CompAir (Hankook) Korea Co. Ltd., CompAir Acquisition (No. 2) Ltd., CompAir Acquisition Ltd., CompAir BroomWade Ltd., CompAir Canada, CompAir Finance Ltd., CompAir GmbH, CompAir Holdings Limited, CompAir Holman Ltd, CompAir International Trading (Shanghai) Co Ltd, CompAir Korea Ltd, CompAir South Africa (SA) (Pty) Ltd., CompAir UK Ltd, CompAir USA, Consolidated Distribution Holdings Ltd., DV Systems Inc., Emco Wheaton, Emco Wheaton GmbH Branch, Emco Wheaton Gmbh, Emco Wheaton UK, Emco Wheaton USA Inc, Enza Air Propriety Limited (South Africa), GD Aria Holdings #2 Limited, GD Aria Holdings Limited, GD Aria Investments Limited, GD First UK Ltd, GD German Holdings GmbH, GD German Holdings I Gmbh, GD German Holdings II GmbH, GD German Investments GmbH, GD Global Holdings, GD Global Holdings II, GD Global Holdings UK II Ltd., GD Global Ventures I B.V., GD Global Ventures II B.V., GD Global Ventures III B.V., GD Industrial Products Malaysia SDN. BHD., GD Investment KY, GD UK Finance Ltd., Gardner Denver (Thailand) Co. Ltd., Gardner Denver Austria GmbH, Gardner Denver Bad Neustadt Real Estate GmbH & Co KG, Gardner Denver Belgium NV, Gardner Denver Brasil Industria E Comercio de Maquinas Ltda., Gardner Denver CZ + SK sro, Gardner Denver Canada Corp, Gardner Denver Cyprus Investments II Ltd., Gardner Denver Cyprus Investments II Ltd. - US Branch, Gardner Denver Cyprus Investments Ltd., Gardner Denver Cyprus Investments Ltd. - US Branch, Gardner Denver Deutschland GmbH, Gardner Denver Engineered Products India Private Limited, Gardner Denver FZE, Gardner Denver Finance II LLC, Gardner Denver Finance Inc & Co KG, Gardner Denver France SA, Gardner Denver France SAS, Gardner Denver Group Services Ltd, Gardner Denver Group Svcs Ltd, Gardner Denver Hoffman, Gardner Denver Holdings, Gardner Denver Holdings Limited, Gardner Denver Hong Kong Investments Limited, Gardner Denver Hong Kong Ltd, Gardner Denver Iberica, Gardner Denver Industries Ltd., Gardner Denver Industries Pty Ltd., Gardner Denver Industries Pty Ltd. Branch, Gardner Denver International, Gardner Denver International Ltd., Gardner Denver Intl Ltd Middle East Regional Rep Office, Gardner Denver Investments, Gardner Denver Italy Holdings S.r.L., Gardner Denver Japan, Gardner Denver Kirchhain Real Estate GmbH & Co KG, Gardner Denver Korea, Gardner Denver Korea Ltd, Gardner Denver Ltd, Gardner Denver Ltd South Africa, Gardner Denver Ltd., Gardner Denver Ltd. Branch (Ireland), Gardner Denver Machinery (Shanghai) Co, Gardner Denver Machinery (Shanghai) Co., Gardner Denver Nash Brasil Industria E Comercio De Bombas Ltda, Gardner Denver Nash Deutschland GmbH, Gardner Denver Nash LLC, Gardner Denver Nash Machinery Ltd, Gardner Denver Nash Machinery Ltd., Gardner Denver Nederland BV, Gardner Denver Nederland Investments B.V., Gardner Denver Oberdorfer Pumps, Gardner Denver Oy, Gardner Denver Petroleum Pumps, Gardner Denver Polska Sp z.o.o., Gardner Denver Pte Ltd., Gardner Denver S.r.l., Gardner Denver Schopfheim GmbH, Gardner Denver Schopfheim Real Estate GmbH & Co KG, Gardner Denver Schweiz AG, Gardner Denver Slovakia, Gardner Denver SudAmerica S.r.l., Gardner Denver Sweden AB, Gardner Denver Taiwan Ltd., Gardner Denver Thomas, Gardner Denver Thomas GmbH, Gardner Denver Thomas Pneumatic Systems (Wuxi) Co., Gardner Denver Thomas Real Estate GmbH & Co KG, Gardner Denver UK, Gardner Denver Water Jetting Systems, Garo Dott. Ing. Roberto Gabbioneta S.r.l., Hamworthy Belliss & Morcom, ILMVAC (UK) Ltd., ILS Innovative Labor Systeme, ILS Inovative Laborsysteme GmbH, Indonesia Foreign Trade Representative Office, LeROI, LeRoi International Inc, MP Pumps Inc., Mako Compressors, Nash, Nash Elmo, Oina VV, Oina VV Aktiebolag, Robuschi, Rotary Compression Technologies, Runtech Systems, Runtech Systems (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Runtech Systems Inc., Runtech Systems OY, Shanghai CompAir Compressors Co Ltd, Shanghai Compressors & Blowers Ltd., Syltone, TCM Investments, TIWR Real Estate GmbH & Co. KG, TODO AB, Tamrotor Marine Compressors AS, Thomas Industries, Thomas Industries Inc., Tri-Continent Scientific, Welch Vacuum Equipment (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Zinsser Analytic, Zinsser Analytik GmbH, and Zinsser NA.
The following companies are subsidiares of CVS Health: @Credentials Inc., ACS ACQCO CORP., ADMINCO Inc., AE Fourteen Incorporated, AHP Holdings Inc., AMC - Tennessee LLC, APS Acquisition LLC, ASCO HealthCare LLC, ASI Wings LLC, AUSHC Holdings Inc., Accendo Insurance Company, Accordant Health Services L.L.C., Active Health Management Inc., Administrative Enterprises Inc., AdvancePCS SpecialtyRx LLC, AdvanceRx.com L.L.C., Advanced Care Scripts Inc., Aetna, Aetna (Beijing) Enterprise Management Services Co. Ltd., Aetna (Shanghai) Enterprise Services Co. Ltd., Aetna ACO Holdings Inc., Aetna Asset Advisors LLC, Aetna Behavioral Health LLC, Aetna Better Health Inc., Aetna Better Health Inc., Aetna Better Health of California Inc., Aetna Better Health of Florida Inc., Aetna Better Health of Kansas Inc., Aetna Better Health of Michigan Inc., Aetna Better Health of Missouri LLC, Aetna Better Health of Nevada Inc., Aetna Better Health of North Carolina Inc., Aetna Better Health of Oklahoma Inc., Aetna Better Health of Texas Inc., Aetna Better Health of Washington Inc., Aetna Capital Management LLC, Aetna Card Solutions LLC, Aetna Corporate Services LLC, Aetna Dental Inc., Aetna Dental of California Inc., Aetna Financial Holdings LLC, Aetna Florida Inc., Aetna Global Benefits (Asia Pacific) Limited, Aetna Global Benefits (Bahamas) Limited, Aetna Global Benefits (Bermuda) Limited, Aetna Global Benefits (Europe) Limited, Aetna Global Benefits (Middle East) LLC, Aetna Global Benefits (Singapore) PTE. LTD., Aetna Global Benefits (UK) Limited, Aetna Global Benefits Limited (DIFC UAE), Aetna Global Holdings Limited, Aetna Health Holdings LLC, Aetna Health Inc., Aetna Health Insurance (Thailand) Public Company Limited, Aetna Health Insurance Company, Aetna Health Insurance Company of Europe DAC, Aetna Health Management LLC, Aetna Health and Life Insurance Company, Aetna Health of California Inc., Aetna Health of Iowa Inc., Aetna Health of Michigan Inc., Aetna Health of Ohio Inc., Aetna Health of Utah Inc., Aetna HealthAssurance Pennsylvania Inc., Aetna Holdco (UK) Limited, Aetna Holdings (Thailand) Limited, Aetna Inc., Aetna Insurance (Hong Kong) Limite, Aetna Insurance (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., Aetna Insurance Company Limited, Aetna Integrated Informatics Inc., Aetna International Inc., Aetna Ireland Inc., Aetna Korea Ltd., Aetna Life & Casualty (Bermuda) Ltd., Aetna Life Assignment Company, Aetna Life Insurance Company, Aetna Medicaid Administrators LLC, Aetna Multi-Strategy 1099 Fund LLC, Aetna Network Services LLC, Aetna Partners Diversified Fund LLC, Aetna Pharmacy Management Services LLC, Aetna Resources LLC, Aetna Risk Assurance Company of Connecticut Inc., Aetna Rx Home Delivery LLC, Aetna Services (Thailand) Limited, Aetna Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Aetna Student Health Agency Inc., Aetna Ventures LLC, Aetna Workers Comp Access LLC, Alabama CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Alaska CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Allina Health and Aetna Insurance Company, Allina Health and Aetna Insurance Holding Company LLC, American Continental Insurance Company, American Drug Stores Delaware L.L.C., American Health Holding Inc., Arbor Drugs, Arizona CVS Stores L.L.C., Arkansas CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Badger Acquisition LLC, Badger Acquisition of Kentucky LLC, Badger Acquisition of Minnesota LLC, Badger Acquisition of Ohio LLC, Banner Health and Aetna Health Insurance Company, Banner Health and Aetna Health Insurance Holding Company LLC, Banner Health and Aetna Health Plan Inc., Beauty Holdings L.L.C., Best Care LTC Acquisition Company LLC, Busse CVS L.L.C., CCI Foreign S.a R.L. (R.C.S. Luxembourg), CCRx Holdings LLC, CCRx of North Carolina LLC, CHP Acquisition LLC, CP Acquisition LLC, CVS 2948 Henderson L.L.C., CVS 3268 Gilbert L.L.C., CVS 3745 Peoria L.L.C., CVS AL Distribution L.L.C., CVS AOC Corporation, CVS AOC Services L.L.C., CVS Albany L.L.C., CVS Bellmore Avenue L.L.C., CVS Care Concierge LLC, CVS Caremark Advanced Technology Pharmacy L.L.C., CVS Caremark Indemnity Ltd., CVS Caremark Part D Services L.L.C., CVS Caremark TN SUTA LLC, CVS Foreign Inc., CVS Gilbert 3272 L.L.C., CVS Health Solutions LLC, CVS Indiana L.L.C., CVS International L.L.C., CVS Kidney Care Advanced Technologies LLC, CVS Kidney Care Health Services LLC, CVS Kidney Care Home Dialysis LLC, CVS Kidney Care LLC, CVS Manchester NH L.L.C., CVS Media Exchange LLC, CVS Michigan L.L.C., CVS Orlando FL Distribution L.L.C., CVS PA Distribution L.L.C., CVS PR Center Inc., CVS Pharmacy Inc., CVS RS Arizona L.L.C., CVS Rx Services Inc., CVS SC Distribution L.L.C., CVS State Capital L.L.C., CVS TN Distribution L.L.C., CVS Transportation L.L.C., CVS Vero FL Distribution L.L.C., Campos Medical Pharmacy LLC, Canal Place LLC, Care Pharmaceutical Services LP, CareCenter Pharmacy L.L.C., Carefree Insurance Services Inc., Caremark Arizona Mail Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Arizona Specialty Pharmacy L.L.C., Caremark California Specialty Pharmacy L.L.C., Caremark Florida Mail Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Florida Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Hawaii Mail Pharmacy L.L.C., Caremark Hawaii Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark IPA L.L.C., Caremark Illinois Mail Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Illinois Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Irving Resource Center LLC, Caremark Kansas Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark L.L.C., Caremark Logistics LLC, Caremark Louisiana Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Maryland Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Massachusetts Specialty Pharmacy L.L.C., Caremark Michigan Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Minnesota Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark New Jersey Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark North Carolina Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Ohio Specialty Pharmacy L.L.C., Caremark Pennsylvania Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark PhC L.L.C., Caremark Puerto Rico L.L.C., Caremark Puerto Rico Specialty Pharmacy L.L.C., Caremark Redlands Pharmacy L.L.C., Caremark Repack LLC, Caremark Rx L.L.C., Caremark Tennessee Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Texas Mail Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Texas Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Ulysses Holding Corp., Caremark Washington Specialty Pharmacy LLC, CaremarkPCS Alabama Mail Pharmacy LLC, CaremarkPCS Health L.L.C., CaremarkPCS L.L.C., Central Rx Services LLC, Claims Administration Corp., Cofinity Inc., Compscript LLC, Connecticut CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Continental Life Insurance Company of Brentwood Tennessee, Continuing Care Rx LLC, Coram Alternate Site Services Inc., Coram Clinical Trials Inc., Coram Healthcare Corporation of Alabama, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Florida, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Greater D.C., Coram Healthcare Corporation of Greater New York, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Indiana, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Massachusetts, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Mississippi, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Nevada, Coram Healthcare Corporation of North Texas, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Northern California, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Southern California, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Southern Florida, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Utah, Coram LLC, Coram Rx LLC, Coram Specialty Infusion, Coram Specialty Infusion Services L.L.C., Coventry Consumer Advantage Inc., Coventry Health Care National Accounts Inc., Coventry Health Care National Network Inc., Coventry Health Care Workers Compensation Inc., Coventry Health Care of Illinois Inc., Coventry Health Care of Kansas Inc., Coventry Health Care of Missouri Inc., Coventry Health Care of Nebraska Inc., Coventry Health Care of Virginia Inc., Coventry Health Care of West Virginia Inc., Coventry Health Plan of Florida Inc., Coventry Health and Life Insurance Company, Coventry HealthCare Management Corporation, Coventry Prescription Management Services Inc., Coventry Rehabilitation Services Inc., Coventry Transplant Network Inc., D & R Pharmaceutical Services LLC, D.A.W. LLC, Delaware CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Delaware Physicians Care Incorporated, Digital eHealth LLC, District of Columbia CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., E.T.B. INC., Echo Merger Sub Inc., Eckerd Corporation of Florida Inc., Employee Assistance Services LLC, Enloe Drugs LLC, Enterprise Patient Safety Organization LLC, EntrustRX, Evergreen Pharmaceutical LLC, Evergreen Pharmaceutical of California Inc., Express Pharmacy Services of PA L.L.C., FOCUS HealthCare Management Inc., First Health Group Corp., First Health Life & Health Insurance Company, First Script Network Services Inc., Florida Health Plan Administrators LLC, Garfield Beach CVS L.L.C., Generation Health L.L.C., Geneva Woods Health Services LLC, Geneva Woods LTC Pharmacy LLC, Geneva Woods Management LLC, Geneva Woods Pharmacy Alaska LLC, Geneva Woods Pharmacy LLC, Geneva Woods Pharmacy Washington LLC, Geneva Woods Pharmacy Wyoming LLC, Geneva Woods Retail Pharmacy LLC, Georgia CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., German Dobson CVS L.L.C., Goodhealth Worldwide (Asia) Limited, Goodhealth Worldwide (Global) Limited, Goodyear CVS L.L.C., Grand St. Paul CVS L.L.C., Grandview Pharmacy LLC, Group Dental Service Inc., Group Dental Service of Maryland Inc., Health Care Management Co. Ltd., Health Data & Management Solutions Inc., Health Re Inc., Health and Human Resource Center Inc., HealthAssuance Pennsylvania Inc., Healthagen LLC, Highland Park CVS L.L.C., Holiday CVS L.L.C., Home Care Pharmacy LLC, Home Pharmacy Services LLC, Hook-SupeRx L.L.C., Horizon Behavioral Services LLC, Idaho CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., IlliniCare Health, Indian Health Organisation Private Limited, Innovation Health Holdings LLC, Innovation Health Insurance Company, Innovation Health Plan Inc., Interlock Pharmacy Systems LLC, Iowa CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., JHC Acquisition LLC, Kansas CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Kentucky CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., LCPS Acquisition LLC, Langsam Health Services LLC, Lo-Med Prescription Services LLC, Lobos Acquisition LLC, Longs Drug Stores, Longs Drug Stores California L.L.C., Louisiana CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., MHHP Acquisition Company LLC, MHNet Life and Health Insurance Company, MHNet Specialty Services LLC, MHNet of Florida Inc., Managed Care Coordinators Inc., Managed Healthcare LLC, Martin Health Services LLC, Maryland CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Med World Acquisition Corp., Medical Arts Health Care LLC, Medical Examinations of New York P.C., Melville Realty Company Inc., MemberHealth LLC, Mental Health Associates Inc., Mental Health Network of New York IPA Inc., Meritain Health Inc., Merwin Long Term Care LLC, MetraComp Inc., Minor Health Enterprise Co Ltd., MinuteClinic, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Alabama L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Arizona LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Florida LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Georgia LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Hawaii L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Illinois LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Kentucky L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Louisiana L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Maine L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Maryland LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Massachusetts LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Nebraska L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of New Hampshire L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of New Mexico L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Ohio LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Oklahoma LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Oregon LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Pennsylvania LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Rhode Island LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of South Carolina L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Texas LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Utah L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Virginia LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Washington LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Wisconsin L.L.C., MinuteClinic L.L.C., MinuteClinic Online Diagnostic Services LLC, MinuteClinic Physician Practice of Texas, MinuteClinic Telehealth Services LLC, Mississippi CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Missouri CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Montana CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., NCS Healthcare LLC, NCS Healthcare of Illinois LLC, NCS Healthcare of Iowa LLC, NCS Healthcare of Kansas LLC, NCS Healthcare of Kentucky Inc. (Oh, NCS Healthcare of Montana LLC, NCS Healthcare of New Mexico LLC, NCS Healthcare of Ohio LLC, NCS Healthcare of South Carolina LLC, NCS Healthcare of Tennessee LLC, NCS Healthcare of Wisconsin LLC, NIV Acquisition LLC, Navarro Discount Pharmacy, Nebraska CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., NeighborCare Holdings Inc., NeighborCare Inc., NeighborCare Pharmacy Services Inc., NeighborCare Services Corporation, NeighborCare of Indiana LLC, NeighborCare of Virginia LLC, New Jersey CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Niagara Re Inc., North Carolina CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., North Shore Pharmacy Services LLC, NovoLogix LLC, OCR Services LLC, Ocean Acquisition Sub L.L.C., Ohio CVS Stores L.L.C., Oklahoma CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Omnicare, Omnicare Holding Company, Omnicare Inc., Omnicare Indiana Partnership Holding Company LLC, Omnicare Pharmacies of Pennsylvania East LLC, Omnicare Pharmacies of Pennsylvania West LLC, Omnicare Pharmacies of the Great Plains Holding LLC, Omnicare Pharmacy and Supply Services LLC, Omnicare Pharmacy of Tennessee LLC, Omnicare Pharmacy of the Midwest LLC, Omnicare Property Management LLC, Omnicare of Nebraska LLC, Omnicare of Nevada LLC, Omnicare of New York LLC, Oregon CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., PE Holdings LLC, PHPSNE Parent Corporation, PP Acquisition Company LLC, PRN Pharmaceutical Services LP, PT Aetna Management Consulting, Pamplona Saude e Beleza LTDA, Part D Holding Company L.L.C., PayFlex Holdings Inc., PayFlex Systems USA Inc., Pennsylvania CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Performax Inc., Pharmacy Associates of Glenn Falls LLC, Pharmacy Consultants LLC, Phoenix Data Solutions LLC, Precision Benefit Services Inc., Prime Net Inc., ProCare Pharmacy Direct L.L.C., ProCare Pharmacy L.L.C., Prodigy Health Group Inc., Professional Risk Management Inc., Pt. Aetna Global Benefits Indonesia, Puerto Rico CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Red Oak Sourcing LLC, Resources for Living LLC, Rhode Island CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Roeschens Healthcare LLC, RxAmerica, Schaller Anderson Medical Administrators Incorporated, Scrip World LLC, Sheffield Avenue CVS L.L.C., Shore Pharmaceutical Providers LLC, Silverscript Insurance Company, Soma Intimates, South Carolina CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., South Wabash CVS L.L.C., Specialized Pharmacy Services LLC, Spinnaker Bidco Limited, Spinnaker Topco Limited, Stadtlander Drug Company, Stadtlander Pharmacy, Sterling Healthcare Services LLC, Superior Care Pharmacy LLC, Sutter Health and Aetna Administrative Services LLC, Sutter Health and Aetna Insurance Company, Sutter Health and Aetna Insurance Holding Company LLC, T2 Medical Inc., TCPI Acquisition LLC, TargetPharmacy, Tennessee CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Texas Health + Aetna Health Insurance Company, Texas Health + Aetna Health Insurance Holding Company LLC, Texas Health + Aetna Health Plan Inc., The Vasquez Group Inc., Thomas Phoenix CVS L.L.C., Three Forks Apothecary LLC, U.S Healthcare Holdings LLC, U.S. Healthcare Properties Inc., UAC Holding Inc., UC Acquisition LLC, UNI-Care Health Services of Maine LLC, Universal American - Medicare Part D Business, Utah CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., VAPS Acquisition Company LLC, Value Health Care Services LLC, Vermont CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Virginia CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Virtual Home Healthcare L.L.C., Warm Springs Road CVS L.L.C., Washington CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Washington Lamb CVS L.L.C., Weber Medical Systems LLC, Wellpartner LLC, West Virginia CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Westhaven Services Co LLC, Williamson Drug Company LLC, Wisconsin CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Woodward Detroit CVS L.L.C., Work and Family Benefits Inc., ZS Acquisition Company LLC, Zinc Health Services LLC, Zinc Health Ventures LLC, bSwift LLC, and iTriage LLC.
1 Wall Street research analysts have issued "buy," "hold," and "sell" ratings for SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust in the last year. There are currently 1 hold rating for the stock. The consensus among Wall Street research analysts is that investors should "hold" SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust stock. A hold rating indicates that analysts believe investors should maintain any existing positions they have in SPY, but not buy additional shares or sell existing shares.

View analyst ratings for SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust or view top-rated stocks.
The detective who was the first to enter Sergei Skripal's home after his poisoning has lost all his possessions after they were contaminated with the powerful nerve agent Novichok.

Speaking to the BBC Panorama programme, Mr Bailey also said he was angry that such a substance had been used because it potentially put innocent people at risk. "Not only did we lose the house, we lost all of our possessions, including everything the kids owned".

Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov has commented on the latest footage released by London Metropolitan Police on the Salisbury and Amesbury incidents, saying that while the use of the nerve agent in Europe was cause for concern, British investigators have yet to share any information with the Russian side.

Detective Sergeant Bailey said he and other officers were wearing protective gear when investigating the home, and he was not sure how he became infected. I could have adjusted my face mask and my goggles whilst I was in the house with it being on my hand. The house was in darkness. "There was nothing untoward". While recalling that night, he told "My pupils were like pinpricks and I was quite sweaty and hot", and added, "at the time I put that down to being exhausted and stressed". "My whole body was dripping with sweat", he described.

"At that time I put it down to being exhausted and stressed".

"Physically, after some time I felt numb", said Bailey.

"It's the fear of the unknown because it's such a risky thing to have in your system", he said.

"Knowing how the other two [Yulia and Sergei Skripal] were or how badly they'd been affected by it, I was petrified".

"The amount that was in the bottle and the way it was applied to the Skripals' home address was completely reckless", he told BBC Panorama.

He said he was conscious throughout his treatment in hospital.

While talking about what he was going through that time, Det Sgt Nick Bailey said: "It was horrendous, I was confused, I didn't know what was going on and it was really, really frightening". As Polygraph.info previously reported, the OPCW (Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) confirmed that the substance used to poison the victims was Novichok, a nerve agent that was developed by Russian Federation. However, after two and a half weeks after hospitalization, he was discharged from the hospital.

THE former head of MI6 has said the government was wrong about how much security Russian former spy Sergei Skripal needed while living in Salisbury.

Investigative website Bellingcat has named them as Alexander Yevgenyevich Mishkin and Anatoliy Chepiga, both of whom Bellingcat says work for Russia's GRU intelligence services.

CCTV images show the two men laughing as they arrive in and move around Salisbury on Sunday 4 March, the day the Skripals were found slumped on a bench in the city.

In an interview with Russia's RT TV channel released on September 13, Petrov and Boshirov said they had visited Great Britain for tourist purposes. The woman, Dawn Sturgess, died.
The following companies are subsidiares of TransUnion: Accupost Corporation, AppLock Limited, Auditz, Autolocator (Pty) Ltd., Beheer en Beleggingsmaatchapij Stivaco B.V., CIFIN S.A.S, [email protected] plc, Callcredit Data Solutions Limited, Callcredit Information, Callcredit Lead Generation Limited, Callcredit Marketing Ltd., Callcredit Public Sector Limited, Callcredit Spain S.L.U, Centro de Informacion y Estudios Estrategicos Empresariales S.A., Centro de Operaciones Servicios de Informacion Estrategica S.A., CheckMend Ltd., Coactiva Limited, Collection Africa Ltd., Confirma Sistemas de Informacion S.L., Credit Bureau of Carmel & Pebble Beach Inc., Credit Information Services Limited, Credit Information Systems Company Limited, Credit Reference Bureau (Holdings) Limited, Credit Reference Bureau Africa (Pty) Ltd., Credit Reference Bureau Africa Ltd., Credit Reporting Services Limited, Credit Retriever LLC, Crivo, Crown Acquisition BidCo Ltd., Crown Acquisition Consumer Ltd., Crown Acquisition MidCo Ltd., Crown Acquisition MidCo. 2 Ltd., Crown Acquisition TopCo. Ltd., DMWSL 617 Ltd., DMWSL 618 Ltd., DMWSL 619 Ltd., DMWSL 620 Ltd., DataLink Services, Datalink Services Inc., Decision Systems Inc., DecisionMetrics Limited, Diversified Data Development Corporation, Drivers History Inc., Drivers History Information Sales LLC, FT Holdings Inc., FactorTrust, FactorTrust Inc., GMAP Japan KK, GMAP Marketing Consulting Shangahi Co. Ltd, Healthcare Payment Specialists, INSDEC LLC, IS Resources Inc., Immobilise.com Limited, L2C Inc., L2C Inc., Link Marketing Inc., Link2credit Inc., Moussoro Participacoes Ltda., RTech, RTech Healthcare Revenue Technologies Inc., Recipero, Recipero Inc., Recipero Limited, Regional Data Systems Limited, RentPort, Rubixis, Rubixis Inc., Rubixis Technologies Private Limited, STS Vail Beheeren Administracion S. DE. R.L. DE C.V., Servicios y Asesoria S CO BC SA de CV, Signal, Soluciones de Informatica de Centroamerica (SICE) S.A., Source USA Insurance Agency Inc., Tenant ID Limited, Title Insurance Services Corporation, Trans Union Central America S.A., Trans Union Chile S.A., Trans Union Content Solutions LLC, Trans Union Costa Rica S.A., Trans Union Guatemala S.A., Trans Union Honduras-Buro de Credito S.A., Trans Union International Inc., Trans Union LLC, Trans Union Nicaragua S.A., Trans Union Real Estate Services Inc., Trans Union Software Services Private Limited, Trans Union de Puerto Rico Inc., Trans Union of Canada Inc., TransUnion (Mauritius) Limited, TransUnion (Proprietary) Ltd., TransUnion Africa (Pty) Ltd., TransUnion Africa Holdings (Pty) Ltd., TransUnion Analytic and Decision Services (Pty) Ltd., TransUnion Asia Ltd., TransUnion Auto Information Solutions (Pty) Ltd., TransUnion Baltics UAB, TransUnion Brasil Sistemas em Informatica Ltda., TransUnion CIBIL Limited, TransUnion Colombia Ltda., TransUnion Consumer Solutions LLC, TransUnion Credit Bureau (Pty) Ltd., TransUnion Credit Bureau Namibia (Pty) Ltd., TransUnion Data Solutions LLC, TransUnion Digital LLC, TransUnion El Salvador S.A. de C.V., TransUnion Exchange LLC, TransUnion Financing Corporation, TransUnion Global Holdings LLC, TransUnion Global Holdings LP, TransUnion Global Technology Center LLP, TransUnion Healthcare Inc., TransUnion Holding Cyprus Ltd., TransUnion ITC (Pty) Ltd., TransUnion Information Group Limited, TransUnion Information Services Limited, TransUnion Information Solutions Inc., TransUnion Information Technology (Beijing) Co. Ltd., TransUnion Intelligence LLC, TransUnion Interactive Inc., TransUnion Intermediate Holdings Inc., TransUnion International Holdings LLC, TransUnion International UK Limited, TransUnion Kenya Limited, TransUnion Limited, TransUnion Ltd., TransUnion Marketing Solutions Inc., TransUnion Netherlands I B.V., TransUnion Netherlands II B.V., TransUnion Rental Screening Solutions Inc., TransUnion Reverse Exchange S de R.L. de C.V., TransUnion Risk Advisory Inc., TransUnion Risk and Alternative Data Solutions Inc., TransUnion Rwanda Limited, TransUnion S.A., TransUnion Soluciones de Informacion Chile SA, TransUnion Soluciones de Informacion S de R.L de C.V., TransUnion Teledata LLC, TransUnion UK Holdings Ltd., Tru Optik, TruSignal, TruSignal Inc., TrueLink, Trustev, Trustev Limited, Vail Holdings UK Ltd., Vail Systemen Groep B.V., Verifacts LLC, Visionary Systems Inc., Worthknowing Inc., eBureau, eBureau LLC, iovation Inc., iovation Ltd., and process benchmarking limited.
Grupo Supervielle SA operates as a holding company. The firm engages in the provision of banking services. It operates through the following segments: Retail Banking, Corporate Banking, Treasury, Consumer, Insurance and Asset Management and Other Services. The Retail Banking segment involves in granting of loans and other credit products such as deposits of physical persons. The Corporate Banking segment focuses in advisory services at a corporate and financial level, as well as the administration of assets and loans targeted to big clients. The Treasury segment operates with Government Securities of the Group, syndicated loans, and financial lease. The Consumer segment consists of loans and other credit products targeted to middle and lower-middle income sectors and non-financial products and services. The Insurance segment comprises insurance products, with a focus on life insurance. The Asset Management and Other Services segment offers mutual funds and other products and services. The company was founded on October 8, 1979 and is headquartered in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

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There is not enough analysis data for True Nature.

4.3 Community Rank

Outperform Votes True Nature has received 59 outperform votes. (Add your outperform vote.)

Underperform Votes True Nature has received 33 underperform votes. (Add your underperform vote.)

Community Sentiment True Nature has received 64.13% outperform votes from our community.

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

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The following companies are subsidiares of Lennar: 360 Developers LLC, Alliance Financial Services Inc., Ann Arundel Farms Ltd., Aquaterra Utilities Inc., Arbor Mill Veteran Project 2018 LLC, Asbury Woods L.L.C., Astoria Options LLC, Autumn Creek Development Ltd., Aylon LLC, Azusa Associates LLC, B2 Milpitas LLC, BB Investment Holdings LLC, BCI Properties LLC, BMR Communities LLC, BMR Construction Inc., BMTD LLC, BPH I LLC, Bainebridge 249 LLC, Bay Colony Expansion 369 Ltd., Bellagio Lennar LLC, Belle Meade LEN Holdings LLC, Belle Meade Partners LLC, Black Mountain Ranch LLC, Blue Horizons Estates LLC, Bonterra Lennar LLC, Bramalea California Inc., Bressi Gardenlane LLC, Breton Park Lennar LLC, CAP IL 1 LLC, CL Ventures LLC, CML INACTIVE LLC, CML-MO HAF LLC, CML-MO HAF PARKING LLC, CP Block 6aS LLC, CP Block 8aS LLC, CP Block 9aS LLC, CP Center Apartments LLC, CP Center Garage LLC, CP Red Oak Partners Ltd., CP Vertical Development Co. 1 LLC, CP/HPS Development Co. GP LLC, CP/HPS Development Co.-C LLC, CPFE LLC, CPHP Development LLC, CalAtlantic Financial Services Inc., CalAtlantic Group, CalAtlantic Group Inc., CalAtlantic Homes of Arizona Inc., CalAtlantic Homes of Georgia Inc., CalAtlantic Homes of Texas Inc., CalAtlantic Homes of Washington Inc., CalAtlantic Mortgage Inc., CalAtlantic National Title Solutions LLC, CalAtlantic Title Agency LLC, CalAtlantic Title Group LLC, CalAtlantic Title Inc., CalAtlantic Title LLC, CalAtlantic Title of Maryland Inc., Camarillo Village Park LLC, Cambria L.L.C., Candlestick Retail Member LLC, Cardiovascular Medical Specialists LLC, Carolina Blue LLC, Carson 175 LLC, Cary Woods LLC, Casa Marina Development LLC, Central Park West Holdings LLC, Cherrytree II LLC, Club Bonterra Lennar LLC, Coco Palm 82 LLC, Colonial Heritage LLC, Columbia National Risk Retention Group Inc., Commonwealth Incentive Fee LLC, Concord Station LLP, Coventry L.L.C., Creekside Crossing L.L.C., Crest at Fondren Investor LLC, DBJ Holdings LLC, DCA Financial LLC, DTC Holdings of Florida LLC, Darcy-Joliet L.L.C., Durrell 33 LLC, EL Ventures LLC, EV LLC, Eagle Bend Commercial LLC, Eagle Home Mortgage LLC, Estates Seven LLC, Evergreen Village LLC, F&R QVI Home Investments USA LLC, FLORDADE LLC, Faria Preserve LLC, Fidelity Guaranty and Acceptance Corp., Fidelity Land LLC, Fox-Maple Associates LLC, Friendswood Development Company LLC, GDI MANAGER LLC, Garco Investments LLC, Greystone Construction Inc., Greystone Homes of Nevada Inc., Greystone Nevada Holdings LLC, Greystone Nevada LLC, Greywall Club L.L.C., HCC Investors LLC, HPS Development Co. LP, HPS Vertical Development Co. LLC, HPS Vertical Development Co.-B LP, HPS Vertical Development Co.-D/E LLC, HPS1 Block 1 LLC, HPS1 Block 48-1A LLC, HPS1 Block 48-1B LLC, HPS1 Block 48-2A LLC, HPS1 Block 48-2B LLC, HPS1 Block 48-3A LLC, HPS1 Block 48-3B LLC, HPS1 Block 50 LLC, HPS1 Block 51 LLC, HPS1 Block 52 LLC, HPS1 Block 53 LLC, HPS1 Block 54 LLC, HPS1 Block 55 LLC, HPS1 Block 56/57 LLC, HSP Arizona Inc., HTC Golf Club LLC, Hammocks Lennar LLC, Harbor Highlands Group LLC, Harveston LLC, Haverton L.L.C., Heathcote Commons LLC, Heritage Pkwy East Holdings LLC, Heritage of Auburn Hills L.L.C., Hewitts Landing Trustee LLC, Hingham Properties LLC, Huntley Venture L.L.C., Inactive Companies LLC, Independence L.L.C., Independence Orlando LLC, Isles at Bayshore Club LLC, KMC Real Estate Investors LLC, Kendall Hammocks Commercial LLC, Kentuckiana Medical Center LLC, Kingman Lennar LLC, LB/L  Duc III Antioch 330 LLC, LCD Asante LLC, LCI Downtown Doral Investor LLC, LCI North DeKalb Investor GP LLC, LCI North DeKalb Investor LP LLC, LEN - Belle Meade LLC, LEN - OBS Windemere LLC, LEN - Palm Vista LLC, LEN BPT Investor LLC, LEN Mirada Investor LLC, LEN Notarize Investor LLC, LEN OT Holdings LLC, LEN Paradise Cable LLC, LEN Paradise Operating LLC, LEN-CG South LLC, LEN-Cypress Mill LLC, LEN-Ryan 1 LLC, LEN-Touchstone LLC, LENH I LLC, LENNAR HOMES OF TENNESSEE LLC, LFS Holding Company LLC, LH Eastwind LLC, LHI Renaissance LLC, LMC 10th & Acoma Holdings LP, LMC 144th and Grant Investor LLC, LMC 2401 Blake Street Holdings LLC, LMC 2401 Blake Street Investor LLC, LMC 360 Acoma Holdings LP, LMC 410 S Wabash Holdings LLC, LMC 808 Gateway Holdings LLC, LMC 808 Gateway Investor LLC, LMC 8th Avenue Apartment Investor LLC, LMC 990 Bannock Holdings LLC, LMC Axis Westminster Holdings LLC, LMC Axis Westminster Investor LLC, LMC Berry Hill Lofts Holdings LLC, LMC Berry Hill Lofts Investor LLC, LMC Block 42 Holdings LLC, LMC Build to Core III Investor LLC, LMC Build to Core III LLC, LMC Burnside Holdings LLC, LMC Burnside Investor LLC, LMC Chandler and McClintock Holdings LLC, LMC Charlestowne Holdings LLC, LMC Charlotte Ballpark Developer LLC, LMC Cityville Oak Park Holdings LLC, LMC Cityville Oak Park Investor LLC, LMC Cobalt Holdings LLC, LMC Costa Mesa Holdings LP, LMC Crest at Park West Holdings LP, LMC Denver Gateway I Investor LLC, LMC Denver Gateway II Holdings LLC, LMC Development LLC, LMC Downtown Doral South Holdings LLC, LMC Durham Gateway Holdings LP, LMC Evans School Holdings LLC, LMC Gateway Investor LLC, LMC Gateway Venture LLC, LMC Gilman Square Investor LLC, LMC Horton Street Holdings LLC, LMC Huntington Crossing Holdings LLC, LMC Inactive Companies LLC, LMC Lakeside Holdings LP, LMC Leya Holdings LLC, LMC Living Illinois LLC, LMC Living Inc., LMC Living LLC, LMC Living TRS LP, LMC Millenia Investor II LLC, LMC NE Minneapolis Lot 2 Holdings LLC, LMC New Bern Investor LLC, LMC North Park Holdings LP, LMC Parkfield Holdings LLC, LMC Parkfield Investor LLC, LMC Righters Ferry Holdings LLC, LMC River North Holdings LLC, LMC Spring Street Investor LLC, LMC Stonewall Station Investor LLC, LMC Triangle Square Investor LLC, LMC Venture Developer LLC, LMC Verbena Holdings LLC, LMC West Loop Investor LLC, LMCFX Investor LLC, LMCPNW Marymoor Holdings LLC, LMI - Jacksonville Investor LLC, LMI - South Kings Development Investor LLC, LMI - West Seattle Holdings LLC, LMI - West Seattle Investor LLC, LMI - West Seattle LLC, LMI Cell Tower Investors LLC, LMI City Walk Investor LLC, LMI Collegedale Investor LLC, LMI Collegedale LLC, LMI Contractors LLC, LMI Glencoe Dallas Investor LLC, LMI Lakes West Covina Investor LLC, LMI Largo Park Investor LLC, LMI Las Colinas Station LLC, LMI Naperville Investor LLC, LMI Pacific Tower LLC, LMI Park Central Two LLC, LMI Peachtree Corners Investor LLC, LMI Peachtree Corners LLC, LMI-JC Developer LLC, LMI-JC LLC, LMV 1640 Broadway REIT-DC LP, LMV 1701 Ballard REIT-DC LP, LMV 19H REIT-DC LP, LMV 2026 Madison REIT-DC LP, LMV 85 South Union REIT-DC LP, LMV ATown REIT-DC LP, LMV Annapolis REIT-DC LP, LMV Apache Terrace REIT-DC LP, LMV Block 42 REIT-DC LP, LMV Bloomington REIT-DC LP, LMV Bolingbrook REIT-DC LP (DE), LMV Central at McDowell REIT-DC LP, LMV East Village I REIT-DC LP, LMV Edina REIT-DC LP, LMV Fremont WS I REIT-DC LP, LMV Glisan REIT-DC LP, LMV Grand Bay REIT-DC LP, LMV II Grand Bay Pod V Holdings LP, LMV II Kierland Holdings LP, LMV II NoMo Holdings LP, LMV II Venture Developer LLC, LMV II Wynwood Holdings LP, LMV Kirkland REIT-DC LP, LMV Little Italy REIT-DC LP, LMV M Tower REIT-DC LP, LMV Millenia II REIT-DC LP, LMV Milpitas REIT-DC LP, LMV NE Minneapolis REIT-DC LP, LMV Oak Park REIT-DC LP, LMV One20Fourth REIT-DC LP, LMV QR Build to Core Manager LLC, LMV Rio Bravo REIT-DC LP, LMV Scottsdale Quarter REIT-DC LP, LMV Tysons REIT-DC LP, LMV Vallagio III REIT-DC LP, LMV Victory Block G REIT-DC LP, LMV Warren Street REIT-DC LP, LNC Communities II LLC, LNC Communities IV LLC, LNC Communities V LLC, LNC Communities VI LLC, LNC Communities VII LLC, LNC Communities VIII LLC, LNC Pennsylvania Realty Inc., LNC at Meadowbrook LLC, LNC at Ravenna LLC, LS College Park LLC, LS Terracina LLC, LV Opendoor Investor LLC, LV Opendoor JV LLC, LW D'Andrea LLC, Lagoon Valley Residential LLC, Lakelands at Easton L.L.C., Legends Club LLC, Legends Golf Club LLC, Len - Little Harbor LLC, Len FW Investor LLC, Len Paradise LLC, Len-Angeline LLC, Len-Hawks Point LLC, Len-Land LLC, Len-Land West LLC, Len-MN LLC, Len-Verandahs LLP, LenCom LLC, LenFive LLC, LenFive Opco GP LLC, LenFive Sub III LLC, LenFive Sub LLC, LenFive Sub Opco GP LLC, Lenalto CMBS LLC, Lencraft LLC, Lennar Aircraft I LLC, Lennar Arizona Construction Inc., Lennar Arizona Inc., Lennar Associates Management Holding Company, Lennar Associates Management LLC, Lennar Avenue One LLC, Lennar Berkeley LLC, Lennar Bevard LLC, Lennar Bridges LLC, Lennar Buffington Colorado Crossing L.P., Lennar Buffington Zachary Scott L.P., Lennar Carolinas LLC, Lennar Central Park LLC, Lennar Central Region Sweep Inc., Lennar Chicago Inc., Lennar Cobra LLC, Lennar Colgate Urban Renewal Development LLC, Lennar Colorado LLC, Lennar Colorado Minerals LLC, Lennar Commercial LLC, Lennar Communities Development Inc., Lennar Communities Inc., Lennar Communities Nevada LLC, Lennar Communities of Chicago L.L.C., Lennar Concord LLC, Lennar Construction Inc., Lennar Cory Road LLC, Lennar Courts LLC, Lennar Developers Inc., Lennar Ewing LLC, Lennar Financial Services LLC, Lennar Flamingo LLC, Lennar Fresno Inc., Lennar Gardens LLC, Lennar Georgia Inc., Lennar Greer Ranch Venture LLC, Lennar Heritage Fields LLC, Lennar Hingham Holdings LLC, Lennar Hingham JV LLC, Lennar Homes Holding LLC, Lennar Homes LLC, Lennar Homes NJ LLC, Lennar Homes of Arizona Inc., Lennar Homes of California Inc., Lennar Homes of Indiana Inc., Lennar Homes of Texas Land and Construction Ltd., Lennar Homes of Texas Sales and Marketing Ltd., Lennar Homes of Utah Inc., Lennar International Holding LLC, Lennar International LLC, Lennar Lakeside Investor LLC, Lennar Layton LLC, Lennar Living LLC, Lennar Lytle LLC, Lennar MF Holdings LLC, Lennar MPA LLC, Lennar MPA WIP LLC, Lennar Mare Island LLC, Lennar Marina A Funding LLC, Lennar Massachusetts Properties Inc., Lennar Middletown LLC, Lennar Monmouth Redevelopers LLC, Lennar Multifamily BTC Venture GP LLC, Lennar Multifamily BTC Venture GP Subsidiary LLC, Lennar Multifamily BTC Venture GP Victory Block G Mezz LLC, Lennar Multifamily BTC Venture II GP LLC, Lennar Multifamily BTC Venture II GP Subsidiary LLC, Lennar Multifamily BTC Venture II LP LLC, Lennar Multifamily BTC Venture II Manager LLC, Lennar Multifamily BTC Venture LP LLC, Lennar Multifamily BTC Venture Manager LLC, Lennar Multifamily Builders LLC, Lennar Multifamily Communities LLC, Lennar Multifamily Venture DC LP, Lennar New Jersey Holdings LLC, Lennar New Jersey Properties Inc., Lennar New York LLC, Lennar Northeast Properties LLC, Lennar Northwest Inc., Lennar OHB LLC, Lennar PI Acquisition LLC, Lennar PI Property Acquisition LLC, Lennar PIS Management Company LLC, Lennar Pacific Inc., Lennar Pacific Properties Inc., Lennar Pacific Properties Management Inc., Lennar Plumsted Urban Renewal LLC, Lennar Point LLC, Lennar QR Build to Core GP LLC, Lennar QR Build to Core LP LLC, Lennar Realty Inc., Lennar Reno LLC, Lennar Riverwalk LLC, Lennar Sacramento Inc., Lennar Sales Corp., Lennar Sierra Sunrise LLC, Lennar Spencer's Crossing LLC, Lennar Sun Ridge LLC, Lennar Texas Holding LLC, Lennar Ventures LLC, Lennar West Valley LLC, Lennar Winncrest LLC, Lennar at Franklin LLC, Lennar at Jackson LLC, Lennar at Marlboro 79 LLC, Lennar at Monroe LLC, Lennar.com Inc., Longleaf Acquisition LLC, Lori Gardens Associates II LLC, Lori Gardens Associates III LLC, Lori Gardens Associates L.L.C., Lorton Station LLC, Lyons Lennar Farms LLC, Madrona Ridge L.L.C., Madrona Village L.L.C., Madrona Village Mews L.L.C., Majestic Woods LLC, Maple and Broadway Holdings LLC, Menifee Development LLC, Mid-County Utilities Inc., Miralago West Lennar LLC, Mission Viejo 12S Venture LP, Mission Viejo Holdings Inc., Motomic Diagnostics LLC, Multibank 2009-1 CML-ADC Venture LLC, Multibank 2009-1 RES-ADC Venture LLC, NC Properties I LLC, NC Properties II LLC, North American Asset Development LLC, Northbridge L.L.C., OHC/Ascot Belle Meade LLC, One SR L.P., PD-Len Boca Raton LLC, PG Properties Holding LLC, POMAC LLC, PT Metro LLC, Pace Drive Holdings LLC, Palm Gardens At Doral Clubhouse LLC, Palm Gardens at Doral LLC, Palm Springs Classic LLC, Palm Vista Preserve LLC, Patuxent Infrastructure Inc., Pioneer Meadows Development LLC, Pioneer Meadows Investments LLC, Plaza Condominium Ventures LLC, Portside Marina Developers L.L.C., Portside SM Associates L.L.C., Portside SM Holdings L.L.C., Portside Shipyard Developers L.L.C., Prestonfield L.L.C., Quail Roost Lennar LLC, RCCF GP II LLC, RCCF GP III LLC, RCCF GP IV LLC, RCCF GP LLC, RES-FL EIGHT LLC, RES-FL SEVEN LLC, RES-FL VISION ONE LLC, RES-FL VISION TWO LLC, RES-GA CASCADE LLC, RES-GA DIAMOND MEADOWS LLC, RES-GA KAP LLC, RES-GA SOUTHERN PLANTATION LLC, RES-GA THIRTEEN LLC, RES-GA TWELVE LLC, RES-GA WEST LLC, RES-IL ONE LLC, RES-NC ONE LLC, RES-PA LSJ LLC, RES-PA POM LLC, RES-TX BOULEVARD LLC, RH Insurance Company Inc., RH MOA BBCMS 2017-C1 LLC, RH MOA CF 2017-C8 LLC, RH MOA LLC, RH MOA U 2017-C4 LLC, RH MOA U 2017-C6 LLC, RIAL 2014-LT5 CLASS B LLC, RIAL 2014-LT5 LLC, RL BB FINANCIAL LLC, RL BB INACTIVE LLC, RL BB-AL LLC, RL BB-FL ALHI LLC, RL BB-GA LLC, RL BB-GA RMH LLC, RL BB-IL LLC, RL BB-IN AA LLC, RL BB-IN KRE LLC, RL BB-IN KRE OP LLC, RL BB-IN KRE RE LLC, RL BB-MS LLC, RL BB-NC LLC, RL BB-OH LLC, RL BB-SC BROOKSA LLC, RL BB-SC CLR II LLC, RL BB-SC CLR III LLC, RL BB-SC CLR IV LLC, RL BB-SC CLR LLC, RL BB-SC CRRC LLC, RL BB-SC RACEDAY LLC, RL BB-TN BRISTOL LLC, RL BB-TN LLC, RL BB-TN RACEDAY TOWER LLC, RL BB-TX LLC, RL BB-WV LLC, RL CMBS Holdings LLC, RL CML 2009-1 Investments LLC, RL REGI ARKANSAS LLC, RL REGI Alabama LLC, RL REGI FINANCIAL LLC, RL REGI Florida LLC, RL REGI GEORGIA LLC, RL REGI INACTIVE LLC, RL REGI KANSAS LLC, RL REGI MISSISSIPPI LLC, RL REGI MISSOURI LLC, RL REGI NORTH CAROLINA LLC, RL REGI SOUTH CAROLINA LLC, RL REGI TENNESSEE LLC, RL REGI VIRGINIA LLC, RL REGI-AL HP LLC, RL REGI-AL VRC LLC, RL REGI-FL CRC LLC, RL REGI-FL ESH LLC, RL REGI-FL FT. PIERCE LLC, RL REGI-FL GDL LLC, RL REGI-FL ITALIA LLC, RL REGI-FL MRED LLC, RL REGI-FL RDI LLC, RL REGI-FL SARASOTA LLC, RL REGI-FL TPL LLC, RL REGI-FL VARC LLC, RL REGI-GA DRAD LLC, RL REGI-GA HAY DB LLC, RL REGI-GA MHU LLC, RL REGI-GA MPD LLC, RL REGI-GA RLR LLC, RL REGI-MO GMB LLC, RL REGI-MO MOSCOW MILLS LLC, RL REGI-MS Double H LLC, RL REGI-MS OCEAN SPRINGS LLC, RL REGI-NC CIL LLC, RL REGI-NC LITTLE WING LLC, RL REGI-NC MLD LLC, RL REGI-NC Mland LLC, RL REGI-NC RALEIGH LLC, RL REGI-NC SUGARM LLC, RL REGI-NM LLC, RL REGI-SC CTL LLC, RL REGI-SC LAKE E LLC, RL REGI-SC TDG LLC, RL REGI-SC TIG LLC, RL REGI-TN OAK LLC, RL REGI-TN SEVIERVILLE LLC, RL RES 2009-1 Investments LLC, RMF Alliance LLC, RMF Commercial LLC, RMF PR New York LLC, RMF Partner LLC, RMF SUB 1 LLC, RMF SUB 2 LLC, RMF SUB 3 LLC, RMF SUB 4 LLC, RMF SUB 5 LLC, RMV LLC, Raintree Village II L.L.C., Raintree Village L.L.C., Ral-Len BM LLC, Ral-Len LLC, Rannel Capital WeWork Series D LLC, Rannel Holdings LLC, Rannel Interests LLC, Rannel Investments LLC, Rannel Mortgage Investments LLC, Rannel Proprietary Investments LLC, Renaissance Joint Venture, Reserve @ Pleasant Grove II LLC, Reserve @ Pleasant Grove LLC, Reserve at River Park LLC, Reserve at South Harrison LLC, Rialto Commercial Mortgage Securities LLC, Rialto Credit Partnership GP LLC, Rialto Mezz Partners GP LLC, Rialto Mortgage Finance LLC, Rialto Partners GP II LLC, Rialto Partners GP III - Debt LLC, Rialto Partners GP III - Property LLC, Rialto Partners GP LLC, Rialto RSSF GP LLC, Riverwalk at Lago Mar LLC, Rocking Horse Minerals LLC, Rutenberg Homes Inc. (Florida), Rutenberg Homes of Texas Inc., Rye Hill Company LLC, Ryland Homes Nevada Holdings LLC, Ryland Homes Nevada LLC, Ryland Homes of California Inc., S. Florida Construction II LLC, S. Florida Construction III LLC, S. Florida Construction LLC, SC 521 Indian Land Reserve LLC, SC 521 Indian Land Reserve South LLC, SPIC CPCO Inc., SPIC CPDB Inc., SPIC CPRB Inc., SPIC Del Sur LLC, SPIC Dublin LLC, SPIC Mesa LLC, SPIC NC Fremont LLC, SPIC Otay LLC, SPIC Springs LLC, San Felipe Indemnity Co. Ltd., San Lucia LLC, San Simeon Lennar LLC, Schulz Ranch Developers LLC, Seminole/70th LLC, Siena at Old Orchard L.L.C., Sierra Vista Communities LLC, Silver Springs Lennar LLC, South Development LLC, Southbank Holding LLC, Spanish Springs Development LLC, St. Charles Active Adult Community LLC, St. Charles Community LLC, Standard Pacific 1 Inc., Standard Pacific Investment Corp., Standard Pacific of Colorado Inc., Standard Pacific of Florida, Standard Pacific of Florida GP Inc., Standard Pacific of Las Vegas Inc., Standard Pacific of Orange County Inc., Standard Pacific of Tampa GP, Standard Pacific of Tampa GP Inc., Standard Pacific of Tonner Hills LLC, Standard Pacific of Walnut Hills Inc., Standard Pacific of the Carolinas LLC, Stoney Holdings LLC, Storey Lake Club LLC, Storey Park Club LLC, Strategic Holdings Inc., Strategic Technologies LLC, Summerfield Venture L.L.C., SunStreet Energy Group LLC, SunStreet Manager LLC, TCO QVI LLC, TICD Hold Co. LLC, TIH Hold Co. LLC, Talega Associates LLC, Temecula Valley LLC, Terra Division LLC, Terra/Winding Creek LLC, The Baywinds Land Trust, The Bridges Club at Rancho Santa Fe Inc., The Bridges at Rancho Santa Fe Sales Company Inc., The LNC Northeast Group Inc., The Oasis Club at LEN-CG South LLC, The Preserve at Coconut Creek LLC, The Vistas Club at LEN-CG South LLC, Titlezoom Company, Treasure Island Holdings LLC, Treasure Island Member LLC, Treviso Holding LLC, Two Lakes Lennar LLC, U.S. Home Corporation, U.S. Home Realty Inc., U.S. Home of Arizona Construction Co., U.S. Insurors Inc., U.S.H. Realty Inc., UAMC Holding Company LLC, UB 2018C14 MOA LLC, USH - Flag LLC, USH Equity Corporation, USH LEE LLC, USH Leasing II LLC, USH Leasing LLC, UST Lennar HW Scala SF Joint Venture, VII Crown Farm Investor LLC, Venetian Lennar LLC, Vineyard Land LLC, Vineyard Point 2009 LLC, Vista Palms Clubhouse LLC, WCI Communities, WCI Communities Inc., WCI Communities LLC, WCI Towers Northeast USA Inc., WCI Westshore LLC, WCP LLC, WIP Lennar OHB LLC, Waterview at Hanover LLC, West Lake Village LLC, West Seattle Project X LLC, West Van Buren L.L.C., Westchase Inc., Westchase Ltd., Westfield Homes USA Inc., White Course Lennar LLC, Wild Plum JV LLC, Willowbrook Investors LLC, Winncrest Natomas LLC, Woodbridge Multifamily Developer I LLC, Wright Farm L.L.C., and YLRichards4Acres 2015 LLC.
The following companies are subsidiares of General Dynamics: 42SIX LLC, ARMA Global Corporation, Advanced Technical Products, Aeromil (Australia) Pty Ltd, Aeromil Aircraft Engineering Pty Ltd, Aeromil Aviation Services Pty Ltd, Aeromil IT Services Pty Ltd, Aeromil Marine Pty Ltd, Aeromil Pacific Pty Ltd, American Overseas Marine Company LLC, Anteon International Corporation, Applied Physical Sciences, Applied Physical Sciences Corp., Ascend Intelligence, Australian Avionics Pty Ltd, Autonomic Resources LLC, Avion Logistics Limited, Avjet Corporation, AxleTech International, Axsys, BATH IRON WORKS CORPORATION, BP-HP Pte Limited, Bath Iron Works, Bath Iron Works Australia Corporation, Bath Iron Works Canada LLC, Bluefin Robotics Corporation, Blueprint Technologies Inc., Braintree I Maritime Corp., Braintree II Maritime Corp., Braintree III Maritime Corp., Braintree IV Maritime Corp., Braintree V Maritime Corp., Buccaneer Computer Systems & Service Inc., CSC Computer Sciences Venezuela S.A., CSRA, CSRA (Costa Rica) S.A., CSRA (Guyana) Inc., CSRA (Middle East) LLC, CSRA Argentina S.R.L., CSRA BH d.o.o., CSRA Bahamas Limited, CSRA Bahrain S.P.C., CSRA Belgium SPRL, CSRA Bolivia S.R.L., CSRA Brazil Servicos de Tecnologia Ltda., CSRA Canada Inc., CSRA Caribbean Inc., CSRA Chile SpA, CSRA Colombia SAS, CSRA Commerce 2010 LLC, CSRA Consular Services Holding Company LLC, CSRA Consular Services Inc., CSRA France SARL, CSRA Guatemala Solutions Sociedad Anonima, CSRA Honduras Sociedad Anonima, CSRA Inc., CSRA Information Systems LLC, CSRA Information Technology Spain SL, CSRA Ireland Limited, CSRA Italy S.R.L, CSRA Kosovo L.L.C., CSRA LATAM LLC, CSRA LLC, CSRA Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., CSRA Netherlands B.V., CSRA Nicaragua Sociedad Anonima, CSRA Panama Inc., CSRA Peru S.R.L., CSRA Senegal SARL, CSRA South Africa (Pty) Ltd, CSRA State and Local Solutions LLC, CSRA Systems & Solutions LLC, CSRA Trinidad & Tobago Limited, CSRA Turkey Bilisim Teknolojileri Limited Sirketi, CSRA Uruguay S.R.L, CSRA Visa Services Israel Ltd., CSRAIT - Information Services Portugal Unipessoal LDA, Centauri Solutions LLC, Command System, Computing Devices International, Concord I Maritime Corporation, Concord II Maritime Corporation, Concord III Maritime Corporation, Concord IV Maritime Corporation, Concord V Maritime Corporation, Convair Aircraft Corporation, Convair Corporation, Creative Technology, Customer Services Ecuador CSRA S.A., Devcor, Diamond Fortress Technologies, DynPort Vaccine Company LLC, EB Groton Engineering Inc., EBV Explosives Environmental, ELCS-CZ s.r.o., Eagle Enterprise Inc., Earl Industries - Ship Repair and Coatings Division, Ebv Explosives Environmental Company, Electric Boat - Australia LLC, Electric Boat - UK LLC, Electric Boat Canada LLC, Electric Boat Corporation, Electric Boat France LLC, Electrocom Inc., Engineering Technology, Expro Finance Inc., FBD Fahrzeug und Bremsendienst GmbH, FC Business Systems, Fidelis Cybersecurity, Force Protection, Force Protection Europe Limited, Force Protection Inc., ForeSight Technology Services LLC, Freeman United Coal Mining Company LLC, GD Brazil Holdings LLC, GD European Land Systems - Steyr GmbH, GD European Land Systems Holding GmbH, GDOTS Services Corporation, GM GDLS Defense Group L.L.C., GPS Source Inc., GTE Government Systems, GWA-Datatrac FAST LLC, Galaxy Aerospace Company, Gayston Corporation - Defense Operations, General Dynamics - OTS (Global) Inc., General Dynamics AIS Australia Pty Ltd, General Dynamics Canadian Finance Inc., General Dynamics Canadian Holdings Inc., General Dynamics Commercial Cyber Services LLC, General Dynamics European Finance Limited, General Dynamics European Land Systems - Austria GmbH, General Dynamics European Land Systems - Bridge Systems GmbH, General Dynamics European Land Systems - Czech s.r.o., General Dynamics European Land Systems - Denmark ApS, General Dynamics European Land Systems - Deutschland GmbH, General Dynamics European Land Systems - FWW GmbH, General Dynamics European Land Systems - Mowag GmbH, General Dynamics European Land Systems Romania S.R.L., General Dynamics European Land Systems S.L., General Dynamics Global Force LLC, General Dynamics Global Holdings Limited, General Dynamics Global Imaging Technologies Inc., General Dynamics Government Satellite Services LLC, General Dynamics Government Systems Corporation, General Dynamics Government Systems Overseas Corporation, General Dynamics Information Technology Canada Limited, General Dynamics Information Technology Inc., General Dynamics Information Technology Limited, General Dynamics Installation Services LLC, General Dynamics International Corporation, General Dynamics Itronix LLC, General Dynamics Land Systems - Australia Pty. Ltd., General Dynamics Land Systems - Canada Corporation, General Dynamics Land Systems - Canada Services Inc., General Dynamics Land Systems - Canadian Services Limited, General Dynamics Land Systems - Force Protection Inc., General Dynamics Land Systems Customer Service & Support Company, General Dynamics Land Systems Inc., General Dynamics Limited, General Dynamics Marine Systems Inc., General Dynamics Mission Systems Inc., General Dynamics Mission Systems International Limited, General Dynamics Mission Systems Overseas Company LLC, General Dynamics Motion Control LLC, General Dynamics OTS (Aerospace) Inc., General Dynamics OTS (California) Inc., General Dynamics OTS (DRI) Inc., General Dynamics OTS (Niceville) Inc., General Dynamics OTS (Pennsylvania) Inc., General Dynamics One Source LLC, General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems - Canada Inc., General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems - Canada Valleyfield Inc., General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems - Simunition Operations Inc., General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems Inc., General Dynamics Overseas Systems and Services Corporation, General Dynamics Properties Inc., General Dynamics Robotic Systems Inc., General Dynamics SATCOM Technologies Inc., General Dynamics Satcom Technologies Asia Private Limited, General Dynamics Satellite Communication Services LLC, General Dynamics Saudi Holdings S.L., General Dynamics Shared Resources LLC, General Dynamics Support Services Company, General Dynamics Swiss Financial Management Limited, General Dynamics United Kingdom Limited, General Dynamics Worldwide Holdings Inc., General Dynamics-OTS Inc., General Motors Defense, Gulfstream 100 Holdings LLC, Gulfstream Aerospace, Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation (CA), Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation (DE), Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation (GA), Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation (OK), Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation of Texas, Gulfstream Aerospace Hong Kong Limited, Gulfstream Aerospace LLC, Gulfstream Aerospace LP, Gulfstream Aerospace Ltd., Gulfstream Aerospace Services Corporation, Gulfstream Aerospace Sociedad de Responssabilidad Limitada de CapitalVariable (S. de R.L. de C.V.), Gulfstream Do Brasil Servicos De Suporte E Manutencao A Aeronaves Ltda., Gulfstream International Corporation, Gulfstream Leasing LLC, Gulfstream Product Support Corporation, Gulfstream Services Corporation, Gulfstream Tennessee Corporation, Gulfstream-California Inc., Hawker Pacific (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Hawker Pacific Aircraft Management Pte Ltd, Hawker Pacific Airservices Limited, Hawker Pacific Airservices Pvt Ltd, Hawker Pacific Asia Holdings Pte Ltd, Hawker Pacific Asia Pte Ltd, Hawker Pacific Australia Pty Ltd, Hawker Pacific Aviation Services Pty Ltd, Hawker Pacific NZ Limited, Hawker Pacific Pty Ltd, IPWireless, IPWireless PTE. Limited, Information Services Consulting Limited, Interiores Aereos S.A. de C.V., International Manufacturing Technologies Inc., Itronix, Janteq Australia PTY Limited, Janteq Corp., Jet Aviation, Jet Aviation (Asia Pacific) Pte. Ltd., Jet Aviation (Bermuda) Ltd., Jet Aviation (Hong Kong) Ltd., Jet Aviation (Malaysia) SDN BHD, Jet Aviation 125 Services LLC, Jet Aviation AG, Jet Aviation Brazil Holdings Inc., Jet Aviation Business Jets (Hong Kong) Limited, Jet Aviation Business Jets AG, Jet Aviation Business Jets FZCO, Jet Aviation California LLC, Jet Aviation Dulles LLC, Jet Aviation Flight Services Inc., Jet Aviation France SAS, Jet Aviation Holding GmbH, Jet Aviation Holdings USA Inc., Jet Aviation Houston Inc., Jet Aviation International Inc., Jet Aviation Malaga SA, Jet Aviation Management AG, Jet Aviation Netherlands B.V., Jet Aviation Savannah Holding LLC, Jet Aviation Services GmbH, Jet Aviation St. Louis Inc., Jet Aviation Teterboro LP, Jet Aviation Texas Inc., Jet Aviation of America Inc., Jet Aviation/Palm Beach Inc., Jet Professionals LLC, Kylmar, Longreach Energy LLC, MAYA Viz, Maricom Systems Incorporated, Material Service Resources Company LLC, Matthews Land Company, Mediaware International, Mediaware International Pty Ltd, Metro Machine, Metro Machine co, Midwest Properties Sales LLC, NASSCO, NASSCO Holdings Incorporated, NES Associates LLC, National Steel and Shipbuilding Company, Network Connectivity Solutions Corp., Newberry Holdings LLC, OOO Jet Aviation Vnukovo, Open Kernel Labs, Page Europa Srl, Patriot I Shipping Corp., Patriot II Shipping Corp., Patriot IV Shipping Corp., Plane 79 LLC, Praxis Engineering Technologies LLC, PrimeX Technologies, Prodelin India Private Limited, Proyectos Prohumane Mexico S.A. de C.V., Quincy Maritime Corporation III, Raven Acquisitions LLC, SENTECH INC., SRA International Inc., Saco Defense, Santa Barbara Sistemas S.A., Savannah Air Center LLC, Signal Solutions LLC, Southern Illinois Recovery Inc., Spectrum Astro, St. Marks Powder Inc., Stabilo Pty Ltd, Steyr-Daimler-Puch Spezialfahrzeug AG & Co KG, Sydney Jet Charter Pty Ltd, Tadpole Computer, Tecnologias Internacionales de Manufactura S.A. de C.V., Tenacity Solutions Incorporated, The Depth of Ideas for General Trading LLC, TriPoint Global Communications, Vangent, Vangent Servicios de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Veridian, Vertex Antennentechnik GmbH, ViPS, Vulnerability Research Labs LLC, and Weco LLC.
1 Wall Street research analysts have issued "buy," "hold," and "sell" ratings for iShares North American Tech ETF in the last year. There are currently 1 hold rating for the stock. The consensus among Wall Street research analysts is that investors should "hold" iShares North American Tech ETF stock. A hold rating indicates that analysts believe investors should maintain any existing positions they have in IGM, but not buy additional shares or sell existing shares.

View analyst ratings for iShares North American Tech ETF or view top-rated stocks.
Bank of America Corp. is a bank and financial holding company, which engages in the provision of banking and nonbank financial services. It operates through the following segments: Consumer Banking, Global Wealth and Investment Management, Global Banking, Global Markets, and All Other. The Consumer Banking segment offers credit, banking, and investment products and services to consumers and small businesses. The Global Wealth and Investment Management provides client experience through a network of financial advisors focused on to meet their needs through a full set of investment management, brokerage, banking, and retirement products. The Global Banking segment deals with lending-related products and services, integrated working capital management and treasury solutions to clients, and underwriting and advisory services. The Global Markets segment includes sales and trading services, as well as research, to institutional clients across fixed-income, credit, currency, commodity, and equity businesses. The All Other segment consists of asset and liability management activities, equity investments, non-core mortgage loans and servicing activities, the net impact of periodic revisions

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Luxottica Group S.p.A., together with its subsidiaries, provides fashion, luxury, sports, and performance eyewear worldwide. It operates through two segments, Manufacturing and Wholesale Distribution, and Retail Distribution. The Manufacturing and Wholesale Distribution segment engages in the design, manufacture, distribution, and marketing of proprietary and designer lines of prescription frames and sunglasses. This segment offers its products under proprietary brands, such as Ray-Ban, Oakley, Persol, Oliver Peoples, Alain Mikli, Arnette, and Vogue Eyewear; and licensed brands, including Giorgio Armani, Emporio Armani, Armani Exchange, Brooks Brothers, Burberry, Bulgari, Chanel, Coach, Dolce&Gabbana, DKNY, Michael Kors, Paul Smith Spectacles, Prada, Miu Miu, Ralph Lauren, Polo Ralph Lauren, Ralph, Starck Eyes, Tiffany & Co, Tory Burch, Valentino, Versace, and Ferrari. The Retail Distribution segment operates prescription eyewear stores primarily under its retail brands, including LensCrafters, Sunglass Hut, Pearle Vision, OPSM, Laubman & Pank, GMO, David Clulow, Salmoiraghi & Vigano, Ray-Ban, Oakley and Vault, Oliver Peoples, Alain Mikli, Ilori Optical, and Optical Shop of Aspen; and licensed brands, such as Sears Optical and Target Optical. As of December 31, 2017, it operated approximately 9,000 stores. The company was founded in 1961 and is headquartered in Milan, Italy. As of October 1, 2018, Luxottica Group S.p.A. operates as a subsidiary of EssilorLuxottica.

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Participants in the 8th Africities Summit, held in Marrakesh, November 21 through 24, expressed their firm commitment to back the various development agendas seeking to establish security, prosperity and peace in Africa and emphasized that the transition to sustainable cities and territories is not an option, but a pressing need.

In a final declaration, participants in the United Cities and Local Governments of Africas flagship pan-African event pledged to support the implementation of continental and global development agendas for a prosperous and peaceful Africa.

They mentioned in this vein the AU Agenda 2063, underpinned by the vision of an integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa, providing a strategic framework for the socio-economic transformation of the continent over the next 50 years.

They also vowed to back the main priorities of the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 2030), including poverty eradication and the promotion of inclusive growth and well-being.

The document underscored the importance of the implementation of the New Urban Agenda 2036, which recognizes the need to provide local and regional authorities with the necessary resources and capacities to enable them to fulfill their role in achieving the SDGs, notably via greater capacity for land and finance management, taxation and planning, as well as direct access to international funding and loans for climate change mitigation-related activities.

Participants committed to share a common aspiration to transform African cities and territories into places where every citizen will live comfortably, peacefully and safely and to strengthen the network of locally elected African female members at the regional and national levels, while emphasizing that the transition to sustainable cities and territories is not an option, but a pressing need.

In a call addressed to governments, they emphasized the need to promote devolution to ensure good governance and help cities and territories conduct their mandate by providing the necessary financial and human resources. Similarly, they called for enacting laws promoting participatory and gender-responsive local governance through gender mainstreaming in local planning and budgeting.

In addition, representatives of African local governments and their partners expressed their support for the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, Africa being most affected by warming.

The Africities summit highlighted by the official launch from Marrakech of the pan-African campaign for African Cities without Street Children by Princess Lalla Meryem, chairwoman of the Moroccan National Observatory for Childrens Rights (ONDE).

In a message addressed on this occasion, King Mohammed VI of Morocco urged African cities, urban communities and all local officials to fight the phenomenon of street children and to put child-related issues at the heart of decentralization policies.

The pan-African gathering that was marked by the signing of several cooperation agreements between cities and NGOs awarded the Moroccan city of Chefchaouen the Climate Initiatives 2018 African communities Trophy in the category of the best intermediate city in Africa.

Africities Summit is held every three years in one of the five regions of Africa. It gathers communities and local authorities in African countries, as well as financial institutions, civil society groups and development partners at continental and international level.

The 9th edition of the International Summit of Cities and Local Governments of Africa (Africities) will be held in 2021 in Kisumu, Kenya.

The 2018 summit, held under the theme The Transition to Sustainable Cities and Territories, The Role of Local and Sub-National Governments of Africa, focused on the need for Local Africa to learn, promote and present a new approach to sustainable development.

The pan-African event in Marrakesh was attended by a record number of nearly 7,000 Participants, including representatives of some 16,500 local communities in Africa.
Mettler-Toledo International, Inc. is a supplier of precision instruments and services. The firm manufactures weighing instruments for use in laboratory, industrial, packaging, logistics, and food retailing applications. It also manufactures several related analytical instruments and provides automated chemistry solutions used in drug and chemical compound discovery and development; and also, metal detection and other end-of-line inspection systems used in production and packaging and provides solutions for use in certain process analytics applications. Its operations are conducted by the following segments: U. S. Operations, Swiss Operations, Western European Operations, Chinese Operations and Other. The U.S. Operations segment represents certain of the company's marketing and producing organizations located in the United States. The Swiss Operations segment includes marketing and producing organizations located in Switzerland, as well as extensive R&D operations that are responsible for the development, production, and marketing of precision instruments, including weighing, analytical, and measurement technologies for use in a variety of industrial and laboratory applications. Th

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Medtronic Plc is a medical technology company, which engages in the development, manufacture, distribution, and sale of device-based medical therapies and services. It operates through the following segments: Cardiac and Vascular Group; Minimally Invasive Technologies Group; Restorative Therapies Group; and Diabetes Group. The Cardiac and Vascular Group segment consists of products for the diagnosis, treatment, and management of cardiac rhythm disorders and cardiovascular disease. The Minimally Invasive Technologies Group segment focuses on respiratory system, gastrointestinal tract, renal system, lungs, pelvic region, kidneys, and obesity diseases. The Restorative Therapies Group segment comprises of neurostimulation therapies and drug delivery systems for the treatment of chronic pain, as well as areas of the spine and brain, along with pelvic health and conditions of the ear, nose, and throat. The Diabetes Group segment offers insulin pumps, coninuous glucose monitoring systems, and insulin pump consumables. The company was founded in 1949 and is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland.

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iShares MSCI Canada ETF's stock was trading at $23.42 on March 11th, 2020 when Coronavirus (COVID-19) reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Since then, EWC shares have increased by 67.8% and is now trading at $39.31.

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USG Corporation, through its subsidiaries, manufactures and sells building materials worldwide. The company's Gypsum division manufactures and markets gypsum and related products to construct walls and ceilings of residential, nonresidential, and institutional buildings; and agricultural and industrial customers. This segment offers gypsum wallboards and compound portfolios, as well as corner beads, joint tapes, and plasters under the USG Sheetrock brand; glass mat sheathing portfolios under the Securock brand; construction plaster products under the Red Top, Imperial, Diamond, and Supremo brands; and lightweight gypsum panels under the USG Sheetrock brand, as well as ultralight panels, USG Sheetrock brand ecosmart panels, and industrial gypsum. Its Performance Materials division manufactures and markets products for interior and exterior building applications of residential and nonresidential buildings, as well as industrial applications. This segment provides cement boards, backer boards, shower systems, performance floorings, air barrier systems, roof board portfolios, and structural panels under the USG Durock, Fiberock, Levelrock, Securock, ExoAir, Securock, and USG brands. The company's Ceilings division manufactures and markets ceiling tiles under the Radar, Eclipse, Mars, and Halcyon brands; ceiling grids under the Donn, DX, Fineline, Centricitee, and Identitee DXI brands; specialty ceilings under the Curvatura, Compasso, Radians, Illusions, Multiples, Runways, Barz, Planx, Mirra, Corniche, Wallforms, and Parti brands; and acoustical drywall ceilings under the Ensemble brand. Its USG Boral Building Products division manufactures, distributes, and sells building products, mines raw gypsum, and sells natural and synthetic gypsum under the USG Boral Sheetrock, USG Boral NextGen, Elephant, Jayaboard, Durock, and Donn DX brands. The company was founded in 1902 and is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois.

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I am not a sheep, I have my own mind

I have had enough of being told what and how to think

Whilst we are still allowed the remnants of free speech,

I will speak out.



I also reserve the right to discuss less controversial matters should I feel the urge.
Invesco S&P 500 Equal Weight Utilities ETF's stock was trading at $98.06 on March 11th, 2020 when Coronavirus reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Since then, RYU shares have increased by 10.1% and is now trading at $107.96.

View which stocks have been most impacted by COVID-19.
The following companies are subsidiares of Procter & Gamble: "Procter & Gamble Services" LLC, "Procter & Gamble" LLC, Agile Pursuits, Agile Pursuits Franchising, Arbora, Arbora & Ausonia, Arborinvest, Billie, Braun (Shanghai) Co., Braun GmbH, Braun-Gillette Immobilien GmbH & Co. KG, Celtic Insurance Company, Compania Procter & Gamble Mexico, Compania Quimica S.A., Corporativo Procter & Gamble, Cosmetic Products Pty. Ltd., Detergent Products B.V., Detergent Products SARL, Detergenti S.A., Eurocos Cosmetic GmbH, FPG Oleochemicals Sdn. Bhd., Fameccanica Data S.p.A., Fameccanica Industria e Comercio Do Brasil LTDA., Fameccanica Machinery (Shanghai) Co., Fater S.p.A., Fountain Square Music Publishing Co., Gillette (China) Ltd., Gillette (Shanghai) Ltd., Gillette Aesop Ltd., Gillette Australia Pty. Ltd., Gillette Canada Holdings, Gillette Commercial Operations North America, Gillette Diversified Operations Pvt. Ltd., Gillette Egypt S.A.E., Gillette Group UK Ltd, Gillette Gruppe Deutschland GmbH & Co. oHG, Gillette Holding Company LLC, Gillette Holding GmbH, Gillette India Limited, Gillette Industries Ltd., Gillette International B.V., Gillette Latin America Holding B.V., Gillette Management LLC, Gillette Nova Scotia Company, Gillette Pakistan Limited, Gillette Poland International Sp. z.o.o., Gillette Poland S.A., Gillette U.K. Limited, Gillette del Uruguay, Giorgio Beverly Hills Inc., Hyginett KFT, Industries Marocaines Modernes SA, LLC "Procter & Gamble Novomoskovsk", LLL "Procter & Gamble Distributorskaya Compania", Laboratorios Vicks, Liberty Street Music Publishing Company, Limited Liability Company 'Procter & Gamble Trading Ukraine', Limited Liability Company with foreign investments Procter & and Gamble Ukraine, MDVIP, MERCK KGAA NPV, Marcvenca Inversiones, Modern Industries Company - Dammam, Modern Products Company - Jeddah, New Chapter, New Chapter Canada Inc., Olay LLC, Oral-B Laboratories, P&G Distribution Morocco SAS, P&G Hair Care Holding, P&G Industrial Peru S.R.L., P&G Innovation Godo Kaisha, P&G Israel M.D.O. Ltd., P&G K.K., P&G Northeast Asia Pte. Ltd., P&G Prestige Godo Kaisha, P&G Prestige Service GmbH, P&G South African Trading (Pty.) Ltd., PGT Health Care (Zhejiang) Limited, PGT Healthcare LLP, PPI ZAO, PT Procter & Gamble Home Products Indonesia, PT Procter & Gamble Operations Indonesia, Phase II Holdings Corporation, Procter & Gamble (Chengdu) Ltd., Procter & Gamble (China) Ltd., Procter & Gamble (China) Sales Co. Ltd., Procter & Gamble (East Africa) Limited, Procter & Gamble (Egypt) Manufacturing Company, Procter & Gamble (Enterprise Fund) Limited, Procter & Gamble (Guangzhou) Consumer Products Co. Ltd., Procter & Gamble (Guangzhou) Enterprise Management Service Company Limited, Procter & Gamble (Guangzhou) Ltd., Procter & Gamble (Health & Beauty Care) Limited, Procter & Gamble (Jiangsu) Ltd. China, Procter & Gamble (L&CP) Limited, Procter & Gamble (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Procter & Gamble (Manufacturing) Ireland Limited, Procter & Gamble (Shanghai) International Trade Company Ltd., Procter & Gamble (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., Procter & Gamble Acquisition GmbH, Procter & Gamble Administration GmbH, Procter & Gamble Algeria EURL, Procter & Gamble Amazon Holding B.V., Procter & Gamble Amiens S.A.S., Procter & Gamble Argentina SRL, Procter & Gamble Asia Pte. Ltd., Procter & Gamble Australia Proprietary Limited, Procter & Gamble Azerbaijan Services LLC, Procter & Gamble Bangladesh Private Ltd., Procter & Gamble Blois S.A.S., Procter & Gamble Brazil Holdings B.V., Procter & Gamble Bulgaria EOOD, Procter & Gamble Business Services Canada Company, Procter & Gamble Canada Holding B.V., Procter & Gamble Chile , Procter & Gamble Chile Limitada, Procter & Gamble Colombia Ltda., Procter & Gamble Commercial LLC, Procter & Gamble Commercial de Cuba S.A., Procter & Gamble Czech Republic s.r.o., Procter & Gamble DS Polska Sp. z o.o., Procter & Gamble Danmark ApS, Procter & Gamble Detergent (Beijing) Ltd., Procter & Gamble Deuttschland GmbH, Procter & Gamble Distributing (Philippines) Inc., Procter & Gamble Distributing New Zealand Limited, Procter & Gamble Distribution Company (Europe) BVBA, Procter & Gamble Distribution S.R.L., Procter & Gamble Eastern Europe, Procter & Gamble Ecuador Cia. Ltda., Procter & Gamble Egypt, Procter & Gamble Egypt Distribution, Procter & Gamble Egypt Holding, Procter & Gamble Egypt Supplies, Procter & Gamble Energy Company LLC, Procter & Gamble Espana, Procter & Gamble Europe SA, Procter & Gamble Export Operations SARL, Procter & Gamble Exportadora e Importadora Ltda., Procter & Gamble Exports, Procter & Gamble Fabricacao e Comercio Ltda., Procter & Gamble Far East, Procter & Gamble Finance (U.K.) Ltd., Procter & Gamble Finance Holding Ltd., Procter & Gamble Finance Management S.a.r.l., Procter & Gamble Financial Investments LLP, Procter & Gamble Financial Services Ltd., Procter & Gamble Financial Services S.a.r.l., Procter & Gamble Finland OY, Procter & Gamble France S.A.S., Procter & Gamble Germany GmbH, Procter & Gamble Germany GmbH & Co. Operations oHG, Procter & Gamble GmbH, Procter & Gamble Grundstucks-und Vermogensverwaltungs GmbH & Co. KG, Procter & Gamble Gulf FZE, Procter & Gamble Hair Care, Procter & Gamble Hellas Ltd., Procter & Gamble Holding (Thailand) Limited, Procter & Gamble Holding France S.A.S., Procter & Gamble Holding GmbH, Procter & Gamble Holding S.r.l., Procter & Gamble Holdings (UK) Ltd., Procter & Gamble Home Products Private Limited, Procter & Gamble Hong Kong Limited, Procter & Gamble Hungary Wholesale Trading Partnership (KKT), Procter & Gamble Hygiene & Health Care Limited, Procter & Gamble Inc., Procter & Gamble India Holdings, Procter & Gamble Indochina Limited Company, Procter & Gamble Industrial - 2012 C.A., Procter & Gamble Industrial Colombia Ltda., Procter & Gamble Industrial S.C.A., Procter & Gamble Industrial e Comercial Ltda., Procter & Gamble Interamericas de Costa Rica, Procter & Gamble Interamericas de Guatemala, Procter & Gamble Interamericas de Panama, Procter & Gamble International Operations Pte. Ltd., Procter & Gamble International Operations SA, Procter & Gamble International Operations SA-ROHQ, Procter & Gamble International S.a.r.l., Procter & Gamble Investment Company (UK) Ltd., Procter & Gamble Investment GmbH, Procter & Gamble Italia, Procter & Gamble Japan K.K., Procter & Gamble Kazakhstan Distribution LLP, Procter & Gamble Kazakhstan LLP, Procter & Gamble Korea, Procter & Gamble Korea S&D Co., Procter & Gamble Lanka Private Ltd. Sri Lanka, Procter & Gamble Leasing LLC, Procter & Gamble Levant S.A.L., Procter & Gamble Limited, Procter & Gamble Manufacturing (Thailand) Limited, Procter & Gamble Manufacturing (Tianjin) Co. Ltd., Procter & Gamble Manufacturing Belgium N.V., Procter & Gamble Manufacturing Berlin GmbH, Procter & Gamble Manufacturing GmbH, Procter & Gamble Manufacturing Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Procter & Gamble Manufacturing SA (Pty) Ltd, Procter & Gamble Marketing Romania SRL, Procter & Gamble Marketing and Services doo, Procter & Gamble Maroc SA, Procter & Gamble Mataro, Procter & Gamble Mexico Holding B.V., Procter & Gamble Mexico Inc., Procter & Gamble Middle East FZE, Procter & Gamble Nederland B.V., Procter & Gamble Netherlands Investments B.V., Procter & Gamble Netherlands Services B.V., Procter & Gamble Nigeria Limited, Procter & Gamble Nordic, Procter & Gamble Norge AS, Procter & Gamble Operations Polska Sp. z o.o., Procter & Gamble Overseas India B.V., Procter & Gamble Overseas Ltd., Procter & Gamble Pakistan (Private) Limited, Procter & Gamble Partnership LLP, Procter & Gamble Peru S.R.L., Procter & Gamble Pharmaceuticals France SAS, Procter & Gamble Philippines, Procter & Gamble Polska Sp. z o.o, Procter & Gamble Portugal - Produtos De Consumo, Procter & Gamble Product Supply (U.K.) Limited U.K., Procter & Gamble Production GmbH, Procter & Gamble Productions, Procter & Gamble Productos de Consumo, Procter & Gamble RHD, Procter & Gamble RSC Regional Service Company Ltd., Procter & Gamble Retail Services BVBA, Procter & Gamble S.r.l., Procter & Gamble SA (Pty) Ltd, Procter & Gamble Satis ve Dagitim Ltd. Sti., Procter & Gamble Seine S.A.S., Procter & Gamble Service GmbH, Procter & Gamble Services (Switzerland) SA, Procter & Gamble Services Company N.V., Procter & Gamble Services Ltd., Procter & Gamble Share Incentive Plan Trustee Ltd., Procter & Gamble South America Holding B.V., Procter & Gamble Spol. s.r.o. (Ltd.), Procter & Gamble Sports and Social Club Ltd., Procter & Gamble Sverige AB, Procter & Gamble Switzerland SARL, Procter & Gamble Taiwan Limited, Procter & Gamble Taiwan Sales Company Limited, Procter & Gamble Technical Centres Limited, Procter & Gamble Technology (Beijing) Co., Procter & Gamble Trading (Thailand) Limited, Procter & Gamble Tuketim Mallari Sanayii A.S., Procter & Gamble UK, Procter & Gamble UK Group Holdings Ltd, Procter & Gamble UK Parent Company Ltd., Procter & Gamble Universal Holding B.V., Procter & Gamble Verwaltungs GmbH, Procter & Gamble Vietnam, Procter & Gamble d.o.o. za trgovinu, Procter & Gamble de Venezuela S.C.A., Procter & Gamble de Venezuela S.R.L., Procter & Gamble do Brasil S/A, Procter & Gamble do Brazil, Procter & Gamble do Nordeste S/A, Procter & Gamble-Rakona s.r.o., Progam Realty & Development Corporation, Redmond Products, Richardson-Vicks Real Estate Inc., Richardson-Vicks do Brasil Quimica e Farmaceutica Ltda, Riverfront Music Publishing Co., Rosemount LLC, SPD Development Company Limited, SPD Swiss Precision Diagnostics GmbH, Scannon S.A.S., Series Acquisition B.V., Shulton, Surfac S.R.L., Sycamore Productions, TAOS - FL, TAOS Retail, Tambrands Inc., Temple Trees Impex & Investment Private Limited, The Art of Shaving - FL, The Dover Wipes Company, The Gillette Company, The Gillette Company LLC, The Gillette co., The Procter & Gamble Distributing LLC, The Procter & Gamble GBS Company, The Procter & Gamble Global Finance Company, The Procter & Gamble Manufacturing Company, The Procter & Gamble Paper Products Company, The Procter & Gamble U.S. Business Services Company, This is L., US CD LLC, Vidal Sassoon (Shanghai) Academy, Vidal Sassoon Co., WEBA Betriebsrenten-Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH, Walker & Company Brands, and iMFLUX Inc..
The following companies are subsidiares of Prudential Financial: 210-220 E. 22nd Street SSGA Owner LLC, AIG Edison, AIG Star, AREF Cayman Co Ltd., AREF GP II Pte. Ltd., AREF GP Ltd., ASPF II - Feeder Fund GmbH, ASPF II - Verwaltungs - GmbH & Co. KG, ASPF II Management GmbH, ASPF III (Scots) L.P., ASSURANCE, AST Investment Services Inc., Adlerwerke CB Investment LLC, Administradora de Fondos de Pensiones Habitat S.A., Administradora de Inversiones Previsionales SpA, Aoba Life Insurance Company, Asia Property Fund III GP S.a.r.l., Assurance IQ LLC, Assurance Intelligence LLC, BSC CP LP, Braeloch Holdings Inc., Braeloch Successor Corporation, Brazilian Capital Fund GP Limited, Broad Street Global Advisors LLC, Broome Street Holdings LLC, CB German Retail LLC, CLIS Co. Ltd., COLICO INC., Campus Drive LLC, Capital Agricultural Property Services Inc., Chadwick Boulevard Investment Holdings Co. LLC, Cibecue LLC, Coconino LLC, Colico II Inc., Columbus Drive Partners L.P., Commerce Street Holdings LLC, Commerce Street Investments LLC, Coolidge LLC, Coral Reef GP, Coral Reef L.P., Coral Reef Unit Trust, Cottage Street Investments LLC, Cottage Street Orbit Acquisition LLC, DHFL PRAMERICA LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY LIMITED, DICKENS AVENUE HOLDINGS VI LLC, DICKENS AVENUE PARTNERS VI (Ireland) L.P., DICKENS AVENUE PARTNERS VI (US) L.P., Don Cesar Investor LLC, Dryden Arizona Reinsurance Term Company, Dryden Finance II LLC, EVP II GP S.a r.l., EVP II Sweden Resi I GP S.a r.l., Edison Place Senior Note LLC, Essex LLC, EuroCore GP S.a r.l., European Value Partners GP S.a.r.l., Everbright PGIM Fund Management Co. Ltd., Flagstaff LLC, GA 1600 Commons LLC, GA 333 Hennepin Investor LLC, GA BV LLC, GA Bay Area GP LLC, GA Bay Area Investor LLC, GA Belden LLC, GA CLARENDON LLC, GA Cal Crossings LLC, GA Collins LLC, GA E. 22nd Street Apartments Holdings LLC, GA East 86 Street LLC, GA JHCII LLC, GA MENLO PARK INVESTOR LLC, GA Manor at Harbour Island LLC, GA Metro LLC, GA Mission LLC, GA TRITON INVESTOR LLC, GA W Paces LLC, GA/MDI 333 Hennepin Associates LLC, GIBRALTAR BSN HOLDINGS SDN BHD, GIBRALTAR INDIA SOLUTIONS LLP, Gateway Holdings II LLC, Gateway Holdings LLC, German Retail Income CP LP, Gibraltar BSN Life Berhad, Gibraltar International Insurance Services Company Inc., Gibraltar International Service LLC, Gibraltar Reinsurance Company Ltd., Gibraltar Universal Life Reinsurance Company, Glenealy International Limited, Global Portfolio Strategies Inc., Gold GP Limited, Gold II L.P., Gold L.P., Graham Resources Inc., Graham Royalty Ltd., Green Tree GP, Green Tree L.P., Greenlee LLC, Halsey Street Investments LLC, Hirakata LLC, IVP Fund GP LLC, Impact Investments Bridges UK S.a.r.l, Inter-Atlantic G Fund L.P., Inversiones Previsionales Chile SpA, Inversiones Previsionales Dos SpA, Ironbound Fund LLC, Jennison Associates LLC, Kyarra S.a r.l., Kyoei Annuity Home Co. Ltd., LINEUP LLC, Lake Street Partners IV L.P., MC GA COLLINS HOLDINGS LLC, MC GA COLLINS REALTY LLC, MC Insurance Agency Services LLC, Manor at Harbour Island LLC, Marble Canyon LLC, Maricopa LLC, Market Street Holdings IV LLC, Morenci LLC, Mulberry Street Holdings LLC, Mulberry Street Investment L.P., Mulberry Street Partners LLC, Mullin TBG Insurance Agency Services LLC, MullinTBG Insurance Agency Services, National Family Assurance Group LLC, New Savanna, Orchard Street Acres Inc., PAI Bay Farm LLC, PAI Bayrock Groves LLC, PAI Belvidere Farms LLC, PAI Big Cypress Farm LLC, PAI Corcoran 640 Ranch LLC, PAI DeKalb Farm LLC, PAI Delano 1500 Ranches LLC, PAI Flicker Orchard LLC, PAI Good Hope Farm LLC, PAI Hawk Creek Ranch LLC, PAI Hills Valley Ranches LLC, PAI Holly Hill Groves LLC, PAI Hunt Farm LLC, PAI Jackson Bayou Farm LLC, PAI Lake Placid Groves LLC, PAI Wallula Gap Vineyard LLC, PCP V Cayman AIV GP L.P., PEREF II Co-Invest 1 GP S.a r.l., PEREF II GP S.a r.l., PEREF II PV S.r.l, PFI EM-Tech Fund I LLC, PG Business Service Co. Ltd, PG Collection Service Co. Ltd., PGA Asian Retail Limited, PGA European Limited, PGI Co. Ltd, PGIM (Australia) Pty Ltd, PGIM (Hong Kong) Ltd., PGIM (Scots) Limited, PGIM (Shanghai) Company Ltd., PGIM (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., PGIM AVP IV GP S.a r.l., PGIM Advisory (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., PGIM Agricultural Investments GP LLC, PGIM Agricultural Investors LP, PGIM Broad Market High Yield Bond Fund L.P., PGIM Broad Market High Yield Bond Partners LLC, PGIM Capital Partners Management (Feeder) VI LLC, PGIM Capital Partners Management Fund VI L.P., PGIM European Financing Limited, PGIM European Services Limited, PGIM Financial Limited, PGIM Fixed Income Alternatives Fund II L.P., PGIM Fixed Income Alternatives Fund L.P., PGIM Fixed Income Alternatives GP LLC, PGIM Fixed Income Alternatives II GP LLC, PGIM Foreign Investments Inc., PGIM Holding Company LLC, PGIM INDIA ASSET MANAGEMENT PRIVATE LIMITED, PGIM INDIA TRUSTEES PRIVATE LIMITED, PGIM Inc., PGIM International Financing Inc., PGIM Investments LLC, PGIM Japan Co. Ltd., PGIM Korea Inc., PGIM LTIF Berlin GP S.a r.l., PGIM LTIF Berlin MLP S.ar.l., PGIM LTIF GP S.a.r.l., PGIM Limited, PGIM Loan Originator Manager Limited, PGIM M Campus GP S.a r.l., PGIM Management Partner Limited, PGIM MetaProp Investor LP LLC, PGIM Netherlands B.V., PGIM Overseas Investment Fund Management (Shanghai) Company Ltd, PGIM Private Capital (Ireland) Limited, PGIM Private Capital Limited, PGIM Private Placement Investors Inc., PGIM Private Placement Investors L.P., PGIM REF EUROPE SCSp, PGIM REF Europe GP S.a r.l., PGIM REF Europe Member LLC, PGIM REF Intermediary Services Inc., PGIM Real Estate (Japan) Ltd., PGIM Real Estate (UK) Limited, PGIM Real Estate CD S.a.r.l., PGIM Real Estate Capital VII GP S.a r.l., PGIM Real Estate Carry & Co-Invest GP LLC, PGIM Real Estate Carry & Co-Invest GP S.a r.l., PGIM Real Estate Carry & Co-Invest L.P., PGIM Real Estate Carry & Co-Invest SCSp, PGIM Real Estate Co-Invest Holdings LLC, PGIM Real Estate Debt GmbH, PGIM Real Estate Finance Holding Company, PGIM Real Estate Finance LLC, PGIM Real Estate France SAS, PGIM Real Estate Germany AG, PGIM Real Estate Global Debt GP LLC, PGIM Real Estate Inmuebles S. de R.L. de C.V, PGIM Real Estate Italy S.r.l., PGIM Real Estate Loan Services Inc., PGIM Real Estate Luxembourg S.A., PGIM Real Estate MVP Administradora IV S. de R.L. de C.V., PGIM Real Estate MVP Administradora V S. de R.L. de C.V., PGIM Real Estate MVP Inmuebles IV S. de R.L. de C.V., PGIM Real Estate MVP Inmuebles V S. de R.L. de C.V., PGIM Real Estate Management Luxembourg S.a.r.l., PGIM Real Estate Mexico S.C., PGIM Real Estate S. de R.L. de C.V., PGIM Real Estate U.S. Debt Fund GP LLC, PGIM Senior Loan Opportunities Management (Feeder) I LLC, PGIM Senior Loan Opportunities Management Fund I L.P., PGIM Strategic Financing LLC, PGIM Strategic Investments Inc., PGIM USPF VI Manager LLC, PGIM Warehouse Inc., PGLH of Delaware Inc., PIFM Holdco LLC, PIIC Limited, PIISC Holdings (UK) Limited, PIM KF Blocker Holdings LLC, PIM KF Blocker V Holdings LLC, PIM USPF V Manager LLC, PLA Administradora Industrial SRL, PLA Administradora LLC, PLA Administradora S. de R.L. de C.V., PLA Asesoria Profesional II S. de R.L. de C.V., PLA Asesoria Profesional S.de R.L. de C.V., PLA Co-Investor LLC, PLA Mexico Industrial Manager I LLC, PLA Mexico Industrial Manager II LLC, PLA Mexico Residential Manager I LLC, PLA Residential Fund III Aggregating Manager LLC, PLA Residential Fund III Limited Manager LLC, PLA Residential Fund III Manager LLC, PLA Residential Fund IV Aggregating Manager LLC, PLA Residential Fund IV Manager LLC, PLA Retail Fund I Blue LP, PLA Retail Fund I LP, PLA Retail Fund I Manager LLC, PLA Retail Fund I Red LP, PLA Retail Fund II Aggregating Manager LLC, PLA Retail Fund II LLC, PLA Retail Fund II LP, PLA Retail Fund II Manager LLC, PLA Retail Fund II U.S. Carry/Co-Invest LP, PLA Services Manager Mexico LLC, PLAI Limited, PMCF Holdings LLC, PMCF Properties LLC, PPPF General Partner LLP, PR GA SCP Apartments LLC, PRAMERICA PRECAP VI GP (SCOTS FEEDER) LLP, PRAMERICA PRECAP VI GP LLP, PRECO ACCOUNT III LLC, PRECO ACCOUNT PARTNERSHIP III LP, PRECO Account IV LLC, PRECO Account Partnership IV LP, PRECO III GP LLP, PREFG Hanwha Manager LLC, PREI Acquisition I Inc., PREI Acquisition II Inc., PREI Acquisition LLC, PREI HYDG LLC, PREI International Inc., PRIAC Property Acquisitions LLC, PRICOA Management Partner Limited, PRISA Fund Manager LLC, PRISA II Fund Manager LLC, PRISA II Pooled Manager LLC, PRISA III Fund GP LLC, PRISA III Fund PIM LLC, PRREF II Fund Manager LLC, PRU 3XSquare LLC, PRUCO LLC, PRUDENTIAL CAPITAL ENERGY PARTNERS MANAGEMENT (FEEDER) LLC, PRUDENTIAL MORTGAGE SKP MEMBER LLC, PRUDENTIAL MORTGAGE SKP REIT LLC, PRUDENTIAL MORTGAGE SKP VENTURE 2 LLC, PRUDENTIAL MORTGAGE SKP VENTURE LLC, PT PFI Mega Life Insurance, Passaic Fund LLC, Pine Tree GP, Pine Tree L.P., Platinum GP Limited, Platinum II L.P., Platinum L.P., Pramerica (Hong Kong) Holdings Limited, Pramerica (Luxembourg) CP GP S.a.r.l., Pramerica (Scots) CP GP LLP, Pramerica Business Consulting (Shanghai) Company Limited, Pramerica EVP CP LP, Pramerica Financial Asia Headquarters Pte. Ltd., Pramerica Financial Asia Limited, Pramerica Fixed Income Funds Management Limited, Pramerica Fosun Life Insurance Co. Ltd., Pramerica General Partner LLP, Pramerica Holdings Ltd, Pramerica Insurance Agency (China) Company Ltd., Pramerica PRECAP I GP LLP, Pramerica PRECAP II GP LLP, Pramerica PRECAP III GP LLP, Pramerica PRECAP IV GP LLP, Pramerica Pan European Real Estate (Scots) LP, Pramerica Property Partners Fund (Scotland) Limited Partnership, Pramerica Real Estate Capital I (Scotland) Limited Partnership, Pramerica Real Estate Capital I GP (Scots Feeder) LLP, Pramerica Real Estate Capital II (Scots) Limited Partnership, Pramerica Real Estate Capital III (Scots) Limited Partnership, Pramerica Real Estate Capital IV (Scots) Limited Partnership, Pramerica Real Estate Capital IV GP (Scots Feeder) LLP, Pramerica Real Estate Capital IV GP Limited, Pramerica Real Estate Capital V (Netherlands) GP LLP, Pramerica Real Estate Capital V (Scots) Limited Partnership, Pramerica Real Estate Capital VI (Scots) Limited Partnership, Pramerica SGR S.p.A, Pramerica Systems Ireland Limited, Preco III (Scotland) Limited Partnership, Pru 101 Wood LLC, Pru Alpha Partners I LLC, Pru Fixed Income Emerging Markets Partners I LLC, PruVen Capital Partners Fund I L.P., Pruco Assignment Corporation, Pruco Life Insurance Company, Pruco Life Insurance Company of New Jersey, Pruco Securities LLC, Prudential 900 Aviation Boulevard LLC, Prudential Affordable Mortgage Company LLC, Prudential Agricultural Property Holding Company LLC, Prudential Annuities Distributors Inc., Prudential Annuities Holding Company Inc., Prudential Annuities Inc., Prudential Annuities Information Services & Technology Corporation, Prudential Annuities Life Assurance Corporation, Prudential Arizona Reinsurance Captive Company, Prudential Arizona Reinsurance Term Company, Prudential Arizona Reinsurance Universal Company, Prudential Bank & Trust FSB, Prudential Capital Energy Opportunity Fund L.P., Prudential Capital Energy Partners L.P., Prudential Capital Energy Partners Management Fund L.P., Prudential Capital Partners Management Fund IV L.P., Prudential Capital and Investment Services LLC, Prudential Chile II SpA, Prudential Chile SpA, Prudential Commercial Property Holding Company LLC, Prudential Customer Solutions LLC, Prudential Equity Group LLC, Prudential Financial Securities Investment Trust Enterprise, Prudential Fixed Income Global Liquidity Relative Value Partners LLC, Prudential Fixed Income U.S. Relative Value Partners LLC, Prudential Funding LLC, Prudential General Services of Japan Y.K., Prudential Gibraltar Agency Co. Ltd., Prudential Global Funding LLC, Prudential Holdings of Japan Inc., Prudential Huntoon Paige Associates LLC, Prudential IBH Holdco Inc., Prudential Impact Investments Mortgage Loans LLC, Prudential Impact Investments Private Debt LLC, Prudential Impact Investments Private Equity LLC, Prudential Industrial Properties LLC, Prudential Insurance Agency LLC, Prudential International Insurance Holdings Ltd., Prudential International Insurance Service Company L.L.C., Prudential International Investments Advisers LLC, Prudential International Investments Company LLC, Prudential International Investments LLC, Prudential Investment Management Services LLC, Prudential Japan Holdings LLC, Prudential Legacy Insurance Company of New Jersey, Prudential Life Insurance Company of Taiwan Inc., Prudential Mortgage Asset Holdings 1 Japan Investment Business Limited Partnership, Prudential Mortgage Asset Holdings 2 Japan Investment Business Limited Partnership, Prudential Mortgage Capital Asset Holding Company LLC, Prudential Mortgage Capital Funding LLC, Prudential Mortgage Capital Holdings LLC, Prudential Multifamily Mortgage LLC, Prudential Mutual Fund Services LLC, Prudential Newark Realty LLC, Prudential QOZ Investment Fund 1 LLC, Prudential Realty Securities Inc., Prudential Retirement Financial Services Holding LLC, Prudential Retirement Holdings LLC, Prudential Retirement Insurance and Annuity Company, Prudential Securities Secured Financing Corporation, Prudential Securities Structured Assets Inc., Prudential Seguros Mexico S.A. de C.V., Prudential Seguros S.A., Prudential Servicios S. de R.L. de C.V., Prudential Structured Settlement Company, Prudential Systems Japan Limited, Prudential Term Reinsurance Company, Prudential Trust Co. Ltd., Prudential Trust Company, Prudential Universal Reinsurance Company, Prudential Workplace Solutions Group Services LLC, Prudential do Brasil Seguros de Vida S.A., Prudential do Brasil Vida em Grupo S.A., Prudential/TMW Real Estate Group LLC, Pruservicos Participacoes Ltda., QMA JP EM All Cap Equity Partners LLC, QMA LLC, QMA Wadhwani LLP, Quartzsite LLC, Residential Services Corporation of America LLC, Rio CP LP, Rock European Real Estate Holdings S.ar.l., Rock Global Real Estate LLC, Rock Kensington Limited, Rock Marty GP S.a r.l., Rock Oxford S.a r.l., Rock UK Real Estate Holdings S.ar.l., Rock UK Real Estate II S.a.r.l., Rockstone Co. Ltd., Rosado Grande LLC, Ross Avenue Energy Fund Holdings LLC, Ross Avenue Minerals 2012 LLC, SCP Apartments LLC, SENIOR HOUSING PARTNERS VI GP LLC, SENIOR HOUSING PARTNERSHIP FUND VI GP LLC, SHP IV Carried Interest LP, SHP V Carried Interest L.P., SMP Holdings Inc., SVIIT Holdings Inc., Sanei Collection Service Co. Ltd. (Kabushiki Kaisha Sanei Shuuno Service), Senior Housing Partners IV L.L.C., Senior Housing Partners V LLC, Senior Housing Partnership Fund IV L.L.C., Senior Housing Partnership Fund V LLC, Sterling Private Placement Management LLP, Stetson Street Partners L.P., Strand Investments Limited, TBG Insurance Services Corporation, TENSATOR HOLDINGS LTD, TF Proveedora S.C., TMW ASPF I Verwaltungs GmbH & Co. KG, TMW ASPF Management GmbH, TMW Management LLC, TMW Real Estate Group LLC, TMW Realty Advisors LLC, TMW USPF Verwaltungs GmbH, TRGOAG Company Inc., The Gibraltar Life Insurance Co. Ltd., The Keynes Dynamic Beta Strategy (US) Fund GP LLC, The Prudential Assigned Settlement Services Corp., The Prudential Brazilian Capital Fund LP, The Prudential Gibraltar Financial Life Insurance Co. Ltd., The Prudential Home Mortgage Company Inc., The Prudential Insurance Company of America, The Prudential Life Insurance Company Ltd., The Prudential Real Estate Financial Services of America Inc., The WMF Group, Thurloe Commercial Guernsey Limited, Times Square Center Associates, USPF V - Verwaltungs - GmbH & Co. KG, USPF V Carry LLC, USPF V Co-Invest LLC, USPF V Investment LP, United States Property Fund VI GP S.a r.l., Vailsburg Fund LLC, Vantage Casualty Insurance Company, Wabash Avenue Holdings V LLC, Wabash Avenue Partners V L.P., Wadhwani Capital Limited, Waveland Avenue Holdings I LLC, Waveland Avenue Partners I (Ireland) L.P., Waveland Avenue Partners I (US) L.P., Wellness Services Ecossistema De Bem Estar Ltda., Wellness Services SRL, Yamato Life, and Yavapai LLC.
The following companies are subsidiares of Quest Diagnostics: AmeriPath, AmeriPath Cincinnati Inc. (OH), AmeriPath Cleveland Inc. (OH), AmeriPath Consolidated Labs Inc. (FL), AmeriPath Florida LLC (DE), AmeriPath Hospital Services Florida LLC (DE), AmeriPath Inc. (DE), AmeriPath Indianapolis PC (IN), AmeriPath Kentucky Inc. (KY), AmeriPath Lubbock 5.01(A) Corporation (TX), AmeriPath New York LLC (DE), AmeriPath Texas Inc. (DE), AmeriPath Tucson Inc. (AZ), American Medical Laboratories, American Medical Laboratories Incorporated (DE), Associated Clinical Laboratories L.P. (PA), Associated Clinical Laboratories of Pennsylvania L.L.C. (PA), Athena Diagnostics, Athena Diagnostics Inc. (DE), Blueprint Genetics, Blueprint Genetics FZ-LLC (UAE), Blueprint Genetics Inc. (DE), Blueprint Genetics Oy (Finland), California Laboratory Associates, Cape Cod Healthcare - Business, Celera, ClearPoint Diagnostic, Clearpoint Diagnostic Laboratories LLC (TX), Cleveland HeartLab, Cleveland HeartLab Inc. (DE), Clinical Laboratory Partners, Colorado Pathology Consultants P.C. (CO), ConVerge Diagnostic Services, Consolidated DermPath Inc. (DE), DFW 5.01(a) Corporation (TX), DGXWMT JV LLC (DE), Dermatopathology of Wisconsin S.C. (WI), Diagnostic Laboratory of Oklahoma LLC (OK), Diagnostic Pathology Services Inc. (OK), Diagnostic Reference Services Inc. (MD), ExamOne Canada Inc. (New Brunswick), ExamOne LLC (DE), ExamOne World Wide Inc. (PA), ExamOne World Wide of NJ Inc. (NJ), Focus Diagnostics, HemoCue, Hoffman M.D. Associated Pathologists Chartered (NV), Institute for Dermatopathology Inc. (PA), Isabella Street Urban Renewal LLC (NJ), Kailash B. Sharma M.D. Inc. (GA), Kilpatrick Pathology P.A. (NC), LabOne, LabOne LLC (MO), LabOne of Ohio Inc. (DE), Laboratorio de Analisis Biomedicos S.A. (Mexico), Lancet Labs, MACL, Med Fusion LLC (TX), Med fusion, MedPlus, Mid America Clinical Laboratories LLC (IN), Nomad Massachusetts Inc. (MA), Nuclear Medicine and Pathology Associates (GA), Ocmulgee Medical Pathology Association Inc. (GA), Pathology Building Partnership (MD) (gen. ptnrshp.), PeaceHealth Laboratories, PhenoPath Laboratories, PhenoPath Laboratories PLLC (WA), Q Squared Solutions Holdings LLC (DE), Q Squared Solutions Holdings Limited (UK), Quest Diagnostics (Shanghai) Co. Ltd. (China), Quest Diagnostics Brasil Holdings Ltd. (UK), Quest Diagnostics Clinical Laboratories, Quest Diagnostics Clinical Laboratories Inc. (DE), Quest Diagnostics Domestic Holder LLC (DE), Quest Diagnostics HTAS India Private Limited (India), Quest Diagnostics Health & Wellness LLC (DE), Quest Diagnostics Holdings Incorporated (DE), Quest Diagnostics Holdings Ltd. (UK), Quest Diagnostics Incorporated (MD), Quest Diagnostics Incorporated (NV), Quest Diagnostics India Private Limited (India), Quest Diagnostics Infectious Disease Inc. (DE), Quest Diagnostics International Holdings Limited (UK), Quest Diagnostics International LLC (DE), Quest Diagnostics Investments LLC (DE), Quest Diagnostics Ireland Limited (Ireland), Quest Diagnostics LLC (CT), Quest Diagnostics LLC (IL), Quest Diagnostics LLC (MA), Quest Diagnostics Massachusetts LLC (MA), Quest Diagnostics Mexico Holding Company Trust (Mexico), Quest Diagnostics Mexico S de RL de CV (Mexico), Quest Diagnostics Nichols Institute (CA), Quest Diagnostics Nichols Institute Inc. (VA), Quest Diagnostics Receivables Inc. (DE), Quest Diagnostics Subsidiary Holdings Ltd. (UK), Quest Diagnostics TB LLC (DE), Quest Diagnostics Terracotta LLC (DE), Quest Diagnostics Venture LLC (PA), Quest Diagnostics Ventures LLC (DE), Quest Diagnostics do Brasil Ltda. (Brazil), Quest Diagnostics of Pennsylvania Inc. (DE), Quest Diagnostics of Puerto Rico Inc. (PR), Quest HealthConnect LLC (CA), ReproSource, Reprosource Fertility Diagnostics Inc. (MA), Solstas Lab Partners, Sonora Quest Laboratories LLC (AZ), Specialty Laboratories Inc. (CA), Summit Health, UMass Memorial Medical Center - Anatomic Pathology Outreach Laboratory Business, Unilab Corporation, and Unilab Corporation (DE).
The following companies are subsidiares of Ashland Global: 565 Corporation, ASH GP INC., ASHLAND SPECIALTY CHEMICAL (SINGAPORE) PTE. LTD., ASHLAND SPECIALTY CHEMICALS (MALAYSIA) SDN.BHD, Adams Drive Totowa L.L.C., Alera Property Holdings LLC, Alera Technologies Inc., Alix Technologies LLC, Aloe Vemera S.P.R de R.L. de C.V., Ash (Gibraltar) One Limited, Ash B CIS 1 Limited, Ash B CIS 2 Limited, Ash B1 Limited, Ash B2 Limited, Ash B3 Limited, Ash B4 Limited, Ash B5 Limited, Ash CIS Canada Corp., Ash CIS Canada Holdings B.V., Ash CIS GmbH, Ash Global Holding Three GmbH, Ash Global Holdings Two B.V., Ash Junior Global Holding One LLC, Ash Junior Global Holding Two LLC, Ash Swiss Holding Two GmbH, AshLux Three S.a r.l., AshOne C. V., Ashland (Australasia) Pty. Limited, Ashland (Changzhou) Advanced Chemical Co. Ltd., Ashland (Changzhou) Specialty Chemical Co. Ltd, Ashland (China) Holdings Co. Ltd., Ashland (Gibraltar) One Holding Inc., Ashland (Thailand) Co. Ltd, Ashland Argentina S.R.L., Ashland CZ s.r.o., Ashland Canada Corp./Corporation Ashland Canada, Ashland Canada Holdings B. V., Ashland Chemco Inc., Ashland Chemical De Mexico S.A. De C.V., Ashland Chemical Hispania S. L., Ashland Chemical Trading (Shanghai) Company Limited, Ashland Chemicals (Nanjing) Company Limited, Ashland Colombia S.A.S., Ashland Comercio de Especialidades Quimicas do Brasil Ltda., Ashland Danmark ApS, Ashland Eastern Markets LLC, Ashland Ethanol Inc., Ashland Finance Limited, Ashland Finland Oy, Ashland France SAS, Ashland Global Holdings One C.V., Ashland India Private Limited, Ashland Industria de Ingredientes do Brasil Ltda., Ashland Industries Deutschland GmbH, Ashland Industries Europe GmbH, Ashland Industries France SAS, Ashland Industries Italia S.r.l., Ashland Industries Nederland B.V., Ashland Industries UK Limited, Ashland International Holdings LLC, Ashland Italia S.r.l., Ashland Japan Ltd., Ashland Korea Limited, Ashland LLC, Ashland Licensing and Intellectual Property LLC, Ashland ME Holdings Inc., Ashland Mexico Holdings One LLC, Ashland Mexico Holdings Two LLC, Ashland Nigeria Exploration Unlimited, Ashland Oil (Nigeria) Company Unlimited, Ashland Oil Inc., Ashland Pacific Pty. Ltd., Ashland Participacoes Ltda., Ashland Pharmachem International Holdings LLC, Ashland Polimeros do Brasil S.A., Ashland Services B. V., Ashland Services Mexico S.A. de C.V., Ashland Singapore Pte. Ltd., Ashland Specialties Austria GmbH, Ashland Specialties Belgium BVBA, Ashland Specialties France S.a.r.l., Ashland Specialties Hispania S.L., Ashland Specialties Holding C.V., Ashland Specialties Ireland Limited, Ashland Specialties Poland Sp. z o.o., Ashland Specialties Sverige AB, Ashland Specialties UK Limited, Ashland Specialty Chemical Korea Co. Ltd., Ashland Specialty Ingredients G.P., Ashland Technologies GmbH, Ashland-Alaskan Limited, Ashland-Plasticos De Portugal Lda., Ashmont Insurance Company Inc., Ashprop Two LLC, Avoca LLC, Avoele S.A. de C.V., Belleville Realty Corp., Bluegrass Insurance Company Limited, CLTA LLC, CVG Capital III LLC, Carol Clifton Inc., Clevedon Sp. z o.o., Curtis Bay Insurance Co. Ltd, East Bay Realty Services Inc., Ever Success Overseas Limited, FRJ Inc., Fospur, Hercofina, Hercules, Hercules Holding BV BVBA, Hercules Holding II Limited, Hercules Hydrocarbon Holdings Inc., Hercules International Limited LLC, Hercules Investment ApS, Hercules Investments Netherlands B.V., Hercules Islands Corporation, Hercules LLC, Hercules Paper Holdings Inc., Hercules Trading (Shanghai) Company Limited, ISP (Belgium) International N. V., ISP Alginates Inc., ISP Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd, ISP Biochema Schwaben GmbH, ISP Canada Corp., ISP Capital LLC, ISP Chemco LLC, ISP Chemical Products LLC, ISP Chemicals LLC, ISP Environmental Services Inc., ISP France Holding SARL, ISP France Marketing SARL, ISP Freetown Fine Chemicals Inc., ISP Freight Services N. V., ISP Global Operations (Barbados) Inc., ISP Global Technologies Deutschland Unterstutzungskasse GmbH, ISP Global Technologies Inc., ISP Global Technologies LLC, ISP HC Limited, ISP Holdings (U.K.) Ltd., ISP Hungary Holdings Limited Liability Company, ISP International Corp., ISP Investments LLC, ISP Lima LLC, ISP Luxembourg Canada S.a.r.l., ISP Management Company Inc., ISP Marl GmbH, ISP Marl Holdings GmbH, ISP Microcaps (U.K.) Limited, ISP Pharma Systems LLC, ISP Real Estate Company Inc., ISP Singapore Holding LLC, ISP Technologies Inc., ISP Technologies LLC, International Specialty Holdings LLC, International Specialty Products, International Specialty Products (India) Private Limited, International Specialty Products Funding Corporation, International Specialty Products Inc., Jiangmen Ashland Chemicals Company Limited, Nanjing Clear Environment Protection, Northwest Coatings, Oil Can Henrys, PT Ashland Asia, PT ISP Chemicals Indonesia, Pakistan Gum Industries (Private) Limited, Pharmachem Laboratories, Pharmachem Laboratories LLC, Pharmachem Laboratories Utah LLC, Prince Street Paterson LLC, Progiven S.A.S., Proprietary Nutritionals LLC, Ralop S. de R.L. de C.V., Saudi Industrial Resins Co. Ltd. (Polyester), Shanghai Ashland Industrial Trading Co. Ltd., St Croix Petrochemical Corp, Taiwan Ashland Co. Ltd., Techwax Limited, Vemera S. de R.L. de C.V., and WSP LLC.
Tele Columbus AG, together with its subsidiaries, operates fiber optic networks in Germany. The company operates in two segments, TV, and Internet and Telephony. The company offers analogue, digital TV, and radio broadcasting services. Its digital entertainment platform offers approximately 250 TV channels, and 60 digital radio stations. The company also provides internet and telephony, and mobile telephony services. In addition, it engages in the B2B business that comprises products to provide carrier companies with bandwidth and business client networking services, and business clients with internet and telephony services, as well as network monitoring and data center marketing services. Further, the company offers construction services to install fiber optic networks or connecting residential areas. It sells its end user products under the PYUR name. As of December 31, 2020, it served approximately 3.3 million residential units. The company was formerly known as Tele Columbus Holding GmbH and changed its name to Tele Columbus AG in September 2014. Tele Columbus AG was founded in 1972 and is headquartered in Berlin, Germany.

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Unum Group is engaged in providing financial protection benefits. It operates through the following segments: Unum US, Unum International, Colonial Life, Closed Block and Corporate. The Unum US segment comprises of group long-term and short-term disability insurance, group life and accidental death and dismemberment products, and supplemental and voluntary lines of business. The Unum International segment engages in the operations of UK business, which includes insurance for group long-term disability, group life, and supplemental lines of business that include dental, individual disability, and critical illness products; Poland business primarily includes insurance for individual and group life with accident and health riders. The Colonial Life segment includes insurance for accident, sickness, disability products, life products, and cancer and critical illness products. The Closed Block segment consists of individual disability, group and individual long-term care, and other insurance products no longer actively marketed. The Corporate segment refers to investment income on corporate assets and other corporate income and expenses not allocated to a line of business; and interest

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iShares S&P SmallCap 600 ETF's stock was trading at $62.31 on March 11th, 2020 when Coronavirus (COVID-19) reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Since then, IJR stock has increased by 88.5% and is now trading at $117.46.

View which stocks have been most impacted by COVID-19.
Raymond James Financial, Inc., a financial holding company, through its subsidiaries, engages in the underwriting, distribution, trading, and brokerage of equity and debt securities, and the sale of mutual funds and other investment products in the United States, Canada, Europe, and internationally. The company operates through Private Client Group, Capital Markets, Asset Management, RJ Bank, and Other segments. The Private Client Group segment provides securities brokerage services, including the sale of equities, mutual funds, fixed income products, and insurance products to their individual clients; and borrowing and lending of securities to and from other broker-dealers, financial institutions, and other counterparties. The Capital Markets segment offers securities brokerage, trading, and research services to institutions with a focus on sale of the United States and Canadian equities and fixed income products; and manages and participates in underwritings, merger and acquisition services, and public finance activities. The Asset Management segment engages in the operations of Eagle, the Eagle Family of Funds, Cougar, the asset management operations of Raymond James & Associates, trust services of Raymond James Trust, and other fee-based asset management programs. The RJ Bank segment provides corporate loans, SBL, tax-exempt loans, and residential loans. The Other segment engages in private equity activities, including various direct and third party private equity investments; and private equity funds. Raymond James Financial, Inc. was founded in 1962 and is based in St. Petersburg, Florida.

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The following companies are subsidiares of Tesco: Adminstore Limited, Adsega Limited, Alfred Preedy & Sons (Trustees) Limited, Alfred Preedy & Sons Limited, Anthony Heagney Limited, Arena (Jersey) Management Limited, Armitage Finance Unlimited, Armitage Luxembourg s.? r.l., BLT Holdings 2010 Limited, Bath Upper Bristol Road Management, Bedminster Estates Limited, Beehythe Estates limited, Berry Lane Management Company Limited, Blinkbox Books Limited, BlinxBox, Booker Group, Brian Fords Discount Store Limited, Broadfields Management Limited, Brookmaker (GP) Limited, Broughton Retail Park Nominee 1 Limited, Broughton Retail Park Nominee 2 Limited, Broughton Retail Park Nominee 3 Limited, Broughton Retail Park Nominee 4 Limited, Buckingham Road (Bletchley) Management Company Limited, Bugden Ltd, Buttoncable Limited, Buttoncase Limited, Canterbury Road Management Limited, Cardiff Cathays Terrace Management Company Limited, Careneed News Limited, Cheshunt Finance Unlimited, Cheshunt Holdings Guernsey Limited, Cheshunt Hungary Servicing Limited Liability Company, Cheshunt Luxembourg S.? r.l., Cheshunt Overseas LLP, China Property Holdings (HK) Limited, Chirac Limited, Cirrus Finance (2009) Limited, Cirrus Finance Limited, Cirrus Luxembourg s.? r.l., Clarepharm Limited, Clondalkin Properties Limited, Comar Limited, Commercial Investments Limited, Crazy Prices, Crest Ostrava a.s, Cullens Holdings Limited, Cullens Stores Limited, Daily Wrap Produce Limited, Day And Nite Stores Limited, Delamare Cards Holdco Limited, Delamare Cards MTN Issuer plc, Delamare Finance PLC, Delamare Group Holdings Limited, Delamare Holdings BV Netherlands, Delamare Luxembourg s.? r.l. Luxembourg, Delamare One Limited, Dunnhumby Ventures LLC, ELH Insurance Limited, Edinburgh Butterfly Farm Limited, Edson Investments Limited, Edson Properties Limited, Ek-Chai Distribution System Co. Ltd., Euphorium (London) Limited, Euphorium (North London) Limited, Euphorium Group Limited, Euphorium IP Limited, Europa Foods Limited, Faraday Properties Limited, Flitwick Pharmacies Limited, Food & Wine Lovers Limited, Forum Liberec s.r.o, Freds Food Construction Limited, Freehold and Leasehold Property Fund, Gain Land Limited, Genesis sp. z o.o., Gibbs News Limited, Gibbs Newsagents Limited, Gida Sanayi A.S., Giraffe, Giraffe Cafe Limited, Giraffe Concepts Limited, Golden Island Management Services Limited, HIT hypermarket Sp. z o. o., Halesworth SPV Limited, Harris and Hoole Holdings Limited, Harris and Hoole Limited, Harris and Hoole Nominees Limited, Homeplus, Hymall Co. Ltd., J E Properties Holdings Limited, Jasper Sp. z o. o. Poland, KSS Retail Limited, Kabaty Investments Tesco (Polska) Sp. z o. o. Sp.k, Kingsway Fresh Foods Ltd, Koxka Hungary Refrigeration LLC, Launchgrain Limited, Launchtable Limited, Laws Stores Limited, Lazada Group S.A., Lee (Southern) Limited, Lek?ren? Tesco Bansk? Bystrica k.s. Slovakia Limited Partnership, Lek?ren? Tesco Dunajsk? Streda k.s. Slovakia Limited Partnership, Lek?ren? Tesco Ko?ice k.s. Slovakia Limited Partnership, Lek?ren? Tesco Lama k.s. Slovakia Limited Partnership, Lek?ren? Tesco Nitra k.s. Slovakia Limited Partnership, Lek?ren? Tesco Petr?alka k.s. Slovakia Limited Partnership, Lek?ren? Tesco Pie?tany k.s. Slovakia Limited Partnership, Lek?ren? Tesco Pre?ov Vukov k.s. Slovakia Limited Partnership, Lek?ren? Tesco Senec k.s. Slovakia Limited Partnership, Lek?ren? Tesco Spi?sk? Nov? Ves k.s. Slovakia Limited Partnership, Lek?ren? Tesco Trenc??n s.r.o. Slovakia Limited Partnership, Lek?ren? Tesco Zlat? Piesky k.s. Slovakia Limited Partnership, Lek?ren? Tesco Zvolen k.s. Slovakia Limited Partnership, Linebush III Holdings Limited, Linebush III Limited, Linebush IV Limited, Linebush Limited, Linebush V Limited, London and Home Counties Superstores Limited, Lowfoods Limited, M & W Limited, Merrion Shopping Centre Ltd, Mills (East Midlands) Limited, Mills (West Midlands) Limited, Mills Group Holdings Limited, Mills Group Limited, Mobcast Services, Monread Developments Limited, Morgam Holdings Limited, Morgam News Limited, Motorcause Limited, NPL (Hardgate) Limited, Nabola Development Limited, NutriCentre Limited, OC FORUM Liberec Ltd., Oakwood Distribution Limited, Obchodn? dom Bratislava s.ro, Obchodn? dom Ko?ice s.ro., Obchodn? dom Nitra s.ro., Obchodn? dom Pre?ov s.ro., Old FEHC Inc., Old FEPC LLC, One Stop Community Stores Ltd, One Stop Convenience Stores Limited, One Stop Stores Limited, One Stop Stores Trustee Services Limited, Orpingford, Orpington (Station Road) Limited, Oxford Fox and Hounds Management Company Limited, PEJ Property Developments Limited, Paper Chain (East Anglia) Limited, Pharaway Properties Limited, Power Supermarkets Limited, Premier Garage (Worthing) Limited, Pulford Foods Limited, R.J.D. Holdings, Retail Property Co. Ltd, S Bottomley & Bros Limited, Sanders Supermarkets Limited, Sandtable Limited, Sarcon (No. 239) Limited, Seacroft Green Nominee 1 Limited, Seacroft Green Nominee 2 Limited, Shire Park Limited, Shuke Advertising (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, Snowman Retail 1 Limited, Snowman Retail 2 Limited, Sociomantic AB, Sociomantic Labs B.V, Sociomantic Labs Inc, Sociomantic Labs Internet Hizmetleri Limited ?ireketi, Sociomantic Labs LLC, Sociomantic Labs Limited, Sociomantic Labs Private Limited, Sociomantic Labs Pte Ltd, Sociomantic Labs S.r.l, Sociomantic Labs SARL, Sociomantic Labs Servicos Web Ltda, Sociomantic Labs Sp.z.o.o., Sociomantic Labs s.r.o., Sociomantic S.L.U., Sociomantic labs GmbH, Spen Hill Developments (Holdings) Ltd, Spen Hill Developments (Portishead) Ltd, Spen Hill Developments (Tonbridge) Limited, Spen Hill Developments Limited, Spen Hill Management Limited, Spen Hill Properties (Holdings) plc, Spen Hill Properties (Southend) Limited, Spen Hill Regeneration Limited, Spen Hill Residential No 1 Limited, Spen Hill Residential No 2 Limited, Station House Welling Management Limited, Statusfloat Limited, Stewarts Supermarkets Limited, Streatham Management Company Limited, T & S Management Services Limited, T & S Properties Limited, T & S Stores Limited, TESCO (POLSKA) sp. z o.o., TESCO Akad?mia K?pz?si ?s Fejleszt?si Kor?tolt Felelss?g T?rsas?g, TESCO MOBILE POLSKA SP. Z O.O., TESCO STORES SR a.s., Tapesilver Limited, Teesport (GP) Limited, Teesport (Nominee) Limited, Telegraph Properties (Kirkby) Limited, Tesco (Foxtrot 1) Limited, Tesco (Foxtrot 2) Limited, Tesco (Fujian) Industry Limited, Tesco (Jersey) Limited, Tesco (Overseas) Ltd, Tesco (Yorkshire) Limited, Tesco Aqua (1LP) Limited, Tesco Aqua (3LP) Limited, Tesco Aqua (FinCo1) Limited, Tesco Aqua (FinCo2) Limited, Tesco Aqua (GP) Limited, Tesco Aqua (Nominee 1) Limited, Tesco Aqua (Nominee 2) Limited, Tesco Aqua (Nominee Holdco) Limited, Tesco Atrato (1LP) Limited, Tesco Atrato (GP) Limited, Tesco Barbers Wood Limited, Tesco Bengaluru Private Limited, Tesco Blue (1LP) Limited, Tesco Blue (FinCo2) Limited, Tesco Blue (GP) Limited, Tesco Blue (Nominee 1) Limited, Tesco Blue (Nominee 2) Limited, Tesco Blue (Nominee Holdco) Limited, Tesco Capital No. 1 Limited, Tesco Capital No. 2 Limited, Tesco Card Services Limited, Tesco Card Services Limited, Tesco Card Services Ltd., Tesco Chile Sourcing Limitada, Tesco Coral (GP) Limited, Tesco Corporate Treasury Services PLC, Tesco Depot Propco Limited, Tesco Distribution Holdings Limited, Tesco Distribution Limited, Tesco Dorney (1LP) Limited, Tesco Dorney (GP) Limited, Tesco Dystrybucja Sp. z.o.o., Tesco EU IT Services s.r.o., Tesco Employees Share Scheme Trustees Limited, Tesco Estates Limited, Tesco Europe B.V. Netherlands, Tesco Family Dining Limited, Tesco Food Sourcing Brazil Representa??o De Servi?os Ltda., Tesco Food Sourcing Limited, Tesco Foundation (Nadacia Tesco), Tesco Freetime Limited, Tesco Fuchsia (1LP) Limited, Tesco Fuel Limited, Tesco Global Employment Company Limited, Tesco Guangdong (HK) Co. Limited, Tesco High Beech Limited, Tesco Holdings BV, Tesco Holdings Limited, Tesco Home Shopping Limited, Tesco Hungary (Holdings) Limited, Tesco International Franchising s.r.o., Tesco International Internet Retailing Limited, Tesco International Services Limited, Tesco International Sourcing Limited, Tesco Ireland Holdings Limited, Tesco Ireland Limited, Tesco Ireland Pension Trustees Limited, Tesco Jade (GP) Limited, Tesco Joint Buying Service (Shanghai) Co Limited, Tesco Kipa Kitle Pazarlama Ticaret Lojistik ve, Tesco Kirkby (General Partner) Limited, Tesco Kirkby (LP) Limited, Tesco Kirkby (Nominee 1) Limited, Tesco Kirkby (Nominee 2) Limited, Tesco Kirkby (Nominee Holdco) Limited, Tesco Kirkby (Unitholder 1) Limited, Tesco Kirkby (Unitholder2) Limited, Tesco Lagoon GP Limited, Tesco Licences Limited, Tesco Lotus Retail Growth, Tesco Lotus Retail Growth Freehold and Leasehold Property Fund, Tesco Maintenance Limited, Tesco Mauritius Holdings Limited, Tesco Mobile (Thailand) Co. Ltd., Tesco Mobile CR s.r.o., Tesco Mobile Communications Limited, Tesco Mobile Ireland Limited, Tesco Mobile Ireland Limited, Tesco Mobile Limited, Tesco Mobile Services Limited, Tesco Mobile Slovakia s.r.o, Tesco Mobile Slovakia s.r.o., Tesco Mobile CR, Tesco Nanjing Zhongshan, Tesco Nanjing Zhongshan (HK) Co. Limited, Tesco Navona (1LP) Limited, Tesco Navona (GP) Limited, Tesco Navona (Nominee 1) Limited, Tesco Navona (Nominee 2) Limited, Tesco Navona (Nominee Holdco) Limited, Tesco Navona PL Propco Limited, Tesco Opticians Limited, Tesco Overseas (Holdings) Limited, Tesco Overseas Investments Limited, Tesco Overseas ULC, Tesco Passaic (1LP) Limited, Tesco Passaic (GP) Limited, Tesco Passaic (Nominee 1) Limited, Tesco Passaic (Nominee 2) Limited, Tesco Passaic (Nominee Holdco) Limited, Tesco Passaic PL Propco Limited, Tesco Pension (Jade) Limited, Tesco Pension Investment Limited, Tesco Pension Trustees Limited, Tesco Personal Finance, Tesco Personal Finance Compare Limited, Tesco Personal Finance Group Limited, Tesco Property (No.1) Limited, Tesco Property (Nominees) (No.1) Limited, Tesco Property (Nominees) (No.2) Limited, Tesco Property (Nominees) Limited, Tesco Property A.S., Tesco Property Finance 1 Holdco Limited, Tesco Property Finance 1 PLC, Tesco Property Holdings (No. 2) Limited, Tesco Property Holdings Limited, Tesco Property Limited, Tesco Property Nominees (No.5) Limited, Tesco Property Nominees (No.6) Limited, Tesco Property Partner (GP No.2) Limited, Tesco Property Partner (GP) Limited, Tesco Property Partner (No.1) Limited, Tesco Property Partner (No.2) Limited, Tesco Red (1LP) Limited, Tesco Red (GP) Limited, Tesco Red (Nominee 2) Limited, Tesco Red (Nominee Holdco) Limited, Tesco Sarum (1LP) Limited, Tesco Sarum (GP) Limited, Tesco Seacroft Limited, Tesco Secretaries Limited, Tesco Services Limited, Tesco Sourcing India Private Limited, Tesco Stores (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Tesco Stores (Thailand) Ltd, Tesco Stores CR a.s., Tesco Stores Limited, Tesco Technology Services HK Limited, Tesco Treasury Services PLC, Tesco Trustee Company of Ireland Limited, Tesco Underwriting Limited, Tesco Vin Plus SA, Tesco Worldwide Limited, Tesco for Thais Foundation, Tesco-Global Stores Privately Held Co. Ltd, Tesco.Com Limited, The Brookmaker Limited Partnership, The Teesport Limited Partnership Limited Partnership, The Tesco Aqua Limited Partnership Limited Partnership, The Tesco Atrato Limited Partnership, The Tesco Blue Limited Partnership Limited Partnership, The Tesco Coral Limited Partnership, The Tesco Dorney Limited Partnership, The Tesco Kirkby Limited Partnership Limited Partnership, The Tesco Navona Limited Partnership Limited Partnership, The Tesco Passaic Limited Partnership Limited Partnership, The Tesco Property (No.2) Limited Partnership, The Tesco Red Limited Partnership, The Tesco Sarum Limited Partnership, Trent Hypermarket Private Limited, Trigger Retail Ltd, Valiant Insurance Company DAC, Value House Properties Limited, Variable Preference, Ventnor High Street Management Company Limited, Verulam Properties (2001) Limited, Verulam Properties Limited, Victoria BB Sp z.o.o., WE7, WSC Properties Limited, Wanze Properties (Dundalk) Limited, Weymouth Avenue (Dorchester) Limited, Whitecastle Properties Limited, Wm. Low Supermarkets Limited, Woolwich Central Residents Management Company Limited, Worple Road Plc, Xiamen Firste Property Limited, Xiamen Firste Property Limited, aAcklam Management Company Limited, dunnhumby (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, dunnhumby (Thailand) Limited, dunnhumby Canada Limited, dunnhumby Consulting Services India Private Limited, dunnhumby Czech s.r.o., dunnhumby Employment Company Limited, dunnhumby Holding Limited, dunnhumby Hungary Kft, dunnhumby IT Services India Private Limited, dunnhumby Inc, dunnhumby International Limited, dunnhumby Ireland Limited, dunnhumby Italia Srl., dunnhumby Limited, dunnhumby Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., dunnhumby Netherlands B.V., dunnhumby Norge A.S., dunnhumby Overseas Limited, dunnhumby Poland Sp z.o.o, dunnhumby Slovakia s.r.o., dunnhumby South Africa (Pty) Ltd, dunnhumby Trustees Limited, and dunnuhumby.
The following companies are subsidiares of Zimmer Biomet: Abbott Spine, Beijing Montagne Medical Device Co. Ltd., Beijing Montagne Medical Device Co. Ltd., BioMet, Biomet 3i Australia Pty. Ltd., Biomet 3i Belgium N.V., Biomet 3i Benelux Holdings N.V., Biomet 3i Dental Iberica SL, Biomet 3i LLC, Biomet 3i Mexico S.A. de C.V., Biomet 3i Netherlands B.V., Biomet 3i Nordic AB, Biomet 3i Portugal Lda, Biomet 3i Switzerland GmbH, Biomet 3i Turkey, Biomet 3i UK Ltd., Biomet 3i do Brasil Comercio de Aparelhos Medicos Ltda., Biomet Acquisitions (Unlimited), Biomet Argentina SA, Biomet Australia Pty. Ltd., Biomet Biologics LLC, Biomet Brazil Medical Device Ltda., Biomet C.V., Biomet CV Holdings LLC, Biomet Cementing Technologies AB, Biomet Chile SA, Biomet China Co. 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Last week, the Reserve Bank in its central board meeting decided the issue of banks under Prompt Corrective Action (PCA) will be examined by Board for Financial Supervision (BFS) of the central bank.

New Delhi: After the recent RBI Board meeting, finance ministry hopes that 3-4 banks would come out of the Central banks Prompt Corrective Action watchlist this fiscal, following the expected modification of guidelines and apparent improvement in bottomline of the public sector banks.

Last week, the Reserve Bank in its central board meeting decided the issue of banks under Prompt Corrective Action (PCA) will be examined by Board for Financial Supervision (BFS) of the central bank.

The government believes that various measures taken by the government, including implementation of Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), have yielded good results in terms of reining bad loans and increasing recovery, said sources.

Therefore, it believes that the review by the BFS of RBI, improving performance of the banks and recovery due to IBC give hope that 3-4 banks could move out of PCA by the end of March 2019.

Banks have made recovery of Rs 36,551 crore during the first quarter, registering a 49 per cent growth over the last fiscal. At the same time, operating profit has risen by 11.5 per cent, while losses fell 73.5 per cent on quarter on quarter basis. Provision Coverage Ratio of banks has improved to a healthy level of 63.8 per cent, said sources.

The government is keen to boost lending by banks to push economic growth. Of the 21 state-owned banks, 11 are under the PCA framework, which imposes lending and other restrictions on weak lenders.

These are Allahabad Bank, United Bank of India, Corporation Bank, IDBI Bank, UCO Bank, Bank of India, Central Bank of India, Indian Overseas Bank, Oriental Bank of Commerce, Dena Bank and Bank of Maharashtra.

The PCA framework kicks in when banks breach any of the three key regulatory trigger points  namely capital to risk weighted assets ratio, net non-performing assets (NPA) and return on assets (RoA).

Globally, PCA kicks in only when banks slip on a single parameter of capital adequacy ratio, and the government and some of the independent directors of the RBI board, like S Gurumurthy, are in favour of this practice being adopted for the domestic banking sector as well.

However, the RBI has strongly defended the PCA framework in the past. Last month, its deputy governor Viral Acharya had said that any relaxation in the PCA imposed on weak banks should be avoided as it is an essential element of its financial stability framework.
About Me Scott Because prophetic scriptures are found throughout the bible, it is obvious that a comprehensive, systematic approach would be useful, if not necessary, for the understanding of prophecy. Past prophecies have been fulfilled in a literal manner, as confirmed by the dating of these writings and historical records of confirmation. These past prophecies also serve as a model of how to interpret future prophecies. A literal view of prophecy clearly indicates a certain sequence of events will occur within a single generation, concluding with the Tribulation and Second Advent and these events will be obvious. The prophetic signs appear to be present in this generation and we believe these signs are revealed in the news from around the world. View my complete profile
Mumbai: Filmmaker S Shankar said Saturday he had approached The Terminator star Arnold Schwarzenegger to play the antagonist in 2.0, but things did not work out and the role finally went to Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar.

Rajinikanth will be back in the role of a 'Chitti' in the second installment the mega-hit Robot, which is slated to be released on November 29.

"We had thought of casting Arnold. We had talked and allotted dates also. But somehow things did not work out as the contracts of Hollywood and India are contradictory. So we thought of looking at a good cast from the Indian film industry," Shankar said at a press conference here.

"Lyca (producers of 2.0) and Akshay were in talks for a remake of a film called 'Kathi' in Hindi. Everyone told me to consider Akshay and I also thought it would be nice. I narrated the story to him and he said yes," the director said.

Shankar is confident that the film would connect with everyone as it has an international theme. The technology, he said, was better than the previous film and that was the reason they decided to title the film as 2.0.
Dining out with food allergies may be safer with at least 15 precautions. (Photo: Pixabay)

A survey of people with food allergies who dine out successfully has found they employ quite a few strategies.

Those who never had an allergic reaction in a restaurant tended to employ an average of 15 strategies to avoid allergens, while those who have had a reaction tended to use only six different strategies before suffering a problem, researchers found.

Physicians can encourage families to use several different strategies when dining out in an effort to prevent food allergy reactions, the studys co-author, Dr. Leigh Ann Kerns, a pediatric allergist and immunologist at Cleveland Clinic Childrens Hospital in Ohio, told Reuters Health by email.

Family members spend a lot of time reading labels and reducing chances of cross contamination in the home, but it is more difficult to prevent unintentional exposures in restaurants due to poor understanding of food allergy, miscommunication, and possible cross contamination of ingredients, Dr. Kerns said.

Her team surveyed 39 people with food allergies, 19 of whom had suffered an allergic reaction while dining in restaurants. Based on the responses, the researchers compiled a list of 25 strategies that diners use and reported them November 16 at the American College of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology's annual conference in Seattle, Washington. (The strategies can be found here: bit.ly/2zxyCCj.)

The top five are these: Speak to waiter on arrival (80 percent), order food with simple ingredients (77 percent), double-check food before eating (77 percent), avoid restaurants with higher likelihood of cross-contamination (74%), and review ingredients on a restaurant website (72 percent).

The least-used strategies reported were these: place food allergy order separately (23%), use a personal allergy card or chef card (26 percent), no longer eat at restaurants (39 percent), choose a chain restaurant (41 percent), go to restaurants during off-peak hours (44 percent).

Patients with food allergies need to be vigilant when going to restaurants, primary investigator Dr. Justine Ade, of University Hospitals Rainbow Babies and Childrens Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio told Reuters Health.

Using more strategies before going out to eat and while dining may help prevent food allergy reactions. (And) always bring an epinephrine device when going out to eat, Dr. Ade said.

The survey suggests that engaging in a wide variety of preventive efforts may reduce a patients risk, said Dr. Clifford Basset, Medical Director of Allergy and Asthma Care of New York in New York City and a spokesperson for the ACAAI, who was not involved in the study.

Optimal preventive strategies are an integral part of a successful food allergen risk reduction program. Several of the identified preventive strategies feature proactive, clear communication between the patient/family and the restaurant staff, Dr. Basset said.

Adapting an old maxim to the topic, the takeaway from the study may be that there are two kinds of diners with food allergies: those who take lots of precautions and those who have not yet had their first reaction.
The police arrested the 40-year-old man when the girl opened up about the assault to her school teacher, who then informed her mother. (Representional Image)

Hyderabad: A 13-year-old Class IX student was sexually assaulted by her father at their residence in SR Nagar.

The police arrested the 40-year-old man when the girl opened up about the assault to her school teacher, who then informed her mother. The accused has been identified as Mohd Sayeed, who runs a mobile shop at SR Nagar and resides in the locality with his wife and daughter.

He has sexually assaulted his daughter, on three different occasions so far, when his wife was not around.

On Saturday, the girl shared her plight with one of the teachers at school, who called her mother and told her about the issue, said SR Nagar police station sub-inspector, D. Gnanender Reddy.

Based on a complaint received by the mother, a case was booked under relevant Sections of the PoCSO (Protection of Children Against Sexual Offences) Act and placed the man under arrest.
Hyderabad: The Commissioners Task Force, East Zone, conducted raids on a gaming house near AOC gate of Marredpally and arrested 16 persons, including the organiser and sub-organiser, who were running the place without a licence and seized Rs 5.37 lakh, 34 cellphones, three laptops and one television among other things.

The organiser, Madav Murthy, and his partner, D. Ajid Kumar, were running the gaming centre at a penthouse above a bakery at AOC gate Y-junction in Marredpally, said Additional DCP, Commissioners Task Force, S. Chaitanya Kumar. The duo were allowing their friends and punters to bet, without holding a valid license from the authorities concerned, and were earning easy money illegally. The arrested were handed over to Marredpally Police.
Chandigarh: Citing terror attacks in Punjab, Chief Minister Amarinder Singh Sunday declined Pakistan's invite for the foundation stone-laying ceremony of the historic Kartarpur corridor.

Replying to Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi's invite, Singh referred to the latest terror attack in Amritsar and said, "I hope Prime Minister (Imran Khan) will understand that under these circumstances it will not be possible for me to be present in Pakistan on this historic occasion."

The chief minister said his reason for declining the invitation was twofold. "Firstly, not a day passes when Indian soldiers are not killed or wounded on the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir. Rather than moving towards normalcy, these incidents are escalating," he said.

However, state minister Navjot Singh Sidhu, who was also invited by Qureshi, expressed his desire to attend and said, "I look forward to meeting you on this historic occasion. My application for permission to attend is now lodged with the MEA."

On Saturday, Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, in a tweet, said he had extended an invitation to External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, Punjab CM Amarinder Singh and state minister Navjot Singh Sidhu to attend the ceremony at Kartarpur on November 28.

In a letter to Qureshi, Swaraj thanked him for the invite but said it would not be possible for her to travel to Kartarpur Sahib due to prior commitments.

Also Read: Sushma Swaraj declines Pak invite for Kartarpur Corridor, 2 ministers to go

India will instead send Harsimrat Kaur Badal and Hardeep Singh Puri to Pakistan next week to attend the groundbreaking ceremony of the Kartarpur corridor for the event.

On Thursday, both countries announced that they would develop Kartarpur corridor in their respective areas, linking Dera Baba Nanak in Punjab's Gurdaspur district with the Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Pakistan.

Gurdwara Darbar Sahib, the final resting place of Sikhism founder Guru Nanak Dev, is located across the Ravi river in Pakistan and is about four kilometres from the Dera Baba Nanak shrine in Gurdaspur district of Punjab in India. The corridor, once built, will give Indian pilgrims easy access to the shrine.
Speaking about the video in which Nath is purportedly seen talking about the votes of the Muslim community, Adityanath said, 'You can remain happy with Ali, we have Bajrangbali.' (Photo: File)

Indore: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Aditynath hit out at Rahul Gandhi over the issue of national security Saturday, and hinting at the Congress chief's comments on the Rafale deal, said it was hard to guess whether he was speaking in India or Pakistan.

Speaking at a rally in Indore's Rau area, Adityanath also attacked Madhya Pradesh Congress chief Kamal Nath over a video that has gone viral and made a veiled reference to the origins of UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi with an "Italy" jibe.

"The country is setting new records on the security front and has developed its hitting capabilities, due to which we can enter the territories of enemies like China and Pakistan. This is upsetting the Congress," he told the gathering. Attacking the Congress chief, Adityanath said, "You will be surprised at the fake outlook of the Congress. Do you know what Rahul speaks? Sometimes, we cannot guess from his body language whether he is speaking in India or Pakistan."

Gandhi has been attacking the Centre on the Rafale fighter jets deal and has claimed that the aircraft were being bought for prices much higher than what the previous Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government had agreed to.

The Centre, however, has maintained that the Rafale deal was carried out after following proper norms.

Speaking about the video in which Nath is purportedly seen talking about the votes of the Muslim community, Adityanath said, "You can remain happy with Ali, we have Bajrangbali." In the video, Nath is purportedly heard saying, "If the Muslim community does not record a 90-per cent voting, we will suffer a heavy blow."

The Congress has, however, dubbed the video as a conspiracy of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to divide voters on communal lines. "We (BJP) do not discriminate on the basis of the beneficiaries' caste and religion in government schemes. This is Ram Rajya, in which there should be no discrimination against any person on any basis," Adityanath said.

He alleged that the Congress had turned Hindi-speaking states like Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand into "Bimaru" ones.

"Bimaru" is an acronym for Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh and has regularly been used by economists and political pundits to signify the "bimar" (Hindi for ailing) socio-economic parameters of these states.

"During the Congress rule, there was terrorism in some of these states and Naxalism in some others. Besides, different types of mafia were also active," Adityanath alleged. In an apparent reference to Sonia Gandhi's origins, The Uttar Pradesh chief minister, without naming anybody, said, "Some mafias were brought here from Italy by the Congress as dowry." He also questioned the Congress's pre-poll promise of farm loan waiver, something that has been mentioned by Rahul Gandhi in his election rallies in Madhya Pradesh as well as in other poll-bound states.

"First, the Congress should waive the debts of all farmers in Punjab," Adityanath said. The 230-member Madhya Pradesh Assembly will go to the polls on November 28 and the results will be announced on December 11.
Hyderabad: Telangana Congress leaders have decided to highlight the mother and children sentiment of UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi as part of their election campaign. Mrs Gandhi in her speech at the Medchal public meeting touched the hearts of public by saying she was feeling like a mother who had come to visit her children after a long time, and that she was pained to see them neglected.

Senior Congress leaders want to use this as a weapon to criticise the TRS and its president, caretaker Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao. Congress leaders are of the opinion that Mrs Gandhis speech has given a boost to Peoples Front candidates and want to cash in on the emotional speech.

TRS leaders have been criticising Mrs Gandhi since she spoke about Special Category Status (SCS) to AP while she was campaigning in Telangana state. Congress leaders said that there was nothing wrong in speaking about special status to AP.

They said there were many people from Andhra Pradesh settled in Telangana state and they are worried over the special status to AP.

In the recent Karnataka Assembly elections also, Congress president Rahul Gandhi had assured AP-origin people who had settled in Karnataka that the Congress after coming to power at the Centre would grant special category status to AP.

TPCC leader Jetti Sukumar said that in spite of her poor health, Mrs Gandhi had come to Hyderabad due to her affection for the people of Telangana. He said after four and a half years, Mrs Gandhi had come as she was worried over her childs condition.

A senior TPCC leader said, The Prajakutami has created a very good impact among the people of Telangana, but that atmosphere was spoilt due to confusion regarding the seat adjustments and delay in announcing the candidates. After Mrs Gandhis speech, the Peoples Front has recovered the positive impact. The speech has given a boost to the alliance candidates.
Fans of actor and former minister Ambareesh (inset) outside Vikram Hospital in Bengaluru on Saturday (Photo: KPN)

Bengaluru: Malavalli Huchegowda Ambareesh, who made his acting debut immortalising the character of Jaleela' from his debut Kannada feature film Nagarahaavu, is no more. The 'rebel' star, fondly referred to as 'Mandyada Gandu' or Mandya's son, was friendly, flamboyant and immensely popular, both in the fillm fraternity and in his home town, from where he rose to wield considerable political clout.

Actor Ambareesh with his wife Sumalatha and son Abhishek.

The genial star passed away here on Saturday evening at Vikram's Hospital after suffering a massive heart attack at around 2.30 pm in the afternoon. He was 66 years old and is survived by his wife and former actress Sumalatha Ambareesh and son Abhishek. The star actor turned politician died from complications, he was suffering from lung infection and was also diagnosed with kidney related ailments.

Ambareesh with late actors Dr Rajkumar and Dr Vishnuvardhan.

According to sources, the actor who is the grandson of acclaimed musician Peteel Chowdaiah was about to get his kidney transplantation done but had been delaying it for a while and had planned to get it done soon after his son's birthday. There was even talk of getting him admitted to a Singapore hospital for further medication and a kidney transplant after finding the right donor. However, it is said that 'Karna', as his friends and followers call him, kept delaying it.

Ambareesh (second from right) with actors Ravichandran, Shankar Nag, Dr Vishnuvardhan and Anant Nag.

He has several hits films to his credit, with Ambareesh acting in popular films such as Nagarahavu, Paduvarahalli Pandavaru, Anta, Tony, Hrudaya Hadithu, Odahuttidavaru, Masanada Hoovu, Yelu Suttina Kote, Olavina Vudugare, Mannina Doni and scores of others. He recently made a comeback in the the film Ambi Ninge Vayassaytho.

A still from one of the actors movies.and With JD(S) supremo H.D. Deve Gowda.

A troubleshooter in the film industry, he had been elected to Lok Sabha on three occasions and even served as the Union Minister for state in the Information and Technology ministry and later resigned from the post when the Cauvery water agitation broke out.

Fans of actor Ambareesh in front of Vikram Hospital where he passed away on Saturday (Photo: DC).

He also served as state minister and had recently quit from active politics and was eagerly waiting for his son's debut movie Amar to be released.

As an actor, he has been honoured with numerous state film awards and even awards from neighbouring states. A close friend of many renowned actors and politicians and personalities from other fields, he shared a special great bond with his late friend and actor Dr Vishnuvardhan.

Shocked by the sudden news, the entire Kannada film industry is mourning the actor who played the role of best friend and brother with panache and verve. The Kanwarlal from Antha will be missed dearly.
e said the quality of education had come down because all these days we were just blaming each other instead of working together.

Hyderabad: The four-year B.Ed course being offered by the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) would help in improving the quality of education, Dr K. Ramdas, general Secretary, All India Teacher Education Colleges Principals Association has said.

According to experts, the four-year is the best option, but only for students who have the passion to become teachers.

Dr Ramdas said, The Regional Institute of Education (RIE) had a similar course but we have very few RIEs due to which it is very difficult to accommodate all the aspirants. That is why the Union human resource development ministry with their team has done a thorough study and visited the oldest European universities and observed their course and curriculum and discussed with their professors and prepared the curriculum of integrated courses.

He said that all these days B.Ed graduates were unable to pursue higher education or jobs abroad as they didn't have a four-year integrated course which was needed abroad. Now with this integrated course it will help B.Ed graduates to pursue higher education and work in other countries like B.Tech graduates and other professionals do, he added.

Prof. Ghanta Ramesh, former member, if the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) said, The problem with teacher education is that there is no coordination between the government of India, the council and the state government. If the affiliated colleges and the state government work together only then this four-year programme will be successful.

He said the quality of education had come down because all these days we were just blaming each other instead of working together. Similarly, even this programme can fail if there is no coordination between the concerned bodies and the state government.

Mr N. Narayana, convener, Centre for Educational Research and Analysis, said, I cant expect that the four-year course would be a merit.

It cant attract high scorers as it cant project equal status to that of B.Tech and MBBS. It cannot create more demand for quality teachers as the private schools are hiring even unqualified people. The requirement of teachers in government schools is diminishing due to lack of students, he added.
Prime Minister also said that his government plans to start a train soon to various sacred pilgrimage spots related to Guru Nanak Dev. (Photo: File)

New Delhi: Kartarpur Corridor featured in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 50th episode of Mann Ki Baat radio programme on Sunday.

"Government has made a very important decision - that of opening Kartarpur Corridor so that people of our nation can easily go to Kartarpur in Pakistan and visit the sacred place of Guru Nanak Dev," the Prime Minister said, while expressing his thoughts with the people through radio.

On November 22, the Union Cabinet approved the building and development of Kartarpur Corridor from Dera Baba Nanak in Gurdaspur district to India-Pakistan International Border.

A day after this landmark decision, Pakistan government also gave a nod to the opening of Kartarpur corridor next year- the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev.

Prime Minister Modi, in his radio programme, further stated that next year, not only India but the whole world will celebrate Guru Nanak's 550th birth anniversary with much fervour.

"Guru Nanak Dev Ji had worked wholeheartedly for the society; he had shown us the path of truth, honesty and goodwill," said Prime Minister Modi.

Prime Minister also said that his government plans to start a train soon to various sacred pilgrimage spots related to Guru Nanak.

He also appreciated the attempts of Gujarat people in constructing a Gurudwara after the tragic earthquake incident occurred in the state in 2001.
As the state healthdepartment officials are busy controlling the spread of vector borne diseases, the number is likely to rise due to intermittent rains in the state. (Representational photo)

Chennai: The total number of swine flu cases in Tamil Nadu has doubled in less than a month. The number of cases recorded till October 21 this year was 529. However, with more than 857 cases till November 11, the total number has gone up to 1,386 cases as per the recent data provided by the state health department to the Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme of National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC).

As the state healthdepartment officials are busy controlling the spread of vector borne diseases, the number is likely to rise due to intermittent rains in the state. Death toll due to swine flu has risen to 13. Tirunelveli, Trichy, Theni, Cuddalore, Coimbatore and Vellore are witnessing more number of cases of swine flu.

However, public health director Dr K. Kolandaisamy said that the incidence of swine flu is now reducing and the number increased during October and November and is decreasing gradually. The number had increased due to seasonal changes and the health department is monitoring the vaccination and medication availability also, he said.

Health department officials boast of better management of swine flu cases this year stating that the incidence is low than last year. Though Tamil Nadu records less cases of swine flu than last year, the deaths are more in 2018. The state recorded 3,315 swine cases and 17 deaths in 2017, whereas as per the Directorate of Public Health, 27 deaths have been reported till date in the state due to the same.

However, against the earlier statement, state health department officials said that the exact number of cases and deaths is not yet available. The

state health department is extensively working towards the restoration of services in cyclone Gaja affected areas and analysis of exact numbers of

incidence of vector-borne diseases and swine flu would be provided next week, said a senior health department official.

As against the reports stating a shortage of vaccines and medications against H1N1, the authorities have assured of enough stock and availability of medications.

Drug Controller Dr K. Sivabalan said that there are more than 20 lakh tablets/ capsules of Oseltamivir available in government hospitals in the state. Moreover, 8,000-9,000 private chemists shops are also having enough stock of the medicine. We are not witnessing high demands of the medicine despite the rise in cases, said Dr Sivabalan.

The officials of Directorate of Public Health also assured that there is enough vaccine dosage available with the department. However, the vaccine is not included in the immunization schedule and has been recommended only for those people who would come into contact with those affected with swine flu.
Divers can swim inside the ship and also experience the unique marine life under the sea.

Udupi: For those who love diving into the deep sea and looking at sunken ships, Udupi should be the new destination. A merchant ship that sank about three decades ago is all set to put Udupi on the map of 'Wreck Diving', as the adventure sport is called.

The merchant ship that sank in the Arabian Sea between Shiroor and Bhatkal had been consigned to the history books. But the vessel, now lying about 100 feet deep, has come to life again, garnering the attention of divers after the Udupi district administration declared as safe to dive in

The divers can swim inside the ship and also experience the unique marine life under the sea.

Instead of restricting tourism to tourist places, homestays and resorts, we are concentrating on activities that attract tourists, like water sports, Kudru tourism, scuba diving and boathouses.

Mr Hariprasad of Karnataka Wreck and Scuba Diving came up with the idea that the ship wreck near Shiroor could be used for scuba diving. We felt this was an interesting concept and gave them permission," Udupi Tourism Department Assistant Director Anitha Bhaskar told Deccan Chronicle.

Mr Hariprasad said, "It is not for beginners as it is a tough dive and shipwreck dive needs experience. We take only experienced people who have done open water course earlier.

Any person who even does not know swimming can be taken for fun diving. But for wreck diving, one needs to be experienced. Our instructor will accompany the divers."
Mumbai: Two lawyers Amin Solkar and Farhana Shah, who defended Ajmal Kasab, are yet to get their legal fees from the state government. While the state government says they have not received any bills, the lawyers say that state prosecutors are not supposed to submit bills.

The then-acting Chief Justice of Bombay high court J.N. Patel had issued a notification to appoint Mr Solkar and Ms Shah on June 8, 2010, after Kasab had expressed his desire to contest the verdict of the trial court sentencing him to death in the Bombay high court.

Mr Solkar and Ms Shah said they had given the case priority as the high court was hearing it on a day-to-day basis from 11 am to 5 pm.

It has been seven years since the judgment was delivered by the high court. The Supreme Court confirmed the death penalty and Kasab is also dead,, Mr Solkar said. He said he was contemplating legal action to get his dues cleared.

Ms Shah, on the other hand, said she has given up hope that she will get her remuneration for appearing in the case.
The latter fired live ammunition to quell the protesters and stone-pelting mobs, resulting in the death of a teenager.

Srinagar: Three district commanders were among the six militants killed in a fierce pre-dawn gunfight with the security forces in Jammu and Kashmirs southern Shopian district on Sunday, officials said. An Army jawan was also killed in the clash.

Soon after the encounter, irate crowds took to the streets and clashed with the security forces. The latter fired live ammunition to quell the protesters and stone-pelting mobs, resulting in the death of a teenager.

In another blow to Paki-stan-based Lashker-e-Taiba and Hizbul Mujahideen, six of its militants, including a Pakistani involved in slaughtering of civilians, were killed in an encounter Sunday, along with a soldier and a civilian, in a village of South Kashmirs Shopian district, police said.

The police said that based on a credible input about the presence of terrorists in Batagund area of Kapran of Shopian district, a cordon and search operation was launched in the night jointly by the police and security forces in the area. As the searches were going on, the miltants fired upon the search party which retaliated effectively leading to an encounter.

Initially, one jawan of 34 RR sustained injuries in the exchange of fire. He was evacuated to the hospital and is stated to be stable now, the police said. Another jawan identified as Nazir Ahmad of 34 RR who was grievously injured in the final phase of the encounter has succumbed and attained martyrdom, the police added.

One militant was identified Mushtaq Ahmad Mir of Shopian who, the police said, was involved in motivating innocent youths into the terrorist fold and also demanding money from public for strengthening Lashker cadre. The others were identified as Mohamm-ad Abass Bhatt and Kha-lid Farooq Malik. PTI
Supporters at Kar Sevak Puram workshop participate in Dharam Sabha to push for the construction of the Ram temple, in Ayodhya on Sunday.  (PTI)

Ayodhya: The Vishwa Hindu Parishad has made it clear that it will not accept division of the disputed site in Ayodhya.

Vishwa Hindu Parishad international vice-president Champat Rai said on Sunday said that the Vishwa Hindu Parishad wants the entire land for building the Ram temple in Ayodhya.

This is a direct challenge to the high court verdict of 2010 in which two parts of the disputed land had been given to Hindu plaintiffs and one part to the Muslim plaintiffs.

Addressing the massive crowd assembled at the Bada Bhakt Mahal Bagiya in Ayodhya on Sunday for the Dharam Sabha, Mr Rai said that the struggle for a Ram temple in Ayodhya is 500-years-old.

Hindus now want the entire land for the temple and building a mosque here is unacceptable. Muslims should withdraw their case, he said.

Accusing the Supreme Court of delaying its decision on the temple issue, he said that the court is not giving the issue the priority it deserves.

We have come to remi-nd some people that the Ram temple issue did not end on December 6, 1992. It is very much alive even after 25 years. BJP may do politics but we are not ready to accept anything less than the temple, he said.

The Dharam Sabha began amidst tight security after recitation of mantras and was punctuated with slogans like Jab kesariya lehrayega, hosh thikane ayega.
BJP national president Amit Shah attends an event in Hyderbad. BJP state president Dr K. Laxman and BJP All India secretary Muralidhar Rao are also seen. (Gandhi)

Hyderabad: BJP president Amit Shah on Sunday projected the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeem (MIM) as a threat to Telangana state and that no party other than the BJP could free the people from it.

Only BJP can relieve the people of Telangana from the rowdyism of the AIMIM, the BJP chief said at this campaign meeting at Dubbak, about 100 km from here in Medak district.

Mr Amit Shah said, There is a triangular competition in the Telangana elections. People should decide whose government should be formed. The BJP government will give relief to the people from the dadagiri (rowdyism) of MIM. Only the BJP can save Telangana from the Owaisis. Can they (the Mahakutami and TRS) do so?

Mr Amit Shah tried to scare the SC, ST and BC communities by saying that their reservations could be cut in order to implement the 12 per cent reservations for the Muslim community.

He said, KCR (caretaker Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao) is under pressure from Owaisi and therefore brought up the issue of 12 per cent reservations to Muslims. As per the Supreme Court orders, the reservations cant be more than 50 per cent and in order to implement Muslim reservations, Mr Chandrasekhar Rao should answer whos reservations among the SCs, STs and BCs will be cut.

The BJP president also promised to celebrate Hyder-abad Liberation Day in every village of the state if the party was voted to power. He alleged that the TRS, which had promised grand celebrations on September 17 was not even celebrating the day because of the pressure from the MIM.

Mr Shah slammed the Telangana Rashtra Sa-miti for not fulfilling the promises made in the previous elections. He said, Chandrasekhar Rao failed in providing water to the people with only 37 per cent being able to access it, about 2.5 lakh jobs are vacant but the youth remain jobless.

Mr Shah said: The CM is not bothered about farmers suicide. The Chief Minister did not have time to visit the victims of Kondagattu accidents in which 65 people died. Mr Chandrasekhar Rao was not even implementing central schemes like Ayushman Bharat that can help the poor in medical treatments.
Hyderabad: Among the questions posed by the Opposition, the Telangana Rashtra Samiti is finding it most difficult to answer those regarding the reservations that it had promised to Muslims. It had promised to increase reservations to Muslims to 12 per cent and for Scheduled Tribes from six to 10 per cent.

Doing so will take the reservations past the 50 per cent limit set by the Supreme Court. Besides, the Centre is against giving reservations on the basis of religion. With the TRS unable to deliver on its promises, it is being pummelled by both the BJP and the Prajakutami.

Both the Congerss and the BJP have questioned caretaker Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao on the matter of reservations for Muslims, albeit from different angles. While the TPCC has questioned Mr Rao for not delivering on the promise, BJP president Amit Shah pointed out the dangers of doing so.

Mr Shah claimed that increasing the reservations for Muslims to 12 per cent would be at the cost of quotas for the SC, ST and BC communities. He said their reservations would be cut in order to provide 12 per cent reservations for Muslims as the Supreme Court had seta a 50-per cent cap on quotas.

The TRS will now have to come out with a new strategy to overcome the problems and implement the promise of enhanced reservations.

The TRS government has completed its pre statutory requirement by constituting a BC Commission for an inquiry that is required to provide 12 per cent reservations to Muslims. It also passed a Bill in the Assembly and forwarded it to Centre for incorporation in Ninth Schedule of the Constitution, as was done in the case of Tamil Nadu, which would place it beyond judicial review.

The BJP-led NDA government rejected the request on the grounds of reservations crossing the cap of 50 per cent which is contrary to the Supreme Court judgement. The TRS has hit back by asking for greater power to fix reservations with the state.
ADILABAD: BJP president Amit Shah on Sunday accused the Congress of encouraging urban Maoism. He alleged that Rahul Gandhi was supported by the Maoists and urban Naxalites arrested recently by the BJP government in Maharashtra.

The BJP national president was speaking at a public meeting in Nirmal in support of the BJP candidates contesting the three seats here - Rama Devi from Mudhole, Swarna Reddy from Nirmal and Satla Ashok from Khanapur.

He said these Maoists and Naxalites had killed many youth in Telangana for differing from them. He claimed that the Congress party under the leadership of Rahul Baba has failed to come to power wherever it has contested and added that the party will soon disappear from the country and Communist parties from the world.

He declared that the Maoists hiding in villages will be arrested and sent to jail if the BJP comes to power in the state.

He claimed that Chief Minister Rao called for early elections because he was afraid of the BJP and Prime Minister Modi and in the interest of his own family members, so he could make his daughter and son Chief Ministers and waste the peoples money.

Mr Shah promised Telangana would become a model state in five years if the people bring in a BJP government in the state. He said Mr Rao had no time to meet the families of the victims of the Kondagattu incident but he has time to eat biryani with Owaisi, his brother.

Turning to his favourite topic, he said, I have been hearing the name of Nirmal since 2012, but for the first time I have arrived in Nirmal town. Nirmal is the place where MIM leader Akbaruddin Owaisi insulted the Hindu gods and goddesses in his speech in the past.

Mr Shah said there is a case against Akbaruddin Owaisi, but the TRS government did not issue the challan against Mr Owaisi; Mr Rao has time to issue the challan against Akabaruddin Owaisi before the elections if he has the guts to do so.

He said Mr Rao had promised to make a Dalit the first Chief Minister of Telangana but could not do so and asked him to say whether he will make a Dalit the CM this time if his party comes to power.

He said only Rs 13,700 crore has been utilised in the state budget out of the proposed Rs 50,000 core in five years for the welfare of Dalits in the state.
WARANGAL: BJP president Amit Shah accused caretaker Chief Minister K. Chandrasekar Rao of dissolving the state Assembly early and deciding to go for elections because he wanted to get his son and daughter settled in the political arena, and because he was afraid of the Modi wave in the 2019 parliamentary elections.

Addressing a public meeting at Parkal in Warangal Rural district on Sunday, Mr Shah began his speech by saluting the valour and foresight of the Kakatiya rulers Rani Rudramadevi and Prataparudra. He hailed their efforts in building the kingdom and developing the chain-link tank system.

Criticising the TRS for being dependent on his bete noir, the Majlis-e-Ittehadul-Muslimeen party to form a government in the state, he asked his audience if they want a government which is dependent on the Owaisis.

Are you anticipating such kind of a government which is dependent on the Majlis? If you do not want such government, remember that neither the Congress nor Mr Rao can give it, only the BJP can, he said.

He alleged that because of the fear of the Owaisis, Mr Raos TRS government failed to keep its promise of celebrating September 17 as Hyderabad Liberation Day. He assured that the BJP, if elected to power, would celebrate September 17 on a large scale.

During his 30-minute speech, the BJP chief said the Modi government had contributed a great deal to the development of Telangana state while the UPA government had done nothing but injustice to Telangana. According to him, the previous UPA government during the 13th finance commission gave Telangana only Rs 16,596 crore. But after the BJP formed a government, in the 14th finance commission Rs 1,15,605 crore was allocated.
BJP president Amit Shah being garlanded by state party president (right) K. Laxman and others during an election meeting at Dubbak in Medak, on Sunday. (PTI)

WARANGAL: The BJP is against religion-based reservations, said its national president Amit Shah, and the party will neither approve it nor let others execute it, he added.

Addressing a public meeting at Parkal, Mr Shah said Telangana caretaker Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao is asking for an unconstitutional 12 per cent reservation for minorities.

The Supreme Court has set the limit of reservations at 50 per cent, so whose share will Chief Minister Rao cut short to give 12 per cent reservation to minorities? Will you give it from the Dalits share or Adivasis or the OBCs? he asked.

The reservation to the Muslim minorities is unconstitutional. Reservations cannot be given on the basis of religion in this country. Until there is the BJP, we will keep opposing reservations on the basis of religion. We will neither approve it nor will we let others execute it. The BJP will always support and protect reservations for Dalits, Adivasis and OBCs, he added.
HYDERABAD: Telangana state caretaker Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao on Sunday launched a stinging attack on UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi for criticising the TRS government at her Medchal public meeting.

Speaking at an election meeting at Tandur, he said Mrs Gandhi and her son Rahul Gandhi would have been honoured by the people of Telangana if they had granted statehood soon after the 2004 general elections in 2004.

Mr Rao started the day with a meeting at Parigi of Ranga Reddy district where he called Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu a mental case.

Naidu asked officials to ban sheep to protect forests. Sheep are part of this world and existed before Naidu. Who gave him the right to ban sheep? People need to be careful with such people.

Naidu who claims to have constructed Hyderabad, which has a history of over 400 years, could not place a brick for construction of Amaravati in the last five years, he told a massive enthusiastic crowd.

He sarcastically remarked that Quli Qutub Shah, who founded Hyderabad, would be turning in his grave if he could listen to what Naidu had to say now about the city.
For the Pakistan-based terrorists and their sponsors, 26/11 succeeded in all the defined elements of what a terrorist act is meant to achieve. It created anguish and turbulence in the target territory, effected out-of-proportion casualties, rocked the local and international community, caused a major response dilemma for the victim state and gave much publicity about the terrorist capability to hit at will: Indias financial capital and symbol of good life was brought to its knees and permanent scars left on the psyche of its people. It was truly Indias 9/11. But soon afterwards, like America after 9/11, India too got its act together on homeland security. Its a credit not often given by Indian analysts. After 26/11, mass casualty terror attacks in Indian cities have been rarer, many have been prevented, although efforts by terror groups to target us have been rife. If anyone can claim credit for that, it is our intelligence agencies, who have found some method in the madness in the high-risk game of intelligence gathering and foiling attacks. So while Pakistan refuses to change its stance on supporting terror and people get worried by nascent signs of revival of terrorism in Punjab, how secure is India 10 years after the event that caused collective anguish to all Indians?

We must remember a truism about terrorism. A determined set of terrorists hell-bent on self-destruction and causing the maximum mayhem can defeat the strongest protective systems. Whatever the States security set-up does to prevent or deter a terror act, the reality is that it also focuses on how to ensure damage control, to minimise the effect and respond adequately. With time, international borders have become far more permeable for the movement of human resources and war-making material, while modern networks enable effective command and control, finances and communication; all ingredients for an effective terror act. The movement of 40,000 trans-national fighters to join the Islamic State (ISIS, also known as Daesh) is a case in point.

The appointment of a prime ministerial special envoy on counter-terrorism has helped coordinate internationally and ensure a better understanding of the threats at the strategic level. Indias long borders and coastline adjoin 10 or more countries. Therefore, the complete sealing of illegal movements is unrealistic. The LTTE could effectively fight as a terror movement in an island state while getting much of its logistics from overseas, reinforcing this argument. However, what is difficult for terror groups to achieve is the coordination to execute the act, mostly requiring recce, safe houses, finances, transportation and communication. 26/11 proved that modern technology and an element of innovative risk can give the terrorists an even chance. The 10-man Lashkar-e-Tayyaba squad braved the move through the ocean in a dinghy; it struck the same evening, thus offsetting the need for safe houses; effectively used satellite communication; hijacked cabs and other vehicles at will; and there was no need for physical recce, having been briefed profusely on modern digital maps while depending on GPS for navigation to the selected targets. What India has done is to tighten surveillance, although a repeat of the sea route to another significant target through means of deception always remains live. In terms of response mechanisms, we have come a fair distance from the situation where the NSG team from Manesar was stuck in traffic on the national highway near Delhi and delayed in reaching Mumbai on 26/11. The creation of NSG nodes has definitely reduced response time, while the envisaged use of local resources like Army ghatak platoons and police commandos offers a means for the initial containment of damage and setting the stage for the NSG to act. However, not too many coordination exercises at the local level are being done to ensure that continuity is maintained in a system where frequent turnover of personnel is common.

For terrorists, there is never a need for penetration of the coastline or borders if reliable sleeper agents exist. To be effective through this front, terror groups have to get the better of police networks  from the beat policeman to the local station house officer (SHO). In India, this appears a weakness with local community involvement and awareness yet to reach the desired level of effectiveness. An alert community, including house-owners, shopkeepers and vendors, can act as a deterrence and also provide quality intelligence inputs through local alarm schemes.

What should worry us as a nation are the continuing divisive acts which alienate one set of people, create hatred and provide a cause for terror groups to exploit. Seething and alienated segments of society are more dangerous than international terrorists, and always open to seeding for larger exploitation by those awaiting such an opportunity. While India may have improved its internal security capability in terms of intelligence and response times, South Asias strategic environment doesnt inspire much confidence. Kashmir continues to fester without full stabilisation anywhere on the horizon. Having overcome the awkwardness of 1980s Punjab, we have failed to ensure societal stability allowing one of our most progressive states to be exploited by an adversary through as unconventional a route as narcotics. It has opened a window to trigger the re-emergence of instability. Terror seeks such opportunities and is never in a hurry as investment in societal and social tension is always long-term.

Visiting developed smart cities like Singapore or Paris at two ends of the globe always gives me reason to compare and welcome our security and intelligence communities. With persistent threats, these cities remain vulnerable from the angle of physical security measures. Airports, malls and other key points may have smart surveillance systems but are still vulnerable and inspire in me less confidence than Indias comparatively more visible means of such security. That doesnt mean India has turned the corner as in the murky world of trans-national terror, the means to predict the nature and location of the next attack remains highly suspect. Counter-terrorism security is always about being ahead in the information loop, but that is seldom possible because mass casualty terror acts are something in which hostile nations and groups always invest sufficient time, resources and patience. The only action a vulnerable nation like India has to take is better societal stability, deterrence, high-quality intelligence, damage control and suitable response.
External affairs minister Sushma Swarajs decision to skip the trip to Pakistan on Wednesday for the ground-breaking ceremony for a corridor on the Pakistani side to facilitate the visit of Indian pilgrims to the Kartarpur Sahib gurdwara, where Sikhisms founder Guru Nanak breathed his last, is rooted in realism. Pakistan PM Imran Khan will do the honours at Kartarpur, barely 8 km from the border. The external affairs minister was invited by Pakistans foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, but India will instead send two Sikh ministers. (The Punjab chief minister, Capt. Amarinder Singh, has also declined Pakistans invitation.) A visit by Ms Swaraj might have given the impression of India agreeing to a resumption of the interrupted Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue. On the eve of crucial state elections, in which the BJPs stakes are high, to be followed by the Lok Sabha polls, the Narendra Modi government is signalling caution in handling Pakistan, that hasnt moved on lowering tensions relating to terrorism and over regular ceasefire violations along the Line of Control.

The last foreign minister-level talks were in December 2015. The terror attack on the Pathankot airbase just days later, on January 1, interrupted the idea of progress in bilateral ties.

India had agreed to Pakistans proposal for a meeting of the two foreign ministers in September on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session, but backed out 24 hours later, citing the killing of policemen in Kashmir and of soldiers on the LoC. Prime Minister Modis references on Friday to the fall of the Berlin Wall apparently referred only to future possibilities, and signalled that doors were not being closed.
The growing belief in Dilli is that the Centre is not keen on promoting transparency in the administration. The Central Information Commission (CIC) will see the exit of four information commissioners including the chief information commissioner, R.K. Mathur, following the completion of their term. The CIC and ICs hold office for a term of five years or till they attain the age of 65 years.

Retired IPS officer Yashovardhan Azad and M. Sridhar Acharyulu are completing their term on 21 November. CIC R.K. Mathur is also retiring on November 24 whereas Amitava Bhattacharya (Retd IAS) will be retiring on December 1. This will leave the CIC panel with just three information commissioners, namely Sudhir Bhargava, Bimal Julka and Divya Prakash Sinha, instead of the sanctioned strength of 11.

The process to fill up the vacancies kick-started in the middle of the year but the appointments are yet to be made. The Centre has not filled any vacant posts in the CIC since 2016.

Things are no better elsewhere in the country. Over 30 per cent of posts of chief information commissioners and information commissioners are lying vacant across the country. There has been no appointment of state chief information commissioners (as on October 10, 2018) for Andhra Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, and Nagaland. There are vacancies of information commissioners in Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Manipur, Meghalaya, Sikkim and Tripura, among others.

Perils of ignoring protocol

The Trumpian snub to Indias official invitation to the US President to be the chief guest at the Republic Day parade next year may have been downplayed in the media, but sources say that MEA mandarins are still rather upset at the way this was dealt with. Once again, it is being said, the Prime Ministers Office handled the invitation. But diplomats who have experience in dealing with such high-level official visits say that the red-faces could have been avoided had the government chosen to involve the chief of protocol, who sits in the Ministry of External Affairs.

It is being pointed out that although the PM has the final say in such issues, the chief of protocol, who is usually a joint secretary-level babu, is the point person. The fiasco over Donald Trumps refusal to be part of Republic Day celebrations could have been avoided, only if the Modi government had followed proper protocol. That means obtaining a broad consent from the invitee through regular MEA outreach before sending an official invitation to ensure that there are no hiccups later on.

Warring rail babus

Within the precincts of Rail Bhawan, a tussle has broken out between the different cadre services of the Indian Railways. The long-festering feud is between the mechanical engineers (IRSME) service and the traffic (IRTS) and electrical engineers (IRSEE) services. The latter alleged that the mechanical engineers seem to have a stranglehold on all important posts in the Railways, even if they do not possess the requisite qualifications.

Sources say that recently IRTS officers have written to the ministry and also the Prime Ministers Office (PMO) about being sidelined. Incidentally, the chairman of the Railway Board, Ashwini Lohani, belongs to the IRSME.

However, sources say, IRSME has always had an edge over the others as they were recruited through the special class railway apprentice exam conducted by the Union Public Service Commission after class 12, which gave them an age advantage over others. The ministry had earlier proposed merging various services but the proposal has not been taken up for discussion.
I was a few days short of my 23rd birthday on December 6, 1992. That evening I was at my friend Rajiv Desais house and he told me that the Babri Masjid had been pulled down.

I felt excited by the thought that something new and radical had happened. The next morning I went to open our little shop in Surats textile market but everything was shut. I telephoned my father to ask what I should do and he said I should wait a while and then return. On my way back, my bike was stopped in a neighbourhood and I was asked my name. I said it and the man said, Dont come back here please.

From our eighth floor flat I could see that by 1 pm, there were several columns of smoke going up all over Surat. I had never seen mass violence before and in a few days over 500 people, mostly Muslims, would be butchered in the city. The columns of smoke were from Muslim homes and businesses being systematically looted and burnt.

Of course my excitement had long vanished by then as the realisation came that something new and radical had indeed happened but it was not in any way positive.

We were punishing the Muslims after having destroyed their structure. Why? This was not easy to answer.

The writer V.S. Naipaul, who spoke no Indian language but was able to examine our society quite deeply, felt that the movement against the mosque was a positive thing. His explanation was that Indian society was the way it was  meaning poor, dirty and uninventive  because the Hindu mind remained colonised and needed to be liberated. The violence and energy released by the demolition would bring positive intellectual change.

This was not based on scholarship but his impressions. If one thinks about this seriously, it is quite ridiculous. It assumes that all the centuries of rule by different dynasties  Afghan, Turk, Mughal and Persian  which all fought each other, were one continuous thing. It assumes that colonising rulers who were not Muslims (for example the Maratha Gaekwads in Baroda or the Scindias in Gwalior) were different and did not tax or oppress their populations. It assumes also that all parts of India were ruled by Muslims. This is not true.

Mr Naipaul was not an academic and therefore not challenged properly on his thesis. No proper scholar would make such a sketchy argument and none has. Did the collective Hindu mind get liberated on December 6, 1992? No, it did not. We are not a different nation in any way. The big change in our collective thinking came from the liberalisation policy of Manmohan Singh in 1991 and not the vandalism of 1992.

Perhaps Mr Naipaul meant in the long term, but then a quarter century is the long term and already we live in a time when most Indians alive today were born after the demolition. Surely it cannot have affected them.

There is no liberation. The one change that has come is that we have become more easily communal in our expression as a nation.

Today the political parties and the mass media can say things, reckless things, which they perhaps hesitated from saying before 1992.

We have news now that two lakh people from the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh are gathering in Ayodhya. Some five thousand Shiv Sainiks under Uddhav Thackeray and his son are also going. They have announced, rather ominously, that this will be the last Dharma Sabha in Ayodhya.

The reason they are doing this is to put pressure on the BJP government to start building the temple before the elections. As if this Bharatiya Janata Party needed encouragement to do this.

If there is a reason the BJP is in power today it is largely because of its actions in 1992.

The sentiment that made the BJP popular in that period was negative. Meaning that it was communally charged. It was against the mosque rather than in favour of the temple. This is why the Ram Janmabhoomi movement collapsed after the demolition and the violence it produced.

It remains negative today and it is intended to punish other Indians. It is not with feelings of devotion or piety that these people are gathering. It is mostly with emotions of hatred. Listen to their slogans and their rhetoric and this becomes immediately clear.

Nothing positive and productive can come out of such bitterness and hate. Mr Naipaul did not understand that. But then for him the stakes were low. He could offer his casual opinions on our society and take a return flight back to his home in England.

We have to live in this country with other Indians. We should be wary of the demons we let escape when we set about liberating the collective Hindu mind.
Naeem Akhtar, senior Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) leader and former minister in the PDP-BJP government, spoke to YUSUF JAMEEL on the dissolution of the J&K Assembly and other recent political developments in the restive Himalayan state.

Dont you think given its fallout, PDP staking claim for government formation was premature or was it a deliberate attempt to prevent defections in the party?

It was not premature. It was, in fact, a bit too late in the day. It should have come slightly earlier. But we thought the governor had promised to be an honest broker. We learnt that some things are happening in the government that would affect the special status of the state. Also many decisions of far reaching consequence were taken which should not have been taken by the governors administration but left to an elected government. There are apprehensions about Article 35A and other litigation regarding Article 370. We had requested the governor last time to at least change the lawyer, which he has not done. He has disengaged Fali S. Nariman, who was hired by us (to fight Article 35A case in the Supreme Court).

The single point agenda for all the three parties (PDP, National Conference and Congress) was to save and protect the special status of Jammu & Kashmir. We came together and it was not to the liking of the BJP and its government and they, unfortunately, again misused the office of the governor to dissolve the Assembly and deny the state a change to have an elected government.

PDP rebel Imran Raza Ansari and Peoples Conference chairman Sajad Gani Lone claimed that 16 PDP MLAs had pledged their support to their group and Mehbooba Muftis staking claim to government formation was actually aimed at preventing this group with the BJP from coming to power?

I really dont know how to describe that. It was unabashed and brazen on their part. He (Lone) is trying to break a party  in fact three  in cobbling up an alliance and then says it in official communication to the governor. That is a most atrocious way of staking a claim. They actually tried to dismantle the entire mainstream, the people who stick their necks out. I have not seen anybody doing that in the recent past. That was done in J&K in 1984 once and all can see the results.

Muzaffar Hussain Baig (former deputy chief minister and senior PDP leader) has openly supported Sajad Lones efforts. What do you have to say on this?

Baig sahib is tuned to being very lavish in his praise of people. He called Mufti (Muhammad Sayeed) sahib his father; he called Mehboobaji his sister, which he continues to do. He likened Ghulam Nabi Azad with Moulana Azad and said that he is the tallest leader we have now. He is given to such generous descriptions of people. I think it was a moment of emotion and let us see how things go from there. But he continues to be our very senior leader and is highly respected in the party.

He also spoke about changing the PDP constitution?

Well, that is something which will not be decided in the media but by the general council of the party. Let a proposal come. Why not?

But he also said that already a committee has been set up to suggest changes in the party constitution and that he is the chairman of that committee?

He should place the report before the general council and discuss it.

Why have several legislators of your party spoken publicly against its president and other senior leaders?

Only these Ansaris (Imran Ansari and his uncle Abid Ansari). Who else? The two others have come back. Imran Ansaris entire family has the distinction of having been declared as willful defaulters: That means no bank in the country can transact with them. Thats in spite of his occupying a religious seat. Theres an outstanding amount of `36 crores of the state exchequer in the shape of sales tax which he has charged from the customers of the company he represents. They have also threatened him with arrest. A notice to this effect has already appeared in the press. So he is under pressure of a different kind.

The BJP alleged that you were trying to cobble up an alliance with the National Conference (NC) and the Congress for government formation at the behest of Pakistan?

(Laughs) Thats the farthest their imagination can go and, if Pakistan has such clout in Kashmir that they can put up their own government here, I dont know what our agencies are doing, what the rest of the country is doing. I think that is a compliment to Pakistan and a very bad commentary on our country.

It also spoke about meetings having been held in Dubai and London?

Well, who was there and who told them about it. This is a demonisation plan because they actually want to tarnish the Muslim leadership of all mainstream secular parties so that they gain the right to rule the state themselves. They have made it a norm now. But we will fight it out.

Why didnt the idea of forging an alliance among what you call secular parties strike you in the past five months?

Everything has a time. We had thought that let the dust settle or otherwise we would have been seen as power hungry. We and also the NC and the Congress had reservations. But then things became unbearable. They actually tried to demolish the whole system and we had to get in.

All said and done, do you regret allying with the BJP?

It was done in good faith. Mufti Sahib had behaved actually like a statesman. He staked his entire political capital, his prestige, standing, stature, politics and his party and went along with PM (Narendra) Modi in the belief that he has a huge mandate and he can perhaps take some decisive measures about our friendship with Pakistan so that the Kashmir issue is resolved. He tried to see (Atal Bihari) Vajpayee in himself but, unfortunately, that didnt prove correct. Also, Mufti Sahib always said that Jammu & Kashmir is also a problem that needs to be fixed. He wanted this triangle  Srinagar, Jammu and New Delhi  to complete. He wanted to fix these fault lines and make a cohesive government. But unfortunately the shortsightedness of the BJP leadership both at the Centre and the state subverted that big vision.

Have you been able to grasp why BJP turned against you?

God knows perhaps our sticking to our agenda of peace and friendship with Pakistan and out of insistence on special status of the state? Perhaps it became difficult for them to defend it at the national level because they were going on an entirely different trajectory. They ultimately said that we are taking instructions from Pakistan. With that kind of a mindset I dont know how they tolerated us for two and a half years.

The PDP recently said that New Delhi has now to show its human face to the people of Kashmir. You ruled the state for more than 30 months and would praise the Prime Minister and the Centre day in and day out. What face of Delhi was that?

Because we always believed that PM Modi would come true to his word and would walk the talk what he said from the ramparts of the Red Fort in Delhi. We had to give them time. We sought a unilateral ceasefire during (the last) Ramzan and they obliged. We gave amnesty to 11,000 youth booked on charges of stone pelting. We tried to do things that would actually show a soft face to the people of Kashmir. But the overall atmosphere couldnt be changed by those small interventions. We still believe that unless we get Pakistan on board it is not possible to achieve tangible peace in Kashmir.

How do you want to address the issues in J&K so that peace returns to the state? Security forces officials are saying that they are gaining an upper hand against militants and that that is the way out?

We say that these are temporary ups and lows. Unless theres durable peace with Pakistan and the stakeholders within all the three regions of J&K things would continue to be as they are today. That needs statesmanship at the national level and also reciprocation from Pakistan. Secondly, you have to trust the local leadership. Yesterday Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti got together and you got agitated and said Pakistan is doing it just because they are named Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti. You didnt say that in case of Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav or in the case of Rahul Gandhi and Chandrababu Naidu.
Terror, says our Supreme Court, is not just a heinous crime. It is crime with the intent of destabilising the Union of India and striking terror in the hearts and minds of Indians.

We are not new to terror. But the digital age has made it easier for terrorists to instil fear and suspicion where faith and trust once reposed and project an impression of terrors limitless reach. No one does this better than the Islamic State, a digitally savvy, West Asian terror group, says Kabir Taneja, a New Delhi-based security analyst.

By the standards of international terrorism, the November 26-28, 2008 Mumbai attacks were a mere blip. Neither did it match the scale of public outrage in October 1984, when Indira Gandhi was assassinated as revenge for the desecration, four months earlier, of the Golden Temple, Amritsar, by the Indian Army whilst purging the holy complex of Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his militant Khalistani gunmen.

Nor did 26/11 match the scale of social disruption  the permanent estrangement of Indian Muslims  emanating from the demolition of the Babri Masjid by Hindu kar sevaks in December 1992, while both the Centre and the Uttar Pradesh government watched mutely. Add to that, the subsequent tragedy  a decade later in 2002  of kar sevaks fatally charred in a train carriage at Godhra, followed by extreme reprisals against Muslims in Gujarat. That wasnt the first time either. Communal violence was the anodyne term used in the 1970s and 1980s to describe targeted slaughter based on religious discord. Three decades later, violence, deliberately stoked for electoral gain by exploiting caste divides, has added to the unsavoury repertoire of savvy electoral tacticians.

But 26/11 remains significant because it was the first, high-impact, success of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the dirty tricks agency of the Pakistani military, in masterminding an attack on the economic stability of India by hitting where it hurts the most  the rich international and domestic business elite, in storied hotels like the Taj, the Oberoi and the Trident at Apollo Bunder, next to the iconic Gateway of India, and the Leopold Cafe in Colaba  a happening space for young expatriates. There were subsequent terror incidents also  the February 2010 bomb blast at the Pune German Bakery; the July 2011 triple bomb blasts at Mumbais Opera House, Zaveri Bazar and Dadar; the September 2011 briefcase bomb blast outside the Delhi high court and the August 2012 Pune blast.

But 26/11 became special because it was the Indian medias Gulf War (1990-1991) moment. We watched the never-seen-before, live, CNN style, television reports from Mumbai. So apparently did ISI controllers, who used them to guide their terror teams holed up inside the two hotels. This successful covert operation by a handful of jihadists brought the commercial capital of India to a standstill. It also ignited the latent fear, lying dormant deep within since the 1947 Partition days, of militant Islams designs on India.

Also visible was public frustration at the ineptness of the Indian State. The casual manner in which the terror squad came ashore and went about their brutal business illustrated the failure of our intelligence agencies. Once the attack started, there was little evidence of a functional emergency management plan. Our specialised agency for counter-terror operations  the National Security Guard  reached almost a day late from Delhi. Once in unfamiliar Mumbai, they failed to fill the gaps proactively. Taking the perpetrators down took a full two days, leaving more than 160 dead and nearly 400 injured. Working out of silos, the civil authorities did not use the available Army special forces which could have hit the ground running. Legend has it that these operationally-hardened commandos literally eat glass to qualify for the honour of joining up.

The 2008 terrorist attack came during a sustained period of high economic growth in India. It shattered Indias projected and self-image of an emerging regional power, as both the Union and the state government floundered while dealing with the invasion by stealth. It foregrounded terror as a key national threat and led to supportive legislative changes to deal with the scourge.

The Terrorism and Disruptive Activities Act 1985 (Tada), enacted in the aftermath of Prime Minister Indira Gandhis assassination in 1984, was used to deal with the ensuing Punjab insurgency and it lapsed in 1995. Six years later, Parliament was attacked by jihadists in 2001. In response, the National Democratic Alliance under Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee enacted the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act 2002 (Pota). Terrorism was redefined to include even political dissent against the government in power (as opposed to rebellion against the Union of India); the period for detention under trial was extended and the presumption of guilt was put on the accused. It was repealed in 2004 when the United Progressive Alliance led by the Congress came to power. But many of the draconian provisions of the Tada and Pota were incorporated post 2008 into the Unlawful Association (Prevention) Act 1967 (UAPA) which continues to exist (Vidhi Terrorism Report, 2015).

With legislative changes came capacity enhancement. Between 2008 and 2016, the Union governments specialised police cadres increased by 25 per cent against an overall increase of just 3.5 per cent in its civilian employees (excluding the armed forces). State governments have their own police establishments. These grew by 51 per cent between 2006 and 2016 (Bureau of Police Research and Development data, 2017). The increase was concentrated in terror-affected (jihadist) Kashmir; militancy (tribal) affected Manipur, Nagaland, Mizoram and insurgency (Maoist) affected Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh.

Have new, tougher laws; more boots on the ground; better mobility and communications and enhanced firepower insured us from another 26/11? Very unlikely. Even in Europe, despite well-developed and endowed intelligence and policing systems, terror seeps through like an insidious miasma of hate.

The only tangible defence against terror is to weaken the manic desire, the evil intent and physical capacity to wreak havoc. Adroit diplomacy, political sagacity and an aware and organised civil society are additional necessary bulwarks against terror. Truth and reconciliation, a technique that is hugely underutilised in India, can show the way.
There is a real mystery about the meetings planned between stars from Bollywood and their very ardent fan, Bahraini sheikh Hamad Isa Ali Al-Khalifa, who is being sued for $33.5 million (around Rs 22 crores). It is reported he defaulted in payments to Ahmed Adel Abdallah Ahmed, who was fixing for him to meet 26 Bollywood stars. This fascinating case of a genuine Bollywood fan is in the UK courts, as he had, according to reports, expressed unbridled desire and fantasy towards these Bollywood stars.

The sheikh had promised $1.5 million per meeting with a Bollywood star plus a $500,000 bonus for every third meeting with a star. As some of the meetings were going to be as brief as 15 minutes, it would have cost him a paltry $100,000 per minute.

The sheikh allegedly backed out after four meetings, paying just $4 million. The court case is ongoing  but I am frankly curious to know what do the stars get when these meetings are planned? Could the chance of meeting a genuine fan be enough? He had allegedly met four stars, including Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan and Ranveer Singh, and paid Ahmed in cash packed in suitcases (how Bollywood is that!). In the list of 26 proposed stars was also Aishwarya Rai. Surprisingly, no Indian TV channels, while happily chasing down the latest wedding destination of the stars, is examining this curious case more thoroughly. It carries all the ingredients of a Bollywood film  except that in the film the sheikh would have done more than just pay the money for a handshake, and there would have undoubtedly been some henchmen settling scores, and a few kidnappings and shootouts  instead of the matter being rather tamely discussed in a London court.

But frankly, would we blame the sheikh if he thought $1.5 million was a bit much for a face-to-face encounter with a Bollywood star, and changed his mind after just four or five meetings. He may have even stopped watching Hindi films by now. One can only say that the Bahraini sheikh was rather naive: He only had to host an award ceremony, and all of Bollywood would have arrived at his doorstep!

As we go into a seriously cold spell  there will be a huge warmth of welcome for the new Indian high commissioner, Ruchi Ghanashyam. There has not been a woman high commissioner to the UK since Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, and as women power is being projected more sharply than ever, this is a very welcome step. The UK of course has two women in top positions: the Queen and the Prime Minister. And right now one of them is very preoccupied with Brexit. It has been often said that Brexit will bring a new closeness to the India-UK story, and so Ms Ghanashyam has arrived at a timely moment.

But the storm around Brexit refuses to go away and more squalls are predicted as the proposal will be voted upon soon in Parliament. Breaking up is never easy, but it is a disaster when one of the partners is receiving little support from her own family  and that is Prime Minister Theresa Mays real problem. Even when her party members rally around her, they do so under duress.

Meanwhile, Labour Party members have also started lobbying for a fresh referendum if the Brexit vote does not pass through Parliament. It may end up being a rather chilly Christmas if there is no resolution. Be prepared for yet another political typhoon to swirl around us. But May has stuck it out thus far, and outwitted her worst critics.

The short list for the DSC South Asian fiction prize was announced as usual at the Shaw Library (named after Charlotte Shaw, the wife of George Bernard Shaw, who gave London School of Economics its first building to begin teaching)! Prof Rudrangshu Mukherjee was the chairman of the judges panel. Surina Narula, the spirit of generosity behind the prize, spoke at the occasion, as did Mukulika Banerjee, director of the South Asian Centre at LSE. Six works of fiction were shortlisted, including two which were translated from South Asian languages. It was good to see well-known Indian and Pakistani authors like Kamila Shamsie, Manu Joseph, Neel Mukherjee and Mohsin Hamid make the shortlist. Ms Narula has been supporting the prize right from the days when it was first associated with JLF. Now it has been moved on, but it is well established and maintains its Asian identity.

This time the top award will be announced in Kolkata next year.

Meanwhile, the housing problems of Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, are now in the headlines. Where are the poor things going to live  with such a wide assortment of properties to choose from? This is a real concern for the British public and the gossip-hungry tabloids. Their choice of moving to the royal Windsor estate where Wallis Simpson (the American divorcee for whom Prince Edward abdicated his throne) is buried along with Prince Edward, made everyone leap to draw parallels between the new American divorcee and the old one. Meghan certainly seems to have stepped out of a TV series into a long-running reality show. But perhaps this move may actually take her out of the immediate orbit of the paps (as the paparazzi are known)  since Frogmore House is set in the midst of the Windsor estate, far away from Kensington Palace, in the heart of London. Good move?
As part of the lawmakers announcement of their probe, they published the responses of banks that have suffered recent outages explaining what went wrong.

British lawmakers launched an inquiry on Friday into computer systems failures at financial services firms, after a number of outages in recent months left millions of customers unable to access their money or make vital payments.

The cross-party Treasury Committee of lawmakers said it will examine how financial firms are trying to guard against IT failings and whether regulators have the skills and powers to hold them to account when customers lose out.

In the last year and a half financial firms including Equifax, TSB, Visa, Barclays, Cashplus and Royal Bank of Scotland have experienced IT failures, Nicky Morgan, chair of the Committee, said.

Measly apologies and hollow words from financial services institutions will not suffice when consumers arent able to access their own money and face delays in paying bills, she said.

The computer systems failings have come at a particularly sensitive time as banks increasingly nudge customers towards their online channels in a bid to cut costs compared with serving them through physical branches.

The Treasury Committee said it is hiring a specialist advisor to inform the inquiry, which could lead to recommendations to the government on tougher regulations or penalties for IT failings.

A botched IT project at TSB, owned by Spains Sabadell, earlier this year led to one of Britains worst-ever banking outages and the resignation of TSB Chief Executive Paul Pester in the wake of sustained and bruising questioning by the committee about his handling of the crisis.

As part of the lawmakers announcement of their probe, they published the responses of banks that have suffered recent outages explaining what went wrong.

A glitch that hit thousands of business and personal customers of Barclays on Sept. 20 was caused by a rare interaction between two software systems that had been recently tweaked, Barclays Chief Executive Jes Staley said in a letter to Morgan.

An unrelated outage that hit RBS customers the very next day was caused by incorrect implementation of a network firewall rule update, RBS Chief Executive Ross McEwan said in a letter published by the Treasury Committee.

The politicians called at the time for the banks to explain what happened and compensate any customers affected.

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All former and current Samsung employees as well as the companys contractors who worked at Samsungs semiconductor and display production plants for more than one year since 1984 are eligible to be compensated for their illnesses.

South Koreas Samsung Electronics on Friday vowed to compensate by 2028 its local chip and display factory workers who have suffered from work-related illnesses.

The move settles a year-long dispute between the worlds top memory chipmaker and an advocacy group representing sickened workers and their families after the 2007 death of a Samsung chip factory worker with leukaemia sparked concerns over working conditions at the South Korean company.

Our effort was insufficient to better understand the pain affected workers and their families went through, Samsung Electronics Chief Executive Kim Ki-nam said in a public apology during an event to sign the agreement with the advocacy group.

Following the mediation panels decision earlier this month on the case, Samsung will pay up to 150 million won (USD 132,649.45) for each former and current employee suffering from work-related diseases if they are found to be caused by exposure to harmful chemicals.

All former and current Samsung employees as well as the companys contractors who worked at Samsungs semiconductor and display production plants for more than one year since 1984 are eligible to be compensated for their illnesses.

Kim said the company would post its compensation guidelines along with an apology letter by at the end of this month on the companys website and an independent Seoul-based law firm will conduct the review process for affected workers for their compensation eligibility.

South Korean activist group Sharps claims around 200 workers have fallen ill after working at Samsung plants and 70 of them have died subsequently.

Hwang Sang-ki, founder of Sharps and father of a dead chip factory worker with leukaemia, told Reuters that besides those 200 he expected more workers to apply for compensation, but it would take a long medical process to prove their diseases are directly related to the work environment.

Both Samsung and Sharps did not elaborate on the potential size of the total compensation.

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Syrian media reported on Saturday that militants based north of Aleppo bombarded the city with chlorine-filled shells, causing over a hundred people to be delivered to hospitals with symptoms typical for poisoning such as suffocation.

Russia's Defence Ministry confirmed that Russian jets hit the targets of terorrists who had reportedly shelled Aleppo with deadly chlorine gas on Saturday.

According to the ministry, intelligence services identified in the Idlib de-escalation zone the fire weapons that were used in the Aleppo gas attack. They also found that the terrorists were preparing for another poisonous shelling. All the targets were destroyed; Turkey was warned about the strikes in advance via a hotline.
British Prime Minister Theresa May, right, and European Council President Donald Tusk attend a round table meeting at an EU summit in Brussels, Sunday, Nov. 25, 2018. (Photo: AP)

Brussels: European Union leaders formally agreed a Brexit deal at a Brussels summit on Sunday, urging Britons to back Prime Minister Theresa Mays package, which faces furious opposition in the British parliament.

The 27 leaders took barely half an hour to rubber-stamp a 600-page treaty setting terms for Britains withdrawal from the European Union on March 29 and a 26-page declaration outlining a future free trading relationship. May joined them shortly afterwards for what will be a brief meeting to seal the accord.

This is the deal, European Union chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker told reporters on his way in to the meeting, saying he believed May would get it through parliament and ruling out big new concessions.

Now it is time for everybody to take responsibility  everybody, said Michel Barnier, the Frenchman who has ground out the withdrawal treaty over the past 18 months.

Juncker called it a sad day, saying Brexit was a tragedy and tough on both sides.

I believe that the British government will succeed in securing the backing of the British parliament, Juncker said, declining to comment on what might happen if May fails.

I would vote in favour of this deal because this is the best deal possible for Britain, he added.

In a sign of worries ahead, Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite tweeted after the deal was endorsed in the summit chamber that the exit process was far from over.

Barnier called the package a basis for close future ties, insisting: We will remain allies, partners and friends.

French President Emmanuel Macron said the Brexit vote showed Europe needed reform. He stressed that Paris would hold Britain to tight EU regulations, notably on the environment, in return for giving it easy trade access.

The departure of a nation long sceptical of deeper EU integration was, Macron said, neither a moment for celebration nor mourning, but Britons free choice.

This is the maximum

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, whose country is one of Britains closest trading partners, praised Mays handling of the difficult negotiations and said he was confident that she could see the deal through parliament in the coming weeks.

But he also had a warning for those in Mays Conservative party as well as the Labour opposition who argue that a better deal can still be done before Britain leaves in four months if lawmakers deny her minority government support on Brexit.

This is the maximum we can all do, Rutte said, shaking his head when asked if the EU might make more concessions.

Saying the EU hates Brexit, Rutte said: Nobodys winning  we are all losing. But, he said, the deal was an acceptable compromise for all that gave May a chance to clinch a solution.

The biggest question now facing the EU is whether Mays divided minority government can steer the deal, which foresees London following many EU rules to keep easy trade access, through fierce resistance in parliament in the coming weeks from both supporters and opponents of Brexit.

Lithuanian President Grybauskaite said there were at least four possible outcomes if parliament blocks the package. She named three - that Britons would hold a second referendum, hold a new election to replace May or return to Brussels to try and renegotiate the package. A fourth is that Britain will simply crash out of the bloc on March 29 without legal clarity.

Both sides have been making preparations for such a no deal scenario, though the EU insists Britain has more to lose. The pound has strengthened since the deal came together over the past 10 days, but companies and investors remain nervous.

The package foresees little changing during a transition period lasting another two to four years.

British opposition

The Democratic Unionist Party, whose votes from Northern Ireland have helped May to govern since she lost her majority in a snap election last year, said it would try to block a Brexit deal it called pitiful - partly because it binds London to many EU rules it will no longer help set and partly as the DUP fears it could weaken the provinces ties to Britain.

In an open letter to the nation May said she would campaign heart and soul to get her Brexit deal through.

It will be a deal that is in our national interest  one that works for our whole country and all of our people, whether you voted Leave or Remain, she said.

Sunday newspapers said different factions in her own Conservative party were preparing alternative plans to keep Britain closer to the EU should her deal fail as many expect.

Wrangling over how to keep open troubled Northern Irelands land border with the EU without creating barriers with the Irish Republic dogged much of the Brexit talks. Another relic of the imperial past, Britains 300-year-old naval base on Spains southern coast, threatened to derail plans at the last minute.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez threatened to boycott Sundays meeting if he did not get amendments to the deal to ensure Madrid gets a say in Gibraltars future ties with the EU.

After officials wrangled through the night, he announced on Saturday afternoon that he had such written pledges. Brussels officials said those essentially confirmed what most EU leaders had already understood - that Spain must have a binding say over how any future EU-UK trade pact might affect Gibraltar.
Deputy Chief Minister G Parameshwara on Saturday warned that Bengaluru is headed for severe drinking water crises in the near future.

Speaking at the Janaspandana, a civic grievance redressal event organised by the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike, Parameshwara said there is no further plans to assure water supply to the constantly expanding city beyond the fifth stage of the Cauvery Water Supply Scheme.

"The city is growing rapidly and may face water crises in the future," Parameshwara, also the Bengaluru Development Minister said. "We have to find a solution soon. People should start saving water to solve future crises," he added.

The Cauvery Water Supply Scheme aims to build a comprehensive water and sewerage network to treat 775 mld of raw Cauvery water at a new plant, to be set up in Thorekadanahalli and pumped to the Harohalli and Tataguni pumping stations. From there, water would be supplied to the city.

Water supply will be split to the west and east side. It would include the 110 villages added to the BBMP limits in 2007.

"I am conducting a meeting with the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board officials to work out a solution for the water scarcity," Parameshwara said. "Under the Yettinahole drinking water project, Bengaluru will get only 2.5 TMC of water. We will, therefore, take up the project, worth Rs 280 crore, to revive the Thippagondanahalli reservoir and ensure supply to the city soon," he said.
India and China on Saturday agreed on the need to deal with the protracted boundary dispute in a manner to be in sync with the long-term and overall interests of the bilateral relations between the two neighbours.

The two nations agreed to explore new measures to avert future flashpoints along their long and disputed boundary. They also agreed to step up their development partnership without undermining each others sensitivities, concerns and aspirations.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's National Security Advisor Ajit Doval met China's Foreign Minister and State Councillor Wang Yi at Chengdu in Sichuan province of the communist country on Saturday to hold the 21st round of negotiations to resolve the vexed boundary dispute.

Doval and Wang are at present leading the negotiation for a settlement of India-China boundary disputes as special representatives of the respective governments.

They agreed on the importance of approaching the boundary question from the strategic perspective of India-China relations and agreed that an early settlement of the boundary question serves the fundamental interests of both countries, the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi stated in a press release issued after the two Special Representatives concluded talks in Chengdu. They also agreed that an early settlement of the boundary question would serve the fundamental interests of both India and China.

The 21st round of boundary negotiation was, in fact, the first between the two neighbouring nations after Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping held an informal summit at Wuhan in central China on April 27 and 28. The informal summit marked a thaw in the complex bilateral relations, which hit a new low last year over the 72-day-long military face-off between the two nations at Doklam Plateau in western Bhutan.
A seven-member inter-ministerial team from the Union Government led by a joint secretary-level officer arrived here on Friday night to assess the damages caused by Cyclone Gaja in ten districts of Tamil Nadu.

The team led by Daniel Richards, Joint Secretary with the Ministry of Home Affairs, will meet Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami on Saturday before they set out to the districts to assess the damages.

The team has representatives from the Ministries of Finance, Agriculture, Rural Development, Power, Water Resources and Road Transport. The team is expected to visit the worst-affected districts of Thanjavur, Nagapattinam, Tiruvarur and Pudukkottai, and interact with the people who lost their agriculture fields.

Cyclone Gaja that hit the Tamil Nadu coast on November 16 left a trail of destruction in almost ten districts, mostly in the fertile Cauvery Delta region, and killed more than 60 people. Thousands of acres of coconut farm have been destroyed due to the Cyclone bringing several families that depend on farming onto the streets.

The teams visit comes after, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami's meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday seeking Rs 15,000 crore for relief and rehabilitation works in the districts. The chief minister had sought dispatch of a Central team to assess the damages and submit a report for further financial assistance.

The visit comes even as normalcy is yet to be restored in several districts  power supply is yet to be restored in numerous villages as work on reinstating the fallen electric poles is on full swing.

Freight charges

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami on Friday wrote to Railway Minister Piyush Goyal seeking to waive of freight charges for relief material meant for cyclone Gaja affected districts in the state.

"I request the Railways to waive the freight charges collected from donors for the relief materials sent to the stations in disaster-hit areas addressed to the District Collectors, as has been done in the case of recent Kerala floods," he said in the letter.
Tukaram Ombles death has left a void in his family. If it wasnt for the brave assistant sub-inspector, Pakistani terrorist Mohammed Ajmal Kasab wouldnt have been caught alive.

Ombles statue at Girgaum Chowpatty, near the place where Kasab was captured by him, continues to inspire people.

After 10 years, Ombles death is still a painful memory for his wife Tarabai and daughters Vaishali and Bharti. We still feel that over Papa has gone out to police station on duty and will return home, says Vaishali. For us, he is a hero, he will remain a hero, she said.

Omble had taken five bullets on his chest and abdomen from the deadly Kalashnikov assault rifle.

He was conferred with the coveted Ashok Chakra. He had caught a fidayeen alive, which had never happened, Vaishali adds.

The 54-year-old Omble, who was attached to the D B Marg police station, hailed from Satara district of western Maharashtra.

What Omble has done is an exemplary act of bravery. But more than that he ensured that the terrorist is caught alive and he gets a fair trial, a police official said.
Thirty-three of the total 200 Rajasthan Assembly constituencies are witnessing a fight between the same candidates of the BJP and the Congress who had contested the 2013 state polls.

Both the parties have changed their candidates on 43 seats this time.

On the remaining 124 seats, the two major parties have decided to field new candidates.

Of the 33 seats, 29 are sitting BJP MLAs and four are Congress MLAs that included former chief minister Ashok Gehlot.

Karanpur seat is witnessing a fight between Mines minister Surendra Pal Singh and former Congress minister Gurmeet Singh, who had lost 2013 election to Surendra Pal Singh with a margin of 3,853 votes, while Hanumagarh seat is being contested by Water Resources minister Ram Pratap and Congress candidate Vinod Chaudhary.

Chaudhary had faced defeat with a big margin of 30,487 votes but the Congress has fielded him again and the seat will witness a direct fight between both the candidates.

Former Congress minister Rajendra Pareek is in the fray in Sikar constituency, which was won by BJP's Ratan lal Jaldhari in 2013 with a margin of 13,015 votes.

The seat in Shekhwati region is all set to witness a triangular contest with Rashtriya Loktantrik Dal's Wahid Chauhan in the race.

Chauhan contested the last polls as Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) candidate and stood third by securing 29.10 per cent votes.

Former speaker and Congress candidate Deependra Singh Shekhawat is in fight with BJP's Jhabar Singh Kharra at Srimadhopur, while Chomu seat is also witnessing a direct fight between BJP MLA Ram Lal Sharma and Congress candidate Bhagwan Sahahi Saini.

The winning margin of Sharma was 44,473 in 2013.

Jaipur's hot seat civil lines is again witnessing the same fight like that of 2013 and the candidates are Social Justice and Empowerment minister Arun Chaturvedi and former Congress MLA Prapta Singh Khachariyawas.

Similar situation is in Malviya Nagar where Health minister Kalicharan Saraf is in a close battle with PCC vice president Archana Sharma.

Candidates are same but people will vote for the Congress on December 7 because there is high resentment among people against Saraf who is facing corruption charges and people are inclined towards Congress, Sharma said.

People want clean leadership and corruption-free government which is focussed on development and the BJP failed to deliver and therefore public is against the ruling party, she said.

Jayal seat of Nagaur district is also having repeat candidates and both are women named Manju.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has retained sitting MLA Manju Baghmar while the Congress has again fielded Manju Devi on the seat reserved for SC candidates.

Jodhpur's Sardarpura seat is witnessing contesting between sitting MLA and Gehlot who had defeated BJP's Shambhu Singh Khetasar with a margin of 18,478 votes.

Gehlot had the only advantage of caste factor. Apart from that, there is no charm of him. He did not work for his constituency and also often remained absent in the assembly. The issue in the assembly remains the same and unaddressed and I am confident that the BJP will win the seat this time, BJP candidate Shambhu Singh Khetasar said.

On the other hand, both the BJP and the Congress have changed their candidates in 43 constituencies.

Thirty-four out of these 43 seats were won by the BJP in 2013 but the party dropped them this time and gave tickets to others which made some of such sitting MLAs, including ministers Rajkumar Rinwa (Ratangarh), Hem Singh Bhandana (Thanagaji) rebel.

As many as 2,294 candidates, including 189 women candidates, are contesting on 200 assembly seats in Rajasthan which is going to poll on December 7.
The mortal remains of Bhavye Suneja, the pilot of the ill-fated Indonesian Lion Air plane, has been recovered and identified  more than three weeks after the aircraft crashed into the Java Sea with an eight-member-crew and 181 passengers onboard.

Suneja, a 31-year-old citizen of India, was the pilot of the Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft, which plunged into Java Sea just 13 minutes after it took off from Jakarta for a flight to Pangkal Pinang on Bangka Belitung Islands of Indonesia on October 30.

A part of Suneja's body was recovered among the mortal remains of the 125 people and identified by Indonesian Police's Disaster Victim Identification unit. A DNA analysis on the body part on Friday confirmed it to be Suneja's.

Indonesian authorities have confirmed identification of the body of Capt. Bhavye Suneja. The remains will be handed over to the family in the presence of @IndianEmbJkt today, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj posted on Twitter on Saturday. My heartfelt condolences to the bereaved family.

Suneja, who grew up in New Delhi, lived in Jakarta with his wife Garima. His parents lived at Mayur Vihar in the national capital territory.
India is in talks with the United States to join hands, together with Japan and Australia, to form an economic Quad alongside the four nations evolving security Quad (quadrilateral security dialogue) to take on an increasingly aggressive China.

While the security Quad is an attempt to manage China and constrain its increasingly powerful navy in the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean, the economic Quad, so to speak since it has no name to call it by, is a bid to take on Chinas Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

The BRI is Chinese President Xi Jinpings strategy to keep the countrys growth engine humming and spread Chinas economic and geopolitical influence all the way to Europe through South and Central Asia and West Asia and Africa through a humongous infrastructure-building effort in countries and seas all along Chinas expansively reimagined version of the ancient Silk Route.

Not that even the worlds largest, third largest and sixth largest economies, along with Australia, can together match the scale of funding that Beijing is pouring into the projects, but the fear among countries that signed up for BRI  some 60 countries, from Sri Lanka to Greece -- that China may be driving them into a debt trap has opened up an opportunity for the Quad countries to offer Asian and African countries an alternative model of infrastructure development.

India has been in discussion with the US at least since early this year. The US Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) said in September that it was talking to the Indian side. It is learnt that it is being handled at the ambassadorial level from the Indian side.

It was only in July that the Trump administration itself firmed up its determination to take on the BRI. The US Congress has since passed the BUILD Act, providing potentially $60 billion and bringing OPIC and a part of the USAID into a newly created development agency  the US International Development Finance Corporation  for the purpose. Japan and Australia have signed up, and its all neatly packaged under the three countries Indo-Pacific strategy. India hasnt signed up yet.

India has its own connectivity projects going, albeit too slowly, such as the International North-South Corridor, connecting Chabahar port, developed by India, through Central Asia to Russia, where it will join trans-European transport networks, and the recently proposed India-Japan Asia-Africa Growth Corridor (AAGC).

The US-Japan-Australia trio, the European Union as well as even China want India to be part of their respective projects. And India will do well to be a part of all or most of them. Still Delhi must think through whether it wants to bet big on being part of efforts to provide multiple infrastructure projects or whether it can offer something uniquely suited to its strengths while diminishing the appeal of China to others.

For one, Chinas biggest BRI investment is the $62 billion it is pouring into the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC); its biggest adverse effect has been felt in Sri Lanka over its Hambantota port project; and it is working hard on turning every other neighbour of India  from Maldives to Afghanistan and Nepal and Bhutan -- into its pawns. Chinas influence in Central Asia is natural, but its ambition in South Asia is clearly aimed at India. How should Delhi deal with China encroaching its turf?

Second, China has the export volumes to justify building roads, railways and ports to transport them. In other words, theres demand for what China is supplying under BRI. Thats not the case with India. Indias merchandise and manufactured exports are minuscule compared to Chinas. Is there a justification for India to build transport infrastructure across a vast region or is it feeling compelled to do so merely to counter Chinese influence?

Third, China has a problem of industrial overcapacity at home and therefore needs to move out and spread its capital and labour across half the world. India hasnt yet achieved substantial capacity in many sectors in the domestic market itself as our industrialisation has gone slow. Should it spread its resources thin in competing with China on BRI?

Fourth, the US strategy is a private sector-led one. Can India match it? Indias

failure to resolve the twin balance-sheet problem  of distressed banks and highly leveraged companies and conglomerates  has left the private sector incapable of making substantial investments, whether in the domestic market or overseas. Delhi should therefore be realistic about what it can contribute and achieve by going down the same route as BRI.

Instead, India will do well to sell a different vision  where China focuses on building conventional power plants, for instance, Delhi could dangle solar power through its International Solar Alliance; where China focuses on brick-and-mortar, India must step up capacity-building and training initiatives for government, NGOs and other personnel across the regions. India must thus contribute to strengthening democracies. That would help take care of Chinese influence.
To the Times:

Arguably Donald Trump may go down in his history as one of our worst presidents. The merits and wisdom of his policies and his agenda (Make America Great Again) can be debated with widely divergent perceptions among fair-minded observers. But most, or at least many, would agree that Trumps style and personality are incompatible with some of the vital roles and demands of his office.

Nowhere are his shortcomings more glaring and more impactful than in his symbolic, but very real role, as our national consoler-in-chief. The person the public looks toward in times of tragedy, whether natural or man-made, for healing.

Consider the presidents performance after Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, or the synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh or just this past weekend at the site of the horrific wildfires in California. Trump is simply unable to express compassion and empathy. Why? Probably because his self-absorption is so grand, so total, there is seemingly no room in his heart for the pain and suffering of others. As he doesnt feel it, its almost impossible to be able to authentically express it to a grieving nation or a grieving family.

As a symbol of hope, compassion and healing, Donald Trump is an abject failure.
During the recent campaign, Brian Kemp, Georgias secretary of state who supervises state elections, was accused of voter suppression when he put 53,000 voter registrations on hold because the names on a voter registration application did not exactly match a government database. The vast majority of those would-be voters were African-Americans. Kemp was accused not only of targeting blacks, but of doing so during a campaign where he was running for governor, and the absence of that many Democratic voters in a close race might tip the balance in his favor.

Indeed, Kemp narrowly won the race.

This is not the first time an elected official running election administration has been accused of using his or her position for partisan purposes. In 2000, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris administered Floridas contested electoral process while also serving on the Republican presidential campaign. Harris was accused of using her office to help George W. Bush win Floridas electoral votes and the presidency.

Nor is this simply a problem elsewhere. The United Utah Party experienced this issue firsthand when the Utah Elections Office, under the supervision of a partisan elected official, refused to allow Jim Bennett, the partys 3rd Congressional District candidate in 2017, to register as a UUP candidate. The office asserted that the party had not yet been certified and therefore Bennett could not be a candidate for that party. But the office slow-walked the certification process as long as possible. A federal judge criticized the state Elections Office for purposely delaying certification and ordered Bennett on the ballot. More recently, the Salt Lake County clerk was sued by her opponent for bias in election administration.

These examples suggest that administration of elections should not be in the hands of partisans. In nine states currently, the job of administering elections is done by an electoral commission. The members of these commissions represent different political parties in order to reduce the influence of any single political party in election administration.

Utah should adopt a similar independent electoral commission rather than place state election administration in the hands of partisan officials. An independent electoral commission would reduce the power of a political party or partisan officials to use the office to serve partisan interests. The above examples, along with others, show that this problem is real.

Additionally, an independent electoral commission would reduce the potential conflict of interest for elected officials who administer elections. Ethical government minimizes as much as possible the possibility of a conflict of interest for an elected official. Utahns should seek the highest ethical standard.

This is not some abstract issue. In fact, it may well be a problem in two years. In 2020, Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox, who supervises the Utah Elections Office, will administer an election where he may be a candidate for governor.

How would a commission be formed? Such a commission would include representatives of the political parties in Utah, along with individuals who are not affiliated with any political party. The governor and state legislative leaders each could appoint a member. Also, each certified political party should have the ability to name a representative. Then, the commission should add several unaffiliated voters who apply to serve. However, an ironclad rule should be that no political party has a majority of membership on the commission. Nor should any member be a current public official  elected or appointed  or a candidate for elective office.

The commission would carry out the same duties that are now assigned to the State Elections Office, such as voter registration, administration of campaign finance laws, voter information, etc. The difference is these duties would be conducted by a nonpartisan staff accountable to a nonpartisan election director who was appointed by an independent, multipartisan commission.

Utah should be a model for ethical government. This change would make Utah a leader in separating partisanship from the process of running an election. It is a time to assure that partisanship is not a factor in the administration of elections in our state, and also to set a model for other states.
With the midterms now behind us, lawmakers should focus on eliminating one of the biggest barriers to creating jobs in Utah: occupational licensing.

Once limited to fields like medicine and dentistry, licensing laws have spread dramatically in recent years. Today, over 200,000 Utah workers need a license to work. Thats over 16 percent of the states workforce  and well over the share of workers who are unionized. By comparison, during the 1950s, just 5 percent of American workers were licensed.

These barriers to entry for aspiring workers restrict competition in licensed occupations, limiting economic opportunity and driving up costs for consumers. Now a new Institute for Justice report by Dr. Morris Kleiner, professor at the University of Minnesotas Humphrey School of Public Affairs, and economist Dr. Evgeny Vorotnikov shows the enormous costs licensing imposes on Utahs economy.

In Utah, licensing results in almost 20,000 fewer jobs. With licensing laws limiting the pool of people who can work in a licensed occupation, those with a license can charge more for their services than they could in a more competitive market. As a result, licensing costs the states economy nearly $88 million in deadweight loss, or reduced economic output, each year.

But even that figure doesnt capture all the economic costs of licensing. For instance, it doesnt include the time and money people waste completing excessive licensing requirements. Nor does it account for the lost potential of people who want to work in a given field but are blocked by licensing.

To better account for these costs, Kleiner and Vorotnikov also include misallocated resources as a broader measure of the value lost from the economy due to licensing. For Utah, licensing costs the economy over $1.9 billion in misallocated resources. Nationwide, occupational licensing laws destroy nearly 2 million jobs and cost the economy upwards of $184 billion.

Defenders of licensing often claim licenses are necessary to ensure quality and to protect the publics health and safety. But when the Obama administrations economic advisers examined occupational licensing in a 2015 white paper, they noted that in a number of other studies, licensing did not increase the quality of goods and services.

Moreover, licensing burdens are often wildly disproportionate to the actual health and safety risks associated with an occupation. For instance, in Utah, it takes 1,600 hours of classes to become licensed to cut and style hair as a cosmetologist. In contrast, it takes only 120 hours of training to become licensed to provide lifesaving aid as an emergency medical technician. Rather than protect the public from harm, many licenses only protect the licensed from competition.

Fortunately, Utah has an opportunity to be a leader on licensing reform. Last year, it was selected for an 11-state learning consortium funded by the U.S. Department of Labor and in partnership with the National Conference of State Legislatures, the Council of State Governments and the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices. The consortium is devoted to developing and implementing effective reform strategies to reduce and remove barriers to labor market entry.

The Beehive State has already made some progress. For instance, last year, Utah eliminated onerous experience and exam requirements and lowered fees for certain construction contractors, bringing the state more in line with others and expanding opportunities for entry into these fields.

To slash through Utahs thicket of licensing red tape, policymakers should rigorously review licensing laws on the books as well as proposed licensing regimes. In both cases, the key is to study whether licensing actually protects the public from real, substantial harms  and whether less restrictive, more targeted regulations, like inspections or voluntary certification, can address consumer protection concerns without the job losses and steep costs from licensing.

Given the high costs and scant public benefits of licensing, policymakers can and should repeal needless licenses, replacing them, if necessary, with less restrictive regulations. By letting Utahns earn a living instead of a license, they can create more jobs, expand economic opportunity and inject billions of dollars into the states economy.
Pignanelli & Webb: Well, its Thanksgiving weekend and everyone is recovering from turkey and pumpkin pie hangovers or (in Franks case) early holiday libations. After the feast, vigorous exercise is warranted, but before you take a brisk walk in the crisp air, take a look at what some of our newsmakers were thankful for as they carved their turkeys.

Every man, woman and child: We are extremely grateful that we can now watch TV and listen to the radio without being bombarded by negative advertising from the McAdams and Love campaigns.

National pollsters, campaign experts, political wise men: Whew. We are grateful the Democratic House takeover occurred as we boldly predicted. Were also thankful that no one remembers two years ago we were questioning whether the House could flip because of Republican gerrymandering.

Local political consultants, campaign managers and activists: We abundantly thank the authors of our state Constitution that allows for citizen initiatives. The cornucopia of opportunities, revenue and job security we enjoyed this election cycle was indeed bountiful.

Congressman-elect Ben McAdams: Whew. I am especially thankful that the "Year of the Woman" momentum bypassed the 4th District. I will be even more grateful if Nancy Pelosi doesnt punish me with lousy committee assignments for my campaign ads and public pronouncements that I oppose her as speaker.

Congressman Chris Stewart: I am so grateful for cynical Democratic strategists who convinced Ben McAdams to run in the 4th District instead of the district he lives in.

National news media: We are grateful President Donald Trump makes news 24/7 to boost our ratings and gives us unlimited opportunities to be self-righteous in our protestations of "fake news" and "enemy of the people."

Democratic leaders: We are so obliged to Trump for providing our voters the motivation, inspiration and enthusiasm that we could never instill ourselves. Heres to more Trump in 2020.

Sen.-elect Mitt Romney: I'm grateful to live in Utah. There is something unique and wonderful about this place  especially because people actually seem to like me  unlike citizens in Massachusetts.

Salt Lake County Councilwoman and losing Senate candidate Jenny Wilson: I sincerely appreciate the enlightened voters who sent Mayor Ben to Washington. Of course, I expected to win the Senate race (wink, wink), but it didnt hurt that running all those campaign ads helped align the forces of the universe to make me the natural pick for Salt Lake County mayor. Thanks to all.

Advertising agencies, TV and radio stations, graphic artists: We are deeply grateful for the cornucopia of blessings our democracy delivers, especially a First Amendment that allows unlimited spending by super PACs and eager billionaires. May they prosper and raise ever more billions of dollars for their right-wing and left-wing causes.

Former Utah governor and Russian ambassador Jon Huntsman Jr.: I'm grateful to survive (so far) various White House purges. If I can refrain from questioning the president's intelligence, a shot at secretary of state could be ahead.

Utah Democratic Chairwoman Daisy Thomas: So this is what it's like to win. Nice feeling. Thanks.

Utah Republican Chairman Rob Anderson: Im grateful for my family. Otherwise, no comment.

Sen. Orrin Hatch: I'm grateful to the citizens of this great state for allowing me to serve them for so many years. Its humbling to see the remarkable progress since Brigham and I declared, This is the place.

Gov. Gary Herbert: Im appreciative of so much. Im not quite as old as Orrin, but with his retirement I accept the mantle as elder statesman of the party.

Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox: I am grateful for the incredible legacy of Herbert. Now the 2020 cycle is here and I can step out of his shadow.

Retiring House Speaker Greg Hughes: I am thankful for my role in resolving homelessness and crime in Salt Lake City and bringing all sides together on medical marijuana. Let me know if more help is needed. Im around. Just sayin.

Retiring Senate President Wayne Niederhauser: So, my last official act will be overseeing the special session on medical marijuana. Then, thank goodness ... Free at last. Free at last.

Congressman John Curtis: Im grateful to remain in Congress, even as a member of the minority. Fortunately, my experience with the strange politics of Utah County has prepared me for anything.

Congressman Rob Bishop: Although I am saddened at losing my committee chairmanship, throwing political bombs at Democrats for the next two years might be a fun way to close out my congressional career.

Attorney General Sean Reyes: I am grateful to defy history and still lead a scandal-free attorney generals office as I enter the next election cycle.

Sen. Mike Lee: Munificent blessings have been showered upon me the past year. Criminal justice reform, Supreme Court nomination talk  and now being able to call Mitt Romney junior.

Congresswoman Mia Love: Im grateful for the opportunity to serve, for my supporters  and for those who are already encouraging future adventures.

Pignanelli & Webb: Were grateful that the elections are over, the holidays are here and that the politicians we annoy have a sense of humor  at least most of them.
UTAH STATE PRISON  The sex offender population at the Utah State Prison continues to grow at a staggering pace.

In 1996, there were 248 sex offenders incarcerated by the Utah Department of Corrections. Today, there are 10 times that number, in the neighborhood of 2,500 at both the Point of the Mountain and the prison in Gunnison, making it by far the fastest-growing population at the prison.

There are an additional 2,200 sex offenders currently under the watch of Adult Probation and Parole.

A Pew study in 2014 found that 31 percent of all inmates in Utah were serving time for a sex offense  a 42 percent increase since 2004.

According to a Utah Sentencing Commission report, the percentage of inmates in prison for sex offenses grew to nearly 34 percent in 2016 to over 35 percent in 2017.

While the general public sees the seemingly daily headlines of people being arrested or charged with child pornography, rape or sexually abusing minors, what many dont realize is that the majority of those people who are convicted of a sex offense will be released from prison one day.

Actually, 95 percent of all people who are sent to prison will eventually be released, according to Victor Kersey, the director of institutional programming at the Utah Department of Corrections.

Its actually a very small population that will never see the outside, he said.

Prison officials remind the public that they are part of the Department of Corrections. The goal is to help individuals correct their wrong behavior so they can re-enter society as a productive member. Prison is not just a timeout box.

The question then becomes: What is being done to correct the behavior of these inmates so they are less likely to reoffend when they are released?

A major overhaul

The numbers are disturbing.

Since 2008, the number of sex offenses that have been charged in Salt Lake County alone by the Salt Lake County District Attorneys Office include:

More than 900 counts of aggravated sexual abuse of a child.

An additional 800 counts of sexual abuse of a child with no aggravated factors.

Nearly 500 counts of rape.

More than 700 counts of sodomy on a child.

More than 500 counts of forcible sex abuse.

More than 100 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor.

More than 100 counts of dealing in harmful materials to a minor.

According to the most recent statistics from the Utah Bureau of Criminal Identification, while overall crimes  including most violent crimes  were down in Utah in 2017, rape was up 11.36 percent. Rapes have shown a steady increase in Utah every year since 2014, according to the bureau.

According to state statistics, a rape happens every 6.25 hours in Utah.

But until recently, all of those sex offenders who were convicted and sent to the Utah State Prison were being treated the same way. It was essentially a one-program-fits-all style.

A scathing 2017 audit from the Utah legislative auditor general slammed the Utah Department of Corrections' sex offender treatment program. The report said the program was plagued by poor management, weak oversight and out-of-date methods to treat offenders.

Kersey, who was brought on board just before the report was released, said his department already knew what the audit was going to say.

We knew it was not good, he said. What we decided to do was wait until the legislative audit completed itself before we started making any changes that we identified were necessary at the time.

A major overhaul of the sex offender treatment program was launched in March of 2017.

Weve designed a program within a program within a program, so to speak. We have eight core programs that are designed to address specific risks and needs of offenders. Rather than having a one-size-fits-all program, which historically we had at the Utah State Prison, we have designed programs that are specific to meet the needs of the offenders, their risk, their offense, their level of functioning, those kind of things, Kersey said.

Inmates are now broken into groups of 10 to 12 for each program. Depending on the type of crime an inmate is convicted of, some programs for low risk offenders last for six months while core programs for those who are at high risk to reoffend can last from 1  to two years.

What we found is that our offenders lack some of just the basic concepts in sex education and human sexuality and personal boundaries. Part of the reason they commit sexual offenses is they dont have those basic skills, he said. It really is about behavior modification and reprogramming their thought distortions, and teaching them basic skills that will assist them in identifying events or people that trigger their sexual arousal or their sexual deviancy.

All sex offenders are different. Their interests are very different. And weve got about 35 offenders that have 'hands-off offenses.' They have internet child pornography  possession, distribution, manufacturing charges  only. Theyve never had a victim. So we have to treat them very differently than an offender who had a pre-pubescent victim, and maybe many victims, Kersey continued.

The goal of treatment is to reprogram an offender so that should they have deviant thoughts again after being released, theyll have the skills to hopefully not act on those fantasies.

But, he said, there is no magical cure.

Its not something that after treatment it just shuts off and theyll never do it again. Its really much like a substance abuser addicted to alcohol or drugs. Theyre battling that addiction the rest of their lives, he said.

Inmates in sex offender treatment are taught empathy, anger management, impulse control, accepting responsibility and other life skills. They participate in group therapy twice a week and once a week with a staff member. Inmates are expected to complete workbooks and keep daily journals.

An estimated 65 percent of adult sex offenders have been victims themselves, he said. Usually, their trauma has never been addressed by the time they arrive in prison.

But corrections officials say progress isn't measured solely by time spent in the program or completed worksheets. Staffers look for "observable changes" such as motivation, and an inmate's "willingness to incorporate changes freely to show commitment toward rehabilitation without being defensive," according to the prison's website.

There will always be that classification of offenders that cannot just be treated and rehabilitated, and they will typically serve life sentences, Kersey added.

Despite the revamping of the sex offender treatment program, Kersey said he still faces challenges.

Although the offender population has significantly increased, my staffing has not, he said. I have the same number of clinicians as I had 22 years ago.

Since September, the prison has increased the number of providers using graduate level interns. According to the prison, the result has more than tripled the number of clinicians and offenders in treatment.

In revamping the programs, prison officials also took into consideration that forcing inmates into treatment is often counter-productive.

They resisted if theyre told they have to do it, Kersey said.

Now, sex offender treatment is voluntary. But inmates soon learn that if they don't participate, it will affect their hearings before the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole.

Its not a good idea to take yourself out of treatment. You better do it or youre coming back for another year or two, he said.

Another reason the sex offender population at the prison is growing is because lengthier sentences are being issued.

In 2012, Utah lawmakers approved a mandatory 25-years-to-life sentence for those convicted of child rape and other child sex-related crimes.

But some point to the issue starting even further back than that.

The states annual Sentencing Commission Report for 2017 notes that "the percent of sex offenders sentenced to prison  increased substantially in 1996 and has remained quite stable since that time.

The report also states: The number of felony sex offender admissions to corrections (prison and probation) has been on a steady increase since 1988."

Juvenile offenders

While the number of rapes continues to rise in Utah, not all of those offenders will end up in the Utah State Prison.

Thats due, in part, to the age of those committing most of the rapes in Utah.

According to disturbing statistics from the Bureau of Criminal Information, the 15-to-19 age group accounted for the most arrests for rape from 2013 to 2017. The group that made of the second-highest number of arrests were those between 10 years old to 14 years old.

Department of Human Services spokeswoman Jackie Chamberlain agreed the bureau's statistics are concerning. But while she cant speculate why the rate of rape arrests for juveniles is higher than adults, she said those who are placed with the Division of Juvenile Justice Services have a higher rate of success than our general delinquency population.

Because of the nature of the crime, we take treatment seriously and provide individualized evidence-based approaches relying on the Network on Juveniles Offending Sexually treatment, she said.

Juvenile Justice Services statistics for 2014-2016 showed the overall recidivism rate was at about 50 percent. But for juveniles adjudicated for sex offenses, 23.8 percent were arrested for a new felony crime within a year of being released, Chamberlain said, but less than 1 percent were arrested for a new sex offense during that time period.

As you can see, our success rate for youth adjudicated on sex offenses is much higher than our general delinquency population," she said.

"The treatment we provide is individualized for each youth. These kids are generally with us for a longer period of time, and they receive very specific treatment while in our care. Additionally, due to the serious nature and type of the crime, they are followed closely after release.
COALVILLE  A handshake on the courthouse steps in Summit County during the Great Depression sealed a $12-per-acre land transaction and the start of a ranching tradition that has continued for four generations.

Earlier this month, Ercanbrack Livestock of Coalville was selected as the recipient of the 2018 Utah Leopold Conservation Award, which recognizes outstanding stewardship practices in the ranching and farming industries.

The award, named in honor of conservationist Aldo Leopold, is given in 14 states and, in Utah, comes with a $10,000 check and a crystal depiction of Leopold.

Ercanbrack Livestock is operated by Ed and Dixie Ercanbrack, and their adult children, Dane and Dusty.

According to one of the award sponsors, the Utah Farm Bureau, the Ercanbrack family works at making their land productive by targeting areas in need of water, regeneration and soil support.

The Ercanbrack family has been ranching cattle east of Coalville in Summit County on reclaimed mine land for almost 50 years, in a deal that started on the steps of the Summit County Courthouse in the Great Depression. They bought their land on a handshake at $12 an acre.

Since then, they've practiced prescribed and rotational grazing, to make the land the healthiest it could be to support their cattle, in addition to working on water development projects, firebreaks, reseeding of native grasses and helping regenerate aspen for the benefit of wildlife.

The family retrofitted cattle water facilities so birds and bats can safely drink on a 2,400-acre landscape that boasts healthy vegetation, warm coal soils and cliffs that also serves as a big game hunting area.

The Ercanbracks host youth groups on their ranch, have participated in pro-conservation videos for fellow ranchers and consumers, and advocated for conservation issues to legislators and agricultural organizations.

They are active partners with the Utah Department of Natural Resources in a forest stewardship plan.

The Leopold Conservation award is sponsored by the Sand County Foundation, the Utah Farm Bureau Federation, Western AgCredit and the Utah Cattlemen's Association.

We are extremely proud of the Ercanbrack family and the pride they take in the land and natural resources in their care, said Ron Gibson, Utah Farm Bureau Federation president. They represent the conservation ethic found in Utahs farmers and ranchers, and we salute them for their efforts.
SALT LAKE CITY  I raced home from work shortly after 5 p.m. to view the World Series. It was Oct. 17, 1989, and I was living and working in Northern California as a young editor for an afternoon daily newspaper. On this day the excitement was palpable in the Bay Area because the San Francisco Giants were taking the field against the Oakland A's in a long-hoped-for World Series matchup.

That's when the earth shook.

The epicenter of the soon-to-be-named Loma Prieta earthquake was about 10 miles northeast of Santa Cruz, and its force was felt throughout the greater Bay Area. Our own home in Napa was about 90 miles from that epicenter and the quake sounded like a semi rolling right by our house. Then it was the house that rolled. I've been in other earthquakes and it usually feels like a strong sustained shake or a sharp jolt, almost like a loud, violent bounce. But this quake rolled from south to north, from one side of the house to the next. The TV flickered off and it was difficult to stand for the 15 seconds it lasted. A photo of my wife and I taken when we were engaged crashed to the floor and for years we kept it in the same cracked frame reminding us of the quake.

Early reports suggested that hundreds would be dead in freeway collapses and destroyed buildings in Oakland, San Francisco and Santa Cruz. But when the dust settled and the recovery was complete, the death total stood at 63.

Consider this: The death toll rising from the ashes of the Northern California Camp Fire that wiped out the town of Paradise is now 84, with 500 still unaccounted for. Three others were killed in a devastating fire in Southern California the same week.

It follows last year's crushing fire in Santa Rosa and Sonoma, Napa and Lake counties, the so-called Tubbs Fire that killed 22 people in Sonoma County alone and destroyed more than 5,600 structures, wiping out whole neighborhoods.

It took only a year for the Tubbs Fire to be replaced as the most destructive in California history by the Camp Fire, and it means fires have replaced earthquakes as the greatest fear for many in the state. Throughout the West, including in Utah, as climate change and growth combine to increase risks, a new normal is emerging.

Drought, fire, change.

Friday the White House released a major scientific report issued by 13 federal agencies making dire predictions about the impact of climate change. The Fourth National Climate Assessment, mandated by Congress, issued the following warning:

"The impacts of climate change are already being felt in communities across the country. More frequent and intense extreme weather and climate-related events, as well as changes in average climate conditions, are expected to continue to damage infrastructure, ecosystems, and social systems that provide essential benefits to communities. Future climate change is expected to further disrupt many areas of life, exacerbating existing challenges to prosperity posed by aging and deteriorating infrastructure, stressed ecosystems, and economic inequality"

Part of the report contains a section on water:

"Rising air and water temperatures and changes in precipitation are intensifying droughts, increasing heavy downpours, reducing snowpack, and causing declines in surface water quality, with varying impacts across regions. Future warming will add to the stress on water supplies and adversely impact the availability of water in parts of the United States."

There is a desperate need for science to replace politics in the way climate change is discussed and decisions are made. There are signs that that may happen.

Earlier this month, prior to the report, Deseret News reporter Amy Joi O'Donoghue wrote the following about the new reality in Utah:

"Utah is plunging ahead on developing pilot projects for water banking, looking to shore up supplies in times of drought but preserve users' water rights that aren't being exercised."

Water will remain key to Utah's economic prosperity, in everything from agriculture to housing starts, from protecting the watershed along the Wasatch Front to attracting a second Olympic Games to Utah  no water, no snow, no Olympics.

And then there are those drought-fueled fires.

On Aug. 30 the Deseret News wrote: "Utah's fire season has weeks to go but has already burned through $75 million, 186,000 acres and destroyed close to 100 homes." In that story, also written by Amy Joi O'Donoghue, Utah officials lament the "horrible" fire season that was exacerbated by some horrible decision-making. State and federal officials have to find a way to communicate and work together to manage forest lands.

Each state can take from this report a strong sense of purpose about the support needed to address the real threats facing each community and the economies of the states and the nation. In Seattle there is a threat to the salmon industry. In the Carolinas and along the Gulf Coast states, it's the threat of more intense hurricanes wiping out whole communities.

There is much to be thankful for this weekend, including the winter weather that has put new snow into the mountains even as Thanksgiving leftovers were being consumed. But with thanks for the rain and snow comes a realization that now is the time to prepare for a future that looks much different then the past.
IDAHO FALLS  It occupies a sprawling 890 square miles in eastern Idaho, giving rise to the world's first production of electricity from nuclear energy.

The idea in 1949 by the military was to establish a premier nuclear energy research facility, build 10 reactors and run them for 15 years to uncover all the knowledge of splitting uranium atoms.

Then, pack up and walk away.

More than 50 nuclear reactors later, the Idaho National Laboratory is the nation's top nuclear research facility for the U.S. Department of Energy, employing thousands of people immersed in research that touches all corners of our lives.

The mysteries of science continue to reveal themselves in a vast research complex that is the birthplace of the U.S. Navy's nuclear submarine program and home to the world's foremost nuclear materials test reactor.

If you use a cellphone, operate a computer or rely on an energy grid (hint, we all do), the U.S. Department of Energy-sponsored research unfolding just 215 miles north of Salt Lake City is quietly designed to make your life better.

The Idaho National Laboratory is intertwined with multiple Utah projects, from helping keep cellphones functional for first responders in a catastrophic emergency to testing the functionality of batteries in electric vehicles.

It is North America's only producer of radioactive, medical grade cobalt-60 used in Gamma Knife radiosurgery, a type of radiation treatment for brain tumors used at facilities like the Intermountain Medical Center in Murray.

"I am a little biased, but I think we do some pretty cool science here," said Don Miley, a communications specialist at INL for the Advanced Test Reactor.

In a recent tour, Miley stepped out of his vehicle into the desert at the junction of U.S. 26 and U.S. 20.

In a 50-acre section southwest of this remote intersection, the laboratory's land may someday be home to the nation's first small modular nuclear reactor serving 46 cities and districts in six states, including Utah.

The project is still in the licensing phase of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the first of its kind under such regulatory scrutiny. Proponents say the next generation technology could be game changing in the energy sector, with carbon free power nuclear generation signficantly less risky than traditional nuclear power plants, and incredibly smaller.

While that continues to unfold, here is a glimpse of what is currently playing out in Utah through partnerships with the Idaho National Laboratory:

Vehicle research

The Idaho National Laboratory is a partner in Rocky Mountain Power's WestSmart Electric Vehicle corridor project, which aims to make available charging stations on major transportation corridors in the West.

This summer, officials celebrated the completion of the I-15 segment from the southern tip of Utah to its northern boundary. Plans include adding stations to I-80 and I-70, with the immediate next step to put charging stations on the route to the popular recreation destination of Moab.

Rocky Mountain Power received a $4 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy. The Idaho laboratory is an energy department facility that includes a sophisticated electric vehicle battery laboratory, where employees carry out research. Researchers bake EV batteries, freeze them or subject them to other elements to determine how varying conditions affect the length of a charge.

The laboratory's Shawn Salisbury is analyzing data gathered from Utah charging stations, some of which are along the I-15 electric vehicle corridor.

Salisbury, a vehicle testing engineer, said the analysis includes 103 Utah chargers, 23 of which are the DC fast chargers.

The 103 chargers provided drivers with over 81.7 megawatt-hours of energy through 9,703 charges in April through June of this year, Salisbury said.

"The goal is to increase the adoption of plug-in vehicles throughout Utah, Wyoming and Idaho," he said. "The way they are doing that is through the deployment of charging infrastructure to build up the charging network throughout the region. There is also an education and outreach component."

Rocky Mountain Power's James Campbell said the University of Utah has students working at the Idaho lab in this continuing research to assess how more charging stations could ultimately affect the grid and how that might be managed in the future.

Utah Clean Energy notes that there are 4,400 electric vehicles or plug-in hybrids in Utah, which make up just under one half of 1 percent of the entire fleet of vehicles in the state. The state, however, was No. 1 in the growth rate for electric vehicle adoption, the advocacy group said, in a trend they expect to continue.

As electric vehicle prices come down and the charging infrastructure expands, electric vehicles are expected to make up more than half of the vehicles in the country by 2040. Campbell said the research needs to be done now to understand grid impacts in the future.

"We're modeling at a community level in neighborhoods what happens if everybody gets a Tesla and they are charging at night," he said.

Current research, Campbell said, shows that Rocky Mountain Power's grid can handle a charging load without upgrades if 50 percent of all homes had an electric vehicle in the driveway.

"As we get faster and faster chargers, we are going to have to manage it a different way," Campbell said.

Hear me now?

The Idaho laboratory is working with the University of Utah on the critical issue of cellphone service for first responders in a cataclysmic event like an earthquake striking the Wasatch Front.

Hurricane Maria, for example, took out 90 percent of Puerto Rico's cellular networks, and it was 10 days before first responders were able to make contact with the island's 68 municipalities.

Firefighters and others relied on low-tech options like ham radio or AM radio.

Closer to home, the Federal Communications Commission said Hurricane Harvey in 2017 disrupted service to 16 emergency dispatch centers in Texas and Louisiana.

The U.'s Behrouz Farhang is working with scientists at the Idaho National Laboratory to research how to spread the wireless communication signal over wider bandwidth to open up more avenues for people to communicate over the air.

In short, researchers believe the radio spectrum is underutilized and has room to grow, with hopes of developing new "cognitive" radios to make the best use of the communication systems.

"One of the key pieces for us is redundancy," said Unified Fire Authority Assistant Chief Mike Watson.

"When a certain system goes down, we need a Plan B and a Plan C. Plan B is cellphones and Plan C is satellite phones."

The Plan B, ideally, will make it possible for first responders to not have to compete for traffic on cellphones should be there be a massive incident.

Watson said AT&T is working on developing the nation's first public safety broadband network.

The laboratory and university are also part of a $100 million effort that is one of the first in the United States and largest in the world to build a living "wireless" lab along stretches of downtown Salt Lake City to the campus itself.

Ultimately, the idea is for companies to test the latest revolutionary technology in the increasingly complex arena of wireless communications.

The Salt Lake network, along with a similar test bed that will be installed in New York City, will offer the only at-scale testing environments that provide both realistic size, and conditions, for researchers to thoroughly vet new innovations.

Geothermal innovation

Utah's Beaver County is the first and only place in the world where an underground laboratory to test new ways to access geothermal energy is under construction.

FORGE, or the Frontier Observatory for Research in Geothermal Engineering, is a U.S. Department of Energy project that may someday mean Utah residents  indeed the country  have easier, cheaper access to the earth's renewable thermal energy.

Researchers from around the world, including the Idaho National Laboratory, join the University of Utah in the $130 million project to test new technology in Utah's high plains desert.

The Idaho National Laboratory assisted the university in a preliminary site analysis in the project that is now in its second phase of development.

Utah already has 73 megawatts of installed geothermal capacity with a trio of producing plants, with the capability of generating 1,300 megawatts of energy.

Military and disasters

When Hurricane Michael ripped through Florida this month, it devastated Tyndall Air Force Base, inflicting catastrophic damage to structures, the flight line and the drone runway.

The base lost power and suffered billions in damages.

For years, the Idaho National Laboratory has been working with military installations in Utah and across the globe to assist them in their mission to become more resilient.

Tooele Army Depot makes about half the energy it consumes from renewable resources like wind and solar. It also worked with a contractor on a $1.7 million microgrid project after seeking technical assistance from the Idaho laboratory.

"The Army is really focusing on resiliency and site generation resources," said the laboratory's Kurt Myers, project manager and staff engineer in the power and energy systems department.

The system includes new generation 1-megawatt battery storage that will allow the facility to shape its energy demands.

Myers said the Army's goal is to sustain itself off the main grid for two weeks.

The laboratory lends it technical assistance and research in the arena of microgrids to military installations and other potential users such as government and universities.

A report by Grand View Research predicts the global market for microgrids will reach $17.51 billion by 2025.

These portable or stationary microgrids can either work with the utility grid or serve as islands in emergencies, Myers said.

In a civilian application, the microgrids can continue to power localized, critical services such as dispatch centers or hospitals should the main grid go down.

Myers has traveled to the Middle East, working with U.S. military leaders to find ways to deploy microgrids in foreign operations.

The U.S. military is the world's largest single consumer of petroleum, with Myers pointing out much of that is due to diesel in backup generators. Navigant Research points out that shifting from a reliance on backup diesel generators to large-scale microgrids could save the agency between $8 billion and $20 billion over the next 20 years.

Dugway Proving Ground is in the design phase for a microgrid and last year, the Utah National Guard sent a team to the Idaho National Laboratory to look at microgrid systems. Those microgrids can reduce fuel consumption and diversify a facility's energy sources.

Utah National Guard Capt. Keith Sestak said the guard wants to be able to operate "off grid" as much as possible in the event of an emergency.

Once Camp Williams gets a new turbine, he said the guard's energy status will be at net zero, meaning its consumption is equal to its renewable energy generation.

"The goal for Camp Williams is to come as close as possible to sustaining ourselves through the use of wind power, and we also have a pretty big solar array," he said.

"We are taking the best practices from INL to integrate into our system."
IDAHO FALLS, Idaho  A legacy of contamination from decades of operation led to a Superfund designation at the Idaho National Laboratory by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1989.

Now, even the milk of cows and goats nearby gets tested regularly for the presence of radioiodine, which can increase the risk of thyroid cancer in people.

Even though the animals are off-site of the 890-square-mile laboratory, the chemical nature of iodine makes it mobile under certain conditions, so it can be carried on the wind and deposited on livestock forage.

The Idaho Department of Environmental Quality collected 45 samples of milk from distribution centers and individual dairies in 2017, and did a split sample of testing with the U.S. Department of Energy to verify the efficacy of the results.

All came back no detect, according to the agency's annual report.

The agency has 10 air monitoring stations, took 126 atmospheric samples last year and does soil testing and monitoring for radiation penetration using both high pressure ion chambers with real-time testing and passive chambers as well.

More than 60 samples of groundwater, surface water and wastewater were tested in 2017, both within the laboratory boundaries and downstream.

As the result of a lawsuit Idaho filed against the U.S. Department of Energy and the Navy, a 1995 settlement agreement establishes requirements and deadlines for the volumes of radioactive waste at INL. There are 306 metric tons of spent fuel alone.

Specifically, the agreement calls for disposal of 84,799 cubic meters of transuranic waste  waste contaminated with artificial radioactive elements  in the deep geologic repository in the Chihuahuan Desert in New Mexico.

Natalie Creed, the state's hazardous waste unit manager, said the deadline of the waste's removal by the end of 2018 won't be met because of problems at the New Mexico Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.

"Some of the requirements they are on track to meet and are doing well, and some they are behind on, which is a challenge. The state of Idaho has been very clear that those things are a priority for us," she said.

The agreement also calls for the U.S. Department of Energy to treat all high-level waste at the laboratory in preparation for disposal elsewhere by 2035.

Idaho has an intense working relationship with the laboratory in the oversight of contamination, waste and emergency preparedness and response.

The state conducted at least four emergency drills last year and has an agency representative who is a liaison for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

All of this work, Creed said, is part of the ongoing effort to address the contamination of the Snake River Plain Aquifer and to prevent future problems.

"We want to protect the aquifer and prevent waste from migrating to it," she said.

The aquifer, added Beatrice Brailsford, is the sole source of drinking water for 300,000 Idaho residents and contains twice as much water as Lake Eerie.

"Cleanup has been going on quite vigorously for more than a decade. The biggest threats to the aquifer is the plutonium waste buried in unlined pits," she said.

Brailsford is the nuclear program manager for the Snake River Alliance, a watchdog organization founded in 1979.

"The contamination at the Snake River Plain Aquifer has been accidental, intentional and sometimes inadvertent," she said.

The alliance runs the Don't Waste Idaho campaign and is fighting the possible importation of 33,600 barrels of nuclear waste from Hanford, Washington, that could begin arriving at the Idaho National Laboratory next year.

It has also came out against the Carbon Free project by the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems that would put a small modular nuclear reactor at the Idaho National Laboratory to power some Utah cities in the future.

The alliance keeps close tabs on incidents at the Idaho National Laboratory, including the April rupture of a barrel of radioactive sludge. The rupture resulted in three firefighters receiving medical treatment for radioactive contamination.

Brailsford said the cleanup of contamination associated with the laboratory will take decades and cost billions.
SALT LAKE CITY  An Oregon-based company is in a global race to be the first to commercially deploy a small modular nuclear power reactor, and if successful, Utah residents served by municipal power systems would be among its first energy consumers.

NuScale's Carbon Free Power Project is scheduled to go online in 2026 at the Idaho National Laboratory a little over 200 miles north of Salt Lake City.

The 12-module reactor with the capacity to generate 720 megawatts of power will occupy a 34-acre site at the sprawling 890-square-mile U.S. Department of Energy facility.

Members of the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems, which serves cities and special districts in six Western states, are inking power sales contracts to move the project forward. So far, 30 members have signed on, and three said no thanks.

"The Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems wanted to have a carbon-free portfolio. We looked at big nuclear, but that was not something we wanted to do," said Doug Hunter, the group's general manager.

NuScale Power completed the design certification phase before the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and additional licensing requirements will be finished in 2020.

This fall, the company picked BWXT Technologies to begin engineering work for the reactor, a significant milestone in the project's development.

The small modular reactor is not like the 99 operating reactors at 61 nuclear power plants across the United States.

NuScale's chief technology officer Jose Reyes writes that this is how they differ:

 Upon loss of all power, the NuScale nuclear reactors will shut down without operator or computer actions.

 It will remain cooled for an unlimited period of time.

 Cooling of spent fuel can be achieved for five months without adding water.

 Multiple modular reactors reduce the risk of a systemwide emergency shutdown.

 Components can be assembled off site in a controlled factory setting and installed module by module.

Another positive aspect is cost. According to Hunter, the price tag for the NuScale project is $4.2 billion, which also includes the costs of financing. Meanwhile, the costs of big traditional plants are escalating. The most recent U.S. plant, Vogtle in Georgia, cost $19 billion for the first two units and will be $25 billion for the additional units now under construction.

Proponents of the project say the beauty of the NuScale design is that the reactors can't melt down, can't be hacked and the plant does not have to be shut down to be refueled. The reactors are underground and submerged in an 80-foot pool.

"This design is very simple in terms of its contrast to the large reactors," Hunter said. "The simplicity in this thing made it pass the design certification process quickly, which for UAMPS, was reassuring."

In December 2017, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission determined NuScale did not need a redundant power source because of its self-cooling features.

"The plant was intentionally designed to be as simple and effective as it possibly could be," said George W. Griffith, the senior reactor physicist with Idaho National Laboratory. "That determined everything else going on down the line."

The World Nuclear Association notes that the passive safety features of these reactors and their smaller geographic footprint and buffer zone considerations could lead to locating them at retired coal plant sites.

Griffith did the site characterization work at INL for the future location of the nuclear reactor, examining 60 different characteristics before narrowing the choice to one.

The NRC, he added, will do its own evaluation of NuScale's project in each licensing phase.

"They don't care about economics or how easy it is to build, they just care about the safety."

But the project has some big bucks behind it, or as it critics say, taxpayer-funded subsidies being dumped into an "unproven" technology.

In the global race to be the first nation to deploy small module nuclear reactors, the U.S. Department of Energy selected NuScale for five-year competitive funding of up to $226 million, of which NuScale will match. The money is meant to accelerate the development of the project ahead of competitors like Russia or China.

A study released in September by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology gave a specific nod to NuScale and small modular reactors as a design ready for commercialization.

"The Future of Nuclear Energy in a Carbon Constrained World" notes the specific role of modular reactors to meet energy needs in both developed and developing countries, especially with global warming driving policy considerations and laws around fossil fuel consumption.

Hunter said with that pressure on to reduce emissions, member cities are looking to craft a clean energy portfolio that shifts away from traditional sources like coal.

The group is investing in "micro energy" projects such as wind, rooftop solar and distributed generation and believes nuclear power could provide base load generation.

"From a personal point of view  climate change, if it is anthropomorphic  it will have all the utilities regulated down the road, whether we like it or not," Hunter said.

"This is very complementary to renewables."

The project is not without its chorus of critics, including organizations like HEAL Utah, radioactive waste watchdog groups and people who hear "nuclear" and think of Three Mile Island or more recently, the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan.

Scott Williams, executive director of HEAL Utah, visited with leaders from multiple Utah cities that are part of the NuScale project to persuade them there are other options.

"We don't believe nuclear power is a necessary part of their portfolio from a reliability standpoint or from a diversification standpoint," he said.

Williams said he believes UAMPS is using outdated assumptions about the need to include base load generation from nuclear power and generate 40 to 80 year's worth of nuclear waste in order to assure system reliability.

UAMPS members, he added, will be able achieve the same reliability at lower rates within 10 to 20 years with innovations in energy efficiency, grid integration and energy storage technology. In the meantime, Williams said, they can use existing natural gas peaking plants as a bridge technology, which while carbon-based is still much less intensive than coal.

HEAL Utah plans to hire a company that will model power portfolio options for potential customers of the NuScale nuclear power, looking specifically at system reliability and rates.

"That is their focus, reliability and rates. Our motivation is the waste," he said.

Williams said that as an environmental advocacy organization, HEAL Utah is opposed to the generation of any more high level nuclear waste.

"When we talk to communities, we tell them we don't like the idea of this waste being generated when there is already nuclear waste sitting around the country and is there is no national solution to its storage."

Yucca Mountain in Nevada was the planned depository for the storage of high level nuclear waste, but President Obama scuttled the project by yanking the funding after two decades of research.

The decision stranded 81,000 metric tons of nuclear waste stored at 61 current and former nuclear reactor sites across the country and dealt the nuclear power industry a signficant setback.

Beatrice Brailsford, nuclear program director for the Snake River Alliance, said the cleanup at Idaho National Laboratory will take decades as it is.

"Now is not the time to be adding more nuclear waste," she said.

At the NuScale project, 4 acres of land on the 35-acre site in Idaho are designated as storage for the spent nuclear fuel, which actually is a solid.

Once nuclear fuel goes through a reactor once, it is termed "spent," even though there is a significant amount of energy that remains.

The used fuel, which is highly radioactive, is shielded and cooled in water.

The NRC requires five years of "wet fuel" storage, but Hunter said the NuScale plant will have the capability to store the material twice that long.

After it reaches a certain radioactive temperature, the pellets are put in dry cask storage in steel cylinders.

Hunter said the site can store 60 years of waste, which is overseen by the U.S. Department of Energy.

"This is the only cycle of power production that I know of where we keep track of every single molecule in the waste stream," Hunter said. "It is highly regulated."

Williams counters: "They make it sound like it is a very minimal footprint at the Idaho site, but it is the most poisonous stuff there is."

While the permanent solution to the storage issue still awaits, Hunter said the nuclear industry and regulators have a long track record of safely handling nuclear waste.

Spent fuel has been safely stored for many decades at hundreds of locations," he said. "The industry has the technology and experience to safely handle it. In the 65 years of nuclear power production in the United States and globally, there has never been a serious accident involving spent fuel.

The municipal energy group is pursuing the acquisition of water for the project and at this stage, existing transmission infrastructure is sufficient to convey the energy, Hunter said.

During this $6 million study phase, the U.S. Department of Energy is picking up half the cost, while Hunter's group puts in $1.5 million, as well as NuScale's $1.5 million.

Hunter said the group can back out at any time prior to construction if the costs and projected rates aren't palatable to members.

Williams said he is skeptical those costs will ever be low enough, while Hunter said he believes the project could stabilize rates for participants for up to 40 years.

As the project moves forward, Hunter and his colleagues have been meeting with community members both in Idaho and Utah to answer questions and address concerns.

"The critics  I am not going to criticize them for their fear," he said. "We are really trying to engage with folks, and be open. This is a community decision. If the community doesn't want to do it, we are not going to make them do it. My job is to implement their decisions."
PROVO  A man who was recently ordered to pay nearly $700,000 for selling fake Latter-day Saint artifacts is also being investigated for stealing rare photos from the BYU library, according to court documents.

According to a newly unsealed search warrant, Kevin Schuwer, 29, of Lehi, went to the Harold B. Lee Library on the campus of Brigham Young University in October and requested to see photos in the Special Collections room.

"While looking at the photos, Schuwer removed an original photo of Porter Rockwell from its protective sleeve and replaced it with a fake copy of the same picture. Schuwer then sold the original photo to a collector in Utah County for $2,000," the warrant states.

That same buyer told police he also purchased "three rare LDS Church books" from Schuwer that all had "markings showing they were BYU property," according to the warrant served by BYU police.

Investigators also learned that Utah State University was "missing a rare photo of Orson F. Whitney that disappeared after Kevin Schuwer visited their library. This picture was sold online to a collector in California by Kevin Schuwer. The same collector reported he also purchased a rare picture of Porter Rockwell for $11,500 from Kevin Schuwer. The Porter Rockwell picture belongs to the Daughters of the Pioneers Museum in Salt Lake City, which was stolen out of a display frame and replaced with a fake," the warrant states.

Schuwer was arrested on Oct. 30, the warrant states. He told police he took the Rockwell picture as well as "six rare books" that he intended to sell, according to the warrant.

During a search of Schuwer's iPhone and iPad, investigators found 38,000 images, the warrant states.

"Kevin Schuwer used his iPad and iPhone extensively and exclusively to sell vintage items on the internet to collectors around the country. Some of these sales have been stolen property," the warrant states. "Kevin Schuwer was also manufacturing digital reproductions of photographs that he used to replace when stealing the originals. It is believed Kevin Schuwer was using these devices to reproduce copies of vintage photos."

Also on Oct. 30, a "judgment by confession" was entered against Schuwer in 4th District Court. Schuwer was ordered to pay Tracy Rawle $694,701.92, according to the judgment.

According to court documents, Schuwer sold Rawle several fake items in 2017, including "a counterfeit 1835 LDS Church hymnal" for $65,000, and a counterfeit 1849 Mormon gold coin for $60,000.

Court records also state that Schuwer facilitated the sale of other rare items, but pocketed the money rather than paying the owner of the artifacts. Those sales included "a 1614 King James Bible, previously owned by King James," for $105,000, an "1837 Book of Mormon that was claimed to have been previously owned by James Talmage," and an "1835 LDS Doctrine & Covenants that was represented by defendant to have been previously owned by Emma Smith."

Schuwer also sold Rawle's "1830 Book of Mormon for the sum of $105,000," but never gave Rawle the money, claiming he left the check at his parent's house in Canada, the judgment states.

According to court records, by making a judgment of confession, "the defendant is confessing to the conduct and to the judgment in an effort to pay the plaintiff the amount wrongfully obtained by him from plaintiff, and to avoid the costs of litigation and likely punitive damage claims."
SALT LAKE CITY  Salt Lake City police recently assisted Wyoming authorities in a child abuse investigation, according to court records.

On Nov. 3, a 6-month-old girl was flown by medical helicopter from Afton, Wyoming, to Primary Children's Hospital after doctors in Afton "located a brain bleed on the child," according to a search warrant unsealed in 3rd District Court.

While at Primary's, doctors discovered "multiple injuries," including a skull fracture, multiple bruises on the neck, left arm, left foot and a broken collarbone in the process of healing that was believed to have been broken two weeks earlier, the warrant states. The "internal head injuries were caused by shaking and or impact," doctors at the hospital told investigators, while "the external bruising...(was) from abuse or rough handling," the warrant states.

"The injuries ... do not appear to be consistent with a six-month-old childs activities. Many of the injuries appear to be consistent with child abuse and shaken child syndrome," an officer wrote in a second warrant.

Police questioned the girl's mother and boyfriend. According to the warrant, the young girl was driven to a hospital in Wyoming by her grandmother who a nurse described as "very frantic," the warrant states. The child's mother and her boyfriend were also in the car, but "acted standoffish and appeared to have little emotion," the warrant states.

Search warrants were served by a Salt Lake City officer on the couple's cellphones and DNA evidence was also collected. As of Sunday, it was unclear whether Wyoming authorities had made any arrests or if charges had been filed.
SALT LAKE CITY  Police say a man released from federal prison just two months ago was still wearing an ankle monitor when they arrested him following a hit-and-run accident involving a stolen vehicle.

On Saturday, Unified police say John Jessie Samora, 27, of Magna, was involved in a traffic accident. Two women, aged 30 and 70, received minor injuries, according to police.

Samora, who was still wearing an ankle monitor, ran from the scene. Witnesses followed him to a Walmart parking lot where they lost sight of him, according to a Salt Lake County Jail report. Later, police received a call of a man matching Samora's description running through yards and hiding behind a trailer near 1925 W. 4600 South, the report states.

Officers found Samora behind the trailer and arrested him at gunpoint, according to the report. Witnesses at the crash scene identified Samora because of a tattoo of red lips on his right cheek, the report states. He was arrested for investigation of being in a stolen car and failing to remain at the scene of an accident.

Court records show Samora has an extensive criminal history in Utah, including several cases of fleeing from police.
For 11 years, ex-employees of Samsung have been fighting for compensation after hundreds of workers fell fatally ill after working in the companys semi-conductor and LCD display manufacturing facilities. Many former workers of the factories are said to have been diagnosed with various forms of cancer. The scandal was brought to light in 2007, and over 200 individual cases were documented. Around 70 of those workers are now dead.

Samsung has publicly apologised for creating an unsafe work environment that led to such fatal illnesses. The company held a news conference in Seoul, South Korea, where Samsungs President for Device Solutions, Kinam Kim admitted that the company failed to sufficiently manage health threats.

We sincerely apologise to the workers who suffered from illness and their families. We have failed to properly manage health risks at our semiconductor and LCD factories. he said.

Samsung also agreed to create a fund that will pay out 100 billion won ($85.8 million) to compensate employees that are reported to have been exposed dangerous work environment in 2015. Samsung will compensate all employees who suffered from leukemia up to 150 million won (USD 130,000) who worked in the factory May 14, 1984 onwards. Samsung will also contribute 50 billion won (US $4.4 million) to Korea Occupational Safety and Health Agency.

The apology and agreement to compensate marks the end of a long-standing battle. It started in 2007 when the Hwang Sang-gi, father of a 23-year old girl who died of leukemia after working in a Samsung plant refused to accept a settlement from the company. Samsung and Banolim, a rights group formed by the family members of the employees who died from cancer have agreed on a settlement. The had earlier issued a formal apology in 2014 but compensated victims who are not associated with the rights group. However, after a prolonged battle, Samsung has agreed to the demands of the group.
The Minister for Justice and Equality, Charlie Flanagan TD, and the Minister of State for Equality and Integration, David Stanton TD, have condemned the arson attack on the Caiseal Mara Hotel in Moville which took place in the early hours of this morning.

Gardai in Buncrana are investigating all circumstances surrounding a fire that occurred at a hotel on Foyle Street, Moville this morning (Sunday).

The hotel - the Caiseal Mara Hotel - is to be the location for the new direct provision centre in the town and is to provide accommodation for around 100 people.

The incident happened at around 4.30am.

One male in his 50s was taken to Letterkenny University Hospital for treatment, and there has been extensive damage to the premises.

Gardai are appealing for witnesses, anyone with information or anyone that was in the area that may have seen suspicious activity on Foyle Street, Moville prior or after the fire are asked to contact Buncrana Garda Station on (074) 9320540 the Garda Confidential Line or any Garda Station.

Commenting on the incident, Minister Flanagan said: I condemn this attack and those behind it in the strongest possible terms. This was a despicable incident and could have led to very serious tragedy. I send my best wishes for a full recovery to the injured person and all those impacted by the fire. I am urging anyone with any information with regard to this fire to contact the Gardai.

Minister Stanton added: I deplore this attack. The hotel is being prepared for accommodation by persons seeking international protection in Ireland. That people would target such a building in this way is deeply shameful. This action is not at all representative of the welcome of the overwhelming majority of people in both Donegal and Ireland as whole. 

Pending a complete assessment of the damage, the Department will not be making further comment.

Condemning the incident the Donegal Intercultural Platform said the fire that damaged the Caiseal Mara "has all the

hallmarks of a racist arson attack."

Direct provision

Their statement added: "Whilst we are fierce critics of the unsatisfactory Direct Provision system, we offered our welcome and support to the new residents, many of who have undergone a traumatic journey to arrive in Ireland to seek asylum. Our steering group has supported the inclusive efforts of local people, particularly the Inishowen Welcomes group

and Failte Inishowen who have taken the lead in offering support and assistance to the refugee families.



"Donegal is the home of Cead Mile Failte  the hundred thousand welcomes -and these actions do not reflect the

views or intentions of Donegal people of all ethnic and faith backgrounds.

"We hope there will be a speedy assessment of the damage caused and prompt repairs made so that the families can

find a welcome shelter before the Christmas holidays. If the building cannot be easily repaired we call on local

agencies to secure alternative accommodation in the area until such times as the fire damage can be made good.



"If this was indeed a racist hate crime then we condemn it. Also we call on everyone to join together and say loud and

clear  there is room at the Inn this Christmas and throughout the year."

Cllr Micheal Cholm MacGiolla Easbuig said he wished to add his voice to the condemnations of the attack: "I wish to add my voice to the many people who are disgusted and outraged at the arson attack on the Caiseal Mara hotel in Moville.

"100 refugees from Syria were to be housed in the hotel and a group has been formed locally to welcome the new residents to the community. This will be a setback but, hopefully, only a short term obstacle.



"It is imperative that we welcome refugees to this country, not least because our own people have been forced to become economic refugees to countries throughout the world. We have see how some countries treated Irish migrants badly and we still remember those attacks on Irish people because of their nationality or religion. That memory makes the attacks on refugees here all the more shameful."
Welcome Guest! You Are Here:
A group of St. Vincent's Home Economics students made the most of the wonderful sunshine and fantastic culinary delights on a recent trip to Southern Italy, where they experienced the food and culture of the beautiful Mediterranean country.

Group leader Jacinta Monaghan described how the girls soaked up the atmosphere on their arrival with a tour of the ancient city of Rome.

After an early start we arrived in Ciampino Airport to glorious weather and our first stop was a guided tour of the city which included the Trevi fountain, the Roman Forum and of course the world renowned Colosseum, where we enjoyed our first authentic Italian meal while watching the evening sun set.

The group stayed in the beautiful coastal town of Sorrento, overlooking the Bay of Naples, famous for its stunning cliff top views and warren of narrow streets.

The next three days was a wonderful feast for any food-lover, with pastry classes where the students tasted the traditional rum-soaked bread Baba, the coffee-roasting factory Torrefazione Maresca, where our energy levels doubled with rich Italian espresso and honey farms with delectable homemade honey and marmalade.

Amongst the various delights sampled were the oil of Oleificio Gargiulo, the cheese of La Sorgente, the oldest mozzarella factory in Sorrento and a firm favourite with the girls, Mamas cooking school where they expertly cooked and ate mouth-watering gnocchi and pizza.

They also discovered what a real sorbet looked like and the best way to roll out a pizza dough.

The trip also included the dazzling Amalfi city, preceded by a tour of its famous panoramic coastline.

There was also a sobering visit to the archaeological site of Pompeii, which was destroyed in 79 A.D. when Mount Vesuvius catastrophically erupted.

Jacinta added: The trip was a huge success, giving the girls a real sense of Italian cuisine alongside a taste of the wealth of history and culture in this fabulous region.
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MEXICO CITY  Leaders of the incoming Mexican government are in talks with American officials to allow migrants applying for asylum in the United States to remain in Mexico while they await a decision  a drastic overhaul of current policy that President Trump suggested Saturday night was as good as a done deal.

While Mexican officials said no decision has been made, leaders of the incoming government are under immense pressure to deal with thousands of migrants lined up along the border between the two countries. The top officials of the incoming Mexican administration plan to meet as early as Sunday to discuss the proposal, according to the incoming foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, who will take office on Dec. 1.

A decision to allow the migrants to stay inside of Mexico while awaiting word from the United States courts would be a sharp reversal of the current policy, which allows asylum seekers to remain in the United States until their petition is resolved.

Migrants at the Southern Border will not be allowed into the United States until their claims are individually approved in court. We only will allow those who come into our Country legally. Other than that our very strong policy is Catch and Detain. No Releasing into the U.S  Mr. Trump said in a tweet.
EU leaders approve Brexit deal

European Council chief says EU has endorsed Withdrawal Agreement, Political Declaration on future EU- UK relations.

The 27 members of the European Union have approved the Brexit deal, the European Council President Donald Tusk announced on Sunday.

TUSK TWITTED A POST ABOUT EU- UK RELATIONS

"EU27 has endorsed the Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration on the future EU-UK relations," Tusk wrote in a Twitter post.

MEETIN WAS HELD IN BRUSSELS

Leaders of the EU countries were meeting on Sunday in Brussels to finalize the U.Ks departure from the EU.

THE UK IS SET TO LEAVE THE EU IN MARCH 2019

The final deal will face a vote in the House of Commons of the UK and the EU Parliament. The U.K. is set to leave the EU in March 2019.
Far Out: Countercultural Seekers and the Tourist Encounter in Nepal by Mark Liechty, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2017; pp xiv +387, $35.

Mark Liechtys name is already well established among students and researchers of Nepali history and society, and Suitably Modern, his wryly titled 2003 book on the Kathmandu middle classes, is a rare example of a Nepal-focused monograph that has made it onto anthropology reading lists worldwide. So, this reviewer was not alone in greeting the news that Liechty was about to publish a study of the history of tourism in Nepal with delight. It turned out that he had been working on it for over 20 years, latterly with the assistance of two of Nepals excellent young researchers, Rashmi Sheila and Ramakanta Tiwari.

The book under review, Far Out: Countercultural Seekers and the Tourist Encounter in Nepal, at a little under 400 pages, is quite a hefty tome. Its cover is a Desmond Doig watercolour of the iconic view of the Basantapur tower of the Hanuman Dhoka palace in Kathmandu, as seen from Freak Street during the hippie heyday. Foreigners fill the street, the men all long-haired, with just one Nepali figure at the margin. Signboards declare: New Hungry Eye, Orient Lodge, Dont Pass Me By Restaurant. The title and its cover, therefore, suggest that this is a study of the hippie period of the history of tourism in Nepal. However, Liechtys account of the hippie period actually amounts to a little under half of the study, because the book attempts to do a great deal more than simply reconstruct (and deconstruct) a fascinating period. As the books title suggests, its central purpose is to analyse the history of tourism in Nepal in terms of an encounter between the foreign visitor and the visited Nepali.
UPDATE: The Pound Sterling Australian Dollar (GBP/AUD) exchange rates have recovered losses experienced this morning and at the time of writing is trading at 1.77233, in line with last weeks close and marking an overall change of -0.01% for the day so far.

Sterling markets this morning seemed unnaturally muted given the Brexit developments over the weekend with investors still maintaining caution over the path ahead. It seems for the moment at least that caution has abated.

Given the EUs approval of the Brexit withdrawal bill alongside how the negotiations thus far have underpinned the Sterlings FX value, its unsurprising that we see a rise in the Sterling as investors may be trying to establish long Sterling positions in the hope that the current milestone is but the beginning of further progress.

BoEs Carney is due to speak this evening which could prompt some volatility if he chooses to touch on the sensitive issues at hand, namely the UKs withdrawal from the EU and any likely economic impact for the UK.

GBP/AUD Exchange Rate Falls Despite Brexit Bill Agreement and Increased Mortgage Approvals

UPDATE: The Pound Sterling Australian Dollar (GBP/AUD) exchange rate has slumped over the course of the morning from a high of 1.77448 to its current level of 1.76985 after a daily low of 1.76484.

After gapping higher this morning the Sterling has fallen against the Australian Dollar. Approval by the EU Council of the Brexit Withdrawal Bill has yet to manifest into the expected Sterling boost.

Speaking to the BBC this morning, Chief Investment Officer at Kleinwort House, Mouhammed Choukeir said, "The lack of movement in sterling is a little bit perplexingTypically, what we see on any announcement [that is] Brexit-related, if it is considered to be a removal of uncertainty, it is usually positive and if it is adding to the uncertainty, it is usually negative.

This mornings mortgage approval figures release from UK Finance, saw an above forecast increased from 38.7k to 39.7k new mortgage approvals by high street banks, the highest level since July of this Year.

PREVIOUSLY: The British Pound to Australian Dollar exchange rates were able to hold its ground as US-China trade jitters weighed on market demand for the risky trade-correlated Aussie, despite some domestic UK political concerns weighing on Sterling on Friday,

After opening the week at the level of 1.7496, GBP/AUD spent most of the week putting in solid gains as investors sold the Australian Dollar. On Thursday, GBP/AUD briefly touched a weekly high of 1.7799 and trended in the region of 1.7766 on Friday before markets closed for the week.

UK-EU Brexit Deal Helps British Pound (GBP) to Sustain Gains Versus Weakened Australian Dollar (AUD)

Investors spent most of the last week selling the Australian Dollar, making it easier for even a mixed Pound to sustain gains.

Earlier in the week, markets were disappointed by the Reserve Bank of Australias (RBA) indication that it would not take a more hawkish stance on monetary policy any time soon.

Demand for the Australian Dollar was further weakened by fresh trade tensions between the US and China, dimming market hopes for the nations to see more productive trade talks and de-escalate trade tensions.

US Vice President Mike Pence noted that controversial US tariffs on imports of Chinese goods would remain in place until China changed its ways.

The news made investors anxious that an upcoming meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping may be more tense than productive.

Towards the end of the week, the Pound saw a jump in demand thanks to a political declaration from the UK and EU regarding post-Brexit relations. The news made investors confident that the UK-EU Brexit deal would smoothly be finalised at this weekends EU summit.

Still, the Pounds gains were limited as market concerns persisted about the support, or lack of support, that UK Prime Minister Theresa Mays Brexit plan has among UK MPs.

Pound Sterling (GBP) Exchange Rate Forecast: Domestic Reaction to Brexit Plan in Focus

Next week will see the publication of UK distributive trades data from CBI and Britains November consumer confidence stats from GfK, but these are unlikely to be particularly influential with markets focused on Brexit developments.

When markets open on Monday, investors will react to the outcome of Sundays UK-EU Brexit summit. The deal is expected to be smoothly finalised, so unless are notable surprises are perceived the Pound is unlikely to see a strong reaction.

Instead, investors will be focused on UK political developments, particularly the perceived popularity of the negotiated UK-EU Brexit deal.

The deal is predicted to go to UK Parliament vote in December, and analysts are concerned that there is not enough support for the bill to pass. This could keep pressure on the Pound and prevent it from continuing its advance.

Australian Dollar Exchange Rates (AUD) Forecast: G20 Meeting Could Influence US-China Trade Jitters

Some notable Australian ecostats due for publication in the coming week include Australia construction stats on Wednesday, new home sales on Thursday and private sector credit on Friday.

These are unlikely to be significantly influential, and Australian Dollar investors are most likely to focus on an upcoming G20 meeting to be held in Argentina.

US President Donald Trump and China President Xi Jinping are expected to meet at the G20 meeting, and markets are hoping for some kind of de-escalation on trade tensions.

If trade tensions persist or worsen though, the Australian Dollar will weaken and the Pound to Australian Dollar exchange rate will have an easier time advancing.
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The sudden downfall of Carlos Ghosn looks set to unleash a power struggle between Renault SA and Nissan Motor Co. over the alliance he oversaw for two decades.

While both sides say they're committed to the partnership, they're already prepping for a battle over control of the world's biggest car alliance, people familiar with their discussions said. And with the French and Japanese governments also keen to defend their own interests, it could devolve into one of the toughest corporate slugfests of recent times.

Ghosn's arrest in Japan for alleged financial misconduct opens the door for Nissan to try to rebalance the alliance, while Renault is bracing to resist any effort to undermine its position, said the people. At the outset, Renault was the stronger partner, but over the years circumstances have changed: Nissan now sells a third more cars annually and earns more profit.

"The crisis has just started for the alliance," said Kenneth Courtis, chairman of Starfort Investment Holdings, an investment, private equity and commodity group. "All the problematic stuff is now going to come to the surface."

This story is based on discussions with more than half a dozen individuals close to the companies, who asked not to be identified discussing private matters. A representative from Renault declined to comment, while a Nissan official didn't immediately return a call seeking comment.

Nissan's board ousted Ghosn as chairman on Thursday, three days after his arrest, a stunning fall from grace for an executive widely credited with rescuing the carmaker from collapse in 1999. With Ghosn gone, Chief Executive Officer Hiroto Saikawa is already plotting a review of the alliance to make it more equitable for the Japanese carmaker, people familiar with the plans said. Nissan has also long been irked by French government meddling in the alliance, one person said.

The French company will resist any sudden moves to reshape the relationship, other people familiar said. Possible scenarios include bringing in another partner such as Germany's Daimler AG to strengthen the European arm of the alliance, two people said, though no such plans are currently under discussion. Daimler and Renault-Nissan started working together eight years ago on small cars and delivery vans. The three-way cooperation is underpinned by a cross-shareholding of 3.1 percent.

France could also tap an executive with credibility on both sides, such as Toyota Motor Corp.'s Executive Vice President Didier Leroy, to act as an intermediary, one person said. The Frenchman and former Renault executive, 60, is a well-regarded business figure in Japan. Leroy declined to comment.

An alliance meeting is planned for next week in Amsterdam, that may include Daimler, said a person with knowledge of the matter.

Renault, with the French state as its biggest shareholder, has a 43 percent voting stake in Nissan, which in turn owns just 15 percent of Renault, with no voting rights. That imbalance has caused simmering resentment at Nissan for years.

Lately, the structure has become increasingly controversial in Japan due to Nissan's improved performance. Nissan sold roughly 5.8 million cars last year - compared with just 3.7 million for Renault - and provides links to China, where Renault only has a small presence, and the U.S., where the French carmaker is absent.

According to Japanese corporate law, Renault's voting rights could be canceled if Nissan raises its shareholding to more than 25 percent in the French carmaker. Under French rules, if Renault lowered its stake in Nissan below 40 percent, then it will help the Japanese carmaker get voting rights in the French company.

Prior to his arrest this week, Ghosn was busy working on plans to make the alliance "permanent," possibly through a merger, as reported by Bloomberg in March. That push was facing resistance from within Nissan, including from Saikawa, his former protege.

Both sides agree that the future of the partnership is more important than the fate of Ghosn, who remains in the same prison as the death-row inmates from the Japanese cult that perpetrated the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin attack, many of whom were executed just a few months ago. He hasn't commented publicly since his arrest.

The allegations against him were of a precise and serious nature, a French government official close to President Emmanuel Macron later said. He also said the state is willing to hold long-term talks about adjusting the shareholder pact to address the tensions, but not now and certainly not until the current governance situation is cleared up. Renault replaced Ghosn as CEO on a temporary basis while awaiting more information.

Macron followed the spectacle around Ghosn's arrest on Monday through the headlines, just like his finance minister and the officials in charge of the state's stake in Renault, according to two officials with knowledge of the matter. The French head of state had been given no warning that trouble was brewing for the 64-year-old Ghosn, even though Renault employs almost 50,000 people in France.

Nissan may have been motivated to keep the French out of the loop by their recollections of a bruising power struggle in 2015 when Macron, as economy minister, boosted the government's stake in Renault without warning Ghosn or the Japanese. That allowed France to thwart Nissan's efforts to increase its influence at the French carmaker.

The conflict couldn't come at a more perilous moment. The rollout of electric vehicles and a move toward autonomous driving are presenting long-term challenges and demanding enormous investment, making the manufacturing scale and R&D muscle provided by the alliance more important than ever. A separation of joint production, model development, engine sharing and parts purchasing could cause years of disarray.

Investors blindsided by Ghosn's arrest for alleged financial misconduct and fearing a destructive corporate battle sold off both companies' shares. Renault is down more than 6 percent over the past week, while Nissan has slid about 4 percent since the outbreak of the scandal. At $36 billion, Nissan's market value is almost twice as large as Renault's.

"All parties involved should be aware that the last thing Nissan and Renault need is an ongoing management and cultural spat which would ultimately lead to a dysfunctional Alliance and further fading competitiveness," Arndt Ellinghorst, an analyst at Evercore ISI, wrote in a note to clients.
This months midterm elections resulted in the election of more openly lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people than ever before. But for Cross Coburn, who served as an openly gay councilman in a small Texas city, it was a day of bitter defeat.

He was ousted in a recall election on Nov. 6, nine months after he was told that City Hall had received an anonymous package of nude photos that Coburn had sent in private messages on a dating app. Those photos were later sent to the local news media, after which supporters of a petition to remove him questioned whether he fit the moral standards of the city.

I regret that it got out, but I will never regret being human, said Coburn, who served about one year of a two-year term. I do not believe that me having consensual conversations with another adult has any merit to how I can perform my duties.

Coburn, 19, ran uncontested for the nonpartisan position last year and supported liberal policies in Groves, Texas, a conservative community of about 16,000 people near the Louisiana border.

I did want to give back to this place that raised me, Coburn said.

He said he had encountered sexual bias while growing up in Groves and was regularly bullied by other children. As the petition and recall campaign against him built, Coburn said, he thought he was being targeted by religious conservatives because of his sexuality.

Chuck Smith, chief executive of Equality Texas, an advocacy group focusing on LGBT issues, said the recall result was sad, especially in contrast to the success of LGBT candidates nationwide.

Someone organized the equivalent of a tar-and-feathering to get him removed from office, Smith said.

Sex scandals, particularly those involving explicit photographs, have long led to the downfall of politicians. Eric Greitens, the former governor of Missouri, resigned earlier this year after he was accused of taking an explicit photograph of a woman he was having an affair with without her permission, and threatening to make the photograph public if she told anyone about him.

Last year, Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, announced that he would not run for re-election this year after a sexually explicit photograph of him was posted by an anonymous Twitter account. At the time, Barton suggested he was a potential victim of a crime under the states revenge pornography law.

Coburn is now formally challenging the outcome of his recall election, filing a complaint in the District Court of Jefferson County that alleges, in part, that some signatures on the petition were forged. He has also asked the state attorney general to look into that allegation; a spokeswoman for the office said she could neither confirm nor deny an investigation.

He said he believed he had been blackmailed through the dating app, and that Mayor Brad Bailey and Councilman Kyle Hollier helped orchestrate the recall effort.

Bailey did not respond to requests for comment about Coburn. I think you should be held to a higher position up here and his track record speaks for itself, he told reporters in September, according to Texas Monthly.

Reached by email, Hollier said his only comment was the voters of Groves have spoken.

Coburn was elected to the City Council in 2017 after the incumbent councilman unexpectedly withdrew from the race, saying that a contested election would be too costly for the city, according to The Port Arthur News.

Nothing seemed amiss during his first few months in office, he said, but in February he was summoned to a meeting with Bailey because of a personal matter.

At that point I was confused, Coburn said. I was a little shocked. I didnt know what he meant.

At the meeting, Coburn said, Bailey produced a manila envelope that he said had been anonymously mailed to City Hall. It contained screenshots of a conversation Coburn had with another man on the dating app Grindr, along with nude photos of Coburn.

Coburn said that he does not know who received the photos he had sent on Grindr, and that any identifying information on the screenshots received by the city had been edited out.

According to Coburn, Bailey indicated that he could choose to resign, or that the city could initiate an unspecified investigation. Days later, the mayor directly asked Coburn if he would resign.

He said no.

Soon Coburn started getting calls from the local news media. Someone had sent them the photos. Coburn found himself on the defensive, and he apologized.

At this point I dont know what I apologized for, Coburn said. It was on a private dating app. I really dont have anything to apologize for. But I was apologizing that it was brought up in the first place.

According to Texas Monthly, the photos were sent to the news media shortly after the city attorney had suggested in an internal email that only citizens could remove Coburn, via a recall election. A resident soon started the petition, which received more than 900 signatures.

In the recall election on Nov. 6, just over 2,400 Groves residents voted in favor of removing Coburn, about 62 percent of the total votes cast. Bailey was narrowly re-elected in his race.

On Friday, Coburn said the fight was far from over, pointing in part to his complaint, but also to what he called a renewed political vigor from the experience.

It has given me a sense of duty, he said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times
BRUSSELS  European Union leaders formally agreed a Brexit deal on Sunday and urged Britons to back Prime Minister Theresa Mays package in the face of furious opposition in the British parliament.





The 27 leaders took barely half an hour at a summit in Brussels to rubber-stamp a 600-page treaty setting the terms of Britains withdrawal from the EU on March 29 and a 26-page declaration outlining a future free trading relationship.





May, who joined them shortly afterwards for what will be a brief meeting to seal the accord, now faces a struggle to get the deal, which has angered eurosceptics and EU supporters alike, through a deeply divided British parliament.





In an open letter to the nation, May said she would campaign heart and soul to get her Brexit deal through.





It will be a deal that is in our national interest, one that works for our whole country and all of our people, whether you voted Leave or Remain, she said.





But any hope that she can clinch concessions to try to win over her critics was crushed by EU leaders.





Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, whose country holds the presidency of the EU until the end of the year, said: One thing is clear. There will be no further negotiations.





European Union chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker said that while the deal was the best one possible, it was no time for champagne or applause following the agreement.





Meanwhile, European Council President Donald Tusk said the bloc was determined to have as close as possible a partnership with Britain, which has long been sceptical about deeper EU integration.





French President Emmanuel Macron said Britains Brexit vote showed Europe needed reform. He stressed that Paris would hold Britain to tight EU regulations, notably on the environment, in return for giving it easy trade access.





THIS IS THE MAXIMUM





Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, whose country is one of Britains closest trading partners, praised Mays handling of the difficult negotiations.





But he also had a warning for those in Mays Conservative party as well as the Labour opposition who argue that a better deal can still be done before Britain leaves in four months if lawmakers deny her minority government support on Brexit.





This is the maximum we can all do, Rutte said, shaking his head when asked if the EU might make more concessions.





The biggest question now facing the EU is whether Mays divided minority government can steer the deal, which foresees London following many EU rules for years to come to keep easy trade access, through fierce resistance in parliament.





British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said that the Brexit deal was a staging post towards Britain getting everything it wanted from leaving the EU, but that the arithmetic for getting the deal approved was looking challenging.





Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite said there were at least four possible outcomes if parliament blocks the package. She named three  that Britons would hold a second referendum, hold a new election to replace May or return to Brussels to try and renegotiate the package.





A fourth is that Britain will simply crash out of the bloc on March 29 without legal clarity.





Both sides have been making preparations for such a no deal scenario, though the EU insists Britain has more to lose. The pound has strengthened since the deal came together over the past 10 days, but companies and investors remain nervous.





The package foresees little changing during a transition period lasting another two to four years. The two sides are due to start negotiations on their future ties after the Brexit day.





We now need to get going on the 27 negotiating mandate for the talks on our future relationship, said an EU diplomat dealing with Brexit, adding it would be an extensive document covering trade, security, financial services, fisheries, phytosanitary controls and much more.





But having it done here before the UK parliament vote would risk giving more ammunition to Brexiteers to bring down the Brexit deal. So we wait.





IRISH QUESTION





Northern Irelands Democratic Unionist Party, which props up Mays minority government, has said it would try to block the deal because it binds London to many EU rules and the DUP fears it could weaken the provinces ties to Britain.





DUP leader Arlene Foster said on Sunday she would review the agreement to back Mays Conservative government if the Brexit divorce is passed by Britains parliament.





Sunday newspapers said different factions in her own Conservative party were preparing alternative plans to keep Britain closer to the EU should Mays deal fail.





Wrangling over how to keep open troubled Northern Irelands land border with the EU without creating barriers with the Irish Republic dogged much of the Brexit talks.




Lourdes Zurita took the swaddled baby gently into her arms and sat in a chair next to the hospital bassinet. She gazed down at the infant, whose head rested in the crook of her right elbow.

Above the tiny bundle, white stitching on Zuritas red shirt spelled out Cuddle Club Volunteer. A laminated cutout of an indigo koala hung from the bedside monitor, a signal that this baby was in need of special attention.

Zurita stroked the girls hair and caressed the blanket enveloping her, lightly placing an index finger on her nose.

On the third floor of Baptist Medical Center downtown, behind a set of light pink doors inscribed with the words Mother Baby Unit, a team of volunteers performs a simple, yet vital service: cuddling the infants in the neonatal intensive care unit.

The volunteers work with all the babies in the eight-bed ward, providing them with the physical contact and nurturing key to their development.

They are particularly attentive to the koala babies, as the nurses and volunteers call them  the infants who are withdrawing from exposure to harmful drugs in the womb, a condition known as neonatal abstinence syndrome.

More babies with NAS are born in Bexar County than anywhere else in Texas, a trend that has persisted for almost a decade. The county had 288 such births in 2016, based on Medicaid data, accounting for more than a quarter of all babies in Texas born with NAS.

RELATED: Bexar County highest in state for babies going through drug withdrawal

The use of the koala imagery comes from the idea that koala cubs need to be constantly cuddled to survive, said NICU nurse Lindy Ochoa, who coordinates the hospitals cuddling program.

It also dovetails with the units efforts not to stigmatize the babies or their parents. If the parents of other NICU babies ask what a koala sign means, nurses simply will say the baby needs additional snuggling.

It was a way to make it more inviting for our NAS moms, said Ginger Hejtmancik, a speech therapist who works with the babies on their feeding. Theyre already judged by everyone else. It was our way of making it more neutral but welcoming to every mother that comes in here.

The baby in Zuritas arms, Felicity Cuellar, was one such infant, still less than a week old. For the time being, the newborn was calm, mirroring the atmosphere of the room, where the lights were dimmed and the quiet was broken only by periodic beeps from machines and the murmurs of nurses at work.

Zurita could tell Felicity was comfortable based on her body language. She wasnt crying or shaking, and she was not reacting negatively to Zuritas touch.

Babies with NAS are prone to irritability and overstimulation, making the typical ways of calming an infant, such as by touch, overwhelming.

In those moments, the best thing to do is hold the baby tightly, and wait.

But that was not the case this day with Felicity. A postpartum nurse, January Rishell, walked over to check on her.

Look, shes completely knocked out, she said.

Such contentment can be deceiving, Rishell said, because it is a different story as soon as they are put down.

Babies going through withdrawal can have problems coordinating bodily functions, like suckling, swallowing, breathing and regulating temperature. Some can develop excessive suck as a coping mechanism when they try to comfort themselves. Others, like Felicity, have a complete breakdown in their ability to suckle.

READ ALSO: Genetic mutation is focus of group and research lab in San Antonio

Every three hours, the babies are evaluated according to the Finnegan scoring system, a 21-point tool that takes into account the severity of a babys withdrawal symptoms as they affect the gastrointestinal, metabolic, blood vessel, respiratory and central nervous systems.

Felicity had problems with feeding, a common symptom, so a thin feeding tube snaked up her left nostril, held in place by a piece of tape. Hejtmancik had attempted to bottle-feed the baby before Zurita began holding her.

Unfortunately, she didnt do very well, Rishell said, so she would receive the remainder of her formula through the tube.

But thats OK, Rishell cooed to the baby as she began to prepare the formula. Youll get there. Itll be fine.

She filled a large syringe with formula and placed it in a pump that would gradually administer the food to the baby over the course of a half-hour, so as to avoid vomiting, another typical symptom.

Zurita had a serene expression on her face as she continued to hold the baby, swaying slowly in a wooden rocking chair.

Zurita, 53, applied to be a cuddling volunteer about a year ago. She wanted to be around babies while her own kids were away at college. Her niece worked in a NICU at another area hospital, so she knew how much care the infants needed, especially the koala babies.

The work is deeply rewarding but requires staunch patience. Zurita has handled other babies who were much more fussy and cried continuously in the high-pitched screams that are a hallmark of newborns with NAS.

A little more than a year ago, Ochoa, the nurse who oversees the volunteers, had been tasked with revamping the hospitals cuddling program. Before, BMC only had four cuddlers who did not come in according to a regular schedule and received only limited training.

Ochoa redesigned the program, solicited applications from prospective volunteers and vetted them through phone and in-person interviews. Most had a personal reason for wanting to cuddle, and often, it was their desire to give back to the community. Cuddlers now undergo a detailed two-hour orientation, working one-on-one with Ochoa, before they start.

Since then, the cuddling program has burgeoned to about 20 volunteers, who come in for three-hour shifts from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. Ochoa hopes to increase the number to 35 and have pairs of cuddlers working each shift.

Toward the end of Zuritas shift on a Tuesday afternoon, another volunteer, Peggy Smith, arrived.

A licensed vocational nurse who works on clinical research in the oncology and hematology department at Brooke Army Medical Center, Smith, 58, sought out the cuddling program so she could work with the koala babies; her niece had been exposed to heroin before birth.

Smith picked up the baby in the bassinet adjacent to Felicity, where a koala also hung off the monitor. Earlier in the day, the baby girl had lain contentedly in a rocking seat that mimics the motions infants feel in utero, but it could not match human touch, so now Smith sat with her in another rocking chair.

Like Zurita, Smith feels she gets as much benefit as the babies do from the cuddling sessions, which she referred to as her me time. Once, after a hard day at work, Smith had walked into the unit and said to Ochoa, Just hand me a baby.

As much as it soothes them, it soothes me, Smith said.

Smith held the baby against her chest, resting her cheek against the top of the childs head. In a low voice, she kept up a steady stream of commentary, telling the baby yes maam when she made a noise. She knew the infant could feel the chest vibrations as she spoke.

It was the same strategy Smith had used once with a far more upset little girl.

The baby had wailed for two hours, flailing her limbs and arching her back in distress. Smith talked and sang to the girl, staying an hour and a half past the end of her shift as she tried to calm her down. Finally, the infant locked eyes with Smith, released a deep sigh and crumbled into her chest.

This baby, though, seemed as calm as Felicity. Eventually, Smith handed off the infant to Rishell for a temperature check, bottle feeding and diaper change. Its part of a cluster care approach that seeks to complete as many routine tasks at once so the baby is disturbed as infrequently as possible.

When the nurse went to burp the infant, she sat the baby upright and moved her midsection in a rhythmic circle called a hula. Rather than flopping back and forth, the babys head remained upright, her neck stiff, a sign of the abnormal muscle tone found in babies with NAS. While the baby continued to feed, she curled her fingers tightly around the bottle and Rishells hand.

Rishell placed her back in the bassinet and, apologizing, began changing her diaper as quickly as possible. The baby cried and thrashed about, her screams reaching a high pitch. As soon as she was swaddled and back in Rishells arms, she settled down.

READ ALSO: Study shows stress hormones link to memory deficits, brain shrinkage

Zurita, meanwhile, had been sitting with Felicity for two and a half hours. She stood and reached for the girls koala cuddle log. On the fourth line, she wrote the duration of their cuddling session, along with a note: slept the whole time!

Two days later, the volunteers and medical staff who worked in the NICU gathered in a classroom on the hospitals third floor for a Thanksgiving potluck. A counter was crowded with food, a nearby table laden with gift bags for the cuddlers.

Dr. John Isaac, the NICU medical director, sat on the edge of a table with the volunteers in a semicircle in front of him. Isaac thanked them for their work and acknowledged how valuable they are.

Their efforts highlighted the power of touch and improved the culture of the unit, where staff may be under pressure, he said.

When you have a calm cuddler, it rubs off on the baby for sure, and it rubs off on the people around, he said.

Several volunteers said the benefits of cuddling are mutual, sometimes in profound ways. Edith Geurin described a revelation she had while holding a baby a few weeks ago: working with newborns was one of the few ways she could be close to God.

This baby is all goodness, because its soul is so fresh, straight from heaven, Geurin said. And I feel the same way about death. When youre with a person that dies, youre close to God because that soul is going to God. And then I feel the same way with a newborn baby. I was just thinking, I am so blessed because Im in this room, and Im just surrounded by Gods goodness.

Lauren Caruba covers health care and medicine in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. Read her on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | lcaruba@express-news.net | Twitter: @LaurenCaruba
Whenever the late Nobel Laurate Gabriel Garcia Marquez had an itch to read his Spanish novel, Cien Anos de Soledad, in translation, hed turn to Gregory Rabassas A Hundred Years of Solitude, a beautifully rendered English version.

Marquez often said that reading Rabassas translation was akin to reading a different novel. Translations can be a cumbersome game because the translator is not only translating a text but re-creating the nuances and tonality of an original work.

The word translator in Spanish is traductor, closely related to Italian as traduttore and a cousin to traditore  which etymologically plays on the pun traitor. Capturing the essence of a foreign text and translating its internal meaning can be troublesome, but not impossible.

Vicente Guillot, who teaches Spanish and is chairman of the English, communications and foreign languages department at Palo Alto College, says, It all depends on the text. The translated text must be faithful, and then, again, how does one define faithful and to whom?

When I asked him, Is the text faithful to the translator or faithful to the author?

He grinned, adding, Translators are tricky avatars because they use different strategies to achieve an understanding of the complexity of the text.

Of course, certain texts require absolute faithfulness to the document. One can translate a birth certificate and repeat the narrative accurately because translations are done for targeted audiences and for specific reasons. Some idiomatic expressions are difficult to translate because of cultural, linguistic idiosyncrasies, such as, Hey, youre pulling my leg or the catchphrase greeting, Whats up? prompting the listener to look up at the sky and inquire about the leg.

Although Google Translator may give literal translations, the algorithms running the program neither detect linguistic nuances nor emulate the idiolect of foreign languages.

But give them a couple of years.

What about translations attributed to historical figures who are complete fabrications?

If you happen to visit the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin, youll be surprised to know that a translated quote attributed to Antonio Navarro on an entrance panel is as bogus as a $3 bill.

Historian James E. Crisp argues that the translated quotation, I will never forsake Texas and her cause. I am her son, engraved on limestone panels displayed in the museum, was lifted from Joseph Dawsons (1969) Jose Antonio Navarro: Co-Creators of Texas.

And Dawson, of course, lifted it from former Texas legislator Dan Kubiaks Ten Tall Texans, a book that Crisp asserts is without scholarly merit or reliability because Navarro never said it  not even in his Spanish native tongue.

Crisp, however, recognizes that the quote may be attributed to Texas historian Jacob De Cordova, a bilingual acquaintance of Jose Antonio Navarro.

But Navarros famous phrase may not even be an oral interpretation, because Navarro had misgivings when he signed the Texas Declaration of Independence, doing so with great reluctance in 1836.

Which brings us back to translations.

Historians warn that the search for accuracy and truth is more important during these times than ever before. In the past, many historical documents prior to 1836 were written in colonial Spanish, and the influx of American historians either did not read Spanish or attempt to learn it, thereby discarding many useful documents. Others relied on incompetent translators.

And here Crisp warns mucho cuidado (be careful) when attempting to translate documents, because precision and accuracy is tantamount in translating documents, both new and old.

Rafael Castillo, who teaches English and humanities at Palo Alto College, is director of publications and special projects for Catch the Next, Inc.
Following the closest U.S. Senate race in Texas in four decades, we still heard triumphalism from establishment conservatives such as Karl Rove, who spun Sen. Ted Cruzs 2.6 point victory as a resounding rejection of Democrat challenger Beto ORourkes radical leftism. What the Texas race shows, if anything, is that establishment Republicans can no longer afford to fool themselves like this.

The fact is, more than 48 percent of Texans bought what ORourke was selling  from his views on anthem protests, to his F rating from the NRA, to his bold climate rhetoric. These clearly werent all political land mines. In fact, many young conservatives now back ORourke on policy and perhaps on a surprising issue: climate change.

As a steady flood of rigorous research  including most recently from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change  has underscored, climate change is a threat of potentially biblical proportions. Its effects threaten the building blocks of civilization and, with it, the American way of life. While the precise effects remain uncertain, the spectrum of potential outcomes are too daunting for any risk-averse conservative to accept. In the words of former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, who served President George W. Bush, doing nothing on climate would be radical risk-taking  definitely not what conservatism means to me.

As a young conservative, I am not alone in caring about these risks. Across the country, young conservatives are stepping forward in unprecedented numbers to voice their concern and advocate for concrete solutions. From the American Conservation Coalition, which recently united 30 College Republican State Federation chairs in support of clean energy, to Students for Carbon Dividends, which has organized an unprecedented coalition of college Republican groups around the free-market Baker-Shultz Plan, young conservatives are increasingly breaking rank with the GOP leadership to call for concrete action.

This generational rift within the Republican Party on climate is borne out by the data. Polling by Young Conservatives for Energy Reform reveals that nearly three-quarters of young conservatives support addressing climate change. Moreover, the free-market Baker-Shultz Plan  which is authored by Republican luminaries and backed by an impressively broad coalition  enjoys 4-1 support among millennials, including Republicans. ORourke is living proof that Texas is no longer insulated from these national trends.

While Cruz doubled down on conspiratorial mush, Beto offered a commonsense approach to clean energy that appeals to me and my circle of conservative friends. He wisely skipped the liberal fearmongering and penetrated to the heart of the matter: Climate change presents a genuine challenge, but also an opportunity for the Lone Star State to benefit economically from solving it.

As ORourke pointed out in January, there are more clean energy jobs in this state than there are carbon energy jobs.

During the final debate, ORourke emphasized that Texas is the nations leader in developing wind energy, which is bringing jobs, clean power and economic opportunity to the state. By focusing on the business case for environmental action, ORourke had his fingers on the pulse of economic and entrepreneurial opportunity. Students like me will be looking for jobs in growing business sectors, and we want Texas to be a leader in attracting and developing the industries of the future.

ORourkes willingness to wade into the rising waters of the climate issue is not only good economics  it was also good politics. According to recent data from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, Texans of all ages are now just as likely as the average American to acknowledge the climate threat, a contrast to the bordering states of Louisiana, Arkansas and Oklahoma, which still sit well below the 70 percent national average. The majority of Texans agree with ORourke on climate, and the consensus is only growing.

Despite ORourkes narrow defeat, the changing politics around climate  particularly along generational lines  should send a wake-up call to Republicans like Ted Cruz. As climate-related weather patterns worsen for both Texas arid north and often-flooded south, our state can either bury its head in the sand or invest in the future. Texans clearly prefer the latter, and thats exactly what Beto stands for. If the Republican party continues to forgo the mantle of leadership, it will be to their political  and our planetary  peril.

Ryan Haygood is a Tyler resident who attends Yale University, studying ethics, politics and economics.
U.S. law on asylum is straightforward. Asylum-seekers presenting themselves at an official port of entry, elsewhere at the border or who are already in the country  regardless of where and how they crossed  are entitled to apply for asylum.

This doesnt mean they will get it  the vast majority dont. But the law is clear that they are free to apply and then receive due process.

This is the gist of a lawsuit challenging the latest of President Donald Trumps attempt to ban Central Americans from seeking sanctuary here. And a federal judge has agreed, temporarily halting last week the presidents proclamation denying asylum to all undocumented immigrants. The president contends he can simply upend this law by executive order.

This legal challenge and the temporary halt  as the ones against the presidents previous ban on Muslims into this country  are entirely with merit as a matter of law. As important, meritorious as a matter of decency. The blockage should become permanent.

The president is citing a national emergency. But there is none. He refers to that caravan of Central Americans approaching the southern border  whose numbers have winnowed since they began their journey.

While its true that the number of Central Americans trying to cross the U.S. border is up, they are part of a generally downward trend in cross-border migration.

Simply, there is no emergency reflected in these numbers to warrant the asylum ban, and there is certainly none to warrant the stationing of U.S. troops to await them.

Those troops have, according to Express-News reports, been laying concertina wire and otherwise, well, doing a lot of waiting. They represent a tremendous waste of resources. The president said he sent them there to repel an invasion  even suggesting firing at asylum-seekers if they throw rocks. That tune changed soon, however. More recently, theyre there for training. And, then, we were told many will be home by Christmas, just as the migrants arrive. Oh, wait. Now, theyre staying. This doesnt sound like an emergency.

It sounds more like using U.S. soldiers as political props for the midterm elections, wanting to bring them home after that fearmongering job was done, but vacillating because of the message that sends about this being purely a stunt.

The U.S. doesnt have the facilities to process the asylum-seekers  thats why so many families are spending cold nights on bridges waiting to get in. So, one wonders if the money spent on deploying troops might have been put to better use that way.

In any case, the law is clear. If they come seeking asylum, the U.S. is obligated to weigh their claim.
The backgrounds of the three women are similar: curious about alcohol, they began drinking at an early age, soon were doing drugs, got into scrapes with the law and hit rock bottom several times.

Two of the women lost their children, one of them permanently.

In their 30s now, the women have one more thing in common, this one something positive: they all received treatment at Alpha Home, a residential and outpatient drug and alcohol rehab center, that they say turned their lives around.

Alpha Home is a place where women and men get another chance at life, said CEO Angela White. The opportunity to be the mom, dad, brother and/or sister they always wanted to be. Alpha Home provides the tools that allow people to learn to live a life in long term recovery.

Founded in 1966 with the support of Trinity Baptist Church by a woman who struggled with her own alcoholism, Alpha Home now provides women 18 and older residential drug rehab and alcohol rehab treatment in two homes north of downtown. One is on East Mulberry, with beds for 31 women. Another, on Camden, has accommodations for 16 clients. Both houses also have kitchen and dining facilities as well as outdoor play areas for children visiting their mothers while undergoing treatment.

At any time, there could be as many as 47 women in the residential treatment program which can last up to 70 days.

The Ruble Center at East Magnolia Street and Carleton Court houses administrative offices and rooms for 12-step meetings, GED and art classes.

There is also the Dr. Richard P. Usatine Wellness Center, where the physician, on the faculty of UT Health, as well as medical students and volunteer doctors provide services to Alpha Home clients.

Women  and since 2013 men  also receive outpatient treatment.

The 501c(3) non-profits residential, outpatient and intervention programs are accredited by the Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities (CARF). The residential and outpatient programs are licensed by the Texas Department of State Health Services.

White said Alpha Home helps those who are uninsured and cannot afford private treatment.

One in three individuals who want to receive drug and alcohol treatment cant afford it, she said. This is where Alpha Home fills the void in the San Antonio community. Our collaborations with other agencies provide a continuum of care and support that rebuild a life devastated by addiction.

According Alpha Home officials, many of the women treated there are mothers with at least two children. More than 10 percent identify themselves as homeless.

The average age of women undergoing treatment at Alpha Home is between 23 and 34 years, said Nangie Lowrie, chief operating officer.

A high percentage of the women and some of the men have a connection to the criminal justice system, Lowrie said.

Alpha Home works closely with local courts, including adult drug court and felony drug court, that deal with people facing alcohol and drug-related charges, said Lowrie.

Once in the residential treatment program, clients learn how to incorporate recovery skills into everyday life; become more self-sufficient; manage anger; improve parenting skills; stay sober; and look for and keep a job. They also receive counseling.

In the outpatient treatment program, which can take from four to six months, treatment includes trauma counseling, anger management, relapse support, domestic violence and parenting and family education.

Alpha Home also provides a Family First program, a pregnant and postpartum intervention outreach program; and a recovery support home in collaboration with Crosspoint Inc.

The best proponents of Alpha Home are the women who have already gone through treatment, some of them several times.

It saved my life and showed me that recovery is real, said Lindsea Classen who was 11 when she pilfered a bottle of white wine from her parents refrigerator and drank it by herself.

She was still in middle school when she began drinking shots of liquor before leaving for class.

I never got caught; but from the beginning, I was a hardcore drinker, she said.

At 12, she began smoking marijuana and later used large amounts of cocaine and other substances.

Classen first entered Alpha Home in 2005, left and returned in 2006 and 2007. She relapsed in 2008 during which she was in active addiction, she said.

In treatment on seven different occasions, including four stints at Alpha Home, Classen said she has been sober since March 2015.

Its all thanks to Alpha Home, the mother of two said. I always felt that walking through those doors, I would be respected and loved. Its been really huge for me.

Now 35, Classen began college this fall. Her goal is to become a substance abuse counselor.

Her younger sister Sarah Classen, was 12 when she began drinking.

I drank Purple Passion in little bottles, she said. I liked it a lot because a sense of ease and comfort came over me.

By her mid-teens, Sarah Classen, who obtained a GED after dropping out of school, was into drugs.

Sarah Classen was 19 when she married. But a month later, she left her husband and came out as gay.

In 2012, she began treatment at Alpha Home but relapsed after only three months of sobriety.

The second time I entered Alpha Home, I was much more desperate to get help, she said. I was very sick spiritually and emotionally.

Describing herself as once a very angry woman, Sarah Classen said she has learned how to deal with her anger.

I carry myself with dignity now, she said.

Sarah Classen said she stopped using drugs and drinking alcohol in June 2016.

Now 32, she has a job she loves and she and her partner have been together three years.

Melissa Vasquez, 38, is divorced and the mother of three. Drinking led to Child Protective Services taking away her children.

When I completed the 70-day treatment program and got my kids back, I said, I can drink again, Vasquez recalled.

Several DWI charges led to her children being taken away permanently in 2011.

While she is in contact with her teenage son, Vasquez said she has not seen her two daughters in 10 years.

Theyre doing well, they were adopted by a family that loves them so I know they are well taken care of, she said.

Vasquez said she no longer is the alcoholic I was. The strongest drink she takes now is Dr. Pepper.

The three are active in the Alpha Home Alumnae Association. Members are former clients who volunteer their time to help women in recovery.

Members meet every week and hold a reunion once a year. They host a series of events for women in treatment.

We encourage everybody to be empowered, said Lowrie, the chief operating officer who is also a former client and has been sober for 21 years. We dont look at the past; we just keep going forward.
Lufthansa will enter the Montenegrin market next year by launching flights from Munich and Frankfurt to Tivat. Services from both German cities will be maintained once per week, starting April 13 and 14, with the airline's 136-seat Airbus A319 aircraft. The carrier will compete directly against Montenegro Airlines on the Munich route. The development comes following talks between operator Airports of Montenegro and Lufthansa earlier this year. At the time, the head of Airports of Montenegro, Danilo Orlandic, said, "Lufthansa, as one of the most important carriers in Europe and the world, should be our partner. The German market is extremely important for our tourism industry. Furthermore, German airports have excellent worldwide connectivity, so the launch of new routes to this market is vital for the public".





Other Lufthansa Group-member airlines serving Montenegro include Austrian Airlines from Vienna to Podgorica, Brussels Airlines to Tivat, as well as Eurowings from Dusseldorf to Tivat, with the latter two being seasonal. Mr Orlandic noted, "There is strong interest from major global carriers this year that were not directly present on the market in the past". Talks have been held with Vueling concerning potential new services between Barcelona and Podgorica, as well as British Airways over flights from London to Tivat. Other airlines which have already confirmed new flights to the Montenegrin market next year include Laudamotion from Stuttgart to Podgorica and Enter Air from Poznan to Tivat.





Montenegro's two international airports have registered strong passenger growth this year, with Podgorica and Tivat to handle a combined total of over two million passengers. During the January - October period, Tivat Airport handled a record 1.198.316 travellers, representing an increase of 9.9%, while Podgorica welcomed 1.066.341 passengers through its doors, up a notable 15.7% on 2017. Both have already overtaken their 2017 end-of-year result. The two are expected to be put up for concession next year as part of a single package. Some fifteen companies are said to be considering placing a bid.




BRIDGEPORT  Area bicyclists have a last-minute opportunity to weigh in on the design of the citys section of the Pequonnock River Rail Trail leading to the Monroe/Newtown line.

The City Council at the request of ex-member and biker Robert Halstead, delayed voting recently on a resolution finalizing the trail project. Halstead complained that the 3-year-old planning process was poorly advertised by City Hall.

We have a bicycle club in Bridgeport  Urban Bike Tours. Three hundred people. And none of us know anything about it, Halstead said in an interview.

And, he said, from what he has recently seen, the 2.5 miles of trail being built in Bridgeport is not worth the $1.8 million in mostly federal air-quality grant dollars being spent on it. Four-hundred thousand dollars of that $1.8 million is city money.

People like me and others who ride bikes should be part of the discussion, and we were kept out of it, Halstead said.

Councilwoman Maria Valle successfully made the motion to send the trail resolution back to the Public Safety Committee for further discussion on Dec. 4.

I want these bikers to be part of the conversation, Valle said.

William Coleman, deputy director of the citys Planning and Economic Development Office, said five public meetings on the trail design were held between July and early November  including when the Public Safety Committee unanimously recommended the project to the full council on Nov. 7.

And, Coleman added, two initial meetings were convened as far back as March 2015 and project information has been on his departments website for close to two years.

But Coleman emphasized he and his staff have no problem continuing the discussion and will work with the council on getting as much public input as they would like.

Were happy to have the conversation continue to get this to be all that it can be, he said. But lets do it with reasonable time constraints and lets move forward sometime soon.

More Information For more information on Bridgeport's section of the Pequonnock River Rail Trail, visit: http://www.bridgeportct.gov/planning/PRT See More Collapse

The 16-mile Pequonnock River Rail Trail has been years in the making, with some 9,900 worth of linear feet already in place in Bridgeport in Beardsley Park and along Housatonic Avenue. The remaining 2.5 miles  13,150 linear feet  of work would complete the trail in Bridgeport.

Halstead said too much of the proposed Bridgeport route is along busy, dangerous streets.

Theres not enough room on them for a bike path, he said.

The city breaks the quality of the sections of trail down into classes, with Class I exclusively for bicyclists and physically separated from vehicles, Class II a bike lane installed on an existing roadway, and Class III a shared right-of-way identified with signage and sometimes lane markings.

According to Coleman, the majority of the Pequonnock trail in Bridgeport  the existing 9,900 linear feet and a planned 5,500 linear feet  will be Class I. Coleman said 3,750 of planned linear feet falls under Class II, and 3,900 linear feet will be Class III.

Coleman admitted that while much of the total trail is a wonderful, bucolic experience linking it through highly developed Bridgeport has at times been a design challenge. For example, he said, critics might assume it simple to establish a bike lane on a certain street, but that can mean eliminating on-street parking for residents.

But weve done well. Youre off-road completely at Beardsley, along the water. Youre off road at Housatonic Avenue. And we get back to the water as soon as you can at the ferry landing (near downtown) and Seaside Park, Coleman said.

He said to add more Class I sections and go off road all the way would require purchasing private property and/or cleaning up contaminated sites.

Halstead argued Bridgeport should find the money necessary to instead install a system of bridges and tunnels for bikers.

Once we do this, this is a one shot deal. Were stuck with it forever, Halstead said.

Coleman said that generally it is important for the city to be more bicycle-friendly, and not just for recreational purposes.

We also see it as economical, Coleman said. You have a lot of folks here in Bridgeport, particularly within lower income communities, for whom bicycle transit is a big part of their economic way of life.
MILFORD  A scientist in Milford who has devised a way to use DNA matching technology to determine if a patient has Lyme Disease has accused the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of suppressing his test and depriving him of $57.1 million in profits.

Dr. Sin Hang Lee filed suit in federal court in October, saying the CDC, a federal agency, has engaged in an anti-competitive campaign to stifle his test and has impugned his reputation and that of his research.

Although the federal government is protected under its sovereign immunity clause, there are cases that are allowed to move forward, such as those involving breach of contract. Lees attorney, Mary Alice Moore Leonhardt, contends this is one of those instances.

The CDCs lawyers have filed for dismissal of the case, but so far its on track to be heard, Leonhardt said, in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington, D.C.

The $57 million figure is based on the value of his intellectual property for this test that he developed over 20 years, she said, as well as the impact of the lost use of this technology  technology that he shared with the CDC.

Attempts to contact Dr. Beth P. Bell, the former CDC director named as a co-defendant in the lawsuit, were not successful. And a spokesperson for the agency did not respond to requsts for comment this week.

Contrasting methods

Twenty years ago, Lee began working on a test for Lyme disease based on DNA sampling and he said his creation was nearly fool-proof. In 2013, he offered it to the CDC.

The serology test that the CDC prefers  its also known as the Western Blot Test  is famous for its false positives, Lee said. You may have had Lyme disease 10 years ago that didnt produce symptoms, but with the CDC test, youd test positive even though you dont have it now.

Lee says that the Western blot test also produces false negatives.

The science is very straightforward, Lee said. No one can refute DNA sequencing  not even the CDC. Even back in 2012, the CDC realized that the serology test had problems.

Lees suit said the CDC had, as early as 2010, held a workshop on tick-borne illnesses in an effort to develop more accurate diagnostic tools and tests for Lyme disease. In 2012, the agency reiterated its need for a better test through what the suit describes as soliciting submissions and offering business opportunities to members of the public in order to solve a national health problem.

The worlds scientific literature agrees that DNA sequencing of bacterial genes in patient specimens is a tool to reach irrefutable diagnosis of bacterial infections, including those due to borrelia, even if antibodies to the bacteria in the patient are not measurable, Lee said.

A nasty pit

Lee is being backed up by the Lyme Action Network, which provides information and builds awareness about Lyme and other tick-borne diseases

We dont support anything of this nature thats not peer-reviewed, and Dr. Lee is entirely on the right track, LAN President Chris Fisk said in a telephone interview. The politics at the CDC with regard to Lyme disease is a nasty pit  no other way to describe it.

According to the suit, in 2013, the CDC agreed to provide samples to Lee to test his protocols with the ultimate goal of the contract (being) to establish the ... test ...that was sought after by the CDC.

Despite working with CDC physicians through most of 2013 and receiving positive feedback, in January 2014, Lees suit says, the representatives of the agency stopped communicating with him. He sent several emails asking for the status of his project and published the findings of the tests in a scientific journal giving credit to CDCs support.

The suit states the CDC publicly stated that in the March 2014 article, Lee and (another researcher) reported inconsistent results and would not answer Lee when he asked what inconsistent results the agency meant. Instead, according to the suit, the CDC referred Lee to its attorney.

Since then, the suit states, the CDC has refused to answer Lees questions or withdraw its statement on inconsistent results.

In response, Lee filed a formal complaint of the CDC and in October, filed the federal suit.

Leonhardt said that if Lee prevails in court and is awarded a settlement, that money will be used to create Lyme disease testing laboratories throughout the U.S., so people can be accurately tested.

The suit charges the CDC of employing false, pseudo-scientific theories in order to justify its own anti-consumer actions aimed at perpetuating Lyme disease testing by a flawed technology.




SRINAGAR  Indian troops on Sunday killed six separatist militants in a gun battle in the disputed region of Kashmir, the army said, as its forces stepped up operations in one of the bloodiest weeks of fighting this year during which 23 people have been killed.





The six militants were shot dead by troops in a village south of Srinagar in an operation launched early on Sunday, Indian army spokesman in Kashmir, Colonel Rajesh Kalia, said. One soldier was also killed in the operation.

The bodies of the militants and ammunition were recovered from the site of the operation, he said.





Locals in the area clashed with Indian troops, pelting them with stones after the operation, while the troops retaliated by firing tear gas, pellets and live ammunition, said a police official, who was not authorized to speak to media. One person died and another was critically wounded.





The operation capped one of the bloodiest weeks in the region this year, during which 16 militants and two soldiers were among 23 people killed.




Ingredion, Inc. manufactures and sells sweetener, starches, nutrition ingredients, and biomaterial solutions derived from the wet milling and processing of corn and other starch based materials. Its activities include turning corn, tapioca, potatoes and other vegetables and fruits into value added ingredients and biomaterials for the food, beverage, paper and corrugating, brewing, and other industries. The firm operates through the following geographical segments: North America, South America, Asia-Pacific and Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA). The North America segment includes businesses in the United States, Mexico, and Canada. The South America segment involves businesses in Brazil, the Southern Cone of South America (which includes Argentina, Peru, Chile, and Uruguay), Colombia, and Ecuador. The Asia-Pacific segment pertains businesses in South Korea, Thailand, China, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Indonesia, Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, India, and Vietnam. The EMEA segment focuses businesses in Pakistan, Germany, the United Kingdom and South Africa. The company was founded in 1906 and is headquartered in Westchester, IL.

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The following companies are subsidiares of Jabil: AOC Technologies Co. Ltd., AOC Technologies Inc., Badger Technologies LLC, Celetronix, Celetronix India Private Limited, Celetronix USA Inc., Clothing Plus Hong Kong Ltd., Clothing Plus MBU Oy, Clothing Plus Zhejiang Ltd., Clothing+, Eco.logic Brands Inc., Ecologic Brands, F-I Holding Company, GET Manufacturing, Green Point Electronic Technology Co. Ltd., Green Point Precision Electronic Co. Ltd., Green Point Precision Sdn. Bhd., Green Point Technology Co. Ltd., Green Prosperity Co. Ltd., Greenam Electricity (Proprietary) Limited, JCI Funding Ireland Designated Activity Company, JCI Labuan Limited, JN Global Holdings C.V., Jabil AMS LLC, Jabil Advanced Mechanical Solutions Inc., Jabil Advanced Mechanical Solutions de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Jabil C.M. S.r.l., Jabil Canada Corporation, Jabil Chihuahua Holding S. de R.L. de C.V., Jabil Circuit Austria GmbH, Jabil Circuit Belgium N.V., Jabil Circuit Cayman L.P., Jabil Circuit China Limited, Jabil Circuit Co. Ltd., Jabil Circuit Financial II Inc., Jabil Circuit Holdings Limited, Jabil Circuit Hong Kong Limited, Jabil Circuit Hungary Contract Manufacturing Services Ltd., Jabil Circuit Inc., Jabil Circuit India Private Limited, Jabil Circuit Investment Co. Ltd, Jabil Circuit Italia S.r.l., Jabil Circuit Limited, Jabil Circuit Ltd., Jabil Circuit Luxembourg II S.a r.l., Jabil Circuit Luxembourg S.a r.l., Jabil Circuit Netherlands B.V., Jabil Circuit Pte. Ltd., Jabil Circuit SAS, Jabil Circuit Sdn Bhd, Jabil Circuit Technology LLC, Jabil Circuit Ukraine Limited, Jabil Circuit de Chihuahua S. de R.L. de C.V., Jabil Circuit de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Jabil Circuit of Michigan Inc., Jabil Consulting Limited Liability Company, Jabil DR S.R.L., Jabil Defense and Aerospace Services LLC, Jabil Denmark Aps, Jabil Dutch Mexico B.V., Jabil EMS Switzerland GmbH, Jabil Electronics Co. Ltd., Jabil Energy Ltd., Jabil Green Point Precision Electronics Co. Ltd., Jabil Green Point Technology Co. Ltd., Jabil Guadalajara Holding S. de R.L. de C.V., Jabil Healthcare DR S.R.L., Jabil Holding S. de R.L. de C.V., Jabil Holdings Ltd., Jabil Hungary LP Services Limited Liability Company, Jabil India Manufacturing Private Limited, Jabil Industrial do Brasil Ltda., Jabil International Holding S. de R.L. de C.V., Jabil International Treasury Pte. Ltd, Jabil Investment Pte. Ltd., Jabil Israel Ltd., Jabil Japan Inc., Jabil Korea International Limited, Jabil Limited Liability Company, Jabil Mexico Holding S. de R.L. de C.V., Jabil Mexico Investment S. de R.L. de C.V., Jabil Monterrey S. de R.L. de C.V., Jabil Nypro Holding LLC, Jabil Nypro I LLC, Jabil Nypro II LLC, Jabil Nypro International B.V., Jabil Optics Germany GmbH, Jabil Poland Sp. z.o.o., Jabil Precision Industry Co. Ltd., Jabil Science and Telecommunication Trading Co. Ltd., Jabil Sdn Bhd, Jabil Services Korea Limited, Jabil Silver Creek Inc., Jabil South Africa (Pty) LTD, Jabil Switzerland Manufacturing GmbH, Jabil Technology Co. Ltd, Jabil Technology and Trading Co. Ltd., Jabil Torres S. de R.L. de C.V., Jabil Tuttlingen Manufacturing GmbH, Jabil Umkirch Manufacturing GmbH, Jabil Vietnam Company Limited, Jabil do Brasil Industria Eletroeletronica Ltda., Johnson & Johnson Medical Devices, Kasalis, Kasalis Inc., Kuatro Technologies, Kuatro Ukraine LLC, Manna Renewable Energy Investments Two (Pty) Ltd, NP Medical Inc., NPA de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Nypro, Nypro Alabama LLC, Nypro Atlanta LLC, Nypro China Holdings Limited, Nypro DR LLC, Nypro Deutschland GmbH, Nypro France SAS, Nypro Guadalajara S.A. de C.V., Nypro Healthcare Baja Inc., Nypro Healthcare GmbH, Nypro Healthcare LLC, Nypro Inc., Nypro Iowa Inc., Nypro Limited, Nypro Monterrey Management S. de R.L. de C.V., Nypro Plastics & Metal Products Co. Ltd., Nypro Plastics & Molding Products Co. Ltd., Nypro Puerto Rico Inc., Nypro Research and Developments Limited, Nypro Spain Holding S.L.U., Nypro de Amazonia, Nypro de la Frontera S. de R.L. de C.V., NyproMold Chicago Inc., NyproMold Inc., NyproMold Investment Corp., PT Jabil Circuit Indonesia, Plasticast Hungary Kft., Plasticos Castella S.A.U., Radius Chicago LLC, Radius Hong Kong Limited, Radius Product Development Inc., Roosevelt Insurance Company Ltd., S.M.R. Metal Ltd., Shay Motion Ltd., Shemer Group, Shemer Motion (2009) Ltd., Taiwan Green Point Enterprises, Taiwan Green Point Enterprises Co. Ltd., Telmar Network Technology, TrueTech, Westing Green Plastic Co. Ltd, Wolfe Engineering, Wolfe Engineering Co. Ltd., and Yen Investments 140 (Proprietary) Limited.
Westinghouse Air Brake Technologies Corp. engages in the provision of equipment, systems, and value-added services for the rail industry. It operates through the following segments: Freight and Transit. The Freight segment involves in the manufacture and offers services components for new and existing locomotives and freight cars; supplies rail control and infrastructure products such as electronics, positive train control equipment, and signal design and engineering services; overhauls locomotives; and provides heat exchangers and cooling systems for rail and other industrial markets. The Transit segments includes the manufacture and providing services components for new and existing passenger transit vehicles, including regional trains, high speed trains, subway cars, light-rail vehicles, and buses; supplies rail control and infrastructure products such as electronics, positive train control equipment, and signal design and engineering services; builds new commuter locomotives; and renovate passenger transit vehicles. The company was founded in 1869 and is headquartered in Pittsburgh, PA.

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Guwahati: Assam police had arrested a youth for posting derogatory remarks against Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal.





According to the reports, the youth identified as Pranob Borah, a businessman hailing from Guwahati had recently wrote a post on Facebook over the Citizenship Amendment Bill issue and he targeted the Assam CM in his post.





Following the objectionable remarks against the Assam CM, Guwahati city police had arrested the youth from Bharalumukh area.





A case (no -949/2018) was registered under section 153 (B) of the IPC and IT Act 66 (F) at Bharalumukh police station.





The youth was produced before the CJM court in Guwahati and sent him to 14 days judicial custody.





Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) of Guwahati City police Ponjit Dowarah said that, police had arrested the youth for posting objectionable contents on social media.




The following companies are subsidiares of Exxon Mobil: AKG Marketing Company Limited, Aera Energy LLC, Al-Jubail Petrochemical Company, Ampolex (Cepu) Pte Ltd, Ancon Insurance Company Inc., Barnett Gathering LLC, Barzan Gas Company Limited, Caspian Pipeline Consortium, Celtic Exploration Ltd., Coral FLNG S.A., Cross Timbers Energy LLC, Ellora Energy Inc., Esmeroon Oil Transporta Imperial Oil Limited, Esso (Thailand) Public Company Limited, Esso Australia Resources Pty Ltd, Esso Deutschland GmbH, Esso Erdgas Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, Esso Exploration Angola (Block 15) Limited, Esso Exploration Angola (Block 17) Limited, Esso Exploration and Production Angola (Overseas) Limited, Esso Exploration and Production Chad Inc., Esso Exploration and Production Guyana Limited, Esso Exploration and Production Nigeria (Deepwater) Limited, Esso Exploration and Production Nigeria (Offshore East) Limited, Esso Exploration and Production Nigeria Limited, Esso Exploration and Production UK Limited, Esso Global Investments Ltd., Esso Italiana S.r.l., Esso Nederland B.V., Esso Norge AS, Esso Petroleum Company Limited, Esso Raffinage, Esso Societe Anonyme Francaise, Exxo Holdings Inc., Exxon Azerbaijan Limited, Exxon Chemical Arabia Inc., Exxon International Finance Company, Exxon Luxembourg Holdings LLC, Exxon Mobile Bay Limited Partnership, Exxon Neftegas Limited, Exxon Overseas Corporation, Exxon Overseas Investment Corporation, ExxonMobil (China) Investment Co. Ltd., ExxonMobil (Taicang) Petroleum Co. Ltd., ExxonMobil Abu Dhabi Offshore Petroleum Company Limited, ExxonMobil Alaska Production Inc., ExxonMobil Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., ExxonMobil Australia Pty Ltd, ExxonMobil B Resources Company, ExxonMobil Capital Finance Company, ExxonMobil Capital Netherlands B.V., ExxonMobil Central Europe Holding GmbH, ExxonMobil Cepu Limited, ExxonMobil Chemical France, ExxonMobil Chemical Gulf Coast Investments LLC, ExxonMobil Chemical Holland B.V., ExxonMobil Chemical Services (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., ExxonMobil China Petroleum & Petrochemical Company Limited, ExxonMobil Development Africa B.V., ExxonMobil Development Company, ExxonMobil Egypt (S.A.E.), ExxonMobil Exploracao Brasil Ltda., ExxonMobil Exploration and Production Malaysia Inc., ExxonMobil Exploration and Production Norway AS, ExxonMobil Exploration and Production Romania Limited, ExxonMobil Exploration and Production Tanzania Limited, ExxonMobil Finance Company Limited, ExxonMobil Financial Investment Company Limited, ExxonMobil France Holding SAS, ExxonMobil Gas Marketing Europe Limited, ExxonMobil General Finance Company, ExxonMobil Global Services Company, ExxonMobil Golden Pass Surety LLC, ExxonMobil Holding Company Holland LLC, ExxonMobil Holding Norway AS, ExxonMobil Hong Kong Limited, ExxonMobil International Services SARL, ExxonMobil Iraq Limited, ExxonMobil Italiana Gas S.r.l., ExxonMobil Kazakhstan Inc., ExxonMobil Kazakhstan Ventures Inc., ExxonMobil LNG Services B.V., ExxonMobil Lubricants Trading Company, ExxonMobil Oil Corporation, ExxonMobil PNG Limited, ExxonMobil Petroleum & Chemical BVBA, ExxonMobil Petroleum & Chemical Holdings Inc., ExxonMobil Pipeline Company, ExxonMobil Production Deutschland GmbH, ExxonMobil Production Norway Inc., ExxonMobil Qatargas (II) Limited, ExxonMobil Qatargas Inc., ExxonMobil Ras Laffan (III) Limited, ExxonMobil Rasgas Inc., ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company, ExxonMobil Russia Kara Sea Holdings B.V., ExxonMobil Sales and Supply LLC, ExxonMobil Technology Finance Company, ExxonMobil Ventures Finance Company, ExxonMobil Ventures Funding Ltd., Fujian Refining & Petrochemical Co. Ltd., Golden Pass LNG Terminal Investments LLC, Golden Pass LNG Terminal LLC, Gulf Coast Growth Ventures LLC, Imperial Oil Limited, Imperial Oil Resources Limited, Imperial Oil Resources N.W.T. Limited, Imperial Oil/Petroliere Imperiale, Infineum Italia s.r.I., Infineum Singapore Pte. Ltd., InterOil Corporation, Jurong Aromatics Corporation Pte Ltd, MPM Lubricants, Marine Well Containment Company LLC, Mobil Australia Resources Company Pty Limited, Mobil California Exploration & Producing Asset Company, Mobil Caspian Pipeline Company, Mobil Chemical Products International Inc., Mobil Corporation, Mobil Equatorial Guinea Inc., Mobil Erdgas Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH, Mobil Exploration & Producing Australia Pty Ltd, Mobil International Petroleum Corporation, Mobil Oil Australia Pty Ltd, Mobil Oil Exploration & Producing Southeast Inc., Mobil Oil New Zealand Limited, Mobil Producing Nigeria Unlimited, Mobil Producing Texas & New Mexico Inc., Mobil SerLimited, Mobil Venezolana De Petroleos Inc., Mobil Yanbu Petrochemical Company Inc., Mobil Yanbu Refining Company Inc., Mountain Gathering LLC, Mozambique Rovuma Venture S.p.A., Palmetto Transoceanic LLC, Papua New Guinea Liquefied Natural Gas Global Company LDC, Permian Express Partners LLC, Phillips Exploration LLC, Qatar Liquefied Gas Company Limited, Ras Laffan Liquefied Natural Gas Company Limited, Ras Laffan Liquefied Natural Gas Company Limited (II), SPI Limited, Saudi Aramco Mobil Refinery Company Ltd., Saudi Yanbu Petrochemical Co., SeaRiver Maritime Inc., South Hook LNG Terminal Company Limited, Tengizchevroil LLP, Terminale GNL Adriatico S.r.l, Trend Gathering & Treating LLC, Wolverine Pipe Line Company, XH LLC, XTO Delaware Basin LLC, XTO ENERGY, XTO Energy Canada, and XTO Holdings LLC.
Targa Resources Corp. provides midstream natural gas and natural gas liquids services. It also provides gathering, storing, and terminaling crude oil and storing, terminaling, and selling refined petroleum products. It operates through the following business segments: Gathering and Processing, and Logistics and Transportation. The Gathering and Processing segment includes assets used in the gathering of natural gas produced from oil and gas wells and processing this raw natural gas into merchantable natural gas by extracting NGLs and removing impurities; and assets used for crude oil gathering and terminaling. The Logistics and Transportation segment includes all the activities necessary to convert mixed NGLs into NGL products and provides certain value added services such as storing, fractionating, terminaling, transporting and marketing of NGLs and NGL products, including services to LPG exporters; storing and terminaling of refined petroleum products and crude oil and certain natural gas supply and marketing activities in support of its other businesses. The company was founded on October 27, 2005 and is headquartered in Houston, TX.

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Lincoln National Corp. is a holding company, which operates multiple insurance and retirement businesses through its subsidiary companies. It provides advice and solutions that help empower people to take charge of their financial lives with confidence and optimism. The company operates through the following segments: Annuities, Retirement Plan Services, Life Insurance, Group Protection, and Other Operations. The Annuities segment provides tax-deferred investment growth and lifetime income opportunities for its clients by offering fixed and variable annuities. The Retirement Plan Services segment includes employers with retirement plan products and services, primarily in the defined contribution retirement plan marketplaces. The Life Insurance segment focuses on the creation and protection of wealth for its clients by providing life insurance products, including term insurance, both single and survivorship versions of universal life insurance, variable universal life insurance, and indexed universal life insurance products. The Group Protection segment offers group non-medical insurance products, which includes term life, disability, dental, vision and accident and critical illness

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The following companies are subsidiares of Fluor: 202 Maintenance Services LLC, 3Angle B.V., 3Angle EPCM V.O.F., 684033 N.B. Ltd., AAR 2007 Limited, ADP Marshall Contractors Inc., ADP/FD of Nevada Inc., AG&P Fluor Joint Venture Company Inc., AJS V.O.F., AMECO COLOMBIA S.A.S., AMECO Caribbean Inc., AMECO Holdings Inc., AMECO PANAMA S.A., AMECO Peru S.R. L., AMECO Project Services Inc., AMECO Services Inc., ATCO  Fluor Support Solutions Ltd., Acqyre B.V., Agensi Pekerjaan TRS Malaysia SDN. BHD., Ameco Chile S.A., Ameco Equipment Services Inc., Ameco Inc., Ameco Mexico Administracion y Servicios S. de R.L. de C.V., Ameco Pty. Ltd., Ameco Services S. de R.L. de C.V., Ameco Services S. de R.L. de C.V., American Bridge/Fluor Enterprises Inc. A Joint Venture, American Construction Equipment Company Inc., American Equipment Company Inc., Arbeitsgemeinschaft BAB A S Ausbau Augsburg - Munchen, Asset Management Solutions S.A.S., B.C. Mining Joint Venture, Bellefonte Construction Services LLC, Bouwcombinatie Sluizen 4-5-6 V.O.F., Brady-Fluor LLC, CEJV Ingenieria y Construccion Limitada, CGF Projects Ghana Limited, COOEC-Fluor Heavy Industries Co. Ltd., CSP EG S.L., Canadian National Energy Alliance Ltd., Cascadia Monorail Company LLC, Cavendish Fluor Partnership Limited, Cibolo Creek Infrastructure Joint Venture, Colorado River Constructors JV, Compania Minera San Jose Del Peru S.A., ConOps Construction Ltd., Connect 202 Partners LLC, Consorcio Generation P135 MASA-VEPICA, Consorcio Grupo Stork, Consorcio KGM JV, Consorcio MASARTEC POWER JV, Consorcio Stork Y Masa JV, Consorcio Turnaround Alliance JV, Consorsio MSC JV, Consorsio Stork-TMI, Contingent Mission Sustainment Inc., Cooperheat Franchising B.V., Cooperheat GmbH, Cooperheat Saudi Arabia Company Limited, Corrosion Inspection & Integrity Services Sdn. Bhd., Crown Energy Company, D/FD Operating Services LLC, DAX Industries Inc., DSC Maintenance V.O.F., Daniel International Corporation, Dean / Fluor LLC, Del-Jen Inc., Denver Transit Constructors LLC, Denver Transit Holdings LLC, Denver Transit Operators LLC, Denver Transit Partners LLC, Denver Transit Systems LLC, Desarrolladora De Etileno S. de R.L. de C.V., Dominican Republic Combined Cycle LLC, Duke Fluor Daniel, Duke/Fluor Daniel, Duke/Fluor Daniel Caribbean S.E., Duke/Fluor Daniel International, Duke/Fluor Daniel International Services, Duke/Fluor Daniel International Services (Trinidad) Limited, Duke/Fluor Daniel LLC, EQIN B.V., EQIN Industrial B.V., EQIN N.V., ESSI LLC, Efdee Connecticut Architects Inc., Efdee Engineering Professional Corporation, Efdee Mississippi Architects A Professional Corporation, Efdee New York Engineers & Architects P.C., Elgin RBG (Pty) Limited, Empresa Constructora Fluor Salfa SGO Limitada, Encee Architecture Services P.C., Energy Resourcing Limited, Etileno XXI Contractors SAPI, Etileno XXI Services B.V., Europea de Ingenieria y Asesoramiento, Evergreen Equipment and Personnel Leasing Inc., FBT Services Inc., FCI/Fluor/Parsons a Joint Venture, FD Architects & Engineers Corporation, FDEE Consulting Inc., FDH JV, FDH JV KNPC AZRP/ZOR, FDHM Inc., FHdB LLC, FIID LLC, FLAG Joint Venture, FLUOR M Ltd., FM Operating Services LLC, FMC Holding Company LLC, FPMM XXK (FPMM LLC), FWPJV Limited, Federal Maintenance Logistics Solutions LLC, Fluor (China) Engineering and Construction Co. Ltd., Fluor (Nigeria) Limited, Fluor A&E Services Inc., Fluor A27/A1 B.V., Fluor AMEC II LLC, Fluor Aker Solutions Indonesia JV, Fluor Alaska Inc., Fluor Americas Inc., Fluor Arabia Limited, Fluor Argentina Inc., Fluor Argentina Inc. Sucursal Argentina, Fluor Australia Pty Ltd., Fluor B.V., Fluor BC Ltd., Fluor BNA GP Inc., Fluor BNA Holdco Inc., Fluor BNA O&M GP Inc., Fluor BNA O&M USA LLC, Fluor Boke Inc., Fluor Brasil Ltda., Fluor Brasil Servicos de Engenharia Ltda, Fluor Canada Ltd., Fluor Caspian Services Limited, Fluor Cebu Inc., Fluor Central Asia LLP, Fluor Chile Inc., Fluor Chile Ingenieria y Construccion S.A., Fluor Colombia Limited, Fluor ConOps Limited, Fluor Construction Services Pty Ltd., Fluor Constructors Canada Ltd., Fluor Constructors International. Inc., Fluor Consultants B.V., Fluor Craft Services Inc., Fluor Daniel (Japan) Inc., Fluor Daniel (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., Fluor Daniel Asia Inc., Fluor Daniel Brasil Ltda., Fluor Daniel Caribbean Inc., Fluor Daniel China Inc., Fluor Daniel China Services Inc., Fluor Daniel Coal Services International Inc., Fluor Daniel Construction Company, Fluor Daniel Development Corporation, Fluor Daniel E&C LLC, Fluor Daniel Eastern Inc., Fluor Daniel Engineering Inc., Fluor Daniel Engineers & Constructors Inc., Fluor Daniel Engineers & Constructors Ltd., Fluor Daniel Engineers & Consultants Ltd., Fluor Daniel Engineers SA (PTY) Limited, Fluor Daniel Espana S.A., Fluor Daniel Eurasia Inc., Fluor Daniel Global Limited, Fluor Daniel Global Services Limited, Fluor Daniel Holdings Canada Inc., Fluor Daniel Holdings Inc., Fluor Daniel Illinois Inc., Fluor Daniel Inc.  Philippines, Fluor Daniel India Inc., Fluor Daniel India Private Limited, Fluor Daniel International (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., Fluor Daniel International Services Inc., Fluor Daniel Latin America Inc., Fluor Daniel Maintenance Services Inc., Fluor Daniel Mexico S.A., Fluor Daniel Mining & Metals Ltd., Fluor Daniel Modesto Inc., Fluor Daniel Nigeria Limited, Fluor Daniel Overseas Inc., Fluor Daniel P.R.C. Ltd., Fluor Daniel Pacific Inc., Fluor Daniel Pulp & Paper Inc., Fluor Daniel Services Corporation, Fluor Daniel South America Limited, Fluor Daniel Technical Services Inc., Fluor Daniel Venture Group Inc., Fluor Daniel a Professional Architectural Corporation, Fluor Daniel-AMEC Philippines Inc., Fluor Daniels Holdings (Botswana) (Pty) Limited, Fluor Driver Inc., Fluor Energy Technology Services LLC, Fluor Engenharia e Projetos S.A., Fluor Engineering Corporation, Fluor Engineering N.V., Fluor Engineering Solutions Ltd., Fluor Enterprises Group Inc., Fluor Enterprises Inc., Fluor Europe B.V.IIIIIX, Fluor Facility & Plant Services Inc., Fluor Federal Global Projects Inc., Fluor Federal Inc., Fluor Federal Petroleum Operations LLC, Fluor Federal Services Inc., Fluor Federal Services LLC, Fluor Federal Services NWS Inc., Fluor Fernald Inc., Fluor Finance International B.V./S.a.r.l., Fluor Finance U.S. Inc., Fluor Flatiron Balfour Beatty Dragados DBJV, Fluor Global Plant Services (Proprietary) Ltd., Fluor Global Services Australia Pty Ltd., Fluor GmbH, Fluor Government Group International Inc., Fluor Government Group  Canada Inc., Fluor Guinea Inc., Fluor HDR Global Design Consultants LLC, Fluor Hanford Inc., Fluor Heavy Civil LLC, Fluor Holding Company LLC, Fluor Idaho LLC, Fluor Industrial Construction Corp., Fluor Industrial Services Canada Inc., Fluor Industrial Services Inc., Fluor Industrial Services Limited, Fluor Infrastructure B.V., Fluor Intercontinental Arabian Peninsula LLC, Fluor Intercontinental Germany GmbH, Fluor Intercontinental Inc., Fluor Intercontinental Solutions LLC, Fluor International C.V., Fluor International Holdings B.V., Fluor International Inc., Fluor International Limited, Fluor International Nigeria Limited, Fluor Investments LLC, Fluor Ireland Limited, Fluor Island ehf., Fluor Kazakhstan Inc., Fluor Kazakhstan LLC, Fluor Kuwait KSC, Fluor Limited, Fluor Maintenance Services Inc., Fluor Management Company L.P., Fluor Management and Technical Services Inc., Fluor Marine Propulsion LLC, Fluor Mediterranean Inc., Fluor Middle East LLC, Fluor Mideast Limited, Fluor Mining and Metals France Inc., Fluor Mocambique Limitada, Fluor NE Inc., Fluor Ocean Services Limited, Fluor Pension Trustee Limited, Fluor Plant Engineering S.A., Fluor Power Services Pty Ltd., Fluor Project Services B.V., Fluor Projects Limited, Fluor Rail Services Pty Ltd., Fluor S.A., Fluor S.A. (Pty) Limited, Fluor SPN Inc., Fluor Services B.V., Fluor Services LLC, Fluor South Africa (Pty) Limited, Fluor Spain Holding S.L., Fluor Supply Chain Solutions B.V., Fluor Supply Chain Solutions LLC, Fluor Supply Chain Solutions Singapore Pte. Ltd., Fluor Techint SRL Construccion y Servicios Limitada, Fluor Technologies Corporation, Fluor Texas Inc., Fluor Transworld Services Inc., Fluor US Services Inc., Fluor Uganda Engineering and Construction Limited, Fluor Virginia Inc., Fluor WEP Holdings Inc., Fluor WorleyParsons Arctic Solutions, Fluor environmental Resources Management Services Inc., Fluor-B&W Oak Ridge LLC, Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth LLC, Fluor-Brady LLC, Fluor-CDM Space Services LLC, Fluor-Habboush International Limited, Fluor-Igoda Projects (Proprietary) Limited, Fluor-Lane 95 LLC, Fluor-Lane LLC, Fluor-Lane South Carolina LLC, Fluor-SKM Iron Ore Joint Venture, Fluor/Technip Integrated JV, Fluor/Westinghouse Liquid Waste Services LLC, FluorAMEC LLC, Fru-Con/Fluor Daniel Joint Venture, GLT-Plus V.O.F., GLX Constructors an unincorporated joint venture, Genesys Telecommunications Holdings Limited, Genesys Telecommunications Limited, Giovenco Industrial Services Pty Ltd., Giovenco Industries (AUST) Pty Limited, Giovenco Industries (AUST) Trust, Giovenco/Insulations International JV Pty Ltd., Giovenco/Insulations International JV Unit Trust, Gladstone Pressure Welders Pty Ltd., Global Project Execution Inc., Goar Allison & Associates, Goar Allison & Associates LLCndo-Mauritian Affiliates Limitednfrastructure Civil Equipment LLC, Greenville Technical Services Inc., Grupo Alvica SCS, Grupo Empresarial Alvica S.A., ICA Fluor Daniel S. de R.L. de C.V., ICA Fluor Operaciones S.A. de C.V., ICA Fluor Operaciones S.A. de C.V., ICA Fluor Petroquimica S.A. de C.V., ICA Fluor Servicios Gerenciales S.A. de C.V., ICA Fluor Servicios Gerenciales S.A. de C.V., ICA Fluor Servicios Operativos S.A. de C.V., ICA Stork S. de C.V., ICA Stork S. de R.L. de C.V., IF Proyectos S.A., IFD Servicios de Ingenieria S.A. de C.V., IT Development Centre B.V., IXAS Gaasperdammerweg B.V., IXAS Zuid-Oost B.V., Industrial Del Hierro S.A. de C.V., Industrial Services France SAS, Industrial Services SF Peru S.A.C., Industrial Services SR Peru S.A.C., Infra Combinatie Zuid-West, Infraspeed Holdings B.V., Ingenieria y Construccion Fluor Daniel Chile Limitada, Iraq Construction Ltd., Iraq Water General Contracting Company L.L.C., Istimewa Electrotechniek B.V., J Crowder Corporation, J. Crowder Corp., J.A. Jones International, JGC Fluor BC Joint Venture, JGC Fluor Kitimat LNG Project JV, JGC  Fluor Mocambique Lda, JGC/FEI Joint Venture, JGC/Fluor JV, KDPC Limited, KMK-DJI JV, KPJV Limited, Karratha Engineering Services Pty Ltd., Kazakh Projects Joint Venture Limited, KazakhNefteGasServis LLP, Koninklijke Machinefabriek Stork B.V., Lone Star Infrastructure Joint Venture, Lone Star Infrastructure LLC, Louisiana Operations and Maintenance Services LLC, M&W/Marshall a Joint Venture, MGJV Pty Ltd., Maquinaria Ameco Guatemala Limitada, Mecanicos Asociados S.A.S., Mid-America Conversion Services LLC, Middle East Fluor, Mineral Resource Development Corporation, Mongolian National Facility Services (MNFS) LLC, Mourik Istimewa Combinatie V.O.F., NWKC LLC, Najmat Al-Sabah for General Services Limited Liability Company, NuScale Holdings Corp., NuScale Power LLC, Oregon Bridge Delivery Partners Joint Venture, P.T. Fluor Daniel Indonesia, P.T. MITRA BERSAMA ENGINEERING, P.T. Nusantara Power Services, PFD (UK) Limited, PFD International LLC, PRI/DJI A Reconstruction JV, PT Signet Indonesia, PT Singgar Mulia, PT. MITRA BERSAMA ENGINEERING, Pacific Defense Constructors LLC, Palmetto Seed Capital Ltd. Partnership, Parkway Infrastructure Constructors, Pegasus Link Constructors, Pegasus Link Constructors LLC, Phoenix Constructors Joint Venture, Pipeline Maintenance Alliance JV, Plant Engineering Services LLC, Plant Performance Services, Plant Performance Services Caribbean Limited, Plant Performance Services International LLC, Plant Performance Services International Ltd., Poort van Den Bosch B.V., Poort van Den Bosch V.O.F., Prairie Link Constructors JV, Prairie Link Constructors LLC, Pro-V/ConOps JV, Provo River Constructors, Purple Line Transit Constructors LLC, Purple Line Transit Operations LLC, Purple Line Transit Partners LLC, Qatar National Facility Services, RBG Kazakhstan LLP, Rash Inversiones 2007 S.L., Rock Island Integrated Services, S-M V.O.F., SDT Maintenance Management Group Limited, SFS 007.298.633 Pty Limited, SSLP/FCCL JV, Sacyr Fluor Bolivia S.R.L., Sacyr Fluor Colombia S.A.S., Sacyr Fluor Participaciones S.L., Sacyr Fluor S.A., Saddleback Constructors, Sakhalin Neftegas Technology, Savannah River Nuclear Solutions LLC, Servicios Cuyuni E.T.T. C.A., Servicios Mineria Inc., Servicios de Construccion del Pacifico Inc., Servitrade  Servicos Investimento y Trading Limitada, Servitrade  Servicos Investimentos y Trading Limitada, Signet Engineering Pty Ltd., Signet Holdings Pty Ltd., Soli-Flo Inc., Soli-Flo LLC, Soli-Flo Material Transfer L.P., Soli-Flo Partners L.P., Soli0Flo Partners L.P., Springfield Resource Recovery Inc., Springfield Resource Recovery Limited Partnership, St. Joe Participacoes, St. Joe Participacoes Ltda, Stork Asset Management Consultancy B.V., Stork B.V., Stork Caspian LLC, Stork Colombia S.A.S., Stork Elecon Ltd, Stork Gear & Services Asia Pte. Ltd., Stork Gear & Services B.V., Stork German Holding GmbH, Stork Getriebe & Services GmbH, Stork H&E Turbo Blading Inc., Stork Holding, Stork Holding B.V., Stork Integrated Solutions B.V., Stork Intellectual Property B.V., Stork International B.V., Stork International Limited, Stork Mechanical Works and Maintenance Co. K.S.C.C., Stork Nederland B.V., Stork Oryx Turbo Machinery Services LLC, Stork Peru S.A.C., Stork Peru S.A.S., Stork Plastic Machinery B.V., Stork Power Services & Technology Beijing Limited, Stork Power Services B.V., Stork Power Services OOO, Stork Power Services USA Holding Inc., Stork TS Holdings Limited, Stork TS UK Limited, Stork Technical Services (Holdings) Limited, Stork Technical Services (RBG) Limited, Stork Technical Services (STS) Ltd., Stork Technical Services Australia Pty Ltd., Stork Technical Services Beheer B.V., Stork Technical Services Belgium N.V., Stork Technical Services GmbH, Stork Technical Services Group B.V., Stork Technical Services HOLDCO B.V., Stork Technical Services Holding Australia Pty Ltd., Stork Technical Services Holding B.V., Stork Technical Services International Limited, Stork Technical Services International South Africa, Stork Technical Services Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., Stork Technical Services New Zealand Limited, Stork Technical Services Norway AS, Stork Technical Services Sadaf LLC, Stork Technical Services Saudi Arabia Co., Stork Technical Services Trinidad and Tobago Ltd, Stork Technical Services UK Limited, Stork Technical Services USA Inc., Stork Thermeq B.V., Stork Turbo Blading B.V., Stork Turbo Service B.V., Strategic Organizational Systems Enterprises Inc., Strategic Organizational Systems Environmental Engineering Division Inc., Support Services International LLC, Supreme Modular Fabrication Inc., TDF Inc., TRS Consultants JLT, TRS Craft Services Inc., TRS Far East Sdn. Bhd., TRS International Group S. de R.L. de C.V., TRS International Payroll Co., TRS Labour Hire Solutions Pty. Ltd., TRS SA Holdings Company (Pty) Ltd., TRS Search and Selection (Pty) Ltd., TRS Staffing Solutions (Australia) Pty Ltd., TRS Staffing Solutions (Canada) Inc., TRS Staffing Solutions (Pty) Ltd., TRS Staffing Solutions B.V., TRS Staffing Solutions Inc., TRS Staffing Solutions India Private Limited, TRS Staffing Solutions Limited, TRS Staffing Solutions Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., TRS Staffing Solutions Mozambique Limitada, TRS Staffing Solutions S. de R.L. de C.V., TRS Staffing Solutions SA (Pty) Ltd., Tappan Zee Constructors LLC, Technical Resource Solutions S.L., Technip-Fluor JV, Thermoprozess Cooperheat GmbH, Trans Florida Express LLCenezco Inc., Trans-Africa Projects (Pty) Ltd., Trans-Africa Projects Ltd., UNEC Engineering, United Rentals Industrial Services LLC, WODECO Nigeria Limited, Walsh-Fluor Design-Build Team, Wescon (B) Sdn. Bhd., Wescon International B.V., Williams Brothers Engineering Company, Williams Brothers Engineering Limited, Williams Brothers Process Services Inc., Wilmore/Fluor Modesto LLC, Windsor Essex Mobility Group GP, WorleyParsons Arabia Limited Fluor Arabia Limited Joint Venture, Wright Engineers (Chile) Limitada, Wright Engineers Limitada Peru, and ZuidPlus V.O.F..
Gildan Activewear Inc. manufactures and sells various apparel products in the United States, Canada, and internationally. It provides various activewear products, including T-shirts, fleece tops and bottoms, and sport shirts under the Gildan, Gildan Performance, Gildan Hammer, Comfort Colors, American Apparel, Anvil by Gildan, Alstyle, Prim + Preux, and GoldToe brands. The company also offers hosiery products comprising athletic; dress; and casual, liner, therapeutic, and workwear socks, as well as sheer panty hoses, tights, and leggings under the brands of Gildan, Under Armour, GoldToe, PowerSox, GT a GoldToe Brand, Silver Toe, Signature Gold by Goldtoe, Peds, MediPeds, Kushyfoot, Therapy Plus, All Pro, Secret, Silks, Secret Silky, and American Apparel. In addition, it provides men's and boys' underwear products, and ladies panties under the Gildan and Gildan Platinum brand names; and ladies' shapewear, intimates, and accessories under the Secret and Secret Silky brands. The company sells its products to wholesale distributors, screen printers, or embellishers, as well as to retailers and consumer brand companies. The company was formerly known as Textiles Gildan Inc. and changed its name to Gildan Activewear Inc. in March 1995. Gildan Activewear Inc. was founded in 1946 and is headquartered in Montreal, Canada.

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The following companies are subsidiares of Textron: AAI Corporation, AAI Services Corporation, ALSTOM Gears, Able Aerospace, Able Aerospace Services Inc., Able Engineering & Component Services, Aeronautical Accessories LLC, Airborne Tactical Advantage Company LLC, Arctic Cat, Arctic Cat ACE Holding GmbH, Arctic Cat France SARL, Arctic Cat GmbH, Arctic Cat Inc., Arctic Cat Production LLC, Arctic Cat Production Support LLC, Arctic Cat Sales Inc., Arctic Cat Shared Services LLC, Arctic Cat UK Ltd., Arkansas Aerospace Inc., Avco Corporation, Aviation Service servis letal doo Ljubljana, Aylesbury Automation, B/K Navigational Equipment sro, Beech Aircraft Corporation, Beech Holdings, Beechcraft Defense Support Holding LLC, Beechcraft Domestic Service Company, Beechcraft Germany GmbH, Beechcraft International Holding LLC, Beechcraft International Service Company, Beechcraft New Zealand, Beechcraft Service Company UK Limited, Bell Helicopter GK, Bell Helicopter KK, Bell Textron Asia (Pte.) Ltd., Bell Textron Canada International Inc., Bell Textron Canada Limited/Limitee, Bell Textron Inc., Bell Textron Korea Inc., Bell Textron Miami Inc, Bell Textron Prague a.s., Bell Textron Rhode Island Inc., Bell Textron Services Inc, Bell Textron Supply Center BV, Bell Textron Technical Services Inc., Benzlers, Brazaco Mapri Industrias, Burkland, Cessna Aircraft Company, Cessna Citation European Service Center SAS, Cessna Dusseldorf Citation Service Center GmbH, Cessna Finance Corporation, Cessna Finance Export Corporation, Cessna Mexico S de RL de CV, Cessna Spanish Citation Service Center SLU, Cessna Zurich Citation Service Center GmbH, Citation Parts Distribution International Inc., Cushman Inc., Datacom Technologies, David Brown Group, Doncaster Citation Service Centre Limited, E-Z-GO Canada Limited, Energy Manufacturing, Flexalloy, HBC LLC, Hawker Beech de Mexico S de RL de CV, Hawker Beechcraft Argentina SA, Howe & Howe Inc., Howe and Howe Technologies, Industrial Technology Inc., InteSys Technologies, International Product Support Inc., KSB Annecy SAS, Kautex (Changchun) Plastics Technology Co. Ltd., Kautex (Chongqing) Plastic Technology Co. Ltd., Kautex (Guangzhou) Plastic Technology Co. Ltd., Kautex (Pinghu) Plastic Technology Co. Ltd., Kautex (Shanghai) Plastic Technology Co. Ltd., Kautex (Wuhan) Plastic Technology Co. Ltd., Kautex Corporation, Kautex Craiova srl, Kautex Germany Holding GmbH, Kautex Inc., Kautex Japan KK, Kautex Shanghai GmbH, Kautex Textron (UK) Limited, Kautex Textron Benelux BVBA, Kautex Textron Bohemia spol sro, Kautex Textron CVS Limited, Kautex Textron GmbH & Co. KG, Kautex Textron Iberica SL, Kautex Textron Italia Srl, Kautex Textron Management Services Company de Puebla S. de RL de CV, Kautex Textron Portugal  Produtos Plasticos Sociedade Unipessoal Lda., Kautex Textron de Mexico S de RL de CV, Kautex Textron do Brasil Ltda., Kautex of Georgia Inc., Kaywood Products Corp., Klauke, LCI Corporation International, LLC Textron RUS, Maag, McCord Corporation, Mechtronix, Medical Numerics Inc., Midland Industrial Plastics, MillenWorks, MillenWorks Themed Technologies, MotorFist LLC, OPINICUS Simulation and Training Services LLC, OmniQuip International, Opinicus, Optical Boring Co., Opto-Electronics, Opto-Electronics Inc., Overwatch Systems Ltd., PEINER Umformtechnik, Pirelli Tyres - General Rubber Goods (GRG) division, Premiair Aviation Maintenance Pty Ltd, Progressive Electronics, Ransomes, Ransomes Inc., Ransomes Investment LLC, Ransomes Jacobsen France SAS, Ransomes Jacobsen Limited, Ransomes Limited, Ransomes Pensions Trustee Company Limited, Replacement Part Solutions LLC, Response Technologies LLC, Rotor Blades Limited, Sukosim Verbindungselemente, TRU Simulation & Training Spain SL, TRU Simulation + Training Inc., TRU Simulation + Training LLC, TekGPS Engineering Srl, Textron Airland LLC, Textron Atlantic LLC, Textron Aviation Australia Pty. Ltd., Textron Aviation Canada Ltd., Textron Aviation Defense LLC, Textron Aviation Finance Corporation, Textron Aviation Inc., Textron Aviation Prague Service Center sro, Textron Aviation Rhode Island Inc., Textron Aviation Services de Mexico S de RL de CV, Textron Capital BV, Textron Communications Inc., Textron Far East Pte. Ltd., Textron Finance Holding Company, Textron Financial Corporation, Textron Financial Corporation Receivables Trust 2002-CP-2, Textron Fluid and Power Inc., Textron France Holding SAS, Textron France SAS, Textron Global Services Inc., Textron Ground Support Equipment Inc., Textron Ground Support Equipment UK Limited, Textron IPMP Inc., Textron India Private Limited, Textron Innovations Inc., Textron International Inc., Textron International Mexico S de RL de CV, Textron Limited, Textron Management Services Inc., Textron Motors GmbH, Textron Motors North America Inc., Textron Outdoor Power Equipment Inc., Textron Realty Corporation, Textron Shared Service Centre (Canada) Inc., Textron Specialized Vehicles Inc., Textron Sweden AB, Textron Systems Australia Holding Pty Ltd, Textron Systems Australia Pty Ltd, Textron Systems Canada Inc., Textron Systems Corporation, Textron Systems Electronic Systems UK (Holdings) Limited, Textron Systems Electronic Systems UK Limited, Textron Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Textron UK Pension Trustee Limited, Textron Verwaltungs-GmbH, Turbine Engine Components Textron (Newington Operations) Inc., United Industrial Corporation, Westminster Insurance Company, Williams Machine & Tool, Wuxi Textron Specialized Vehicles Co. Ltd., and Zhenjiang Bell Textron Aviation Services Limited.
Global X MSCI Greece ETF shares reverse split on the morning of Tuesday, April 28th 2020. The 1-3 reverse split was announced on Monday, April 13th 2020. The number of shares owned by shareholders was adjusted after the market closes on Monday, April 27th 2020. An investor that had 100 shares of Global X MSCI Greece ETF stock prior to the reverse split would have 33 shares after the split.




Guwahati, Nov 25 : Tense erupted in Moreh, bordering town along Manipur-Myanmar border, after some Myanmarese army men entered Haulenphai village near Moreh and reportedly asked the villagers to halt construction work of some houses.





According to the reports, the incident was happened on Saturday and the troops of Manipur police and Assam Rifles had immediately rushed to the area under Tengnoupal district.





The Manipur police with district administration officials asked the Myanmarese army men to go back.





Few people including women were injured during a clash with between police and villagers after the Manipur police team asked the villagers of Haulenphai to suspend the construction work.





But, the angry villagers claimed the area is in Indian territory and they will not stop construction work.





We will continue to construct our houses in our land, an angry villager said.





Angered by the attitude of Manipur police, Assam Rifles and district administration, the villagers of Haulenphai had blockade road and continue its construction works.





We are constructing house in our village which is located inside Indian territory. But Myanmarese army enter our village and told us that, the area belongs to Myanmar and asked us to stop the construction. We inform about the incident to Moreh police and Assam Rifles, who are guarding Indo-Myanmar border and supposed to protect, safeguard the Indian boundary.





But the police and Assam Rifles men also asked us to suspend the construction works. We will halt the construction work if the Indian government says it is not in India, Lalkholun Haokip, Chief of Haulenphai village said.





It is to be mentioned that, there were massive protests in the past over allegations of shifting of some boundary pillars within the Indian territory.





Haulenphai village is located near boundary pillar 76 of Indo-Myanmar border.





Following the allegations, the union government had also sent a team to make spot verifications along the Indo-Myanmar border.




Vivint Solar, Inc. provides distributed solar energy primarily to residential customers in the United States. It owns and installs solar energy systems through long-term customer contracts. The company also sells photovoltaic installation products, as well as solar renewable energy certificates. As of December 31, 2019, it had an aggregate capacity of 1,294.0 megawatts covering approximately 188,300 homes. The company was formerly known as V Solar Holdings, Inc. and changed its name to Vivint Solar, Inc. in April 2014. Vivint Solar, Inc. was founded in 2011 and is headquartered in Lehi, Utah.

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The following companies are subsidiares of Carnival Co. &: 1972 Productions Inc., 6348 Equipment LLC, A.C.N. 098 290 834 Pty. Ltd., A.J. Juneau Dock LLC, AIDA Kundencenter GmbH, Adventure Island Ltd., Air-Sea Holiday GmbH, Alaska Hotel Properties LLC, Barcelona Cruise Terminal SLU, Bay Island Cruise Port S.A., Belize Cruise Terminal Limited, CC U.S. Ventures Inc., CCL Gifts LLC, CSSC Carnival Italy Cruise Investment S.r.L, Carnival (UK) Limited, Carnival Bahamas FC Limited, Carnival Bahamas Holdings Limited, Carnival Corporation & plc Asia Pte. Ltd., Carnival Corporation Hong Kong Limited, Carnival Corporation Korea Ltd., Carnival Corporation Ports Group Japan KK, Carnival Finance LLC, Carnival Grand Bahama Investment Limited, Carnival Investments Limited, Carnival Japan Inc., Carnival License Holdings Limited, Carnival Maritime GmbH, Carnival North America LLC, Carnival Port Holdings Limited, Carnival Ports Inc., Carnival Support Services India Private Limited, Carnival Technical Services (UK) Limited, Carnival Technical Services Finland Limited, Carnival Technical Services GmbH, Carnival Technical Services Inc., Carnival Vanuatu Limited, Costa Crociere PTE Ltd., Costa Crociere S.p.A., Costa Cruceros S.A., Costa Cruise Lines Inc., Costa Cruise Lines UK Limited, Costa Cruises Shipping Services (Shanghai) Company Limited, Costa Cruises Travel Agency (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Costa Cruzeiros Agencia Maritima e Turismo Ltda., Costa Group Digital & Strategic Services GmbH, Costa International B.V., Costa Kreuzfahrten GmbH, Cozumel Cruise Terminal S.A. de C.V., Creative Travel Lab Ltd., Cruise Ships Catering & Services International N.V., Cruise Terminal Services S.A. de C.V., Cruiseport Curacao C.V., D.R. Cruise Port Ltd., Ecospray Technologies S.r.L., F.P.M. SAS, F.P.P. SAS, Fleet Maritime Services (Bermuda) Limited, Fleet Maritime Services Holdings (Bermuda) Limited, Fleet Maritime Services International Limited, GXI LLC, Gibs Inc., Global Experience Innovators Inc., Global Fine Arts Inc., Global Shipping Service (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Grand Cruise Shipping Unipessoal LdA, Grand Turk Cruise Center Ltd., HAL Antillen N.V., HAL Beheer B.V., HAL Cruises Limited, HAL Maritime Ltd., HAL Nederland N.V., HAL Properties Limited, HAL Services B.V., HSE Hamburg School of Entertainment GmbH, Holding Division Iberocruceros SLU, Holland America Line Inc., Holland America Line N.V., Holland America Line Paymaster of Washington LLC, Holland America Line U.S.A. Inc., Ibero Cruzeiros Ltda., Iberocruceros SLU, Information Assistance Corporation, International Cruise Services S.A. de C.V., International Leisure Travel Inc., International Maritime Recruitment Agency S.A. de C.V., Milestone N.V., Navitrans S.R.L., Ocean Bahamas Innovation Ltd., Ocean Medallion Fulfillment Ltd., Operadora Catalina S.r.L., P&O Princess American Holdings, P&O Princess Cruises International Limited, P&O Princess Cruises Pension Trustee Limited, P&O Properties (California) Inc., P&O Travel Limited, Prestige Cruises Management S.A.M., Prestige Cruises N.V., Princess Bermuda Holdings Ltd., Princess Cays Ltd., Princess Cruise Corporation Inc., Princess Cruise Lines Ltd., Princess Cruises and Tours Inc., Princess U.S. Holdings Inc., RCT Maintenance & Related Services S.A., RCT Pilots & Related Services S.A., RCT Security & Related Services S.A., Roatan Cruise Terminal S.A. de C.V., Royal Hyway Tours Inc., Santa Cruz Terminal S.L., SeaVacations Limited, SeaVacations UK Limited, Seabourn Cruise Line Limited, Shanghai Coast Cruise Consulting Co. Lda, Ship Care (Bahamas) Limited, Sitmar Cruises Inc., Spanish Cruise Services N.V., Sunshine Shipping Corporation Ltd., T&T International Inc., Tour Alaska LLC, Transnational Services Corporation, Trident Insurance Company Ltd., Westmark Hotels Inc., Westmark Hotels of Canada Ltd., Westours Motor Coaches LLC, Wind Surf Limited, and World Leading Cruise Management (Shanghai) Co. Ltd..
The following companies are subsidiares of Bristol-Myers Squibb: 1096271 B.C. ULC, 345 Park LLC, A.G. Medical Services P.A., AHI Investment LLC, AbVitro LLC, Abraxis BioScience Australia Pty Ltd., Abraxis BioScience Inc., Abraxis BioScience International Holding Company Inc., Abraxis BioScience LLC, Abraxis BioScience Puerto Rico LLC, Acetylon Pharmaceuticals Inc., Adnexus, Adnexus a Bristol-Myers Squibb R&D Company, Allard Labs Acquisition G.P., Amira Pharmaceuticals, Amira Pharmaceuticals Inc., Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Apothecon LLC, B-MS Generx Unlimited Company, BMS Benelux Holdings B.V., BMS Bermuda Nominees L.L.C., BMS Data Acquisition Company LLC, BMS Forex Company, BMS Holdings Sarl, BMS Holdings Spain S.L., BMS International Insurance Designated Activity Company, BMS Investco SAS, BMS Korea Holdings L.L.C., BMS Latin American Nominees L.L.C., BMS Luxembourg Partners L.L.C., BMS Omega Bermuda Holdings Finance Ltd., BMS Pharmaceutical Korea Limited, BMS Pharmaceuticals Germany Holdings B.V., BMS Pharmaceuticals International Holdings Netherlands B.V., BMS Pharmaceuticals Korea Holdings B.V., BMS Pharmaceuticals Mexico Holdings B.V., BMS Pharmaceuticals Netherlands Holdings B.V., BMS Real Estate LLC, BMS Spain Investments LLC, BMS Strategic Portfolio Investments Holdings Inc., Blisa Acquisition G.P., Bristol (Iran) S.A., Bristol Iran Private Company Limited, Bristol Laboratories Inc., Bristol Laboratories International S.A., Bristol Laboratories Medical Information Systems Inc., Bristol-Myers (Andes) L.L.C., Bristol-Myers (Private) Limited, Bristol-Myers Middle East S.A.L., Bristol-Myers Overseas Corporation, Bristol-Myers Squibb (China) Investment Co. Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb (China) Pharmaceuticals Co. Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb (Israel) Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb (NZ) Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb (Proprietary) Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb (Shanghai) Trading Co. Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb (Singapore) Pte. Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb (Taiwan) Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb (West Indies) Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb A.E., Bristol-Myers Squibb Aktiebolag, Bristol-Myers Squibb Argentina S. R. L., Bristol-Myers Squibb Australia Pty. Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb Axia Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb B.V., Bristol-Myers Squibb Belgium S.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb Business Services Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Canada Co., Bristol-Myers Squibb Canada International Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Delta Company Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Denmark Filial of Bristol-Myers Squibb AB, Bristol-Myers Squibb EMEA Sarl, Bristol-Myers Squibb Egypt LLC, Bristol-Myers Squibb Epsilon Holdings Unlimited Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Farmaceutica Ltda., Bristol-Myers Squibb Farmaceutica Portuguesa S.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb GesmbH, Bristol-Myers Squibb GmbH & Co. KGaA, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holding Germany GmbH & Co. KG, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holdings 2002 Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holdings Germany Verwaltungs GmbH, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holdings Ireland Unlimited Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holdings Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holdings Pharma Ltd. Liability Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Ilaclari Inc., Bristol-Myers Squibb India Pvt. Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb International Company Unlimited Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb International Corporation, Bristol-Myers Squibb Investco L.L.C., Bristol-Myers Squibb K.K., Bristol-Myers Squibb Kft., Bristol-Myers Squibb Luxembourg International S.C.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Bristol-Myers Squibb MEA GmbH, Bristol-Myers Squibb Manufacturing Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Marketing Services S.R.L., Bristol-Myers Squibb Middle East & Africa FZ-LLC, Bristol-Myers Squibb Norway Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb Nutricionales de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Bristol-Myers Squibb Peru S.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma (HK) Ltd, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma (Thailand) Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma EEIG, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma Holding Company LLC, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma Ventures Corporation, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceuticals Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceuticals Unlimited Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Polska Sp. z o.o., Bristol-Myers Squibb Products SA, Bristol-Myers Squibb Puerto Rico Inc., Bristol-Myers Squibb Puerto Rico/Sanofi Pharmaceutical Partnership Puerto Rico, Bristol-Myers Squibb Romania S.R.L., Bristol-Myers Squibb S.A.U., Bristol-Myers Squibb S.r.l., Bristol-Myers Squibb SA, Bristol-Myers Squibb Sanofi Pharmaceuticals Holding Partnership, Bristol-Myers Squibb Sarl, Bristol-Myers Squibb Service Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb Services Sp. z o.o., Bristol-Myers Squibb Spol. s r.o., Bristol-Myers Squibb Theta Finance Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb Trustees Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Verwaltungs GmbH, Bristol-Myers Squibb de Colombia S.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb de Costa Rica Sociedad Anonima, Bristol-Myers Squibb de Guatemala S.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Bristol-Myers Squibb/Astrazeneca EEIG, Bristol-Myers Squibb/Pfizer EEIG, Bristol-Myers Squibb/Sanofi Pharmaceuticals Partnership, Bristol-Myers de Venezuela S.C.A., CHT I LLC, CHT II LLC, CHT III LLC, CHT IV LLC, CR Finance Company LLC, Cardioxyl Pharmaceuticals, Cardioxyl Pharmaceuticals Inc., Celem LLC, Celem Ltd., Celgene, Celgene A.B., Celgene AS, Celgene Ab (Finland), Celgene Alpine Investment Co. II LLC, Celgene Alpine Investment Co. III LLC, Celgene Alpine Investment Co. LLC, Celgene ApS, Celgene B.V., Celgene BVBA, Celgene Brasil Produtos Farmaceuticos Ltda., Celgene CAR LLC, Celgene CAR Ltd., Celgene Chemicals Sarl, Celgene China Holdings LLC, Celgene Co., Celgene Corporation, Celgene Distribution B.V., Celgene EngMab GmbH, Celgene Europe B.V., Celgene Europe Limited, Celgene European Investment Company LLC, Celgene Financing Company LLC, Celgene Global Holdings Sarl, Celgene GmbH [Austria], Celgene GmbH [Germany], Celgene GmbH [Switzerland], Celgene Holdings East Corporation, Celgene Holdings II Sarl, Celgene Holdings III Sarl, Celgene Ilac Pazarlama ve Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Celgene Inc., Celgene International Holdings Corporation, Celgene International II Sarl, Celgene International III Sarl, Celgene International Inc., Celgene International Sarl, Celgene K.K., Celgene Kft., Celgene Limited [Hong Kong], Celgene Limited [Ireland], Celgene Limited [New Zealand], Celgene Limited [Taiwan], Celgene Limited [UK], Celgene Logistics Sarl, Celgene Ltd, Celgene Luxembourg Sarl, Celgene Management Sarl, Celgene NJ Investment Co, Celgene Netherlands B.V., Celgene Netherlands Investment B.V., Celgene Pharmaceutical (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Celgene Pte. Ltd., Celgene Pty Ltd, Celgene Puerto Rico Distribution LLC, Celgene Quanticel Research Inc, Celgene R&D Sarl, Celgene RIVOT LLC, Celgene RIVOT Ltd., Celgene RIVOT SRL, Celgene Receptos Limited, Celgene Receptos Sarl, Celgene Research Incubator At Summit West LLC, Celgene Research S.L.U., Celgene Research and Development Company LLC, Celgene Research and Development I ULC, Celgene Research and Development II LLC, Celgene Research and Investment Company II LLC, Celgene S. de R.L. de C.V., Celgene S.L.U., Celgene S.R.L., Celgene SAS, Celgene Sarl AU, Celgene Sdn Bhd, Celgene Services Sarl, Celgene Sociedade Unipessoal Lda, Celgene Sp. Z.o.o., Celgene Sro [Czech Republic], Celgene Summit Investment Co, Celgene Switzerland Holding Sarl, Celgene Switzerland II LLC, Celgene Switzerland Investment Sarl, Celgene Switzerland LLC, Celgene Switzerland Sarl, Celgene Tri A Holdings Ltd., Celgene Tri Sarl, Celgene UK Distribution Limited, Celgene UK Holdings Limited, Celgene UK Manufacturing II Limited, Celgene UK Manufacturing III Limited, Celgene UK Manufacturing Limited, Celgene d.o.o., Celgene sro [Slovakia], Celmed LLC, Celmed Ltd., ConvaTec Divestiture, Cormorant Pharmaceuticals, Cormorant Pharmaceuticals AB, Crosp Ltd., Delinia Inc., Deuteria Pharmaceuticals Inc., DuPont Pharmaceuticals, E. R. Squibb & Sons Inter-American Corporation, E. R. Squibb & Sons L.L.C., E. R. Squibb & Sons Limited, EWI Corporation, EngMab Sarl, F-star Alpha, FermaVir Pharmaceuticals L.L.C., FermaVir Research L.L.C., Flexus Biosciences, Flexus Biosciences Inc., Forbius, Galecto Biotech, GenPharm International L.L.C., Gloucester Pharmaceuticals LLC, Grove Insurance Company Ltd., Heyden Farmaceutica Portuguesa Limitada, IFM Therapeutics, Impact Biomedicines Inc., Inhibitex, Inhibitex L.L.C., Innate Tumor Immunity Inc., JuMP Holdings LLC, Juno Therapeutics GmbH, Juno Therapeutics Inc., Kosan Biosciences, Kosan Biosciences Incorporated, Linson Investments Limited, Mead Johnson (Manufacturing) Jamaica Limited, Mead Johnson Jamaica Ltd., Medarex, Morris Avenue Investment II LLC, Morris Avenue Investment LLC, MyoKardia, O.o.o. Bristol-Myers Squibb, Oy Bristol-Myers Squibb (Finland) AB, Padlock Therapeutics, Padlock Therapeutics Inc., Pharmion LLC, Princeton Pharmaceutical Products Inc., Receptos LLC, Receptos Services LLC, RedoxTherapies Inc., Route 22 Real Estate Holding Corporation, SPV A Holdings ULC, Seamair Insurance DAC, Signal Pharmaceuticals LLC, Sino-American Shanghai Squibb Pharmaceuticals Limited, Societe Francaise de Complements Alimentaires(S.O.F.C.A.), Squibb Middle East S.A., Summit West Celgene LLC, Swords Laboratories, VentiRx Pharmaceuticals Inc., Westwood-Intrafin SA, Westwood-Squibb Pharmaceuticals Inc., X-Body Inc., ZymoGenetics, ZymoGenetics Inc., ZymoGenetics LLC, ZymoGenetics Paymaster LLC, iPierian, and iPierian Inc..
Aenza SAA is a holding company, which engages in the provision of engineering, management consulting, real estate, and corporate shares trading services. It operates through the following segments: Engineering and Construction, Infrastructure, Real Estate, Technical Services, and Parent Company Operation. The Engineering and Construction segment includes activities such as engineering, civil works, electro-mechanic construction, building construction, and contract mining. The Infrastructure segment provides operation and maintenance services for infrastructure assets. The Real Estate segment develops and sells homes targeted to low and middle income population sectors. The Technical Services segment offers information technology services, and electricity networks services. The Parent Company Operation segment corresponds to the services which the holding company provides, management, logistics, and accounting services. The company was founded by Alejandro Grana Garland, Carlos Montero Bernales, and Carlos Grana Elizalde on June 22, 1933 and is headquartered in Lima, Peru.

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iShares MSCI Denmark ETF's stock was trading at 60.79 on March 11th, 2020 when COVID-19 (Coronavirus) reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization. Since then, EDEN shares have increased by 77.7% and is now trading at 108.04.

View which stocks have been most impacted by COVID-19.
Nabors Industries Ltd. engages in the provision of platform work over and drilling rigs. It operates through the following segments: U.S. Drilling, Canada Drilling, International Drilling, Drilling Solutions, and Rig Technologies. The U.S. Drilling segment includes land drilling activities in the lower 48 states and Alaska, as well as offshore operations in the Gulf of Mexico. The Canada segment consists of land-based drilling rigs in Canada. The International segment focuses in maintaining a footprint in the oil and gas market, most notably in Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Argentina, Colombia, Kazakhstan, and Venezuela. The Drilling Solutions segment offers drilling technologies, such as patented steering systems and rig instrumentation software systems that enhance drilling performance and wellbore placement. The Rig Technologies segment comprises Canrig, which manufactures and sells top drives, catwalks, wrenches, drawworks, and drilling related equipment, such as robotic systems and downhole tools. The company was founded by Clair Nabors in 1952 and is headquartered in Hamilton, Bermuda.

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BCE Inc., a telecommunications and media company, provides wireless, wireline, Internet, and television (TV) services to residential, business, and wholesale customers in Canada. It operates through three segments: Bell Wireless, Bell Wireline, and Bell Media. The Bell Wireless segment offers wireless voice and data communications products and services. The Bell Wireline segment provides data, including Internet access and Internet protocol television; and local telephone, long distance, satellite TV service, and connectivity, as well as other communications services and products. This segment also buys and sells local telephone, long distance, data, and other services from or to resellers, and other carriers. The Bell Media segment provides conventional TV, specialty TV, pay TV, and streaming services; and digital media, radio broadcasting, out-of-home advertising services. It owns and operates approximately 35 conventional TV stations; 27 specialty and four Pay TV channels; 3 direct-to-consumer streaming services; 109 licensed radio stations; and websites. The company was formerly known as Bell Canada Enterprises Inc. BCE Inc. was founded in 1880 and is headquartered in Verdun, Canada.

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National Australia Bank Limited provides financial services to individuals and businesses in Australia, New Zealand, and internationally. It operates through Business and Private Banking, Personal Banking, Corporate and Institutional Banking, and New Zealand Banking segments. It operates through Business and Private Banking; Personal Banking; Corporate and Institutional Banking; New Zealand Banking; Corporate Functions and Other; and MLC Wealth segments. The company accepts transaction accounts, savings accounts, deposit accounts, and term deposits; and specialized accounts, such as foreign currency, business interest, statutory trust, community free saver, farm management, and project bank accounts, as well as farm management deposits. National Australia Bank Limited also provides home loans; personal loans; business loans; vehicle and equipment finance; and trade and invoice finance, as well as business overdrafts and bank guarantees. In addition, the company offers insurance products consisting of car, home and content, landlord, travel, caravan and trailer, life, and business insurance products; and pension, superannuation, self-managed super funds, cash management, and financial planning and advisory services. Further, it provides investment products; credit, debit, and business cards; payments and merchant services; travel services; online and internet banking services; small business services; international and foreign exchange solutions; and industry specific banking services. National Australia Bank Limited was founded in 1834 and is based in Docklands, Australia.

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6 Wall Street equities research analysts have issued "buy," "hold," and "sell" ratings for Tullow Oil in the last year. There are currently 1 sell rating, 3 hold ratings and 2 buy ratings for the stock. The consensus among Wall Street equities research analysts is that investors should "hold" Tullow Oil stock. A hold rating indicates that analysts believe investors should maintain any existing positions they have in TLW, but not buy additional shares or sell existing shares.

View analyst ratings for Tullow Oil or view top-rated stocks.
by Sean Fitzpatrick | Sat, Nov 24th 6:07pm EST

Alfonzo McKinnie has been ruled out for Saturday's game versus the Sacramento Kings with a foot injury. (NBA.com)

Fantasy Impact:

With both McKinnie and Draymond Green out again, Jonas Jerebko stands to benefit the most with Jordan Bell next in line for minutes. Iggy and Jerebko are solid DFS punt plays in this matchup.
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A usually daring and dashing personality and an outspoken person embraced bachelorhood till he turned 39 years. The star who was seen as a vibrant and a livewire during his heydays kept sets on toes whenever he reported to the shooting spot and it was in 1984 when Ambareesh's life took a big turn.

Ahuthi, a movie in 1984 had the Rebel star Ambareesh as the male lead and had a newcomer in Kannada cinema, Sumalatha Naidu. Sumalatha was born in a Naidu family in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh in 1963 and made her debut in 1979 with a Telugu cinema. She was already a star before she set her foot in the industry with Ahuthi.

Ambareesh and Sumalatha were poles apart in their nature and that helped the duo to bring themselves together, voiced Sumalatha once upon a time in an interview.

Ambareesh was always full of sound and filled with exuberance who ensured that no one was sunken with low energy in sets during a film shoot. On the contrast, Sumalatha was a soft-spoken person who was reserved to herself with a limited conversation. She had once stated that no Ambareesh's antics and energetic act were able to catch her attention as she was spending most of her off-screen time reading books.

She was initially a bit apprehensive about working with the Rebel Star as there were many stories doing rounds about his attitude and behaviour. This prompted her to maintain certain amount of distance from the star and establish friendship only at a limited level.

However, both of them developed a decent level of friendship from this point onwards and it was in 1987, during the shooting of New Delhi that the duo's proximity grew formidable and closer.

Sumalatha's nature, which was devoid of a typical cinema celebrity, made Ambareesh develop a strong liking towards the former, asserted Mrs Ambareesh.

It was in 1989 when Rebel Star made his intentions clear to the beautiful actress and finally proposed in a unique manner to Sumalatha.

Ambareesh had shared that he had written a letter to the multi-language actress, which read, "Rebel in Trouble", as the proposal intention had gone quite hasty. The combination of a dignified female and a rebellious and a dynamic male was quite a pair in the making and hence proved that the opposite poles attract each other.

Finally, the lovebirds accepted their mutual love to each other and entered a wedlock in 1991 and led a contented, blessed and a harmonious life for a span of over 27 years.
The entire South Indian film fraternity has been left saddened upon hearing about the demise of veteran Kannada actor Ambareesh. The much loved star of Kannada Cinema breathed his last at around 10:15 AM in Bengaluru yesterday (November 24, 2018) after he suffered a cardiac arrest.

Ambareesh has acted in just a Malayalam movie but he was a dear friend to the top celebrities of Mollywood. The Big M's of Mollywood, Mammootty and Mohanlal, did share a good rapport with the big star of Kannada cinema.

Both the superstars of Mollywood took to their social media pages to mourn the death of veteran actor Ambareesh and sent out notes remembering the much loved actor.

Mohanlal wrote a note remembering Ambareesh, whom he considered as a dear friend and a brother. Take a look at the Facebook post of Mohanlal here..

Mammootty has sent out a heartfelt note remembering his close friend Ambareesh. The actor has remembered the "Madras Days" when their friendship grew and how they maintained the same rapport later on. Interestingly, Ambareesh had played the lead role in the Kannada remake of Mammootty's superhit movie New Delhi, which was a success in Kannada as well. Take a look at the Facebook post of Mammootty here.
The bus was on its way to Delhi from Himachal Pradesh's Junga in the Shimla district when the accident took place at around noon.

Solan/Shimla (Himachal Pradesh): As many as 21 people were injured after a tourist bus they were travelling on plunged into a gorge at Kiari Nallah on the Solan/Shimla border on Sunday.

Two people, including the driver, got seriously wounded while the rest sustained minor injuries.

The bus was on its way to Delhi from Junga in the Shimla district when the accident took place at around noon. All the injured passengers were rushed to a hospital in Junga.

"We rushed here the moment we received the information. The locals helped us in carrying out the rescue operations. Prima facie it appears that the accident happened due to the negligence of the driver," said Desh Raj Guleria, Station House Officer of the Kandaghat Police Station.

"The vehicle belongs to New Delhi. The people in the vehicle were tourists. We have informed the owner of the vehicle about the accident," added the police official.
While the height of the actual statue would be 151 metres, its overhead umbrella would be 20 metres while the pedestal would be 50 metres, he said. A museum will also be housed at the pedestal.

Lucknow: The Uttar Pradesh government will install a 221-metre bronze statue of Lord Ram in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh Principal Secretary (Information) Avanish Awasthi said on Saturday.

While the height of the actual statue would be 151 metres, its overhead umbrella would be 20 metres while the pedestal would be 50 metres, he said. A museum will also be housed at the pedestal, Awasthi said.

Five firms shortlisted for construction of the statue gave presentations before Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Saturday evening, the officer said, adding soil testing is being done for installing the statue.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had on 31 October, inaugurated an imposing 182-metre statue of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the country's first home minister, in Gujarat.

Follow LIVE updates on the Ayodhya dispute
The Ram Janmabhoomi movement was against the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya rather than in favour of constructing a Ram Mandir, and this is why the movement collapsed after the demolition and the violence it produced

I was a few days short of my 23rd birthday on 6 December, 1992. That evening I was at my friend Rajiv Desais house and he told me that the Babri Masjid had been pulled down.

I felt excited by the thought that something new and radical had happened. The next morning I went to open our little shop in Surats textile market but everything was shut. I telephoned my father to ask him what I should do. He said that I should wait a while and then return. On my way back, my bike was stopped in a neighbourhood by a group of men. They asked my name. I said it. One of the men replied, Dont come back here, please.

From our eighth floor flat in Surat, I could see that by 1 pm, there were several columns of smoke going up all over the city. I had never seen mass violence before and in a few days over 500 people, mostly Muslims, would be butchered in the Surat. The columns of smoke were from Muslim homes and businesses being systematically looted and burnt.

Of course, my excitement had long vanished by then as the realisation came that something new and radical had indeed happened, but it was not in any way positive.

We were punishing the Muslims after having destroyed their structure. Why? This was not easy to answer.

Writer VS Naipaul, who spoke no Indian languages but was able to examine our society quite deeply, felt that the movement against the mosque was a positive thing. His explanation was that the Indian society was the way it was  meaning poor, dirty and uninventive  because the Hindu mind remained colonised and needed to be liberated. The violence and energy released by the demolition of Babri Masjid would bring positive intellectual change.

This was not based on scholarship but his impressions. If one thinks about this seriously, it is quite ridiculous. It assumes that all the centuries of rule by different dynasties  Afghan, Turk, Mughal and Persian  which all fought each other, were one continuous thing. It assumes that colonising rulers who were not Muslims (for example the Maratha Gaekwads in Baroda or the Scindias in Gwalior) were different and did not tax or oppress their populations. It also assumes that all parts of India were ruled by Muslims. This is not true.

Naipaul was not an academic, and therefore, not challenged properly on his thesis. No proper scholar would make such a sketchy argument and none has. Did the collective Hindu mind get liberated on 6 December, 1992? No, it did not. We are not a different nation in any way. The big change in our collective thinking came from the liberalisation policy of Manmohan Singh in 1991 and not the vandalism of 1992.

Perhaps Naipaul meant in the long term but then a quarter century is the long term, and already we live in a time when most Indians alive today were born after the demolition. Surely it cannot have affected them.

There is no liberation. The one change that has come is that we have become more easily communal in our expression as a nation.

Today, the political parties and the mass media can say things, reckless things, that they perhaps hesitated from saying before 1992.

Reports say that two lakh people from the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh are gathering in Ayodhya. Some five thousand Shiv Sainiks under Uddhav Thackeray and his son Aaditya are already there. They have announced, rather ominously, that this will be the last Dharma Sabha in Ayodhya.

The reason they are doing this is to put pressure on the BJP government to start the construction of the Ram Mandir before the elections as if this Bharatiya Janata Party needs encouragement to do that.

If there is a reason the BJP is in power today it is largely because of its actions in 1992.

The sentiment that made the BJP popular in that period was negative. Meaning that it was communally charged. It was against the Babri Masjid rather than in favour of the temple. This is why the Ram Janmabhoomi movement collapsed after the demolition and the violence it produced.

It remains negative even today, and it is intended to punish other Indians. It is not with feelings of devotion or piety that these people are gathering. It is mostly with emotions of hatred. Listen to their slogans and their rhetoric and this becomes immediately clear.

Nothing positive and productive can come out of such bitterness and hate. Naipaul did not understand that. But then for him the stakes were low. He could offer his casual opinions on our society and take a return flight back to his home in England.

We have to live in this country with other Indians. We should be wary of the demons we let escape when we set about liberating the collective Hindu mind.
The congregation on Sunday in Ayodhya is being held less than two weeks before the 26th anniversary of the demolition of the 16th century Babri Mosque.

Ayodhya: Posters of VHP's 'Dharma Sabha' and Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray's programme in Ayodhya are splashed across the streets of the temple town, and many religious 'akharas' have turned into debating venues to discuss the issue of Ram temple.

The 'Dharma Sabha' is being touted as the largest congregation of 'Ram bhakts' in Ayodhya since the 1992 'kar seva'.

The congregation on Sunday is being held less than two weeks before the 26th anniversary of the demolition of the 16th century Babri Mosque, that had triggered unrest in this town and riots in other parts of India.

Hordes of activists of both the VHP and the Shiv Sena, who have gathered in Ayodhya from various parts of the country, bear saffron flags and chant 'Jai Shri Ram'. In the background posters with images of Lord Ram and the slogan 'Chalo Ayodhya' dot the roads.

At many places, passers-by can see small trucks carrying projectors and a screen to showcase 'Ramayana', a famous 1986 TV series.

The VHP has claimed that three lakh people, including seers, will attend its 'Dharma Sabha' to be held at Bade Bhakt Mal Ki Baghia, not far from the controversial Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas-run workshop, where work for building a temple has been underway since 1990.

Posters of the VHP mega event and Sena proclaiming 'Chalo Ayodhya' compete with each other to grab eyeballs of residents, even as rhetoric takes centre stage in the pilgrim town. From Ram ki Paidi to main market areas, huge hoardings have been put up, some in front of parks, bus stands and other public places.

Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray, who arrived in Ayodhya ahead of Sunday's VHP rally for a Ram temple, Saturday asked the Narendra Modi government to wake up from a "Kumbhakarna-like slumber" and declare the date for its construction.

Amid a growing chorus for construction of a Ram Temple, the Sena leader has also urged the government to bring legislation, or an ordinance, for building the temple on the disputed Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri Masjid site in Ayodhya, but he has not linked his own two-day visit to the VHP event.

'There is no political motive behind my visit to Ayodhya," claimed the Sena chief, who was greeted with slogans of "Jai Shri Ram" when he arrived in Ayodhya with his wife Rashmi and son Aditya.

Mahant Nrityagopal Das, the chairman of the Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas, was among those who welcomed Thackeray at Lakshman Qila, where the Sena leader made the remarks. A drone monitored the event.

The Sena claimed to have brought several thousand supporters to Ayodhya for Thackeray's events.

Many religious 'akharas' have turned into debating venues to discuss the issue of Ram Temple. Electronic media houses have organised debates at various venues, including the 'akharas' attended by large crowds.

Mahant Dharamdas, a prominent seer in Ayodhya, at a debate held at Digamber Akahara said, "The Supreme Court should heed to the sentiments of these people who have arrived in Ayodhaya today, with a pious belief that a Ram temple will be built soon."

At the Bade Bhakt Mal Ki Baghia, near the Karsewakpuram workshop, people have flocked from near and far to attend the event.

"I have come to Ayodhya with just one hope, the temple should be built. And, I am sure it will be built," said an 80-year-old woman from Jaunpur.

Many were seen dressed in saffron robes, some even wearing jazzy accessories, taking selfies, while others danced and sang.
VHP leaders and saints from across the country met in Dharma Sabha in Ayodhya on Sunday to push for the construction of the Ram temple.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday hit out at the Congress, accusing the party of attacking the judiciary while it was hearing a crucial case like the Ayodhya dispute. "The Congress creates an atmosphere of fear for the judiciary when the court hears the Ayodhya issue. They do everything possible to impeach the Chief Justice of India. How can such things be accepted?" Modi said at a rally in Rajasthan's Alwar.

He made the statement the same day the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) organised a "Dharma Sabha" in Ayodhya to push for the construction of a Ram Mandir at the disputed site in Uttar Pradesh amid heightened security. Ayodhya has turned into a virtual fortress with multiple layers of security and deployment of drones as lakhs of right-wing supporters and leaders arrived in the town, chanting their demand to begin the construction of the Ram Mandir on Sunday itself.

Responding to Modi's remarks, Congress leader Kapil Sibal blamed Modi for challenging the judiciary, saying it was the CJI who had said in October that the Ram Mandir issue was not a priority, deferring the hearing in the case to January 2019.

PM alleges Congress was responsible for the matter not being heard in SC, I being representing one of the parties, the Congress party. Which also he doesn't know because Congress isn't a party in it, nor is BJP. I was representing a stakeholder: Congress' Kapil Sibal. #RamTemple pic.twitter.com/fZ2wEOrzIa  ANI (@ANI) November 25, 2018

VHP, Hindu priests organise Dharma Sabha

This back and forth took place while VHP leaders and Hindu priests from across the country met at the 'Dharma Sabha' in Ayodhya on Sunday to discuss the way ahead for the construction of the Ram temple at the disputed site.

The 'Dharma Sabha' has been touted as the largest congregation of 'Ram bhakts' in Ayodhya since the 1992 'kar seva'. The congregation was held less than two weeks ahead of the 26th anniversary of the demolition of the 16th-Century Babri Mosque, which had triggered unrest in the pilgrimage town and riots in other parts of India.

VHP national vice-president Champat Rai addressed the Sabha. "The mobilisation you see today is just from 45 districts of Uttar Pradesh. Some intelligent people of this country need to be reminded that the issue of Ram Mandir didn't end on 6 December, 1992," Rai said, according to a News18 report.

The spectre of 1992 still haunts cores of people from both Hindu and Muslim communities who had directly or indirectly suffered in the violence that had erupted after the Mughal-era mosque was razed by a frenzied army of 'karsewaks' (right-wing activists) on 6 December.

The VHP has claimed that three lakh people, including seers, will attend its 'Dharma Sabha' to be held at Bade Bhakt Mal Ki Baghia, not far from the controversial Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas-run workshop, where work for building a temple has been underway since 1990. In the morning, the police had said that it was expecting as high as 5 lakh people on Sunday.

Meanwhile, an uneasy calm prevailed in Muslim-dominated areas like Dharam Kanta, as the mega event triggered some apprehension over the safety of the town's Muslim community.

A senior police official said that security has been stepped up in Ayodhya, in view of the VHP event and the presence of a large number of Shiv Sainiks in town.

"We are prepared to meet all challenges, all arrangements are in place in the town, the district and its border area to avoid any untoward incident. We are keeping a tight vigil and security around Ram Janmabhoomi site has also been stepped up," the senior official told PTI.

Chants of 'Jai Shri Ram' filled the air in the streets and around Saryu River, where the Yogi Adityanath government has also planned to install a 151-metre statue of Lord Ram.

Mahant Dharamdas, a prominent seer in Ayodhya said: "The Supreme Court should heed to the sentiments of these people who have arrived in Ayodhya today, with a pious belief that a Ram temple will be built soon."

Uddhav Thackeray accuses BJP of playing with Hindu sentiments

Security was also beefed up at Lakshman Qila on Saturday where Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray was welcomed after his arrival in Ayodhya. The Sena claimed to have brought several thousand supporters to Ayodhya for Thackeray's events. Arriving here ahead of Sunday's VHP rally for a Ram temple, Thackeray had asked the Narendra Modi government to wake up from a "Kumbhakarna-like slumber" and declare the date for its construction.

On Sunday, he slammed the BJP government again, advising it not to take the sentiments of the Hindus lightly anymore and bring an ordinance for the construction of the Ram temple which the Sena will support.

"Shiv Sena has been supporting (them) on the issue of Hindutva and will continue to do so. Bring ordinance or a law but construct temple ...the emotions of Hindus should not be taken for granted," he told reporters. Thackeray said Hindus are today asking when will the temple be made while maintaining that his visit to Ayodhya is neither for political purposes nor is there any hidden agenda.

"I am only asking (BJP) that when you were campaigning for elections you said all possibilities will be explored under the Constitution ...what has been done in four years ..when will you explore possibilities," he asked. The Sena chief said that if the temple is not made perhaps this government will also not last but the temple will definitely be made.

Mounting an attack on Yogi Adityanath, he said the chief minister said there was a Ram temple in Ayodhya and will remain "but when will it be visible... it should be constructed as the earliest."

The Sena chief was greeted with slogans of "Jai Shri Ram" when he arrived in Ayodhya with his wife Rashmi and son Aditya on Saturday. Mahant Nrityagopal Das, the chairman of the Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas, was among those who welcomed Thackeray at Lakshman Qila, where the Sena leader made the remarks. A drone monitored the event.

'Justice delayed is justice denied'

While vociferous protests erupted in Ayodhya seeking the construction of the Ram Temple, the RSS also upped the ante at its home ground of Nagpur. RSS sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat said at a Hunkar Sabha, "The matter is in court, and the decision should be given early. It has also been proved that the temple was there... Justice delayed is justice denied."

Bhagwat was also quoted by ABP News as saying that if the issue was not a priority for the Supreme Court, the government should "think of what to do, how to bring in an ordinance, and construct the Ram Temple".

With inputs from agencies
The Muslim body wrote to the president on the developments in Ayodhya as the VHP called for the public meeting, 'Dharam Sabha', which is being touted as the largest congregation of 'Ram bhakts' in Ayodhya since the 1992 'kar seva'.

Aligarh: The All India Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat (AIMMM) on Sunday wrote to President Ram Nath Kovind, seeking his urgent intervention into the developments in Ayodhya, where the VHP organised a public meeting to press for construction of a Ram temple.

An umbrella body of more than a dozen Muslim religious and social organisations, the AIMMM said in its letter that the presence of "unruly mobs" in Ayodhya is a clear pointer to the way things are moving in an unchecked manner in Uttar Pradesh.

The Vishva Hindu Group (VHP), a right-wing group, called for the public meeting, 'Dharam Sabha', which is being touted as the largest congregation of 'Ram bhakts' in Ayodhya since the 1992 'kar seva'.

The organisers have claimed that more than three lakh devotees, including seers, will attend the meeting to be held at Bade Bhakt Mal Ki Baghia, not far from the controversial Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas-run workshop, where work to build a temple has been underway since 1990.

"If any attempt is made to forcibly change the status quo at the disputed site at Ayodhya, it would tantamount to a gross violation of the orders of the Supreme Court," AIMMM chief Navid Hamid said in the letter.

It said the lives and safety of thousands of innocent people were at stake and alleged that the Uttar Pradesh government was displaying "total negligence of its responsibility" to maintain peace in the state.

Hamid said the state government cannot abdicate its constitutional responsibility of protecting all citizens.
Today's top stories: Ayodhya on high alert ahead of VHP and Shiv Sena's ram mandir events; Actor politician Ambareesh passes away; Narendra Modi to deliver 50th episode of Mann ki Baat today; and more.

VHP Dharma Sabha today: Ayodhya on high alert

Uttar Pradesh's Ayodhya has been put on high alert on Sunday, ahead of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Shiv Sena's efforts to push for the construction of a Ram temple in the city. Security has been tightened in the temple town as both groups organise separate events.

The VHP, backed by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), will hold a Dharma Sabha on Sunday to press for early construction of the Ram Temple, even as the title dispute lay sub judice in the apex court. About 2.5 lakh volunteers, karsevaks and workers from the VHP, Shiv Sena, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), and several other organisations have arrived in the temple town for the event.

Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray arrived in the city on Saturday in preparation for the party's events. He will address rallies to put pressure on the Centre about the Ram mandir dispute.

Police sources said that there would be over two lakh people converging in Ayodhya. Several trains, buses, tractor trolleys, taxis have been booked by the organisers to ferry people from across the state to be part of the congregation, the VHP has announced.

Swaraj declines Pakistan's invite to Kartarpur corridor event

Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj will not visit Pakistan to attend the ground-breaking ceremony for the Kartarpur corridor for Sikh pilgrims but two of her cabinet colleagues will attend it. India will send Union ministers Harsimrat Kaur Badal and Hardeep Singh Puri, her office said on Saturday while responding to an invite to her by Islamabad for the event.

Pakistan foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, in a tweet, said he has extended an invitation to Swaraj, Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh and state minister Navjot Singh Sidhu to attend the ceremony at Kartarpur on 28 November.

In a letter to Qureshi, Swaraj thanked him for the invite but said it would not be possible for her to travel to Kartarpur Sahib due to prior commitments.

Mann ki Baat: Narendra Modi to deliver 50th episode today

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be addressing the 50th edition of Mann Ki Baat radio programme on Sunday. The broadcast is of note as it will be the 50th episode of the monthly programme.

He will be sharing his thoughts on various issues, with the people spread all across the country and the world through All India Radio broadcast starting 11 am.

The last episode of Mann Ki Baat programme was aired on 28 October. During that day's address, Modi acknowledged the contribution of Sardar Patel for uniting India and also paid homage to army soldiers and their families on the occasion of Infantry day.

As the last address was broadcasted days before the festival of Diwali, Prime Minister Modi has also urged people to buy indigenous products in order to support countrymen. He had also requested farmers to give up the practice of stubble burning in order to curb air pollution.

Mexico will hold US-bound refugees while claims are processed: Trump

Asylum seekers hoping to enter the US via its southern border will have to wait in Mexico while they are assessed, President Donald Trump announced, appearing to confirm a report about a bilateral deal published by The Washington Post.

"Migrants at the Southern Border will not be allowed into the United States until their claims are individually approved in court," Trump wrote on Twitter. He added that the US "will allow those who come into our Country legally" and emphasised: "All will stay in Mexico."

3rd T20I: India take on Australia in do-or-die battle

India will be looking for a solid bowling performance against a brittle Australian top-order in third and final T20 International. A win at the SCG will at least let Virat Kohli's team share the bragging rights and more importantly remain in a good frame of mind before the real test begins at Adelaide on 6 December.

Paris protests intensify, 3,000 police personnel deployed

France is likely to continue making headlines on Sunday amid efforts to contain the nationwide protests and road blockades being staged by drivers, angry over rising fuel taxes and Emmanuel Macron's presidency. Tensions have been mounting around the grassroots movement that drew more than a quarter million people a week ago to protests across France, from Provence to Normandy and in between.

Demonstrators wearing the yellow, high-visibility vests that symbolise their movement threw projectiles at police preventing them from moving along the famed Champs-Elysees shopping avenue, which was decked out in twinkling Christmas lights.

They also built barricades in some spots and tore down traffic lights and street signs, creating riotous scenes reminiscent of France's 1968 civil unrest, or street insurrections immortalised in several paintings and movies.

Police arrested 130 people, 42 of those in Paris, and 24 people were injured, five of them police officers including one who suffered burns to his groin, the city police department and Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said. Some 3,000 police were deployed in the capital to contain the situation.

Actor-turned-politician Ambareesh passes away

Kannada actor and politician Ambareesh on Saturday night passed away at a private hospital in Bengaluru due to cardiac arrest, sources said. He was 66.

A former Union minister, Ambareesh was rushed to the hospital after he complained of breathing trouble and passed away on Saturday night, officials at the hospital said. "Ambareesh was brought to the hospital around 9 pm and he passed away because of cardiac arrest," Vikram Hospital officials told PTI.

According to the hospital spokesman, Ambareesh was found unresponsive at his residence and the resuscitation efforts were initiated there and continued en route while he was shifted to the hospital. Ambareesh, a three-time Lok Sabha member and also a former State minister, is survived by actress Sumalatha and son Abhishek.
The Delhi Police have arrested three alleged operatives of the Islamic State in Jammu and Kashmir terror group. The arrests were made by the Delhi Police's Special Cell on Saturday

The Delhi Police on Saturday arrested three suspected operatives of the Islamic State in Jammu and Kashmir terror group.

The three have been identified as Tahir Ali Khan, Haris Mushtaq Khan, Asif Suhail Nadaf. They hail from Jammu and Kashmir's Tral, Budgam and Rainawari districts.

In a press conference on Sunday, DCP (special cell) Pramod Kushwaha said that following arrests of alleged Islamic State operatives in September, the police said that they found that activity of an Islamic State module is happening in Delhi.

Kushwaha said that while the arrested persons were not planning an attack in Delhi, they were planning "some kind of activity." He also said that one hideout of the module was busted at an apple orchard in Awantipora.

In September, the Delhi Police had arrested two alleged members of the Islamic State in Jammu and Kashmir from near the Red Fort. The duo from South Kashmir's Shopian district were identified as Parvez (24) and Jamshid (19).

Earlier this week, a high alert was sounded in Delhi after intelligence agencies informed the police that two suspected Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) militants had infiltrated the capital. In an advisory, the police had asked the public to remain alert and inform them about any suspicious activities. They also released photographs of the two operatives.

Four days earlier, the Punjab Police was put on high alert after its Counter Intelligence Wing issued a note, warning them.

With inputs from agencies
Terming VHP's 'Dharm Sabha' and the visit of Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackerey to Ayodhya an open 'challenge' to the Supreme Court, AIMPLB said a situation is being created against Muslims.

Lucknow: Terming VHP's 'Dharm Sabha' and the visit of Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackerey to Ayodhya an open "challenge" to the Supreme Court, the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) on Sunday said a situation is being created against Muslims.

"It is not a matter of giving us a mosque but of a principle that how many mosques we will have to sacrifice gradually. If we talk to someone, it will withdraw and another one will come."

"Sri Sri Ravi Shankar had offered that we should construct a big mosque outside Ayodhya. But later he cornered himself. Just imagine, what had happened, we entered into an agreement with him," AIMPLB General Secretary Maulana Wali Rehmani said.

"With VHP's dharm sansad, Thackerey's visit and similar such programmes, a situation is being created against Muslims and it's also an open challenge to the judiciary (SC)," he said.

On Samajwadi Party supremo Akhilesh yadav's statement that army should be brought in Ayodhya, Rehmani said "his demand is not unjustified especially keeping in mind the role of the state police and biased action against Muslims."

"In such a scenario, it seems Akhilesh is disappointed with the police and has demanded deployment of Army there. Government will be responsible for communal tension, if any," he added.

Yadav had on Friday said, "The Supreme Court should take notice of the situation in Uttar Pradesh. It should seriously consider the matter and bring in the Army, if required... as the BJP and its allies can go to any extent."

On talks to resolve the Ayodhya issue, Rehmani said, "as far as talks are concerned we are asked to make mosque outside Ayodhya. This is like dictating terms".

There is no talk like "kuch tum peeche hato, kuch ham" (Both compromise a little), he added.

Stating that "compromise on Babri mosque" has many drawbacks, Rehmani said, "First, it will be said that if Muslims can leave claim of a mosque when why not on second, third, fourth and so on..Secondly, even if maximum Muslims parties sign for giving mosque's land what's the guarantee that non-signatories will not raise for another mosque."

Asked whether attempts to rake up temple issue is becoming successful, Rehmani said: "There is not doubt the Hindu brothers are taking is as a pure politics. But certainly the foundation movement on which Hindus are being targeted is becoming successful.

"Only the time will tell, how much it succeeds," he added.

Rehmani said a AIMPLB meeting is proposed in Lucknow on December 16 in whichthe present situation in Ayodhya will be discussed, though it is not in the agenda.

He, however, ruled out any need for emergent meeting of AIMPLB on the issue.
The RSS, VHP and Shiv Sena on Sunday organised events in Ayodhya, Nagpur and Bengaluru to muster support for the construction of Ram temple in Ayodhya and mount pressure on the Centre.

Ayodhya: Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) leader Rambhadracharya on Sunday claimed a high-level meeting will be held after 11 December, at which a decision will be made about the construction of Ram temple at Ayodhya. "Prime Minister Narendra Modi will take a final call about the construction of Ram temple after 11 December," he said while addressing the Dharma Sabha organised by the VHP.

VHP leader said: "On 23 November, I spoke to a senior minister in the central government. He has asked me not to disclose his name. So I can't reveal that. I asked him till when should we wait for the Ram Mandir, to which he said that there would be a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on this issue after 11 December. He further told me that during that meeting, a decision will be made, which will lead to the construction of Ram temple."

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), VHP and Shiv Sena on Sunday organised events in Ayodhya, Nagpur and Bengaluru to muster support for the construction of Ram temple in Ayodhya and mount pressure on the central government to facilitate the temple construction, which is currently sub judice in the Supreme Court.

The Uttar Pradesh Police have heavily deployed security personnel along with a legion of senior officers to monitor the law and order situation in Ayodhya. The team includes one ADGP, one DIG, three SSPs, ten ASPs, 21 DSPs, 160 inspectors, 700 constables, and 42 companies of PAC, five companies of the RAF, ATS commandos and drone cameras.

On 29 October, the Supreme Court had adjourned the Ram Janambhoomi-Babri Masjid title suit till January 2019 to fix the next date of hearing in the matter, challenging the Allahabad High Court ruling of 2010.

The Allahabad High Court in its 2010 verdict had suggested the division of the disputed land in Ayodhya, one for each of the parties the Nirmohi Akhara, the Sunni Waqf Board and Ram Lalla.

The Babri Masjid, which was constructed by Mughal emperor Babur in Ayodhya in 1528, was demolished by Hindu activists on 6 December, 1992, who claimed that the mosque was built after demolishing a Ram temple that stood there.
The NIA had announced a reward of Rs 2 lakh on the head of the Ajmer dargah bomb blast accused, identified as Suresh Nair.

Ahmedabad: A 2007 Ajmer dargah bomb blast accused, who was on the run for the last 11 years, was arrested on Sunday by the ATS from Bharuch in Gujarat.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA), which is probing the case, had announced a reward of Rs 2 lakh on the head of the accused, identified as Suresh Nair.

As per the NIA, Nair had allegedly supplied a bomb to the planters at the famous sufi shrine in Rajasthan and was also present at the spot, the Gujarat Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) said in a statement.

Three persons were killed and 17 others injured in the blast that occurred on 11 October, 2007.

After he was apprehended from Bharuch, Nair was shifted to Ahmedabad for further investigation, the ATS said.

He is a resident of Thasara in Kheda district of Gujarat.

"Officials of Gujarat ATS had received a credible information that Suresh Nair will visit Shukaltirth in Bharuch in near future, following which a close watch was kept at the place," the agency said, adding that Nair was apprehended from the spot.

He will be handed over to the NIA, it said.
In another incident that took place earlier on Sunday in Himachal Pardesh, as many as 21 people were injured after a tourist bus they were travelling in fell into a gorge at Kiari Nallah on the Solan-Shimla border.

Sirmaur (Himachal Pradesh): At least nine persons have been killed after a private bus they were travelling in plunged into a gorge near Dadahu in Himachal Pradesh's Sirmaur.

Additional Superintendent of Police of Sirmaur district, Virender Thakur, said the bus was on its way from Renuka area to Nahan. "Those injured have been taken immediately to Nahan district hospital," he added.

A rescue and relief operation in the accident area is currently underway.

In another incident that took place earlier in the day, as many as 21 people were injured after a tourist bus they were travelling in fell into a gorge at Kiari Nallah on the Solan-Shimla border.

Two people, including the driver, got seriously wounded while the rest sustained minor injuries.

The bus was on its way to Delhi from Junga in Shimla district when the accident took place at around noon. All the injured passengers were rushed to a hospital in Junga.
The 63-year-old retired peon from Malgaon village in Satara district of Maharashtra completed his 47th poem in the first half of this year.

This story is part of a series on the everyday heroes of rural Maharashtra.

Goraknath Awale is proud of two achievements. In his late 30s, he had dreamt of becoming a poet. But poverty and casteism created hurdles in achieving it, his acquaintances recall. There came a time where he had to choose between writing his poems and working as an agricultural labourer to survive. In the circumstances, he chose both. The 63-year-old retired peon from Malgaon village in Satara district of Maharashtra completed his 47th poem in the first half of this year, which he calls his first achievement.

I dont have an option other than toiling as a labourer to make ends meet, he says. Goraknath decided to work more than 16 hours a day, a decision which landed him with complete bed rest for a while. After 12 hours of work, he would resume reading Marathi novels every day. Honest and hardworking is how people describe him in the nearby villages. He belongs to the Matang caste which is classified as a Schedule Caste. Casteism would shape much of his life and using his passion for storytelling, Goraknath, in a subtle way, would fight against it. He has a bank of experiences which helped him document the everyday life of everyday people across the countryside. Varying from inspirational to heart-wrenching, he decided to compile his journey of decades in his next achievement  a handwritten autobiography.

Battling Poverty

Born in a Dalit household and a conservative casteist society, Goraknath had bitter childhood experiences. His mother, the late Jai, and father, the late Ramchandra would work as agricultural labourers and do odd jobs to make ends meet. Earlier his mother used to wash utensils in the upper caste marriages from Malgaon and nearby villages. We were given the left-over and stale food, he recalls.

For five years, he performed the traditional caste-based occupation of making brooms. He also worked as a majdoor in the villages of Pune and Satara districts after dropping out of grade XI. At the age of 26, he walked 20 km from Dehu in Pune to Dapodi for employment but luck was not on his side. Later he covered a distance of 120 km to reach his village. I had no money then and hence had to walk all the way, he recollects.

While working as a labourer at a canal, his hands caught an infection. Immediately, his wife asked him to discontinue. After seeing him work as a labourer, his school teacher Chitnis felt sorry for his condition and decided to offer him the job of a peon in the school. Without hesitating for a moment, he accepted the job which would eventually give him a space to explore his passion for poetry. When I joined at the age of 27, I was paid Rs 70 monthly, he says smilingly. He worked in the same organisation for the next 34 years and retired as a lab assistant in 2015. His daughter, Chaya, in her late 20s, is a homemaker. His sons, Santosh, 40 and Ganesh, 31 work as agricultural labourers in the nearby villages

The difficult road to education

He completed his primary education in Malgaon village. For secondary education, he had to walk all the way to Wai taluka in Satara on weekends where he enrolled in a residential school. I didnt have any chappals then and I had to walk for three hours in the scorching heat, he remembers.

My mother always used to say [these] days of poverty should end and for that, you should learn, he recollects.

One day when I had no food in school, my teacher Chitnis asked seven classmates to bring one quarter chapati extra. This carried on for four years till grade XI where he dropped out eventually.

During his younger days, he travelled with his family to villages for making brooms. One day, a school teacher from the village asked my parents to enroll me in school, he remembers. Goraknath would proudly recite the things he learned at school to his parents. Although they werent educated, they always listened to my recitation, he says smilingly expressing his gratitude for them.

The literary journey

I always loved poetry, he says smilingly. When he was in his late 30s, he had gone to a poets conference in Bhuinj village of Satara where a few of his friends asked him to read his poem. Scared and anxious, he somehow managed to read it and immediately everyone broke into applause. That moment was my starting point in poetry, he now says proudly.

While working as a peon, he couldnt find much time to pursue his passion and managed to write only a handful of poems. He derives his poetry from the people and society. I carefully observe what people are doing, note down a few words from their conversation and start writing my poem, he says. Three decades ago he saw an alcoholic man arguing with his family in the village. He heard the entire conversation and then wrote a poem called Sansar [life] on the plight of alcoholism. This poem won him praise across several villages of Maharashtra and inspired him to write more societal poems. Poet Narayan Surve read the poem in a poets conference in Pune and asked him to keep writing. Humbled by the kind gesture, he wrote a handful of poems more and had to stop because of lack of time. He proudly shows me his poetry journal signed by Surve.

A master storyteller

While working as a peon in the school, he made sure he discussed the stories and poems with children. Several reading sessions of his poems have been arranged in the Kisanrao Sable Patil school in the nearby Shivthar village where he spent more than 15 years of his service. Later he retired from the same schools branch in Wai taluka of Satara district.

Vidya Shedge, 34, who was once a student in the same school would listen to his stories every day. She now teaches Mathematics there and says, Awale kaka [uncle] was always busy in his work, but would never forget to narrate new stories and poems. For his honesty and dedication to poetry, he was awarded the Adarsh Sevak Puruskar by the school.

He felt a strong urge to document his entire journey of honesty and integrity in the form of an autobiography. The biggest challenge was to juggle between writing and working as an agricultural labourer to make ends meet. I started writing late in the night post 11 pm every day. He considers his wife, Parvati as an inspiration who always stayed awake while he was working on his autobiography. She says, Its always a pleasure to read his poems. His daughter-in-law, Vaishali, 28 reviews his poems and gives feedback on it. She says, I like his poems and want to learn poetry from him.

It took him three months to complete his autobiography which will now be reviewed by his literary friends. The strenuous working hours coupled with writing the autobiography in the night meant minimal resting hours for the Awale couple. I was suffering from heavy fever when I completed my autobiography, he says.

The writings of Annabhau Sathe and Surve had an impact on him. He credits Nandkumar Shedge, a poet and Marathi Professor from the nearby Shivthar village for pushing him to write a book and also for providing him 13 books on rural poetry. In his 47 poems, Goraknath writes about the agrarian crisis, societal issues like alcoholism, patriarchy and everyday life across the countryside.

The bigger challenge for him is getting the book published with minimal finances at his disposal. Shedge has been helping Goraknath find a publisher in the Satara city. I could never earn any money, but I earned humanity, he says proudly. Everyone in the village now calls him master. We make a lot of mistakes while writing, but how will you understand if you dont write at all, he says.
After the Uri attack in Kashmir in September 2016, the government had sought to use the Indus Waters Treaty to put pressure on Pakistan. The measures included effectively using India's share of waters that flow into Pakistan.

New Delhi: India has decided to fast-track three projects, including the construction of two dams, to arrest the unutilised water of its share under the bilateral Indus Waters Treaty with Pakistan, government officials said. The three projects include the Shahpur Kandi Dam project, a second Sutlej-Beas link in Punjab and the Ujh Dam project in Jammu and Kashmir, they said.

"These (three) projects were stuck in red tape and inter-state disputes. But it has been decided to expedite the execution of these projects," one of them added.

Under the Indus Waters Treaty, waters flowing in three of Indus tributaries  Sutlej, Beas and Ravi  have been allotted to India, while waters of the Chenab, Jhelum and Indus have been allotted to Pakistan.

Of the total 168 million acre-feet, India's share of water from the three allotted rivers is 33 million acre-feet, which constitutes nearly 20 percent. "India uses nearly 93-94 percent of its share under the Indus Waters Treaty. The rest of the water remains unutilised and goes to Pakistan," an official added.

The Ujh Dam is a proposed hydroelectricity and irrigation multipurpose project in the Kathua district of Jammu over the Ravi river with a capacity to generate 196 megawatts of electricity.

The total water utilisation from this project is 172.8 million cusec metre (mcm), but it has the capacity to store 925 mcm of water, the officials said. The estimated cost of the project is Rs 5,950 crore.

The Jammu and Kashmir government has forwarded the Detailed Project Report to the Centre for its appraisal, which is expected to be approved by the Advisory Committee of the Ministry of Water Resources for clearance, they said.

After the Uri attack in Kashmir in September 2016, the government had sought to use the Indus Waters Treaty to put pressure on Pakistan. The measures included effectively using India's share of waters that flow into Pakistan. This also included fast-tracking irrigation and hydropower projects by resolving the inter-state disputes.

The Centre has also asked the Punjab government to prepare a feasibility report of the second Ravi-Beas link that is expected to further help in increasing utilisation of India's share of water under the treaty.

In September, the Punjab and the Jammu and Kashmir governments signed an agreement to resume works on the Rs 2,793-crore Shahpur Kandi project.

Although the work on the project began in 2013, it was halted due to certain issues raised by the Jammu and Kashmir. government.

The Punjab government also submitted a revised cost estimate of Rs 2,793.54 crore and requested the Centre to include the project in the prioritised list of the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana/Accelerated Irrigation Benefit Programme projects.

The project, when implemented, will enable the up-stream Ranjit Sagar Dam project power station to act as a peaking station, besides having its own generation capacity of 206 megawatts and irrigation benefit of 37,173-hectare to Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir.
The current exercise initiated by the army leadership is indeed a bold attempt to overcome many of the imponderables in the face of poor perception about the nature of threats.

Probably stung by poor perceptional response on the intended changes to the armys structure in different domains, its leadership decided to go transparent and brief the army veteran community on what exactly it was attempting and how. A good decision no doubt in todays environment when disinformation is so easy and holding backing unclassified information is unproductive. However, a degree of clarity on a few issues is necessary before a brief description and analysis of some of the intended change.

Transformation is not something achieved in a year or two; its an ongoing process which spans several years and takes into account the national functional environment, changing nature of conflict, threats, material resource availability, emerging technology, suitability of existing doctrine, quality of human intake, training needs and logistics, among other domains. This must not be confused with restructuring, a terminology being loosely used today. Restructuring by itself is at best a part of the transformation process. The Indian Army, inspired by the US exercise of transforming itself into the digital-information age after the First Gulf War, attempted such an exercise beginning 2005. However, it could force no traction with the political leadership and an unsupportive bureaucracy. The first exercise in attempted transformation led to some accretions as part of Plans, but that was about all. A major accretional sanction it could achieve was for the Mountain Strike Corps (MSC), 90,000 strong at an estimated cost of Rs 65,000 crore. However, transformation itself found no takers. In the face of lack of budgetary support, even the MSC was later virtually shelved.

In the light of the above and escalating threats in which two front war and more have become a reality, especially after Doka La, somehow the Army has been unable to convince the political leadership of the need for suitable budget support to create the right deterrence and dissuasion which it aims to achieve against its adversaries. A notion appears to prevail among the non-uniformed, including the political leadership, diplomatic community and bureaucracy that conventional threats are passe and hybrid conflict is the flavour of the day. It is usually forgotten that deterrence through conventional military strength caters for the far end of the conflict spectrum while responding in the hybrid domain which is many times an ongoing phenomenon in varying intensity.

The current exercise initiated by the army leadership is indeed a bold attempt to overcome many of the imponderables in the face of poor perception about the nature of threats. It is currently a restructuring effort and will hopefully eventually progress into a transformation, going by my earlier explanation of the two terms. What is important is that the leadership is attempting to do a large number of things in a short period to overcome many of the anomalies which have piled up over time. The immediate backdrop study is the Shekatkar Committee Report of 2016, but it is heartening to see that a plethora of past reports, including the VK Singh Report on transformation, have been examined. Each such report is a wealth of analysis of that time with an eye on the future which is already the time we are living in. Many of the unactioned thoughts and ideas gain relevance even with changing context.

Four theme based committees have been formed, each under a Lt Gen, with terms of reference. These are  reorganising and optimisation with an aim of transforming the Indian Army, reorganization of the army HQ, cadre review of officers and review of terms of engagement of other ranks (OR). Each of them deserves a separate analytical piece but this analysis is a generic one to get a measure of understanding before more is written specifically on each study.

Obviously, two things are driving the entire exercise which the army chief appears to have correctly assessed as core to his current concern. First is the low budgetary support with no apparent assurance of any assuaging of the perception prevailing in the army. Second is the dilution in status of ranks of officers and the relative deprivation in terms of promotion prospects for all ranks across the board compared to the civil services, an issue snowballing to greater acrimony. Very interestingly, unlike in the past when the government approved a fixed increment of promotion vacancies as part of cadre review and the army doing the fitment by looking for appointments for upgradation, this time, the reverse seems true.

Doctrinally proactive strategy, a euphemism for Cold Start, requires progressive alteration in its capability to be effective. That is being attempted through the creation of Integrated Battle Groups (IBGs) different from the current ones which are essentially based on loose grouping of a division and an armored brigade. What is being sought is a configuration with a permanent grouping of a mix of lesser number of infantry units along with some armored regiments, mechanised infantry and artillery units with dedicated and possibly assured communication, engineer and logistics support. This is the major change in the plains and desert creating a larger number of formations somewhere between a brigade and a division group thus enhancing the number of formations, increasing flexibility and reducing the headquarters (HQ) elements currently existing as the command and control body of each brigade and division. Its a good thought since the number of contact points along the frontage automatically increase in an offensive operation in which a corps HQ directly controls the IBGs which will be under a Major General each, thus doing away for the need of Brigadier as a command rank. Something similar is being attempted in the mountains for offensive operations but two areas remain intact as they are. These are the Line of Control and the Strike Corps, clarity on which is yet missing. The rank of Brigadier will exist but there will be no selection board to become Maj Gen. Brigadiers will be automatically promoted to Major General rank after 2-3 years. Both ranks of Brigs and Maj Gens will be placed in same Pay Level 14. The army hopes to promote 80 officers per batch to Maj Gen, much above the current number, and thereby improve feasibility of more officers attaining the Senior Administrative Grade (SAG), although nowhere near the percentage achieved by the Civil Services.

Promotability from Lt Col to Col is to be increased from current 35-38 percent to about 55-60 percent with additional vacancies of Colonels who will also enter the staff only stream currently reserved for Maj Gen. That will enable command and staff stream officers to be placed in command as Colonels in about 18 years of service after serving a tenure in staff. It will reduce the Colonel to Brigadier/Maj Gen service gap and allow more senior Colonels to command as the perception about very young Commanding Officers (COs) has not been as positive as had been contemplated. The army appears willing to take a notional cut of 4,500 from its authorised strength of 49,000 officers, to cater for enhanced cadre strength at senior ranks. A plethora of measures is being considered to optimise the use of available strength of officers. Merger of the sub area HQ with the corps HQ and 20 percent reduction of officers at Delhi is under consideration with pruning of the army HQ. There is likely to be a small cut in authorised strength of even frontline units to enable a pruning of up to 100,000 all ranks from the current authorisation.

As stated earlier, the restructuring hopefully with an eye towards transformation is yet at proposal stage. The one negative in all this is that the leadership hopes to commence restructuring in 2019 with a drastically short doctrinal test in a single exercise with troops and war game. This is unlikely to deliver optimum results because the proposed changes are actually a drastic overhaul of structures.

Not everything under change is being viewed positively by the experienced veteran community which also drives public opinion, especially the tampering with ranks and terms of service. The prevailing perception is that it is being driven more by the governments unreasonable attitude and lack of understanding of professional needs which the army leadership has been unable to resist. Not the best way of going about it but under the circumstances a creditable attempt, which needs more refinement.

The author is a retired lieutenant-general and former general officer commanding 15 and 21 Corps
In a letter to Qureshi, Swaraj thanked him for the invite and said she was unable to travel to Pakistan due to prior commitments, and said that India will be represented at the ceremony by Union Ministers Harsimrat Kaur Badal and Hardeep Singh Puri.

Islamabad: Pakistan has invited External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj to visit the country to attend the groundbreaking ceremony of the Kartarpur corridor next week, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said on Saturday.

A long-pending demand of the Sikh community to build a religious corridor linking India's border district of Gurdaspur with a historic gurudwara in Pakistan may finally be fulfilled with both the countries announcing that stretches would be developed in their respective areas.

Qureshi tweeted on Saturday:

On behalf of Pakistan I have extended an invitation to External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj @SushmaSwaraj ,Capt Amarinder Singh @capt_amarinder & Navjot Singh Sidhu @sherryontopp to attend the groundbreaking ceremony at #Kartarpura on 28 Nov, 2018.#PakistanKartarpuraSpirit  Shah Mahmood Qureshi (@SMQureshiPTI) November 24, 2018

In a letter to Qureshi, Swaraj thanked him for the invite and said she was unable to travel to Kartarpur Sahib due to prior commitments, including an election campaign in Telangana, and that India will be represented at the ceremony by Union Ministers Harsimrat Kaur Badal and Hardeep Singh Puri.

Swaraj also hoped that the government of Pakistan will expedite the construction of the corridor in order to ensure that "our citizens can pay their respects at the Gurudwara Kartarpur Sahib using the corridor as soon as possible."

Prime Minister Imran Khan will inaugurate the groundbreaking ceremony of the facilities on the Pakistani side on 28 November.

The move to open the corridor could break the chill in bilateral ties, which had taken a nose-dive in recent years with no bilateral talks taking place. The ties between the two countries had strained after the terror attacks by Pakistan-based groups in 2016.

India called off a meeting between Swaraj and Qureshi on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York in September, citing the "brutal" killing of three policemen in Jammu and Kashmir and the release of the postal stamps "glorifying" Kashmiri militant Burhan Wani.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi Friday hoped that the Kartarpur corridor would act as a bridge between the peoples of India and Pakistan that might lead to a better future as he referred to the fall of the Berlin Wall to underline the importance of people-to-people contact.

Pakistan's foreign office on Friday said the "Kartarpur Spirit can be a step forward in the right direction from conflict to cooperation, animosity to peace and enmity to friendship."
Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Sunday he deliberately kept 'politics' out of his monthly radio address 'Mann ki Baat' as the programme was about the aspirations of the people and not his or the government's achievements. He also said he chose radio as a medium to connect with the people as it was a 'mighty means' of getting a message across.

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Sunday he deliberately kept "politics" out of his monthly radio address 'Mann ki Baat' as the programme was about the aspirations of the people and not his or the government's achievements. He also said he chose radio as a medium to connect with the people as it was a "mighty means" of getting a message across.

Addressing the 50th episode of the programme, he said the "apprehensions" of the people are not "misplaced" that the programme could have been used as a political tool and to disseminate his and his government's achievements. "The fact is, if a leader gets hold of a microphone with assured listeners to the tune of millions, what else does he need? ... When 'Mann ki Baat' commenced, I had firmly decided that it would carry nothing political, or any praise for the government, nor Modi for that matter anywhere. The greatest bulwark in ensuring adherence to my resolve have been you," he said.

As a run up to each episode, the expectations and aspirations of listeners through their letters, online comments and phone calls are crystal clear, he said. "Modi may come and go, but this country will never let go of its unity and permanence, our culture will always be immortal," the prime minister said.

He said in an era of social media, he preferred radio as he realised its potential in 1998 as a worker of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

In a remote Himachal Pradesh area, it was a tea stall owner who broke him the news of India carrying out a nuclear test.

"It was matter of great intrigue to me to see a lone tea seller in a remote, snow-clad hilly place, who possibly kept listening to the radio the entire day watching that particular effect of the news on radio led me to realise and internalise that this was a medium that was truly connected with the masses and that it was a mighty means of getting across," Modi said.

"In terms of the reach and depth of communication, radio has been incomparable. I have been nursing that feeling ever since, acknowledging its power and strength. Hence when I became the prime minister, it was natural for me to turn towards a strong, effective medium," he pointed out.

Modi's monthly radio broadcast 'Mann ki Baat' completed 50 episodes on Sunday.

In its previous episodes, he has covered issues of social, national as well as international implication: education of the girl child, tackling exam stress, climate change and drug menace.

In October 2014, in the very first episode of the programme, he had urged citizens to use at least one khadi product, saying it would help poor weavers.
After MH Ambareesh died of a cardiac arrest, Venkaiah Naidu, Narendra Modi, superstars of the South Indian film industry and Bollywood, besides thousands of fans and political leaders from across India paid their tributes.

Bengaluru: Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, superstars of the South Indian film industry and Bollywood, besides thousands of frenzied fans and political leaders from across India on Sunday paid their tributes to veteran Kannada actor-turned-politician MH Ambareesh who died in Bengaluru following a cardiac arrest.

Several thousands of fans queued up outside the Kanteerava Stadium grounds in the Karnataka capital, where the 66-year-old actor-turned-politician's body was kept in the state since early in the day.

The superstar of the sandalwood industry, Ambareesh, was a dedicated parliamentarian, Naidu tweeted. "Sad to hear about the sudden demise of Ambareesh. He was not only a great actor but also a dedicated parliamentarian. My condolences to his family, friends and followers," Naidu said.

Modi condoled Ambareesh's death saying the actor will be remembered for his memorable performances and extensive contribution to politics. The rebel actor, who died at a private hospital in Bengaluru late on Saturday, was described by Modi as "a strong voice for Karnataka's welfare, at the state and central level".

Congress president Rahul Gandhi said his party has lost a valuable member. "He was a famous son of Karnataka, whose work as an actor and in politics, won him a huge following both in the state and across India."

In the passing of Ambareesh Ji, the Congress family has lost a valuable member. He was a famous son of Karnataka, whose work as an actor & and in politics, won him a huge following both in the state & across India. My condolences to his family and friends in this time of grief.  Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) November 25, 2018

Ambareesh died around 10.15 pm after a massive cardiac arrest a couple of hours after he was brought to the Vikram Hospital with breathing trouble.

A former cabinet minister in the previous Congress government in Karnataka from May 2013 to June 2016 before then chief minister Siddaramaiah sacked him along with 13 other ministers in a major reshuffle, the Kannada star enjoyed huge respect across party and linguistic divide.

Tamil superstar Rajinikanth, multi-lingual actors Prakash Raj, Raadika Sarathkumar, Kannada actors Shiva Rajkumar, Puneeth Rajkumar, popular Telugu actor Chiranjeevi and several others from the south Indian film industry paid their homage to the actor.

A wonderful human being ... my best friend ... I have lost you today and will miss you ... Rest In Peace #Ambrish  Rajinikanth (@rajinikanth) November 24, 2018

"Grieved to learn of the passing of a colleague Ambareesh. Condolences and prayers," Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan tweeted.

grieved to learn of the passing of a colleague Ambareesh .. condolences and prayers .. https://t.co/D1zwEeA3l8  Amitabh Bachchan (@SrBachchan) November 25, 2018

Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy, Janata Dal (Secular )(JDS) supremo and former prime minister HD Deve Gowda, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) state unit president B.S. Yeddyurappa and ministers from the JDS-Congress cabinet also paid their respects.

The Karnataka government has declared a three-day mourning and a state funeral for the actor-politician starting Monday.

The actor is survived by his widow and multi-lingual actress Sumalatha and son Abhishek.

Ambareesh entered films as 'Jaleel' in veteran director Puttanna Kanagal's Naagarahaavu in 1972.
Sikhs in America have hailed the Indian government's decision to build the Kartarpur corridor linking border district of Gurdaspur with historic Kartarpur Sahib gurudwara in Pakistan  fulfilling a long pending demand of the community.

Washington: Sikhs in America have hailed the Indian government's decision to build a religious corridor linking border district of Gurdaspur with historic Kartarpur Sahib gurudwara in Pakistan  fulfilling a long pending demand of the community.

Kartarpur Sahib in Pakistan is located across the river Ravi, about four kilometres from the Dera Baba Nanak shrine in Punjab's Gurdaspur district. It was established by the Sikh Guru in 1522. The first Gurdwara, Gurdwara Kartarpur Sahib, was built here, where Guru Nanak Dev is said to have died.

Both India and Pakistan have announced that stretches would be developed in their respective areas.

"The Indian government's decision to develop and open the Kartarpur Sahib Corridor is historic," Jasdip Singh, the chairman of the Sikhs of America, said during his meeting with visiting Union Minister of State for External Affairs Gen (retd.) VK Singh.

A delegation of eminent Sikh of America led by Jasdip Singh on Saturday met the minister in Washington. "From the very first day after coming to power, the prime minister has not only been sympathetic to the concerns of the Sikh community but has also acted to address all our concerns," he said.

Welcoming the decision, Gurinder Singh Khalsa, a community leader, said that this is just a beginning for the greater good of the region and the humanity.

"Incarnation of God, Guru Nanak became corridor between Hindus and Muslims, rich and poor, Pundits and Dalits during the most troubled times. I am a firm believer that now again after 550 years, with the grace of almighty, Kartarpur (town of God) corridor will be a pathway for sustainable peace between the two countries of India and Pakistan, Khalsa said.

"This is a historic decision," said Adapa Prasad, vice president of Overseas Friends of BJP.

The decision regarding construction of the Sikh corridor has the potential to kick-off peace between India and Pakistan. "Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been a great friend of the Sikhs. This was one of our long pending decision," said Puneet Ahluwalia, a Republican leader from Virginia.

In a memorandum submitted to the visiting minister, Sikhs of America organisation urged the prime minister to bring to justice the masterminds of the 1984 riots. The memorandum also urged the Indian Government to provide visas to the Sikhs in the US who have received political asylum.

Singh, who is currently on a three-city US trip to inaugurate Passport Seva projects in New York, Washington DC and Atlanta, was felicitated at a Baltimore Gurdwara in Maryland in recognition of some of the decisions being taken by the Indian government for the Sikh community.

The local Sikh community from Maryland and Virginia representing the Sikh Sewa presented a Saropa to the minister at a community reception later in the evening.
The last episode of Mann ki Baat was aired on 28 October, where Narendra Modi outlined the IT for society initiative for promoting selfless service, acknowledged the contribution of Sardar Patel for uniting India and also paid homage to army soldiers and their families on the occasion of Infantry day.

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be addressing the 50th edition of Mann Ki Baat radio programme on Sunday.

He will be sharing his thoughts on various issues, with the people spread all across the country and the world through All India Radio broadcast starting at 11 am.

The Mann Ki Baat radio broadcast by Prime Minister Narendra Modi started months after him assuming the prime minister's office. The first episode of the monthly radio programme was broadcasted on October 2014. The highlight of this episode was Modi's insistence on the usage of Khadi products, which subsequently boosted the sale of such products by over 100 percent.

The last episode of the programme was aired on 28 October. During that day's address, Modi outlined the IT for society initiative for promoting selfless service, acknowledged the contribution of Sardar Patel for uniting India and also paid homage to army soldiers and their families on the occasion of Infantry day.

As the last address was broadcasted days before the festival of Diwali, Modi has also urged people to buy indigenous products in order to support countrymen. He had also requested farmers to give up the practice of stubble burning in order to curb air pollution.

In the past, former US president Barack Obama had also joined Modi in Mann Ki Baat in an episode broadcasted in January 2015. The former United State's president had shared personal stories and gave insights over what it takes to achieve life goals.

The toll-free telephone lines were also introduced in September 2015 for connecting more people, especially the differently abled to connect with the radio programme.

The 50th episode of this monthly programme will be broadcasted on the entire network of AIR and Doordarshan. It is also live streamed on official YouTube channels of the Prime Minister's Office, Information and Broadcasting Ministry.
Pakistan foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi had extended invitations for the foundation stone laying of the Kartarpur corridor to Sushma Swaraj, Navjot Singh Sidhu and Amarinder Singh. Swaraj and Singh will not be attending.

Punjab Cabinet minister Navjot Singh Sidhu on Sunday accepted Pakistan foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi's invitation to attend the opening ceremony of Kartarpur corridor, slated for 28 November.

Responding to invitation of Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi to attend opening ceremony of #KartarpurCorridor corridor,Navjot Singh Sidhu writes "I look forward to meeting you on this historic occasion. My application for permission to attend is now lodged with MEA" pic.twitter.com/4NexsNPtxS  ANI (@ANI) November 25, 2018

In a letter to Pakistan's foreign minister, Sidhu stated, "It is with great honour and unalloyed joy that I accept your invitation to attend the ground-breaking ceremony at Kartarpur Sahib on 28 November. I look forward to meeting you on this historic occasion."

"This day will indeed break ground. As our two nations take this first step, the Kartarpur spirit can make pilgrims of us all, venturing out on a journey that breaks the barriers of history and opens the borders of the heart and the mind. A journey that our people can walk together towards, a future of shared peace and prosperity for India and Pakistan," Sidhu's letter read.

Conversely, Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh has rejected the offer to attend, citing continued terrorist attacks in the state and the various killings of Indian soldiers by Pakistani armed forces.

"Firstly, not a day passes when Indian soldiers are not killed or wounded on the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir. Rather than moving towards normalcy, these incidents are escalating," Singh said. Secondly, the chief minister claimed, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has started its nefarious activities in Punjab.

"Since March 2017, the state has neutralised 19 ISI-armed and controlled modules, apprehended 81 terrorists and seized 79 weapons, numerous grenades of the HG-84 type made in Pakistan's Ordnance factories with Austrian know how, and some IEDs," the chief minister claimed.

The last attack took place in Amritsar few days ago, on a peaceful religious congregation in a village. Three men were killed and 19, including women and children, were wounded, Singh said, adding that the terrorists had been caught.

"I hope that the prime minister (of Pakistan) will understand these circumstances... It will not be possible for me to be present in Pakistan on this historic occasion, despite the fact that paying my respects at Gurdwara Sri Kartarpur Sahib has always been my cherished dream which will hopefully be fulfilled once these hostilities and killings are stopped," he said.

Qureshi had also extended an invitation to external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj on Saturday.

In a letter to Qureshi, Swaraj thanked him for the invite and said she was unable to travel to Kartarpur Sahib due to prior commitments including election campaign in Telangana and that India will be represented at the ceremony by Union ministers Harsimrat Kaur Badal and Hardeep Singh Puri.

Swaraj also hoped that the government of Pakistan will expedite the construction of the corridor in order to ensure that "our citizens can pay their respects at the Gurudwara Kartarpur Sahib using the corridor as soon as possible".

Prime Minister Imran Khan will inaugurate the groundbreaking ceremony of the facilities on the Pakistani side on 28 November.

The move to open the corridor could break the chill in bilateral ties. India-Pakistan ties nose-dived in recent years with no bilateral talks taking place. The ties between the two countries had strained after the terror attacks by Pakistan-based groups in 2016.

India called off a meeting between Swaraj and Qureshi on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York in September, citing the "brutal" killing of three policemen in Jammu and Kashmir and the release of the postal stamps "glorifying" Kashmiri militant Burhan Wani.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi Friday hoped that the Kartarpur corridor would act as a bridge between the peoples of India and Pakistan that might lead to a better future as he referred to the fall of the Berlin Wall to underline the importance of people-to-people contact.

Pakistan's foreign office on Friday said the "Kartarpur Spirit can be a step forward in the right direction from conflict to cooperation, animosity to peace and enmity to friendship."

With inputs from agencies
Subramanian Swamy backed Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh's decision to decline the invitation to attend the stone-laying ceremony of the Kartarpur Corridor on the Pakistan side.

New Delhi: Bharatiya Janata Party MP Subramanian Swamy on Sunday backed Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh's decision to decline the invitation to attend the stone-laying ceremony of the Kartarpur Corridor on the Pakistan side. "No Indian minister should go to the other side of the border until Pakistan stops cross-border terrorism," he said.

"I don't think any Indian minister should go to attend any kind of event in Pakistan. They are also preventing our diplomats from accompanying the people to religious places. Until Pakistan stops sponsoring cross-border terrorism, we should not allow anyone to go there for any kind of event," Swamy siad.

On Sunday, Amarinder declined an invitation for the stone-laying ceremony on 28 November, citing terror attacks in his state and the relentless killing of Indian troops on the Line of Control (LoC).

"Every day, Indian soldiers are either killed or wounded on the LoC in Jammu and Kashmir. Rather than moving towards normalcy, these incidents are escalating," Amarinder wrote in his letter to Pakistan foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi.

However, Punjab Cabinet minister Navjot Singh Sidhu said that he would be attending the stone-laying ceremony of Kartarpur on Pakistan side, while praising the initiative taken by Indian and Pakistan governments to develop Kartarpur Corridor.

"It is a commendable step by both the governments of India and Pakistan. If you take a step, they will obviously take it further. Now that we have taken a step, they said that they would be inaugurating the historic corridor. It is a commendable initiative indeed," Sidhu said.

Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan will inaugurate the ground-breaking ceremony of the Kartarpur Corridor, on the Pakistan side, on 28 November.
Last week, Steven Spurrier, the British wine expert was in Mumbai to release his new book, Wine  A Way of Life.

Last week, Steven Spurrier, the British wine expert, was in Mumbai to release his new book, Wine  A Way of Life. Spurrier, who consults with Singapore Airlines on their in-flight offerings is a giant of the wine world, having staged the Judgement of Paris, which saw California wines come out on top of the French ones that they were pitted against in a blind taste test by French judges. The evening raised the profile of New World wines considerably.

The Brit is someone who has a long association with India; hes been coming to the country for over ten years. On the day we spoke, he was in Akluj at the Fratelli vineyards, working on M/S the Masi/Spurrier collaboration that has been ongoing since 2015. The wine range brings together Piero Masi the Tuscan winemaker and of course, Spurrier.

In a crisp accent that enunciates every word, Spurrier explains with restrained passion, the vintage was wonderful. He goes into detail and says, Weve made the blend. In 2017, the white with Chardonnay was 80 percent and Sauvignon Blanc was 20 percent, this time it's going to be Chardonnay 90 percent and Sauvignon 10, because the Chardonnay is so good and the Sauvignon just adds a little bit of a kick to it.

It's this level of passion and detail that leads the entire conversation, which sees Spurrier rattle of grape varietals, percentages and tasting notes the way a layperson would give directions around their home city.

When speaking about what hes hoping for from any wine he tastes, Spurrier says, The absolute aim of any vineyard owner or winemaker is that the wine should have a sense of place. Put another way hes hoping that, the wine should express the vineyard. In the context of India, he says, I think Indian wines, as the vines age, should do or will do that, and he maintains it is happening with every vintage he tastes.

As for the book, Spurrier who writes for Decanter magazine, says, its a memoir, its my life in wine. It was never supposed to be a full-fledged tome, but rather a brief recollection for his grandchildren. Spurrier says, Its something Ive been thinking of for some years, and I was planning just to write maybe 50 pages for my grandchildren, just to tell them what my life was like in the wine business.

However, his friend and publisher David Campbell asked for a few chapters, and it morphed into a book.

Spurrier says, Its a very personal book but it is also a survey of the wine trade, which I have seen internationally over fifty years and thats quite interesting because the wine trade has changed incredibly from when I joined it in 1964.

Indian oenophiles will remember that he was one of the co-founders of the Wine Society of India in 2006. However, the society shut down in 2016, and he says, Id like to make it very plain, the administration in this country is not in favour of wine distribution and wine consumption. The society had backing from United Spirits, had partnered with Direct Wines in the United Kingdom and had over 12,000 members but its expenses outweighed the profit on the revenue.

As for where the industry is going in the next couple of years, Spurrier is bullish. He says, Its a growing industry that should succeed. Certainly, in the 10 to 12 years that Ive been coming to India, the quality of wines has improved dramatically. I think theyre going to get visibility outside of India.
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Launching his career under the tutelage of the then Congress stalwart S Nijalingappa, Sharief had, however, sided with former prime minister Indira Gandhi after the split in the Congress.

Bengaluru: Veteran Congress leader and former Union minister CK Jaffer Sharief passed away on Sunday at a private hospital here following a cardiac arrest, doctors said. He was 85.

Sharief was hospitalised after he collapsed while getting into his car for attending the Friday namaz. Family sources said Sharief was not keeping well for quite some time. He is survived by two daughters.

Hospital sources said Sharief died of cardiac arrest.

Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee president Dinesh Gundu Rao tweeted: "One of @INCIndias senior-most leaders, many times MP and one of Indias most successful Railway minister, Karnatakas very own son Sri CK Jaffer Shareef has passed away.

A national leader who had a great connect across all communities, a truly secular leader. My condolences."

Congress MLA and Sharief's family friend NA Harris told PTI that the doctors had planned to implant pacemaker in his heart Sunday but he died before he could be brought to the operation table.

Born on 3 November, 1933 at Challakere in Chitradurga, Sharief had an illustrious political career spanning 50 years.

Launching his career under the tutelage of the then Congress stalwart and former chief minister S Nijalingappa, Sharief had, however, sided with former prime minister Indira Gandhi after the split in the Congress.

He was a seven-time MP from Bengaluru North constituency and served as the Railway minister in the PV Narasimha Rao government between 1991 and 1995.

Karnataka Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy, who rushed to the hospital, said Sharief was close to his father and former prime minister HD Devegowda. "Jaffer Sharief was not restricted to the minority community but had emerged as a leader of every citizen of the state. He was a great leader who gifted various central government schemes, especially railway projects, to the state," Kumaraswamy said.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi condoled Sharief's death. He tweeted:

It is a day of tragedy for the Congress party, with another senior, loved & respected member of our family in Karnataka, Shri Jaffer Sharief Ji, passing away today. My condolences to his family, friends & supporters in their time of grief. #JafferSharief  Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) November 25, 2018

Former External Affairs minister SM Krishna recalled his association with Sharief, saying, "He was a great visionary and was able to very effectively represent all sections of society".

Sharief had on occasions threatened to quit the Congress, sulking over being "sidelined" in the party and being denied ticket to him or his family members, but had withdrawn it on being pacified by the party high command.

The RSS, with which Sharief had maintained cordial relations, condoled his death and said he was well known to many senior sangh functionaries and supportive of social causes.
In Paper Asylum, Rochelle Potkar combines her love for the Japanese form of haibun (part-prose, part-haiku) with social commentary

A short story writer and poet, Rochelle Potkar is fast becoming the face of Haibun in India. Her new book, Paper Asylum, combines prose and poetry to wondrous results. Rochelle speaks about her preferred form of writing, which is all about imagery, I once entered a haiku at a competition, to which a haibuneer told me there was a difference between three lines of poetry and a haiku.

Sample this:

reunion party

the taste of rum

on her lips

Here line 1 is image 1, lines 2 and 3 are image 2. These two images are juxtaposed. I was startled and got hooked to writing haiku then on, and eventually was drawn to the prose that comes around it, called the haibun.

Soon after his city was destroyed by fire, Basho, the 17th century Japanese Zen-Buddhist and master Haijin, began months-long journeys on foot and traced those journeys in a new poetic form called haibun. Written in part-prose, part-haiku, haibun makes for a flexible form to accommodate the abstract and concrete; stillness and movement; historical and terrestrial. Calling it the 'candy crush' of words, Rochelle uses it to great effect in her book, to convey everything from pain, longing, love and betrayal to travel, in a dazzling combination of prose, poetry, essay and short story.

This haiku in the book speaks about the #MeToo movement:

phosphorus sky

the gulmohar bursts

aflame

I have always thought of angry women as gulmohar trees, every fourth one. Besides, of course being in love with the gulmohar tree for the way it filters sunlight. Rochelle explains, My ideology as a writer is to follow an idea and have its soul embody in the flesh of any form: short story, novel, script, haiku. Haibun, then, accommodates part-prose, part-poetry (haiku) and hence makes for a flexible form to speak in abstract and concrete ways.

Rochelle reveals that what drew her to the form was its succinctness, musicality, brevity. She says, In one page a poet could jump history, memory, or time-lapse from immediacy to far-metaphysicality. This traversing of orbits between the links and shifts of prose, fragments and phrases of haiku, and the jive between haiku and prose made for an amazing maze. It spoke so much of what can be done in limited words and time. Additionally, I felt the haiku was a big crunch  the smallest trilogy, because a world opens up and continues expanding the moment you find its (two) juxtaposing images. Take Laryalee Frasers haiku, where a whole climate change saga unfurls in a short while:

apple harvest

weighing the future

of honeybees

The poet says that the time for Haibun has come, adding that she is confident about the smartphone generation, which refuses to flip a paper, embracing this form. You will be surprised with the number of youngsters who have taken to poetry as a means of expression. When I join the dots  the nooks, pubs, art spaces, open mics, videos  I see a social revolution. Even working professionals and retired people are coming back to poetry, and catharsis. So yes, smartphones show different consumption patterns, but good content is a vortex in any size. I find for shorter attention spans, haibun works to the telegraphic nature of poetry.

Paper Asylum has all the claustrophobia of living in an urban setting. In the book cover, the flower peeps from within a prison of concrete, at the sun imprisoned in horizontal and verticals bars outside. Rochelle divulges her inspiration for the book, Paper Asylum has two meanings (for me). The catharsis that springs from speaking about cloying existences. And the process of writing itself, which means that on paper, all is brittle and fragile. It can tear, soak, or drown.

Haibun for every emotion

shells of the snails remain

the same

our holiday homes too

This verse from the short story Selena in the book is a powerful indicator of the potency of the medium. Capturing the tale of a hopeless marriage with startling beauty, Rochelle says that this haiku has to do with hope that can carry us a long way even in unchanged situations. She elaborates, We are inflicted with undying dreams, turning to delusions. Life is very inspiring in its range of sorrow and sadness, sunshine and serendipity. People in life, too. I like conflicts and contradictions because they are marked by their inherence. That makes it so beautiful, this irrationality. Add language to that and we have a feast.

Paper Asylum is a collection of natural, willing pieces which were written over a year. While the haiku in some places are obvious, they take a life of their own in some stories, like Mass which talks of dinosaur dreams. Rochelle, who says that she never force-fits an idea, explains, Haiku in the haibun is supposed to walk a tangent to the circle or universe of the prose. Its meant to take a tiny leap, one to three thoughts away. In some cases, a quantum leap. Finally, it will fall within the realms of existence based on a mesh of shared emotions, language and imagery even if prone to multiple interpretations.

Stories about women

A lot of the stories in the book touch upon issues concerning women, from the #MeToo movement to issues with in-laws and marriage woes. Rochelle admits that she reacts to these issues instinctively and remarks, The journey of a woman compared to a man on the same path is very different. We deal with heavier levels of patriarchy and misogyny in the most startling corners. In the poetry world I have been left out of festivals and anthologies.

I have to then ask myself:

A. if I was a man would this happen to me.

B. if I was an appeasing woman would this happen to me.

I would ask a third question, but I dropped it off when I saw the quality of writing around.

C. if was a better writer, poet would this happen to me.

It has to do with point B. A woman has to be a giver, fan girl the entitled alpha male, not concentrate on her own craft. Once I heard my name eliminated from a list. I earned paranoia. Who knows what else is going on in the dark? That has consequently made me more productive. So when I write a haiku in this book:

Bodhi tree

spears blossoming

into stipules

 I mean it.

Building images out of words

Many of the prose poems in the book have a soul which reflect slice-of-life issues, like in Samsara, the sexuality of two men is described as a spiritual retreat  melting the gods for their gold. Rochelle explains that haiku is all about having fun with images in the fewest of words. She says, What happens when god is just the material it is made up of, and not of faith? Like someone elses god? Or distanced from your own god because of a change in path? Then even its gold is for melting. Its a hegemony of human interpretation.

Also, haiku juxtaposes two images in three lines. One image is for curating nature, the second to do with human states. Take for instance:

the way pink orchids 

blossom into periwinkles

heresy ...

With haiku entering the popular lexicon, (St Xaviers College, Mumbai is the first to include this form in its Arts syllabus) Rochelles advice to budding haibuneers is simple and straightforward:

Read Contemporary Haibun Online, Haibun Today for your daily fix of zen. Then write some. You will be surprised by what you write. This is a new beast. Or call me for a workshop anytime, she smiles.

Currently awaiting the release of two books in 2019, a collection of short stories titled Hangovers from a Bombay Debacle and a third book of poetry, The Inglorious Coins of the Counting House, Rochelle believes that haibun can strike a chord with people of all ages, and worries of catering to a niche audience don't bother her. Poetry is niche anyway. So the Japanese short poetry forms, of haiku and haibun become more niche. But thats the advantage and uniqueness that its not for everyone. That to be a reader or a writer of haiku and haibun you need to cultivate a certain skill, and train yourself. Isnt that beautiful and rare? she asks and adds thoughtfully,  Lets not underestimate the young at heart and mind who are always curious for something new at the turn of everyday (if just to escape boredom). These new readers and writers love to plunge into a new form.
Amit Shah hit out at Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) chief and Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao over the issue during campaign rallies at Parkal and Nirmal.

Parkal/Nirmal: BJP chief Amit Shah on Sunday attacked the state government's proposal to give 12 percent quota to Muslims, saying his party will never allow it as religion-based reservation is unconstitutional.

Shah hit out at Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) chief and Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao over the issue during campaign rallies at Parkal and Nirmal ahead of the 7 December Assembly polls in the state.

"I want to tell Chandrasekhar Rao, the Supreme Court has fixed 50 percent ceiling (on total reservations). If you want to provide 12 percent reservation, from whose quota are you going to carve it out: from Dalits, tribals or OBCs? Decide this first," Shah said.

Shah said Rao promised reservation to the minority community "despite being aware" of the 50 percent ceiling and forwarded the proposal (Bill) to the Centre.

"BJP would stand firmly to protect the reservation of Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Backward Classes," he said. The Constitution does not allow reservation based on religion, the BJP chief said.

He asked the gathering whether a religion-based reservation should be be given, and said, "You don't worry. Even if KCR, Congress, TDP, communists, all of them come together, I guarantee that till the BJP government is at the Centre, religion-based reservation will not be given."

The Telangana legislature has passed a Bill increasing reservations in jobs and education for backward sections of the Muslim community to 12 percent from the earlier four percent. The Bill is yet to get the Centre's nod.

Meanwhile, speaking at a campaign rally at Shadnagar, Rao said the bill was not yet cleared by Prime Minister Narendra Modi despite repeated requests.

"We want to give reservations to Muslims. But Modi is against that. That is the reason I am advocating a non-Congress and non-BJP front government. You know that I fought for Telangana's statehood. I will get you reservations the same way," he said.
Addressing a press conference in Bhopal, BJP vice-president Prabhat Jha said the Congress was so perturbed by the persona of the prime minister that they had to resort to attacking his mother.

Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Sunday said that the Congress' remark on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's mother showed nothing but the party's "feudalistic mindset."

Addressing a press conference in Bhopal, BJP vice-president Prabhat Jha said the Congress was so perturbed by the persona of the prime minister that they had to resort to attacking his mother.

"The prime minister represents 130 crore Indians. How can the Congress attack his mother like that? Not only that, the way they attacked his mother is condemnable. They should not forget the fact that Modi Ji's mother is 96 years old," he said.

Jha further added, "Is Narendra Modi not the prime minister of the Opposition too? This is nothing but a feudalistic mindset. The BJP never believes in personally attacking either Jawaharlal Nehru or any other Congress leaders. The voters will respond to such filthy attack by voting in favour of us."

BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra, speaking on the occasion, said the party will take up the matter with the Election Commission. "Winning and losing an election is part and parcel of politics. We can never assure anyone on what is going to happen in the ensuing five Assembly elections. But, then, again, why attack someone's mother? Prime Minister Narendra Modi's mother is a motherly figure to all of us," he said.

On Thursday, Congress leader Raj Babbar had stoked a controversy after he compared the devaluation of the Indian rupee to Modi's 96-year-old mother. "Narendra Modi used to attack the then UPA government by saying the value of rupee neared to the age of then Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh. What about now? It is inching closer to his mother's age," Babbar had said during a rally in Madhya Pradesh.
BJP president Amit Shah on Sunday accused the Congress of supporting 'Urban Naxals' and said his party will put Maoists in jail if it is voted to power in Telangana.

Nirmal: BJP president Amit Shah on Sunday accused the Congress of supporting "Urban Naxals" and said his party will put Maoists in jail if it is voted to power in Telangana.

"Urban Naxals" is a term used to describe city-based supporters working in alleged front organisations of proscribed Maoist outfits.

Addressing a public meeting in Nirmal district, Shah said, "Recently they (Urban Naxals) were arrested in Maharashtra. The BJP government there, led by Devendra Fadnavis, put them behind bars, but Rahul Gandhi supported them."

"Rahul baba, are you aware that hundreds of people in Telangana have died due to Naxalism?" he asked.

The BJP chief claimed Maoists were "hiding" in different parts of the state and said his party would look for them and send them to prison. "They have only two options  either join the mainstream or get ready to face jail," Shah said.

He also trained his guns at Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) chief and the state's caretaker chief minister K Chandrashekhar Rao, popularly known as KCR, for demanding reservation for minorities.

The BJP chief said Rao-led Telangana government had forwarded a proposal to the Centre demanding 12 percent reservation for minorities despite knowing that it is not possible to do so.

"You don't worry. Even if KCR, the Congress, the TDP and Communists come together, I guarantee that till the BJP government is in the Centre, religion-based reservation will not be granted," Shah said.

He accused Rao of failing to provide employment to the family members of those who sacrificed their lives during the Telangana statehood movement.

Shah claimed Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led central government had extended over 2.30 lakh crore for Telangana's development in the last four and half years, but the funds had not been utilised for the state's development.

"Over 2.30 lakh crore has been given by the central government to Telangana. Had it been any other state, problems would have been solved long back by utilising these funds. He (KCR) is not concerned about the children of Telangana, but only about his son and daughter," he alleged.

The BJP chief told the gathering that he had brought a message from Modi which asked the people to bring the party to power in the 7 December Assembly polls so that Telangana can be developed as a model state.

Shah said the polls will decide the future of every child in Telangana and asked people to strengthen the hands of Modi by defeating the TRS and other parties.
Former TRS leader Vishweshwar Reddy Sunday hinted at the possibility of a 'tacit understanding' between the ruling party in Telangana and the BJP.

Hyderabad: Former TRS leader and Chevella MP Konda Vishweshwar Reddy Sunday hinted at the possibility of a "tacit understanding" between the ruling party in Telangana and the BJP behind Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao's move to dissolve the Vidhan Sabha before completion of its full term.

The dissolution of the Assembly in September this year had paved the way for early polls in the southern state.

The elections to the 119-member Assembly are scheduled on 7 December.

Reddy, who recently crossed over to the Congress, said the decision to hold early elections came as a "shock" to the people.

Addressing reporters, he claimed that factors like the chief minister's "tacit understanding with the Bhartiya Janata Party" or "falling popularity of the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samiti" might be behind the chief minister's move to dissolve the House.

"It was a matter of shock for all the people as to why the TRS government didn't complete the five years mandate given to them. Why would any government voluntarily dissolve the House and take the risk of being put under President's rule by the Central government?"

"There was either a tacit understanding with the BJP or this step was taken out of fear due to the fast declining graph of the TRS in the state," he said.

Reddy, who had won Chevella seat as a TRS candidate, joined the Congress on 23 November in the presence of UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi in a public meeting at Medchal.

The chief minister had already dismissed reports that his move to dissolve the House was motivated politically. His daughter and Nizamabad MP MP K Kavitha has denied that her party had a "covert" understanding with the BJP. She has accused the Congress of spreading such rumours to get minority votes.

Meanwhile, referring to his previous stint in the TRS, Reddy said some of his initiatives were appreciated by the national and international bodies such as Unicef, but were not recognised by the KCR- led party.

"I was constantly insulted by various means including removal of my flex boards in the constituency (Chevella)," he said.

Reddy said the state government is yet to formally apply to the Centre seeking a national status for the Kaleshwaram project though it has been raising the demand. The chief minister had laid the foundation stone for the Kaleshwaram irrigation project, taken up at an estimated cost of Rs 80,500 crore, on May 2, 2016. The project aims to take water to the state's drought-hit regions.

Reddy further said the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management (FRBM) Act, which ensures that no state government goes about spending its budget indiscriminately, has been completely neglected by the state.

"The state government debt is to the tune of Rs 2.20 lakh crore. It works out at around Rs 61,000 per person if apportioned to individual citizens in the state," he said.

Responding to a query, Reddy said the TRS took an ambiguous stand on the Triple Talaq Bill that was passed by Parliament recently. The Congress had last month forged 'Prajakutami' (People's Alliance) with the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) of Chandrababu Naidu, the Telangana Jana Samithi (TJS) and the Communist Party of India (CPI) to take on the TRS in upcoming polls.
Narendra Modi mounted a scathing attack on the Congress for launching personal vitriol against him, saying that they have abandoned the traditions and etiquettes of politics because they cannot debate on real issues like development.

Alwar (Rajasthan): Prime Minister Narendra Modi accused the Congress party of interfering in the Supreme Court's proceedings on the Ram Temple-Babri Masjid case, saying that their Rajya Sabha leaders intimidate Supreme Court judges with the threat of impeachment if they don't stall the case until the general elections in 2019.

"When their shameless tactics fail, they use the threat of impeachment to bend the judges to their will. This is a dangerous play. The Congress is committing a crime by using impeachment to stop lawful procedures. They are enslaving the country using their power in the Rajya Sabh," Modi said.

Addressing a campaign rally in Alwar, the prime minister said, "They give Rajya Sabha tickets to prominent Supreme Court advocates, who attend proceedings in the court all day and then sit in the Rajya Sabha. We don't have a majority in that House, so they are using it to their advantage. Those Congress members in the Rajya Sabha have told to Supreme Court to not restart the case till 2019 because of the impending elections."

He also mounted a scathing attack on the Congress for launching personal vitriol against him, saying that they have abandoned the traditions and etiquettes of politics because they cannot debate on real issues like development.

"Day by day, the Congress is stooping to new lows, they have abandoned the traditions and etiquettes of politics and have lost their courage to talk about the real issues like development," he said.

The prime minister challenged the Congress party to better Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje's record of welfare in the state during her five-year term. "But their previous government's record is so dire, they don't even have the courage to remember Vasundhara ji's record," he added.

"When you don't have a record of the work you did, or a vision for the future development of the state, or have an answer for the political rifts within your party, the topic for your election campaign becomes Modi's caste. Tell me will that decide your vote? Can the Congress not get rid of the poison of communal divide?" Modi said.

The 200-member Rajasthan Assembly is scheduled to go to polls on 7 December. The counting of votes will take place on 11 December.
Jhalrapatan is part of Vasundhara Raje's son Dushyant Singh's Jhalawar Lok Sabha constituency, which is probably why Raje refused to budge despite the BJP leadership wanting her to change her constituency

Jaipur: Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje Scindias decision to contest for a fourth consecutive time from Jhalrapatan constituency immediately led to speculation that she was grooming her son Dushyant Singh to contest the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

BJP rebels were quick to hit out at Raje over her decision to continue with Jhalrapatan. Ghanshyam Tiwari, who quit the BJP to form his own outfit, dubs Raje an "outsider, who is bent upon promoting her son's political career". Independent MLA Hanuman Beniwal, also a former BJP man who formed the Rashtriya Loktantrik Party (RLP) and is causing serious problems for both BJP and Congress, said that an insecure Raje would never dare change her constituency.

Congress leader Sachin Pilot also chipped in saying, The chief minister would get the real taste of electoral politics if she takes up the challenge of shifting to some other constituency."

The contestants in Jhalrapatan are an interesting lot. Raje's main opponent is former BJP leader Jaswants Singhs son Manvendra Singh who was a surprise Congress choice. Mukul Chaudhary was angling for Congress ticket, but the party refused. Earlier, it was speculated that she may contest the election as an Independent candidate. However, she did not file nomination till the last day. Incidentally, Jhalrapatan is part of Jhalawar Lok Sabha seat, which is probably why Raje refused to budge despite the BJP leadership wanting her to change her constituency.

Dushyant, a two-time MP from Jhalawar, could not get a ministerial berth in the Narendra Modi cabinet which has not gone down well with the Scindia camp. Especially since three other Rajasthan MPs  PP Chaudhary from Pali, Arjun Ram Meghwal from Bikaner and Gajendra Singh Shekhawat from Jodhpur  became ministers.

Raje scotched all speculation of alternate constituencies like Lalsot and Dholpur and a double contest from Lalsot and Jhalrapatan, by quickly filing her nomination papers for the latter. Raje had refused Lalsot despite the fact that voters in the Assembly constituency, which was earlier held by BJP turncoat Kishori Lal Meena, had appealed to Raje to contest from there.

Raje also sprang a surprise by nominating Kirori Lal Meenas wife and former MLA Golma Devi Meena from Lalsot.

Subsequently, the BJP claimed that there was never any speculation about Raje's constituency.

"Some party workers were demanding that Raje contest from Lalsot or nearby constituencies," said BJP state president Madanlal Saini. But this demand was rejected during the first meeting itself, he informs.

"Raje couldnt fight from Lalsot because it is a reserved seat," added political analyst Sanjay Bohra.

She was expected to fight from Dholpur. However, it was speculated that if she leaves Jhalrapatan, it will appear that she has lost control over Jhalawar. Moreover, the BJP high command had made it clear that no one will be allowed to change seats."

This is despite the fact that Raje contesting from Lalsot would have been a boost for the party in eastern Rajasthan.

Besides Jhalrapatan, Jhalawar district consists of Khanpur and two reserved Assembly constituencies  Manohar Thana and Dag. Long associated with the Gwalior family, the district has a large Rajput population even in the reserved constituencies, with Jats having little or no presence.

Since Dushyant has never been considered close to his Jat father Hemant Singh  he is seen more a Rajput than a Jat  the BJP sees him as the favourite to win Jhalawar seat in the 2019 polls. The chances of his win increases if Raje retains the Jhalrapatan Assembly constituency.

Probably that is why Saini is also determined to have Dushyant contest from Jhalawar. "There is no chance of changing Dushyant, the BJP state president recently said.

Interestingly, Raje and Congress leader Ashok Gehlot, are the only two politicians in Rajasthan who have never changed their constituency. Though Rajes electoral record beats Gehlots performance hollow  she won three consecutive Assembly elections in 2003, 2008 and 2013, besides being a Lok Sabha MP for five terms from 1989 to 2003  Rajasthan has a record of defeating incumbent chief ministers. Ashok Gehlot replaced Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, then Gehlot was toppled by Raje, who then lost to Gehlot till she evened the score in 2013.

The authors are members of 101Reporters.com, a pan-India network of grassroots reporters
Asserting that the Ram Janmabhoomi was a matter of faith which could not be questioned, Mohan Bhagwat said, 'The society does not move only by the words of law, but also by its own wishes.'

Nagpur: Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat Sunday said the time for patience was over and a law should be brought to facilitate the construction of a Ram temple at Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh if the matter was not a priority for the apex court.

Speaking at a rally organised by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) on the Ram temple issue in Nagpur, Bhagwat also said this should be the "decisive phase of the agitation".

"One year ago, I myself had said be patient. Now I say, patience will not work. Now we need to mobilise people. Now we should demand a law," he said.

"If, for whatever reasons, because the court has a busy schedule or maybe it does not understand the sensibilities of the society, the Ram temple case is not a priority for them, then the government should think how to bring a law for the construction of the temple....the law should be introduced at the earliest," Bhagwat added.

"Now this should be the decisive phase of this agitation," he said.

The RSS chief said in 1992, those agitating for the temple at Ayodhya had approached then Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao, but he did not take a prompt decision.

"(Then) the karsevaks (volunteers) got angry and what happened, happened," he said, referring to the demolition of the Babri mosque on 6 December, 1992.

Asserting that the Ram Janmabhoomi was a matter of faith which could not be questioned, Bhagwat said, "The society does not move only by the words of law, but also by its own wishes."

"In 2010, the court (Allahabad High Court) had ruled in favour of the construction of the Ram temple, but now, indications are clear that it is not a priority of the (apex) court," he added.

The Supreme Court, hearing appeals against the high court's decision, had said earlier in November that it would hear the matter only in January, 2019.

Bhagwat also said people should not fight with the government, but build pressure on it.

"The government, if not willing to build the temple, would bow down before such pressure, or if it wanted to build it but could not find a way, would gain "strength from the public pressure", he added.
The discussions to be held on Monday at the special Delhi Assembly session are likely to further Arvind Kejriwal and AAP's narrative of of crying victim, which it has eagerly  and somewhat successfully  attempted to push over the years.

The Aam Admi Party (AAP) government in Delhi has decided to call a special Assembly session on Monday to discuss the 20 November attack on Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal with chilli powder at the Secretariat. A discussion on the mass deletion of names from the national capital's voters' list is also on the agenda of the special session.

However, discussions on these matters is unlikely to yield any effective results, for both the intended subjects of talks are beyond the administrative ambit of the Delhi government, and the session is unlikely to offer any solution.

The Delhi Police is exclusively within the purview of the Union Ministry of Home Affairs, and the Delhi government has no control over it. Similarly, the deletion of names of voters is within the ambit of the Election Commission of India, a constitutional body whose territory can be treaded by no second body other than the judiciary.

Even so, the discussions to be held on Monday are likely to further AAP's narrative of of crying victim, which it has eagerly  and somewhat successfully  attempted to push over the years. The party has left no stone unturned in playing the victim card in both cases.

However condemnable the attack on Kejriwal and the breach in the Delhi Police's security cordon may be, AAP portraying the chilli powder attack on the Chief Minister of Delhi as a grave threat to his life is likely to sound outlandish to many.

Despite this, Kejriwal, catering to a constituency that readily accepts such conspiracy theories, claimed after the incident, "They all want to kill me. There is no other chief minister who has been attacked four times in two years. I have become an eyesore for them."

Earlier, the Delhi chief minister faced three similar attacks, all in 2016. These involved attacks with ink, a shoe and sticks.

Moreover, the Election Commission of India has also clarified and categorically denied the alleged deletion of names from the voters' list without due process being followed.

In a statement, the District Election Officer of Delhi said: "It is being clarified that all allegations are baseless and without facts. In fact, based on the complaint filed by AAP, the Election Commission of India took immediate steps to stop all apprehension with respect to the sanctity of the electoral roll and ordered immediate house-to-house verification of all deleted entries of the Harkesh Nagar and Lala Kuan areas, as alleged to have massive deletions."

AAP still chooses to thrust the issue into public eye and play the victim card as it has spotted a story to tell here to further fortify its narrative of victimhood.

In fact, in the past three years in office, Kejriwal has pursued his tussle with the Centre and the Lieutenant General of Delhi as vehemently as he has the conspiracies against him and his government. As a result, his "isme Modiji ka haath hai" (Modi has a hand in this) quote has became a favorite jibe on social media.

It is not to say that a few external factors didn't make it easier for the party to go ahead with playing the victim card repeatedly. Be it the Supreme Court order to reinstate 20 AAP MLAs earlier disqualified by the Election Commission, or another top court order reminding the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi of the limitations of his power amid a bitter spat with the AAP government  all these factors have only helped the party play the victim.

With the Lok Sabha elections nearing and AAP attempting to field candidates from all the parliamentary constituencies in Delhi, it would only be apt for the party to cash in on this image it has created for itself.

However, the special session of the Delhi Assembly, is likely to be futile in bearing any administrative change that would serves the AAP cause well.
The Ministry of Forest and Environment gave clearance for stage I of the Palamuru-Ranga Reddy irrigation project in Telangana in April 2018. How is it then KCR is claiming that the projected achieved 90 percent completion?

Recently, in an election rally, caretaker chief minister and TDP leader KCR claimed that the intended project of the Palamuru-Ranga Reddy Lift Irrigation System (LIS) has been completed by around 90 percent. The project intended to supply irrigated water to around 12 lakh acres of land in the erstwhile combined district of Mahabubnagar. The government has spent nearly Rs 3,200 crores on the project so far.

In the election rally KCR also claimed that nearly 8.5 lakh acres of land is being irrigated today, which is far from what is happening on the ground. Currently, a mere 3 lakh acres of land is being irrigated under the project. Out of this irrigated land, water is being supplied from the existing Koil Sagar, which was inaugurated in 1948 to at least 2,300 acres of land.

The idea is to increase the irrigated land to 50,000 acres, and therefore water was diverted from the Jurala dam to Koil Sagar, but lack of proper irrigation channels has made it difficult to supply the water to the intended lands.

A proposal is in place to lift water from the foreshore of Priyadarshini Jurala Project (PJP) in two stages. The proposed utilisation under this scheme is 2.06 TMC.

In the first stage, water will be lifted from the foreshore of PJP (Chintareddy Palli) and dropped into Pardipur tank. In the second stage, the water stored in Pardipur tank will be lifted and dropped in Koil Sagar Reservoir.

Is the project serving the agricultural needs?



One of the biggest loopholes of the project has been that the existing reservoir channels dont cover agricultural lands that it intends to irrigate.

Under the Palamuru-Ranga Reddy LIS too, the KCR government is yet to complete construction of reservoir channels to take water to the targeted croplands, because of which water from this project is getting sidetracked and ending up getting wasted.

Although this water is being used to fill 300 different lakes, creating an area of 20,000 acres of new ayacut, KCR is claiming that the water from the project has created 3.5 lakh acres of new ayacut even without creation of new irrigation channels.

Moreover, the Ministry of Forest and Environment gave clearance for stage I of the Palamuru-Ranga Reddy LIS covering 500 acres of forest land in April 2018. How then has the projected achieved 90 percent completion?

How will the project affect Hyderabad?

The KCR government has claimed that the Palamuru-Ranga Reddy LIS water is meant for fields, but on numerous occasions and in the high court as well, it has said that Palamuru-Ranga Reddy LIS waters would also be used for filling up the Osman Sagar and Himayat Sagar. Whereas, the official PRLIS report submitted to the Ministry of Environment, does not contain any mention of the Osman Sagar or the Himayat Sagar.

In the past three decades, supply of water to the Himayat Sagar and Osman Sagar lakes has been dwindling because of the low rainfall, and the existing channels are not opened to utilise water from these lakes. Hyderabad already feels the threat of water scarcity because of its exclusive dependence on water from Godavari and Krishna rivers.

Won't the government's plan to link the Palamuru-Ranga Reddy LIS project to the lakes of Osman and Himayat Sagar further dry up the rivers?

Also, the Telangana government hasnt given any clarification as to how it plans to connect the project to the lakes which are at least 300 kilometers away.

The larger question that everybody should be asking the KCR government is: why are promises being made to fill lakes in Hyderabad using the Palamuru-Ranga Reddy LIS when it's the Musi river, a tributary of Krishna river, which form the sagars.
Yogi Aditynath hit out at Rahul Gandhi over the issue of national security, and hinting at the Congress chief's comments on the Rafale deal, said it was hard to guess whether he was speaking in India or Pakistan.

Indore: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Aditynath hit out at Rahul Gandhi over the issue of national security on Saturday, and hinting at the Congress chief's comments on the Rafale deal, said it was hard to guess whether he was speaking in India or Pakistan.

Speaking at a rally in Indore's Rau area, Adityanath also attacked Madhya Pradesh Congress chief Kamal Nath over a video that has gone viral and made a veiled reference to the origins of UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi with an "Italy" jibe.

"The country is setting new records on the security front and has developed its hitting capabilities, due to which we can enter the territories of enemies like China and Pakistan. This is upsetting the Congress," he told the gathering.

Attacking the Congress chief, Adityanath said, "You will be surprised at the fake outlook of the Congress. Do you know what Rahul speaks? Sometimes, we cannot guess from his body language whether he is speaking in India or Pakistan."

Gandhi has been attacking the Centre on the Rafale fighter jets deal and has claimed that the aircraft were being bought for prices much higher than what the previous Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government had agreed to.

The Centre, however, has maintained that the Rafale deal was carried out after following proper norms.

Speaking about the video in which Nath is purportedly seen talking about the votes of the Muslim community, Adityanath said, "You can remain happy with Ali, we have Bajrangbali."

In the video, Nath is purportedly heard saying, "If the Muslim community does not record a 90 percent voting, we will suffer a heavy blow."

The Congress has, however, dubbed the video as a conspiracy of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to divide voters on communal lines.

"We (BJP) do not discriminate on the basis of the beneficiaries' caste and religion in government schemes. This is Ram Rajya, in which there should be no discrimination against any person on any basis," Adityanath said.

He alleged that the Congress had turned Hindi-speaking states like Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand into "Bimaru" ones.

"Bimaru" is an acronym for Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh and has regularly been used by economists and political pundits to signify the "bimar" (Hindi for ailing) socio-economic parameters of these states.

"During the Congress rule, there was terrorism in some of these states and Naxalism in some others. Besides, different types of mafia were also active," Adityanath alleged.

In an apparent reference to Sonia Gandhi's origins, the Uttar Pradesh chief minister, without naming anybody, said, "Some mafias were brought here from Italy by the Congress as dowry."

He also questioned the Congress's pre-poll promise of farm loan waiver, something that has been mentioned by Rahul Gandhi in his election rallies in Madhya Pradesh as well as in other poll-bound states.

"First, the Congress should waive the debts of all farmers in Punjab," Adityanath said.

The 230-member Madhya Pradesh Assembly will go to the polls on 28 November and the results will be announced on 11 December.
Reuters

Russia has drawn up draft legislation aimed at stopping leaks of personal information from state agencies, a step that follows publication of details of Russians allegedly involved in clandestine intelligence operations abroad.

The bill, produced by Russias communications ministry, bars unauthorised people from creating and publishing databases of personal data drawn from official sources, and fines anyone violating that rule.

It also requires that state agencies setting up systems for handling personal data consult with the Federal Security Service, Russias main domestic intelligence agency.

The communications ministry did not respond to a request for comment from Reuters.

The bill, published late on 23 November, says it is in response to a 2017 instruction from President Vladimir Putin and makes no mention of the spate of leaks.

However, Russian authorities have been embarrassed by leaks about two men Britain alleges were Russian intelligence agents who used a nerve agent to poison former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter. Russia denies involvement.

The two men told Russian television they were innocent tourists who went to the English city of Salisbury, where Skripal was living, to view its cathedral.

But the Bellingcat investigative journalism website, drawing on leaked passport information, identified the two as officers with Russias GRU military intelligence agency.

In a separate case, a Russian accused in a U.S. indictment of conducting cyber attacks around the world was traced, via leaked official databases, to an address in Moscow that Washington says is a base for Russian military intelligence.

The legislation, comprising two draft laws and a draft government resolution, has been published for a 30-day period of public consultation, after which it will be submitted to parliament and the government for approval.

Russia has an active black market in illegal databases compiled using confidential information stolen from state-run registries. The data includes passport details, addresses, car registrations, flight manifests and even tax returns.

Releasing personal data in this way is already illegal under existing legislation, but Russian authorities have struggled to stamp out the practice. Many of the databases are openly available on the Internet.
tech2 News Staff

Earlier this month, Samsung unveiled its unnamed foldable smartphone, currently known as the Galaxy F at its developer conference, and the company will apparently manufacture as many as 1 million units of the device. It now appears that the device will be priced in the range of $1,900 to $2,500, which is about Rs 1,35,000 to Rs 1,76,000, which is quite steep.

A recent tweet released an image on the platform with the same information.

Reports suggest that the foldable smartphone will be launched in March 2019, and that Samsung is aiming to ship Bixby 3.0 with the foldable smartphone.

The announcement was made on 20 November, when Samsung hosted the Bixby Developer Day event inviting developers to expand and discuss on its AI assistants ecosystem. The event was held in Seoul, South Korea. It was announced that the company is working on a new version of Bixby thatll bring more features and services, which will be installed on the upcoming foldable phone.

The company CEO DJ Koh recently said that, "possibly when we start selling the foldable phone, it may be a niche market... but definitely, it will expand. I'm positive that we do need a foldable phone."

Samsung describes its folding phone technology as Infinity Flex Display and said that mass-production of the device should begin in a "matter of months."

The display on the tablet has a resolution of 1536 x 2152 pixels which gives it a 4.2:3 aspect ratio and a screen size of 7.3-inches. When folded, the device is an 840 x 1960 display with a tall aspect ratio of 21:9 and screen size of 4.58-inches.
Syrian state media and a monitor reported that around 100 Syrians were hospitalised with breathing difficulties in Aleppo after an attack allegedly using 'toxic gas.'

Moscow: Russia's defence ministry on Sunday said that Syrian rebels used chemical weapons containing chlorine in an attack the previous day on the regime-held city of Aleppo.

Syrian state media and a monitor reported that around 100 Syrians were hospitalised with breathing difficulties in Aleppo after an attack allegedly using "toxic gas."

"According to preliminary information, confirmed particularly by the victims' symptoms of poisoning, the shells that were fired at residential areas of Aleppo were filled with chlorine," defence ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said at a briefing, quoted by Russian news agencies.

He said that 46 people including eight children suffered from exposure to chemicals and have been hospitalised.

He pointed to repeated warnings from Russia that the White Helmets rescue volunteers in Idlib were staging chemical attacks in order to blame them on regime forces.

During the seven-year Syrian conflict, the West has accused Damascus on a number of occcasions of using chemical weapons against the civilian population.

The regime of Bashar al-Assad and its top backer Moscow have consistently denied those claims, pointing the finger at rebels instead.

On Saturday evening, "terrorist groups" in an area of the Idlib buffer zone controlled by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham jihadist group fired grenade launchers loaded with "explosives apparently containing chlorine," Konashenkov said, quoting the Russian military's "reconciliation" centre in the country.

"Russian military chemists have arrived in the area to help victims and monitor the situation," Konashenkov said.
Sunday night's earthquake struck near Sarpol-e Zahab in Iran's Kermanshah province, which suffered half of the casualties from last year's quake and where some still remain homeless.

Tehran: A magnitude 6.3 earthquake struck western Iran near its border with Iraq on Sunday night, the same area where another temblor last year killed over 600 people. Initial reports said the temblor injured at least 70 people.

Sunday night's earthquake struck near Sarpol-e Zahab in Iran's Kermanshah province, which suffered half of the casualties from last year's quake and where some still remain homeless.

State television in Iran reported the quake, while semi-official news agency Fars said it was felt across seven Iranian provinces. Authorities said six rescue teams were immediately deployed after the quake stopped.

Morteza Salimi of Iran's Red Crescent told state TV that since the area was reconstructed after the 2017 quake, officials hope there won't be casualties.

The earthquake had a depth of 10 kilometers (6.2 miles), making it very shallow. Shallow earthquakes have broader damage.

The earthquake was felt as far away as the Iraqi capital of Baghdad.

Iran is located on major seismic faults and experiences an earthquake per day on average. In 2003, a magnitude 6.6 earthquake flattened the historic city of Bam in southern Iran, killing 26,000 people.

Last year's earthquake near Sarpol-e Zahab, a predominantly Kurdish town, had a magnitude of 7.3.

The region, nestled in the Zagros Mountains, largely rebuilt in recent decades after Iran and Iraq's ruinous 1980s war, saw many buildings collapse or sustain major damage in the 2017 quake.
By Aziz El Yaakoubi and Nafisa Eltahir DUBAI (Reuters) - Bahrainis voted on Saturday in a parliamentary election from which opposition groups have been barred, amid a crackdown on dissent in the small Sunni-led, Western-allied kingdom. Activists had called for a boycott of the vote, describing it as a 'farce'. The government said the election is 'democratic' and put voter turnout at 67 percent

By Aziz El Yaakoubi and Nafisa Eltahir

DUBAI (Reuters) - Bahrainis voted on Saturday in a parliamentary election from which opposition groups have been barred, amid a crackdown on dissent in the small Sunni-led, Western-allied kingdom.

Activists had called for a boycott of the vote, describing it as a "farce". The government said the election is "democratic" and put voter turnout at 67 percent.

The Sunni ruling Al Khalifa family has kept a lid on dissent since the Shi'ite opposition staged a failed uprising in 2011. Saudi Arabia sent in troops to help crush that unrest in a mark of concern that any power-sharing concession by Bahrain could inspire Saudi Arabia's own Shi'ite minority.

Riyadh regards the neighbouring island nation, which does not possess vast oil wealth like other Gulf states, as a critical ally in its proxy wars with Iran in the Middle East.

Bahrain, which is home to the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet, has closed the main opposition groups, barred their members from running in elections and prosecuted scores of people, many described by human rights groups as activists, in mass trials.

"Clearly, legislatures from the world's leading democratic states believe that the upcoming election in Bahrain lacks legitimacy. You simply cannot crush, torture and imprison your entire opposition, call for a pseudo-election, and then demand the respect of the international community," said Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, director of the UK-based Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD).

The government said 506 candidates were running in the election, including 137 for local city councils and the highest number of female candidates.

Bahrain's state news agency (BNA) said 54 polling stations were open for 12 hours before voting closed at 8 p.m. (1700 GMT).

The kingdom's Justice Minister Sheikh Khalid bin Ali Al Khalifa said voter turnout was 67 percent, more than in 2014 when opposition groups boycotted the elections. He did not say when the results would be announced.

Only 23, out of 40 incumbents of the House of Representatives, are seeking re-election this year to parliament, which has limited powers.

Earlier, the kingdom's interior ministry called on Bahrainis to disregard rumours and seek "trusted sources" for information. "Text messages saying your name has been removed and calling on you not to vote are false," the ministry said in a Twitter post.

The ministry accused Iran of sending the messages saying it was "the source of 40,000 e-messages to disturb the parliamentary and municipal elections."

Tehran could not be immediately reached for a comment.

BAHRAIN EMBOLDENED

Many of Bahrain's Shi'ites say they are deprived of jobs and government services and treated as second class citizens in the country of 1.5 million.

The authorities deny the allegations and accuse Iran of fostering unrest that has seen demonstrators clash with security forces, who have been targeted by several bomb attacks. Tehran denies the allegations.

Human Rights Watch said in a statement that Manama is failing to create conditions necessary for a free election by "jailing or silencing people who challenge the ruling family" and banning all opposition parties.

A leader of dissolved opposition group al-Wefaq said the rise of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has emboldened Bahrain's authorities in their crackdown, which has included stripping scores of activists of their nationality.

"They couldn't go ahead with all the crackdown without the strong backing of the Saudi government. Mohammed bin Salman listens only to hardliners in Bahrain's ruling family," Ali Alaswad, who lives in self-exile in London and has been sentenced in absentia to life in prison, told Reuters.

Government opponents say the space for political expression has been shrinking in the lead up to the election. Several activists, including a former lawmaker, were arrested earlier this week for tweeting about boycotting elections, activists said.

"No-one is barred from expressing their political views," said a government spokeswomen. "Bahrain is home to 16 political societies, the majority of which have put forward candidates for the upcoming elections, and the government fully supports open and inclusive political dialogue.

Some opposition figures hope the outcry over the murder of prominent Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Riyadh's consulate in Istanbul last month could help strengthen more moderate voices in the region, including members of Bahrain's royal family who are open to dialogue with the opposition.

(Reporting by Aziz El Yaakoubi and Nafisa Eltahir; Editing by Michael Georgy, Ghaida Ghantous and Clelia Oziel)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
The Karachi militant attack may seed more such actions by Baloch rebels and nationalists unless Pakistan is able to convince the Chinese to re-examine the CPEC.

On the morning of Friday, 23 November, 2018 three gunmen attacked the Consulate of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) at Karachi. In an hour-long gun battle, the Sindh Police managed to thwart the attack, killing the three gunmen while losing two of their men. All 21 Chinese citizens were safely evacuated. Prime Minister Imran Khan called the Karachi incident a "failed attack which was clearly a reaction to the unprecedented trade agreements that resulted from our trip to China. The attack was intended to scare Chinese investors and undermine the CPEC. These terrorists will not succeed." Imran Khan was referring to his recent visit to China to plead more economic assistance for Pakistans failing economy, but nothing concrete emerged amid reports that he had raised issues concerning the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and its less than effective dividends for the people of Pakistan.

A terror attack in Pakistan with no Islamist link is a rarity. This one was by the Baloch Liberation Army and carries the sentiment of the demand for separation and creation of the independent state of Balochistan. However, there is more to it than just that sentiment, as the Baloch strongly feel the presence of the Chinese in Pakistan, and more specifically in their region, is inimical to their interests. They vehemently oppose Chinese projects in the western province that borders Iran and Afghanistan.

Balochistan is Pakistans poorest and least populous province despite a number of development projects Islamabad initiated there in the past. Baloch are 14 percent of Pakistans population residing in 40 percent of its land area. Rebel Baloch groups have waged a separatist insurgency in the province for decades, with the demand that the central government and the richer Punjab province unfairly exploit their resources. In 2005, Islamabad reacted to the insurgency by launching a military operation that resulted in the death of Nawab Akbar Bugti a respected Baloch leader; that operation had a profound effect in cementing separatist sentiments.

The CPEC in which China has invested more than 62 billion USD runs through the heart of Baluchistan. It aims to expand Chinas influence in Pakistan and in conjunction with other initiatives of the Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) across Central and South Asia in order to counter US and Indian influence. The CPEC links Pakistan's southern Gwadar port in Balochistan on the Arabian Sea to China's western Xinjiang region. It also includes plans to create road, rail and oil pipeline links to improve connectivity between China and West Asia. The Baloch perceive that this project will give them nothing, exploit Balochistans abundant natural resources and give even more confidence to Islamabad to subjugate their people. Pakistan has raised a 15,000 strong force to secure the corridor against rebel attacks and other activities which hamper the completion of the project.

There is another angle to the militant attack. It, in fact, obliquely assists Pakistan in its quest for greater assistance to bail it out of its precarious financial position. Down to the last 8 billion USD in foreign exchange reserves, equivalent to approximately six weeks worth of imports, Pakistan has been seeking bailouts from different quarters. 3 billion USD promised by Saudi Arabia has seen only a billion USD reach its account and another 3.3 billion USD worth of energy credits again from Saudi Arabia gives it a temporary reprieve. Simultaneously, a 9 billion USD bailout from the International Monetary Foundation (IMF) has been sought, but is mired in transparency issues regarding the terms and conditions of the CPEC (relatively unknown) which the US as one of the major controllers of the IMF wants laid out bare. Prime Minister Imran Khan made a trip to Beijing to reinforce the longstanding existing relationship with China. However, even with the signing of many trade agreements, the visit did not produce any immediate financial relief, with China insisting that more talks were needed. Imran Khan was also seeking to renegotiate the Chinese terms as well as the priorities of the CPEC. In fact, lack of success in this direction has forced Pakistan to reinvigorate the pursuit of the IMF bailout but has run into the US demand on greater transparency.

To add to it is the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) demands on Pakistan to do more on dismantling financial networks that support transnational terror to get any reprieve in financial support. Pakistani newspaper Dawn reported that the delegation of the Asia Pacific Group of the FATF was not impressed with the progress made by Pakistan so far as it found the legal framework insufficient and the institutional arrangements weak.

People from Balochistan further charge that the provinces local population has no stake in the CPEC and chafe at China importing materials from China, needed for projects, rather than purchasing them locally and also employing Chinese rather than Pakistani labor; all actions which give no boost to the local economy.

The militant attack in Karachi could turn all this around if the Chinese perceive a serious security threat to their flagship project. It could see a change in the Chinese approach towards securing more support for the project and therefore a rejigging of the terms and conditions, exactly what Imran Khan was seeking during his visit. It could also lead to an assuaging release of loans under negotiation. The Chinese are known for their "no free lunch" approach to financial assistance. Beijings release will be for the strictest purpose of effect. It will include terms for enhancing the security and making the CPEC project more viable. The experience with Malaysia is only too recent to fritter away the long term gains at the altar of short term losses.

India was right in condemning the attack, although many in India will decry the lack of support for a Baloch militant group in light of Pakistans proxy war in Jammu and Kashmir. Pragmatism demands that perception be reinforced about the difference between Indias stature as a responsible nation battling transnational terror and of Pakistan which is repeatedly accused of supporting it; the latest being President Trumps responses in a recent interview.

The Karachi militant attack may seed more such actions by Baloch rebels and nationalists unless Pakistan is able to convince the Chinese to re-examine the CPEC and its local dividends. Failure to do so by the Chinese is likely to lead to more instability astride the Corridor and its consequent failure.

The author is a retired lieutenant-general and former general officer commanding 15 and 21 Corps
PARIS (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday praised the courage of Raed al-Fares, a prominent activist who was gunned down along with his friend Hamoud al-Juneid in Syria on Friday. Fares was a pro-democracy activist who ran a radio station in Idlib, northwestern Syria, that provided independent news and satirised both President Bashar al-Assad and opposition insurgents. The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said unidentified gunmen shot and killed Fares, along with his friend Hamoud al-Juneid, in Kafranbel, home to his Radio Fresh station

PARIS (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday praised the courage of Raed al-Fares, a prominent activist who was gunned down along with his friend Hamoud al-Juneid in Syria on Friday.

Fares was a pro-democracy activist who ran a radio station in Idlib, northwestern Syria, that provided independent news and satirised both President Bashar al-Assad and opposition insurgents.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said unidentified gunmen shot and killed Fares, along with his friend Hamoud al-Juneid, in Kafranbel, home to his Radio Fresh station.

"Raed al-Fares and Hamoud al-Juneid were killed in a cowardly way. They were the conscience of the revolution and peacefully stood up against the crimes of the regime and terrorists. We will not forget the resistants of Kafranbel," Macron said on Twitter.

(Reporting by Dominique Vidalon; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Mexico's incoming government has agreed to back the Trump administration's plan to change U.S.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Mexico's incoming government has agreed to back the Trump administration's plan to change U.S. border policy by requiring asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their claims move through U.S. courts, the Washington Post reported on Saturday.

Citing Mexican officials and senior members of president-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's transition team, the newspaper said the agreement would break with long-standing asylum rules and mount a new obstacle to Central American migrants attempting to reach the United States and escape poverty and violence.

Olga Sanchez Cordero, Mexico's incoming interior minister and the top domestic policy official for Lopez Obrador, who takes office Dec. 1, told the Washington Post the plan known as Remain in Mexico was a "short-term solution."

"The medium- and long-term solution is that people don't migrate, Sanchez Cordero said. "Mexico has open arms and everything, but imagine, one caravan after another after another, that would also be a problem for us."

The paper said that according to the outlines of the plan, asylum applicants at the border will have to stay in Mexico while their cases are processed, potentially ending the system President Donald Trump decries as "catch and release" that has until now generally allowed those seeking refuge to wait on safer U.S. soil.

There was no immediate comment from the White House or Mexico on the deal that the Washington Post said took shape last week in Houston during a meeting between Marcelo Ebrard, Mexicos incoming foreign minister, and top U.S. officials including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

Trump has been seeking to block thousands of Central Americans traveling in caravans from entering the United States, and has ordered that immigrants who enter the country illegally from Mexico are ineligible for asylum.

That order has been temporary suspended by a U.S. judge.

(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Tom Brown)

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No formal agreement has been signed but US officials view the deal, which would see would-be refugees' cases heard by US courts in Mexico, as a potential breakthrough in deterring migration.

Washington: Asylum seekers hoping to enter the US via its southern border will have to wait in Mexico while they are assessed, President Donald Trump has announced, appearing to confirm a report about a bilateral deal published by The Washington Post.

The move was cautiously welcomed by some refugees currently at the border, even as Mexico's incoming interior minister Olga Sanchez Cordero, who was quoted by the Post as confirming the agreement, later issued a denial.

Trump wrote on Twitter:

Migrants at the Southern Border will not be allowed into the United States until their claims are individually approved in court. We only will allow those who come into our Country legally. Other than that our very strong policy is Catch and Detain. No Releasing into the U.S...  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 24, 2018

The deal, which would overhaul US border policy, comes with Trump outraged over the presence of thousands of Central American migrants who marched to Mexico's border city of Tijuana hoping to enter the US for a better life free from the poverty and gang violence in their homelands.

"For now, we have agreed to this policy of Remain in Mexico," the Post quoted Sanchez Cordero as saying. The government of new President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador will enter office on 1 December.

But her office later issued a statement saying: "There is no agreement of any type between the future federal government of Mexico and that of the United States of America."

Trump has sent almost 6,000 soldiers to the Mexican border in support of Customs and Border Protection agents and National Guard troops already there, to forestall what Trump has called an "invasion" by "very bad people." After a trek of more than a month from Honduras, nearly 5,000 migrants - including women and children  are now in Tijuana living in a makeshift shelter.

Trump "is within his right. He is in his government," but he is not like other presidents in his views of migrants, said a resident of the shelter, Carolina Flores, 38, of Honduras.

"He sees us like a bug that is going to eat there," she added. "We come for an opportunity!" Another Honduran in the shelter, Orlinda Morales, 31, a housewife, said the reported new asylum rules seem "very good" because migrants will not be in limbo. "We will get work here," she said.

Hundreds of the migrants lined up this week at a special jobs fair set up for them in the manufacturing city, but others remain determined to reach the US.

No formal agreement has been signed, the Post said, but US officials view the deal, which would see would-be refugees' cases heard by US courts in Mexico, as a potential breakthrough in deterring migration.

US asylum officers will begin implementing the new procedures in coming days or weeks, Homeland Security officials cited by the Post said.

Asylum seekers will be given an initial screening to determine whether they face imminent danger by staying in Mexico, where violence is widespread. American officials will be able to process at least twice as many asylum claims under the new system because they would not be limited by detention space at US ports of entry, the Post report said.

It added that under the new rules, an applicant whose asylum claim is denied would not be allowed to return to Mexico but would remain in US custody pending immediate deportation to his or her home country.

In a statement issued on Thursday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made no mention of a deal but said that he and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen had "a constructive meeting" with Mexico's future foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard over the caravans.

"We have affirmed our shared commitment to addressing the current challenge. The caravans will not be permitted to enter the United States. There are real dangers to the safety and human rights of migrants from those who would prey on them," Pompeo said.

He added that he was looking forward to working with Mexico's new government, including on ways to spur job creation "to benefit the government and people of Mexico."

In 2018, border patrols registered more than 400,000 illegal crossers, according to Homeland Security, and in the last five years, the number of those requesting asylum has increased by 2,000 percent. Less than 10 percent of cases result in asylum being granted, the government says.

Last week, a US federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from denying asylum to people who enter the country illegally. The president issued a proclamation earlier this month saying that only people who enter the US at official checkpoints - as opposed to sneaking across the border - can apply for asylum.
By Amanda Ferguson BELFAST (Reuters) - The Northern Irish party propping up British Prime Minister Theresa May's government launched fresh attacks on her Brexit withdrawal deal on Saturday, saying it would leave Britain in a 'pitiful' place and a Labour government might be preferable.

By Amanda Ferguson

BELFAST (Reuters) - The Northern Irish party propping up British Prime Minister Theresa May's government launched fresh attacks on her Brexit withdrawal deal on Saturday, saying it would leave Britain in a "pitiful" place and a Labour government might be preferable.

At its annual conference, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) rallied its supporters to oppose May's deal and gave a standing ovation to key May rival Boris Johnson. He called for the government to prepare for a possible no-deal Brexit.

"In the coming weeks parliament will be faced with a clear choice on the future of our country: To be a free independent trading nation leaving the EU as one United Kingdom or to be

locked into an EU straitjacket, divided and diminished," Deputy leader Nigel Dodds told supporters.

"The published Withdrawal Agreement portrays a pitiful and pathetic place for the United Kingdom," he said.

The rhetoric highlighted the challenge May faces to try to convince the DUP and rebels in her Conservative Party to support the deal or at least abstain in a parliamentary vote on the withdrawal deal.

May's divorce treaty and accompanying political declaration were due to be endorsed in Brussels on Sunday by May and the other 27 EU leaders.

But she is likely to need to convince dozens of parliamentarians to change their mind if she is to get the deal ratified in the British parliament.

The DUP, whose 10 members of parliament agreed to a 'confidence and supply' deal last year to back her minority government after a snap election, have repeatedly made clear they oppose May's compromise with the EU.

In an interview with The Times newspaper published on Saturday, DUP leader Arlene Foster suggested a government led by the Labour Party's Jeremy Corbyn - a longtime sympathiser with the DUP's arch rival Sinn Fein - might be preferable to the deal.

While a Corbyn government is "not a pleasant scenario," May's Brexit deal "is a real threat," she was quoted as saying.

The DUP fears the withdrawal treaty's 'backstop' provision could ultimately align Northern Ireland more closely with the EU than the rest of the United Kingdom if no other way can be found to avoid a hard border with the Republic of Ireland.

Foster's pro-British party fears the backstop provision, if implemented, could one day threaten the province's place in the UK altogether.

"Unless we junk this backstop, we will find that Brussels has got us exactly where they want us  a satellite state," Johnson told the crowd, taking up the same theme.

May has responded by telling her critics that Britain could face a hugely disruptive "no deal" Brexit if it does not take the deal on offer.

Several party members said they were fully behind the leadership's hardline stance on the withdrawal agreement, despite calls from business and farmers groups in recent days to accept it to avoid trade disruption.

"Theresa May is simply not taking on board.. with what the unionists in Northern Ireland think," said a 47-year-old solicitor and party member from Belfast, who declined to give his name. "What is happening to the union is more important than business opportunities."

(Writing by Conor Humphries; Additional reporting by Liz O'Leary in London; Editing by Clelia Oziel, Richard Balmforth)

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Tens of thousands of people rallied across Europe on Saturday against sexist violence, with more than 30,000 turning out in Paris. Demonstrations across France drew around 50,000 people in all, according to organiser Caroline de Haas.

Paris: Tens of thousands of people rallied across Europe on Saturday against sexist violence, with more than 30,000 turning out in Paris.

Demonstrations across France drew around 50,000 people in all, according to organiser Caroline de Haas, to answer a citizen collective's call for a "feminist tidal wave" of outrage against gender violence brought into sharp focus by the #MeToo movement.

Elsewhere, a thousand people braved the driving rain in Rome while similar protests drew several hundred demonstrators in Geneva and Athens on the eve of the UN's International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on Sunday.

In Spain's capital Madrid, several hundred people took to the streets to march to loud drumming as some shouted, "We are all here, the murderers are missing."

Authorities put the Paris turnout at 12,000 and similar marches in Lyon, Marseille and Rennes at between 1,000 and 2,400, but De Haas felt moved to salute "the largest (feminist) mobilisation France has known", far bigger than a rally that drew some 2,000 last year.

French President Emmanuel Macron offered his support, tweeting: "The fight against violence against women is progressing daily but our society has a long way to go  everyone must act and fight as this is everybody's business."

La lutte contre les violences faites aux femmes progresse chaque jour mais notre societe part de loin : chacun doit agir et lutter car cest laffaire de tous ! #NousToutes  Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) November 24, 2018

Participants clad in purple, the colour of the #NousToutes women's activist protest movement, shouted slogans including "sick of rape", "end impunity for aggressors" and "a woman is never responsible for the violence she suffers", while also demanding sufficient government resources to tackle the issue.

"I am here to support all the victims and continue this struggle which started long before I came along," said French actress Muriel Robin, who had organised a similar rally last month in the capital.

The rallies drew a number of men, including Tanguy, a 19-year-old student who turned out in the western city of Rennes to declare backing for "a movement which is not based on sex  it's not a fight pitting men against women but a fight by men and women, together, against inequality".

The #NousToutes movement started out in France in September, inspired by the #MeToo campaign that began last year since when the number of cases of sexual violence reported to police in France has risen 23 percent.

Latest French government figures say 2017 saw 225,000 cases of domestic violence against women by their partners while 2016 saw 123 deaths.

Further marches are planned for Sunday in a number of cities across Europe to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

Macron last year made sexual equality a priority of his presidency. But "if the money is not forthcoming public policy won't follow on", warned De Haas, speaking two days after several civil organisations called for a huge increase in public resources dedicated to the problem.

French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe announced on Saturday that an online platform for reporting sexual violence and sexism will be launched on Tuesday. "This is the first milestone, technical and political, to eradicate" violence, said he said in a Facebook post.

"From now, a few clicks can help everyone make a new start: for themselves, for their family. And perhaps avoid the worst."
Sri Lanka president Maithripala Sirisena last month abruptly sacked Wickeremesinghe and replaced him with former strongman Mahinda Rajapksa in a controversial move termed by many as unconstitutional.

Colombo: Sri Lankan president Maithripala Sirisena on Sunday made it clear that he would never reappoint ousted prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe even as he accepted that the action of removing his arch-rival has created "some form of political unrest" in the country.

Sirisena last month abruptly sacked Wickeremesinghe and replaced him with former strongman Mahinda Rajapksa in a controversial move termed by many as unconstitutional.

The controversial action on 26 October led to a political crisis in the country, with both Wickremesinghe and Rajapaksa claiming to be the legitimate prime minister.

Sirisena, addressing the Colombo-based foreign correspondents, said: "There is no possibility that I will be re-appointing him (Wickeremesinghe). There is some form of political unrest in the country due to my decision, but I do not consider it as a serious political crisis."

The president said that he and Wickremesinghe had developed serious policy differences on their approach to governance.

"The first one was on the appointment of the Cabinet. I had entrusted a committee of academics to recommend ways to appoint a Cabinet based on a scientific division of subjects. But Mr Wickremesinghe ignored those recommendations," he said.

Sirisena said that Wickremesinghe appointed one ministry to handle both the higher education and highways.

One of the major issues of conflict was Sirisena's opposition to Wickremesinghe's nominee to the post of Central Bank governor, Arjuna Mahendran, a Singaporean national. "I told him (Wickremesinghe) that he should not be appointed because he is a non Sri Lankan. He insisted that he (Mahendran) be appointed," Sirisena said.

The president said that Mahendran was responsible for the biggest financial scam in the country over the Central Bank's issuance of bonds. A probe had found Mahendran guilty of providing insider information to a dealer linked to his son-in-law.

"He (Mahendran) is absconding and Ranil Wickremesinghe knows his whereabouts," Sirisena said, adding that he would appoint a special probe on Wickremesinghe's three years as prime minister, accusing his government of being corrupt.

The President described Wickremesinghe as a proponent of destructive neo-Liberal economic policies which are not suitable for Sri Lanka.

"How can I work with a government leader who was ridiculing an attempt on my life," Sirisena said, accusing the ousted prime minister of trying to undermine a probe on an alleged plot to assassinate him.

An Indian national and a senior police officer are currently under the police custody for the plot.

Sirisena claimed that Wickremesinghe's sacking, Rajapaksa's appointment and Parliament's dissolution for fresh elections were all constitutional actions.

"They (the Opposition parties) have only challenged my decision to dissolve Parliament," he said.

Sirisena accused Speaker Karu Jayasuriya of violating Parliament's standing orders in approving the motion of no confidence against Rajapaksa.

He said although the standing orders can be suspended, Jayasuriya's action to approve the motion on the strength of voice was wrong in a matter of changing of a government.

Wickremesinghe has termed his dismissal as invalid and said he still holds a majority in the 225-member Parliament.

Former president Rajapaksa, who ruled Sri Lanka for nearly a decade, was unexpectedly defeated by his deputy, Sirisena, in the presidential election in January, 2015 with the support from Wickremesinghe's United National Party.

However, the power-sharing arrangement between Sirisena and Wickremesinghe became increasingly tenuous on several policy matters, mainly on economy and security.

The country is witnessing a political stalemate since Sirisena sacked Wickremesinghe on October 26.

Sirisena later dissolved Parliament, almost 20 months before its term was to end, and ordered snap election. The Supreme Court overturned Sirisena's decision to dissolve Parliament and halted the preparations for snap polls.

Speaker Jayasuriya then ordered a floor test in the 225-member assembly to end the ongoing political crisis, a move which invited the wrath of the government of Rajapaksa.

The United National Front led by Wickeremesinghe has already moved three motions of no trust against Rajapaksa. Rajapaksa, however, has refused to step down.
By John Revill ZURICH(Reuters) - Swiss voters have rejected a proposal to give the neutral country's laws priority over international law, a move that critics claimed would have deeply damaged its global standing and hurt its economy.

By John Revill

ZURICH(Reuters) - Swiss voters have rejected a proposal to give the neutral country's laws priority over international law, a move that critics claimed would have deeply damaged its global standing and hurt its economy.

Some 66 percent of voters and all of its cantons voted against the "Swiss law, not foreign judges" measure in a national referendum on Sunday, the government said.

The measure, backed by the right-wing Swiss People's Party (SVP), called for a provision to be added to the national constitution giving it explicit precedence over international agreements.

Where there is a clash between the two, Switzerland would have had to alter its international obligations so they complied with its constitution or quit the international agreement.

Backers argued that neutral Switzerland's historic autonomy was being watered down by its participation in international agreements covering areas such as environmental protection, police cooperation, air transport and trade.

Their campaign said that such agreements endangered the long tradition of direct democracy in Switzerland, where citizens have the final say on political decisions via referendums.

Debate over whether sovereignty has been eroded has intensified in recent years as Switzerland has struggled to clarify its relationship with the European Union and is currently governed by a tangle of bilateral pacts.

The SVP, the largest party in the Swiss parliament, said its proposals would empower citizens and free them from interference from international bodies such as the EU.

They were opposed by the Swiss government, business groups and most other parties, who said the proposal would force Switzerland to cancel existing treaties, weaken human rights protections and hurt its economy.

They said a "yes" vote would result in Switzerland having to renegotiate thousands of treaties it has signed, undermining an open economy that is highly dependent on global trade.

Justice Minister Simonetta Sommaruga said the Swiss cabinet was pleased with the result, which underlined the importance of Switzerland's institutions and its direct democracy.

"The institutions are set up so there is a balance of power, and compromises must be made. Nobody can decide everything," she told a press conference in Bern.

"All or nothing, black or white; that is not what has made Switzerland so successful."

Jan Atteslander, of business lobby group Economiesuisse, said that Switzerland's reputation and economy would have been harmed if the vote had gone in favour of the proposal.

"We have to stick to our words internationally and be a good and reliable partner in good times and bad times," he said.

Tania Ovanne-Erias, from the canton of Geneva, said: "I voted against the initiative because I dont think we have to vote again on treaties that have already been voted. I think this initiative is absurd.

"I dont think we can just think only of our country, Switzerland; we are part of a continent and a world."

Switzerland also rejected a proposal to subsidise farmers who let cows and goats grow their horns naturally, amid debate over whether the practice of removing horns harms the animals.

(Reporting by John Revill; Additional reporting by Cecile Mantovani; Editing by Mark Potter and David Goodman)

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By Yimou Lee and Jess Macy Yu TAIPEI (Reuters) - Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen resigned as chairwoman of the ruling pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) after it suffered a major electoral defeat on Saturday, losing two of the island's most important city posts in mayoral elections. The results of the polls, being held just over a year before Taiwan's next presidential election, are likely to please China, which claims self-ruled and proudly democratic Taiwan as its own and has ramped up pressure on Tsai and her administration since she took office in 2016. In the run-up to the elections, Tsai and her government said repeatedly that China was trying to sway voters with 'political bullying' and 'fake news', accusations that Beijing denied

By Yimou Lee and Jess Macy Yu

TAIPEI (Reuters) - Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen resigned as chairwoman of the ruling pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) after it suffered a major electoral defeat on Saturday, losing two of the island's most important city posts in mayoral elections.

The results of the polls, being held just over a year before Taiwan's next presidential election, are likely to please China, which claims self-ruled and proudly democratic Taiwan as its own and has ramped up pressure on Tsai and her administration since she took office in 2016.

In the run-up to the elections, Tsai and her government said repeatedly that China was trying to sway voters with "political bullying" and "fake news", accusations that Beijing denied.

The DPP lost control of the mayoralties in Taiwan's second-most populous city Taichung and the key battleground of Kaohsiung in the south, which it held for two decades and played a central role in Taiwan's pro-democracy movement in the 1970s.

Both were won by the China-friendly opposition, the Kuomintang, which once ruled China before fleeing to Taiwan at the end of a civil war with the Communists in 1949.

Tsai said the DPP would reflect on the defeat, but she vowed to press on.

"Continuing reforms, freedom and democracy, and protecting the country's sovereignty are the mission that the DPP won't abandon," she told reporters.

She said she would not accept the resignation of her premier William Lai, who had offered to quit earlier in the evening.

"TRAGIC DEFEAT"

The DPP has now been left in control of only six of Taiwan's cities and counties, compared with at least 15 for the Kuomintang.

The party held on in two of its other strongholds, however, keeping Tainan in the south and Taoyuan in the north.

"This is a tragic defeat for the DPP," Yao Chia-wen, a senior adviser to the president, told Reuters.

"But this is not support for the Kuomintang from the people. This is the people's disappointment in the DPP," he said, citing slower-than-expected initiatives that have drawn criticism including pension and justice reforms.

Votes were still being counted in Taiwan's affluent capital Taipei, where the incumbent mayor Ko Wen-je, an independent, is in a close race with the Kuomintang's Ting Shou-chung, and the DPP is running a distant third.

Kaohsiung's Kuomintang mayor-elect, Han Kuo-yu, who described the city as "outdated and poor" while on the campaign trail, told a rally he would go all-out to boost its economy.

"We must immediately roll up our sleeves and get to work," Han said, speaking of what was once one of the world's busiest ports but which has lost much of its business to China.

There was no immediate reaction from Beijing to the poll results, where state media simply noted Tsai's resignation as party chairwoman "to take responsibility for the party's performance in Taiwan's local elections".

A spokesperson for the U.S. State Department praised Taiwan for "demonstrating the strength of their vibrant democratic system through a successful round of elections."

HIGH TURNOUT

Taiwan television stations reported a high turnout, with some polling stations in parts of Taipei and Kaohsiung remaining open past 4 p.m (0800 GMT) when the polls were due to close.

Candidates fanned out across the island to shake hands and canvass votes, and held noisy, colourful rallies that have become the hallmarks of Taiwan's vibrant democracy, in marked contrast to China where the Communist Party tolerates no dissent to its rule.

Tensions across the Taiwan Strait have heightened, with China conducting military drills around the island and snatching away Taiwan's dwindling number of diplomatic allies.

Tsai's domestic reform initiatives, from the island's pension scheme to labour law, have also come under intense voter scrutiny recently.

Confidence in the government has waned in recent months after reform moves upset both the opposition and some supporters, who said Tsai had backed away from promises to reduce the deficit and cut pollution.

Underscoring Tsai's challenge are a series of public votes also held on Saturday on whether to make same-sex marriage legal, an issue which has deeply divided Taiwan.

Voters looked set to back a referendum defining marriage as between and a man and a woman, dealing a sharp blow to Taiwan's position as a bastion of liberalism in Asia.

Tsai has made little progress despite campaigning on a promise of marriage equality in the run-up to elections in 2016.

In Asia's first such ruling, Taiwan's constitutional court declared in May last year that same-sex couples had the right to legally marry, and set a two-year deadline for legalisation.

Voters were also asked whether the island should join the 2020 Tokyo Olympics as Taiwan, rather than "Chinese Taipei"  the name agreed under a compromise signed in 1981.

A vote to compete under a Taiwan banner would further rile Beijing, which has never renounced the use of force to bring the island under its control.

That referendum appeared to have been blocked, with most people voting against re-naming Taiwan's Olympic team.

Final results for all the referendum votes are not expected until early on Sunday, according to election officials.

(Additional reporting by Tyrone Siu in Kaohsiung, Cate Cadell in Beijing and David Brunnstrom in Washington; Writing by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Michael Perry, Hugh Lawson and Helen Popper)

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The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is getting an update for the 21st century. Despite threatening to completely abandon the deal, the Trump administration instead decided to use its negotiating leverage over Mexico and Canada to improve relatively minor aspects of the trade pact to favor American businesses and workers.

Things like raising the minimum wage of certain manufacturing jobs, ensuring American corn and soy can dominate the continent's trade flows, and increasing how much of an automobile is made in the United States hardly come close to a worst-case scenario. But while the preliminary changes announced to date affect only an estimated 5% of the original agreement, what might be more important is what was excluded from the new deal currently on the table.

Somewhat surprisingly, the new NAFTA doesn't ease American tariffs on Canadian aluminum until Uncle Sam's neighbor to the north ratifies the updated agreement. Turns out, that was intentional. It also points toward a surprising bellwether for Alcoa (NYSE:AA) and its shareholders: the Canadian dairy industry -- which will need to make major concessions for the new NAFTA to work.

Alcoa changed its tune, but tariffs still hurt the business

Aside from a line drawn on a map, the aluminum industries of the United States and Canada are essentially one and the same. The journey from ore to aluminum to finished product could take a half dozen trips back and forth across the national border, Alain Croteau, the Quebec director for the Metallos (steelworkers) union, told the Montreal Gazette in June. That's why it's more accurate to draw a circle around operations in both countries and call it the North American aluminum industry.

However, that doesn't mean it's an equal arrangement. Nearly 84% of Canada's aluminum production is shipped to the United States. That has made America's 10% tariff on Canadian aluminum products painful for many (mostly smaller) players and has limited the effectiveness of Canada's retaliatory tariff on American products in the value chain.

Pittsburgh-based Alcoa was originally counted among the companies suffering from the tariffs, as an estimated 28% of its aluminum production originates in Canada. It even lowered its full-year 2018 adjusted EBITDA guidance in the second quarter as a result. But management changed its tune on the third-quarter 2018 earnings conference call. The business estimated that tariffs on aluminum imports from all countries actually boosted profits by $27 million during the period by increasing prices for American-made aluminum products.

That said, easing tariffs between the United States and Canada -- while keeping them in place for aluminum products originating outside the continent, such as China, a country long identified as oversupply the markets -- could unleash further benefits for Alcoa. Investors looking for progress on that front will need to watch Canada's dairy industry.

Why Canadian dairy matters to Alcoa

Canada operates as a confederal democracy, which means its 10 provinces wield considerable power over national and international policy. That also means the most powerful provinces wield the most power. That bodes well for Quebec and, by association, Quebec's dairy industry. It made out pretty well in the original NAFTA agreement, but that has only put it in the bull's-eye of the Trump administration's protectionist agenda.

As geopolitical analyst Peter Zeihan recently explained, changing dairy product standards and other elements of the new deal will drastically increase American access to the Canadian market. Something that Quebecois farmers are none too happy about. In fact, the details of the deal played a large part in recent provincial elections that resulted in the nationalist party earning a majority in Quebec.

These election results hint at what might be to come for Canada's national election in 2020. And since the Trump administration has pledged not to budge on aluminum tariffs until Canada ratifies the new NAFTA -- complete with dairy concessions -- recent developments hint that this situation could drag out for at least the next two years.

This could get ugly. Unless...

There is one wild card for Alcoa in this complicated situation. In a strange twist, Quebec is also home to Canada's aluminum industry, which employs some 30,000 workers in the province. The Quebecois government is even an equity owner in an exciting new carbon-free aluminum joint venture jolted to life by Apple, Rio Tinto, and Alcoa.

Perhaps more important for the company, the regional government initiated a $100 million loan program to help smaller aluminum producers (read: not Alcoa) cope with American tariffs. But if that financial aid package doesn't yield results soon, then it could force the government to sacrifice its inefficient dairy industry to salvage its global leadership position in the aluminum value chain.

Considering the importance of the American market to Canadian aluminum, that may have been the only realistic outcome from the start, although Quebec's dairy industry can still fuel a political tussle to delay the inevitable for at least a few more quarters. So while relief from tariffs is likely for Alcoa eventually, shareholders will have to remain patient for the time being.
Remember when Thanksgiving meant fun times and good food with family and friends? These days, most of us barely get a chance to digest our turkey before heading out to stores or going online in an attempt to snag some coveted goods at a discount. And though the idea of rising at the near-crack of dawn and battling crowds at popular retailers is enough to make most of us want to stay in bed, these days, you don't even need to leave your house to get in on the Black Friday action. An estimated 205 million Americans went shopping last year over Black Friday weekend, slightly more than half of whom limited their purchases to those acquired online. But while Black Friday may be known for offering the lowest prices of the year, in reality, it's one of the worst times to shop.

The lure of Black Friday

You've got to hand it to the folks who market those Black Friday deals -- they're generally pretty good at what they do. The goal of a typical Black Friday retailer is to attract customers by offering a few key products at a so-called discount. Then, once those "deals" run out, the retailers have still got you in their hooks because you're already in their stores or on their sites, at which point you're more likely to buy something else -- even if it's not on sale.

One thing to keep in mind about Black Friday is that the advertised "deals" tend to be very limited in quantity. Even if you're willing to camp out in a store parking lot to be one of the first people in line when the doors open, you might still lose out on the products you were hoping to buy. And that's when Black Friday retailers really start to capitalize.

Speaking of deals...

So let's talk about those bargains that are too good to pass up: a flat-screen TV for $200 that normally goes for $400! A gaming system for $150 that usually sells for double! How can retailers afford to part with these products for such little money?

The answer is: They can't, and they don't. See, what many retailers do is offer lower-quality versions of popular products specifically for Black Friday. These inferior versions are known as derivatives, and they're typically made with cheaper materials and parts that enable retailers to offer them at such low prices. Purchasing a derivative means running the risk that a so-called name-brand product will fail you the minute its warranty runs out, so be sure to do your research before you buy. Specifically, you may want to think twice about buying a TV on Black Friday, especially one that's only available at a single retailer and whose model number has magically never existed before.

What about the savings?

Of course, not all products sold on Black Friday are derivatives. A lot of the products you'll see online and in stores are the same items you'll see year-round, in which case it probably pays to jump on what could be the lowest prices of the year, right? Wrong. The Wall Street Journal studied pricing data across a wide range of product categories, and it found that most items are offered below Black Friday price points at different times throughout the year. For example, there's data suggesting that you're more likely to get a better deal on a new car in April than on Black Friday. Meanwhile, flat-screen TVs often get discounted the most the week before the Super Bowl. And if you're buying jewelry for that special someone in your life, you'd best wait till after Valentine's Day, when you're likely to score the deepest discount.

Of course, there are always exceptions, and if you play your cards right, you might come away with a deal so fabulous you'll need to resist the urge to tweet about it. But if your plan for Black Friday is to visit your favorite retailers, either in person or online, and snatch up every product in sight, there's a good chance you'll wind up overpaying for most items and busting your budget in the process.

Remember, buying an $80 toaster oven you don't need for $40 isn't saving $40; it's wasting $40. So if you do insist on doing some Black Friday shopping, make a list and stick to it. Otherwise you might come home with a mountain of debt, and that's no way to ring in the holiday season.
Millions of seniors today collect Social Security and use that money to help pay their living expenses. It's not surprising, then, to learn that 39% of Americans think they won't be financially secure in retirement without those benefits, according to data from Provision Living. The problem, however, is that Social Security is facing some serious financial challenges that could leave future recipients out in the cold on the benefits front. A greater issue is the fact that Social Security was never designed to sustain seniors by itself in the first place.

Social Security's uncertain future

Let's be clear: Social Security is by no means going broke. Because the program is funded by payroll taxes, as long as we have a workforce and continue to uphold the current practice of taking out Social Security taxes from earnings, there will be a means of paying out benefits. That said, once the program's trust funds run out, which could happen as early as 2034, Social Security might have to cut benefits by as much as 21% (and that figure has the potential to rise, depending on how the program's finances play out).

Clearly, that's bad news for current and future beneficiaries alike. It also means that seniors might need to rely even further on their own savings to stay afloat financially in retirement, especially when we consider that Social Security, even in its strongest state, won't cover the bills by itself.

Right now, Social Security is meant to replace about 40% of the average earner's preretirement income. Most seniors, however, need roughly twice that amount to live comfortably, and while cutting corners can help compensate for a lack of savings, living on Social Security alone generally isn't an option.

Now when we read that 39% of Americans feel they need those benefits to be financially secure in retirement, it doesn't necessarily mean that they aren't saving or that we have a full-blown crisis on our hands. Those benefits will be around in some shape or form, and even if they get cut, they'll still provide some income to those who collect them.

In fact, the average recipient today gets roughly $17,500 a year from Social Security, so even if that figure were to drop by 21%, that's still close to $14,000 a year, which is nothing to scoff at. At the same time, workers who think they'll depend on Social Security to pick up a large chunk of their total retirement tab should proceed with caution and step up their savings game, especially when a future reduction in benefits is a distinct possibility.

Securing your own retirement

The more you're able to save for retirement during your working years, the less you'll have to bank on Social Security when you're older. Currently, workers under 50 can contribute up to $18,500 annually to a 401(k) and $5,500 to an IRA, while those 50 and older can contribute up to $24,500 to the former and $6,500 to the latter. These limits are also increasing by $500 apiece for 2019, thereby providing an even greater opportunity to save.

Of course, many folks will inevitably struggle to max out a 401(k), and some might have a hard time maxing out an IRA. The key, therefore, is to save as much as you reasonably can for as long as you can, and hope that your investments generate a high enough return to grow your modest contributions into a sizable sum over time. If you invest your savings heavily in stocks, however, there's a good chance you'll snag an average annual 7% return, since the stock market's historical average is closer to the 9% mark.

The following table will give you an indication of how much wealth you might accrue if you save steadily throughout your career and load up on stocks in your 401(k) or IRA:

Monthly Savings Amount Total Accumulated Over 40 Years

(Assumes a 7% Average Annual Return) $100 $240,000 $200 $479,000 $300 $719,000 $400 $958,000 $500 $1.19 million $600 $1.43 million

While there's nothing wrong with factoring Social Security into your retirement plan, don't make the mistake of relying too heavily on those benefits, especially when you have plenty of options for building wealth yourself. Otherwise, there's a good chance you'll end up disappointed when your golden years roll around.
Nine coastal provinces and cities from Khanh Hoa to Tra Vinh and Bac Lieu province have banned boats from going out to sea. As of this morning, local authorities have evacuated 76,470 people, including 4,476 people from HCMC.



The National Hydro Meteorological Forecasting Center said that the typhoon was 60 kilometers off Ba Ria-Vung Tau province and 110 kilometers off Ben Tre province at 4 a.m. this morning. Strongest winds near the eye of the storm reached level 9-10 moving 75-100 kilometers an hour.

In the next 12 hours, it will move west northwest at 5-10 kilometers an hour to make landfall in provinces from Binh Thuan to Ben Tre province and degrade to level 8. Afterwards it will travel further inland and weaken into a tropical low pressure system in Cambodia.

Direction of typhoon Usagi in the morning on November 25 (Photo: nchmf)

HCMC has been warned of cyclones and wide spreading flooding because of heavy rains in combination with high tide. Under influence of the storm, central provinces from Thua Thien-Hue to Binh Thuan, the southern Central Highlands and the southern region will see torrential rains with common precipitation of 100-200mm and over 250mm in places.



The storm in combination with a northward cold front will unleash heavy rainfall in provinces from Quang Tri to Khanh Hoa on November 25-27. The cold front has fueled wind power in the Gulf of Tonkin to reach level 6 and caused rough sea.

By VAN PHUC  Translated by Hai Mien
Galveston, TX (77553)

Today

Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible late. Low around 70F. Winds SSE at 10 to 20 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible late. Low around 70F. Winds SSE at 10 to 20 mph.
Iranian women endure systematic gender discrimination as second class citizens in Iran, they are deprived of fundamental rights. Of course, the situation of Iranian women is slightly better than their peers in Middle-East, but, they undergo many hardships under both Sharia Laws and backward traditions. Women suffer social inequalities such as lack of an appropriate job, not allowing to choose desired clothes, forced marriage in traditional cities, verbal and physical sexual harassment, and insecurity during hours of the day. Only about three million and 500 thousand women are among the 22 million employed in Iran, according to Iran Statistics Center reports in 2017. Most of the people who commit suicide are women. More than 10% of the students deprived of education are girls between 6 and 17 years old, ISNA declared on October 2014. At least 50% of girls in marginalized area across Iran are deprived of education, deputy minister of education said in 2017.





In 2017, Iranian news agencies revealed details of a domestic violence case in which a man tortured his wife and two daughters for 21 days. He jailed his wife and daughters at house and brutally tortured them. She was frequently thrown in a metal box and her addicted husband fired a gun under the box, the victim told the state-run news agency ISNA. She also added that her naked body was often burnt by an ignited cloths. Her attorney Ms. Mohebi said that there are no punishments for gender violence against women under the laws in Iran.









Arezou also noted forced marriage in which women and young girls are being forced by their families to get married because the families will benefit from this marriage while these women become the victims of abuse. Many forced marriages occur to stop the bloodshed and retribution and ending sectarian strife, although these marriages rarely occur in Iran and usually happen in far-flung village.

Sima considered wrong traditions of old attitudes in methods of household, marriage, raising children as other problems of women and said: following wrong ancestral traditions is something very wrong and senseless, because society is going forward and we cannot confront todays standards with the old standards.





Looking at women around the world has become very annoying to women, but this is the reality in backward and Muslim countries.





Maryam pointed out harassment by some tutors or doctors and said some male doctors when they are examining touch our organs in an unusual way and out of medical methods. She talked about her own personal experience when she had an injection in the buttock, and was harassed by the personnel of the injection section. She also mentioned her experience and those of peers with verbal and physical harassment while visiting internal medicine and womens physicians. She continued and said that many teenage or toddler girls were abused by male relatives, by acts such as kissing the lips or licking their genitals. And after revealing the incident, the families have remained silent to save their face, this issue is continuing to seriously threaten women. She also explained her bitter experience at the airport gate during a physical inspection and acknowledged that many of her friends had the same experience being abused at the gate inspections.





Many women are at risk of exposure to sexual harassment by co-workers or their employers in the workplace. Many women speak about being asked for closer or sexual relationships by their employers and they have to accept these suggestions or they will be fired. Many employers misuse their positions to achieve their goals and put their female employees under pressure to have relationships with them.





Iranian women are often abused in public transport such as buses, subways and taxis. Most of the women considered lack of codified rules for sexual violence against women as the major reason of sexual harassment. There is no significant law against sexual violence to support women against harassment.





Several young women felt senselessly victimized by acid throwing (Honor Related Violence). A series of acid attacks on women in the city of Isfahan happened around October 2014, raised fears and prompted rumors that the victims were targeted for not being properly veiled (Islamic dress). The Islamic vigilantes riding on motorbikes threw acid in at least four womens faces in Isfahan, but the Media put the number as high as eight.





Maryam Ayubi, an alleged adulteress, was stoned to death while strapped to a stretcher in 2001.

Official laws against women in Iran





According to Irans Civil Code, girls should have their fathers consent, if they want to marry, it means that there is no marriage if the father withholds his consent. Further, Father can force her 13-year-old daughter into marriage if he wishes. It leads girls marriage to reach a critical point.

Women are not considered as the head of family.





According to the current laws in Iran, men can divorce their wives more easily. But, women have difficulties to divorce and they should file a long list of evidences to prove that the man is not qualified to continue wedlock.





Women have no rights for guardianship of their children. Mothers can take care of their children or being the custodian, but, they are not allowed to have the rights for guardianship of their children. Mothers cannot take guardianship of their children even in the case of death/absence of the father, and the rights of guardianship of children will be given to the grandfather.





Women have the rights to keep their children (until the children are under 7 years old) after divorce, but, they will lose the custody if they remarry before children reach seven.





Based on Irans Islamic law, men can have four permanent wives and unbounded number of temporary wives. Married women would be sentenced to death penalty if they were in partnership with another man.





Based on the laws in Iran, childrens citizenship is under her/his fathers nationality, not mother. So, the Iranian women cannot get Iranian ID card for their children if they marry with foreigners.





Women lose their rights for education after marriage expect with the consent of the spouse. Husband has the rights to ban his wife from work if he wishes. Husband has the rights to seek court order on grounds of conjugal disobedience while his wife works in different city and ask to end employment or get permission to remarry. No women have the rights to become president in Iran, according to the laws that allow only men (Rejal) to chair the high-ranked official seats.





Womens blood money (compensation, Diyyah in Persian and Arabic) is as half of the mens. In a car accident, the cost of blood money that women receive as compensation is half of the compensation for male embryo, if women were pregnant.





Women receive 50% less than their brothers from the inheritance, if father/mother pass away. Based on this rule, if husband pass away, the women receive 50% less than their male-children or husbands father.





Womens credibility of witnessing at court is considered as half of men. And, no women can become a judge in Iran under Islamic laws, which exist in the country. They can only play a role as advisor of a male judge even if they have law degree, or they can work as investigation judge, but, without the rights to issue verdict.





Women have no rights to obtain a passport to travel without husband/father permission, and, the husband/father can confiscate womens passport to ban from travelling abroad. The law allows all husbands to prevent their wives from travelling abroad.

Iranian women have been always complaining of harassment during the day in the streets, public places, bus and metro. In pointing out that women are not even immune from religious people with traditional viewpoints, she says: so many times Ive been warned and blamed by women in Islamic dress that its because of the way I am dressing.
Le Collectif Cheikh Yassine a organise un certain nombre dactivites et de festivites pour les enfants de Gaza sous le theme  La joie des enfants de Gaza pour lAid . Ces activites ont commence le premier jour de lAid et continue jusquau 4eme jour de lAid dans la bande de Gaza.



Plusieurs activites, ont ete organisees parmi lesquelles : des competitions recompensees par des prix, des jeux, des animations et des chants presentes par un groupe ainsi que des distributions de cadeaux et daides financieres.




Qualcomm Snapdragon 8150 flagship SoC will launch on the 4th of December in Hawaii News oi-Vivek Qualcomm Snapdragon 8150 will be the first chipset from Qualcomm with 5G modem support

Qualcomm's next-generation flagship Mobile Solution, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 or the Snapdragon 8150 will be the next generation flagship chipset, which will power the upcoming premium smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy S10, Xiaomi Mi 9, OnePlus 7, and the Sony Xperia XZ4.

And now, according to a report, the company is all set for the launch of the Snapdragon 8150 SoC on the 4th of December in Hawaii. Here are the complete details on the upcoming flagship SoC from Qualcomm.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 8150 expected features

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8150 was recently spotted on Geekbench with a single core score of 3505 and a multi-core score of 10,608, which makes it one of the fastest Mobile processor. However, the chipset scores slightly lower scores than the Apple A12 Bionic chipset.

Compared to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845, the Snapdragon 8150 offers up to 15% improved performance in both single core and multi-core performance. The chipset is also expected to feature the Andreno 640 GPU, which will again improve the gaming or graphical performance of the smartphone that is based on the Snapdragon 8150 SoC.

Qualcomm will release the Snapdragon 8150 processor in Hawaii on December 4th. pic.twitter.com/Ny93ADY1Rz  Ice universe (@UniverseIce) November 21, 2018

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8150 is also expected to be the first chipset from the company, which will be manufactured using 7nm FinFET fabrication, which helps to offer improved performance with lower power consumption.

The chipset is also expected to feature a dedicated APU (Artifical Intelligence Processing Unit) to improve the overall AI capability of the smartphone. With a dedicated APU, the smartphone will be able to offer faster AI calculations with low-power consumption. With AI capability, a smartphone with the Snapdragon 8150 chipset will improve the camera, battery, and overall performance of the smartphone.

The Snapdragon 8150 is also compatible with the Snapdragon X50 5G modem, the first commercial 5G modem from Qualcomm. Considering the features the chipset offers, the smartphones running on the Snapdragon 8150 might cost slightly more than the smartphones with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 SoC.

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Aaron Merriman became the first driver in the history of harness racing to achieve multiple 1,000-win seasons, nonetheless back to back, when he scored in the twelfth race on Saturday, Nov. 24 at Northfield Park. The triumph was a gate-to-wire victory aboard Zumba in 1:57.3 over a sloppy surface.

Harness racing fans have been counting down Merrimans victories all over social media, tracking the well-traveled reinsman across the Midwest at racetracks in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Merriman raised his whip with elation as he crossed the wire to celebrate his historic achievement.

It was such a good feeling to do something that has never been done before, said Merriman. I definitely got caught up in the moment as I neared the wire and knew I had it won.

Last year Merriman became only the fourth driver in harness racing history to score 1,000 wins in a single year, posting a total of 1,095 victories. It took him only a year to become the first ever to repeat that feat.

I love to win and I dont try to look much further ahead than the next race, said Merriman. I figure that I will just win as many as I can for as long as I can and keep driving day-to-day.

Merriman, now just 40, keeps a torrid schedule, driving in over 4,000 races during each of the last five seasons.

Im definitely tired, not of winning, just tired, Merriman said. I dont know how long I can or will keep this schedule. But I am for now. Who knows what the future will hold?

(With files from Northfield Park)
493rd FS trains during Tactical Leadership Programme 18-4

By Senior Airman Malcolm Mayfield, 48th Fighter Wing Public Affairs / Published November 24, 2018

AMENDOLA AIR BASE, Italy (AFNS) -- F-15C Eagles and an F-15D assigned to the 493rd Fighter Squadron and support personnel from the 48th Fighter Wing, RAF Lakenheath, U.K., are participating in the NATO Tactical Leadership Programme 18-4 at Amendola Air Base, Italy.

The multilateral training course focuses on developing tactical air expertise and leadership skills. This event marks the first time the course has been held in Italy, from its normal host location at Albacete AB, Spain.

Another welcome first for the course is the participation of Italian F-35s, which will allow for the expansion of fourth and fifth-generation aircraft interoperability.

"We are here to train side-by-side with our NATO allies to meet future security challenges as a unified force," said a 493rd FS flight commander. "We'll fly about 15 missions that will get tougher and more complex as the course goes on. They are challenging us to create good tactical plans within a short amount of time and execute them."

With over four decades of history, TLP has become the focal point for NATO's Allied Air Forces tactical training, developing knowledge and leadership skills, necessary to face today's air tactical challenges.

Along with the U.S. Air Force, air forces from Italy, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands and Belgium are participating in the training. Training courses like TLP help to enable the NATO alliance by providing an opportunity for NATO partners and allies to work alongside each other in the classroom and in European airspace.

"TLP is a tremendous opportunity to strengthen our interoperability as NATO allies," said Lt. Col. Cody Blake, 493rd FS commander. "The training strengthens our partnerships across the board, and we get the opportunity to train with different platforms and countries to enhance our readiness."

TLP has prepared hundreds of NATO and allied forces' flight leaders to be mission commanders. Where they learn to lead coalition force air strike packages, instruct allied flying and non-flying personnel in matters related to tactical composite air operations, and provide tactical air expertise to NATO agencies.

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5 Emirati troopers killed in attack on UAE base in Yemen's Abyan: Report

Iran Press TV

Sat Nov 24, 2018 07:04PM

At least five Emirati soldiers have been killed when a military base run by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) came under attack in Yemen's southern province of Abyan, a report says.

Turkey's official Anadolu news agency, citing an unnamed local source, reported on Friday that the attack was carried out after unknown gunmen started firing at the base with light weapons and RPGs, leaving another Emirati trooper wounded.

The base, located in the vicinity of Abyan city, is run by Emirati servicemen and armed militia loyal to Yemen's former President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, the source said, adding that the attack could likely be carried out by militants of the al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) Takfiri terrorist group.

The source also said the gunmen left the scene without leaving any casualties, citing previous similar attacks by the same group against numerous military bases in the region.

In August 2017, local authorities in Abyan announced they purged AQAP militants from the city, but the outfit has conducted a number of attacks and killed scores of troopers and militia ever since.

Leading a coalition of its allies, most prominently the UAE, Saudi Arabia invaded Yemen in March 2015 in an attempt to reinstall Hadi, who had resigned amid popular discontent and fled to the Arab kingdom.

The aggression initially consisted of a bombing campaign but was later coupled with a naval blockade and the deployment of ground forces to Yemen.

Since the onset of the imposed war, the Yemeni army, backed by fighters of the country's popular Houthi Ansarullah movement, has been defending the impoverished nation against the brutal aggression. The coalition is also resolute to crush the movement as another goal in its war on Yemen, which is teetering on the edge of famine.

More than three and a half years into the war, Saudi Arabia has achieved neither of its objectives. Riyadh had declared at the start of the invasion that the war would take no more than a couple of weeks.

Back in June, the UAE forces, backed by armed militia loyal to Hadi, launched a full-scale offensive against the Houthi-held Hudaydah, which is currently under a tight siege imposed by the invaders. The so-called liberation operation, however, failed to achieve its objective, which is overrunning the vital port and defeating Houthi fighters, backed by those from the Popular Committees.

Over the past several months, humanitarian organizations have warned that military operations against Hudaydah threaten to cut off essential supplies to millions of Yemeni people. More than 70 percent of Yemen's imports pass through Hudaydah's docks.

The coalition claims Houthis are using Hudaydah for weapons delivery, an allegation rejected by Ansarullah fighters.

The Saudi-led war has also taken a heavy toll on the country's infrastructure, destroying hospitals, schools, and factories. The UN has already said that a record 22.2 million Yemenis are in dire need of food, including 8.4 million threatened by severe hunger. According to the world body, Yemen is suffering from the most severe famine in more than 100 years.

A number of Western countries, the United States and Britain in particular, are also accused of being complicit in the ongoing aggression as they supply the Riyadh regime with advanced weapons and military equipment as well as logistical and intelligence assistance.

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Boko Haram raids Nigerien villages, abducts dozen girls

Iran Press TV

Sat Nov 24, 2018 06:18PM

Suspected militants from the Boko Haram Takfiri terrorist group have abducted around a dozen girls in overnight raids on several border villages in southeastern Niger.

A local councilor and an NGO said on Saturday that the abductions were carried out in the villages located in the Diffa region, near the border with Nigeria.

"We still don't know the number but we can estimate a dozen girls have been abducted from different villages," the Diffa regional councilor, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP.

Meanwhile, Kaka Touda, a human rights activist with the Alternative Espace Citoyen NGO in Diffa, said the terrorists "abducted 16 young girls in two villages in Toumour commune."

He said nine girls had been kidnapped in the village of Blaharde and seven others in Bague.

One local source said "more than 50" unidentified armed men seized the girls.

The latest abductions come two days after gunmen killed seven local employees of a French drilling firm and a government official in a late night attack on their compound in southeastern Niger.

The Takfiri terrorist group routinely carries out attacks across Nigerian borders into Niger, Chad, and Cameroon.

Since 2009, Boko Haram militancy has left at least 20,000 dead and made over 2.6 million others homeless. The group pledged allegiance to the Takfiri Daesh group in 2015.

Boko Haram, whose name roughly translates as "Western education is forbidden," has used kidnapping as a weapon of war, seizing thousands of women and young girls as well as men and young boys.

According to NGOs, over the past four years, Boko Haram has repeatedly attacked Diffa, a region of some 600,000 inhabitants, displacing around half of the local population.

A total of 219 girls were kidnapped by Daesh-linked Boko Haram terrorists from the Government-run Girls Secondary School in the Nigerian remote town of Chibok in Borno state in April 2014. 112 of them are still being held after four years. The rest have been found, escaped or released as part of a government deal with the terror group.

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Hamas warns Arabs against warming up to Israel

Iran Press TV

Sat Nov 24, 2018 11:26AM

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh has strongly warned the Arab world against "restoring" ties with Israel, saying all efforts have to be directed at preventing the occupying regime from "infiltrating" the Muslim world.

"The Zionist occupiers are the common enemies of the Muslim world. It is our responsibility to boycott them, expose their crimes, and prevent them from infiltrating the Islamic community," he told an Islamic unity conference in Tehran Saturday.

"We must work hard to reject and criminalize all plots aimed at restoring ties, be it on political, economic, cultural, academic, or social fronts," he added.

Haniyeh, who heads Hamas political bureau, was addressing the 32nd International Islamic Unity Conference in the Iranian capital via a video link.

"Tehran is the capital of a land which accompanies and is aligned with the Islamic Ummah, especially the Palestinian nation. This conference will guarantee the steadfastness of the Palestinian nation," he said.

His remarks came after visits by Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to the Persian Gulf and reports of clandestine cooperation between Riyadh and Tel Aviv.

The US is pressing Saudi Arabia and other Arab states to forge relations with Israel after President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem al-Quds as the so-called capital of the occupied territories.

Hamas said Trump cannot forcibly hand Jerusalem al-Quds over to the Israelis in the same way that Lord Arthur Balfour was unable to give them even "a palm's length" of the Palestinian soil.

The Balfour Declaration was a public statement issued by the UK government during World War I, announcing support for the creation of Israel. The declaration was named after Lord Balfour, the then British foreign secretary who penned the document.

Jerusalem al-Quds "is entirely ours," Haniyeh said as he pledged that the Palestinian resistance will reject the so-called "deal of the century."

Haniyeh was referring to a US plan for the Middle East which Trump is yet to unveil, reportedly making a short shrift of Palestinian demands.

The Hamas chief said Muslims have to devise a strategy to confront Israeli plots to Judaize al-Aqsa Mosque.

Israel imposes restrictions on visits by Palestinians to the mosque, while freely allowing Israeli settlers to frequently visit the site under military escort.

Also addressing the conference in Tehran, deputy head of Lebanon's Hezbollah said al-Quds is the pivotal issue of the Islamic world.

Sheikh Na'eem Qasim said the Palestinians could not be divided, adding they will refuse to give up even an inch of their land.

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Bahrain holds polls without opposition parties

Iran Press TV

Sat Nov 24, 2018 09:51AM

Bahrain is holding a parliamentary election from which opposition groups have been barred in a crackdown on dissent in the small Persian Gulf island.

Polls opened on Saturday to choose 293 candidates for parliament in the kingdom that has been hit by ongoing unrest since 2011, when security forces crushed protests demanding elected leaders.

The country's two main opposition groups, the Al-Wefaq and Wa'ad, were barred from fielding candidates and they called for a boycott of the elections which they have described a "farce".

International rights groups and experts have questioned the value of a parliamentary election in which the opposition is not allowed to participate.

Amnesty International on Friday expressed "grave concerns" over a campaign of suppression by the ruling Al Khalifah regime against political dissidents and pro-democracy activists.

"Over the past two years, the crackdown in Bahrain has seen the political opposition detained, intimidated and silenced," Devin Kenney, the rights group's Bahrain researcher, said in a statement.

At least six people were detained and charged this month for "obstructing the electoral process," according to statements released by Bahrain's Public Prosecutor.

One of them was Ali Rashed al-Asheeri, a former member of parliament with al-Wefaq, who was arrested after tweeting that he and his family would not be voting.

Since February 2011, Bahraini people have been holding peaceful protest rallies on an almost daily basis, demanding that the Al Khalifah family relinquish power and allow the establishment of a just system representing all Bahrainis.

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Cameroon Government Cautions Foreigners Against Traveling to Restive Regions

By Moki Edwin Kindzeka November 24, 2018

Administrative authorities in Cameroon say they are tracking armed terrorists who this week killed a Kenyan missionary in the town of Eyumojock in the restive southwest region of the central African state. The slaying happened as many missionaries and foreign workers have been leaving the area following other attacks, and as the government of Cameroon and foreign embassies in that country have urged those workers to leave.

Nigerians living in Cameroon's political capital Yaounde sing in a special ceremony Wednesday to welcome seven fellow citizens who fled fighting in the towns of Kumba and Kumbo in the restive English-speaking northwest and southwest regions. Among them are Okafor Stanley, his wife Okafor Emmaculate Ngoze and their one-year-old baby. Okafor Emmaculate Ngoze says she fled from Kumbo in the northwest after she and her husband were kidnapped by armed men and tortured until they paid a $6,000 ransom last week.

"You need to have seen these guys, the way that they are dressed, the way that they are dirty, the way that they are masked," said Ngoze. "The way that they talk. They were seven in number, all of them were having guns. They took us to an unknown destination, I can not tell you where we were taken. In short I can not describe them because it was a very bitter experience."

The couple left their hometown Onitsh and settled in Kumbo three years ago. They abandoned everything and trekked over 40 kilometers before a car transported them to Yaounde where the Nigerian community took them in.

They are among an unknown number of foreign nationals who have fled the English-speaking regions after attacks, arson, kidnappings and killings.

Last Wednesday Cosmas Ondari, a Kenyan missionary, was shot dead in the southwestern village of Kembong, where he worked for the Roman Catholic Church. He was the second Kenyan missionary killed in Cameroon following an April 2017 incident in which a missionary was caught in the crossfire between government troops and militants in the southwest.

On October 30, American missionary Charles Trumann Wesco, was shot to death in the town of Bamenda.

Earlier this month three Catholic nuns and 13 novices were kidnapped on their way to Kumbo in the northwest region. They were released after 24 hours.

Armed gangs kidnapped five foreign road construction engineers last year in the southwest for neglecting instructions to stop building roads. Two were killed in a military a rescue operation.

In April, authorities in Cameroon said they freed 18 people, including 12 European tourists, who were seized by separatists in the English-speaking regions.

Several embassies now caution workers against travelling to the violence-hit areas.

Cameroon's territorial administration minister, Paul Atanga Nji, says although security has been increased, the country still needs the collaboration of every citizen for those who have fled to return when live returns to normal.

"It is terrible you can not go to a church and kill," said Nji. "If we all decide not to harbor the terrorists, if we all take one statement that we have to denounce them, because what are they doing? They are doing everything which is evil. Even if you have a family member who is part of that, you just have a choice to tell him either you go out of this thing which is very, very destructive, which is dangerous or you have to meet the justice on your way."

The separatists have not claimed responsibility for the attacks on foreigners. The government says those killed are often caught in a crossfire between the militants and government forces.

Unrest in Cameroon's northwest and southwest regions began in 2016, when English-speaking teachers and lawyers staged demonstrations criticizing what they called the marginalization of the Anglophone population, which accounts for about one-fifth of the country's 25 million people. The government says over 1,200 civilians, military troops and armed separatists have been killed.

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NASA's Latest Mars Probe to Attempt Landing

By VOA News November 24, 2018

After traveling hundreds of millions of miles through space, NASA's latest Mars probe will arrive Monday at the Red Planet.

Scientists have carefully chosen where they want the probe, called InSight, to land, selecting a large volcanic plain named Elysium Planitia. They say the site has few rocks and less chance of wind gusts that could potentially knock over the lander.

The spacecraft will take a crucial six minutes to enter Mars' atmosphere, descend and land. During that time, InSight will decelerate from an initial speed of 19,300 kmh (12,000 mph) down to just 8 kmh (5 mph) when it touches down. To aid the landing, scientists have equipped InSight with a parachute, descent thrusters and shock-absorbing legs.

If all goes well, InSight will make the eighth successful landing on Mars.

"My heart is beating inside of my chest like a drum," NASA project manager Tom Hoffman said Wednesday during a news conference about the planned landing.

Scientists say they are trying to determine whether the craft needs a small nudge to put it in the proper place for landing. Since InSight launched May 5, scientists have made four small tweaks to its path to ensure it arrives on target. Engineers were able to skip an additional nudge because the other maneuvers went so smoothly, and they say they might also be able to skip the final adjustment scheduled for Sunday.

By the time it lands, InSight will have traveled 484 million kilometers (300.7 million miles). However, once the lander is on the Martian surface, it cannot move, as it is not a rover. Scientists say it is critical that InSight land in the correct location, because wherever it lands is where it will stay.

NASA says the landing site has been particularly quiet in recent weeks, with few storms.

"We're expecting a very plain day on Mars for the landing, and we're very happy about that," said Rob Grover who is overseeing the landing phase.

Once landed, Insight has a unique mission to explore Mars' interior. While other missions have sought to better understand the planet's surface and atmosphere, this is the first to focus exclusively on what is under Mars' surface.

The $850 million InSight mission is planned to last about two years and will try to gather an array of information, including Mars' below-ground temperature and seismic activity, as well as to carry out an underground mapping project.

Insight is armed with a crane, heat probe and seismometer and is able to hammer 5 meters (16.4 feet) below the surface.

Scientists are hoping the mission will help answer questions about the composition and evolution of the planet and whether Mars was formed from the same mixture of materials as Earth.

Once InSight touches down, it will wait for 16 minutes to allow the dust that it kicked up to settle down again. Then it will deploy solar arrays, a critical step that will allow the lander to power itself for the next two years. InSight also has a battery system, but that will only last one day.

The lander is expected to touch down on Mars about 3 p.m. EST (2000 UTC) on Monday. Scientists hope to know quickly whether the landing was successful but say if communication with the spacecraft is delayed, they might not know InSight's status for several hours or even days.

NASA's website will be broadcasting news of InSight's approach and landing all day Monday.

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Iran says US chemical weapons' claim, 'ungrounded'

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

London, Nov 24, IRNA -- US claim that Iran is secretive about the issue of chemical weapons is "baseless," Iran said through a statement Friday.

The statement was released by Director General of the Department of International Peace and Security of Iran's Ministry of Foreign Affairs Reza Najafi in response to the anti-Iran claim made by the US Ambassador to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) Kenneth Ward at the organization's conference at the Hague, the Netherlands.

"The United States has had longstanding concerns that Iran maintains a chemical weapons program that it has failed to declare to the OPCW," the US ambassador told the OPCW conference on Thursday.

The full text of Iran's statement on the US baseless claim is as follows:

Mr Chairperson,

We are not surprised by the new baseless accusations of the United States under the current administration which we categorically reject. As my Minister twitted "if they say Iran perhaps is responsible for the California fires, because we didn't help rake the forests just like the Finns do!" you should not be surprised.

But let us look at the facts.

1. During the 8-year imposed war by Saddam's regime on Iran, the United Stated as a permanent member of the UN Security Council turned a blind eye to the extensive and brutal use of chemical weapons against Iranian civilians and servicemen, and by so doing, shouldered responsibility for tens of thousands of Iranians who continue to suffer and perish as a result of chemical weapons. Some of them are present in this Conference. The components of those chemical weapons came from the US and its allies' companies. There are substantial evidences such as UNSCOM that many American and western companies provided Saddam with the required equipment, materials and technology to develop its chemical weapons program. Given that all of those companies needed to obtain export licenses from their governments, they could not transfer chemical weapons precursors to Saddam without the US government's blessing. Thus US must be held accountable for complicity of such war crimes.

2. The reports about the use of chemical weapons by terrorist groups in Syria, are very disturbing. It is evident that those terrorist groups could not procure toxic chemical agents as well as produce and use chemical weapons without the external assistance and support. This situation is very similar to how Saddam's army could acquire and use chemical weapons in the 1980s.

3. We should not forget that the United States is the only possessor State Party that has not yet completed the destruction of its chemical weapons stockpile, while it has all of the necessary financial and technical capacities to do so. Furthermore, the US has not withdrawn its reservation on the 1925 Geneva Protocol where it still reserves its rights to use chemical weapons contrary to its obligations under the Convention. Keeping chemical weapons stockpiles together with its reservation to the Protocol, give rise to the assumption that US would like to maintain its chemical weapons as a so-called strategic reserve forever in full non-compliance with the Convention. US must make an official statement in this Conference to make commitments that it will withdraw its reservation on Geneva Protocol immediately and will never use chemical weapons under any circumstances and also it will complete destruction of all of its remaining stockpiles on time.

4. The US staunch ally in the Middle East, i.e. Israeli regime has also developed chemical weapons with the help of US which is another case of US non-compliance with the Convention.

5. The US history in developing WMDs and using these inhumane weapons is very dark. It has developed nuclear weapons and used them in Hiroshima and Nagasaki killing hundreds of thousands of civilians. It has developed chemical weapons and used them in Vietnam War killing more than 400,000 peoples. Contrary to its obligations under the Convention, US did not declare its abandoned chemical weapons in Vietnam and neighboring countries. A fact that just recently was revealed and shows US non-compliance.

6. The US is also in non-compliance with its obligations under Article XI of the Convention and by its unilateral sanctions against other States Parties to the Convention not only hampered the economic or technological development of States Parties but also prevented the importation and purchase of goods required for humanitarian needs, such as medicines and medical devices and agricultural commodities. A fact that was recognized by the International Court of Justice in its recent order.

7. While pretending to have concern regarding non-compliance of the others, the US is in complete non-compliance itself with the UNSC resolution 2231 which it had cosponsored. US also compels the other UN members to violate this resolution and thus the UN Charter too. The US is even punishing its own allies for compliance with the UNSC resolution and now ironically talks about concern over non-compliance with international obligations.

8. Furthermore, the US has also had a history of lying to the world about existence of WMD program of the others. In February 2003 its then Secretary of State in the UNSC meeting lied to the international community in order to invade Iraq. The result of attack, using all kind of weapons including CNS weapons, was the killing of thousands of peoples, including many civilians. Apparently its army believed the US officials' lies and searched every inch of Iraq. They found Saddam in a small hole but they could not find a single WMD. They claimed 6 years later that they had found something and destroyed it. If it was true, they are in non-compliance with the Convention because they must have declared it to the OPCW and transferred or destructed it under verification of the OPCW. And if it was not true they told another lie to the world again.

9. The US is supporting terrorist activities in the Middle East and indeed it is the mother of terrorist groups as it was reconfirmed by its current president during election campaign who clearly declared that previous US administrations were "the founder of ISIS" (Daesh) and the "co-founder" of the other terrorist and extremist groups. It was a bitter confession but it is very true. All of these facts show that the US is not in a position to introduce itself as the guardian of the Convention.

I request this statement be considered an official document of this Review Conference and posted on its website. I thank you.

1483**1771

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Iranian FM Says U.S. Chemical-Weapons Accusations 'Dangerous'

By RFE/RL November 24, 2018

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif says U.S. charges that Iran has a chemical weapons program are "obscene and dangerous."

Zarif said in a tweet on November 23 that "[The] U.S. wants to resort to international conventions to make allegations against Iran when it's made a policy of violating them itself."

He added that such allegations "by a country that supported Iraq's use of [chemical weapons by Iraq] against Iran, then invaded Iraq to allegedly rid it of them is not just obscene, it's dangerous."

Zarif's comments come one day after a U.S. envoy alleged that Iran had failed to declare a production facility for the filling of aerial bombs and that it maintains a program to obtain banned toxic munitions.

Those charges were made to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) at The Hague on November 22 by Kenneth Ward, the U.S. ambassador to the OPCW, an international chemical-warfare watchdog.

"The United States has had long-standing concerns that Iran maintains a chemical-weapons program that it failed to declare to the OPCW," Ward said, adding that Washington "is also concerned that Iran is pursuing central-nervous-system-acting chemicals for offensive purposes."

Ward cited the discovery of chemical-filled artillery projectiles, mortars, and aerial bombs of Iranian origin as proof that Iran did not fully disclose its capabilities.

His allegations come amid growing pressure on Iran from U.S. President Donald Trump, who has withdrawn Washington from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and introduced several layers of U.S. sanctions against Tehran.

Earlier on November 23, the Iranian Foreign Ministry said Tehran "strongly rejects" the U.S. accusations.

"The United States...has made, as is its habit, baseless accusations against the Islamic republic which we strongly reject," it said in a statement.

Chemical weapons were used by Iraq under leader Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88, during which thousands of Iranian soldiers and civilians were killed and wounded by such weapons.

With reporting by AFP

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/iranian-fm-says-u-s-chemical- weapons-accusations-dangerous-/29618250.html

Copyright (c) 2018. 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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Trot Insider has been informed that trainer Harald Lunde, who is well known in the Ontario harness racing industry for his expertise with elite trotting talent, has passed away at the age of 72.

Lunde, who regularly campaigned two and three-year-old trotters in the Ontario Sires Stakes program, was best known to the North American industry for his campaigning of Rotation, who was part-owned by Toronto Maple Leafs great Mats Sundin.

Rotation 4,1:52.3 ($1,478,290) won his OSS Super Final as a three-year-old in 2002 before finding further success in the aged ranks. The son of Balanced Image, who was a $40,000 yearling purchase, won his $215,000 division of the American National in 2003, and hauled down major scores in the $450,000 Nat Ray and $851,500 Maple Leaf Trot at Mohawk Racetrack later that year.

Lunde had earlier found success with Balanced Image bay Banker Hall 3,1:55.2s ($1,026,624), who, as a two-year-old, won a division of the Champlain before recording further major scores in his OSS Super Final and the Breeders Crown Two-Year-Old Colt Trot final. He didn't find quite as much sucees at three, but did manage to win the Colonial Trot and the final of the Yonkers Trot.

Rotation and Banker Hall were each honoured with O'Brien Awards while under Lunde's watch.

Birminghim 2,1:57.1s ($791,084) was another Ontario-sired performer that responded well to Lunde's tutelage, as the brown daughter of Striking Sahbra was a tough customer in the provincial program.

Lunde is a native of Lademoen, Norway, an area just outside of Trondheim. He eventually made his way to the United States and then Canada. While in North America, he relished wintering in Florida, where he prepped his younger horses for the forthcoming campaigns of racing.

Lunde had resided in Trondheim in recent years.

Trot Insider will update this notice with more information when it becomes available.

Please join Standardbred Canada in offering condolences to the family and friends of Harald Lunde.

(With files from tgn.no)
UN grants South Korea sanctions exemption for inter-Korea rail survey

Iran Press TV

Sat Nov 24, 2018 11:00AM

The United Nations Security Council has granted sanctions exemptions to South Korea for a joint survey with the North for the construction of inter-Korean railways.

"The sanctions exemption has big implications given that the project has garnered recognition and support from the United States and the international society," South Korea's presidential spokesperson Kim Eui-kyeom said Saturday.

The waiver is the first step towards reconnecting rail and road links with the North that was cut during the 1950-53 Korean War.

Kim further expressed optimism about quick construction of the railways, which he said will take inter-Korean cooperation to a new level.

With Pyongyang under extensive Security Council sanctions for its missile and nuclear programs, Seoul requested an exemption for deliveries of fuel and other equipment needed to conduct the railway survey in the North, South Korean news agency Yonhap reported.

The US has told its key ally in Seoul that it should not improve relations with Pyongyang faster than North Korea taking steps to abandon its nuclear weapons.

Leaders of the two Koreas reached consensus in April to adopt practical measures to reconnect railways and roads as part of their efforts to expand bilateral ties.

The two Koreas agreed in October to carry out the joint field studies on transport plans, with a ground-breaking ceremony arranged for late November and early December.

However, the plan was delayed amid failed talks between Washington and Pyongyang following a historic summit in June between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

However, negotiations have since made little progress, amid Pyongyang's growing frustration over Washington's insistence that US-led sanctions against North Korea must remain in place until it completely gives up its weapons programs.

The North says the US has failed to take reciprocal steps to satisfy Pyongyang's concerns about the massive American military presence so close to its territory and its refusal to permanently halt its regular war games with South Korean troops in the region.

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Britain's head of army calls Russia more threatening than Daesh

Iran Press TV

Sat Nov 24, 2018 02:47PM

The head of the British army has said that Russia poses more threats to the UK than the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group.

General Mark Carleton-Smith said on Saturday that Russia was using whatever it could to harm the interests of Western countries, including Britain.

"The Russians seek to exploit vulnerability and weakness wherever they detect it," Carleton-Smith said in an interview with the Daily Telegraph, adding that Britain "cannot be complacent about the threat Russia poses".

The remarks are the most pointed at Russia from Britain since relations deteriorated in March with the poisoning of a former Russian spy in the southern English city of Salisbury.

London accused Moscow of ordering the attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia. Russian authorities have consistently denied the accusations, even after London released images showing two suspected members of Russia's military intelligence service GRU travelling to Salisbury in March.

Senior officials in Moscow maintain that the attack on Skripals was an attempt by British intelligence services to further target Russia at a time the ruling Conservative government is experiencing a fall in its popularity.

Carleton-Smith, who was appointed in June as Britain's Chief of the General Staff, said when it came to threats against Britain's national security, Russia was "indisputably" a bigger threat than Daesh and al-Qaeda.

"Russia has embarked on a systematic effort to explore and exploit Western vulnerabilities, particularly in some of the non-traditional areas of cyber, space, undersea warfare," he said.

Russian embassy in London said the 54-year-old military commander was out of touch when dealing with global security threats like Daesh, which is also called ISIL.

"Army chief doesn't care about ISIL? Great global strategic vision!" said the embassy in a tweet posted after Carleton-Smith's interview.

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Russia says US views Daesh as ally to push regime change in Syria

Iran Press TV

Sat Nov 24, 2018 03:20PM

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says the United States is using the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group as a pretext to maintain its military presence in Syria and views the terror outfit as an ally to push regime change in the Arab country.

Lavrov, who was speaking at a joint press conference with Portuguese Foreign Minister Augusto Santos Silva in Lisbon on Saturday, said the US has set conditions for defeating Daesh, which indicates Washington has a "covert agenda in Syria."

"The US State Department has declared that Daesh has not been completely defeated and that the main condition for its defeat is regime change in Syria and the withdrawal of any Iranian or pro-Iranian units from the country," said Lavrov.

"This confirms my theory that the Americans view Daesh as an excuse for their presence in Syria and almost as an ally in the fight against the Syrian regime. In other words, the main task [for Washington] now is regime change, not defeating Daesh."

Russia's top diplomat said the main remaining hotbed of Daesh activity in Syria is now located on the east bank of the Euphrates River, where the US runs military bases.

There are several thousands of militants in the area around the settlement of al-Tanf in southern Syria, "where the United States has illegally created a zone which they control with a radius of 55 kilometers", said Lavrov.

Those militants are regarded by the United States as "off-limits, allowing the Americans to make excuses for their presence" on the Syrian territory, he said.

Earlier in October, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that Daesh was expanding its presence in the Syrian regions controlled by Washington and its allied Kurdish militants, revealing that the Takfiri terror outfit had managed to take hundreds of people hostage in those areas.

The US, along with a coalition of its allies, has been conducting airstrikes inside Syria since September 2014 without any authorization from Damascus or a UN mandate. It has repeatedly been accused of targeting Syrian civilians and infrastructure.

On the contrary, Russia has been providing the Syrian army with both advisory and on-the-ground assistance in its counter-terrorism battles. Thanks to that help, Syrian armed forces have managed to liberate most of their homeland from the clutches of terrorists.

At Damascus' request, Tehran has also been providing military advisory support to the Syrian military fighting foreign-backed terrorism and militancy since 2011. The Islamic Republic says it will maintain the role as long as it is required by the Syrian government.

The mid-northern parts of Syria are under the control of the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-dominated alliance of militants receiving arms and training from the US.

The SDF militants, mainly active in the eastern part of the Euphrates River, are purportedly fighting against the remnants of Daesh, which has already been driven out of all its urban bastions both in Iraq and Syria.

Damascus, however, regards them as occupying forces since they refused to return the areas they captured from Daesh to government control.

Back in June, the Russian military said that the last pockets of land occupied by Daesh were "only in areas controlled by the US."

It had also said in March that the US had set up around 20 military bases in areas controlled by the Kurdish militants.

Lavrov also said last month that the US is seeking to use its allies in Syria, especially the Kurds, in order to establish a quasi-state east of the Euphrates River and create illegal structures there.

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Ankara uneasy about US plan for 'observation posts' on Syria border: Turkish minister

Iran Press TV

Sat Nov 24, 2018 03:15PM

Turkey has expressed its strong dissent against Washington's plan to establish "observation posts" in northern Syria, along parts of its border with the Anatolian country, in a purported attempt to help prevent clashes between Turkish government troops and those armed Kurdish militia supported by the United States.

Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said on Saturday, "I am of the opinion that these measures will only complicate further an already complicated situation."

"We have told our American counterparts about our unease several times," the state-run news agency Anadolu further quoted the minister as saying.

He also stressed that he had recently raised the issue with head of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Joe Dunford.

Earlier this month, Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu lambasted as a "big mistake" the US support for the Syrian Kurdish militants of the People's Protection Units (YPG), warning that the matter has strained relations between the two NATO allies.

Washington has infuriated Ankara by announcing a plan for the formation of a Kurdish militant force in Syria near the Turkish border.

The plan prompted Turkey to launch a cross-border military operation on January 20 inside the Arab country, code-named Operation Olive Branch, with the declared aim of eliminating the YPG militants from northern Syria, particularly Afrin region.

The YPG forms the backbone of the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an anti-Damascus alliance of predominantly Kurdish militants supported by the US.

Ankara views the YPG as a terrorist organization and the Syrian branch of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has been fighting for an autonomous region inside Turkey since 1984.

Akar's comments came three days after US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said that Washington wanted the so-called observation posts to help minimize tensions between the Turks and US-backed SDF forces in the purported fight against the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group.

He said on Wednesday that the US move was aimed at ensuring that the two sides "are not drawn off that fight."

"They will be very clearly marked locations day and night so that the Turks know where they're at," Mattis added, claiming that the decision was taken in close cooperation with Ankara.

However, The Turkish defense minister urged Washington to halt support for the YPG, stressing that the so-called observation posts would serve no use.

Turkey "will not hesitate to take the necessary measures on the other side of its borders to face up to the risks and threats which could result," Akar added.

The Syrian government has given a degree of authority to the Kurdish regions to run their own affairs. The US, however, has used the power vacuum to establish a foothold in those regions with the help of militants.

However, Ankara is strongly against recognizing the territory on its border, fearing it will stoke the separatist ambitions of Kurds in Turkey.

"Nobody should doubt that the Turkish Armed forces and the Republic of Turkey will take the necessary steps against all kinds of risks and threats from across its borders," Akar further said.

Ankara, one of Washington's key allies in the region, has repeatedly questioned the US deployment of heavy weapons in Syria despite the defeat of Daesh in much of the Arab country.

Earlier this year, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened to push Turkey's Afrin offensive against the YPG militants eastward to Manbij, where American forces are stationed, risking a confrontation between the NATO allies.

Syria has strongly denounced the presence of Turkish and US troops around Manbij.

A US-led military coalition has been conducting airstrikes against what are said to be Daesh targets inside Syria since September 2014 without any authorization from the Damascus government or a UN mandate.

The military alliance has repeatedly been accused of targeting and killing civilians. It has also been largely incapable of achieving its declared goal of destroying Daesh.

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US-led coalition strikes kill 11 Syrian civilians in Dayr al-Zawr

Iran Press TV

Sat Nov 24, 2018 12:34AM

At least 11 civilians, mostly women and children, have lost their lives and dozens more have been wounded when the US-led coalition purportedly fighting the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group bombarded residential areas in Syria's embattled eastern province of Dayr al-Zawr.

Local sources, requesting anonymity, told Syria's official news agency SANA on Friday that the airstrikes pounded multiple parts of the village of al-Shafa in the east of the flashpoint province, adding that three women and five children were among the victims.

The report further said that the death toll could rise as some of the wounded were in critical condition due to the intensity of the aerial aggression.

On November 17, the so-called military coalition killed at least 40 people after its warplanes struck the village of al-Buqa'an on the outskirts of Hajin town in the same province, leaving dozens more wounded.

On November 13, the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates condemned a recent airstrike by the US-led coalition against the eastern town of al-Shaafah, which left more than 60 people dead and injured, arguing that the massacre clearly pointed to the fact that members of the military alliance had no respect for moral values, international rules and regulations besides the lives of innocent civilians.

The ministry, in two separate letters, addressed to United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres and the rotating president of the UN Security Council Ma Zhaoxu, called on the Security Council to fulfill its responsibilities and stop US-led aerial assaults.

Furthermore, the US-led coalition has in multiple occasions used internationally-banned white phosphorus munitions in bombing raids across the province, particularly the town of Hajin, located some 110 kilometers east of the provincial capital city of Dayr al-Zawr.

In June last year, Human Rights Watch warned that the US-led coalition was deploying white phosphorous bombs in both Iraq and Syria.

The US-led coalition has been conducting airstrikes against what are said to be Daesh targets inside Syria since September 2014 without any authorization from the Damascus government or a UN mandate.

The military alliance has repeatedly been accused of targeting and killing civilians. It has also been largely incapable of achieving its declared goal of destroying Daesh.

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Spain Gets Guarantees on Gibraltar Before Endorsing Brexit Deal

By VOA News November 24, 2018

European Council President Donald Tusk and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez agreed to a deal Saturday on the future of Gibraltar, removing a key obstacle one day before a European Union meeting intended to endorse the Brexit deal.

Spain had demanded changes to the agreement and an accompanying declaration on a new EU-Britain relationship to clarify that the future of Gibraltar, which was ceded to Britain in 1713 but still is claimed by Spain, be decided in direct talks between Madrid and London.

Sanchez had warned he could boycott the summit if London and EU member states did not confirm his country's right to a veto over any future accord involving Gibraltar.

The deal was reached after British and Spanish negotiators talked through the night with EU officials.

Sanchez said the deal "is going to allow us to have direct negotiations with the U.K. regarding Gibraltar'' and added Spain would vote in favor of Brexit.

EU head Jean-Claude Juncker said after meeting with Sanchez that solidarity and dialogue were "the European way of finding solutions."

Spain does not currently have veto power on the Brexit agreement, which does not have to be approved unanimously, but it would prevent any free-trade deal between Britain and the European Union, which would require the approval of all 27 EU member states.

The Brexit package is also facing strong opposition in the British parliament, which must vote in favor for it to take effect. Otherwise, Britain would leave the bloc on March 29, 2019, without an agreement to mitigate economic disruption.

As negotiators from EU member nations attended a pre-summit meeting in Brussels Saturday, British Prime Minister Theresa May was scheduled to discuss the disputed British territory with Juncker and Tusk.

May warned on a radio talk show Friday a rejection of the deal would create "more uncertainty and more division" and even result in Britain leaving the bloc without an agreement.

"If this deal doesn't go through, what happens is we end up back at square one," May said.

Former British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson called Saturday for the appointment of a minister to oversee preparations for a "no-deal" British exit from the EU.

"It is very important that we show we are negotiating with confidence and conviction and we have a new secretary of state with powers ...to make things happen and get this country ready if we have to go out on WTO (World Trade Organization) terms."

EU diplomats were hopeful a draft of the clause would be approved by late Friday. And they were concerned Sanchez would want to discuss the issue with top-level officials on Sunday in an attempt to show determination and to curry favor with voters before December's regional election.

The clause is seen by some experts as a major opportunity for Spain, one of whom is Ignacio Molina of the Elcano Royal Institute, a Madrid-based research organization.

"Madrid saw Brexit as an opportunity to reconfigure the status of the territory which is administered by the United Kingdom," Molina wrote on the Agenda Publica's website.

Molina wrote that Spain could go "all-out" and raise the issue of sovereignty or take a more modest approach to "resolve concrete problems in the areas of regulation, tax and cross-border freedom of movement."

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Ukraine Marks Holodomor Anniversary, U.S. Blasts Russia's 'Ongoing Aggression'

By RFE/RL November 24, 2018

Ukraine has marked the 85th anniversary of the Stalin-era famine, known as the Holodomor, in which millions of people died of starvation.

The anniversary was also marked by U.S. criticism of what Washington called "ongoing aggression in eastern Ukraine" by Russia and "attempts" by Moscow "to destroy the identity and Western aspirations of the people of Ukraine."

Moscow responded by rejecting critics who describe the Holodomor exclusively as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and his wife, Maryna, on November 24 laid bouquets fashioned from wheat stalks and red flowers at a memorial to the victims of the Holodomor on Kyiv's Mykhailivska Square.

Poroshenko, in a statement posted on his Facebook page, also said the Holodomor was an "artificial" famine and a terrible crime committed by Soviet authorities in the early 1930s.

"In the name of Ukraine's preservation we must always remember the terrible crimes committed by the communist regime on Ukrainian lands," he said.

The Holodomor took place in 1932 and 1933 as Soviet authorities forced peasants in Ukraine to join collective farms by requisitioning their grain and other food products.

Estimates of the famine's death toll range from 3 million to 7 million.

Ukraine marks the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holodomor each year on the fourth Saturday of November to commemorate those who died during the tragedy, which many Ukrainians consider as an act of genocide aimed at wiping out Ukrainian farmers.

The Russian government denies there was any systematic effort by Soviet-era authorities to target Ukrainians, arguing a poor harvest at the time wiped out many in other parts of the Soviet Union.

On November 24, the Russian Foreign Ministry described the famine as a "major humanitarian catastrophe" that also affected Russians, Kazakhs, and others.

"Attempts to present those tragic events exclusively as an act of 'genocide of the Ukrainian people' have nothing in common either with the restoration of justice or historical facts," the ministry said on its VKontakte page.

Ahead of the commemorations, the U.S. State Department said on November 23 the "man-made famine" was "one of the most atrocious acts of the 20th century."

The. State Department also said the victims were "deliberately starved to death by the regime of Josef Stalin."

"The Soviet Union's barbaric seizure of Ukrainian land and crops was undertaken with the deliberate political goal of subjugating the Ukrainian people and nation," it said.

The State Department also pointed to Russia's "ongoing aggression" in eastern Ukraine, where fighting between Ukrainian government forces and Moscow-backed separatists has left more than 10,300 dead since April 2014.

"Today Ukrainians are once again dying as a result of Russia's attempts to destroy the identity and Western aspirations of the people of Ukraine," the statement added, citing Moscow's "ongoing aggression in eastern Ukraine."

However, Russia "will not vanquish the resilient Ukrainian spirit, nor dampen Ukrainians' desire for a better future," the State Department added, reaffirming the United States' "unwavering support" for Ukraine's national sovereignty and territorial integrity.

In a video posted on Twitter to mark the Holodomor anniversary, U.S. Ambassador Marie Jovanovich said, "Even during the darkest times, the Ukrainian people have continued to struggle for pace, freedom, and democracy with dignity."

"The United States stands with the people of Ukraine," she added.

Along with Ukraine, at least 15 other countries have officially recognized the Holodomor as "genocide" -- but not the United States.

On October 3, the U.S. Senate adopted a nonbinding resolution recognizing that Stalin and those around him committed genocide against the Ukrainians in 193233.

The European Union describes the Ukrainian famine an "appalling crime."

Relations between Moscow and Kyiv -- as well as its Western backers -- have deteriorated dramatically after Russia seized Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in March 2014 and shortly thereafter began supporting separatists in the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.

With reporting by Interfax

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/state-department-issues-statement- marking-holodomor-anniversary/29618259.html

Copyright (c) 2018. 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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On Saturday (Nov. 24) Standardbred horseman John Schuberg, 80, passed away after a long battle with dementia.

Schuberg, a resident of Perrysburg, Ohio, earned $1.9 million as a trainer and $406,564 as a driver.

Representative of District 2; elected to the USTA Board in 1986, and serving for 25 years, Schuberg has been active in harness racing as an owner, driver and trainer since 1955. Born and raised in Big Rapids, Michigan, he is a graduate of Ferris State College and Central Michigan University and taught high school for 15 years.

Hailing from Lasalle, Michigan, Schuberg, before he stepped down as a director, was very instrumental in the hiring of the past two CEOs of the USTA while serving on the executive committee. An extremely talented horseman who raced at both the fairs and tracks throughout Ohio, Michigan and Indiana, he was a force at the fairs.

Schuberg was an expert at buying young stock and producing racehorses. One of his most highly regarded accomplishments, besides his actual children, was his longtime relationship with fellow horseman, Greg Bateson. Schuberg and Bateson were inseparable and often successful for decades.

More details will be posted when available.

Please join Standardbred Canada in offering condolences to the family and friends of John Schuberg

(USTA)
No one sees the hidden hazards in your horse barn quite like an expert. One simple call to your local fire department for a site walk through may be the best investment you make to protect your stock.

As advocates of prevention, featuring the Barn Fire Prevention Tool as Equine Guelphs Tool of the Month for November, Equine Guelph and tool sponsor, Heartland Farm Mutual, set out to discover the benefits of making that call.

After picking up the phone and speaking with assistant fire chief Jason Benn of the North Perth Fire Department in Ontario, it became crystal clear that having your local department out for a site visit is not only painless, but the best way to create a solid pre-plan. Benn dispelled some of the fears callers have that a visit will result in huge costs involving infractions and enforcement. We are there to give friendly suggestions, says Benn, who has conducted many walkthroughs for local farms, boarding stables and such. Information collected is kept private for fire service emergencies only.

Benn goes on to explain how useful the information in a pre-plan is in the event of an emergency. A pre-plan includes mapping out the location of where all animals are being housed, as well as the location of all emergency utility shutoffs, and identifying all buildings on the property and sources of water available, should firefighters require access to it. Pre-plans should be stored in a neutral location on site, such as the side of the house or a drive shed.

Some of the most common topics discussed are to do with housekeeping and electrical. Taking down curtains of cobwebs, properly storing piles of combustibles and putting electrical in conduit are all easy steps to improve fire safety, said Benn. Having a no-smoking policy in the barn is of course crucial. With so many combustibles in a barn (hay, dust, bedding), taking an attitude that it wont happen to me is like playing Russian roulette.

Where the horse owner may see a stack of neatly piled hay and a cozy tack room with a heater plugged in keeping the saddles free of mould, the firefighter quickly spots all of your ignition sources and fuel sources and can make recommendations to reduce these risks. Storage implements, tractors and such should be stored in a separate building from hay and bedding. Fertilizer stored by hay could also cause a catastrophic event. Separation to alleviate fuel and ignition sources is a best practice when it comes to barn fire prevention.

There are also seasonal considerations that can increase a risk of fire. During cold months: heating/electrical systems can be taxed when drinking water freezes then thaws. Water buckets that are allowed to run dry can leave elements exposed causing bedding or other combustible material to ignite. Attempting to thaw pipes with a torch is a huge hazard. Heat trace lines provide a solution to pipes that would otherwise freeze.

During harvest times improper storage of crops containing too much moisture can cause spontaneous combustion. Prior to storing hay a moisture check is important.

Benn also has recommendations for prior to building, It is a good idea to have someone from the fire department come in during the planning stages to look at building plan. Depending on the size of the facility we have requested water to be on site and helped calculate how much. We can also advise on lane widths, turn arounds, avenues to get around buildings and so on.

Among the many interactive activities on the Equine Guelph Barn Fire Prevention Tool, there is a great quick reference sheet on the seven principles of life safety and barn design and a top 10 checklist for inside and outside the stable.

Equine Guelph's Barn Fire Prevention Tool is a practical way to promote education and awareness of farm safety, says Jim Zyta, vice president Loss Prevention/Risk Assessment specialist at Heartland Farm Mutual. In the farm insurance industry, we have seen first-hand the many causes of barn fires and their devastating effects. Losses from such events are not only physical and financial, but can be very emotional for the horse owner. In many cases, the tragedy is realizing that the fire could have easily been prevented. We encourage all farm owners to use this simple checklist to identify the potential hazards in their own barn and help keep it a safe environment.

The big thing that was instilled in me since childhood, is to invest in your investment, said Benn. If you look after it and it will look after you.

Dont put off making that call for tips and a site visit from your local fire department and do make use of the great resources out there on fire safety from Ontario Ministry of Agriculture Food and Rural Affairs, Ontario Federation of Agriculture and Equine Guelphs interactive Barn Fire Prevention online tool.

(Equine Guelph)
ADEME, Frances Environment and Energy Management Agency, carried out a study with IFP Energies nouvelles (IFPEN) on the dynamics of lithium supply and demand, based on different scenarios for the electrification of the global car fleet by 2050.

The lithium market continues to grow; in 2015, the market grew by 5% a year, and supply will have to increase sharply to meet future demand.





Distribution of reserves (dashed circles) and world primary production (solid circles) with the main companies present on current production sites and on-going projects. (Source: USGS, 2017)

According to the scenarios developed in this study, a high penetration of electric vehicles worldwide (up to 75% of the stock of vehicles in 2050) would not entail a geological supply risk, as reserves are sufficient in the long run.

On the other hand, this could lead to a marked decrease in the safety margin of lithium supplythe ratio between the cumulative consumption and current reservesand a possible significant volatility of lithium prices by 2050.

More generally, vulnerabilities economic, industrial, geopolitical or environmental issues are still possible.

Production is currently concentrated between Australia (40%), Argentina and Chile (50% between them). The latter two countries belong to the lithium triangle (Argentina, Bolivia and Chile), which represents about 55% of the worlds resources. The strategies of these 3 countries will have a decisive weight in the medium- and long-term capacity to supply lithium to industrial players, especially in Europe.

Further, vulnerabilities could emerge from increased competition among lithium buyers. China, which has put in place a policy of security of supply, will have competitive advantages and will be able to favor its internal market to the detriment of the importing countries. Developments in Chinas trade policy will therefore become an essential parameter of the market, according to the report.
AVEVAI, a new B2B e-mobility and logistics solutions and technology provider based in Singapore, launched its range of IONA electric light commercial vehicles (e-LCVs) at the 5th Guangzhou International Electric Vehicles Show in China (16-25 November 2018).

The electric vehiclesin van and truck configurationsare designed specifically for use by delivery and service businesses and use supercapacitor battery hybrid technology to achieve an all-electric range of 330 km (205 miles) for the IONA Van and 300 km (186 miles) for the IONA Truckup to 40% more than comparable e-LCVs.

Supercapacitors are able to accept and deploy electrical charge much faster than conventional batteries, and are less affected by charge and discharge cycles, thereby giving them a longer life.

The graphene-infused supercapacitor technology used by AVEVAI in its IONA models is developed by Singapore-based e-SYNERGY, a provider of smart batteries and energy management systems. This system also extends the optimal productive life of the batteries, compared with existing products on the market. In addition to lowering the total cost of ownership, a factory warranty of five years or 200,000 km (whichever comes first) ensures that no further battery-related expenses are incurred by the vehicle owner or operator.

IONA electric vehicles are powered by a Graphene Energy Management System (GEMS) that can be customized for use in any electric vehicle to enhance performance and range and maximize the productive life of the battery.

The patented GEMS technology, which AVEVAI and e-SYNERGY plan to market in 2019, uses graphene-infused supercapacitors with very low internal resistance. Controlled by a proprietary smart algorithm, GEMS allows charging and discharging cycles to run in nanoseconds and the entire vehicle electrical system to store and distribute energy more efficiently and with greater flexibility.





The system can also harness and utilize up to 85% of energy captured through regenerative braking, which contributes to a substantial extension in range of up to 40% in real-life road tests.

Vehicle down-time is also reduced with fewer charging intervals and optimal charging versatility. A 22kW AC charging station will fully charge the IONA Truck in two hours, while the IONA Van takes less than four hours to be fully charged via a fast-charging terminal. Standard 220v charging is also available. The enhanced durability and performance of the batteries is assured in extreme weather conditions, enabling battery operation in temperatures as low as -40 C and as high as +70 C.

Designed by AVEVAI in Singapore, the IONA is built on a chassis developed in an R&D facility in Stuttgart, Germany, in cooperation with Daimler and Foton. The development process incorporates all performance and safety related elements, from brakes, bearings, drive and control systems, as well as insulation and NVH, to achieve the highest international standards for quality and meet stringent European safety regulations.





AVEVAI was founded in response to the growing demand from small- and medium-sized businesses for low-cost, flexible e-LCVs, driven by the growth of e-commerce. The first two IONA models can be configured to exact customer requirements, with short and long wheel-base versions capable of carrying a payload of up to 2,500 kg and as much as 18 m3 of cargo.

IONA models will be distributed directly by AVEVAI, with first deliveries from February 2019 and deliveries to other markets, including Europe and the US, from May 2019.

A manufacturing partnership has been agreed with China Foton Motor Co., Ltd. to build the vehicles at the FOTON facilities in Shangdong, China, ensuring the highest levels of build quality. With the factory and test drive facilities already established, orders are being taken immediately with minimal build time.

The AVEVAI company name is formed from the words Autonomous Vehicle; Electric Vehicle; Artificial Intelligence, hinting at future developments planned in other key mobility-focussed technologies. Partnerships with specialist automotive and technology partners will enable the fast development of innovative logistics software, including AI machine-learning and driverless technology for its next generation of products.
The Undead Archives

I have finally salvaged my pre-Blogger TDR archives and added them into Blogger. They are almost totally in the form of one giant post for each month. And the formatting strayed from the originals. Sorry. But historians everywhere can rejoice that this treasure trove of my thoughts is restored to the world.
GREENWICH  The Planning and Zoning Commission has given the go-ahead to the final site plan for a new apartment complex in Chickahominy that will include some units of affordable housing.

The plan is to build three buildings, with a total of 15 apartment units, on an 18,600-square-foot site at 303 Hamilton Ave. Five of the units would be set aside as affordable units through an agreement with the state, which would add to Greenwichs stock of affordable housing while making the projects developer eligible for tax breaks.

Bruce Cohen is the attorney representing the project developer, which was not identified in Planning and Zoning Commission documents released to the public.

According to Cohen, 14 of the apartments would be one-bedroom units and one would be a two-bedroom unit. The apartments are expected to attract either single tenants or couples without children, he said.

Three of the five affordable units would be rented to tenants who qualify at 60 percent of the state median income. The other two would be rented to tenants who qualify at 80 percent of that figure.

The other 10 units would be rented at market value.

Connecticut statutes call for municipalities to set aside 10 percent of housing as affordable. With Greenwich at about 5 percent, Cohen said the development would add to that number and do it in an attractive way. The project is an excellent example of an affordable development, he said.

The commissions vote was not unanimous. Acting Chair Margarita Alban voted against the plan after a lengthy debate about the additional parking needed in an already well-developed neighborhood.

We want to support the affordable housing but on the other hand we dont want to compromise peoples quality of life, Alban said.

There is currently a three-family house and a two-car garage on the property. A number of apartments are nearby: The site is close to a 22-unit condo development and to the town-owned Armstrong Court housing complex with its 144 units.

It is a fairly densely developed area, Cohen said, adding that Hamilton Avenue is the commercial spine of the Chickahominy area near several local businesses and between Hamilton Avenue School and Western Middle School.

But he said the apartments were not in any way adversely impacting the neighborhood in terms of quality of life.

But commission members were concerned about adding more apartments  and more 17 more parking spaces, one of which would be handicapped accessible  in the area. They asked about the impact on Hamilton Avenue, which is designated as a town emergency evacuation route.

With only 17 parking spaces for 15 units, commission members said resident might park elsewhere when there were guests at the complex. That, they said, could create problems.

Overnight parking is prohibited in several sections of the Hamilton Avenue neighborhood, Alban said.

In the event of a major event like a hurricane, you would need to have Hamilton Avenue open for evacuation, Alban told Cohen. You said you could use Hamilton Avenue (for overflow parking) and yet were being told you really cant overnight there.

But Cohen said bad weather could be an issue even without the apartments. He cited the snowstorm earlier this month that paralyzed traffic throughout the region and said he couldnt get out of his own driveway.

These are infrequent and unusual situations, Cohen said. As a regular matter what (the commission) should be looking at is there adequacy in terms of parking. The 17 parking spaces satisfies the needs of the 15 units.

Alban said it was a matter of being prepared.

The protection of the health and safety of the citizens of Greenwich is not, Lets just shoot for the average, Alban said. We have to think about what will happen when there is an emergency situation. Hamilton Avenue is an emergency evacuation route and we have to be conscious of that. You cant say to us, Well lets just plan for adequacy when everything is going well.

The increase in extreme weather from global warning could lead to more emergencies in the future, Alban said.

Commission member Nick Macri said an accident or traffic jam on nearby Interstate 95 can also lead to backups on streets in the neighborhood.

John Canning, a traffic consultant hired by the developer, said overnight parking on the street near the apartments would not interfere with emergency access.

Fifteen units is not going to make a difference on Hamilton Avenue, Canning said.

Commission members also asked whether allowing fewer units in the development would allow for more green space and have less of an impact on parking and traffic.

It seems to me that the whole project would be much more beneficial if it had less units on it, commission member Nick Macri said. Youd get more parking off the street and more green space and less air conditioners.

Commission member Dave Hardman repeatedly pressed on the issue, asking whether it was possible to have fewer units while maintaining the planned number of affordable ones and making the overall project economically feasible for the developer. Cohen said that his client had done everything possible to maximize the number of affordable units within the limits of the statute. The developer didnt want to eliminate the affordable units to make the development smaller, he said.

I dont believe there are any substantial interests in health, safety or other issues that would come before the commission that would mitigate against the approval of a project like this, Cohen said.

Ultimately, Macri and Hardman voted to approve the project.

No members of the community attended the meeting to speak about the project.

kborsuk@greenwichtime.com
KABUL, Afghanistan - Hundreds of ethnic Hazaras rallied in protest here Sunday over the arrest of a rogue anti-Taliban militia commander, resulting in violence that left at least 30 civilians and security forces wounded, police said.

While the Western-backed government of Afghanistan has battled Taliban insurgents for years with mixed success, the actions of local anti-Taliban commanders, operating outside central government control, have led to periodic clashes between formal and informal allies.

The arrest Sunday in Kabul of Hazara militia commander Alipur, known as "Commander Sword," spread rapidly among Hazara communities here and other cities, where he was viewed as an ethnic hero of the anti-Taliban conflict.

Alipur escaped from central Ghowr province during a government raid in October and is wanted by Kabul for alleged human rights abuses. He had built a reputation as a brutal warrior but maintained strong popular support among fellow ethnic Hazaras, especially those in central Afghan provinces, including Ghazni, that have recently come under Taliban attack.

As news of Alipur's arrest spread, Hazara protesters flooded the streets of the capital, marching from Hazara-dominated areas toward the presidential palace. The spontaneous rally echoed one a few weeks ago, when Shiite Hazara marchers protested a spate of Taliban attacks across long-peaceful Hazara regions of Ghazni.

Kabul police said protesters Sunday attacked a police vehicle and set fire to a police checkpost, causing authorities to send added security forces to block their march.

"They used whatever they had in their hand" including stones and guns, said Basir Mujahid, a Kabul police spokesman. He said that 23 officers were injured by protesters.

There were reports that several dozen protesters were also wounded. Avenues and streets across the capital were blocked for at least five hours, residents said.

Ambulances were seen rushing to the various areas where the demonstration was happening. A national committee for journalists said one local reporter was beaten by the protesters.

Sporadic gunfire could be heard from the area where police had blocked demonstrators. Video images on social media showed a group of people running away with barrages of shots being fired in the background and police rushing to the scene.

As evening fell, police said the protests had been quelled, but there were unconfirmed reports of more gunfire.

Earlier in the day, some protesters expressed fear that they would be targeted by Islamic State extremists, who have claimed numerous bombings and other attacks on mosques, schools and gatherings of Hazaras in Kabul and elsewhere.

Two weeks ago, four people lost their lives near the presidential palace, where Hazara demonstrators had gathered to denounce what they called the government's inability to stop Taliban advances in once-secure areas of Ghazni and the Afghan central region.

Alipur's arrest comes months after the detention of an Uzbek militia commander in a northern area, which prompted widespread protests that led to the closure of two trade ports with Central Asia.

Several other ethnic minority commanders, seen by officials as leaders of illegal armed anti-Taliban groups, have also been arrested in recent months.

These arrests of popular local heroes have angered many Afghan minority groups, whose fervor has already been aroused by the planned presidential elections in April. President Ashraf Ghani, who is from the Pashtun ethnic majority, has said he plans to stand for reelection.

"If every tribe defends its criminals, we should announce death sentence of justice," Abdul Sattar Sadaat, an adviser for Ghani, wrote in a tweet Sunday.

To the protesters, Alipur is a hero.

"Alipur is the servant of the country and the people. He is the servant of the honor and dignity of this country," Mohammad Ahmadi, a protester in Kabul, told Tolo television News.
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From left, Justin Senkyrik, Myra Storm, Randall Storm, Scott Storm and Sean Glick emerge from their crossing of nearly waist-deep water Sept. 2, 2017, at the intersection of FM 522 and CR 842 in Wild Peach. Just 24 hours earlier, this section of road was dry.




Haiti - NOTICE : The Digital Observatory worried about the misuse of social networks





The Digital Observatory in Haiti (ObNH) expresses its concern on the misuse of new media, particularly the social media platforms, with the sharing of multimedia contents that infringe upon privacy and individual liberties.



It is with great concern that ObNH noticed that a large majority of Internet users and institutions are contributing, through digital media, to the dissemination of graphic contents without regard to ethical and moral values.



ObNH wants to remind everyone that, regardless of the context, the use of digital tools and applications must always take into account the respect of dignity and human rights, as well as the values that elevate us as a responsible society.



ObNH believes it is the appropriate time to reiterate, on behalf of a shared responsibility, a call to institutional actors especially academics, civil society, and public institutions for the expansion of initiatives on digital risks and its challenges.



The Digital Observatory takes this opportunity to encourage the public to demonstrate more thoughtful behavior, in accordance with the respect of values when using the new media and the Internet.



See also :

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-25809-haiti-alert-risk-of-whatsapp-hacking.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-25017-haiti-flash-attempted-scam-with-fraudulent-emails-from-unibank.html



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - News : Zapping...





PetroCaribe hearings paralyzed by strike

Me Ramoncite Accime, investigating Judge of PetroCaribe case waiting for the end of the strike of lawyers of the Court of First Instance (TPI) Port-au-Prince https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-26079-haiti-justice-the-cspj-reminds-the-lawyers-strikers-that-justice-can-not-be-interrupted.html to resume the instruction of the file (interrupted because of the conflict), with the hearing of the compatriots of Diaspora Maxi Francois, Tina Lorquet and Roland Sainristil who filed a complaint in this case https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-26088-haiti-news-zapping.html



Second promise of the Minister of Justice

Following the violence in the demonstrations, Jean Roody Aly, Minister of Justice and Public Security, says that "instructions were passed to the police and the judiciary to put hands on the perpetrators of the acts of violence" announcing that all steps are taken to facilitate the resumption of school activities, Monday, November 26 (while the opposition has just announced two days of general strikes... https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-26213-haiti-news-zapping.html )



The Executive dialogue...

The Executive has already met several political actors in the dialogue initiated by President Moise to find a way out of the crisis, says Secretary of State for Communications Eddy Jackson Alexis "We are ready and already we are starting to sit down with all sectors to create a space that can lead to marriage : freedom and well-being for the population," without specifying specifically with whom or with which sectors...



The radical opposition met diplomats and businessmen

The leaders of the Democratic and Popular Movement of the radical opposition met diplomats and businessmen on the political crisis "We told them very clearly that the solution passes by the resignation of President Jovenel Moise, the main obstacle at the PetroCaribe trial," specified Me Andre Michel



80 million euros in EU donations per year

"EU support in Haiti represents 80 million euros in donations per year, whose a part through budget support https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-26210-haiti-economy-the-european-union-confirms-budget-support-of-nearly-3-billion.html A significant support to the service of the Haitian people. "I am happy to be in Hinche with President Moise to see the progress made in the field of infrastructure and agricultural works. The EU is ready to help Haiti move towards a greener economy," said Stefano Manservisi, Director General for International Cooperation and Development of the European Union, on Saturday.



HL/ HaitiLibre


















Published on 2018/11/25 | Source

"My Aunt in Texas", a new play produced by the National Theater Company of Korea, investigates the struggle of women who migrate to another country in search of happiness.

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The plot evolves around a Korean woman who falls in love with a U.S. soldier stationed in Korea and moves to Texas, dreaming of a comfortable life in the rich West, and the Kyrgyz mail-order bride her brother marries. The two women's stories are juxtaposed as the Kyrgyz wife is subject to domestic violence and the Korean woman ends up alone in a dried-up corn field, a poignant metaphor for the course her life has taken.

The star of the show is Anna Rihlmann, also known as Anna Yoon, a German actress who is impressing critics and audiences with her portrayal of the innocent Kyrgyz women gradually resigning herself to everyday violence from her husband.

Rihlmann worked very hard to win the role and she even practiced traditional Kyrgyz dance by watching YouTube videos. "Korean actors would have found it hard to speak broken Korean in this role, but I didn't have to worry about that", she jokes. "At first, there were some things that I couldn't understand. Why wouldn't she just leave the husband who batters her? So, I started learning about Kyrgyzstan, and found that there is custom of bride kidnapping. If a man kidnaps a woman for three days, the woman's family won't take her back because she now belongs to the other family".

Rilhmann is from Kaiserslautern, a nondescript town in western Germany. "I was just attracted to Korea for no reason that I can identify", she said. "The impetus was Arirang TV, which I watched at a friend's house when I was 14, and the film '3-Iron' [directed by Kim Ki-duk in 2004] that I watched at a local cinema. I loved listening to Korean, and that spurred me to take interest in Korean culture".

She first visited Korea when she was in high school, and she went on to major in journalism and Korean studies at the University of Tubingen before moving to Korea five years ago. She even took the surname of the father of her first host family in Seoul and still lives with them.

She was exploring her career options while working at educational channel EBS in her early days here, and found her calling when she watched a play by the National Theater Company. She joined small theater troupe Dream Play in 2014, and became the first foreigner to be admitted to master's program in acting at the Korea National University of Arts.

So far mostly roles of American missionaries or German nurses have come her way. "Perhaps one day, I can play a Korean character without controversy", she said.
Published on 2018/11/25 | Source

/Yonhap

The government is minded to sue 17 people who failed to pay for emergency charter flights out of volcano-stricken Bali in November last year.

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A Foreign Ministry official said, "We continued to tell the 17 passengers by telephone, e-mail and official notice urging them to pay for the charter flight but receive no responses and decided to consider legal steps".

At the orders of President Moon Jae-in, the government sent a charter flight to the Indonesian resort island on Nov. 30 last year to rescue 266 Korean tourists who were stranded there and fly them safely back home.

The government paid Asiana Airlines W215 million for the flight and told passengers that they would each be charged economy-class rates of W420,000 and cover the remaining W150 million. But 17 of the passengers have failed to pay their share, which amounts to a total of W7 million.

The ministry has the contact addresses of all of the passengers as well as their written pledges to pay up.
Published on 2018/11/25 | Source

Signboards in Japanese hang along a street in the trendy Hongik University area in Seoul.

When Korea opened its door to Japanese pop culture some two decades ago, many feared that it would lead to a cultural invasion and wipe out Korean culture. But 20 years on, it is the Japanese who have become big fans of K-pop and dramas, while Koreans have embraced Japanese food.

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Japanese restaurants now swamp trendy neighborhoods in Seoul, making some of them look like the back streets of Tokyo.

The number of Japanese restaurants in Korea has more than tripled from 5,272 in 2006 to 17,290 this year. The bustling commercial districts near Hongik University in northwestern Seoul, posh Gangnam south of the Han River and Seoul National University in southern Seoul are now packed with Japanese restaurants.

Foreign tourists refer to parts of the Hongik University area as "Japantown".

So popular are Japanese-style restaurants that they have become the favorite business venture among Koreans in their 30s and 40s who quit their office jobs.

One culinary school in Gangnam is filled with people learning how to make Japanese food and baked goods. Sohn Woo-hyung (45), who quit his job at an IT company this year, said, "I started learning to cook Japanese food because I feel that I can make a success of a restaurant business if I focus on a few good dishes".

Most of the students are former office workers who quit their day jobs. Tetsu Nakamura, the head of the school, said, "More than 70 percent of my students are people in their 30s and 40s who plan to start their own restaurants. When I opened my school nine years ago, the only Japanese restaurants in Seoul were sushi places, but now there are many selling anything from home-style food to desserts".

Moon Jung-hoon at Seoul National University said, "As more and more Koreans prefer to eat either alone or in small groups, demand has risen for the simple dishes available in Japanese restaurants. People tend to think of Western and Chinese food as heavy and Japanese meals simpler and lighter, which seems to coincide with the latest consumer trend".

Also fueling the demand is the surging number of Korean tourists who visit Japan. Some 73.6 percent of the 7.14 million Koreans who traveled there last year said the food was a main reason.

"In the past, Koreans usually traveled to Japan to go shopping in Tokyo's Shinjuku or relax at a hot springs resort, but nowadays a growing number of visitors go to Japan to try out Michelin-rated and other famous restaurants", said Yoo Jin at the Japan Tourism Agency.
Published on 2018/11/25 | Source

Samsung is desperately grasping at any innovation it can think of in a saturated smartphone market where cheaper Chinese rivals are increasingly catching up.

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The latest gimmick is a bezel-less screen for the Galaxy S10 scheduled for release in March of 2019. The screen covers the entire face of the phone except for a small hole for the camera lens.

Apple and Huawei already have patents on a similar screen and are expected to follow quickly in Samsung's footsteps.

Industry watchers say Samsung has ditched its "fast follower" approach, where it was always second or third on any innovations, and is instead trying to claw back market share by taking the lead in innovation.

One motivating factor is that Apple is shifting strategy from constant innovation to simply producing the best quality phones once the innovations of rivals stabilize after a year or two.

Samsung's foldable smartphone, set for release in the first half of next year, is another example of the new strategy.

A Samsung staffer said, "Management has decided that we can't survive unless we keep trying new things as smartphone market growth slows and competition intensifies".

Read this article in Korean
By Panos Kotzathanasis | Published on 2018/11/24

Winner of the Baeksang award for Best Film and by the Korean Association of Film Critics for Best Actor, "Village of Haze" (aka "Village in the Mist") is a great sample of the legendary Im Kwon-taek's contemporary filmography.

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Betrothed Soo-ok leaves Seoul to teach at a remote village elementary school in the mountains. The village seems to be scarcely populated and the first person she meets is a rather unusual, ragtag man, who glances straight in her eyes with an audacity that makes her shiver. Soon she learns that his name is Kkae-cheol-i and that he is the only stranger in a clan village where everyone is related, and carry the same surname from their mother's side. Furthermore, they consider him a cripple, lunatic and impotent, although Soo-ok soon begins having doubts about all three of his "capacities". Her doubts take a much more solid shape when a man of the village beats Kkae-cheol-i because he had sex with his wife. Soon enough, a number of secrets, mostly of sexual nature, are revealed, and even Soo-ok, after her fiancee fails to show up in the village as promised, does not succeed in staying out.

Im Kwon-taek does a splendid job of commenting on human nature, and particularly the roads it is led in extreme environments, as the secluded village in the story. His most obvious comment can be summarized by the phrase "extreme conditions demand extreme measures" but this is just the tip of the iceberg, as the comments extend to much more than that. The need for sexual comfort and the non-monogamous nature of people is another central one, with Im though, not failing to show the consequences, through a number of rather violent scenes in the film.

The fact that people can get used to any kind of life is another one, with the villagers and their "arrangements" being the first example and Kkae-cheol-i the most significant. In that aspect, Kkae is treated in essence as a pet (a dog if you prefer): they allow him to roam around; they feed and let him sleep in their houses when he has no place to and they beat him when does something wrong, and he actually is used to this situation, finding no reason to leave the village. Ahn Sung-ki is great in the part, communicating the aforementioned elements with very few words, but quite eloquently, particularly through his look.

A minor one also concerns the differences of the village and the city people, with Soo-ok's clothes, make-up and music being the mediums of this aspect. Eventually, Im shatters this image of difference, through the implementation of the aforementioned comments about human nature.

Im Kwon-taek retains a sense of disorientation and uncertainty about what is actually going on in the village, by focusing on Soo-ok, whose thoughts are presented through narration. Jeong Yun-hui presents this aspect quite convincingly, with her own narration adding much to an also mostly laconic part.

This sense though is completely shattered near the end, as Im felt the need to explain everything that isactually happening in a dialogue between the woman and a colleague, which I found an element that faults the overall sense of the film, by "feeding" the answers to the viewer instead of allowing him to think for himself. This, however, does not ruin the overall sense of the film completely, as its aesthetics and impact remain at large, particularly due to the ouroboric ending.

Jung Il-sung's cinematography is excellent, with his portrayal of the misty village being accurate and artful. Kim Chang-sun's editing implements a pace that fits the story to perfection, much faster than one would expect in such a film. The production values of the film find their apogee in the sex scene in the water mill, which actually synopsizes the aesthetics of the movie, as it works on a visual, contextual and metaphoric level.

"Village of Haze" is definitely a film worth watching for its comments, direction and acting, which could have been on a much higher level, though, if not for the "spoon-feeding" scene.

Review by Panos Kotzathanasis

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"Village of Haze" is directed by Im Kwon-taek, and features Jeong Yun-hui and Ahn Sung-ki.
Published on 2018/11/25 | Source

Hyundai Group chairwoman Hyun Jeong-eun (center) speaks to reporters in Goseong, Gangwon Province on Monday. /Newsis

Hyundai Group chairwoman Hyun Jeong-eun admitted on Monday that the resumption of package tours to North Korea's Mt. Kumgang is unlikely any time soon.

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Hyun had just returned from a two-day-trip to the mountain resort, which was opened up for tourism by her late husband while subsidiary Hyundai Asan ran the tours. Over 100 South Koreans joined Hyun there to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the tours.

In August, Hyun for some reason expressed hope that tours would resume before the year is up, despite international sanctions making that impossible, but stalled negotiations between Pyongyang and Washington make that an even more distant prospect.

Hyun said the North Koreans want to resume the tours as soon as possible but she had no detailed discussions about it. She added Hyundai is getting prepared so the tours could start right away once international sanctions are lifted.

The Hyundai Group is a different spinoff from the former family empire than the better-known Hyundai Motor and now mostly focuses on elevators and container services.
Published on 2018/11/25 | Source

Korean writer Han Kang has won Spain's San Clemente literary prize for her novel "The Vegetarian", the winner of the 2016 Man Booker International Prize.

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The literary prize was launched at the initiative of a high school in Santiago de Compostela, which is famous for its Camino de Santiago route for Christian pilgrims. The winners are screened and chosen by the school's students.

The award ceremony will be held in the Galician city in March next year.
Published on 2018/11/25 | Source

The government is turning the state-run home-shopping channel into an exclusive outlet for products made by small firms at home. The channel was launched in 2015 to promote small and mid-sized companies and help farmers and fishermen.

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SMEs Minister Hong Jong-haak told reporters at the Korea Federation of SMEs in Yeouido, Seoul on Monday, "There will be no problem letting the channel sell 100 percent local products".

The new policy will go into effect in January.

In August, the channel announced plans to stop selling products made overseas even if the companies that make them are Korean-owned. But last month lawmakers raised objections, warning the decision could violate international trade law.

"The channel is a shopping outlet for local SMEs", Hong said. "It's wrong for it to sell foreign products".

Hong, who was marking his first year in the job, said the government is supporting small businesses in other ways too. "We've worked hard to reduce the troubles of small businesses, including lowering credit-card processing fees and revising lease contracts to protect them from a sudden hike in rents", he added. "We'll continue to support small businesses by making the most of next year's budget of W10.2 trillion (US$1=W1,127)".
Yvonne Mintz is editor and publisher of The Facts. She has worked at the paper since 1997, first as a reporter, then as senior reporter and city editor before becoming managing editor in 2004.

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Amid growing demand for Ram temple at a disputed site in Ayodhya, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday said that the Congress had asked the Supreme Court to delay hearing the case because of 2019 polls and accused its leaders of threatening to impeach judges.

Speaking at a campaign rally in Alwar ahead of the Rajasthan assembly election, Modi said Congress was dragging the judiciary into politics.

It is creating an atmosphere of fear for the judiciary. One of their leaders asked the Supreme Court to delay the Ayodhya hearing because of 2019 polls. When a judge doesnt pay heed to their demands, they try to threaten the judiciary with impeachment. How can such things be accepted? he asked, adding that he had assured full freedom to the judiciary to ensure justice.

Modis reference is to Congress leader Kapil Sibal who sought deferment of the Ayodhya site dispute case to until after 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

Sibal had sought the deferment as the counsel for the Sunni Waqf Board and told the court that the Ayodhya matter has serious repercussions outside the court.

Hindu leaders and groups have intensified demand for building Ram temple after the Supreme Court in October pushed the hearing in the dispute to January 2019.

Uddhav Thackeray, chief of BJP ally Shiv Sena, has said that the Modi government will not be in power if it does not build a Ram temple.

Hindus believe the 16th-century mosque, Babri Masjid, was built over a temple dedicated to Hindu god Ram, whose birthplace is also considered to be at the site. The mosque was demolished by a mob of thousands in 1992, triggering a cycle of violence and riots across India.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a sharp attack on Congress president Rahul Gandhi accused him of defending those who were abusing his parents, and argued that Congress was doing so because they had run out of issues and did not want to take on the BJP on a debate over development.

Speaking at a public meeting in Vidisha, Modi said, Two days ago they dragged my mothers name during a rally and today I read in social media that they had dragged my fathers name who died 30 years ago and had nothing to do with politics, and Namdaar (Gandhi) is defending them.

Modi was referring to Congress leader Vilasrao Muttemwars comment during an election meeting in Rajasthan that while the world knows who Rahul Gandhis parents were, no one knew who Modis father was.

In Alwar, the PM described the Congress as the partys jatiwadi mansikta (caste mentality) while referring to Congress leader CP Joshi reportedly questioning the PMs caste at an election rally in Nathdwara on Friday.

Someone abuses my mother, someone questions my caste, he said, while quoting both Kabir and seer Ravidas to drive home the point that humans were one despite their caste.

The PM also said that the Congress gives more importance to its leaders than Mother India, in reference to a video of Congress leader BD Kalla where he is seen stopping a man shouting Bharat Mata ki Jai and telling him to say Sonia Gandhi ki jai.

In both Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, Modi reiterated that the Congress was resorting to jatiwaad ka zeher (the poison of caste) and claimed the moral of the rival party was down whereas that of BJP was up.

He also said four members of one family got Bharat Ratna but Ambedkar did not get the countrys highest civilian award and the Congress ensured his defeat in elections.

Reacting to Modis speech, Congress Odisha in-charge Jitendra Singh alleged that the Prime Minister was spreading lies in the name development in Rajasthan and elsewhere. In Modis speech there were many words such as ego, development, casteism, dalit, religion, dynastic, small mentality, martyrdom of jawans, one rank-one pension, welfare of farmers, development by the Vasundhara Raje government and so on. They were just lies told to cheat people, he said.
Campaigning for the upcoming Telangana Assembly polls is set to reach its crescendo with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Congress president Rahul Gandhi and other senior leaders scheduled to hold rallies in the state this week.

Modi will address public meetings at Nizamabad and Mahabubnagar on November 27, state BJP president K Laxman said on Saturday.

He will address another campaign meeting at the Lal Bahadur stadium in Hyderabad on December 3, ahead of the state polls scheduled on December 7, he said.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah, who is taking part in the campaign on Sunday, would again visit the state on November 28 and December 2, Laxman said.

Also read | Telangana assembly elections: Two lakh less voters in 2018 than in 2014 polls, says CEC

Rahul Gandhi would participate in a road show at Parigi and Chevella near Hyderabad on November 29, according to former Congress MLA T Rammohan Reddy.

The Congress chief had attended a public meeting at Medchal on the outskirts of Hyderabad along with UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi on November 23.

The tour schedule of Telugu Desam Party president and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu is being finalised and he is likely to campaign in Telangana on November 28 and 29, TDP polit bureau member Ravula Chandrasekhar Reddy said.

The BJP is going solo in the state Assembly polls while the Congress is leading a grand alliance of opposition parties including the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), the Communist Party of India (CPI) and the Telangana Jana Samiti (TJS).

Naidu and Rahul Gandhi are expected to jointly campaign in favour of the alliances candidates.

TJS president M Kodandaram is the main campaigner for his party.

For the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS), its president and caretaker chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao has already been addressing campaign rallies criss-crossing the state.

His son K T Rama Rao, who is a minister in the caretaker government, has been canvassing in the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) region.

The TRS is also going solo in the state polls.

You may also like | Telangana assembly elections 2018: An emotional Sonia Gandhi vows to teach TRS a fitting lesson

For full coverage on Telangana assembly elections 2018 click here
Ranveer Singh and Deepika Padukone are one of the most sought-after couple in Bollywood today. For the last two weeks, they have kept their fans in raptures thanks to the pictures and videos from their various wedding ceremonies at Lake Como in Italy and their reception in Bengaluru. On their return to Mumbai from Bengaluru, Ranveers sister Ritika threw a party for them. In the videos that are now online, we see both of them dancing to songs, both Bollywood and English ones.

However, one particular video has stood out where Ranveer can be seen making a speech. In the said video, he declares his love for his wife and says that he has married the most beautiful woman in the world. He also thanks her for obliging him by wearing a dress similar to the kind Mexican artist Frida Kahlo often wore. He also spoke of a pusy cat motif on his sherwani and thanked all who had gathered there to celebrate their union. He also tells Deepika that they will have an epic future together.

Check out the video here:

Deepikas look at the do was definitely the talking point at the party. Her get-up is like that of Frida, complete with her roses-hemmed hairdo. Ranveer, on his part, was the live wire at the party, dancing with Deepika to English songs, hit songs from his films like Gallan Goodiyaan and popular Govinda numbers.

In the videos and pictures that are online, we clearly see what a wonderful time the couple had.

Deepika and Ranveer got married in the Italian lakeside town of Como in mid-November and have since been the toast of the crowds. Initially, pictures from the many ceremonies were hard to come by but after the official pictures were shared by the couple, there has been a steady stream of updates about their wedding celebrations. Most recent were pictures and videos from their Bengaluru reception where the two of them looked nothing less than a royal couple.

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Kolkata still remains a great city that hasnt lost its heart of culture and among whose people there is some kind of discipline, says P Thankappan Nair, its 86-year-old barefoot chronicler, who has left the eastern metropolis after a 63-year-long association with the city. His legacy will be the 62 books he penned on the city and the 2,000 he purchased over the years and which he has donated to the Town Hall library.

Nair has gone back to his roots  Chendamangalam, a small town in Keralas Ernakulam district  as his children and grandchildren did not want him and his wife to stay on alone in Kolkata at their age. The heart of the city has not changed. Although the city has lost its importance as many companies shifted their operations, but the city has not lost its culture. It still remains a great city, said Nair, while recalling his memories of the city.

Somehow I like the city. It has got some kind of discipline among its people, added Nair, who still prefers to call it Calcutta though the name was changed to Kolkata in 2001. I am already 86 and my two children and three grandchildren do not want me to stay here at this age, though my wife is also staying with me for the last 10 years, he said, while his wife was busy with last-minute packing.

His latest book, Gandhiji in Kolkata, would be released at next years Kolkata Book Fair and he was not sure whether he would present at the event. Explaining his style of work, he said he would gather information from government records, newspaper clippings and listening to the local people as this was very important to know about a city and its culture, he said at his rented accommodation at Kansari Para Road, about 10 minutes walking distance from the National Library  his primary source of research.

I used to ask the people whenever I saw any buildings or came across any little street to collect material and prepare notes about its origin. For example, I have been staying at Kansari Para Road since the 1960s and took interest in how it was named after Kansari.

Recalling the day he had arrived in the city on a Thursday morning in October, 1955, Nair said: Armed with only a matriculation certificate and Rs 20-25 in cash, I had travelled ticketless in a train to Howrah station for seeking a job here. I did not have anybody in Kolkata but had a reference of a U. Raman hailing from a village near mine.

He fell in love with the metropolis at first sight while crossing the river Hooghly and the iconic Howrah Bridge in a tram that took him to Dalhousie Square, Nair said, adding that he managed to meet Raman and stayed with him for few days.

Nair secured a steno-typists job in a private company in Dalhousie Square within a week of his arrival in the city and kept on changing jobs. He eventually got a job at the Anthropological Society of India and was posted in Shillong for few years before returning to Kolkata. The historian has given all the books that he had purchased for his research to the citys Town Hall library to make it an alternative and rich source of historical documents, beside the National Library, he said.

I used to go to College Street every day and had purchased almost each and every book written on Calcutta and West Bengal. There are about 1,700 books. In addition, a list of 300 books is being prepared and these would also deposited to the Town Hall authority. I have chosen the Town Hall as an alternative source of books as there are many books on the city in the National Library, Nair explained.

The research work that I am intending to take up will be of a different kind. There is scope of researching in my native village because Chendamangalam is a place where the first printing was started in India by Portuguese. I would like to explore more on this, said Nair, who still remains on the lookout for a new challenge.
Rajvinder Grewal has quit as Liberal MP from Brampton East as he is struggling with a personal gambling addiction.

In a Facebook post addressed to his constituency on Saturday, the 33-year-old Ludhiana-origin leader, better known as Raj Grewal, said: As many Canadians that suffer from addiction issues, I recognise that I have a problem. My focus is now entirely on my mental health and spending time with my family as I recover.

To my family, friends, and supporters, I am sorry to have disappointed you. You have all poured so much time, energy and love into me. To my constituents and colleagues, you put your faith in me to serve. I enjoy my job, every minute of it. But recently, I knew I could no longer serve my constituents to the best of my ability due to my personal problem. It is for that reason, I decided to take some time to look after my health, he wrote, requesting privacy.

A statement released by Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus office also clarified that Grewal was resigning to seek treatment for the problem of gambling which had led him to incur significant personal debts.

Trudeau backed Grewals decision and tweeted, Yesterday (on Thursday), I learned that Raj Grewal is facing serious personal challenges, and today he announced he is stepping down as Member of Parliament for Brampton East. While it may have been a difficult decision, it was the right one. I hope he receives the support he needs.

SETBACK FOR LIBERALS

The move comes as a setback for the Punjabi diaspora in Canadas Ontario province and for Trudeaus team since Grewal, who hails from Sarabha village in Ludhiana, had already been re-nominated by the Liberal Party as its candidate for the 2019 federal elections. Trudeau will now need to call for a bypoll before that due to the timing of the resignation.

Grewal, who had assumed office in the House of Commons in Canada on October 19, 2015, made his first announcement via a Facebook post on Thursday evening, citing personal and medical reasons. At the same time, he said he was hopeful of being able to again represent his constituency.
The Indian voice cast of Netflixs Mowgli: The Legend of the Jungle was introduced in Mumbai on Sunday. In the presence of director and actor Andy Serkis and original cast members Christian Bale, Freida Pinto and Rohan Chand - theyre in India to attend the films world premiere - Bollywood actors Abhishek Bachchan, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Madhuri Dixit and Anil Kapoor spoke about the challenges of translating such a beloved story for Indian audiences.

Abhishek, who provides the Hindi voice of Bagheera in the film - performed originally through state-of-the-art motion capture by Christian Bale - said that to fit Hindi into English lines was very challenging. Both languages have their own, very distinct qualities, he said, and to try and Indianise the movie was difficult.

The stars in attendance at the press conference of Netflixs Mowgli: The Legend of the Jungle in Mumbai. (Viral Bhayani)

The Hindi trailer for the film - a darker and edgier adaptation of Rudyard Kiplings The Jungle Book, which will also be dubbed into Tamil and Telugu - was premiered before the press at the same event. The trailer was received with sweeping applause, directed in particular at the villainous Shere Khans fleeting appearance towards the end. Neither original actor Benedict Cumberbatch nor his Hindi counterpart, Jackie Shroff, were present. Much attention was also given to Kareenas seductive and hypnotic character, Kaa, originally performed by Oscar-winner, Cate Blanchett.

Kareena Kapoor pose for the paparazzi at the trailer launch of Netflixs Mowgli in Mumbai. (Viral Bhayani)

Kareena Kapoor smiles at the trailer launch of Netflixs Mowgli in Mumbai. (Viral Bhayani)

Christian Bale with Abhishek Bachchan (left) and Freida Pinto, Kareena Kapoor and Madhuri Dixit at the trailer launch of Netflixs Mowgli in Mumbai. (Viral Bhayani)

Rohan Chand and Louis Serkis (left) and Christian Bale at the event. (Viral Bhayani)

But like Abhishek, who acknowledged that his job was made easier by having such strong references for the character in Bales performance, Anil Kapoor, who voices Baloo, also thanked Serkis for his layered characterisation. Serkis, in addition to directing the film, also plays the fan favourite bear. This more nuanced take on what has historically been such a fun-loving character, as Abhishek pointed out, was what convinced Anil to take on the role. Usually youd have the director right next to you when you dub for a film, but this time I had Andys voice, he said.

As evidenced by the Hindi trailer, Anil has brought a lot of his own personality to the role of Baloo. At one point, he even drops his catchphrase, Jhakaas!

Andy Serkis and Anil Kapoor at the trailer launch of Netflixs Mowgli in Mumbai. (Viral Bhayani)

Whenever I would get stuck, I would listen to Andys voice (as Baloo) over and over again, and try to figure out what emotion he was going for, what he was thinking, Anil continued. He also pointed out that this was the first time in a decade that he was sharing the stage with Freida Pinto, his co-star in the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire.

As the only Indian member of the films main cast, Freida said that it was important for her to represent India responsibly. Like many millions, she said that she grew up watching the Jungle Book television series on Doordarshan. No other version focuses on the village life as much, she noted, and said that she was glad this new film spends significant time in a village setting. Freida plays Messua, Mowglis adoptive human mother. She also dubbed her own Hindi lines, which she thanked Serkis for allowing her to do.

Like Freida, Abhishek also remembers watching the animated series on television as a child. A Japanese production, the show became hugely popular in India, thanks to its original theme song, written by acclaimed lyricist Gulzar.

When youre younger, Abhishek said, you identify with Baloo, but as you grow older you begin to relate with Bagheera, who represents a certain responsibility, he said. But while translating the film for an Indian audience wasnt easy, We were merely trying to live up to the standard Andy and Christian had set, he said.

This sentiment was echoed by Madhuri, who voices Mowglis wolf mother, Nisha - a role originally performed by Naomie Harris. Ms Harris did such a brilliant job, Madhuri said, adding that she had a blast playing such a beautiful and ferocious character.

Freida Pinto and Madhuri Dixit at the event. (Viral Bhayani)

Madhuri will produce an upcoming film, titled 15th August, for Netflix. The streaming giants announcement that they would hold the world premiere of Mowgli in India signals the importance of the market in their future plans. Only a few weeks ago, at an event in Singapore, Netflix had announced nine new originals from India. The streaming service previously brought Brad Pitt (for War Machine) and the cast of Bright (led by Will Smith) to India for promotions.

Mowgli: The Legend of the Jungle will be released in all territories where Netflix is available on December 7. A limited theatrical release will be given, starting November 29, in the UK and the US.

Follow @htshowbiz for more
Two lawyers who defended Ajmal Kasab in the 2008 Mumbai attack case on the directions of the Bombay High Court are yet to get their legal fees from the Maharashtra government.

While the state government says they have not submitted any bills, the lawyers say that state prosecutors are not supposed to.

The two lawyers -- Amin Solkar and Farhana Shah -- were tasked with defending Kasab, hanged to death on November 21, 2012 for killing over 166 people in Mumbai, by the Maharashtra State Legal Services Department after they were nominated by then acting Chief Justice of Bombay High Court J N Patel.

A notification about their appointment was issued on June 8, 2010 after Kasab had expressed his desire to contest the verdict of the trial court sentencing him to death in the Bombay High Court. According to the notification, Solkar was to receive remuneration equivalent to what is sanctioned for a public prosecutor, who conducts a death confirmation appeal, and Shah was to receive fees on par with an assistant prosecutor.

Also read | 26/11 terror attacks: Cops were afraid, let Kasab flee from station, recounts photojournalist

Keeping in tradition with the fairness of the trial, the law allows for appointment of a lawyer from the legal services department if accused is unable to do so.

Solkar and Shah had argued for Kasab in the Bombay High Court against his death sentence almost on a day-to-day basis for nearly nine months before it confirmed the death sentence on the lone gunman, who sprayed bullets barbarically on November 26, 2008. His conviction was upheld by the Supreme Court a year later and he was hanged to death in 2012 inside the Yerwada prison in Pune.

When contacted by PTI, both Solkar and Shah said they are yet to receive their fees.

Both the lawyers said they had given the case priority as the high court was hearing it on a day-to-day basis from 11am to 5pm. I do not know why the state government has not made any efforts to pay us our fees. It has been seven years since the judgment was delivered by the high court. The Supreme Court confirmed the death penalty and Kasab is also dead. But we are still waiting (for the fees), Solkar told PTI.

He said he was contemplating legal action to get his dues cleared from the state government.

You may also like | How the secret operation to shift 26/11 terrorist Ajmal Kasab for hanging unfolded

We are only asking for what is legally due to us. The law says every accused should get a fair trial. To ensure this, we were appointed to defend Kasab... then why this delay in paying us our fees, Solkar said.

Shah, on the other hand, says she has given up hopes that she will get her remuneration for appearing in the case.

I have now given up. I consider it as a pro bono case (a case taken up voluntarily and without payment), Shah, who had defended several accused in the 1993 Mumbai serial bomb blasts case, told PTI.

While the exact amount per hearing was not known, sources in the know put the figure somewhere between Rs 1,500 to Rs 2,000 per day.

An official from the state governments law and judiciary department said the government would pay the fees only after the two lawyers submit their bills.

To this, both Solkar and Shah said the need to submit bills does not arise at all as they were appointed by the high court and a notification to this effect was issued by the government.

Does the government ask for bills from the public prosecutor before giving them their remuneration? Solkar said.

Also read | 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks: Father remembers Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan

Abbas Kazmi, a lawyer who had defended Kasab before trial judge M L Tahalayani, claims he has been paid by the government for his services.

My remuneration was given by the government soon after the completion of the trial, Kazmi said, adding he got his fees without having to submit any bills to the government.

Ten Pakistani terrorists had launched a dastardly attack on key locations in the city on the night of November 26, 2008. The terrorists killed 166 people and injured over 600 others.

The places that were attacked included the CST railway station in south Mumbai, the Taj Hotel and the Trident Hotel in south Mumbai, Cafe Leopold and Chabad House at Colaba in south Mumbai.

The attacks lasted three days. While nine of the terrorists were killed during the siege, Kasab was caught alive by the Mumbai police at Marine Drive in south Mumbai.

Read more | They called me Kasab ki beti: 9-year-old shot during 26/11 Mumbai attacks recounts horror
Three children died after a live mortar shell, picked from an army firing range and stored in a house, exploded on Saturday, Arunachal Pradesh police said.

The incident happened in Chirang village in Anjaw district of Arunachal Pradesh. The village is near an Indian Army firing range.

According to Habung Hailyang, Superintendent of Police, Anjaw, the incident happened at 5.30 pm on Saturday at the residence of Shibsu Krong, a petty contractor.

Three children, including Krongs two-year-old son, and two cousins aged eight and ten, who were living with the family, had gone to the store, to fetch some firewood.

They seem to have accidentally picked up a mortar shell that had been stored there. The shell exploded, killing them on the spot, said Hailyang. He said that the shell had probably been stored by the family for nearly a year and that they may not have known that it was a live shell.

Hailyang said that the villagers often go to the nearby firing range to pick up used shells which they sell either as scrap or melt to extract metals.

The police has registered a case of unnatural death and are investigating the incident.

Meanwhile, Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu expressed deep shock and grief over the incident and has announced a compensation of Rs 4 lakh to the next of kin from the Chief Ministers Relief Fund.

According to a statement from the Chief Ministers Office, Khandu cautioned the villagers asking them to avoid going to danger zones like the Army firing ranges even as he requested the Army to issue advisories to the locals.
Guru Nanaks 550th birth anniversary to be celebrated in a grand manner

Guru Nanak 550th birth anniversary is being celebrated in a grand manner. All governments and departments and embassies have been asked to observe the anniversary in a grand manner.

Govt has made a very important decision to open Kartarpur Corridor so that people of our nation can easily go to Kartarpur in Pakistan and visit the sacred place of Guru Nanak Dev.

Nov 26 is Constitution Day

Tomorrow, November 26 is Constitution Day. An extensive and descriptive constitution was done by the great men. Even poor can become prosperous. A combination of rights and duties will take citizen forward.

Todays youth wont do things that they dont believe in

Sometimes our elders become hurdle to conversation. I try to learn from youths, match their wavelengths.

Todays youth are very ambitious today. They wont do things that they dont believe in. If they believe in something, they will leave everything and do that. Youths ask a lot of question. They dont want to waste time and want to achieve things fast. They will transform the nation.

The spirit of Mann ki Baat is of the people: PM Modi

Voice is mine, but examples, emotion and the spirit of Mann ki Baat is of the people: PM Modi

I become family member of people while reading letters

I get letters from people. I read this closely and understand the circumstances of the person. By this, I become part of the family of the person, and have become a family member of many people across the country: PM Modi

Our country will remain Atal, our culture will remain eternal

If a leader has crores of listeners, what more does he need. A study found that it has been non-political. Modi will come, Modi will go, but our country will remain Atal, our culture will remain eternal: PM Modi

Radio has wide impact, says PM Modi

On being asked why he chose radio for Mann ki Baat, Modi said: While working as a BJP worker in Himachal in 1998, I stopped for tea at a dhaba. The person running the dhaba gave me sweets, surprising me. He said India has tested nuclear bomb and said he had heard on radio. Radio is the most extensive communication medium, probably has an impact unmatched by any other.

PM Modi to share his thoughts with the people of the country

PM Modi starts Mann ki Baat by greeting people on the golden jubilee of the show.
Another major terrorist attack in India of the magnitude similar to the 26/11 strike originating from Pakistan could easily escalate into a regional war, scholars, former diplomats and US officials have warned ahead of the 10th anniversary of the deadly Mumbai terror attack.

Some 166 people, including Americans, were killed in the attack carried out by Pakistan-based 10 Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorists. Nine of the attackers were killed by police while lone survivor Ajmal Kasab was captured and hanged after handed down death sentence by an Indian court.

Perpetrators of the 26/11 attack, including its mastermind and banned Jamat-ud Dawa (JuD) chief Hafiz Saeed, continue to roam freely in Pakistan, indicating that Islamabad is not serious in bringing them to justice. The US has offered a $10 million reward for information that brings Saeed to justice.

Also Read: Mumbai 26/11 Terror attacks: When LeT trained Ajmal Kasab on how to fish

The 26/11 attack case has entered into the 10th year but none of its seven suspects in Pakistan has been punished yet, showing that the case had never been in its priority list.

The victims of 26/11 have yet to see the masterminds of the attack in the LeT and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) face justice; unfortunately, that is virtually impossible in Pakistan, former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) official Bruce Riedel told PTI.

Riedel, senior fellow and director of Brookings Intelligence Project, believes that another terror attack in India of similar magnitude would result in a war between the two countries.

If another attack of this magnitude occurs, there will be war, he said.

Pakistans former envoy to the US Husain Haqqani said: With US-Pakistan relations in a tailspin and hawkish attitudes dominating the subcontinent, one cannot predict if and how the situation would be controlled in the event of another major terrorist attack in India, with clear linkages to groups in Pakistan.

Currently a senior fellow and Director for South and Central Asia at the Hudson Institute, Haqqani said Pakistan must fulfil its promise of acting against the masterminds of the 26/11 attack.

That it has chosen to let them operate freely raises the justifiable concern that Pakistans deep state does not want to deter or punish terrorists responsible for attacks in India.

In 2008, Pakistans promise of acting against the LeT and those involved in the Mumbai attack prevented escalation of India-Pakistan hostilities. The US also helped calm things down by sharing intelligence with both Pakistan and India, he said.

Agreed a senior Bush administration official, who was inside the White House at the time of the 26/11 attack.

That (India-Pakistan war) was a primary concern and a primary scenario that we wanted to avoid, Anish Goel, who was director of South Asia in the National Security Council of the White House at the time of the 26/11 attack, told PTI.

Noting that there was a lot of pressure on then prime minister Manmohan Singh to react kinetically, Goel said then US president George Bush and secretary of state Condoleezza Rice had to make a lot of efforts including several phone calls to New Delhi, Islamabad and leaders of several American allies to prevent such a scenario.

Bush was very concerned, and got on phone with Singh immediately, offering condolences and urging restraint, he said. Rice travelled to the region trying to cool things.

Theres a lot of public pressure. I think prime minister Singh himself was showing a lot of restraint and was not inclined to do a counter attack right away, but there was a lot of political pressure on him to do so, said Goel.

The US, I believe -- I dont know for sure, you have to ask the Indian government to know -- having counseling or urging him to show restraint, gave him some sort of political leeway and maneuverability to resist the domestic political pressures from those calling for a quick counterstrike on Pakistan, he said, adding that at no point there was any evidence of military mobilisation.

There was a sense of nervousness in the then Bush administration about a possible nuclear war in South Asia. The Mumbai terror attack started a day before Thanksgiving  a national holiday in the US  and did not end till Sunday, the last day of the long weekend. Bush not only held situation room meeting on Saturday, but also mobilised his entire administration to try and prevent escalation of the tension, Goel added.

A senior former Obama administration official said if another attack would have happened like that, it would quickly escalates into a regional war.

The current government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has already taken a tough line against Islamabad including a surgical strike, the official said on anonymity.

I could certainly foresee a situation where he (prime minister Modi) escalates those quite a bit in response to the terrorist attack. Then for the US government, I just dont know if the Trump administration would counsel restraint the way the Bush administration did, he said.

The Trump administration might say they (Indians) are justified, he said.

Not only are we not going to stop you, but were going to help you. I dont know that they would do, but I dont know if they would carry the same message of constraints.

So, when youre talking about what could happen in the region, if there was another Mumbai attack after the Pakistanis have promised theres no terrorists operating in our country and were going after all of them, I could see a scenario which quickly escalates into a regional war, he added.

(This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.)
Vishva Hindu Parishads (VHP) two-day show of strength in Ayodhya ended on Sunday with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) affiliate asking Muslims to hand over the land for the construction of a Ram temple in place of the demolished Babri mosque there.

If an ordinance is brought for the temple construction, it will not end with Ayodhya. The process of the ordinance will begin for Kashi Vishwanath (Varanasi), Mathura and other temples, said Swami Parmanand, who presided over the VHPs two-day Dharam Sabha (religious assembly) to press for the temple construction. He was referring to other mosques allegedly constructed in place of temples in the medieval times.

Our temples were broken by (Muslim) rulers. The common Muslim is not responsible... So, a common Muslim should not associate himself with those oppressors, said Parmanand.

He asked Muslims to surrender the land for the temple to strengthen brotherhood. If our request is not heard, we will continue our fight for the Ram temple, Parmanand said. He added they have complete faith in VHP that has taken the Ram temple movement to this stage.

VHP vice-president Champat Rai ruled out the division of land and said no mosque would be allowed in Ayodhya. No mosque, with the name of Babri Masjid, will be allowed anywhere in India. He called the Ayodhya issue non-negotiable for Hindus.

The distribution of land is not acceptable to us and we want the whole land for Lord Ram... Hindus would not accept the offering of namaaz over any piece of the disputed land.

Jagadguru Swami Rambhadracharya hinted the Centre was contemplating an ordinance to pave way for the temple. I spoke to a senior Union minister on November 23. He informed me that the Centre could not take a decision on the issue in view of the Election Commissions code of conduct for ongoing assembly elections in five states, he said.

I feel an ordinance will be brought as they (the BJP government) will not betray us. The minister has asked me to inform the people about this in the Dharam Sabha, said Rambhadracharya, who left the venue after the next speaker raised doubts about his conversation with the minister. I am speaking the truth, Rambhadracharya insisted.

Mahant Nritya Gopal Das, the chief of Ram Janmbhoomi Nyas formed to promote and oversee the temple construction, said the BJP has majority in Parliament as well as in the Uttar Pradesh assembly. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and chief minister Yogi Adityanath should work to pave the way for the temple construction.

Nand Kishore, 82, an Ambedkar Nagar-resident who attended the Dharam Sabha, said there has been much delay in the temple construction. The Hindus cannot wait any longer. We want an exact date for construction work to start.

An uneasy calm prevailed in Ayodhyas Muslim-dominated areas despite a heavy security deployment. Many Muslims had left the temple town in view of the sabha. Earlier, authorities tightened security after tens of thousands of slogan-shouting VHP volunteers turned up in Ayodhya demanding that the temple be constructed at the earliest. The volunteers held saffron flags and arrived on motorcycles, buses and in cars.

Authorities restricted peoples movements and beefed up the security of Iqbal Ansari, a party to the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid title suit in the Supreme Court, as a precautionary measure.
Bhagwat says SC not giving priority to Ayodhya case

The matter is in Court, the decision should be given early. It has also been proved that the temple was there. Supreme Court is not giving priority to the case. Justice delayed is justice denied: RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat at Hunkar Sabha in Nagpur.

VHP tells Muslims to handover land for Ram temple

VHP in the Dharma Sabha tells Muslims to handover land for Ram temple before BJPs move for ordinance or else they will include demand for Kashi, Mathura and other temples.

VHPs Dharma Sabha resolves

Vishwa Hindu Parishads Dharma Sabha resolves for construction of Ram temple. The organisation has not come up with any deadline and there is no demand for an ordinance.

Vishwa Hindu Parishads Dharma Sabha resolves for construction of Ram temple ( HT Photo )

People from intelligence agencies have been deployed: ADG (law and order)

We received alert by the Intelligence Bureau (IB) a few days back, it was a non-specific alert. Action is being take. People from intelligence agencies under state government and centre have been deployed there and are monitoring the situation, says ADG (law and order) on input by IB of an attack in Ayodhya.

Hindus want Ayodhya, Kashi and Mathura: RSS

Krishna Gopal of RSS says Hindus want Ayodhya, Kashi and Mathura. We will follow whatever decision is taken at this Dharma Sabha.

Drone cameras being used to assess crowd: ADG (law and order)

ADG (law and order) says heavy deployment of CAPF(Central Armed Police Forces), PAC(Provincial Armed Constabulary), ATS(Anti-Terrorism Squad) has been done.Drone cameras being used to assess crowd. 13 parking spots have been designated, 2000 buses from various places have come to Ayodhya.

Ayodhya has been divided into red and yellow zones: Police

Ayodhya has been divided into zones and security scheme has been implemented, says police.

Ayodhya has been divided into zones. Security scheme has been implemented. Red zone and yellow zone are two main security zones. State govt, state police and administration are committed to uphold the directions by the Supreme Court and High Court: ADG (law and order) Anand Kumar pic.twitter.com/rAfKIfERpe  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) November 25, 2018

Traffic jam at Lucknow- Gorakhpur highway

Traffic jam at Toll plazas located on Lucknow- Gorakhpur highway.

Traffic jam at Toll plazas located on Lucknow- Gorakhpur highway. ( HT Photo )

Negligible presence of police

There is almost negligible presence of cops. Only RAF personnel are regulating traffic movement on the Faizabad- Ayodhya highway.

People from Barabanki district have come to attend rally

People from as far as Barabanki district have also come to attend the rally. Slogans like Baccha Baccha Ram Ka, Janmabhoomi ka kaam ka, Bharat Mata ki Jai and Jai Sri Ram are being raised by people arriving for the rally.

Around 2 lakh people have already reached rally venue

There is constant movement of people from adjoining areas to the VHPs Dharma Sabha at Bade Bhakt Mahal in Ayodhya. Around 2 lakh people have already reached the rally venue. People are still coming on bikes, pick-up vans, school buses, trucks and cars.

Around 2 lakh people have already reached the rally venue. ( HT Photo )

Ram Lalla is in lock up: VHP

Ram Lalla is in lock up and we have to take him out to a magnificent temple. Ramanujacharya fire of 1992 has not died down, says VHP.

Ayodhya is a pilgrimage of the Hindus: VHP

Ayodhya is a pilgrimage of the Hindus, so only a temple should be constructed here. There is no name of Babri masjid in India. Some will try to mislead the Hindus, says Rai.

Namaz on grabbed land not acceptable: VHP

Namaz on grabbed land not acceptable. This land was taken by force. No one should test our patience,says Champat Rai.

We do not want division of land: VHP

We do not want division of land. We want the entire land. Government of India should fulfil its commitment, says Champat Rai.

Fight for Ram temple is continuing for 490 years: VHP

Some intellectuals think Ram temple issue is over with demotion of Babri masjid, says VHP vice president Champat Rai. The fight for Ram temple is continuing for 490 years.

Drone cameras deployed at the venue

Drone cameras deployed for security at the venue.

Virat Dharma Sabha begins

Virat Dharma Sabha begins with chanting of Vedic hymns.

High security at the Vishwa Hindu Parishad venue

High security at the Vishwa Hindu Parishad venue for Virat Dharma Sabha.

Had Balasaheb been alive, he would have prevented Uddhav: UP Deputy CM

There is no problem in Uddhav Thackeray catching a glimpse of Ram Lalla... But, had Balasaheb Thackeray been alive, he would have prevented Uddhav from doing whatever he is doing, Uttar Pradesh deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya told news agency PTI.

Ram temple will definitely be built: Uddhav

This government needs to understand that if the Ram temple is not built, they might not come back to power. But the temple will definitely be built, says Thackeray.

Dont play with the sentiments of the Hindus: Uddhav

If the matter is under legal jurisdiction, then the party should not use it as a poll plank.I have come here to say this only that dont play with the sentiments of the Hindus, says Uddhav.

Temple should be constructed at the earliest: Uddhav

Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray says temple should be constructed at the earliest.

Maine suna tha ki CM Yogi ji ne kaha ki mandir tha, hai aur rahega. Ye to hamari dhaarna hai, hamari bhavna hai. Dukh iss baat ka hai ki wo dikh nahi raha, wo mandir dikhega kab. Jald se jald uska nirmaan hona chahiye: Uddhav Thackeray, Shiv Sena chief pic.twitter.com/3mjgtSOwHN  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) November 25, 2018

I have no hidden agenda in coming to Ayodhya: Uddhav Thackeray

Saints who blessed me yesterday,I had told them that the work which we are about to begin cant be done without their blessings.I have no hidden agenda in coming to Ayodhya.I have come to express sentiments of all Indians and Hindus across the world.All are waiting for Ram Temple, says Thackeray.

Tight security near Hanuman Gadi Temple

Tight security near Hanuman Gadi Temple and Ram Janm Bhoomi in Ayodhya.

Tight security near Hanuman Gadi Temple and Ram Janmbhoomi in Ayodhya ( HT Photo )

Police recovers a weapon from a Bajrang Dal activist

Police recovers a weapon from a Bajrang Dal activist near Ram Janmbhoomi.

VHP workers leaving for Ayodhya from Gorakhpur

Vishwa Hindu Parishad workers are leaving for Ayodhya from Gorakhpur.

Vishwa Hindu Parishad workers are leaving for Ayodhya from Gorakhpur. ( HT Photo )

Thackeray returns to the hotel after visiting the Ram Mandir

Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray visits Ram Mandir, set to address media shortly.

Ayodhya: Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray returns to the hotel after visiting the Ram Lalla temple earlier today. pic.twitter.com/Py0I4yPdKd  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) November 25, 2018

Hindu Yuva Vahini volunteers going to Ayodhya

Volunteers of Hindu Yuva Vahini (raised by Yogi Adityanath in 2002) going to Ayodhya from neighbouring Basti district.

Volunteers of Hindu Yuva Vahini are going to Ayodhya from neighbouring Basti district. ( HT Photo )

Arrangements made for parking

Police ensures that arrangement is in place and everything would be done in an organised way.

Weve made all the arrangements for the programme (VHPs dharma sansad). Weve allotted spaces for parking, bypass is running smoothly & well ensure it stays like that. Darshan will be from the usual routes. Well do everything in an organized way: DIG Ayodhya, Omkar Singh pic.twitter.com/igqgu5WgCR  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) November 25, 2018

Alert on Indo-Nepal border

Alert on India-Nepal border in Bahraich and Siddharthnagar district as large number of people from Nepal are also going to Ayodhya to participate in the VHP Dharma Sabha.

Slogans changing to Raja Ram Chandra ki Jai

Slogans changing to Raja Ram Chandra ki Jai, Har Har Mahadev and Jai Sri Ram. Security allowing entry only in small numbers.

Blowing conch shells and raising Jai Ram slogans

Blowing conch shells and raising Jai Ram slogans, the people including devotees and VHP workers are reaching the entry point to the make shift temple.

Long queue for darshan at make shift temple

People are coming in large numbers for darshan at the make shift temple.

Sena workers reaching

Shiv Sena workers are reaching Ram janmbhoomi at a makeshift temple in large numbers before arrival of Udhav Thackeray.

VHP volunteers started reaching Ayodhya from last night

Buses carrying Vishwa Hindu Parishad volunteers started reaching Ayodhya on Saturday night.

Police diverting all vehicles

Police stopping and diverting all vehicles, even media vehicles are not being allowed. Those in Ayodhya are also finding it difficult to come to other side.

Security tightened in Ayodhya

Security has been tightened in Ayodhya ahead of the separate events of Shiv Sena and VHP being organised in the city today over the matter of Ram Temple.

Security has been tightened in Ayodhya ahead of the separate events of Shiv Sena and VHP being organised in the city today over the matter of #RamTemple. pic.twitter.com/7pHNcrEl2w  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) November 25, 2018
The temple town of Ayodhya is all set to witness the biggest congregation of Hindus on Sunday for the VHPs Dharma Sabha since December 6, 1992, when Kar Sevaks had razed the Babri Mosque.

Thousands of Hindu religious figures and their followers have descended on the city to crusade for the construction of a Ram temple on the ruins of a disputed 16th century mosque, as the authorities threw a tight security ring around the tense but calm holy city to deter troublemakers.

More than a lakh people are expected for the rally which will be held at the Bade Bhakt Mahal ground near Ram ghat. The meeting will start around 12 noon but the main speakers are likely to address the gathering between 2pm and 4pm. A senior functionary of the RSS might also attend the rally and address the gathering.

International vice-president of the VHP, Champat Rai has said that no politician will be allowed to share the main stage with seers and address the rally.

Prominent seers likely to attend the VHPs event are Jagat Guru Ramanandacharya, Swami Hansdevacharya from Haridwar, Rambhadracharya from Chitrakoot, Rameshwar Das Vaishnav from Rishikesh and Mahant Nritya Gopal Das of the Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas among others.

Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray will also offer prayers at the makeshift Ram Mandir at the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid campus along with his wife Rashmi and son Aditya. Shiv Sainiks are also expected to offer prayers at the makeshift temple.

Thackeray had on Saturday demanded that the government should announce a date for the construction of the Ram temple raising the pitch for the building of the Ram Temple at the disputed site in Ayodhya.

A large contingent of police force has been deployed in Ayodhya. Several companies of the para-military force have also been rushed from the state capital as a precautionary measure.

On Saturday night, additional security force was deployed in areas having mixed population of Hindus and Muslims and in predominantly Muslim areas like Tedi Bazar and Kajiana areas.

In a bid to ensure success of the Dharma Sabha, senior RSS functionaries are camping at Karsevakpuram for the past 15 days.
Uttar Pradesh deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya on Sunday disapproved of the Shiv Sena push for constructing a Ram temple in Ayodhya, saying the party had no role in the temple movement. Mauryas remarks came a day after Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray asked the BJP-led NDA government to declare a date for the construction of the Ram temple.

The Shiv Sena had no role in the temple movement or even in the dharma Sabha, though Balasaheb Thackeray would support the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Maurya told PTI on the phone.

There is no problem in Uddhav Thackeray catching a glimpse of Ram lalla... But, had Balasaheb Thackeray been alive, he would have prevented Uddhav from doing whatever he is doing, he added.

Also Read: Build Ram Mandir or you wont remain in power: Uddhav Thackeray warns ally BJP

He said Uddhav Thackeray should take the VHP, which is leading such a large-scale movement, along with his party. There is no point creating a divide.

The deputy chief minister, who was a part of the VHP during the Ram temple movement, said, The devotees of lord Ram know who can actually make a sacrifice now and who had made a sacrifice earlier. Maurya also denounced Akhilesh Yadavs statement that the Army must be deployed for the Dharam Sabha, saying the remarks showed the Samajwadi Party chiefs frustration.

Referring to the firing on the Kar Sevaks in Ayodhya in 1990, he said, If Akhilesh Yadav is thinking that a 1990-like situation will prevail, then this will not happen under the government headed by Yogi Adityanath. We will provide adequate security to all and take necessary action. This is a Dharma Sabha, and there is no need to deploy the Army, and Akhilesh Yadav must understand this, the UP deputy chief minister said.

Also Read: Keep your Ali, Bajrangbali is enough for us: Yogi Adityanath to Congress

Asked about a section of the Muslim community feeling apprehensive about the event, he said, No one needs to fear (anything). There is peace in Uttar Pradesh. The government has made elaborate security arrangements to ensure that no untoward incident takes place.

Maurya said, A large section of the Muslim community wants a temple at the Ram Janmabhoomi. However, some political parties that indulge in appeasement politics are trying their best to create hindrances. The BJP supports the construction of a grand Ram temple in Ayodhya, and it has assumed the shape of a national movement. For the BJP, Ram temple has never been an election issue, but has been a matter of faith and devotion. There is no point in deriving any electoral mileage from this issue, he added.

The UPs deputy chief minister also made it clear that no mosque, memorial or tomb (maqbara) in the name of Babar will be allowed to come up at Ram janmabhoomi.

Asked about a date for the construction of Ram temple, Maurya said, Till the time the matter is pending in the Supreme Court, neither the BJP nor other organizations associated with the temple movement can tell the dates. This is the job of the VHP, the Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas and the seers. The BJP will lend its moral support to this movement.
A Ram temple will be built in Ayodhya whether or not the present government at the Centre stays in power, said Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray on Sunday, day 2 of his visit to the Uttar Pradesh temple town. It was another in a series of barbs that he has shot at ally BJP during his visit.

If it doesnt build it, then this government may not stay, but the Mandir will still be built, Thackeray said at a press conference on Sunday morning after a visit to the makeshift Ram temple at the disputed Ram Janmbhoomi Babri Masjid site.

The Sena chief said he had sought the blessings of the saints. I told the saints who blessed me yesterday that the work which we are about to begin cant be done without their blessings. I have no hidden agenda in coming to Ayodhya. Ive come here to express the sentiments of all Indians and Hindus across the world. They are all waiting for the Ram Mandir to be built, he said. (Live updates)

Referring to a statement given by Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Thackeray said, I heard that the chief minister had said, mandir tha, hai aur rahega. (There was a mandir, there will be a mandir and there will remain a mandir.) But that is our conviction, our belief, our emotion. What hurts is that we cant see the mandir. When will we see the mandir? It should be built soon, Thackeray said.

The government did not wait for any court order on the issue of Triple Talaq or demonetisation. So, why wait for the courts order for the Ram Mandir? he said.

Continuing his attack on the Modi government, Thackeray said: It is during elections that some people say Ram - Ram. But after polls they go back to sleep.

At a time when assembly elections are happening in five states, the Shiv Sena chief took a veiled dig at the BJP and warned that the party should not use the Ram Mandir issue as a poll plank. If the matter has to go to court, then the party should not use this as a poll plank and should tell the people that this is just another jumla. They should not play with the emotions of Hindus, he said.

On Saturday, Thackeray had, while addressing a gathering at Laxman Quila in Ayodhya, demanded that BJP-led governments at the Centre and in Uttar Pradesh must give a date by which the construction for the Ram Temple will begin in Ayodhya town.

You have to tell us the date, the rest can follow. I want the date today, Thackeray said.

How many years will we have to wait? Generations have gone by ... During Atal Bihari Vajpayees time, it might have been little difficult (to build the temple) but todays government is powerful... If you want to bring in an ordinance bring it or if you want to make a law, do it, he said in Hindi.

Thackerays visit is a part of Senas campaign for the building of the Ram Temple at the disputed site in Ayodhya. Hindus believe the 16th-century mosque, Babri Masjid, was built over a temple dedicated to Hindu god Ram, whose birthplace is also considered to be at the site. The mosque was demolished by a mob of thousands in 1992, triggering a cycle of violence and riots across India.

It is not important to have a big chest. But you should have a heart in your chest, Thackeray said in a comment directed at Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The Sena chief asserted he had to come to Ayodhya to wake up Kumbhakarna, who he said, has been sleeping for the past four years.

The Kumbhakarna slept for six months. But this Kumbhakarna (the Modi government) is sleeping for the past four years, Thackeray said referring to the mythological character in the Hindu epic Ramayana.

I have not come here to fight with anyone or take credit for construction of the Ram Mandir. You (BJP) construct the temple and take credit, Thackeray said.

The Shiv Sena chief said the Modi government has not sought a courts permission to bring demonetisation, asking, Now, for Ram Mandir why you are waiting for courts order?

Hindu groups, including the Bharatiya Janata Partys ideological mentor Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, have called for a law or an ordinance to facilitate the building of a temple at the disputed site. The RSS has also threatened a 1992-like campaign for its construction.

Talk of the government considering an ordinance or a bill to construct a temple in Ayodhya in the remainder of Parliaments term has gained momentum after the RSS demand.

The dispute - among Indias most sensitive and divisive political issue - has slowly returned to the political centre stage over the past few months. The Supreme Court has turned down the Uttar Pradesh governments request to expedite hearing the land title dispute case and pushed the hearing to January next year.

The Shiv Sena, which is part of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) but has had strained ties with ally BJP, has also demanded an ordinance and declare a date for the construction of the Ram temple. It has claimed it has the support of more than 400 members of Parliament cutting across party lines for the ordinance.

And on Friday, senior Sena leader Sanjay Raut pushed it a little further.

The Babri mosque was demolished in 17 minutes ... How long does it take to prepare papers... to bring ordinance... from the Rashtrapati Bhawan to Uttar Pradesh assembly... They are all BJP governments, Raut said.
A businesswoman, driving a luxury sedan, was arrested for allegedly running over a pedestrian near Parama Island on Kolkatas EM Bypass Sunday afternoon.

Aditi Agarwal was in an inebriated state and was alone in the car, locals who blocked the path of the car after the incident told officers from Pragati Maidan police station.

The car she was driving was registered on October 10 this year. Close circuit cameras that monitor traffic movement at the spot caught the car travelling at high speed an officer at Pragati Maidan police station said on condition of anonymity.

Relatives of the deceased, identified as Hari Mohan Ram, 48, have been contacted, he said.

Agarwal has been booked under non-bailable section 304 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), which deals with culpable homicide not amounting to murder. Forensic experts have been asked to examine the car to find out at what speed it was travelling when Ram was hit.

The incident took place around six months after Kolkata police launched a massive drive to stop drunken driving. Drivers are made to undergo the breath analyser test at major road intersections of the city. However, these tests are conducted only at night.

Last year, Kolkata police had booked Tollywood actor Vikram Chatterjee under section 304 of the IPC for causing model and anchor Sonika Chauhans death. She was in the front passenger seat of Chatterjees sedan when he drove at a high speed, jumped the pavement on an empty south Kolkata road in the dead of the night and hit a structure.

In 2016, chief minister Mamata Banerjee had instructed the police to slap non-bailable sections against those accused of causing accident while driving in drunken state.
Punjabs chief minister Amarinder Singh has declined an invitation by Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan to attend the laying of the foundation stone for the Kartarpur corridor on November 28, citing terrorist attacks in his state and the killings of Indian soldiers by Pakistani armed forces.

In a letter to the Pakistan foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Amarinder welcomed it as a historic occasion, which he also described as a cherished desire of Sikhs around the world, but said he would not be present for the ceremony across the border.

[Pakistans spy agencies] ISI has started its nefarious activities within Punjab and since my government was sworn in, in March 2017, the state neutralized 19 ISI armed and controlled modules, apprehended 81 terrorists and recovered 79 weapons, in addition to numerous grenades made in Pakistans ordnance factories, said Amarinder, referring to last weeks grenade attack on a Nirankari religious gathering in Amritsar.

Two people have been arrested in connection with the attack that killed three people. Police suspect the role of a Khalistani group backed by Pakistans Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

I hope the Pakistan Prime Minister will understand that in these circumstances it will not be possible for me to be present in Pakistan, despite the fact that paying my respects at Gurdwara Sri Kartarpur Sahib has always been a cherished dream which will hopefully be fulfilled once these hostilities are stopped, added Amarinder, who received the invitation from Qureshi on the behalf of PM Imran Khan.

But a minister in his state cabinet, Navjot Singh Sidhu, accepted the invitation with unalloyed joy.

As our nations take this first step, the Kartarpur Spirit can make pilgrims of us all, venturing out on a journey that breaks the barriers of history and opens the borders of hearts and the mind, he wrote in his letter to Qureshi.

Sidhu, on his last visit to Pakistan on August 18 to attend Khans swearing in ceremony, sparked a controversy after he hugged Pakistan Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa. As the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) launched an attack and the Punjab CM expressed unhappiness over his gesture, Sidhu justified his visit to Pakistan saying he went there as a messenger of peace and hugged the Pakistani army chief in an emotional response to the information provided by him that the neighbour country was working on the corridor to Kartarpur Sahib.

On Thursday, both India and Pakistan agreed to build corridor on their respective sides, to commemorate the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev in 2019. Welcoming the move, Amarinder had said the move will facilitate pilgrims desirous of visiting Kartarpur gurudwara. But the next day the government lodged a strong protest with Pakistan after Indian diplomats were harassed and denied access to Sikh pilgrims visiting gurudwaras in Pakistan.

Vice-president M Venkaiah Naidu will lay foundation stone in Dera Baba Nanak on Indian side on November 26. Amarinder will attend the function, in which his political rival Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) will also be a present.

Union minister of state Harsimrat Kaur Badal of the SAD will attend the ceremony on the Pakistan side along with Union urban development minister Hardeep Puri.
The one kilometre-long stretch on Tolstoy Marg leading up to Parliament Street was decked in rainbow colours as people marched in the Delhi queer pride parade on Sunday  for the first time after Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), which criminalised homosexuality, was scrapped on September 6.

Around 3pm, people dressed in colourful costumes, holding balloons, flags and placards, assembled near the Ranjit Singh Flyover  at the intersection of Barakhamba Road and Tolstoy Marg  before marching towards Jantar Mantar as part of the 11th annual Delhi queer pride parade. Enroute, they sang, danced and chanted slogans.

For us it is a formal celebration of winning the battle over Section 377 two months ago, Shiv Sahu, a volunteer at Alliance Francaise, a French language and cultural institute, said.

We dont chant the slogan kaunsa qanoon sabse battar, teen sau sattatar teen sau sattatar (Which law is the worst??Three seventy seven) anymore, he added.

Members and supporters of LGBT community take part in Delhi's Queer Pride Parade. (Amal KS/HT PHOTO)

From over a hundred participants wearing masks to hide their identities in its first year in 2008 to more than 5,000 people from all walks of life identifying with their sexual orientations and genders as they marched in central Delhi in 2018, the pride parade has come a long way. Participation kept multiplying before the parade culminated at Parliament Street around 7pm.

Also read | Gay sex no longer a crime in India, rules Supreme Court on Section 377 in historic judgment

Organised on the last Sunday of every November, the Delhi queer pride is a communitydriven endeavour planned by volunteers. Leading up to the march, events include a fundraiser party as well as a picnic. Unlike in the west, the pride parade in Delhi doesnt allow organisations or other support groups to use their branding while participating in the march.

At each traffic light on the route towards the final destination, the police and traffic personal had to put in extra effort to streamline traffic without affecting the passage of the march on the sunny Sunday afternoon. A group of people danced their way under the nearly 15-metre-long pride rainbow flag, accompanied by dholakwalas. Participants in bright, colourful sarees and feathered head accessories posed with onlookers for selfies and videos, as they marched for more than four hours.

Homosexuality is not a choice, but homophobia is, read one of the placards.

You may also like | Its our duty to strike down law if it violates rights: SC on Section 377

I can hold my partners hand without feeling weird about it, Rythma (first name only), a participant in the parade, said, as she marched, chanting Azadi (freedom) and Hum honge kamyaab (we shall overcome) slogans.

Members of LGBT community celebrate freedom at Delhi Queer Pride Parade on Sunday. (Amal KS/HT PHOTO)
As Shiv Sena volunteers marched from one temple to another on Saturday amid chants of Jai Shri Ram, many residents of Ayodhya were reminded of the volatility in the temple town before the demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992 .

However, given the limited scale of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) Dharma Sabha to whip up support for building a Ram temple in Ayodhya, the frenzy seen among kar sevaks in October-November 1990 and in December 1992 is missing this time around. Unlike 1992, when top BJP leaders like L K Advani, Uma Bharti and Murli Manohar Joshi anchored the massive build-up through Rath Yatra and various events over two years covering states like Gujarat, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, MP, Bihar and UP, the VHP has limited its Dharma Sabha campaign to Ayodhya and adjoining districts. Many believe the Rashtriya Swayansewak Sangh and VHP may intensify the campaign in coming months.

Over the years, the residents here have stayed away from the Ram temple movement.

A local resident, Mohammad Ashraf, said: We see tension only when outsiders come here. Muslims are contributing a lot to the local economy. We are not opposed to the temple. Muslim women residing in areas around the disputed Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid complex make garlands for local temples. Muslim men make khadaun (footwear) for seers. Both Hindus and Muslims live peacefully.

Sanjay Raundal, who reached Ayodhya from Nashik to take part in the Shiv Senas Ashirwaad Utsav here, said, I remember December 1992. I was on way to Ayodhya when police stopped me on the borders of Maharashtra. Many kar sevaks had reached Ayodhya to demolish the Masjid. The situation in Ayodhya has changed now. Other people also travelled down memory lane to compare the situation in Ayodhya in 1990-1992 and now. Curfew was clamped in Ayodhya when then chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav ordered firing on kar sevaks in 1990. Later, it all happened within minutes and the disputed structure was demolished. Shiladaan was organised in 2003 but nothing more happened all these years. The general condition here has improved to some extent due to rising footfalls, said Ram Krishna Gupta, a shopkeeper outside Hanuman Garhi temple.

We hope an ordinance is issued to build the temple now, he added.

Ayodhya has been renamed and elevated to a district and division. A notification to rename Faizabad district and division as Ayodhya was issued on Friday to give a message of change to seers and local people.
A sense of uneasiness shrouds Muslim-dominated areas of Ayodhya and adjoining districts ahead of Sundays Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) Dharm Sabha, despite the presence of large police teams.

The large-scale mobilisation of VHP volunteers has jogged memories of the communal violence that erupted in 1992 when the Babri Masjid was razed, said Iqbal Ansari, a party to the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid title suit in the Supreme Court.

So much so that several Muslim families settled in Alambagh Katra locality of the temple town have shifted their women and children to safer places, he said.

One way to instil confidence among minorities would be deploy central paramilitary forces, he added.

The VHP is organising foot marches and motorcycle rallies that will pass through Muslim settlements in Ayodhya and adjoining districts.

Provocative slogans being raised by these volunteers might instigate members of the other community to react, said Ansari.

Highways and roads leading to Ayodhya, apart from neighbouring Gonda, Barabanki, Basti, Sultanpur, Ambedkar Nagar and Rae Bareli districts, have a large proportion of Muslims.

ADG (law and order) Anand Kumar told HT superintendents of police of all districts have been directed to deploy extra forces in communally sensitive areas as well as areas dominated by the minority community. Police have also been told to monitor VHP rallies in urban and rural areas, he said, adding that strict action will be taken against those who violate the law.

VHP Awadh unit leader Hari Agarwal said volunteers have been directed to take out rallies peacefully and not raise slogans while passing through minority-dominated areas.

Gauri Prasad, a resident of Wazeerganj locality in Ayodhya, said though police contingents had been deployed, people were anxious as violence had erupted during earlier such gatherings. People have stocked up on food supplies and other essentials, he said.

Mahant Dharamdas, a party from the Hindu side in the title dispute case, said rumours were flying fast and furious as hordes of Shiv Sena and VHP workers were arriving in the temple town. An uneasy calm was prevailing, he said.

Asked what measures had been taken to counter rumours, ADG Kumar said the state police had raised a team of digital volunteers to monitor social media. Police officers have been asked to hold press briefings and the district administration told to make regular announcements on public address system to calm sentiments, he said.

A district police officer said adequate forces have been deployed to maintain law and order but the main challenge would be when the crowds start returning to their respective districts.

Police have been directed to streamline movement of people after the rally, he said.

P D Gupta, the Ayodhya ADM, said section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code has been imposed restricting assembly of more than four people. People will be permitted to have darshan in batches. Security personnel have been directed to frisk visitors, he said.

Ayodhya ASP Sanjay Kumar said policemen have been directed to remain vigilant in bordering areas of the district as majority of the participants will be moving towards Ayodhya by road.
One person was killed Sunday when a car hit him when he was waiting for a bus on the EM Bypass in Kolkata, police said.

The car was allegedly driven by a woman fashion designer. She was arrested and was booked under relevant non-bailable sections, they said.

The incident happened at around 3.30 pm when the fashion designer, allegedly drunk, broke the red signal and drove across to hit one person, who was waiting for a bus to reach his workplace at the Leather Complex, a senior officer of Kolkata Police said.

She is unable to talk properly. Its quite surprising how was she driving the car. The vehicle was running at a very high speed. Initial questioning revealed that she came out of a pub in the Park Street area and was heading towards home after dropping some of her friends. After that the mishap happened, the officer said.

(This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.)
Former Union railway minister CK Jaffer Sharief, 85, died after a brief illness in Bengaluru. Sharief, who was once a close confidant of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, had been elected to Parliament eight times. Sharief had entered politics under the mentorship of S Nijalingappa, a former Karnataka chief minister. During the famous Congress split of 1969 between Congress (O) and Indira Gandhis Congress, he had sided with the latter.

Interestingly, he was credited for leaking the plans of the Syndicate - as Congress (O)s leaders were known - to Indira Gandhis faction thus helping her. He was duly rewarded when she made him minister of state for Railways when the Congress returned to power in 1980.

During his long parliamentary career, he also handled the irrigation and coal portfolios at the Centre. However, it was his stint as Union Railway Minister between 1991 to 1995 for which he is remembered as it was during this period that Indian Railways comprehensively moved largely to broad gauge from meter gauge. He also played a key role in establishing the Wheel and Axle plant at Bengaluru. While he was a senior minority leader of the party and aspired to be the Chief Minister of Karnataka, it never came to fruition.

While Shariefs biggest calling card was his unswerving loyalty to the Gandhi family, in the last decade or so his relationship with the high command had been frayed. After his defeat in 2004 by BJPs Sangliana from the Bengaluru North constituency, Sharief never regained his electoral footing. He had his son-in-law selected to be a minister in Karnataka, lobbied for tickets for his sons and eventually his grandson, all of whom lost polls. Feeling marginalised within the Congress, he threatened to quit the party several times only to eventually withdraw his resignation each time after being mollified. He surprised a lot of people including some of his closest supporters in 2017 by backing Mohan Bhagwat, the RSS chief, as the next prospective President of the country.

Given his long stint in public life, however, Sharief had friends across the political spectrum in Karnataka.
Former Union railway minister and veteran Congress leader from Karnataka C K Jaffer Sharief passed away on Sunday morning at a hospital in Bengaluru, Karnataka pradesh Congress committee president Dinesh Gundu Rao said. Sharief was 85.

One of @INCIndias senior most leaders, many times MP and one of Indias most successful Railway minister, Karnatakas very own son Sri CK Jaffer Shareef has passed away. A national leader who had a great connect across all communities. a truly secular leader. My condolences, Rao said in a tweet.

He was admitted on Friday after he collapsed at home. He was ailing for sometime with age-related problems, partys state unit spokesman Ravi Gowda told IANS.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi also condoled the death of former Union minister. It is a day of tragedy for the Congress party, with another senior, loved & respected member of our family in Karnataka, Shri Jaffer Sharief Ji, passing away today. My condolences to his family, friends & supporters in their time of grief, he tweeted.

It is a day of tragedy for the Congress party, with another senior, loved & respected member of our family in Karnataka, Shri Jaffer Sharief Ji, passing away today. My condolences to his family, friends & supporters in their time of grief. #JafferSharief  Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) November 25, 2018

A veteran parliamentarian from Bengaluru North and Bengaluru Rural Lok Sabha constituencies, Sharief was Union Railway Minister from 1991-1995 under the PV Narasimha Rao government at the Centre.
A soldier and six militants were killed in an encounter in south Kashmirs Shopian district early on Sunday morning after security forces launched a search for militants.

A civilian was also killed and five locals injured in cross firing near the encounter site, sparking massive clashes between groups of youth and security forces in the area, a police official said.

Police said a joint team of Army and police launched a cordon and search operation in Kaparan village around 1 am. During the search, the forces were fired upon triggering retaliation which turned into an encounter in which one soldier and six militants were killed.

The slain soldier, Naik Nazir Ahmed of the 162 Territorial Army operating with 34 Rashtriya Rifles was highly decorated, having been awarded the Sena medal twice.

Another soldier of the Rashtriya Rifles was also injured, but he was shifted to hospital and his condition is said to be stable now.

The militants were identified as Mushtaq Ahmad Mir, Mohammad Abass Bhatt, Umar Majeed Ganai, Mohd Waseem Wagay, Khalid Farooq Mali and one foreigner from Pakistan, according to a police official quoted by ANI. While four of them belonged to Hizbul Mujahideen, two were affiliated to Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Police said Umar Ganai was involved in had escaped from Batmaloo encounter and was involved in killings of many policemen and civilians since 2106.

Five civilians suffered bullet injuries in the cross-firing near the gunfight site and were rushed to a hospital where one of them succumbed to injuries, a police official said, according to PTI. He said the other injured are being treated.

The security forces have recovered a huge quantity of weapons and ammunition from the site of the encounter.

Clashes erupted between forces and civilians in the area. Many youths were seen pelting stones at vehicles of security forces after the encounter ended.

Mobile internet services have been suspended in Shopian district as a precautionary measure.

This is the third operation against militants in south Kashmir since Wednesday. So far, 16 local militants have been killed in three encounters.

On Friday, six militants were killed in Anantnag district in a similar operation, including three top commanders of militant groups. On Wednesday, four militants were killed in Shopian district.
The ministry of civil aviation is set to allow the commercial use of drones as taxis and delivery vehicles, and permit their operation beyond the visual line of sight under its Drone 2.0 policy, which is likely to take effect by March 2019 and open up a raft of business opportunities.

In August, the ministry released its Drone 1.0 policy, which makes it legal for individuals and companies to operate drones from December 1 in certain areas other than those barred for security reasons. The ministry, however, held back approval of the commercial use of drones  as taxis, delivery vehicles, and other services.

Drone 2.0, the draft of which will be released at a global aviation summit on January 15, 2019, and be open for public feedback for 30 days, will make such commercial use legal. At the time it released Drone 1.0, the aviation ministry had said it was open to changing its regulations as technology advances.

We are working to get the entire drone industry launched on December 1. We are very much on track to do that, minister of civil aviation, Jayant Sinha, said in an interview. And drones will provide a whole host of applications, many of which are already being utilised across the world; so they will become available in India and thats through the set of regulations that we are calling Drone 1.0. We also have a drone task force thats working on Drone 2.0 regulations, which we think will truly be revolutionary once India implements it. And we are hoping to implement it over the next few months.

Drone 2.0 is a forward-thinking step by the government, and will change the whole delivery model, said Rabindra Jhunjhunwala, partner at law firm Khaitan & Co, At the same time appropriate safety nets will have to be built. The devil will lie in the details.

From December 1, operators will be able to apply for permissions and get instant approvals through a Digital Sky Platform for the use of drones for photography and recreational purposes. Possible applications include aerial photography of property and other projects, monitoring equipment at wind and solar energy plants and delivery of disaster relief.

Drone 2.0 regulations will crack the code and enable us to cross three important thresholds all at once. One, beyond visual line of sight; two, payloads; three, automation...we are trying to find a way we can enable drones to be able to be operated automatically, beyond visual line of sight and allow for payloads. This will open up drone delivery, it will open up passengers drones and a whole host of other application as well, Sinha added.

The regulations will enable the use of drones as taxis and delivery vehicles by companies such as e-commerce operators.

And it will make India a world leader in drone regulations...because of [Indias] large sized markets, we will become leader in the drone ecosystem as well because it includes manufacturing; it includes software development and applications as well. Thats very much our focus for our efforts as far as the drone ecosystem is concerned.

The drone 1.0 regulations said that no permissions will be needed for flying nano drones, which weigh less than 250gm, within the visual range. But operators had been advised to inform the local police beforehand and to not breach the privacy of any individual.

According to the ministry, the Digital Sky Platform will be the first-of-its-kind national unmanned traffic management (UTM) portal to implement a no permission, no take-off (NPNT) policy for remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS) that are not of nano  size.

Users will be required to do a one-time registration of drones, pilots and owners. For every flight (except nano drones), users will be required to ask for permission to fly through a mobile app, and an automated process will permit or deny the request instantly. The UTM operates as a traffic regulator in the drone airspace and coordinates closely with the defence and civilian air traffic controllers (ATCs) to ensure that drones remain on the approved flight paths, a ministry official said on condition of anonymity.

All RPAS, except nano drones and those owned by government intelligence agencies will have to be registered and will be issued a Unique Identification Number (UIN). Non-registration will be a violation of law that will attract penal action.

As per the regulations, there are five categories of drones by weight: nano, micro, small, medium and large. For flying in controlled airspace, the filing of a flight plan and obtaining Air Defence Clearance (ADC) /Flight Information Centre (FIC) number will be necessary. The regulation defines no-drone zones as areas around airports, near the international border, Vijay Chowk in New Delhi, state secretariat complexes in state capitals, and strategic locations and vital military installations. A case under the Indian Penal Code can be filed for flying a drone in a prohibited zone.
Veteran Kannada films rebel actor M.H. Ambareesh died at a private hospital here on Saturday night following a heart attack, a duty doctor said. He was 66.

Ambareesh died at around 10.15 p.m. after a massive cardiac arrest (heart attack) a couple of hours after he was brought to our hospital in the evening due to breathing (respiratory) problem, the doctor told IANS from Vikram Hospital in the city centre.

The super star of the sandalwood industry is survived by his widow and multi-lingual actress Sumalatha and son Abhishek.

In a statement on early Sunday, the hospital said, Ambareesh was found unresponsive at his residence (in the citys southern suburb) and resuscitation efforts were initiated at his home and continued en-route to the hospital.

Despite all aggressive resuscitation efforts, Amabreesh could not be revived and is declared deceased at 22.15 on 24.11.2018, added the statement.

As the news of Ambareeshs death was flashed on local news channels, hundreds of his frenzied fans thronged the hospital, wailing for the sudden loss of their hero.

Karnataka Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy, cabinet ministers K.J. George and D.K. Shivakumar were among the several political leaders who visited the hospital soon after doctors declared Ambareesh dead.

With a heavy heart, visited the hospital and met the grieving family members of my dear friend rebel star #Ambareesh, tweeted Kumaraswamy.

In consultation with the family, the chief minister has directed the officials concerned to make arrangements for the public and fans to pay their last respects to Ambareesh at Kanteerva Stadium opposite Cubbon Park in the city centre from 8 am onwards.

Ambareesh was a rebel who was loved by all. He carved a unique place in both politics and films. He leaves back a legacy that will be cherished by his family, friends, fans and followers. May his soul rest in peace and his family get strength to bear this loss, said the chief minister in another tweet.

Kumaraswamy also assured the fans to arrange special buses from Ambareeshs home district (Mandya) to allow them travel to Bengaluru for paying homage to him.

I request Ambareesh fans and people to maintain peace, prevent any untoward incident over his death and pay homage to the departed soul peacefully, added Kumaraswamy through a tweet.

In a statement after midnight, the chief ministers office said last rites of Ambareesh body would be performed on Monday near Rajkumar Smaraka at Kanteerava Studio in the citys northwest suburb with state honours, as decided in consultation with his family members.

Ambareesh was former cabinet minister in the previous Congress government from May 2013 to June 2016 when then Chief Minister Siddaramaiah sacked him along with 13 other ministers in a major reshuffle of his ministry.

He was Union Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting in the first UPA government and a Parliament member from Mandya Lok Sabha constituency, about 100km from here.

Ambaressh was also a member of the state legislature, representing Mandya and Srirangapatna assembly segments as a Congress and Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) leader.

Though the Congress leadership wanted Ambareesh to contest in the May 12 assembly elections, he declined on health grounds, saying he would not be able to do justice to the people as their public representative.

Mourning Ambreesh, Siddaramaiah tweeted that the rebel star was not only a great actor and a proven politician, but also a great human being. You will be missed, he said.

Ambareesh entered filmdom through the role of Jaleel in veteran director Puttanna Kanagals Naagarahaavu in 1972.

He alsoAacted in Shubhamangala, Antha, Chakravyuha, Masanada Hoovu, Olavina Udugere, Hrudaya Haadithu, Odahuttidavaru, Diggajaru and Elu Suttina Kote, where he played a critically acclaimed role.
Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) gave sea training to 26/11 terror attack convict Ajmal Kasab in the high seas of Karachi, revealed a new book Fragile Frontiers: The Secret History of Mumbai Terror Attacks.

The sea training, as per the book written by historian Saroj Kumar Rath, also included how to fish, something that made Kasab think that he had got a job and he could earn a respectable living.

He (Kasab) was not informed by the LeT why he was being prepared as a mariner and as a fishermen, quoted the book from what Kasab told during his interrogation.

Also Read: 10 years after 26/11: We are better prepared

According to the book, fearing a leak, the sea route assault plan was kept secret by the top LeT commanders -- Hafiz Saeed, Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi, Abu Hamza and others -- until November 2008. It also said that before the D-day, the LeT tried to send attackers to Mumbai twice, but failed on both occasions.

In September 2008, the boat carrying terrorists hit a rock in the sea and the attackers almost drowned before their handlers rescued them. The other failed attempt was on 7 November 2008, when an alarmed captain of an Indian boat refused to surrender to the LeT and fled, it added.

The book, in one of its essay titled Ajmal Kasab: The LeT side of the story, recorded that the 2-year training of the recruits for the 26/11 attacks was a joint responsibility of the LeT and the ISI.

Each terrorist had to undergo a series of training and indoctrination sessions organized by the LeT. All the 10 terrorists recruited for the Mumbai attacks had received four stages of training and after that, received sea training as well, read the book.

As part of the sea training the recruits were taught how to read maps, how to measure the depth of the sea, how to use GPS for the sea route, how to use the nets of fishermen and how to operate a ship.

They were also trained on how to use a fishermans net just to mislead the Indian navy personnel in case of an enquiry. Also, other than the sea training, the four stage training received by the ten terrorists under the LeT command was: Daura-e-Sufa (20 Days Preliminary Training), Daura-e-Ama (21 Days Combat Course), Daura-e-Khaas (75 Days Advanced Combat Course), Daura-e-Ribat (30 Days Training on Intelligence Agencies).

Kasab received (Daura-e-Khaas) training during May-July 2008. Skills like how to open and close Kalashnikovs, firing of a gun... and how to survive 60 hours without food and still climb a mountain with a heavy load were taught. The Mumbai attacks continued for 62 hours and crossing the LoC in Kashmir would take 60 hours as well, it said.

Besides delving into the interrogation and confession report of Kasab, the book, also tried to answer significant questions like Why do young boys like Kasab become terrorists in Pakistan? What is the root cause of terrorism? Or what motivates them to follow a violent lifestyle?.

Also Read: Will go home and take care of parents: Ajmal Kasab said during questioning

Kasab, the lone terrorist captured alive after the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, was hanged at Yerawada jail in Pune on November 21, 2012 after the then-president Pranab Mukherjee rejected his mercy petition. Published by Routledge India, Fragile Frontiers: The Secret History of Mumbai Terror Attacks, priced at Rs 995, other than offering a lucid and graphic account of the ill-fated day also traces the changing dynamics of terror in South Asia.
India has been attacked several times in the decade that followed the Mumbai 26/11 attacks, reminding the government and the general public that the threat of terrorism is persistent.

Pune, 2010: A bomb exploded at the German Bakery in Pune, killing 17 people and injuring at least 60.

Varanasi, 2010: The explosion of a bomb hidden inside a milk container on a ghat near the historic Dashashwamedh ghat killed two people and left at least 30 people injured.

Mumbai, 2011: Indias financial capital was rocked by a series of three coordinated explosions at Opera House, Zaveri Bazar and Dadar West. Twenty six people were killed and 130 were injured in the blast.

Delhi, 2011: A bomb went off outside the Delhi high court, killing 15 people and injuring 80.

Hyderabad, 2013: Two blasts in quick succession in a busy shopping area in Hyderabad left 18 people dead and at least 100 people injured.

Gurdaspur, 2015: Five gunmen sprayed bullets on a bus and then attacked a police station, resulting in death of three civilians and four police personnel.

Pathankot, 2016: A heavily armed group of attackers stormed the Pathankot air base. The ensuing siege and combat operations killed six soldiers and a civilian.

Uri, 2016: Four heavily armed militants attacked security forces, resulting in the deaths of 17 soldiers.

Sunjuwan, 2018: Militants attacked an army camp in Sunjuwan, Jammu, killing six soldiers and a civilian.
A woman, who was attacked along with social activist Agnes Kharshiing in Meghalayas East Jaintia Hills district on November 8, has accused senior National Peoples Party (NPP) leader Nidamon Chullet of masterminding the assault.

The women came under attack when they were taking pictures of coal-laden trucks to expose alleged illegal mining. Seven people, including a woman, have been arrested in the case.

East Jaintia Hills additional district magistrate recorded Amita Sangmas statement at the North East Indira Gandhi Regional Institute of Health and Medical Sciences, where both victims are undergoing treatment. Chullet, who is the working president of East-West Jaintia Hills, joined NPP in December in the presence of NPP president and Meghalaya chief minister Conrad K Sangma, and other senior party leaders. He is also the headman of Mynkrem village and the president of Jaintia Hills Truck Owners Association.

In her statement on Saturday, Sangma demanded call records of Ladrymbai police station officers as she suspected that the assailants were tipped off. Kharshiing and Sangma had visited the police station to alert officers about illegal mining.

Sangma told the magistrate that after leaving the police station, they were followed by several people in vehicles. When the women stopped to take pictures of coal-laden trucks at Sohshrieh, they were attacked.

Sources told HT that Chullets proximity to the ruling dispensation had led to the delay in his arrest.

Meanwhile, former CM DD Lapang, who is the chief advisor to the government, has suggested an independent probe.

Congress legislator and party spokesperson HM Shangpliang said, It is now clear that illegal mining is still underway, especially after the NPP leader has been identified as the mastermind of the attack . He questioned the delay in arresting the accused.
Gone are the days when opposition parties in Uttar Pradesh, led by Mulayam Singh Yadav, could strike a discordant note and stand firm amid demands for the liberation of what Hindu groups call Ram Janmabhoomi, or Lord Ramas birthplace, in the early 1990s.

Despite his confrontational stand -- Masjid pe ek parinda bhi par nahin maar sakega (the security will be so tight that not even a bird will be able to enter it) -- Mulayam not only survived in Indian politics, he flourished.

Twenty-six years after the demolition of Babri Masjid, as Hindu groups gather in the city to press for the construction of temple on the same site, the scenario has undergone a drastic change.

The opposition has gone silent and its belligerence has faded before the renewed frenzy with which the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Bharatiya Janata Party have rekindled the emotive issue. Those who believed the religious issue has lost its zing have been proven wrong. Preferring to be a mute spectator, a senior opposition leader said, Let people decide what type of a govt they want to rule the country.

A majority of opposition leaders prefer to talk on the issue off the record. Others find an easy alibi in,  Let the court decide.

The saffron brigade had last tested its strength over the temple issue in 2002 when Hindu religious figures associated with the VHP had organised a shila daan ceremony in Ayodhya. It had then lacked the full backing of the ruling dispensations at the Centre and in the state. Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the countrys prime minister while Uttar Pradesh was under Presidents rule.

Today, the votaries of Ram temple are heading the governments, both in Delhi and the UP, while the BJPs ideological mentor RSS and its affiliate VHP are spearheading the movement.

The absence of opposition to their plans at any level has given the temple votaries a free field to play in. The Muslims and their leaders are also in a silent mode.

With the UP chief minister, ministers and BJP legislators lending their support, the RSS-VHP combine has been successful in building a favourable atmosphere for the construction of a Ram temple ahead of elections in five states, which will lead up to Lok Sabha polls in 2019, and the beginning of hearings on a title suit by the Supreme Court.

Experts say that any adverse verdict by the SC would be exploited by temple backers. So, while a makeshift temple has replaced the 16th century Babri mosque, the opposition has gone into hibernation taking refuge in the oft-repeated alibi that the matter is in the Supreme Court.

Communist leader Atul Anjan said, The entire disputed site is now under the ambit of the Supreme Court and all parties in the case have agreed to abide by its decision. But the people in power are trying to undermine the authority of the constitutional institutions...Lets see how the state comes forward to defend the Constitution and the judicial process. When asked why Communists leaders are not opposing the movement, Anjan said,  We are observing December 6 as save secularism day. That was the day in 1992 when Babri mosque was demolished.

Building pressure on opposition leaders, Union minister Uma Bharti said she would request Congress president Rahul Gandhi, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav and BSP leader Mayawati to help in creating a positive atmosphere for the construction of a Ram temple on the lines of the support extended for the building of the Somnath temple in Gujarat.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in a first-of-its-kind move, will take part in an international judges meet on the Supreme Court premises on Sunday.

Chief justices and judges of the Supreme Court of India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Nepal and Bhutan will be meeting on the SC premises here to discuss issues surrounding technology, access to justice, adjudication of terrorism, transnational organised crime among other matters.

This would be a first for any Indian PM to go to the SC premises to attend a BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative for multi-sectoral technical and economic cooperation) conference.

BIMSTEC is a regional organisation comprising seven member states lying in the littoral and adjacent areas of Bay of Bengal constituting a contiguous regional unity.

Topics like illicit drug trafficking and human trafficking cases will also be discussed.
Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh has declined Pakistans invitation to attend the foundation stone laying for the Kartarpur corridor even as his minister Navjot Singh Sidhu has decided to attend the occasion.

Amarinder Singh cited continued terrorist attacks in his state and killings of Indian soldiers by Pakistan armed forces to decline Pakistan foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshis invitation to the ceremony.

Sidhu, who has earlier visited Pakistan for its Prime Minister Imran Khans swearing in ceremony, said his application to attend the event is now lodged with the ministry of external affairs.

Responding to invitation of Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi to attend opening ceremony of #KartarpurCorridor corridor,Navjot Singh Sidhu writes "I look forward to meeting you on this historic occasion. My application for permission to attend is now lodged with MEA" pic.twitter.com/4NexsNPtxS  ANI (@ANI) November 25, 2018

Earlier, external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj had declined an invitation to her, citing prior commitments and deputed Union ministers Harsimrat Kaur Badal and Hardeep Singh Puri for the event.

On Thursday, India and Pakistan announced they would develop Kartarpur corridor in their respective areas, linking Dera Baba Nanak in Punjabs Gurdaspur district with the Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Pakistan.

Gurdwara Darbar Sahib, the final resting place of Sikhism founder Guru Nanak Dev, is located across the Ravi river in Pakistan and is about four kilometres from the Dera Baba Nanak shrine in Gurdaspur district of Punjab in India.

The corridor, once built, will give Indian pilgrims easy access to the shrine.
The Prime Ministers Office (PMO) has refused to share details on the quantum of black money brought back from abroad, citing a provision of the RTI Act that bars disclosure of information that may impede investigation and prosecution of offenders.

Its response came on an October 16 order passed by the Central Information Commission, asking the PMO to provide details of black money within 15 days.

Replying to an RTI query, the PMO said a Special Investigation Team (SIT) has already been formed and its investigation is underway.

As such, disclosure of all the action/efforts undertaken by the government at this juncture may impede the whole process of investigation or apprehension or prosecution of offenders and hence would attract the provision of exemption under Section 8 (1) (h) of the RTI Act, it said in response to the RTI application filed by whistleblower bureaucrat Sanjiv Chaturvedi.

Such investigations come under the purview of different government intelligence and security organisations which have been excluded from the ambit of the RTI Act, the PMO said.

Also read | Madras HC quashes order to prosecute Chidambarams family members in black money case

Chaturvedi, an Indian Forest Service (IFoS) officer, had sought information on the quantum of black money brought from abroad since June 1, 2014.

In its initial reply to the RTI application, the Prime Ministers Office had in October last year said the query was not covered under Section 2(f) of the transparency law that defines information.

Chaturvedi thereafter moved the Central Information Commission which had last month ordered the PMO to provide information within 15 days.

There is, at present, no official assessment on the quantum of black money in India and abroad.

According to a study by US-based think-tank Global Financial Integrity (GFI), an estimated USD 770 billion in black money entered India during 2005-2014.

Nearly USD 165 billion in illicit money exited the country during the same period, the report by the global financial watchdog said.

In response to another query mentioned in the Chaturvedis application, the PMO refused to share details of corruption complaints received against Union ministers, saying providing such information may be a subjective as well as a cumbersome exercise.

You may also like | TRS MPs firm reports Rs 60 crore black money after raids in Telangana: I-T dept
The Sikhs in America have hailed the Indian governments decision to build a religious corridor linking border district of Gurdaspur with historic Kartarpur Sahib gurudwara in Pakistan - fulfilling a long pending demand of the community.

Kartarpur Sahib in Pakistan is located across the river Ravi, about four kilometres from the Dera Baba Nanak shrine in Punjabs Gurdaspur district. It was established by the Sikh Guru in 1522. The first Gurdwara, Gurdwara Kartarpur Sahib, was built here, where Guru Nanak Dev is said to have died.

Both India and Pakistan have announced that stretches would be developed in their respective areas.

The Indian governments decision to develop and open the Kartarpur Sahib Corridor is historic, Jasdip Singh, the chairman of the Sikhs of America, said during his meeting with visiting Union Minister of State for External Affairs Gen (retd.) V K Singh.

A delegation of eminent Sikh of America led by Jasdip Singh on Saturday met the minister here.

From the very first day after coming to power, the Prime Minister has not only been sympathetic to the concerns of the Sikh community but has also acted to address all our concerns, he said.

Welcoming the decision, Gurinder Singh Khalsa, a community leader, said that this is just a beginning for greater good of the region and the humanity.

Incarnation of God, Guru Nanak became corridor between Hindus and Muslims, rich and poor, Pundits and Dalits during the most troubled times. I am a firm believer that now again after 550 years, with the grace of almighty, Kartarpur (town of God) corridor will be a pathway for sustainable peace between the two countries of India and Pakistan, Khalsa said.

This is a historic decision, said Adapa Prasad, vice president of Overseas Friends of BJP.

The decision regarding construction of the Sikh corridor has the potential to kick-off peace between India and Pakistan. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been a great friend of the Sikhs. This was one of our long pending decision, said Puneet Ahluwalia, a Republican leader from Virginia.

In a memorandum submitted to the visiting minister, Sikhs of America organisation urged the prime minister to bring to justice the masterminds of the 1984 riots.

The memorandum also urged the Indian Government to provide visa to the Sikhs in the US who have received political asylum. Singh, who is currently on a three city US trip to inaugurate Passport Seva projects in New York, Washington DC and Atlanta, was felicitated at a Baltimore Gurdwara in Maryland in recognition of some of the decisions being taken by the Indian government for the Sikh community.

The local Sikh community from Maryland and Virginia representing the Sikh Sewa presented a Saropa to the minister at a community reception later in evening.
The St Josephs College in Tamil Nadus Trichy on Sunday postponed an international seminar titled harassment of women as recorded in Tamil literature.

The announcement came a day after Bharatiya Janata Party leader H Raja sought a ban on the event calling it an assault on the Tamil language and Hinduism by missionaries and urban Naxals. It is a war on Tamil language and Hindu religion declared by the Christian St Josephs College. Lets be prepared to face it, he tweeted.

Raja objected to the events invite that referred to women being subjugated from the Vedic period. He alleged the event was a conspiracy to denounce and insult classics and Hindu epics to instigate communal tensions.

A minority community could not be allowed to denigrate the majority community and our Tamil literary works. Tamil Nadu minister K Pandiarajan responded saying the government would not allow the slanderous event.

The colleges principal, Xavier Arockiasamay, insisted the event has been postponed as their institution is busy with relief work in Tamil Nadus cyclone-hit districts.
The week ended on a very violent note in Kashmir on Sunday with an army soldier, seven militants and a civilian killed in two encounters between security forces and militants in Jammu and Kashmirs Shopian and Pulwama districts today. At least 29 people, including 19 militants, have been killed in the Kashmir Valley since November 15.

In the Shopian gunfight, soldier Nazir Ahmad of 162 Territorial Army, currently operating with 36 Rashtriya Rifles, was killed. The army described him as a highly decorated soldier who was awarded Sena Medal twice. The seven militants included three district commanders  two of Hizbul Mujhaideen and one of Lashkar-e-Taiba.

The civilian identified as Nouman Ashraf Bhat of Bolous Kulgam was killed in clashes with security forces that erupted around the encounter site. Locals said he was 17 years old.

Health officials said that more than 50 persons with pellet and bullet injuries, including an 18-month-old girl, came to Shopian and Kulgam hospitals after clashes between locals and security forces near the encounter site.

Since November 15, as many as 29 persons have been killed in various violent incidents across the Valley which include 19 militants, seven civilians and three security forces personnel. Seventeen of these militants, most of them locals, have been killed by security forces in Shopian, Anantnag and Pulwama districts since Wednesday alone.

Joint Resistance Leadership comprising Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Muhammad Yasin Malik has called for complete shutdown tomorrow (Monday) to strongly protest and denounce the killing of 17 Kashmiris by Indian forces brutal action in the last 3 days.

The encounter in Shopian ensued as security forces started a cordon and search operation around 1 am in Batagund village of Kapran in Shopian after getting information about presence of militants.

Police spokesman Manoj Kumar, in a statement, said that militants opened fire as the searches were going on. He said that soldier Nazir Ahmad was grievously injured in the final phase of the encounter and succumbed. Another jawan has been injured.

In the ensuing encounter, six terrorists were neutralized and the bodies were retrieved from the site of encounter, he said.

The killed militants were identified as Mushtaq Ahmad Mir, Mohammad Abass Bhatt, Umar Majeed Ganaie , Mohd Waseem Wagay , Khalid Farooq Malik and from the material evidence collected sixth one is learnt to be a foreigner from Pakistan, according to police.

It was a combined group of HM (Hizbul Mujahideen) and LeT (Lashkar-e-Taiba), as per police records, Mushtaq Ahmad Mir @Hammad was affiliated with LeT and was operating as District commander for Shopian, while Mohd Abaas, Waseem Wagay, Umar Majeed Ganai and Khalid were with HM. Mohd Abass was known as District Commander of HM for Shopian and Umar Majed was operating as district commander of HM for Kulgam, said the spokesman.

The police claimed that all the slain were wanted by the law for their complicity in a series of terror crimes including attack on security establishments and civilian killings in the area. With their elimination, all notorious terrorists of the belt have been successfully eliminated, the spokesman said.

According to police records, Mohammad Abass Bhatt was involved in the recent spate of gruesome killings of civilians in Shopian including the decapitating of 19-year -old Huzaif Ashraf.

Bhatt was also wanted for killing of trainee army officer Lt Omar Fayaz, advocate Imtiyaz Khan and four police personnel at Shopian in August this year and many other civilian killings in the area, the police spokesman said.

The police said that the Pakistani terrorist was wanted in the gruesome killing of civilians in the area including the throat slitting video uploaded on social media.

Later, a Jaish-e-Mohammad militant was killed in a brief exchange of fire at Bathien in Khrew area of Pulwama. The police spokesman said he was a Pakistani codenamed Waseem.

On November 15, suspected militants shot dead Nadeem Manzoor Dar, 18, and slit the throat of a 19-year-old baker, Huzif Ashraf, two days later, on suspicions that they were police informers. On Friday, youth Bashrat Ahmad, who was earlier a special police officer, was abducted and killed by suspected militants in Shopian. Two other abducted youths, Reyaz Ahmad and Zahid Hamid, were, however, released unharmed.
In the summer of 2009, Devika Natwarlal Rotawan couldnt wait to get back to school.

The nine-year-old girl had spent the past few months recuperating from an injury after being shot in the leg by terrorist Ajmal Kasab during the siege of the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus on November 26, 2008. She then shot into nationwide fame after public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam sprang a surprise and got Rotawan to testify in court and identify Kasab, the only attacker captured alive; visuals of her walking in crutches into court were beamed into millions of homes, making her an overnight celebrity.

In school, however, there was no adulation. On her first day back, Rotawan found that she had no friends left, her classmates were either distant or frosty. I was called Kasab ki beti (Kasabs daughter). I used to run home crying because the girls used to tease me and did not want to play with me, said Rotawan.

Rotawan had to eventually leave the school. But adjusting into a new institution was also not easy, she said, because many were scared to be associated with someone who identified a terrorist. One school denied her admission, saying her English was not fluent.

By then, her relatives and neighbours had also started distancing themselves, fearing possible reprisals by other terrorist groups. On top of that, the family received regular threat calls till the trial ended, added Rotawans father Natwarlal.But that did not scare us a bitI was depressed but that did not break me, she added.

Today, Rotawan is a steely 19-year-old woman who shares a tiny 12 feet by 12 feet room in Bandra (east) with her father, who makes ends meet by doing odd jobs as a labourer, and the younger of her two brothers who is unemployed. A single bed, which takes up most of the space in the room, is next to a small old television and a few utensils.

As her mid-term exams for Class 11 approach, Rotawan appears quietly determined. Her aim is to become an Indian Police Service officer and she says she is happy to have seen Kasab hanged, but that more needs to be done.

I knew he deserved to die but I think the government should take a stern step towards eliminating terrorism. I want to be the one to bring peace in the society. Kasab was just a small fish. I want to clean the entire ocean. Instead of killing a terrorist, terrorism should be uprooted, she said.

On November 26, 2008, Rotawan was on her way with her father and brother to see her elder brother, who worked in Pune. We were waiting on the platform when I heard a sound like firecrackers bursting. People began running. My brother had gone to the bathroom when the gunmen came charging into the station. My father told me to run and when I started, I felt a shooting pain. I had been shot in the right leg. Blood began flowing and within seconds I collapsed, Rotawan recalled.

Rotawans father, Natwarlal, had initially not agreed to let his daughter testify but later changed his mind. For two months after the attack I was in JJ hospital, and was operated on several times. The police asked questions but my father did not want me to depose in court then. However, later on, he supported and motivated me, she said.

Ujjwal Nikam sir looked at me as I stood there knowing that I was face to face with the monster who wanted to kill me. When I was asked to tell the court who shot me, I raised my hand and pointed towards Kasab who stood there expressionless, Rotawan added.

The testimony made her a household name but no help was forthcoming for either her or her family. Everyone met me and praised me, but no one helped me. We are still struggling to survive, she said. In the last decade, she has spoken to numerous television channels and is now fluent in a crisp narration of her story, but no one has come forward to even finance her studies. We were promised a house but nothing has been done till date, added Natwarlal.

The attacks left an impression on Rotawans younger brother Jayesh too. Since my mother passed away, and after seeing my sister almost dying at CST, I have not been the same. I try to control my feelings by joking around and entertaining Devika, said Jayesh.

But adversity has not broken Rotawan. She passes by CST on her regular commute and said she sometimes goes to the spot where she was shot. I stand there and close my eyes and feel as if I have travelled back in time to relive the moment. I feel I am standing there still and the world is moving in a fast forward mode. It is scary but it reminds me of the promise I have made to myself, she said.

And what is that promise? I want to provide a good future to my father and brother and to my country. I want to be an IPS officer and fight terrorism and bring justice to all those who have suffered like me and my baba.
Days after the Delhi Police sounded an alert for two suspected Jaish-e-Mohammad operatives who had reportedly sneaked into the city, the Delhi Polices special cell and Jammu and Kashmir Police arrested three suspected terrorists associated with Islamic State in Jammu and Kashmir (ISJK) early on Sunday and seized hand grenades and weapons from them. Police said that the men planned to carry out a terror strike in the national capital.

The three men were arrested from near a tourist information centre in Kothibagh near Srinagar in a joint operation, said deputy commissioner of police, special cell, Pramod Kushwah. The three were identified as Tahir Ali Khan from Tral, Haris Mushtaq Khan from Budgam and Asif Suhail Nadaf. Three hand grenades and two pistols were recovered from them. They are being questioned to know motives and source of weapons, an officer said.

Police on Tuesday sounded an alert in Delhi and released photographs of two alleged Jaish-e-Mohammed operatives who could try to carry out a terror attack in the city. The alert came on an intelligence input in wake of Sundays grenade attack at a religious congregation in Amritsar that left three people dead and 20 others injured.
After visiting the disputed site for a Ram temple in Ayodhya, Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray on Sunday said he will return to the city if the temple is not built at the earliest. He wrapped up his two-day visit to Ayodhya on Sunday, his first political event outside Maharashtra.

Thackeray on Saturday asked the Narendra Modi-led government to wake up from slumber and declare a date for the construction of a Ram temple. My Ayodhya yatra has started; I wish that the Ram temple is constructed at the earliest and that I get to come here to pay obeisance to Lord Ram. If it is not constructed, then I will have no choice but to come here with the determination to build the Ram temple, Thackeray told Sena leader and Saamana editor Sanjay Raut in an interview.

Thackeray attacked the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government and said that the Modi government has a full majority, and yet it is not pushing for the temple. He demanded an ordinance to facilitate the construction. Terming the construction of a Ram temple a matter of pride for all Hindus across the world, Thackeray said, Unfortunately, the Ram temple has been made to be stuck in the legal tangle. To resolve it, the government will have to come with an ordinance If the government has to be pressured [to build a Ram temple in India], there is nothing unfortunate than this.

Thackerays visit to the temple town was an important one for the party as the issue would help them create a mark on the national stage. Though the party has been advocating for a Ram temple since the 1990s, this is the first time that a leader from the party ventured outside its home state and took on the BJP. Thackeray, in the interview, added that Shiv Sena leaders and followers of the party are the Ram setu (a mythological bridge between India and Sri Lanka) between Maharashtra and Ayodhya. Sena leaders called the visit successful, but added that had Thackeray got an opportunity to hold a rally, it would have had more impact.

Meanwhile, chief minister Devendra Fadnavis said, The construction of a Ram temple in Ayodhya is not a political issue. Lord Ram is a deity for entire India. Thackeray would get his blessings too, Fadnavis told reporters in Karad.

BJP state chief Raosaheb Danve welcomed Thackerays Ayodhya visit. Though we have the strength in Lok Sabha, we do not have the numbers in Rajya Sabha. However, we are positive on it. On the alliance with the Sena, Danve said, I am sure Thackeray will have a change of heart after Lord Rams darshan.
Police officials had a nervous long-distance face-off with the tribe who killed an American missionary, in their latest bid to locate his body on a remote island, police said Sunday.

The police team, who took a boat just off Indian-owned North Sentinel island on Saturday, spotted men from the Sentinelese tribe on the beach where John Allen Chau was last seen, the regions police chief Dependra Pathak told AFP.

Using binoculars, officers -- in a police boat about 400 metres from the shore -- saw the men armed with bows and arrows, the weapons reportedly used by the isolated tribe to kill Chau as he shouted Christian phrases at them.

They stared at us and we were looking at them, said Pathak. The boat withdrew to avoid any chance of a confrontation.

Police are taking painstaking efforts to avoid any disruption to the Sentinelese -- a pre-neolithic tribe whose island is off-limits to outsiders -- as they seek Chaus body.

The death of the 27-year-old on November 17 has cast a new spotlight on efforts to protect one of the worlds last uncontacted tribes whose language and customs remain a mystery to outsiders.

Fishermen who took Chau to North Sentinel -- which is one of the Andaman and Nicobar islands in the Bay of Bengal -- said they saw the tribe burying the body on the beach.

The Sentinelese normally attack anyone who goes to the island and Pathak said police are monitoring to see if there is a repeat of an incident after two fishermen who strayed onto the island were killed in 2006.

One week after their deaths, the bodies of the two Indians were hooked on bamboo stakes facing out to sea.

It was a kind of scarecrow, Pathak said.

We are studying the 2006 case. We are asking anthropologists what they do when they kill an outsider, the police chief added. We are trying to understand the group psychology.

Though Chaus death is officially a murder case, anthropologists say it may be impossible to retrieve the Americans body and that no charges will be made against the protected tribe.

Seven people, including six fishermen who were involved in ferrying Chau to North Sentinel, have been arrested.

The fishermen have accompanied the police teams to the island to help efforts to pinpoint where Chau was killed.

Anthropologists and tribal welfare experts who have had the previous rare contacts with the Sentinelese have been heavily involved with the inquiry.

Their advice will be important, said Pathak. We are taking the advice of the people in the field to advance this case.
The body of American missionary-adventurer John Allen Chau may never be recovered from the lost island where he fell in a volley of arrows fired by a reclusive tribe whose existence is threatened by the modern world, say experts.

The menace to the Sentinelese from Chaus one-man invasion is such that tribal rights specialists say no murder charges will ever be laid and Chaus body will have to stay hidden to protect what is probably the worlds last pre-neolithic tribe.

Government authorities -- who do not dare enforce their rule over North Sentinel island -- have not sent police ashore to question the tribe who have been greeting outsiders with hostility for centuries.

Police sent a boat near North Sentinel for the second time since the killing on Friday.

Due precautions were taken by the team to ensure that this particularly vulnerable tribal group are not disturbed and distressed during this exercise, said a police statement.

Fears that 21st century diseases as mild as the common cold could kill off the tribe, or that experiencing electricity and the internet would devastate their lifestyle, have left them in a guarded bubble that Chau sought to burst with his Jesus loves you message.

The American died last week after making several attempts to reach the Sentinelese to preach Christianity -- knowing it was illegal to go within three miles (five kilometres) of the island.

Double dilemma

Pankaj Sekhsaria, a tribal rights expert and author on the Andaman and Nicobar islands, said it would be a futile exercise to try to retrieve Chaus body.

I dont think it is a good idea to go anywhere near (North Sentinel) because it will create conflict with the community there, he told AFP.

I dont believe there is any safe way to retrieve the body without putting both the Sentinelese and those attempting it at risk, added Sophie Grig, senior researcher for Survival International which campaigns for such isolated groups.

Anup Kapoor, an anthropology professor at the University of Delhi, said that anyone wanting to open a dialogue with the Sentinelese had to show they were on the same level.

Dont wear anything, he recommended. Only then you can hope to have some sort of interaction.

Kapoor once had contacts with the Onge, another Andamans tribe, adding: It was only after I took off my clothes, except my underwear.

The lack of knowledge of the Sentinelese, believed to be the last surviving descendants of the first humans to arrive in Asia -- and who 13th century adventurer Marco Polo called brutish and savage -- is the main handicap.

We have no clue about their communication systems, their history and culture, how can we go anywhere near them, said Kapoor.

What we know is that they have been killed and persecuted historically by the British and the Japanese. They hate anyone in uniform. If they see someone in uniform, they will kill him on the spot.

Let them be the way they are. Leave them in peace in the ecosystem they are in. Do not disturb them because that will only make them more aggressive.

No timeline

Police in the Indian Ocean paradise are now wrestling with a double dilemma: how to answer the prayers of Chaus family and maintain the privacy around North Sentinel that is essential for the tribes survival.

Andamans police chief Dependra Pathak has said no timeline can be given for finding a body.

And Sekhsaria warned Indian authorities may now have to strengthen surveillance around North Sentinel to prevent a Chau copycat.

The administration is seized of the matter, they are already thinking about the surveillance, he said without giving detail.

Indian outsiders have had a rough reception when going to North Sentinel. Arrows were fired at a helicopter that checked on the tribe after the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Two fishermen who strayed too close in 2006 were killed.

Police are talking with anthropologists and tribal welfare experts about the best way to establish contact.

The Anthropological Survey of India has had previous rudimentary contact.

When we went there, nothing happened, said the surveys Andaman chief C. Raghu. Our seniors visited the island and they came back. It is because we are experts and know the pulse of the people.

Its not just the risk of disease. You also have to think of how to handle yourself, what to say and what to share with them. To them, whoever gets there is from the outside, new world.
Sadhvi Koyal Giri, 38, suffered severe burns and was very critical after she reportedly set herself ablaze at her house in Bahadurganj village under Tilhar police station of Shahjahanpur district late on Friday night. Police said it was a self immolation bid but the victims relatives alleged four people set her ablaze over a property dispute, when she was returning home late night.

Sadhvi Koyal Giri, earlier known as Seema Verma, had taken diksha (initiation) from Mahant Divya Giri of Mankameshwar Math of Lucknow in January this year. She also contested assembly elections from Nigohi constituency of Shahjahanpur as a Peace Party candidate in 2012 and remained on the sixth position.

Giris nephew Amit Rajput said she was troubled with multiple criminal cases related to fraud registered against her and harassment by Pankaj Gupta, Sushil Babu Gupta, Anurag Gupta and Anil Gupta. He alleged that the Guptas chased her when she was returning home from Lucknow and set her ablaze.

Rajput said Giri suffered over 80% burns and was shifted to a Bareilly hospital where her condition was stated to be critical.

Talking on phone, inspector of Tilhar police station, Ashok Pal said initial probe revealed that Giri had gone to Lucknow for Gomti Aarti on Friday morning and returned to Shahjahanpur at around 9 pm. He said Giris niece Shruti told police that she (Giri) was visibly upset when she returned and locked herself in a room.

The inspector said Giris nephew and other family members later turned up with allegations of the Guptas setting her ablaze over property dispute. He said the Guptas had lodged an FIR against Giri of land grabbing after manipulating facts and preparing forged documents.

He said the family members had earlier said they rushed to rescue Giri when they saw smoke coming out of the room. They first took her to a local hospital from where she was later referred to Bareilly hospital considering serious burn injuries. He said so far police had not received any formal information about the incident but a police team was in touch with the family. No clear reason had emerged behind her grave step, he said.

Giris followers, however, alleged that she was troubled due to fake criminal cases registered against her. They said Giri was arrested and sent to jail thrice in the past two years due to which she was feeling depressed.

The inspector said four criminal cases related to land fraud and bank related fraud were registered against Giri at different police stations in Shahjahanpur since 2016. He said three cases were lodged at Tilhar police station while one case was registered with Sadar Bazar police station. He said the last case related to land grabbing was lodged against her by Guptas in September 2018 at Tilhar police station but she had take stay against arrest in the matter.
As a frenzied mob, shouting slogans in support of Ram temple construction, reached Ayodhya for attending Shiv Senas Aashirwad Utsav on Saturday and VHPs Dharma Sabha on Sunday, a three-layer security was put in place in view of heightened tension and charged atmosphere.

The city was drenched in a saffron hue -- the colour of both Shiv Sena and VHP.

Frenzied group of Shiv Sainiks were seen moving on the streets of Ayodhya chanting slogans like Jai Shri Ram, Pahle Mandir, Phir Sarkar and Jai Bhawani, Jai Shivaji as the local residents remained divided on the need for holding such programmes.

The VHP supporters poured in on bikes, SUVs and buses even as the senior officials of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) kept busy making last-minute preparations for the success of VHPs congregation, for which a massive build-up had been done over the weeks.

Immediately after the arrival of Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray in the afternoon, the district administration sealed Ayodhya. Cops were alert, drones deployed to monitor movement of mobs amid apprehensions of trouble while some were making videos of the crowd. The para-military forces and the state police were on their toes constantly guarding the streets, specially the Muslim dominated areas.

Senior officials from Lucknow are camping in the temple city.

A special vigil was maintained around the disputed complex, which was about 2 km from the venue of Thackerays Aashirwad Utsav.

Uddhav presence created lot of curiosity as it is the first time that he has visited Ayodhya.

Making a blistering attack on the Modi government, he asserted that he had to come to Ayodhya to wake up Kumbhkaran who is sleeping for the past over four years.

The real Kumbhkaran slept for six months. But this Kumbhkaran (Modi government) is sleeping for the past over four years, he said.

Mocking the Prime Minister for his famous 56-inch chest statement, Thackeray said: It is not important to have a big chest. But you should have a heart in your chest.

Ironically, listening to him were also some VHP volunteers.

Later Uddhav, along with his wife Rashmi and son Aditya went to Saryu ghat for aarti.

Earlier in the day, Udhav interacted with seers and got the blessings of Nritya Gopal Das, the head of Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas.

VHP vice-president Champat Rai said, Some intellectuals sitting in New Delhi think that Ram temple movement has lost relevance. We will show the mirror to them.

VHP has already revised its estimate of the crowd likely to attend the Dharam Sabha from 1 lakh to 2 lakh. Seers associated with the VHP are reaching Ayodhya from across the country for the event. However, chief minister and his cabinet colleagues will stay away from the event, unlike December 1992 when the BJPs senior leadership was present in Ayodhya for the final showdown.

Although the state government has deployed large contingents of police force to maintain law and order in Ayodhya, uneasiness is palpable in Muslim-dominated areas of Ayodhya and adjoining districts.

Mohammad Yusuf, a local resident, said: Muslims are afraid. We saw such a huge crowd in 1992 when the Babri Masjid was demolished and a large number of people were killed in violence in different parts of the country. Some people of our community have shifted their families while others are keeping fingers crossed, said Mohammd Yusuf, a local resident.

Iqbal Ansari, a party to the Ram Janambhoomi-Babri Masjid title dispute case in the Supreme Court, said the fear of a repeat of the 1992-type communal violence looms large among the Muslim community with the large mobilization of VHP volunteers.

Fearing trouble, several Muslims settled in Alambagh Katra locality of the temple town have shifted their women and children to safer places.

Mahanth Dharamdas, a party from the Hindu side in title dispute case, said the town is in grip of rumours as hordes of Shiv Sena and VHP workers are arriving.

An uneasy calm is prevailing in the town, he said.

The chief priest of Ramlala Virajaman at the acquired premises in Ayodhya, Acharya Satyendra Das, termed the VHPs Dharam Sabha as purposeless.

He said theres no point in having the event in Ayodhya. Instead they should go to Delhi and gherao the Prime Minister, he added.

Ayodhya residents, however, said the issue was being raised in view of the Lok Sabha elections.

They (politicians and religious organisations) are also aware that nothing can be done now. The Supreme Court will take up the issue only in January 2019. If they want to hold any such convention they should do so in New Delhi to put pressure on the Narendra Modi government to bring an ordinance, said Dhiman, a rickshaw-puller.

A local shopkeeper Ram Prakash said, We are happy to see focus shifting again on Ayodhya. Although not many visitors buy anything more than prasad, their visit means more income for us.

Meanwhile, terming the mobilisation of people for Ram temple a planned strategy of the saffron brigade, Bahujan Samaj Party president Mayawati said the temple issue is in the Supreme Court and the matter should be disposed of by the court only.
Congress even does totka: Shivraj Chouhan

Congress is the biggest communal party. Sometimes they need Muslims votes, sometimes they act to visit temples, they even do totka.One of their leaders is roaming around wearing garland of lemons and chillis.Votes shouldnt be sought on the basis of religion, said Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Chouhan, according to news agency ANI.

Congress has scams worth crores, Shivraj brought development: Modi

At one hand, is the Congress which has done scams worth crores of rupees with its uncles (Bofors accused Italian businessman Ottavio) Quattrocchi and (United Carbide Corporation chief Warren) Anderson, the accused in killings of thousands in the Bhopal gas tragedy, and on the other, Mama Shivraj (Singh Chouhan) who has brought development and the Ladli Lakshmi programme to Madhya Pradesh, said PM Modi.

                                           :   #ModiSangMP  BJP (@BJP4India) November 25, 2018

Will he bring moon if someone asks for it: Shivraj Chouhan on Rahuls promise to waive off farmers loan within 10 days

Will he bring down the moon from the sky if someone asks him to, he is just saying anything, MP CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Congress chief Rahul Gandhis promise to waive off farmers loan within 10 days.

If someone says him to bring the moon from the sky, will he get it? Kuch bhi keh rahe hai aaj kal: Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Rahul Gandhi's statement to waive off farmers' loan within 10 days if Congress wins the elections pic.twitter.com/UHaphwZyNF  ANI (@ANI) November 25, 2018

Congress has become burden on nation: PM Modi

Congress party has become a burden on the nation, said PM Narendra Modi at poll rally in Madhya Pradesh, according to news agency PTI.

BJP ensured affordable healthcare for all: PM Modi

We are ensuring affordable and quality healthcare for all. Through Jan Aushadhi Kendras, the poor and middle class people have been immensely benefited, said PM Modi in MP.

India now exports mobile phones: PM Modi

Namdaar talks about Made in Mandsaur, Made in Jabalpur and Made in Indore mobile phones, but doesnt have that much knowledge that today India exports mobile phones, said PM Modi in MP.

BJP increased MSP by 1.5 times: PM Modi

In 2006, Swaminathan Commission submitted a report to the Congress government. The report suggested that minimum support price (MSP) by for farmers should be increased by 1.5 times, which was never implemented. It is BJP who increased the MSP 1.5 times.

People across country now rejecting Congress: PM Modi

From Panchayat to Parliament, each and every state were once ruled by the Congress. But why people across the country are now rejecting the Congress? The reason - Because of their corruption, because they believe in dividing people on the grounds of caste, said PM Modi.

Is baar fir se Shivraj: PM Modi in Jabalpur

Na darbari, na Raja, na Maharaj, is baar fir se Shivraj said Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Jabalpur.

Shouldnt Cong tell who is their CM face? PM Modi asks in MPs Jabalpur

Shouldnt they (Congress) tell you who is their chief minister face? When they dont trust you with this, should you trust them & cast vote for them on November 28? asks PM Narendra Modi in Jabalpur.

BJP indulging in overt, covert polarization in country: Cong leader Jairam Ramesh

There is a high degree of communal polarization that the BJP is doing in every election and in these states, he told PTI.

One is overt polarization, which is the language used by Mr Amit Shah and PM Narendra Modi. Then there is covert polarization done by the RSS and its people through the word of mouth and house to house, Ramesh said.

Ramesh said the Opposition tends to miss overt polarization and also the seriousness of covert polarization.

BJP rules more than 70% of India: Amit Shah

Congress, Communists and TDP have joined hands for elections. The Communists have been wiped out of world and the Congress out of India. However, currently, BJP is ruling more than 70% of India.

Fake news only enterprise flourishing under BJP rule: Cong leader Jairam Ramesh

I think this is Make in India, Make in BJP. Fake news is the biggest enterprise in Make in India during the BJP regime. The fact is that Mr Modi himself, during his election campaign, indulges in falsification of facts, he indulges in falsification of history, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh alleged, according to news agency PTI.

KCR govt didnt implement Central schemes to stop PM Modi from becoming popular: Shah

Telangana govt did not implement several schemes of the centre because they believe it will make PM Modi more popular in the state, said Amit Shah.

For each Amit Shah, 10 Shahs of RSS practicing communal polarization: Ramesh

Mr Amit Shah is a good example of a person who preaches and practices the politics of overt polarization and that for every Amit Shah there are 10 Amit Shahs of the RSS who are practicing and preaching covert polarization. That is what happened in UP, Cong leader Jairam Ramesh noted.

KCR govt hasnt fulfilled employment promises: Shah in Telanganas Siddipet

KCR government hasnt been able to fulfil any of his promises. Instead of giving employment to 1.60 lakh people, more than 2 lakh seats are lying vacant, said BJP president Amit Shah in Telanganas Siddipet.

Around 4,500 farmers committed suicide in Telangana: Amit Shah

Around 4,500 farmers have committed suicide in Telangana. In KCRs constituency, around 131 farmers have killed themselves, says BJP chief while addressing a public meeting in Telangana.

BJP doesnt believe in reservation on basis of religion: Amit Shah

Telangana CM has proposed 12% reservation for the minorities which isnt possible without taking away reservation quotas of SCs, STs or OBCs. BJP is against any reservation on the basis of religion and will not allow anyone else to make this happen, says BJP chief Amit Shah in Telanganas Warangal.

BJP brought most comprehensive crop insurance scheme: PM

We brought the most comprehensive crop insurance scheme. Farmers are immensely benefiting from it, says PM Modi.

Why Cong leaders making personal attacks on my parents, asks PM Modi

We never attack anyones family, we never make personal comments, then why are Congress leaders making personal attacks on my parents, said PM Modi.

#WATCH: PM Modi says in Vidisha, "kya kaaran hai ki aaj mere pita ji ko bhi ghasit ke le aaye, jo 30 saal pehle duniya chod ke chale gaye hain. Aur Congress ke naamdaar kehte hain ki Modi Ji bhi to mere parivar ke liye bolte hain". #MadhyaPradesh pic.twitter.com/qO18PXvEv3  ANI (@ANI) November 25, 2018

PM Modi takes a dig at Congs Digvijaya Singhs no campaign remark

Congress leader Digvijaya Singh says he does not campaign because that reduces the number of votes Congress gets, said PM Modi.

                          55                 :   -   9345014501  #ModiSangMP pic.twitter.com/JYq4D86TGK  BJP (@BJP4India) November 25, 2018

See the difference: PM Modi on 15 years of BJP rule in MP vs congress 55

Compare the 55 years of misrule of Congress versus 15 years of good governance in Madhya Pradesh under Shivraj Chouhans leadership. The difference is for everyone to see, said PM Modi in PMs Vidisha.

No trace of Congress in UP, Odisha, Gujarat: PM Modi

Ever since Congress was kept out of power in Gujarat, UP, Odisha, Andhra,Telangana, and West Bengal, they havent been given another chance, said PM Modi.

Cong doesnt talk about development: PM Modi

Neither has Congress worked for development, nor do they have the courage to talk about development. BJP works towards development because there is no other way of working, said PM Modi.

PM Modi addresses rally in MPs Vidisha

PM Modi is currently addressing a public meeting in Madhya Pradeshs Vidisha, development being the focus of his initial speech.

BJP ensured one rank one pension to the soldiers: PM Modi

The soldiers were demanding one rank one pension for the last 40 years. I want to ask the Congress why did they not listen to them. When we came to power we ensured one rank one pension to the soldiers, said PM Modi.

What Congress had done in 50 years, Raje did in 5 years: PM

What the Congress had done in 50 years, Vasundhara Raje did in 5 years. Now, you have to decide are you going to vote for the BJP or for a party which will make you wait 50 years to get work done, said PM Modi.

Congress is trying to use impeachment to threaten judiciary: PM Modi

Congress is dragging the judiciary into politics. Congress is creating an atmosphere of fear for the judiciary. One of their leaders asked the Supreme Court to delay the Ayodhya hearing because of 2019 polls. When a judge doesnt pay heed to their demands, they try to use impeachment to threaten judiciary. But, I urge the judiciary to keep on treading the path of justice without any fear,said PM Modi.

Its Rajes 5 years vs Congress 5 years

We want votes on the basis of development. Its Vasundhara Rajes 5 years vs Congress 5 years, said PM Modi.

Congress is a confused party: PM Modi

The Congress is a confused party. They are confused about their CM Candidates, their leader is so confused, said PM Modi.

When I go abroad, they dont see my caste, they just see India: PM Modi

When I go abroad, they dont see my caste, they just see India and its people, said PM Modi in Rajasthans Alwar

Congress worked towards breaking the country: PM Modi

While BJP worked towards making the country strong, Congress worked to break it, said PM Modi.

Marginalised communities are just vote-bank for Congress: PM Modi

When a Congress leader humiliated me over my caste, he was suspended from the party. But, after two months, he was cordially welcomed by the party. Marginalised communities are just vote-bank for them. Thats what caste means to them. Everyone knows their conduct towards Dr. Baba Saheb Ambedkar. They did not even confer him Bharat Ratna, said PM Modi

Congress has no vision for welfare of Rajasthan: PM

Congress is now asking my caste, abusing my mother as they dont have any other agenda to fight the polls on. They dont have any vision for the welfare of Rajasthan, said PM Modi

If Congress had courage, they would have challenged the work done by CM Vasundhara Raje: PM

The Congress is stooping lower day-by day. They have forgotten civility. If theyve had courage, they would have challenged the work done by CM Vasundhara Raje in Rajasthan, said PM Modi

PM Modi addresses public rally in Rajasthans Alwar

PM Narendra Modi is addressing a public rally in Rajasthans Alwar.

PM Modi to address public rally in Rajasthans Alwar

PM Narendra Modi will be addressing a public rally in Rajasthans Alwar shortly.
On November 14, Garima Arora became the first Indian woman to head Michelin-starred restaurant. That day we celebrated, but the next, it was business as usual, she says. The star is a push to innovate more, she adds, and to work on her dream to open a restaurant in India.

The dream is still a distant one, given the complications, the bureaucratic maze and the corruption. Just getting a liquor licence is such a long and expensive process. India doesnt yet have a Michelin-star restaurant. But thats because Michelin doesnt yet have a guide to a city here, or the country.

These guides are a series of books first published around 1900 by the French tyre company Michelin. In a world of very few cars, they were initially meant to encourage people to drive, and so they included maps, tips on car care, listed where to stop for fuel.

The Michelin guides, now considered the last word in restaurant rankings, were first published around 1900 by the French tyre company. In a world of very few cars, they were meant to encourage people to drive, and so they offered maps, tips on car care, listed where to stop for fuel.

By 1920, they began to list hotels and restaurants in Paris. As the guide became more popular, Michelin hired gourmands to visit restaurants in secret and rate them for the guide.

The first stars were award in 1926. Over nearly a century, they have come to be considered the final word on restaurant ratings.

And yet, until 2006, there were still only Michelin guides for Europe. Since then, the guide has expanded its scope to include cities in North America, South America, Japan, South Korea, China and parts of south-east Asia.

Indian chefs have headed Michelin-starred restaurants outside India (remember, a star is for an establishment, never a person), the first being Atul Kochhars Indian-cuisine restaurant Tamarind, and Vineet Bhatias Zaika, both in London, in 2001. After him came Vikas Khannas Junoon in New York, Kochhars Benares in London, Gaggan Anands Gaggan in Bangkok, among others.

But never to a restaurant headed by an Indian woman. Is that because the professional kitchen is not really conducive to womens growth? The kitchen in general is a challenging place, says Arora, 32. It was a tougher place to work for women some 15-20 years ago. Now, in general, efforts are made to make the atmosphere more cooperative and focus on the strengths of each person.

Fish Khanom La at GAA. Its inspired by a Thai pastry called khanom la. Arora says she wants to blend the Indian and Thai food cultures on her menu.

EATS SHOOTS & LEAVES

At GAA, Arora says she tries to blend the Indian and Thai food cultures, working with ingredients such as jackfruit and betel leaf, which are common to both.

Its been extremely difficult to carve out a niche for GAA, she admits. The flavours here are unique, so there is no reference point for diners to compare them with. While this can be a great experience, people are usually averse to trying something so new.

The Michelin star rating, she believes, will help them accept her experiments more readily.

Not all chefs have felt this way about the coveted star. In 2013, a Spanish chef returned his Valencia restaurants Michelin star because he felt it restricted his freedom to experiment. In 2014, a Belgian chef did the same, saying he wanted to be able to serve fried chicken if he liked, without worrying that he was disappointing customers.

In 2011, an Australian chef heading a restaurant in London reportedly called the star a curse because of how it raised expectations among customers. And this year, for the first time, a three-starred restaurant in the running was left off the list on request, after Sebastien Bras, the French chef of Le Suquet, said he wanted to start a fresh chapter without the pressure of being judged all the time.

The secret judges responsible for Michelin ratings typically check for quality, craft, the personality of the chef reflected on the plate, value for money and consistency. They try not to be snooty  stars have been award to a dim sum chain in Hong Kong; a streetside noodle bar in Tokyo, a street food stall in Singapore.

But for chefs, a lot of the stress comes from fear of losing the star  celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay likened it to losing a girlfriend.

Quick facts Garima Arora studied mass media in Mumbai, and her first job was with a newspaper Cooking was her first love, though, so she quit and headed to Paris to train as a chef. From Paris, it was on to work at Gordon Ramsays Verre in Dubai, then Noma in Copenhagen. In 2015, Arora moved to Bangkok to work as sous chef at the Michelin-starred restaurant Gaggan with Gaggan Anand. Anand helped her set up GAA in the same neighbourhood in April 2017. When shes not running her restaurant, Arora likes to work out. Back home in Mumbai, her comfort food is baingan bharta and her go-to place to eat is Madras Cafe!

Arora, incidentally, worked with Ramsay, in Dubai. It was my first experience in a professional kitchen and there was a lot that I learnt from it, the primary thing being that though a restaurant kitchen looks chaotic, its organised chaos fuelled by speed, she says.

She also worked at Noma, repeatedly ranked the best restaurant in the world, and she says it is here that she learnt how cerebral cooking can be.

It changed me. I realised that as much is done with the hands as with the mind, she says. I still look at every process  from pickling to making curd  differently as a result of that experience.

So whats next? I really want that restaurant in India, she says. But not in my home city. In fact, not in a city at all.
In the late 1980s, as various outfits in the Sangh Parivar started the campaign for the construction of the Ram temple in place of the Babri mosque in Ayodhya, Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray was quick to sense the changing public mood and hopped on to the Hindutva bandwagon. He adopted the hard-line Hindu agenda more aggressively than the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) itself, forcing the latter to align with Sena. Thackerays party gained more from the hard-line Hindutva than the BJP. Within a few years, the Sena-BJP alliance was in power with Sena playing the role of the big brother.

Now, almost three decades later, Thackerays son and current Sena chief, Uddhav, is doing the same. As the Hindu right-wing outfits have started raising the pitch for the Ram temple, Uddhav has not wasted any time to pick up the issue. His Ayodhya visit is aimed at the same.

However, 2018 is not 1989; the Ram temple issue has not become that big, though some outfits are planning to take it across India. So why is the Sena doing this now?

The popular theory in Maharashtras political circles is that the Hindu hard-line agenda will give Uddhav an excuse to realign with the BJP after his bitter criticism of the Modi government at the Centre since the last four years. Several leaders from both parties are privately admitting that the alliance will be inevitable if they have to counter the Congress and Nationalist Congress Party-led coalition in Maharashtra in the coming elections.

According to Sena insiders, this is not entirely wrong but there is more behind Uddhavs move. It is true that Hindutva could be the common ground for us to align with the BJP. For the past four years, we have been criticising the Modi-Shah regime in BJP. If we forge an alliance with the BJP, it would be for Hindutva and not for Modi. We cant go to the people and seek votes in the name of PM Modi after criticising him, said a key Sena leader, who did not wished to be named.

Further, it seems the BJP will also take help of the Hindutva agenda since the situation in the country today is not similar to 2014 when it swept the elections. In that case, we will have a leverage over the BJP as they know that the voters responding to the Hindutva agenda would be divided between them and us, he added. And what if the two parties contest separately? There is one more reason why the Sena leadership wants to adopt hard-line agenda: It will help the party to reach out to non-Marathi voters in the Mumbai-Thane-Pune belt, especially Mumbai.

Senas leadership is aware that votes of the Marathi-speaking population will not be enough to win assembly elections or even Mumbai civic body polls, which are crucial for the party. Senas top brass realised this when the BJP won more assembly seats than Sena in Mumbai in 2014 and came close to it in the 2016 civic polls. If the Sena has to reach out to non-Marathi voters, it will need a wider appeal of Hindutva. It can click with north Indian and Gujarati voters who are the largest groups after Maharashtrians in the Mumbai-Thane belt.
We often overlook the fact that one of Indias worst terrorist attacks took place amidst a moment when India-Pakistan relations were looking up. The then Pakistan Foreign Minister was in India even as the attack took place. The fact that Pakistans most prominent political leader, Benazir Bhutto, had been herself killed less than a year earlier certainly suggested to some of us then that the restoration of civilian authority in Pakistan meant that the country would address terrorism more purposefully and substantively.

The Mumbai carnage saw an international condemnation that cut across all divisions in demanding that action be taken against its planners and perpetrators. None of that happened. Familiar sentiments of national denial and victimhood asserted themselves in Pakistan. A consequence has been that the tactical planners and ideological mentors of 26/11 remain unpunished. They have, in fact, expanded their profile and we are left with one more festering sore in the already crowded terrain of India-Pakistan relations. Post Mumbai, Pakistans descent into chaos appeared to gather greater momentum- The Osama bin Laden (OBL) raid a year and a half later, saw also an assertion of self-righteous denial. If anything, the reactions in Pakistan to the elimination of OBL help in understanding how deeply ingrained and all pervasive is the sense of victimhood and how strong a shield it provides against introspection and course correction.

For an elite as globalised as Pakistans, to live with the kind of international image they have acquired is not easy. That they have done so for well over a decade underwrites the structural roots of an incapacity to change. Equally what is evident is a deepening and widening of Pakistans internal crisis, as contradictions that have been with it for many years have further sharpened and intensified. The civil-military divide, the spread of extremism, the economic crisis, and the resort to great power support -- none of this is particularly new given Pakistans history. Yet, in the past decade, each has grown in strength and in terms of the impact they have.

The most obvious casualty of 26/11 was the India-Pakistan dialogue process. The Composite Dialogue had to be discarded and its mutation into a Resumed dialogue and thereafter into a Comprehensive Dialogue followed. That the mutations did not ever take off suggest that the 26/11 impact was deeper rooted than was earlier anticipated. The inability and the incapacity of the Pakistan State to act against those behind the attack meant there would be no early closure to this trauma and without closure moving on is that much more difficult. So, it is not surprising that India-Pakistan relations have remained to a great extent paralysed over the past decade and every effort to shake off this state of paralysis floundered because it was unable to provide a convincing answer on where Pakistan stood on terrorism. But possibly, Mumbai also reinforced the doubts created by Kargil: Is an upswing in ties potentially dangerous given the reaction it may provoke?

Why is it so difficult for Pakistan to accept this -- something which is regarded as self-evident by many countries and about which it is repeatedly counseled by its closest friends. To some extent, Pakistan is victim to its own strategic ambitions vis a vis India and Afghanistan. It knows of no other way to increase its geopolitical heft other than through the Taliban or other motley groups of terrorists in J and K. To question these ambitions or even introspect on what its Afghanistan and India policies have tangibly yielded it terms of advancing Pakistans national interest has been a non-starter because these considerations take you into the quagmire of civil-military relations. It is far easier to uphold dubious claims than question them. It is also no coincidence that Nawaz Sharif, the one Pakistani leader who was clear sighted about Pakistans future with India and Afghanistan, was deposed in the way that he was.

Terrorism is no longer a staple just of the India-Pakistan agenda. If anything, Pakistan has discovered how much space this issue now occupies in its foreign and economic policy as a whole. The Financial Action Task Force for instance has an impact that extends to the IMF and the structural adjustment program it draws up for Pakistan. It is however unrealistic to expect that international scrutiny or pressure will bring about change in Pakistan on an issue that is so deeply intertwined with its regional policies and with its own self-image. In any event, building an international consensus today is more difficult than it was a decade ago, even on an issue on which there is otherwise general agreement. To be realistic, Pakistans political process, post-Benazir and post-Nawaz, also does not presently suggest that it has the potential to come up with any new ideas.

(TCA Raghavan is a former Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan and is currently Director General, Indian Council of World Affairs.)
Ending its prolonged strife with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)s Rajasthan unit, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has deputed its foot soldiers in the poll-bound state to help the party buck anti- incumbency and return to power in the upcoming elections, people aware of the development said.

The decision was taken after protracted talks between top RSS and BJP functionaries. Both decided to chart out strategy ahead of the December 7 polls.

After talking over in 2013, chief minister Vasundhara Raje did not share an amicable equation with the RSS. Many Sangh offshoots like the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh criticised her policies. The strain was palpable ahead of the RSSs yearly gathering in Rajasthans Nagaur in 2015, when the cadre complained that the CM did little to extend logistical support, RSS and BJP functionaries said on condition of anonymity. Amid forecast from pollsters showing the BJP faces an uphill task in the polls, Sangh brass decided to bury the hatchet, said a senior functionary. Though the RSS asserts that it stays away from electoral politics, the BJP relies on its cadre for reaching out to voters.

Also Read: Rajasthan assembly elections: EC notice to Congress CP Joshi over Brahmin remark

All hands are on deck and the inconsonance over key issues has been set aside. The Sangh leadership had several rounds of meetings with senior BJP leaders including party president Amit Shah to iron out difference in the interest of the party and the organisation, an RSS functionary said. A BJP functionary privy to the high-level meetings cited RSS chief Mohan Bhagwats visit to the state in September, which nudged Sangh workers to join forces with the BJP and help it retain power. This was preceded by a round of meeting between Shah and RSS general secretary Suresh Bhaiyyaji Joshi where it was decided that the Sanghs suggestions on campaigning will be taken on board and its kshetra prachraks will be involved in key decisions.

For the longest time, there was no sangathan mantri (organisational secretary) in the state. In August 2017, Chandrashekhar was brought in from Uttar Pradesh and things began to turn from there on, the BJP functionary said. Even though the seats where the RSS had the final say in candidate selection is under 30; party functionaries said they expect the Sangh to help overturn the anti-BJP sentiment in areas where Rajput and Jat voters are in larger numbers. An internal survey that showed the BJP way below the half-way mark set the alarm bells ringing, the BJP functionary said.

In areas with larger minority vote-share, such as Alwar, Ajmer and Dausa, the RSS has suggested roping in popular speakers such as Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanah.

The presence of old Sangh hands, like national joint general secretary V Satish and Prakash Chandra ,who was removed as sangathan mantri in 2009 following differences with Raje, has helped improve coordination between the Sangh and the BJP.

Union minister Prakash Javadekar ,who is BJPs in-charge of the state, shares good relations with the RSS; his involvement has also been crucial, as he has been able to smoothen ties. Efforts made by Chandrashekhar such as renewing door-to-door contact with voters is also helping mitigate peoples anger towards the government, said a third second functionary. Sangh cadre will be campaigning for the continuation of PM Narendra Modis development agenda and the issues underlying the Hindutva sentiment, which includes the construction of a Ram Temple in Ayodhya and cow protection.

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The ruling BJP today launched a sharp attack on the Congress for controversial comments by its leaders against Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Shameful, the BJP said on social media, tweeting a short video that it says, features former union minister Vilasrao Muttemwar.

He says that the world knows past generations of Rahul Gandhi but no one knows who Modis father was!, the BJPs official handle tweeted.

In the clip, the leader, addressing an election meeting reportedly in Rajasthan, can be heard saying, Who knew him before he became the Prime Minister? Even today who knows his fathers name? Everyone knows Rahul Gandhis fathers name, Rajiv Gandhi. Everyone knows Rajiv Gandhis mothers name, Indira Gandhi. Everyone knows Indira Gandhis fathers name, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. And everyone knows Pandit Jawaharlal Nehrus fathers name, Motilal Nehru. Everyone knows the family since five generations. But this Narendra Modi, nobody knows his fathers name.

Shameful statement by Congress leader and former Central Minister Vilasrao Muttemwar. He says that the world knows past generations of Rahul Gandhi but no one knows who Modis father was! pic.twitter.com/TwUhpdCBET  BJP (@BJP4India) November 25, 2018

Earlier, Raj Babbar had brought in Modis mother into the assembly election campaign saying that the rupees falling value against the US dollar was the same as her age. This had sparked demands from the BJP for an apology from both Babbar as well as party chief Rahul Gandhi.
Tamil superstar Rajinikanth condoled the death of veteran Kannada actor MH Ambareesh on Saturday, calling him his best friend.

A wonderful human being ... my best friend ... I have lost you today and will miss you ... Rest In Peace #Ambrish, he said in the tweet.

A wonderful human being ... my best friend ... I have lost you today and will miss you ... Rest In Peace #Ambrish  Rajinikanth (@rajinikanth) November 24, 2018

Many other actors took to Twitter to express their grief at his passing away.

Telugu superstar Allu Arjun wrote: Kannada Star Ambareesh Garu No more . Shocking news early morning. Man with a golden soul . May his soul rest in peace . Condolences to @sumalathaA garu and the family. #Ambareesh garu.

Kannada Star Ambareesh Garu No more . Shocking news early morning. Man with a golden soul . May his soul rest in peace . Condolences to @sumalathaA garu and the family. #Ambareesh garu .  Allu Arjun (@alluarjun) November 25, 2018

Veteran actor Radhika Sarathkumar, sharing a picture from a get-together of stars from the 80s and 90s, wrote: #Ambareesh what a wonderful human being, , such a wonderful person. Will miss you terribly. My heart goes out to Suma and family. So heartbreaking. May he rest in peace.

#Ambareesh what a wonderful human being, , such a wonderful person. Will miss you terribly. My heart goes out to Suma and family. So heartbreaking. May he rest in peace. pic.twitter.com/Zb3bt3GCwd  Radikaa Sarathkumar (@realradikaa) November 24, 2018

Tamil actor and Congress leader Khushbu Sundar too wrote on Twitter: You will always be in our hearts .. we will be incomplete without you Sir.

You will always be in our hearts .. we will be incomplete without you Sir. pic.twitter.com/0csS8aDLaT  Khushbu Sundar.. (BJPwaalon ab thoda araam karlo) (@khushsundar) November 24, 2018

Actor Laxmi Raai too left a note on Twitter. She wrote: Grown up watching his movies never had the opportunity to work with him but I m happy I met him few times ! Shocked to hear this news ! another legend gone rip #Ambareesh sir.

Grown up watching his movies never had the opportunity to work with him but I m happy I met him few times ! Shocked to hear this news ! another legend gone  rip #Ambareesh sir  pic.twitter.com/Pgo41mUgkN  RAAI LAXMI (@iamlakshmirai) November 24, 2018

Ambareesh passed away in Bengaluru, according to official sources and Karnataka Film Chamber of Commerce. He was 66.

The former union minister was rushed to a private hospital after he complained of breathing-related issue, sources said.

Ambareesh has acted in over 200 films and served as the Karnataka minister of housing in the Siddaramaiah-led cabinet.

(With HT inputs)

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Bharatiya Janata Party national president Amit Shah on Sunday categorically ruled out granting of reservations to Muslims in education and employment, as it was against the spirit of the Constitution.

Addressing a series of election rallies at Parkal, Nirmal, Narayankhed and Dubbak in Telangana where assembly elections will be held December 7, he said that as long as the BJP was in power at the Centre, there was no question of allowing reservations based on religion.

Shah was referring to the promise made by chief minister and Telangana Rashtra Samithi president K Chandrasekhar Rao that he would ensure passage of a bill in Parliament granting 12 per cent reservations to Muslim minorities, if the TRS won 16 out of 17 Lok Sabha seats from Telangana. How can he do that? Supreme Court has fixed a ceiling of 50 per cent on the reservations. If he has to provide 12 per cent quota for Muslims, he has to impose a cut in the percentage of reservations being provided for SCs, STs and Other Backward Classes. So, which category has to lose its quota? he asked.

He said it was the Narendra Modi government which had constituted an exclusive commission for OBCs to take care of their welfare.

Shah claimed the National Democratic Alliance government had helped the Telangana government in a big way, by increasing the devolution of funds by five times as per the 14th finance commission recommendations. Besides, the Centre released another Rs 1.14 lakh crore to Telangana under various centrally sponsored schemes. But the Telangana government had pushed the revenue-surplus state into a debt trap by borrowing more than Rs 2 lakh crore in the name of projects only to take kickbacks. He (KCR) even refused to implement the central scheme of Ayushman Bharat thereby depriving lakhs of poor people of proper health care, he alleged.

In Nirmal town, the BJP president came down heavily on the Telangana chief minister for buckling down to the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM). When MIM floor leader Akbaruddin Owaisi abused Hindu gods and goddesses, the TRS government did not even bother to register an FIR against him. I challenge KCR to get a case filed against Akbaruddin before December 5, if he has got guts, he said.

He assured the people that BJP will celebrate September 17 as Hyderabad liberation day as an official function after coming to power in Telangana.

Shah also blamed KCR for going in for early elections, thereby causing huge burden on the state exchequer. He reminded that the TRS chief had supported the proposal of Prime Minister Narendra Modi for one-nation-one-poll idea in the past. He was apprehensive that the TRS would be wiped out, if there are simultaneous polls to the assembly and the Lok Sabha. This is actually an early election for KCRs family members. He wanted to anoint his son or daughter as the next chief minister if his party comes to power again, he said.

Reminding KCR of his promise of making a Dalit as the chief minister of Telangana in 2014, Shah sought to know whether the TRS chief would stick to his promise at least in 2018. Will he announce a Dalit as the CM candidate at least in 2018 or project his son? he asked.

The BJP president said the Congress was fast losing power everywhere in the country and it cannot win even in Telangana, even if it joined hands with the other parties. The BJP is the only party that can provide a safe, stable and strong government, he said.
The Congress might be on a campaign blitzkrieg in poll-bound Telangana but, ironically, it was a strongly billed Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) rally that buoyed its morale .

A few months ago, the Congresss prospects in Telangana were bleak with political pundits not holding out any hope for the party. It seemed to be a deja vu moment for the party, which had bitten the dust in the last assembly polls despite being a prime proponent of the creation of Telangana. However, suddenly the picture has changed -- the Congress has managed to bring itself back in the reckoning with the TRS losing some of its sheen.

The party sensed a renewed opportunity when the TRS failed to bring the promised 2.5 million people to the mother of all rallies at Kongara Kalan on the outskirts of Hyderabad on September 2, four days before chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao  popularly known as KCR  dissolved the assembly on September 6.

Also Read: Telangana assembly elections: Two lakh less voters in 2018 than in 2014 polls, says CEC

It turned out to be a flop show, said film star-turned-politician and Congress leader, M Vijaya Shanthi. We figured out that the people have lost confidence in KCR and are no longer ready to trust him, she said.

The factors that contributed to the Congresss resurgence were the overconfidence of KCR in dissolving the assembly six months before schedule and the simmering-beneath-the-surface anti-incumbency against a large number of TRS legislators.

KCR had taken the dissolution decision based on an assessment that there is tremendous goodwill for the TRS with internal surveys predicting 100 of the 119 seats for the party.

He also did not want simultaneous elections to the assembly and the Lok Sabha  due in mid 2019 -- given that national issues could have a bearing on the outcome of the state polls.

He wanted enough room to manoeuvre during the Lok Sabha elections, which would enable him to take a call on joining any alliance.

Will the decision prove costly for KCR? Political observers think the Congress might just turn out to be the dark horse -- not because of its own efforts but due to the blunders of the TRS.

First of all, the rally did not go as expected and that sent wrong signals to the voters. Secondly, the renomination of many sitting legislators has come as a blessing in disguise for the Congress, said political analyst Gone Prakash Rao.

TRS leaders may say they are fighting in KCRs name but the anti-incumbency cannot be ignored, he said.

Among the rebels re-nominated by the TRS are 12 from the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), three from the YSR Congress Party (YSRCP), one from the Communist Party of India (CPI), two from the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and six from the Congress.

J Kishan Rao, a non-resident Indian who returned to the country from the US a few years ago, echoed Gone Prakashs views.

KCR is inaccessible not only to the general public but even to his ministers and legislators. He has turned too arrogant, he said. But TRS leaders rubbish the allegation and claim that there is no anti-incumbency and their party will cross the two-thirds majority mark.

Congress has already admitted that it cant contest against TRS in all the seats on its own and that is why we see Maha Kootami or whatever Kootami it is. That is the admission of defeat, said TRS Lok Sabha MP Boianapalli Vinod Kumar. He said the September 2 rally was one of the most successful public meetings in Indian politics.

Smelling blood

Sniffing victory, the Congress is leaving no stone unturned on its comeback trail. It has launched a multi-pronged attack on the TRS, dubbing it a B-team of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The TRS has been warming up to the BJP. While the PM has been praising KCR, the TRS helped the BJP in the no-confidence motion by abstaining from voting and later supported NDA candidate Harivansh Narayan Singh in the Rajya Sabha deputy chairperson elections.

Maha Kootami

The Congresss electoral prospects also received a boost when it joined hands and struck a seat-sharing deal with the TDP, Telangana Jana Samithi (TJS) and the CPI to form a Maha Kootami or a grand alliance.

We share the concerns of the Congress and other parties of Maha Kootami. KCR has humiliated the people of Telangana and we want to save democracy, said Telangana TDP chief L Ramana. His party colleague, R Chadrasekhar Reddy, said the upcoming election is a battle between the alliance of four members of the ruling family and the coalition of four parties.

Damage control

The fear of rebel candidates has prompted the Congress to initiate efforts to woo them. Accordingly, senior leaders Ahmed Patel, M Veerappa Moily, Jairam Ramesh and DK Shivakumar rushed to Hyderabad and succeeded in persuading the dissidents to withdraw from the contest. And after Fridays show of strength at a rally addressed by United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson Sonia Gandhi, an upbeat Congress is confident of ousting KCR and TRS from power in the December 7 elections. Whether it succeeds or not will be known when the votes are counted on December 11.

For full coverage, click here
Three of Airbnbs top growth markets are in Africa and the continent has become a cornerstone of the U.S. companys sustainable tourism strategy, a senior official with the home-sharing service said on Thursday. More than 3.5 million customers have stayed with Airbnb hosts across the continent since the company began operating in Africa, with roughly half of those coming in the past year.

South Africa constitutes the bulk of that business, followed by Morocco, Kenya and Egypt. But the rest of the continent is catching up, the companys South Africa manager, Velma Corcoran, told Reuters.

Three of the top eight fastest-growing countries globally are in Africa: Nigeria, Ghana and Mozambique, she said on the sidelines of a tourism conference in Stellenbosch, South Africa.

As of July, Nigeria had recorded year-on-year growth in guest arrivals of 213%. Growth in Ghana and Mozambique was 141% and 136% respectively. Theyre off a relatively small base, but that kind of growth has been really, really encouraging, Corcoran said.

Since its founding in 2008, Airbnb hosts across Africa have earned more than $400 million in direct income from renting out their properties via the service, the company says. Corcoran said it was working with other African governments to ensure they were able to benefit from the home-sharing market.

Ideally what we want is governments recognising home-sharing. Then we can work with them to put in place certain tools, like collecting and remitting tourism tax, she said. Tourism is among Africas fastest-growing sectors and contributed nearly $178 billion, or roughly 8.1%, to the continents gross domestic product last year, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council.

Were looking at Africa and South Africa as our flagship markets for how Airbnb is thinking about more inclusive and sustainable tourism, Corcoran said. We know that if we want to grow as a business over the next 10 or 20 years, that is going to be absolutely key.
US President Donald Trump has said migrants at the southern border will not be allowed into America until a court approves their claims individually.

Trumps comments came in the wake of a caravan of people -- mostly from three Latin American countries El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras -- inching closer to the US-Mexico border with the intention of illegally entering America, a trend that has been going on for the past several decades.

In the last two weeks, approximately 5,000 Central American migrants have arrived in the Mexican border city of Tijuana, just south of California.

Migrants at the Southern Border will not be allowed into the United States until their claims are individually approved in court, Trump tweeted Saturday.

Migrants at the Southern Border will not be allowed into the United States until their claims are individually approved in court. We only will allow those who come into our Country legally. Other than that our very strong policy is Catch and Detain. No "Releasing" into the U.S...  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 24, 2018

Also read | Iran urges Muslims to unite against US, including Saudi brothers

He said illegal immigrants would be caught and detained and not released inside the country, as was the practice earlier.

We only will allow those who come into our country legally. Other than that our very strong policy is Catch and Detain. No Releasing into the US... All will stay in Mexico, Trump tweeted.

....All will stay in Mexico. If for any reason it becomes necessary, we will CLOSE our Southern Border. There is no way that the United States will, after decades of abuse, put up with this costly and dangerous situation anymore!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 24, 2018

He said all these years illegal immigrants have been taking advantage of the earlier US policy of catch and release, under which they were released inside the country and asked to come back to report to a court at the next hearing on their asylum application.

Trump, who has announced to end the catch and release policy, argues that those immigrants who were let off never come back to the court hearings and it becomes very difficult to identify them once they mix up with the locals.

If for any reason it becomes necessary, we will CLOSE our Southern Border. There is no way that the United States will, after decades of abuse, put up with this costly and dangerous situation anymore! he asserted.

You may also like | Donald Trump calls for wall funding in major border security package

Meanwhile, US media on Saturday reported that the Trump administration has reached an understanding with the leaders of the incoming Mexican government that would allow migrants applying for asylum in the US to remain in Mexico while they await a courts decision.

This would be a sharp reversal of the current policy, which allows asylum seekers to remain in the US until their petition is resolved, The New York Times reported.

A policy in this regard could be rolled out by the US this coming week, officials from the Department of Homeland Security said, it said.

This is a short-term solution, Olga Sanchez Cordero, Mexicos incoming interior minister, was quoted as saying by The Washington Post.

Also read | Donald Trumps billionaire gulf partner sympathetic on US trade war with China
Syria accused insurgents of wounding more than 100 people in a suspected toxic gas attack in Aleppo, which a health official described as the first such assault in the city.

The shells spread a strong stench and caused dozens of people breathing problems on Saturday night in Aleppo, which is under state rule, a monitoring group said.

State news agency SANA said on Sunday that 107 people were injured, including children, after militants hit three districts with projectiles containing gases that caused choking.

It marks the highest such casualty toll in Aleppo since government forces and their allies clawed back the city from rebels nearly two years ago.

Syrias foreign ministry urged the UN Security Council to condemn and punish these terrorist crimes.

Rebel officials denied using chemical weapons and accused the Damascus government of trying to frame them.

Russias defence ministry accused insurgents on Sunday of firing shells filled with chlorine gas at Aleppo from the rebel stronghold of Idlib.

Moscow, Syrian President Bashar al-Assads key ally, said it would talk to Turkey, which backs some rebel factions and helped broker a ceasefire in the Idlib region.

We can not know the kinds of gases but we suspected chlorine and treated patients on this basis because of the symptoms, Zaher Batal, the head of the Aleppo Doctors Syndicate, told Reuters.

Patients suffered difficulty breathing, eye inflammation, shivering and fainting, he said. Hospitals had discharged many people overnight.

Batal called it the first such gas attack hitting civilians in Aleppo city during the conflict, which has raged for more than seven years.

Stretchers and oxygen masks

The explosive (shells) contain toxic gases that led to choking among civilians, Aleppo police chief Issam al-Shilli told state media.

Pictures and footage on SANA showed medical workers carrying patients on stretchers and helping them with oxygen masks.

Abdel-Salam Abdel-Razak, an official from the Nour el-Din al-Zinki insurgent faction, said rebels did not own chemical weapons or have the capacity to produce them.

The criminal regime, under Russian instructions, is trying to accuse the rebels of using toxic substances in Aleppo. This is purely a lie, he tweeted.

Abu Omar, a Failaq al-Sham spokesman, accused Damascus of trying to create a malicious charade as a pretext to attack rebel towns.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the shelling in Aleppo wounded 94 people, while government shelling earlier on Saturday had killed nine people in Idlib.

The UK-based monitoring group said two women and seven children were killed in Jarjanaz village in Idlib, where Russia and Turkey have agreed a demilitarised zone.

The dominant force among an array of factions holding sway in Idlib is Tahrir al-Sham, an Islamist alliance led by fighters formerly linked to al-Qaeda.

A past UN-OPCW inquiry found the Syrian government used the nerve agent sarin in an April 2017 attack and has also used chlorine several times. It also blamed Islamic State militants for using mustard gas.

Assads government has repeatedly denied using chemical weapons in the war.
A concert promotion company called Concert France announced that 50 Cent will be making a stop in Paris on New Years. They have been advertising the event since September. The concert date seems to have gained enough traction to prompt 50 Cent to expose the whole deal as a scam. According to the rapper, he is not set to play any shows in Paris on January 1, 2019.

The entrepreneur uploaded a message to his social media to alert his following of the situation. The text is type in all caps, bringing clarity to the misconception with bold letters: "I'm not going a show in Paris Jan. 1 2019. Fake Promotion. Do not buy tickets."

Even though Fifty probably has other considerations on his mind, he felt the need to inform his fans of the scam since he cares about their pockets. His caption specifies his intent: "I hate to see people who support me getting beat out of their money."

Concert France's Facebook event for the fake show has garnered over 7k "interested" clicks. It is unclear what the company is or was planning on offering concertgoers in January. A Jeremih-style doppelganger might have been entertaining, but likely a foolish move considering how Fifty's fans have adopted his motto.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bqk6t3jnoxl


Anyone who saw Israel Adesanya make quick work of Derek Brunson at UFC 230 knows that his shot up the rankings is anything but fortuitous. After dispatching the heavier Brunson in a convincing manner, the UFC matchmakers were left to ponder where to slot him in next. Well, it turns out Dana White and the UFC brass are convinced of his star power and are ready to push him as a main eventer.

On February 9th in Melbourne, Australia, Adesanya will face a legend in the flesh, and perhaps his closest comparative, the one and only Anderson Silva, who hasn't fought in the Octagon since defeating Adesanya very last opponent, Derek Brunson. What do you know!

The 185-pound contest will serve as the co-main event for alongside an all-important bout to determine the Middleweight crown. Robert Whittaker, who fights out of Australia, will be facing a strong test from Kelvin Gastelum, the Ultimate Fighter 17 champion.

Casual observers of the sport likely thought Silva had retired, when in fact he was actually serving a suspension he consented to in October 2017. After serving his time, Anderson Silva will certainly be motivated to prove that his winless run before the Brunson fight was a departure from the norm.

Who's your pick: Adesanya or a 43-year old Silva?
After burning for over two weeks, killing dozens and destroying thousands of homes, the Northern California fire has been fully contained authorities confirmed on Sunday. According to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, the Camp Fire was able to put under control when firefighters surrounded it after days of rainfall in the Paradise area. A declaration of 100% containment does not mean that the fire is completely put out, but it indicates that firefighters have been able to create a successful containment barrier.

Now considered the nations deadliest wildfire in a century, the fire killed at least 85 people while 249 continue to be unaccounted for as rescue crews look through debris for human remains. It was on November 8th that the fire began in the Sierra Nevada foothills and within a day it had destroyed most of the town of Paradise. The exact cause of the fire remains under investigation according to authorities.

Mario Tama/Getty Images

This news arrives after the devastating Woolsey Fire came to an end in Southern California last week. While not as destructive as the Camp Fire, Woolsey claimed the lives of three people.

California was placed under a public health state of emergency by U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar after the fires caused the evacuation of two hospitals and eight other health facilities. Authorities also warn that danger still looms as rainfall after a fire places the area at a high risk for debris flow, flash flooding, and mudslides.
BBC reports that 26 pieces of West African artwork stolen during the colonial period will be returned to Benin.

It was French president Emmanuel Macron who ordered a group of thrones and statues currently on display at Frances Quai Branly Museum to be returned to Benin. His decision arrived after the publication of an experts report that suggested African treasures in French museums be returned to their states of origin.

The 26 pieces in question were originally taken in 1892 during the war against what was then the Kingdom of Dahomey.

Source: Quai Branly

Officials in Benin requested the return of the pieces years ago. However, it took the president to actually commission a group of the aforementioned experts to conduct a study on African artworks in French museums. It was when they presented their findings on Friday that Macron declared the pieces would be returned without delay.

Macron "hopes that all possible circulation of these works is considered: returns but also exhibitions, loans, further cooperation", says the Elysee palace.

During the colonial era, thousands of cultural pieces were collectively taken from their land by Western civilizations. According to the report, most of the approximately 46,000 African pieces in the collection at Quai Branly were acquired with some degree of force.

France marks the latest country to participate in this exchange after other European countries agreed to return artifacts to Nigeria.
Kim Kardashian is one of the world's most followed and searched celebrities. Due to the public nature of her life, the model and business maven's every move is often scrutinized and criticized. When she made the controversial decision to visit the White House and speak to President Donald Trump about prison reform, Kardashian West was flooded with a barrage of demeaning messages and was made the subject of international headlines but, she really didn't care.

While in conversation with journalist Van Jones at Rolling Stones Criminal Justice Reform Summit, Kim spoke candidly about how her famous meeting with Trump came to be. She revealed that she first reached out to Ivanka Trump, who proceeded to connect Kim to her husband, Jared Kushner. He has been amazing. He has fully listened, Kim revealed. Ivanka was amazing in really connecting me. And we really worked together as a team to present Alices case.

When asked about whether the thought of collaborating with Trump, a politician whose views do not always align with her own, discouraged her from pursuing her cause, Kim shared, I did consider the fact that I would get a lot of backlash if I went to the White House." She further explained, For me, if its a life versus my reputation. People talk s about me all day long, I didnt really care. What more could they say about me, seriously? When I outweighed the options of bad stories about me that would probably last a week in this news cycle, versus saving someones life, that wasnt an option. I will gladly go there and take the heat. Okay, if hes gonna listen to me and hes taking the meeting, maybe I can really get through to him and really explain to him. From meeting all of the people that I have met behind bars, I guarantee you, they dont care who signs that clemency paper.

[via]
According to Keith Pompey of the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Sixers' may be looking to move on from the Markelle Fultz' experiment, assuming they can find a trade partner at an equitable rate.

"Some sources have said that, despite the teams statements, Fultz is no longer in the Sixers long-term plans. And they are no longer using his shoulder as an excuse for his performances," Pompey's report states.

To say Fultz has struggled since being drafted is a bit of an understatement. The Sixers' guard only suited up for 14 games in his rookie campaign under mysterious circumstances we later learned to be a shoulder injury. And let's not forget the videos that circulated all of last year displaying Fultz having altered his shooting mechanics. His transition to the pro game is reminiscent of America's Cold War obsession with Flying Saucers, except the subject is a highly-touted college dropout with an end in sight.

Fultz' shooting woes this season have undoubtedly lowered his value, to what extent, it's hard to say? In 19 games this season, Fultz is averaging 8.2 points and 3.1 assists.

Following Jimmy Butler's acquisition, the experiment of starting Fultz next to Ben Simmons in the backcourt has come to a premature end. In fact, Fultz has been ruled a DNP in the last contests while he awaits cat scan results for yet another mystery ailment.
Considering his polarizing persona, it is unsurprising that his supporters would receive some backlash. Nicki Minaj is bearing some of this weight. After Tekashi's imprisonment made headlines, the "Barbie Tingz" rapper took to social media to share a word of encouragement.

Nicki informed of her following about the current state of 6ix9ine's project rollout. Her message confirmed that the release date was being pushed past its original slot of November 23. She also took time to send love to the inmate and his family: "For reasons beyond the music, the record company will hold off on putting his project out for now. Danny, I love you and am praying for you, your mother, daughter & her mom during this time.

Social media users have expressed their disapproval of her display of loyalty for her "FEFE" collaborator, many of who are calling the artist a "pedophile apologist." One Twitter user put into question a couple of her other relationships to that effect: "6ix9ine a repeating rapist AND pedophile is friends with Nicki Minaj who defends her brother who is a RAPlST PEDOPHlLE all while being friends with Rah Ali who runs a pimp sweatshop in the back of a strip club"

https://twitter.com/_/status/1064189355810406400



https://twitter.com/_/status/1065400666808557568



Some went as far as dissing her music, essentially saying that they had dismissed her before this situation: "Queen is still flop and has lots of skip.."

https://twitter.com/_/status/1065333766959304704



A lot of people are making light of the situation with humor.

https://twitter.com/_/status/1065299573726416897



https://twitter.com/_/status/1065339645041565698



https://twitter.com/_/status/1064996242453868545


Tory Lanez and Joyner Lucas have been going head to head in a battle of lyricism and artistry for a minute now. A multitude of verbal blows were exchanged between the two artists in the form of scorching tracks including, "Lucky You Freestyle," ""Litty Freestyle," "Litty Again," and "ZEZE Freestyle."

During a recent appearance in his native Ontario, Lanez brought his rivalry with Lucas to a standstill, declaring himself the victor. "That Joyner Lucas kid: I want to offer this moment right now to give him a good moment of silence. Rest in peace because today his career is over," he told his Toronto audience."Joyner Lucas, we killed you. It's done."

Proving that his rivalry with Lucas was not the only thing on is mind, Lanez went on to comment on the level of talent in Toronto, reminding his supporters that Canadian artists have and will continue to hold their own against their American counterparts. "I want Toronto to know that any of these f***kin' American n***as that think they gon' step on us [...] let them n***as know we acceptin' all fades, all battles, all everything," he announced to the crowd.

Watch Tory give his impassioned speech below.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bqk7ISMFz8y


The holidays in Houston for many means digging into that first Goode Co. Brazos Bottom Pecan Pie. Whether served warm with Blue Bell ice cream or right out of the box, the pies have a reputation that expands way beyond Texas.

The nine-inch pies in the pine wood box, emblazoned with "Made in Texas" on the side, have made it all over the world including Afghanistan, where U.S. troops used it to commune with home from thousands of miles away.

HOUSTON MUST HAVES: The essential dishes you have to eat in Houston

Goode Co. owner Levi Goode told the Chron.com this week that pecan pie as we know it started generations ago with a family recipe passed down through the years, ending up on the menu at the first Goode Co. barbecue joint on Kirby his dad Jim Goode started in 1977. It was a homespun dessert to top a proper Houston barbecue lunch or dinner.

Over the years it took on a life of its own and Goode Co. became associated with pecan pie in short order. By the mid-'80s the popularity necessitated a designated central kitchen.

SMOKED HEAVEN: Houston's favorite barbecue joints

"I can't even tell you how many countries they have been to," Goode said. "The mailing thing became popular in the '80s when displaced Texans moved away and wanted pies to enjoy away from Texas."

These days Goode Co. ships out everything from sausage, ribs, turkey, and brisket.

The idea for the signature pine box come about after the elder Goode thought it would serve a dual purpose of protecting the precious pecan-laden cargo and also serve as a lasting advertising tool. Most people keep the boxes for other storage or to carry their own creations later.

WAY BACK WHEN: Houston's influential Goode Co. BBQ changed smoked meat history in 1977

The holiday season, starting with Thanksgiving, is a busy one for the brand and its many incarnations. Pecan pie prep starts long before November comes, starting with the most important ingredient.

The pecans come not too far from Houston, usually from the Richmond and Fort Bend areas, according to Goode. They are chosen for there quality and size so it all depends on the year's crop.

These days the pie-making process starts at the company's kitchen in Stafford where all baking, butchering, and smoking is done of Goode products. The second most popular Goode Co. dessert is the chocolate creme pie, which also has a small cult of its own.

HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM: Goode Co. celebrates 40 years of barbecue, pecan pie and expansion

Goode wouldn't divulge exactly how many pecan pies they sell in a year in those wooden boxes but it's a lot.

"We make a few dozen," Goode said with a laugh. "A lot of hands make it all happen. There are three generations working in our corporate kitchen."

This year the pecan pie earned top kudos from Bloomberg as one of the best mail order pies out there with a Bloomberg newsroom taste tester even saying that they would "lick this off the floor."

A cosign like that makes Goode happy, even if its a little weird.

Goode, like many others, prefers a slice of his grandma's pecan pie warmed up with a side of Blue Bell's Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream

Craig Hlavaty covers Houston history and pop-culture. Read him on our breaking news site, Chron.com, and on our subscriber site, HoustonChronicle.com. | craig.hlavaty@chron.com | Text CHRON to 77453 to receive breaking news alerts by text message
ARTESIA, N.M. - Erin Herrgott, a 20-year-old from small-town Michigan, was working at the county probation office and dreaming of becoming a federal law enforcement officer when she stumbled across a job listing for the U.S. Border Patrol.

She worried she was unqualified: Herrgott didn't speak Spanish. She had never been to the Southwest. And she wasn't "jacked" the way she expected border agents need to be to face off with drug smugglers in inhospitable desert terrain.

A few days after she submitted her application, an email arrived notifying her that she was to begin the vetting process. Now she is one of the newest recruits at the U.S. Border Patrol Academy, where a six-month training program funnels new cadets directly onto the front lines of one of America's fiercest political battles.

OBRADOR: Despite reports, no deal for Mexico to host U.S. asylum seekers

President Donald Trump has made a crackdown on illegal immigration a policy priority, pressing Congress to fund a border wall, 5,000 additional Border Patrol agents and 10,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. He deployed thousands of troops to the southern U.S. border to stop a caravan of Central American migrants, some of whom began arriving in the Mexican border city of Tijuana this month. Border agents needed backup, Trump said.

Hundreds of miles away, here in the desert flatlands of New Mexico, the men and women who stand next in line to become the nation's border enforcers are training to take on the mission.

The Border Patrol has long struggled with recruitment, currently lagging 2,000 agents short of its quota - not including the 5,000 agents that Trump wants to add. The agency loosened admission requirements after 9/11 to try to expand the force, decisions that critics now blame for a rash of corruption cases and allegations of misconduct.

Most of the 46 cadets in Herrgott's class, which arrived at the academy in late August, are in their 20s, with no prior law enforcement experience or college degrees. Many previously worked in non-professional jobs, as cashiers and security guards, manual laborers and sales people. Roughly half are Hispanic.

And many, like Herrgott, stumbled across a career in the Border Patrol by accident.

Trevor Osman, a 23-year-old who most recently worked as an aircraft fueler, found the agency while looking for a job with police departments near his home in Littleton, Colorado.

"Most or all of the departments require at least a two-year degree, and that's something I don't have yet," Osman said. "I saw Border Patrol, and I saw that they didn't require a degree. So I wanted to throw my hat in the ring and just see where it went. . . . And here I am."

For many of the recruits, the Border Patrol simply offers a steady job with good benefits, an opportunity to provide for one's family while performing a public service. Among Hergott's 45 classmates are those hoping to pay off student loans, experience adventure and find purpose in life.

They'll learn how to be border agents under an extended curriculum - lengthened from three months to six - that the academy introduced last year to strengthen training.

Over the past decade, agents have faced allegations of ties to drug cartels, cross-border shootings, abuse of immigrant detainees and illicit drug use.

The new curriculum seeks to produce better agents who are well-versed in the law, less likely to accept bribes from a drug cartel, and less likely to kill or be killed. And as the debate over the Border Patrol's role has intensified, the academy wants to produce agents who can maintain their composure in the face of adversity.

"If someone challenges them and puts that camera in their face and says, 'You're a scumbag. I can't believe you would do this. I can't believe you would do those kind of things,' we're going to have them react as a top-notch professional," academy chief Dan Harris said.

During its nearly 95-year existence, the Border Patrol has operated on the literal periphery of the country's more celebrated and visible law enforcement agencies. It is outranked in the popular imagination by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Administration, and it is off the radar for many Americans who live far from the border.

The starting salary for a Border Patrol agent with no prior military or law enforcement experience is $41,187 - comparable, Harris says, with the other federal agencies with which Border Patrol competes for recruits.

But the requirements are less stringent - a successful applicant needs neither a college degree nor relevant work experience - and the job usually requires agents to live on the hot, desert border, where schools and services are often lacking.

Charged with preventing drugs and people from illegally entering the United States, Border Patrol agents are stationed between the country's ports of entry, often in remote stretches of mountains, deserts and forests, and in areas that can be reached only on foot or horseback.

To recruit, the Border Patrol goes to military bases, college campuses and career fairs. Recruiters also speak at special events.

"You'd be surprised how many applicants we get from the PBR," the Professional Bull Riders rodeos, Harris said. Such events are attractive to people who grew up on ranches and have a strong sense of "obligation to serve their country," he said.

Not all make it in. The most common disqualifier for applicants to the Border Patrol Academy is drug use or lying about drug use on the mandatory polygraph test. And attrition is common. About one in four leave before graduation day. Some drop out because of injuries or other personal issues. Others fail - the immigration law class tends to be the hardest.

Then there are those who finish the program and embark on their mission but leave the agency after a few years for more desirable jobs with other federal agencies.

"This will be the first year our hiring will outpace our attrition," Harris said.
If I were looking for advice on how to deal with right-wing populism, Hillary Clinton is not the first person I would ask.

Clinton, the Democratic partys 2016 presidential nominee, has a long and impressive resume. There is nothing in her background, however, that would suggest any particular insight on Americas working class, or an ability to build bridges with such voters.

That was clear this week, thanks to Clintons diagnosis of how European leaders like Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany, should get a handle on migration.

Clinton made that comment in an interview with the Guardians Patrick Wintour about the rise of right-wing populism in the United States and Western Europe and how centrist politicians should respond to it.

She told Wintour that in her view, migration is the issue that lit the flame and that it has been skilfully exploited by politicians like Donald Trump, who defeated her in the presidential election in 2016.

Grieder: Donald Trump might change American culture but immigration wont

In light of that, Clinton continued, perhaps it is time for leaders like Merkel to take a different course.

I think it is fair to say Europe has done its part, and must send a very clear message  We are not going to be able to continue provide refuge and support, she told Wintour.

Otherwise, Clinton continued, the issue would continue to roil the body politic.

Some Americans would agree with Clintons emphasis on political strategy here, and some would agree with her conclusion on the issue of migration itself.

I would suggest caution on both fronts. And I would suggest that centrists confronted with right-wing populism take a look at what happened in Texas in this years midterm elections and the relative sanity that has suffused state politics in the aftermath.

Grieder: Texans should put the election behind them and work together

I have often felt over the past two years that the state accidentally staged a dress rehearsal for American politics in the era of Trump.

Texas became a red state in the 1990s and has remained red well into the 21st century, despite demographic and economic trends that must have seemed inauspicious for Republicans.

Much of the credit for that should go to Republican leaders like Rick Perry and David Dewhurst.

Sure, there were occasional prayer rallies during the years those two served as governor and lieutenant governor, respectively. Perry and Dewhurst, however, largely kept their focus on bread-and-butter issues such as jobs, roads and public schools.

Their successors, though, have allocated more time to pandering to the grassroots. Since Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick were elected in 2014, we have seen protracted debates in the Texas Legislature over things like constitutional carry and last years notorious bathroom bill.

The mentality that underlies such fights is reminiscent of the one Clinton is advocating in her comments about how European leaders should address the migration issue. And it is not one that ultimately serves anyone well.

If leaders see migration as a problem, they should say so, of course. They also should specify the nature of the problem a little more precisely so voters can evaluate their claims for themselves. Unchecked migration, for example, can be a security issue. Large-scale migration can have a suppressive effect on wages. If the evidence supports such arguments, there is no need for a politician to demagogue on an issue.

Grieder: Texas Republicans cant coast to victory this year

Demagoguing  on any issue  can work out well for a politician, over the short term. Trumps overheated rhetoric on immigration helped propel him to the presidency.

Its funny to think back on this now, but at the beginning of that election cycle, it widely was assumed that the partys presidential nomination would go to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. Obviously, that did not come to pass.

Neither did many of the predictions Trumps supporters made, heading into the midterms.

Republicans could have campaigned on their achievements over the past two years: The national economy is humming along, unemployment has reached historic lows, Trump has appointed two conservative justices to the Supreme Court.

Instead, the president spent the final weeks of the election stoking fears about a caravan of migrants from Central America making its way through Mexico toward Americas southern border. As political calculations go, that did not pan out. Republicans picked up a couple of Senate seats, but they lost control of the House.

And Texas, the linchpin of the partys electoral coalition, is a purple state now. Democrats did not win any statewide offices this time around, but four of their candidates came within 5 points of doing so. They also made inroads in the state Legislature and in pivotal counties like Harris and Fort Bend.

As a result, the states Republican leaders have taken a renewed interest in issues like school finance, workforce development and property tax reform.

Theres a lesson there for centrists: Even when right-wing populism is roiling the body politic, voters still care about bread-and-butter issues. And they appreciate leaders who do, too.

erica.grieder@chron.com

twitter.com/ericagrieder
A motorcycle rider was killed in west Houston early Sunday after a high-speed crash with an SUV.

The 22-year-old biker was speeding back and forth on Westheimer near Stoney Brook around 3:15 a.m. when a small SUV pulled out of the McDonald's parking lot, according to Houston police.

OCTOBER ARRESTS: HPD rounds up 43 on felony DWI charges

The man driving the SUV was heading toward the far left lane to make a left turn when the motorcycle rider crashed in the driver-side back door of the vehicle.

The rider was rushed to the hospital in critical condition, and later died. The man and woman in the in the SUV were not hurt, and no charges are expected, police said.

Authorities did not immediately identify the man who died, and were continuing to investigate.

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Jay Yousafzoys has found much happiness since arriving in Houston from Kabul last year.

For one, Yousafzoy discovered Mexican food. And he finds delights unimaginable to him back in Afghanistan: the zoo, the beach, the movie theater (he liked Jurassic World and 12 Strong). And the Texas Renaissance Festival.

I never thought this existed, the 25-year-old said.

Perhaps most happily for the former interpreter, who spent seven years working with American troops and their allies, Yousafzoy no longer has to fear reprisals from anti-American insurgents responsible for killing hundreds of interpreters from Afghanistan and Iraq. He arrived in Houston in November 2017, four years after first applying for a special immigrant visa available to interpreters and others who helped the U.S. military in Afghanistan and Iraq.

JOURNEY TO AMERICA: Houston Marine's military interpreter finally reaches new home in Texas

Now, he has set about trying to realize his own American dream here in southeast Texas: finding a job, continuing his education, and helping relatives still living in Afghanistan.

He spent several months living in southeast Houston with one of the officers he used to interpret for, gradually acclimating to a new nation and a new life.

He traded patrols in Humvees for commutes on the regions busy roads in a 2009 Toyota Corolla. He moved to Pasadena and found a job at a hose and pipe manufacturing plant; within a few months he was promoted to foreman. An avid bodybuilder  a hobby he picked up working with American special forces operators  Yousafzoy found Fitness Connection near his new apartment. He started working out six days a week, and soon found some friends there.

A sometimes-rough transition

But starting a new life in a new country  nearly alone  is no easy task, and this first year has had its challenges, and many still-unrealized dreams.

While Yousafzoy no longer has to fear for his own safety, his family back in Kabul remain in constant danger. He spends the nights trying to keep abreast of the news in Afghanistan, but barely a week seems to go by without a bombing or other terrorist attack.

Their lives scare me (now) more than I was scared for my life when I was there, Yousafzoy said, as he tucked into a loaded baked potato at El Torito Country-Cooking in Pasadena on a recent November evening.

He calls his family every day to speak with his mother, father and his six siblings. And every month, he sends home as much of his paycheck as he can. He knows they have high hopes for him.

The pain of separation is severe. When he talks to his mother, sometimes she cant bear to look at him. His youngest sister  who turns 8 next month  kept asking when he would come home, and he finally had to tell her he wouldnt be coming home anytime soon.

In a country where many women run the household, Yousafzoy had never really learned to cook before he arrived in the U.S. Now, he tries to make the dishes he misses most, shorba  a type of beef broth  and bolani (a stuffed flatbread). The results never taste quite right, and so he drives into Houston every couple of weeks to a traditional Afghan restaurant for food that tastes of home.

Like many other combat veterans, Yousafzoy has found the return to civilian life a little jarring  made all the more so by the transition to a new country and community.

He misses the brotherhood of the military, working alongside other American and Afghan servicemembers.

It was very, very beautiful, he said. The love and friendship and trust  in all conditions.

He had hoped to enlist in the U.S. Marine Corps, but was told that branch has stopped allowing non-citizens to enlist. And he applied to the U.S. Army, but struggled with the entrance exam.

The year ahead

In years past, Yousafzoy ate Thanksgiving dinner with Americans, on U.S. military bases in Afghanistan. Then, the holiday was marked by their distance from home, and the hope to be together again soon.

On Thursday, Yousafzoy drove to the house of a co-worker he met at his job in Pasadena for his first Thanksgiving in America. The house was filled with his friends and their family. He piled his dish with fried turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing and green bean casserole.

He gave thanks for his friends, and he thought of his family back home.

It's not very easy to just take it easy, Yousafzoy said. I hope I never, ever, hear anything bad happens to any member of my family.

He thought about the year ahead. One of his fellow interpreters arrived in Houston a few months ago; another has received his visa, and will soon hopefully be on his way.

Yousafzoy hopes to enter his first body-building competition in America, this year. He is grateful for his job, his new home. But the expectations of his parents weigh on his mind.

Most of all, he hopes to finally go back to school.

Every son wants to make their family proud, he said. I cant let my family down.

St. John Barned-Smith covers public safety and major breaking news for the Houston Chronicle. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. Send tips to st.john.smith@chron.com.
Mohammed Younus Yousafzoy walked off Lufthansa Flight 440, bleary-eyed and dizzy from the two-day trip from Kabul.

Then the 24-year-old Afghan spotted his old boss, Mike Hudson, waiting for him, and smiled with surprise and happiness.

"When I saw him, I thought 'I have a family now,'" he said Thursday. "I don't have to worry."

For Hudson, a U.S. Marine Lt. Colonel now stationed at Ellington Joint Reserve Base, the relief was just as tangible.

"It was overwhelming," he said, of watching his old interpreter finally arrive.

The moment was four years in the making, a trip Hudson feared Yousafzoy might not live long enough to make.

Yousafzoy - who also goes by "Jay" - had begun translating for American-led forces in 2011, when he was 17. He started working as Hudson's interpreter in 2013.

They lived in the same forward operating base, supporting U.S. Army Special Operations teams trying to help local villages rid themselves of the Taliban. Now he'll be living in Hudson's suburban home in southeast Houston as he settles into a new culture and way of life.

"Jay is a special kind of guy," said Hudson, 44. "He didn't judge anybody. He was very honest, very forthright  He would represent me. They were judging me by what they'd see in him."

Yousafzoy arrived at Bush Intercontinental Airport Wednesday after receiving a special immigrant visa available to interpreters and others who helped the U.S. military in Afghanistan and Iraq. The visas were first approved by Congress in 2009 under the Afghan Allies Protection Act, but have dwindled in recent years.

The delays have left thousands of former interpreters - who risked their lives to help the U.S. military since 2001 - waiting to get out of the countries where their support has now exposed them to additional dangers and violence.

The average processing time for a special immigrant visa is now more than 900 days, said Henrike Dessaules, with the New York-based International Refugee Assistance Project.

"Every day is of the essence, so any delay like that could be the death sentence for one of our clients," she said.

Yousafzoy wanted to come to Texas because of Hudson and his family but also because he'd heard of its reputation for diversity, of opportunities for immigrants - and because of the heat.

'He never wavered'

In Kandahar, Yousafzoy and Hudson worked side by side, coaxing governors of local districts to improve conditions for farmers so they could grow crops besides poppies. They encouraged officials from the United Arab Emirates to invest in Afghanistan to visiting local villagers.

They worked together to coordinate with local police and military to try to improve security.

On his off time, Yousafzoy studied and lifted weights.

Six months later, in 2013, Hudson returned home from Afghanistan. Soon after, Hudson got a panicked email from Yousafzoy.

His application for a special interpreters visa had been held up. What should he do and could Hudson help?

Hudson wrote letters to the State Department and contacted the embassy in Kabul, but couldn't get any answers.

"It's definitely something that kept me up at night," Hudson said. "Other interpreters I worked with before - none of them are alive. I didn't want to see that happen again."

Almost two years later, Hudson returned to Afghanistan on another deployment. He got Yousafzoy rescreened and then hired him for a new assignment with a group of advisors training Afghan commandos and special forces.

He figured that assignment would keep Yousafzoy safe. Then he sought help from lawyers in Chicago and from the International Refugee Assistance Project.

More than 9,000 applicants are still waiting for their visas, according to a U.S. government report issued in September on the status of the Afghan Special Immigrant Visa Program.

The List Project to Resettle Iraqi Allies, meanwhile, estimates more than 1,000 Iraqi interpreters died at the hands of anti-government terror groups. Unknown others have died in Afghanistan.

Yousafzoy got word in October that his visa had come through.

"Our client never wavered - he just never wavered," said Julie Fournier, an attorney with Chicago-based Neal, Gerber & Eisenberg firm, which handled his case.

Yousafzoy told his parents he'd been approved. His mother - who has diabetes and fainting spells - was happy he would be safe, but sad he was going so far away.

"It was hard for me to let her go," Yousafzoy said. He didn't let her accompany him to the airport because he worried she might become so distraught she'd collapse.

He said goodbye to his four sisters - the youngest is seven - and two brothers, and packed his bags. Then came the trip, through Dubai and Frankfurt and on to Houston, where he met Hudson, his wife, Cristela, and Yullina, their 7-year-old daughter.

'Everything is new'

Thirty-nine minutes after he landed in Texas, two days after he left Kabul and four years after he first applied to come to the United States, Yousafzoy walked out of Bush airport with his mentor.

In Hudson's blue Honda Odyssey, they drove the 40 minutes to Hudson's spacious home in southeast Houston - a quick trip, Yousafzoy thought, compared to the clogged arteries of Kabul.

He carried his backpack and two other bags into the second-floor bedroom and dropped them on the thick carpet.

He knew there would be much to do over the next few days. A caseworker from Catholic Charities would be by Thursday, to show him around town, and help him obtain his Social Security card, his drivers license, and everything else he'd need to begin life as an immigrant in the U.S.

On Saturday, the Hudsons plan to pick up a Christmas tree.

Yousafzoy had to figure out his education, as well. Because of his job, he stopped attending school in the 10th grade but took annual exams, instead.

"I'd love to go back to school," he said.

And he wants to find a local gym to continue the bodybuilding regimen that has left him able to squat 450 pounds and bench 125-pound dumbbells.

But first came dinner - Texas barbecue. Downstairs, there'd be smoked chicken, macaroni and cheese, Spanish rice - he'd tried that before - and some brisket.

And there were neighbors to meet.

A new town. A new country. A lot to take in.

"I'm sure I'll have some thoughts soon," he said, smiling. "But now I don't ... Everything is new."
State Sen. Judith Zaffirini readily admits the Texas Legislature passed a flawed ban on texting while driving.

Zaffirini, D-Laredo, spent a decade trying to pass a ban that forbids anyone from typing away behind the wheel. What Texas has is a ban on sending or reading electronic communications while driving, though motorists can go right ahead controlling their stereo or typing in an address to their navigation app.

The carve-outs make it almost impossible to enforce the ban, nearly everyone agrees, but Zaffirini said they were necessary to get the bill through the Senate.

Tom Reel/Staff photographer

"If we hadn't done that, we would not have passed the bill," she said. "It was the lesser of all evils."

It is a start, many supporters said, even if enforcement has not lived up to expectations. While not everything she hoped for, she said it is a positive step and already yielding results.

"I know many, many people who have stopped texting and driving because it is against the law," she said.

Zaffirini said she expects a flurry of bills to toughen the law during the upcoming session.

OUT OF CONTROL: Distracted drivers pile up the crashes

History, however, is not on the side of swift action from lawmakers, who long have called cellphone bans evidence of a nanny state taking hold in freedom-loving Texas. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle also have bristled at the implication of giving police statewide more authority to pull people over because they think they see them doing something dangerous.

Before the 2017 ban passed, the closest Zaffirini and others, notably Rep. Tom Craddick, R-Midland, had come was in 2011, only to have the bill fall to then-Gov. Rick Perry's veto. Perry said he favored education, calling the ban "a government effort to micromanage the behavior of adults."

Texas also remains one of the most lenient states for phone use, with some lawmakers trying to strip cities of the authority to ban all phone use while driving. Lawmakers have restricted adult drivers from using cellphones only in school zones and have quibbled about requirements for signs before citations can be upheld. Only novice drivers under 18 face any statewide, universal ban on phone use.

THE WAY FORWARD: 'Do not disturb', safe-driving contests, tougher local laws

In other legislative sessions, bills outlawing texting or all handheld phone use failed to garner enough votes in committees to move on to the House and Senate floors, or did not even get a hearing.

Despite the concerns, there is growing consensus the laws can be written smartly to reduce crashes  thus saving lives. States with a cellphone ban where police can pull over people they see on their phones saw "significant reductions," said Alva O. Ferdinand, an assistant professor at the Texas A&M School of Public Health who has studied texting-while-driving crashes extensively.

In Georgia, lawmakers recently saw road fatalities rise 33 percent from 2014 to 2016  the highest number the state had weathered in a decade. The state also saw increases in auto insurance rates over those years were more than twice the national average.

The state, which had a texting ban, instituted a new hands-free law in July, prohibiting drivers from holding a phone in their hand or with their body, writing, sending or reading any text-based communication, or watching videos or movies on a phone or similar device.

"A lot of people were afraid (and said) the government should not legislate this," said Georgia state Rep. John Carson, a Republican, the bill's author. "But when you do that, you're relying on the personal accountability of drivers who don't think they're dangerous at all, until after they have an accident."

READ MORE: See our entire series on the dangers of driving in Houston

Traffic deaths dropped 2.5 percent in the first month after the law's passage and 8.9 percent in the following month, he said. Overall, traffic deaths are down 11 percent, which Carson attributes to the publicity surrounding the new legislation.

Eventually, Zaffirini said she expects Texas to get there, as it did when it took years for bills to ban smoking in buildings and near entrances to take hold. Things, and opinions, change, she said.

"Thirty years ago, you saw parents driving with their children on their laps," Zaffirni said, remembering a time before child restraint was not law. "You don't see that anymore. It would be considered by some child abuse today."

dug.begley@chron.com

st.john.smith@chron.com
Texas is sending two new members to Congress who are military veterans, contributing to the largest freshman class of former soldiers on Capitol Hill since 2010.

Nationwide, 17 newly elected members of the U.S. House are veterans, assuring that Congress will begin 2019 with at least 78 veterans -- one more than the number currently serving in the House.

We have just elected to Congress a record number of new Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, while witnessing the largest influx ever of women veterans, said Seth Lynn, founder of Veterans Campaign, which helps recruit and prepare former soldiers to run for office.

HEART-FELT: Crenshaw shares new way to thank veterans for their service

The list of veterans includes Houston Republican Dan Crenshaw, a retired Navy SEAL who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Plano Republican Van Taylor, a retired Marine who fought in Iraq.

They will be among six veterans representing Texas in Congress. The state has 6 veterans in Congress now, but two of them -- Ted Poe, R-Atascocita, and Sam Johnson, R-Plano  are retiring. Crenshaw is replacing Poe in the 2nd Congressional District, while Taylor is replacing Johnson in the 3rd District.

For most of the last 20 years, the number of military veterans has been on the decline in Congress. Even Texas, which has 15 active-duty military bases and 1.6 million veterans, has seen its number of veteran U.S. representatives decline from 16 in 1971 to 6 today.

Nationally, 72 percent of House members were veterans in 1971. Today, just 18 percent are.

The decline in veterans has prompted former soldiers to become more aggressive in trying to convince more of their former service colleagues to run for office. Nearly 200 veterans ran for Congress this year.

NEXT MISSION: Crenshaw plans to 'make conservatism cool,' only on HoustonChronicle.com

Currently, veteran representation in Congress is at a record low and young veterans often face high barriers to entry due to the rising costs to run for office, said Rye Barcott, a Marine Corp veteran and co-founder of With Honor, a Washington D.C. group that works to get more veterans in Congress. I am encouraged to see this surge of fellow veterans who are answering the call to serve our country again.

Several military veterans running for Congress came up short in Texas, including Air Force veteran MJ Hegar and Army veteran Joseph Kopser. The two Democats both came within a few percentage points of pulling off big upsets in central Texas districts.

Crenshaw, 34, will be the only Navy SEAL veteran in Congress. Another SEAL, U.S. Rep. Scott Taylor, R-Virginia, lost his re-election bid.

Crenshaw nearly died on a battlefield in Afghanistan six years ago after a roadside bomb killed his Afghan interpreter. Crenshaw said that at first he couldnt see at all. He credits his doctors with pulling off a miracle to keep him alive and restore vision in his left eye.

Lynn said veterans not only bring first-hand knowledge on military issues, but they have historically been more aggressive in challenging presidents, regardless of party, on national defense issues.

According to With Honor, the surge in military veterans can help cut down on partisanship in Washington. That group says veterans are more likely than non-veteran politicians to work with their colleagues across the aisle.

Veterans from Texas in Congress include U.S. Reps Brian Babin, R-Woodville; Pete Olson, R-Sugar Land; Louie Gohmert R-Tyler, and Michael Conaway, R-Midland. Gohmert and Conaway served in the Army, Babin in the Air Force, and Olson in the Navy.

Crenshaw gained national attention for a recent appearance on NBCs Saturday Night Live. In a previous show, comedian Pete Davidson had made fun of Crenshaw and his eye patch, evoking complaints from both Democrats and Republicans that the gibe was in poor taste. Appearing on a subsequent SNL, Crenshaw accepted Davidsons apology and took playful jabs at the comic.
I was standing in a trailer in South Texas, anxiously sipping from a Styrofoam coffee cup, when the lawyer rushed in. Can you help? she said. Theres a 9-year-old who will not stop crying.

It was a relief to face a problem I might be able to fix. I had spent that whole week in mid-July in this temporary building, interpreting for detained asylum seekers who had just been reunited with their children.

Id volunteered there precisely to stop feeling helpless. Under the zero-tolerance immigration policy launched in April, all people who crossed the border without documents  even asylum seekers  were now treated as criminals. When parents went to court, their children were taken from them and placed in shelters.

Five months later, the family separation policy has been suspended, but thousands of children who have crossed the border are still held for long periods in detention centers and tent cities across the country. Though my understanding of asylum law was limited, I knew I wanted to help those kids. Most of all, I wanted to see what was going on for myself.

What I saw at the border was far worse than I imagined, not only because of what these families experienced, but because of what had happened to the American workers guarding them.

I was hardly alone in wanting to help detained kids. The volunteers I worked with that week included Republicans, Democrats and independents; Baptists, Evangelicals, Catholics and Jews; mothers, nuns and young men. Laura, the corporate lawyer for whom I translated, had grabbed a flight from Kansas City. I drove from Houston.

The 60 or so women we met that week had been reunited with their children only days before. All were following the legal procedure to seek asylum, after crossing over from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. For some, our job was preparing them for credible fear interviews, the first step in filing an asylum case. A negative outcome from one of these interviews can lead to deportation.

For others  women who had already failed this interview, women without legal counsel and distraught over their missing children  we helped document why they were afraid to go home, with the hope they would get another chance at a hearing.

My first surprise that week, however, was not what our clients were fleeing. It was the brutality in their everyday lives. Every woman I talked to, and every one that my colleagues interviewed, had endured some form of sexual or physical violence at home.

Domestic violence, though, is no longer cause for asylum in most cases. What potentially is: persecution by criminals or government, lack of protection from police, forced labor, oppression for race or political belief. For a woman whose whole village or neighborhood has been strangled by gangs and poverty, though, it can be hard to explain to Americans how these all entwine. In the first interview I did, a Honduran mother tried to explain why she knew police wouldnt protect her from a violent stalker. It took her awhile to find an example that showed us: Her neighbor in their remote village was murdered along with her children in her house by a gang. The police never showed up to investigate.

It was stories like this that kept me returning to the break room to gulp caffeine. Other interpreters and lawyers were there for the same reason, silently swallowing coffee or chips. It helped to glance up at the wall, covered with crayoned pictures of mermaids and superheroes drawn by detained kids. They reminded me of the sketches with which I used to amuse my own daughters. So when the lawyer came in for help, I thought I know what to do.

But the girl would not stop crying.

Inside a cubicle, her mother sat quietly. This interview was her one chance for help: most detainees get no counsel and have no clue what U.S. asylum criteria might be. But the interview couldnt start because her daughter leaned face down on the desk, shaking with sobs.

I obviously couldnt carry out my original plan for distraction: a princess-y portrait of the girl herself. So I decided to sketch the person she loved most in the world, her mother. Sure enough, never once showing her face, the girl slowly began pointing which colors I should use. The lawyer started asking questions.

But when I looked up to draw in the mothers long hair, she was hiding her face as well. Staring downward, cheeks drenched with tears, she never stopped whispering her answers to the lawyers questions.

What if the child resumed crying, now that I had nothing to draw? I started making things up. Around the moms half-finished portrait, I drew vines, bluebirds, green trees bursting with roses and grapes. Still facing downward, the girl joined in. I love you Mami, she wrote neatly in Spanish. Then, almost miraculously, she began to color. By the time Laura tapped to signal a new case, the girl was sitting up, drawing and smiling intently.

The next interview made my stomach churn all over again. All that week Laura and I had worked with a Salvadoran mother who had seen authorities in her town beat someone nearly to death. This time, she told us what she experienced herself. At the hands of Americans.

Shivering and exhausted after crossing the Rio Grande River, the woman and her small daughter encountered U.S. border agents almost immediately. The officials drove them to the Port Isabel detention center in Brownsville  and the hielera. The icebox. A routine, and controversial, part of the border control process, the hielera is an ice-cold cell with concrete floors where newly apprehended migrants are jammed often for days. Forbidden to huddle for warmth, with no protection except Mylar sheets, the women in the hielera begged border control agents for sweaters.

They laughed, the mother told us. A group of them fanned themselves and said, Whew, its hot in here! Lets turn up the air conditioning.

From the hielera, officers transferred the woman to the perrera, the dog kennel. Here, in a cell crammed with dozens of other women, trays of disgusting food such as still-frozen bologna were kicked across the cell floor. She told us that once, after a day with no food at all, a guard opened the door at 3 a.m. and hurled in packs of crackers, as if to animals.

But the mother we were interviewing was too traumatized to eat at all. Within hours of arriving, officials had taken her daughter. They took me out to go sign papers, she told us. They said shed be there when I got back. But when she returned to the perrera, her daughter was gone.

That was May 23. The girl would not see her mother until the third week of July, just days before I met them.

Migrating to the United States is a known risk. One in six Latin American women who make the journey are raped. This threat in mind, some mothers even give their girls birth control injections before starting out. But the Salvadoran woman and her daughter had been threatened with murder and had no choice. Other migrants have been driven by poverty so intense that 70 percent of their communities suffer from malnutrition. Most never heard - or imagined - that the United States might separate them from their children.

When the Salvadoran mother was finally reunited with her skinny, soft-spoken daughter, whose favorite recollection of home was going to school, the girl was altered. Why did you sign me away? were her first words to her mother. Why did you give me to a shelter? U.S. border officials had told her that her mother abandoned her. For two months she had no choice but to believe them.

At late-night dinners all that week, my co-workers described similar stories. One talked to a small boy who said he was told by guards to sign a paper he couldnt read or have his fingers chopped off. Another interviewed an 8-year-old who watched guards kicking a teenager over and over in the ice box room. Child welfare workers and lawyers have documented thousands of similar reports.

Why did they treat us like we were not human? the Salvadoran mother asked. Some guards, she added, were Latino. Why did they do this to their own people?

When the interview ended, I ran into the lawyer who asked for help with the crying girl. Thanks for the help, the lawyer said tersely. Then she summarized what the girls mother had whispered to her. What both had survived, for years, in the house of a gang member before they fled.

Thats not why the girl was crying, the lawyer added. She wont talk about that even with her mother. She was crying because they were separated when they got here, and she didnt see her mother again for 52 days. She has been crying nonstop since they were reunited.

I had fixed precisely nothing, in other words. My absurd attempt at American mom magic merely showed how little I understood what was in front of me.

Leaving for South Texas five days earlier, I had wanted to support due process, and to act on the same empathy that millions of others have felt for children snared in the zero-tolerance policy. What I hadnt grasped was how many regular Americans were no longer just executing that policy. They were purposely sharpening its cruelty.

It hit me that the faint nausea Id felt that week had nothing to do with all the junk food I ate. I was unable to digest what I was learning.

I have lived in Texas for more than 20 years. Ive spent lots of time in small communities where the local prison is the best employer. And like many Texans, I have friends from border towns who grew up alongside people who became officers for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and border control. My own family circle includes good men and women who have worked as corrections officers in places like the South Texas town where I was volunteering.

What had happened to so many of these working dads and moms, that they could see a girl freezing in a concrete room and laugh? How could these regular Americans tell a boy his fingers would be severed if he disobeyed? The zero-tolerance detention policy was designed with full knowledge of how it would damage children. But its most far-reaching effect may be the way it has distorted American men and women who enforce it.

Border control agents dont differ much from millions of other hard-working Americans with blue-collar jobs, families to support and the luck to find secure work in places with limited options. Typically, they view themselves as good guys, defending Americans safety like firefighters or policemen.

Even in good times such jobs take a toll: ICE ranks near last of all government agencies in employee satisfaction [CK6], and corrections officers overall endure PTSD rates equal to those of war veterans. Now, though, the border agents adversaries are children. And the number in custody is soaring.

While unauthorized crossings overall dropped sharply in the past 20 years, the number of migrant children in U.S. custody has skyrocketed to the highest levels ever, from an average of 4,000 two years ago to more than 14,000 today. Extreme vetting rules mean far fewer of these children are being released to family and friends. And the government has now proposed new rules allowing detention of migrant children indefinitely, in facilities free of state supervision.

These officers are under untenable pressure, a researcher on corrections officers told me. Of the border agents who purposely torment migrant children, theres a lot of in-group pressure, possibly led by a few strong personalities, she said. Like military and police culture, she said, immigration officers have a culture of toughness and unity. If youre not with them youre against them.

The repercussions for soldiers and other people who engage in such brutality, however, are often lifelong, crippling levels of guilt and shame.

But our southern border isnt a war zone. Its not Vietnam or post-9/11 Abu Ghraib. Were not living through World War II, when Americans of Japanese descent were imprisoned on our own soil. More than a century has passed since slavery made tearing children from parents a business model. Were at peace, in a boom economy, and many Americans are deep in the work of trying to comprehend those past crimes and their lingering effect on our culture.

Given the right circumstances, most humans have it in us to hurt those with less power. Its surprisingly easy to induce a sense of disgust in a lab, and after thats achieved, normal people will steal and cheat others. Wearing a uniform can hold particular power, making us do things we might not otherwise  sometimes even making us better at performing those actions.

Under normal conditions, though, were socialized to nurture, not torture. It was the familiar call to nurture that catapulted Laura, the Kansas lawyer, from her church pew to this dusty outpost in Texas. Haunted by reports from the border, she had mulled volunteering before deciding she was too busy. Then, one Sunday morning at church, she told me, the gospel was John 21:15-19, in which Jesus asked Simon Peter three times in quick succession: Do you love me? Three times he responds, Yes, you know I love you. To which Jesus replies: Feed my lambs. Tend my sheep. Feed my sheep. And finally: Follow me.

I couldnt ignore the message, Laura said, and signed up to volunteer.

Months later Im back at home, and whenever I dissolve into sleep I often see something familiar as well: a girl who looks a lot like my daughters, intently coloring a picture. Just as often, I see darkness and feel sick. I have the sensation that Ive been in a place where something was wrong, something infectious. It was cruelty, spreading from person to person, among ordinary Americans not any different from me.

Kolker is the editor of Rice Business Wisdom, the ideas magazine at Rice Business School, and author of The Immigrant Advantage: What We Can Learn From Newcomers To America About Health, Happiness And Hope.




iciHaiti - Culture : Our Miss make Haiti shine in international competitions





For several months now, we have been in the midst of international beauty pageants and despite the lack of support obtained, "Miss Haiti Org is proud of the work done during the international competitions with the participation of our different representatives who made the flag of Haiti stand high.



Samantha Colas: Miss Globalcity in China (unique black beauty to participate in this contest and winner of the Best in Social Media Award).



Merlie Fleurizard: Placed Top 8 finalist at Miss Panamerican International in Los Angeles, California.



Cristina Cadet: Outstanding participation and considered one of the favorites by the media during her participation in Reina Hispanoamericana in Bolivia.



Cassandra Chery: Has attracted the attention of all international beauty pageant experts and has been named the 'Black Barbie' and 'Attention Stealer' at the Miss International Beauty contest in Tokyo, Japan.



The adventure continues with the participation of Haiti in Miss Universe, the largest beauty contest in the world and many other competitions at the beginning of 2019. Yes! Haiti is also part of the world and has a unique beauty that is highlighted during the participation of Haiti in these beauty pageants that also look at the culture and tourism of the country."



IH/ iciHaiti


















The best bang for your buck! This option enables you to purchase online 24/7 access and receive the Sunday, Tuesday & Thursday print edition at no additional cost * Print edition only available in our carrier delivery area. Allow up to 72 hours for delivery of your print edition to begin. Print edition not available for Day Pass option.
Imperial Valley News Center

CBP in San Juan seizes over 350 pounds of Cocaine Intended to be flown to New York

San Juan, Puerto Rico - U.S. Customs and Border Protection Officers seized Sunday 353 pounds (160 kilos) of cocaine prior to be loaded into a private aircraft at the Luis Munoz Marin International Airport bound to New York. The estimated value of the seized narcotics is $4 million.

A private aircraft service operator contacted CBP Officers after they encountered extremely heavy items inside the luggage of four passenger destined to New York.

CBP Officers inspected the luggage and discovered what appeared to be solid sealed bricks of suspected narcotics. A CBP canine inspected the items and alerted positive to a smell for which is trained to detect, which field tested positive to cocaine.

CBP Officers arrested the four male passengers who checked in the luggage and chartered the private flight.

The Drug Enforcement Administration assumed custody of the four men and the contraband for investigation and prosecution.

CBP regularly works with our industry partners to discover nefarious actors attempting to exploit the air transportation system to conceal and move contraband from Puerto Rico into the US mainland, indicated Edwin Cruz, CBPs San Juan Area Port Director.

CBPs mission is to facilitate travel while maintaining the highest standards of security for those who live here and for those who come to visit. On a typical day last year, CBP officers processed more than 1 million travelers arriving airports, seaports or border crossings.
Imperial Valley News Center

Man Pleads Guilty to Laundering Proceeds from Romance and Cyber Scams

Miami, Florida - On November 16, 2018, Peter Vincent Cruz, a resident of Washington State and Alaska, pleaded guilty to money laundering charges, stemming from his decision to launder hundreds of thousands of dollars in fraud proceeds from online romance and business email compromise (BEC) scams, announced U.S. Attorney Ariana Fajardo Orshan for the Southern District of Florida and Special Agent George L. Piro of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Miami Field Office.

According to documents filed with the court, from approximately June 2016 through June 2018, in Broward County, Florida, and elsewhere, Cruz knowingly and willfully agreed to participate in, and did participate in, a conspiracy to commit money laundering, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1956(h). The purpose of the conspiracy was for Cruz and his co-conspirators to unlawfully enrich themselves, to hide illegal proceeds, and to further wire fraud schemes by, among other things, withdrawing, depositing, and transferring fraudulently obtained funds between federally insured credit unions, federally insured banks, and individuals, and converting the fraudulently obtained funds to cash and cryptocurrency. Cruz laundered proceeds from BEC and romance scams.

According to court documents, Cruzs co-conspirators in Nigeria and elsewhere contacted businesses (the business victims) located throughout the United States, using email, social media, and other Internet-based methods of communication, and falsely and fraudulently posed as vendors seeking payment for services rendered, in order to facilitate the BEC scam. The co-conspirators, posing as vendors, used spoofed emails and email account takeover techniques to send emails falsely and fraudulently directing the business victims to make payments to various bank accounts, through wire transfers, in purported satisfaction of invoices due to the actual vendors.

The court docket further indicates that Cruzs co-conspirators also used stolen and false identification information to create online personas, utilizing online dating applications, email, social media, and other forms of communication, in order to facilitate romance scams. The co-conspirators then pursued false and fraudulent relationships online with individual victims (the romance scam victims or individual victims), and tricked these victims into falling in love with them. Eventually, the co-conspirators would persuade these individuals to open bank accounts and shell companies; to conduct financial transactions (cash withdrawals or transfers) under false pretenses, such as to purportedly aid with medical bills or business expenses; and to send money from the victims personal savings, or in the form of iTunes gift cards.

At times, Cruzs co-conspirators directed fraudulently obtained funds from the business victims into accounts established by the romance scam victims. They then directed the romance scam victims to wire the fraud proceeds on to accounts controlled by other co-conspirators, such as the defendant, Cruz. One of these victims resided in Broward County, Florida.

According to the court record, Cruzs role in the laundering conspiracy was to convert fraud proceeds from the cyber and romance scams via wire, in United States dollars, into cryptocurrency. Cruz then provided the cryptocurrency to his co-conspirators via email, and in doing so, Cruz assisted them in further concealing their true identities, and their role in the underlying fraud schemes. Cruz met, and routinely communicated with, his co-conspirators via e-mail, over the dark web, and through online cryptocurrency exchange forums. Indeed, Cruz regularly received funds from multiple anonymous sources, and regularly sent cryptocurrency payments to anonymous counterparties.

Cruz is scheduled to be sentenced on January 25, 2018 before U.S. District Judge William P. Dimitrouleas. He faces a statutory maximum sentence of twenty years in prison. He also faces a period of supervised release of up to three years, restitution and monetary penalties.

U.S. Attorney Fajardo Orshan commended the investigatory efforts of the FBI and FBI Miamis Cyber Task Force in this matter. This case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Lisa H. Miller.
What International Travelers Should Know Before You Go this Holiday Season

Washington, DC - U.S. Customs and Border Protection encourages travelers to Know Before You Go when traveling to the United States or returning home during the holiday season. CBP officers at international airports, cruise terminals and land border ports of entry around the country and at Preclearance facilities around the world are prepared for the additional traffic expected.

CBP continues to leverage technology and make advancements in the screening process at ports of entry. Travelers should also to plan ahead to ensure a smooth and efficient processing experience. Use these tips to help you prepare.

Travel Documents: Travelers should have appropriate passports and any other associated travel documents ready when approaching a CBP officer for processing or visiting a foreign country. Find out more information about approved travel documents for entry into the U.S. as well as country specific information at getyouhome.gov and travel.state.gov. Remember to carry these documents with you, do not pack them.

Familiarize yourself with Automated Passport Control (APC) and Mobile Passport Control: These two programs are making the entry process more efficient, intuitive and paperless for travelers. Learn which option works best for you and speed up your entry into the United States. APC expedites the entry process for most international travelers by allowing them to submit their biographic information and answers to inspection-related questions electronically at self-service kiosks located at 56 airports worldwide. At 25 U.S. airports, U.S. citizens and Canadian visitors can submit their passport information and answers to inspection-related questions to CBP via a smartphone or tablet app prior to arrival. Android and iPhone users can download the Mobile Passport app for free from the Google Play Store and Apple App Store.

Declare goods: Truthfully declare everything you are bringing from abroad including duty-free items. If duty is applicable, credit cards or cash payment in U.S. currency is acceptable.

Declare food: Many agriculture products can bring damaging pests and diseases into the country. If you have questions about what food is allowed or not allowed in to the U.S. visit https://help.cbp.gov/ and remember don't pack a pest!

Apply and pay for an I-94 online: Speed up your entry into the U.S. by providing your biographic and travel information and paying the $6 fee for the I-94 application online at https://i94.cbp.dhs.gov/ up to seven days prior to entry.

Monitor border wait times: Download the Border Wait Time app or use the border crossings wait times website to plan your trip across the border. Know which ports of entry have heavier traffic and possibly use an alternate route. Information is updated hourly and is useful in planning trips and identifying periods of light use/short waits. The official Border Wait Time app can be downloaded from the Apple App Store and Google Play.

Familiarize yourself with biometric entry and exit: CBP is testing biometric exit at 15 major airports across the United States. The facial recognition verification process takes less than 2 seconds, with a 99 percent matching rate. CBP has also implemented facial comparison technology for arrival processing at 15 air and two land ports of entry. The new simplified arrival process enables increased security, faster throughput, and better efficiency.

CBP uses airline manifest data to retrieve existing traveler photographs from government databases, including passports and visas, to build a photo gallery of travelers who are expected to arrive and depart the United States. CBP then compares the live photographs of travelers taken with those that are already on file in DHS holdings. No new data is required. U.S. Citizens who request not to participate in this biometric collection may notify a CBP Officer or an airline or airport representative in order to seek an alternative means of verifying their identity and documents. CBP has been testing facial recognition technology to satisfy its biometric exit Congressional mandate.

Obtain a radio frequency identification (RFID)-enabled travel document to use a Ready Lane at some land ports of entry: At some ports of entry, processing in Ready Lanes is 20 percent faster than normal lanes and provide a time savings of up to 20 seconds per vehicle. To use Ready Lanes, adult travelers (over 16 years of age) are required to have high-tech RFID enabled cards. These include RFID-enabled U.S. Passport cards, Legal Permanent Resident cards, B1/B2 border crossing cards, Trusted Traveler Cards (Global Entry, NEXUS, SENTRI, and FAST) and Enhanced Drivers Licenses.

Declare gifts: Gift you bring back for your personal use must be declared, but you may include them in your personal exemption. This includes gifts people gave you while you were out of the country and gifts you have brought back for others.

Prohibited vs. Restricted: Know the difference between prohibited merchandise (which is forbidden by law to enter the United States) and restricted merchandise (items needing special permit to be allowed into the United States). For more information, visit the Restricted/Prohibited section of the CBP website.

Traveling with medication: Travelers must declare all medicine and similar products when entering the United States. Prescription medications should be in their original containers with the doctor's prescription printed on the container. It is advised that you travel with no more than personal use quantities, a rule of thumb is no more than a 90 day supply. If your medications or devices are not in their original containers, you must have a copy of your prescription with you or a letter from your doctor. A valid prescription or doctors note is required on all medication entering the U.S.

Traveling with pets: Cats and dogs must be free of disease and illness when entering the United States. In addition, dog owners must be able to show proof of rabies vaccination. If crossing with a puppy, certain paperwork will need to be completed at the border for the new addition to the family. All pets are subject to health, quarantine, agriculture, or wildlife requirements and prohibitions. The regulations about bringing a pet into the United States are the same whether you drive over the U.S. border with your pet in your car, fly, or travel by other means. Pets taken out of the United States and returned are subject to the same requirements as those entering for the first time. For more information about traveling with your pet to a foreign country or bringing your pet into the U.S., visit APHISs pet travel website.

Report Traveling with $10,000 or more: There is no limit to how much currency you may take in or out of the United States; however, U.S. federal law requires you to report your total currency of $10,000 or more. Currency includes all forms of monetary instruments. Travelers who fail to truthfully report all of their currency risk their currency being seized, and may face criminal charges.

For citizens of Visa Waiver Program (VWP) countries, an approved Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) is required before boarding an aircraft. CBP encourages VWP travelers to apply for an ESTA as soon as they begin preparing their travel plans to the United States and no later than 72 hours in advance of their departure to the United States. For those traveling by air or sea on a visa, CBP has automated the Form I-94 removing the need for travelers to fill out a paper copy. Travelers will still be able to obtain their I-94 number and/or a copy of their I-94 online.

For your next trip, consider joining the ranks of a Trusted Traveler. Trusted Traveler members enrolled in Global Entry, NEXUS or SENTRI continue to enjoy the most expedited CBP processing experience. Trusted Traveler members retain their membership for five years.

CBPs mission is to facilitate travel while maintaining the highest standards of security for those who live here and for those who come to visit. On a typical day last year, CBP officers processed more than 1 million travelers arriving airports, seaports or border crossings. During the holiday season, travelers should expect heavy traffic. Planning ahead and adopting these travel tips can save time and lead to a less stressful trip.
I study innovators for a living. Every year, I interview dozens of men and women who've achieved remarkable things. For my own part, I publish about a hundred articles a year and my second book, Cascades, will come out this spring. While my achievements pale in comparison to many of those I interview, many believe my work to be original.

The most destructive myth about creativity is that there are innate traits that allow some people to be creative, while others, who lack these, cannot. The truth is that in decades of research on creativity, nobody has been able to identify any such traits. In my experience, great innovators come in all shapes and sizes.

Still, despite the diversity of original innovators themselves, there are some common principles in how they approach their work and these are things that anyone can apply in their daily lives. That doesn't mean everyone can be world famous, but the evidence clearly shows that anyone can be creative and, even if it's not a major breakthrough, make some contribution to the world.

1. Explore

In 2006, Jennifer Doudna got a call from a colleague at the University of California at Berkeley, Jillian Banfield, who she knew only by reputation. Banfield's area of research interest, obscure bacteria living in extreme conditions, was only tangentially related to Doudna's work, studying the biochemistry of RNA and other cell structures.

The purpose of the call was to interest Doudna in studying an emerging phenomenon that was recently discovered in microbiology, a strange sequence of DNA found in bacteria. The function of the sequences were not yet clear, but some early evidence suggested that they might be involved in some kind of immune function, helping bacteria to defend themselves against viruses.

Intrigued, Doudna began to research the sequences, called CRISPR, in her own lab and, in 2012, discovered that they could be used as a powerful new tool for editing genes. Today, CRISPR is creating a revolution in genomics, completely redefining what was considered to be possible in just a few short years.

Many have observed the role of serendipity in innovation, such as in Alexander Fleming's chance discovery of penicillin. Yet in every case, once you look a little deeper, you find that even the most unexpected discoveries were the product of intense exploration. Like Fleming and penicillin, Doudna wasn't looking for a gene editing technology, but she was investigating a wide number of phenomena that were previously unexplained.

The first step for innovation is exploration. All who wander are not lost.

2. Combine

I'm a relentless fact checker. Over the years, I've found that even if you've done significant research, reading papers and interviewing experts, it's amazingly easy to get things wildly wrong. I've also found that fact checking can lead you to new information you didn't know existed. So before I publish anything of significance, I always make sure to reach out to someone who can correct my foolishness before it becomes public.

That's why when I was finishing up Cascades, I reached out to Duncan Watts to look over two chapters on the science of networks, a field which he helped pioneer. As usual, Duncan was gracious and helpful, and pointed me towards a paper of his that I might want to include. He did so somewhat apologetically, not wanting to push his work on me, but observed that since I had largely based both chapters on his work already, it was probably okay.

This was entirely true. Much of the first half of my book is based on Duncan's ideas. What's more, the second half of the book is largely based on insights from my friend Srdja Popovi?, who trains activists around the world to create revolutionary movements. There are a number of others as well, all of who shared their wisdom with me.

None of this, of course, was at all original, but the combination is. In fact, the key insight of the book is that Duncan's mathematical models and the on-the-ground tactics of Srdja and others are intensely related. They can inform each other in ways that both men, who are mostly unfamiliar with each other's work, had not addressed and, I believe, are important.

3. Refine

I first got interested in Duncan's work in 2006. I was running a large digital business at the time and, with social networks becoming a powerful force online, I thought that learning some basic concepts of network science would be useful. Much to my surprise, I found that the ideas had a powerful resonance in an unexpected area.

Two years earlier, I had found myself in the middle of the Orange Revolution in Ukraine. What struck me at the time was how nobody seemed to have the first idea what was happening or why -- not the journalists I worked with everyday, or the political and business leaders I would meet with regularly, nobody.

So I was excited to find, in Duncan's work, a mathematical explanation for many of the seemingly inexplicable things that I had seen and experienced first-hand. Yet still, I had only a faint sense of what I was on to. Sure, there were obvious connections and possibilities, but I had no real framework to make the insights actionable.

That was 12 years ago (and 14 since the Orange Revolution) and I've been working to refine those initial ideas ever since. Over that period, there has been no shortage of blind allies and wrong turns. Nevertheless, I kept at it and continued to learn. It took over a decade before I was able to pull everything together into something worth publishing.

4. Validate

The connection between Duncan and Srdja's work wasn't completely out of the blue. In fact, Duncan had made a short reference to Otpor, the movement which Srdja had helped lead, and its overthrow of Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevi? in his book, Six Degrees. Yet there was no guarantee that the significance went any further than that.

So I began to widen my search. I looked at social movements throughout history to see if similar patterns held or whether the Orange Revolution in Ukraine and similar events in Serbia were anomalies. I struck up a working friendship with Srdja, read his book, Blueprint for Revolution and pored through the training materials on his organization's website.

Yet to be truly useful, I needed to see if the same concepts could be applied more broadly. So I also researched and spoke to a number of leaders in other fields, such as corporate executives and people who led movements to transform heathcare, education and other things. Anywhere I could find anyone that created transformational change, I sought them out to find how they were able to succeed where so many others failed.

What I found was that while there were vast difference among changemakers, they had all eventually arrived at common principles that made them successful, which I could validate. It took me nearly 15 years, but the journey that began with that initial connection between two vastly different sets of ideas eventually became something that I could consider to be coherent and useful.

In that way, my experience reflects many of the innovators of vastly greater accomplishment that I research and study. Truly original work doesn't emerge fully formed from a brainstorm or sudden epiphany. It's long years that follow, combining, refining and validating that makes the difference between an errant idea and something useful.
Nicole Kidman has opened up about her career during a Bafta lecture in London.

The Australian actor was in the UK's capital for the Life in Pictures event which saw her discuss her career as well as gender imbalance in the industry and the impact of HBO series Big Little Lies which she stars in alongside Reese Witherspoon.

During the talk, Kidman revealed she almost dropped out of playing one of her most high-profile roles: Virginia Woolf in Stephen Daldry drama The Hours (2002).

It was interesting because I got very, very scared and tried to pull out of it because I was going through things in my own life," she said. "I just felt Im completely overwhelmed and is there any way you can cast somebody else? To which they said no, get on the plane. Get here'. And then I just got so immersed in her. I started to  she just came into me, I dont know any other way to explain it.

Kidman went on to win Best Actress for the role at the 2003 Academy Awards

, who will next be seen in DC film Aqauman, said that she's considered quitting acting multiple times, but described the profession as this slow thing that pulls me back and I love it.

Speaking about Hollywood's gender imbalance, she said: I made a pledge a couple of years ago to work with a female director every eighteen months because youve got to act to change the statistics; I have to do something. We can talk about it and we can all talk about it or I can actually just get out there and do it.

The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood Show all 12 1 /12 The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood Anne Hathaway The 32-year-old actress said she has already experiences job rejections because of her age. Now I'm in my early thirties and I'm like, 'Why did that 24-year-old get that part? I was that 24-year-old once. I can't be upset about it, it's the way things are, she told Glamour. EPA The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood Helen Mirren On news that Maggie Gyllenhaal had been turned down for being too old, aged 37, to play a 55-year-old mans partner: Its f***ing outrageous. Its ridiculous. Honestly, its so annoying. And twas ever thus. We all watched James Bond as he got more and more geriatric, and his girlfriends got younger and younger. Its so annoying. Getty The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood Maggie Gyllenhaal Gyllenhaal revealed she was told by a Hollywood producer that she was too old, aged 37, to play the love interest of a 55-year-old man. It was astonishing to me. It made me feel bad, and then it made feel angry, and then it made me laugh, she said at the time. Getty Images The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood Meryl Streep Meryl Streep has helped fund an all-female screenwriters group called The Writers Lab to encourage more women to pen Hollywood scripts. She previously told Vogue in 2011: Once women pass childbearing age they could only be seen as grotesque on some level. Getty The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood Emma Thompson The actress said she thought Hollywood is still completely s*** when it comes to treating women equally to men. When I was younger, I really did think we were on our way to a better world. And when I look at it now, it is in a worse state than I have known it, particularly for women, and I find that very disturbing and sad. EPA The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood Elizabeth Banks Banks said she was driven from acting to directing due to the lack of roles for older women in Hollywood. "[Industry sexism] drove me to direct for sure. I definitely was feeling that I was unfulfilled and a little bit bored by the things that were coming across my desk. I mean look at Gwyneth Paltrow who has her Oscar [for Shakespeare in Love] and played fifth banana to Iron Man, she told Deadline. PA The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood Viola Davis I had never seen a 49-year-old, dark-skinned woman who is not a size 2 be a sexualised role in TV or film. I'm a sexual woman, but nothing in my career has ever identified me as a sexualised woman. I was the prototype of the mommified role, she told The Hollywood Reporter. Getty The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood Liv Tyler The Lord of the Rings actress said she only get cast in roles where she is treated as a second class citizen at the age of 38. When youre in your teens or twenties, there is an abundance of ingenue parts which are exciting to play. But at [my age], youre usually the wife or the girlfriend - a sort of second-class citizen. There are more interesting roles for women when they get a bit older, she told More magazine. Getty Images The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood Cate Blanchett The actress famously called out sexism on the red carpet at the 2014 Screen Actors Guild Awards. When a camera operator scanned her up and down, she said: Do you do this to the guys? In her Oscar acceptance speech for Blue Jasmine, she reminded the film industry that movies with leading women can still be successful. And thank you to... those of us in the industry who are still foolishly clinging to the idea that female films, with women at the centre, are niche experiences. They are not -- audiences want to see them and, in fact, they earn money. The world is round, people. Gareth Cattermole/Getty The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood Ellen Page Asked if she had ever encountered sexism in Hollywood, Page told The Guardian: Oh my God, yeah! It's constant! It's how you're treated, it's how you're looked at, how you're expected to look in a photoshoot, it's how you're expected to shut up and not have an opinion, it's how you... If you're a girl and you don't fit the very specific vision of what a girl should be, which is always from a man's perspective, then you're a little bit at a loss. Getty Images The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood Zoe Saldana The actress says she refuses roles where she has to play the generic girlfriend, wife or sexy bombshell. "It's very hard being a woman in a man's world, and I recognised it was a man's world even when I was a kid. It's an inequality and injustice that drove me crazy, and which I always spoke out against  and I've always been outspoken, she told Manhattan magazine. Getty The actors fighting against sexism in Hollywood Charlize Theron The actress spoke to ELLE about negotiating equal pay for the Snow White and the Huntsman sequel: "This is a good time for us to bring this to a place of fairness, and girls need to know that being a feminist is a good thing. It doesn't mean that you hate men. It means equal rights. If you're doing the same job, you should be compensated and treated in the same way." Andreas Rentz/Getty Images

Kidman is being touted for awards consideration thanks to her forthcoming role in Karyn Kusama film Destroyer. In it, she plays a police detective who attempts to make peace with people from an undercover assignment in her distant past.

In 2019, Kidman will return for a second season of Big Little Lies, this time alongside Witherspoon and Meryl Streep.
Disney has thanked its entire pride for making the trailer for a forthcoming remake of The Lion King its most-watched trailer in a day, and the second most-viewed trailer debut from any studio in 24 hours.

The trailer, which was revealed on Thanksgiving, generated 224.6 million global views in 24 hours, according to Disney studios, coming in second to the trailer for Avengers: Infinity War which attracted 238 million views.

The Lion King remake, from director Jon Favreau, with Donald Glover starring as Simba and Beyonce as the voice of Nala, is slated for release on 19 July 2019. Favreau previously had huge success with his remake of The Jungle Book, which grossed $966 million globally.

Glover and Knowles-Carter are also joined by James Earl Jones, who reprises his role from the 1994 animated film as Simba's father Mufasa. Chiwetel Ejiofor will voice Simba's villainous uncle Scar, Alfre Woodard will star as Simba's mother Sarabi, and child actor JD McCrary will voice the young version of Simba.

Shahadi Wright Joseph is voicing the young Nala, while John Kani voices the baboon Rafiki and John Oliver playing Mufasas confidant, Zazu. Elton John and Tim Rice, who won a Best Song Oscar for their original track "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" as part of their work on the original film, recently confirmed they have made a new end credits song for the remake.

Some doubt has been expressed on social media by fans of the original film. Some have complained about the film being billed as a live action version rather than CGI. And while the casting generated considerable excitement, a viral video showing a shot-by-shot comparison of the new films opening with the original has prompted some fans to question whether anything different or new has been added.

However, the majority reaction still appears to be largely positive, with much of the excitement focused on the all-star voice cast, and the obvious quality of the CGI in the film.
Doctor Who has defeated Daleks, Cybermen and a campaign by BBC management in the late Eighties to send the Tardis into early retirement. But not even a Time Lord in a natty coat stands a chance against the malignant spirits haunting the internet, as made clear this week when BBC Ones eighth episode of the latest season was leaked by Amazon.

The paranoid might wonder if the accidental appearance of The Witchfinders on Amazon Prime in the US represented cosmic payback. The previous Sunday, showrunner Chris Chibnall had appeared to tweak the nose of the tech goliath with an instalment that pointedly critiqued online retailing.

In Kerblam!, the Doctor investigated a conspiracy at the hulking warehouse complex of a (completely fictional) internet retailer with a cosmic footprint. Along the way serious points were made about worker treatment by the dotcom gods. Had the broadcaster brought the virtual equivalent of bad karma down on its head?

Either way, those who enjoyed a sneak peek at The Witchfinders before Amazon hastily took it down may have wished they hadnt. Before us stands the first properly scary Doctor Who under Chibnall. The gallant Gallifreyan (Jodie Whittaker) and her team travel to a Satan-obsessed village in 17th century Lancashire. This is the era when the hats were tall, the populace godfearing and the punishment for witch-like behaviour  being female and having entry-level knowledge of herbs  severe.

Its witch-hunting season, as it happens, and the action commences with our heroes observing an innocent woman drowned in a ritual to test whether she is in league with Satan (had she survived, her guilt would have been proved beyond all doubt and she would have been conveyed to the nearest pyre).

This is disturbing enough  but far scarier is to follow. The witchy goings-on at Bilehurst Cragg  didnt he play bass with Iron Maiden in the Eighties?  are the work of demonic mud particles, which have possessed the corpses of the innocents slaughtered in the moral panic.

Ashen, with muck oozing down their faces, the zombies look like something from an x-rated Japanese horror movie such as The Grudge or Ring. Which is obviously a welcome change after a rather preachy season of Doctor Who. Its just a fortnight, after all, since we were asked to consider that the internecine violence that erupted during Indian partition was on balance a negative development.

Nonetheless, for all the families watching, Japanese-horror style zombies are probably too much of a terrifying thing. Why, it needs to be asked, was writer Joy Wilkinson given a green light to serve up full-fat nightmare fuel on a Sunday evening pre-watershed?

Still, the shivers are in service of a cracking story. Alan Cumming turns up as a dandy-ish King James I (at one point it seems his moustache is about to literally start twirling and lift him off the ground). Hes in town to assist godfearing Becka Savage (Happy Valleys Siobhan Finneran) with her black magic crackdown and quickly rumbles that the Doctor isnt, as she claims, a Witchfinder General.

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Actually, James assumes Graham (Bradley Walsh) is the boss witchfinder, the Doctor his assistant (what with her being female and everything). But the newcomers story crumbles quite rapidly anyway and its the Doctor who finds herself taking a dip in order to ascertain her witchiness.

However, death by drowning is the least of her worries (she slips her chains and swims to safety). The mud-monsters, it turns out, are elite alien soldiers, imprisoned on Earth for millennia previously.

The charm holding them in place is broken when Becka cuts down a magical tree  for which her reward is extraterrestrial infection. The orgy of witch killing is her way of covering up for the fact she is being consumed by forces beyond her understanding  and also a flailing attempt to drive out what she assumes to be the devil inside.

Yet the jig is revealed to be up when the mud-demon possesses her completely and (very considerately) explains that, with the guardian tree gone, his big bad boss is about to return. Enter the Doctor, who uses charmed wood from the tree to seal the gate and scatter the monsters  with amused assistance from King James.

The blend of chills and whimsy  Cumming licks, chews and devours the scenery whole  is surprisingly effective and the mud-zombies looming in the murk are genuinely unsettling. Which is good news for horror diehards, less so for all those tuning in with their children. The Witchfinders undoubtedly casts a spell, but family fare it is not.
One should not believe in superstitions, but it is best to be heedful of them  Sefer Hasdim

Look round any bookshop and the section on the occult is likely to be next to, or close by, the section on religion. Counting the books alone (and I confess to have been an avid reader of the Denis Wheatley Black Magic thrillers) confirms the popularity of the occult. The word is derived from the Latin word occultus, which means hidden. Both religion and the occult seek to make clear what is hidden to those who are not practitioners or believers.

What makes the occult so popular? The answer is straightforward: human interest in the unseen, in the working of the universe, not to mention a quest for power and control over the future, and over other individuals. Where then lies the difference between the occult and religion? The former practises magic and divination, which is an anathema to religion; while the latters focus on prayer, and on a mythology, by which to understand the world is dismissed by the occult.
Camilla Lowther might be one of the most successful booking agents in the fashion industry, but the eminent businesswoman has major regrets when it comes to her supermodel daughter, Adwoa Aboah, who she sent to boarding school at the age of 13.

Aboah, who has fronted numerous brand campaigns and been on the cover of British and American Vogue, has previously spoken out her unhappy memories of being at Millfield school in Somerset, which preceded a severe struggle with depression and, when she was 22, a suicide attempt.

Now, Lowther has opened up about her daughters experiences, expressing guilt over sending her to the school.

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She didnt want to go, the agent tells The Sunday Times Style magazine, explaining how she wishes shed never sent either of her two daughters away to board.

Im not a great one for regrets because there is f*** all one can do about it. But if I had my time again, I wouldnt have sent them.

At Millfield, which is located near Glastonbury, Aboah has claimed she struggled to fit in.

I looked a lot different to all the other girls: everyone was blonde and blue-eyed, she once told ES Magazine.

It was, 'This is how you dress. This is how you do your hair, and you put loads of foundation on and wear high heels.' And I was like, 'F***, I dont even know how to be this person.

Aboah explained how her insecurities drove her to drug addiction: "I wanted to take drugs, I wanted to drink, I wanted to stay out all night."

Recalling the moment her daughter attempted to take her own life, Lowther explains she was working at the time when she got "the call".

It was right after Id sold the business. I ran downstairs and said, Charles, get your coat on, Adwoas tried to kill herself and shes in an ambulance on her way to A&E. When we got there, she was fitting, like an epileptic.

Lowther explains how Aboah was in an induced coma for the next four days on life support.

We had to sit in Carluccios opposite Chelsea and Westminster Hospital drinking glass after glass of white wine, waiting for the news to see if shed suffered brain damage, she recalls.

To mark World Mental Health Day, Aboah shared an honest post on Instagram of photographs taken in the weeks after her suicide attempt, recalling how broken and exhausted she felt at the time in the caption underneath.

For the rest of my life I promise to shine light on this illness that so many times is forgotten, she continued.

I promise to give the unheard a voice whenever I can, I promise to remember the girl In that photo and everything she had to go through and to protect the woman I have now become.

For confidential support call the Samaritans on 116 123.
In her 1997 memoir, Personal History, The Washington Posts longtime publisher Katharine Graham remembered a very alcoholic, emotional party in 1950 when the papers staff left the old Post building on E Street NW for a new site on L Street NW: The party  more of a wake, actually  was, as someone put it, to mourn the death of a building, which, with all its inconvenient horror, was still much loved.

There was, perhaps, less booze when the Post moved again in late 2015, out of its 1972 building on 15th Street NW to the spot it now occupies, rental space on K Street NW a few blocks away. But if there was less booze, there were still plenty of people who mourned the death of a building, not because it was a good building, or a beloved building or a beautiful building, but because it was repository of memory and habit.

Designed by Albert Kahn Associates (once a powerhouse firm in industrial Detroit), the Posts flagship office (adjoined to other structures along the northwest corner of L and 15th Streets) was as ugly as a mid-century concrete box could be. For some reason, the windows along the east face were deeply recessed, making it seem as if daylight and the world at large were always out of reach.

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The newsroom, famous from its role during the Watergate scandal (and from movies based on that historical episode), had no glamour at all. It was a low-ceilinged, fluorescent-lit warren of cluttered desks and aisles, with enormously large pillars breaking up the space. As the papers staff shrank precipitously after the 2008 economic crash, whole floors felt funereal and the newsroom seemed to engulf its remaining inhabitants.

And now its gone, demolished and replaced. Ive walked by the old address dozens of times, and never has the disappearance of a building seemed so absolute. Largely, thats a happy symptom of the development that has replaced it, a 14-story, 867,000 square-foot glass- and copper-clad structure dubbed Midtown Center, designed by the New York-based SHoP Architects. Four separate buildings once stood here, but now there is one large structure, divided into two main towers and connected by three bridges that soar above the city with an appealing geometry.

The east tower rests on large, curved-edge glass plinth-like forms, which create paths and open space at street level, and the area between the two towers includes a fountain and a small plaza with benches, built-in planters and trees.

(SHoP Architects ) (SHoP Architects)

Like CityCenter, an earlier, much larger development that replaced the old DC convention centre a few blocks east, Midtown Center offers back to the city some of its ground plane as a quasi-public space. But where CityCenter opened up pedestrian space by reinstituting the citys street grid, Midtown Center has burrowed out new space at street level, creating intriguing sightlines, letting visitors move through the buildings footprint along angled pathways, giving them access to what feels like an open atrium in the middle, and allowing them to pass through to what was once an alley with access to the old Post parking garage and is now a shady terrace space with cafe tables and outdoor dining.

The new building will be occupied primarily by the Federal National Mortgage Association, commonly know as Fannie Mae, the government-sponsored mortgage security company, with some leftover room for rental tenants. The Fannie Mae offices are centred on a large, vertical town centre in the west tower, which, along with the bridges, helps give a focal point to the otherwise chopped-up floor plan. The exterior of the building, with its greenish oxidising copper trim, is far more appealing than the rather bland, Michael Graves-designed interior spaces.

On a tour of the building in October, the architects and owners (Carr Properties) focused on the buildings amenities: its terrace and penthouse space with exceptional views over the city (Midtown Center is taking advantage of relaxed rules on enclosing space above the usual allowable city height limits), its appealing exercise facility, a bike storage room and electric car charging stations. By cutting a large, open stairwell through the street-level plaza, employees catch a glimpse of sky and daylight as they ascend a bamboo-lined staircase from the garage to the plaza. That cut-through also brings natural light into the fitness centre.

Midtown Center is a rare example of urban jazz in what is otherwise a uniformly drab stretch of typical Washington bureaucratic architecture. If this study in resisting the grid is successful and repeated elsewhere, one can imagine entirely new patterns of movement and habitation in the city, with interconnected plazas and alleys overlaid on the otherwise monotonous right angles of old cityscape.

But for anyone who worked in the old Post building, the opening of Midtown Center brings mixed feelings. What Graham called the wake for an old building is well over, though one sometimes misses the habits of how the old site connected to Metro, the restaurants that were its near vicinity, the man who never missed a day of work panhandling along 15th Street, indefatigably chanting Quarters, dimes or nickels. The old Linotype machine that once stood at the entrance of the old building is gone, and nothing has replaced it at the new Post building, which feels remote from the city, with only some signage to tell people what goes on inside.

The old Post building was a study in missed opportunities. There was room at ground level along 15th Street to create space that might have engaged with readers  perhaps a glass-walled studio for television interviews, or an exhibition hall showing the best of the papers photographic work, or focusing on its role in historical events. None of that ever happened, and when the offices moved to their current space, a sharp-edged interior world of blindingly white walls and minimalist finishing touches, the goal seemed to dematerialise the offices, as if the new digital era required reinventing the clean, featureless modernism of French filmmaker Jacques Tatis imaginary Paris.

Graham was always disappointed by the 1972 Post building, which at one point was to have been designed by IM Pei before the newspaper went in a different direction because of concerns about the design and cost. The current home of the Post continues the newspapers retreat from the architectural expression of its ideals and purpose, emphasising the corporate media brand over visual instantiation of a national institution with a specific civic function (which doesnt mean the newspaper has retreated from that role in its daily journalism).

(The Washington Post (The Washington Post)

Midtown Center has now erased what feels like the last physical traces of the newspaper, with the new Post newsroom operating in the sunny uplands elevated over the city, with little connection to it. Midtown Center also offers a study in architectural good citizenship, giving back to the pedestrian and passerby in ways that none of the Posts buildings have done for the past half-century at least.

At the time the Post moved out of the old 15th Street building, just two years after it was bought by Jeffrey Bezos, there was still considerable anxiety about the papers financial future, and investing in a new, purpose-built home would have been foolhardy. Now, looking at the building that has replaced it, which breathes life into a forlorn part of downtown, one can only think: if only. If only the Post had had more room to manoeuvre when it created its new home; if only the Post, too, was a player in the new urban energy that is fighting back against the blockbusting concrete office boxes that have long ruled this city.

 The Washington Post
The design community has been celebrating some major anniversaries, with more to come in the next year. 2019 will mark the 100th year of Bauhaus, and iconic scandi brand, string (as seen in the headquarters of the UN), will turn 80.

So, to mark the long list of notable design anniversaries, brands are launching new collections, collaborations and design retrospectives to celebrate not only their history, but also their futures.

This year, to mark its 75th birthday, Ikea introduced Gratulera, a series made up of three collections that cite some of the companys key pieces designed from the 1950s to the 2000s. So far, two retrospective collections have launched, bookmarking the 1950s and 1960s in August, and the 1970s and 1980s last month.

In December, Ikea fans can expect the final collection of the Gratulera series, with a focus on the 1990s and 2000s. One particular piece to look out for in the final instalment is the Thomas Sandell-designed wheeled bench, which was originally produced in 1995.

Last week, Andrew Martin celebrated its 40th anniversary and fifth decade of design. In the build-up to this milestone, the brand launched its most fascinating and colourful collection yet.

Andrew Martins Glazed Bronze Pear is an eye-catching ceramic sculpture with a modern, surrealist twist

In a recent collaboration with Kit Kemp and the launch of a collection of larger than life fruit sculptures, Martin Waller, the brands founder, has his foot firmly on the accelerator, saying: Over the next 40 years, we will aim to, once again, distil the inspiration of the past and the adventure of the future. So too, has Andrew Martin just awarded the 22nd Designer of the Year award to Ohara Davies-Gaetano.

Next, is a collaboration between two huge forces in design and Hollywood: Kelly Hoppen MBE X Mickey Mouse. This collaboration honours the 90th anniversary of the Disney characters appearance in Steamboat Willie, and was launched on 18 November with three collections of Mickey-themed homeware.

The collection include murals and wallpapers in partnership with Graham & Brown, rugs created with Essie, and a bedding collection designed by Hoppen for QVC. The bedding launches this month exclusively at QVC. Since winning the first Andrew Martin Interior Designer of the Year award in 1996, Hoppens signature taupe and beige schemes have experienced endless popularity.

The South-African designer teamed up with Disney to make Mickey-themed homeware

With the addition of the much-loved Disney character to her impressive portfolio of collaborators, Hoppen has demonstrated true flexibility in her designs. Of the collection, she says: I absolutely adore Mickey, and cant even tell you how much fun I had creating these designs. Its an honour to be able to reimagine Mickey in my own way.
A parliamentary bill to help protect children from female genital mutilation (FGM) has been blocked by the same Conservative MP who sought to prevent a bill to make upskirting a criminal offence.

Sir Christopher Chope, 71, who is the MP for Christchurch in Dorset, shouted object in the House of Commons on Friday to a second reading for the bill that had been proposed by Lord Michael Berkeley.

The Labour peers proposal wouldve seen a one line amendment to the Childrens Act 1989, which would considerably extend protection to young girls at greatest risk of genital mutilation.

Chopes actions sparked outrage on Twitter, with many people calling for him to be deselected and reiterating their shock when the MP blocked the upskirting bill, which has since been adopted as a governmental bill and is expected to pass in the coming months.

 Commons bill to make 'upskirting' criminal offence halted by Peter Chope objection

"Can we table a bill to object to Christopher Chope shouting object?" wrote Labour MP Stella Creasy.

"This man is just beyond words," added FGM campaigner Nimco Ali.

Its not clear why Chope decided to block this particular bill, but in June, when he did the same with upskirting, he explained that his objection was not to the bill itself but to the procedure of legislation being passed without debate.

Speaking to the Bournemouth Echo at the time, he said: "The government has been hijacking time that is rightfully that of backbenchers. This is about who controls the House of Commons on Fridays and thats where I am coming from [...] this is something I have fought for in most of my time as an MP and it goes to the very heart of the power balance between the government and parliament.

He later added that he did in fact support the bid to make upskirting a criminal offence.

Chope's objection to the FGM bill came just after Penny Mordaunt, the international development secretary, announced she had secured a 50m aid package to help put an end to FGM.

Berkeley congratulated Mordaunt for her landmark achievement and urged her to help him get his bill passed through the Commons.

Amazing that Chope can halt an important improvement to the protection of young girls," he wrote on Twitter, "and how ironic that he has done so (for no discernible reason) on the day you launch this initiative."
Emily Ratajkowski has hit back at critics who mocked her for not wearing a bra when she attended a protest last month against the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, who had been accused of sexual assault by Dr Christine Blasey Ford.

The model walked among protesters with the actor Amy Schumer while holding a placard with the words: Respect female existence or expect our resistance emblazoned across it.

Despite being there to make an important statement about Kavanaughs appointment, some fans remained fixated on what Ratajkowski was wearing and argued that her outfit - a white vest top and jeans - detracted from her political motivations.

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Speaking to the Australian magazine Stellar, the 27-year-old said she was very surprised by the attention she received at the time.

I knew being there would be important and I knew some people would find it controversial, but I never expected anyone to talk about why I wasnt wearing a bra under my tank top.

It was 32 degrees, I was marching through D.C. in jeans; my outfit seemed completely normal to me. And I was there making a political point. Why would people focus on what I was wearing?

Both Ratajokowsi and Schumer were detained for participating in the protest, which took place at a US Senate building in Washington DC.

 Amy Schumer and Emily Ratajkowski among 300 arrested at Kavanaugh protest

In a video shared on Twitter, police can be seen walking up to the two women and asking if theyd like to be arrested, to which Schumer responds yes. They both sat on the floor with other protestors until they were escorted out of the building.

Schumer pictured at the protest in October

Afterwards, when vitriol towards Ratajkowski emerged, Schumer defended her friend in a powerful Instagram post, arguing that the criticisms she had received were misguided and sexist.

People are trolling @emrata for not wearing a bra while she got arrested. Well for starters I wasnt wearing a bra either, the comedian wrote in a caption underneath a selfie of her and her dog.

In the what to wear when being detained for four hours on an 87 degree day after a two hour march handbook. Bras arent recommended.

Emily sacrificed herself fighting to protect womens rights to choose what they do with their own bodies.

How about we show her the same courtesy and direct some of that toxic energy to the people who deserve it?
Stop and search does not significantly reduce knife crime, research has suggested, as the home secretary and senior police officers call for the power to be used more widely.

The study also found that stop and search is disproportionately used against people of colour.

Researchers from the Centre of Crime and Justice Studies examined data including a study commissioned by the Home Office  and concluded there was limited evidence of the effectiveness of stop and search in reducing crime.

Their report, seen exclusively by The Independent, said: It is also recognised as having detrimental effects on certain groups and on community relations with the police. Stop and search is disproportionately used against people of colour, and, after initial improvements, this disproportionality has widened.

While the number of searches carried out has fallen overall, in 2016-2017 black people were eight times more likely than white people to be stopped by police in England and Wales, according to another report published last month.

Researchers said punitive approaches to gang crime can have the unintended consequence of pushing people into gangs as a form of reaction and defiance.

They added: The vast majority of stops and searches do not result in arrests, and reasonable grounds for a search have been found to not be apparent in around one in six stops, leading to further feelings of victimisation and unfairness.

A Home Office study of targeted weapons searches in London found no statistically significant reductions in crime as a result of the intervention, and a College of Policing report looking at 10 years of Metropolitan Police data found only a weak relationship between stop and search and overall levels of the types of crimes the practice aims to reduce.

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The use of stop and search fell in England and Wales from a peak of 1.5 million in 2008-09 to a record low of 304,000 in 2016-17.

There were 7,097 arrests for offensive weapons, including knives, as a result of stops and searches in 2016-17. There were 32,852 total stops and searches for weapons in the same period.

Researchers said that some of the arrests were the result of searchers targeting other items such as drugs. They added that the gap between the number of those searched and detained means that stop and search is a very inefficient way of confiscating knives from people who would carry them as weapons.

But some police leaders have blamed Theresa Mays 2014 rule change for a dramatic rise in violent crime  as officers are reluctant to use stop and search for fear of accusations of racism.

The debate around how to tackle stabbings has been reignited by a spate of murders in London. Concern has also been growing over rising recorded knife possession among ever-younger children.

Sajid Javid is among politicians backing the use of stop and search as part of efforts to take weapons off the streets before they are used, and the Home Office is considering extending the powers to tackle acid, drones and laser pointers.

In October, the home secretary told a police conference that he wanted officers to feel feel confident, trusted and supported in using stop and search.

He added: I will be looking at ways to reduce bureaucracy and increase efficiency in the use of this power.

Police were outraged when Mr Javid told them to step up their response to knife crime earlier this month by using stop and search more, amid a row over funding cuts that have seen more than 20,000 officers lost since 2010.

The teenagers murdered in London in 2018 Show all 21 1 /21 The teenagers murdered in London in 2018 The teenagers murdered in London in 2018 Oluwadamilolda Odeyingbo Oluwadamilolda Odeyingbo, 18, was killed in a fight in Chislehurst on 10 January 2018 Metropolitan Police The teenagers murdered in London in 2018 Hasan Ozcan Hasan Ozcan, 19, was stabbed to death on the Gascoigne Estate in Barking on 3 February 2018 Metropolitan Police The teenagers murdered in London in 2018 Sabri Chibani Sabri Chibani, 19, was stabbed fatally in the chest in Streatham on 11 February 2018 Metropolitan Police The teenagers murdered in London in 2018 Promise Nkenda Lord Promise Nkenda, 17, was stabbed to death in Canning Town on 14 February 2018 Facebook The teenagers murdered in London in 2018 Lewis Blackman Lewis Blackman, a 19-year-old rapper from Kentish Town, was stabbed to death in Kensington on 18 February 2018 Metropolitan Police The teenagers murdered in London in 2018 Abdikarim Hassan Abdikarim Hassan, 17, was stabbed to death near his home in Camden's Peckwater estate on 20 March - less tahan two hours before another man was stabbed to death nearby Metropolitan Police The teenagers murdered in London in 2018 Kelvin Odunuyi Kelvin Odunuyi, a 19-year-old rapper known as DipDat and Lampz, was shot dead in Wood Green on 8 March Metropolitan Police The teenagers murdered in London in 2018 Lyndon Davis Lyndon Davis, 18, was chased down and stabbed to death in Chadwell Heath on 14 March Metropolitan Police The teenagers murdered in London in 2018 Tanesha Melbourne-Blake Tanesha Melbourne, 17, was killed in a drive-by shooting in Tottenham on 2 April PA The teenagers murdered in London in 2018 Amaan Shakoor Amaan Shakoor, 16, was shot dead in Walthamstow on 2 April Metropolitan Police The teenagers murdered in London in 2018 Israel Ogunsola Israel Ogunsola, 18, was stabbed to death in Hackney on 4 April Metropolitan Police The teenagers murdered in London in 2018 Rhyhiem Ainsworth Barton Rhyhiem Ainsworth Barton, a 17-year-old rapper and aspiring architect, was shot dead in a Kennington Street on 5 May Handout The teenagers murdered in London in 2018 Jordan Douherty Aspiring rapper Jordan Douherty died of his injuries outside a birthday party in Romford on 23 June Metropolitan Police The teenagers murdered in London in 2018 Katrina Makunova Katrina Makunova, 17, was stabbed to death in Camberwell on 12 July 2018 Metropolitan Police The teenagers murdered in London in 2018 Latwaan Griffiths 18-year-old Latwaan Griffiths was fatally stabbed on 25 July and died in hospital after being thrown off the back of a moped in Camberwell Metropolitan Police The teenagers murdered in London in 2018 Guled Farah Guled Farah, 19, was shot in Walthamstow on 22 September Metropolitan Police The teenagers murdered in London in 2018 Ethan Nedd-Bruce Ethan Nedd-Bruce, 18, died after he was shot outside a party at a flat in Greenwich, south-east London, on 22 October. He had also been stabbed, but the gunshot wound was the cause of death. Metropolitan Police The teenagers murdered in London in 2018 Jay Hughes Jay Hughes, 15, died was fatally stabbed outside a chicken shop in Bellingham, south-east London, on 1 November Metropolitan Police The teenagers murdered in London in 2018 Malcolm Mide-Madariola Malcolm Mide-Madariola, 17, was found suffering from a stab wound outside Clapham South Tube station on 2 November Metropolitan Police The teenagers murdered in London in 2018 John Ogunjobi John Ogunjobi, 16, died in front of his parents after he was stabbed in Greenleaf Close, Tulse Hill, on 5 November Metropolitan Police The teenagers murdered in London in 2018 Aron Warren Aron Warren, 18, was found stabbed in a flat block in Greenwich on 8 December and died at the scene Metropolitan Police

Sara Thornton, chair of the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC), said it was an important tool in protecting the public.

Earlier this year, she wrote that the power may have been used too freely in the past, but the pendulum has now swung too far in the opposite direction.

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has backed intelligence-led stop and search, while Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick has hailed it as one of the many things that will bring the number of stabbings down.

Richard Garside, director of the Centre of Crime and Justice Studies, told The Independent that big social forces including poverty, inequality and mental health were driving violence.

Its difficult to see how police themselves are in a position to do anything other than keep a lid on it at best, he said.

The police themselves arent going to be able to resolve this issue but an increase in stop and search is a very easy response.

The government can say look, were on top of it when of course theyre not, theyre just repeating failure.

Researchers also said that increased prison sentences and other attempts to punish and prosecute our way out of knife crime are doomed to failure.

(ONS (ONS)

They noted that while a rising number of people have been sent to prison over recent years, and for longer periods, there has been no demonstrable effect on knife violence.

Interventions which do not seek to address wider social issues such as inequality, deprivation, poor mental health and drug addiction are unlikely to provide long-lasting solutions to knife violence, the report said.

It concluded that a public health approach to prevent violence, which focuses on early intervention to improve childrens prospects and divert them from crime, would be more effective.

Researchers said that although this approach has been backed by the home secretary and incorporated into London programmes, it lacks consistent funding or genuine policy support.

Report author Dr Roger Grimshaw said: A genuine and successful public health approach requires multi-faceted leadership, long-term funding commitments and the political will to sustain violence reduction.

It should be informed by public health approaches seeking to educate, prevent and treat, rather than enforcement approaches seeking to prosecute and punish.

A Home Office spokesperson said: Stop and search is a vital policing tool and officers have the government's full support to use these powers in a way that is fair, lawful and effective.

The home secretary has said he wants police officers to feel confident, trusted and supported when they are using stop and search powers.

We are looking at ways to work with the police to reduce bureaucracy and increase efficiency in the use of this power.
The president of the European Commission has said he would vote in favour of Theresa Mays Brexit deal if he had a vote in the UK parliament.

Jean-Claude Juncker said the agreement was the best deal possible and that the EU would not change its fundamental position.

It comes as EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier insists he has always negotiated with the UK, never against it.

The presidents comments are part of an EU-wide push to convince British MPs that the plan is worth backing. The arithmetic in the House of Commons currently suggests it will be rejected by a wide margin if nothing changes.

Mr Juncker described Britains departure as a tragic moment.

I would vote in favour of this deal because this is the best deal possible for Britain, he told reporters on the doorstep of a Brussels summit to sign off the deal.

This is the deal. It's the best deal possible and the EU will not change its fundamental position when it comes to these issues.

He added: The UK leaving the EU is a tragic moment. Not a moment to celebrate.

But arriving at the same meeting, French president Emmanuel Macron said: It's not a day when we should celebrate, nor a day of mourning. It is the choice of a sovereign people.

He added that Britains departure showed the EU had a fragile side and was in need of reform. He also pledged that the deal would protect the access of French fishermen to British waters.

Mr Barnier, who is also attending the meeting, said: All along this extraordinary negotiation, very difficult we have worked to reach a deal. That means to organise in an orderly fashion the withdrawal decided by the UK.

We have negotiated with the UK, never against the UK. Now it is time for everybody to take their responsibility, everybody.

This deal is a necessary step to build trust between the UK and the EU, we need build in the next phase of this unprecedented and ambitious partnership. We will remain allies, partners and friends.

Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte said there were no political winners or victories in the Brexit process.

A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Show all 65 1 /65 A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit An estimated 700,000 people marched through London to demand a final say on the withdrawal agreement Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Red smoke from a canister hangs in the air as around 100,000 demonstrators march through London during a People's Vote anti-brexit demonstration savings banners and placards Anti-Brexit People's Vote March for the Future in London Rex A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Mayor of London Sadiq Khan takes part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum. PA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Final Say campaigners take part in the peoples vote march for the future in London 20/10/2018 Protesters wearing final Say shirts and holding placards Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit MP Chuka Umunna (left) and MP Vince Cable (right) as MP Anna Soubry (centre) addresses Anti-Brexit campaigners at a rally after the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum. PA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit A Peoples Vote march attendee calls for a Final Say Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Demonstrators with banners 'We're with EU' during the People's Vote March for the Future in London, Britain, 20 October 2018. Reports state that the 'March for the Future' is to be led by a column of young people and call for a Peopleas Vote on the Brexit deal. After marching through central London, there will be a rally on stage in Parliament Square, including speeches from Mayor of London Sadiq Khan. EPA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Protesters at Londons march for the future in October The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Editor of The Independent Christian Broughton speaks to demonstrators in Parliament Sqaure after they take part in a march calling for a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal, in central London on October 20, 2018. - Britons dreading life outside Europe gathered from all corners of the UK to London on Saturday to try to stop their country's looming breakup with the EU. AFP/Getty A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit A poster at the March for the Future in October The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Anti-Brexit campaigners take part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum. PA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Final Say campaigners take part in the peoples vote march for the future in London 20/10/2018 Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Anti-Brexit campaigners take part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum. PA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Demonstrators hold placards as they take part in a march calling for a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal, in central London on October 20, 2018. - Britons dreading life outside Europe gathered from all corners of the UK to London on Saturday to try to stop their country's looming breakup with the EU. AFP/Getty A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Final Say campaigners take part in the peoples vote march for the future in London 20/10/2018 campaigner wrapped in EU flag Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Final Say campaigners take part in the peoples vote march for the future in London 20/10/2018 Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Demonstrators pass Trafalgar Square as they take part in a march calling for a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal, in central London on October 20, 2018. - Britons dreading life outside Europe gathered from all corners of the UK to London on Saturday to try to stop their country's looming breakup with the EU. AFP/Getty A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Demonstrators wave Union and European flags and hold up placards as they pass Trafalgar Square, taking part in a march calling for a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal, in central London on October 20, 2018. - Britons dreading life outside Europe gathered from all corners of the UK to London on Saturday to try to stop their country's looming breakup with the EU. AFP/Getty A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Demonstrators hold placards as they take part in a march calling for a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal, in central London on October 20, 2018. - Britons dreading life outside Europe gathered from all corners of the UK to London on Saturday to try to stop their country's looming breakup with the EU. AFP/Getty A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit A demonstrator holds a message during a march calling for a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal, in central London on October 20, 2018. - Britons dreading life outside Europe gathered from all corners of the UK to London on Saturday to try to stop their country's looming breakup with the EU. AFP/Getty A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Anti-Brexit campaigners take part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum. PA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Demonstrators take part in the 'People's Vote March for the Future,' in central London, Britain, 20 October 2018. Reports state that the 'March for the Future' is to be led by a column of young people and call for a Peopleas Vote on the Brexit deal. After marching through central London, there will be a rally on stage in Parliament Square, including speeches from Mayor of London Sadiq Khan EPA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit A protester brandishes an Independent t-shirt during the Brexit March Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Anti-Brexit campaigners take part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum PA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Tens of thousands of people take part in People's Vote March for the Future in central London. The march organised by the People's Vote campaign is led by young people calling for a People's Vote on the Brexit deal Rex A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Anti-Brexit campaigners take part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum PA

He added: I don't expect a no vote. I expect a yes vote and this is the deal on the table. I don't think there's anything more."

Leaders are gathering in Brussels to sign off the deal after a last-minute climbdown by the UK over the issue of Gibraltar. British officials conceded in writing that any future trade deal between the UK and EU would only apply to Gibraltar with the consent of Madrid.

Thersa May had told MPs last week that any deal would have to apply to Gibraltar. Spain has always had a veto of the future trade deal, however, as does every other EU member state.
Jeremy Hunt has admitted it will be challenging to get MPs to back Theresa Mays Brexit deal as the DUP warned she could not rely on their support.

European leaders agreed to endorse the prime ministers Brexit blueprint after just half an hour of talks at a special summit in Brussels on Sunday, which comes after 18 months of wrangling behind the scenes.

Ms Mays focus now shifts to the battle to get the deal through parliament amid opposition from all sides, with more than 90 Tory MPs publicly expressing disapproval of the plan.

It comes as European leaders warned the UK would not be offered a better deal if Ms Mays blueprint is overturned in parliament.

Mr Hunt appealed to his party to act in the national interest but admitted the prime minister faced an uphill battle to win over MPs before the crunch vote in parliament in December.

Asked how many Tory MPs would vote against the deal, the foreign secretary told the BBCs The Andrew Marr Show: Thats a very difficult question and the arithmetic at the moment is looking challenging but a lot can change over the next two weeks.

I think what all my colleagues will be doing is thinking what is in the national interest.

Asked if a defeat could mean Ms Mays government could collapse, he said: Its not possible to rule out anything.

Mr Hunt also appeared to suggest that the deal could be a staging post towards a better agreement and said it mitigates most of the negative impacts of Brexit.

He said: I think the truth is there are compromises in this deal, but my colleagues in the House of Commons will be looking at this and they will say that we have got between 70 and 80 per cent of what we want and the question is, can this be a staging post to getting 100 per cent of what we want?

However, DUP leader Arlene Foster threatened to bring down the government over the deal, making clear there were no circumstances under which her party would back it in the Commons.

And she warned that Ms May could not count on the support of the DUP if a parliamentary defeat triggered a vote of no confidence in the prime minister.

She insisted the DUPs confidence and supply agreement  where her 10 MPs prop up the government - remained live but added: If it came to the situation that parliament did decide  and there is no evidence that they are going to  if they did decide to back this deal then obviously we would have to review the confidence and supply agreement.

As far as I can see, in parliament, she does not have support for this deal, Ms Foster said.

Ms Foster suggested the DUP could back a Norway-style deal allowing the UK to stay in the EU single market, as long as there was no separation of Great Britain from Northern Ireland.

Former Tory leader Iain Duncan-Smith said it would be very, very difficult to support the deal as he claimed far too much has been given to the EU.

He told Sky Newss Sophy Ridge on Sunday: Well I dont want to stay in the EU. I campaigned and voted to leave the EU.

I dont believe that, so far, this deal delivers on what the British people really voted for, take back control of your borders, your laws, your money. I think it has ceded too much control.

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Labour MP Lisa Nandy, who represents Leave-backing Wigan, said it was inconceivable for her to back the deal, in a blow to the prime ministers hopes of support from Labour ranks.

Ms Nandy called for an extension to Article 50 to head off a no-deal, adding: There is a real prospect now of no deal because many of those Leave voters, contrary to the opinion in Westminster, actually dislike this deal more than the Remain voters who contact me on a regular basis.

However European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker fired off a warning to MPs seeking to derail the deal, saying: This is the best deal possible for Britain, this is the best deal possible for Europe.

This is the only deal possible.
Senior ministers are reportedly mulling a "plan B" for leaving the European Union if Theresa May's deal is voted down by MPs.

European leaders have approved the prime minister's Brexit blueprint at a special summit in Brussels on Sunday, which was brought back from the brink after Spain threatened to "veto" progress due to concerns over Gibraltar.

However Ms May faces an arguably more difficult task of getting her deal through parliament in the coming weeks, amid renewed opposition from both Brexit and pro-EU wings of the Conservative Party, as well as her DUP allies, Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the SNP.

Ms May is facing threats from all sides amid speculation of a fresh threat within her cabinet from chancellor Philip Hammond, who would lead an exodus of pro-EU ministers if the prime minister ends up pursuing a no-deal Brexit.

And another group of cabinet ministers are said to be in talks with the DUP to draw up an alternative plan around a 'Norway option', in which Britain stays in the European Economic Area (EEA) in case the deal is rejected.

A DUP source told the Sunday Times it was in talks with "people who might assert themselves", adding: "At that point people in the cabinet will say we've got to have a plan B. They will have our support in taking a different approach."

Party leader Arlene Foster did not deny the report, telling the BBC's Andrew Marr Show: "There are conversations going on right across government, I don't think that will surprise you.

"We are talking to everybody across government, we are talking to people in the Remain side, we are talking to Brexiteers, we are talking to everyone as I think you would expect us to do."

The Northern Ireland party has called on Ms May to bin the deal and threatened to torpedo their confidence-and-supply agreement, which props up her government.

In interviews ahead of DUP's annual conference on Saturday, Ms Foster claimed Ms Mays deal would be a worse outcome for the UK than a Jeremy Corbyn-led government  despite their longstanding differences.

She warned that her party would revisit its confidence-and-supply deal to support the Conservatives at Westminster if the Brexit agreement is voted through parliament.

However European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker warned restive MPs that the EU would not budge on its plans.

Speaking to reporters as he arrived at the summit, Mr Juncker said: "This is the deal. It's the best deal possible and the EU will not change its fundamental position when it comes to these issues.''

Meanwhile, Mr Hammond and four other ministers including Amber Rudd, David Gauke, Greg Clarke and the PM's de-facto deputy David Lidington could resign rather than be associated with a no-deal Brexit, according to the Mail on Sunday.

Mr Hammond delivered a gloomy verdict of the economic prospects of leaving the EU without a deal on Saturday, telling the BBC that a no-deal Brexit would unleash "economic chaos".

He said: "If the meaningful vote is lost we are in uncharted territory.

"We will be faced with potential economic chaos, I am sure we would get a very negative reaction from the business community, from investors, from the markets.

Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Show all 13 1 /13 Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Esther McVey Britain's Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey arrives to attend the weekly meeting of the cabinet at 10 Downing Street in London. - Britain's Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey resigned from the cabinet over draft Brexit deal AFP/Getty Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal PA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Dominic Raab British Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab give a press conference at the end of the final round of talks in Brexit negotiations at the European Commission in Brussels, Belgium EPA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal PA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Rehman Chrishti Vice Chairman of the Conservative Party Rehman Chrishti tendered his resignation letter this afternoon PA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Anne-Marie Trevelyan Parliamentary private secretary in the Department of Education Anne-Marie Trevelyan resigned stating that she cannot support the deal Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal PA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Sam Gyimah Universities minister Sam Gyimah resigned on November 30, claiming the government's decision to pull out of the EU's Galileo satellite navigation system as a deciding factor PA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Shailesh Vara Shailesh Vara who has quit as Minister of State for Northern Ireland, saying he cannot support Theresa May's Brexit agreement, which he said "leaves the UK in a halfway house with no time limit on when we will finally be a sovereign nation" PA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Suella Braverman Brexit minister Suella Braverman has resigned, stating It is not what the British people, or my constituents, voted for in 2016. Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Ranil Jayawardena Parliamentary private secretary to the ministry of justice Ranil Jayawardena resigned as he could not back the deal "in good conscience"

On the eve of the summit, Ms May made an emotional appeal to the nation, saying her deal would deliver for our whole country and all of our people, whether you voted Leave or Remain and promising a moment of reconciliation when Britain leaves the EU.

In an open letter to the British public, Ms May said the deal will honour the result of the referendum, taking back control of UK borders, money and laws, and taking the country out of EU programmes that do not work in our interest.

She also made a plea for unity and said Brexit day next year will be a moment of renewal and reconciliation for our whole country ... when we put aside the labels of Leave and Remain for good and we come together again as one people.
Tony Blair has claimed that Labour is on course to throw its weight behind a second referendum, as there is no other proposition that can get through parliament.

The former Labour prime minister, who is backing a public vote on the Brexit deal, admitted there was no Commons majority for a new vote but he said Labour was shifting towards backing the idea.

Labours official position is to keep all options on the table, including the prospect of a second referendum, but Jeremy Corbyn has repeatedly made clear that he would prefer a general election.

Recommended EU officials given date for crunch Brexit vote in Commons

Mr Blair said the Brexit deal was a dodo, which was hated by both Leave and Remain supporters, and insisted that the choice presented to people was between painful and pointless.

The only way to break the parliamentary impasse is a final say referendum, he said, as Ms May faces opposition from more than 90 Tory MPs, Labour and other opposition parties, including her DUP allies.

It comes as European leaders finally signed off Ms Mays deal at an emergency summit in Brussels, where European Commission boss Jean-Claude Juncker warned rebellious MPs that the agreement was the best deal possible.

Asked if there was a parliamentary majority for a second vote, Mr Blair told the BBCs Andrew Marr Show: Not yet but I think it will get there.

He added: I think its moving that way and I would be really surprised if the Labour party doesnt end up in the position of supporting another vote.

Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Show all 13 1 /13 Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Esther McVey Britain's Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey arrives to attend the weekly meeting of the cabinet at 10 Downing Street in London. - Britain's Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey resigned from the cabinet over draft Brexit deal AFP/Getty Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal PA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Dominic Raab British Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab give a press conference at the end of the final round of talks in Brexit negotiations at the European Commission in Brussels, Belgium EPA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal PA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Rehman Chrishti Vice Chairman of the Conservative Party Rehman Chrishti tendered his resignation letter this afternoon PA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Anne-Marie Trevelyan Parliamentary private secretary in the Department of Education Anne-Marie Trevelyan resigned stating that she cannot support the deal Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal PA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Sam Gyimah Universities minister Sam Gyimah resigned on November 30, claiming the government's decision to pull out of the EU's Galileo satellite navigation system as a deciding factor PA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Shailesh Vara Shailesh Vara who has quit as Minister of State for Northern Ireland, saying he cannot support Theresa May's Brexit agreement, which he said "leaves the UK in a halfway house with no time limit on when we will finally be a sovereign nation" PA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Suella Braverman Brexit minister Suella Braverman has resigned, stating It is not what the British people, or my constituents, voted for in 2016. Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Ranil Jayawardena Parliamentary private secretary to the ministry of justice Ranil Jayawardena resigned as he could not back the deal "in good conscience"

Because theres no other proposition that can get through parliament.

Mr Blair said the deal failed to honour the Brexit mandate because the people who most fervently believe in Brexit say this isnt Brexit.

Therefore the only way youre going to unite the county ultimately is to get this back to the people and say youve got a mandate, whether the government does a proper Brexit  thats the sort of Brexit that Boris Johnson wants  or that we stay, he said.

Mr Blair pledged that if the country votes again to Leave, I accept it and Ill get behind it and try and make it work.

The Independent has launched a campaign for a Final Say referendum on Ms Mays Brexit deal, which has attracted more than a million supporters.

However, shadow justice secretary Richard Burgon dismissed calls for a second referendum, saying Labour needed to focus on the upcoming Commons vote, which is expected on December 10 or 11, ahead of the next European Council meeting.

He added: Were now reaching a point where Theresa May is trying to push through parliament an ill-fated, half-baked deal thats the worst of all worlds.

We need to work as hard as we can to ensure she thinks again and try and bring people together on the basis of a deal that works in the national interest.

It comes after it emerged that John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, had met with former Labour spin doctors Alastair Campbell and Tom Baldwin, who are senior figures from the Peoples Vote campaign.

Mr McDonnell told the Sunday Times: I was happy to meet representatives from the Peoples Vote campaign simply to map out what options are available to us based on conference policy, which includes the option of a public vote.

Sources close to Mr McDonnell advised that Labours policy had not changed and that he was still pushing for a general election.
EU leaders have approved Theresa Mays Brexit deal at a special summit in Brussels on Sunday, warning that it is the only deal possible within the prime ministers red lines.

The signoff by the bloc paves the way for MPs to vote on the deal, with officials in Brussels told to expect MPs to make their decision on 10 or 11 December.

The 27 heads of state and government are understood to have avoided discussing what would happen if the deal was rejected by parliament, as now looks increasingly likely.

Recommended EU officials given date for crunch Brexit vote in Commons

Officials privy to the private top-level meeting said the plan was adopted in a matter of seconds with one describing the short session as solemn.

Some EU chiefs gave emotional goodbyes to Britain, with council president Donald Tusk telling journalists: Regardless of how it will all end, one thing is certain: we will remain friends until the end of days, and a day longer.

But commission president Jean-Claude Juncker struck a starker tone, warning: This is the best deal possible for Britain, this is the best deal possible for Europe, this is the only deal possible. The only deal possible.

He added: Those who think that by rejecting the deal that they would have a better deal will be disappointed in the first seconds after the rejection of this deal.

Outside the summit, pro-Remain activists took a blowtorch to a mock copy of the withdrawal agreement, before they were asked to stop by Belgian police.

Speaking on the doorstep of the meeting, Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte said he did not expect MPs to reject the deal.

I dont expect a no vote. I expect a yes vote and this is the deal on the table. I dont think theres anything more, he said.

Discussion about what to do in the event the deal was rejected was notable by its absence from the meeting, with one senior EU official saying there was no appetite for it after the gruelling slog to an agreement.

I dont think there were any what if questions asked to Theresa May today, quite a few were wishing her good luck, they said.

We dont want to create the false impression for the UK that a better alternative deal is possible Leo Varadkar

Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar said: We made the conscious decision as 27 not to speculate on alternative scenarios.

We dont want to create the false impression for the UK that a better alternative deal is possible.

Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz added: It is important that everyone in the UK is aware of the fact that this agreement is the final result. It will definitely not be renegotiated and there will be no further leeway.

The European Council conclusions released after the meeting specifically thanked chief negotiator Michel Barnier for his tireless efforts as the Unions chief negotiator and for his contribution to maintaining the unity among EU27 member states throughout the negotiations.

EU leaders met among themselves without Theresa May, and were then joined by the British prime minister to discuss the deal once they had signed it off. The PM has been in Brussels since Saturday afternoon putting the finishing touches to the deal.

A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Show all 65 1 /65 A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit An estimated 700,000 people marched through London to demand a final say on the withdrawal agreement Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Red smoke from a canister hangs in the air as around 100,000 demonstrators march through London during a People's Vote anti-brexit demonstration savings banners and placards Anti-Brexit People's Vote March for the Future in London Rex A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Mayor of London Sadiq Khan takes part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum. PA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Final Say campaigners take part in the peoples vote march for the future in London 20/10/2018 Protesters wearing final Say shirts and holding placards Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit MP Chuka Umunna (left) and MP Vince Cable (right) as MP Anna Soubry (centre) addresses Anti-Brexit campaigners at a rally after the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum. PA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit A Peoples Vote march attendee calls for a Final Say Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Demonstrators with banners 'We're with EU' during the People's Vote March for the Future in London, Britain, 20 October 2018. Reports state that the 'March for the Future' is to be led by a column of young people and call for a Peopleas Vote on the Brexit deal. After marching through central London, there will be a rally on stage in Parliament Square, including speeches from Mayor of London Sadiq Khan. EPA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Protesters at Londons march for the future in October The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Editor of The Independent Christian Broughton speaks to demonstrators in Parliament Sqaure after they take part in a march calling for a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal, in central London on October 20, 2018. - Britons dreading life outside Europe gathered from all corners of the UK to London on Saturday to try to stop their country's looming breakup with the EU. AFP/Getty A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit A poster at the March for the Future in October The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Anti-Brexit campaigners take part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum. PA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Final Say campaigners take part in the peoples vote march for the future in London 20/10/2018 Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Anti-Brexit campaigners take part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum. PA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Demonstrators hold placards as they take part in a march calling for a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal, in central London on October 20, 2018. - Britons dreading life outside Europe gathered from all corners of the UK to London on Saturday to try to stop their country's looming breakup with the EU. AFP/Getty A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Final Say campaigners take part in the peoples vote march for the future in London 20/10/2018 campaigner wrapped in EU flag Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Final Say campaigners take part in the peoples vote march for the future in London 20/10/2018 Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Demonstrators pass Trafalgar Square as they take part in a march calling for a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal, in central London on October 20, 2018. - Britons dreading life outside Europe gathered from all corners of the UK to London on Saturday to try to stop their country's looming breakup with the EU. AFP/Getty A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Demonstrators wave Union and European flags and hold up placards as they pass Trafalgar Square, taking part in a march calling for a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal, in central London on October 20, 2018. - Britons dreading life outside Europe gathered from all corners of the UK to London on Saturday to try to stop their country's looming breakup with the EU. AFP/Getty A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Demonstrators hold placards as they take part in a march calling for a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal, in central London on October 20, 2018. - Britons dreading life outside Europe gathered from all corners of the UK to London on Saturday to try to stop their country's looming breakup with the EU. AFP/Getty A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit A demonstrator holds a message during a march calling for a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal, in central London on October 20, 2018. - Britons dreading life outside Europe gathered from all corners of the UK to London on Saturday to try to stop their country's looming breakup with the EU. AFP/Getty A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Anti-Brexit campaigners take part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum. PA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Demonstrators take part in the 'People's Vote March for the Future,' in central London, Britain, 20 October 2018. Reports state that the 'March for the Future' is to be led by a column of young people and call for a Peopleas Vote on the Brexit deal. After marching through central London, there will be a rally on stage in Parliament Square, including speeches from Mayor of London Sadiq Khan EPA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit A protester brandishes an Independent t-shirt during the Brexit March Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Anti-Brexit campaigners take part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum PA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Tens of thousands of people take part in People's Vote March for the Future in central London. The march organised by the People's Vote campaign is led by young people calling for a People's Vote on the Brexit deal Rex A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Anti-Brexit campaigners take part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum PA

Among the final hurdles was the issue of Gibraltar. The UK conceded in writing that Spain should have a veto over whether any future trade deal applies to Gibraltar  potentially storing up trouble down the road. Spain wants any future relationship governing the British overseas territory to be negotiated bilaterally between itself and the UK.

Behind the scenes, officials in Brussels were delighted with the result, particularly the maintenance of EU unity in the face of British attempts to divide the bloc.

Many member states have had very particular concerns which are all legitimate, and there has been a willingness to accommodate, one EU source said.

More fundamentally that says something about the nature of the union. The union stands up for its member states  like Spain, Ireland. This is the essence of the union. I would tend to borrow a slogan and say Stronger In.
 Close Theresa May reveals she is not sad about the UK leaving the EU

EU leaders have challenged MPs to either back Theresa Mays Brexit deal or face up to the economic consequences of crashing out of the bloc.

Heads of its 27 member states took little more than half an hour this morning to rubber-stamp the agreement setting the terms for Britain's departure.

However, the deal now faces a vote in the House of Commons, where the odds appear stacked against it as MPs of all stripes, including a significant portion of the prime ministers own party, have made their opposition clear.

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Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, warned them the agreement was the only deal possible and hopes that a better one could be struck were in vain.

Those who think by rejecting the deal that they would have a better deal will be disappointed in the first seconds after the rejection of this deal, he said.

In a veiled plea to MPs Michel Barnier, Europes chief negotiator, called on everyone to face up to their responsibilities.

Mr Barnier said the deal with the UK was a "necessary step" to advance to the next phase of the negotiations.

"I have worked with my team and negotiated with the UK, never against the UK," he told reporters as he arrived for the summit.

"Now it is time for everybody to take their responsibility. This deal is a necessary step to build the trust between the UK and the EU we need to build.

"The next phase is an unprecedented and ambitious partnership. We will remain allies, partners and friends."

The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU Show all 8 1 /8 The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU Post-Brexit immigration workers sorting radishes on a production line at a farm in Norfolk. One possible post-Brexit immigration scheme could struggle to channel workers towards less attractive roles - while another may heighten the risk of labour exploitation, a new report warns. PA The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU Customs union A key point in the negotiations remains Britain's access to, or withdrawal from, the EU customs union. Since the referendum there has been hot debate over the meaning of Brexit: would it entail a full withdrawal from the existing agreement, known as hard Brexit, or the soft version in which we would remain part of a common customs area for most goods, as Turkey does? No 10 has so far insisted that Brexit means Brexit and that Britain will be leaving the customs union, but may be inclined to change its position once the potential risks to the UKs economic outlook become clearer. Alamy The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU Northern Ireland-Irish border Though progress was made last year, there has still been no solid agreement on whether there should be a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. To ensure borderless travel on the island, the countries must be in regulatory alignment and therefore adhere to the same rules as the customs union. In December, the Conservative Partys coalition partners, the DUP, refused a draft agreement that would place the UK/EU border in the Irish Sea due to its potential to undermine the union. May has promised that would not be the case and has suggested that a specific solution would need to be found. Getty The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU Transition period Despite protests from a small number of Conservative MPs, the Government and the EU are largely in agreement that a transitional period is needed after Brexit. The talks, however, have reached an impasse. Though May has agreed that the UK will continue to contribute to the EU budget until 2021, the PM wants to be able to select which laws made during this time the UK will have to adhere to. Chief negotiator Michel Barnier has said the UK must adopt all of the laws passed during the transition, without any input from British ministers or MEPs. EPA The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU Rights of EU citizens living the UK The Prime Minister has promised EU citizens already living in the UK the right to live and work here after Brexit, but the rights of those who arrive after Brexit day remains unclear. May insists that those who arrive during the transition period should not be allowed to stay, whereas the EU believe the cut-off point should be later. Getty The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU Future trade agreement (with the EU) Despite this being a key issue in negotiations, the Government has yet to lay out exactly what it wants from a trade deal with the EU. Infighting within the Cabinet has prevented a solid position from being reached, with some MPs content that "no deal is better than a bad deal" while others rally behind single market access. The EU has already confirmed that access to the single market would be impossible without the UK remaining in the customs union. Getty The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU Future trade agreements (internationally) The Government has already begun trying to woo foreign leaders into prospective trade agreements, with various high profile state visits to China, India and Canada for May, and the now infamous invitation to US President Donald Trump to visit London. However the UK cannot make trade agreements with another country while it is still a member of the EU, and the potential loss of trade with the world's major powers is a source of anxiety for the PM. The EU has said the UK cannot secure trade deals during the transition period. EPA The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU Financial services Banks in the UK will be hit hard regardless of the Brexit outcome. The EU has refused to give British banks passporting rights to trade within the EU, dashing hopes of a special City deal. However according to new reports Germany has suggested allowing trade on the condition that the UK continues paying into the EU budget even after the transition period. Getty

Ms May has written a letter to the British public pleading for the countrys support over the deal.

In her letter she promised a brighter future and said that Brexit would be "a moment of renewal and reconciliation for our whole country".
Theresa May has promised a new chapter in our national life after Brexit in a public plea to support her deal.

There would be a moment of renewal and reconciliation once the UK leaves the European Union, the prime minister said.

In a letter to the nation, Ms May said settling the Brexit question would allow the government to focus on the economy, the NHS and tackling the burning injustices in British society.

The nearly 800-word letter is the latest in her attempt to speak directly to the public to build support for her Brexit deal, which faces widespread opposition in Westminster.

Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Show all 13 1 /13 Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Esther McVey Britain's Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey arrives to attend the weekly meeting of the cabinet at 10 Downing Street in London. - Britain's Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey resigned from the cabinet over draft Brexit deal AFP/Getty Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal PA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Dominic Raab British Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab give a press conference at the end of the final round of talks in Brexit negotiations at the European Commission in Brussels, Belgium EPA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal PA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Rehman Chrishti Vice Chairman of the Conservative Party Rehman Chrishti tendered his resignation letter this afternoon PA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Anne-Marie Trevelyan Parliamentary private secretary in the Department of Education Anne-Marie Trevelyan resigned stating that she cannot support the deal Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal PA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Sam Gyimah Universities minister Sam Gyimah resigned on November 30, claiming the government's decision to pull out of the EU's Galileo satellite navigation system as a deciding factor PA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Shailesh Vara Shailesh Vara who has quit as Minister of State for Northern Ireland, saying he cannot support Theresa May's Brexit agreement, which he said "leaves the UK in a halfway house with no time limit on when we will finally be a sovereign nation" PA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Suella Braverman Brexit minister Suella Braverman has resigned, stating It is not what the British people, or my constituents, voted for in 2016. Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Ranil Jayawardena Parliamentary private secretary to the ministry of justice Ranil Jayawardena resigned as he could not back the deal "in good conscience"

Ms May insisted that the withdrawal agreement and political declaration set to be agreed by EU leaders in Brussels on Sunday will honour the result of the referendum by allowing the UK to take back control of its money, laws and borders.

It is a deal for a brighter future, which enables us to seize the opportunities that lie ahead, she said.

Outside the EU, we will be able to sign new trade deals with other countries and open up new markets in the fastest-growing economies around the world.

With Brexit settled, we will be able to focus our energies on the many other important issues facing us here at home: keeping our economy strong, and making sure every community shares in prosperity; securing our NHS for the future, giving every child a great start in life, and building the homes that families need; tackling the burning injustices that hold too many people back, and building a country for the future that truly works for everyone.

Ms May acknowledged the bitter rows which have surrounded the Brexit debate, adding: On 29 March next year, the United Kingdom will leave the European Union.

We will then begin a new chapter in our national life. I want that to be a moment of renewal and reconciliation for our whole country.

It must mark the point when we put aside the labels of Leave and Remain for good and we come together again as one people.

To do that we need to get on with Brexit now by getting behind this deal.

 Theresa May faces public interrogation in live radio phone-in as Brexit negotiations with Europe continue

It comes as Ms May was accused of caving in to Spains demands for concessions over the future of the British overseas territory of Gibraltar.

The prime minister said she would always stand by citizens of the Rock.

European Union leaders will meet to debate Ms Mays Brexit deal on Sunday as MPs were warned by the chancellor, Philip Hammond, that rejecting it would cause economic chaos.

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One Labour MP branded the letter an utter work of fiction.

Ian Murray, MP for Edinburgh South, said: This letter is an utter work of fiction, and shows just how desperate the prime minister has become.

The people of Scotland and Britain wont buy this deal, no matter how hard she tries to sell it.

Its incredible that Theresa May is repeating lies about NHS spending, putting our economy at risk, and threatening the very future of the United Kingdom she once claimed was precious to her.

There is simply no parliamentary majority for this deal, because it is the worst of both worlds. The only campaign which has momentum is the campaign for a peoples vote with the option of remaining in the EU.
Theresa May has said she is not sad about leaving the EU, after a string of the blocs leaders gave emotional goodbyes to Britain.

The prime minister met with EU leaders on Sunday in Brussels for the final signoff of her Brexit deal, which was described by one senior EU official as dignified, solemn, measured, composed.

Asked whether she shared the views of people like European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker who had branded today a sad day, the prime minister said: No: but I recognise that others do; I recognise that some European leaders are sad at this moment.

Recommended EU officials given date for crunch Brexit vote in Commons

She added that she understood that some in the UK would also be sad.

Mr Junckers counterpart Donald Tusk, the European Council president said: We will remain friends until the end of days, and a day longer.

French president Emmanuel Macron took a contrary view of the situation, telling reporters on the doorstep of the summit: Its not a day when we should celebrate, nor a day of mourning. It is the choice of a sovereign people.

Speaking at a press conference after the signoff, the prime minister said she had rejected the council of despair of those who said no deal could be good for both the UK and EU.

She claimed the deal would get rid of vast annual payments, and give Britain control of its border and laws  despite criticisms that it would tie the UK into EU rules and require a massive divorce bill.

She insisted the public would also swing behind the plan, which polls suggest is unpopular across the political spectrum.

A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Show all 65 1 /65 A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit An estimated 700,000 people marched through London to demand a final say on the withdrawal agreement Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Red smoke from a canister hangs in the air as around 100,000 demonstrators march through London during a People's Vote anti-brexit demonstration savings banners and placards Anti-Brexit People's Vote March for the Future in London Rex A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Mayor of London Sadiq Khan takes part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum. PA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Final Say campaigners take part in the peoples vote march for the future in London 20/10/2018 Protesters wearing final Say shirts and holding placards Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit MP Chuka Umunna (left) and MP Vince Cable (right) as MP Anna Soubry (centre) addresses Anti-Brexit campaigners at a rally after the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum. PA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit A Peoples Vote march attendee calls for a Final Say Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Demonstrators with banners 'We're with EU' during the People's Vote March for the Future in London, Britain, 20 October 2018. Reports state that the 'March for the Future' is to be led by a column of young people and call for a Peopleas Vote on the Brexit deal. After marching through central London, there will be a rally on stage in Parliament Square, including speeches from Mayor of London Sadiq Khan. EPA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Protesters at Londons march for the future in October The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Editor of The Independent Christian Broughton speaks to demonstrators in Parliament Sqaure after they take part in a march calling for a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal, in central London on October 20, 2018. - Britons dreading life outside Europe gathered from all corners of the UK to London on Saturday to try to stop their country's looming breakup with the EU. AFP/Getty A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit A poster at the March for the Future in October The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Anti-Brexit campaigners take part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum. PA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Final Say campaigners take part in the peoples vote march for the future in London 20/10/2018 Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Anti-Brexit campaigners take part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum. PA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Demonstrators hold placards as they take part in a march calling for a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal, in central London on October 20, 2018. - Britons dreading life outside Europe gathered from all corners of the UK to London on Saturday to try to stop their country's looming breakup with the EU. AFP/Getty A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Final Say campaigners take part in the peoples vote march for the future in London 20/10/2018 campaigner wrapped in EU flag Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Final Say campaigners take part in the peoples vote march for the future in London 20/10/2018 Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Demonstrators pass Trafalgar Square as they take part in a march calling for a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal, in central London on October 20, 2018. - Britons dreading life outside Europe gathered from all corners of the UK to London on Saturday to try to stop their country's looming breakup with the EU. AFP/Getty A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Demonstrators wave Union and European flags and hold up placards as they pass Trafalgar Square, taking part in a march calling for a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal, in central London on October 20, 2018. - Britons dreading life outside Europe gathered from all corners of the UK to London on Saturday to try to stop their country's looming breakup with the EU. AFP/Getty A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Demonstrators hold placards as they take part in a march calling for a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal, in central London on October 20, 2018. - Britons dreading life outside Europe gathered from all corners of the UK to London on Saturday to try to stop their country's looming breakup with the EU. AFP/Getty A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit A demonstrator holds a message during a march calling for a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal, in central London on October 20, 2018. - Britons dreading life outside Europe gathered from all corners of the UK to London on Saturday to try to stop their country's looming breakup with the EU. AFP/Getty A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Anti-Brexit campaigners take part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum. PA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Demonstrators take part in the 'People's Vote March for the Future,' in central London, Britain, 20 October 2018. Reports state that the 'March for the Future' is to be led by a column of young people and call for a Peopleas Vote on the Brexit deal. After marching through central London, there will be a rally on stage in Parliament Square, including speeches from Mayor of London Sadiq Khan EPA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit A protester brandishes an Independent t-shirt during the Brexit March Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Anti-Brexit campaigners take part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum PA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Tens of thousands of people take part in People's Vote March for the Future in central London. The march organised by the People's Vote campaign is led by young people calling for a People's Vote on the Brexit deal Rex A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Anti-Brexit campaigners take part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum PA

When they look at this deal they will see that it is a good one for our country and that it is in the national interest for everyone to get behind it, she said, adding that her focus now was on getting MPs to back it.

But she ruled out giving the public a final say on the deal, suggesting another referendum would be undemocratic.
EU officials have been told to expect the parliamentary vote on the Brexit deal on 10 or 11 December, according to senior sources in Brussels.

The date for the vote has not been officially confirmed by the British Government but it is now expected to be held before the next meeting of the European Council on 13 December.

Parliamentary arithmetic currently suggests that MPs are likely to overwhelmingly reject Theresa May's deal, with votes against from her own MPs  both eurosceptic and remain  as well as Labour, the, DUP, and the other opposition parties.

It is understood that EU leaders did not discuss the meaningful vote at todays Brussels summit where they signed off the plan.

I dont think there were any what if questions asked to Theresa May today, quite a few were wishing her good luck, one senior EU official said.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn today branded the plan a miserable failure of negotiation that leaves us with the worst of all worlds.

EU chiefs spent the day in public trying to win support for the agreement. Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said the agreement was "the only deal possible".

The EU has ruled out renegotiating the agreement, but is likely to come under huge pressure to do so at its meeting in December once it has been rejected.

Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Show all 13 1 /13 Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Esther McVey Britain's Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey arrives to attend the weekly meeting of the cabinet at 10 Downing Street in London. - Britain's Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey resigned from the cabinet over draft Brexit deal AFP/Getty Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal PA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Dominic Raab British Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab give a press conference at the end of the final round of talks in Brexit negotiations at the European Commission in Brussels, Belgium EPA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal PA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Rehman Chrishti Vice Chairman of the Conservative Party Rehman Chrishti tendered his resignation letter this afternoon PA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Anne-Marie Trevelyan Parliamentary private secretary in the Department of Education Anne-Marie Trevelyan resigned stating that she cannot support the deal Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal PA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Sam Gyimah Universities minister Sam Gyimah resigned on November 30, claiming the government's decision to pull out of the EU's Galileo satellite navigation system as a deciding factor PA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Shailesh Vara Shailesh Vara who has quit as Minister of State for Northern Ireland, saying he cannot support Theresa May's Brexit agreement, which he said "leaves the UK in a halfway house with no time limit on when we will finally be a sovereign nation" PA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Suella Braverman Brexit minister Suella Braverman has resigned, stating It is not what the British people, or my constituents, voted for in 2016. Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Ranil Jayawardena Parliamentary private secretary to the ministry of justice Ranil Jayawardena resigned as he could not back the deal "in good conscience"

If the government loses the vote it must consult MPs on what to do next.

The Government has suggested that is the deal is voted down there could be "no Brexit at all" or perhaps a chaotic no-deal, but refused to say what it would do. Theresa May today declined to rule out resigning if she lost the vote.

There has been speculation that MPs could be later asked to vote again by Downing Street if the first division does not go its way. Labour and other opposition parties said they would oppose a no-deal.
The 27 EU national leaders have agreed to endorse Theresa May's Brexit deal at a meeting in Brussels.

The heads of state and government backed the treaty after meeting for around half an hour  with the real work having been done by negotiators during the preceding 18 months.

The European Council released a statement on Sunday morning saying it had approved the the withdrawal agreement and the political declaration on the future relationship.

But despite the sign-off in Brussels the accord still faces formidable opposition in Westminster and Britain at large, with all opposition parties, and a large chunk of the governing Conservative party totally set against it.

Arriving at the summit, Europes top brass urged the British parliament, which will now get a vote on the agreement, to also back it.

Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said the agreement was the best deal possible and that the EU would not change its fundamental position in any attempt to renegotiate it.

Meanwhile EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier insisted he has always negotiated with the UK, never against it.

What will happen once the deal is most likely rejected by the House of Commons remains unclear. The Government has suggested that Brexit could potentially be cancelled, or that a chaotic no-deal could take place. Some campaigners have suggested there should be a second referendum, while Labour favours a general election to decide the way forward.

Mr Juncker said he would vote for the deal were he a British MP, and said: I do think that the British parliament, because this is a wise parliament, will ratify this deal.

He added: The UK leaving the EU is a tragic moment. Not a moment to celebrate.

But arriving at the same meeting, French president Emmanuel Macron said: It's not a day when we should celebrate, nor a day of mourning. It is the choice of a sovereign people.

Mr Macron added that Britains departure showed the EU had a fragile side and was in need of reform. He also pledged that the deal would protect the access of French fishermen to British waters.

Chief negotiator Mr Barnier told reporters: All along this extraordinary negotiation, very difficult we have worked to reach a deal. That means to organise in an orderly fashion the withdrawal decided by the UK.

We have negotiated with the UK, never against the UK. Now it is time for everybody to take their responsibility, everybody.

This deal is a necessary step to build trust between the UK and the EU, we need build in the next phase of this unprecedented and ambitious partnership. We will remain allies, partners and friends.

Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte said there were no political winners or victories in the Brexit process.

He added: I don't expect a 'no' vote. I expect a yes vote and this is the deal on the table. I don't think there's anything more."

EU diplomats speaking in the margins of the summit repeated the blocs position that there would be no renegotiation of Brexit, and that this was the only deal on offer.

A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Show all 65 1 /65 A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit An estimated 700,000 people marched through London to demand a final say on the withdrawal agreement Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Red smoke from a canister hangs in the air as around 100,000 demonstrators march through London during a People's Vote anti-brexit demonstration savings banners and placards Anti-Brexit People's Vote March for the Future in London Rex A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Mayor of London Sadiq Khan takes part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum. PA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Final Say campaigners take part in the peoples vote march for the future in London 20/10/2018 Protesters wearing final Say shirts and holding placards Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit MP Chuka Umunna (left) and MP Vince Cable (right) as MP Anna Soubry (centre) addresses Anti-Brexit campaigners at a rally after the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum. PA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit A Peoples Vote march attendee calls for a Final Say Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Demonstrators with banners 'We're with EU' during the People's Vote March for the Future in London, Britain, 20 October 2018. Reports state that the 'March for the Future' is to be led by a column of young people and call for a Peopleas Vote on the Brexit deal. After marching through central London, there will be a rally on stage in Parliament Square, including speeches from Mayor of London Sadiq Khan. EPA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Protesters at Londons march for the future in October The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Editor of The Independent Christian Broughton speaks to demonstrators in Parliament Sqaure after they take part in a march calling for a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal, in central London on October 20, 2018. - Britons dreading life outside Europe gathered from all corners of the UK to London on Saturday to try to stop their country's looming breakup with the EU. AFP/Getty A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit A poster at the March for the Future in October The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Anti-Brexit campaigners take part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum. PA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Final Say campaigners take part in the peoples vote march for the future in London 20/10/2018 Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Anti-Brexit campaigners take part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum. PA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Demonstrators hold placards as they take part in a march calling for a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal, in central London on October 20, 2018. - Britons dreading life outside Europe gathered from all corners of the UK to London on Saturday to try to stop their country's looming breakup with the EU. AFP/Getty A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Final Say campaigners take part in the peoples vote march for the future in London 20/10/2018 campaigner wrapped in EU flag Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Angela Christofilou/The Independent A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Final Say campaigners take part in the peoples vote march for the future in London 20/10/2018 Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Demonstrators pass Trafalgar Square as they take part in a march calling for a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal, in central London on October 20, 2018. - Britons dreading life outside Europe gathered from all corners of the UK to London on Saturday to try to stop their country's looming breakup with the EU. AFP/Getty A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Demonstrators wave Union and European flags and hold up placards as they pass Trafalgar Square, taking part in a march calling for a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal, in central London on October 20, 2018. - Britons dreading life outside Europe gathered from all corners of the UK to London on Saturday to try to stop their country's looming breakup with the EU. AFP/Getty A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Demonstrators hold placards as they take part in a march calling for a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal, in central London on October 20, 2018. - Britons dreading life outside Europe gathered from all corners of the UK to London on Saturday to try to stop their country's looming breakup with the EU. AFP/Getty A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit A demonstrator holds a message during a march calling for a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal, in central London on October 20, 2018. - Britons dreading life outside Europe gathered from all corners of the UK to London on Saturday to try to stop their country's looming breakup with the EU. AFP/Getty A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Anti-Brexit campaigners take part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum. PA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Demonstrators take part in the 'People's Vote March for the Future,' in central London, Britain, 20 October 2018. Reports state that the 'March for the Future' is to be led by a column of young people and call for a Peopleas Vote on the Brexit deal. After marching through central London, there will be a rally on stage in Parliament Square, including speeches from Mayor of London Sadiq Khan EPA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit A protester brandishes an Independent t-shirt during the Brexit March Angela Christofilou A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Anti-Brexit campaigners take part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum PA A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Tens of thousands of people take part in People's Vote March for the Future in central London. The march organised by the People's Vote campaign is led by young people calling for a People's Vote on the Brexit deal Rex A historic moment: thousands march to demand Final Say on Brexit Anti-Brexit campaigners take part in the People's Vote March for the Future in London, a march and rally in support of a second EU referendum PA

The European Council conclusions released on Sunday specifically thanked Michel Barnier for his tireless efforts as the Unions chief negotiator and for his contribution to maintaining the unity among EU27 member states throughout the negotiations.

Council president Donald Tusk confirmed on Sunday morning: EU27 has endorsed the withdrawal agreement and political declaration on the future EU-UK relations.

EU leaders met amongst themselves without Theresa May, and were then joined by the British prime minister to discuss the deal once they had signed it off. The PM has been in Brussels since Saturday afternoon putting the finishing touches to the deal.

Among the final hurdles were the issue of Gibraltar. The UK conceded in writing that Spain should have a veto over whether any future trade deal applies to Gibraltar  potentially storing up trouble down the road. Spain wants any future relationship governing the British overseas territory to be negotiated bilaterally between itself and the UK.
Police officers in Wisconsin are under investigation for shooting an unarmed black man on a garage roof.

Jerry Smith Jr, of Milwaukee, has said a bullet is still in his hip and that he has been in a wheelchair since the incident in August last year.

Police officers responding to reports a man with a gun confronted 19-year-old Mr Smith, who matched the description of the man they were looking for, Fox6Now reported.

Mr Smith said that he ran from a police officer on a bicycle who had scared him, onto a roof. Two officers pursued him and told him to put his hands up.

Recommended Police admit they shot innocent black man by mistake

The video shows that Mr Smith put his hands up, but then lowered them. At that point the officer holding the gun fired three shots. One bullet grazed Mr Smiths head, narrowly missing his brain.

Mr Smith told the Milwaukee news station TMJ4 that he was not carrying a gun, nor does he own one, but was holding a phone in his right hand that he was using to call his mother. "I really don't know why they shot me," he said in a video interview. "OK, I ran, but the officer scared the hell out of me, man."

Because the shooting was not fatal, the police department does not need an outside department to investigate the shooting. Both officers in the video are currently still at work, on administrative duty.

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The district attorney has deemed the shooting justified, as the officers believed that Mr Smith was reaching for a weapon when they fired, Fox6Now reported.

Mr Smiths legal team acquired the body cam footage and released it. They are asking the US Attorneys office to look at the video and reconsider the verdict. They also said they hoped the case would bring attention to improving Milwaukee police training.
US agents have fired tear gas at Central American migrants, after some tried to breach the busiest border separating Mexico and the United States.

Officers from US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) fired or threw the gas after a handful of migrants sought to open a small hole in concertina wire at a gap on the Mexican side of a levee. Images showed the migrants  men, women and children  running from the smoke. For a time, they also suspended all crossings at the world's busiest land border.

Honduran migrant Ana Zuniga, 23, told the Associated Press it was at that point she saw the US agents fire the tear gas, which enveloped some of the migrants. We ran, but when you run the gas asphyxiates you more, she told the AP, while cradling her three-year-old daughter Valery in her arms.

Earlier, the CBC said all crossings at the busiest port of entry on the US-Mexico border have been suspended, after hundreds of Central American migrants pushed past a blockade of Mexican police. Later, it reopened the facility for pedestrian crossings.

Television footage showed hundreds of migrants storming towards the US border after pushing their way past the officers. There were no reports of anyone being hurt, or of any of the migrants committing violence.

The agency said both vehicle and foot crossings had been suspended at the San Ysidro port of entry hundreds of migrants gathered at the busy crossing point, seeking to apply for asylum in the US.

Southbound lanes into Mexico at the San Ysidro port of entry are currently closed. Updates will be provided, the CBCs San Diego office said on Twitter at around noon local time. It subsequently tweeted to say northbound vehicles, along with all foot crossings, had also been halted.

The move came after Donald Trump suggested over the weekend that Mexico had agreed a deal to allow asylum-seekers to wait in the country while their claims move through US immigration courts. The Washington Post had quoted Mexicos incoming interior minister Olga Sanchez to say president-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador agreed to allow migrants to stay in Mexico as a short-term solution.

Hours later, the newspaper said she had denied any deal had been done, saying: There is no agreement of any sort between the incoming Mexican government and the US government.

Earlier on Sunday, hundreds of Central American migrants, most of the them countries such as Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala raced towards the US border, making their way around or through a blockade of Mexican police officers.

 Saturday Night Live skit parodies Fox News coverage of Migrant Caravan

The Associated Press said around 5,000 migrants have been camped in and around a sports complex in Tijuana after making their way through Mexico in recent weeks in a series of caravans. Many hope to apply for asylum in the US, but agents at the San Ysidro entry point are processing fewer than 100 asylum petitions a day.

Some of the migrants who went forward Sunday called on each other to remain peaceful. They appeared to easily pass through the Mexican police blockade without using violence, the AP said.

A second line of Mexican police carrying plastic riot shields stood guard outside a Mexican customs and immigration plaza, where the migrants were headed.

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

That line of police installed tall steel panels behind them outside the Chaparral crossing on the Mexican side of the border, which completely blocked incoming traffic lanes to Mexico.

In recent weeks, Mr Trump has seized on the issue of the migrant as he sought to rally Republicans ahead of the midterms, terming their massing an invasion and dispatching thousands of troops to the border. They spent their days laying down rolls of razor wire in a visual display of actions, Democrats and migrants rights activists have dismissed as a political stunt.

Irineo Mujica, who has accompanied the migrants for weeks as part of the aid group Pueblo Sin Fronteras, said the aim of Sundays march towards the US border was to make the migrants plight more visible to the governments of Mexico and the US We cant have all these people here, said Mr Mujica.

Tijuana Mayor Juan Manuel Gastelum on Friday declared a humanitarian crisis in his border city of 1.6m, which he he said was struggling to accommodate the crush of migrants.
Taiwans president, Tsai Ing-wen, has resigned as chairwoman of the ruling pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) after it suffered a major electoral defeat on Saturday, losing two of the islands most important city posts in mayoral elections.

The results of the polls, being held just over a year before Taiwans next presidential election, are likely to please China, which claims self-ruled and proudly democratic Taiwan as its own and has ramped up pressure on Tsai and her administration since she took office in 2016.

In the run-up to the elections, Ms Tsai and her government said repeatedly that China was trying to sway voters with political bullying and fake news  accusations that Beijing denied.

 Chinese government 'seriously concerned' by Trump stance on Taiwan

The DPP lost control of the mayoralties in Taiwans second-most populous city Taichung and the key battleground of Kaohsiung in the south, which it held for two decades and which played a central role in Taiwans pro-democracy movement in the 1970s.

Both were won by the China-friendly opposition, the Kuomintang, which once ruled China before fleeing to Taiwan at the end of a civil war with the Communists in 1949.

Ms Tsai said the DPP would reflect on the defeat, but she vowed to press on.

Continuing reforms, freedom and democracy, and protecting the countrys sovereignty are the mission that the DPP wont abandon, she told reporters.

She said she would not accept the resignation of her premier William Lai, who had offered to quit earlier in the evening.

The DPP has now been left in control of only six of Taiwans cities and counties, compared with at least 15 for the Kuomintang.

The party held on in two of its other strongholds, however, keeping Tainan in the south and Taoyuan in the north.

This is a tragic defeat for the DPP, Yao Chia-wen, a senior adviser to the president, said.

But this is not support for the Kuomintang from the people. This is the peoples disappointment in the DPP, he said, citing slower-than-expected initiatives that have drawn criticism including pension and justice reforms.

Votes were still being counted in Taiwans affluent capital, Taipei, where the incumbent mayor Ko Wen-je, an independent, is in a close race with the Kuomintangs Ting Shou-chung, and the DPP is running a distant third.

Kaohsiungs Kuomintang mayor-elect, Han Kuo-yu, who described the city as outdated and poor while on the campaign trail, told a rally he would go all-out to boost its economy.

We must immediately roll up our sleeves and get to work, Mr Han said, speaking of what was once one of the worlds busiest ports but which has lost much of its business to China.

There was no immediate reaction from Beijing to the poll results, where state media simply noted Ms Tsais resignation as party chairwoman to take responsibility for the partys performance in Taiwans local elections.

 Donald Trump breaks US policy stance with Taiwan call

A spokesperson for the US State Department praised Taiwan for demonstrating the strength of their vibrant democratic system through a successful round of elections.

Taiwan television stations reported a high turnout, with some polling stations in parts of Taipei and Kaohsiung remaining open past 4pm (8am GMT) when the polls were due to close.

Candidates fanned out across the island to shake hands and canvass votes, and held noisy, colourful rallies that have become the hallmarks of Taiwans vibrant democracy, in marked contrast to China where the Communist Party tolerates no dissent to its rule.

Tensions across the Taiwan Strait have heightened, with China conducting military drills around the island and snatching away Taiwans dwindling number of diplomatic allies.

Ms Tsais domestic reform initiatives, from the islands pension scheme to labour law, have also come under intense voter scrutiny recently.

Confidence in the government has waned in recent months after reform moves upset both the opposition and some supporters, who said Ms Tsai had backed away from promises to reduce the deficit and cut pollution.

Underscoring Ms Tsais challenge are a series of public votes also held on Saturday on whether to make same-sex marriage legal, an issue which has deeply divided Taiwan.

Voters looked set to back a referendum defining marriage as between and a man and a woman, dealing a sharp blow to Taiwans position as a bastion of liberalism in Asia.

Best pictures from the 2018 Taipei Gay Pride March in Taiwan Show all 35 1 /35 Best pictures from the 2018 Taipei Gay Pride March in Taiwan Best pictures from the 2018 Taipei Gay Pride March in Taiwan Participants take part in the 2018 Taipei Gay Pride March in Taipei, Taiwan, 27 October 2018. AFP/Getty Images Best pictures from the 2018 Taipei Gay Pride March in Taiwan Thousands of people attended the march in Taipei, the capital of Taiwan. REUTERS Best pictures from the 2018 Taipei Gay Pride March in Taiwan Participants walk in the parade. REUTERS Best pictures from the 2018 Taipei Gay Pride March in Taiwan The march took place ahead of a landmark vote next month on LGBT+ rights in Taiwan. REUTERS Best pictures from the 2018 Taipei Gay Pride March in Taiwan On May 24 2017, the Constitutional Court in Taiwan ruled that same-sex couples have the right to marry in the state. AP Best pictures from the 2018 Taipei Gay Pride March in Taiwan After making its ruling on same-sex marriage in May last year, the court stated that its decision must be implemented in two years. AP Best pictures from the 2018 Taipei Gay Pride March in Taiwan On November 24, a public vote will be held in Taiwan on same-sex marriage. AFP/Getty Images Best pictures from the 2018 Taipei Gay Pride March in Taiwan A participant of the march poses next to a wedding studio. REUTERS Best pictures from the 2018 Taipei Gay Pride March in Taiwan A young woman from Chongqing in mainland China holds a fan reading "free writers" before the start of the march. AFP/Getty Images Best pictures from the 2018 Taipei Gay Pride March in Taiwan Participants with Pikachu-styled costumes pose as they gather at the square outside the presidential office for the start of the march. AFP/Getty Images Best pictures from the 2018 Taipei Gay Pride March in Taiwan Thousands took part in the parade in support of same-sex marriage. REUTERS Best pictures from the 2018 Taipei Gay Pride March in Taiwan Participants in the square outside the presidential office before the start of the parade. AFP/Getty Images Best pictures from the 2018 Taipei Gay Pride March in Taiwan A couple take part in the march with their baby. AFP/Getty Images Best pictures from the 2018 Taipei Gay Pride March in Taiwan Members of Tokyo Rainbow Pride walk in the parade. AFP/Getty Images Best pictures from the 2018 Taipei Gay Pride March in Taiwan The parade was awash with rainbow-coloured paraphernalia. AFP/Getty Images Best pictures from the 2018 Taipei Gay Pride March in Taiwan A participant of the march poses with a fan. AP Best pictures from the 2018 Taipei Gay Pride March in Taiwan A participant from Japan holds a banner before the start of the march. AFP/Getty Images Best pictures from the 2018 Taipei Gay Pride March in Taiwan Young women display rainbow flags. EPA Best pictures from the 2018 Taipei Gay Pride March in Taiwan A person taking part in the march waves a rainbow flag. EPA Best pictures from the 2018 Taipei Gay Pride March in Taiwan A man, decorated with balloons and a rainbow flag, takes part in the celebrations. EPA Best pictures from the 2018 Taipei Gay Pride March in Taiwan An American man and his Japanese partner, both wearing headbands saying 'Japan' in Japanese, kiss each other during the march. EPA Best pictures from the 2018 Taipei Gay Pride March in Taiwan Thousands of people attended the annual march. EPA Best pictures from the 2018 Taipei Gay Pride March in Taiwan Taiwan gay rights activist Chi Chia-wei attends the march. Chi became the first person in Taiwan to come out as gay on national television in 1986. EPA Best pictures from the 2018 Taipei Gay Pride March in Taiwan Participants take part in the march, organised by Taiwan LGBT Pride. AP Best pictures from the 2018 Taipei Gay Pride March in Taiwan Participants hold up a large rainbow flag. EPA Best pictures from the 2018 Taipei Gay Pride March in Taiwan People walking in the parade. EPA Best pictures from the 2018 Taipei Gay Pride March in Taiwan A person stands in front of a rainbow-coloured flag. EPA Best pictures from the 2018 Taipei Gay Pride March in Taiwan A Japanese couple hold a sign saying 'You Are My Safe Harbour' in Chinese. EPA Best pictures from the 2018 Taipei Gay Pride March in Taiwan A man, decorated with balloons and rainbow flags, takes part in the march. EPA Best pictures from the 2018 Taipei Gay Pride March in Taiwan The first Taiwan Pride march was held in 2003. EPA Best pictures from the 2018 Taipei Gay Pride March in Taiwan Participants display a huge rainbow flag during the 2018 Taipei Gay Pride March. EPA Best pictures from the 2018 Taipei Gay Pride March in Taiwan Two men take a selfie in front of a rainbow flag. EPA Best pictures from the 2018 Taipei Gay Pride March in Taiwan A man waves a rainbow flag during the march. EPA Best pictures from the 2018 Taipei Gay Pride March in Taiwan The annual Taipei Gay Pride March is the largest in East Asia. EPA Best pictures from the 2018 Taipei Gay Pride March in Taiwan The Rainbow City Symphonic Band performs during the march. EPA

Ms Tsai has made little progress despite campaigning on a promise of marriage equality in the run-up to elections in 2016.

In Asias first such ruling, Taiwans constitutional court declared in May last year that same-sex couples had the right to legally marry, and set a two-year deadline for legalisation.

Voters were also asked whether the island should join the 2020 Tokyo Olympics as Taiwan, rather than Chinese Taipei the name agreed under a compromise signed in 1981.

A vote to compete under a Taiwan banner would further rile Beijing, which has never renounced the use of force to bring the island under its control.

That referendum appeared to have been blocked, with most people voting against re-naming Taiwans Olympic team.

Final results for all the referendum votes are not expected until early on Sunday, according to election officials.

Additional reporting by Reuters
They came in their tens of thousands, for a second weekend running, demanding change and demonstrating against escalating costs of living and rising inequalities.

We just want our government to listen to us, said Laetitia Dewalle, an organiser of the yellow vest protests which brought cities across France to a standstill on Saturday.

She was, it now seems, in for disappointment.

As the protests turned violent and demonstrators clashed with police, President Emmanuel Macron appeared unwilling to engage with the reasons behind why 109,000 had taken to streets all over the country.

Recommended Police fire water cannon and tear gas at fuel tax protesters in Paris

Shame on all the people who assaulted [the police], he tweeted instead. Shame to those who voluntarily assaulted citizens and reporters. Shame on those who tried to intimidate our elected officials.

His interior minister Christophe Castaner went further, calling the protesters seditious and labelling them supporters of the far right.

The abrasive statements followed a day in which tear gas and water cannons were turned on marchers in Paris  a minority of who were seen ripping up pavements, building street blockades and starting fires.

The Champs-Elysee was brought to a standstill as running battles under cover of smoke took place. At one point, demonstrators set fire to a shed on wheels and rolled it towards officers protecting key sites. Some 42 people were arrested in the capital and another 88 across the country. Six people  including two police officers  were reported injured.

Yet analysts in the country widely agreed that to call the demonstrations the work of the far right seems to have widely misread the public mood.

This weekends demonstrations had been called act two in a campaign which started last Saturday when some 280,000 took to the streets.

Paris fuel protests: Demonstrators clash with police Show all 22 1 /22 Paris fuel protests: Demonstrators clash with police Paris fuel protests: Demonstrators clash with police AFP/Getty Images Paris fuel protests: Demonstrators clash with police A barricade is seen during a "Yellow vest" protest against higher fuel prices in Paris REUTERS Paris fuel protests: Demonstrators clash with police A woman wears a Yellow vest (Gilet jaune) reading "Macron resign" with a French flag on the Champs Elysees in Paris, on November 24, 2018 during a protest against rising oil prices and living costs. - Police fired tear gas and water cannon on November 24 in central Paris against "yellow vest" protesters demanding French President roll back tax hikes on motor fuel. AFP/Getty Paris fuel protests: Demonstrators clash with police Riot police vehicles stand on the Champs Elysees in Paris, on November 24, 2018 during a protest of Yellow vests (Gilet jaune) against rising oil prices and living costs. - Police fired tear gas and water cannon on November 24 in central Paris against "yellow vest" protesters demanding French President roll back tax hikes on motor fuel. AFP/Getty Paris fuel protests: Demonstrators clash with police Protesters wearing yellow vests, a symbol of a French drivers' protest against higher fuel prices, build a barricade during clashes on the Champs-Elysees in Paris, France, REUTERS Paris fuel protests: Demonstrators clash with police A protestor throws flares on the Champs Elysees, in Paris on November 24, 2018 during a national rally initiated by the Yellow vests (gilets jaunes in french) to protest against rising oil prices and living costs. - Security forces in Paris fired tear gas and water cannon on November 24 to disperse protesters who tried to break through a police cordon on the Champs-Elysees. Several thousand demonstrators, wearing high-visibility yellow jackets, had gathered on the avenue as part of protests which began on November 17, 2018 AFP/Getty Images Paris fuel protests: Demonstrators clash with police A protester wearing yellow vest, a symbol of a French drivers' protest against higher fuel prices, gestures during riots on the Champs-Elysees in Paris REUTERS Paris fuel protests: Demonstrators clash with police A truck burns during a "Yellow vest" protest against higher fuel prices during clashes on the Champs-Elysees in Paris, France REUTERS Paris fuel protests: Demonstrators clash with police A protester wearing yellow vest, a symbol of a French drivers' protest against higher fuel prices, talks to the police officer during clashes on the Champs-Elysees in Paris, France REUTERS Paris fuel protests: Demonstrators clash with police A man kneels on the street during a "Yellow vest" protest against higher fuel prices in Paris, France REUTERS Paris fuel protests: Demonstrators clash with police A huge explosion is seen on the famed Champs-Elysees avenue, after protesters, called the yellow jackets, set on fire a construction trailer during clashes with riot police as they protest against the fuel taxes, in Paris, France, Saturday, Nov. 24, 2018. French police fired tear gas and water cannons to disperse demonstrators in Paris Saturday, as thousands gathered in the capital and staged road blockades across the nation to vent anger against rising fuel taxes and Emmanuel Macron's presidenc AP Paris fuel protests: Demonstrators clash with police A protester wearing French flag attends a "Yellow vest" protest against higher fuel prices on the Champs-Elysees in Paris, France REUTERS Paris fuel protests: Demonstrators clash with police Paris Protests Protesters clash with riot police as they deploy tear gas during a demonstration of Yellow vests (Gilets jaunes) on the Champs Elysees in Paris AFP/Getty Images Paris fuel protests: Demonstrators clash with police Paris Protests A protester wrapped in a French flag faces riot police during a demonstration on the Champs Elysees in Paris. AFP/Getty Images Paris fuel protests: Demonstrators clash with police Paris Protests A protester dressed in hivis vest holds a french flag as she stands on a red light at the Champs Elysee, in Paris. AFP/Getty Images Paris fuel protests: Demonstrators clash with police Paris Protests A demonstrator holds a flare on the Champs Elysees in Paris. AFP/Getty Images Paris fuel protests: Demonstrators clash with police A protester gestures on the Champs Elysee as protests against rising fuel prices bring Paris to a standstill. AFP/Getty Images Paris fuel protests: Demonstrators clash with police Paris Protests Demonstrators hold barriers on the Champs Elysees in Paris. AFP/Getty Images Paris fuel protests: Demonstrators clash with police Paris Protests Protesters demonstrate surrounded by tear gas on the Champs Elysees in Paris, on November 24, 2018. AFP/Getty Images Paris fuel protests: Demonstrators clash with police Paris Protests A protester wears a Yellow vest (Gilet jaune) reading "The richer always richer" during a demonstration on the Champs Elysees in Paris, on November 24, 2018. AFP/Getty Images Paris fuel protests: Demonstrators clash with police Paris Protests Demonstrators pulls out barriers as on the Champs Elysees in Paris. AFP/Getty Images Paris fuel protests: Demonstrators clash with police Paris Protests Riot police face Yellow vests (Gilets jaunes) protestors demonstrating near the ARc de Triomphe on the Champs Elysees in Paris. AFP/Getty Images

The protests started as an outcry against the rising cost of fuel duty which, in some cases, has gone up by 23 per cent in just 12 months. But it has since grown to reflect wider grievances about the rising cost of living, growing inequalities and anger at Mr Macrons inability to deliver the changes he promised before his election.

Polls suggest almost 80 per cent of French people support the yellow vests  so called because protestors wear the high-viz jackets which French motorists have to carry in their car. Even more think Mr Macron should abandon plans to impose even higher taxes on petrol and diesel.

Were here because weve had enough, Joel Mouilleseaux, a 24-year-old student told The Guardian. Its always the same people who have to pay for the madness of others.

We have to work to pay, work some more to pay some more and its been like that for years. Its been like it since I was born, president after president, and now were saying Thats enough.

I want to be heard, listened to and have a response.

 Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events

Another, Sylvie Poireau, a 46-year-old from a small town outside Paris, told The Daily Telegraph: Were made to pay higher taxes while theyve scrapped the wealth tax on the rich. My daughters handicapped and I struggle at the end of every month to buy food.

Far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon warned about the potential consequences of not taking the yellow vests, known as the gilet jaunes, seriously: History shows that when taxes are not accepted, that starts revolutions in France.
Nearly three years after a Zika outbreak in Brazil caused thousands of cases of microcephaly and other devastating birth defects in newborns, Reuters returned to check on the mothers and their children.

Zika, the first mosquito-borne virus known to damage developing foetuses, has since disappeared from headlines, but world health officials fear its spread to new populations. In Angola, dozens of babies born with microcephaly since 2017 appear linked to the same strain of Zika that hit Latin America.

In northeastern Brazil, we spoke with nearly 30 mothers who contracted the Zika virus during pregnancy. Most of them have been abandoned by their husbands and must care for their children alone.

Many of the women have largely adjusted to the initial shock of their childs disability, trading dreams of their own careers for the reality of around-the-clock care of a child who may never walk or talk.

Many struggle to get by on a monthly disability check of just over 954 reais (roughly $250), which must cover shelter, food, medications and transportation to frequent doctor visits.

Some seek comfort among mothers whose children share the same affliction. Others expressed gratitude for family members or friends who offer a break from the daily grind. Many confessed to despair and depression, and some considered suicide. But they share a fierce love for their children and a hope for a better life.

Four of them provided us a glimpse of their daily life in simple homes on the outskirts of Recife and Olinda, two cities in the state of Pernambuco.

Gabriela Alves de Azevedo, 22, lives outside of Olinda with her daughter, Ana Sophia, now three years old.

Gabriela holdsing her daughter Ana Sophia outside their house (Reuters)

Ana Sophia has microcephaly, a rare birth defect marked by small head size that signifies arrested brain development during gestation. Before Zika, such birth defects had never been linked to a mosquito-borne disease. Besides developmental issues, Ana Sophia has vision and hearing problems and trouble swallowing.

Gabriela had planned to finish high school and study physical therapy. Now, she spends her days caring for her child. Her husband left shortly after Ana Sophias birth. He could not accept their childs condition, Gabriela says, and does not pay child support.

I went into depression and my family helped me, she says. If it was not for them, I would have gone crazy.

Today, some relatives give moral support and Ana Sophias paternal grandmother helps with her day-to-day care.

Gabriela does physical therapy exercises at home with her daughter and thinks her health has improved.

Nowadays, I treat my daughter like a normal child. I know she has her deficiency, but I pretend she does not.

Gleyse Kelly da Silva, 28, has help from her husband and mother in caring for three-year-old Maria Giovanna Gigi da Silva. But the burden is still great, and she was forced to leave her job as a toll attendant.

After Gigi was born, there were many consultations with medical teams trying to understand the full implications of Zika. Those visits are less frequent, but Gigis medical challenges are significant.

Mothers of babies afflicted by Zika fight poverty in Brazil Show all 16 1 /16 Mothers of babies afflicted by Zika fight poverty in Brazil Mothers of babies afflicted by Zika fight poverty in Brazil Gleyse Kelly da Silva embraces her daughter Maria Giovanna, who has microcephaly, in 2016. She has help from her husband and mother in caring for "Gigi". But the burden is still great, and she was forced to leave her job as a toll attendant Reuters Mothers of babies afflicted by Zika fight poverty in Brazil "She does not sit alone, she does not roll, she does not do anything alone," Gleyse said. Gigi needs an orthopedist, but there are not enough to go around, and she's perpetually on waiting lists Reuters Mothers of babies afflicted by Zika fight poverty in Brazil Gleyse holds her now two-year-old daughter Maria Giovanna, at their house in Recife. She struggles with navigating her daughter's wheelchair on public transportation. Few buses have working lifts, and some drivers have refused to help her. Such struggles prompted Gleyse to help create the Union of Mothers of Angels, which provides advice and logistical support for mothers of children with microcephaly. The group now serves more than 250 families in Pernambuco Reuters Mothers of babies afflicted by Zika fight poverty in Brazil A few years ago Jackeline Vieira de Souza fought to overcome a very rare complication from an earlier pregnancy, and then survived cancer. "My dream was to be a mother again," she says. In 2015, she got her wish. But during her pregnancy, she learned that her son had microcephaly. "When he was born, I fell in love with him because I knew he would be a good thing in my life, even with the difficulties I would have to face." In this picture Jackeline uses a green bottle to stimulate her then four-month-old son Daniel Reuters Mothers of babies afflicted by Zika fight poverty in Brazil Jackeline stands by as Daniel, who is now two years old, during an evaluation session with a physiotherapist at the Association of Parents and Friends of the Exceptional in Recife Reuters Mothers of babies afflicted by Zika fight poverty in Brazil Jackeline holds up Daniel, then just four months old. Daniel's father separated from Jackeline shortly after learning that his son had microcephaly. He pays a small amount of family support every month, in addition to a monthly check that Jackeline gets from the government Reuters Mothers of babies afflicted by Zika fight poverty in Brazil Daniel with his brother at their house. It takes several hours to travel by bus between their home in Olinda and Recife, where Daniel goes for treatments. Lately, those trips are somewhat less frequent, and Jackeline believes Daniel's health is more stable. She has no illusions that her son will ever walk, eat on his own or live a normal life. Yet in many ways she is grateful for her "miracle" baby, who she says makes her feel "happy and more accomplished." Reuters Mothers of babies afflicted by Zika fight poverty in Brazil Rosana Vieira Alves and her then five-month-old daughter Luana Vieira, who was born with microcephaly, in the sea of Porto de Galinhas. She has three daughters. "It's hard to manage the girls. Some of them are jealous, but Luana needs more care. In time, they'll understand." Reuters Mothers of babies afflicted by Zika fight poverty in Brazil Rosana holds up Luana at their house in 2016. She does not have any family support and is overwhelmed by the cost of housing and Luana's medicines. She counts it a victory that she has managed to get a wheelchair for Luana, and worries about the four surgeries her daughter needs to correct problems with her eyes, her gut and the position of her hips and feet Reuters Mothers of babies afflicted by Zika fight poverty in Brazil Rosana, 28, washes her now two-year-old daughter Luana. The demands have taken Rosana to some dark places, and she confesses that she has considered suicide. But she still dreams of a better future, and hopes to get a degree in accounting or civil engineering Reuters Mothers of babies afflicted by Zika fight poverty in Brazil Luana reacts to stimulus during an evaluation session with a physiotherapist at the Altino Ventura rehabilitation center in Recife Reuters Mothers of babies afflicted by Zika fight poverty in Brazil Rosana carries Luana (then four months old), while taking her daughters Laiane Sophia (left) and Vitoria Evillen to their school Reuters Mothers of babies afflicted by Zika fight poverty in Brazil Gabriela Alves de Azevedo, holds her then four-month-old daughter Ana Sophia, who was born with microcephaly, at their house in 2016. Gabriela had planned to finish high school and study physical therapy. Now, she spends her days caring for her child Reuters Mothers of babies afflicted by Zika fight poverty in Brazil Ana Sophia, now three-years-old, being held by Gabriela. Her husband left shortly after the birth. He could not accept their child's condition, Gabriela says, and does not pay child support Reuters Mothers of babies afflicted by Zika fight poverty in Brazil Gabriela bathing her Ana Sophia, in 2016. After he husband left she said: "I went into depression and my family helped me. If it was not for them, I would have gone crazy." Reuters Mothers of babies afflicted by Zika fight poverty in Brazil Silvina da Silva poses with her two-year-old granddaughter Ana Sophia Reuters

People do not respect my daughters rights, she says. Other mothers have told her similar stories, including a bus passenger who refused to ride with that demon, referring to a baby with microcephaly.

Such struggles prompted Gleyse to help create the Union of Mothers of Angels, which provides advice and logistical support for mothers of children with microcephaly. The group now serves more than 250 families in Pernambuco.

Gleyse says some mothers have abandoned their children due to the many hardships, sending them to live with grandparents or other relatives. She is determined to make a place for in the world for children like Gigi. Her advice to other mothers: Dont ever give up.

A few years ago, Jackeline Vieira de Souza, 28, of Olinda, fought to overcome a very rare complication from an earlier pregnancy, and then survived cancer.

My dream was to be a mother again, she says.

Daniel Vieira receives a big hug from his brother when he returns home (Reuters)

In 2015, she got her wish. But during her pregnancy, she learned that her son, Daniel Vieira de Oliveira, had microcephaly.

When he was born, I fell in love with him because I knew he would be a good thing in my life, even with the difficulties I would have to face.

Daniels father separated from Jackeline shortly after learning that his son had microcephaly. He pays a small amount of family support every month, in addition to a monthly check that Jackeline gets from the government.

It takes several hours to travel by bus between their home in Olinda and Recife, where Daniel goes for treatments. Lately, those trips are somewhat less frequent, and Jackeline believes Daniels health is more stable.

Rosana holds her daughter Luana Vieira, who was born with microcephaly, at their house in 2016 (Reuters)

She has no illusions that her son will ever walk, eat on his own or live a normal life. Yet in many ways she is grateful for her miracle baby, who she says makes her feel happy and more accomplished.

Rosana Vieira Alves, 28, has three daughters, but nearly all of her attention goes to her youngest, Luana Vieira da Silva, age three.

Its hard to manage the girls. Some of them are jealous, but Luana needs more care. In time, theyll understand.

Rosana does not have any family support and is overwhelmed by the cost of housing and Luanas medicines. She counts it a victory that she has managed to get a wheelchair for Luana, and worries about the four surgeries her daughter needs to correct problems with her eyes, her gut and the position of her hips and feet.

The demands have taken Rosana to some dark places, and she confesses that she has considered suicide. But she still dreams of a better future, and hopes to get a degree in accounting or civil engineering.

Im sure one day Ill get there, she says.



Reuters
FlyVee? That is one possible name for Flybe if the airline ends up being taken over by Virgin Atlantic. But I think a more likely prospect is that it will end up as Virgin European  ironically, around the time that the UK is due to distance itself from the EU.

I like Flybe: the network, the staff and the fares. But the prices I pay are evidently not enough to sustain the troubled Exeter-based airline. Brexit has already damaged it, through the weaker pound.

Last week Flybe put itself up for sale. The carrier has suffered from the day of the EU referendum and the plunge in the pound. While Flybe earns revenue mainly in sterling, its costs are in dollars and euros.

At this stage all that the airline founded by Sir Richard Branson will say is that it is reviewing its options in respect of Flybe, which range from enhanced commercial arrangements to a possible offer.

I wasnt the only one taken by surprise at Virgin Atlantics interest. Consolidation  takeovers and mergers  is an accelerating trend in aviation. But normally there are lots of synergies: opportunities to take out costs (sadly by cutting jobs) and to benefit from economies of scale.

That is not the case with Virgin Atlantic and Flybe. Virgin is long-haul-only, with wide-bodied Airbus and Boeing jets, while Flybe operates small Bombardier and Embraer aircraft.

Even if there were plans to combine the two airlines HQs, there is no obvious solution for where that should be.

Virgin Atlantic is based just south of Gatwick airport, where Flybe (after selling its slots to easyJet) has no presence apart from a single route to Newquay, which itself will end in March 2019.

Flybe is based in Exeter, where it is an important local employer, and any move of the HQ would have a significant effect on the region.

Perhaps the two airlines will stay where they are but coordinate schedules. Flybe already feeds Virgin Atlantic flights at Gatwick, Heathrow, Manchester and Glasgow, and delivers passengers to Air France-KLM (which is aiming to take 31 per cent of Virgin) on a range of routes to Paris and Amsterdam.

In the event of a takeover, the Flybe network could be tuned to provide maximum connectivity with Virgin services, particularly at Manchester  which, unlike Heathrow and Gatwick, has plenty of scope for expansion.

Yet a cynic (of whom there are plenty in aviation) would say that the most attractive thing about Flybe is its cannily acquired collection of slots.

When British Airways took over BMI in 2012, the European Union stipulated that BA must surrender some slots at Heathrow for specific purposes to maintain competition. They could be used for routes to Moscow, Cairo, Nice and Riyadh, or domestic links to Aberdeen and Edinburgh.

Flybe is using these remedy slots between Heathrow and Scotland, and has also procured some dormant rights for its new four-times-daily link from Newquay to Britains busiest airport.

In time  three or four years  those slots will become more flexible, which means more valuable.

I calculate the portfolio as comprising 13 pairs of Heathrow slots a day, which is worth well north of 100m even with a third runway in prospect.

An alternative thesis is that Sir Richard sees a future for an airline that helps feed his long-haul aircraft and delivers value for Virgin Atlantics partners. We shall see in time which proves to be correct.

Meanwhile, Flybe is a going concern, and I shall continue going on Flybe.
Boris Johnson is still occasionally whispered of as a rockstar politician, so we hope the former foreign secretary understands there is absolutely no shame whatsoever in being 54 years old, well past your best, and having to come all the way to the junior ballroom of a business hotel on the outskirts of Belfast just to find a crowd that still wants to hear the only tune youve got.

In the Boris Johnson Story as imagined by Boris Johnson, this is not where Boris Johnson was meant to be by now, which is to say being the hype man for the annual conference of a once obscure and soon-to-be-obscure again Northern Irish political party, firing off material about bendy buses that is so far beyond its best before date as to pose a significantly greater risk to public health than anything ever threatened by the buses themselves.

Still, at least Boris Johnson and the Democratic Unionist Party have finally found each other, and together must be wondering how such a blistering run of combined victories appear to have brought them to the brink og humiliating defeat.

At this event last year, in the wake of Theresa Mays disastrous general election, the DUPs deputy leader Nigel Dodds modestly concluded that it was probably god himself that had decided to intervene and give Nigel Dodds and the DUP so much power over British politics.

Fast forward 12 months and youve even got Boris Johnson on hand to lend to this years event a kind of Winners Anonymous feel, like a support group for people whove got precisely what they wanted and cant quite work out how its ruined their lives.

Yes, its a real headscratcher, this one. Ask absolutely anyone at DUP conference what they cherish above all else, and contrary to popular belief, it wont actually be their Werthers Originals, itll be the union with Great Britain. It is the guiding star through the darkness, the never ecclesiastically under-clubbed Dodds said on Saturday. We dont gamble, he added. Not with the union.

But history kind of intimates otherwise. They backed Brexit, for a start, that thing that absolutely everybody said would risk breaking the union, and they won that one. And then, as a little bonus, they got an election that allowed them to dictate terms over the actual government.

So how on earth has it come to be that, as of now, Brexit, the very thing they wanted, and through the medium of a prime minister over whom they claim to hold sway, is looking rather like it might, whisper it guys, actually, erm, kind of break up the union?

Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Show all 13 1 /13 Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Esther McVey Britain's Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey arrives to attend the weekly meeting of the cabinet at 10 Downing Street in London. - Britain's Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey resigned from the cabinet over draft Brexit deal AFP/Getty Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal PA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Dominic Raab British Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab give a press conference at the end of the final round of talks in Brexit negotiations at the European Commission in Brussels, Belgium EPA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal PA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Rehman Chrishti Vice Chairman of the Conservative Party Rehman Chrishti tendered his resignation letter this afternoon PA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Anne-Marie Trevelyan Parliamentary private secretary in the Department of Education Anne-Marie Trevelyan resigned stating that she cannot support the deal Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal PA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Sam Gyimah Universities minister Sam Gyimah resigned on November 30, claiming the government's decision to pull out of the EU's Galileo satellite navigation system as a deciding factor PA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Shailesh Vara Shailesh Vara who has quit as Minister of State for Northern Ireland, saying he cannot support Theresa May's Brexit agreement, which he said "leaves the UK in a halfway house with no time limit on when we will finally be a sovereign nation" PA Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Suella Braverman Brexit minister Suella Braverman has resigned, stating It is not what the British people, or my constituents, voted for in 2016. Cabinet ministers resign over Brexit deal Ranil Jayawardena Parliamentary private secretary to the ministry of justice Ranil Jayawardena resigned as he could not back the deal "in good conscience"

God, in his unknowable ways, has really buggered this up, hasnt he Nigel? Still, as the search for someone to blame for all this hurtles towards its most desperate phase they really should be thanking the Almighty for putting himself in the firing line at this opportune time.

Its hard to imagine how the results could have done more to maximise our influence, were Doddss precise words last year. And yet here we are, long past the point at which the negotiations were meant to have been finished, with a deal on the table that the DUP wont tolerate, and with precious few ideas what to do about it, other than to use their fully maximised influence to smash everything to pieces because they cant get their own way.

Its proper mad stuff, this Northern Irish politics, even if theyre doing their best to emulate it over on the mainland.

That the DUP can be pro-Brexit, put their beloved union in peril, then clean up the electoral advantages that come from claiming to be the only ones who care about it is the sort of national gaslighting that would make Donald Trump jealous. Then theres the fact that they can squeeze a billion quid out of Theresa May, and when a plan comes together, namely the backstop, that almost all Northern Irish businesses agree would be an absolutely wonderful best of both worlds scenario, theyll gladly give the money back to make sure it doesnt happen.

There are such things as liberal unionists, who arent heard so much from anymore, wholl admit to not having a clue who to vote for. Welcome to 2018. Fun isnt it.

More to the point, if its ideas the DUP were after, Im afraid to say they flew in the wrong act. Having to listen to the Brexiteers constantly fight the same absurd battles was the price Remainers imagined theyd have to pay for winning the referendum not losing it.

Watching Boris Johnson continuing to fight the referendum campaign two years after winning it is one of Brexits most troubling realities.

Every ingredient was there, its just that the EU has become the backstop. There were lies about EU regulations that restrict British businesses, this time pertaining to hovercrafts. There was Brussels having the UK exactly where it wants it. There was the freedom to do our own trade deals, all that stuff that should have come to pass so easily by now, and the mere fact that absolutely none of it has should not in any way lead you to believe that none of it was ever true.

And of course, there was the promise, again to build a bridge to Scotland, over Beauforts Dyke, an unexploded Second World War munitions dump at the bottom of the sea, and for precious little economic benefit to either side. The problem isnt Beauforts Dyke, he said, The problem is a lack of political will.

It was the perfect distillation of eau de Boris, a fragrance of which everybody recognises the smell. Who knows, maybe hell build the thing one day, and when the central supports are suddenly blown away in the middle of rush hour by some giant German bomb everybody told him was there, that too will be the EUs fault.

But the real purpose of his attendance was clear enough. He knows very well that all that either he or the DUP have come up with by way of a solution, which is to bin the backstop, is something the European Union could hardly have been clearer they will not countenance. The answer, both he and the DUP think, is to carry on negotiating, to use the time we have left to come out with a different solution, one that, in a few short months, can resolve the irresolvable questions that no one has managed to resolve in the last 18.

The only solutions at the DUPs disposal are a series of very drastic levers, and he has to make sure they pull the right one. In the last few days, Arlene Foster has publicly flirted with ending the confidence and supply arrangement with the government, an agreement her senior colleagues already speak of in the past tense. This may very well not be in the national interest, not even in the DUPs interest, but most of all, it wouldnt be in Boris Johnsons interest, and that definitely will not do. So, after savaging everything Theresa May, and his own government, has achieved in the last 18 months, it was, all of a sudden, absolutely vital that we keep this partnership going.

Dont bring down the government, in other words, just bring down the Brexit deal. Lets keep this machine ticking over, and I can slot right into the driving seat. Then we can do wondrous things together, in this precious United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, that together, me through my utter lack of all shame, and you through your mad flag waving nationalistic self harm, will have brought fully to its knees.
By Trend:

The State Tourism Agency of Azerbaijan is developing proposals to create modern infrastructure on the territory of the Yanardag State Historical-Cultural and Natural Reserve, Kenan Guluzade, head of the public relations department of the agency, told Trend.

He said that at this stage, work actively continues on the reconstruction of the reserve, which is part of the state agency.

"Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree on measures to reconstruct the Yanardag State Historical-Cultural and Natural Reserve in order to create modern tourism infrastructure in the territory of this reserve," he said.

Guluzade noted that seven reserves are included in the agencys structure.

"Besides Yanardag, the agencys structure includes the State Historical-Architectural Reserve "Ateshgah Temple" (of fire-worshipers), the State Historical and Cultural Reserve "Basgal", the State Historical, Architectural and Ethnographic Reserve Khinalig, the Lahij State Historical and Cultural Reserve, the State Historical and Architectural Reserve "Yukhary Bash" in Shaki city and the Kish State Historical and Architectural Reserve," said Guluzade.

"By his decree, the president of Azerbaijan instructed the state agency to prepare the relevant information on condition of the State Historical and Cultural Reserve "Basgal", as well as to prepare proposals for the development of tourism infrastructure in the territory of this reserve."

He noted that the State Tourism Agency is working on all the issues, as well as closely studying the situation in five other reserves, where work of a similar nature is planned.
Beyond the worst rioting ever seen on the Champs-Elysees, a particularly disturbing drama in the fuel price protests sweeping across France was a threat to throw six immigrants on a giant barbecue.

Scenes of intense violence in and around the most famous avenue in Paris on Saturday were bad enough, but the treatment of the unidentified men found hidden in the back of a tanker lorry was especially chilling.

They were stopped by a group of so-called yellow vests (gilets jaunes) on the A16 motorway at Flixecourt, near Amiens, last Tuesday. The demonstrators get their names from the high-visibility jackets all motorists are obliged to carry in France, but rocketing petrol and diesel charges were evidently not their only concern.

 Demonstrators take to the streets in Paris in protest over fuel prices

Throw them on a giant barbecue and they cost us too much in taxes was their reaction to the group of dark-skinned foreigners looking to claim asylum in France, or across the Channel in Britain. After dragging the immigrants from their hiding place, the mob handed them over to a police patrol.

The CGT (General Confederation of Labour) union is helping to organise the yellow vests campaign and  admirably  made a complaint about racism to prosecutors who launched a criminal enquiry into the incident.

Referring to the Holocaust, the CGT statement on the horror reads: All of this is reminiscent of very sad and unglamorous events in our history, but is above all clearly a call for racial hatred.

On Saturday I saw yellow vests smashing up pavements to create missiles to throw at the police, building sites being torn apart to turn into barricades and fires being lit in residential areas. Water cannons and round upon round of tear gas provoked the crowds into running battles with the police, leading to almost 70 arrests.

Since the protests began earlier this month, there have been two traffic accident-related deaths linked to illegal road blockades, and more than 500 wounded. Scores of yellow vests have been charged with public order offences.

However, it would be unfair to suggest that the many thousands taking part in the demonstrations were all punchy bigots. The majority of those I spoke to were part of a forgotten France based in the suburbs of major cities or the countryside. They rely on very low incomes or benefits, and are mainly dependent on their cars to get them anywhere. Their rage is aimed at a metropolitan elite who not only have far more money and power, but who can afford to pay for the kind of green initiatives which are partly behind the fuel price rises.

Emmanuel Macron  the French head of state the yellow vests call president of the rich  personifies this class of out-of-touch townies. His perceived arrogance has resulted in a woeful approval rating of just 26 per cent, according to recent polls  all while close to a tenth of the fit-for-work population remains unemployed. The former merchant banker is frequently pictured on a bike at the many holiday homes available to him, and has pledged to keep increasing ecologically motivated taxes in line with the Paris climate change agreement.

More than that, Macron continues to cut public service jobs while liberalising the economy as quickly as possible using presidential decrees. Dissent is right and proper, especially in a democratic republic still imbued with a revolutionary spirit.

The real problem, however, is that opposition to Macron involves as much venal extremism as is evidently found in the yellow vest movement. Remember that the runner-up to Macron in last years presidential election was Marine Le Pen, leader of a far-right party then still called the Front National. Its strong links with convicted racists, antisemites and Islamophobes apparently mattered as little to many voters as its equally disturbing history of fascism.

Jean-Luc Melenchon of the far-left La France Insoumise (France Unbowed) movement did extremely well in the first round of voting too. Had the self-styled eco-socialist been more open to working with potential allies, not least of all the Socialist Party, then he too could feasibly have sneaked the presidency.

Both Le Pen and Melenchon captured the imaginations of so-called left behind provincial communities, appealing to mindsets not unlike some of those that voted Britain out of the European Union in 2016. A desire for a Frexit  the French equivalent of Brexit  is a standard refrain among many of the yellow vests. These are the types who have largely been ignored by the notoriously corrupt, self-serving Paris establishment. With few resources or influence, they are prepared to rally behind any cause that reflects their intense anger and sense of frustration.

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Like the economically illiterate leaders of the National Rally (the new name for the Front National, with Le Pen still in charge!) and France Insoumise (which is effectively a one-man pressure group calling for a Sixth Republic) they accentuate the negative at all times, while never seriously living up to positions of responsibility.

During recent brushes with the law over corruption allegations, both Le Pen and Melenchon acted like rowdy political agitators. Le Pen insisted she would refuse to cooperate with examining magistrates, saying they were corrupt tools of the state. When fraud investigators turned up at Melenchons Paris apartment and party HQ, he screamed at them while live-streaming his rant.

Little wonder that French interior minister Christophe Castaner accused Le Pen of encouraging her supporters to cause Saturdays trouble. Highly organised casseurs  a French noun that loosely translates as people who want to smash things up  were heard shouting pro-Le Pen slogans as they went about their destruction.

Their malevolence gained a great deal of publicity, but as far as persuading Macron to change his anti-car policies is concerned, they were all but useless. As with the National Rally and France Insoumise, the yellow vests are a symptom of Frances endemic problems, but by no means a solution.
Amber Rudd returned to the cabinet after 201 days, coincidentally leaving from and returning to the same jobs as David Blunkett 13 years earlier: from home secretary to work and pensions. Matt Smith asked: Whats the shortest gap between exiting and re-entering the cabinet? Here are (I think) the shortest gaps since 1900.

1. Clement Attlee, Herbert Morrison and Ernest Bevin, Labour ministers in the wartime coalition, resigned in May 1945 when the war (in Europe) and the coalition ended, and returned in July after winning the election, after 64 days. Thanks to Richard Olszewski.

2. James Brokenshire, out of the Northern Ireland Office to have treatment for lung cancer, and back as housing and local government secretary 112 days later in April this year (taking Sajid Javids post when he was promoted to replace Rudd). Thanks to Anthony Wells.

Recommended Top 10 pseudonyms for more than one person

3. David Blunkett: 142 days in 2004-05. From Anthony Wells and Allan Holloway.

4. Peter Brooke resigned as Northern Ireland secretary after singing on Irish TV on the day seven were murdered by the IRA in 1992, but came back as national heritage secretary 165 days later. Thanks to James M.

5. Samuel Hoare resigned as foreign secretary over the secret deal with Pierre Laval, French foreign minister, to partition Abyssinia in December 1935. He returned as first lord of the admiralty 170 days later. Thanks to Allan Holloway.

6. Hugh Dalton resigned as chancellor of the exchequer after leaking Budget secrets on his way into the chamber in 1947; came back as chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster 200 days later. Allan Holloway again.

7. Amber Rudd: 201 days.

8. Edwin Montagu left cabinet in May 1915, and returned to the same post, chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, in January 1916 after 231 days. He then left cabinet again in December 1916, returning as secretary of state for India in July 1917 after 219 days. Unusual double case from Mr Memory.

9. Austen Chamberlain, who was out for 275 days between his resignation as secretary of state for India in July 1917, following his criticism of the Mesopotamian campaign (see no 8), and his appointment as minister without portfolio the following year. Thanks again to Allan Holloway.

10. Peter Mandelson: 292 days between resigning as trade secretary over his home loan from fellow minister Geoffrey Robinson in December 1998 and his return as Northern Ireland secretary in October 1999. Then had to wait seven years and eight months from his resignation from that post in 2001 to his return as business secretary under Gordon Brown in October 2008.

Not quite: George Young, who left cabinet as leader of the Commons in 2012 and was brought back to government 45 days later as chief whip when Andrew Mitchell resigned over plebgate  but as chief whip he was entitled to attend cabinet but was not a full member.

Paul T Horgan asked about the reverse, the longest interval between offices, and started with Winston Churchill, out of the cabinet between 1929 and 1939. Allan Holloway came up with a longer gap: William Wedgwood Benn, 14 years from being secretary of state for India in 1931 to secretary of state for air (as Viscount Stansgate) in 1945. He also noted two even longer gaps in the 19th century: Charles James Fox, 23 years between his second and third terms at the Foreign Office, 1783 to 1806; and Earl Grey, 23 years 242 days between resigning as foreign secretary in 1807 and returning as prime minister in 1830.

Next week: Unlikeliest cover versions, such as Slades version of Nights in White Satin

Coming soon: Worst deals in history, after Nigel Farage described the draft Brexit deal thus

Your suggestions please, and ideas for future Top 10s, to me on Twitter, or by email to top10@independent.co.uk
Fire damage can be seen at the Caiseal Mara Hotel in Moville, Co Donegal (Aoife Moore/PA)

A Co Donegal hotel that was due to house asylum seekers has been damaged in a suspected arson attack.

A man in his 50s was taken to hospital for treatment after the overnight blaze at the Caiseal Mara Hotel in Moville.

Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan condemned the incident as despicable.

This was a despicable incident and could have led to very serious tragedyCharlie Flanagan

The hotel was set to become a direct provision accommodation centre, with around 100 asylum seekers due to arrive in Moville in the coming weeks.

Gardai are investigating the fire, which broke out at the Foyle Street property at around 4.30am on Sunday.

They said extensive damage had been caused.

Mr Flanagan said: I condemn this attack and those behind it in the strongest possible terms.

This was a despicable incident and could have led to very serious tragedy.

Expand Close Fire damage to the Caiseal Mara Hotel (Aoife Moore/PA) / Facebook

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I send my best wishes for a full recovery to the injured person and all those impacted by the fire.

I am urging anyone with any information with regard to this fire to contact the Gardai.

Minister of State for Equality and Integration David Stanton added: I deplore this attack.

The hotel is being prepared for accommodation by persons seeking international protection in Ireland.

That people would target such a building in this way is deeply shameful.

This action is not at all representative of the welcome of the overwhelming majority of people in both Donegal and Ireland as whole.
Ukraine says that Russian fire has hit two of its navy vessels, with two crew members wounded - and that both boats have been seized by Russia.

The Ukrainian navy made the announcement in a statement late on Sunday. Russia did not immediately comment on the claims.

Hours earlier, Ukraine said that a Russian coast guard vessel rammed into a Ukrainian navy tugboat, resulting in damage to the ship's engines and hull.

The incident took place on Sunday as three Ukrainian naval ships were transiting from Odessa on the Black Sea to Mariupol in the Sea of Azov, via the Kerch Strait.

Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.
The 27 European Union leaders have endorsed the Brexit deal, European Council president Donald Tusk has said.

The endorsement means all eyes now turn to Westminster, where British Prime Minister Theresa May faces an uphill battle to get the deal through the House of Commons.

European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said "it is a very sad day".

"A country leaving the EU doesn't give rise to the raising of Champagne glasses or applause. It is a sad day and everybody who spoke today during the European Council attempted to express their sadness.

"It was broadly shared, if not unanimously shared."

He acknowledged that "ultimately we did have a problem, a difficulty, with our Spanish friends" at the end of the process over Gibraltar.

"I would point out today that the agreement we have obtained here today is an agreement which is good for Spain, so we are with Spain," he said.

The EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier said it was a "fair and balanced agreement" and "the best deal possible given the circumstances".

He added: "We will remain allies, partners and friends with the UK."

Jean-Claude Juncker added: "I am totally convinced that this is the only deal possible. Those who think by rejecting the deal that they would have a better deal will be disappointed in the first seconds after the rejection of this deal."

The European Commission president said "divorce is a tragic moment".

"Payments have to be made but the future understanding is one which has to be constructed.

"I don't think Britain will be a third country like other third countries are third countries.

"There is, between us, something which has the remainings of love."

At a press conference in Brussels, Theresa May said: "Before Christmas, MPs will vote on this deal.

"It will be one of the most significant votes that Parliament has held for many years. On it will depend whether we move forward together into a brighter future or open the door to yet more division and uncertainty.

"The British people don't want to spend any more time arguing about Brexit.

"They want a good deal done that fulfils the vote and allows us to come together again as a country.

"I will take this deal back to the House of Commons, confident we have achieved the best deal available and full of optimism about the future of our country.

"In Parliament and beyond it, I will make the case for this deal with all my heart and I look forward to that campaign."

Entering the emergency summit this morning, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said he regrets the UKs departure from the European Union  but insisted Ireland has secured a good deal from Brexit.

I still regret the fact that the UK is leaving the European Union. I think the best thing for Ireland and for Europe would be for the UK to stay in the European Union, stay in the single market and the customs union. But we respect their decision, the Taoiseach told reporters in Brussels.

But he said the draft Withdrawal Agreement protected Irish interests, citizens rights, a common travel area, and a transition which will allow the EU and UK to negotiate a new future relationship. If those talks failed Ireland still had the so-called backstop which would ensure there will be no return of border controls in Ireland and continued free trade with Britain.

It allows us to move on, Mr Varadkar added.

The British Prime Minister has written a 'letter to the nation', insisting her EU withdrawal agreement will work "for our whole country and all of our people, whether you voted 'Leave' or 'Remain'".

Mrs May said the deal will "honour the result of the referendum", taking back control of UK borders, money and laws, and taking the country out of EU programmes like the Common Agricultural Policy and Common Fisheries Policy "that do not work in our interest".

She said the deal "works for every part of our country - for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, for our Overseas Territories like Gibraltar, and also for the Crown Dependencies".

And she called for Brexit day on March 29 next year "to be a moment of renewal and reconciliation for our whole country ... when we put aside the labels of 'Leave' and 'Remain' for good and we come together again as one people".
CONSEQUENCES: Nigel Dodds, Boris Johnson and Arlene Foster during the DUP annual conference in Belfast. Picture: PA

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar is in Brussels today for an EU leaders' summit at which all 28 governments are set to sign off on a Brexit divorce deal with the UK.

Last-ditch talks with Spain defused a row over Gibraltar which threatened to cancel the historic summit, which will effectively seal the UK's departure from the European Union on March 29 next after 46 years of membership.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez had threatened to oppose the 585-page Brexit Withdrawal Agreement and an accompanying 26-page political declaration, which will frame negotiations on future EU-UK ties after Brexit when all transition grace periods expire.

Irish officials remain happy that Ireland's key concerns over Brexit have been answered in the draft deal. But Mr Varadkar has publicly acknowledged that the agreement faces a difficult future amid fears that it will not be ratified by the British parliament.

Theresa May issued a direct plea to the public to support her Brexit deal as European Union leaders prepared to endorse the package.

The British Prime Minister will meet the other 27 EU leaders in Brussels after they have given their backing to the Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration thrashed out by negotiators.

In a "letter to the nation", Mrs May said leaving the EU on March 29 2019 would mark "a new chapter in our national life" and there would be a moment of "renewal and reconciliation" after the bitter battles over Europe.

The almost 800-word message is an attempt to speak directly to the public to build support for her deal, which faces widespread opposition at Westminster including from both wings of her Conservative Party and the Democratic Unionist Party which props up her administration.

Eurosceptic Tory MP Andrew Bridgen, a prominent critic of the Prime Minister, said: "With regard to the Withdrawal Agreement and the proposed future relationship 'never in the history of our great nation have so many been betrayed, so deliberately, for so little'."

But Mrs May said the deal "will honour the result of the referendum" by allowing the UK to "take back control" of its money, laws and borders.

"It is a deal for a brighter future, which enables us to seize the opportunities that lie ahead," she said.

She promised she would be "campaigning with my heart and soul" to win the vote in the Commons.

And "with Brexit settled" the UK will be able to focus on the economy, NHS, building homes and tackling the "burning injustices" in society, the Prime Minister added.

Once today's summit is concluded, the Brexit battle will switch back to Westminster where it is in serious danger of not being ratified by MPs. The Democratic Unionist Party, whose 10 MPs underpin British Prime Minister Theresa May's minority government, yesterday ramped up their opposition to the Brexit deal at a conference addressed by radical Brexiteer Boris Johnson.

"The DUP wants a deal with the European Union. We understand that businesses, families and communities want certainty," the party's deputy leader, Nigel Dodds, said.

"But it is not this deal. It is not a deal at any price. Prime minister - bin the backstop," he urged May from his party's annual conference.

Mr Dodds insisted the union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland was "non-negotiable".

"It is still not too late for the prime minister to change course," he said.

Addressing the DUP conference in Belfast, former British foreign secretary Boris Johnson stressed the need to maintain the Conservatives' "crucial" confidence and supply deal with the DUP.

He warned of ruinous consequences for the UK if Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn came to power.

But the DUP leader, Arlene Foster, had already addressed that issue by saying a UK government led by Jeremy Corbyn would be preferable to the current Brexit draft deal.

Ms Foster told London newspaper The Times that she did not want to see Mr Corbyn become prime minister but warned it might become a reality.

Spain is understood to have secured guarantees of a major say in framing the EU's future relationship with the UK territory of Gibraltar.

Mr Sanchez had threatened to boycott today's summit and the row was compounded by German Chancellor Angela Merkel also warning that she would not attend the summit unless all outstanding rows were resolved.

British Prime Minister Theresa May was due to meet EU Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker and summit chairman Donald Tusk last night for talks to finalise details of today's summit programme.

President Tusk, a former Polish prime minister, secured a deal with the Spanish prime minister at lunchtime yesterday to defuse the stand-off.

Other sidebar rows, notably a demand from France and other member states on access to British fishing waters, have also been parked.

The British government released a letter from the UK ambassador to the EU, Tim Barrow, to the head of President Tusk's secretariat. It specified that Britain would make no presumption that any future EU-UK trade pact would apply to Gibraltar.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said he regrets the UKs departure from the European Union  but insisted Ireland has secured a good deal from Brexit.

Mr Varadkar was speaking as the EU leaders gathered in Brussels for a special summit to rubber stamp a 585-page legal text on the UK divorce deal and a 26-page general declaration to frame negotiations on a a future relationship between Britain and the remaining 27 member states.

On his way into the summit meeting, which will put the UK beyond the point of no return in ending its 46-year EU membership, Mr Varadkar said the meeting was a sad occasion and the culmination of two years of negotiations between Brussels and London.

I still regret the fact that the UK is leaving the European Union. I think the best thing for Ireland and for Europe would be for the UK to stay in the European Union, stay in the single market and the customs union. But we respect their decision, the Taoiseach told reporters in Brussels.

But he said the draft Withdrawal Agreement protected Irish interests, citizens rights, a common travel area, and a transition which will allow the EU and UK to negotiate a new future relationship. If those talks failed Ireland still had the so-called backstop which would ensure there will be no return of border controls in Ireland and continued free trade with Britain.

It allows us to move on, Mr Varadkar added.

The Taoiseach said he was confident the 28 leaders would endorse the draft Brexit deal. The UK will leave the EU at 11pm Dublin time on March 29 next and a transition period, ensuring no change in the relationship, will continue at least until December 2020 and perhaps for a year or two beyond that date.

Arriving for the summit, European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said: "This is the deal. It's the best deal possible and the EU will not change its fundamental position when it comes to these issues."

EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier said the deal with the UK was a "necessary step" ahead of next phase of the negotiations.

"I have worked with my team and negotiated with the UK, never against the UK," he told reporters as he arrived for the summit in Brussels.

"Now it is time for everybody to take their responsibility. This deal is a necessary step to build the trust between the UK and the EU we need to build.

"The next phase is an unprecedented and ambitious partnership. We will remain allies, partners and friends."

The British Prime Minister has written a 'letter to the nation', insisting her EU withdrawal agreement will work "for our whole country and all of our people, whether you voted 'Leave' or 'Remain'".

Mrs May said the deal will "honour the result of the referendum", taking back control of UK borders, money and laws, and taking the country out of EU programmes like the Common Agricultural Policy and Common Fisheries Policy "that do not work in our interest".

She said the deal "works for every part of our country - for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, for our Overseas Territories like Gibraltar, and also for the Crown Dependencies".

And she called for Brexit day on March 29 next year "to be a moment of renewal and reconciliation for our whole country ... when we put aside the labels of 'Leave' and 'Remain' for good and we come together again as one people".

Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte warned there could be no further negotiation and said he hoped the British Parliament would now back the deal.

"This is the deal on the table. I don't think there is anything more now. I don't want to contemplate a no vote. I think there will be a yes vote," he said.

"I think this is the best we can all do - both Theresa May and her Government as well as the European Union.

"I have lots of respect for Theresa May and what she has done over the last two years and particularly the last two or three weeks.

"I do think she has everything now to argue for a yes vote in the British Parliament."
Darragh McCullough on his drought hit farm in simmer of 2018 at Stamullen, Co Meath. Photo: Gerry Mooney

As a farmer, I'm beginning to feel more like an environmental terrorist than a food producer.

It's not a nice feeling, but it's kind of unavoidable when you hear more and more facts on climate change and global warming.

And as somebody with a stake in a rapidly expanding dairy unit, I'm one of the biggest culprits.

Emissions from every other farm sector are steady or in decline. But every extra dairy cow added to the herd is generating more methane, nitrous oxide and carbon emissions that are screwing up the planet for everybody.

This is despite the fact that Irish milk has one of the lowest carbon footprints in the world.

Counter-intuitive as it may seem, this is the key reason why I think we should still aim to max out Ireland's capacity to produce milk - Irish dairy products are the least worst option for a global population hungry for more.

If we cap our production, then the untapped demand for that extra dairy product just gets produced somewhere else where it does even more damage to the environment.

Not only would it be a futile exercise, it would cost the national economy big-time.

The 50pc growth in milk output over the last five years has increased employment by 10,000 people and annual dairy-sector spend in the local economy to 3.8bn. The dairy sector now accounts for 10pc of all domestic industrial spend.

One prominent dairy farmer representative told me last week that he thinks dairy cow numbers could hit two million - that would be another 50pc jump in output.

But further growth is wishful thinking if we don't get our act together on emissions.

Irish dairy farmers have increased their collective emissions by over 30pc in the last five or six years.

That's at a time when as an industry, agriculture is faced with a legally binding target of reducing our emissions by 20pc compared to 2005, by 2020.

Up to the recession, overall levels from agriculture were in decline, but in the last year or so we've sailed right past not just our target but also the level that we were at in 2005. And it's all on the dairy industry's head.

But I don't hear many alarm bells ringing in Government circles, so I suspect that policy-makers are secretly hoping that the goal-posts will shift in Ireland's favour over the coming years.

This could be in the form of recalibrating the impact of, say, methane, or some breakthrough technology that allows everyone switch overnight to electric vehicles.

But I suspect big polluters like dairying are going to run out of road long before that.

There is an endless stream of ever-more damning reports from the scientists on the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, lambasting the business-as-usual approach across the world.

It's not like we don't have enough evidence that what they are saying is spot on. The weather has been getting more extreme with every passing year.

Ireland is also heading for fines that could run into the hundreds of millions for breaching our emissions limits in 2020, and who knows what the penalties might be for missing the even stricter limits set for 2030.

In the same way that the New Zealand dairy industry got a shock when it realised that its aggressive expansion had killed its social licence to expand, it will be too late for Irish dairy farmers to turn around in 10 years' time and promise major reform.

If Irish taxpayers find themselves forking out for emissions fines and carbon taxes then it's highly likely that dairy herds here could be facing a forced retreat. Just look at what's happening in Holland right now.

It's also wishful thinking by the milk brigade that a shrinking beef sector will give dairying room to keep expanding. Maybe if we had 50 years to play with, but the emissions crunch is going to come much quicker than that.

Some may point to the 'smart' farming initiatives designed to encourage more efficient operations. But the notion that these are going to save the sector from harsher measures also strikes me as fanciful.

Most of these measures are basic good farming practices that allow a farmer to be more profitable. It also tends to be fairly standard things like getting soil fertility right and maximising grass intake.

I can't see why farmers who didn't think it worthwhile to try to make their businesses more profitable would suddenly jump to action to make themselves more environmentally friendly.

So then you are left looking at more radical options like banning splash-plate slurry spreaders and urea (in favour of protected nitrogen), but that will probably get shot down by the farmers-say-no gang.

Other radical but thoughtful suggestions came from the agricultural economist Alan Matthews.

His carbon tax is the best way to ensure the 'polluter pays' principle applies to farming, but of course anyone who suggests another tax gets short shrift.

It was only when I heard that the European Court of Auditors had kicked back the CAP reform proposals to Commissioner Hogan, on the basis that they weren't focused enough on the environment, that I felt slightly hopeful.

Surely pivoting CAP payments away from the broken historical area-based system to one that helps Irish agriculture to realise its full potential without becoming an environmental pariah would be a major step forward?

Undoubtedly, farm representatives will be quick to claim that any change to the current system would be terrible and unworkable.

That's where farmers with a clear logic on the true potential of Irish farming need to come to the fore.

Because there are lots of ways of minimising and off-setting farming emissions. But without it being tied into CAP payments, it probably won't amount to a hill of beans.
Construction continues to be one of the countrys fastest-growing industries

The economy is in a sweet spot. It's still lean after the shake-out of recession years and it is benefiting from benign international conditions. Despite all the uncertainties out there, the latest growth figures from the UK and the US are robust, while a soft patch in the euro area is probably just that, and not a sign of incipient recession.

So what is driving Irish economic growth, which sectors are doing well and which ones are likely to do well in the future? The best indicator of what is happening sectorally, and indeed on an economy-wide basis, is the quarterly jobs statistics. The latest batch were delivered by the State's number crunchers last Tuesday.

They show an economy that has been cooling a little recently, the quarter-on-quarter rate of job creation - adjusted for seasonal ups and downs - decelerated from a very strong 1.1pc at the end of last year to a more modest 0.5pc in the third quarter of this year.

This deceleration, however, need not cause sleeplessness. Other economic indicators are not pointing to an end of the growth phase of the current business cycle. As such, the recent slowdown in job creation is unlikely to herald the onset of a slump, or something worse.

With the macro picture broadly benign, let's turn to the economy's thriving industries. Sectorally, the latest (third-quarter) job figures were broadly consistent with recent trends.

The fastest-growing industries continue to be construction, hospitality, technology and back-office businesses. Possibly reflecting the growth of ecommerce, there has also been a more recent surge in the transportation and storage sector.

Consider each one of these in turn.

It has been the case for some time, the construction sector is leading the pack when it comes to hiring.

Builders are taking people on to beat the band. The number at work in the industry grew by a eye-widening 14pc in the 12 months to the third quarter (all figures cited here are seasonally adjusted).

Headcount is now back at levels recorded in the immediate pre-bubble period in the early 2000s.

Much of the growth has come from the non-residential side of the industry, which is booming.

With the homebuilding sector ramping up rapidly, further strong growth can be expected, barring a shock to the economy from Brexit or one of a number of other big risks looming on the horizon.

Those worrying that another boom-bust cycle is ongoing can take solace in the fact that there are still almost 100,000 fewer workers in the sector that at the peak of the property frenzy more than a decade ago.

Moreover, as a percentage of total employment in the Irish economy, construction accounted for 6.4pc in the third quarter, down from 11pc in 2007, and is not out of line with historical norms in developed countries.

One driver of the construction sector has been an increase in hotel-building to satisfy the booming demand for accommodation, as ever-growing hordes of tourists flock into the country.

The hospitality sector continues to be second only to construction in the employment growth stakes.

The number of jobs in accommodation, restaurants and the like hit 180,000 in the third quarter, more than 10pc higher than a year earlier.

That represents a sharp acceleration in the already strong growth over the previous few years.

It's also worth noting that the hospitality industry is one of the few which has far surpassed it's previous, pre-crash peek. Employment in the sector is up by a quarter on 2007-08 levels.

How an industry which has been doing so well got preferential Vat treatment for so long is testament to just one thing: the power of lobby groups in Ireland.

If the wider economy is not hit by external shocks over the next year, it will be interesting to see what those in the industry who warned that a higher Vat rate would be disastrous for the sector will say in their next pre-budget submissions.

The third of the star performing sectors is humdrum administration and assorted support services in the private sector.

Those who were once called 'paper pushers' numbered more than 100,000 in the third quarter, up a phenomenal 14pc year on year.

Since the recovery began six years ago, their number has grown by third.

Those who talk at business conferences about how automation and artificial intelligence are doing away with administrative jobs should check the employment data.

Just as the warnings over decades that technological change would lead to mass unemployment, current predictions about job-destroying technology are also likely to be proved wrong.

Speaking of technology, the IT sector continues to go from strength to strength, even if its growth has been less spectacular than general chatter might suggest. Employment in the industry rose by almost 6pc year-on-year in the third quarter to stand at 123,000.

Like its less glamorous counterpart - administration - it has also grown by a third since the economy started its current growth phase in 2012.

Given the amount of new investment and innovation in the tech sector, there is every reason to believe that it will go on growing in the quarters and years ahead.

Another sector that is on the up is transportation and storage.

Growth in employment has accelerated over the past year or so, bringing the numbers at work past the 100,000 threshold for the first time ever.

This is likely to reflect changes in the way we consume, with more online purchases and fewer shop-bought goods and services. That, in turn, is reflected in the numbers working in retail and wholesale, which are 40,000 below a decade ago and showing no real sign of growth.

A final, non-sectoral point jumps out of recent Labour Force Surveys.

Despite a huge amount of discussion of housing shortages in the capital and the implications of too few homes for the continued advance of Dublin, employment growth has accelerated since the middle of last year.

In the just past 12 months the number of people working in the capital has grown by 5pc, or 33,000 people.

Some of the additional workers have come from the ranks of the unemployed, people who, presumably, would already have been housed.

But the data shows that the vast majority of the increase was driven by more people crowding into the city.

Housing supply is certainly a problem, but the jobs numbers show that it is not choking off the capital's continued boom - for now at least.
Iranian foreign minister on Saturday expressed his support for peace talks in Afghanistan, IRNA reported.

Iran will use all its capacities to help the Afghan government, Mohammad Javad Zarif said.

He made the remarks in a meeting with Hamid Karzai, former Afghan president.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has always supported the peace talks in Afghanistan conducted by the countries' government, Zarif asserted.

Zarif and Karzai discussed issues of mutual interest as well as the latest developments in Afghanistan.

Iran and Afghanistan held the first round of talks on a 'comprehensive strategic partnership' document in 2017.

Five joint committees were established to draft a 'comprehensive strategic partnership' document to promote two countries' cooperation in fields of security, defense, economy, culture, and education.
Paula Rowan says she knew if she stuck to her guns she could achieve her aim of being the best glove designer around. Picture by Steve Humphreys

Launching a luxury brand at the height of the last recession might seem like a counter-intuitive move, but that's exactly what glove designer Paula Rowan did.

Fast-forward to today and her glove collection has just secured a home at the concept store 10 Corso Como in New York's historic Seaport District and is available there from tomorrow.

The store occupies 28,000 sq ft on the first floor of the Fulton Market Building - a nice Thanksgiving present you could say.

Rowan is a history and classics graduate of UCD and worked as an interior designer before buying out her brother's Claudio Ferricci leather bag shop and business in Dublin's Westbury Mall in 2006. The firm was a one-trick pony with the leather bags business and Rowan soon realised if she were to survive she would need another product range. So two years later she launched her glove collection and they are now attracting high-profile customers such as Helen Mirren, Chloe Sevigny and Kate Moss while they also feature regularly in Vogue magazine.

It wasn't always that glamorous, though, at her Westbury Mall base in Dublin where she also sells belts and bags.

"I launched the day that Lehman Brothers collapsed and when I went home that evening I remember seeing all the employees leaving with their belongings in boxes and thought 'What have I done'," she told the Sunday Independent. "I made no sales that day.

"My Christmas turnover plummeted but it gave me more time to work on my design and brand. I had always thought gloves were an understated accessory and I always loved design."

She was also lucky to have a realistic landlord but there were many sacrifices along the road.

"I had no holidays for seven years, no new clothes, cars. I knew long-term if I stuck to my guns I would achieve my aim of being the best glove designer around. Generally I'd be very focused and I cut overheads as I was determined to keep the shop open - it's part of being an entrepreneur."

Things really began to pick up in 2011 and while she admitted that opening up a pop-up shop in London that year was costly, it was a coup from a marketing perspective. "That year my gloves ended up on the cover of Grazia magazine, then Helen Mirren was wearing them."

Later on, during a high-profile trip to London, Sabina Higgins, the wife of Irish President Michael D Higgins, sported a pair. Other fans include Madonna and Martin Scorsese. There are now 50 designs in 25 different colours and her products are stocked in high-end stores in Milan, London, Rotterdam, Oslo and now New York.

Prices start at 65, at the top end you are looking at 2,800 for a more high-end glove that might include feathers or Mongolian fur.

She is looking at the Asian market and hopes to launch a bag collection next year.

The company is profitable and Rowan expects turnover to be up 25pc next year following an increase of 20pc in 2018. Things are a lot rosier than in 2008 and her focus remains on quality.

While a lot of leather production has gone to China, she has five leather suppliers in Italy that she shares with brands such as Prada and Gucci and she travels there regularly to ensure quality control - each glove is made by hand and takes three months from stretching to stitching.

She also insists that all leathers and furs are ethically sourced.
Irish companies continue to win business in international markets. Those supported by Enterprise Ireland (EI) reported a 7pc increase in exports to a record 22.7bn in 2017. Stock image

Given the high level of uncertainty facing companies operating in the global marketplace, Irish exporters must broaden their horizons like never before.

With Brexit looming, potential trade wars between global trading blocs and currency volatility, now is the time for companies to develop a market diversification strategy.

This will make them better able to protect themselves against external shocks in 2019 and beyond.

Irish companies continue to win business in international markets. Those supported by Enterprise Ireland (EI) reported a 7pc increase in exports to a record 22.7bn in 2017.

Exports to the eurozone grew by 9pc to 4.6bn in the same period. The US and Canada, important markets for business and consumer software, saw growth of 7pc to 3.96bn.

Despite Brexit uncertainty, the UK saw a 4pc growth rate to exports of 7.6bn, a considerable achievement. However we must build on these successes and ensure that Irish companies are well positioned to continue to succeed globally.

A key focus of activities in Enterprise Ireland is to work with companies to identify and take action if they are overly reliant on one geographic or vertical market.

We understand the challenges facing SMEs as they research, develop and implement diversification strategies, and we have developed a suite of supports to assist companies succeed in these efforts.

The cost of market diversification can be an obstacle. In February 2018, Enterprise Ireland launched the Market Discovery Fund to help companies tackle the main challenges of preparing to enter a new market.

The fund has so far helped approximately 80 Irish companies to assess new geographic markets or to research the potential of a new product or service in an existing market.

It operates at three levels: up to 35,000; up to 75,000; and up to 150,000, supported at a grant rate of 50pc. The fund supports a diverse range of activities, including establishing market potential; identifying barriers to entry; assessing the competitive landscape; understanding market regulations, and determining the best route to market.

This research can inform the development of a robust and structured market plan, should the market opportunity be validated.

In addition to financial assistance, Enterprise Ireland offers many advisory supports. Our network of 33 overseas offices is staffed by teams with expert knowledge of the markets and sectors of greatest relevance to Irish exporters.

Over the past year, Enterprise Ireland increased the number of trade missions and events we lead to help companies to access decision makers in markets of strategic significance.

Our #IrishAdvantage campaign promotes the benefits of doing business with our companies and connects international partners with exporters. We also encourage companies to access market research reports through the Market Research Centre in our Dublin office or one of our regional locations.

The benefits of diversification are clear in the successes of Irish companies. For example, high-voltage solutions specialist H&MV Engineering has enjoyed rapid growth in recent years, particularly in the UK and Norway. CEO PJ Flanagan says EI's market research supports have been very beneficial.

"Enterprise Ireland helped us make initial contact and build relationships in new regions," he says.

"It can be lonely at first when you're trying to break into a new market, so it's great to have someone on the ground to give you support and help." H&MV's investment has delivered. The company anticipates UK turnover to reach 4m in 2018 and secured a 6m contract in Norway. Additional markets are now being assessed for potential.

At EI, we strongly believe that companies must diversify in order to thrive in today's rapidly changing economic landscape.

To learn more visit: https://globalambition.ie/supports/market-diversification-supports/
Two Singaporean businessmen with strong Irish links have emerged as the new owners of luxury hotel Sheen Falls in Kenmare, Co Kerry.

Staff have been informed in recent days that the five-star hotel has been acquired by Dr Stanley Quek and his business partner Peng Loh. The pair previously bought the Trinity Townhouse in 2016 for 7m.

Quek, who was elected as one of Trinity College's pro-chancellors earlier this month, has invested in several Irish properties over the past number of years.

He was born in Singapore, but moved to London in 1960 with his family, before graduating from Trinity in 1972 with a degree in medicine. He has a lecture theatre named after him in the Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute.

Investments have included properties on Molesworth Street and Baggot Street in Dublin.

He is believed to have bought 75 Merrion Square, which was put up for sale earlier this year with a 4m asking price. It is let to Enet.

He was the Honorary Consul General representing Ireland in Singapore from 1994 to May 2000 and is chairman of The Ireland Funds Singapore.

Quek's business partner Peng Loh is a hotelier and restaurateur who was born in Dublin in the 1970s to Singaporean parents who were practicing medicine there at the time. He studied in London before returning to Singapore over 20 years ago.

Loh is a member of Singapore Tourism Board's (STB) tourism consultative council.

As recently reported in the Irish Independent, Sheen Falls changed hands for around 17m and the new owners are understood to have plans to further develop the property.

Sheen Falls was developed in the late 1980s by Danish shipping businessman Bent Hoyer and the hotel opened in 1991.

It was bought by Palladian Hotels, which is chaired by Nigel Chapman, in 2013 for 5m, and has undergone an overhaul since then. Palladian had looked at growing the 68-room premises into a 100-bedroom hotel.
Oil prices have plunged, with futures in London slipping below $60 for the first time in a year, as a global stock-market sell-off and signs of record Saudi output helped intensify crude's late-year freefall. Brent, the international benchmark, dropped as much as 5.9pc.

Traders are focused on the growing risks of a new glut of crude after Saudi Arabia's oil minister said last Thursday that production from the world's largest exporter climbed further this month.

Oil joined a swoon in equity markets nervous about international trade and a weakening economy. The S&P 500 Index fell to its lowest mark since May while European markets lost ground after a report showing a slowdown in Germany.

Energy companies led declines, with shale drillers Concho Resources and EOG Resources each down more than 5pc. "Crude's getting shellacked," said Kyle Cooper, director of research at IAF Advisors in Houston. "The equities are giving a foreboding sign for overall economic growth. I think that's what's disturbing people."

The Saudis have signalled they will throttle back on production in December, but unless the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) and Russia can reach a new deal to constrain output in Vienna next month, analysts see the prospect of sustained oversupply in 2019, undoing the group's success over the last two years to drain global inventories.

Crude collapsed into a bear market this month after the US allowed some nations to continue buying Iranian crude. Trade tension between America and China is raising concerns over demand and President Donald Trump renewed his call on Saudi Arabia this week to cut prices further.

These factors pushed up oil's volatility to the highest since early 2016. "The increased tensions between the US and China are adding to the intensely sour sentiment in energy markets," TD Securities analysts led by Bart Melek wrote in a note to clients last Friday. A strike at key French refineries this week has added another threat to demand, he noted. "We continue to see fundamentals improving in the near-term, but caution traders against sticking their necks out until the momentum shock finds a more solid floor."

Brent for January settlement fell $3.82, or 6.1pc, to $58.78 a barrel at 11.8am in New York. It was headed for a 12pc loss on the week, according to data from the London- based ICE Futures Europe exchange. The global benchmark traded at a $7.85 premium to WTI. West Texas Intermediate for January delivery lost 6.9pc from Wednesday's close to $50.88 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Total volume traded was almost twice the 100-day average. There was no settlement last Thursday due to the US Thanksgiving holiday.

Bloomberg
We have created a monster in the banking sector. Well, make that two monsters. Banks in this country are almost twice as profitable as the rest in the eurozone and have managed to increase their profitability since the financial crash 10 years ago. That is some achievement given the economic upheaval and the impact on ordinary people.

A Central Bank report issued last week found that Irish banks are more profitable than those in other European countries. Banks here are gaining from the low cost of funds, and from the fact that they have very little competition for savings, and so pay some of the lowest deposit rates in the European Union.

Low levels of banking competition mean banks here do not have to compete for deposits, unlike banks in other countries. Separate studies have found that deposit rates paid by banks in this country are among the lowest in the EU. Mortgage rates are so high as the Central Bank has repeatedly found that home buyers are paying multiples of what is being charged in other countries in the euro area.

Earlier this month European Central Bank president Mario Draghi, speaking in Dublin, blamed a "quasi-monopoly" among banks here for the high mortgage rates.

AIB and Bank of Ireland dominate the mortgage market, accounting for 60pc of home lending. AIB made profits of 762m in the first half of this year, with Bank of Ireland making 500m over the same period.

Central Bank economist Ciaran Nevin has found that banks here are highly profitable due to what he calls "historically low levels of competition" since the crash. He looked at what is called net interest margins, a key measure of the bank profitability. It is the difference between the interest income generated by banks on the likes of mortgages and the amount of interest paid on deposits.

The only good news from the study by the Central Bank economist is that the highly profitable nature of Irish banking may attract new entrants.

A number of non-bank lenders, including An Post, Finance Ireland and Dilosk, have said they intend to enter the residential mortgage market. That is desperately needed to put manners on the big two banks in this market.

They have a stranglehold on our economic fortunes, with no signs of any official attempts to change that.

The Government does not want to upset their quasi-monopoly as it has stakes in both of them, while our competition enforcer and the Central Bank have not shown any interest in tackling the dominance of AIB and Bank of Ireland. We deserve better.
When you take out a gym membership, you usually sign up to terms and conditions which outline the gyms cancellation procedure.

Query: When I was reviewing my bank statements recently, I noticed that I am still paying for a gym membership even though I cancelled it three months ago. When I followed up with the company to get a refund, it wouldn't entertain a refund without bank statements to prove that I've paid the membership for those months. This will cost me as I have to pay to get the statements from my bank. Can the company do this? Sorcha, Cork city

Answer: When you take out a gym membership, you usually sign up to terms and conditions which outline the gym's cancellation procedure. If you then decide to cancel your membership, you need to follow this procedure to ensure your membership is cancelled correctly.

The first step is to check you followed the company's cancellation policy. Check your original contract to get further detail. Then see if you have evidence of your request to cancel - and that you got confirmation from the gym that it received your request and cancelled your membership.

If you paid by direct debit, you can cancel the direct debit by writing to both your bank and the gym to inform them of the cancellation, if you have not done so already. You should keep a copy of the cancellation in case of a dispute. When you contact your bank, you will need to provide your account details, the name of the gym and any other details relevant to the payment.

If you feel the direct debit the gym is taking from you is unauthorised, you can request a refund immediately and get a refund of payments taken up to the previous eight weeks. You can also request a refund for any unauthorised direct debits after eight weeks and within 13 months from the date on which the payment was debited. However, after the eight-week period you may need to provide additional information or proof the transaction was unauthorised.

Dodgy buy at car boot sale

Query: I recently bought a 'nearly new' phone charger at a car boot sale. I paid very little for it but when I used it, the charger started to get very hot and it has damaged my phone. The seller lives locally. Can I insist on him paying for the damage to my phone? Lorraine, Wicklow

Answer: If you buy second-hand items from another consumer, you have no consumer rights as you are not buying from a business. The item only has to be owned by the seller and fit their description. So it is important to check goods before you buy and it's very much a case of "buyer beware".

You can always contact the seller, explain your problem calmly but firmly and ask for what you want. If the seller makes you an offer, you can either accept or continue to negotiate. But be realistic in what you will accept.

Another option is to consider taking legal action but this is time-consuming and expensive and you are not guaranteed a better outcome. Before starting court action, you need to consider whether you have sufficient evidence. For example, can you say and prove with absolute certainty it was the charger that caused the damage to your phone?

Finally, always try to buy chargers from a reputable retailer and check they have a CE mark and that the manufacturer's name and contact address is present. With poor quality chargers there is a greater risk of electrocution, fire or damage to the electronic equipment.

Refund for online customer

Query: I am a small business selling hand-made cards through my social media business page. One customer recently tried to cancel her order after she received her cards, saying she doesn't like them and wants a full refund. Can she do this? I have a no-refunds policy clearly stated on my page. Jimmy, Co Monaghan

Answer: If you are a business selling online, either through a website or on social media, this means you must comply with the regulations in the Consumer Rights Directive. This directive gives online shoppers strong protections when they buy from a business in the EU. This is because when consumers shop online, they are buying from a distance so these rights allow them to examine what they have bought, see if they are happy with it and, if not, return it to the business and get a full refund.

Your customers can cancel an online order - once it is not custom-made for them - up to 14 days after they receive it. This means they have the right to cancel an order for any reason within this period and get a full refund, including any standard delivery costs they have paid. They are allowed to remove the packaging, examine the item and make sure they are happy with it.

Your customer is within her rights to return the cards to you because she doesn't like them and get a full refund. This right applies even if you stated in your terms and conditions that you have a no-refunds policy. The customer must ensure the cards are kept in good condition until they are sent back to you.

As your customer is cancelling the order because she changed her mind, she has to pay for the cost of returning the cards if you clearly stated this in your terms and conditions. If you didn't, she does not have to pay for the cost of returning them. She is entitled to a refund within 14 days of cancelling, but you can wait to refund her until you have received the cards or have proof of return postage.

Crypto-currency scam

Query: A friend of mine recently shared a post on Facebook about a get-rich-quick crypto-currency scheme. The scheme looked genuine and was fronted by a well-known celebrity. However, when I looked into it further, I found out that it's a scam. Is there anything people can do to stop these kind of scams? Joe, Raheny, Dublin 5

Answer: You may have heard stories of people making a fortune after investing in crypto-currency but, as with any form of investing, it's important to understand the risks first. Scammers are active on social media sites and other platforms trying to entice users to invest through the lure of an instant windfall.

Scammers can include images and fake claims from well-known celebrities to try to make the offer seem credible, but these are often done without the celebrity's knowledge or permission.

Be careful of potential scams when it comes to crypto-currencies. You should be wary of "initial coin offerings", which is a way of crowdfunding the launch of new currencies or companies. They are not regulated and could turn out to be scams, meaning the currency may not launch at all and your investment may be wiped out.

Also be very wary of getting involved in crypto-currencies where the main focus is on recruiting more people into the scheme, as this could in fact be a pyramid scheme and these are illegal.

There are a few things you can do to protect yourself from these types of scams. If the offer sounds too good to be true, it usually is. Research who is making the offer. Click through to the Facebook page behind the offer and see if it appears genuine by looking at things like when it was set up, background information and previous posts. Google the company and see if any reviews appear or any news articles talking about scams. See if this company has a legitimate website, office and contact number.

If you come across a scam post, let the social media site know so it can investigate.
Poland has indicated it wants to get more of its energy from nuclear reactors in an effort to draw in more than 88bn of investment to wean the coal-dependent nation off the most polluting fossil fuel.

The Energy Ministry wants the country to build 6 to 9 gigawatts of nuclear power generation by 2043 with the first 1- to-1.5 gigawatt unit to be completed in 2033, it said in an energy policy draft on Friday. Total capital expenditures for new mix are seen at 400 billion zloty (93bn) by 2040. "Nuclear energy is certainly a challenge," Energy Minister Krzysztof Tchorzewski told a news conference in Warsaw.

"We're the only country in the region that doesn't have a nuclear plant. It will provide clean power for every Pole." The remarks indicate the government is making security of energy supply a priority over cost and pressures to reduce its greenhouse gas pollution. Poland historically has emphasised energy security as an essential part of its sovereignty, fearing that Russia could use its dominant position as supplier for political ends, as has been the case with Ukraine. Poland sits atop Europe's largest coal reserve and relies on that fuel for the vast majority of its electricity.

Earlier this week, Poland awarded contracts for renewable energy capacity with electricity prices of 196 zloty a megawatt-hour, well below the at least 105 required by atomic plants, according to research from Bloomberg Intelligence.

While big European utilities including PGE, EON, EDP Renovaveis won capacity in that auction, smaller developers such as Polenergia lost out. The ministry has been struggling to reach a compromise within the government to chart a path towards a smooth coal phaseout amid strict EU carbon emission reduction targets.

The proposed strategy didn't give any details about the nuclear plants' funding or companies that will be responsible for the construction. Until now, state-controlled PGE has been in charge of the project - in limbo for almost a decade. The document envisages that burning thermal coal and lignite would account for 60pc of power production by 2030, down from about 80pc now. The share of coal will decline further by 2040 - to around 35pc. Renewables are set to account for 27pc of electricity usage in 2030. The document, which requires approval by the entire government, is released just a week before a United Nations climate summit starts in Poland.

Bloomberg
An LED lighting firm in which former Tyndall National Institute CEO Kieran Drain has a small stake has developed 'healthy' LED bulbs which disinfect environments such as hospitals.

The company has also developed LED lights for homes. The lights do not contain blue light that affects sleep-promoting melatonin production.

Products by Soraa - which was founded by Nobel prize winning scientist Dr Shuji Nakamura, an LED lighting pioneer from Japan - are also being used by hotel chains, high end fashion retailers including Louis Vuitton, and restaurants and coffee shops. Its lighting has been adopted by London's V&A Museum, British tailor Gieves & Hawkes, and Madame Tussaud's waxwork museum in San Francisco, as well as the Palace of Versailles in France.

Drain, a Co Antrim native who lives in the US and holds a PhD in industrial chemistry from Belfast's Queen's University, became COO of California-based Soraa last year.

"LED lighting is an $50bn-plus market and these lights render colours more vividly, as they would appear in natural daylight. They also differentiate how shades of white look, which is important in certain environments, and contrasts with how fluorescent or other LED lighting can make shades of white all appear to be the same shade.

"The lights also do not buzz, do not contain the harmful blue light and do not produce a stroboscopic effect - like slow flashing - that can sometimes cause headaches or eye strain."

"Our revolutionary violet LEDs can reduce the spread of bugs like MRSA in hospital environments. They provide a disinfecting action while delivering natural white light. We hope they'll help usher in a new era of white light disinfection in an effort to create healthier environments," he said.

Soraa employs 180 people and is backed by Indian-American billionaire and Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla's leading US VC firm Khosla Ventures.

Drain said the firm is focusing on increasing its presence in the European market, which he expects to be lucrative for the business, and that Ireland could potentially be a strategic location for a future office or assembly operation.

With a wealth of R&D and commercial experience under his belt, he retains close links with the academic community on this island, and is chair of the advisers to the University of Limerick's Bernal Institute, which focuses on research in the areas of biomaterials, composite materials, nanomaterials and process engineering.
UX Design Institute has closed its first funding round after securing 500,000 from Enterprise Ireland and a number of private investors.

The investment will be used to accelerate the company's expansion as it plans to increase staff numbers over the next 18 months, enter new markets and further develop its online product offering.

Established in 2013 by veteran user experience (UX) designer, Colman Walsh, the company has operated a profitable business from year one, with revenues on track to reach 1.2m this year and 2.5m in 2019.

The company was initially focused on closing the rapidly expanding UX skills gap in Ireland and now educates students globally, with 73pc of its sales coming from abroad.

UX is a design methodology which plays a similar role in the technology industry that architecture does in construction.

It provides high-level and detailed design to ensure digital products are easy to use and fit for purpose.

UX is championed by tech giants such as Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon.

It's a fast-growing sector with an estimated 580,000 UX designers needed in the tech industry in the EMEA alone by 2024. In June of this year the Institute launched the world's only university-accredited online UX course.

The company says demand has been strong with over 400 students enrolled since launch.

Last month the company announced it was hiring for 16 new positions to add to the seven staff members in its Dublin offices, with new positions to span sales, marketing, operations and finance.
It's amazing to think that independent publisher Tramp Press was only established in 2014. During this short but brilliant existence, they've published several groundbreaking, daring books in fiction and non-fiction: by Sara Baume, Mike McCormack, Joanna Walsh and Emilie Pine, among others.

Tramp has also produced two short-form collections, and in that vein, they now bring us something completely different: a selection of Irish science-fiction stories from the 1830s to 1960s. Not just different in that this is, I think, their first foray into the genre; but also, as editor Jack Fennell points out in his introduction, most of us "would be hard-pressed to name an Irish sci-fi writer".

It's not a field our authors have ever been associated with. Literary fiction, yes, alongside poetry, drama, crime, horror (especially Gothic) and humour - but not science fiction.

This remains true today; Hibernian versions of JG Ballard or William Gibson are basically non-existent. But in the past, Fennell argues, this country actually had a strong tradition of sci-fi: if you expand your definition of the genre a little, and accept that it shares borders with others, such as horror and Lovecraft-style "weird fiction".

So here, for instance, he includes 'Mad Scientist' stories like William Maginn's 'The New Frankenstein' and 'The Professor's Experiment' by Margaret Wolfe Hungerford, monster-horror 'The Great Beast of Kafue' (Clotilde Graves) and Charlotte McManus's 'The Sorcerer', with its ambiguous blend of science and magic. Meanwhile, in 'The Diamond Lens' by Fitz-James O'Brien, one man's obsession with microscopes spirals off into a fantastical tale of humanoid creatures, miniature replicas of us, somehow existing inside a single raindrop.

Whether you consider this to be a bit of a cheat on Fennell's part, or an acceptable tweak, depends I suppose on how much of a sci-fi literalist you are. For me, these stories are as close to fantasy as they are to science fiction.

There's a supernatural or mystical undertone; events are often unexplained and aren't always plausible within the physical laws of the universe as we know it. In the end, a higher suspension of disbelief is required. Indeed, referencing Frankenstein again, I also consider Mary Shelley's great novel to be more of a supernatural, or perhaps preternatural, horror than proper sci-fi.

But that's maybe being overly pedantic. For one thing, these are all fine, entertaining tales. More importantly, many of the central themes and narrative staples of sci-fi are impossible anyway: time travel, interstellar exploration and so on. They make for cool stories but, in reality, they're as absurd as any Cthulhu.

The book also has plenty of "straight" sci-fi, for those of a more militant aesthetic. Frances Power Cobbe's 'The Age of Science', for instance, is a witty, clever and oddly modern-feeling (it was written in 1877) satire, told through a 1977 newspaper retrieved by some intertemporal wizardry, about how science would come to dominate all life, as dogmatic and self-regarding as any theocracy.

Meanwhile 'Mercia, the Astronomer Royal' (Amelia Garland Mears) could be an excerpt from Iain M Bank's Culture series.

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Fennell's exemplary introduction draws interesting connections between sci-fi and Ireland's literary heritage, right back to mythology, "aisling" dream-poetry and early Christian "fantasy-voyage epics" called immrama. It's a fascinating set-up for a thoroughly enjoyable collection, which itself is another feather in Tramp's well-plumed cap.

Darragh McManus's novels include 'Shiver the Whole Night Through' and 'The Polka Dot Girl'
Dubai's Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) has awarded a contract for the construction of internal roads at Al Khawaneej 2 network spanning 77 km, comprising 68 km of single roads and 9 km of collector dual carriageways.



This comes as part of the implementation of the five-year plan endorsed by HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai to construct internal roads in several residential areas of Dubai.



The announcement was made during a session chaired by Mattar Al Tayer, the director-general and chairman of the board of executive directors.



"The construction of internal roads at Al Khawaneej 2 stems from RTAs commitment towards improving the infrastructure of Dubais residential areas, which covers road construction, street lighting and rainwater drainage systems," stated Al Tayer.



"Such works are a necessity due to the demographic and urban expansion, and contributes to the general welfare and happiness of the people in the emirate," he added.



The scope of work includes the construction of internal roads along with the associated infrastructure works such as rainwater drainage network, enhancements to the electricity and water networks, and street lighting.



Al Tayer said RTA was also progressing in the construction of internal roads for the Mohammed bin Rashid Housing Est project at Oud Al Mateena 1 which covers the construction of internal roads extending 7 km and linking them with the surrounding roads network to ensure safe and smooth access to and from nearby areas.



"The project, also includes street lights, roadside parkings and pedestrian walkways, and is expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2019," he added.



The RTA chief said work was currently under way on the initial phase of the internal roads project at Sama Al Jaddaf extending 12 km.



Under this project, several junctions will be constructed, including two signalised junctions and street lighting works.



It is aimed at improving the roads network in the area and link it with the surrounding roads such as Al Khail Road to the south and Sheikh Rashid Street to the north, besides ensuring smooth traffic flow in the area.



"RTA has also completed internal roads projects at Nad Al Sheba 4 and Hatta. Works included the construction of 56 km roads; 50 km at Nad Al Sheba 4 (District 282) and 6 km at Nad Al Sheba 1 (District 618). It also covered utility works such as street lighting, and rainwater drainage systems, said Al Tayer.



"The internal roads Project at Makan Community, Hatta which has 346 houses built by Mohammed bin Rashid Housing Est, included the construction of 8 km internal roads, car parks, pavements and street-lighting," he added.-TradeArabia News Service
Tributes have been paid to US magician and actor Ricky Jay.

The performer, once lauded as perhaps the most gifted sleight-of-hand artist alive in a 1993 New Yorker article, has died aged 72 of natural causes.

Fellow magician Penn Jillette, of duo Penn & Teller, called Jay, in his tribute on Twitter, a genius and one of the best who ever lived.

Oh man, Ricky Jay. Just a genius. One of the best who ever lived. Well all miss you, Ricky. Oh man.  Penn Jillette (@pennjillette) November 25, 2018

Jay used his knowledge as a magician to help as an adviser on films such as Forrest Gump, The Prestige and The Illusionist, and he also starred in movies including Boogie Nights, Magnolia and Tomorrow Never Dies.

Fellow actor Neil Patrick Harris, of How I Met Your Mother and A Series of Unfortunate Events fame, called Jays passing such a profound loss.

Master magician and historian Ricky Jay has passed away. The breadth of his knowledge and appreciation for magic and the allied arts was truly remarkable. Such sad news, such a profound loss. #RIP https://t.co/VRYRxhkQKr  Neil Patrick Harris (@ActuallyNPH) November 25, 2018

Born Richard Jay Potash, the magician was known for his acute control over a deck of cards, whether that be conjuring an audience members chosen card or throwing one into the rind of a watermelon.

One of his shows was called Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants and actor and writer Stephen Fry said he was blown away by it in his tribute, while also commending Jays performance in the HBO series Deadwood.

Sorry to hear of Ricky Jay's death. He had the chops alright. Saw him and his "52 Assistants" (in an air conditioned tent to keep his fingertips dry) and was blown away. Impossible feats. His book "Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women" a masterpiece.  Stephen Fry (@stephenfry) November 25, 2018

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(damned good as a total creep in HBO's Deadwood too)  Stephen Fry (@stephenfry) November 25, 2018

Fry also commented on Jays book Learned Pigs & Fireproof Women, one of many the magician wrote, including Jays Journal Of Anomalies, Cards As Weapons and Dice: Deception, Fate And Rotten Luck.

Seinfeld actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus wrote on Twitter: Rest In Peace, Ricky Jay. You were an unsurpassed artist and an exceptionally kind soul. I will miss you.

Rest In Peace, Ricky Jay. You were an unsurpassed artist and an exceptionally kind soul. I will miss you, xo, your pal, Louis.  Julia Louis-Dreyfus (@OfficialJLD) November 25, 2018

Born in Brooklyn, the New York Times said Jay did not like to reveal his age or discuss his childhood and so reports on his year of birth vary between 1946 and 1948, although most said he was 72.
Me and Shane are getting married tomorrow. It took a while. Thirty-two years, to be exact. Marriage is a scary business, a big commitment. You might know that you have met 'The One', the minute you lay eyes on them across a crowded bar. You might have been mesmerised, enchanted, and entirely convinced that you couldn't live without them. But you have to be certain.

We met for the first time in London when I was only 16, the minute he walked into the pub. Admittedly it was a very quiet, suburban pub but Shane was unmissable, tall, pale and skinny, with jug ears and missing teeth, sporting a mobster Crombie and an air of monstrous arrogance.

I was awe-struck by him. I became consumed by the thought of him. He says that he felt the same way, that we were destined to be together. But ours were not to be easy, uncomplicated lives and ours was not to be an uncomplicated love affair.

We grabbed hold of each other, became glued together and hung on for a ride that took us through a world of glamour and fame, creativity and ecstasy, drink, drugs and crazy, wild sex and on to madness, self-destruction and despair, violence, death, betrayal, rage, separation, and sadness and on and on towards revelation, renewal, compassion and hope for the future. Our real life together makes the Fairytale Of New York couple from Shane's Christmas song seem tame and orderly.

When you meet 'The One', you have a choice. You can dive in, marry them while you are infatuated with each other and hope for the best. Or you can wait until you are sure that the honeymoon phase has worn off and you are seeing each other in the light of having lived, no longer young, beautiful and indestructible.

When you realise that for every characteristic that attracted you, and intrigued you, there are things that you loathe and despise about each other. There have been times when you have wished each other dead - you see each other as flawed, nasty, fragile, maybe even hideous.

But when you get there, if you still look into each other's eyes and laugh at the sheer joy of each other's existing; if you still see each other's faces and know that these are the most beautiful faces that you have ever seen and know that this person is the one you would chase to hell and back, then I think you are on the right track.

Marriage is a ritual that can trigger you. I generally hate even going to other people's weddings. There are all kinds of ideas and images of how it should be, the fairytale wedding. The blushing, beautiful, virginal bride in the big white dress, the handsome, dashing groom who will carry her over the threshold of their perfect home where they will live their perfect life and have their perfect kids. And the huge, fabulous wedding with hundreds of guests, rivers of Champagne, cakes, page boys and flower girls and endless speeches.

It is hard, when you have to face the fact that you may not be that perfect couple, and you don't even know if you would want all that stuff, when the thought of a huge white wedding terrifies the life out of you.

It can be embarrassing, even, when people want to make a fuss on your behalf and you would rather be sitting quietly at home, watching the telly. And that's not even mentioning the agony of choosing who should be invited, and realising that your big day is inevitably going to alienate some of the people that you love, because you simply can't have everybody there.

Shane and I are both introverts and we decided that the only solution was to just elope together to someplace that we know nobody and nobody knows us, and keep it a secret. Which is what we have done. There will be a tiny civil ceremony in an anonymous City Hall, there will be no white dress, nobody will be 'given away', there will be no flower girls or page boys or matrons of honour. We haven't even got wedding rings.

But I have discovered something about weddings that I had not realised. People really, really want to show that they love the people that they care about. And no matter how awkward or introverted you are, the love that they have for you finds a way to smash through the walls that you put up. And when it happens, it is a magnificent thing.

We all want as much love as possible, and we mostly all try to manipulate people into loving us by making ourselves as attractive as possible. But some of us don't know how good it can feel to just be loved for who you are without having to be anything other than what you already intrinsically are. And sometimes we hide from love because we are afraid that people will see us as we are. But people can surprise you, the ways they get through to you.

So, much as we might have liked our wedding to be a non-event, and because we have found it impossible to keep it a total secret, a few of our friends and family have elected to make it a tiny but beautiful thing.

Some of them have helped with the paperwork and planning (I don't know how I ever passed an exam, I am allergic to paperwork). A few of them have travelled from far-flung places to be with us for moral support. My nephew Olan has cut short his holiday to be Shane's best man.

We have a Breatharian friend who has come all the way from Thailand to have dinner with us, even though she doesn't actually eat. Bella Freud has given me a beautiful red dress which is perfectly unfussy. Johnny Depp is going to be the wedding guitarist. My nieces are going to do my make-up. And my mother and sisters are bringing a cake and flowers.

It will be weird, but I think it will be lovely. We may even have a speech.
Garda forensic officers at the scene of the fire at the Caiseal Mara Hotel in Moville where 100 immigrants are due to arrive to in the next few weeks. (North West Newspix)

The people of a small Co Donegal seaside town have come together to stand behind a group of asylum seekers after an arson attack on the local hotel where they were due to stay.

The first group of an overall group of 100 asylum seekers were due to arrive in the Inishowen town of Moville in early December.

However, a huge shadow was cast over the plan after an arson attack on the Caiseal Mara Hotel in the early hours of Sunday morning.

The attack which damaged the reception area and sent smoke damage throughout the building came just hours before the meeting to arrange a welcome party for the asylum seekers was held.

Expand Close The scene of the fire at the Caiseal Mara Hotel in Moville where 100 immigrants are due to arrive to in the next few weeks. (North West Newspix) / Facebook

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That meeting went ahead with more than 150 people turning up to show their support for the asylum seekers.

Garda Inspector Goretti Sheridan confirmed to the meeting that the fire had been started deliberately.

A Garda forensic team spent yesterday examining the scene of the attack while they are also compiling hours of CCTV footage in and around the hotel on Foyle Street.

One man, understood to be the owner of the hotel, was injured in the attack and taken to Letterkenny General Hospital.

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His injuries are understood to be not life-threatening.

His daughter was also understood to be in the building at the time of the attack at around 4am but was not injured.

The father and daughter are understood to have been working in the hotel when the assailants struck.

Many of those who attended the meeting in Moville's Methodist Hall, organised by Failte Inishowen, said they were horrified by what had happened in their town.

Over 150 people attended the meeting and all of those who spoke reflected an eagerness for the Direct Provision plan for the displaced people to go ahead in Moville.

The principal of the local Moville Community College, Anthony Duggan, said the attack sent out a very poor message from Moville.

He said it was ironic when the Inishowen town was preparing to put up its Christmas tree that such an act should happen.

He added that the arson attack meant that the Christmas message of welcoming had been completely lost as a result.

Local county councillor Martin Farren said that while he condemned the attack, he was immensely proud of the reaction of the people of Moville to the incident.

"I said that the people of Moville would respond to the needs of these people and they have. We obviously condemn this attack but I felt immense pride in the people of Moville today who stood behind these people.

"We will welcome these people as we said we would and nothing has changed because of that.

"It was heartening to hear so much goodness and kindness spoken at the meeting," he said.

Councillor Farren said he had spoken with Eugene Banks, Principal Adviser at the Reception and Integration Agency and he confirmed the Direct Provision Centre will be going ahead at the hotel.

"He said he will assess the damage and will assess when the building can be ready for these people but it will still be going ahead," he said.

Local resident Enda Craig said no right-thinking person can condone this "shameful act."

However, he added that the Department of Justice should have had more sense than to release "scant details" of the project in the manner in which they did two weeks ago.

He said "A vacuum was created and filled with numerous wild and unfounded allegations of racism and other on social media regarding Direct Provision Centres and their inhabitants.

"Nothing justifies this action but civil servants would need to acknowledge that this is the last possible way to let this news be known in the community. Their behaviour helped to fan the flames of deep concern felt in the locality," he said.

The Donegal Intercultural Platform said the attack had all the hallmarks of a racist arson attack.

Spokesman Paul Kernan said "Whilst we are fierce critics of the unsatisfactory Direct provision system, we offered out welcome and support to the new residents, many of who have undergone a traumatic journey to arrive in Ireland to seek asylum.

"Our steering group has supported the inclusive efforts of local people, particularly the Inishowen Welcomes group and Failte Inishowen who have taken the lead in offering support and assistance to the refugee families.

"This possible attack echoes the racist house burnings in previous decades in US cities like Boston, and the sectarian arson attacks of the troubles in town and cities in the North of Ireland.

"It also mimics the recent rise of racist fire-bombings in Belfast were properties earmarked for or occupied by Black and Minority Ethnic families were targeted.

"Donegal is the home of Cead Mile Failte  the hundred thousand welcomes - and these actions do not reflect the views or intentions of Donegal people of all ethnic and faith backgrounds.

"We hope there will be a speedy assessment of the damage caused and prompt repairs made so that the families can find a welcome shelter before the Christmas holidays.

"If the building cannot be easily repaired we call on local agencies to secure alternative accommodation in the area until such times as the fire damage can be made good.

"If this was indeed a racist hate crime then we condemn it. Also, we call on everyone to join together and say loud and clear  there is room at the Inn this Christmas and throughout the year."

Nobody has yet been arrested or questioned in relation to the attack.

Gardai in Buncrana are leading the investigation and appealing for witnesses, asking anyone with information or anyone who was in the area that may have seen suspicious activity on Foyle Street prior or after the fire to contact Buncrana Garda Station on (074) 9320540 the Garda Confidential Line or any Garda Station.

An article in yesterday's Irish Independent reveals how plans for the centre have divided locals in the small town.
As he served with British Intelligence in Persia and later Palestine, Bill Magan dreamed of the hunting fields of Westmeath which he had abandoned to go to war, and of re-establishing himself in Ireland in the style of an old Gaelic chieftain.

The Magans of Umma-more, a townland between the villages of Moate and Ballymore, on the edge of Moyvoughly bog, were said to be descended from the ancient Gaelic MacDermott Roe clan and over the centuries, had acquired castles, manor houses and estates stretching to 20,000 acres across Meath, Westmeath and Offaly.

In the end, it wasn't Bill Magan who re-established the connection with his homeland, but he did live to see one of his two surviving sons, George, a highly successful London banker and former Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ireland, make a triumphant return to one of the most sumptuously restored mansions in the country.

Lord George Magan of Castletown settled not in the Midlands like his ancestors, but in the splendid surrounding of Castletown Cox, a 513-acre estate once owned by the Earl of Dunraven, in the fertile lands on the Kilkenny/Waterford border near Carrick-on-Suir.

He not only meticulously restored the great Palladian pile but also filled its rooms with Old Masters and other treasures - only to then see it go 'sale agreed' for 20m last August by the Castletown Foundation Ltd, a Jersey-administered trust which he himself had established.

The sale of the most splendid stately home in private hands in Ireland went through, even though it was opposed by the Lord of the Manor and the Edgehill Trust, established by Lord Magan for the benefit of his two children, Edward and Henrietta.

The intended buyer has paid off a 14.5m borrowing secured on the property by a finance company, Sancus Jersey, in anticipation of closing the sale and to prevent what the Castletown Foundation believes would be a "fire sale" of the great house.

In the High Court in Dublin last Wednesday, the saga got even sorrier for the wealthy Conservative Party donor and his wife Wendy, who live in a 7m (7.9m) pad at Cambridge Place, Kensington, London. Mr Justice Robert Haughton ruled that the Castletown Foundation Ltd is entitled to summary judgment for 571,893 against Lord Magan in respect of rent arrears which have accumulated since he put Castletown Cox into a trust and rented it back for his own use.

For a man who values his privacy to such an extent that he wouldn't reveal who was behind the fabulous restoration of the mansion, and whose wealth was once estimated at between 68m and 226m, depending on which Rich List you read, this publicity could only have come as a double blow.

But it certainly adds another layer to the already colourful history of both the Magan family and Castletown Cox.

One ancestor, Francis Magan, a barrister, is credited with betraying Lord Edward Fitzgerald to the authorities in Dublin Castle, leading to Fitzgerald's capture and death. Another ancestor, William Magan known as ''The Magnificent'' of Clonearl, Co Offaly, cemented the family fortunes by marrying heiress Elizabeth Loftus of Killyon, Co Meath, and in turn, their only daughter, Elizabeth Georgina Magan, lived like a miser while filling her homes with a mixture of treasures and trash.

The house at the centre of the drama, Castletown Cox, was built of stone and Kilkenny marble on lands owned by the Duke of Ormond between 1767 and 1771 for Michael Cox, the Archbishop of Cashel. It passed to the Villiers-Stuart family and was sold in 1926 by the Earl of Dunraven when he moved into the family seat in Adare, Co Limerick.

The son of Major-General E.R. Blacque sold it to the self-styled 'Baron' Brian de Breffny, the bisexual son of a London taxi driver who was born Brian Lees. He settled there with his adopted aristocratic title, and his exotic second wife, Ulli, and is credited locally with saving the house which was then in a state of disrepair. De Breffny, author of Castles of Ireland, was said to have hosted lavish parties at Castletown Cox which lasted for days, replete with champagne and caviar, and where the servants witnessed decadence on an epic scale.

This wistful longing of the Magans for a return to their ancestral homeland appears to have been fostered by William 'Bill' Magan who wrote the acclaimed book, Umma-More: The story of an Irish family, which the writer Charles Lysaght described as "a social history" that "narrated their evolution over succeeding generations into members of the Anglo-Irish Protestant ascendency".

After an idyllic Irish childhood, William 'Bill' Magan was sent to public school in England, returning briefly in 1938 to Killyon Manor near Hill-of-Down, Co Meath where he became Master of the Westmeath hunt. Fluent in Farsi, he served with distinction in Persia during the war, preventing German infiltration of Afghanistan and India. Afterwards he rose through the British Intelligence service to become Director of F Branch (counter subversion) and C Branch (protective security division) of MI5 before his retirement in 1968.

He had four sons, two of whom died before his death at the age of 101 in January, 2010.

His son George, a banker and financier, is said to have made 22.6m alone from the sale of London's Hambro Magan bank. He bought Castletown Cox in 1999 after it had lain idle for many years after the ''Baron'' died of cancer at the age of 58. The restoration of the mansion took several years to complete and although Lord Magan, his wife Wendy and their children Edward and Henrietta kept a low profile, they are said to have ridden out with the local hunt, the Kilmoganny Harriers. Because of his international business and Irish connections, George Magan was appointed to the ''Court'' of the Bank of Ireland in 2003 and succeeded telecoms tycoon Denis O'Brien as Deputy Governor in 2008, when the share price was 15.46. He resigned with other members of the board following the financial collapse and the Government bail-out.

In 2005, Lord Magan established the Castletown Foundation Ltd. The Castletown Foundation became the owner of Castletown Cox and Lord Magan rented it and a licence to use the fine art hanging on its walls for 100,000 a year. But the Foundation claims that the upkeep of the house costs 500,000 a year and Lord Magan, who was raised to the peerage on the advice of then British prime minister David Cameron in 2011, hadn't paid the rent since 2013. The Foundation then discontinued his tenancy. He counter-claimed that he had spent 361,000 of his own money on its upkeep.

The case has transfixed the last of the 'bluebloods' living in Irish historic homes. The High Court was told last month that Lord Magan regularly used Castletown Cox prior to his tenancy being revoked. Then on May 23 last, a "large gang" cut chains to the gates and forcibly took control of the estate when Lord Magan wasn't there.

At a High Court hearing in October, Mr Rossa Fanning SC said that Lord Magan was in "straitened financial circumstances" and had obtained a loan from a fellow peer, Lord Ashcroft, to stave off a bankruptcy application in London. Lord Magan confirmed to The Daily Mail that he was in dispute with Bank of Ireland "over certain financial arrangements that have been in place for some time" and he expected the matter to be settled:"Our family net worth is very substantial and I am sure that with a constructive approach matters between myself and Bank of Ireland can be resolved satisfactorily."

Things have moved on inexorably since then and Lord Magan and his family have been forced to retreat from what is arguably one of the most beautiful homes in Ireland to their English domain. Bizarrely, the matter of the cancelled tenancy of Castletown Cox and Lord Magan will be adjudicated by the Residential Tenancies Board.
Gardai may receive formal complaints this week relating to some of the surviving alleged child abusers on file in Scouting Ireland.

Detectives with the Garda's Protective Services Bureau will meet Scouting Ireland's child safety review team and the child and family agency Tusla later this week.

The meeting is expected to discuss the 71 alleged perpetrators and 108 alleged victims identified to date in a review of historic child abuse at Scouting Ireland.

Many of the alleged perpetrators are dead and sources estimate up to 20 survive, none of whom are involved in Scouting Ireland.

Gardai are expecting to receive more detail on the survivors from Tusla and Scouting Ireland's review team but will require formal complaints in order to open or re-open investigations into any of the alleged abusers. A key concern will be whether any of the surviving alleged abusers have access to children.

Ian Elliot, the child safety consultant who conducted the review of historic complaints, told an Oireachtas Committee that victims have been coming forward in increasing numbers. A helpline, set up last week by Scouting Ireland, was reported to have received up to 20 calls from victims. As of this weekend, it is understood no complaints have been made to the Garda's Protective Services Bureau, which investigates child abuse.
Mark was an excited six-year-old when he joined the Catholic Boy Scouts. His family was enthusiastic too. His mother joined in with other mothers baking for cake sales and jumble sales to fund scouting trips. The Scout Master became a good friend of his parents, dropping in on the family unannounced.

He recalls vividly his first camping trip. The Scout Master showered him with praise and put him in charge of the tuck shop, a prestigious and responsible post for a six-year-old. Mark, who cannot give his real name, recalls now that first night when the Scout Master crept into his tent during the night.

"He was inside my sleeping bag, I was half asleep, half awake," he says. After that it all made sense when the Scout Master would tell the boys that "the best scout would get to sleep near the leader's tent".

Mark's childhood was one of relentless sexual abuse. He alleges that he was abused by the Scout Master through the late 1960s and the 1970s, on camping trips and close to home. At school, he was abused by two Christian Brothers. He never told anyone.

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Many years later, when he was in his late 30s, having endured a troubled and self-destructive life, he went to his local Garda Station and named the three men he alleged sexually abused him. One Christian Brother admitted to abusing Mark and was convicted. The Scout Master and the other Christian Brother denied his claims and were not prosecuted.

Mark is suing the Christian Brothers and Scouting Ireland. At one point, the brothers and the scouts offered him a joint settlement but the offer was not followed through, and his case is still before the High Court.

Mark's former Scout Master is believed to be among the cases that have been forwarded by Scouting Ireland to the child and family agency, Tusla, after rifling through hundreds of complaints locked inside a filing cabinet at the organisation's headquarters in Larch Hill, south Dublin.

Officially referred to as a "review of historic cases", it was conducted by the foremost child safety expert, Ian Elliot, who once headed the Catholic Church's child protection body and now is an independent consultant.

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He was brought in by Scouting Ireland's board in 2016 to examine how the organisation handled a sexual assault allegation.

He found the handling of that complaint to be so wanting that two years later he is still embedded at Scouting Ireland's HQ, elbow deep in confidential files of past child abuse complaints, to assess how they were handled.

For an organisation that includes 14,000 volunteer leaders and 40,000 children, one could ask why this exercise was not done sooner.

Especially given his preliminary findings, which were disclosed by Minister for Children, Katherine Zappone, to an Oireachtas committee last week. Mr Elliot had identified 71 alleged abusers who abused children between the 1960s and the 1980s. Fourteen of these alleged perpetrators had multiple victims.

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There are 108 alleged victims.

While the figures are stark and disturbing, the stories behind them are even more important. How many of these 71 alleged perpetrators were reported to the authorities? What did the authorities do with those complaints? How many of those alleged perpetrators were prosecuted?

State investigations into child abuse within the Catholic Church diocese and in residential institutions have shown time and again how historically crimes against children were covered up to protect the reputation of the Church, of priests, of religious orders, in some cases with the collusion of gardai. Were the various scouting organisations any different?

Public records show that the notorious and prolific paedophile priest Sean Fortune was a scout leader in Wexford, until he was thrown out by the Catholic Boy Scouts of Ireland, although he tried to re-join the organisation in Northern Ireland.

Jack Dunne, a former garda, was a scout master from 1953 to 1976, and abused boys on camping trips in Dublin and Waterford, and in his car when he drove them home after scout meetings. He was convicted in 2012 of abusing four children and died while awaiting trial on charges of convicting six others.

According to informed sources, investigating gardai discovered that Dunne had been reported to gardai in the early 1960s but could find no record that the complaint was acted upon.

John Lawlor, chief executive of Scouting Ireland, was "five minutes behind the desk" in 2012 when he was told that a scouter removed in the early 1970s had returned to Scouting Ireland.

He told an Oireachtas committee in May that he was worried there might be more and ordered a review of the old files, "traffic-lighting" them as red, amber or green.

He said "fortunately" they ended up with "seven amber light" files - which meant "something to do but it was not immediate". Sean Sherlock, the Labour TD, has now raised questions over that exercise, given what Ian Elliot told the committee last week.

Ian Elliot had neither backstories nor answers for the Committee on Children but he did elaborate a little on his ongoing work.

He suggested that there was more to gathering the information on past cases than going through files and records. He derived his list of 71 suspects from a variety of sources. These included handwritten notes and people within Scouting Ireland, who'd had concerns over many years about particular individuals. Names were also offered by victims, whom Mr Elliot said were coming forward in ever increasing numbers to share their experiences, reflecting the confidence that they would now be listened to.

The alleged perpetrators abused the children when they were away from the protective settings of their homes. Residences, camps and jamborees, were "high risk". "Abuse is frequently reported from those activities," he said.

"One of the issues that has come to light is the discovery of really a very serious perpetrator on which we did not have a file," Ian Elliot told the committee.

"It was a situation that was discovered as a consequence of a victim coming forward and saying this happened to me. We were not aware in the organisation that that person was a perpetrator. A simple review of the paper work is only part of the story."

Most alleged abusers are dead, the committee was told. The names of those who are still alive have been reported to Tusla and An Garda Siochana. While Mr Elliot could say that none were still working with Scouting Ireland, he could not say whether any still had contact with children.

His figures related to the 1960s to the 1980s. This implies that there are later years that have yet to be examined.

The impact on Scouting Ireland has been devastating, to the point where the board was reportedly warned that it could face extinction as a result of the legal fall-out.

Scouting Ireland is the result of the merger in 2003 of the Scouting Association of Ireland, and the Catholic Boy Scouts of Ireland. But the loose ends of governance were never properly tied up.

Sources at Scouting Ireland say that the organisation had been working on this issue for a number of years and point out that it was the board who hired Ian Elliot in the first place. He was brought in to report on the handling of a complaint made in 2016 by a woman who said she had been raped by a volunteer at a camping trip 10 years earlier, when she was 18.

The volunteer was suspended from scouting while the matter was investigated. When no prosecution followed, the volunteer was reinstated and, later, promoted. There was no further vetting of his suitability for the role. During his suspension, he persuaded other volunteers to lobby on his behalf. Mr Elliot presented his report to the board at the beginning of this year. It criticised four senior volunteers and recommended new child protection measures and a full review of historic child abuse cases.

Long before Mr Elliot's report was leaked to the media in April, it had already created huge tension and division at board level, sources said.

Against a backdrop of intense public scrutiny, the Minister suspended its 876,000 annual State funding until it got its house in order.

Chief Scout, Christy McCann, stepped aside pending an independent investigation into the handling of the rape allegation. Senator Jillian van Turnhout, dispatched to look into the organisation's governance, later produced a report highlighting "dysfunction" and "blind loyalty" towards some key figures.

The controversy has forced Scouting Ireland to implement important changes that it says were coming anyway. On October 6, a new board was voted in and new governance structures put in place. Directors have met 17 times since then, and have "hit the ground running", according to chairwoman Aisling Kelly.

A recruitment campaign is underway for a child safety executive - one of the things to raise eyebrows of Oireachtas committee members last week was Mr Elliot's revelation that at the annual scouting jamboree at Stradbally, two members of his child safety team received "16 to 18 referrals" on child safety issues, though none related to sex abuse, Scouting Ireland later clarified.

There is still no sign of the independent barristers' report into the handling of the rape allegation.

The publicity generated since Ian Elliot's preliminary findings has led to a surge of former scouts contacting various authorities.

They include at least 15 people who have contacted Scouting Ireland while a smaller number have come forward to the Garda and to the Rape Crisis Centre's networks around the country.

Scouting Ireland is already being sued by victims of child abuse, some cases lodged with the High Court long before the current storm erupted, and other proceedings issued this year.

They include actions arising from the conviction of the late garda Jack Dunne and David O'Brien, a former postman jailed in 2015 for abusing six boys on scout camping trips in the 1970s and 1980s, creeping into their tents by night to fondle them.

Scouting Ireland is exploring a compensation fund for victims, is offering counselling to those who contact it, and is putting together a victim's charter. Not before time. According to Ian Elliot, new cases will continue to come forward in increasing numbers. Not because they have been jolted by the publicity. But because now they can be confident that they will be listened to.

Contact the Scouting Ireland helpline at 1800-221199 and Tusla's helpline at 1800 805 665 from 9am to 4pm.
Fewer than 100 weight loss (bariatric) operations are being carried out on obese patients in our public hospitals annually, when this number should be around 1,500 annually, a medical meeting in Dublin heard last week.

A number of speakers at the Irish Society of Gastroenterology (ISG) 2018 Annual Winter Meeting pointed out that Ireland is on track to become one of the fattest nations in the world if current obesity trends continue, with 39pc of Irish adults being overweight and 18pc obese.

Obesity is leading to huge increases in diabetes, cancer and liver-related diseases, putting increased pressure on our health services.

Bariatric surgery, including gastric banding or bypass, is only available publicly in Galway or Dublin, where the waiting lists are as long as four to five years.

Chris Collins, Consultant General and Upper GI surgeon in Galway University Hospital, told the ISG meeting that current waiting times for bariatric surgery for obese patients were unacceptable, and the fewer than 100 surgeries a year being provided in the public system came nowhere near meeting growing demand.

He said that given our current waiting lists and population size, Ireland should be carrying out 1,500 such surgeries a year in our public hospitals but the capacity and beds to do this are not available.

However, following the work of the Taskforce on Obesity and the appointment of obesity expert Prof Donal O'Shea, of RTE Operation Transformation fame, to the role of HSE Obesity lead, dedicated funding for obesity services is due to be made available by the HSE next year.

This should lead to bariatric surgery being rolled out in other regions, and an increase in the number of operations being carried out to 150 next year, and up to 750 annually within the next five years, Mr Collins told the Sunday Independent.

The ISG Meeting also heard how hospital admissions for alcohol-related liver disease and cancers soared over a 10-year period.

Alcoholic liver disease (ALD)-related hospital admissions in Ireland increased by 23pc between 2006-2016, while hepatocellular carcinoma (liver cancer)-related admissions increased by 300pc in the same period, research presented at the ISG meeting showed.

Researchers from the National Liver Transplant Unit in St Vincent's University Hospital, Dublin, examined HSE data on ALD admissions between 2006-2016 in all acute public hospitals across Ireland.

In total, 3,532 discharges for patients with ALD were recorded during the 10-year period. Over half (57pc) of these patients had advanced liver damage (cirrhosis), and about one in 10 of these patients died in hospital.

Less than a third (30pc) of those discharged were under the care of an appropriate specialist (gastroenterologist) upon leaving hospital.

In 2016, 40,482 public hospital bed days across Ireland were taken up by patients with ALD.
Money raised for motor neuron disease by Fr Tony Coote, the Dublin priest who was diagnosed with the incurable neurological condition earlier this year, through his 550km fundraiser, has increased hopes for a breakthrough in the medical treatment of the condition.

Consultant neurologist, Professor Orla Hardiman of Trinity College Dublin told the Irish Independent she believes research into the disease, which progressively robs sufferers of their physical faculties, is on the cusp of a breakthrough in the next two to five years.

Fr Coote raised over 550,000 through his Walk While You Can pilgrimage from Letterkenny to Ballydehob. Half of this money has been earmarked to fund healthcare services for the 400 sufferers of motor neuron disease (MND) in Ireland. There are currently only three dedicated nurses looking after them, and they are funded entirely by charitable donations.

The other half of the money will go towards a research project headed up by Professor Hardiman which will focus on testing brain wave and imaging patterns to better understand how the disease progresses and identify which drugs it responds best to.

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This money is vital. We are going to use the 250,000 to leverage further money to build a programme to understand brain activity and brain wave changes, she explained. These clinical trials need to raise 8 million in Ireland and this will be part of a wider 40 million project across Europe.

Motor Neuron disease is not an untreatable disease  it is an underfunded disease, Professor Hardiman said and explained that there have been no significant advances in its treatment for 24 years due to a lack of research funding.

In Ireland about 150 new cases of MND are diagnosed every year. According to Professor Hardiman, this is not much lower than the number of people diagnosed with MS but MS sufferers have good treatments now and so can hope to live a much longer life than MND sufferers.

There are about 350 and 400 people living with motor neuron disease in Ireland at the moment whereas there are 7,000 people living with MS in Ireland. So that shows the difference and the tragedy of motor neuron disease  it is a life shortening disease.

She spoke to the Irish Independent following an advance screening of a new documentary 'Walking the Walk' on Fr Tony Cootes epic walk which will air on RTE One on December 6 at 10.15pm.

The documentary follows Fr Tony Cootes dogged and inspirational journey through Donegal, Sligo, Mayo, Galway, Clare, Limerick and Cork. Along the way, people join the walk, with communities the length of the country turning out to welcome and support him.

His inspirational campaign has increased awareness of MND according to Professor Hardiman who commented to the Irish Independent, I am not religious  I lost my faith a long time ago, but this man is like a latter-day saint.

Roger Childs, head of Religious Broadcasting at RTE told the Irish Independent that though the documentary is about a priest going on a walk, it is actually about what it means to be a human being.

He added, What we have in Tony is a fantastically charismatic person who can articulate faith in really difficult circumstances.
Trade Bank of Iraq (TBI), Standard Chartered Bank and General Electric have jointly closed a $600 million financing agreement that funded an ambitious electricity project 'Power Up Plan' implemented across Iraq.



The governments Power up Plan comes as a major part of the countrys ongoing rebuilding and modernisation plans, said a statement from TBI.



Being implemented in two phases, the project is aimed at delivering and securing more than 2 gigawatts (GW) of new power, while ensuring the continuity of up to 6.7 GW to Iraq's grid, supplying much-need electricity to homes and businesses nationwide.



The financing arrangement is the largest bespoke Letter of Credit (LC) confirmation and discounting transaction of its kind in the region, said a statement from TBI.



The bank was established in 2003 with the aim of helping the reconstruction of Iraq by facilitating international trade and continues to be at the forefront of large-scale infrastructure developments across the country.



The institutions financial network and expertise play a significant role in sourcing and securing funding for projects that will benefit the Iraqi people for generations to come.



Faisal Al Haimus, the chairman and president, said: "An efficient, modern, secure, and reliable power network is the foundation on which the countrys long-term development and prosperity will be built. The financing supported as part of this latest round with our partners at GE and Standard Chartered Bank will play a major role in creating a brighter future for the Iraqi people."



"Trade Bank of Iraq will work closely with our partners to ensure the agreements set out will help to drive forward this essential project and support the well-being of people, communities, and businesses nationwide," stated Al Haimus.



The agreement further underscores the crucial financial history and positive relationship that exists among the three institutions, he added.



For Standard Chartered, the agreement also manifests its newly introduced sustainability philosophy, as such finance will help enable individuals businesses to thrive and grow, and governments to deliver economic prosperity for the wider community; supporting sustainable and responsible growth.



Rola Abu Manneh, CEO for Standard Chartered Bank UAE, said: We are delighted to once again be partnering and collaborating with our colleagues at Trade Bank of Iraq and General Electric on a landmark deal, in Iraq.



This pioneering partnership will be key to facilitating and improving the power and electricity across the country. We are very proud and delighted to have structured and delivered such a trade financing solution in one of our network locations," she stated.



"This deal further demonstrates Standard Chartereds core strength of seamlessly leveraging its global network and deep local expertise across Asia, Africa and the Middle East," she added.



GE has supported the development of essential energy, healthcare and transportation infrastructure in Iraq for over 50 years. The current agreement is an important part of the companys commitment to contributing towards the countrys rebuilding efforts to the benefit of families, businesses and industries across Iraq.



Yoshito Murakami, CFO of GEs Power Services business in Africa, India and the Middle East, said: "General Electric has a long and successful history of supporting major developments throughout the Middle East and we are honoured to collaborate with Standard Chartered Bank and Trade Bank of Iraq to be part of this vital infrastructure project that will bring power to homes and businesses across the country."



"Iraq is currently undergoing a period of significant redevelopment as it moves towards a more stable and secure future. GE is committed to continue working with its partners and customers across the region to be at the forefront of plans that will bring progress to the people of Iraq," stated Murakami.-TradeArabia News Service
Minister for Older People Jim Daly has become embroiled in a furious row with the nursing home industry over his plans to replace the traditional model of care with retirement villages.

Nursing Homes Ireland (NHI) wrote to the minister expressing the organisation's "fury and severe disappointment" over what they described as "derogatory" and "ill-informed" comments. The minister hit back, saying the industry's fury will not "influence" or "deter" him from reforming care for older people.

Last week, the minister told the Sunday Independent that he hoped to replace all of the country's nursing homes with retirement villages within the next 20 years.

Three days after his comments, the nursing homes industry lobby group held an emergency meeting to discuss the minister's plans.

After the meeting, NHI's chief executive Tadgh Daly sent a scathing letter to the minister to "put on record" the industry's "extreme anger and disappoint" with his comments.

Tadgh Daly said the industry was calling on the minister to "apologise, retract and clarify" his remarks about nursing homes.

"On behalf of the staff in our nursing homes across Ireland, residents and their families, we place on record our fury and severe disappointment with your ill-informed comments," Mr Daly said

"For staff to read of you, the Minister with ultimate responsibility for their 'portfolio', speaking about nursing home care in a, frankly, derogatory manner has proven extremely upsetting," he added.

The NHI chief executive said the industry "utterly refutes" the minister's description of people in nursing home care as "loved ones sitting in a chair, head thrown sideways and their mouth open".

He said the portrayal suggested nursing home residents were being neglected and not provided with proper stimulation or activities.

He also said it was "shocking" that nursing home care was compared with institutional care of 50 years ago, which was a reference to the minister saying the number of people in inpatient mental health services has dramatically reduced.

He also noted that the minister's comments were at odds with an address he made at the nursing home industry's Annual Care Award three days before he was interviewed by the Sunday Independent.

The minister responded to the NHI chief, saying he would not be retracting or apologising for his comments.

The Sunday Independent understands the minister said he respected the work of the nursing home industry but insisted the care provided to people in their later years needs to evolve and reform.

He said the Government's long-term plan for care is to ensure older people can have their own front door for as long as possible. The minister said he is willing to meet Mr Daly to discuss the matter further.
Last week, I charted the revival of houseplants. It seems like we've all fallen in love with the idea of creating indoor gardens or occasional green statements. But which plants have proved to be the most popular to cultivate indoors and how easy are they to look after? Here's my list of the top 10 remarkable houseplants.

1. Philodendron is a great plant for coping with low-light situations: its dark green leaves are rich in chlorophyll to photosynthesise more effectively. The classic form has beautiful heart-shaped leaves but there are new cultivars such as 'Xanadu', which has wonderful scalloped leaves for a funky, tropical appearance. Water once a week in summer and an occasional dusting will optimise available light. Keep warm (not less than 16C at night) and misted.

2. Calathea, the peacock plant, is grown for its beautiful foliage - so perfect it can almost look fake! Keep this plant happy by being true to its tropical rainforest-floor origins: moist, shady and warm (16C minimum). Humidity can be helped by siting in bathrooms, grouping plants together, standing on a tray of moistened pebbles or regular misting.

3. Monstera deliciosa, the Swiss cheese plant, is a 1970s plant undergoing a revival in popularity with the trend for bold leaf foliage in interior design. They're easy to grow in moderate brightness. No Swiss cheese holes in the leaves? Doesn't matter when leaves are juvenile but indicates a lack of warmth, food or water when mature. Feed once a month in spring/summer, and provide support such as a moss cane pole for them to climb.

4. Echinocactus, the golden barrel cactus - or mother-in-law's cushion! Its spherical shape, deep ribs and colourful spines make this one of the most popular cacti today and, like most cacti, it is low maintenance. Keep in a sunny position - a south-facing windowsill is ideal. Don't overwater; in summer, allow soil to dry out before watering again. In winter, water very little. Liquid feed once a month in summer. If repotting, use cacti compost or add grit/gravel to ordinary compost.

5. Vriesea 'Flaming Sword'. This bromeliad features wonderful mottled leaves and a dramatic red sword-like flower. You water the cup formed by the rosette of leaves and not the soil. About an inch of water is right but empty out completely every month or so and refresh with water. As with all houseplants, rainwater is best. Keep in bright but not direct sunlight. The flower will last for months, then the plant dies but the mother plant should have produced some "pups" - baby rosettes - which you can pot up, and these will eventually flower as well.

6. Palms like Howea forsteriana add an instant elegance to a room, harking back to the glamorous palm courts in Victorian hotels. If I were to choose the most easy-going, it would be this one, the Kentian palm. It'll do well in low-light situations and prefers some protection from direct sunlight. Stand under a tepid shower to refresh the leaves occasionally.

7. Sansevieria laurentii (mother-in-law tongue) is one of the most indestructible houseplants. Being a succulent, it will withstand periods of neglect and drought. Water only when compost is dry, and less in winter. Position in bright sun to light shade. As well as the classic version, there are also some architectural-looking cylindrical varieties.

8. Pilea peperomioides, the Chinese money plant (pictured left), is very "in", with its striking circular lotus-like leaves. It enjoys bright light or semi-shade, with protection from full sun. Water regularly in summer, but allow to dry out slightly between waterings, then only sparingly in winter. It likes being misted and you can pinch it out to maintain its bushy shape or if it gets very leggy, take cuttings.

9. Aglaonema or Chinese evergreen, is a really easy-going beautiful plant that will cope well in lower light, though medium light is optimal, especially for variegated versions such as 'Silver Queen'. Mist leaves regularly, and keep away from draughts and at a minimum of 15C.

10. Adiantum, the maidenhair fern, is one the most beautiful ferns and one of the trickiest. Its dainty, trembling leaves dry up without adequate humidity so it needs lots of misting or a humid environment. Unlike most ferns that like to be continually moist, Adiantum grows naturally on rocks near waterfalls so it likes good drainage and loads of mist.
Few places can better test the ability of an SUV than the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, home to stunning desert landscapes, strange and wonderful roads and breathtaking gorges. It was here Citroen chose to launch its all-new SUV, the C5 Aircross. Comfort is Citroen's new focus; inspired by customers, the French car-maker believes this to be its unique selling point.

First impressions matter when it comes to buying an SUV and Citroen's new C5 Aircross is certainly striking, with an imposing grille and discrete air bumps.

Inside, the car is - as you might expect - comfortable and the armchair seats are not only supportive but restorative. The console is dominated by an eight-inch digital screen infotainment system to access the multimedia system, together with the phone, air conditioning and navigation.

You will fit three children in the back without initiating a turf war and the boot is similarly impressive with 580 litres and best in class with a total 1,630 litres of storage when all three back seats are folded. There are only front-wheel drive versions offered, although the PSA's Grip Control system is optional, and buyers will have the choice of five engines - a PureTech 130 6spd manual, PureTech 180 EAT8 petrols and BlueHDi 130 6spd manual, BlueHDi 130 EAT8 and BlueHDi 180 EAT8 diesels.

In 2020, the Citroen C5 Aircross will be the first vehicle in the line-up with a petrol plug-in hybrid engine.

Driving in Marrakesh is not without its challenges, with ambiguous traffic laws, erratic drivers and unforeseen obstacles; scooters, mopeds, stray dogs, rebel goats, farmers on mules, children en-route to school - we meet them all. Away from the urban madness, we travel south en-route to the foothills of the Atlas Mountains.

As we climb higher, the road narrows and twists and the barriers at the edge disappear. On the undulated dirt roads, the C5 Aircross makes molehills out of mountains.

The C5 Aircross is not a small car and leans going into corners, but it proves to be sure-footed and relaxing over some seriously rough conditions.

Official fuel economy figures generally need to be taken with a pinch of salt, but Citroen reckons that the petrol will deliver almost 5.2 litres per 100km, while the abstemious diesel returns 4.1 litres per 100km.

The C5 Aircross is packed with features to enhance safety including autonomous emergency braking, active lane departure warning and blind-spot monitoring.

Prices for the new car will be announced in the new year and it will be in showrooms from mid-February.

Citroen has launched a distinctive SUV that distinguishes itself from the tough competition, mostly for its comfort; a feature that will be appreciated by driver and passengers on a daily basis. But in a crowded market, opting for one over established rivals such as the Peugeot 3008, Renault Kadjar, Hyundai Tucson, Opel Grandland X or Volkswagen's Tiguan, will be a matter of price.

With funky looks, spacious interior and low running costs, the C5 Aircross is a capable, compact SUV, but with only front-wheel drive and five seats, the price will need to reflect its limitations.
A Global Top 100 has been created for the first time, placing the Clare peninsula in some very famous company.

The Top 100 Sustainable Destinations list was created by TravelMole.com, Vision on Sustainable Tourism, Totem Tourism and Green Destinations to celebrate the management efforts of the world's most sustainable destinations.

The results see Kilkee and Loop Head listed alongside worldwide destinations ranging from Botswana's Okavango Delta to Bhutan's National Parks, Sintra in Portugal, Lanzarote and South Africa's Cape Whale Coast.

Inclusions are not ranked, although the Azores were considered "most sustainable of all" listed destinations, because the islands attained the highest sustainability score.

The Global Top 100 was arrived at following open calls on social media and a selection process that saw 30 international experts in tourism sustainability examine key criteria including nature, culture and tradition and green tourism policies.

No judges' comments are available. However, Independent.ie Travel understands that Kilkee and loop Head were cited for their "substantial natural heritage", which locals are "seeking to preserve through tourism on a small scale."

The Clare hotspots are the only Irish destinations on the list.

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The Atlantic Coast near Kilkee.

The award caps a remarkable journey for Loop Head, which despite its tiny population has been ranked both as a European Destination of Excellence (EDEN) and 'Best Place to Holiday in Ireland' in recent years.

Cillian Murphy, chair of Loop Head Tourism, said:

"For Loop Head Tourism (LHT) being listed in the Sustainable Destinations Global Top 100 is a great honour. All the more so because it has come on the back of a concerted voluntary effort that has taken responsibility for ensuring the long-term sustainability of our community.

"We have set ourselves the target of becoming a best practice example of how tourism in a rural area should be developed, and the award today goes a long way to validating the choices we have made in the last five years to make that happen."

Responsible tourism is not "a niche product," Murphy added. "It should simply be best practice for the tourism industry globally."

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Kilkee's Victorian seafront.

"Despite Irish Tourism not having a clear Sustainable Tourism Policy at either individual business or destination level, Kilkee and Loop Head have lead the way to show Best Practice," said Mary Mulvey, CEO of Ecotourism Ireland.

The Global Top 100 looks solely at destinations, and does not factor the travel required to reach them.

For the full list, see www.greendestinations.info.
With or without a withdrawal agreement, the United Kingdom departs the European Union on March 29 next by automatic operation of the law.

The UK resigned, the treaty provision takes effect two years later and the UK parliament can vote against 'no deal' as often as it likes. If the House of Commons declines to endorse the deal as negotiated, the Article 50 resignation takes effect regardless, just four months from now, and there will be no standstill or transition period.

Barring some exceptional development there are just two choices - Theresa May's deal or a chaotic crash-out, for which the time to make damage-reducing preparations has been squandered.

MPs from both the Leave and Remain wings of the Tory party have expressed opposition to May's deal and it may fail on its first presentation to parliament. In which case there will likely be a second attempt and Damascene conversions all round.

There is just one circumstance in which another course becomes possible. If parliament votes for a second referendum, the EU could defer the operational date of Brexit in response to a UK request, which May says she will not make, to permit the necessary legislation and the vote itself.

Presumably May would have resigned and been replaced. But this prospect, a Brexit reversal, is receding, not least because Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has declined to support it. Of course, a second referendum could produce the same result as the first and for that reason alone the EU leaders may already have written it off.

For May to have antagonised both the pro- and anti-European wings of the Tory party is not such a surprising outcome. The red lines introduced in her Lancaster House speech in January 2017 have pre-ordained a sub-optimal result while raising expectations.

The Brexiteers welcomed the promise of departure from both single market and customs union, while the disappointed Remainers took solace from her insistence that 'frictionless trade' with Europe would somehow be delivered. Almost two years have been devoted to learning that no such happy outcome was possible, given the red lines.

Precisely because the EU's internal market is deep, including customs integration and the regulatory union of the single market, there must be a sharp distinction between members and non-members. Hence border controls.

Frictionless access tantamount to membership in the single market has not been delivered because it is not deliverable. No non-member enjoys the full access which many in the UK thought feasible - not even countries like Norway willing to accept the single market rules.

May's failure to square these impossible circles, and the shocked reaction to the deal unveiled these last two weeks, have been largely a failure of expectations management.

The key passages in May's Lancaster House speech ruled out adherence to the single market and extolled the prospects for Global Britain, concluding, she hoped, new trade agreements with countries around the world, in competition with the European Union, which pursues such deals all the time.

She also committed to ending freedom of movement - that is, to control European immigration into the UK - and to ending the jurisdiction of the European Court. All of this was to be achieved without cost: the red lines would not inhibit the UK's future trade with Europe and exciting new opportunities were going a-begging on the open sea.

There was never a feasible deal which offered greater sovereignty and freedom of action without trade-offs. The Lancaster House vision was a fantasy from the start and has nurtured unrealistic expectations ever since. Hence the incessant blame game in London and the accusations of 'bullying' against the EU. Now all that is left is the withdrawal agreement as negotiated, an open-ended involvement with Europe's customs union and not even freedom from a continuing role for the European Court.

The tangible 'success', if such it be, is the ending of free movement, which May has trumpeted for whatever it is worth.

Dissident Tory MPs and almost all the commentators on both sides of the argument are howling that the deal is a humiliation for the UK, but it should have been foreseen. The disappointments are not over. If the deal goes through, it will secure immediate relief from the horrors of a no-deal Brexit but then comes the negotiation of a long-term trade deal with the EU and further horrors.

What is currently before the House of Commons is the withdrawal agreement, which delivers for Britain the safe harbour of a transition period up to the end of 2020 and possibly extendable. But the cliff-edge has been deferred, not avoided. It is most unlikely that a free trade agreement between the UK and the EU will be concluded inside a few years (the Canada deal took seven) and the negotiating balance will be just as unfavourable for the UK as it has been up to now.

The 'political declaration' which accompanies the withdrawal agreement consists mainly of aspirational (and non-binding) language about future arrangements, but there are some unambiguous items. The most explicit provision is that the UK and the EU will be "separate markets and distinct legal orders". This ends any hopes raised by May's Chequers plan that the UK could somehow enjoy single market access without single market rules. Out means out and means borders of some kind.

The liberalised aviation market, for example, one of the stand-out successes of the European Union over recent decades, could be closed to the UK unless some serious agreements are negotiated during the transition phase.

The UK had sought some form of continuing membership in the European Aviation Safety Agency which licenses airfields, pilots, manufacturers and maintenance facilities.

This has been declined, in favour of 'exploring future cooperation'. There is a commitment to talks about a future air services agreement, but it is all very vague.

If the withdrawal agreement goes through there will be no disruption at the end of next March but the potential for future squabbles is clear. There is no certainty either for London's financial services firms, just more promises of talks.

The entire process on which the UK has embarked, assuming the withdrawal agreement goes through, will I fear turn into a perpetual grievance machine as the detailed negotiations proceed.

The expectation remains widespread in Britain that a non-member of the European Union, which has also chosen to exit the single market and to end freedom of movement, can somehow continue to trade in Europe as if trading in its home market.

There will be one grievance after another, about product standards, fisheries, aviation, passporting for financial services and all the rest as European negotiators engage with their UK counterparts.

The EU team will seek to secure the best deal for their principals from a superior negotiating position. This will be represented as bullying and taking unfair advantage in parts of the British press whose xenophobic tendencies have been much in evidence.

But it is neither bullying nor is it unfair: it is the way that international trade negotiations have always worked.

The EU negotiators will treat the UK as they would any other third country. That is, after all, what the UK has chosen to become.
When pressed, most elected representatives say personal tax rates should be restored to their pre-austerity levels. If everyone from public servants to welfare recipients is having their pay and benefits restored to pre-crash levels, then why not those who pay for it all - taxpayers?

But to govern is to choose. The Government has very clearly chosen the restoration of spending over the restoration of tax rates, and for this it has wide support in the Dail. Indeed, there is not a single TD who has openly advocated prioritising tax cuts over spending increases. The political class, it seems, has moved en masse to the left. This raises the question as to whether politicians are reflecting what voters want, or if the political class has become detached from the electorate.

As it happens, an opinion poll published last week covering all of the euro-using countries cast light on the matter. It had some fascinating insights into Irish voters' views on taxation, and many other issues.

The Eurobarometer survey, taken last month, found that 87pc of Irish respondents favoured tax reform designed to boost jobs and the economy. That was the third highest level of support among the 19 countries in the single currency area.

The question did not ask people whether they preferred tax cuts over spending increases. As such, it would be to over-interpret the result to conclude that the political class is now to the left of voters. But a recent Ipsos/MRBI-Irish Times poll more explicitly asked about preferences and found that there was more support for tax cuts than for increases in government spending.

Another finding from the euro-wide poll also raised questions as to whether the political class's drift toward social democracy is a reflection of voter preferences, or a sign that it is decoupling from the electorate. Asked if they supported market reforms, including freer competition and privatisation, 78pc of Irish respondents were in favour, far above the Eurozone average and the fifth highest among the 19 member countries.

With the Government shaping up to hold a referendum on enshrining State ownership of water infrastructure in the constitution, this should give pause for thought. The general assumption among the political parties is that such a referendum, if it was ever held, would be passed comfortably given the depth of feeling that emerged over water charges. But that may not necessarily be the case if the Eurobarometer poll is picking up something beneath the surface. Moreover, referendum campaigns have a habit of developing a life of their own which no politician can control.

Yet another question in the euro survey raised questions about what has become economic orthodoxy among the political class - that is to spend every cent that post-crash budget rules will allow. A quite astonishing 91pc of Irish respondents favoured more government saving to prepare for the higher costs of health and old-age care that come with an ageing society. Support for prudence today so that the public finances might be better prepared for future challenges was higher in Ireland than in any of the other 18 countries.

The response to that question, and to others about reform of the pension and health systems, raises questions about whether politicians are correctly gauging the appetite of the public for change.

Despite Ireland moving earlier than most other countries to raise its retirement age, support among the public for further increases is the highest in the euro area, at 45pc. Although more opposed the idea (52pc), the gap was much smaller than in other countries or the average across the bloc.

On healthcare reform, 97pc of Irish respondents backed change, which was, again, the highest among the 19 countries surveyed. The cold calculus of the current government, and its predecessors, is that more votes are to be lost by upsetting healthcare workers and patients who would suffer from industrial unrest than are to be gained from those who would benefit from greater efficiency in a reformed system. If there is as much support for reform as the poll suggests, then it may be time to look again at the conventional wisdom underpinning the calculus against root-and-branch reform. There may be more electoral gain to be had by taking on vested interests in the health system than most observers believe.

If the poll shows no little discontent about the domestic status quo, there appears to be less about Ireland's place in Europe.

The same survey found that 85pc of Irish respondents believed that the euro had been good for the country, by a distance the highest level among the 19. A separate, recently-published survey covering all 28 members of the EU showed that in no other country are people more satisfied with how democracy works in the EU. It also showed that just 7pc of Irish voters would opt to leave the union if given the choice in a referendum. That was the lowest level of support for exiting the bloc of any member (unsurprisingly, the British were most favourable).

But if many of the responses suggest that the Irish are a nation of enthusiastic europhiles, some of the future-orientated questions show a degree of scepticism about centralising more power.

The survey of the euro-19 asked those polled about their views on "more co-ordination of economic policy". It could be argued that this is somewhat tendentious, as the term 'co-ordination' has little negative connotation.

Whatever quibbles one might have about the wording of the question, there is undoubtedly considerably less enthusiasm in Ireland for more policy 'co-ordination' than for the single currency itself and some unease about how far it has all gone. Support for "more co-ordination" among Irish respondents was the fourth lowest among the 19, while support for "less co-ordination" was the highest bar none.

This public view is reflected in the Government's position on such matters. Ireland has joined with other small, northern European countries in what has been dubbed the 'Hanseatic League 2.0', named after the medieval free-trading zone that stretched from the eastern extremes of the Baltic to the Dutch cities on the North Sea.

The grouping is sceptical of the sort of plans being driven by French President Emmanuel Macron that would see more decisions being taken at European level and a greater role in those decisions for the EU institutions (just nine days ago, he finally got his German counterpart to sign up to a plan moving in this direction).

There is a major question as to whether it is in Ireland's longer- term strategic interests to integrate further. On the one hand, the euro is structurally fragile. Its break-up would cause an economic calamity and threaten the wider EU project, including the single market upon which Ireland is so dependent.

On the other hand, deeper integration would eventually mean more 'co-ordination' on tax issues, something that sets alarm bells ringing across the Irish political, administrative and business classes. This, among other things, has caused Ireland to take a more sceptical view of deeper European integration than in the past. Discussion of future choices on Europe has been swamped by Brexit. Once Britain leaves, they might well move up the agenda quickly.
Around lunchtime today in Brussels, the UK will cross the rubicon and take a definitive step toward ending 46 years of EU membership, a move which poses huge problems for Ireland.

The last-minute bitter rows over Gibraltar - and that source of so many EU rows in the past: fish - must not obscure this hugely historic moment which will see the EU's second biggest economy part company with a trade bloc that it has had a belligerent but deep relationship with since January 1, 1973.

Ireland and Denmark had followed the UK into what was then the European Economic Community as though both were attached by an umbilical cord of trade dependence upon their much larger neighbour.

The erudite Sir John Kerr, a British diplomat who had a role in negotiating the mechanism which allows a member state to exit the EU, had a delightfully sardonic way of summing up the inevitability of last-minute rows ahead of the historic moment. "It is said that all EU treaty negotiations begin with high diplomacy, and end in a dirty row over fish," the then UK ambassador to the EU told a group of journalists including this writer.

It has been a slow and difficult period since that dawn shock on June 24, 2016, when the EU's 500 million citizens learnt that UK voters had opted by 52pc to 48pc to leave the EU.

The ensuing 12 months were a time of serious uncertainty with big question marks over the very existence of the EU which had a difficult 60th birthday in May 2017.

But things have settled down considerably since then despite the increased support in many countries for Eurosceptic parties of the far left and right. In Brexit talks with the UK, the residual EU 27 showed surprising unity of purpose which sharply contrasted with London's deep divisions and disarray.

Britain's performance in the Brexit talks, which began on March 29, 2017, was very poor indeed and based on a miscalculation.

"The British thought that ultimately countries would choose their economic interests over the grand principles of the EU. They thought that, in this way, they could break the unity of the 27," said Pierre Sellal, the former French ambassador to the European Union who was involved in the first phase of Brexit talks.

Big problems persist within the remaining 27 EU member states. Italy, which becomes the EU's third largest economy after Brexit, is teetering financially and is led by a Eurosceptic government.

Hard-right governments in Hungary, Poland and Austria have a series of rolling conflicts with Brussels. European Parliament elections next May may yet see big swings to anti-EU parties of the right and left.

But it is undoubtedly clear by now that the EU has moved into a post-Brexit phase. The member states on mainland Europe have largely written off the UK and boxed off the Brexit talks as a largely administrative, if difficult, task which will be completed one way or another. The EU is working on other projects in a post-Brexit world.

The final EU phase of Brexit takes place in January when the European Parliament is expected to endorse this draft deal. From now on, the real battle switches to the British parliament where Theresa May's numbers are very discouraging and threaten a smooth passage for this draft deal which a good outcome for Ireland in a very difficult situation.

The Democratic Unionist Party, addressed by radical Brexiteer Boris Johnson in Belfast yesterday, is pumping up the volume for the bitter battle which is to come. Most Irish citizens' attention will be focused on London for the coming weeks.

Today's doings in Brussels are largely symbolic but very momentous. The message for Ireland will be that Brexit is far more than dealing with considerable economic fallout. It is equally important to forge new and deeper relations with the EU while preserving links with our larger neighbouring island.
You thought you knew all there was to know about the Duchess of Cambridges style.

After almost eight years as part of the Royal family, Kates look has eased into a familiar pattern of mostly British labels- a high/low mix of high street (often L.K Bennett, Topshop or Zara) and designer (Alexander McQueen, Erdem and Catherine Walker feature regularly). We know that she loves feminine silhouettes and pretty prints, that skinny jeans are a mainstay and that wedges are as much a go-to as sleek pumps.

None of this has altered dramatically, but since the Duchess returned to public duties in October following her maternity leave, there has been a notable step change in her look.

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This hasnt meant a completely new wardrobe. Indeed, many of Kates comeback looks have been rewears of old outfits but theres nevertheless a trend in what shes picking out of storage.

Emilia Wicksteads brightly coloured wool dresses have proven popular - the Duchess wore a turquoise style with a pleated skirt to visit the BBC last week. It was the dresss third outing following its debut in 2014. Then there was a similar lilac version- no pleats- retrieved after its first sighting in 2017 for a mental health summit in October. There have been more rewears of Kates favourite bespoke block-coloured pieces too, in the form of a cobalt Eponine London coat dress and a bottle green Catherine Walker coat dress at the Armistice centenary service.

While you may think that not much could have changed in the six months that the Duchess took off following the birth of Prince Louis, there have been enough tectonic shifts for her role to have been subtly redefined. With the Duchess of Sussex Meghan now the glamorous newcomer and the Queen slowly relinquishing more of her duties to Prince Charles, Kates position is now elevated and her look is reflecting this, moving towards queen-in-waiting territory.

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Her series of bright rewears plays into two of The Queens favourite fashion approaches- wearing bold colours so that she can be easily spotted in a crowd and showing thriftiness by using the same pieces over and over again. Meanwhile, the Duchess of Sussex, who is still building up her regal wardrobe and settling into her role, has only reworn a handful of times so far.

But the Duchess has also been switching up her look in her own way. The Alessandra Rich polka dot dress which she chose for Prince Charles birthday photo shoot was more Fashion (capital F intended) than she usually dares. And that she opted to accessorise an already statement mauve taffeta Alexander McQueen gown worn for the Dutch state banquet with Queen Alexandras pearl-bedecked necklace suggested that Kate is unafraid to stand out, even amongst a room of senior royals.

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After her previous maternity leaves, Kate has preferred to ease back into her style mojo with soft, familiar fashion choices, but over the past few weeks weve seen her wear some of her sharpest looks ever. A new McQueen coat dress for Remembrance Day came with slick military detailing and a strictly tailored silhouette, while an off-shoulder tweed dress by Erdem was an experimental choice which divided Kates acolytes - some were unnerved by its fashion-forward credentials, others were overjoyed at its chicness.

That it came from a collection inspired by The Queens 1958 meeting with Duke Ellington perhaps gave it the pass. In fact, thats an association which sums up Kates new style strategy: forging an ever sleeker sartorial path of her own whilst always paying deference to the foundations laid by The Queen.

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Germanys Chancellor Angela Merkel has said the Brexit deal brokered between the European Union and Prime Minister Theresa May is a diplomatic piece of art.

Mrs Merkel, speaking in Brussels, said: its a historic day, which triggers very ambivalent feelings  it is tragic that the UK is leaving the EU now after 45 years, but we have to, of course, respect the vote of the British people.

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She praised the deal struck in an extremely difficult situation, in a situation without any precedence because we havent had it before that a European country leaves the EU.

Mrs Merkel said, while the agreement was based on very hard negotiations, it considers both sides interest.
The pharmaceuticals market in Kuwait is in the growing stage and is primarily driven by governments healthcare initiatives, said a report.

The government had doubled the budget for healthcare spending between 2010 and 2016 which soared to hit nearly KD2 billion ($6.6 billion), stated Ken Research.

More than 20 large governmental healthcare projects are in the pipeline worth KD3.5 billion ($12 billion) across the country, it stated in the report titled Kuwait Pharmaceuticals Market Outlook to 2022.

This report provides a comprehensive analysis on introduction of Kuwait Pharmaceuticals market, value chain, stakeholders in Kuwait pharmaceuticals market ecosystem, market size by revenue (2012-2017), it added.

The report will have the type of drugs (Generic and Patented Drugs); By Channel of Distribution (Institutional Sales and Retail Sales) and By Therapeutic Class (Anti-Infectives, Gastrointestinal, Cardiovascular, CNS, Respiratory, Musculoskeletal, Analgesics and Anti Inflammatory and Others), it added.

The report also includes future outlook for the market (2018-2022) including estimated market size in terms of revenue and pharmaceuticals market segmentation by therapeutic class.

The report is useful for manufacturers, distributors, retailers of pharmaceuticals, hospital chains, Drug stockiest, Healthcare IT companies to align their market centric strategies according to ongoing and expected trends in the future.

A booming oil and gas industry and limited diversification into other sectors have significantly constrained the manufacturing activities in Kuwait.

As a result, domestic production of medicines in the country continued to be low and majority of the pharmaceuticals consumed were imported in this period, including branded and generic drugs, said the report by Ken Research.

Although the industry is closely monitored by the government, medicine prices in Kuwait continued to be high. Doctors and patients generally prefer patented and branded products, which has stretched the government funding system, it stated.

In 2017, patented drugs dominated the pharmaceuticals market of Kuwait as compared to generic drugs in terms of revenue. This is because branded and patented drugs are more popular in the country due to the relative wealth of the population and expatriate workers, it added.-TradeArabia News Service
Detectives investigating the death of a man, whose case prompted a warning to drug users about a potentially dangerous batch of cocaine, have made a third arrest.

Essex Police said a 22-year-old man and a 20-year-old woman from Colchester were taken to hospital at around 2.50am on Saturday after becoming unwell at a property in Egerton Road.

The man has now died and his death is being treated as unexplained, the force said.

The woman remains in hospital in a stable condition and is assisting officers with their inquiries.

Essex Police said they executed a warrant in Clarendon Way, Colchester at around 8pm on Saturday and arrested a 20-year-old man on suspicion of being concerned in the supply of drugs, who remains in custody for questioning.

A 20-year-old man from Elmstead and a 35-year-old man from Colchester who were arrested on suspicion of drugs offences have been released under investigation, the force said.

Detective Inspector Kev Hughes issued a warning in the wake of the man's death and said they were concerned a "potentially dangerous batch" of cocaine was being sold in the area which may pose a "direct threat to the safety" of those who bought and are using them.

He urged those who may have purchased the narcotics to dispose of them and to seek medical attention if they felt unwell.

Essex Police said are yet to receive any further reports of anyone needing medical assistance after taking cocaine in the area.

The force have urged anyone with any concerns or information to call Colchester CID on 101 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.
A seven-year-old Honduran migrant waves an American flag at US border control helicopters flying overhead near a temporary shelter for migrants, in Tijuana, Mexico (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

Mexicos incoming government has denied a report that it plans to allow asylum seekers to wait in the country while their claims move through US immigration courts.

The deal was seen as a way to dissuade thousands of Central American migrants from seeking asylum in the US, a process that can take years.

In effect, Mexican border towns are already acting as waiting rooms for migrants hoping to start new lives in the US due to bottlenecks at the border.

There is no agreement of any sort between the incoming Mexican government and the US government, Mexicos future interior minister Olga Sanchez said in a statement.

Hours earlier, The Washington Post quoted her as saying the incoming administration of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador had agreed to allow migrants to stay in Mexico as a short-term solution while the US considered their applications for asylum. Mr Lopez Obrador will take office on December 1.

The statement shared with The Associated Press said the future governments principal concern related to the migrants is their wellbeing while in Mexico.

The Washington Post reported on Saturday that the administration of US President Donald Trump has won support from the Mexican president-elects team for a plan dubbed Remain in Mexico.

The newspaper also quoted Ms Sanchez as saying: For now, we have agreed to this policy of Remain in Mexico.

Ms Sanchez did not explain in the statement why The Washington Post had quoted her as saying there had been agreement.

White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said: President Trump has developed a strong relationship with the incoming (Lopez) Obrador Administration, and we look forward to working with them on a wide range of issues.

Stephanie Leutert, director of the Mexico Security Initiative at the University of Texas at Austin, described the Remain in Mexico plan as a strategy to take away the ability of migrants to live and work in the US while cases are processed.

The hope is that asylum seekers will not want to live in (Mexico) for months/years and wont come, Ms Leutert said via Twitter.

US officials have said for months that they were working with Mexico to find solutions for what they have called a border crisis.

One variation, called Safe Third, would have denied asylum claims on the grounds that asylum seekers had found haven in Mexico.

President Enrique Pena Nieto offered thousands of Central Americans asylum on October 26 if they agreed to remain in southern Mexico. Close to 3,000 migrants took Mexico up on the offer.

Ms Sanchez said that the next government does not plan for Mexico to become a Safe Third country.
A woman receives treatment following a suspected poison gas attack on her town of al-Khalidiya, in Aleppo (SANA via AP)

Syrian warplanes have attacked rebel-held areas in northern Syria for the first time.

The attacks come as Syrian officials said more than 100 people were treated at hospitals following a suspected poison gas attack by rebels in the northern city of Aleppo.

The latest wave of shelling and air strikes in northern Syria is the most serious violation of a truce reached by Russia and Turkey that brought relative calm to the countrys north for the past two months.

The rebels, who have denied carrying out any chemical attacks, accused the Government of trying to undermine the ceasefire.

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The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Thiqa News Agency, an activist collective, said government warplanes pounded rebel-held areas west and south of Aleppo city. The air strikes were the first since the truce went into effect on September 17.

Syrias Arab News Agency, SANA, said the alleged chemical attack late on Saturday was carried out by terrorist groups positioned in Aleppo countryside that fired shells containing toxic gases on three neighbourhoods in Syrias largest city.

Russian Defence Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said Russian chemical weapons specialists have been dispatched to Aleppo. Russia is a close ally of President Bashar Assad and has intervened in recent years to turn the tide of the civil war in his favour.

According to preliminary data, particularly the symptoms shown by the victims, the shells that bombarded residential areas of Aleppo were filled with chlorine gas, Mr Konashenkov said.

Syrias forensic medicine general director, Zaher Hajo, told The Associated Press that all but 15 of the 105 people who were treated have been discharged. He said two people who were in critical condition have improved.

The Observatory said 94 people were treated, with 31 remaining in hospitals.

The Observatory, which relies on a network of activists and contacts throughout Syria, said the air strikes hit the Rashideen district on the western outskirts of Aleppo and the village of Khan Touman south of the city.

The truce brokered by Russia and Turkey, which supports the rebels, has been repeatedly violated, but until Sunday there had been no air strikes.

Syrian state media, meanwhile, reported that rebels shelled the Christian village of Mahradeh in northwestern Syria, causing material damage but no casualties.
Thomas Cook in September warned over profits after sales were hit by the European heatwave and a fall in demand for last-minute trips abroad.

Holiday giant Thomas Cook is expected to lay bare the impact of a European heatwave and a fall in demand for last-minute trips abroad when it unveils falling profits next week.

A consensus of City analysts expects the firm to post a 15% dive in underlying operating profit to 280 million for the full year to September.

It comes after the FTSE 250-listed group said earlier this year that an unprecedented prolonged period of hot weather across the continent meant more people spent June and July enjoying the sunshine at home and put off booking holidays abroad.

However, Thomas Cooks current trading performance should have improved or at least stabilised since it warned over profits in September.

Since then, holiday bookings for European destinations have not waned, broker Numis said, despite fears of a potential hard Brexit.

Kathryn Leonard, analyst at Numis, said: The data suggests that demand has improved since Thomas Cook last reported.

Indeed, the growth of keyword search terms versus the prior year have, on average, improved by circa 5% in the UK and by circa 17% in the Nordics.

Adding credence to the data, budget carriers easyJet recently said that forward bookings for next summer are slightly ahead of this summer, while Ryanair said Brexit had not affected demand from UK or European consumers for travel.

Numis said the comments from airlines are supportive for the wider UK-listed travel sector, as investors remain vigilant of any slowdown in demand and later booking cycle, which would negatively impact profitability and working capital.

But it still flagged Brexit as a key risk for next years figures.

The travel sector has been struggling lately due to ambiguity around Brexit, rising costs and slowing demand with recent profit warnings from Ryanair and Flybe, which last week put itself up for sale.

However, easyJet shrugged off strike woes and surging costs to notch up a 41% jump in annual profits last week.
A helicopter searches for victims of a boat which capsized in Lake Victoria (AP Photo/Stephen Wandera)

Ugandan diving teams are retrieving bodies from Lake Victoria where police say at least 30 people died in a boat accident near the capital, Kampala.

The boat overturned and sank at about 7pm local time on Saturday night, said senior police officer Zurah Ganyana.

She said that 27 people were rescued overnight, lower than earlier reports. More than 90 passengers were on the boat, leading officials to believe that the death toll will rise.

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Ganyana said the boat was in poor condition and had been grounded for some time. She said it did not have a valid licence to operate.

The boat was taking passengers on a pleasure cruise on Lake Victoria, a popular weekend activity for young people in Kampala, when it capsized close to shore.

Early on Sunday a police helicopter hovered low over the spot where the boat sank, as a team of divers searched for bodies under calm waters. As the death toll rose, so did the crowd of onlookers at a beach abutting a quiet village outside Kampala.

Police carried victims in tarpaulins and hauled them into a waiting truck, occasionally drawing loud wails from some of the onlookers. One young woman, seeing a victim she apparently recognised, collapsed and was rushed to hospital.

Witnesses who were there on Saturday night said they heard people calling for help as they tried to stay afloat and others tried to swim ashore. Many were women.

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They were shouting Help us! Help us! and the boat was sinking very quickly, said Sam Tukei, one of several local men who used fishermens canoes to rescue people. By the time the police came we had saved many people.

One reason many people died so close to shore was likely intoxication, said Asuman Mugenyi, national director of police operations. Citing the accounts of some survivors, he said there was a good number of life jackets on board the doomed vessel that passengers neglected to wear.

The boats passengers, in a party mood halfway through their journey, are likely to have panicked when the vessel started to sink, he said.

The boat is believed to have been on a routine weekend cruise that is popular among some young Ugandans. Victims include the couple who owned the boat, according to police officer Ganyana.

Boat accidents are increasingly common on East Africas major lakes including Lake Victoria, which is surrounded by Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda.

More than 200 people were killed in a Tanzanian ferry disaster in September, with officials saying it had been dangerously overcrowded.
It was on September 6th 2018 that the draconian law which declared homosexuals as criminals was struck down by the Supreme Court. People rejoiced and celebrated because a section of individuals who felt like they were tagged as criminals merely for loving people of their choices finally had the backing of the law to reassure them that they were not criminals. It is no wonder then that the first Delhi Pride Parade that took place after the Supreme court defanged Article 377 was grand and left the skyline of Capital colored in rainbow hues.

We went out with our OnePlus 6T to capture all the beautiful colors and it was a sight like no other. Amidst all the slogans and drum beats, we've got you these beautiful photos:

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Folks, love is love!

Pictures taken by: Arushi Lohia.
The Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry has announced that its President and CEO Hamad Buamim has been appointed as the new chairman of World Chambers Federation (WCF) of the International Chamber of Commerce.

WCF is the International Chamber of Commerces forum uniting a global network of 12,000 chambers and their respective business communities.

The appointment marks the second time that an official from the Middle East region has been elected as WCF Chairman.

From 1991 and 1996, Adnan Kassar, the president of Beirut Chamber of Commerce and president of General Union of Arab Chambers of Commerce and Industry, had held the coveted position.

The announcement came during a high-level WCF General Council meeting which was recently held at Dubai Chambers headquarters.

Buamim, who previously served as Deputy Chair of WCF, will assume his new position at the beginning of 2019 for a period of three years, during which he will preside over meetings and activities of the WCF Chairmanship, WCF Executive Committee, and WCF General Council.

In his new role, Buamim will supervise the WCFs efforts to foster and facilitate collaboration and cooperation between chamber leaders and their members worldwide.

The WCF actively promotes chambers of commerce as essential intermediaries between business and government, and between business and the general public. In addition, the organisation addresses common challenges and help its members benefit from new opportunities.

Buamim succeeds Peter Mihok, President of Slovakias Chamber of Commerce and Industry, who held the position of WCF Chairman for the last six years.

On the appointment, Buamim said: "As one of the worlds largest membership-based chambers of commerce, Dubai Chamber has played a crucial role in fostering cooperation and partnerships between chambers of commerce and championing best international practices to enhance our members trade competitiveness."

"We are now ready to launch a constructive dialogue about how chambers of commerce can align their efforts to achieve this goal on a global level," he stated.

Buamim also thanked HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, for his strong support to Dubai Chamber and the business community in Dubai, and said that the achievement reflected Dubais strengthening reputation as a global business hub.-TradeArabia News Service
Blessed with many natural water bodies which ensure abundant water supply, villagers of Morpirla, a remote and predominantly tribal village in Quepem, have long been undertaking cultivation of two crops. The agricultural crop is grown during the monsoon season while cultivation of the horticultural crops is undertaken post the monsoon, once winter begins to set in.

However, apathy towards maintenance of these natural springs has cause hurdles, especially for those undertaking horticultural cultivation of Vaigani sheti (Rabi crop).

joegoauk/Representational Image

Seeing the deplorable condition of the water bodies while on a visit to the village, National Service Scheme officer of MES College, Zuarinagar, Vasco, Dattaprasad Shirgurkar convinced the colleges principal R B Patil on the need for immediate remedial measures to save them for sure death. Consequently, the college conducted a special NSS camp at Morpirla during the recent Diwali vacation. volunteers undertook the task of rejuvenating water bodies.

Heavy siltation and lack of maintenance had blocked the natural flow of Dvachi zor, a sacred spring associated with the Shree Saptakoteshwas temple. The volunteers desilted the springs natural tract, thus helping rejuvenate the spring.

joegoauk/Representational Image

Speaking about the initiative, Shirgurkar said, Since the last few years, wherever we have organised the special NSS camp, we have concentrated on watershed management. Here, too, our students, mostly coming from urban areas, have done wonderful work by installing check dams, disilting lakes and rejuvenating the sacred spring of Morpirla.

Appreciating the students efforts, Shanu Velip, 72, a Morpirla villger, said, The good work put in by the students, due to which the flow of water has been restored, will greatly help us undertake Vaigani sheti efficiently.

joegoauk/Representational Image

Narayan Gawas, a lecturer at Dnyanprakash Higher Secondary School, Mulgaon, who visited the NSS camp site at Morpirla said, There is urgent need for increased watershed management initiative to be undertaken in various parts of the state as this will help provide smooth supply of water for irrigation purposes.
In a major development on the eve of the 26/11 terror attack anniversary, the Delhi Police have arrested three terrorists belonging to the Islamic State J&K (ISJK) terror group. The arrests were made by the Delhi Police's Special Cell on Saturday. Arms and ammunition along with explosives have been recovered from their possession.

BCCL

The three suspected terrorists have been identified as Tahir Ali Khan, Haris Mushtaq Khan and Asif Suhail Nadaf.

Earlier this week, a high alert was sounded in the national capital after intelligence agencies tipped off the Delhi Police about two suspected terrorists, belonging to Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), possible entering the city.

BCCL

The Delhi Police released a photo of the two terrorists and pasted their posters across the city and also circulated their photos on the social media to alert people.
Hadiya Aarbi, a 15-year-old girl from Sindh, Pakistan, was preparing to return home from Delhi. A student of class 9 came to India for her liver transplant in December 2017 and had successfully undergone treatment. She had to leave studies midway through the semester because of her health conditions.

However, the last-minute U-turn by her uncle, who refused to donate his liver, left her family devastated. Luckily for Hadiya, her mother Nausheen, who was not in a condition to donate her liver earlier when the family was still in Pakistan, was cleared for donating liver after undergoing several tests in India.

Like Hadiya, there are many Pakistanis who prefer to come to India for treatment because, for them, it's just like home.

Dr Shaleen Aggarwal says Pakistan still doesnt have enough facilities for liver transplant and this is big reason that Pakistani patients choose to come to India.

India is a growing destination for medical tourism. The number of foreign patients coming to India is constantly rising as suggested by the data of the last six years issued by the Ministry of External Affairs last year. India's potential as a hub for medical tourism was formally recognised by the Indian government over a decade ago.

In an attempt to make India a lucrative destination, Union Budget of 2003 stated that India must come up as a "global health destination" This was followed up by the introduction of a new category of visa, the Medical (M) Visa, by the Ministry of External Affairs.

Not so lucrative for the neighbouring country

When I got to know about my disease, I decided immediately to come to India for the surgery, says Asim Bhatti.

Although people from all over the world including countries from Europe and Middle East have benefitted from this initiative. However, the strained relationship between India and Pakistan makes it difficult for patients from the latter country to get a visa.

Suhail Aarbi, Hadiya's father who manages a small business of 'fishing net' talks about the hardships of getting a medical visa and said, "I had to wait for three months and called the embassy every day to check if we were granted the visa or not.

Then, last year, visas were granted on the occasion of Diwali. Knowing this I applied again but didn't get any response for another week. Lastly, my daughter tweeted to Sushma Swaraj and we were assured for the visa the very next day."

India is considered to be one of the most favourable destinations for medical tourism. "There are multiple reasons for patients from Pakistan to choose India over China, Singapore, and Thailand, mainly because of the language and cost barriers and also because of the success rate of Indian doctors," said Dr Shaleen Aggarwal, Associate Director, liver transplant, Max Hospital.

Some Indian hospitals have tie-ups with hospitals in Pakistan, which serve as information centres that facilitate the arrival of the patients in India.

For example, Apollo Hospital in India and the Dr Ziauddin Hospital in Karachi ran a flagship programme, called 'Peace Clinic'. Such flagship programmes serve as a precedent. They show how collaborations can bridge geographical and historical barriers and provide better health facilities to the people of Pakistan.

Twitter as Last Resort

Bhattis are in India since last three months and are satisfied with the treatment.

Contended about her husband Asim Bhatti's recovering health, Afza Asim, a resident of Lahore and mother of three, has been in Delhi for last three months for Bhatti's treatment.

Bhattis were just a day away from leaving to Pakistan when Indiatimes met them at Max Hospital. The family had come to India for an urgent transplant. Earlier, Bhattis went to several hospitals in Pakistan.

The family also went to China and Turkey for treatment. However, after thorough research and several recommendations, they chose India.

Like in case of Hadiya, Bhattis also took to Twitter to request for their visa approval.

"We were aware of complexities that come in the process of getting a visa. Therefore, my daughter tweeted to Sushma Swaraj, India's Minister of External Affairs, and she issued us visa immediately," Afza says.

According to Bhatti, they decided to choose India over other countries because the Indian doctors have a very good reputation in Pakistan.

"Doctors and hospital staff were extremely nice to us. I still don't feel that I had such a major surgery. I am completely satisfied with the treatment I got in India," says Asim Bhatti.

Business Is Booming

Doctors have advised Asim to eat only home cooked meals.

It is not just the Pakistani patients who benefit from the cooperation, the Indian health sector earns huge revenue from them as well.

At $2906 per patient, a Pakistani national, according to a survey by the Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics, earns Indian hospitals more revenue than a medical tourist from other nations.

A key competitive advantage India has in medical tourism, in comparison to other countries, lies in the cost-effectiveness it has to offer to its patients. A person coming to India for his/her medical treatment can have savings anywhere in the range of 30 to 70 per cent.

Comparison of medical care cost between India and other countries (in US$):

There are many key players in the business of medical tourism like medical facilitators, who works as a bridge between patients and the hospital. Medical facilitator, Sumit Wadhwa says "Patients contact him through his website MediGuardians. Our primary work is to establish contact between patients and hospital according to their budget and kind of treatment they want".

Mujahid Malik, another facilitator, says, "We help the patients throughout their stay in India, with the accommodation and paperwork." He adds "Doctors in Pakistan often recommends Indian doctors to critical patients. The respective Indian hospital then sends a formal invitation to the patient in Pakistan."

According to the FICCI-IMS report published in 2016 by the Ministry of Commerce, India is ranked third amongst the top 6 MVT (Medical Value Travel) destinations in the world which include Thailand, Singapore, India, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Mexico. It also says that through adequate focus and effective execution, Indian Medical Value Travel, pegged at $3 billion in 2015, can be a $9 billion opportunity by 2020.

Differences on Political Level Not on Individual Level

Mujahid Malik, a medical facilitator helps foreign patients throughout their stay in the country.

The recent increase in bitterness between both the countries after Kulbhushan Jadhav fiasco had impacted both business and lives. With the relationship between the two nations stooping new low by each passing day, in the lights of harassing of diplomats in each other's territory, there is a little possibility in near future for it to be normalised again.

But, the doctors have different things to say on the issue. Dr Aggarwal says, "When patients seek for a visa in emergency cases, the governments should not let their diplomatic bitterness to come in between their lives. Due to the problem in the issuance of medical visas, the doctors are unable to see the emergency cases." He adds, "Healthcare sector has played an important role in curbing the bitterness among the two nations as for instance, patients tell us that before coming to India they were skeptical but after coming here they realised that there are no differences."

There are thousands of patients in Pakistan who seek medical help from India. But only a handful avail the opportunity. "Medical visa should be granted as soon as possible because there are many parents like me, waiting in grief for the visa to be granted", says Nausheen.

The authors are New Delhi-based freelance contributors.
The discharge of sewage from over 1,500 unauthorized colonies and slums in Delhi is a major reason for pollution in the Yamuna, a monitoring committee overseeing the cleaning of the river has said.

Taking note of the pollution in the river, the committee has directed authorities to come up with a plan for preventing pollution from these sources and for proper disposal of fecal sludge and other wastes.

PTI

Delhi has 1,797 unauthorized colonies that have a population of about 40 lakh, which is growing, the report said.

There is no regulated system of emptying their septic tanks and fecal sludge that contain very high levels of coliform and get deposited in drains and water bodies which ultimately pollute the river, it added.

The monitoring committee has said in the report that only about 14 per cent of the 1,797 colonies have been provided sewage pipelines.

But, even there "the offtake is extremely poor as the residents are reported to be unwilling to pay the charges," it said.

BCCL

The monitoring committee has said that about one-third of the population of Delhi is still dependent upon the septic tank.

The committee was set up by National Green Tribunal Chairperson Justice A K Goel in July with retired expert member B S Sajwan and former Delhi chief secretary Shailaja Chandra as members.

It was tasked to come up with an action plan on cleaning of the river and submit a detailed report by December 31.

It has directed the Delhi government to notify regulations of septage management under which responsibility of each and every person involved should be fixed so that the sewage could get properly treated in an aligned manner.

The committee has also directed the Delhi Jal Board to immediately provide to the Central Pollution Control Board and the DPCC connectivity to their servers for real-time monitoring of quality of treated water from each sewage treatment plants.

BCCL

The committee has reviewed the sanitation situation with all authorities and issued comprehensive directions which include, among others, asking the CPCB and DPCC to designate scientists or engineers within their organization to be responsible for monitoring online reports from DJB and send SMS alerts to the Jal board DJB for corrective action.

It pointed out the Delhi Jal Board has the power to impose a fine of up to Rs 5000 for discharging filth and garbage into the drains.
Stroking controversy, Dilip Sanghani a senior BJP leader from Gujarat and a former state agriculture minister has accused Dr Verghese Kurien, who is hailed as the Father of Indias White Revolution of using Amul's profits to funds Christian Evangelists.

Speaking at an event to felicitate a group of bikers, who have embarked on a 3,000 km rally from various places to commemorate the 97th birth anniversary of Indias Milkman he even went on to claim that Kurien was not the founder of Amul.

BCCL/FILE

Amul was founded by Tribhuvandas Patel, but does the country know about Tribhuvandas Patel? The money that Gujarats farmers and cattle rearers collected through their hard work, he (Kurien) donated it for religious conversions in Dangs (South Gujarat), he said.

Sanghani also claimed that details about Kurien's donations can be checked from Amuls records adding that when he was the minister the issue had come to his notice.

BCCL/FILE

Later, speaking to media persons Sanghani clarified that Kurien started as an employee of Amul. He got more importance than Tribhuvandas Patel, who had founded Amul at Sardar Patel's behest. The contribution of Tribhuvandas Patel has been forgotten.

Reacting to Sanghani's comment, Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation Limited (GCMMF) chairman Ram Singh Parmar said, "We don't want to reply to such a bogus statement."

BCCL

Even Kurien's family has rejected the claims and termed the allegations as laughable.

According to his family, Kurien, who was born in a Syrian Christian family in Kerala has lived his life as an atheist.

BCCL/FILE

They also pointed out that in 2012, when Kurien died at the age of 90, he was cremated at a Hindu crematorium in Anand, as per his wish.

Kurien is credited of revolutionizing dairy farming in the country with "Operation Flood" transformed India into the largest milk producer in the world.
Today we have so many ways to interact with our computers. There's voice recognition, touch screens, styluses.

Yet, for the most part, we rely on a keyboard interface that looks almost exactly like the first typewriter that came out in the 1800s. Why is that?

Well, it might have a little bit to do with the legacy of QWERTY. The massive four row keyboard is something generations over the last 150 years have always known. We learned to type on it, so it's what we're most comfortable with. If you think about it, feature phones had a keyboard of their own to fit the space. But with the Blackberry, and later smartphones, we had all the space we needed so we never even thought of designing a new keyboard interface for them. We just went with the same QWERTY. And by this point, we've improved it to a level where it's efficient and sufficiently ergonomic.

That wasn't always the case though. When typewriters first came out, they had many different layouts. What eventually became popular and succeeded though was a layout designed in 1873 by Wisconsin Journalist Christopher Latham Sholes for the Sholes & Glidden Type-Writer, which looks almost exactly like the one you use today.

In 1893, the biggest names among typewriter manufacturers came together to form the Union Typewriter Company, and made QWERTY their standard. It's still unclear how that came to be though.

Sholes & Glidden Type-Writer - Wikimedia Commons

A common theory is that, because early typewriters had a tendency to jam when commonly used letters were hit in quick succession, the vowels and such were separated from each other. Later in 2011, researchers from Kyoto University theorised that perhaps QWERTY came to be thanks more to telegraph operators, the most common typewriter users. That's why, they said, the letters often mistaken for each other in Morse code are grouped together.

Of course, it wasn't long after that children in the US began learning the typewriter, which is part of what makes the interface so tough to break, since it's ingrained into us at an early age.

However, there have been plenty of attempts over the years to take on QWERTY. In 1936, University of Washington professor August Dvorak introduced the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard layout. However, it ended up being more of a niche variant that never really took off, though it was supposedly designed to reduce finger travel time and avoid repetitive strain injuries.

Dvorak Simplified keyboard

After that we had the T9 keypads on our dumb phones, mostly because phones then were tiny. BlackBerry here found its calling by taking the QWERTY to a portable device in our pocket. Then came smartphones which, despite using a touch interface, used the same layout. We'd officially come full circle.

However, as technology progresses, many do believe QWERTY will eventually phase out. Already, things like predictive text on our phones and Gmail's Smart Compose and smart Reply features try to lessen the amount we have to type. With our smart hubs, we don't type at all, instead voicing whatever we need.

But what happens when virtual and augmented reality take off commercially? Suppose we have VR or AR gear in every home, and you want to send a text through your headset to someone who's away from theirs. You might be typing in the air but, are you still typing on a QWERTY layout? See, there's that circular loop again, always coming back to the keyboard.

Still experts believe voice dictation will be one way the keyboard dies for good. All that requires is for speech recognition AI to get better, which shouldn't be too long, and for us to solve our data privacy issues of course.

Aside from that though, there may be something even better on the horizon. After all, it has to be faster and more convenient than QWERTY to replace it right? Well, that's where Neurable comes in, a startup in Cambridge Massachusetts. They're working on a way to type with your very thoughts.

They've designed a headband covered with electrodes that's connected to a VR headset. When a person types in VR, the key they're trying to select and the one they want next lights up in their mind a certain way. Tasking a machine learning algorithm to learn these patterns, they believe it can eventually let a person type just by thinking about doing it, and the program would even learn enough to autocomplete your words and make the process faster. Facebook is already working on this at a rudimentary level as well, attempting to design a simple yes/no click input device that people can use telepathically.

Still, we might eventually be sad to see the QWERTY keyboard go. I know I'll miss the familiar clickety clack sound.
In 1969, Apollo 11 landed on the surface of the moon and three men became the first-ever humans to walk on the lunar surface. Neil Armstrongs One small step for man, a giant leap for mankind, was met with a lot of cheering and whistling and clapping  most of all in the US. The US had outraced Russia in the space race. If you thought, that was that, you couldnt be more wrong.

Soon after the moon landing, conspiracy theories started pouring in, claiming that the moon landing was actually fake.

Smithsonian Mag

The pictures of the landing were microscopically scrutinized and full-fledged documentaries were made to convince the world that USAs moon landing was nothing but a hoax.

Also Read: China Is Launching Three Artificial Moons Bright Enough To Replace Streetlights By 2022

So, Dmitry Rogozin - the head of Russias national space agency Roscosmos, has offered to "check" whether or not the Americans actually set foot on the moon.

Speaking to Igor Dodon  President of Moldova  about the prospects of a moon base, Rogozin suggested that it was impossible for one country alone to bear all the expenses of a moon program.

When asked if American astronauts landed on the moon, Rogozin replied with a smile, "We have set a task to fly and see whether they were [on the Moon] or not."

"They say that they were, so we will check [it]," Sputnik News quotes him as saying.

Roscosmos announced that it would pen a new, multibillion-rouble Moon exploration programme, which will see Russia send its first manned mission to the Moon. It also plans to work with NASA to discuss the concept of a lunar orbital station.

Russia is also contemplating building a long-term base on the moon to help study earths natural satellite with the help robot avatars.

Also Read: Astronomers Believe A Moon Can Have Its Own Moon, And Their Official Name For It Is 'Moonmoon'
A U.S. judge has dismissed nationwide litigation over the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 in which victims families sought to hold the carrier, its insurer Allianz SE and Boeing Co. liable for the still-unexplained disaster.

U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson in Washington ruled on Wednesday night that the wrongful death and product liability litigation, encompassing 40 lawsuits, did not belong in the United States.

She said the case belonged in Malaysia, which has an overwhelming interest in and substantial nexus to the March 8, 2014 disappearance of Flight MH370, a Boeing 777 heading to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur with 239 people on board.

At its core, this case is about the unexplained disappearance of a passenger plane operated by Malaysia Airlines as part of its national air carrier fleet following its departure from a Malaysian airport, Jackson wrote.

Litigation in the United States related to the Flight MH370 disaster is inconvenient, she added.

The 61-page decision is a setback for plaintiffs from the United States, Australia, China, India and Malaysia who represented more than 100 Flight MH370 passengers, including from Japan.

The plane is believed to have crashed in the south Indian Ocean after veering far off course, but no remains or large pieces of wreckage have been found.

Flight MH370s disappearance remains one of the worlds greatest aviation mysteries.

A 495-page report from Malaysian investigators in July offered no clear answers about what happened.

The plaintiffs sued under the Montreal Convention, an international treaty governing air transportation incidents, and various U.S. state laws.

Mary Schiavo, a lawyer for some of the plaintiffs, said in an email on Friday her clients were preparing for a June 2019 trial in Kuala Lumpur over the plane.

Malaysia Airlines, Boeing, their respective lawyers, and lawyers for other plaintiffs did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The carrier was insured by Allianzs Global Corporate & Specialty SE unit, according to Wednesdays decision. Hugo Kidston, a spokesman for the unit, declined to comment.

The case is In re: Air Crash Over the Southern Indian Ocean, on March 8, 2014, U.S. District Court, District of Columbia, No. 16-mc-01184.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)

Topics Lawsuits Carriers Legislation USA Aviation Allianz
Qatar Navigation (Milaha), a leading maritime and logistics conglomerate, showcased latest upgrades in its operations and services at the recently concluded 2nd Business Continuity and Resilience Conference, which was held in Doha, Qatar.



The event was held under the patronage of Minister of Commerce and Industry Ali bin Ahmed Al Kuwari and was attended by business continuity, risk management and organisational resilience professionals from all sectors, said a statement.



Milahas chief executive officer Abdulrahman Essa Al Mannai headed the companys delegation to the conference where he delivered a presentation, showcased latest developments, and highlighted the companys contribution to the overall resilience of the Qatari economy.



In his presentation, Al Mannai highlighted some of Milahas success stories since the beginning of the blockade, notably, connecting Qatari cargo to international liner networks and supporting Qatars food supply chain connectivity.



Al Mannai said: From the first day of the blockade, Milaha has proven itself to be a reliable and trustworthy partner by ensuring business continuity to all its clients, starting with the relocation of our transhipment hub and the quick rollout and expansion of fast, direct shipping services between Qatar and key regional and international ports in Oman, Kuwait, Pakistan, India, and Turkey.



As a result of those decisive and prompt measures, a lot of the blockades repercussions have been mitigated and even reversed to Qatars benefit; and the shortage of vital goods and supplies was averted, he added.



Al Mannai also received the Business Continuity Institutes Award for the Continuity and Resilience Provider category, which was judged by a UK-based panel of independent international experts in further recognition of Milahas role in ensuring continuity of business in Qatar, it stated.  TradeArabia News Service
European leaders have put it up to the UK by stressing the Brexit draft withdrawal agreement is the only deal on the table.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has come out strongly to say "there isn't a plan B" adding that the deal signed off on today is "the best deal that is available".

The EU 27 and British prime minister Theresa May met for a special Council Summit in Brussels this morning where they endorsed the agreement as well as the political declaration around future relationship talks.

The pressure is now on Mrs May who will have to convince politicians in the House of Commons to ratify the deal.

Speaking after today's meeting, Mr Varadkar said the best outcome would be for the UK to stay in the EU but said the agreement is "the next best outcome".

"In terms of alternative options and a plan B, let's not forget what we have here, we have an agreement that took between 18 months and two years to negotiate, it's is over 500 pages long and as of today has the support of 28 Governments."

Mr Varadkar said that he has heard "a lot of people talking about better deals or alternative deals" but moved to shut this prospect down by stating that "what's on the table is the only deal".

"The entire European Union today was very much of the view that there couldn't be a renegotiation, it wasn't easy to get to this point, a 500-page treaty that has been ratified by 28 States all at once."

Mr Varadkar added: "What we need to do now is get on with it, get on with ratification of this agreement by the House of Commons and also by the European Parliament."
Dubai Studio City, a top business community for the broadcasting, production and events sectors, has launched CineMENA, a unique platform that celebrates the art of content creation and nurtures local talent in the field.



The initiative aims to assist content creators in enhancing their skills through an annual agenda of events, including workshops, masterclasses and training sessions by globally renowned industry influencers, actors and filmmakers.



Set to officially kick off in February 2019, CineMENA seeks to provide networking opportunities for members and stakeholders of the Mena regions creative community. The initiative will comprise multiple activations, an exhibition showcasing the latest technologies and trends, outdoor film screenings, and thought sessions focused on all aspects of the art and craft of content creation.



CineMENA will also introduce a new competition to recognise local and regional talent, featuring four categories  Best Short Film, Best Short Documentary, Best Music Video, and Best Film Inspired by the Founding Father of the UAE, Late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan.



Majed Al Suwaidi, managing director of Dubai Studio City, said: In line with our core priority of nurturing a creative community through identifying, supporting and honing talent in the media and content creation industry, we are proud to announce the launch of CineMENA, our new platform that celebrates excellence in media across the Mena region.



He added: The media industry today features multiple platforms for different types of content creators and some of these stipulate a high number of followers as a prerequisite. In contrast, CineMENA caters to all ages and levels of expertise  from new entrants to seasoned professionals  equipping participants with the necessary skills and tools to create engaging content.



Local content from the Mena region has a relatively low representation on a global level. We are keen for CineMENA to change the status quo through actively promoting locally produced content in both Arabic and English. We aspire to bring together passionate individuals to learn, generate content, and network with other members and stakeholders of the creative community.



Jamal Al Sharif, chairman of the Dubai Film and TV Commission, said: For over a decade, there has been no doubt that the region has made significant strides in the content creation industry, and we intend to provide all the facilities to support our local talent.



With CineMENA, we aim to build a platform where content creators can learn, inspire, network and explore new prospects. The initiative is poised to benefit all aspiring creators, whether they belong to the filmmaking, screenwriting, or pre- and post-production fields. CineMENA will provide our young people with an ideal opportunity to showcase their talent while helping develop the regional visual content creation sector and encouraging creativity.



Over the past three years, Dubai Studio City organised diverse workshops in all aspects of film and media production that collectively drew the participation of over 2,000 amateurs and professionals.



In 2018, the community has hosted 12 workshops in collaboration with the Emirati production house Behind the Scenes at in5 Media, an innovation centre in Dubai Production City that supports entrepreneurs and startups in the media domain. Led by Mohammad Salam, managing director of Behind the Scenes, and conducted by award-winning specialists, the workshops covered topics such as sound recording, cinematography, voice and speech, post-production, and directing.  TradeArabia News Service
The British Parliament has seized internal Facebook documents from the founder of an American software company, using a rare mechanism to compel the handover of the documents during a business trip to London by the founder of Six4Three.

The Guardian reported that the documents are said to contain details of decisions taken by Facebook on data and privacy controls that resulted in the scandal involving the data analysis firm Cambridge Analytica.

The firm is alleged to have used data of more than 50 million Facebook subscribers for targeting voters in the 2016 US presidential election.

The allegations about Cambridge Analytica were made by a former employee, Christopher Wylie, and reported by London's The Observer and The New York Times in March.

Britain's culture, media and sport committee chairman Damian Collins was at the heart of the move to seize the documents. Parliament sent a sergeant at arms to the hotel where the founder of Six4Three was staying, and gave him two hours to hand over the documents.

He refused to do so and was promptly escorted to Parliament where it was made plain to him that he would be fined or even jailed if he did not hand over the documents.

Collins said: "We are in uncharted territory. This is an unprecedented move but its an unprecedented situation. Weve failed to get answers from Facebook and we believe the documents contain information of very high public interest.

Facebook chief executive and founder Mark Zuckerberg appeared before a US Congressional hearing after the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke. But he refused to appear before the British or Canadian Parliaments despite being requested to do so.

We have very serious questions for Facebook. It misled us about Russian involvement on the platform. And it has not answered our questions about who knew what, when with regards to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Collins said.

We have followed this court case in America and we believed these documents contained answers to some of the questions we have been seeking about the use of data, especially by external developers.
This Week in Review

A weekly review of the best and most popular stories published in the Imperial Valley Press. Also, featured upcoming events, new movies at local theaters, the week in photos and much more.
Casio Middle East has launched its recently improved AT-3 and brand-new CT-X series keyboards specifically designed for the Arab market, marking its formal entry to the growing Arab electronic musical instrument industry.

The formal unveiling of the two products took place at the Music Chamber, the one-stop music experience showroom and academy, at The Mall, Jumeirah in Dubai.

In conjunction with the launch was the rolling out of Casio Middle Easts Arabic YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3X54vbHnuNvMGZ7hXuiEEw to serve as its official platform in the hugely popular video-sharing website.

The channel will broadcast footage of its latest top-of-the-line musical instruments and their features, as well as easy-to-follow tutorial videos for beginners and professionals alike in keeping with the companys commitment to help nurture music geniuses in the region.

The CT-X series features a right mix of unique Western, Oriental and Gulf sources capable of playing different styles of music such as R&B, Rock, Jazz, Saidi, Maksoum and Katakofti, while the upgraded version of the competitively priced AT-3 series offers a new set of Oriental rhythms with a professional arranger to support new beginners and a veteran musician performing a one-man show.

Both strong Oriental keyboard products are integrated with pre-set Arab music and oriental rhythms to appeal to local and regional artists.

Koji Naka, the managing director, Casio Middle East, said: "The two new products launched is a boost to our initiative to highlight the role of music, a universal language, in bringing people together regardless of their nationalities and cultural backgrounds."

"In the Middle East, we aim to attract Arab musicians, listeners, and fans by offering them a product that fits their needs. On the business side, the unveiling provided us with an opportunity to show our strong interest and desire to capture a large portion of the Arab market amid the rising opportunities in the electronic musical instrument industry here," he stated.

Live performances by Mohammad Salah (Keyboard), Michael (Digital Piano), Rami (Oud), Valerie (Piano), Beshoy (Nay) and Hani (Violin) dominated the launch event attended by key Casio and Music Chamber executives.

Salah, a professional Iraqi keyboardist, said the improved AT-3 is the best keyboard in today's musical instruments market for learning or playing Oriental music.

It is loaded with advanced features and options allowing users to create their very own music, rhythms and tones, coupled with high quality materials and one of a kind output quality that makes it unique among its competitors, he explained.

The enthusiastic audience also tried their hand on the new keyboards and other Casio musical instruments during the launch, giving them an opportunity to experience the power of the high-quality and exceptionally made instruments.-TradeArabia News Service
UAEs General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) has signed final agreements on air transport services with the Central Pacific island of Kiribati, the South Pacific Ocean nation of Vanuatu and the cabinet of Bosnia and Herzegovina.



The UAE remains to be the country with the most signed number of open skies agreements, reported Emirates news agency Wam.



Saif Mohamed Al Suwaidi, director-general of the GCAA, who signed on behalf of the state, said, "These final agreements implementing the open sky policy aims to explore new prospects and line up with aviation development march for the national carriers to enhance cooperation and economic bonds between UAE and the other countries.



The GCAA strategy is to find growth opportunities and facilitate the commercial exchange process in the aviation sector. We are proud that the UAE is a pioneer and the country with the most signed open sky agreements, and is always exerting efforts to promote this policy globally.



Al Suwaidi also confirmed that the signing of open sky policies aims to expand commercial and tourism relationships with countries, and support the development opportunities of all national carries in the UAE as well as stimulating free competition.



Air transport agreements between countries are governed by laws and principles established by ICAO to control air transport between regions of countries. The UAE encourages other countries to sign open sky agreements to facilitate air transport movement globally.



The GCAA is the federal authority which oversees the management of airspace and aviation movement in the country.
Bidroom, a growing online travel community, has announced a 15 million capital investment in the company, which will be used to accelerate growth.

The capital injection will be used for the accelerated international roll-out and the investment follows two months after the new management board took office.

Bidroom is an initiative designed by hoteliers for hoteliers and started in 2014. The company is an alternative to high-commission platforms and one that brings more business freedom to the hospitality industry, the company said.

In September, the company entered a new phase with an expansion of the board. This new board announced new strategic plans containing product improvement, concept development and solid growth of the Bidroom community.

Bidroom CEO Bas Tolmeijer said the company's workforce will expand to 200 employees within the next year after the company moves into a new, hypermodern office in Krakow in April 2019.

He says that right now, the focus is on the recruitment of IT specialists, marketeers and customer service employees.

The capital injection will also be used to renew the business model, to develop smart technology and to expand availability by partnering with more large chain hotels. Tolmeijer adds that investments are made in sustainable cooperation with various worldwide partners such as Visa, which recently formed an exclusive partnership with Bidroom. The new shareholders are mainly so-called family offices that have faith in the new concept.

Bidroom is working behind the scenes to finalise the new growth strategy and launch of consumer campaigns.

According to Francesco Monaco, CCO of Bidroom, the special collaboration with Visa is aimed at enabling all their European cardholders to get to know the benefits of booking via Bidroom.

Our research has shown that there is a particular need for city trips, whereby people often opt for hotels in the higher segment. With this in mind, Bidroom has decided to pay the activation costs for the next 10,000 hotels that register, says Monaco.

The company also indicated that it will open new offices and expand its teams in the short term, in order to be able to optimise the services to the hotels. The company already operates in the United Arab Emirates.

Bidroom is an online travel community and a hotel booking platform with +120,000 hotels in 128 countries. The concept differs from online travel agencies (OTAs) because it does not charge commission to the hotels. Bidroom works with an annual membership model, whereby hotels only pay the contribution after proven success. This substantial saving is shared with the traveller who will subsequently be paying a guaranteed best price. Bidroom is demonstrably cheaper than all known OTAs. The result is a margin improvement for the hotelier.

Bidroom is the worlds first membership-based hotel booking platform, with offices in Amsterdam, Krakow, Istanbul and Paris. - TradeArabia News Service
A Peruvian judge issued an international arrest warrant for an ally of jailed opposition leader Keiko Fujimori in relation to the same money laundering probe that has seen former president Alberto Fujimoris daughter locked up for three years of preventative detention.

Judge Richard Concepcion Carhuancho also ordered Jaime Yoshiyama to join Fujimori in pre-trial detention for three years.

Yoshiyama ran for vice-president at the 2011 election when Keiko Fujimori first lost a presidential run-off.

She is accused of accepting $1.2 million in illicit party funding from Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht for her 2011 presidential campaign.

Yoshiyama is currently recovering in Miami following an operation on his face, his lawyer said.

In his ruling issued in the early hours of Saturday morning, Carhuancho ordered businessman Augusto Bedoya, one of Fujimoris campaign leaders in 2011, not to leave Peru in the next three years.

The judge said Yoshiyamas conduct in evading justice by leaving the country meant pre-trial detention becomes indispensable.

Prosecutors have accused a total of 11 people linked to Fujimoris Popular Force party of running a criminal organization in order to raise illicit funding for her 2011 campaign. Seven of those are in pre-trial detention.

Attorney general Jose Domingo Perez claims Yoshiyama and Bedoya each received $500,000 for the campaign with the other $200,000 allegedly paid by Odebrecht going to a fund for businessmen supporting Fujimoris campaign.

Her disgraced father, president from 1990-2000, is serving a 25-year sentence for crimes against humanity and corruption.

Peru is one of the Latin American countries worst affected by the multi-million dollar, region-wide Odebrecht corruption scandal.

The Brazilian company has admitted paying at least $29 million in bribes to Peruvian officials since 2004.

Former Peru president Alan Garcia has been barred from leaving the country while under investigation and last week entered the Uruguay embassy in Lima seeking political asylum.

Three more ex-presidents, Alejandro Toledo, Ollanta Humala and Pedro Pablo Kczynski are also under investigation.

Odebrecht has admitted paying $788 million in bribes across 12 countries to secure public works contracts.
Burundi authorities have arrested four retired army officers suspected of a role in the 1993 assassination of the countrys first democratically elected President Melchior Ndadaye, a judicial source said.

The source said the four arrested Saturday are suspcted of involvement in the killing of Ndadaye, a majority Hutu in a country whose army has been traditionally dominated by the Tutsi minority.

The October 21, 1993 assassination, just three months after Ndadaye took office, sparked a 12-year civil war which cost more than 300,000 lives.

A UN commission of enquiry in 1996 concluded senior army officers were behind the killing.

State prosecutor Sylvestre Nyandwi said Saturday that, having learned of (other) people who may have been implicated in the coup  we have decided to open a dossier into them and four were arrested this morning.

We consider they are among those behind the assassination of the president, said Nyandwi.

The four detained are general Celestin Ndayisaba and colonels Gabriel Gunungu, Laurent Niyonkuru and Anicet Nahigombeye.

A 1998 prosecution found a dozen officers guilty of involvement in the killing but the highest-ranking was a lieutenant.

A judicial source said the four detained had been questioned in Bujumbura and jailed. Another source said police had sought to arrest at least three other retired Tutsi officers but found they were not at home.

The wife of one of the four arrested told AFP her husband had been hauled out in the early hours by dozens of heavily-armed police. She slammed the detentions as purely political.

Politicians and former military benefited from provisional immunity following the 2000 Arusha peace accord within the framework of a truth and reconciliation commission (CVR).

But Nyandwi said that the CVR was not put in place to prevent justice from functioning.

Several political parties and civil groups have expressed concern that the commission will lead to impunity for crimes and unrest which has marred the country since independence from Belgium in 1962.

str/cw/pma

CVR ENERGY
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.
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Active Shooter in Squirrel Hill. This was the subject line of an email I received on the morning of the Tree of Life synagogue shooting. It was from my childrens school, which is located less than a mile from the scene of the shooting. I am working  to put in place a plan for helping our students understand this situation in age-appropriate ways, the schools principal went on to say. Unfortunately, there simply are no age-appropriate ways to understand such a horrific act of violence and hatred. Even as an adult, I dont understand it. How does the school, and how do I, tell my children that a man simply walked into a synagogue and began indiscriminately shooting peaceful worshipers?

Mass shootings in the United States are not a political issue  they are a public health one. Our country has had more mass shootings than any other country in history.

Since 2011, the rate at which public mass shootings occur has tripled. Defined as at least four people either injured or killed, thus far in 2018, there have been 366 mass shootings in the U.S.  on average, more than one each day. We, as health care providers, work to protect the public from preventable diseases; similarly, it is our duty and responsibility to work to protect the public by ending these preventable tragedies. The American College of Physicians, American College of Surgeons, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, American Public Health Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, and American College of Emergency Physicians all have called for policies to reduce injuries and deaths from firearm injuries.

The shooter in the Tree of Life massacre used a semi-automatic assault weapon. How do we, as health care providers, rationalize a citizenry armed with weapons of war? How do we make sense of the fact that our federal government has allowed and continues to allow these tragedies to happen by not passing legislation ending the possession and sale of such weapons? Should Second Amendment rights supersede our: rights as Americans to safely worship at a synagogue (Tree of Life) or church (Sutherland Springs); the right for our children to go to school safely (Columbine High School, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook Elementary, Umpqua Community College, Margerie Stoneman Douglas High School, Santa Fe High School); the right to attend a concert (Las Vegas); the right to go out to a nightclub (Orlando); or see a movie (Aurora)?

We live in a civilized society, and as such, we constantly must relinquish individual rights for the protection of the larger community. We have laws, rules, and regulations which serve to protect the public from public health threats  laws against natural gas drilling in an individuals backyard, rules about responsible hazardous waste disposal and smoking bans in public enclosed areas, for example. Unfortunately, we are in a time where the unrestricted right to bear arms has led to senseless acts of violence against innocent people. Encouraging civilians to carry weapons to their places of worship, to work, and to their schools is not the answer. Doing so perpetuates a culture of fear and distrust that is counter to a healthy populace. In addition, common sense dictates that its unlikely that mass shootings would turn out differently if civilians were encouraged to carry guns, armed security guards were at every door post, and teachers came to school armed to fight. These proposed solutions ignore the obvious  the federal government enacting one of the many legislative proposals banning assault weapons.

Shortly after the San Bernardino and Orlando nightclub shootings, polls found that more than half of Americans supported a ban on assault weapons and according to data from the Pew Research Center, more than 65 percent of the public agree on the need for stricter gun laws. Despite this majority opinion, our government has not yet taken the action needed to save lives. Several states have passed successful legislation banning the purchase of assault weapons and to remove guns from those who pose a danger to others. As health care providers, it is our duty to advocate for these proposals and to speak out and take action against gun violence. Contact your members of Congress, send letters and emails, make phone calls, travel to your state capital, to Washington, D.C., and of course, vote.

As a child growing up in South Florida, my school had regular hurricane drills. Today, my children have school shooting drills. I never thought my community would experience one of the many horrific acts of gun violence this country has seen in the last decade. But then again, thats probably what everyone thinks when they watch what seems like the never-ending news cycle of gun violence. That is, until they get the phone calls, text messages and emails that alert them to a shooting in their community. This is not about Pittsburgh, Squirrel Hill, or the Tree of Life Synagogue. It could have been your town, your place of worship. Do not wait until it happens in your backyard to take action not just as a health care provider but also as a human being.

Jennifer R. Marin is an pediatric emergency physician.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
MASON CITY, Iowa  The Mason City downtown area saw more people out-and-about on Saturday for Home for the Holidays. As a direct results, many of the smaller businesses saw an increase in business.

Mary Rohne, a barista at Beanzys coffee bar, confirmed the rise in business.

Its been really busy here today, Rohne said. Its usually just busy here in the morning, the afternoon kind of lulls, but its been consistent the whole day.

As someone who works for a small business, she understands the importance of supporting local businesses.

Not only are you supporting your community but youre supporting your friends, your family, its everyones connected and thats way more important than giving money to some CEO.

As part of Small Business Saturday, many local businesses gave away assortments of goodies, offered special discounts, and some even extended their hours.
MASON CITY, Iowa  Dozens of runners gathered in downtown Mason City Saturday morning to compete in the Rum With Rudolph 5K Fun Run.

There was a variety of competitors in the event ranging from young children, avid runners, and even seniors.

The run began downtown on Federal Avenue, with the turnaround being at John Adams Middle School, and ending up by Southbridge Mall.

Michael Rowe, a Mason City cross country state-qualifier was the winner of Saturdays race.

It was just a nice fun run  came out here and just fun to compete again, said Rowe. First run since state and just fun to see all of the guys out here and everyone ran well, it was a good time.

But he admits Thanksgiving made running a little more challenging.

Yeah, I had my third Thanksgiving meal last night and could feel it a little bit this morning.

Runners were treated to water and snacks at the finish line by Main Street Mason City and sponsors.
MASON CITY, Iowa  A Clear Lake woman is sentenced after drunkenly crashing into a Cerro Gordo County sheriffs patrol car.

Stacey Irene Lester, 44, pleaded guilty to OWI-1st offense. Authorities say a sheriffs deputy had made a traffic stop in Clear Lake at around 12:30 am on October 27 when Lester crashed her vehicle into the deputys patrol car. Lester reportedly tried to drive away but was caught within a few blocks.

No one was injured in the crash.

Lester has been ordered to spend two days in jail and must pay a $1,250 fine.




For South Koreans seeking an escape from the everyday grind, a 24-hour lock-up at a fake prison gives them "a sense of freedom." It's an unconventional means of escape, but the participants here are paying $90 a night to stay in a South Korean prison.

Tucked away in the northeast corner of the country, the "Prison Inside Me" facility hosts stressed out workers and students who are willing to spend 24 hours in solitary confinement.

28-YEAR-OLD PRISON STAY PARTICIPANT, PARK HYE-RI, SAYING:

"Ironically, it feels this prison is giving me a sense of freedom."

Here, there's a ban on any kind of communication, mobile phones, clocks, or even mirrors, and customers say the solitude allows them to get away from their busy lives.

South Korea has an infamously demanding academic and work culture. According to data from the OECD, South Koreans worked over 2,000 hours in 2017, putting in the third-longest hours among OECD countries.

The country's suicide rate is double that of the U.S., and one of the highest in the world.

Co-founder Noh Ji-Hyang says part of the inspiration for the mock prison came from her husband, a local prosecutor who often worked about 100 hours per week.

CO-FOUNDER OF PRISON STAY, NOH JI-HYANG, SAYING:

"At first people say it would be stuffy to be in a prison cell. But after their stay, they say this isn't a prison - the real prison is where they return to."

Since last July, the South Korean government has cut working hours to 52 in a week, but the policy has drawn criticism that says its standards are too vague. (Reuters)







A participant meditates before being locked up in a cell at Prison Inside Me, a mock prison facility, in Hongcheon, South Korea, November 10, 2018. Since 2013, the facility has hosted more than 2,000 inmates, many of them stressed office workers and students seeking relief from South Korea's demanding work and academic culture. Reuters







Park Hye-ri, 28, a startup business program manager, stretches while being locked inside a cell of Prison Inside Me, a mock prison facility, in Hongcheon, South Korea, November 11, 2018. "This prison gives me a sense of freedom," Park said. "I shouldn't be here right now, given the work I need to do. But I decided to pause and look back at myself for a better life." Reuters

Park Hye-ri, 28, a startup business program manager, puts her mobile phone outside a cell of Prison Inside Me, a mock prison facility, in Hongcheon, South Korea, November 10, 2018. Reuters







Participants are seen through the windows of Prison Inside Me, a mock prison facility, in Hongcheon, South Korea, November 10, 2018. Reuters






Kendallville, IN (46755)

Today

Rain showers early will evolve into a more steady rain overnight. Low 42F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%..

Tonight

Rain showers early will evolve into a more steady rain overnight. Low 42F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%.
Alaska State Troopers report that a 21-year-old man from Kwethluk was arrested on Thanksgiving for shooting a family member multiple times as they returned from a hunting trip.

According to AST, Village Police Officers responded on Wednesday to a call for a man shot around eight miles outside of town.

"The victim was later treated for multiple gunshot wounds," troopers wrote.

The suspect, Seth Michael, was missing until he was found by officers asleep at a family member's residence on the morning of Thanksgiving.

Troopers say they collected evidence and remanded Michael in custody. He has been charged with attempted murder in the second degree, assault in the second degree and assault in the third degree.
A 13-year-old is among several people accused of sits in the Scott County Juvenile Detention Center after police said she led them on a high speed chase in a stolen vehicle.

Officers were called to a Blue Grass neighborhood early Sunday morning when a neighbor saw a suspicious van on his street that it appeared the occupants were trying to break into cars. A Blue Grass police officer tried to pull the vehicle over, but the teenage driver took off. The chase reached speeds of 100 miles-per-hour.

The chase ended in the 6700 block of West Kimberly Road when officers performed pit maneuver on the car. The vehicle had been reported stolen out of Rock Island.

Six people, including the 13-year-old driver, were in the car. All of them were taken into custody. Dramya Holt, 18, was the only adult in the car. She is in the Scott County Jail facing charges of theft and attempted burglary. The other juveniles range from 13 to 15-years-old. They have been released to their parents pending charges.

Two people in the car were taken to the hospital for minor injuries. They have been released.

Three law enforcement vehicles suffered minor damage.
Okay! We are so not done with the wedding festivities of Ranveer Singh and Deepika Padukone and going by all the fun that they are having, we don't want to either. The perfect couple tied the knot in a dreamy two-day affair on November 14 and 15 in Italy. Post their wedding, they hosted a grand Bangalore reception, the duo is back in Mumbai and has two more reception parties to go. But before that, Ranveer's sister Ritika threw them a grand filmy reception and pictures are finally making their way onto social media. [Inside pics] Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh's Intimate Party To Be Extra Filmy, Courtesy Ritika Bhavnani

What really got us excited was Ranveer's latest party look. All through his wedding and his first reception, we saw Ranveer sport elegant and regal ensembles. But the actor who is known for his quirky dressing sense, was back to making headlines, for his last night's choice of clothing. With blingy psychedelic designs on his ethnic jacket and a legit neon torchlight on his shoulder, Singh just made the OOTN as extra as his personality. Ranveer Singh Goes Back To Bling With Kohl Eyes For His Wedding Party With Deepika Padukone And We Are Speechless

And as expected, pictures of Ranveer and Deepika taking centre-stage and dancing their hearts out have now surfaced on social media and here are some of them.

View this post on Instagram A match made in Paradise! @ranveersingh @deepikapadukone A post shared by DiwaaahBhaiWaah! (@shanoosharmarahihai) on Nov 24, 2018 at 9:53pm PST

Well, Ranveer and Deepika have two more receptions to go. November 28 will see the pair's reception for the Bhavnani family and December 1 will see their Bollywood reception. Can we expect the madness that was Sonam Kapoor's reception, at DeepVeer's party as well?

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Nov 25, 2018 12:07 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
Mumbai, November 25: Mumbai Police Commissioner Subodh Jaiswal, in an interview to The Times of India, said that the Mumbai police is better equipped now to handle terror attacks and stated that terror attacks from Pakistan are a bigger threat to the city than even the IS (Islamic State). On November 26, 2008, 10 terrorists trained by Lashkar-e-Taiba had entered Mumbai and carried attacks at several spots in the city. The only terrorist captured alive was Ajmal Kasab, who was hanged in the year 2012. 26/11 Mumbai Terror Attack: 10 Years After Attack, People Left With Faded Memories of the Mayhem.

The Mumbai police commissioner, in an elaborate interview to the daily, explained how the intelligence network and the response time of the Mumbai police has improved drastically in the past decade. The top cop also said that Pakistan has been trying to conduct more terror attacks on the city even after 26/11 and that a few attacks have been prevented since the attacks. However, he did not reveal more details regarding the failed attempts by terrorists, citing security reasons.

The top cop added that coastal security has been enhanced and more coastal police stations have been set up in the years after attack. Talking about the attacks, ten heavily-armed terrorists trained by LeT, sneaked through the Arabian Sea and attacked multiple locations in South Mumba killing 166 persons, including Indian security personnel and 26 foreign nationals and left another 300 injured, besides inflicting huge damage to public and private properties.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Nov 25, 2018 03:42 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
New Delhi, November 25: Special Cell of Delhi police yesterday arrested three terrorists belonging to Islamic State Jammu and Kashmir (ISJK) terror group from Srinagar. Arms and ammunition along with explosives were also recovered from them. Security has been tightened in Delhi and its surrounding since the last two weeks after intelligence agencies alerted police about five to six terrorists planning to move towards the national capital to conduct a major attack.

Another alert was issued on November 13. The Intelligence Bureau on circulated a letter asking the security agencies to be on a high alert in the national capital. In the letter, it is mentioned that as per the message circulated by a Pakistan National Ameer Hamza in the whats app group, the terror organisation Jaish e Mohammed (JeM) is planning to carry out terrorist attacks on security establishments in Delhi to avenge the killing of Usman alias Huzaifa during the Tral encounter in the Kashmir Valley on October 30. Central Industrial Security Force, Delhi Police, National Security Guards, and Railway Protection Force were alerted in the wake of possible attacks.

Earlier this month, former Hizbul Mujahideen commander and founder and chief of Al-Qaeda cell Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind Zakir Moosa was spotted in Amritsar. The state police released posters of the terrorists to gather information about his whereabouts.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Nov 25, 2018 03:58 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
New Delhi, November 25: The government plans to complete the sale of Air India ground handling subsidiary AIATSL by March 2019, an official said. Air India is reeling under a huge debt burden of over Rs 50,000 crore and the government is planning to sell its non-core subsidiaries of the national carrier.

"We are looking to conclude strategic sale of Air India Air Transport Services Limited (AIATSL) in current fiscal. We will soon invite bids from merchant bankers for managing the sale process," the official told PTI.

The sale proceeds would add up to the government's disinvestment kitty. The government has so far has raised over Rs 15,200 crore from CPSE stake sale in current fiscal as against the budgeted target of Rs 80,000 crore. Cash-Strapped Air India Gets Rs 1000 Crore Lifeline From Small Savings Fund.

The government is launching a follow on public offer of CPSE Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) on November 27, targeting to raise up to Rs 14,000 crore.

As part of its plans to take forward the strategic sale of non-core assets of CPSEs, the Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM) has already identified assets of loss making Air India which are to be hived off.

As per latest data, in 2016-17, two subsidiaries of Air India - AIATSL and Air India Express Ltd - posted profits. While AIATSL earned Rs 61.66 crore profit in financial year 2016-17, another subsidiary AI Express earned profit of Rs 297 crore.

Some of the other subsidiaries of Air India include Air India Charters Ltd, IAL Airport Services Ltd, Airline Allied Services Ltd, Air India Engineering Services Ltd and Hotel Corporation of India Ltd.

Besides, catering services provider AISATS - a 50:50 joint venture between Air India and SATS Ltd - too posted profit of Rs 66.06 crore in 2016-17. Under the administrative control of Ministry of Civil Aviation, AIATSL is 100 per cent subsidiary of Air India and was incorporated in June 2003 with the objective of carrying on the business of providing all types of services at airport.

Industrial / Business operations of AIATSL include rendering airport ground handling services, including passenger, ramp, security and cargo handling for Air India.

The strategic sale plan follows the decision by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley led ministerial panel in June to make Air India competitive, by way of cutting down debt and raising resources by selling land assets and other subsidiaries.

The Group of Ministers (GoM) had decided to revive Air India after the government's offer to sale 76 per cent stake in the airline failed to attract any bidder earlier this year.

The government had originally proposed to offload 76 per cent equity share capital of the national carrier as well as transfer the management control to private players. However, the stake sale failed to attract any bidders when the bidding process got completed on May 31. In June, the GoM then decided not to go ahead with Air India stake sale in an election year.
Tension smeared between the law students and engineering students at the Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (IIT) reportedly, leaving over 40 students were hospitalised, and at least one admitted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) with a severe head injury. The delayed response of police officials has only made the situation worse. Reportedly, the State Reserve Police Force (SRPF) has been deployed at the Bhuvaneshwar campus. The uproar had started when a second-year-BTech Mechanical Engineering student allegedly harassed and teased a final year female law student on the evening of November 23. SRM Hostel Staffer Masturbates in Front of Girl Student: Warden Shames Victim, Suspended by University.

After the incident, the law student and her batchmates protested at the BTech hostel and demanded an apology. According to the students account shared on social media, the accused apologised by the end of the day. But the matter did not end there. The next day, hundreds of engineering students entered the Law School with beer bottles, sticks, bats, stones and even knives to damage the premise and harm the students. The civilian activist platform, Arguendo reported that the incident continued for an hour and the engineering students also entered to one of the students were unaware law students were brutally assaulted. SNDT Hostel Warden in Mumbai Forces Female Student to Strip, Students Protest.

Watch the video of KIIT University violence.

The violence broke out into a full-fledged riot spreading panic to the locals. Students reported that name of the molester because of whom the whole incident started is Rakesh Rathore. The accounts shared on social media also revealed the authoritys lack of control over the situation. By the time, police arrived, many students were already injured. Section 144 has been imposed on the university campus.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Nov 25, 2018 08:48 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
Mumbai, November 25: Ten years after the dastardly Mumbai terror attacks, memories of the bloody mayhem seem to have faded in peoples minds like some horrible nightmare  but for survivors and families of victims the day still evokes dread.

Except for symbolic memorial services all over the city planned by VVIPs for photo-ops and the mandatory media coverage, there is barely any evidence of public emotion over those harrowing 60 hours which shook the nation's soul.

Ten heavily-armed terrorists, sneaking in through the Arabian Sea, attacked multiple locations within a small geographical area, killing 166 persons -- including Indian security personnel and 26 foreign nationals -- and left another 300 injured, besides inflicting huge damage to public and private properties.

The toll on the nation's collective social-political psyche was higher, but the scars have apparently healed. Ajmal Kasab, Hanged For 26/11 Mumbai Attacks, Issued Domicile Certificate in UP.

"Whatever happened was very sad for the country. We remember the victims But, all have moved ahead in life and think of a bright future," said Rakesh Upadhyay, director at an ayurvedic pharmaceutical company.

He was among the millions worldwide who remained glued to the television during the November 26-28, 2008, terror attacks and watched the real-life drama live  and it unfolded like some unbelievable Hollywood disaster film.

"It was a massive national tragedy, we still feel bad about what happened, especially for the innocent victims. Now, it feels like a bad dream. Everyone is busy tackling major problems of daily life," shrugged a middle-class housewife, Minakshi Baikar, adding how her son Atharva was a then a year-old toddler and is now 11.

However, Sharda Bhosale, 60-year-old widow of martyred policeman Balasaheb Bhosale (he was in the team that helped nab Kasab at Chowpatty) has yet to come to terms with his death, her son, traffic policeman Deepak Bhosale, said.

"Each year, on November 26, she invariably falls ill over my father's painful death and his memory... She remains like that for at least 5-6 days. The entire family shudders every time the calendar changes to November," Deepak told IANS.

As the day looms closer, dark memories of the attacks flicker alive, reminding people of how the extremists unobstrusively entered Mumbai to execute their sinister plans on a cold evening.

Alighting from a hijacked dinghy at a small fishing bay near Colaba, they divided themselves into groups of 2-3 and systematically went after their surgically-planned targets, catching everyone unawares.

So well-prepared were they with inputs and reconnaissance carried out by various accomplices, including Pakistani-American David Coleman Headley, that they melted into the crowds and walked around in a familiar manner in south Mumbai, reaching their destinations precisely.

They targeted the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus, Hotel Taj Mahal Palace & Tower, Hotel Trident, Nariman House, Leopold Cafe, Cama Hospital, Wadi Bunder -- all within a radius of barley 4-5 kms -- while a bomb exploded at suburban Vile Parle in one of the taxis they had earlier hired.

Nine of the terrorists were gunned down in the combined security operations that included the Mumbai police, army and naval commandos, and other paramilitary forces who battled them for 60 hours as the city waited with bated breath.

In the wee hours of November 27, barely six hours after the mayhem started, one of the terrorists, Ajmal Amir Kasab (22), was caught alive following a fierce gun battle with the police near Chowpatty Beach, proving to be a significant achievement.

Kasab and his accomplice were speeding in a hijacked car towards Malabar Hill, where the Governor's residence Raj Bhavan and the Chief Minister's official residence -- besides those of other VVIPs -- are located.

An aggressive Mumbai police interrogated Kasab, investigated the matter thoroughly, and identified and named 35 accused directly or indirectly responsible for the 26/11 terror attacks. With the top police brass personally directing investigations, an air-tight case was made against Kasab -- the sole terrorist nabbed alive.

Making doubly sure he would be convicted, the prosecution was handed over to a top criminal lawyer, Special Public Prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam. With his rich experience in the case relating to the March 12, 1993, Mumbai serial blasts, he successfully directed the trial right from the Special Court in Mumbai to the Bombay High Court and finally the Supreme Court.

During the trial, in January 2010, the then Maharashtra Home Minister, R.R. Patil (now deceased), took the bold decision to order the covert burial of the nine slain terrorists. The location is still a mystery.

Finally, two years after the 26/11 carnage, on May 6, 2010, Kasab was awarded the death sentence, and the nation heaved a collective sigh of relief.

Exploiting the legal privileges granted in a democracy like India, Kasab challenged the verdict right up to the Supreme Court but was dismissed at every level. Even the President of India rejected his mercy petition.

Terming it as the "greatest challenge of his legal career", Nikam said "full justice has still not been done" to the innocent victims as the main conspirators remain under the protection of Pakistan. Even as the trial continues there, Islamabad remains furtive and argumentative and doesn't give credence to the evidence submitted to it by India.

"As long as extremists like Hafeez M. Saeed and Zaki-Ur-Rehman Lakhvi are not punished, neither Pakistan nor India can be considered free of terror. On the Indian side, the 26/11 trial continues with Abu Jindal and the deposition of Headley," Nikam told IANS.

Later, on the quiet and cool morning of November 21, 2012, Kasab was hanged inside Pune's Yerawada Central Jail and his body disposed off somewhere on the jail campus. The exact location remains unknown.

Not surprisingly, all the legally tenable actions post-26/11 by India, including the disposal of the terrorists' bodies, Kasab's hanging and his last rites, evoked no international opposition, barring some stray murmurs in Pakistan.

With the experience of 26/11 as a grim lesson, security was boosted on all fronts -- terrestrial, coastal and maritime -- and the outcome is that Mumbai is scarred but safer.

(This opinion piece is authored by Quaid Najmi of IANS. The views belong to the author. LatestLY does not take any ownership for the same)

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Nov 25, 2018 12:50 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
Vertigo is not a word in these tourists dictionary visiting Thailands famous building, King Power MahaNakhon. Located at the heart of Bangkok, the world-class attraction is countrys tallest completed building offering a first glass skywalk at 314 metres. After much delays, they unveiled the observation deck and rooftop bar offering 360-degree views of the city. Thailand, known to be one of the favourite tourist destinations have added an attractive must-visit spot  the terrifying glass floor protruding out over the edge of the mixed-use skyscraper. It is definitely not for faint-hearted, but for other fearless visitors, it brings an adrenaline rush. Wat Pa Maha Chedi Kaew Temple in Thailand is Made Up of Beer Bottles, View Pics.

King Power Mahanakhon announced the opening of Mahanakhon SkyWalk, that offers astounding panoramic views of the city from Thailand's tallest building. It is located on the 74th, 75th and 78th floor with the outdoor observation deck including one of the worlds most massive glass trays. Visitors who are going all out to have the chilling experience on top of glass-bottom skywalk are made to wear a pair protective fabric booties over their shoes. Thai Paradise Koh Tao Becomes 'Death Island' After Rising Cases of Rapes, Murders and Disappearances of Tourists.

The billion dollar-building has several exciting features to talk about such as ascending 74 floors in 50 seconds, flat! And these supernova-speed elevators have fast-paced Bangkok videos playing on all four walls. Apart from the glass skywalk and speedy lifts, the rooftop bar, Thailands highest is the place to be. Check out pics of MahaNakhon SkyWalk shared by lucky and daredevil tourists.

Daredevil Family is All Smiles at King Power MahaNakhon Glass Skywalk

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Pheerawas Khunlanunthwatn (@amp_pheerawas_k) on Nov 18, 2018 at 9:04pm PST

On Top of The World

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Jeab Naphatsakorn (@jeabnaphatsakorn) on Nov 16, 2018 at 7:44pm PST

The Best View in Thailand

View this post on Instagram A post shared by JOLIE NoppawanT. (@jolienoppawan) on Nov 24, 2018 at 9:26pm PST

At Peace on Top of MahaNakhon Tower

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Edgars Pastars (@edgarspastars) on Nov 25, 2018 at 12:44am PST

Oh My God, That's One Scary View!

View this post on Instagram #bangkok #thailand A post shared by Laurence Hoefling (@laurencehoefling) on Nov 25, 2018 at 12:11am PST

On their official website, the information reads: "King Power Mahanakhon is recognized as one of Thailands tallest buildings, at 314 meters. From the Mahanakhon SkyWalk, the view of Bangkok below is spectacular and intriguing, whether day or night. Watching the BTS Skytrain as it snakes through the city like a miniature toy train, with the long lines of glowing car headlights in the evening traffic like so many pulsing arteries, you realize that you stand atop the very heart of the tremendous center of life and activity which is Bangkok."

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Nov 25, 2018 03:16 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
- A military source has revealed that the Boko Haram insurgents that attacked the Nigerian Army base in Borno state disguised as friendly soldiers

- The source says the insurgents went into the commander's office and shot the latter alongside five other soldiers that were with him

- According to the source, the Nigerian soldiers were were overpowered by the insurgents

As Nigerians mourn soldiers killed by Boko Haram insurgents at Metele village in Guzamala local government area of Borno state on Sunday, November 18, a soldier has revealed how the insurgents succeeded in their dastardly act.

The Nation reports that the soldier, who survived the attack, said the attackers disguised as friendly soldiers and went into the office of the commander. The commander and five other soldiers that were with him were shot dead by the insurgents.

Legit.ng notes that the source said: We saw some people dressed in full military uniform who came into our camp, but we thought they were friendly forces. They went straight to the office of our commander and shortly after, there were gunshots in the office.

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We became confused, waiting for orders but it was too late. Boko Haram had already surrendered us. They killed the commander with five other soldiers that were with him in the office.

Before we knew it, there was heavy fire from Boko Haram from all sides of the camp with more fire at the entrance.

One of our anti-bomb vehicles tried to charge through the barbwire but got hooked. It was a terrible fight. We couldnt do much because their number and fire power were more than our own.

Another military source, who craved anonymity, said more than 100 soldiers lost their lives in the Metele attack.

He added: As at today, the bodies of some of the dead soldiers have been evacuated and brought to Maiduguri.

"More than 70 bodies have been brought, but I am sure many may not have been recovered. I am not sure, but the soldiers that died in that attack will be more than 100.

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Meanwhile, Legit.ng previously reported that President Muhammadu Buhari dispatched the minister of defence, retired Brigadier General Mansur Dan-Ali, to Chad for an emergency meeting with the Chadian president, Idris Deby, on the deterioration of security at the Nigeria-Chad border.

Dan-Ali had on Thursday, November 22, briefed President Buhari on security development across the country.

He also briefed Buhari about the recent killings of some Nigerian soldiers by the Islamic West Africa Province, a breakaway Boko Haram sect, operating along Nigeria-Chad border.

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Nigerian Air Force Operations Against Boko Haram | Legit TV

Source: Legit.ng
Despite it being general knowledge that every soul shall taste death, it still doesnt prepare one for the passing of a loved one.

Nigerian On Air Personality (OAP), Tosyn Bucknor, reportedly kicked the bucket on November 19, 2018. It was revealed that he husband, Aurelien Boyer, found her dead after he returned home from work that day.

The presenters sister later revealed that she passed on due to sickle cell complications.

Several Nigerians and celebrities took to social media to mourn the great loss of the star who had made a lasting impact in the industry.

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The deceaseds French husband, Aurelien, who had previously not said anything publicly about his wifes death, has finally taken to social media to eulogize her.

He revealed in his post that it has been hard living without her.

See post below:

That night, I felt I had gone. With you.

Next day, I could not stand all of them there. For you.

And then, I realized it was all love. Like you.

From then, they say I've been strong. It is true.

Every day, I stand together with all of us. To go through.

Last night, I realized how much. I miss you.

Irawo mi, through the window, I look at you.

Days and nights cannot get dark.

A star illuminates the sky with its eternal spark.

READ ALSO: FG mourns Tosyn Bucknor, says her death is a great loss to Nigerian creative industry

Aureilien and Tosyn got married on November 15, 2015, at Landmark Events Centre, Oniru. The event was planned by the Tosyns sister Funke Bucknor-Obruthe of Zapphaire Events.

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HELLO! NAIJ.com (naija.ng) upgrades to Legit.ng We keep evolving to serve our readers better.

XXXTentacion is dead: What Really Happened To The Young Rapper | Legit TV

Source: Legit
- The army says at least 155 repentant terrorists will be returned to the society following the completion of their de-radicalization

- Army general Shafa of the Operations Safe Corridor (OSC) said the 155 are part of a second batch after about 95 were re-integrated some time ago

- Some repentant Boko Haram fighters who have completed their de-radicalization programme have also sought the forgiveness of their communities

The Nigerian Army has announced that no fewer than 155 ex-Boko Haram terrorists that have been rehabilitated under the De-radicalisation, Rehabilitation and Reintegration (DRR) programme are now set to be reintegrated into the society.

News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the army announced this through Maj.-Gen. Bamidele Shafa, Coordinator, OSC.

Shafa disclosed this at the end of a rehabilitation programme for the repentant boko haram members in Gombe on Saturday, November 24, noting further that this was the second batch of the programme.

READ ALSO: 2019: Obasanjos son leads pro-Buhari youth group

He said: The first batch of 95 clients who were discharged in February, have been successfully reintegrated .

By the grace of God, a total of 155 clients will also be discharged and handed over to their state authorities for reintegration and resettlement."

He added: As part of the decisions reached at the meeting, visits were conducted in Partnership with the Presidential Committee on North East Initiative and the Centre for Democracy and Development to Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states to sensitize the state authorities, traditional rulers, religious leaders and other relevant stakeholders on the need to reconcile, resettle and reintegrate the clients back into their communities.

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I wish to state that, the reception of the various stakeholders in the Tree states were warm, encouraging and assuring that these repentant youths would be accepted wholeheartedly on return.

Meanwhile, Legit.ng reported that some repentant members of the Boko Haram sect asked for forgiveness from their respective communities.

The former insurgents asked for forgiveness on Thursday, November 22, while taking an oath of allegiance to the federal government at a rehabilitation camp in Gombe state.

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Legit.ng gathered that they had willingly surrendered to security forces who helped them in the process of being re-integrated into the society.

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Survivors of Boko Haram - on Legit TV

Source: Legit.ng
- APGA has accused the PDP of fanning the flames of the crisis in the Anambra State House of Assembly

- The party says PDP is worried over Governor Obianos closeness to presidency and wants to destabilize the state ahead of 2019

- National Co-ordinator of APGA Media Warriors Forum Chinedu Obigwe, also accused factional House Speaker Uzoezie of collaborating with the PDP

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has been accused of causing the crisis in the Anambra State House of Assembly.

Punch reports that the allegation was made by the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) which claimed the PDPs purpose was to impeach the state governor Willie Obiano by making the state ungovernable.

According to the party, the closeness of Governor Obiano to the presidency has been a source of worry to the PDP which feels thee southeast governor might work against the main opposition in the next election.

READ ALSO: Nigerian Army arrest notorious gun runner in Niger state

Chinedu Obigwe, National Co-ordinator of APGA Media Warriors Forum, in a statement, accused the factional Speaker of the House, Ikem Uzoezie of romancing the PDP to destabilise the state.

He said: As of today, we know those funding their rebellion in the House of Assembly and the amount of money spent to buy their conscience.

The reason why their evil plan to impeach the Speaker failed is because they are not fighting a just battle rather they are doing the bidding of politicians that want to return Anambra to the PDP dark era.

The aggrieved APGA lawmakers fomenting this trouble with them are on their way to PDP because they lack spirits of good sportsmanship to accept the outcome of the last primary elections.

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Punch quotes a source close to the new leadership in the Assembly as saying that a plot to impeach Obiano was supposed to commence on Tuesday, November 20, 2018, but was shifted when the day was declared a public holiday by the Federal government.

Legit.ng reported some members of the Anambra state House of Assembly were on Thursday, November 22, locked out of the legislative chambers by police officers.

The Punch reports that the legislators locked out of the assembly building were those who purportedly impeached the speaker of the House, Rita Maduagwu, on November 13, 2018.

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The action against the lawmakers reportedly began around 8am when about 200 policemen barricaded the entrance to the legislative complex while the factional speaker, Ikem Uzoezie, and his group pleaded with the police outside for about two but were not allowed in.

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Between Buharis Next Level And Atikulate - Nigerians React - on Legit TV

Source: Legit
- Senate president Bukola Saraki has reportedly forced Governor Abdulfatah Ahmed to drop his senatorial ticket

- Ahmed was said to have been told by Saraki's political family to drop his ambition due to the loss suffered by the PDP during bye-election held in the state on Saturday, November 17

- But the governor said that his withdrawal from the race has nothing to do with the party's loss during the House of Reps by-election in the state

Governor Abdulfatah Ahmed of Kwara state on Saturday, November 24, admitted that he might forego his senatorial ticket for Kwara south senatorial district for the incumbent Senator Abdulrafiu Ibrahim.

The Nation reports that he said the talks within Bukola Sarak's political family for him to step aside had been on for a while.

Legit.ng gathered that he clarified that forsaking the ticket had nothing to do with the November 17, by-election into Ekiti/ Oke Ero/ Isin/ Irepodun federal constituency.

But it was gathered that Saraki, who is the governors godfather, directed Ahmed to forget his ambition after the defeat.

READ ALSO: Jonathan was incompetent but I supported him - Balarabe Musa

Although Saraki had initially favoured Abdulrafiu, Ahmed sent many PDP governors to his godfather to concede the ticket to him.

The governors first political test after securing the ticket was election into the federal constituency which was fatal for PDP.

A PDP source said: Our leader has taken the senatorial ticket away from the governor because he cannot afford to take any risk. The slot is now for the present occupant of the seat, Senator Abdulrafiu Ibrahim.

"What we are trying to do is to give the governor a soft landing. We do not want it to appear as if the governor is being humiliated. To get the ticket, the governor sent emissaries to our leader. It has now turned out that the shoe is bigger than him because 2019 poll is really testy for us.

Our leader has been in the state in the past 48 hours to put things in order since he will serve as the director general of the presidential campaign council of PDP. If you leave your pot unwatched, your food will get burnt.

But Governor Ahmed has denied speculations that the Kwara south senatorial ticket has been retrieved from him on account of the last House of Representatives bye-election results in the state.

Ahmed, in a statement by his senior special assistant on media and communications, Dr. Muyideen Akorede, described as politically motivated mischief the rumours that he has been asked to step down due to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)s loss of the Ekiti/ Oke Ero/ Irepodun bye-election.

The statement said: The Governor said, on the contrary, consultation had been going on before the November 17 elections within the political family to consider the request by the leadership of the Ibolo division of Kwara south, from where the current senator hails, for a second tenure at the Senate

Furthermore, he said that the ongoing consultation was based on the view that the Igbomina and Ekiti divisions had successfully served two terms in the Senate as opposed to the Ibolo division whose representative had served only one term in the Senate.

While describing the last by-election as a farcical exercise marked by voter intimidation, widespread disenfranchisement and the use of security agencies against PDP supporters and members, Ahmed said the result of such a disputed election could, therefore, not have formed the basis of a review of his candidacy for the Kwara south senatorial elections.

"He assured that PDP will win the general elections in the state as the people of Kwara have resolved never to allow such harassment by security agents again.

A separate statement by the state publicity secretary of PDP, Tunde Ashaolu, confirmed that the party was weighing options on the demand of Ibolo people to give a second term ticket to the incumbent Sen. Abdulrafiu Ibrahim.

The statement said: The attention of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Kwara state has been drawn to a misleading media report insinuating that there is panic in the camp of Senate President, Dr Abubakar Bukola Saraki and that Governor Abdulfatah Ahmed is under pressure to withdraw from the Kwara south senatorial race as a result of the aftermath of last Saturdays by-election in Ekiti/Oke-Ero/Isin/Irepodun federal constituency.

This is totally untrue, ridiculous and a deliberate mischief orchestrated by some unscrupulous elements and political jobbers who are bent on causing confusion within the party and among our leaders.

"For the avoidance of doubt, there is no tension whatsoever within the fold of the PDP in Kwara State and there is no pressure on Governor Ahmed to drop his senatorial ambition because of the outcome of the recently held bye-election in the state.

The party however, notes that there are ongoing consultations and pleas by leadership of the Ibolo axis of Kwara south, where the current senator representing the senatorial district, Dr Rafiu Ibrahim hails from, for the partys senatorial ticket to be retained in the axis in the interest of fairness and equity in the distribution political offices within the district.

It is instructive to note that these consultations and pleas preceded the November 17 by-election and are based on the understanding that the Igbomina and Ekiti divisions of Kwara south had produced senators who served two terms in the Senate as opposed to the Ibolo division whose representative had only served one term.

This was the sole observation raised by the stakeholders during all their consultative meetings with the national leader of our party and Senate President, Dr Abubakar Bukola Saraki, Governor Abdulfatah Ahmed and other leaders of the PDP in the State.

It is, therefore, ridiculous for anybody to think that the outcome of an election that does not reflect the will of the people, as it was marred with widespread irregularities including intimidation of voters, ballot box snatching and illegal arrest of PDP members, could lead to the withdrawal of Governor Ahmed from the senatorial race.

The party thereby urges members and supporters of the PDP as well as the general public to disregard the fake report which was sponsored and planted in the media by unscrupulous elements and fifth columnists.

Ahmed is a prominent leader of our party and has always placed the partys interest above his personal interest. More so, he has provided exemplary leadership since he assumed office in 2011 and has created enduring legacies that have placed Kwara on a path of sustainable development.

READ ALSO: Obanikoro, wife, son recover N500m houses, land from EFCC

Among the enduring legacies of Governor Ahmed, which are products of foresight and vision, are the establishment of the Kwara State Internal Revenue Service (KWIRS) and the Kwara Infrastructural Development Fund (IF-K). Without doubt, these initiatives have had great impacts on the development of the state.

Meanwhile, Legit.ng had previously reported that the Senate president, Bukola Saraki, reacted to the loss of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) at the Kwara bye-election, accusing the federal government of intimidation.

NAIJ.com (naija.ng) -> Legit.ng We keep evolving to serve our readers better.

Nigeria Latest News: Buhari vs Atiku - 2019 Elections | - on Legit TV

Source: Legit Newspaper
- Senator George Akume recently accused the Benue state government of spreading fake news against the Buhari administration to achieve cheap political gains

- He further claimed that the state government was responsible for the farmers/herdsmen crisis in the state

- The comments of Akume has generated reactions in Benue state, with many calling the senator a sell-out

The former governor of Benue state, Senator George Akume has come under intense fire over a statement credited to him that the Benue state government and not armed Fulani herdsmen are responsible for the mass killings in the state.

Akume, the chairman Senate committee on army, made the comment when he led some Benue indigenes to visit President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja on Friday, November 23.

Former Senate President, Dr. Iyorchia Ayu, described the statements made by the senator as unfortunate, irresponsible and embarrassing to Benue state, considering the position he occupies in the society.

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Dr. Ayu regretted that such a statement was coming from Senator Akume, who as the Senate committee chairman on army has failed woefully to prevail on the federal government to end the killing of hundreds of innocent people in the state only to make such a spurious allegation.

He expressed dismay over Akume's comments, saying he would continue to support Governor Samuel Ortom who has courageously stood firm in defence of human lives and property.

It is high time the people of Benue speak with one voice against those who want to cause disaffection between them and the government of governor Samuel Ortom, Dr Ayu stated.

Also reacting to Akume's allegation, secretary to the Benue state government, Professor Anthony Ijohor, SAN, condemned the utterances and urged the people of the state to be vigilant.

He said the Benue people should resist at any level the senator's antics, which he said, have characterised his recent public outings both in the state and at the national level.

It is unthinkable for a man like Akume who is from Benue to go public to allege that the Benue state government is responsible for the killing of its people. The implication of his unfortunate outing in Abuja is that we have a big problem on our hands. They are now changing the narrative to blame the victim, Professor Ijohor stressed.

Also, the executive chairman, Benue State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB), Dr. Philip Tachin urged the people to stand firm in support of Governor Ortom's re-election, describing Senator Akume's comments in Abuja as shameful.

Dr Tachin said it was shocking that a Benue son, would opt to take sides with enemies of the state against his people.

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Meanwhile, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Benue state says it has uncovered a scheme by the All Progressives Congress (APC) to buy voters cards belonging to internally displaced persons taking refuge in camps across the state.

In a statement sent to Legit.ng, Bemgba Iortyom, the Benue state publicity secretary of the PDP, said credible intelligence at the party's disposal, indicated that APC was targeting to possibly manipulate and rig the 2019 elections in its favour through buying of permanent voters cards from the IDPs.

NAIJ.com (naija.ng) -> Legit.ng. We have updated to serve you better.

Benue IDPs: Education amidst crisis | Legit TV

Source: Legit
- Ukraine government has urged Nigeria to recognise Holodomor as genocide against Ukrainian people

- Valerie Aleksandruk, the Ukraine ambassador to Nigeria, made this known in Abuja on Saturday, November 24

- He asked the National Assembly of Nigeria to pass a resolution to recognise the 1932 to 1933 Holodomor in Ukraine as a genocide against Ukrainians people

The Ukraine ambassador to Nigeria, Valerie Aleksandruk, has appealed to the federal government to formally recognise `Holodomor' (the man-made famine in Ukraine in which millions of Ukrainians were deliberately starved to death) as genocide against the Ukrainian people.

Vanguard reports that Aleksandruk, who made the call in a statement in Abuja, also asked Nigeria to adopt Holodomor relevant resolution.

Legit.ng gathered that the envoy asked the National Assembly of Nigeria to pass a resolution, like many countries around the world, that would recognise the 1932 to 1933 Holodomor in Ukraine as a genocide against Ukrainians.

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Aleksandruk said that the entire world would on Saturday, November 24, join the Republic of Ukraine in commemorating Holodomor, a day set aside to remember the execution by hunger (communist genocide) in Ukraine.

Ukrainian President, Petro Poroshenko

Source: Depositphotos

He said: Holodomor, which the Soviet Authorities carried out between 1932 and 1933 in Ukraine, is considered to be one of the most devastating events of the twentieth century.

It was an artificial famine induced by the Communist regime in Ukraine, which resulted in genocide.

Holodomor is a term used to describe death or murder inflicted by starvation. It comes from two Ukrainian words: holod, meaning starvation or famine, and moryty, to inflict death.

Though, the Soviet Authorities concealed this act of genocide from the rest of the world for decades, the extent of death in Holodomor was revealed in archives in Moscow and Ukraine, after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

He said Ukrainians in the west had long maintained that millions, especially children, died as the result of a state-organized famine in 1932 to 1933.

Aleksandruk noted that beyond state-induced famine, which led to genocide, countless numbers of Ukrainians were executed by firing squads, deported to Siberia, or sent to the Gulag.

Between 1922 and 1933, millions of Ukrainians perished after being besieged by Soviet troops who confiscated not only bread, but anything edible from the Ukrainian households.

In June of 1933 about 24 Ukrainians were dying every minute. Stalins design went much farther than simply suppressing protest movements.

The tragedy of the Holodomor 1932 and 1933 in Ukraine for many decades was not just ignored but officially denied by the ruling elite of the USSR, he said.

He noted that in 1998, the Decree of the president of Ukraine, however, established the Holodomor Victims Day and it is observed every year on the fourth Saturday of November.

On this day, as soon as it gets dark, Ukrainians light candles in their windows in memory of all those killed by famine.

In 2003, on the 70th Holodomor anniversary the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine in its Resolution recognized this crime as genocide against the Ukrainian people.

The same year, the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States Congress issued a Resolution recognizing the Holodomor in Ukraine as an act of terror and mass killing targeted against the Ukrainian nation.

According to him, the Holodomor 1932 to 1933 in Ukraine was recognised as the genocide of the Ukrainian people at the parliamentary and regional level in Australia, Canada, Portugal.

At the parliamentary level, Holodomor was recognized in Georgia, Ecuador, Estonia, Colombia, Latvia, Lithuania, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Poland and Hungary.

"At the regional (municipal) level, Holodomor was recognized in Argentina, Brazil, Great Britain, Spain, Italy.

On Oct. 4, 2018 the U.S. Senate has unanimously passed a resolution, in which the Ukrainian Famine of 1932 to 1933 is recognized as genocide against the Ukrainian people.

The resolution also condemns the systematic violations of human rights, including the freedom of self-determination and freedom of speech, of the Ukrainian people by the Soviet government.

The resolution he said, extended its deepest sympathies to the victims, survivors of the famine, and their families.

He added that it also encouraged dissemination of information regarding the Holodomor of 1932 to 1933 in order to expand the worlds knowledge of what he described as man-made tragedy.

According to him, the draft of a similar resolution was also approved by the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives of the U.S. Congress and is currently awaiting consideration during a plenary session.

READ ALSO: 2019: Saraki reportedly forces Governor Ahmed to drop Senate ticket

We also ask the National Assembly of the Federal Republic Nigeria to recognise the Holodomor in Ukraine of 1932 to 1933 as the genocide against Ukrainian people and to adopt the relevant resolution, he said.

Recall that some media organizations not Legit.ng had incorrectly stated the name of the Ukrainian president as Ukraines President Viktor Yanukovych instead of Petro Poroshenko.

Meanwhile, Legit.ng had previously reported that a former Unites States ambassador to Nigeria, John Campbell, described Nigeria as the troubled giant of the African continent.

Campbell said although Nigeria possesses extraordinary potential, it is the truly troubled giant of Africa.

NAIJ.com (naija.ng) -> Legit.ng We have updated to serve you better.

Nigeria Latest News: Buhari vs Atiku - 2019 Elections | - on Legit TV

Source: Legit
- The Oba of Lagos, Rilwan Akiolu, has said former President Olusegun Obasanjo is the major problem of Nigeria

- The monarch said the former president was running after Lagos when in government, instead of focusing on the countrys investments

- Akiolu advised Nigerians to vote for candidates based on their manifestoes and not for money

The Oba of Lagos, His Highness Oba Rilwan Akiolu has said Nigeria's former President Olusegun Obasanjo is the major problem of Nigeria today.

The monarch in an interview with Vanguard, said the former president was running after Lagos when in government, instead of focusing on the countrys investments.

"The major problem of Nigeria today is former President Olusegun Obasanjo. When he was in government, he was running after Lagos while someone was cornering all the blue-chip companies that belong to the country.

READ ALSO: Ukraine urges Nigeria to recognise Holodomor as genocide

He cannot win election in his ward in Abeokuta. He ignored all Supreme Court judgements which were in favour of Lagos State. He told me that Tinubu is stubborn, each time he goes to court even if he wins, I will make the condition of the court unenforceable.

I told him, it is true Bola Ahmed Tinubu is stubborn but his stubbornness is based on popular support. Tinubu is a good man and an achiever, but stubborn to a fault; if I tell him hes stubborn, he will say he is taking after me, he said.

Akiolu speaking about the 2019 elections, advised Nigerians to vote for candidates based on their manifestoes and not for money.

He said: It is unfortunate, many Nigerians are deceiving themselves. The kind of politics we play here is money politics. Politicians should bring their manifestoes and their followers should make sure they deliver on their promises.

But for some people to line-up somewhere and be collecting $20,000, $25,000 to pick a presidential candidate is wrong. If the person gets there, he will first recoup his money. I pray those people should not get there.

Oba Akiolu praising President Muhammadu Buhari for not being materialistic, labelled other politicians as theives, adding that if they came to visit him he would tell them to their faces.

Its unfortunate that Buhari did not stay long as Head of State in 1984, Nigeria would have been better. Buhari is one of the few, politicians who are not materialistic.

Majority of them are grab grab politicians. Let me use this medium to tell all those politicians moving about because election is coming, that if they are not ready to hear the truth, they should not come to my palace.

I will tell them that they are thieves, Nigerians know them, and youths should not allow politicians to use them., he said.

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In a previous report by Legit.ng, Nigeria's former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, who chaired the public presentation of Goodluck Jonathan's book, My Transition Hours, to the public in Abuja, on Tuesday, November 20, urged Nigerians to ensure that they would not hand over the nation and democracy to those he called thieves and hooligans.

Obasanjo said if the nations democracy is handed over to those in these categories, they could use it as a weapon against the people.

The former president said: There is still no substitute for democracy when all is said and done. It fosters peace. It builds and does not destroy. It unifies, rather than divides.

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Governors visit Buhari, Google to train Nigerians, Nigeria no longer corrupt | Legit TV

Source: Legit
- Former vice president, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, clocked 72 years old on Sunday, November 25

- Atiku was also turbaned as the Waziri Adamawa as he celebrates his 72nd birthday

- Comrade Timi Frank has joined admirers and well-wishers of the PDP presidential candidate to laud him on his special day

Former deputy national publicity secretary of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Comrade Timi Frank, has stated that former Vice President Atiku Abubakar's strong faith in democracy, rule of law and justice will work for him in the 2019 general elections as the presidential flag-bearer of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

Frank, in a special message to Atiku to mark his 72nd birthday and his turbaning as the Waziri Adamawa, on Sunday, November 25, said that the PDP presidential candidate's life has been a life of service to humanity and his country.

He also stated that Atikus contribution to the social, political and economic development of the country will continue to speak volumes.

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His words: When the history of Nigerias democracy is written, Atiku Abubakar's name will feature prominently.

Over the years, the Waziri Adamawa has proven himself as a democrat, detribalised leader, elder statesman, successful businessman, political icon and philanthropist to the admiration of all and sundry.

Atiku's search for true democracy has taken him around but in all he is now more prepared to serve the country at the highest level, which I believe Nigerians will reward him in the coming 2019 general election.

I believe that God will make Atiku emerge as the next president, to come and rescue the nation from killings, poverty and all forms of leadership failure.

As the whole world celebrates you today, we hope and pray to celebrate victory with you again by February 16th, 2019.

Comrade Frank prayed that God grant the PDPs presidential candidate the strength, wisdom, knowledge and understanding, to continue to be a blessing to his generation.

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Similarly, Delta state governor, Dr Ifeanyi Okowa has described Atiku as a great patriot, democrat and man of faith for his legendary and remarkable contributions to the growth of democracy in Nigeria.

In a statement sent to Legit.ng by his chief press secretary, Charles Aniagwu, on Saturday, November 24, the governor lauded Atiku's strong faith, dexterity, sagacity, courage and penchant for democratic values and ethos as an unrepentant democrat.

He commended the former vice president for his tremendous impact on the lives of people irrespective of tribe, religion, geography, gender, social status or political affiliation.

NAIJ.com (naija.ng) -> Legit.ng. We have updated to serve you better.

OBJ Endorsement Of Atiku; Sign Of Good Tidings? - Nigeria Street Gist | Legit TV

Source: Legit
- Former PDP members in a defection rally held before thousand APC supporters pledge their loyalty to the ruling party in Kano state

- Adams Oshiomhole, the national chairman of the APC, urges Nigerians not to allow those who have plundered the country to return to power

- Oshiomhole commends Governor Abdullahi Ganduje for carrying out developmental projects in Kano state

Some members of the Kwankwasiyya movement, a group affiliated with an ex-Kano state governor, Rabiu Kwankwaso, have defected from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Kano state.

Legit.ng reports that the former PDP members in a defection rally held before thousand APC supporters in Kano state have pledged their loyalty to the ruling party.

READ ALSO: Obasanjo, Jonathan campaign for Atiku in Adamawa

A past governor of Kano state, Malam Ibrahim Shekarau, was among those who publicly identified with the APC. The new party members were welcomed to the APC by the national chairman, Adams Oshiomhole.

Oshiomhole at the rally urged Nigerians not to allow politicians who had plundered the country to return to power.

He commended Governor Abdullahi Ganduje for carrying out developmental projects in Kano state. Oshiomhole said the governor deserved another four-year tenure so that he could continue the projects he is working on.

Meanwhile, a former deputy national publicity secretary of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Comrade Timi Frank, has stated that former Vice President Atiku Abubakar's strong faith in democracy, rule of law and justice will work for him in the 2019 general elections as the presidential flag-bearer of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

Frank, in a special message to Atiku to mark his 72nd birthday and his turbaning as the Waziri Adamawa, on Sunday, November 25, said that the PDP presidential candidate's life has been a life of service to humanity and his country.

He also stated that Atikus contribution to the social, political and economic development of the country will continue to speak volumes.

We are honestly tired of Buhari and Atiku | Legit TV

Source: Legit
- Yakubu Gowon, a former head of state, says the church must provide a moral compass for the nation to make the people imbibe the fear of God and to follow righteousness

- Gowon says there is great need for Nigerians to come together to pray and intercede for the nation and its people in the light of insurgency and politically motivated violence

- The former head of state says Gods solutions to the problems of the country is not in guns, retaliation or physical weapons but in prevailing prayers of the church

Former head of state, Yakubu Gowon, on Sunday, November 25, held a prayer session for Nigeria at the headquarters of Deeper Life Bible Church in Lagos.

Gowon said that Nigerias problems would be resolved through unrelenting prayers by the church, rather than resorting to violence, retaliation and unforgiveness.

The former head of state who is the president of the Nigeria Prays Movement, was in the company of the chief host, Pastor Kumuyi, the general superintendent of the Deeper Christian Life Ministry and his wife, Pastor Esther.

READ ALSO: Worlds largest church auditorium dedicated in Abuja (photos)

The annual event brings together Christian faithful from various denominations as well as political office holders.

Gowon, who took his reading from 2 Chronicles 7: 14, urged the congregation to pray for the nation, saying that God is interested in the Nigeria situation at all times, The New Agency of Nigeria reports.

Yakubu Gowon in the company of Pastor Kumuyi and Femi Adesina, photo credit: Femi Adesina - Facebook

Source: Depositphotos

The church must provide a moral compass for the nation to make the people imbibe the fear of God and to follow righteousness.

Brethren, it is important to remind us that the church is Gods House of Prayer. With the general elections coming ahead, it is natural for people to become anxious and fearful of what the future holds for Nigeria.

In the light of the wanton killings in the land be it politically motivated or instigated by the dark agents of insurgency like Boko Haram, armed herdsmen or rustlers, there is great need for us to come together to pray and intercede for our dear nation and its people.

PAY ATTENTION: NAIJ.com upgrades to Legit.ng: a letter from our Editor-in-Chief Bayo Olupohunda

Gods solutions to the problems of this country is not in guns, retaliation or physical weapons but in prevailing prayers of the church.

May I ask the people of Nigeria to embrace of the spirit of love, patriotism and commitment to the good of our nation, irrespective of political parties or religious affiliation or tribal differences.

According to him, citizens of this hold important role of maintaining peace and unity for the progress and prosperity of Nigeria.

He cautioned Christians against reprisal attacks, retaliation, vengeance and religious intolerance in the guise of self-defence.

Whatsoever the provocation, whatsoever the threat, for the sake of our country, Nigerian Christians should never resort to retaliation that could lead to a religious war.

I call on the authorities to provide the necessary physical protection for all. We must continue to demand for the government to be alive to its primary responsibilities of protecting lives and properties of poor citizens.

Gowon said that the mission of Nigeria Prays was to mobilise all Nigerians to offer prayers for the healing and transformation of the nation.

The general commended the host minister, Pastor William Kumuyi, for his love and commitment to nation growth and development.

In a message, President Muhammadu Buhari also commended Gowon and Kumuyi for their passionate love for national cohesion.

READ ALSO: Obasanjo, Jonathan campaign for Atiku in Adamawa

Buhari, whose message was read by his media aide, Mr Femi Adesina, said that love and commitment of Gowon and Kumuyi to the unity and cohesion of the country was unparalleled.

Prayer is the right thing to do and the way to go. Nigeria is not a mistake. God that brought us this far wont abandon us.

It is right that we pray to God for the unity and prosperity of Nigeria. None of Nigerias challenges is greater than God. In God we trust and He will take us through the challenges.

Also speaking, Kumuyi, who spoke on Divine Assurance When Nigerian Prays said that God will answer if His people, faced with national perplexity can pray.

Nigeria wont disintegrate, we are just starting.

According to him, if God can turn around and show mercy to Nineveh, Egypt, Assyria and others countries as well as various individuals in the Bible days like Rahab, there is hope for Nigeria.

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, was represented at the event by the minister of industry, trade and investment, Okey Enelamah, while President Muhammadu Buhari was represented by his media adviser, Femi Adesina.

Meanwhile, President Muhammadu Buhari has told Nigerians to stop politicising the deaths of soldiers who were killed after a recent attack by Boko Haram insurgents on their base in Metele, Borno state.

In a tweet on Sunday, November 25, the president described the soldiers as heroes who were fighting on the frontline to make Nigeria safe.

Buhari assured Nigerians that the circumstances that led to the deaths of the soldiers will be addressed.

Between Buharis Next Level And Atikulate - Nigerians React| Legit TV

Source: Legit Nigeria
A 20-year-old Hellertown man is accused of trying to rob a Walgreens store early on Saturday in Palmer Township.

Joseph Arnold Jr. allegedly entered the store, located at 2535 William Penn Highway, at about 4:23 a.m. and handed the cashier a handwritten note that demanded "everything."

Township police said Arnold also showed a folding knife and threatened an employee. He then fled the store empty-handed, and was last seen running through the parking lot towards the 25th Street entrance of the store, police said.

Police Detective Jim Alercia said Arnold was identified after surveillance images were released of him inside the store. He was connected to the crime following further interviews and investigations, Alercia said.

Arnold is charged with felony criminal attempt to commit robbery, felony criminal attempt to commit theft, misdemeanor possessing an instrument of crime, and misdemeanor reckless endangerment. He was transported to Northampton County Booking, where he is awaiting to be arraigned on the charges.

Pamela Sroka-Holzmann may be reached at pholzmann@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @pamholzmann. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Interested in the marijuana business industry? NJ Cannabis Insider is a new premium intelligence briefing that features exclusive weekly content geared toward entrepreneurs, lawyers and realtors. View a sample issue.

After months of delay and backroom disputes, state lawmakers are expected to finally begin voting next week on legalizing marijuana for adults over age 21 in New Jersey.

And it's getting the fast-track treatment, even though legislative leaders and Gov. Phil Murphy remain at odds over details of the legislation.

Separate state Assembly and Senate committees will meet together for a hearing of debate and are expected to vote on the legalization bill on Monday, Nov. 26 at 10 a.m., according to sources familiar with the plan.

The negotiations over the legalization bill (S2703) have stalled in recent months between state Senate President Stephen Sweeney and Murphy, who have disagreed over the tax rate and whether a new commission should exercise control over the new industry.

Sweeney, D-Gloucester, said he and the Democratic governor have not agreed on the bill. But he said he didn't want to wait any longer.

"We have been talking, and it's time to move forward," Sweeney told NJ Advance Media Monday night. "Hopefully, we can get to agreement with the governor."

Sweeney said he favors imposing a 12 percent tax rate, plus 2 percent for municipalities that are willing to host cannabis-related businesses. He doesn't want to go higher because he fears that it will allow the illegal market to thrive.

Michigan just passed a 10 percent tax rate, Sweeney noted.

Michigan's marijuana tax rate is comprised of a 10 percent excise tax and a six percent sales tax, according to published reports.

Murphy -- as well as legislators who supported earlier versions of the legislation -- have sought a 25 percent tax rate. Murphy has declined to say publicly how much he is willing to budge.

A source familiar with Murphy's side of the negotiations said Murphy and the Legislature are at "an impasse."

"They haven't entertained our proposals or sought to meet us in the middle," the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

A spokeswoman for state Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin, D-Middlesex, could not be reached for comment Monday night.

On his call-in radio program Monday night, Murphy said he awaits a final version of the bill from lawmakers.

"I'm ready to go," the governor said. "The legislators haven't gotten it to us."

But, Murphy added, he doesn't want to "needlessly take shots" at lawmakers.

The legislative committees are also expected to act on legislation (S10) that would expand the medicinal marijuana program, according to the most recent legislative calendar.

The number of patients registered with the medicinal marijuana program, 35,700, has more than doubled in the past year.

But the program is still cost-prohibitive for many because New Jersey's cannabis is among the most expensive in the nation, and patients are required to see their doctor every three months to review their qualifications.

The legislation (S2426) aims to expand the program will allow people to see their doctor once a year to maintain their eligibility.

All legislation must be voted on by the full 80-member Assembly and 40-member Senate before it goes to the governor's desk.

Susan K. Livio may be reached at slivio@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @SusanKLivio. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.
There won't be any walleye to be had ice-fishing this winter at Minsi Lake, after it was drained in 2017 for an ongoing dam repair.

But with the project scheduled for completion in fall 2019, Northampton County is finalizing the list of improvements it wants to see at the 311-acre county park and lake.

That includes assembling cash. Toward that end, county officials announced last week a $275,000 grant for improvements at Minsi Lake, released by the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.

The county earlier this year budgeted $500,000 to match grants from the DCNR and other sources. The Pennsylvania Department of General Services is heading up the $4 million dam repair for the state Fish and Boat Commission.

"The future of Northampton County is green," county Executive Lamont McClure said in a news release announcing the latest grant. "It is important that we act now to preserve our open spaces and natural land. These grants will help ensure that our parks will be around for future generations to enjoy."

That $275,000 includes $75,000 to create a Greenway and Stewardship Plan for Minsi Lake Park and the nearby Bear Swamp Park and Tott's Gap Corridor, according to the announcement. All three are in Upper Mount Bethel Township.

The county is finalizing a feasibility study to create the Northern Tier Trail connecting that portion of the township to other existing trails through a mix of road and mixed-use trail routes.

The remaining $200,000 will go toward improvements at Minsi Lake including a fishing pier and kayak launch accessible to people with disabilities, hiking trails, picnic areas and restrooms, said Bryan Cope, county superintendent of parks and recreation.

He also expects the county grant to go toward construction of a new pedestrian bridge over the dam's rebuilt spillway, to connect the Minsi Lake Park's west and east parking areas.

Minsi Lake was built by the Fish and Boat Commission in 1970 as a 117-acre lake for public recreation. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection deemed the dam structurally deficient, leading to its draining in spring 2017 and the relocation over more than 5,000 pounds of fish, according to the county. The dam project includes a new spillway and is designed to withstand a projected maximum flood event.

Minsi Lake's east shore remains open to the public for hiking, birdwatching and other recreational activities.

The lake is one of only three in the Lehigh Valley open to the public, Cope said, in addition to East Bangor Dam and, in Lehigh County, Leaser Lake.

"As 2018 comes to an end, the Friends of Minsi Lake are seeing the beginning of the rejuvenation of Minsi Lake and the surrounding park lands," John Mauser, chairman of the Friends group, said in a statement on the new state grant.

"The awarding of the two DCNR grants totaling $275,000 to Northampton County which will be matched by other Northampton County funds will jump start the much needed infra-structure improvements," Mauser continued. "When combined with $4,000,000 in dam structure improvements provided by the state, the awarding of the contract for the dam improvements which will begin soon, and the public donations which are coming into the FOML for fish habitat and other infrastructure, I can say the Minsi Lake project is now well under way."

In addition to the grant to Northampton County, Lehigh County last week announced the following grants totaling $469,900 awarded by the state DCNR:

Catasauqua D&L Trail gap closure plan

Amount Received: $250,000

The grant will contribute to the development of the D&L Trail in Hanover Township and Catasauqua Borough, work will include the construction of approximately 1.5 miles of trail from the Lehigh County border in Catasauqua Borough to an existing pedestrian bridge in Hanover Township.

Master Site Plan for the Trexler Nature Preserve

Amount Received: $50,000

The grant will enable Lehigh County to develop a Master Site Development and Stewardship Plan for the 1,108-acre Trexler Nature Preserve and adjacent 400-acre county land in Lowhill and North Whitehall townships.

Mountain Bike Trails in the Trexler Nature Preserve

Amount Received: $128,000

The grant will contribute to the development of mountain bike trails at the Trexler Nature Preserve in Lowhill and North Whitehall townships, Lehigh County. The construction will include the development of approximately 1.5 miles of trail within the North Range section of the Trexler Nature Preserve.

South Mountain Land Acquisition

Amount Received: $41,900

The grant will serve as a payment toward the acquisition of approximately 18 acres in Upper Milford and Upper Saucon townships which will form a connection to the South Mountain Greenway. This will be done in cooperation with the Wildlands Conservancy.

Also, Allentown announced it received DCNR approval for a $300,000 matching grant for the proposed skate park in the city's Jordan Park. City council agreed in April to pursue the grant for the two-phased, $1.4 million skate park. City officials hope to begin construction in 2019 with a 2020 opening.



Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
SIGNIFICANT steps forward have been taken in the plan to provide a new, state-of-the-art garda station in Newcastle West.

Staff members in the Superintendents office this week move to Askeaton on a temporary basis as part of a plan agreed with garda representatives to ease overcrowding at the station.

Another element in to that agreement, to utilise the probation service office as the Garda public office is expected to go ahead, possibly in the New Year. Other additional accommodation is expected to be provided at Rathkeale garda station.

Meanwhile, this Thursday was the deadline set for tenders for architectural consultants for the project. The appointment of an architect is expected to follow quickly and an on-site meeting involving the project architect is due to take place by the end of the year.

The deadlines for tenders for structural engineering and mechanical and electrical engineering consultants all fall within the next fortnight and the aim is to have the full design team in place for the start of the New Year. .

The project is a complex one, according to Minister of State Patrick ODonovan because it involves taking out a garda station while still maintaining garda presence, and at the same time, designing, procuring and building a new one.

But he is very happy that the time frame agreed following a visit to Newcastle West by Minister Kevin Boxer Moran, who has responsibility for the OPW, has been adhered to.

The milestones he identified he has stuck to, Minister ODonovan said. The portakabin has been removed, the district office moved and consultants will be in place by the end of the year, he pointed out.

Once the design team is finished, it is then about drawing down of funds. But he is confident about this.

Minister Moran has given a strong commitment that once the design is in place, it would be proactive. I would hope they would start work fairly rapidly. The one thing going for it is that a whole lot of alternative accommodation will have to be used (in the meantime).
MIKE Lundon spoke so much in a chat to the Limerick Leader about the Oyster Ballroom that his tea went cold.

Sixty years ago  November 19, 1958  the largest dance hall in the south of Ireland opened its doors in Dromkeen. Known as the ballroom of romance, countless men and women found love in that hallowed hall.

Mike was there on the first night. He even met his wife, Josephine, there in later years. Mike would collect the money in his office for the next 25 years. He is the last employee alive to have worked there that night.

Now aged 82, there is the same twinkle in his eyes that there was when he was in his early twenties.

Im the last man standing, he smiles.

Would you prefer Michael or Mike? the Leader asks in his cosy sitting room in Dromkeen.

I dont give two hoots. Just dont call me sir, he replies. Mike it is.

Back in 1958 there was consternation locally that Packie Hayes was building this gigantic ballroom in the middle of rural east Limerick. It even had a state-of-the-art stage that could be wheeled forwards and backwards depending on the size of the crowd.

Many thought Packie was stone mad but Mike said he was a visionary. Packie put Dromkeen, where Mike was literally born and bred, on the map.

I was born under that roof, he says as he points out the window. He was recommended to Packie Hayes due to his success in running dances for Macra.

On the first night I was a barman. I never pulled pints before but if if you can drink a pint you can fill a pint! Donie Collins played on the first night. There was bedlam going in so I got the office the second night. I collected the money on the way in and paid the staff. I was in the office until 1983.

I was the first man you met on the way in to the Oyster Ballroom and the last man you met when you went out, said Mike.

If he put his finger up you were out the door and you wouldnt be let in again.

They might have been fighting or not speaking nicely to a lady. As they were going out I would get their name and I knew them from then on. I still get abuse from people to this day that I didnt let in. I even got it at a funeral once!

This reporter doubts it weighs too heavily on his mind.

Mike says his memory is bad but once I get it the first time Im fine. He recalls the night when Jim Reeves came like yesterday. Famously, there were more people outside the Oyster than inside as the price was doubled to 10 shillings.

Jim Reeves was there in the end of April of 1963. He died in July 1964. He was a nice man, he was a pure gentleman. He had an escort and the minding of him youd swear we were criminals. He was rushed away after and as far as I know he played Ennis the same night, said Mike.

He lists off musicians that performed like a child buying penny sweets  Victor Silvester, Ivy Benson, Adam Faith, Chubby Checker, Thin Lizzy, Joe Dolan, Brendan Bowyer, Joe Loss, Drifters and Sonny Knowles, who passed away last week, to name but a few. There were also bingo and dinner dances.

What is the biggest amount you ever took in on the door?

That is the question I am asked every place and any place I go and I always say no. I never like calling another mans money - thats why I wont answer that, said Mike.

And like a person he barred there is no point pushing your luck.

What time would you finish up?

It would depend on what you mean by finish up. I often came home at six oclock in the morning and milked 16 cows and fed maybe 80 greyhounds. I always walked home.

Wed get there about 8.15pm. It was from 9pm to 1am but they would be an hour straggling on. The toilets had to be checked. There was often a lad or a lassie asleep in the toilets, said Mike.

Buses from surrounding areas and as far away as Galway and Waterford would descend upon Dromkeen on dance nights and there are many stories about a missed bus and a long walk home!

Of course it was famous for romance and Mike asked a beautiful lady called Josephine to dance.

I knew her before. It was my night off. I asked her to dance.

Mike and the late Josephine had five children  James, Catherine, Helen, Michael and Brenda.

Times changed and the hay days of the showband era died. The crowds stopped coming and in 1983 the Oyster Ballroom closed its doors. It was home to Furniture Man before the fire in 2015 and a brand new store was built on the site. The crowds that returned to Dromkeen after the blaze proved how much the Oyster Ballroom means to so many.

It was a huge part of my life. I worked with great people over the years and I made great friends there. I had a lot of good times there. I remember it tragically more so than anything, it is completely gone off the map.

I was sad when it closed and Im sad every time I ever go through Dromkeen, said Mike.

Gone but definitely not forgotten.
THE USUAL large Limerick home contingent will be expected to attend this years ICMSA annual general meeting to be held in the South Court Hotel on Friday, November 30.

One man who will be especially welcomed is the popular Murroe man John Egan. Mr Egan represents the Castleconnell area and is thankfully on the way back after a recent health issue.

The states specialist family dairy farm organisation has a heritage of outspoken and hard-hitting meetings and this years will doubtless be in the same vein. The line-up of speakers includes Commissioner Phil Hogan, Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed and John Jordan, chief executive, Ornua, all of whom will certainly be quizzed from the floor on the updated Brexit situation  a picture changing daily but one that will surely be clearer at that stage.

Its also almost certain that very pointed questions will be directed at Mr Jordan of Ornua on the controversy that has erupted following the decision of Glanbia to launch its Truly Grass Fed range in the very valuable US export market in direct competition with the Kerrygold range owned and marketed by Ornua, in which Glanbia is the largest shareholder.

The meeting will be addressed by ICMSA president, Pat McCormack, who, in addition to commenting on those issues, will speak on what has been one of the most challenging years in terms of weather, costs, poor markets and crippling uncertainty that farmers can remember.

Numbers will be limited and interest is always high, so members intending to attend are asked to ring 061 314677 or email info@icmsa.ie to confirm. AGM will end at 5pm with dinner served immediately.
LIMERICK council should be ashamed of itself for allowing the City Walls to fall into rack and ruin.

Thats the view of firebrand Independent councillor John Gilligan, who has pledged to fight for the future of the ancient boundaries in his final few months on the council.

In a notice of motion submitted to this weeks metropolitan district meeting, the veteran member urged the local authority to remove all vegetation from the walls and repair them to recognised standards.

What is left of the Walls of Limerick, particularly going down the Island Road, are slowly crumbling into dust, and nobody seems to give two hoots about it. Its something I have been bringing up since the first time I went onto council, and that was 28 years ago, he said.

Cllr Gilligan pointed out that other European cities take pride in their city walls, adding: We let ours fall down  its disgraceful. We should be ashamed of ourselves.

He pointed out that a housing development near King Johns Castle was once vetoed because of the presence of the walls.

We had designed a beautiful housing development in the old Car Park opposite King John's Castle, and when we had it planned, someone from Dublin told us we could not build it there.

It was because the remains of the wall ran under it. But these were long gone and long buried  yet the walls which are still visible are falling down, Cllr Gilligan said.

Limericks famous City Walls date back to a time the Normans first arrived in Limerick. Then, the natives moved across the Abbey River and formed an important enclave called Irishtown.

The walls were completed in the 1590s, but only some of the main features are still preserved including on the Island Field, and at St Johns Hospital.

Much of the walls were knocked down when the citys status changed in 1760.

Fine Gael councillor Elenora Hogan agreed the walls are in a shocking state of disrepair.

Her party colleague, Cllr Michael Sheahan said: We spend a lot of money providing protection to graffiti and things which are of little historical value. Yet we neglect our own history.

Sinn Fein member Seighin O Ceallaigh added: We cannot just focus on the walls around areas of the castle  we need to focus on other parts just as much.

Architect Maria ODonoghue in response: The best we can do without funding is to maintain the walls as best we can. In terms of stabilisation, this is very expensive.

Subject to funding, it is something the council is interested in doing. Its something which is reflected in our tourism plan, she added in response to Cllr Gilligans motion at this months meeting.
A LIMERICK man who has been involved in ten road traffic accidents has had his compensation claim for alleged injuries sustained in a crash in 2012 dismissed.

Gerry McDonagh, of Fanningstown, Fedamore, has been involved in ten road traffic accidents, including six since 2012, and has received 40,700 in relation to four separate compensation claims.

My body is destroyed from people driving into me, Mr McDonagh told Ennis Circuit Court.

I dont go around claiming off people for nothing, he added.

According to the Irish Examiner, Judge Gerald Keys dismissed Mr McDonaghs claim for the accident, ruling that the threshold had not been reached to show Niamh Kitson, the 19-year old driver of the other car, was negligent in causing the accident.

The court heard that the crash on August 10, 2012 was the third accident within four months that Mr McDonagh was involved in.

He was involved in three further road traffic accidents in October 2015, November 2016, and June 2017.

The court also heard that Mr McDonagh fell six feet off a ladder in May 2013 and had another fall in August 2013.

In 2001, he received 5,000 from a road traffic accident and 11,000 from Limerick County Council after a fall in 2007.

He also received 14,000 for an accident at a Limerick corporation house and a further 10,700 from a road accident in 2008.

Ms Kitson told the court Mr McDonagh crashed into her stationary car at the exit of a petrol station on Lahinch Road in Ennis.

The accident caused 579 worth of damage to her car, and 1,166 to Mr McDonaghs vehicle.

Counsel for Ms Kitson, Siobhan Gallagher BL, told the court Mr McDonagh was also involved in another crash in May 2012 that he did not disclose.

He reported headaches and chest tightness after the car he was traveling in as a back seat passenger was rear-ended.

While he did not make a claim from this crash, members of his family did.

The crash in August 2012 aggravated his back pain from the July 2012 crash, Mr McDonagh told the court.
One-day visit of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev to Ashgabat turned out to be highly productive in terms of bilateral agreements. Agreements mainly concerned issues of cooperation between Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan in the Caspian Sea. Previously, relations between Baku and Ashgabat had a pretty stable nature, but now Ilham Aliyev and Gurbanguly Berdymuhamedov focused on development of transport corridors - Lapis Lazuli and Turkmenistan-Azerbaijan-Georgia-Romania.

Researcher at the Economics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Alexander Karavayev, believes that Turkmenistan is focused on using its full transit potential. "Lapis Lazuli is an attempt to bring Turkmenistan out of transport isolation by connecting it to main routes of Central Asia - "One Belt - One Road" and "North-South." There is, however, threat that secondary routes won't bear desired results. But they still will be important in their own way, so neglecting their capabilities would be wrong, even though they're not as huge as trans-regional routes," he said.

Expert also believes that logistics of the Caspian Sea, in particular routes connecting ports like Alyat and Turkmenbashi, are extremely important. The problems is that as of right now there's nothing to deliver but sulfur, at least at regular schedules. Turkmenistan is counting on transit of goods, bearing in mind that, Uzbekistan, for example, is considering Turkmen direction as the main one when it comes to access to the Middle East. It also has high hopes for the Afghan transit. Despite complicated relations between Russia and the United States, fuel supplies to the NATO group in Afghanistan are still carried out through the Volga-Don Canal," Karavayev noted.

In his opinion, since Baku and Ashgabat don't have to talk about large-scale cooperation, they can simply work on small projects in detail, since they can be very useful in bilateral relations format. That's exactly why presidents signed documents that concerned "long-term trade and economic cooperation; encouragement and mutual protection of investments; elimination of double taxation."

"Those documents will affect investments of Azerbaijan in Turkmenistan, activity of Azerbaijani side in Kazakhstan, in its western Caspian regions, and they may suggest that Baku has similar interests on the Turkmen coast. That's why those documents were needed, especially elimination of double taxation," Karavayev said, recalling that Azerbaijan couldn't sign similar agreement with Russia for about 15 years, before finally signing it in 2016. "It all means one thing - there's a mutual interest between Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan," Karavayev stressed.

Doctor of political sciences, deputy director general of the Strategic Forecast Center, Igor Pankratenko, noted that the reason why Ilham Aliyevs visit to Ashgabat drew so much attention of the international community is Turkmenistan's participation in the Azerbaijani-Turkish gas pipeline TANAP, and this topic wasn't discussed enough.

At the same time, development of the Lapis Lazuli corridor - Afghanistan-Turkmenistan-Azerbaijan-Georgia-Turkey - seems quite promising. China has already shown interest in it. As for another corridor - Turkmenistan-Azerbaijan-Georgia-Romania - it's difficult to say something definite yet. It doesn't even have a provisional name yet. Still, transport corridors are almost always extremely important, so we should just wait and see, refraining from hasty assessments," Igor Pankratenko believes.
Tomorrow, humanity will once again reach out and touch the surface of a foreign world. After seven months traveling across our solar system, NASA's InSight Lander is scheduled to touch down on the flat plains of Elysium Planitia on Mars on Monday at 3 p.m. ET.

But though this landing is taking place 91 million miles away from Earth, people on this planet will still have the opportunity to watch the historic event.

Here's how you can watch, from the comfort of planet Earth: NASA TV will be broadcasting the landing live online between 2 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. ET on Monday (Nov. 26). You can also watch the landing on other sites such as Facebook and Space.com.

NASA also has a list of viewing parties that are set to take place across the U.S., including ones in Times Square and at the American Museum of Natural History in New York; at the California Science Center in Los Angeles; and at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. Internationally, there will be some viewing parties in France, Germany and on the Ile de la Reunion. See the full list here.

Here's what should be happening: The InSight (or "Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport") lander will push through Mars' thin atmosphere using small rockets, deploy parachutes to slow its fall to the surface, and then use retro rockets to finally stick the landing. It will take about 6 minutes from the time the lander reaches the Martian atmosphere until it touches down on the surface of the Red Planet. (Of course, this is if everything goes according to plan: For example, the lander may face dust storms in the northern hemisphere where it's aiming to land. According to NASA, these autumn Martian storms have grown larger in recent years.

Here's what you'll see: A bunch of NASA commentators and most likely some mock-up landing footage, because, let's face it, there's barely reception in some places of our own planet. Because of the difficulty communicating between planets, NASA may not even know if the landing was successful or not until several hours after the scheduled landing time.

When InSight lands, it will set off a radio signal called a "tone" that radio telescopes on Earth will try to detect. If the craft is healthy and functioning, 7 minutes after landing, it will send a louder beep, according to NASA.

The Mars newcomer will be greeted by NASA's orbiting Mars Odyssey, which will snap some photos, as might two experimental spacecraft flying behind InSight. All of these machines, plus something called the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter that serves as a sort of aircraft "black box," will feed clues about InSight's success or failure back to Earthlings.

If all goes smoothly, the InSight lander will spend its life on this foreign land listening to its native music  vibrations beneath the surface of the planet, or "marsquakes," to understand how rocky planets, including our own, formed.

Happy viewing!

Originally published on Live Science.
Hoover Ala.

Protesters Saturday marched through an Alabama shopping mall where police killed a black man they later acknowledged was not the triggerman in a Thanksgiving night shooting that wounded two people.

An officer shot and killed 21-year-old Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford, Jr. of Hueytown while responding to the Thursday mall shooting. Police said Bradford was fleeing the scene with a handgun.

Hoover police initially told reporters Bradford had shot a teen at the mall, but later retracted the statement.

"We knew that was false," said stepmother Cynthia Bradford when she heard police were blaming him for the shooting. She described her stepson, who went by E.J., as a respectful young man whose father worked at a jail for the Birmingham Police Department.

Hoover Police Capt.Gregg Rector said investigators now believe that more than two people were involved in the initial fight ahead of the shooting, and that "at least one gunman" is still at large who could be responsible. Police said while Bradford "may have been involved in some aspect of the altercation, he likely did not fire the rounds that injured the 18-year-old victim." Rector said police regret that their initial statement about Bradford was not accurate.

The shooting remains under investigation, including whether Bradford played any role in the initial disturbance.

The unanswered questions stirred emotions in the suburb outside the majority-black city of Birmingham.

More than 200 demonstrators, including several relatives, chanted "E.J" and "no justice, no peace" as they marched past Christmas shoppers at the mall. They held a moment of silence at the spot outside a shoe store where Bradford was killed.

"They should have never have killed him," Emani Smith, Bradford's 7-year-old half-sister said, while other family members cried.

Family members described their horror of finding out from social media that Bradford was dead. Video circulated on social media of Bradford lying in a pool of blood on the mall floor.

Carlos Chaverst, an activist in Birmingham who organized the protest, said that when authorities acknowledged that the person killed was not the actual shooter, "that sent us in an uproar." He said they want justice for the family and he called for police to release body camera and surveillance footage. More protests will be held in the future to hold officials accountable, he added.
Yesterday, Russian and Turkish Defense Ministers Sergei Shoigu and Hulusi Akar discussed situation in Syria by phone and agreed to continue working together to ensure stability in Syrian cities of Idlib and Tell Rifaat after Moscow and Ankara managed to prevent humanitarian disaster in this Syrian region. Meanwhile, Turkish leadership continues to succeed in peaceful settlement of situation in Idlib. In many ways, success of Turkish diplomacy can be explaned by agreements that were reached during the Astana meeting of heads of Russia, Turkey and Iran.

Press service of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan noted that thanks to agreement on Idlib, Russia and Turkey managed to prevent deaths of more that half million people. However, there are still some difficulties concerning creation of a 20-kilometer demilitarized zone, which will allow to pay more attention to security issues at the Syrian-Turkish border. Now Ankara will try to achieve more diplomatic success by participating in the process of creation of new Syrian constitution.

Situation in Idlib is directly affects role of external players in restoration of Syria, in which Turkey, a country with dynamic construction sector, is showing huge interest. Before the war, Idlib province had predominantly rural population, plateau accounted for most of its territory, which was close to fertile Al-Ghab Plain. Obviously, restoration of industrial potential of Syria will be a priority, including infrastructure affected by the war. This will likely lead to urbanization of post-war Syria, which in which construction businesses of Turkey are interested. Distance from Idlib to Turkish border is just 25 km, which significantly reduces costs of materials' delivery. In addition, most important highways pass through the territory of this province, restoration of which will open access to the Mediterranean coast of Syria.

Stabilization of situation in Idlib can open way for Turkish investments in province's economy. Investments will further rise after free movement of residents and transportation of Syria goods after restoration of transit traffic along the Aleppo-Latakia and Aleppo-Hama highways will be ensured. Reconstruction of roads should be completed by the end of 2018.

It's high likely that Turkish business can compete for contracts in the field of railway communications. Syrian railways were built with direct participation of the USSR, and Syrian side will be interested in their modernization.

Turkish economists can also contribute to agricultural restoration of Syria. Companies that will begin to cooperate with Syrian partners now, in a period that is extremely important for revival of the country, will have key positions in the future of Syrian economy.

Ankaras involvement in stabilizing situation in Idlib allows Turkish leadership to hope that trade and economic ties between Syria and Turkey at the northern border provinces will be maintained. Turkey is already investing in infrastructure development in northern Aleppo.

Economically, Ankara is unable to satisfy all needs of post-war Syria. That's why focusing on border provinces with intention to create free trade zone capable of attracting investments from China in the future is extremely important.

Ankara will also benefit from speedy settlement of the Syrian conflict in terms of anti-terrorist operation against Kurdish armed formations, which require substantial financial costs. Ankara is worried about unpredictability of the future of Syria, since country may be torn apart and armed groups may occupy large areas, which may in turn pose potential threat to Turkeys national security. New military operation may take too much time, that's why Ankara will do everything possible to speed up peace settlement and restoration of Syria. That's why it's necessary to prevent situation in Idlib from escalating and create a buffer zone along the entire Syrian border.
BRUSSELS - European leaders on Sunday signed off on their split from Britain, approving a deal that would set the United Kingdom on a new, if uncertain, road, independent from the European Union after more than four decades of membership in the political and economic powerhouse.

The agreement - "historic," according to German Chancellor Angela Merkel - will cut Britain out of the European Union, marking the first time a nation has ever sought to depart. But the deal must still weather Britain's political storms ahead of the official March 29 exit date, with the key test next month when the U.K. Parliament puts it to a vote amid violent opposition.

No matter the uncertainty in Britain, it was a momentous occasion in Britain's 45-year-long membership in the European club and its torturous two-year effort to depart it.

The deal will almost certainly come with steep costs for both sides, leaving leaders in the extraordinary position of negotiating a split that they almost all believe will harm their citizens. Some E.U. leaders said they felt Sunday's deal was a tragedy. The deal, approved unanimously Sunday by the remaining 27 E.U. leaders, would leave Britain in legal limbo - obligated to follow most E.U. rules but no longer a member - until the end of 2020, as leaders haggle over the relationship to come. The assent came after less than an hour of discussion.

"Today has been a historic day," Merkel said after the meeting, a rare and unusual gathering of European leaders on a chilly Sunday morning in Brussels. "My feelings are very divided. I feel very sad, but at the same time I feel a sense of relief."

British Prime Minister Theresa May, asked if she shared the unhappiness, said, "No, but I recognize that others do."

May said the British Parliament will now face "one of most significant votes Parliament has had in many years," and that she would campaign for it with all her heart.

"This is the deal on the table," she said. "It is best possible deal. It is the only deal."

Under the terms of the deal, Britain will face a $50 billion bill to pay its financial commitments on its way out the door. It will be tied to E.U. laws and regulations for years in some areas, and its ability to negotiate its own trade deals - a key demand of the Brexiteers who led a successful rebellion against the established order in 2016 - could be tightly limited. But it will no longer be obligated to allow E.U. citizens to live and work within its borders, and May has sought to promote that as a major win, even as other leaders shake their heads about the situation.

"The cost we discussed in recent months is massive," said French President Emmanuel Macron. "Those who said to the British they would save several dozens or hundreds of billions pounds lied to them."

British and E.U. negotiators will still have to work out the terms of their future relationship, and although a 36-page declaration also approved Sunday set out some of the guidelines, much remained unresolved, including Britain's freedom to control large parts of its own economy.

Arriving at this point in the divorce has been a struggle: 17 months of fraught negotiations, marked by nonstop bickering within May's own leadership team, including a string of high-profile resignations from her cabinet.

May's headaches are far from over. Her limits as vote-wrangler will be tested in her own Parliament, where pro-Brexit lawmakers have hammered the plan as failing to break decisively enough from Brussels and pro-E.U. forces have condemned it as a self-inflicted wound that hurts British voters.

According to the British press, as many as 90 lawmakers of May's own Conservative Party have said they plan to vote against it, alongside members of the opposition Labour Party.

The plan seeks to avoid a hard border between the Republic of Ireland, which is remaining in the E.U., and Northern Ireland, which will depart. It also seeks to prevent an internal split between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom. To do so, the two sides agreed that if they fail to come up with a better plan before the end of Britain's transition period, London would remain locked inside the European customs union, obligated to respect most E.U. regulations on goods that would pass between the two sides, including tariffs with the rest of the world.

In addition to the divorce deal, May and her European counterparts approved a political declaration on the future relationship between the two partners. Unlike the withdrawal agreement, which will be legally binding after it is approved by British and European parliaments, the political document is loosely worded and aspirational, an outline for future talks, which will likely take years to complete. It contains a list of hoped-for outcomes on trade, customs inspections, tariffs, fisheries rights, aviation, and the ability of citizens to visit and live in the other's territory.

Even the vague aspirations, however, are likely to disappoint British business interests. For example, while May has long sought to replicate the "frictionless" trade that exists today between members of the European Union, a post-Brexit Britain will face "separate markets and distinct legal orders," according to the political declaration, while aligning with E.U. rules. London's financial center, one of the largest in the world, will also see its access to Europe diminished when it surrenders its "passport" rights to move money.

Boris Johnson, the former foreign secretary and lead campaigner for Brexit, said on Saturday that Britain was "on the verge of a historic blunder." He said May's withdrawal deal surrenders too much power to Brussels.

What will happen to the withdrawal agreement if it is voted down by the British Parliament is unclear. May could put it up for a vote again. She could face a leadership challenge or new elections. Britain could even re-run their referendum, although few analysts believe this is realistic.

Brexiteers want negotiators to return to Brussels to amend the deal, but European leaders have said that they have little room to improve it and that there is nothing more to talk about. They advised British lawmakers to take what is on the table.

The disagreements have left the two sides staring into the abyss, as British opponents to the deal say they want to come up with something better. E.U. leaders say the alternative is a chaotic no-deal departure - a development that could ignite economic crisis and could even lead to shortages of medicine in Britain.

Europe has largely held united through the negotiations, vowing that if Britain leaves their club, it must no longer benefit from club benefits. Leaders generally dislike the departure but now want to pin down the deal to free them to focus on other, more pressing problems such as populism, struggling economies and Russia.

Their main goal on Sunday appeared to be to try to move on from the bitter breakup.

"Nobody is winning. We are all losing because of the U.K. leaving," Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said.

---

The Washington Post's Quentin Aries contributed to this report.
Washington

Shoppers heading online to purchase holiday gifts will find they're being charged sales tax at some websites where they weren't before. The reason: the Supreme Court.

A June ruling gave states the go-ahead to require more companies to collect sales tax on online purchases. Now, more than two dozen have moved to take advantage of the ruling.

"Will your shopping bill look any different? ... The answer right now is it depends," said Jason Brewer, a spokesman for the Retail Industry Leaders Association.

Whether shoppers get charged sales tax on their online purchases comes down to where they live and where they're shopping.

Before the Supreme Court's recent decision , the rule was businesses selling online had to collect sales tax only in states where they had stores, warehouses or another physical presence. That meant that major retailers such as Apple, Best Buy, Macy's and Target, which have brick-and-mortar stores nationwide, were generally collecting sales tax from online customers. But that wasn't the case for businesses with a big online presence but few physical locations.

Now, states can force out-of-state sellers to collect sales tax if they're doing a fair amount of business in the state. That means retailers such as Overstock.com, home goods company Wayfair and electronics retailer Newegg can be required to collect tax in more states. Those companies were involved in the case before the Supreme Court, but a range of businesses from jewelry website Blue Nile to clothing and outdoor company L.L. Bean and electronics retailer B&H Photo-Video are also affected.

States had a strong interest in taking advantage of the Supreme Court's decision by passing laws or publishing regulations prior to this holiday shopping season if at all possible, said Richard Cram of the Multistate Tax Commission, which works with states on tax issues. Those that did have generally been following the lead of South Dakota, which brought the issue to the Supreme Court. South Dakota requires sellers who don't have a physical presence in the state to collect sales tax on online purchases if they do more than $100,000 in business in South Dakota or more than 200 transactions annually with state residents.

Alabama, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, North Dakota, Washington and Wisconsin began enforcing their own requirements starting Oct. 1. But a number of big states, including New York, do not yet have similar collection requirements in place. As a result, consumers shopping online from those states and others that have yet to act may not be charged sales tax on some websites for a little longer.
After dozens of people fled a Thanksgiving-evening shooting inside an Alabama shopping mall - stampeding through the food court and hiding inside stores - one woman told reporters she said a prayer as she ran: "Give the police wisdom and accuracy of shots."

At first it seemed the prayer was answered. Police in Hoover, Alabama, soon announced that they had secured the Riverchase Galleria and killed the gunman, who allegedly wounded two people during a dispute and then brandished a pistol at a uniformed officer.

Hoover's mayor called the police heroes that night. "Thank God we had our officers very close," Police Chief Nick Derzis told AL.com. "They heard the gunfire, they engaged the subject, and they took out the threat."

By the next morning, the body of 21-year-old Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford Jr. was at the medical examiner; an 18-year-old man and a 12-year-old bystander were being treated for bullet wounds at a hospital; and Alabama's largest shopping mall was back open for business for Black Friday crowds.

And then a reporter from television station WBRC, a Fox affiliate from Birmingham, posted a photo of a pistol on the floor of the Santa's Village display - one of several things police apparently missed that night, including the actual shooter.

"New evidence now suggests that while Mr. Bradford may have been involved in some aspect of the altercation, he likely did not fire the rounds that injured the 18-year-old victim," police said in a statement Friday night as they announced that the state would be taking over the investigation.

What police at first described as a fight between Bradford and the teenager that escalated to gunfire, during which a girl standing nearby was also shot, now appears to be something else.

More than two people were involved in the dispute, police say. They left unclear what role, if any, Bradford had in the incident, but police maintain that he threatened an officer with a handgun while fleeing.

"We regret that our initial media release was not totally accurate, but new evidence indicates that it was not," police wrote. "This information indicates that here is at least one gunman still at-large."

Neither a police spokesman nor officials with the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency responded Saturday to questions about the search and investigation. Bradford's family could not be reached, though some details of his life and final minutes have emerged online.

Bradford had photos of himself in Army uniform posted on Facebook, and he described himself as a combat engineer. A spokesman for the Army, however, told The Washington Post that he "never completed advanced individual training" and so did not serve. A lawyer from Bradford's family said he had been honorably discharged from the Army.

He lived just outside Birmingham, a few miles from the mall where he was shot.

"He was a super sweet, funny, kind and good-hearted young man who never had a bad word to say to anyone," his former Catholic high school teacher, Carl Dean, told the Hoover Sun.

About an hour before the shooting, Bradford posted a photo of himself on Facebook, showing him posing in a doorway in the shredded jeans and T-shirt in which he would die. Digital scribbles on the photo obscure his left hand, in which he appears to be holding something.

Gunshots rang out on the second floor of the mall shortly before 10 p.m., according to police and witness accounts. Cellphone videos show people fleeing through the food court, knocking over a cash register and cowering in employee backrooms.

An unidentified 18-year-old was shot and was last reported to be in serious condition at a hospital. A 12-year-old girl standing nearby was apparently struck by a stray bullet, her mother later wrote on Facebook. A military medic used a shirt from a rack at a nearby store to stop her bleeding. She is expected to recover.

In this chaos, AL.com reported, "several shoppers were seen with their guns drawn."

It is unclear where Bradford was during the shooting. Two uniformed police officers working as security guards intercepted him in front of a shoe store on the second level, where a graphic photo spreading online shows him lying on the tile, blood pooled around his head.

"While moving toward the shooting scene, one of the officers encountered a suspect brandishing a pistol and shot him," police wrote in their first public statement, immediately after the shooting. In their revised statement the following evening, they said Bradford was shot and killed while "fleeing the shooting scene while brandishing a handgun."

In two graphic videos taken outside the shoe store, shoppers watch in astonishment.

"That boy didn't shoot at nobody. He's dead!" a man down the corridor says, as officers stand over Bradford and pin someone else to the ground. "They just killed that black boy for no reason. . . . He probably got a gun license and everything."

Bradford did have a license to carry a concealed gun, according to the civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who was hired by the family this weekend after previously representing black shooting victims such as Stephon Clark and Trayvon Martin.

Bradford is one of more than 850 people who have been shot and killed by police in the United States this year, according to a Washington Post database, and the latest of many black men whose deaths have led to accusations of systemic racism in the U.S. law enforcement system.

"The systems in America are dangerous for and to Black people," Bernice King, the daughter of Martin Luther King Jr., wrote as Bradford's killing spread virally on Twitter.

On Saturday, a group of protesters marched around and through the mall, followed by Hoover police officers and joined by several of Bradford's family members.

As seen in ABC 33/40s live feed, these relatives described Bradford as the youngest member of a military family - the son of a U.S. marine who, as his great aunt put it, "chose country first, not a bullet."

"They shot the wrong man!" another woman said, consoling the aunt.
MOSCOW - Tensions between Russia and Ukraine escalated Sunday after the neighbors accused each other of provoking an incident at sea, with Moscow closing a vital water route and Ukraine's leader declaring that he wants to implement martial law in response.

On Sunday morning, Russia prevented three Ukrainian ships from entering the Kerch Strait, a narrow strip of water linking the Azov and Black seas. According to the Ukrainian navy, vessels belonging to Russia's border service opened fire on the Ukrainian fleet, injuring six sailors, before seizing two of the ships.

Moscow had prevented the ships from entering the strait by placing a large cargo vessel beneath a Russian-controlled bridge. Russia then closed the strait, which both nations use.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko endorsed the military cabinet's proposal, rushed through in Kiev well past midnight, to install martial law across the country for 60 days. On Monday, the vote will be put before parliament and is expected to sail through.

In Ukraine, martial law grants authorities and the military the powers needed to ensure national security. It could allow Poroshenko, who has been dogged by low ratings and could seek reelection in March, to act more independently than usual.

The mood in Kiev was bellicose. "It is now likely possible that Russia plans further acts of aggression at sea or on the ground. We must be ready for this," Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said on Twitter.

Russia said the Ukrainian navy illegally entered its waters. The two artillery boats and a tugboat "unlawfully entered a temporarily closed area of Russia's territorial sea at about 7 a.m. Moscow time," Russia's border service told the Interfax news agency. "It is clear that their goal is to create a conflict situation in the region."

Ukraine disputed this. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Russia acted "aggressively" and "illegally used force against the ships of the Ukrainian Navy." A Russian ship rammed into the tugboat, damaging it, the Ukrainian navy added.

A bilateral treaty grants both countries the right to use the Azov Sea.

The standoff raises the specter of further confrontation between Russia and Ukraine. Both nations called for an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council. The European Union called on Russia to reopen the Kerch Strait and urged "all to act with utmost restraint to de-escalate the situation immediately."

A lot is at stake. The two countries have been at loggerheads since a pro-Moscow government in Ukraine was toppled more than four years ago, touching off Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula and the ongoing war in eastern Ukraine involving pro-Russian separatists.

Fighting between the rebels and Ukrainian troops has claimed more than 10,300 lives since 2014, and continued skirmishes result in near-daily casualties.

Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for Russia's Foreign Ministry, said in a Facebook post that Ukraine was employing "the methods of banditry. First there are provocations, then they exert strong pressure, and finally an accusation of aggression."

According to the Ukrainian navy, Russia sent two combat helicopters to the location of the incident.

The Ukrainian ships were on a journey through the Black Sea, having left the Ukrainian port city of Odessa and heading to Mariupol on the Azov Sea coast, the government-controlled Ukrainian city that is closest to the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Since President Vladimir Putin earlier this year opened the new bridge across the Kerch Strait - connecting the Russian mainland to Crimea - Moscow has increased its control of the area.

Tensions between Russia and Ukraine have been steadily mounting in recent months, and even entering new battlefields.

Last month, the conflict spilled over into the area of faith when the Ukrainian Orthodox Church officially broke free from Moscow's control, a move that continues to anger the Kremlin.

Amid the Black Sea standoff, popular Russian TV host Dmitry Kiselyov told state television that Poroshenko was picking a fight with Russia at the prompting of the United States.

"What is happening now at the [Kerch] bridge threatens to become a very unpleasant story," said Kiselyov, one of the Kremlin's main propagandists.

---

Stern reported from Kiev.
Paradise, Calif.

The catastrophic wildfire in Northern California is nearly out after several days of rain, but searchers are still completing the meticulous task of combing through now-muddy ash and debris for signs of human remains.

Crews resumed the grim work Saturday as rain cleared out of the devastated town of Paradise. Some were looking through destroyed neighborhoods for a second time as hundreds of people remain unaccounted for. They were searching for telltale fragments or bone or anything that looks like a pile of cremated ashes.

The nation's deadliest wildfire in a century has killed at least 84 people, and 475 are on a list of those reported missing. The flames ignited Nov. 8 in the parched Sierra Nevada foothills and quickly spread across 240 square miles, destroying most of Paradise in a day.

The fire burned down nearly 19,000 buildings, most of them homes, and displaced thousands of people, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said.

The two-week firefight got a boost Wednesday from the first significant storm to hit California. It dropped an estimated 7 inches of rain over the burn area over a three-day period without causing significant mudslides, said Hannah Chandler-Cooley of the National Weather Service.

The rain helped extinguish hotspots in smoldering areas, and containment increased to 95 percent. Despite the inclement weather, more than 800 volunteers kept searching for remains.

Crews worked on-and-off amid a downpour Friday. While the rain made everybody colder and wetter, they kept the mission in mind, said Chris Stevens, a search volunteer who wore five layers of clothing to keep warm.

"It doesn't change the spirits of the guys working," he said. "Everyone here is super committed to helping the folks here."

His search crew went home to Orange County on Saturday after completing its assignment. Authorities also lifted evacuation orders for certain sections of Paradise.

In Southern California, more residents have returned to areas evacuated in a destructive fire as crews repaired power, telephone and gas utilities.

Los Angeles County sheriff's officials said they were in the last phase of repopulating Malibu and unincorporated areas of the county. At the height of the fire, 250,000 fled their homes.

Flames erupted Nov. 8 just west of Los Angeles and burned through suburban communities and wilderness parklands to the ocean.
Man is endowed with reason and the power to create, so that he may increase that which is given to him, reads the line from Anton Chekhovs Uncle Vanya. Translated from the original Russian, the line is projected onto the wall in English and Azeri, but delivered in Japanese by an actor in the Kyoto-based Chiten Theatre. The stage is set with a baby grand piano wrapped in cellophane; one actor is wearing six inch platform Oxfords and another is standing on his head. The production is part of the MAP Festival in Baku, Azerbaijan, and were in a converted ship maintenance warehouse on the Caspian Sea, the main venue of the YARAT Contemporary Art Space.

As The Independent writes in an article "How Baku is emerging as an arts destination", its not the type of performance you may associate with the Caucasus region, known for carpets, vast oil reservoirs and the trendy city of Tbilisi in Georgia. But Azerbaijan is working to change that, using its petro-wealth to position its capital Baku as an international centre for the arts and architecture: a Dubai on the Caspian. The injection of culture is an attempt to draw tourists to the country and revitalise the arts after the traumatic fall of the Soviet Union.

Well-publicised festivals with international headliners and flamboyant grandscale architecture are examples of this push. These are funded by government and corporate sponsors, who are betting that a vibrant grassroots arts scene can develop in an incubator created by these headliner projects. The MAP Festival has more than doubled in scope since 2017, its inaugural year. This years event featured 16 shows and 13 productions from companies and artists hailing from all over the world. YARAT raised the profile of the MAP Festival by timing the 9 November opening to coincide with the heavily publicised launch of a solo installation by the artist Pedro Gomez-Egana.

Born in Colombia but based in Norway, Gomez-Egana was motivated to bring his work to Azerbaijan by the possibility and proportion of the YARAT exhibition space. He was also inspired by the vision of YARATs energetic artistic director Suad Garayeva Maleki. Prior to meeting Maleki, Baku was not on my radar at all, says Gomez-Egana.

Founded in 2011 by Aida Mahmudova, a Central Saint Martins graduate and niece of Azerbaijans first lady, YARAT was originally a collective for local artists. Since then, the collective has morphed into a not-for-profit non-governmental organisation with more financing and structure, says Garayeva Maleki over green tea in her office. Support from the government, she says, is limited to the main exhibition space  the converted industrial warehouse where many of MAPs theatre productions were staged this year.

The Azerbaijani government supports other cultural initiatives, including the Baku Jazz Centre (and its annual festival), the Azerbaijan Carpet Museum and large-scale architectural works like Zaha Hadids controversial Heydar Aliyev Centre. The carpet museum, designed by the Austrian architect Franz Janz, is shaped like a giant rolled-up carpet. Public arts are supported by the government; they embellish the city, says Garayeva Maleki.

But is the art scene in Baku more style than substance? Perhaps: Gomez-Egana describes Baku as a city of facades where attendees of art events have little attention for the work itself. After all, the Heydar Aliyev Centre, as well as the three Baku Flame Towers, appear to emphasise exterior panache over whats on display inside. But Dubai, now the undisputed contemporary art capital of the Middle East, was a desert backwater 30 years ago. Azerbaijan has had fewer than 20 years to recover from the traumatic aftermath of perestroika and the breakup of the Soviet Union. For 20 years it was survival mode, we had coups detat every few years. It was a horrible, crazy collapse. All the artists had to stop working and do whatever they could to feed their families, says Garayeva Maleki.

Part of YARATs mandate is to fan the dormant flame of homegrown arts in the country, and help young Azeri artists find their identity. Half of YARATs temporary artist residencies are reserved for Azeri artists, who are mentored by a group of Azeri permanent residents. The Artim Project Space, a small gallery in old Bakus warren of streets and alleys, is well suited to this younger generation. This month, the space features the Shy Boy of the Pink Future installation by 26-year-old Agil Abdullayev, a collection which reckons with identity and otherness in the social media age.

Art can always be a way to do some city branding, says Pedro Gomez-Egana. But one shouldnt underestimate what these kinds of opportunities make room for. There are interesting visions, and people who manage to show challenging work, that builds audiences and builds practices.

Six must-visit art institutions in Baku

YARAT contemporary art space

A former ship maintenance warehouse converted into a gargantuan, modular space which stages installations, workshops and theatre performances.

YARAT Painting Museum

Adjacent to the contemporary art space, the painting museum features fascinating work by Azerbaijans cadre of Soviet-influenced painters working in the mid-20th century.

Artim Project Space

Smack in the middle of the Old City, this cosy space managed by YARAT hosts experimental installations and other work by youthful Azerbaijani artists.

Heydar Aliyev Centre

This staggering-in-scale Zaha Hadid masterpiece is catnip for Instagrammers.

YAY Gallery

This YARAT-managed space in the old city features contemporary Azeri photographers whose work focuses on a modernising Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan Carpet Museum

Not as far from contemporary art as you might think, the carpet museum features a series of amazing carpets woven with images of oil derricks. The building itself is also shaped like a rolled-up carpet. Its delightfully on the nose.
Schertz police arrested one person early Sunday who investigators believe is connected with the death of Lisa Meisel, 28, whose body was found in her home in Northeast San Antonio.

The Schertz Police Department released a statement on social media confirming that authorities had found Meisel's body at her home in San Antonio after receiving a tip about a homicide at another home in Schertz.

According to the statement, the Comal County Sheriff's Office notified Schertz police at about 12:48 a.m. of the possible homicide in the 700 block of Hollow Ridge.

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Officials did not specify what lead them to the San Antonio home but said that during their investigation, officers were able to link the discovery of Meisel's remains to the home in Schertz. Police obtained a search warrant for that Schertz home and say a suspect was arrested without incident. Police declined to elaborate on the statement, which did not give the suspect's name or the charge.

However, Guadalupe County jail records show Derek Conley, 28, was booked on a murder charge by Schertz police on Sunday. Conley lives in the 700 block of Hollow Ridge.

San Antonio police say they assisted Schertz police with a welfare check early Sunday morning at a residence in the 2oo block of Heimer Road, near U.S. 281 and Bitters Road. Public databases list the address as Meisel's residence.

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SAPD gave no details on the check and deferred to Schertz police who said they could not release further information pending the investigation.

SAPD, Comal County Sheriff's deputies and Texas Rangers are assisting Schertz in the investigation.
Two days before Thanksgiving, tech CEO Keith Caneiro was found dead on his front lawn with a gunshot wound to the head. The remains of his wife and two young children were discovered inside their Colts Neck, New Jersey, mansion, which had been set ablaze, local prosecutors said Wednesday.

Paul Caneiro, Keith's brother, was arrested and charged with aggravated arson Wednesday - not for setting his brother's home on fire, but for allegedly burning his own house, hours before the apparent quadruple homicide. Paul Caneiro's wife and two daughters were also inside at the time, though none were hurt.
The UK intention to withdraw from the European Union has brought into focus the need of a "profound" reform of the bloc, French President Emmanuel Macron told reporters on Sunday, Sputnik reports.

Macron said ahead of the EU leaders' summit that its participants had to discuss the future relations between the United Kingdom and the European Union, stressing that London would continue playing an "important role" even after Brexit, and that its role could also evolve.

"This summit is an important stage, and we should all draw conclusions from it. This proves that the European Union is fragile to some extent, and that there is always obviously a room for improvement. It finally shows that Europe need reforms, this is obvious, and I support it, we continue working on it. I believe this is what the upcoming debates ahead of the European elections [to the European Parliament, scheduled for May 2019] should focus on," Macron said.

He specified that "profound reforms" should be introduced to the European Union for the benefit of its citizens.

Macron also voiced his support to the Brexit withdrawal agreement, qualifying it as a "good" one.
As Texas lawmakers were headed into a special session in 2017, House Speaker Joe Straus was appalled that his Senate counterpart Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick was planning to push once more for a controversial bill targeting transgender Texans access to restrooms.

Im not a lawyer, but I am a Texan, Straus said. Im disgusted by all this. Tell the lieutenant governor I dont want the suicide of a single Texan on my hands.

It was a defining comment, and moment, for Straus, the longest-serving speaker in Texas history. Its worth recalling, now that the smoke shrouding the identity of the member who will succeed him has begun to clear. It looks very likely that Rep. Dennis Bonnen, R-Angleton, will be the next speaker come January.

Thats no small matter. The Texas Constitution divides power in the Capitol far more evenly between the speaker, the lieutenant governor and governor than in most other states. As we saw last session, the three-way tussle over the direction our leaders would take Texas was intense, and at key points Speaker Straus played a decisive role.

Now that Bonnens path to leadership of the House grows more certain, the question left for the rest of us is changing, too. No longer so focused on who will be speaker, Texans are left asking what kind of leader the newly chosen member of the states triumvirate will be.

Bonnen has been a representative for 22 years, ever since winning his seat at age 24 in 1996. Throughout his long tenure, Bonnen has developed the reputation as a loudmouth and a bulldog  albeit one who grew to hone and leverage those skills in service of House leadership. More recently, hes been a top Straus lieutenant and chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. He was the go-to attack dog for criticizing the most extreme measures promoted by Patrick in the 2015 and 2017 sessions.

That institutional loyalty has paid off, as his supporters now seem to hope that hell continue to stand up to Patrick and protect the House as an institution and what has been its far more pragmatic path.

Still, if he is indeed installed as speaker, the new role will thrust him into a statewide spotlight that until now he hasnt confronted. For all his insider credentials, hes not well known to Texans outside of Austin and at home in District 25.

But well know all about him, soon enough. Power, as Robert Caro has observed in his study of Lyndon Johnson, doesnt so much corrupt as it reveals. The pursuit of power tells us much, but the real test is how a leader uses it once he or she has it.

In that sense, were about to see the true nature of Bonnen revealed by the very power with which his colleagues are about to entrust him.

We see Straus as an exemplar. We certainly didnt always agree with Straus, but his was a pragmatic yet principled leadership we admired.

It was pragmatism that caused him to initially recoil at hard-liners bid to pass a bill restricting which bathrooms transgender students and others could use. Nationwide, businesses had punished other states for similarly intolerant laws and he wanted none of that for Texas.

But the real leadership came later, when it dawned on him that making a purely economic case against the bill wasnt enough. He decided he must stand against the bill in order to stand with the people in Texas  many of them young, many of them vulnerable  who would feel targeted should the bathroom bill pass. He knew that messages like the ones sent by legislation can be toxic and even fatal. He wouldnt have it.

Bonnens backers apparently see in him the same kind of backbone that Straus demonstrated. We hope they are right. Texas is counting on it.
Cllr Micheal Carrigy attended the Fine Gael Ard Fheis at the weekend where he spoke to delegates on a number of matters of both national and local importance.

He says he was invited by the Taoiseach, in his capacity as general election candidate in the Longford/Westmeath Constituency, to speak on the issues in an effort to raise more social awareness.

During the event Cllr Carrigy spoke about rent control funding for the Residential Tenancy Board; rent caps and the housing shortage.

I spoke about the policies that have been introduced by the Government to regulate some of the issues for both tenants and landlords as well as the schemes that have been introduced to try and free up houses that could then become available for long term letting, he added.

I did some research on similar issues in Vancouver and how they were handled there and I pointed out at the Ard Fheis that since they introduced measures similar to our own last April 2,880 units have been made available.

Cllr Carrigy went on to say that a lot of the forward planning by department officials in respect of residential development in Co Longford indicates that development can only take place in areas where there are adequate services.

Over the last number of years we have seen Irish Water, for example, putting all the necessary water infrastructure in place; in fact they are placing new water lines in Ballinalee this week, but we are a very rural county that has a lot of farming going on and I do feel that if a person wants to build a house on their own land they should be allowed to do that, the local area representative in the Granard Municipal District continued.

We [council members] have made our feelings known on this matter at national level and there would be very little support for stopping the development of one-off housing in rural areas.

He added, I dont envisage a general election next year - it could be 2020 at this stage - but the Taoiseach has indicated his wish for Fianna Fail to step up now and confirm its commitment to the Confidence & Supply Agreement until at least the summer of 2020, so that says it all really as far as a general election is concerned.
The number of civilians injured in an attack by militants using chlorine-filled shells on residential areas of Syria's Aleppo has reached 65 people, Sputnik reported citing Syrian newspaper al-Watan.

Sources at the ar-Razi hospital told the newspaper that by midnight local time (22.00 GMT on Saturday), 21 injured had been admitted, all hospitalized in the intensive care unit.

Aleppo University Hospital received 44 victims displaying difficulty in breathing due to exposure to gas, presumably poisoning, the newspaper said.

The head of the health department of the Syrian city of Aleppo, Ziad Haj Taha, earlier reported that 25 had been hospitalized to ar-Razi hospital and another 25 to Aleppo University Hospital. Lebanese broadcaster Al Mayadeen has reported about 100 injured in the attack.
The passage of civil ships through the Kerch Strait was banned on Sunday amid fears of provocations after three Ukrainian warships had intruded into Russias territorial waters, a source in transport authorities of the South Federal District said, TASS reports.

"The Kerch-Yenikale Canal has been closed," the source said, noting that this comes "amid fears of provocations" and earlier political statements in Ukrainian media.

Besides, the ships have switched off all means of their detection, he said. "They are not seen, they are not providing information to the center for control of maritime traffic."
The Massachusetts State Police have identified the victim of Friday's fatal two-car crash on I-195 in Somerset as 66-year-old Delton Pacheco of Somerset.

According to investigators, Pacheco was killed at about noon Friday when a second vehicle struck his car from behind in the eastbound lane of I-195 in Somerset.

Apparently, Pacheco's car was stopped and he was standing in front of the vehicle when the second car crashed into the rear of Pacheco's.

The name of the second driver and any potential charges have not been released pending completion of a full investigation.
Boston Police Commissioner William Gross lambasted the ACLU in a private Facebook post after the organization filed a lawsuit over the police department's gang database, according to the Boston Herald.

The newspaper reports Gross called the ACLU "paper warriors" who are not there when police officers are shot.

"No ACLU present when we have to explain to a mother that her son or daughter was horribly murdered by gang violence," Gross wrote in the private Facebook post obtained by the Herald.

The ACLU of Massachusetts is suing the Boston Police Department for access to its gang database. The ACLU argues police are too secretive about how they track believed gang members, according to the organization's lawsuit filed in Suffolk Superior Court.

Gross is named as a defendant in the lawsuit. The ACLU claims Boston Police is misusing a public records exemption an in attempt to keep key information about the tracking system private.

"Being labeled as a gang member can have catastrophic consequences for a young person's life, including being targeted for surveillance and police stops, facing harsher outcomes in the criminal justice system, and for noncitizen youth-being detained and deported," ACLU lawyers wrote in the suit. "Yet, under BPD rules, police can place children in its 'Gang Assessment Database' and label them as "active" gang members based on nothing more than the clothing they are seen in and the classmates they are seen with."

The ACLU contends the database results in people of color being racially profiled.

Police spokesman Sgt. John Boyle told the Boston Herald that the commissioner "shared his opinion on his personal Facebook page."

Boston 25 News reports Gross pointed out that his department went to El Salvador to learn more about the MS-13 gang.

"I sure as hell didn't see the ACLU in El Salvador working to find a solution to our youth being inducted into the MS-13 Gang and The 18th Street Gang," Gross wrote, according to Boston 25 News. "Didn't see the ACLU there or at any of our 22 programs and initiatives for our citizens and youth. Despite the paper warriors, we'll continue to do our jobs."

Gross said the ACLU doesn't support police or the 22 youth programs working to curb gang violence. He added the ACLU did not offer condolences to Boston Police after a police officer was shot in the face, according to the Herald.

Officer John Moynihan was shot in the face in March 2015. Moynihan recovered from his injuries.
An Orleans investment advisor has admitted to stealing more than $3 million from her clients, and using the money to buy luxury vehicles and vacations.

Kimberly Pine Kitts, 51, on Nov. 19 pleaded guilty in Boston's federal courthouse to wire fraud, investment advisor fraud, and aggravated identity theft, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Kitts was also sued in July by the Securities and Exchange Commission for misappropriating client funds. The federal prosecutors say the criminal charges arose from the same conduct alleged in the SEC's complaint.

According to the civil complaint, Kitts, then a registered advisor at Royal Alliance Associates, forged client signatures to steal money from their variable annuity and investment accounts. Over six years, Kitts allegedly made 82 unauthorized withdrawals, using fake account statements to conceal her theft.

Kitts falsely represented to her clients that she was a certified public accountant with a Ph.D. in economics, the complaint alleges. Kitts continued her fraudulent practices until 2017, according to the SEC.

FINRA has barred Pitts from acting as a broker or otherwise associating with a broker-dealer firm. In the criminal case, Kitts was released on an unsecured bond, and is due to be sentenced on March 20.
The sister of Leonel Rondon, the 18-year-old man killed in the Sept. 13, Merrimack Valley gas explosions, will speak at Monday's U.S. Senate Commerce Committee hearing about the response to the gas pipeline fires and explosions.

The hearing begins at 9 a.m. inside the South Lawrence East Middle School gym and will be streamed live on the Commerce Committee's website.

Lucianny Rondon, Leonel's sister will speak at the beginning of the hearing. She will be there with her mother, Rosaly Rondon. The family will be with U.S. Senator Edward J. Markey.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren will join U.S. Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire and Reps. Niki Tsongas and Seth Moulton at the hearing with Markey.

The committee hearing titled, "Pipeline Safety in the Merrimack Valley: Incident Prevention and Response", focuses on the natural gas pipeline explosions and fires in Lawrence, Andover and North Andover.

Leonel Rondon was killed, and more than two dozen others were injured. More than 100 structures were damaged.

The committee is going to ask questions about the response and hear from Columbia Gas as well as federal, state and local authorities.

Steve Bryan, Columbia Gas president, and NiSource CEO Joe Hamrock are expected to testify.

As of Sunday, 5,917 residential gas meters have restored gas service, which is about 81 percent, according to Columbia Gas. The company has paid $64.13 million after receiving 23,825 claims.

The company reports 1,235 families were living in temporary housing as of Nov 23.
Robert Bolduc, CEO and owner of Pride Stores, has been helping out neighbors in need for decades.



Charitable giving for him and his wife, Roberta, is an integral part of their lives.

For the third year in a row, Pride Stores will be partnering with the Toy for Joy campaign to provide gifts to as many children as possible across Western Massachusetts on Christmas Day.

Bolduc is hoping Pride's many faithful customers will join him in supporting the 96th annual Toy for Joy campaign, a collaborative effort by the Salvation Army, The Republican and MassLive. The goal is to raise $150,000 by Christmas Eve.

Toy for Joy is also partnering with the Reading Success by 4th Grade initiative of the Irene E. and George A. Davis Foundation for a second year to help ensure each child receives a new book.

"We are once again offering our customers an opportunity to contribute to Toy for Joy this year," said Bolduc. "There will be cards in $1, $5 and $10 increments for people to choose from. We hope that everyone who can help will help as much as possible."

Pride locations in Western Massachusetts and northern Connecticut are participating in the collection effort. Last year, Pride and its customers donated $8,050 to Toy for Joy.

Danielle LaTaille, social services director for the Salvation Army in Springfield, said Pride has been a generous donor over the years.

"We are so excited that Pride Stores are on board again this year," she said. "We are so grateful for their continued support of the Toy for Joy program."

Added Cynthia G. Simison, managing editor of The Republican, "The Bolducs embody all it means to be good corporate citizens. They share their good fortune with so many organizations, too many to mention, which help children and families. We are grateful for their continuing generosity to Toy for Joy."

Registration for families to benefit from Toy for Joy begins tomorrow at the Springfield citadel of the Salvation Army and will continue this coming week at Salvation Army centers in Greenfield and Holyoke. In Springfield, there will be an initial list of 1,500 families and a waiting list established for additional families. The limit had to be imposed due to last year's shortfall of more than $40,000.

To make a contribution to the Toy for Joy fund, write to Toy for Joy, 1860 Main St., Springfield, MA 01101. Contributions may also be dropped off with the coupon that accompanies this story to The Republican, 1860 Main St., Springfield, weekdays between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. through noon on Dec. 21.

TOY FOR JOY REGISTRATION

Here are the times for families to register at Salvation Army sites for the 96th annual Toy for Joy campaign. The Springfield citadel will assist families whose communities are not listed below:

Greater Springfield Citadel: 170 Pearl St., Springfield; Registration: November 26, 27, 28. 9:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m., for info, call (413) 733-1518, serves Agawam, East Longmeadow, Easthampton, Longmeadow, Ludlow, Northampton, Palmer, Monson, Springfield, Ware, West Springfield, Wilbraham, Westfield, Southwick, Russell and Belchertown;

Holyoke: 271 Appleton St., Holyoke; Registration: November 27 and 28, 9 a.m.- 12 p.m. and 1 p.m. - 3 p.m., for info, call (413) 532-6312, serves Holyoke, South Hadley, Granby and Chicopee;

Greenfield: 72 Chapman St., Greenfield; Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays from 10:00 a.m.- 2:00 p.m. until December 8th, for info, call (413) 773-3154, serves all Franklin County communities;

Required documentation: Photo ID for parent/guardian, proof of address dated within last 30 days, birth certificates or passports for each child 16 years and younger and proof of financial need (MassHealth, WIC card, EBT card, current pay stub, or other acceptable documentation)
Tales of kindergarten and first-grade students who stab each other with pencils, trash classrooms, and threaten teachers were shared at a Nov. 19 meeting of the Orange School Committee.

Parents and teachers lined up to express their concerns about Fisher Hill Elementary School, where a principal and other staffers remain on leave while the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families conducts an investigation, reports the Athol Daily News.

At the committee meeting, stories were told of frequent "evacuations" where children aged five and six were removed from the classroom for their own safety due to unruly students.

"My daughter is petrified," said one mother, who added that disruptive students should be removed from the classroom. A teacher said she and her colleagues are frightened, and another said that overcrowded classes make the situation more difficult.

Principal Tari Thomas attributed the problem to "a handful of students," expressed optimism for progress, and said a new kindergarten class would be opened with $50,000 the district recently received in supplemental rural school aid.

Parents at the meeting also alleged poor communication from school officials, the Athol newspaper reports.

Principal Maureen Donelan was placed on leave in October for unspecified reasons. "I can promise you that the physical and emotional safety and security of our students is always at the forefront of my mind," Thomas wrote to parents at the time.

The School Committee plans a follow-up meeting to deal with evacuation policies and student safety, said School Committee Chairwoman Stephanie Conrod.
The owners of a family-run plumbing company in Central Massachusetts that authorities say was a front for a large-scale marijuana business are asking for a hearing in federal court to discuss if they were in compliance with Massachusetts medical marijuana laws.

The federal indictments against Charles "Chuck" Laverty, his wife, Andrea Laverty, and their son, Thomas Laverty, came in October 2017 after authorities seized $6 million in marijuana from a Clinton warehouse.

Investigators say they also seized a large quantity of marijuana from the Millbury home of Charles and Andrea Laverty. All three family members, who run Chuck Laverty & Son, are facing federal charges of conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance, manufacture a controlled substance and to possess a controlled substance with intent to distribute.

Lawyers for all three defendants are asking a judge for an evidentiary hearing to decide if they were in compliance with Massachusetts marijuana laws.

All three family members have valid medical marijuana licenses in Massachusetts. The lawyers argue in a court filing that on Jan. 1, 2013, the Massachusetts medical marijuana act went into effect and it indicated no qualified patient would be punished under state law for medical use of marijuana.

Federal law still prohibits the use of sale of marijuana even if distributed and possessed pursuant to state-approved medical marijuana programs, the lawyers note.

The family wants a hearing and a judge to decide if the indictments can be dismissed.

In a recently filed response, Assistant U.S. Attorney William Abely said the defense lawyers failed to show why an evidentiary hearing is warranted in the case.

He argued state law cannot interfere with a federal prosecution.

The family's business is not registered as a marijuana dispensary and no family member is registered as a personal caregiver, the prosecutor responded.

"The Defendants ran a black-market, commercial marijuana trafficking business that operated in flagrant violation of both Massachusetts and federal criminal laws," Abely wrote. "Defendants have made no showing of - or even any effort to show, compliance with the State Law, and have offered nothing that would entitle them to an evidentiary hearing."

The family is accused of running the marijuana operation from July 2016 through October 2017.

Authorities say the operation at the Laverty & Son warehouse yielded between 5 to 10 pounds of dried marijuana weekly. The marijuana was taken to the home of Charles and Andrea Laverty, according to prosecutors.

"Defendant Charles Laverty sold the marijuana harvested from the Laverty & Son warehouse for between $2,400 - $2,600 per pound, with some customers purchasing multiple pounds of marijuana at a time," Abely said.

The family company was used to launder money derived from the marijuana operation, authorities said. Thomas Laverty, who has multiple prior drug convictions, also lied about his income gained in the marijuana operation in order to obtain food stamps, the prosecutor said.

The Oct. 17, 2017 bust in Clinton netted 2,200 pounds of marijuana inside an 8,000-square-foot garage attached to a single-family home where Thomas Laverty lives, authorities said.

The Clinton warehouse had air-circulating machines, irrigation systems, plant food, indoor plant lighting and roughly 1,029 marijuana plants, police said. Cash and vehicles were seized.
Russian aircraft struck militant targets in the Idlib demilitarized zone, from which Syrian militants launched a poisonous substance attack on civilians in the city of Aleppo, Moscow announced, RT reports.

The air raid was aimed particularly at artillery positions of the militants, according to the Defense Ministrys spokesperson, Major General Igor Konashenkov.

However, the militants did not plan to stop at one assault. Intelligence data showed that further attacks of the kind were planned, Konashenkov revealed.
Judy Herrell, the owner of Herrell's Ice Cream in Northampton, offers her employees health insurance.

But premiums are expensive, and many of the workers are students who are on their parents' plans or can buy cheaper and better insurance through MassHealth or the state-subsidized Health Connector.

Herrell has been hit by a new fee that the state is charging businesses whose employees use taxpayer-subsidized insurance.

"We don't know if they're on MassHealth, the Connector, their parents' plan ... (so) we can't plan for it," Herrell said. "It's costing us between $4,000 and $5,000 a year extra that we didn't budget for."

Herrell's shop is among the 48,248 Massachusetts businesses that have had to pay the fee, referred to as EMAC, in 2018. The fee raised $287.9 million for the state as of Nov. 5, according to the Executive Office of Administration and Finance. Businesses say it is hurting their bottom line and having unintended consequences, with certain types of businesses being hit far harder than others.

Jon Hurst, president of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts, said small businesses tend to have high insurance premiums, so their employees will logically buy publicly subsidized insurance, which is often cheaper and better, if they meet the income eligibility guidelines.

"Small business disproportionally ended up getting whacked with EMAC through no fault of their own," Hurst said.

The EMAC contribution, officially called the Employer Medical Assistance Contribution Supplement, is a payment of up to $750 per employee that businesses must pay when their employees get state-subsidized health care coverage through MassHealth or the Health Connector.

The extra payment will be in place for two years, from January 2018 through December 2019.

The assessment was signed into law in August 2017 after back-and-forth between Gov. Charlie Baker and the Legislature about how to address rising MassHealth costs. The goal was to stop the migration of people from commercial insurance to MassHealth, which was shifting the burden of paying for insurance from employers to state taxpayers.

So far, the assessment has raised more than anticipated. Lawmakers assumed it would raise $200 million in fiscal 2018, which ended June 30, 2018. Instead, it raised $229.4 million.

This fiscal year, state officials expect to collect another $273 million.

Certain types of businesses, like those that experience high turnover, are disproportionately bearing the costs.

Tricia Canavan is president of the Springfield-based staffing agency United Personnel, which employs around 1,000 people in any given week. Canavan offers health insurance, but many of her employees earn low enough wages that they are eligible for MassHealth or the Health Connector.

Canavan said the nature of staffing work is people use it temporarily as a bridge to another full-time job or to school, so employees are constantly moving on. Because the fee is charged quarterly for each employee who uses public insurance, capped at $750 a year, Canavan might pay $750 for an employee one quarter, then another $750 the next quarter for that person's replacement.

"Our workforce can turn over multiple times during the year, so we pay and pay and pay," Canavan said.

Canavan said she paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in EMAC assessments this year.

"Health care is a human right ... but it needs to be a different formula to figure out how we're going to provide health care for everybody," Canavan said. "It cannot be on the back of employers solely."

This July, the Legislature and Baker agreed to create a hardship waiver, which was implemented in October. The waiver allows certain small businesses to avoid the fee if paying it would result in the company going out of business or laying off staff. Types of businesses that could be eligible include seasonal businesses, staffing agencies with high turnover, and human services agencies that get most of their money from government contracts.

But only a small number of businesses are getting waivers. So far, 246 businesses applied for a waiver. Only 99 of those applications were approved, 144 were denied and three were withdrawn.

"In those particular cases, it helps, but we'd obviously rather see a comprehensive approach to the issue rather than a one-off," said Chris Geehern, a spokesman for the business trade group Associated Industries of Massachusetts.

Applying for a waiver requires significant financial documentation. "It basically requires you to do your end-of-year accounting, which takes weeks, and is in such detail that it's prohibitive to do," Herrell said.

Kevin Smith, president of the Quincy-based Best of Care home care agency and president of the Home Care Aide Council, also said the hardship waiver is difficult to apply for due to the documentation required, even though agencies like his are eligible.

Smith said home care agencies, which get most of their money from state contracts, are in a difficult situation when it comes to EMAC. Smith said the amount he pays in wages to home care workers is based on the reimbursements he gets from MassHealth to take care of MassHealth patients. Because those reimbursements are low, nearly half his employees -- often low-income, immigrant women -- are eligible for MassHealth or Connector coverage themselves.

He has no way to offset the cost of the assessment, which cost Best of Care $80,000 in the first three quarters of 2018.

Smith said it is common for home health workers to work part-time for multiple agencies. That means multiple agencies are paying the EMAC fee to cover the same employee.

"It's a weird cycle that this money is following," Smith said. "You're using money from MassHealth to pay providers to deliver services to MassHealth recipients and then you're imposing a fee upon that employer because they employ MassHealth recipients, and then that money essentially is going back to MassHealth."

The fee was proposed as part of a package of reforms to lower the cost of MassHealth, but lawmakers last year did not make any other reforms. The fee is supposed to sunset automatically, but some employers worry about what's next.

"This was implemented with the promise that there would be some sort of structural reforms to the Medicaid program, and those have not taken place," Geehern said.

Sen. Don Humason, R-Westfield, sat on a Senate task force on strengthening local retail, which issued its report in May. That report noted that the cost and unpredictability of the assessment creates problems for small businesses.

"It's just one more complaint we heard from businesses about the cost of doing business in Massachusetts and how expensive it is to insure their employees," Humason said.
Three Ukrainian Navy ships crossed into temporarily off-limits Russian territorial waters, moving from the Black Sea to the Kerch Strait, the press service of the FSB's Crimean border department said on Sunday, Sputnik reported.

"This morning at around 07.00 Moscow time, three ships of the Naval Forces of Ukraine, in violation of Articles 19 and 21 of the United Nations Convention of Sea Law, defining the coastal state's right to ensure safety in maritime space, crossed the Russian state border, unlawfully entering the off-limits water area of Russian sea territory," the FSB said in a statement.

Ukrainian warships are moving into the Kerch Strait from the Black Sea, the FSB stressed.

"Ukrainian warships continue to move towards the Kerch Strait, which has a procedure for permitting the movement and anchorage of ships, in accordance with the schedule of the movement and deployment of ships, (which needs) approved by the captain of the Russian seaport," the department said.

The Russian Federal Security Service's border control department has said that it is doing everything it can to curb the provocation by the three Ukrainian ships.

In October, the Ukrainian parliament passed a draft law authorising Kiev to expand maritime controls by 12 nautical miles off its southern coast, allegedly in an effort to counter smuggling in the Black Sea.

Russian Foreign Ministry emphasised that Russia regarded the waters east of Crimea as an integral part of its territory. The Black Sea peninsula in southern Europe rejoined Russia in 2014.
In a few days you go to Moscow for the Interministerial Meeting between the two countries. What is it that you aspire to accomplish, Minister?

Greece is a peace loving country which systematically carries out multidimensional foreign policy based on respect and equity between States. Russia is a country with which we have traditionally had friendly relations and common historical and cultural traditions. Moreover, we are celebrating, this year, 190 years of diplomatic relations. At the Interministerial Meeting, we shall conclude agreements on economic and institutional co-operation between the two countries, and we will seek further ways to expand cooperation in the fields of trade and investment.



Will Alexis Tsipras visit and his meeting with President Vladimir Putin perhaps mark the normalisation of relations between the two countries? Under what conditions?

We had a fleeting dark cloud in our traditionally good relations. Our response then was not due to differences in matters of foreign policy, but for reasons relating to the sovereignty of our country and compliance with diplomatic rules. After all, short reckonings make long friends. But these are things that belong in the past. Now, the two leaders will have a substantive discussion on the steps for further improving relations between the two states, especially on the level of bilateral economic relations and contacts between the two peoples. We are thinking of making the year 2019 the year of Culture between Greece and Russia.



Recently, it seems that, in Turkey, a bidding war of nationalism has been launched. In fact, a party leader went as far as declaring that Cyprus is Turkish. Does this worry you?

Nationalism has always had a strong voice in the neighbouring country. It is important that we do not follow down that slippery slope, not only on the level of government policy, where sobriety and stability are a given, but on all levels. Extremism and intolerance have a multiplier effect on feeding extreme views and poison our societies. Our country has a solid foreign policy based on respect for international law and, for this reason, we have no interest in stepping up a loudmouth rhetoric. Obviously, this does not mean feebleness. We continuously reject every revisionist attempt and creation of faits accomplis, and insist on settlement of disputes through dialogue.



If drilling in Cyprus is hindered, Minister, what will Athens do?

As regards relations between states, law does not suffice to defend oneself if one is not equipped with might. Injustice armed is at its harshest states Aristotle in his Politics. For this reason, the Hellenic Republic and the Republic of Cyprus have developed a systematic and coordinated diplomatic effort to support national interests. This has yielded multiple fruits: First of all on a European level, where the European Council has condemned the systematic violations of international law by the Turkish side and has called upon Turkey to respect International Law. A simple comparison of this declaration with the one following the incident at Imia, shows the great progress of our diplomacy in this field. Equally important is the multilateral diplomacy that we have developed, together with Cyprus, through trilateral schemes of strategic cooperation in the region, primarily with Egypt and Israel. We need not concern ourselves, therefore, with Turkish provocativeness. We are coordinating our steps with Cyprus so that the sovereign rights of the latter are not threatened in the slightest way.



With the start of the year, new negotiations may potentially begin on the Cyprus issue. With what positions is Greece going to come to the table?

The main point for us is, once again, for the Cyprus issue to be framed as an issue of respecting international law and UN resolutions. In this light, we place particular emphasis on safeguarding the acquis of Crans-Montana, in other words in the necessary elimination of the unacceptable system of guarantees and ending the presence of foreign troops on the island. It goes without saying that the Republic of Cyprus has otherwise the last word with regard to the domestic aspects of the problem.



What does the announced visit of Alexis sipras to Ankara aspire to accomplish? What results can be achieved?

We want to relieve tension, to keep open the channels of communication which had been restored during Erdogans visit to Athens, and to promote, to the extent possible, depending on the willingness and the responsiveness of the other side, bilateral dialogue.



The constitutional revision in fYROM is proceeding smoothly? Do concerns exist in Athens?

A very positive framework of communication and cooperation with the other side has been restored, within which we monitor developments. I have no doubt that our neighbours, as we do also, respect the letter and spirit of the Prespa agreement, and that this will be faithfully reflected and implemented in the constitutional revision under way.

Leaders of opposition parties, such as the head of Potami, feel that once the agreement has been approved by Skopje, it will not come for ratification to the present Hellenic Parliament. Others note that the agreement will not muster the required majority. I'd like your comment on that.

From the beginning, I have stated that I do not have the slightest doubt with regard to the ratification of the Agreement.



Does Athens, Minister, support the establishment of a real EU army? And is it felt that something like this can happen?

It is important for Europe to strengthen its autonomy in defence; to be able to effectively protect its citizens and its borders. The [EU] Treaty now includes a provision, article 42 par. 7, similar to that of Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, which creates the necessary legal basis for something similar. All that remains now is the political will for European Sovereignty to acquire a meaning, in the sense that I mentioned above, in other words the joint guarantee of the territory of the member states as territory of the Union.



On 13 December, you will meet with your US counterpart for the strategic dialogue between the United States and Greece. What exactly will you agree upon? What is the agenda?

Upgrading talks with the United States to the level of a strategic dialogue reflects the emergence of our country as an element of stability and promotion of solutions in the region as well as the significant progress of our bilateral relations. The recent Thessaloniki trade fair, where the United States was the country honoured, was an unprecedented success and gave a significant boost to bilateral economic relations. Strategic dialogue covers both areas above: On the one hand, the increasingly important role of our country as a provider of security in an especially troubled region. On the other hand, promotion of mutual economic interests, both with regard to welcoming American investments as well as with regard to developing Greece as a gateway of economic synergies in the wider region of the Balkans.



With the EEZ in the Ionian Sea, what will you do?

As has already been announced by the Prime Minister, after informing the other parties, and following substantive public debate, we will proceed, through a law, to extend our territorial waters in the Ionian Sea, which is our inalienable sovereign right enshrined in the Convention on the Law of the Sea.



I would also like a comment from you about Nikos Kotzias and his term at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs...

I believe, and I dont think that I am alone in this, that he was one of the best Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the post Junta period, with a clear strategic outlook and exceptional negotiating skills. He left his mark on the Prespa Agreement, as well as, despite the unfortunate outcome of the negotiations, on the Cyprus issue, solidly defending national priorities, within the framework of international law.
U.S. senators expect to get a briefing next week from senior Trump administration officials on Saudi Arabia that could determine whether Congress goes forward with sanctions on the longtime U.S. ally, The Hill reported.

Two congressional sources said an all-senators briefing is expected when the Senate returns to Washington after the Thanksgiving recess.

The briefing could determine whether theres any chance of passing sanctions legislation or blocking a major arms sale to Saudi Arabia in the end-of-year session.

That will be really important, said a Senate GOP aide. Im not sure adding sanctions will happen but the Saudi situation is not over.

The scheduled topic of the briefing is the civil war in Yemen, where a Saudi coalition backed by the U.S. military is fighting against Houthi rebels.

However, the topic of Saudi Arabias role in the killing of U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi will also come up during the meeting, as could a discussion about U.S.-Russia policy, said a second congressional source.

The source said Defense Secretary James Mattis and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will likely conduct the briefing, although that has not yet been finalized.
Ukrainian tugboat Yani Kapu was damaged when passing from the port of Odessa to Mariupol, escorted by two small armored artillery boats Berdyansk and Nikopol, the Ukrainian Navy said on Sunday, TASS reports.

"The Don coast guard ship [of Russia] rammed our tugboat, and as a result the vessels main engine, plating and open railing were damaged and a life float was lost," the statement said.

The Ukrainian Navy claims that with the aim to ensure security of navigation the Ukrainian side had informed Russia about the plans for passage in line with international rules.

Earlier on Sunday, the Russian Federal Security Services Border Service in Crimea reported that three Ukrainian warships had illegally crossed Russias state border entering its territorial waters, and were carrying out dangerous maneuvers. The Border Service is taking all steps to ensure security of navigation and regulation of maritime traffic in the waters of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait, it said.

The Treaty on the Legal Status of the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait, signed in 2003, confirmed their status as domestic waters of Russia and Ukraine. The sides agreed on the joint usage and protection of the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait and introducing restrictions for vessels of third countries.
MIDDLETOWN  Now that Thanksgiving is in the books, it is time to look ahead to the busy holiday season in Middlesex County and throughout our great nation.

A special meeting for member manufacturers will be held Wednesday at Roto Frank of America in Chester. This latest initiative of our Manufacturers Council will focus on developing the workforce pipeline within this critical industry sector in our state. Our members look forward to hearing from the host of the meeting, Chris Dimou, president of the Americas for Roto Frank; Christine Benz of Trumpf North America, who will focus on workforce trends in the industry; and Rachel Mauer of the German American Chamber of Commerce, who will focus on skills and innovation strategies to strengthen U.S. manufacturing.

In addition to a series of constructive meetings planned on this topic, chamber Vice President Jeff Pugliese is visiting all our member manufacturers at their terrific facilities throughout our region. We understand the importance of manufacturing to our regional economy, and look forward to working with all stakeholders as we address this important workforce pipeline issue.

A busy Wednesday continues in the evening with our November Business After Work networking reception at the Riverhouse at Goodspeed Station in Haddam. The event will feature the Central Business Bureaus 2018 Festival of Wreaths Silent Auction. Beautifully decorated wreaths will be displayed for viewing and bidding until the auction closes at 6:30 p.m.

Funds raised will benefit the annual Holiday on Main Street, presented by Pratt & Whitney, and the Hal Kaplan Middletown Mentor Program. Liberty Bank has once again donated the artificial wreaths for chamber member businesses to decorate, and we certainly appreciate that continued support.

Our members and their guests always look forward to the delicious spread of food and drink provided by the Riverhouse team, along with outstanding networking opportunities that the event provides. We certainly look forward to a fun evening, and I thank Owner Jim Bucko, General Manager Hattie Donner, and the entire Riverhouse team for hosting this outstanding event.

Switching gears to the business development front for a moment, I look forward to attending the Sistas Academy of Cosmetology grand opening Thursday at 1:30 p.m. Sistas provides education and training in the field of beauty culture and prepares its students for exciting careers in cosmetology. We look forward to working with Brenda Shuler and her team as they work to grow the business, and look forward to celebrating with them.

Back to the festive theme, the 33rd annual Holiday on Main Street, presented by Pratt & Whitney, is off to a fast start after a very successful opening weekend.

The fun continues Saturday with Rotary Club of Middletown Day. Planned events and activities include free pictures and donuts with Santa at Vinnies Jump and Jive, the Fun Train, which will offer free rides on the sidewalk around downtown, and the annual holiday craft fair at The Church of the Holy Trinity.

At 11:30 a.m., Holiday Story Time, featuring Middletown Fire Chief Rob Kronenberger, will take place at the downtown fire house, 533 Main St., and Madeline will be on hand for a book signing. Volunteers from the Rotary Club will staff the popcorn and hot pretzels stand in front of the chamber building, and holiday music played by Harvest Woods Audio will entertain the large crowd that we expect.

Holiday on Main Street continues Dec. 8 and 15 and parking is free in city lots. Th event is an institution in Middletown and in Middlesex County and we are very proud of it. I want to again thank Pratt & Whitney for its great support, the city of Middletown, and in particular, the leadership of Mayor Dan Drew and the Common Council, our longtime event chairman Al Santostefano, vice chairman Rich Greco, event coordinator Haley Stafford and the entire Holiday on Main Street Committee for their terrific support of this longtime event.

For information, visit holidayonmain.com.

Another important initiative of the Middlesex County Chamber of Commerce is our KeyBank Workshop Series which covers a variety of important topics for our members. The next installment is Dec. 11 from 8 to 10 a.m., with a session titled The Two Faces of Time Management. Presented by Jim Jackson of the Connecticut Small Business Development Center, the workshop will cover practical techniques that we can use to immediately gain control over our day and more effectively manage interruptions and distractions.

Another important chamber workshop, this one, an initiative of the Middlesex County Substance Abuse Action Council, will take place Dec. 12 from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at the Community Health Center on Main Street in Middletown. This workshop is titled, Accidentally on Purpose: When Drug Abuse Turns Suicidal.

This is a difficult topic, but it is a very important one for the business community, and for the community at large. I want to thank our partners in this effort, Middlesex Hospital, Wesleyan University, the Community Health Center, and Rushford, for all of their great work and support. More information can be found at middlesexchamber.com, and I will continue to provide updates in this column as we get closer.

Before wrapping up for the week, I ask once again that members and other interested parties save Dec. 19 for an important chamber morning in Cromwell. We look forward to welcoming as keynote speaker for the final time, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy at our annual governors breakfast at the Red Lion Hotel. He has appeared at our December member breakfast meeting in every year of his administration, as have all of our sitting governors, going back to the administration of Gov. William A. ONeill in the 1980s.

We look forward to thanking him for his service at this important chamber event. I also appreciate the support of Eversource, which not only sponsors this breakfast meeting on an annual basis, but supports a number of other chamber programs and initiatives.

I must unfortunately close this weeks otherwise festive column on a sad note after the recent passing of two wonderful people who were valued members of our chamber.

Michele Mazzotta was a Middletown native who served as vice president and as a loan servicing manager at Liberty Bank for 40 years. She was very active with the chamber during her tenure at Liberty and also supported a number of other community organizations. In fact, she was awarded the Volunteer Hall of Fame Award due to her work with organizations such as the Hal Kaplan Middletown Mentor Program and the Middlesex Branch of the NAACP.

I attended a memorial mass at St. Mary Church in Portland Nov. 17 which was a fitting tribute to Michele, who was loved by so many. All of us at the chamber offer our heartfelt thoughts and prayers for her husband, Larry, her daughter, Devan, her mother, Peg, and her entire family and network of friends at this difficult time. Michele Mazzotta will certainly be missed.

We also recently learned of the passing of Ken MacCormac, a longtime friend to the chamber and to many of us personally. Ken served as a member of the chambers Executive Committee and Board of Directors for many years. He served as our chairman in 2008 and 2009, and was presented with our Distinguished Citizen Award in 2017.

He also served as chairman of our Manufacturers Council for many years, and supported a host of other chamber events and activities. Ken had a remarkable professional career that included senior leadership positions at a number of companies, and he recently retired from Capewell Components Company after 30 years serving as the companys president and CEO.

Ken leaves behind his wife of 60 years, Mary, their three children Bruce, Craig and Cynthia, and their beloved grandchildren. I will join other members of the chamber team at a memorial service for Ken Dec.1 in West Hartford. Ken MacCormac was a giant, I will always be grateful for his friendship and support. He will be missed by many.

Larry McHugh is president of the Middlesex County Chamber of Commerce in Middletown.
There are about 500 Dunkin Donuts stores in Connecticut  basically about three each for the 169 towns in the state.

Some towns may be without even one. Cities seem to have one of every corner, the better to serve the chocolate-glazed-and-vanilla-bean Coolata-loving public.

Dunkin Donuts knows human behaviors, said Tracy Rittenhouse, an associate professor of natural resources and the environment at the University of Connecticut.

Rittenhouse was speaking to a packed house at the annual Haskins Lecture, presented by the Aspetuck Land Trust at the Unitarian Church in Westport earlier this month.

She was talking about black bears, not crullers and coffee.

But her research shows this: inadvertently, weve set up feeding stations, like Dunkin Donut shops, for bears in our spaciously-zoned, well-wooded towns. Instead of Munchkins, theyre chowing down on bird seed and garbage.

But the state black bears are doing a Goldilocks routine. Too crowded, and theyll stay away  they generally avoid people. But too empty and theyll look for more promising digs.

Whats just right is the exurbs  posh suburban towns that have lots of open space between houses. The homes give them access to extra food. The woods give them places to den in winter, nuts to eat in fall, and open space to beat a quick retreat when humans approach.

And they have no predators in the state. Their numbers are increasing mightily.

We might have 700 bears in the state, but I think thats a conservative number, said Jason Hawley, a wildlife biologist with state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. It could be high as 1,000.

And when people see them, they call their first selectman.

Oh yes, said New Fairfield First Selectman Pat Del Monoco. Its pretty frequent. Its been pretty constant from the spring until the last couple of weeks.

Bridgewater First Selectman Curtis Read said his town, bordered on the south by both Lake Lillinonah and the Shepaug River, may be a sort of bear trap. They travel south, he said, until they hit water. Then, they decide to stay.

Weve got bears with tags, bears with babies, Read said. Weve got all types. Theyre becoming a nuisance.

The DEEPs Hawley said there were about 30 bear break-ins at houses this year  mostly in bear-heavy Farmington River Valley towns.

His guess, is that only a few bears were responsible for all these kitchen cupboard raids.

One time we had 15 break-ins in the town of Norfolk, Hawley said. Only one or two bears were doing it.

But the fear is that because black bears live close to people, and have voracious appetites, theyll find human food stored inside houses too tempting to resist.

I think were going to see it more and more, Hawley said.

Although black bears are native to Connecticut, deforestation in the 19th century and unrestricted hunting made them disappear for a century.

But once the state grew back to mature, nut-producing forests, black bears had a place to live. Slowly, an existing bear population in Massachusetts began moving back into Connecticut in the 1980s.

Rittenhouse and grad student Michael Evans spent four years, from 2010 to 2014, studying the states black bear population. They placed food baits inside barbed wire enclosures, then did a DNA analysis of the hair snagged on the wire.

She expected to find that, as in other states, black bears would prefer to live in the least-populated towns in the study areas.

Instead she found that, in Connecticut, bears can tolerate people and choose to live in some proximity to them.

This the first study that provided solid evidence of that, she said. I was shocked.

Rittenhouse is now working with the DEEP to study bobcat behavior. Preliminary evidence shows that they are choosing to co-exist with humans as well.

There are also coyotes, which after arriving here from the West in the 1950s are now an established part of the states ecosystems. They handle being near people with aplomb.

And, of course, there are white-tailed deer pacing through the suburban shrubbery.

Rittenhouse said she considers herself lucky to be a wildlife biologist in a small, un-wild place and study the interplay of people and animals. If big things like black bears are doing well, small things  most bats, many birds and salamanders  are in trouble.

We have 3.5 million people living on 5,500 square miles of land, she said. Its a wonderful place to work.
Editors Note: Hearst Connecticut Media first reported on Charlottes case in 2017 in an article titled The Legal Assault  part of a five-part series on domestic violence. At her request, we continue to use the pseudonyms Charlotte and Lucas to protect her privacy.

As the minutes ticked by in the Stamford courtroom, Charlotte sat next to her lawyer, praying for a ruling that would transform the courts, so long a place of abuse, into a refuge.

Charlotte, a travel and marketing consultant, was seeking relief from a nonstop torrent of legal actions brought against her since 2014 by the father of her 4-year-old son. Her lawyer has argued, and two Connecticut family court judges have agreed, that this flood of litigation  most of it eventually denied or dismissed  has risen to the level of harassment.

While Charlottes case garnered a rare ruling Wednesday, her situation is not wholly unique, advocates say.

More for you THE LEGAL ASSAULT

Thousands of individuals are subjected to vexatious litigation every year, prompting some states to respond with new legislation to limit the practice.

In domestic violence cases, vexatious litigation can become a new tool for abusers to retain power over their victims, said Karen Jarmoc, executive director of the Connecticut Coalition Against Domestic Violence. Some advocates call it stalking by way of the courts.

The circumstance of abusers using the court system to continue to harass, stalk, threaten, intimidate emotionally, manipulate, cause emotional harm to their ex-partner is extremely common, and it is a challenge that we grapple with on a daily basis, said Jarmoc.

Acknowledging the issue, Tennessee passed a law in May allowing a judge to stop a former romantic partner from filing frivolous motions against an ex. The CCADV is now considering lobbying for similar legislation in Connecticut in 2019.

Unceasing litigation

When their short dating relationship produced a child, Charlotte hoped for a harmonious co-parenting situation with the dapper interior designer Lucas.

But from 2014 to 2017, Lucas filed 56 motions against Charlotte in family court, three civil restraining order applications, one civil complaint, one probate court complaint and one appeal of a family court decision, in addition to being sentenced to a family violence re-education program for disorderly conduct, court documents show.

In the past year, Lucas has only continued his aggressive litigation. In 2018, he filed six new restraining order applications against Charlotte and her father  all denied  and two fresh appeals.

All that litigation has cost Charlotte, a Greenwich resident, more than $515,000, she said. She lost her job because she was in court so much, and it took her time away from parenting.

Exhausted to the point of numbness, she worries constantly about what the man who threatened to take their child away will do next. Even her dreams are invaded by a maelstrom of judges, filings and courtrooms, she said.

It has taken over my life, said Charlotte, testifying before a family court judge Wednesday.

Lucas denied Wednesday that he harassed Charlotte through the courts, or otherwise. He maintains his legal actions are not frivolous.

I finally and categorically deny every allegation that has been made against me, he said. (She) simply doesnt stop.

States responses

Some states have started to address the use of litigation to intimidate or harass people, advocates say. Texas, California, Florida and Massachusetts have passed laws to address vexatious litigants, according to the CCADV.

California includes a lengthy definition of a vexatious litigant in its state statutes. Since 1991, it has published a monthly list of vexatious litigants in the state. Canada allows judges to hold some hearings in writing to reduce vexatious litigation.

The Tennessee law passed this spring allows a judge to hold a hearing to determine whether an ex-spouse or former partner has filed abusive lawsuits. The law empowers the judge to stop someone from filing additional lawsuits for four to six years.

Some advocates and legal observers have worried that the Tennessee law could be used against victims as well as abusers, however. Im not sure it would always be clear to courts who is the vexatious litigant, said Susan Schmeiser, a professor at the University of Connecticut School of Law. There could be mutual recrimination.

Connecticut now

Connecticut law gives judges leeway to respond to vexatious litigation, but does not specifically outline a strong sanction for the behavior.

The Connecticut Practice Book, which contains court rules published by the state, forbids frivolous and vexatious litigation. State statute also permits the court to force a plaintiff who makes an untrue pleading to pay the defendants legal fees, but does not block their ability to file future motions.

Generally the judges usually stick to the Practice Book and prior case law when they make their decisions, said Anne Louise Blanchard, litigation and advocacy director for Connecticut Legal Services.

Judges may craft additional orders or sanctions to protect a victim, if they see fit. But they must allow everyone to defend their rights in court, while attempting to dismiss frivolous litigation.

Were always on kind of a tightrope to ensure due process, said Judge Elizabeth Bozzuto, deputy chief court administrator for the Judicial Branch, in a 2017 interview with Hearst Connecticut Media.

Judges may be hampered in their ability to respond to vexatious litigants if the litigation is filed in multiple courts or if new motions are assigned to different judges. When presented with only one thorny action amid a forest of lawsuits, it can be difficult for a judge to see the whole picture of a litigants behavior.

Bozzuto advocated for individual calendaring to improve the Family Court system  one judge sitting through the entirety of a case from first motion to trial. Only the Norwich Judicial District now uses individual calendaring, said Rhonda Stearley-Hebert, communications program manager for the Connecticut Judicial Branch.

Judges should also be educated on the courts authority to ensure the orderly administration of justice, said Schmeiser.

Courts can always dismiss particular pleadings as frivolous, but I think they are reluctant to do so, she said. Judges are reluctant to cut off litigants and potentially infringe on their access to justice and their rights to be heard.

New territory

On Wednesday, a Superior Court judge issued a second Strobel order, named for litigants in a precedent-setting family case, on Charlottes behalf, blocking Lucas from filing any new restraining order applications in Family Court.

Alicia Chalameau, Charlottes attorney, called the ruling a unicorn.

Strobel orders, by their nature, exist maybe in 1 percent of court cases, she said. You would be hard pressed today to find another Strobel order in a restraining order case.

But Charlotte was frustrated, fearing Lucas may turn to other courts to continue the onslaught.

I would like to see that the person who has caused me so much fear and distress and anxiety and loss of my time with my son, my personal time and my work time, I would like to see that person be sanctioned and be restrained from continuing to behave that way, she said.
Political opponents of US President Donald Trump are sure to venture new provocations to break down relations between Moscow and Washington, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Sunday, TASS reports.

"We cannot guarantee that those political forces in the United States that are seeking to break down Trumps presidency will not venture new provocations," he said in an interview with the Moscow. Kremlin. Putin program on the Rossiya-1 television channel. "On the contrary, further provocations and attempts to destroy our relations are highly likely to follow. But it in no way means that dialogue is unnecessary."

He stressed that Moscow is ready for such dialogue. "When the president of a great nations is ready to speak with the president of another great nations, I think it is our duty to spare no effort to facilitate such contacts," he said. "The more so as certain progress has been recently seen in restoration of dialogue channels and at other levels, including between the Russian and US security councils."

According to earlier reports, Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia and Donald Trump of the United States are to meet on the sidelines of a Group of Twenty summit in Argentina due to take place on November 30 through December 1. Putins aide Yuri Ushakov said however the exact date of such a meeting had not yet been agreed.
China's Sub Force Is Growing More Powerful. This Is What the US Navy Needs to Do to Stay Ahead
SEOUL, South Korea -- Camp Humphreys, the main U.S. Army base in South Korea, has closed one of its main access gates after an incident with a car.

The incident happened about 2 p.m. Saturday and did not involve a gate runner, said garrison spokesman Steven Hoover. He declined to provide more details pending the ongoing investigation.

A photo posted on Facebook showed a four-door car that appeared to have smashed into a raised barrier at the Dongchang-ri gate on Saturday, with the concertina wire and concrete walls that surround the garrison in the background.

The gate has been closed until further notice. The nearby Anjeung-ri gate, which is normally closed on weekends, was opened to facilitate traffic.

It was at least the third gate-related incident this year at Humphreys, which has undergone a major expansion in recent years as part of a frequently delayed plan to relocate most U.S. forces south of Seoul.

In April, a car going the wrong way through another gate prompted a lock-down of the garrison, but authorities said it turned out to be a misunderstanding involving a driver who went the wrong way by accident.

A South Korean man who drove through a gate without authorization was arrested in January.

The population at Humphreys, a sprawling base in the rural area of Pyeongtaek about 40 miles south of Seoul, has mushroomed to nearly 30,000 after the three main military commands (U.S. Forces Korea, Eighth Army and 2nd Infantry Division) moved their headquarters there, along with families and civilian employees.

Some 28,500 U.S. service members are stationed in South Korea, which remains technically at war with the North after their 1950-53 conflict ended in an armistice instead of a peace treaty.

Stars and Stripes reporter Marcus Fichtl contributed to this report.
KABUL, Afghanistan -- An Army Ranger assigned to 2nd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, was killed in action in Afghanistan on Saturday.

Sgt. Leandro A.S. Jasso, 25, was mortally wounded during a firefight with al-Qaida forces in Nimruz province, according to a Defense Department statement released early Sunday. He was medically evacuated from the combat zone and later died of his injuries at a medical facility in Helmand province.

Jasso, from Leavenworth, Wash., was on his third deployment to Afghanistan. He enlisted in the Army in 2012 and became an accomplished soldier, completing the Basic Airborne Course and earning the Combat Infantryman's Badge and the much-sought after Ranger tab.

"Sgt. Jasso was a humble professional who placed the mission first, lived the Ranger Creed and will be deeply missed," said Lt. Col. Rob McChrystal, commander of 2nd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, in a prepared statement.

Jasso's death raises to 10 the number of U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan this year. Earlier this month, Maj. Brent Taylor of the Army National Guard was killed during an insider attack in Kabul that also injured another U.S. service member.

Most of the roughly 14,000 U.S. troops deployed to Afghanistan assist NATO's training and advising mission, while a smaller number help with the U.S.' separate counterterrorism mission that targets groups like the local Islamic State affiliate.

"The loss of Sgt. Jasso is felt by his family and loved ones, by all who served with him and by all on this mission to protect our country and our allies," said Gen. Scott Miller, Resolute Support and United States Forces-Afghanistan commanding general.

About 2,400 American military personnel have been killed since the war in Afghanistan began in 2001; fewer than 1,900 of them were killed in combat.

Sunday marked the 17-year anniversary of the first American combat death, Johnny Micheal Spann, a Marine veteran working for the CIA who was killed in a bloody prisoner uprising at Qali-Jangi fortress in Mazar-e-Sharif during the first weeks of the war.

-- Stars and Stripes staff contributed to this report.
How to use the mindat.org media viewer

Click/touch this help panel to close it.

Welcome to the mindat.org media viewer. Here is a quick guide to some of the options available to you. Different controls are available depending on the type of media being shown (photo, video, animation, 3d image)

Controls - all media types

Zoom in and out of media using your mousewheel or with a two-finger 'resize' action on a touch device.

Use the mouse or your finger to drag the image or the view area of the image around the screen.

< and > at the left and right hand side of the screen move forwards and backwards for the other images associated with the media you selected. Usually this is used for previous/next photo in a gallery, in an article or in search results. Keyboard shortcuts: use shift + the left and right arrow keys.

< and > in the bottom center are used for switching between the photos of the same specimen. Keyboard shortcuts: use the left and right arrow keys.

> in the bottom center, raises the information box giving details and further options for the media, < at the top of this box then hides it. Keyboard shortcuts: use the up and down arrow keys.

? opens this help window. Keyboard shortcuts: use the H key or the ? key.

Other keyboard shortcuts:

1 Fit image to screen 2 Fill screen with image 5 Display at full resolution < Make background darker > Make background lighter space Hide/dim titles and buttons

Scalebar

If the field of view (FOV) is specified for the photo, the scalebar appears in the left bottom corner of the viewer. The scalebar is draggable and resizeable. Drag the right edge to resize it. Double click will reset the scalebar to it's default size and position. If the scalebar is in default position, double click will make it circular.

Controls - Video

Video files have a standard set of video controls: - Reset to start, - Skip back, - Play, - Pause, - Skip forwards. Keyboard shortcuts: You can stop/start video play with the P key.

Controls - Animation (Spin Rotation)

Animation (usually 360 degree spin rotations) have their own controls: - enable spin mode. Note that while images are loading this option will not be available but will be automatically activated when the animation has loaded. Once active you can spin the image/change the animation by moving your mouse or finger on the image left/right or by pressing the [ or ] keys.

The button switches to move mode so that you can use your mouse/fingers to move the image around the screen as with other media types.

The button, or the P key will start playing the animation directly, you can interrupt this by using the mouse or finger on the image to regain manual movement control.

Controls - 3D Stereoscopic images

If a stereoscopic 3D image is opened in the viewer, the 3D button appears in the bottom right corner giving access to "3D settings" menu. The 3D images can be viewed in several ways:

- without any special equipment using cross-eyed or parallel-eyed method

- with stereoscope

- with anaglyph glasses.

- on a suitable 3D TV or monitor (passive 3D system)

For details about 3D refer to: Mindat manuals: Mindat Media Viewer: 3D

To enable/disable 3D stereo display of a compatible stereo pair image press the 3 key. If the left/right images are reversed on your display (this often happens in full-screen mode) press the 4 key to reverse them.

Controls - photo comparison mode

If a photo with activated comparison mode is opened in the viewer, the button appears in the bottom right corner giving access to "Comparison mode settings" menu.

Several layouts are supported: slider and side by-side comparison with up to 6 photos shown synchronously on the screen. On each of the compared photos a view selector is placed, e.g.: Longwave UV . It shows the name of currently selected view and allows to select a view for each placeholder.

Summary of all keyboard shortcuts
By WestKyStar & WKCTC Staff Oct. 31, 2018 | 08:53 PM | PADUCAH

The students, under the supervision of WKCTC dental hygiene faculty, will treat the military patients on Wednesday and Thursday at 8 am or 1 pm in the dental clinic located in the Anderson Technical Building, Room 230. Appointments are required and can be made by calling 270-534-3437. Proof of military affiliation and a photo ID is required. The plan of care can take three to three and a half hours.

"We want to honor our service men and woman for putting themselves in harm's way for our freedom," said Amanda Stringer, WKCTC dental assisting/hygiene instructor. "It's not only a wonderful learning experience for our dental hygiene students, but they are looking forward to meeting the veterans and thanking them personally for their service."





"We want to take our time and provide great dental care for our veterans," said Stringer.

West Kentucky Community and Technical College will offer "Smiles and Salutes," a dental hygiene clinic to provide dental cleanings for military veterans one last week in November. Veterans will receive a special price of $20.
BAY CITY, MI - To help celebrate the third consecutive tree-lighting ceremony, Santa Claus came all the way down from the cold North Pole to join Bay City residents in holiday festivities.

At 7 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 23, the Christmas tree in downtown Bay City lit up with many residents and their families joining in the festivities as Santa took photos with children, listened to their Christmas list wishes and led holiday singing at the event.

The tree, located at Wenonah Park, is 35 feet tall and 14 feet wide and has roughly 6,900 lights on it this year and is the largest tree that has been used in the last three years.
GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- A Grand Rapids woman's health funding issues and her effort to get a heart transplant have gone viral after a newly elected congresswoman tweeted about it Saturday.

The tweet from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a popular Democrat from New York City who won the November election at age 29, noted "insurance groups recommending GoFundMe as official policy" and cited a hospital letter to Grand Rapids resident Hedda Martin.

Martin on Nov. 21 posted a public letter to her Facebook page from the Spectrum Health Heart & Lung Specialized Care Clinics that recommended "a fundraising effort of $10,000" if she is to be considered a heart-transplant candidate.

Hedda Martin

In her post, she explained that the the hospital wants to make sure she can pay for the $700-per-month anti-rejection drugs and her $4,500 annual deductible.

After the $4,500 is paid, the drugs would be covered at 100 percent.

Martin, in the post, said she has been told by hospital officials that she must have $10,000 set aside to be considered for a heart transplant.

The incoming congresswoman's tweet garnered 65,000 'likes' and about 2,600 comments by Sunday morning about the national health care dilemma. It also created so much interest in Martin's case that her son, in fact, used a GoFundMe page to raise more than $11,000 for her in just a few hours.

Martin's heart failure is related to chemotherapy from earlier breast cancer, her son said. She is planning to have surgery Monday involving a "ventricular assist device" to help her heart as a short-term solution.

Contacted through Facebook messenger, Martin early Sunday said she was "overwhelmed by everyone's kindness."

She said she's not upset with her hospital care team, but thinks Spectrum administrators could have handled the situation better.

"I will get better and I will fight to my last breath the injustice and greed in our healthcare and pharmaceutical sectors," she wrote.

Ocasio-Cortez campaigned on a goal of getting "Medicare for all" and universal health care.

In her tweet involving Martin, she wrote: "Insurance groups are recommending GoFundMe as official policy - where customers can die if they can't raise the goal in time - but sure, single payer healthcare is unreasonable."

Insurance groups are recommending GoFundMe as official policy - where customers can die if they cant raise the goal in time - but sure, single payer healthcare is unreasonable.



h/t @DanRiffle pic.twitter.com/zetPW0MgDd  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) November 24, 2018

Spectrum Health, which is not an insurance company, issued a statement on the issue late Saturday and said they have an obligation to make sure donor organs "remain viable" and that "costs are sometimes a regrettable and unavoidable factor in the decision-making process."

Hospital officials said they work with patients to identify funding opportunities.

The full statement is as follows:

"While we do not comment on specific patient situations to protect their privacy, Spectrum Health cares deeply about every patient that enters its doors and provides each of them the highest quality of care possible. While it is always upsetting when we cannot provide a transplant, we have an obligation to ensure that transplants are successful and that donor organs will remain viable. We thoughtfully review candidates for heart and lung transplant procedures with care and compassion, and these are often highly complex, difficult decisions. While our primary focus is the medical needs of the patient, the fact is that transplants require lifelong care and immunosuppression drugs, and therefore costs are sometimes a regrettable and unavoidable factor in the decision making process. We partner with our patients throughout their care and work closely with them to identify opportunities for financial assistance. Our clinical team has an ongoing dialogue with patients about their eligibility, holding frequent in-person meetings and informing patients in person to ensure they fully understand their specific situation."
There are lots of things people miss about their jobs after they retire, but for one former third-grade teacher, one of the things she misses most is seeing her students' generosity in action.

Mary Lou Ohnsman, a third-grade teacher at Northview Public School's West Oakview Elementary School, is pictured with fourth-grader Gabe Royce, 9, and third-grader Sydney Sweat, 8, at the school Thursday, Dec. 13, 2012. Ohnsman asks her students to help donate to Santa Claus Girls. (Cory Morse | MLive.com file photo)

Mary Lou Ohnsman retired last year from West Oakview Elementary School, where she had supported the Santa Claus Girls in a classroom project for the past eight years.

In her first teaching job in Minnesota, she recalled, she had 19 students and got 19 gifts, a pattern that would be repeated year after year throughout her teaching career.

"I would say 'Thank you very much,' and I liked them all, but I realized there was a bigger cause," she said.

So she started a project each December in which students would give to the Santa Claus Girls instead of buying her a gift. On Mondays, the kids brought in pennies; on Tuesday, nickels; and on up through dollar bills on Fridays. In addition to the lesson they learned about giving to less fortunate children, students learned about counting and predicting how much money would accumulate, she said.

She chose the Santa Claus Girls because she remembered raising money for them as a high school student in Rockford, and because her mother donated to them in memory of two grandchildren who had passed away.

But also, she said, she saw hunger and need in her own students at Northview. Some families didn't even have homes, she said, let alone money for gifts.

"There are families in need, and that's a fact," she said.

"Honestly, as I retired from the classroom, there are many traditions I will miss. This annual tradition is truly one of those."

The Santa Claus Girls raised $202,198.84 and brought gifts to 12,502 children in 5,149 Kent County families in 2017. More information about the all-volunteer organization is on its Facebook page. For information about volunteering, call 616-957-7335. Donations can be made online, by credit card at 616-254-2099, or by mailing a check to Santa Claus Girls, c/o The Grand Rapids Press, 3102 Walker Ridge Drive NW, Walker, MI, 49544. Have a story to tell behind your donation? Send the details and your contact information to comments@mlive.com and we may feature you and your family in a future story.
JACKSON, MI -- A steady stream of customers ventured into Jackson's Sears department store on Saturday to search the barren store for savings as high as 70 percent off.

"Anytime we see a retail business close in Jackson, it's a stab," said Greg Schultz in the parking lot after shopping inside for furniture and fixtures.

The company announced in August the Jackson store would close sometime in November. Later, it announced the Sears Auto Center in Jackson will remain open.

"It's kinda disappointing," said Schultz. "Listening to others talk inside the store about this being such a long standing fixture in Jackson. Everyone blames Amazon and the internet and everything else, but it's a way of doing business."

Most remaining items in the half-empty store are marked down - many between 30- and 70-percent off. Store fixtures are also for sale. Sears coupons and promotional deals are not accepted, per store signage.

The store is open from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 25, according to an automated answering machine at the store.

Sears Holdings - best known for its Sears and Kmart stores - filed for bankruptcy last month and closed 46 locations across the country - including two Sears and two Kmart locations in Michigan.

Both Kmart stores in Jackson have closed in the past two years.
MASON COUNTY, MI - A 43-year-old man from Custer, Michigan died Sunday morning after he struck a deer while operating an all-terrain vehicle, according to the Mason County Sheriff's Office.

Deputies have not released the man's name, but said he was pronounced dead at the scene of the crash, according to a news release issued by the sheriff's office.

The victim was not wearing a helmet and speed does not appear to be a factor in the crash, the release reads. The incident remains under investigation.

Deputies and emergency crews responded at around 7:37 a.m. Sunday, Nov. 25, to Stephens Road south of U.S. 10 in Custer on a report of an unresponsive male subject lying in the roadway.

Investigators said they believe the 43-year-old man was operating a 2018 Polaris ATV traveling southbound on Stephens Road when he struck a deer, the release reads. The impact caused the man to lose control of his ATV, which then rolled over and ejected him.

Life EMS and the Custer fire department assisted deputies on scene.
NASA is offering the world a chance to watch its first landing on Mars when the InSight Lander touches down at about 3 p.m. Monday, Nov. 26 on the Red Planet.

In addition to hosting viewing parties across the world, the U.S. space agency will broadcast the landing live on NASA TV, the space agency's website, social media channels and a number of other websites. For a list of live viewing events around the world, click here.

See below for a live feed of NASA TV:

--

While NASA is excited to broadcast the event, it is also hyping up the difficulty of the descent and landing phase of the mission. The Verge reports that landing the car-sized lander will have to slow from 12,000 mph to zero in less than 7 minutes.

"Only about 40 percent of the missions ever sent to Mars -- by any space agency -- have been successful," the space agency reports. "The U.S. is the only nation whose missions have survived a Mars landing.

"The thin atmosphere -- just 1 percent of Earth's -- means that there's little friction to slow down a spacecraft. Despite that, NASA has had a long and successful track record at Mars. Since 1965, it has flown by, orbited, landed on and roved across the surface of the Red Planet."

The lander has been en route to Mars since it first launched back on May 5 from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The mission is notable for setting out to study the Red Planet's interior using a "self-hammering" probe that will dig deeper than ever before studying its interior and looking out for "Marsquakes."

InSight -- short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport -- is set to become the first since the Apollo missions to place a seismometer on the surface of another planet or moon. It will represent the first spacecraft to touch down on Mars since the Curiosity rover in 2012.

No matter how many times we may have done it before, landing on #Mars is hard! My mission is no different. Thousands of steps need to work perfectly together. More on landing: https://t.co/E46jVgdbKw pic.twitter.com/p08h8CBEij  NASA InSight (@NASAInSight) November 1, 2018
Yes, you can transfer your domain to any registrar or hosting company once you have purchased it. Since domain transfers are a manual process, it can take up to 5 days to transfer the domain.

Domains purchased with payment plans are not eligible to transfer until all payments have been made. Please remember that our 30-day money back guarantee is void once a domain has been transferred.

For transfer instructions to GoDaddy, please click here.
Senior lawyer Ujjwal Nikam, who appeared as special public prosecutor in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack case, on November 25 blamed the Pakistan government for delay in the trial against masterminds of the attack.

On the eve of 10th anniversary of the terror attack, he accused the neighbouring country of providing patronage to those accused in the case.

On November 26, 2008, 10 Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorists had sailed into Mumbai from Karachi and carried out coordinated attacks, killing 166 people and injuring over 300.

Nine of the attackers were killed by police while lone survivor Ajmal Kasab was captured and hanged after he was awarded death sentence by a court.

Dubbing LeT founder Hafiz Saeed and Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi as the "real terrorists" behind the attack in Mumbai in 2008, Nikam said the authorities in Pakistan should make efforts for cancellation of the bail granted to them.

"Still, a decade after the terror attack, there's little to show that Pakistan has acted against the masterminds," Nikam said.

Hewas speaking as the chief guestat a conference on law and justice organised here.

"The Pakistan government is responsible for delay in the trial (against the masterminds)," he said, adding that the neighbouring country needs to fight terrorism emanating from its soil.

In order to bring the guilty to book, the Indian government had in the past written to Pakistan, suggesting ways in which the trial could be expedited by cooperation through the legal channel, he added.

Hafiz Saeed was earlier put under house arrest after the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack, but was freed by a court in Pakistan in 2009.

He carries a reward of USD 10 million on his head, announced by the authorities in the US for his role in terror activities.
New Delhi: Rajasthan Congress chief Sachin Pilot addresses a press conference, at AICC HQ in New Delhi, Monday, Oct 22, 2018. (PTI Photo/Atul Yadav) (PTI10_22_2018_000034B)

Key focus areas for Congress, if it comes to power, in Rajasthan would be resolving the agrarian crisis and unemployment issue, Rajasthan Congress committee president, Sachin Pilot, told Moneycontrol's Tarun Sharma.

Moneycontrol team travelled with him the whole day across his constituency, Tonk. Pilot feels that Vasundhara Raje betrayed the people of Rajasthan. Edited excerpt:

Q. While we travelled and interacted with farmers, they have mainly two issues. One, procurement at Minimum Support Price (MSP), and two, polluted water. How will you tackle these issues?

A. MSP announcement is the biggest fraud. There is no procurement at that price. Black marketers and hoarders have chains in government agencies. They announced MSP and now farmers wait for 4-5 days, after which the government agency says that we cant take the produce since it is not up to the mark.

And just outside the mandi, farmers have to sell the produce at half the price. I can challenge BJP, they declare numbers on how much crop they procure at MSP. MSP grabs headlines but procurement does not happen. And it is a long term-process; why did the government wake up in the last six months of its tenure?

Q. What is your view about the Rs 50,000 loan waiver schemes for farmers? Was it just an eye wash?

A. That she has given only waive off only co-operative bank loan. For this also, the government has borrowed Rs 6000 crores from the Centre. She is borrowing to waive off something. On the other hand, implementation of the scheme was faulty, the bureaucratic layers of getting an approval for loan waivers are plenty. Hardly any people are getting benefitted with this scheme. It is a mere announcement and on the ground deployment of this scheme is almost zero.

Q. Congress is raising issue of farmers and unemployment but these are not new issues for the state. What is different this time?

A. Rajasthan's situation has never been so grim. Five years of Vasundhara Raje, full majority government with 165 Member of Legislative Assembly and clear majority in Center also. Sadly, she took this mandate for granted and core issues of people, of real development, were completely ignored.

Vasundhara made 611 promises and hardly any of them have been fulfilled. This time, the agrarian crisis in Rajasthan, its like you have never seen before. For the first time in Rajasthan history, 150 farmers committed suicide. Earlier also, farmers have faced drought or flood-like situation but have never felt the need to kill themselves. They see no future since they are not getting any support from Rajasthan government.

So, joblessness has become acute now. It is very young state we have lots of energy, lots of talent here. Educated young people are unemployed  just recently four young people killed themselves due to lack of job. Thats shattering, I think we are squashing the hope of whole generation we must introspect. Therefore, I am really sad to say that Vasundhara Ji has betrayed the mandate of people of Rajasthan.

The state is yearning for a change, certainly it will happen when people go out and vote on December 7. They are not only voting to vote out a government which is corrupt, inefficient and insensitive, but also a government that is locked in palaces or castles and totally cut off from the actual life.

The people of Rajasthan are looking up to positive blue print that congress is presenting in terms of what we can do for the state. We are talking about five years plan for Rajasthan, development plan or new beginning. To help the state break away from shackles of debt, which was Rs 1.4 lakh crores five years ago and is more than Rs 3 lakh crores today. The electricity loan alone is Rs 2 lakh crores. The state is in financial mess and Vasundhara Ji claims, she got this state out of bimaru category, but data gives a picture just opposite.

Q. What will be the main focus areas for congress if it comes to power?

A. There are 2-3 things, one is agriculture crisis or financial situation of farmers will have to be resolved. It is not just credit on loan, but also access to the market and availability of seeds. There is acute shortage of urea in Rajasthan; distribution is happening under police protection. You can imagine the desperation of farmers.

Why did Vasundhara ji wait for 4 year 11 months and 29 days  last day before code of conduct was supposed to be announced  to announce some sops for farmers? She knows that they will never be implemented because she will be voted out. So, farmers is the first issue.

Young people, after getting Phd or masters, are applying for fourth-class government job category. In Rajasthan there is major issue of unemployment and underemployment. In a few days time we will have the manifesto out.

We are looking at not allowing the State to give up all its assets which Vasundhara ji has done. In some cases, they have privatised schools and hospitals through public private partnership model, PPP model. If a government cannot provide right to education or healthcare, it does not deserve to be in power.

Q. The state government introduced Bhamashah Yojana to transfer benefits of government schemes directly to people. What will congress do if it comes to power?

A. Bhamashah Yojana has actually been a failure since it was overtaken by corrupt workforce. Insurance companies backed out of it as a cartel was formed by hospitals, brokers and individuals. It sounds very grand but implementation is far from satisfactory. BJP is very good in announcing things changing names, re-naming programmes but implementation is almost zero. There is no conviction to deliver, just rhetoric and propaganda.

Q. BJP said they will get 180 seats, now they are saying they will form the government. What is your party magic number?

A. Do you really expect that BJP to say that they are losing? I find nothing wrong if they pretend that they will get 180. They wont concede defeat before the polling happens. But it is perfectly normal behaviour. Every single election including municipal, jila parishad, dairy, Member of Parliament, congress has won handsomely. That is to tell you why there is buzz on the streets that congress is firmly placed in Rajasthan.

It is not sudden development, all the leaders and workers have contributed. Five years ago, we started our campaign. Prakash Javedkar or Amit shah ji discovered land of Rajasthan recently  they never knew that it existed when there were floods, rioting, murders, rapes and mob-lynching. Where were all senior leaders for five years, now they have come to seek vote when it is election time.

Q. We have seen you doing campaigning, you have not touched regional sentiment issues like Ram Mandir. So, in future also development of Tonk and Rajasthan is the only agenda?

A. It is not, will it be the agenda? In fact it should be the agenda. Why should the agenda be  what religion you follow, what you eat, or what you wear? BJP boast about rhetorical stuff about development. Ask them about data, they have reduced spending on housing and social welfare scheme. Inter-mortality rate is higher than national average. Even in Vasundhara jis constituency 16 children died due to lack of food.

Q. Is it anti-incumbency against Vasundhara Raje or BJP that we are seeing today?

A. Its one and the same thing. BJP cant shrug off from its responsibilities, they made her the CM.
Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan

The world may know him by the moniker 'mama' but Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan's ancestral village is possibly the only place in the state where he is addressed as 'bhaiya' as locals remember his rise to power from a humble beginning.

About 86-km from the state capital Bhopal, Jait is located on the banks of the Narmada and is connected to Chouhan's assembly constituency of Budhni via state highway No 15.

A broad banked under-construction 3.5-km dust track from the main road, flanked by paddy fields, takes people to Chouhan's house, at the entrance of which is a big photograph of the CM depicting him with folded hands greeting visitors.

Hariom Yadav, a domestic help at the house, informs that the occupants of the house  the CM's elder brother Narendra Singh, his wife and others are out in Budhni for campaign-related work.

"But, they will be back by the evening," Yadav says as he offers tea in the courtyard of the two-storeyed house where an old portrait of Chouhan and his wife Sadhna Singh hangs.

"He (Chouhan) is bhaiya (elder brother) to us. This is the affectionate name this village addresses him with. The entire state may call him 'mama' but locals here hold a very special place for him and vice-versa," village elder 67-year-old Bhagwan Das told PTI.

This small village is known as the CM's home place and people from 'Jait' get together like one family whenever the elder brother visits, he said while supervising work at his under-construction home.

The tiny village has over 260 households and less than 2,000 voters.

"Bhaiya makes sure he comes home for the 'dooj' festival twice a year and locals take it upon themselves that they campaign for him during elections and cover nearby villages along with other members of the Chouhan family," says tailor Santosh Namdev, when asked why the village wore a deserted look.

This is harvesting season so few others are out in the fields, he adds.

Imrati Devi, while performing her daily ablutions at the banks of the Narmada River, says Chouhan has helped the people of his village during every crisis or trouble.

He (Chouhan) lived here during his early days and then moved out for his studies and work in politics. 'Bhaiya' has made sure that he is connected to every big or small development in the village, local Hari Singh Chouhan said.

The CM has had a very humble origin and not only he is connected to the ground but has made his way to the top with great hardwork, he adds.

The village has a panchayat, a public health centre and the roads are made of RCC (reinforced cement and concrete) and locals expect more development will reach the 'special village in Budhni' once 'bhaiya' wins another battle at the hustings.

While there is a school, and small health centre in the village, villagers would wish to get more public amenities like toilets, community centre, a larger health centre with yet another victory of 'bhaiya', 28-year-old Vishnu Prasad said.

Chouhan had last visited the village to take the blessings of the Narmada River and his 'kul devta' temple (family deity) on November 5 before he filed his nomination from Budhni.

He was first elected as MLA in 1990 from the Budhni Assembly seat. This would be the fifth time he will be contesting from here.

An year after being elected an MLA in 1990, Chouhan was elected Member of Parliament when he won a bypoll from Vidisha constituency in 1991 after former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee quit the seat.

He went on to win Vidisha LS seat in 1996, 1998, 1999 and 2004.

In 2005, against the backdrop of infighting among state BJP leaders, Chouhan took over as Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister and in 2006 contested from Budhni to get elected to the MP assembly. He beat Congress's Rajkumar Patel, a former minister, by a margin of 36,000 votes.

He won from the seat again in 2008 and 2013 assembly polls, defeating the Congress's Mahesh Singh Rajput and Mahendra Singh Chauhan by a margin of 41,000 and 84,000 votes respectively.

His family and his supporters have given the slogan of 'abki baar 1 lakh paar' this time to ensure victory for him by a margin of over a lakh votes.

Main opposition party Congress has made the contest interesting by fielding Arun Yadav, former PCC President and an MP from nearby Khargone seat, from the seat.
A signed letter, penned by Mahatma Gandhi a year before India's independence, thanking a British lord for for wishes on his birthday is expected to fetch over USD 20,000 at an online auction.

Signed 'M K Gandhi', the one-page letter to Lord Pethick-Lawrence, Secretary of State for India and Burma, was written from New Delhi on October 10, 1946.

"Dear friend, It was good of you to send me your wishes for my birthday which is synonymous with the rebirth of the spinning wheel in 1918," the letter reads.

Gandhi's reference to the spinning wheel is exceptionally important, as he had adopted it as a symbol of economic independence very early on in his movement, US-based RR Auction said in a statement.

Shortly after World War I, he developed a broad base of support from Indians for peaceful non-cooperation.

After December 1921, Gandhi expanded his nonviolence programme to include the swadeshi policy -- the boycott of British goods.

From this originated his spinning wheel, as he encouraged all Indians to wear khadi instead of British-made textiles.

He furthered this concept by exhorting Indian men and women, rich or poor, to spend time each day spinning khadi in support of the independence movement.

Thus the spinning wheel became symbolic of the movement toward Indian independence.

While Lord Pethwick-Lawrence was involved with the negotiations that led to India's freedom, it was Prime Minister Clement Atlee who made the government's principal decisions in the matter.

The bidding for the online auction ends on December 5.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other top leaders will address the party's campaign meetings for the December 7 assembly polls in Telangana, state BJP president K Laxman said on November 24.

Modi will address public meetings at Nizamabad and Mahabubnagar on November 27, he told reporters. The Prime Minister would address another campaign meeting on December 3 at the Lal Bahadur stadium in Hyderabad, he said.

BJP president Amit Shah would participate in BJP's campaign in Telangana today. Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath are also likely to visit Telangana for the campaign, he said.

Shah had kicked off the party campaign with a public meeting at Mahabubnagar in September and subsequently addressed two more rallies in the state.

BJP is going it alone in the Assembly polls. The party had five MLAs in the state assembly, which was dissolved on September 6 and it hopes to substantially increase its strength in the coming elections.
Ram temple is not a political issue, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said on November 25 and expressed hope that Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray, who is in Ayodhya, would get the blessings of Lord Ram.

A senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader also said that the Sena, which is its ally at the Centre and in Maharashtra, will remain its partner for the Maharashtra and the Lok Sabha polls due next year.

Thackeray, who offered prayers at the Ram Lalla temple in Ayodhya on Sunday, said the BJP government at the Centre "may not last" if Ram temple is not constructed in the Uttar Pradesh city, and demanded that an ordinance be brought to pave for its way.

"The construction of Ram temple in Ayodhya is not a political issue. Shri Ram is the deity for entire India, Thackeray would get his blessings too," Fadnavis told reporters at Karad in Maharashtra's Satara district.

He was speaking after paying tributes at the memorial of late Y B Chavan, the state's first chief minister.

Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar also paid floral tributes to Chavan in Karad along with senior leaders of the party from the region.

Meanwhile, Maharashtra BJP chief Raosaheb Danve said the Shiv Sena's stand on the construction of Ram temple supports the BJP and asserted that both the parties will jointly contest the next year's state and general polls.

"It is not like the Sena has backed the BJP recently, but we have been together for decades," Danve told reporters in Jalna district.

The Sena has demanded that an ordinance be brought before 2019 for constructing the temple.

Dashing it aside, Danve said, "The dispute related to temple or mosque is in court. Hence, despite being in power there are limitations to what a government can do."

One has to coin some slogans while undertaking an activity like visiting Ayodhya, "which does not mean we have severe differences with each other", said the Lok Sabha member from Jalna constituency.

"To avoid division of votes, the Sena is going to be our partner for the general and assembly elections," he said.

The Sena had said earlier that it will fight all the upcoming elections solo.
Congress President Rahul Gandhi

Congress president Rahul Gandhi attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi on November 24, alleging that the 'theft' committed by "our watchman" in the Rafale deal had even put the French government in trouble.

Taking to Twitter, Gandhi claimed that the people of France were now demanding a probe into the Rafale fighter jets deal with India and that the matter was being discussed the world over.

"The theft committed by our watchman has now put the French government in trouble. Now, even the French public is demanding an investigation into the Rafale deal," he said in a tweet in Hindi.

There was no official comment from the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) on the issue.

The Centre and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have rejected the corruption charges in connection with the deal to buy 36 Rafale fighter jets from a French firm.

Gandhi cited a news report that a French NGO, fighting "economic crimes", had filed a complaint not just seeking a clarification on the conditions under which the Rafale deal was signed with India, but also questioning the choice of Anil Ambani's Reliance Defence as an offset partner by the Dassault Aviation, the makers of the aircraft.

Reliance Defence has denied any wrongdoing in the Rafale deal.

The NGO, in a press release, has said it expects the National Public Prosecutor's office to "promptly investigate the seriousness of the facts and the presumptions on the reported offences: potential corruption, grant of undue advantages, trading in influence, complicity of these offences, concealment of corruption and laundering of these offences".

The Rafale deal has turned into a huge political controversy in India with allegations of corruption and crony capitalism being levelled by the opposition against the government.

The Congress has alleged that Dassault chose Reliance Defence as an offset partner, despite its inexperience in the field, to bag the Rs 59,000-crore deal.
Former prime minister Manmohan Singh warned that use of religion and caste by political parties to capture power can create an atmosphere of hate and division and asserted that saner elements in the society need to unite to counter such evil designs.

He said that attempts at communal polarisation create an atmosphere of fear, anxiety and uncertainty and said a secular character of all the institutions, Judiciary, Executive and Legislature, is a pre-requisite for peace and harmony.

Addressing a conference organised by the Pranab Mukherjee Foundation, Singh claimed that the integrity of major institutions is facing many challenges in the country, while noting that a nation without well functioning institutions is "bound to fail".

The deterioration adversely affects the functioning of state organs and erodes their credibility, he said.

"Such a situation, he said, can create chaos in society, economy and polity," he said at the conference  'Towards Peace, Harmony and Happiness: Transition to Transformation'.

The Congress leader said that institutions of governance are a necessary condition to maintain peace and harmony. Besides, they must be impartial, objective and should function for the benefit of all sections of society.

"Unfortunately, the use of religion, caste and other such factors by the political parties to advance their political interests and capture power can create an atmosphere of hate and division among religious and caste groups. Such an environment poses a serious challenge to the peaceful transition and transformation.

"It is in this context that the saner elements in the society need to unite and counter the evil designs of those forces that are bent upon to disrupt the peace, harmony and happiness" he said.

Quoting Rabindra Nath Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi, Gurunanak and Sir Muhammad Iqbal, widely known as Allama Iqbal, the former prime minister said that they all wanted a nation which was free of communal unrest and without any division among people based on their caste, creed, colour, religion or baseless superstitions.

"It should always be remembered that India is multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and multi-lingual country. However, there are certain forces which are taking advantage of such diversity and pose a threat to the unity of the country.

"In a multi-religious society, communal harmony is very important for citizens to lead a life free from fear, anxiety and uncertainty," he said.

Singh's remarks came on the eve of a 'dharam sansad' (religious conclave)called by Vishwa Hindu Parishad in Ayodhya on the sensitive Ram temple issue.

The former prime minister said that there were various types of economic and non-economic factors which give rise to fears, anxieties and uncertainties and that the underlying reasons behind them should be diagnosed to translate the conflict and anger into peace, harmony and happiness.

"That would require transparency, honesty, probity and truthfulness in public life," he said.

Maintaining secular character of all the institutions is a pre-requisite for peace and harmony, he said, adding that eventually, it is the responsibility of the political and religious leaders, civil society, intelligentsia and the media to uphold the Constitution and the integrity of institutions.

"When the institutions start deviating from a just discharge of their constitutional responsibilities and knowingly or unknowingly fall prey to the extra-constitutional powers and non-state actors, then there is a danger of violence entering into the process of transition and transformation," he remarked.

He said that economic growth and development was a necessary condition but not a sufficient one for having peace, harmony and happiness in the society. Empowering the underprivileged and marginalized with education, skill and good health is an important means to make the people partners in growth and development, he said.

"The sustainable development goals(SDGs), set by the United Nations for 2015-2030, are aimed at achieving peace, harmony and happiness for all and have a smooth transition to transformation.
Bharatiya Janata Party chief Amit Shah on November 25 accused the Telangana government led by K Chandrashekar Rao of "failing" to keep its promises, and claimed that only the BJP, under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, can ensure the state's development. He also hit out at Rao for advancing the state polls, claiming that the chief minister did so as he was scared of the "Modi wave".

Addressing a public meeting at Parkal in Warangal district, Shah appealed to people to vote for the BJP in Telangana polls scheduled on December 7, in order to take the state forward.

He said KCR (as Rao is popularly known) failed to fulfil his promise of appointing a Dalit chief minister, and sought to know if Rao would now announce a Dalit as the chief ministerial candidate.

Shah also hit out at All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) leader Akbaruddin Owaisi's claim that his party would be the "kingmaker" after the state election.

"Do you want a government which is dependent on Owaisi and AIMIM? Neither the Congress nor KCR can provide such a governance, only the BJP can provide a government which is not dependent on Majlis," he said.

The assembly election in Telangana was expected along with the Lok Sabha election in May next year, but Rao advanced the polls and put the financial burden on people only because "he is scared of the 'Modi wave' and to promote his son and daughter for the chief minister's post," Shah alleged.

Attacking the Rao-led Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) government in the state over its move to provide 12-per cent reservation to minorities, Shah said the Constitution does not allow reservation based on religion and that it is "unconstitutional".

"The BJP opposes religion-based reservations and will neither allow it nor allow others to grant it," he said.

The senior BJP leader said the Modi government took up several works for Telangana's development and released over Rs 1.15 lakh crore to the state under the 14th Finance Commission, as against Rs 16,596 crore given by the UPA government under the 13th Finance Commission.

"The central government gave over Rs 2.30 lakh crore for Telangana's development in the last four-and-a-half years. Under KCR's rule, a revenue surplus state (when Telangana was formed) has been pushed into a Rs 2 lakh crore debt," he said.

Over 3,500 farmers in Telangana committed suicide under the TRS rule, Shah claimed. And on the other hand, he added, the Modi government announced to provide a higher minimum support price to cultivators for their crops.

Taking a dig at the alliance of parties, including the Congress and the Communist Party of India (CPI), formed in the state ahead of the polls, he said the Communist Party is on a decline across the world and the Congress is on a decline in India.

"The Congress lost power in 14 states and the BJP is in power in 19 states," he pointed out.

The BJP chief also slammed Rao for not celebrating September 17 as 'Liberation Day' "out of fear of Owaisi".

He said if the BJP comes to power in the state, it will celebrate Liberation Day in every village.

The BJP-led government launched the 'Pradhan Mantri Jan Aarogya Yojana for providing health insurance cover, but Rao did not implement the scheme as "he is afraid that Modiji's popularity will further increase," Shah said.
Antarrashtria Hindu Parishad president Pravin Togadia during a rally near the 'samadhi' of Ram Chandra Paramhans, in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh. (Image: PTI)

The streets of Ayodhya are filled with right-wing activists who have poured in from various parts of the county for a VHP grand event Sunday to push for construction of a Ram Temple here, even as security has been heightened in the temple town to maintain law and order.

Vishwa Hindu Parishad's 'Dharma Sabha' is being touted as the largest congregation of 'Ram bhakts' in Ayodhya since the 1992 'kar seva', with the Hindu outfit claiming a large number of people will attend it.

The congregation is happening less than two weeks ahead of the 26th anniversary of the demolition of the 16th century Babri Mosque, that had triggered unrest in this pilgirm town and riots in other parts of India.

The spectre of 1992 still haunts many people of both the communities who had directly or indirectly suffered in the violence that had erupted after the Mughal-era mosque was razed by a frenzied army of 'kar sewaks' (right-wing activists) on the fateful day of December 6.

The VHP has claimed that three lakh people, including seers, will attend its 'Dharma Sabha' to be held at Bade Bhakt Mal Ki Baghia, not far from the controversial Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas-run workshop, where work for building a temple has been underway since 1990.

An uneasy calm prevailed in Muslim-dominated areas like Dharam Kanta, and the mega event has triggered some apprehension over the safety of the town's Muslim community.

Meanwhile, a senior police official said security has been stepped up in Ayodhya, in view of the VHP event and the presence of a large number of Shiv Sainiks in town.

"We are prepared to meet all challenges, all arrangements are in place in the town, the district and its border area to avoid any untoward incident. We are keeping a tight vigil and security around Ram Janmabhoomi site has also been stepped up," the senior official told PTI.

Chants of 'Jai Shri Ram' rent the air in the streets and around Saryu River, where the Yogi Adityanath government has also planned to install a 151-m statue of Lord Ram.

Mahant Dharamdas, a prominent seer in Ayodhya said: "The Supreme Court should heed to the sentiments of these people who have arrived in Ayodhaya today, with a pious belief that a Ram temple will be built soon."

Security was also beefed up at Lakshman Qila on Saturday where Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray was welcomed after his arrival in Ayodhya.

The Sena claimed to have brought several thousand supporters to Ayodhya for Thackeray's events.

Arriving here ahead of Sunday's VHP rally for a Ram temple, Thackeray asked the Narendra Modi government to wake up from a "Kumbhakarna-like slumber" and declare the date for its construction.

"There is no political motive behind my visit to Ayodhya," he claimed.

The Sena chief was greeted with slogans of "Jai Shri Ram" when he arrived in Ayodhya with his wife Rashmi and son Aditya.

Mahant Nrityagopal Das, the chairman of the Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas, was among those who welcomed Thackeray at Lakshman Qila, where the Sena leader made the remarks. A drone monitored the event.

The streets of Ayodhya are awash with saffron colour as flag-bearing activists camped at 'akharas' moved around in various parts of the city, and held informal gathering.

But, many in Ayodhya are miffed over these events, which seek to whip up communal frenzy.

Aman Kumar, a stone craftsmen when asked about the current situation surrounding the controversial temple issue, said: "People of Ayodhya, of all communities, have always lived in peace. It is outsiders and politicians with agenda, who come to our town and vitiate the atmosphere."
Amit Shah, President of India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), gestures as he begins a door-to-door campaign at a residential area for the upcoming Gujarat state assembly elections, in Ahmedabad, India November 7, 2017. REUTERS/Amit Dave - RC1F79E70CD0

BJP chief Amit Shah on November 25 attacked the state govenment's proposal to give 12 percent quota to Muslims, saying his party will never allow it as religion-based reservation is unconstitutional.

Shah hit out at Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) chief and Telangana chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao over the issue during campaign rallies at Parkal and Nirmal ahead of the December 7 Assembly polls in the state.

"I want to tell Chandrasekhar Rao, the Supreme Court has fixed 50 per cent ceiling (on total reservations). If you want to provide 12 per cent reservation, from whose quota are you going to carve it out: from Dalits, tribals or OBCs. Decide this first," Shah said.

Shah said Rao promised reservation to the minority community "despite being aware" of the 50 percent ceiling and forwarded the proposal (bill) to the Centre.

"BJP would stand firmly to protect the reservation of Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Backward Classes," he said.

The Constitution does not allow reservation based on religion, the BJP chief said.

He asked the gathering whether a religion-based reservation should be be given, and said, "You don't worry. Even if KCR, Congress, TDP, communists, all of them come together, I guarantee that till the BJP government is at the Centre, religion-based reservation will not be given."

The Telangana legislature has passed a bill increasing reservations in jobs and education for backward sections of the Muslim community to 12 per cent from the earlier four per cent. The bill is yet to get the Centre's nod.

Meanwhile, speaking at a campaign rally at Shadnagar, Rao said the bill was not yet cleared by Prime Minister Narendra Modi despite repeated requests.

"We want to give reservations to Muslims. But Modi is against that. That is the reason I am advocating a non- Congress and non-BJP front government. You know that I fought for Telangana's statehood. I will get you reservations the same way," he said.
BJP president Amit Shah on November 25 hit out at Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao for not taking action against AIMIM leader Akbaruddin Owaisi in connection with a hate speech.

Akbaruddin, MLA from Chandrayangutta in the dissolved state Assembly, was arrested by Nirmal police in January 2013 for allegedly using inflammatory and derogatory language against a community during his public speeches in Nirmal and Nizamabad in December 2012. He was subsequently released on bail.

Shah also claimed that KCR was afraid of the AIMIM, which he described as a 'Razakars party".

The Razakars were an armed militia of the Hyderabad Nizamate who tried to brutally put down a revolt by peasants opposed to the Nizam's decision to not merge with India following Independence.

Addressing a rally here on November 25, Shah said: "This is the land (Nirmal) where Akbaruddin Owaisi gave a speech. He insulted Hindu gods. There was also a case against him. But this TRS government failed to take further action."

Taking a swipe at KCR on the issue, Shah added, "I want to ask Chandrasekhar Rao, why are you not taking action? Do it now, otherwise you would lose power to take action (TRS government would be voted out)."

Continuing his tirade, Shah said KCR, as the Telangana CM is popularly known, had no time to visit families of the 60 people who died when a overcrowded state bus plunged into a valley in Kondagattu in the state's Jagtial district in August this year.

"This Chief Minister does not have the time to visit the victims of the Kondagattu (bus) accident. But he has time to eat biryani with Owaisi brothers (AIMIM chief Asaduddin and Akbaruddin)," he said.

Alleging that KCR was "scared" of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul Muslimeen, Shah said, "KCR is scared of this Razakars party (AIMIM). That is why he is not holding (celebrations for) Hyderabad Liberation Day on September17,

Hundreds lost their lives in the crackdown by the Razakars following which the Indian government conducted "police action", codenamed Operation Polo, on September 17, 1948, to merge Hyderabad state into the Indian Union.

Shah also attacked the TRS government over farm distress and claimed that as many as 131 farmers had committed suicide in Gajwel constituency from where KCR is seeking re-election.
December 07, 2018 / 08:41 PM IST / 08:41 PM IST

Polling in Telangana has concluded. Meanwhile, the exit poll results for all five states are out.

Who is likely to win the battle in Telangana? Find out here.
Representative image

Twelve people have been killed in a suspected Islamist attack in northern Mozambique, with thousands of villagers fleeing the area into neighbouring Tanzania, police sources said Sunday.

Early Friday, "there was an attack in Nangane district, where there are no security patrols. The attackers killed 12 people, mostly women and children," a police source in Cabo Delgado province, who asked not to be named, told AFP.

The attack took place in the village of Chicuaia Velha, just a few kilometres (miles) from Tanzania, forcing several thousand people to cross the border to seek safety, police said.

A local journalist said the villagers were killed by machete or died when their houses were set on fire by the attackers.

It was the third such incident in the last month in Cabo Delgado, leaving 20 dead in all.

The authorities have responded with a crackdown, rounding up some 200 suspects.

Over the past year, hardline Islamists have been active in the region, stoking unrest just as the government in Maputo is pushing ahead with oil and gas development in the province.
Floating Island, which emerged from the silt only about 20 years ago, is about 30 km (21 miles) from the mainland. (Reuters)

A strong 6.1-magnitude earthquake shook Colombian-owned islands in the Caribbean Sea on November 24, but authorities said there was no need for a tsunami alert.

The quake struck 32 kilometres (20 miles) southeast of Mountain, Colombia, at 0340 GMT Sunday, according to the US Geological Service, which monitors quakes worldwide.

Both the Colombian geological service and the USGS said the quake's epicentre was ten kilometers deep.

Colombian officials said that the municipalities of San Andres, Providencia, and Santa Catalina -- part of an archipelago of the same name -- were mostly affected.

The islands are located some 220 kilometres (140 miles) off Nicaragua's eastern coast.

Colombia's national disaster agency said that there was no tsunami alert for the country's Caribbean coastline and that there were no reports of damage on the islands.
Memorial Unveiled for WWI Soldiers Who Fought Against Armenian, Assyrian Genocide

It's estimated 1.5 million people died in the Armenian Genocide during World War I - among them, 300,000 Assyrians.

On Sunday, New Zealand's Assyrian community unveiled a memorial at Makara Cemetery in Wellington dedicated to the Kiwis who fought and died trying to rescue them.

Robert Nichol was a house painter from Lower Hutt, and one of New Zealand's most respected and decorated soldiers of World War I.

His memory was honoured on Sunday by the descendants of those he died trying to save.

"Captain Nicol [was] shot down and he died, sacrificing his life for thousands of Assyrian refugees," Assyrian-Kiwi Ashoor Yalda said.

A captain aged just 23, Nichol volunteered for a specialist brigade known as Dunsterforce - a forerunner to today's SAS.

Dunsterforce was sent to modern day Iran to seize vital oil fields for the British in 1918 - but ended up trying to stop the 20th Century's first great crime against humanity.

"The Assyrian Genocide was a very specific part of a general process in the Ottoman Empire to 'Turkify' the Empire," historian James Robins explained.

"In other words, to get rid of its non-Turkish Christian minorities - so that included the Armenians, it included the Assyrians, and it included ethnic Greeks as well."

Mr Robins is writing a book on New Zealand's many links to the Genocide, and is dedicating a chapter to Nichol.

"He was fighting alongside another New Zealander called Alexander Nimmo, who was from Mosgiel in Otago, and he was fighting to defend the rear guard of this refugee column of around 60,000 Armenians and Assyrians who were fleeing annihilation," said Mr Robins.

Outnumbered 100 to one, the Kiwis fought bravely; Nimmo survived, but Nichol was shot and killed - his body never recovered.

"What he did was brave and courageous in the sense that it was for a humanitarian purpose," Mr Robins said.

"And it's important to realise that he volunteered for this mission - he didn't have to go into that valley to defend those refugees."

Jacinda Ardern's Government has never officially acknowledged the Armenian genocide - over genuine fears Turkey would ban Kiwis from visiting Gallipoli if it did - but it was a very different political story a century ago, under William Massey.

"The New Zealand government under Massey during the war, and in the immediate aftermath of the war, used it as a justification for pursuing the war effort," Mr Robins said.

"They said, 'We'll look at these poor Christians in the Ottoman Empire who're being exterminated - this is precisely why we need to fight this war'."

So 100 years on, those crimes against humanity are ignored by the New Zealand Government - but the sacrifice Robert Nichol made trying to stop them is remembered by the people he was trying to save.
Opposition to a draft Brexit deal due to be approved by EU leaders dominated a conference of the Democratic Unionist Party, the Northern Irish party whose support is vital to Prime Minister Theresa May's government and EU exit plans.

Ahead of a speech by Britain's former foreign minister Boris Johnson  a staunch critic of the tentative agreement  DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds warned May that she must abandon her proposal for a so-called backstop arrangement for Northern Ireland.

"The DUP wants a deal with the European Union... we understand that businesses, families and communities want certainty," Dodds said.

"But it is not this deal. It is not a deal at any price. Prime Minister -- bin the backstop," he urged May from the annual conference, this year coming the Sunday's special EU summit to sign off the plan.

The DUP's 10 MPs have propped up her government ever since she lost her majority in a 2017 election and was forced to turn to the fiercely pro-Brexit, unionist right-wingers to pass legislation.

However, that support is hanging by a thread over its opposition to May's plans for future ties with the European Union after Britain departs the bloc next March.

It fears the backstop  which if used would keep Northern Ireland more closely aligned with the EU in certain areas following a 21-month transition period  will effectively create a border between the British province and the UK mainland.

The party withdrew its support for government legislation earlier this week in a warning protest and Dodds said Saturday its support was "a two-way street".

But in a possible conciliatory offer for May, he added: "It is in the interests of the country and of Northern Ireland that our parties continue to work together in the national interest".

In a sign of the DUP's central role, British finance minister Philip Hammond attended the conference Friday. Samantha Sacramento, the housing minister of Gibraltar  the British territory which has become a last-minute sticking point ahead of the EU summit  also addressed attendees Saturday.

"Our borders and our history are very different, but our solidarity in defence of our democratic right to preserve our British way of life is unshakeable," she said.

All eyes will be on Belfast when Johnson and DUP party leader Arlene Foster take the stage separately later in the day.

Foster will insist that the government "must implement the referendum result of 2016" and "we must leave as one nation," according to extracts released by the party.

She will tell May that the draft agreement "fails her own key commitments" but will hold off on withdrawing the party's support for her, according to the extracts.

The DUP is in favour of British rule in Northern Ireland, and fears that any weakening of the bonds with the rest of the country could increase the chances of a unified Ireland.

It has fought bitterly to prevent that happening, with its hardline tactics forged in the decades-long Troubles, which came to an end with the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

Johnson is also at odds with May and shares the DUP's dissatisfaction with the Brexit deal, with both promising to vote it down if and when the agreement comes to parliament next month as expected.

The DUP campaigned in favour of Brexit but is also faced with public concern in Northern Ireland about the prospect of a new hard border undercutting trade and the peace process.

The self-styled "Christian fundamentalist" party has softened its fiery anti-Catholicism and other harsh stances since it was founded by Protestant evangelical minister Ian Paisley in 1971.

But it still holds tight to what critics call its puritanical views, particularly on social issues such as abortion.

Its increased influence in Westminster has prompted warnings that a disrupted balance of power in Belfast could harm the delicate peace struck after decades of sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland.

Irish republicans Sinn Fein have blamed the DUP-May London power deal for the failure to restart a power-sharing executive with the DUP in Northern Ireland.

That arrangement collapsed in January 2017 because of a row over Foster's handling of a botched renewable heating funding scheme.
November 26, 2018

Russia Blocks Ukrainian Navy From Militarizing The Sea of Azov - Updated

Originally posted Nov 25: 18:00 utc - Updated below on Nov. 26, 6:00 utc

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The Ukrainian government under the oligarch Petro Poroshenko is in election campaign mode. That is one reason why it is launching new provocations against Russia. Yesterday Ukrainian forces reportedly occupied a town within the neutral zone between the government controlled part and the rebel held Donetsk area. Today the Ukrainian navy sent a tug and two small gun boats, recently acquired from the U.S. Coast Guard, Ukrainian build Gurza-M class types, to pass through the Kerch Strait into the Sea of Azov.

When the ships entered Russian waters without announcing their intent, a Russian coast guard ship rammed (vid) and damaged the tug. The two gun boats escaped but did not pass the strait. The pictures show the melee at sea.

With Crimea back in Russian hands, the Kerch Strait is solely Russian territorial water. The Treaty on the Legal Status of the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait, signed in 2003 by Russia and the Ukraine, provides that military ship entry into the sea is only allowed with mutual consent. Ukraine disputes the status of the sea in an arbitration court. (For a legal discussion of the case see 1, 2, 3.)

The Ukrainian government, urged on by the U.S., wants to establish a new military harbor in the Sea of Azov. Two of its navy ships, a rescue vessel and a tug, passed through the street on September 23. In October the Russian government warned that it will not allow any further militarization of the sea. Some U.S. hawks even want NATO ships to enter the Sea of Azov. The Sea of Azov has a maximum depth of 7 meters. Typical U.S. frigates have a draft of 10+ meters. What NATO or U.S. ship could even go there? As Russia firmly controls the sole entry point into the sea and can easily attack any ship in the Sea of Azov from within its borders the idea is incredibly stupid.

The Kerch Strait is now blocked by a large cargo ship the Russians anchored under the new Kerch bridge.

The passage is closed and a number of ships are bunched up on both sides.



Pic via MarineTraffic of traffic at 15:45 utc - bigger

The Ukrainian provocation may well be aimed to sour the meeting between President Trump and Putin that is planned for November 30 during the G20 summit in Argentina. It should be more careful. It is quite possible that Russia will block commercial traffic to the Ukrainian port of Mariupol over any further incident. The big loser of this useless provocation would then again be the Ukraine.



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Update - Nov. 26, 6:00 utc

The Russian coast guard detained the three Ukrainian ships and their crews in Russian waters. They again illegally attempted to cross from the Black Sea through the Kerch Strait into the Sea of Azov. The Ukrainian side says the two of its seaman were injured.

Since Crimea voted to again become a part of Russia the Kerch Strait is Russian territorial water. Ships can pass the strait but are required to take on a pilot and to undergo inspections if the Russian coast guard demand such. The Ukrainian side understands that these are legal measures. In a report by the U.S. government outlet RFL/RE published in August the Ukrainian side admitted as much:

[The Ukrainian Sea Guard and the squadron's spokesman] Poliakov said that, while Russia's actions are "provocative," because of a controversial 2003 agreement on cooperation and shared use of the Sea of Azov and Kerch Strait, "everything Russia is doing here is technically legal."

The three Ukrainian ships tried to pass Russian waters without informing Russian authorities and without taking on pilots. Since Russia build the $3.7 billion Kerch bridge which connects Crimea with Russia, U.S. commentators and Ukrainian politicians threatened to blow up the bridge:

The Kerch Bridge is an enemys infrastructure. It connects the occupied territory with the mainland of the aggressor country, that is why it is an enemys infrastructure, Mosiychuk said on air of 112 Ukraine channel. According to him, any normal country in a state of war strives for destroying enemys infrastructure. Answering a question whether he personally would destroy the bridge, he said that he would do it if he were the defense minister.

The Russians are understandably careful with any traffic near to it.

Following yesterday's incident the president of the Ukraine Pedro Poroshenko proposed to declare martial law. The parliament will have to decide on that. This is a very convenient move for Poroshenko as it will allow him to move the March 2019 general election date. Poroshenko trails in the polls with some 8% of the total vote.

Russia called for a UN Security Council emergency meeting which will be held at today at 11:00am EST. The passage through the Kerch Strait is again open for civil vessels.

The usual anti-Russian subject in "western" political circles use the incident to demand more measures against Russia. Fronting the effort is the weapon industry lobbying group Atlantic Council:

Anders Aslund, a resident senior fellow in the Atlantic Councils Eurasia Center, said: NATO and the United States should send in naval ships in the Sea of Azov to guarantee that it stays open to international shipping. Such action, Aslund said, would be in full compliance with the UN Law of the Sea Convention of 1982 and the Montreux Convention Regarding the Regime of the Straits of 1936.

Anders Aslund is listed as member of the "U.S. & Canadian Cluster" of the secret influence operation by the British Foreign Office describe here two days ago. He is obviously unable to read a map, sea chart, or UN convention. The Ukrainian attempt to pass through the Kerch Strait without Russian consent is a breach of Article 7, 19 and 21 of the UN Law of the Sea Convention (pdf):

Article 7: "Subject to this Convention, ships of all States, whether coastal or land-locked, enjoy the right of innocent passage through the territorial sea."

...

Article 19-1: "Passage is innocent so long as it is not prejudicial to the peace, good order or security of the coastal State. Such passage shall take place in conformity with this Convention and with other rules of international law."

...

Article 21-4: "Foreign ships exercising the right of innocent passage through the territorial sea shall comply with all such [coastal state] laws and regulations and all generally accepted international regulations relating to the prevention of collisions at sea."

There will now be again a lot of noise in the media about the 'nefarious Russians' and new demands for even more useless sanctions. But the legal case is clear. It was the Ukrainian navy that willfully attempted to pass from the Black Sea into the Sea of Azov through Russian territorial waters without regard to the laws and regulations of the coastal state. Russia was within its full rights to prevent the passage and to seize the Ukrainian boats.

Posted by b on November 26, 2018 at 9:44 UTC | Permalink

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November 25, 2018

The MoA Week In Review - OT 2018-63

Last week's posts on Moon of Alabama:

November 19 - Syria - Back In The Arab Fold

Last night Jihadis in the Turkish-Russian de-escalation zone in Idleb governorate launched gas filled artillery munition into Aleppo city. Some 100 people were hurt with some 30 still being hospitalized. In response to the chemical attack the Russian air force in Syria launched bombing raids against the Jihadi positions and eliminated the threat. It earlier informed the Turkish observers in the area of its intent. This was the first Russian air attack on the de-escalation zone since it was established.

There have been a number of such provocations and skirmishes between the Syrian army and the Jihadis along the demarcation line. The terrorists hope to provoke the Syrian army into an all out attack on the de-escalation area. They hope that the U.S. would then support their side. The all out attack will come, but probably not before next spring.

Turkey was supposed to clean a 15 kilometer strip along the demarcation line from all Jihadi presence and from heavy weapons. It seems to be unable or unwilling to do so. That Russia intervened today can be understood as a warning to the Turks. Either it does its job and controls the Jihadis or Russia will eliminate them.

November 21 - Keeping Bin Salman In Place Will Hurt Trump's Middle East Policies

November 24 - British Government Runs Secret Anti-Russian Smear Campaigns

November 25 - Russia Blocks Ukrainian Navy From Militarizing The Sea of Azov

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Over the years various MoA pieces were translated and published in Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, German and Russian language. Yesterday's piece about the British government smear campaigns was the first to appear in Turkish. Emre Kose translated it: Ceviri | Ingiliz hukumeti Rusyaya kars gizli bir karalama kampanyas yurutuyor  Moon of Alabama.

(The general policy is that I welcome such translations if they are a. published without any commercial intent and b. link back to the original piece on this site.)

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Use as open thread ...

Posted by b on November 25, 2018 at 18:07 UTC | Permalink

Comments
Just a month after hitting a four-year high of more than $76 a barrel, crude prices have plummeted about 25 percent to their lowest level in more than a year.

That quick U-turn from bullish to bearish sentiment has raised concerns for at least one commodity trading and risk management expert, who said oil and gas producers could see sub-$20 prices by 2023.

"Am I sure it will happen? No. But it does give me pause, Ryan Dusek, director with the energy consulting firm Opportune LLP, said in a phone interview.

Dusek said hes been watching a long-term pattern and the sharp turn from four-year highs to one-year lows fits a pattern that goes back to 2008.

If you look back at some of those dates, and you go back to 2008, prices hit $150 and four months later they were at $30, he said. By 2014, prices were back up to $112 a barrel, only to fall to $26 a barrel by early 2016, he said.

Ive often heard that if oil prices go up, they use the stairs and they use the elevator on the way down. When you look at price trends, the downward movements have been so fast theyve been almost devastating, Dusek said. The upside is slow. I dont think this (bear market) is over yet.

That doesnt mean there wont be higher prices in the interim, he said.

Im very bearish on what I see. That doesnt mean the market wont turn bullish, but I feel prices are definitely on the decline. It wouldnt surprise me if they hit sub-$20.

If there is good news in his assessment, Dusek said prices could return to the $70 to $72 range again within the next year.

That should give producers enough time to put longer-term hedges in place, he said.

A great hedging plan will help producers weather a return to very low oil prices as seen in 2015-2016, he said.

I dont know how many companies could hold on again, he said.

Low oil prices should also drive the trend toward consolidation that had been expected three years ago, Dusek said.

What is driving the downward movement in prices is supplies, according to Dusek.

The way I view it, Russia, Saudi Arabia and President Trump have the upper hand. And the only one with the incentive to lower prices is the U.S.

Market trends are more on the bearish side, particularly the strength of the U.S. dollar, he said.

A stronger dollar means lower commodity prices, and crude oil will be hit hardest because it is priced in dollars, he said. Thats a long-term story that has legs.

If there is further good news in Duseks expectations, its prices below $20 should be the bottom, in my opinion, and if youre riding out $20, you should be good. The market will return. The longer-term market will be very bullish from that floor.

Dusek said he hopes his interpretation of long-term patterns is wrong.

If Im wrong, good. If Im not, a lot of companies will get hurt, he said.

If hes wrong and prices rebound quickly and break $80, its a whole new game. Its just not what Im seeing.

His main goal is to raise awareness among the industry and among Opportunes clients so they can be proactive and take hedging precautions, he said.
Multi-billion-dollar acquisitions have made headlines this year, as Concho Resources acquired RSP Permian, and Diamondback Energy is about to complete its purchase of Energen Resources.

As the Permians unconventional shale play matures and shifts into manufacturing mode, experts said companies will need to scale up to continue their success.

Thats an assessment agreed upon by panelists at the recent Executive Oil Conference presented by Hart Energy

RELATED: The shale deals just keep coming

Consolidation will continue for the next year, year and a half, said Mike Marziani, executive vice president and chief financial officer, Tall City Exploration III. He said 10 or 15 names could disappear, not just in the Permian Basin but across the E&P industry.

While he said that could sound like a negative, those same dynamics offer opportunities for small companies like us that can take advantage of the non-core assets shed by the larger companies.

James Walter, co-chief executive officer of Colgate Energy LLC, said the Permian Basin has always had an independent mind set. Well see the independents regroup and come back.

Chris Atherton, president, EnergyNet, said activist investors appear to be driving at least some activity in the mergers and acquisitions market.

Activist investors are sable rattling with the public companies, particularly Delaware Basin companies, to divest their lesser acreage, he said.

Added Walter, Companies are starting to recognize the value of high-grading their portfolios.

Marziani said that some acreage doesnt meet thresholds where theyre worth selling.

His company recently launched its third iteration, backed by up to $500 million in equity financing from the private equity firm Warburg Pincus.

OIL REPORT: Panel discusses best ways to optimize production

Our team is focused on the Permian Basin, east of the Midland Basin to west of the Delaware Basin and everywhere in between, he said. Were dedicated to new play concepts. The first Tall City leased in Howard County, 60 miles from the Wolfcamp play. We say there are still places to explore.

He said with the Permian offering five to seven benches of drilling inventory, there will be opportunities in the churn of acreage as leases turn over because wells werent drilled in a timely manner. He said Tall Citys team also doesnt shy away from step outs. Well take the fairways, well go places that arent leased. We also explore three-dimensionally. This basin has scale, and the fact it still has surprises, offers opportunities.

Walter said Colgate got its start in 2015 putting together a three-section block in Reeves County.

As companies consolidate, said Atherton, You have this behemoth of a company with inventory they wont get to for 30 years. They can spin that off to other companies.
Denbury Resources buys Penn Virginia for $1.7 billion.

Chespaeake Energy follows suit, gobbling up another Eagle Ford shale player, WildHorse Resource Development for $3 billion.

Canadas Encana Corp. tops them both, acquiring the Newfield Exploration Co. for $5.5 billion in the beginning of November.

Those are three big deals that happened over four days recently, all targeting Houston shale exploration and production companies. And the Houston energy investment banking firm Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. said thats just the tip of the M&A iceberg. Expect more to come in 2019.

Buckle up as the upstream merger train has left the station, and next year will likely be a wild ride, the firm said while unleashing a torrent of cliches.

The last few years saw a land rush in West Texas Permian Basin in whats become the worlds hottest oil play. This spring saw Permian holdings begin to consolidate under bigger players after nearly all of the top acreage was scooped up. Now, it appears the merger spree is spreading to onshore shale nationwide.

Sharing the fun

Penn Virginia is an Eagle Ford company. WildHorse is focused on the emerging northeastern portion of the Eagle Ford west of College Station. Newfield, of The Woodlands, has a mix of assets, but its primary focus is in Oklahoma.

Early this year it was predominantly a Permian play, said Neal Dingmann, an energy analyst with SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, and now it seems to be expanded to all of North America.

Dingmann said he expects more corporate combinations in other regions such as North Dakotas Bakken shale, but dealmakers will still focus on the Permian. Its just that the Permian wont hog all of the fun.

Its consumed a lot of 2018. In a pair of $8 billion Permian-focused deals earlier this year, two Midland companies, Concho Resources and Diamondback Energy acquired, respectively, RSP Permian and Energen. The largest deal of the year still belongs to British energy giant BP buying up the Texas shale assets  including both the Permian and Eagle Ford  of BHP Billiton for $10.5 billion. The sale closed at the end of October.

The next big Permian deal could come from the privately owned Midland company Endeavor Energy, which is looking to sell itself for close to $10 billion, as first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

The U.S. shale industry is now more than a decade old since pioneers combined horizontal drilling techniques with hydraulic fracturing, called fracking, to access and crack the shale rock and its large volumes of oil and gas. There are still more prospective areas such as Wyomings Powder River Basin, the extension of the Austin Chalk shale into Louisiana and others, but much of the shale sector is maturing.

Big dogs

Even though shareholders are pushing companies to keep their spending levels conservative after the recent oil bust, analysts still see the industry moving toward an acquire-or-be-acquired mentality.

Concho, for instance, is simultaneously running almost 35 drilling rigs just in the Permian. A lot of other companies can barely afford to operate one or two at a time. And Concho cant even come close to the buying power of behemoths like Exxon Mobil and Chevron as they continue to expand in the Permian.

How do you compete with that? Dingmann said.

jordan.blum@chron.com

twitter.com/jdblum23
Photo by Russell Lee for the Farm Security Administration, as preserved by the Library of Congress.

Timothy Warren was driving his FedEx truck through a Portland, Oregon, neighborhood when a man screamed at Warren that he was going too fast.

Warren stopped his truck. He was exhausted, he tried to explain to Joseph Magnuson that night in late September, and just wanted to get done with his work.

Magnuson was unrelenting and hurled insults and racist slurs at him, a report said.

Warren, who is black, stepped out of the truck, and both men yelled at one another.

Magnuson took a swing. Warren swung back, connecting a single blow above Magnuson's left eye that sent Magnuson tumbling to the ground, according to reports.

Magnuson, 55, briefly lost consciousness, then died later that evening.

Prosecutors have decided not to charge Warren with a crime. He did not intend to kill Magnuson and acted in self-defense during the Sept. 26 incident, the Multnomah County District Attorney's Office said in a memo released Monday.

Magnuson's death from the fall was precipitated by "extremely poor health," a medical examiner concluded, and the punch itself was not fatal, Senior Deputy District Attorney Adam Gibbs wrote.

More for you Racist incidents flare in federal facilities as hate crimes rise; Trump blamed for divisiveness

Warren was within his legal right to challenge Magnuson's "racist vitriol," Gibbs noted, and said Warren's decision to confront Magnuson - rather than ignore him - was not legally significant.

Oregon law does not carry a "duty to retreat" provision that would have required Warren to reasonably remove himself from danger, Gibbs wrote.

Prosecutors and police pieced together events using accounts from six eyewitnesses, three of whom saw the entire incident. They all maintained that Warren had driven an acceptable speed and that Magnuson started the incident, and then escalated it.

"Mr. Magnuson's actions, as reported by all three witnesses and Mr. Warren, gave rise to a reasonable belief on Mr. Warren's part that a limited use of force was necessary to prevent injury to himself," Gibbs wrote.

Magnuson was living in a van near the park where the deadly encounter occurred, district attorney spokesman Brent Weisberg told The Washington Post.

Warren, whose age wasn't released, could not be reached for comment.

The announcement by the prosecutor's office on Monday was the first public mention of Magnuson's death and the ensuing investigation, the Oregonian newspaper reported; it was unclear why prosecutors had only recently released information about the incident.

It's unclear whether Warren still works for FedEx; the company declined to comment on his status.

The company, which said it cooperated fully during the investigation, extends "condolences to those affected," FedEx Ground spokeswoman Nikki Mendicino said in a statement.
What should we do during the next two years of divided government? We could spend them as weve spent the last two: React to every Trump outrage. Keep Trumps narcissistic provocations at center stage. Express daily contempt from within the safety of our political silos.

This seems to be the business model for cable news and online media. Theres a big, reliable audience of people who will tune in to feel appalled by and superior to President Donald Trump, and who are addicted to their daily rituals of moral onanism.

On the other hand, we could put the Trump soap opera off to the side and pay attention to actual Americans and actual solutions. We could acknowledge that we are an evenly divided country. We could build the bipartisan governing coalitions and agendas suited to that reality.

Fortunately, many people are opting for plan B. For example, the Convergence Center for Policy Resolution gathers stakeholders across the political spectrum and gets them working together on common visions  union bosses with Walmart executives, teacher union leaders with charter school heads.

Washington think tanks are undergoing a fundamental evolution. A lot of them, like the American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution, were built to advise parties that no longer exist. They were built for a style of public debate  based on social science evidence and congressional hearings that are more than just show trials  that no longer exists. Many people at these places have discovered that they have more in common with one another than they do with the extremists on their own sides.

So suddenly there is a flurry of working together across ideological lines. Next week, for example, the group Opportunity America, with Brookings and AEI, will release a bipartisan agenda called Work, Skills, Community: Restoring Opportunity for the Working Class.

Written by a wide array of scholars, the report starts with the truth that the working class has been mostly ignored by the rest of society. Government has welfare programs to serve the poor and they have programs like 529 savings accounts to subsidize the rich. But theres very little for families making, say, $50,000 a year.

Businesses like Amazon will invest in rich places like New York and Northern Virginia, but they wont invest much in working-class communities in Ohio or Kentucky. Universities, religious organizations and activist groups will recruit from the affluent suburbs and serve those in dire poverty, but they barely touch the working class.

What you get is a layer of society that has been denuded of institutions and social bonds. Working-class men have been dropping out of the labor force at alarming rates. A generation ago, working-class families were about as likely to be part of religious communities as affluent Americans, but now their participation rates have plummeted. A generation ago, working-class families were nearly as likely to be married as affluent people, but now only half the children in working-class families will be raised in adolescence by stably married parents. From the 1970s to the 2000s, the share of working-class people aged 25 to 60 who were involved in a neighborhood organization fell from 71 percent to 52 percent.

As the authors of the Opportunity America report lay out the evidence, you see how the debate has evolved over the past few years. First, there used to be relatively little research attention paid to the working class at all. Now its the epicenter. Second, there used to be a silly debate over whether economics or culture explained social breakdown. Now these two elements are woven seamlessly together. Third, geography plays a much bigger role. Social problems are concentrated in specific places.

The authors of this report dismiss the policy slogans coming from the extremes. Building a wall is not a policy. Universal basic income degrades the work ethic that is at the core of working-class life. Free college is a massive subsidy for the upper middle class.

Instead, the authors come up with a broad left/right agenda that 70 percent of Republicans and Democrats could support: wage subsidies, improved parental leave, work requirements for some federal benefits, child care tax credits.

I especially like their point that we have overemphasized four-year colleges as the only route to success. In 2016, the federal government spent $139 billion on postsecondary education and training. Only a sliver, 14 percent, went to career education and training. Private sector employers fetishize the college degree even where its unnecessary. Two-thirds of the job postings for production supervisors now require a college degree. But only 16 percent of the people currently holding those jobs have such a degree.

One of the core questions before us is this: Who is going to lead this country? Is it perpetual outsiders like Trump, with no governing or policy competence, who say the establishments have forfeited all credibility? Or are there enough chastened members of establishments, who have governing experience, who acknowledge past mistakes, who take the time to reconnect with the country and apply their expertise in new ways?

I dont know about you, Ill take a chastened establishment any day.

David Brooks is a New York Times columnist.
'E-levy is retrogressive, can't be used ...
Theres no drill or ceremony, but the men and women who appear in Felony Veterans Treatment Court stand before the judges and maintain a military bearing  a form of respect rarely shown by civilian defendants.

One of Bexar Countys newest specialty courts, the court formed last year around Veterans Day and began hearing cases in January. It is for former servicemen and women who suffer from drug or alcohol abuse, mental health issues or post traumatic stress disorder, and have specified felony offenses pending. There is a companion court on the misdemeanor side that has operated for years.

Treatment court for veterans is logical here because of the large military footprint in Bexar County; there are about 60,000 active-duty personnel and some 211,000 veterans living here, with the militarys overall economic impact estimated at $28.8 billion a year.

Our goal is to give somebody the best resources and treatment so they have the tools to go back into the community, said Judge Lori I. Valenzuela, one of the judges involved in the program. We dont want them to return to the criminal justice system.

RELATED: Records: 49 arrested on felony DWI charges in October in Bexar County

As the daughter of a U.S. Army veteran, she said, the program has a special place in her heart. It is also a passion for Judge Jefferson Moore, a former judge advocate general who retired after 20 years serving in the U.S. Army Reserves and active duty in the National Guard. Though he has never seen combat, Moore said, he has spoken to many who have, and when they return, things arent easy.

Requirements DD214 form proving military discharge eligible felony offense pending U.S. citizen or legal resident Live in Bexar or surrounding county Get VA mental health assessment SOURCE: Bexar County Felony Veterans Treatment Court See More Collapse

Docket call for veterans is conducted each week on Thursday afternoons in Valenzuelas 437th state District Court, and in Moores 186th state District Court  which are right across from each other on the third floor of the Cadena-Reeves Justice Center.

We need to take care of these (vets), said Moore. Some of these guys seem to have issues caused by the service we ordered them to do, which is causing them to get arrested.

The proceedings in FVTC run differently  the weekly meetings begin with everyone reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, and each participant has a one-on-one conversation at the bench with their assigned judge, who will ask them about their week, challenges faced and lessons learned.

Valenzuela said the court should not be mistaken for a revolving door just because you are a vet, she said, but a treatment court that will provide participants with the tools they need to get them back on their feet.

John Herman, case manager for both courts, said the program is very intense for participants, who must report to court and work with a team of 11 people, up to four times a week in the beginning. He said each case and participants criminal history is carefully reviewed

We will take a look on a case-by-case basis, but it is up to the District Attorneys Office regarding the charges, Herman said.

RELATED: San Antonio part of study finding speedier PTSD therapy

He said a team of 11 review felony offenses such as drug, alcohol and assault charges, but anyone with a more serious accusation such as rape, murder, aggravated assaults that incurred serious bodily injury, or assault with a deadly weapon, arent considered for the special court.

The key requirement for each participant is a link between their military service and their criminal history, he said.

There needs to be a nexus with the military, mental health, substance abuse and criminal history, said Herman. There has to be a connection.

For consideration, veterans must write a letter to the team, which consists of a case manager, a probation officer, a Veterans Affairs coordinator, two Bexar County prosecutors, two defense attorneys, both judges and two mentors.

The main focus is to reduce arrests, promote self-sufficiency to keep participants sober and help them achieve education and employment to become responsible members of the community.

They have to do treatment, drug tests, community service hours, Moore said.

The time commitment is intense, but he said: In as short as four weeks, I can see them improving. Its stark.

READ ALSO: Army backtracks on border mission timetable

The new court currently has 18 participants who meet weekly with a team, which consists of a probation officer, a Veterans Affairs coordinator, two Bexar County prosecutors, two defense attorneys, two mentors, and Moore and Valenzuela. The program will take from 18 months to two years to complete, Herman said, and then the participant enters after-care.

Although the charges would stay the same, once someone successfully completes the courts program, Herman said, there would be pre-trial and other diversion programs and alternatives that the team would discuss with the DAs office, which has the final say on disposition of the case.

Herman said once a participant is done with the program, that doesnt mean contact ends there.

We will stay with them and continue to work with them 100 percent, he said. Once they are with us, were family.

Elizabeth Zavala is a courts and crime reporter in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. Read her on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | ezavala@express-news.net | Twitter: @elizabeth2863
This story has been updated with new information provided by SAPD.

A man was shot and killed at an East Side residence after a drug deal he arranged on social media went wrong, according to San Antonio police.
A 19-year-old male who police say opened fire on a man and woman Tuesday, resulting in the death of the woman, had been "beefing" with the other man, according to an arrest affidavit.

John Michael Zimmers Jr. was arrested Thursday night after a high-speed chase. He faces charges of murder, drug possession, and evading arrest.

Zimmers is accused in the shooting death of Gloria Stephanie Rodriguez, 36, at about 6:30 p.m. Tuesday near Pecan Valley Drive and Pyle Street on the Southeast Side.

RELATED: Teen accused of gunning down a woman on S.E. side arrested after high-speed chase

A witness told police that he, Rodriguez and another man were going to a nearby gas station to buy some items when he noticed a green SUV near the gas pumps, according to an arrest affidavit. Eventually, the SUV drove off and the group started walking home.

When they got to Pecan Valley Drive and Pyle Street they noticed the same SUV at a stop sign. All three then crossed the street and kept walking, but the SUV drove up near them.

A gunman, later identified by witnesses as Zimmers, started shooting, striking Rodriguez, according to the affidavit. The SUV then sped off.

The witness told police he saw only one person in the car when the shooting occurred. He also told police that he had been Zimmers' intended target, according to the affidavit.

Another man told police that Zimmers went to his house asking for help after the shooting. The affidavit states that Zimmers told this witness that he had been involved in a shooting but that it was Zimmers who had been shot at first and he was only returning fire.

Zimmers also told the witness he had been "beefing" with one of the men in the group, the affidavit states.

According to a San Antonio police sergeant, street crimes officers were searching for Zimmers when a helicopter unit spotted him at about 11:45 p.m. Thursday near Pecan Valley Drive. An officer attempted a traffic stop. Zimmers did not pull over and a chase ensued, police said.

RELATED: Teen in critical condition following Saturday morning shooting

Police said the chase reached speeds of 90 mph. Bexar County deputies joined in before Zimmers smashed into a civilian's vehicle near Goliad Road and Pecan Valley Drive, authorities said.

After the collision, Zimmers darted into a nearby auto repair store, where he was detained by police, officials said. Paramedics took him and a woman who was a passenger in his car to a local hospital for minor injuries.

There were four people in the civilian vehicle Zimmers crashed into, including two children. The children were unharmed, but paramedics took the two adults in the vehicle to a hospital for non-life threatening injuries.
This story has been updated to reflect new information provided by SAPD.

A 17-year-old boy is in critical condition after being shot several times early Saturday morning on the Southeast Side, police said.
MIAMI (AP)  Two children of a 52-year-old Alabama woman who died on a cruise from Florida to Aruba say she was nervous about taking the trip.

Timothy Tenorio told ABC's "Good Morning America" on Tuesday that his mother, Almarosa Tenorio, told him when she said goodbye that it might be the last time she hugged him.
Balkis Press /TNS

Mr. President, your statement regarding Saudi Arabias involvement in Jamal Khashoggis murder is an affront to the core values of our nation embodied in the Declaration of Independence and our Constitution. Mr. Khashoggis unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness was alienated by an authoritarian government with no regard for freedom of speech.

Your thin attempt at citing Saudi Arabias efforts against Iran as justification glosses over the Saudis indefensible human rights violations in Yemen while simultaneously revealing your belief that we are not strong enough to curb Iran on our own. You do not waste much time talking about abstract ideas like terrorism, however. Your primary justification is economic. You entice us to go along with you by waving dollars in front of us. In doing so, you have clearly communicated to the world that at least on your watch, Americas founding values can be bought if the price is high enough. Saudi Arabia has demonstrated to the world how to get away with murder and crimes against humanity  buy off the only independent actor with the muscle to stop them.
So, Ivanka Trump has been using a private email account to conduct official business in violation of federal law.

Can you say, Lock her up?

Steven G. Powell

Bad candidates

Re: How Trumps handhold on 2020 could slip, Other Views, by Michael Gerson, Tuesday:

Its ironic Michael Gerson writes about improving the character of Republican presidential candidates in 2020 when the Democratic Party ran Hillary Clinton in 2016 and again possibly in 2020.

Look in the mirror, sir.

Jimmie Jones, New Braunfels

Disgusting display

The article by Felicia Sonmez of the Washington Post on President Donald Trumps 20-20 hindsight about the capture of Osama bin Laden was sad (Trump says U.S. slow in killing bin Laden, enraging critics, Tuesday).

Trumps flagrant and random tweeting about any subject that pops into his mind is a sad comedy being played by a man with a serious personality disorder who is supposed to be leading our nation.

He should not be taking potshots at distinguished Americans like Adm. Bill McRaven. Adm. McRaven is a distinguished officer, a brilliant strategist and a known leader who is suffering from leukemia.

We know about the presidents history of ridiculing those who are infirm or not attractive in his sad mind, or who disagree with him. I am astounded that the Republican National Committee rallied in Trumps defense after his comments.

This is just another example of the weakness and pettiness of many of our political leaders. I feel as if I am watching two neighborhood children (the Democrats and Republicans) bickering about whose turn it is to be pitcher so they can throw beanballs at each other.

Mike Horridge

Trump helps Pelosi?

I read where President Donald Trump has said he can get Nancy Pelosi as many votes as she wants to make sure she gets elected speaker of the House.

I also heard he intends to get up early the next day and have the sun come up in the eastern sky. Amazing.

Bobby Allen
FORMER president Robert Mugabe is now unable to walk and has been in Singapore over the past two months for medical attention.

This was revealed by President Emmerson Mnangagwa Saturday while addressing a Zanu PF rally at Murombedzi Growth Point in Mashonaland West province.

The rally is the first of a series meant to thank voters for backing him and the ruling Zanu PF party in the bitterly disputed July 30 elections.

According to Mnangagwa, Mugabe has been in the Asian island city state of Singapore over the past two months for medical attention.

Mnangagwa told the gathering at Murombedzi that, Mugabe, now 94 years old, is no longer able to walk, adding that the government would continue to look after him.

He (Mugabe) is now old. Of course, he now is unable to walk but whatever he asks for we will provide.

The veteran leader was however, on the mend and now expected back home at the end of the month.

He should have been back on October 25 but his health was not yet good, Mnangagwa said.

But yesterday we got a message that he thinks he is getting better. He will come back on 30 November.

Mugabe, Zimbabwes ruler over the first 37 years of independence, suffered an inglorious end to his reign at the hands of trusted allies last November.

He gave in to pressure from increasingly powerful wife Grace and her G40 allies to fire Mnangagwa as internecine squabbling over his succession came to a head.

The army however, intervened by taking over power and effectively placing Mugabe under house arrest while Zanu PF initiated impeachment proceedings.

This forced Mugabe to resign, resulting in Mnangagwa taking over power.

The irony of holding a celebratory rally in Mugabes home district on the anniversary of the veteran leaders inglorious exit from power was not lost on Mnangagwa on Saturday.

He reiterated his respect for his mentor, making it clear that Mugabe was the undisputed founding father of independent Zimbabwe.

He (Mugabe) is the founding father of the nation of Zimbabwe, said Mnangagwa.

He is our founding father of a free Zimbabwe. There could be others who would want to distort our history, but they should also know that Zimbabwes founding father is Gushungo.

 NewZimbabwe

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Vice-President Constantino Chiwenga yesterday vowed that MDC leader Nelson Chamisa will never take over as president, saying no opposition leader will ever rule the country.

Addressing Zanu PF supporters in Zvimba yesterday at a thank you rally organised for President Emmerson Mnangagwa, Chiwenga  who led the military coup against former president Robert Mugabe in November last year  launched an unrestrained verbal attack on Chamisa.

He described the opposition leader, who is an Apostolic Faith Mission pastor, as a false prophet and a little bishop.

The VP  who resurfaced last week after a long absence from public events amid reports that he was seriously ill  declared that there was no vacancy at State House.

We hear that this young preacher is going around telling people that he is on his way to State House. That is wishful thinking, charged Chiwenga.

There is no vacancy at State House now and forever for opposition parties.

He described Chamisas supporters as blind.

We are saying [this] to you blind ones who could not see and voted for this little bishop  the false prophet. He elects himself and the fire refuses to light up. He elects himself and the birds return to the podium, the VP said.

Chiwenga was referring to the Gwanzura Stadium incident where Chamisa struggled to light what his party described as a democracy flame and released 19 doves.

This is what Jehovah says, we do not want to play with the name of Jehovah to that extent, he said.

Meanwhile, Mnangagwa also fired a broadside at Chamisa, saying he was abusing the democracy ushered in following former president Robert Mugabes ouster by the military.

We are doing government programmes to feed the nation like command agriculture and when some people are full, they abuse the democratic space we created for them. . . they must be warned that we are not fools, he said.

Mnangagwa went on to compare Chamisa with MDC founding leader, the late Morgan Tsvangirai, whom he described as better than the youthful politician.

Tsvangirai was better because he had Zimbabwe at heart. We differed with him, but he would give you his thoughts in a more mature manner, Mnangagwa said.

Tsvangirai succumbed to cancer in February this year.

Chamisa immediately took to Twitter to mock both Mnangagwa and Chiwenga following their statements. I am praying for sekuru Chiwenga, he tweeted.

He really needs grace. I thank him for acknowledging my faith and ordaining me a prophet.

He said the VP sounded like Ian Smith with his not in a thousand years mantra.

He said Mnangagwa seemed to miss my old man, the iconic MT, the man who taught me to fight oppression and injustice.

 The Standard

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MDC president Nelson Chamisa has apparently hit back at Vice President Constantino Chiwenga. This comes after the VP referred to Chamisa as a false prophet while addressing ZANU PF supporters at Murombedzi Growth Point on Saturday.

Writing on microblogging site Twitter yesterday, Chamisa said:

I am praying for my Sekuru Mr Chiwenga.He really needs grace!I thank him for acknowledging my faith and ordaining me a prophet.

Why does he sound like the Rhodesian Smith in his not in a thousand years mantra! This Nov is when Smith declared UDI and you know it!Chamisa tweeted.

Vice-President Constantino Chiwenga yesterday vowed that MDC leader Nelson Chamisa will never take over as president, saying no opposition leader will ever rule the country.

Addressing Zanu PF supporters in Zvimba yesterday at a thank you rally organised for President Emmerson Mnangagwa, Chiwenga  who led the military coup against former president Robert Mugabe in November last year  launched an unrestrained verbal attack on Chamisa.

He described the opposition leader, who is an Apostolic Faith Mission pastor, as a false prophet and a little bishop.

The VP  who resurfaced last week after a long absence from public events amid reports that he was seriously ill  declared that there was no vacancy at State House.

We hear that this young preacher is going around telling people that he is on his way to State House. That is wishful thinking, charged Chiwenga.

There is no vacancy at State House now and forever for opposition parties.

He described Chamisas supporters as blind.

We are saying [this] to you blind ones who could not see and voted for this little bishop  the false prophet. He elects himself and the fire refuses to light up. He elects himself and the birds return to the podium, the VP said.

Chiwenga was referring to the Gwanzura Stadium incident where Chamisa struggled to light what his party described as a democracy flame and released 19 doves.

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By Jessica Corbett, a staff writer for Common Dreams. Reposted from Alternet.

Amazon workers across Europe staged a walkout on Black Fridaywhen retailers offer major deals to holiday season shoppers the day after Thanksgivingto protest low wages as well as inhuman conditions at company warehouses.

It is one of the days that Amazon has most sales, and these are days when we can hurt more and make ourselves be heard because the company has not listened to us and does not want to reach any agreement.

Eduardo Hernandez, Amazon worker in Spain

Eduardo Hernandez, a 38-year-old employee at an Amazon logistics depot in Madrid, Spainwhere about 90 percent of staff walked off the jobtoldthe Associated Press that the action was intentionally scheduled on the popular shopping day to negatively impacting the companys profits.

Hoy #BlackFriday es un #BlackFridaySinAmazon: Comienza la #HuelgaAmazon en #Madrid, en lucha por los derechos que la empresa mas rica del mundo quiere arrebatar a su plantilla pic.twitter.com/dWe3mUeAVh  CCOO de Madrid (@CCOOMadrid) November 23, 2018

Protests were also planned for Amazon facilities in Italy, France, the United Kingdom, and Germany.

Some 620 employees at Amazon distribution centers in Rheinberg and Bad Hersfeld, Germany joined the walkout to demand higher wages, while union members in the U.K. organized actions at five warehouses across the country to highlight safety concerns.

As Tim Roache, head of the London-based GMB union explained: The conditions our members at Amazon are working under are frankly inhuman. They are breaking bones, being knocked unconscious, and being taken away in ambulances.

While Amazon denies these claimstelling Business Insider in a statement Thursday that all of our sites are safe places to work and reports to the contrary are simply wrongRoache said the workers are standing up and saying enough is enough.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is the richest bloke on the planet; he can afford to sort this out. Youd think making the workplace safer so people arent carted out of the warehouse in an ambulance is in everyones interest, Roache added. These are people making Amazon its money. People with kids, homes, bills to paytheyre not robots.

In a video from the union targeting Bezos, workers also declared in multiple languages, We are not robots. Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the U.K.s Labour Party, shared the video on Twitter and expressed solidarity with those participating in the walkout.
(Natural News) The internet is abuzz with analysis of the California fires, and some observers note that the videos and photos from the fire are showing a surprising number of anomalies that dont seem possible to have occurred through natural fires. This article from ChemtrailPlanet.com offers a typical description of the strangeness now being observed with these fires:

The news tried to give the impression that the over 100 fires (in 2017) that occurred all at once were from a forest fire spreading into neighborhoods. Yet, most of the trees didnt burn and there is no burnt path between houses that are next to or across from each other. Notice in the picture on the left how that there was no burnt path between the two buildings and how that though both buildings were surrounded by trees, none of the trees got burnt or even singed. It is plain to see from this picture that a fire didnt go from one building to the other, but that they were both attacked from above or inside.

Many people believe the U.S. government is behind the fires, using Direct Energy Weapons (DEW) to target the area for destruction in a way that can be easily blamed on wildfires:

The evidence that the fires were a result of directed energy weapons (DEW), at least in part, is undeniably strong. There are also theories of smart meters or transformers blowing up being a cause. They might have contributed, (but that wouldnt explain cars also being toasted with no burnt path between the house and the car), and the evidence that can be seen is that of directed energy weapons. It is not at all unfathomable that more than one weapon could have been used to ensure the desired effect.

CrazzFiles.com has also posted a collection of photos from the California fires that seem to show anomalous behavior. See some of those photos are posted here, including this first one that shows cars and trucks burned out, but nearby trees appear to still retain their leaves:

This next photo appears to show an entire neighborhood of houses that burned down, yet nearby trees were somehow spared. It isnt known, however, when or where this photo was taken, so its difficult to attribute this to the recent California fires:

According to internet analysts, these Direct Energy Weapons are being used around the world to torch intended targets while being able to blame them on natural fires. The following photo was supposedly taken in Greece, and it appears to show an entire street of burned and melted automobiles, surrounded by trees on both sides of the road which were miraculously undamaged (and still have their leaves):

Heres a video from John Knox that has since been banned on YouTube. A user posted it to Brighteon.com, so you can see it there. Watch the first 3 minutes to get a sense of what Knox is explaining:

If these fires are being artificially created, what would be the purpose in doing so?

Creating fires artificially is nothing new. Its called arson, and there are a thousand different ways to carry it out. Whats being alleged with the California fires is the idea that arson is being initiated using energy weapons platforms mounted on aircraft.

We already know such systems exist, by the way. This isnt some outlandish theory. The UK Daily Mail, for example, reported over a year ago that Russia had successfully mounted lasers on fighter jets that could burn through enemy missiles. Russia says it will deploy powerful lasers on its new sixth-generation fighter jets to destroy enemy missiles, reports the news publisher. The news comes one month after the US army successfully hit an unmanned target using a high-powered laser mounted on a Apache AH-64 helicopter.

In other words, laser systems are already being mounted in helicopters and jet fighters. And thats publicly known. Imagine what kind of energy weapon systems are not yet being reported to the public, and imagine how large of a system could be mounted on a C-130 military cargo aircraft.

Its not even really a question of whether such weapon systems exist, as thats already been confirmed. The bigger question is why California would be targeted in such an attack and who benefits from the fires?

Some observers have compared the burning of California to the Biblical event of God destroying Sodom and Gomorrah. These two ancient cities were destroyed by fire from the sky, and the Bible explains this was done as punishment for the homosexual orgies carried out by those who lived there. Some people believe today that the California fires are also the result of Gods wrath for similar reasons, noting that the fires have burned out the luxurious homes of many Hollywood actors and producers who create sick, perverted films while promoting the transgender genital mutilation of children. (Related note: Twitter now openly promotes the genital mutilation of little girls and has begun banning anyone who speaks out against genital mutilation.)

Other observers say the fires have nothing to do with Gods wrath and are, instead, a United Nations military operation to depopulate the region in advance of it being seized by globalists. Humans must be forced into the cities, the thinking goes, and evacuated from rural areas that will be controlled by police state world governments. Setting rural areas on fire, some people believe, is the quickest way to convince people to leave (or kill them while they try to escape).

This explanation doesnt add up, however, when you consider that many people whose homes were burned out are simply going to rebuild new homes in the exact same location after collecting insurance money. Unless residents are blocked from rebuilding, the land seizure explanation doesnt really add up.

Leftists blame global warming for the fires, but their explanation makes no sense either

On the political Left, liberals blame global warming for the fires. They mindlessly call it climate change now, of course, and they imply that forests never burned anywhere on the planet before humans came along and started burning gasoline in combustion engines.

These very same people who claim that burning fossil fuels causes fires are still, by the way, burning up fossil fuels as they commute across Los Angeles and other California cities. As I point out in this Natural News article, if Californias fires are caused by combustion engines, then why are California residents still driving cars? Do they want more fires? Are they cruel?

The simplest explanation is that shrubs and grasses simply burn when ignited under the right conditions, but mature trees often survive forest fires

For these particular fires, I tend to go with Occams Razor: The simplest explanation is often the correct one. You dont need exotic energy weapons systems or the wrath of God to set fire to Malibu. All you need is the right conditions (dryness, winds, lots of plant fuel) and a single spark. The laws of physics take care of the rest.

California is probably burning for the simple reason that shrubs and grasses always burn when ignited under the right conditions. Given that much of California is a natural desert, the conditions are often ideal there for grass fires to spread, once ignited. The ignition could have easily come from a smart meter, or an electric utility component malfunction.

Whats throwing a lot of people off is the apparent strangeness where trees are not burned up but cars and homes have been burned to a crisp. How does this happen?

Many people may not realize it, but most forest fires dont burn up all the trees. They leave most mature trees alive and singed, ready to re-grow leaves and small branches in the following year. Trees dont automatically burn up in every forest fire, and in fact, small brush fires are a very necessary and healthy part of forest ecology. Pine cones, for example, contain a natural wax that holds the pine seeds in place. This wax is melted by brush fires, releasing the seeds which find themselves planted in fertile ground, cleared of brush by the natural fires. Without forest fires, pine trees would have a much more difficult time reproducing.

It does seem strange to me that some photos appear to show tree leaves remaining intact, even while vehicles are burned out nearby. This seems to defy any reasonable explanation, so theres a still a mystery element to explore in all this.

However, to see neighborhoods where homes are burned down while trees seem unaffected isnt that unusual. Modern homes are made of combustible material such as 24 timber, plywood and roof shingles that can ignite. Plus, homes are filled with papers, furniture, clothing, wood floors and other combustible materials. In a typical home, all these materials are very dry and contain almost no moisture. Meanwhile, nearby trees may be full of moisture in their trunks, branches and leaves. This moisture offers a high level of protection against nearby fires. Thats why homes can burn down right next to mature trees that appear unaffected. It all depends on the level of moisture in the trees. (Ever try to light wet logs on fire? Its almost impossible to get them to light.)

The bottom line here is that yes, its certainly possible that aircraft-mounted energy weapons systems could have sparked numerous fires in California and around the world, but its also not as strange as it first seems to witness homes burning to the ground while nearby trees remain largely intact.

Besides, God already punished California by making Nancy Pelosi the upcoming Speaker of the House.
Russia has signed contracts with India on the construction of four project 11356 frigates for the Indian Navy, Russias Federal Service for Military and Technical Cooperation said.

Russia has signed contracts with India on the construction of four project 11356 frigates for the Indian Navy, Russias Federal Service for Military and Technical Cooperation said.

Three project 11356 frigates (Talwar-class) of the Indian Navy - from left to right: F 51 Trikand, F 44 Tabar and F 45 Teg (c) Indian Navy

"Contracts were signed for the construction of project 11356 frigates for the Indian Navy. This is yet another important event in developing Russian-Indian military and technical cooperation," the Federal Service said.

India is to buy four Russian frigates that would be built in the 2+2 format: two would be constructed at Russias Yantar Shipyard on the Baltic coast and the other two at Indias Goa Shipyard.

A source in the Indian defense industry told TASS technology transfer is envisaged in frigate construction according to the national Make in India program. "We need technologies," he said. The India-built frigates have to be ready in 2027.

Project 11356 frigates are designed to deliver strikes against adversary surface ships and submarines both in brown and green waters and fight air targets. The warships are armed with A-190 100mm artillery guns, strike missile and air defense systems, including Kalibr and Shtil complexes and torpedoes. The displacement is 3620 tons. The frigates are 124.8 meters long, develop a speed of 30 knots and have an operating range of 4850 miles.

 Copyright 2018 TASS. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The 49ers on Sunday morning announced the team is releasing second-year linebacker Reuben Foster, just hours after his arrest at the team hotel on a misdemeanor charge of domestic violence.

The 49ers stood behind Foster during his previous accusation of domestic violence, stemming from a February incident in Los Gatos, but the latest incident prompted the 49ers to announce they are parting ways with the former first-round draft pick, four hours before the team's scheduled kickoff against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

General manager John Lynch and coach Kyle Shanahan stated in April that any player who hits a woman would have no place on the 49ers.

On Saturday, Foster was arrested at 9:10 p.m. ET at the team hotel, and he was charged with one count of first-degree misdemeanor domestic violence. He was booked into Hillsborough County Jail at 11:11 p.m.

According to Greg Auman of The Athletic, Foster's bond has been set at $2,000, and a judge has ordered the linebacker to have no contact with the victim, who is 28-year-old Elissa Ennis, the same woman from the previous domestic violence case.

Tampa police said in a statement given to NBC Sports Bay Area that Foster, 24, and the woman, who wasn't identified at that time, previously lived together and were involved in an "on-again-off-again" relationship over the past three years.

Foster and Ennis were involved in a verbal altercation Saturday, according to police. Ennis said Foster slapped her phone out of her hand, pushed her in the chest and slapped her on the left side of her face with an open hand.

Officers observed a one-inch scratch on Ennis' left collarbone, according to the report.

In February, Ennis told officers at the scene in Los Gatos that Foster struck her eight to 10 times in the head. He originally was charged with felonies for domestic violence, making criminal threats and weapons possession.

A Santa Clara County judge dismissed those charges on May 23, ruling the District Attorneys office did not show sufficient evidence to proceed with the case. Ennis testified during the preliminary hearing that she lied during her statements to investigators as revenge against Foster, who told her he wanted to break up with her.

As for her motivation for accusing Foster, Ennis said on the witness stand, I was going to f--- up his career.

Two months later, after reporting to 49ers training camp, Foster described the entire episode as a "learning experience."

"It made me appreciate football a lot better," Foster said. "It was crazy, knowing that football can be gone. Being back on this field with my brothers and these coaches, man, is a blessing."

The 49ers selected Foster in the first round of the 2017 draft with the No. 31 overall pick. He earned his degree in human environmental science from Alabama, where he won the 2016 Dick Butkus Award as college footballs best linebacker. Injuries limited Foster to nine games during his rookie season.

The NFL suspended Foster for the first two games of this season for violations of the leagues policies on personal conduct and substances of abuse, stemming from an offseason misdemeanor charge of possession of marijuana in Alabama. The league did not punish him for the alleged domestic violence incident.

Foster's suspension for personal conduct was from his no contest plea to a weapons charge, which was reduced to a misdemeanor, related to the marijuana case. He was sentenced to two years' probation, 232 hours of community service and $235 in fines.

The two-game suspension without pay amounted to a $103,024 loss of Fosters scheduled $875,708 salary.

Last week, Lynch told NBC Sports Bay Area that he believed Foster was on the right path. He missed the two games before the bye week with a hamstring injury.

"Were really proud of some of the steps Reuben is making, just as far as growing up," Lynch said during the bye week. "His diligence to his rehab has been extraordinary. Im excited to see him come and play. Hes watching film. Hes doing all the things that pros do, and hes really growing in that respect."
What to Know The Camp Fire in Butte County is 100 percent contained after scorching 153,336 acres

The blaze has left at least 85 people dead and destroyed 13,972 homes

The cause of the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in recorded California history remains under investigation

A massive wildfire that killed dozens of people and destroyed thousands of homes in Northern California has been fully contained after burning for more than two weeks, authorities said Sunday.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said the Camp fire had been surrounded by firefighters following several days of rain in and around the devastated town of Paradise.

The nation's deadliest wildfire in a century killed at least 85 people, and 249 are on a list of those unaccounted for. The number of missing dropped in recent days as officials confirmed that more people were alive.

Crews continued sifting through debris and ash for human remains.

"It's certainly good to be done with the containment of this fire, even though there's still a lot of work to be done moving forward," fire spokeswoman Jennifer Erickson said.

The blaze began on Nov. 8 in the parched Sierra Nevada foothills and quickly spread across 240 square miles, destroying most of Paradise in a day.

Nearly 19,000 buildings, most of them homes, are gone.

The firefight got a boost last week from the first significant winter storm to hit California. It dropped an estimated 7 inches of rain over the burn area during a three-day period without causing significant mudslides, said Hannah Chandler-Cooley of the National Weather Service.

In Southern California, more residents returned to areas evacuated in a destructive fire as crews repaired power, telephone and gas utilities.

Los Angeles County sheriff's officials said they were in the last phase of repopulating Malibu and unincorporated areas of the county. At the height of the fire, 250,000 fled their homes. The fire was fully contained Nov. 21 after burning for two weeks.

Three people died, and 1,643 buildings, most of them homes, were destroyed, officials said.
While there will be plenty of focus on the heavy snowfall making its way toward the Chicago-area, residents should also be on the look out for high waves on Lake Michigan as a result of the winter storm.

The National Weather Service has issued a Lakeshore Flood Warning in advance of the storm. The warning will take effect at 9 p.m. Sunday night and will last through noon on Monday, and will affect Cook County in Illinois and Porter and Lake counties in Indiana.

According to the warning, waves of 12 to 18 feet are expected, and significant shoreline flooding and beach erosion are also possible because of the high water.

Residents are urged to avoid flood prone areas along the lakeshore, including the city of Chicago bike path.

Piers, jetties, and breakwalls could also be overtaken by water, and residents are urged to exercise caution near the lake.
What to Know A Husky that disappeared from his home in New York was taken in by a teen in Florida 18 months later

The Husky, named Sinatra, once belonged to a 16-year-old who died in a gun accident in Brooklyn

He'll be reunited with her family in Baltimore on Sunday

Eighteen months after Sinatra the brown and white Husky disappeared from his home in Brooklyn, he ended up wandering in a Florida neighborhood where 13-year-old Rose Verrill took him in.

Turns out, Sinatra once belonged to 16-year-old Zion Willis, who died in a gun accident in the Bronx in 2015. He'll be reunited with her family in Baltimore on Sunday.

The Tampa Bay Times reports that while the dog has been found, no one knows how it traveled 1,200 miles from New York to Seffner, which is near Tampa.

But this much is known. Sinatra was a 14th birthday gift for Zion, who was an avid dancer and an animal lover. The blue-eyed dog loved to chase raccoons and squirrels, the teen's father told the newspaper. One day, a year-and-a-half after Zion's death, the dog never came home. It was a tragic loss for Zion's grieving parents.

Some 18 months passed before the Florida teen found Sinatra near her home.

"He's been such a wonderful guest and such a sweet dog," said Rose's mother, Denise Verrill. "I can see why they love him so much."

The Verrills and family friend Jeanne Baldi started trying to find Sinatra's owners. They took him to a veterinarian who was not able to retrieve much from an identification chip. They turned to the Hillsborough County Pet Resource Center, which came up with a possible name - Willis Les - and a phone number that was off by one digit.

That's when Baldi took to social media. She reached out to Lesmore Willis with the information she had.

"I never would have thought he was from Brooklyn," Baldi said. "I messaged Lesmore over Facebook and didn't think it would lead to anything when I saw where he was from."

A few days later, Willis messaged back. As they compared notes, they both spoke of a dog that had a problem with its right foot.

Baldi sent along a photo and Willis confirmed it was Sinatra.

"I told him that he was safe and well taken care of with Denise," Baldi said.

Willis spoke of his daughter's love for the dog. "That was her dog and their bond was strong," he said. "She loved to take him on her walks to the store. The love was obvious. When he was gone, it was like losing a part of her."

After Sinatra disappeared, they put up flyers and spent months searching.

Now, they'll be reunited. A friend of Verrill's is taking Sinatra to Baltimore for the Thanksgiving weekend reunion.
A Connecticut man who spent 22 years on the run after he was convicted of murder is heading back to court for an appeal trial.

Testimony in the trial of Adam Zachs is scheduled to begin Monday in Rockville Superior Court.

The 55-year-old former West Hartford resident says he did not get the lawyer of his choice for his 1988 murder trial, and the attorney he did have was ineffective. He filed a habeas corpus appeal seeking to get his conviction overturned.

Zachs was convicted of fatally shooting 29-year-old Peter Carone outside a West Hartford restaurant following a bar fight and sentenced to 60 years in prison. He fled in 1989 after posting bail during his appeal and was captured in Mexico in 2011.

The state disputes Zachs' appeal claims.
A group of Southern California doctors crossed the border into Tijuana on Saturday to treat members of the migrant caravan who are camping in overcrowded shelters.

About 20 medical professionals  doctors and medical students from UCLA and UC Irvine  traveled from the Los Angeles area to the border with medical supplies.

Weve been watching the pain and suffering on the news and just sitting there and feeling sorry for them isnt enough. We have to do something, said Margarita Loeza, a doctor at UCLAs Providence St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica.

The group met in San Diego and traveled to Tijuana with local volunteers who were also delivering food and water to shelters.

The Central American migrants have been living in camps in unhealthy conditions.

Not only have they been dealing with poor nutrition, which has led to a number of medical problems, but also theyve suffered abuse from protesters in Tijuana throwing rocks, said Phillip Canete, the organizer of the medical brigade.

Doctors say that a large number of migrants are also dealing with flu and foot problems from their long journey. Many are dealing with colds, cough and other infections because, being from Central America, the migrants have not acclimated to the colder climate here, Canete said.

The doctors set up the clinic Saturday and were hoping to meet with 50 patients a day and will likely return for follow up visits.

Were also immigrants, Loeza said. Our family migrated in different ways. Theyre human beings and we want to help them. Its the right thing to do.

In effect, Mexican border towns are acting as waiting rooms for migrants hoping to start new lives in the U.S. due to bottlenecks at the border. President Donald Trump is calling on Mexico to stop the migrants from reaching the U.S. and is saying that all will stay in Mexico while their claims are processed. He even threatened to close the border. However, Mexico denied that is made a deal with the U.S. to hold asylum-seekers in the country.

For many of the migrant families, it may take months just to apply for asylum. That likely means that the doctors' mission to treat the migrants will be a long-term one.

Saturdays visit was also to assess the migrants needs so that the next time we come we come better equipped, Loeza said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A former Texas police chief is being held without bail in a western New York jail after being charged with the murders of two people.

The Wayne County sheriff's office says Timothy Dean was arraigned Friday in connection with the Oct. 22 shootings in Sodus. The Democrat and Chronicle of Rochester says the former Sunray, Texas, police chief pleaded not guilty.

The jail didn't have information Saturday on whether Dean has a lawyer who can comment on the case.

The shootings killed Amber Washburn and Joshua Niles, the ex-boyfriend of Dean's wife, Charlene Childers.

Childers is jailed on conspiracy and weapons charges. A Sunray police officer, Bron Bohlar, is being held on a conspiracy charge.

Police have said the 32-year-old Dean carried out the shooting, while the others helped plan it.
Olivia Hooker, one of the last survivors of the 1921 Tulsa race riots and among the first black women in the U.S. Coast Guard, has died. She was 103.

Hooker was 6 years old when one of the worst race riots in U.S. history broke out and destroyed much of a Tulsa neighborhood known as "Black Wall Street." She hid under a table as a torch-carrying mob destroyed her family's home, she told National Public Radio in an interview this year.

She recalled hearing the mob use an axe to destroy her sister's piano. For a child, she said, it was horrifying trying to keep quiet.

"The most shocking was seeing people you'd never done anything to irritate would just, took it upon themselves to destroy your property because they didn't want you to have those things," said Hooker, who died this week at her home in New York, according to her goddaughter.

The number of deaths from the riot was never confirmed, but estimates vary from about three dozen to 300 or more. The violence began after a black man allegedly assaulted a white woman in an elevator in Tulsa.

Following the riots, Hooker's family moved. And during World War II, she became the first African-American woman to join the U.S. Coast Guard as a member of the Semper Paratus program, or SPAR, in which she prepared discharges for guardsmen returning from the war and rejoining civilian life, according to the Coast Guard.

"She was a national treasure, she was a very special lady," Coast Guard spokesman Barry Lane said.

She went on to earn a master's degree from Columbia University and a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Rochester, and later worked as a professor at Fordham University in New York, according to the Coast Guard.

Her goddaughter, Janis Porter, said Hooker died Wednesday at their home in White Plains, New York. Porter said her godmother had no surviving relatives. She didn't provide a cause of death.

"Her mind was clear, no dementia. She was just tired," Porter said Friday.

Hooker was also a member of the Tulsa Race Riot Commission, now called the Tulsa Race Massacre Commission, which has sought reparations for survivors impacted by the violence.
A menacing hand reaches from above, pushing the small girl further underwater as she struggles for air.

The Houston Chronicle reports that's what 12-year-old Izzy Plunkett drew last October in a family friend's home, adopted as her own, as her family rebuilt their Hurricane Harvey-flooded home in Cypress.

"The house was out on a ranch in the middle of nowhere," Izzy said. The home-schooled teenager was a long drive from the activities, such as theater rehearsal, that would have made life feel kind of normal. "But my art was always there with me."

Izzy's dark drawing became the inspiration for her Silver Award project, the highest award that middle school-aged Girl Scouts can earn. Her project culminated in a recent "Recovery through Art" event for other Girl Scouts at mosaic-filled Smither Park, where mental health advocates and community artists were on hand to encourage self-expression in the face of trauma or stress.

With fruit-shaped pins and a bow in her hair, enthusiastic Izzy, now 13, was there, too, kicking off the event with a short speech and teaching other girls how to draw at the sketching table.

"Sometimes, whenever something bad happens to you, like Harvey or a loss to the family, it can make you very upset, and you don't want to keep that all inside of you," Izzy said to the girls gathered around her at Smither Park. "That's unhealthy, and you don't want to be unhealthy."

After making her case for mental wellness, members of Mental Health America of Greater Houston gathered the girls into a circle and urged them to reach out to trusted adults and friends when feeling depressed or overwhelmed.

"Harvey is just one example of something traumatic that ended up changing a lot of lives," said programming coordinator Tilicia Johnson, who Mental Health America of Greater Houston brought in to lead post-Harvey workshops. "Through art, girls are able to find an avenue to heal their emotions and what they went through."

Although other stressors can strike at any moment, Houstonians are most likely still in the throes of post-Harvey recovery. Disaster research has found mental health needs peak around 18 months after the traumatic event, and recovery can take anywhere from three to five years, said the chapter's chief operating officer, Alejandra Posada.

On the local level, a survey conducted by the UT School of Public Health a few months after Hurricane Harvey found that nearly half of Harris County residents whose homes flooded during the storm were experiencing severe psychological distress.

"In those first months after the disasters, it's survival. I've got to make sure my family has a roof over their head," Posada said. "Sometimes, it's not until some of those basic needs are met that those emotions have room to come out."

Izzy, her older sister Abby, 16, and her parents at first coped with Harvey's heavy floods by camping out upstairs -- literally. Her father, Vince Plunkett, cut the house's power, and they brought all sorts of camping equipment to the second floor. The Plunketts sanitized one bathroom and transformed it into a makeshift kitchen. A week later, they evacuated to a friend's house in Hockley.

The experience of flooding, evacuating and tearing apart their home rattled Izzy, said her mother, Jennifer Plunkett.

"She shut down verbally, and art kind of pulled her out," Plunkett said. "It got her talking about how she felt."

That started with an activity called Inktober, in which artists across the country vow to make one original drawing every day of October. Izzy followed a list of prompts as inspiration for her sketches, and in response to one, she drew a girl being pushed underwater by an oppressive hand.

"She drew this picture, and when I first saw it -- it hit me," Jennifer Plunkett said. "It was very hard to see her drawing that."

With encouragement from her family, Izzy recreated her drawing with watercolors and entered it into a children's mental health-related art contest organized by Mental Health America of Greater Houston. She won first place, which came with a scholarship for art classes at the Museum of Fine Arts - Houston's Glassell School of Art.

A few months later, the family visited the mosaic-covered Smither Park, a project of the Orange Show where a variety of Houston artists have crafted small sections of the walls, pavilion and picnic tables into creations of their own imaginations. Izzy was captivated, and she got permission from the park to create a mosaic at the base of a park lamp post.

Next, she gathered tiles, plates and other ceramics damaged by the storm's flooding from more than 20 neighbors and used them to bring her watercolor drowning girl to life.

The girls who attended Izzy's event on Nov. 17 got to contribute to the Orange Show project, too, as volunteer artists helped them break apart recycled plates and plaster them to a new section of the wall.

Girls ran between stations trying their hand at all kinds of art -- playing guitar, painting, writing poetry, drawing, watercolors, and even pin-making.

Two attendees, sisters Katelyn and Sophia Lowe, ages 9 and 12, spent a while with Izzy as they sketched, and she taught them how to draw anatomically correct human forms. The sisters had to evacuate their home during Harvey-related flooding, too, as neighbors pulled them to dry land. The experience wasn't a good one.

"It was very stressful, and it was hard to think that things were going to get better," Sophia said. "We moved into my dad's apartment for a few months while the house was being fixed, but we weren't sure how we were going to afford things."

Sophia said she coped with the stress through drawing, which is why she was excited to go to "Recovery through Art."

"We learned a lot in the circle," she said. "A lot of emotional intelligence was gained, and as an artist, I think I learned a few things too."

Another scout in Izzy's troupe, 13-year-old Kate Law, said she already sees a therapist sometimes, and she knows about mental illnesses and how to cope with them, but she said it was still nice to see that others her age are learning and talking about those issues.

Instead of drawing or painting, though, Kate said that when she's sad or overwhelmed, she opens her door to feel better.

"Just going outside and saying, `Look at all these nice things around me. Things aren't as bad as they seem,"' she said.
More Malibu residents were permitted to return home Sunday after being evacuated from the Woolsey Fire.

At 9 a.m. Sunday, an area along Westlake Boulevard from East Carlisle Road to just north of Mulholland Highway was re-opened to residents only, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.

At 10 a.m., Encinal Canyon Road was re-opened - also to residents only - from Via Vienta to Noranda Lane.

On Saturday, the road closure at Mulholland Highway and Calamigos was moved to Mulholland Highway at the Encinal Canyon "Split'' to allow for increased access to residents. Mulholland Highway East was closed between Pacific Coast Highway and Kanan Dume Road, and Highway 23 North is closed between PCH and Country Ranch Road.

Since erupting Nov. 8 in Ventura County and quickly spreading into Los Angeles County, the fire charred 96,949 acres, destroyed 1,643 structures in both counties and damaged 364 others, with damage assessments completed.

The death toll stands at three civilians, and three firefighters were injured. The fire was 100 percent contained on Nov. 21.

As areas are repopulated, Los Angeles County Sheriff's officials have reminded people to stay vigilant of areas impacted by the fires as firefighters, road crews and others work on completing their assignments.

Intermittent power outages should be expected as utility crews repair and replace burned and downed power poles.

"The whole landscape in the area has changed,'' Los Angeles County Fire spokesman Pono Barnes said. He urged residents returning to their homes to immediately begin evaluating and mitigating the danger of flooding and debris flows from future rain storms.

Natural gas service has been restored in areas deemed safe, including the Peter Strauss Ranch community, the Oak Forest Mobile Home Park, the Seminole Mobile Home Park, and the vicinity of Morning View Drive and Bonsall Drive in Malibu, according to the Southern California Gas Company.

Residents were urged not to try to restore their own gas service but to contact SoCal Gas or certified contractors to do it. They also were cautioned to watch out for workers restoring services.

Malibu Creek State Park, Solstice Canyon, Upper Solstice Canyon, and Castro Crest will remain closed to all pedestrian and vehicle traffic indefinitely.

''Many known and unknown hazards exist following an intense fire,'' Deputy Armando Viera Jr. of the Sheriff's Information Bureau said. ''This includes fire weakened or dead trees that can fall without warning, burned out stumps creating holes under trails, damage to parking areas and roads, and damaged or destroyed structures.''

Disaster Assistance Centers in Malibu and Agoura Hills had their mission extended to help residents affected by the blaze. The centers are located at the former Malibu Courthouse at 23525 Civic Center Way, and at the Conrad L. Hilton Foundation, 30440 Agoura Road, in Agoura Hills.

The centers will be open through Dec. 8, during the following hours:

- Monday-Thursday: 1-8 p.m.

- Friday-Saturday: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

- Closed on Sundays

At the centers, fire victims can get help replacing lost records, filing insurance claims, applying for FEMA assistance and getting information on property cleanup, repair and rebuilding.

The Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District updated its tentative schedule of school openings on its website. Webster Elementary is scheduled to reopen Wednesday, followed by Point Dume Marine Science on Dec. 3, Juan Cabrillo Elementary between Dec. 3 and Dec. 5 and Malibu High School between Dec. 4 and Dec. 10.

Additional fire information for Los Angeles County can be found at www.lacounty.gov/woolseyfire. Malibu also has a website with updated fire information at www.malibucity.org/woolsey.ncop.
The New York Police Department says the death of a man who was punched in the head outside a bar has been classified as a homicide.

Authorities on Friday identified the man as 21-year-old John McGee of Queens.

Irish media reported he was from County Longford, in the country's midlands.

Police say McGee was punched around 3:45 a.m. Thursday in the Sunnyside section of Queens after a dispute that began inside the Gaslight bar and then extended outside.

Authorities say the man who punched him fled the scene and is being sought.

McGee was found lying on the ground with head injuries and was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Authorities say a dispute at an after-hours club in Philadelphia ended with two security guards being shot and wounded.

Four men who were involved in a fight inside the club around 5 a.m. Saturday were escorted out by security guards who walked the men to their vehicles. One of the men soon pulled out a gun and started firing, while one guard also fired several shots.

Authorities say a 28-year-old guard was shot in the left arm, while a 27-year-old guard was hit in the left leg. Both were being treated at a hospital, and their injuries are not considered life-threatening.

The younger guard reportedly fired 12 shots, but it's not known if anyone was hit.

The four men fled the scene and remain at large.
What to Know The leak of a flammable chemical from a plant next to the Delaware Memorial Bridge forced a sudden closure of the bridge Sunday evening.

Bridge officials said chemical plant staff requested the closure as a precaution. The shut down caused a traffic nightmare.

Ethylene oxide, a flammable and potentially hazardous chemical, was leaking from the plant.

The leak of a highly flammable chemical from a plant next to the Delaware Memorial Bridge forced an emergency shutdown of the dual-span suspension bridge on Sunday, creating a traffic nightmare during the travel rush home from the Thanksgiving holiday.

The closure happened around 5 p.m. Sunday after ethylene oxide began leaking from the Croda Atlas Point chemical plant on the Delaware side of the bridge's span. The plant, located along Cherry Lane in New Castle, Delaware, is closest to the northbound span which carries cars into New Jersey.

The Delaware River and Bay Authority said plant staff requested the bridge closure as a precaution.

Ethylene oxide is a highly flammable and acute exposure can cause lung damage and nausea, according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. It is typically used as an ingredient to make other chemicals and can have a sweet smelling odor.

A firefighter at the hazmat scene told NBC10 that measuring equipment showed a high risk of explosion and thus warranted the highway shut down.

George Greenley, spokesman for Holloway Terrace Fire Company, told The Associated Press that if the gas cloud "would have had an ignition source it could have been catastrophic."

Fire officials waited for pressure to dissipate in the pipes at the plant before reopening the bridge around 11:30 p.m.  more than six hours after it was closed.

He says the cloud of chemical gas was "of such magnitude that it easily could have" reached the bridge.

A Croda spokesperson said it's too early to know specifics about what led to the leak, but that the company is working with state environmental control to monitor the impact.

The bridge's sudden closure during the final hours of the Thanksgiving travel rush resulted in a traffic nightmare in Delaware and New Jersey  the two states the bridge connects.

An average of 80,000 vehicles cross the span which feeds the New Jersey Turnpike and I-295 in New Jersey and I-95 in northern Delaware.

Bridge officials described the roads leading to the spans as a "parking lot" at the start of the closure.

The New Jersey Turnpike Authority reported a backup of at least 2.5 miles in the southbound lanes headed for the bridge. Traffic was detoured off the turnpike at Exit 2 and onto U.S. 322.

The Croda spokesperson said the company deeply regrets the leak and that more information about what happened would be released as soon as it became available.
Climate change may soon have more devastating effects on our health, safety, and economy, according to a dire warning from Congress latest report released Friday.

The report was just another sobering look at the drastic effects of climate change, Imperial Beach Mayor Serge Dedina said.

His city has been working diligently to try and stay one step ahead of a natural disaster, such as the Bayfront, where water levels there can get dangerously high.

We've seen the actually bay shore bikeway flood during king tides, or really high tides, something that we never use to see that has really started to happen more recently," Dedina said.

In addition to being the mayor of the seaside town, he is also the executive director at Wildcoast, a non-profit organization specializing in coastal conservation.

Dedina said flood concerns in Imperial Beach are strongly tied to climate change.

We found that we could have about 30 percent of town impacts by coastal flooding," he said.

That is why the city has focused its efforts on off-setting some of climate changes effects, such as wetlands restoration.

The South San Diego Bay Wetland Restoration Project has restored more than 250 acres of coastal wetlands in the southwest corner of San Diego Bay, including Imperial Beach.

This is really big wetland restoration project for the Fish and Wildlife Service, Dedina said. So things like this help but we have a lot more to do."

The trickle-down effect of climate change can be seen across the state with the recent wildfires and warmer summers, he said. The way to combat climate change is to off-set some of the damage humans have done to the environment, Dedina said.

Climate change is here it's happening it's up to us to figure out to deal with it and the more effective way is to work with nature not against it," he said.

Click here, to read the entire climate change report.
A new study shows the price tag for long-term care in Virginia is rising and getting long-term care for a loved one is particularly expensive in the D.C. area.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that a report shows the median annual cost of a private room in a nursing home went up nearly 7.7 percent to $102,200 from 2017 to 2018.

Costs for home health aides in Virginia also rose.

The survey was conducted by Genworth Financial. Senior Brand Marketing Manager Gordon Saunders said a shortage of skilled workers helped explain some of the price increases.

Not all costs went up. The median cost for assisted living facilities dropped 1.25 percent to $53,415.

Nationally, prices for long-term care are rising, the survey shows. Nursing home and assisted living facility prices increase by more than 3 percent a year, while the cost of employing home healthcare workers rises by more than 1.5 percent annually.

But the report suggests that location has a major impact on prices.

For example, Washington, D.C., was listed as the most expensive area for assisted living facilities, where costs reach an average of $9,266 monthly. Such facilities median cost is about $4,500 in Maryland and Virginia  which is still more expensive than the national median.
Heavy rain that drenched the D.C. region stopped hours ago, but rescue crews remained hard at work late Saturday night getting people out of high water.

Fire and rescue departments throughout the region reported floodwaters had closed roadways and stranded drivers.

Two dozen people attending a birthday party for a 1-year-old were stranded in a building surrounded by high water at the Meadowbrook Park Community Center in Chevy Chase about 7 p.m., Montgomery County Fire and Rescue spokesperson Pete Piringer said. Crews helped the party attendees get on boats to escape the floods.

Update - MeadowBROOK CC, ~2 dozen attending 1-yr olds Birthday Party (little mermaid theme JK), building completed surrounded by several feet of water, water receded somewhat, but building & occupants evacuated by Maryland-National Capital Park PD & @mcfrs Swift Water Rescue pic.twitter.com/ixU4lLCtbv  Pete Piringer (@mcfrsPIO) November 25, 2018

"I rode in the raft and everybody else had to walk behind the raft. I held the two kids, the babies we had, and everybody else walked behind the raft in the water, in the puddles," said Shayla Dixon.

"The good news is they are safe and sound. Maybe some wet feet, but we were able to get in and get them out safely," Piringer said.

Montgomery County rescue workers also responded to several reports of people trapped in cars on flooded roads.

One person was trapped on the roof of their car at Brighton Dam Road. The person was rescued and taken to the hospital with injuries not considered life-threatening.

The National Weather Service said just before 6:30 p.m. that several streams were rising toward their flood stages. About 1 to 1 and a half inches of rain fell, the weather service said.

Fairfax County rescue crews saved a person from a car stuck in flood waters on Woodburn Road and Spicewood Drive in Annandale. They were unharmed.

The heavy rain has also affected roads throughout Loudoun County, the sheriff's office said. Authorities warned that the following roads had high water: 23500 block of Evergreen Mills Road, Sycolin Road and Shreve Mill Road and Gleedsville Road at Masons Lane.

Flooding is expected to recede at some point overnight and most of Sunday is expected to be dry. Temperatures will reach the upper 50s amid sunshine.

More rain is expected Sunday evening through Monday morning.
Hannah Crenshaw hosts a Thanksgiving dinner each year, cooking turkey, stuffing and mashed potatoes  her favorite  for up to 15 guests at her home in Magalia.

That's not an option this year. Her house burned down in the Nov. 8 wildfire that tore through the town of Paradise and surrounding communities, including Magalia, destroying more than 13,000 homes.

Instead, the 26-year-old will be spending Thanksgiving with her husband's family in nearby Durham. She's trying to see the best in a heartbreaking situation.

"It doesn't really feel like Thanksgiving," she said. "But Thanksgiving's my favorite holiday. I guess I have a lot to be thankful for this year with everything going on."

The Camp Fire has killed at least 83 people, with the number rising daily, and has displaced tens of thousands of others. Hundreds are unaccounted for.

It won't be a normal Thanksgiving for any of those families, but businesses and hundreds of volunteers have stepped up to ensure turkey, potatoes and pie are available as a small slice of comfort for anyone who wants a plate.

Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit World Central Kitchen is cooking 15,000 Thanksgiving meals, teaming up with Chico-based Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., the local university and the town of Paradise to serve them Thursday. Volunteers prepared food and set up massive tables Wednesday.

"It will be a respite from the frantic activity of trying to put our lives back together and our town back together," Paradise Mayor Jody Jones said.

Scores of volunteers also are opening their houses to strangers, to provide a more intimate Thanksgiving.

Rachael Anderson is hosting a displaced mom and daughter at her home in Redding, about an hour and a half from Paradise. Anderson knows what it's like to live in a community devastated by flames  a massive wildfire swept through Redding last summer.

She didn't lose her home, and she now wants to share it with others in need. She'll be joined by Athenia Dunham and her 15-year-old daughter, Natalie.

"They've lost their home, their traditions, whatever it is that they do. I just want to give them a little piece of home," Anderson said. "That's what Thanksgiving's about; it's not just about your blood family  it's about giving thanks and helping each other."

Joann Barr will be at one of the community dinners hosted by the brewery and World Central Kitchen, held on the campus of the California State University, Chico. Normally she'd cook at home  deviled eggs are her Thanksgiving specialty. She did not lose her house but has been under evacuation orders for days.

"It's sad, but there's plenty of things to be thankful for," she said outside a disaster assistance center at the Chico mall. "I'm thankful for the shelter I was able to go to, now the motel that I'm in  everything I have, basically."

Some people didn't even realize Thanksgiving had arrived amid the chaotic and emotionally draining rush of the past two weeks.

"Is that today?" Amy Sheppard asked Wednesday, rushing to pack her belongings in a black trash bag as rain fell over a Walmart parking lot where she and many others had camped for days.

Sheppard would normally spend Thanksgiving with three dozen family members and friends at a home in Magalia. That home  a family friend's  and her own both burned down. This year, she's likely to spend the holiday in a hotel room with her sister and 1-year-old niece.

Sheppard began to cry as she explained her son was staying with other family after the fire and that they would likely spend the holiday apart.

People like Faun and Danny O'Neel hope they can provide some relief, even for a few hours, for those who have lost everything. The couple who live in the Sacramento-area city of Folsom are hosting three families Thursday.

Faun O'Neel's parents and grandparents lost their homes in a Calaveras County fire several years ago, so she said opening her home to others was a "no-brainer."

Thanksgiving at a stranger's house may not be what her guests originally expected. But she hopes it can provide some calm in a trying time.

"A few hours of normalcy," O'Neel said. "Where they can laugh and enjoy other peoples' company without thinking about what they just lived through and what is in front of them."
Maine authorities say they continue to investigate the death of a woman whose body was found in the woods more than a decade ago.

The Press Herald reports Maine State Police considers the death of Amy Drake to be "open and active'' 12 years after her death. State police posted the message Saturday on their Facebook page on the 12th anniversary of her death.

The Skowhegan woman was reported missing Sept. 20, 2006, by her mother.

The then 18-year-old was the mother of a 2-year-old child and was found two months after she went missing in the woods by a pair of deer hunters in Norridgewock.

State police have interviewed a suspect in the past but stopped short of naming any persons of interests in the case.

Officials have not said how Drake died.


Bishop Graham bids farewell to the Diocese of Norwich Bishop Graham bids farewell to the Diocese of Norwich

Bishop Graham James said an emotional official farewell to the Diocese of Norwich at a packed Norwich Anglican Cathedral last night, after 19 years as its bishop. Keith Morris reports.

The Rt Rev Graham James, Bishop of Norwich was the longest-serving bishop in the Church of England and recently while in Norwich, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, described him as one of the best bishops since the second world war. He oversaw an increase in numbers in a rural diocese and my admiration for him is endless.



The tributes continued to flow at Norwich Cathedral last night at a final thanksgiving service for Bishop Grahams ministry and that of his wife Julie. Ecumenical and civic guests were present in abundance as were clergy and parishioners from right across the diocese filling every available seat in the vast cathedral from end to end.



Processions headed into the nave from every conceivable direction and Bishop Graham made a dramatic entrance as the huge Great West Door was opened for him alone. He was welcomed by the Dean of Norwich, the Lord Lieutenant of Norfolk and the Lord Mayor of Norwich.



Cathedral Dean, the Very Rev Jane Hedges, said: "Bishop Graham is the seventy-first Bishop of Norwich and the first of this millennium. We give thanks for the faithfulness of Gods calling of him and for all that Graham and Julie have brought to this diocese and to each one of us.



Bishop Graham gave thanks for and received gifts from some of the more than 70 charities which he has supported while in his role.



He said: I thank God for all who have invited me to work with them these past years in this diocese as members of my staff team, as leaders of other Christian churches, as influencers, leaders, organisers and facilitators of the communities we serve together locally, nationally and at an international level.



Together we have sought to bring a richness of life to those whose lives were poor in health or education, to those with few financial resources, to those whose opportunities the world too easily closes down and to those whose lives were coming to their close.



In his final sermon as Bishop of Norwich, Bishop Graham said: I am deeply grateful for the partnership of the Gospel that I have shared with other Christian leaders throughout my 19 years here.



I am resolutely cheerful about the church, the Gospel and the world in which we live. The power of God in Jesus Christ does not depend on us but he does use us despite our limitations, our weaknesses and our shortcomings.



Bishop Graham then led a procession to the High Altar of the Cathedral where, after giving a final blessing from the Ancient Throne, he symbolically laid down his bishops crozier, his mitre and his cloak on the Altar.



The Bishop of Thetford, Rt Rev Alan Winton, paid tribute to Bishop Graham: There is huge personal affection for Bishop Graham and Julie across the diocese. They demonstrated such a depth of knowledge about the diocese and its people.



One of Bishop Graham lasting legacies will be the Norfolk Community Foundation, which he was instrumental in bringing into being and which has raised very significant sums of money to support people across the diocese. He has made huge contributions beyond that of his leadership of the church.



I cant begin to describe how privileged we feel and how much each of us owe you," said Bishop Alan.



I hope that as your ministry draws to a close as the Bishop of Norwich, you will have a true sense of the enormous love there is for you, the enormous respect and admiration and the enormous hope and prayer for Gods blessing upon you both for a very long and very happy retirement.



The couple received a standing ovation and a leaving gift. They plan to move back to their native Cornwall on retirement.



Over 1,800 people attended the service and one earlier in the day, also at the cathedral.



Pictured above is Bishop Graham James making his final sermon as Bishop of Norwich in the citys Anglican Cathedral last night.



Watch a short farewell message from Bishop Graham



Click here to see a full picture gallery of the service.

You can add your thoughts, tributes and memories of Bishop Graham by clicking below.
In the early decades of the 20th century sleazy cartoon postcards were very popular. Looking through postcards from the 1930s-1950s, youll find not as many photographs of tourist locations as you will bawdy cartoons. Its a fascinating social documentation on public tolerance for this risque subject matter  much of it would be wildly inappropriate today.

The Donald McGill Museum:

In the early 1930s, cartoon-style saucy postcards became widespread and at the peak of their popularity the sale of saucy postcards reached a massive 16m a year. They were often tacky in nature making use of innuendo and traditionally featured stereotypical characters such as priests, large ladies and put-upon husbands in the same vein as the Carry On films.

However, in the early 1950s the newly elected Conservative government was concerned at the apparent deterioration of morals in Britain and decided on a crackdown on these postcards. The main target on their hit list was the renowned postcard artist McGill. In the more liberal 1960s the saucy postcard was revived and became to be considered, by some, as an art form.

The demise of the saucy postcard occurred during the 1970s and 1980s; the quality of the artwork and humor started to deteriorate with changing attitudes towards the cards content.
'Yummy' event brings West Berkshire's 26 varying cultures together

THEY say nothing brings people together like good food.

That proved to be the case on Sunday as local people from 26 nationalities turned out for The West Berkshire Food Day at the Riverside Community Centre.

The purpose of the inaugural event was to celebrate West Berkshires different cultures, meet new friends and sample food from around the world.

Guests were invited to bring national dishes to sample and they also received a passport to West Berkshire, an essential guide to local services and information.

Speaking at the event, Krutanth Mehta said: Its been really really good; so much food from all parts of the world. I didnt know there were different communities here.

Mr Mehta said he had met a cross-section of West Berkshires diverse community, including people from Ghana, Lebanon and his native India, along with representatives from councils and the police.

Mr Mehta said that he had used the tourist information centre, which closed following council cutbacks, to learn about the community.

When I came first, I didnt know much of the people. Winter was quite depressing, he said.

I got to know the people and joined a running group.

My experience has been quite good, but theres not much of an awareness of the services available here.

Thats something when people come here that people dont know about, like running groups. Its nice to meet other people and I really enjoy living here now.

Shazia Ali, from the West Berkshire Muslim Centre, said: Im quite surprised to see how diverse our community is  how many different cultures from different countries.

Its really nice to have an event like this to showcase that and bring everybody together.

In the future we will try to do more events that involve the whole community.

On living in West Berkshire, she said: Its been pleasant. I have never had anything negative at all like racism.

Back in Essex I had lots growing up, but not come across it in Newbury, although Ive had people say they have, but I personally havent.

Everybody has been really friendly and welcoming.

Pastor at Bridge Church Newbury Mark Landreth-Smith said: Its great. Loved it, loved it, loved it, loved it.

Its a celebration of West Berkshires different cultures that we have and a celebration of yummy, yummy, yummy food.

The new curate at St Marys Church in Thatcham, Leonard Onugha, from Nigeria, said: Its a good thing to have, bringing different people together and meeting new people.

Im more aware of the diversity in the area than before.

The event was co-hosted by Building Communities Together, The Berkshire School of English, Healthwatch West Berkshire (HWWB) and West Berkshire Council.

Organiser Alice Kunjappy-Clifton, representing HWWB, said: When we held our Thinking Together events we didnt see the community at all. We thought about bringing the community together.

The whole idea is to hear from the community. A lot of the time they have festivals and events that are celebrated, but you dont want to go and talk about health issues at things like that.

We thought, lets see them all come out.

I think the networking has been very good. We didnt have an agenda, just wanted to see what the community is like.

Its lovely to see so many people. Its lovely to see community engagement and integration.

Mrs Kunjappy-Clifton said that organisers were hoping to bring a CultureFest back to the district next year, providing funding could be secured.

Chillies, The Sushi Maki, Isham Indian Dining, Kung Fu Oriental Buffet, The Newbury pub, Cote and Thai Golden Horse all donated food to the event.
Six year jail sentence for offering to supply heroin and crack cocaine

ANOTHER 'county lines' dealer has been jailed for travelling from London to supply Class A drugs in Newbury.

Michael Dollo, aged 24 of Coleridge Road in Islington, London, was found guilty by unanimous verdict following a five day trial at Reading Crown Court on Tuesday (20/11).

He was convicted of one count of offering to supply heroin and one count of offering to supply crack cocaine.

He was sentenced at the same hearing to six years imprisonment.

On 21 September, Dollo was found to be using a property in Newbury to supply drugs and was charged on 18 May this year.

Investigating officer PC Chris Eaton, based at Newbury police station, said: We pursue those who deal drugs in the Thames Valley as they can cause substantial harm to our communities.

Targeting those who deal drugs is a top priority for Thames Valley Police, particularly those who seek to deal drugs across county lines.

We also aim to protect those who are most vulnerable in our communities.
Prisoner escapes jail thanks to the invisible cobra trick

To Thailand, where prisoner Anan Komolwanit, 23, is escaping jail by pretending theres a cobra in his cell. Anan, who was pinched for allegedly holding dozens of illegal methamphetamine pills, told on-duty officer officer, Commander Ratchada Supawong, that a deadly snake had made its way into his cell. Anan slipped out the open door, locked the officer in the cell and ran. Stay tuned as another office gives chase. The pratfall completes the picture:







Anan was re-arrested after he approached a member of the public asking for help. The invisible snake remains at large

Anorak

Posted: 25th, November 2018 | In: Strange But True Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
Bhopal: A 21-year-old college girl escaped a gangrape bid in an abandoned house in Govindpura late Friday night. She ran to safety after fighting the three attackers for at least 15 minutes.

The trio has been arrested and booked for assault and attempt to rape. The girl knew one of the three men for a few years, the Times of India reported.

At around 9 pm on Friday, the girl had gone to a medical shop when she received a call from the friend. He reportedly asked her to meet him as he had to give her some notes and also introduce her to a relative. He then asked her to meet near Chapati Kendra in Govindpuras Barkheda. When the girl reached there, the boy offered to drive her scooter.

The boy kept driving through lanes of various localities, while the girl kept asking him about notes and the relative she was to meet.

This continued for about 40 minutes and they finally reached back the Chapati Kendra. The boys cousin and friend were at the spot, which took the girl by surprise.

The girl was alarmed at this point and tried to run away, but the trio dragged her to a nearby abandoned house.

She was hurled with abuses and threats when she protested the assault. The boys allegedly started beating her and her clothes were torn in the scuffle. The three boys tried to rape her, but she fought them. She managed to get hold of a stone and hit the assaulters. She then ran to the nearest house. The family let her in and called the police. A zero FIR was filed and the three were caught within hours.


Addressing a rally in Rajasthans Alwar, he accused Congress of playing casteist politics, saying it cares more about his caste that about peoples problems. He said the Congress did not remember BR Ambedkar and members of only one family were honoured with Bharat Ratna. Accusing the Congress of dragging the judiciary into politics over the Ayodhya case, he alleged that if a Supreme Court judge does not work as per their "politics" then Congress MPs start "scaring" them in the name of impeachment. Hitting back, Congress leader Kapil Sibal accused the PM of lying adding that CJI Ranjan Gogoi himself said the Ayodhya dispute was not a priority matter.



Madhya Pradesh is one of the five states that will go to polls in the ongoing election season. While Chhattisgarh voted in two-phase elections on November 12 and 20, the next two seats to vote will be MP and Mizoram on November 28. Rajasthan and Telangana will be the last to vote on December 7. The results, billed as the semi-final to the big battle for Lok Sabha in 2019, will be declared on December 11.



Rahul Gandhi, who is hoping to unseat the BJP in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, addressed election rallies at Sagar, Damoh and Tikamgarh in the Bundelkhand region of Madhya Pradesh on Saturday.



"Modiji has betrayed the people on the issue of providing jobs to two crore people every year and depositing Rs 15 lakh cash into their accounts by bringing (back) black money stashed abroad," Gandhi said in Sagar.



Modi, during the 2014 Lok Sabha election campaign, had prominently highlighted the issue of black money and had promised to bring it back.



The fear of losing the 2019 general elections has created "hatred" in Prime Minister Modi's mind against the Congress, Gandhi said addressing another rally at Damoh later.



The Congress chief said while Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan speaks with decency, Modi lacks it whenever he attacks the Congress and his family members.



"When you hear Modi's speech, he uses wrong words and speaks with hatred... and also speaks lies. The faith reposed by the people and youths in them has broken. Now, when Modi comes, people say he will speak lies," Gandhi said.



"He (Modi) speaks with hatred about me and my family, but Shivraj uses decent language. Modi doesn't know how to speak decently, but Rahul Gandhi will always maintain decency while speaking. Though Chouhan has indulged in corruption, whenever he says anything against us, he speaks with decency," he said.



Chouhan knows that he is contesting this election only to lose. He is going to be defeated. But there is no hatred in his words, the Congress chief said.



"There is another person (Modi), who is afraid. The people have lost their faith (in Modi)," Gandhi said while addressing a gathering at Damoh.



"He (Modi) knows that he is going to be defeated in 2019. This has caused hatred in his heart. Wherever he is going, he is talking with hatred and anger. People know that this man is weak. This fear is converting into hatred. The entire country is watching," he said.



Referring to the Vyapam scam, Gandhi said the youth in Madhya Pradesh were deprived of jobs as they did not have money to pay people involved in the scam.



Those involved in the scam, included people from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Chouhan's family, he alleged.



However, state BJP spokesperson Sarvesh Tiwari said, " Rahul's statement on Vyapam is ridiculous. The matter came up in 2013, and even after that, the BJP won convincingly. It shows that the (Rahul's) allegations have no substance and made out for political purposes."



"The CBI and various courts have also given clean chit in the case," he said.



Speaking at a rally in Tikamgarh, Gandhi said the slogans of the Modi government had changed after four years in power.



"Four years go, when Modi used to ask people 'achche din', (good days), they used to reply "aayenge" (will come). Now when we ask the people "chowkidar" (watchman), they reply 'chor hai' (is a thief)," he said.



Continuing his attack on Modi, Gandhi said, "Modi said he would become the 'chowkidar' (of people) but he did not tell the people whose 'chowkidar' he would be? He became the chowkidar of Anil Ambani, Nirav Modi, Mehul Choksi and Vijay Mallya."



He also accused the BJP government in Madhya Pradesh of corruption in implementing the Bundelkhand package.



On November 19, 2009, the Centre had approved a special package of Rs 7,266 crore for implementation of drought mitigation strategies in Bundelkhand region which falls in Madhya Pradesh as well as Uttar Pradesh.



Under this package, Uttar Pradesh was allocated Rs 3,506 crore while Madhya Pradesh was to receive Rs 3,760 crore over a period of three years from 2009-10 to 2011-12.



Narrating how a Congress worker had told him that a village woman has said that a 'tawa' (frying pan) stops working properly after 10 years, Gandhi asked the crowd to ensure the state government is unseated (in the polls).



Chouhan has been chief minister since 2005 while the BJP has been in power in the state since 2003.



He reiterated his allegations in the purchase of Rafale fighter jets, something that the Centre has continually refuted.
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Devon Energy employees recently presented contributions totaling $30,000 to three United Way organizations in Southeast New Mexico  the United Way of Carlsbad and South Eddy County, the United Way of Lea County, and the North Eddy County United Way.

These United Way organizations collectively support 60 unique health and human service agencies in Eddy and Lea counties, and these partner agencies provide the strong social services network that make their communities stronger and healthier.

Helping our neighbors by giving to people who may not know where to turn is part of who we are at Devon, said Devon Energy Senior Operations Superintendent Dan Werner. Were honored to partner with United Way organizations in our community and proud to support the critical work they do to aid our neighbors.

Devons support of United Way of Carlsbad and South Eddy County has been instrumental in our long-term success and our ability to provide critical funding to local programs, said Linda Dodd, executive director of the United Way of Carlsbad & South Eddy County. These programs are essential to the well-being of the most vulnerable citizens in our community. For example, our children are now receiving the supplemental support they need, our elderly are receiving basic assistance and meal delivery, and our veterans are receiving transportation to obtain medical care.

The mission of the United Way is to unite people and resources to improve lives and build stronger communities, with a goal of promoting change in education, improvements in health and financial stability for all across our region.
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New Delhi:

Days ahead of the crucial Assembly polls in Madhya Pradesh, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Sunday launched a spate of attacks on Congress president Rahul Gandhi, accusing the grand-old party of practicing "petty politics" to oust the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government from the state. Chouhan was replying to Congress state unit president Kamal Nath, who in a viral video, has been reportedly seen asking Muslim leaders to secure at least 90 per cent of their votes for the party in order to dethrone the Saffron party in Madhya Pradesh.

In an exclusive interview with ANI, the Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister said, "the Congress is practicing petty politics. They are the biggest communal party. Sometimes they want Muslim votes. At times, they visit temples. Some of their leaders roam around with a garland of lemons and chilly around their neck. They claim that they will lose if they don't get 90 per cent Muslim votes. Then it is better to lose".

Congress is the biggest communal party. Sometimes they need Muslims' votes, sometimes they act to visit temples, they even do 'totka'.One of their leaders is roaming around wearing garland of lemons and chillis.Votes shouldn't be sought on the basis of religion: Madhya Pradesh CM pic.twitter.com/8VgLguCfuQ  ANI (@ANI) November 25, 2018

Read | Rahul Gandhi in Madhya Pradesh: Fear of losing 2019 elections creates 'hatred' in PM Modi's mind

"In a democracy, people vote on the basis of the work a government does, the policies and the vision of the government, but to make Hindu-Muslim a basis for asking votes is a rubbish mentality. The Congress is just too frightened as they are going to lose the polls and is now dividing the nation," Chouhan added.

Referring to the Congress's allegations of corruption against the BJP government in Madhya Pradesh, the chief minister said the Rahul Gandhi-led party is levelling false charges against him as they could not accept the fact that the son of a farmer has been elected the chief minister of the state.

"The son of a farmer is the chief minister while the son of a 'chaiwala' (tea-seller) is the prime minister. They cannot live with that. I don't worry about their allegations," ANI quoted Chouhan.

"Everywhere the people are favouring the BJP. I am sure we will win spectacularly," he added.

Read | Telangana Elections: Sonia Gandhi addresses maiden rally, accuses KCR of running 'family rule'

Reacting strong to Congress chief Rahul Gandhi's promise of waiving off farmers' loans in Madhya Pradesh within 10 days of coming to power, Chouhan said, " if someone asks him to bring the moon from the sky, will he get it? He says anything nowadays".

If someone says him to bring the moon from the sky, will he get it? Kuch bhi keh rahe hai aaj kal: Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Rahul Gandhi's statement to waive off farmers' loan within 10 days if Congress wins the elections pic.twitter.com/UHaphwZyNF  ANI (@ANI) November 25, 2018

Polling in Madhya Pradesh will take place on 28 November to elect members of the 230 constituencies across the state. It is believed to be a straight fight between the BJP and the Congress. The counting of votes will be taken up on December 11, 2018.

Read | Cannot guess if Rahul Gandhi is speaking in India or Pakistan, says Yogi Adityanath

Chouhan has been ruling Madhya Pradesh since 2005 while the Saffron party has been in power in the state since 2003.
New Delhi:

Amid the much excitement and eager anticipation for the release of mega-budget Akshay Kumar and Rajinikanth-starrer 2.0, filmmaker S Shankar on Saturday revealed that Akshay Kumar was not the first choice for the role of the villain. The shocking revelation comes a few days before the film release. Sankar said that he had approached the Terminator star Arnold Schwarzenegger to play the antagonist in 2.0, but things did not work out and they had to finalise Akshay for the role.

Also Read | Amitabh Bachchan, Priyanka Chopra pour congratulatory wishes on Mary Kom's sixth gold win

The Thalaiva Rajinikanth is back in the Chitti avatar in the second part of the mega-hit Robot which was released in 2010.

"We had thought of casting Arnold. We had talked and allotted dates also. But somehow things did not work out as the contracts of Hollywood and India are contradictory. So we thought of looking at a good cast from the Indian film industry," Shankar said at a press conference.

The filmmaker even exclaimed that the Producers, Lyca, were already in talks with the Gold actor for a remake of a film titled Kathi in Hindi.

"Everyone told me to consider Akshay and I also thought it would be nice. I narrated the story to him and he said yes," the 2.0 filmmaker added.

Reports suggest that the big-budget film is slated to release in over 10,000 screens worldwide.

Also Read | Shahid Kapoor as Kabir Singh: Bollywood's Quintessential chocolate boy is back

At the trailer launch, Akshay Kumar had shared, I got to learn a lot of challenging things. Shankar is a scientist, not a director. I did make up for 3 hours and I took one hour to remove the makeup. I just saw myself on the screen, and it was unbelievable. Im looking forward to seeing the film. I thank Shankar sir. It was worth the pain.

The sequel to Enthiran (2010) was announced three years ago and after years of hard work, the magnum opus is finally slated to release on November 29. The VFX in 2.0 is at par with Hollywood standards and ever since the trailer was launched, the fans could not get over the magnanimity of the film.

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New Delhi:

In their 14 years of married life, Hrithik Roshan and Sussanne Khan have always given away marriage goals, and after the couple parted their ways, they still continue to give away friendship goals. The fans were completely heartbroken when Hrithik and Sussanne announced their divorce and while the couple never revealed the reason behind their decision, many theories made rounds on the internet. However, the ex-couple have shunned all the conspiracies through their lasting friendship.

Also Read | Jennifer Winget bids goodbye to fans as Bepannah goes off air, promises to be back soon with something interesting

The Krishh actor has been close with his ex-wife Sussanne even after the divorce. Be it partying or film screenings or vacationing together, the ex-couple have got each others back. The two have shared their special bond on social media platforms and have often been spotted together at various occasions.

They have stuck together as a family to their kids  Hrehaan and Hridhaan.

Sussanne even supported Hrithik during his controversial fight with Bollywood actor Kangana Ranaut.

Also Read | Akshay Kumar was not first choice for 2.0 but THIS Hollywood star was, find out here

Hrithik on Sunday shared a series of pictures of Sussanne clicking photos of him, with their children at the beach and embraced the feeling of being united. He wrote, Here is Sussanne, my closest friend ( also my ex wife) capturing a moment with me and our boys. A moment in itself. It tells a story to our kids. That in a world separated by lines and ideas, it is still possible to be united. And that you can want different things as people and yet stay undivided. Heres to a more united, tolerant, brave, open and loving world. It all starts at home. #beOpen #bebrave #artoflove #tolerance#courage #abundance#loveisgreaterthanfear #explorersforever#childrenarethefuture #harmony

Sussanne also commented on the picture, This is us. Always and beyond forever

Recently in an interview to a magazine, Sussannes father Sanjay Khan opened up on Hrithik and Sussannes divorce. During the interview, he said, Divorce is a very heartbreaking exercise. I have never asked my daughter [Sussanne] the reason for her parting [with her husband Hrithik Roshan]. I love Hrithik still and I love my daughter. They must have their reasons. Fine. But the good part is, they're still very good friends. And the children don't feel the negative impact of their separation because of the combined efforts of both to keep it working. They holiday together, they take care of the children from time to time, babysitting and stuff."

Also Read | Amitabh Bachchan, Priyanka Chopra pour congratulatory wishes on Mary Kom's sixth gold win

Sanjay also wishes that the ex-couple and parents to his grandchildren, Sussanne and Hrithik, work out their differences and get back together.

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New Delhi:

The soon-to-be man and wife Nick Jonas and Priyanka Chopra landed in Mumbai on Sunday early morning. Priyanka recently concluded the schedule of The Sky Is Pink in Delhi, where her groom Nick joined her on Thursday. Movies director Shonali Bose and producer Siddharth Roy Kapur hosted a small elated bash for the couple on Saturday.

Also Read | Cuteness alert: Ziva Dhoni greets in two different languages, watch video

Before leaving for Mumbai, the couple cut a cake and popped some champagne with the core team of The Sky Is Pink. The production team took to the official Twitter handle to share the glimpse of the celebratory night with the love-couple. They wished the soon-to-be-married couple with all the happiness, love and laughter.

The pictures were shared on Twitter with a caption that read, Love, laughter and happily ever after to the beautiful bride-to-be! #TheSkyisPink @priyankachopra @nickjonas #SiddharthRoyKapur #ShonaliBose @RSVPMovies #champagnecelebrations #BTS #delhischedule #delhidays #winterwarmth

A delighted big fat thanksgiving  a quintessential American festival with a formal, sit-down dinner  was celebrated by the Chopra family on Thursday. Priyanka shared the Thanksgiving picture on Instagram with a caption that read, Happy Thanksgiving.. family.. forever... The entire Chopra family was present at the occasion, to celebrate the American festival Thanksgiving that happens on the fourth Thursday of November.

The much-in-love couple was recently spotted in Jodhpur to finalise the gorgeous Umaid Bhawan as the wedding venue where theyll stamp their love forever. Said to be a big fat Indian wedding happening at a palace, the budget of their Nuptials is going to be a king-sized affair. If the reports were to be believed, the cost of a single night stay at this expensive hotel is a whopping $60,000, which is about Rs 43 lakh in Indian currency!

Also Read | Ranveer Singh and Deepika Padukone dance their way to each other's hearts, watch video

Priyanka Chopras mother, Madhu Chopra arrived in Jodhpur on Friday to oversee the wedding preparations. The paparazzi, who have been following her like a shadow, dropped questions to her asking about why they finalised the city for the nuptials. To this, Madhu Chopra said, Mera bahut pasandida shehar hai. Saari duniya chhodkar hum yahaan aaye hain (This is one of my favourite cities. We have chosen this city over the whole world).

Nick and Priyanka have been the toast of the international glamour circuit for a while now. From making the hot red carpet appearance at the Met Gala to vacationing together in different parts of the globe, including Mexico, the US and London, the couple is high on everybodys mind.

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New Delhi:

The searing pain, profuse bleeding and shock of being hit by a bullet was drowned by an acrid smile on the face of a man just 20 feet away from her  this dark smile would not let Devika Rotawan, then 10 years old, sleep for days. Devika became the youngest witness to identify Ajmal Kasab, one of the 10 Pakistan-based terrorists who attacked Mumbai on , 2008.



On the eve of the 10th anniversary of 26/11 attack, Devika rubs her right leg where she was shot by Kasab at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (CSMT). I was in a hospital for around two months and underwent at least six surgeries over the years. My leg still gets numb as winter approaches, but I can walk without support now, the 20-year-old told News Nation from her rented home in Bandra, Mumbai.



On , 2008, Devika along with her father Natwarlal Rotawan and younger brother Jayesh was at CSMT to catch a train to Pune.



It was around 9.20 pm. My brother had gone to a public toilet at the station when we sensed some commotion and then heard gunshots. Before we could realize anything, we saw people, many of them wounded, running and so did we, Devika recalls.

Also Read | Watch Video: PM meets 'Baby Moshe'; 26/11 survivor says 'Dear Mr Modi, I love you', wish to visit Mumbai



One bullet hit Devikas right leg. As soon as the bullet hit me, I fell down. But before losing consciousness, I saw Kasab. He was right there smiling as he was firing indiscriminately on people. I will never forget that face, she says.



The CSMT was the first place to be targeted by two terrorists -- Kasab and his associate Abbu Ismail  who were among the 10 gunmen sneaked into Mumbai through the Arabian Sea route and brought the business capital of India under siege for three days. Fifty-eight people were killed at the CSMT railway station in the indiscriminate gunfiring.



Devika was rushed to St. George Hospital, where doctors removed the bullet next day. She was then shifted to JJ Hospital where doctors conducted multiple surgeries. She remained in the hospital for more than a month.



In the beginning of 2009, the family shifted to its native village Sumerpur in Rajasthan. After a few months, Devikas father received a call from the Mumbai Police who asked him if the father-daughter was ready to testify in a Mumbai court.



In , we reached Mumbai. In the court, I had to identify Kasab out of three suspects present before me. I didnt even hesitate for a minute to identify him. I was angry, furious. I wanted to slap him and ask him why did he kill so many innocent people, Devika says.



In the court, Kasab near the judge with his head hung low. His face was bereft of any expression, Devika says, adding that her family had received several threat calls from Pakistan before they went to court to testify against the terrorist.



Fearing backlash, our relatives had warned us against going to the court. Many even stopped talking to us. They thought if they remained associated with us they would also be susceptible to further attacks. In fact, many people even refused to rent us houses. When we had come to Mumbai to testify in court, we had no roof over our heads and so we had to spend the nights at the same the CSMT station which had taken so much away from us, she says. Some people had even branded the girl Kasab ki beti (daughter of Kasab).



Being identified as the girl who sent Kasab to gallows, however, only made Devika more determined to fight against crime. After completing school, she wants to study further and join the Indian Police Service (IPS). I was happy when Kasab was hung (on , 2012), but the mastermind of the attack should also be brought to book.



We were stuck for three days outside Taj



When Kasab and Ismail were causing mayhem at the CST station, merely two kilometers away four other terrorists  Shoaib, Umer, Abdul Rehman Bada and Abu Ali -- had begun to fire inside the iconic Taj Mahal Hotel.



It was terrifying. I saw a man being shot right through his head as he was trying to escape from the hotel. Those terrorists fired six bullets at that person. He died on the spot. There were small children, women who were shot at. I will never forget that fateful night, says Raj Trivedi, a digital marketing head at a private company in Mumbai.



Around 8.30 pm, Raj, then an under-graduate student, along with his three friends had stepped outside the Leopold Cafe after celebrating his 20th birthday.



We had left the cafe after spending two hours and were walking towards the Nariman Point for dinner when some policemen stopped us and told to leave. We still had no inkling that Leopold Cafe had been attacked by some terrorists then, Raj says. The cafe was attacked by two terrorists around 9.30 pm.



It was only when Raj and his friends had started to walk towards CSMT to take a local train for home that they came to know about the terror attack there.



While one of our friends managed to take a taxi back home, we started to walk back towards the Gateway of India when we saw the right wing of the Taj Mahal Hotel being blown up. In the next moment, people had started to run for their life, he says.

Raj and two of his friends were stuck in the area for the next three days as the place had been cordoned off by security forces. They were in shock and barely spoke to each other till the operation ended. The three had money but could not buy anything to eat as all the shops were shut, though locals provided them water and tea.



It was like a war zone. We saw hundreds of rounds of bullets being exchanged by both sides  terrorists and security forces  and grenades explosions. In fact, a grenade had exploded just a few metres away from one of my friends outside the Taj. He suffered hearing impairment in one of his ears and now has to depend on a hearing aid, Raj laments.



On , when NSG commandos eliminated all the terrorists holed inside the Taj Hotel and other sites the three friends managed to take a train back home. Even as I boarded a train from the piquantly empty CSMT station, I found it hard to believe that the siege was over. I remember looking around at every passenger with suspicion, he says.



Also Read | Probe ordered after Ajmal Kasab issued domicile certificate in UP's Auraiya district

Since then Raj has not celebrated his birthday in Mumbai as he fears that terrorists might attack again on the 26/11 anniversary. This year too, he is traveling outside India ahead of his birthday.



That incident had left a deep scar. I was the liveliest person in my friend circle before 26/11. Now, I became introvert. I had stopped going outside and meeting people. I lost many of friends because of that. The last time I cried was when I met my parents after reaching home on , 2008.



Rajs two friends were so traumatised that they had to go through counsellings for months.



On the 10th anniversary of Mumbai terror attack, Raj remembers those bravehearts who fought the terrorists for 60 hours but also believes there are a lot to be done to make the city safer.

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New Delhi:

CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury, who is in a two-day-long visit to Agartala, on Sunday gave a clarion call to all the opposition parties to take a unified move in order to dethrone Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) at the Centre in Lok Sabha elections next year. The CPI(M) politburo secretary was in the north-eastern state to attend the party's 22nd Tripura State Conference and suggested a three-point action plan to unseat the BJP.

Addressing an open session before the 22nd CPI(M) Tripura state conference on Sunday, the communist leader urged people to extend their support to the CPI(M) and other left parties, seeking to oust the ruling BJP in 2019 general elections. Yechury also accused the Saffron party of using communal force to divide people, adding that attacks on backward classes, women, youths have been rising since 2014 when the Modi government had come to the power.

"There are three things that have to be done. BJP and its ally political parties should be defeated. Number of MPs from CPI (M) and other Left parties in the Parliament should be increased. And an alternative government with pro-people policies should be established at the centre", Yechury was quoted as saying.

Read | PM Modi in Madhya Pradesh: People determined to vote Shivraj Singh government to power again

The CPI (M) leader appealed to people to mobilize all anti-BJP votes to secure a "secular" central government in India. "BJP got only 31 per cent votes in 2014 Lok Sabha election. But they formed the government. So, anti-BJP votes must be mobilized in larger numbers this time", he said.

Referring to the growing unemployment in India in the last few years, Yechury criticises Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his failure to provide 2 lakh jobs per year as promised during his 2014 Lok Sabha elections campaign. He also trained his gun at the prime minister as he failed to protect the public money looted by millionaires like Nirav Modi, Mehul Choksi, Vijay Mallya and others.

Talking about the next prime ministerial candidate of the country, the CPI (M) leader said, "People presumed there would be no alternative to Vajpayee. Alternatives came up. An alternative will come again". However, Yechury did not elaborate on his choice regarding the next prime minister of India.

Read | Congress is dividing the nation, seeks votes on basis of religion, says Shivraj Singh Chouhan

The 22nd Tripura State Conference has reportedly discussed the present political situation of the state, formulation of strategies to counter the political opponents and alleged attack and atrocities on the opposition supporters by ruling BJP cadres across the state.

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New Delhi:

After a successful trial of cargo movement to Bangladesh via the inland waterways protocol route to minimise the transportation cost and distance, India is now preparing to exploit the path for the purpose of tourism, an official said.

According to an official report, a river cruise which connects the two countries India and Bangladesh are likely to commence its operations in March next year, bringing the best experience of the northeastern part of the country.

A transboundary river cruise operation is expected to commence from Kolkata in March next year through Sunderbans to Bangladesh and then to connect the northeastern destinations by private operators, said a senior official.

Also Read | Indus Waters Treaty: India to accelerate 3 projects to stop flow of unutilised waters into Pakistan

Bilateral secretary-level meetings between India and Bangladesh were held in October. It has been decided that one of the river cruise operators would be starting operations from March, 2019 from Kolkata through Sunderbans via the protocol route to Bangladesh and then to the northeast, Member, Inland Waterways Authority of India, SVK Reddy said.

The trans-border river cruise, which will cover about 1,539 km, will cruise from Kolkata to Dhaka and Guwahati through Ganga, Padma and Brahmaputra. The route of the ship will also cross Haldia and the Sundarbans in Bengal and Dhaka in Bangladesh to reach Guwahati, the official said.

The private players will be allowed to operate river cruise between the two countries, which will cover about 1,539 km, said Bangladesh shipping secretary Abdus Samsah.

Read More | Gurdwara Kartarpur Sahib: Click here to know all about the holy Sikh site in 7 points

Both sides also agreed to allow private operators to run cruise to Coxs Bazar in Bangladesh, Samsah said.

According to sources, Kolkata-based Heritage Cruise which operates Ganga Voyager in India has proposed to run the first vessel on the river route.

We are hopeful of more players showing interest. The route passes through Sundarbans and other scenic areas. It will be a lifetime experience, the shipping official said.

Samsah also said India has agreed to fund up to 80 per cent of the dredging cost in some identified stretches within Bangladesh in the Indo-Bangla protocol route to make it navigable.

Regularly, 15-20 barges carrying fly ash are now heading to Bangladesh and navigation up to the Indian border is smooth, Samsah said.

(With inputs from agencies)

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New Delhi:

Body of Indian pilot Bhavye Suneja, who captained the Indonesian plane that crashed into the sea on October 29, has been identified by the Indonesian authorities. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, in a tweet, announced about the identification of Suneja's body.

"Indonesian authorities have confirmed identification of the body of Capt Bhavya Suneja. The remains will be handed over to the family in the presence of @IndianEmbJkt today. My heartfelt condolences to the bereaved family," Sushma Swaraj tweeted.

Indonesian authorities have confirmed identification of the body of Capt.Bhavya Suneja. The remains will be handed over to the family in the presence of @IndianEmbJkt today. My heartfelt condolences to the bereaved family.  Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) November 24, 2018

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Captain Suneja, 31, was from Delhi. After completing his studies at Ahlcon Public School in Mayur Vihar, Suneja received his flying license in 2009. He married in 2016 and was based in Jakarta.



The Lion Air flight, that was scheduled from Jakarta to Sumatra on October 29, plunged into the Java Sea coast just a few minutes after the take-off with 189 people on board.



Earlier in November, the investigators of Lion Air flight confirmed that the airspeed indicator had malfunctioned during its last four flights.



ALSO READ | Indonesia Plane Crash: Delhi man Bhavye Suneja was the pilot of tragic Lion Air craft

Local media in Indonesia also reported that the plane had faced technical problems during its previous flight from Denpasar to Jakarta which was resolved before its take off.

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New Delhi:

The Indian government has decided to fast-track three projects, including construction of two dams, to arrest the unutilised water of its share under the bilateral Indus Waters Treaty with Pakistan. The three projects include the Shahpur Kandi dam project, Sutlej-Beas link in Punjab and the Ujh Dam project in Jammu and Kashmir, news agency PTI quoted government officials as saying.

These (three) projects were stuck in red tape and inter-state disputes. But it has been decided to expedite the execution of these projects, one of them added.

Read More | Pakistans warning to India on Indus Waters Treaty: Will trap you in your own bluff

Under the Indus Waters Treaty, waters flowing in three of Indus tributaries  the Sutlej, Beas and Ravi  have been allotted to India; while the Chenab, Jhelum and Indus waters have been allotted to Pakistan.

The Indus Waters Treaty is a water distribution pact between India and Pakistan, brokered by the World Bank to use the water available in the Indus System of rivers located in Jammu and Kashmir. The treaty was signed in 1960 by Indias first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and then Pakistani President Ayub Khan.

Of the total 168 million acre-feet, Indias share of water from the three allotted rivers is 33 million acre-feet, which constitutes nearly 20 per cent.

India uses nearly 93-94 per cent of its share under the Indus Waters Treaty. The rest of the water remains unutilised and goes to Pakistan, an official added.

Also Read | Indus Water Treaty: India, Pakistan agree on mandated tours to each other's hydropower projects

The Ujh dam, over the river Ravi in the Kathua district, is a proposed hydroelectricity and irrigation multipurpose project with a capacity to generate 196 MW of electricity. The total water utilisation from this project is 172.8 million cusec metre, but it has the capacity to store 925 mcm of water, the officials said. The estimated cost of the project is Rs 5,950 crore.

The Jammu and Kashmir government has forwarded the Detailed Project Report (DPR) to the Centre for its appraisal, which is expected to be approved by the Advisory Committee of the Ministry of Water Resources for clearance, they said.

(With PTI inputs)

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New Delhi:

The Delhi Police's Special Cell on Saturday arrested three terrorists belonging to the Islamic State J&K (ISJK) terror group from Srinagar and recovered arms and ammunition along with explosives from their possession, according to ANI.

The arrested terrorists have been identified as Tahir Ali Khan, a resident of Tral, Haris Mushtaq Khan, a resident of Wathura, Budgam, and Asif Suhail Nadaf, a resident of Rainawari. On a specific input, the Srinagar police busted the IS-inspired module and arrested the terrorists with the assistance of Delhi police.

At a police checkpoint, a party of Srinagar Police intercepted a motorcycle-borne terrorists who were moving through the Kothi Bagh area. The police acted swiftly and apprehended the motorcyclist and two of his associates. The police have registered an FIR under section 307 RPC, 16,18 ULA (P) Act read with 7/25 I.A.Act in this regard. Further investigation in the matter is underway.

On Sunday, as many as six terrorists were killed in an encounter that broke out between the terrorists and the security forces in the Batgund area of South Kashmirs Shopian district. Earlier, the area was under cordon after security forces received a specific input about the presence of terrorists. Mobile internet services were suspended in the area.

On Tuesday, the Delhi police sounded high alert after two Jaish-e-Mohammad terrorists had allegedly sneaked into the national capital. The police had also released pictures of the two suspected terrorists standing next to a milestone on which its written Delhi 360 km Firozpur 9km in Urdu.

Punjabs Firozpur is 133 km from Amritsar where two motorcycle-borne youths threw a grenade at a religious congregation on Sunday, killing three persons were killed and leaving 20 injured.

The incident came just a few days after an intelligence report claimed that at least six to seven terrorists belonging to Jaish-e-Mohammad had sneaked into Punjab and were believed to be hiding in Firzopur area. The report added that the suspected terrorists might be planning to move towards Delhi.



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New Delhi:

As many as six terrorists were killed in an encounter that broke out between the terrorists and the security forces in the Batgund area of South Kashmirs Shopian district early on Sunday morning, according to news agency ANI. Earlier, the area was under cordon after security forces received a specific input about the presence of terrorists. Mobile internet services have been suspended in the area.



"Six militants have been killed, four of them belong to Hizbul Mujahideen and two to Lashkar-e-Taiba. Both the district commanders of Hizbul Mujahideen and Lashkar have been killed. We have seized huge cache of arms, the investigation is underway," SP Shopian Sandeep Chaudhary said.



ALSO READ | J-K Panchayat Polls: State registers over 75% turnout in third phase



Encounter underway between security forces & terrorists in Kapran Batagund area of Shopian district. 2 to 3 terrorists are believed to be trapped, ANI tweeted.

#JammuAndKashmir: Shopian encounter concludes. Total six terrorists neutralised, one security personnel also died in action. Weapons and warlike stores recovered. pic.twitter.com/RAIm7iw0E1  ANI (@ANI) November 25, 2018

#JammuAndKashmir: An encounter is underway between security forces & terrorists in Kapran Batagund area of Shopian district. 4 terrorists have been neutralised. (visuals deferred by unspecified time) pic.twitter.com/MvduHcF4BF  ANI (@ANI) November 25, 2018

#UPDATE Shopian encounter: Four terrorists have been neutralised in the encounter with security forces. The operation is underway. https://t.co/Pj3Tkhciga  ANI (@ANI) November 25, 2018

On Friday, a former special police officer (SPO) Basharat Ahmad Wagay was killed after he was kidnapped by terrorists in Jammu and Kashmirs Shopian district. His bullet-riddled body was recovered, hours after he was kidnapped.

On Friday, security forces gunned down six Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists, including one, who was accused of killing Rising Kashmir editor-in-chief Shujaat Bukhari, in a gun battle in Jammu and Kashmir's Anantnag district.



The accused has been identified as Azad Malik and was eliminated in Sekipora area of Bijbhera at the wee hours of Friday. The operation was jointly conducted by Indian Army's 3 Rashtriya Rifles (RR), 166 battalions of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and the police force of the state Jammu and Kashmir.



ALSO READ | Sajad Lone dares PDP to move court, says they dont have the numbers



The other terrorists killed in the ensuing encounter were Unais Shafi, Shahid Bashir, Basit Ishtiyaq, Aqib Najar and Firdous Najar. The security forces launched a cordon and search operation following specific inputs about the presence of terrorists in the woods of Sekipora. The operation turned into a gun battle after terrorists opened fire on the forces.

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New Delhi:

The police have again made an unsuccessful attempt to retrieve the body of American national John Allen Chau, who was allegedly killed by Sentinelese people in North Sentinel island in Andamans on November 17, after a nervous long-distance face-off with the tribe, officials said on Sunday.

According to reports, a joint team of the Andaman police, forest officials and tribal welfare department and the Indian Coast Guard made the second expedition on November 24 with two of the accused to identify the area where the body was spotted. Andaman DGP Dependra Pathak was also part of the mission.

The officials, however, retreated after spotting armed Sentinelese men along the shoreline to avoid any chance of a confrontation. The police team took a boat just off the North Sentinel island, Pathak said.

About 400 metres from the shore, the officers spotted the men armed with bows and arrows, the weapons they reportedly used to kill Chau as he shouted Christian phrases at them.

"They stared at us and we were looking at them," said Pathak.

Another senior police official told The Indian Express: Two accused were taken along to pinpoint the area along the shoreline where Chau landed in the morning of November 15 and the spot where they spotted his body in the morning of November 17.

The police are taking help of anthropologists and experts to draw a strategy to search the body of the American national, who was killed when he tried to enter the prohibited North Sentinel Island.

The police are also perusing 13 pages of a journal written by John Allen Chau, 27, which was handed over to them by his local contact Alexander to learn more about the incident.

Chau had survived an arrow attack a day before his death as it hit the Bible he was carrying, his diary noting has revealed.

"I'm scaredWatching the sunset and it's beautiful - crying a bit . . . wondering if it will be the last sunset I see," a note in the diary of the 26-year-old American from Washington State reads. Chau had reportedly travelled to the island on a clandestine mission to convert its inhabitants to Christianity.

Chau "appeared to be a staunch believer" (of Christianity), Director General of Police, Andaman and Nicobar, Dependra Pathak, said.

He also wrote of maneuvering to avoid the Indian authorities who patrol the waters near North Sentinel Island.

"God Himself was hiding us from the Coast Guard and many patrols," he stated in a description of the boat journey. The notes written in incongruent sentences in English throw light on his misadventure.

The DGP said that as part of the probe, a police team on Friday made a trip towards the Sentinel island with Alexander, whom they have taken on remand.

Chau, an avid traveller who graduated from Oral Roberts University, had visited the Andaman and Nicobar Islands four times before.

The US national, who according to the DGP, had paid around Rs 25,000 to local fishermen to take him to the island, wrote that god sheltered him from the coast guards and the Navy.

Chau in his notes dated November 16 narrated that around 4.30 am, standing near the shore of the Sentinel island he saw two persons as the sun rose. He told them that he too has two legs.

He further recounted that he was inches from an "unusual guy about 5 ft 5" and as they got bunched together he gave them some gifts. But, the short-statured man "shot me with an arrow that directly hit the Bible which I was holding near my chest", he wrote.

Who are Sentinelese tribe?

# The Sentinelese people are among the tribes that survived the tsunami of 2004 without any help from the outside world.

# For the 2011 Census, enumerators could locate only 15 Sentinelese people - 12 men and three women. However, their numbers could be anything between 40 and 400, according to experts.

# In 2006, two Indian fishermen were killed when their boat broke loose and drifted onto the shore.

(With agency inputs)

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New Delhi:

Prime Minister Narendra Modis monthly radio broadcast Mann ki Baat completes 50 episodes on Sunday. The first episode of the programme was aired on October 24, 2014 when PM Modi had urged citizens to use at least one khadi product, saying it would help poor weavers. The popular radio programme, in its previous episodes, has covered issues of social, national as well as international implication: education of the girl child, tackling exam stress, climate change and drug menace.

A statement from the Prime Ministers Office issued on Friday said that after the first episode was aired, the sale of khadi products went up by 120 per cent. Citing an instance, the official said after the PM advocated the use of khaadi products, the railway ministry, police department, Indian Navy, postal department of Uttarakhand and many such government organisations took initiatives to promote the use of home-spun cotton.

Read More | Jammu and Kashmir: 4 terrorists killed in Shopian encounter

The Mann ki Baat programme is broadcast every month on the last Sunday on the All India Radio, the Doordarshan and the Narendra Modi (NaMo) app at 11 am.

Besides, the monthly radio programme is also streamed on the YouTube channels of the Prime Ministers Office, Information and Broadcasting Ministry, AIR and DD News and is simultaneously broadcast on AIRs website - www.allindiaradio.gov.in. AIR broadcasts the programme in regional languages immediately after the Hindi broadcast. The regional language versions are repeated at 8 pm.

In the 49th edition, the Prime Minister addressed the issue of stubble burning in Punjab. He said instead of burning it, it should be cultivated in the field itself. This will not only increase the soil strength but will also help prevent air pollution.

Taking cue from a listener, Modi dedicated the entire December 2014 episode to making India drug-free. He requested all those active on the social media to create a continuous online movement by using #DrugsFreeIndia hashtag.

The episode in January 2015, was the first ever joint radio address by an Indian Prime Minister and an American President.

PM Modi and then US President Barack Obama shared some personal stories and accounts and answered questions like what makes you smile after a long day at work?? or did you ever think you would reach the position you have reached today?

The PM also discussed how examinations should be celebrated as a festival. Narendra Modi followed it up with a book titled Exam Warriors which discussed how to deal with exam pressure as well as a community-driven initiative to make exams fun.

Also Read | Maharashtra: Husband kicks pregnant wife in stomach, loses baby

In May 2015, the PM talked extensively about June 21 being declared by the United Nations as the International Yoga Day.

In June 2015, the prime minister shared the account of a Haryana village sarpanch who launched #SelfieWithDaughter campaign and the hashtag soon became a social media rage with millions of posts from citizens from all walks of life  celebrities, national as well as global leaders, the statement said. PM Modi had termed the initiative special for Haryana as the state has a skewed sex ratio.

Recently, the Prime Minister Modi invited citizens to the Fit India challenge and nominate celebrities to join.

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New Delhi:

After six Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Hizbul Mujahideen (HM) terrorists were shot dead during a fierce encounter with the security forces in Jammu and Kashmir's Shopian on Sunday, violent protesters took to streets, throwing stones at the forces and vehicles in and around the region. Apart from the terrorists, a soldier and civilian also lost their lives in the ensuing gun battle in the Batagund area of Shopian district.

"Protesters pelt stones on the vehicles of security forces in Shopian following the encounter in Kapran Batagund area which concluded earlier today. 6 terrorists were neutralised and one Army jawan died in action," the news agency ANI reported.

#WATCH: Protesters pelt stones on the vehicles of security forces in Shopian following the encounter in Kapran Batagund area which concluded earlier today. 6 terrorists were neutralised and one Army jawan died in action. #JammuandKashmir pic.twitter.com/0YHX3sFAX9  ANI (@ANI) November 25, 2018

Read | Shujaat Bukhari's murderer among 6 terrorists killed in Jammu and Kashmir's Anantnag encounter

A joint team of army, CRPF paramilitary forces and Jammu and Kashmir police launched a cordon and search operation following credible inputs about the presence of terrorists at Batagund area of Karpan. As the operation was going on, the terrorists fired upon the search party which retaliated successfully leading to an encounter this morning.

One of the six terrorists killed in the encounter has been identified as the murderer of a former public prosecutor in Shopian a year ago. Another terrorist eliminated in the operation is the killer of a teenager in the area. The group he belongs to also posted a gruesome video, showing a blood-soaked knife and further threatened of more such attacks.

Apart from the gunning down, six rifles and ammunition were recovered from the encounter spot. Followed by the encounter the target house where the terrorists were hiding was destroyed by the troops.

Read | Jammu and Kashmir: Let PDP go to court, I will prove my numbers, says Sajjad Lone

This was the third major encounter in less than a week in which 16 terrorists have been gunned down across the Valley.

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New Delhi :

Shiv Sena Chief Uddhav Thackeray, who is on a two-day visit to the temple town of Ayodhya, on Sunday intensified his attack against the Narendra Modi government over the issue of Ram temple in the holy city  believed to be the birthplace of Lord Ram. Speaking to reporters during a press conference, the Sena chief said the BJP government will not return to power if they dont build Ram temple. Taking a jibe at the Modi government, Thackeray said that if the court is to decide the fate of the Ram temple in Ayodhya, then the BJP should not use the issue to gain votes in elections and tell the people that it was also a jumla (gimmick).

Also Read | VHP Dharma Sabha Live Updates: In mega push for Ram temple, lakhs of devotees to gather in Ayodhya

If the matter has to go to court then dont use the issue during elections and say that brother and sisters forgive us as this was also an election jumla. But dont play with the sentiments of Hindus, Thackeray said.

Taking a dig at Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath over his remark on Ram temple, the Sena leader said, I have heard that CM Yogi had said that there was a temple in Ayodhya, it is there in Ayodhya and will always remain in Ayodhya. This is what we think, this is our faith. But the sad part that it is not visible yet. When will the temple appear?

The Shiv Sena leader said that he came to Ayodhya to express the sentiments of Hindus across the world and had no other hidden agenda.

"The saints who blessed me yesterday, I had told them that the work which we are about to begin can't be done without their blessings. I've no hidden agenda in coming to Ayodhya. I have come to express sentiments of all Indians and Hindus across the world. All are waiting for Ram Temple," he said.

Earlier in the day, Thackeray offered prayers at the Ram Lalla temple in Ayodhya along with his family members. On Saturday, the Leader of the right-wing Sena party had arrived in Ayodhya to push the ruling BJP government in the Centre and the state for construction of a grand temple of Hindu deity Ram.

Also Read | Yogi Adityanath clears Ram statue in Ayodhya amid rage over delay in temple construction

During his maiden visit to Ayodhya, Thackeray launched a scathing attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the delay in their part in the construction of Ram temple. Taking a jibe at the prime minister, he said that a broader 56-inch chest wasn't enough and it takes sheer courage to build the temple.

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New Delhi :

The temple town of Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh turned into a fortress with multiple security layers ahead of Vishva Hindu Parishad's (VHP) 'Dharam Sabha' to push for the construction of a grand temple of Lord Ram on the ruins of a 16th-century mosque in the holy city. The organisers of the Dharma Sabha claimed that over 3 lakh devotees of Lord Rama are likely to gather for the largest congregation of Hindus since December 6, 1992, when the Babri Mosque was demolished. The Dharma Sabha of the VHP will be held at Bade Bhakt Mal Ki Baghia near the Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas workshop.

Besides the VHP Dharma Sabha, Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray, who arrived in Ayodhya on Saturday, will also address party workers over the issue of Ram temple in Ayodhya. With the two major events lined up, the Uttar Pradesh Police has deployed massive security in and around the city to avoid any untoward incident. One additional DGP, one deputy inspector general (DIG), three senior superintendents of police (SSPs), 10 additional SPs, 21 deputy SPs, 160 inspectors, 700 constables, 42 companies of the Provincial Armed Constabulary, five companies of the Rapid Action Force, Anti-Terrorism Squad commandos and drones have been deployed in Ayodhya, a UP police spokesperson said.

People standing at Bade Bhakt Mal Ki Baghia near the Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas workshop. (Photo: News Nation/Anurag Thakur)

VHP Dharma Sabha | Highlights

14:20 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In An entire generation has passed since the Ram temple movement, but there will be now more wait now. A grand Ram temple will be build in Ayodhya at any cost. It will not be shifted to any other place and will be constructed at the Ram Janmabhoomi: Senior VHP leader Champat Rai

13:03 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In VHP Dharma Sabha begins amid chants of Vedic hymns: The Dharma Sabha of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) has started with the chants of Vedic hymns. Over a dozen saints started the event by lighting a Diya.

11:46 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Say this if Ram temple was also a 'jumla', says Uddhav Thackeray



Saints who blessed me y'day,I'd told them that the work which we're about to begin can't be done without their blessings.I've no hidden agenda in coming to Ayodhya.I've come to express sentiments of all Indians&Hindus across world.All are waiting for #RamTemple: Uddhav Thackeray pic.twitter.com/gdnVCvOhoy

 ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) November 25, 2018



11:43 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Saints who blessed me yesterday, I had told them that the work which we're about to begin can't be done without their blessings. I have no hidden agenda in coming to Ayodhya.I've come to express sentiments of all Indians and Hindus across the world. All are waiting for RamTemple: Uddhav Thackeray

09:48 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Meanwhile, Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray returns to the hotel after visiting the Ram Lalla temple earlier today.



Ayodhya: Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray returns to the hotel after visiting the Ram Lalla temple earlier today. pic.twitter.com/Py0I4yPdKd

 ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) November 25, 2018



09:46 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In UP Police assures adequate security arrangments for VHPs Dharma Sabha: Weve made all the arrangements for the programme. Weve allotted spaces for parking, the bypass is running smoothly and well ensure it stays like that. Darshan will be from the usual routes. Well do everything in an organized way: DIG Ayodhya, Omkar Singh

09:36 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Security has been tightened in Ayodhya ahead of the separate events of Shiv Sena and VHP being organised in the city today to push for the construction of a grand temple of Lord Ram in the holy city.



Security has been tightened in Ayodhya ahead of the separate events of Shiv Sena and VHP being organised in the city today over the matter of #RamTemple. pic.twitter.com/7pHNcrEl2w

 ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) November 25, 2018



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New Delhi:

Contrary to the belief that people flock to tropical destinations to beat freezing winters, a study conducted by global travel metasearch engine has revealed that more Indians are gearing up for a snow-filled experience this season.

With the onset of winter and long breaks during Christmas and New Year, destinations such as Europe and North America are now popular among Indian travellers for a white Christmas with New York topping the list followed by London and Toronto, global travel search engine KAYAKs director of India and the Middle East, Abhijit Mishra, said.

A white Christmas in New York city is the fairy tale festive season for travellers as The City Which Never Sleeps gives a whimsical experience with a lot of snow and magical atmosphere.

Also Read | India most vacation deprived nation in world: Report

According to KAYAKs data, there has been an almost ten per cent hike in searches done by Indians planning to travel this season across North America and Europes popular destinations for white Christmas and New Year celebrations.

There has been an eight per cent year-on-year surge in searches by Indians compared with the corresponding period in the previous year, said Mishra.

The data is based on searches done by Indian travellers on return flights on KAYAK platform during January till November this year for travelling between January and February 2019.

One of the reasons could be due to the fact that off-season travel brings with it some amazing deals, making these countries perfect for winter travel, Mishra said.

According to KAYAKs report, New York, London and Toronto are among top three international destinations in travel search portal with a year-on-year increase of 4 per cent, 31 per cent and 50 per cent respectively.

Read More | Meet the uncontacted tribe of Sentinelese people

This pattern suggests that the holiday-makers are keen to experience a snowy Christmas and New Years, Mishra said.

Also, like America, winter holidays in Europe are gradually witnessing growth as they (people) do Christmas right.

Within Europe, Reykjavik in Iceland has witnessed the highest growth of 137 per cent in year-on-year searches owing to its beautiful natural wonders, Mishra added.

According to KAYAKs data, other North American destinations, including Chicago, Boston and Vancouver with 31 per cent, 75 per cent and 43 per cent year-on-year growth in searches respectively, also featured in the list.

These cities have a slightly higher average trip duration period of 15-23 days, compared to European cities ranging from 8-11 days, Mishra said.

For Indian travellers, Christmas will surely be white this season and ring a new year with a new lease on life.

(With PTI inputs)

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New Delhi:

Killing of seven people in a daring terrorist attack on the Chinese consulate is the first of its type in Pakistan in recent past. Since the mid-1990s, however, this is the fourth attack on diplomatic missions in Pakistan. The last attack was on the Danish Embassy in 2008. In the killing field of Pakistan, such incidents show that even diplomatic missions are not safe from attack by terrorists in the country. However, in the case of attack on the Chinese consulate, the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), a banned militant organisation with its bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan, has claimed responsibility for the act.



ALSO READ | India must understand no terrorism sustains without the local support



The militant group, fighting against the Pakistani Government for its discriminatory attitude and exploitation of Balochistans natural resources, is deeply against the $62 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. The China-led project is seen by the group which sources most of its members from Pakistans Marri and Bugti tribes, as part of Beijings expansionist design.



It fears that Pakistans Gwadar Port to which China will link its Xinjiang provinces Kashgar city, will be used as a base for the People Liberation Armys Navy. In May this year, 11 people working for the construction of road under the CPEC project were gunned down in Gwadar. And in June 2017, two Chinese nationals were killed by ISIS in Balochistan.



Nonetheless, for Pakistan, the attack on the Chinese consulate has come at its worst time. It has taken place when Pakistan, staring at financial crisis, is seeking help from Beijing to avert its balance of payment problem. Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khans recent visit to China was in keeping with his objective to get loans from Beijing.



According to media reports, Pakistan has received assurance from China of getting $6 billion loan. But the same has not yet been revealed by the Chinese leadership so far. It is in this situation, suicide bombers carried out their dastardly act by storming the consulate in Karachi, Pakistans largest city and financial capital.



Even if the incident may not cloud Pakistan-China relations, it is felt that worried China may compel Pakistan to provide more security cover to its men and financial interests. For cash-starved Pakistan, putting up more men to protect Chinese interests means pumping in huge amount of money by withdrawing from its exchequer. That means money intended for development, education, health and other social causes in Pakistan may be diverted towards meeting objectives of providing security to Chinas human and financial interests in the country.



ALSO READ | Pak invites Sushma Swaraj for Kartarpur Corridor opening on Nov 28



But since there is nothing like foolproof security, Pakistans militant organisations could hardly be reigned-in completely from undertaking terrorist acts. In that case hard-pressed China, which has made Pakistan heavily indebted with its money, will have two options: Either to withdraw from the multi-billion CPEC project or send its army to protect it.



In neither case, however, China will be able to save its skin. The CPEC project which is part of Chinese President Xi Jinpings 2013 launched Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), has already sucked in more than $10 billion Chinese money. Facing liquidity crisis, withdrawal from the project at this stage, will be suicidal for President Jinping as he will not be spared by his rivals and old guards from the Chinese Communist Party.



Since the arrival of Jinping at the top of Chinas power structure, several senior CPC leaders have been silenced, while old guards like former Presidents Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao and ex-Prime Minister Wen Jiabao are cooling their heels in some remote areas of the country. They are waiting for an opportunity when they would question the leadership of the incumbent President, who has managed to amend the partys constitution to stay in power for life term.



President Xi Jinping too wouldn't be able to send Chinese troops to Pakistan to provide security to the CPEC project. If he does so, it may send alarm bell ringing across the world and suspicion being raised over BRI that it is a front for China to become global military ruler may get confirmed. For Pakistan itself, it would not be a happy proposition to welcome Chinese troops on its land. If it does so, local people may raise hue and cry over the sovereignty issue, which may turn indefensible for Islamabad to explain its situation.



ALSO READ | Pakistan: 3 terrorists, 2 cops killed in Chinese consulate attack



Yet, there are some media reports which suggest that China is going to raise three divisions of its PLA to guard the Chinese interests in Pakistan. A few months ago, the Indian Army spotted the presence of PLA officials at the forward posts opposite the Nowgam sector in North Kashmir. Last year, India had registered its protest against the presence of Chinese troops in Gilgit and Baltistan, an area of PoK. Local Kashmiris in PoK and people in Balochistan have also raised banner of revolt against Chinese troops presence.



The Free Balochistan Movement (FBM) has been campaigning against Chinese presence in Balochistan across national capitals of European countries, America and Canada. The statement released by the BLA after the attack on the Chinese consulate in Karachi expresses clearly about discontent against China. The objective of this attack is clear: We will not tolerate any Chinese military expansionist endeavour on Baloch soil, the BLA said in its release, giving sufficient indication that enough is enough for Baloch.
New Delhi:

As many as nine people were killed and hundreds injured as militants shelled residential districts of the Syrian city of Aleppo with chlorine-laden shells on Saturday, news agency ANI reported. According to Al Arabiya, the projectiles were filled with chlorine gas which caused extreme breathing problem to the people, including children, who were subjected to the attack in rebel-held Idlib.

Earlier in the day, the Syrias state-run SANA news agency said extremist armed groups fired shells loaded with chlorine at Aleppo on Saturday evening. A police source told Syria TV that the shopping area on the Nil Street, where citizens were strolling in the evening, came under fire. Earlier, reports about a chlorine attack came from the neighborhoods of Al-Khalidiyah and Jamiyat al-Zahr. Initial reports said at least 15 people were hospitalised with breathing troubles.

Read More | IS counter-attacks kill 47 US-backed fighters in east Syria: Monitor

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the two women and seven children were killed in Jarjanaz village in Idlib province, where Russia and Turkey have agreed a buffer zone.

Aleppo Health Directorate Chief Ziad Haj Taha said many lives were saved by Syrian servicemen, who promptly delivered victims to hospitals, according to Russian news agency TASS. "So far, no one was discharged from hospital. Doctors continue treating those affected," he said. "The condition of two teenagers, who were earlier admitted to intensive care, has stabilised."

Also Read | Ex-Nazi death camp guard faces charges in Berlin over 36,000 murders

Aleppo police chief Major Gen Issam al-Shibli had earlier blamed the attack on terrorists from the Jabhat Al-Nusra terrorist group (outlawed in Russia). He said the militants launched projectiles at city districts close to their positions. Sputnik quoted a Syrian military source as saying, The Syrian Army responded to the shelling of militants, attacking the positions from where shelling was carried out, militants suffered significant loses.

On Thursday, the militant groups had shelled western outskirts of Aleppo, injuring five civilians.

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BETHEL  Bethels new poet laureate finds that its the experiences that hit close to home for a writer that tend to be the most relatable to others.

In poetry, I tend to write about things that are personal because in personal we find the universal, said Cortney Davis, the towns first poet laureate, an unpaid, two-year position that requires her to spread appreciation for literature throughout town. When we write about our everyday lives, that enables us to see a way to other peoples daily lives.

Because of this, her previous experiences as a nurse practitioner at Danbury Hospitals intensive care unit, cancer floor and womans outpatient OBGYN clinic have been the inspiration for some of her work.

It informs my poetry in a tremendous way, said Davis, who is retired. When youre working with people who are sick, who are being born or dying, you cant get closer to the essentials of life than that.

Davis poems have been featured in nursing and medical journals, in addition to literary journals and poetry anthologies. Her books include When the Nurse Becomes a Patient: A Story in Words and Images and The Hearts Truth: Essays on the Art of Nursing.

Her awards include a National Endowment for the Arts poetry fellowship and the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry.

She is now working on a chapbook, a small collection of poems, called I Hear Their Voices Singing.

Davis has written poetry since she was a small child and said she was influenced by her parents. Her dad was a public relations and fiction writer and her mother loved poetry.

Davis first moved to Bethel in 1972 and raised her two kids there. She later left Bethel, but moved back in the 1990s before moving again  this time to Redding. She returned to Bethel three years ago.

Davis said Bethels art culture is already thriving, thanks to its multiple bookstores and open mic nights at Molten Java and Byrds Books.

There is already a very vibrant poetry and writing culture in Bethel, she said.

But she aims to bring poetry to people who would not normally seek it out. She envisions placing poetry books in places such as doctors offices and wants to encourage people to write menu poems about their favorite restaurants.

Maybe well tuck them into the napkin or something, Davis said.

She also hopes to start a poetry book club or run more poetry and writing workshops, especially for senior citizens.

Diana Gubbay, chair of Bethel Arts, also hopes to have a pop-up exhibit in town with a blown-up poem next to a painting.

Justin Hurgin, vice chairman of Bethel Arts, said he and First Selectman Matt Knickerbocker had long talked about creating a poet laureate position. Davis had even written to Knickerbocker asking for a position to be created.

But it wasnt until this spring that the town and Bethel Arts finally asked for submissions.

Seven residents applied. Three finalists read their poetry and were interviewed by a panel.

Hurgin said the panel loved Davis plan for what to do as poet laureate.

More Information Here is an excerpt from The Last Heartbeat by Cortney Davis, Bethel's poet laureate: The minutes dragged. She worked at it- sweat pooling in her frown, her lungs bellowed in and out as if the air were oil. Her expression never changed. Beneath the light, my mother's skin looked violet. I squeezed her hand, pressed her fingertips, stroked the branching veins, but . . . nothing. And so, good nurse, I held her wrist between my fingertips and counted one, two, three. Then the last beat came just as light travels from a star even when the star has blinked away. See More Collapse

She has the network to get things moving, Hurgin said. She was very proactive about coming up with her own ideas, as opposed to letting the town dictate what happened.

Gubbay said Davis imagery was powerful, giving her the experience good poetry is meant to.

Its a ping that can resonate throughout the soul of a person, Gubbay said. It is a direct contact with someone, a crystallization of something we often seek to put into words.
The graduation rate for Connecticuts high schools is at an all-time high, having risen to 88 percent, up from 83 percent seven years ago. At first glance that would seem to be a good thing, and in some ways it is.

Three-fourths of Connecticuts high school graduates enroll in college within 16 months of graduation. That would seem to be a good thing as well.

A third of those graduates enroll in the states community colleges or in one of its four regional universities. Nearly half of those graduates required remedial courses in reading, writing, or math within the first two years of enrollment. Thats according to newly released figures for 2012, the latest statistics gathered by the state, which tracks remedial rates only at those colleges.

Put another way, nearly half of the 13,000 graduates headed for the states regional and community colleges arrive unprepared, having failed to learn what they needed to know in order to graduate high school, including, in some cases, how to read their own diplomas. (School superintendents from Bridgeport and Windham testified during a school funding trial in 2016 that it was not beyond the realm of possibility that illiterate students may have been awarded high school diplomas on their watch.)

All of which begs the question: Just how much is a high school diploma worth?

Its a matter of growing urgency at a time when a high school education is more often a ticket to further education than it is a gateway to high-paying jobs in industry or manufacturing. Todays employers increasingly want to hire college graduates regardless of occupation. Instead, were producing an ever-growing force of unskilled labor.

Over the past decade, lawmakers in Connecticut and elsewhere have been grappling with setting higher standards for high school diplomas. In 2010, Connecticut state legislators decided that in order to graduate, students should be required to pass exams in algebra, geometry, biology, American history and English, earn six additional credits, and complete a senior project.

To pay for all that, the state tried  three times  to secure funding under Race to the Top, the Obama administrations competition to stimulate education reform. No federal funds were forthcoming.

Last year, the state did away with the exit exams and jettisoned the senior project in favor of mastery-based diploma assessment, achieved through educational experiences and opportunities that provide flexible and multiple pathways to learning. The surviving requirement  the six-credit increase  wont see daylight until 2020 at the earliest, following the most recent legislative postponement.

Its easier  to say nothing of cheaper  for schools to lower their standards than it is to improve education. Instead, graduation rates have become the benchmark for schools progress. Needless to say, higher standards would lower them.

But the U.S. Department of Educations National Center for Education Statistics has pronounced the United States less educated than it was a generation ago. That needs to change.

Todays rising graduation rates mean little given the percentage of students who show up for college unprepared to do college-level work.
In Something Rotten, the hit Broadway musical performing Nov. 30-Dec. 2 at the Shubert Theatre, Matthew Bakers ongoing challenge is convincing his audience that he is the greatest writer in the world, no less than William Shakespeare, that prolific Bard of Avon (sound cue applause).

Yet Baker, who lived the first 25 of his 30 years in his native England, doesnt fold or even quake under the pressure of such a charge. As his native accent sweetly passes your ear, you figure hes a natural for the role since he looks kind of like the guy in countless paintings and renderings of Shakespeare.

You might think, said Baker, en route from Pennsylvania to Virginia, that a lot of people would think: you got the accent, youre just playing yourself. But, as any actor would know, youre never playing yourself. Its very strange.

Something Rotten, which just closed its Broadway run nearly two years ago following an impressive 708 performances, is something of a dark-horse hit. An original theater piece, Something Rotten! is a blue moon among musicals. None of the shows authors  the Kirkpatrick brothers Wayne (music and lyrics) and Karey (music, lyrics, and book), or John OFarrell (book)  yet bear brand names. They do nonetheless conjure a rollicking and impishly saucy blast of merry, old England, circa 1595.

Director Casey Nicholaw, who has staged such flashy, fat hits as The Book of Mormon and Mean Girls, is a big, hot brand name. Together, the shows four creators shake and stir jiggers of brassy comedy, British Music Hall and bawdy history in telling their story of Nick and Nigel Bottom, two playwrights who cant get arrested with Big Bill Shakespeare, writing away like Stephen King just up the cobblestone street. When a historically familiar soothsayer tips off the Bottoms that all the next rage in the theater is a musical, the brothers build the bandwagon on which all future generations of fans will gladly jump.

The trick for Baker to playing the worlds most celebrated and studied poet-playwright, he said, is keeping with what I believe what Shakespeare would be in this 21st century of ours. But also were playing Renaissance England in a contemporary way, Baker added.

As Baker claimed, he got the role in large measure because of his Britishness, if you Will.

The director ... hired me based on the fact that I was British, Baker said, referring to associate director Steve Bebout, and, as youll see in the production, I dont want to give too much away, but in the second act, I have to play the character thats introduced from Yorkshire. So being able to have that in your back pocket is good.

According to Baker, neither he nor his cast mates much need concern themselves with Streep-like regional accents.

It wasnt imperative, he said. On Broadway and the first national tour, they did not have that (mandate). Christian Borle, who played the role on Broadway, had that slight, British twang to it.

After the show, Baker said, when we meet audience members to say hello and sign autographs, some who havent read their programs are genuinely surprised that Im British.

Bakers most persistent challenge is resisting the temptation to play Shakespeare (who was an actor as well as playwright) a tad over the top.

Sometimes I think the hardest thing for me is to not be too  I dont want to say  animated with it, Baker said. It still has to ring some kind of truth of who this guy was. Hes definitely got an ego. But, you know, back in the day, he was the main man. The way we demonstrate him in the show, he has all the crowds after him. I always say hes the rock star of the day, and youll see that in the show. So ... definitely his ego comes out a few times in the show.

One of the shows aces in the hole, besides its universal accessibility, is that Something Rotten is relatively intimate, as far as big musical hits go. That perceptible connection with the audience breeds a dash of spontaneity in performance, yet stops well short of ad-libbing.

More Information Shubert Theatre, 247 College St., New Haven. Friday-Sunday, Nov. 30-Dec. 2, 8 p.m. Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sunday. $39-$126. 203-562-5666. shubert.com See More Collapse

Theres breaking the fourth wall on a rare couple of occasions, Baker said. But, for the most part, were having so much fun out there in our own scenes.

Since the audiences reactions vary from region to region, if not from city to city, Baker said that the cast had to listen to the audiences reactions with attend ears, as Hamlet might have said in an early draft.

We definitely found that out. The most exciting part is that we have to ride the wave of laughter, either way. Some jokes are made more so for the East Coast, some for the West, said Baker, who will perform Something Rotten in South Korea at tours end. We havent been far out West yet, so were not sure how theyre going to react. Its a challenge for us, but every night were learning new things. How to make a laugh, how not to push. You need to let the audience decide whats funny, and, for sure, weve learned as we go along.

A previous online version had the wrong byline. E. Kyle Minor is the Register theater writer.
A group of diverse but like-minded individuals, the members of ARC have come together in their common desire to fight hatred, bigotry, intolerance and violence because of the harm these antisocial behaviors cause to our society. In that effort, we will not use or sanction the use of illegal actions (such as violence or intimidation) in pursuit of our desired aims and if we learn of anyone who does use these unethical methods we will report those individuals to the authorities. Instead, we will use the guarantees found in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that ensure freedom of legal speech and expression.
STAMFORD  Since Alla Bourlatskiis daughters began attending Westover Magnet Elementary School, shes seen changes in their health.

Her older daughter began developing food allergies to fruits and vegetables, she said. Her younger daughter was diagnosed with reactive airways disease after her first year at Westover, is using her inhalers more frequently and had to take more medications. Rashes have appeared on the girls and sore throats pop up on Monday and last throughout the week, disappearing on the weekend.

It wasnt a surprise to Bourlatskii when she then found out mold was present in both daughters classrooms.

In my mind, this is absolutely not a coincidence, Bourlatskii said. I think all of these things chronologically tell me this is all related to this toxic environment.

With the citys Mold Task Force investigating mold in city school buildings, Mike Handler, director of operations for Stamford and task force member, has been telling parents and staff that the situation is not intrinsically a health crisis. Mold exists in most buildings, he says. Its a persons sensitivity levels that determines their reaction.

Its an educational opportunity crisis, because were running out of room to educate people, he said, adding its almost impossible to completely eliminate mold from any building.

To date, mold has been reported in eight elementary schools  Westover, Hart, K.T. Murphy, Newfield, Northeast, Roxbury, Stillmeadow and Toquam, plus Turn of River Middle School and Westhill High School.

But Bourlatskii is not alone in seeing the health effects of the mold. Over the past month, public meetings on the problem have been populated by parents complaining of their childrens migraines, and teachers with doctors notes about the hazards of working around mold.

RELATED: What we know about the mold problem in Stamford schools

Dr. Dominic Roca, a pulmonologist and allergist with Stamford Health, said in general, the effects of mold are not long standing.

Its very unusual for patients to get infected by mold unless their immune system is not good, he said.

Common symptoms of mold infection include fevers and chills, but Roca said a mold infection, which usually only occurs in people with compromised immune systems, should not be confused with a reaction to mold.

It is analogous in many ways to being allergic to anything, Roca said. When you go into a room with a lot of stuff youre allergic to, youre going to have runny noses, watery eyes. But once you get out, you should be fine.

The Mold Task Force website issues the same warning via a city Health Department memo, reminding visitors that mold is everywhere and most is harmless, pending the persons underlying health conditions.

According to the Health Department, signs and symptoms of mold exposure can range from itchy eyes and headache to joint pain and weight loss. Symptoms can take anywhere from two days to three months to develop, depending on the person. Not everyone will have a reaction.

Roca said long-term mold exposure can lead to allergies and sensitivities that cause reactions. However, mold can be dangerously toxic if eaten.

Roca recommends that people experiencing symptoms get a blood or skin test to detect an allergy. Breathing function tests also help detect underlying lung issues, which also could cause a reaction to mold. However, these tests cannot pinpoint if recent exposure caused an allergy or sensitivity.

More Information Signs and symptoms of mold exposure:  Wheezing  Shortness of breath  Worsening of asthma  Stuffy nose that is sometimes accompanied by drainage that may contain blood  A dry cough or a cough that sometimes brings up blood or plugs of mucus  Red itchy, burning, watery eyes  Facial pain Headache  Fever with or without chills  Skin lesions  Fatigue  Chest or joint pain  Unintentional weight loss Source: City of Stamford Health Department See More Collapse

Molds are in the air, Roca said. Theres far more exposure to mold in the air than in any building. Having a positive blood test proves you have a sensitivity. It doesnt prove exposure in the school. ... The thing to keep in mind is 90 percent of mold exposure is really equivalent to being in a room with something youre allergic to. Once you get out of that room, you should be fine.

erin.kayata@stamfordadvocate.com; (203) 964-2265; @erin_kayata
EAST HAVEN  Mayor Joseph Maturo Jr. is again facing pushback from constituents and town leaders after the settlement of a sexual harassment suit and the emergence of accusations from three more women.

Maturo denies that he repeatedly sexually harassed and once exposed himself to former town employee Francine Carbone, accusations that first arose in a 2014 complaint to the state Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities. He fought Carbones state civil suit with town legal resources for three years. In September, Maturos team opted to settle the suit right before the case was set to go to trial.

Now, East Haven will pay Carbone a $175,000 settlement plus medical benefits for her and her husband until age 65, said Joseph Zullo, the town attorney.

Maturos backers cast doubt on the truth of the accusations against him and attribute it all to politically motivated mudslinging. They also question what they believe may be the motives of the women.

I dont believe Joe would be turned on by this girl in any way or sexually aroused, Republican Town Councilor Ken McKay said via phone Friday.

McKay is the Republican chairman of the Town Council and grew up with Maturo.

McKay also said he did not believe the mayor sexually harassed Carbone. McKay said he can understand people being upset [about the town paying the settlement], but they have to realize the circumstances involved.

We have to protect the mayor, he said. Hes an employee of East Haven, just like a firefighter or a police officer or any other town employee. If he says things that are out of order, we have to protect him.

When asked for comment Friday, Maturo cut off a Hearst Connecticut Media reporter during the question and hung up abruptly.

The fact that three additional women spoke to an attorney alleging Maturo sexually harassed them came to light after the Carbone case was settled.

Legal investigator Edward Peruta, who worked on Carbones case with attorney Rachel Baird, said two of the women worked for the town.

In the wake of the settlement, criticism of the mayor from residents and local political leaders is bubbling up and a wider rift is forming between those who continue to support Maturo and those who want him out of office.

Residents upset with the outcome of the settlement have asked during public hearings that the longtime mayor step down and pay for the cost of the settlement. An online petition with 430 signatures as of Friday morning demands the same.

One woman who spoke at a public hearing in October said Maturos alleged behavior is highly offensive to her as a survivor of sexual assault and harassment. She asked the council members to consider their female constituents and how it must feel for them to live with a leader who is alleged to harass and demean women.

Further, Democratic Town Committee Chairman Marc Conte publicly asked the mayor to resign in September, and most Democrats who work alongside Maturo on the council say they want him to step down.

Im totally embarrassed by his antics, said Nicholas Palladino, a Democrat representing District 2 on the council.

The money hes cost the town in legal fees for his misbehavior is unacceptable, said the retired police officer. I truly believe he should resign. My personal belief is she wouldnt say something like that if it didnt happen.

Many opponents of Maturo say they believe the women who have accused him of harassment. They say the alleged behavior is intolerable in any workplace and especially in the office of the mayor.

I have no reason not to believe them, Councilman Joseph Badamo, D-4, said of the accusers.

Republicans and defenders of the mayor, however, argue the settlement in the Carbone suit is equivalent to what the cost of the former employees retirement agreement would have been. They also say the town employees, including the mayor, should be protected with legal resources provided from their employer.

If people understood the complete facts, they would understand the town did very well as far as what it would have been liable for, said Councilman Robert Parente, R-1, who also is chairman of the Republican Town Committee. The town saved hundreds of thousands of dollars in this situation.

Councilwoman Judy Esposito, R-3, compared the backlash against Maturo to that against President Donald Trump, who has also been accused of sexual harassment by multiple women.

I mean, come on, she said. These are the same people who want to impeach Trump. And what do they want to impeach for him for? Look at our economy. He comes across like a construction worker sometimes, but he says things like they are.

Maturos fervent supporters on the council cite the towns low taxes and its financial position as successes of the mayor and his administration. They say the good they believe hes done for the town is reason enough for him to finish his term and run again in 2019.

I would assume the mayors constituents would want him to stay because our taxes have not gone up in a few years, said Councilwoman Judy Sittnick, R-1.

The council members who continue to support Maturo say theyve known him socially for years. Some say they owe their involvement in the town to the mayor.

I got involved because the mayor asked me to get involved, Esposito said. My allegiance is to the mayor.

While much of the criticism of the Republican mayor from Town Council members is split along party lines, one representative within his own party believes Maturo should resign.

I get a lot of calls [from constituents] about it, said Councilman Steve Tracey, R-4 . They dont think its right they should have to pay for [the settlement]. I dont think its right what happened with the lawsuit.

Two Republicans on the council declined to comment on whether they support Maturo or not when asked by Hearst Connecticut Media: Linda Hennessy, vice chairwoman of the council, and Richard Anania, a representative of District 5.

When called on to resign by Conte, Maturo said he would not do so.

Even if all council members want the mayor to resign, there isnt a procedural way to oust him. There is no provision for forcing a mayor to step down under any circumstance in the town charter.

We have no jurisdiction as a council to unseat him, other than publicly pressuring him to make him resign, said Councilman Joseph Deko, D-2.

The charter also allows for a mayor  or any town employee  to use East Havens resources to defend themselves in legal matters.

Some Democrats on the council want to change the charter to add mayoral term limits, checks and balances on the office and more regulation of an employees use of the towns legal resources.

McKay said Maturo did not want to reach a settlement in the Carbone case, but did so on the advice of his attorneys, and It would end up costing more court fees to continue to fight it.

Further, McKay said, he believes its unfair for people to feel that mayor should pay for it.

Everybody gets mad at me because I support him, but I do, McKay said. Hes a no-nonsense guy and some people get upset with him.

Both Maturos supporters and his rivals agree on one thing: the need for the town to rebuild its reputation and move forward.

The town gets a lot of negative bashing, said Councilman Louis Pacelli, D-3. This is a good town. We need to move forward in a positive way and realize through learning and education how to get there.
A Vineland man is dead after the minivan he was riding in was struck by a truck running a stop sign Saturday, according to Franklin Township police.

Ruben Artillero Garcia, 34, was pronounced dead at the scene of the crash at the intersection of Main and Marshall Mill roads around 3:30 p.m., police said.

Lt. Matthew DeCesari said a 2014 Dodge Durango driven by Melissa L. Ramos, 33, of Vineland, went through the stop sign while traveling east from Marshall Mill Road.

Her truck then entered the southbound lane of Main Road and struck a 2003 Nissan Quest driven by Rosa Palma, 34, of Vineland, police said in a press release.

Garcia, the passenger in the Nissan Quest, died. The two drivers of the involved vehicles were injured but were both in stable condition, DeCesari said.

He said no criminal charges or traffic citations had been issued as of 9 p.m. Saturday, and there were no signs that alcohol or the rainy weather played factors in the crash.

Franklin Township Officer Allison Schempp is leading the crash investigation. Police were assisted at the scene by the Malaga Fire Department, Gloucester County EMS and Inspira Paramedics, police said.

Rebecca Everett may be reached at reverett@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @rebeccajeverett. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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HOBOKEN -- The New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission has fined former Mayor Peter J. Cammarano III, as well as members of his 2009 mayoral slate, for not reporting more than $1 million in contributions, according to court documents.

The fines, totaling $95,330, come more than nine years after Cammarano was arrested as part of Operation Big Rig, a sweeping federal corruption sting that netted 46 high-profile arrests of public officials across the state.

The decision, passed down on Nov. 13, said that the "Respondents' Joint Candidate Committee... failed to timely report over $1,000,000.00 in runoff election transactions" during his 2009 bid for the mayoralty, and that some transactions were still unreported "as of the date of the Court's opinion."

Also named in the decision are Cammarano's former running mates: Vincent Addea, Angel Alicea and Raul Morales II -- as well as the campaign treasurer, Lucy Truglio.

Cammarano assumed the mayoralty in June 2009 after beating Dawn Zimmer in a runoff election.

He was accused of accepting $25,000 in cash bribes from Solomon Dwek, the central figure in the undercover sting operated by the FBI and U.S. Attorney's Office, and was arrested after less than a month in office. He pleaded guilty and served two years in prison.

Zimmer was later sworn in as acting mayor and would go on to serve two full terms.

The decision said that respondents received three substantial contributions, in excess of a $2,600 contribution limit, from Dwek.

Cammarano and the other named respondents could not be reached for comment.

Corey W. McDonald may be reached at cmcdonald@jjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @coreymacc. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook.
WEST NEW YORK -- The Board of Education approved renaming Public School No. 2 after the late Mayor Anthony M. DeFino, who served for more than two decades.

During its regular meeting Wednesday, the board voted 6-1 to rename the school after the former mayor. Trustee Lorena Portillo abstained and trustee Jose Mendoza was absent for the vote.

DeFino served as mayor from 1971 through 1995. He died in December 1996.

"He loved the kids and I, as a former superintendent of schools, know my brother did so much for the children," Rose DeFino, the late mayor's sister, said during the meeting, according to Hudson County View. "He was a brilliant man, a good father, and a good grandfather  a great husband and a great brother."

Not all approved of the decision, however. Trustee Matthew Cheng voted no because, he said, "I want our children to inspired by our dedicated employees, not politicians."

"In my personal opinion, and not that of the Board of Education, school buildings should be named after exemplary employees and not that of politicians," he told The Jersey Journal. "Mayor Defino faithfully served the community decades ago and is already recognized with a road named after him."

Both U.S. Rep. Albio Sires and U.S. Senator Bob Menendez both have schools named after them in the town.

Corey W. McDonald may be reached at cmcdonald@jjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @coreymacc. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook.
Joe Ide's third IQ novel, "Wrecked" (Mulholland Books, 352 pp., $27) opens with a brutal torture scene. It may be a few pages before you can identify the victim, but the setup reaffirms Ide's reputation as a master of palpable action and nail-biting suspense.

Personally, I lack the tolerance for non-stop action and suspense. Happily, Ide doesn't demand it of me.

Isaiah Quintabe is a thinking-reader's protagonist. Clearly modeled on Sherlock Holmes (if you were to transplant Arthur Conan Doyle's famed sleuth to the rough

environment of today's South Central L.A.), his prescience for sizing up and solving problems has earned him the moniker "IQ" - which, not coincidentally, was the title of Ide's debut.

To describe the series in a single sentence, it embodies a lot of thought-provoking analysis, a good deal of brutality, and more than a smattering of Three Stooges thrown in for balance.

Isaiah has changed from the distraught teen we first met in "IQ." Oh, he's still subject to depression and determined to exact revenge on the man who ordered the hit-and-run killing of his beloved older brother Marcus. And he hasn't entirely lost the vulnerability and uncertainty that marked him as an endearing character from the outset. But Isaiah is in his twenties now, and managing - well, mostly managing - his loss.

What hasn't changed is Isaiah's genius for solving mysteries - of which "Wrecked" has no shortage. Chief among them here is locating the long-estranged mother of a young artist who captivates him at first sight. Grace is a loner, closed and wary, and gives Isaiah no encouragement. But she does ask him to find her mother, which is enough for the infatuated Isaiah, who wants only an excuse to be in her orbit.

Grace isn't the only one searching for Sarah. There's also a disgraced ex-cop and a small, deadly band of ex-paramilitary whose CVs include torturing political detainees in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, Their plan to reel in Sarah is to snatch Grace and use her as bait.

The stakes are high for both sides. Sarah has incriminating Abu Ghraib photos, and has threatened to go public with them unless Walczak, leader of the venal group, gives her an enormous payoff. So he has no choice but to off her.

The presence of the supporting cast - Dodson (now Isaiah's partner), his beloved, take-no-prisoners wife Cherise, and the unforgettable Deronda - will immediately envelop you. You'll think it's been only a day or two since you were last in their midst.

Of his many talents, Ide's greatest is putting the reader definitively in the moment. The sense of authenticity is what sets him far apart from writers who try mightily to simulate tough guys from the streets. Ide grew up in South Central. He doesn't' have to imagine anything. His characters' vernacular, some of it hysterically funny, is unfailingly spot-on.

If you're a newby, start with "IQ," then move to "Righteous" before picking up "Wrecked."

If you're already a fan, welcome back to the 'hood.

Fran Wood, retired op-ed columnist and former books editor for The Star-Ledger, blogs at nj.com.
Authorities in Roxbury Township are currently investigating the death of a man after finding elevated levels of carbon monoxide in his home.

Roxbury Police were called to a home on Pleasant Hill Road shortly after 4 p.m. for a report of an unconscious man, according to Jennifer Dillard of the Roxbury Police Department.

When they got to the home, they found the man dead, and there was a woman who reported feeling ill, Dillard said.

EMS took the woman to the hospital, but Dillard did not have information on her condition.

Police are withholding the names of the man and woman until next-of-kin are contacted, but Dillard said they are an elderly couple.

Roxbury Fire Department and New Jersey Natural Gas are currently investigating the incident.

Taylor Tiamoyo Harris may be reached at tharris@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @ladytiamoyo.

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"Bottlenecking" is a term that describes the practice of using government licensing to enhance profits for certain politically connected people.

It was coined by William Mellor and Dick M. Carpenter of the Institute for Justice, a free-market advocacy group, in their book "Bottleneckers."

They write that the most flagrant example of bottlenecking involves actual bottles, the kind that hold alcoholic beverages.

Ever since Prohibition ended, bottleneckers have been gaming the system. Among the worst offenders is the New Jersey Alcoholic Beverage Commission.

But last week a federal court issued a ruling that threatens to break that bottleneck wide open. It came in a case brought against the ABC by the owners of a go-go bar in Atlantic City.

Like many such joints, the Stiletto operates without a liquor license and all the attendant ABC regulations that take the "go-go" out of "go-go bar."

To that end, the owners of the Stiletto encourage patrons to bring their own beer and wine. This is permitted under ABC regulations. But those regulations also forbid business owners from using the four letters that tell customers they can bring their own drinks.

That's a violation of free speech, the court ruled.

"The State Defendants presented no compelling government interest for banning BYOB advertising, while permitting liquor stores and restaurants with liquor licenses to advertise on-site alcohol sales," the decision stated.

That was good news for the assemblyman from Gloucester County who's been trying to open up New Jersey's archaic system of alcoholic beverage regulation.

Democrat John Burzichelli is the lead sponsor of a bill that would allow restaurants to sell beer and wine, as is done in other, more civilized states.

He and others argue that this would create opportunities for restaurants to serve as anchors for flagging business districts and shopping malls.

That would be a great start. But when you read this ruling, you see that this could be a foot in the door for those who want to see the entire bottleneck broken.

"It would make a very interesting argument to ask who's entitled to one and who isn't," Burzichelli said of liquor licenses. "The barrier to entry is depriving the little guy from having a chance at success."

It certainly is. In other states, anyone can get a liquor license for a nominal fee. Here, a restaurant owner has to pay as much as a million dollars for the simple right to sell drinks with dinner.

Theoretically this is done to enhance public safety. But a court might have a hard time understanding why beer and wine with dinner in a restaurant are any more dangerous than happy hour at a shot-and-beer joint.

And then there's the question of equal protection. How can the government grant Person A a license equal to a lottery win in value while Person B - you or me - can't have the same privilege?

If such a decision came down, the owners of liquor licenses would be in the same position the owners of New York taxicab medallions were when Uber came in and broke that bottleneck.

Burzichelli argues that his bill would guarantee those license-holders a soft landing by creating a fund to compensate those whose licenses lost value. That's not enough for them, he said.

"They want it to be worth more so it can sell for more," he said.

Till now, the ABC has been putting that interest above the public interest. But it's been a tough year for the ABC.

In September, ABC director David Rible announced a big crackdown on microbreweries because they were, among other offenses, sponsoring yoga nights.

Shortly thereafter someone pointed out to Rible that microbreweries are one of the state's few growing industries. That someone may have been state Senate President Steve Sweeney, a Democrat from Burzichelli's district who was quoted as saying that microbreweries "epitomize the best qualities of small business."

The only business Rible wanted to protect was the business of what he termed the "stakeholders," which is a polite word for bottleneckers. (actually it's a weasel word.)

That was a bit strange for a Republican who was appointed by Gov. Christie, who was sympathetic to the microbrewery movement and to liquor reform in general.

But as of next week, Rible will have to do his bottlenecking in the private sector. Earlier this month, the Murphy administration replaced him with James Graziano, a lawyer from Metuchen.

Whether Graziano will open up those bottlenecks remains to be seen.

But once all those BYOB signs start cropping up at restaurants perhaps our legislators will realize that if you can BYOB you ought to be able to buy your own B - whatever that means.
It's Thanksgiving weekend, a time to feel gratitude. But when you make a living covering politics in the age of Donald Trump, that doesn't come easily. It takes work.

For me, the break came Tuesday when the New York Times reported that Trump wanted to order the Justice Department to prosecute Hillary Clinton and former FBI director James Comey.

It was a new low. A president who wants to put his political enemies in jail has no understanding of how a democracy works, and no clue about what really makes America great. He's in Vladimir Putin territory.

"It's a level Richard Nixon never went to," says John Dean, Nixon's chief counsel. "I heard (Nixon) break the law. I never heard him do it by turning on his enemies and trying to put them in jail."

So, then, why the gratitude, you may ask? Because Trump is a stress test for our democracy, and after watching how our political system has kept him in check, my money is on democracy.

I don't mean to be naive, or to diminish the danger. I'm terrified that I could be wrong.

And I get that he's doing real damage. He inflames ethnic and racial hatreds for political advantage. He drums up partisan hatred for the courts and the press, based of flat-out lies. He fabricates charges of voter fraud when his guys lose, and encourages violence against political opponents, sometimes explicitly. He is blind to the lessons of history, and wants only to win, no matter what mess he leaves behind.

But America is pushing back. When Trump asked his chief counsel, Don McGahn, to order those criminal charges against Clinton and Comey, McGahn pushed back and told him the idea was crazy. He warned that Congress might even impeach him. The system worked.

The courts have pushed back as well. They blocked his plan to purge the military of transgender recruits. They blocked several attempts to roll back environmental regulations. They stopped him from cutting aid to sanctuary cities. They stopped him from eliminating protections for the Dreamers, who came here illegally as children. They stopped him from applying a vile religious test at our borders to keep out Muslims.

This week, another blow came from a court in San Francisco's 9th District, which ruled that asylum-seekers are entitled at least to a hearing under the law, no matter how they entered the country. And when Trump attacked that decision from "an Obama judge" and warned darkly that "it's not going to happen like this anymore" he got a scorching lesson in civics from Chief Justice John Roberts.

"We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges," Roberts said. "What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them. That independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for."

I'm grateful for the courts, for the resurgent national press that hasn't backed down an inch, for those members of Trump's inner circle who are trying to contain the damage, for those rare but precious moments when key Republicans draw the line, as when the late Sen. John McCain saved Obamacare by one vote.

But my deepest gratitude this Thanksgiving goes to the regular folk who came up so large in the mid-term elections and gave Democrats control the House, vastly diminishing Trump's power. And no state did better than New Jersey, which replaced four of its five Republicans in Congress with freshman Democrats, all of them hard-headed centrists.

My personal favorite is a group that started in Montclair, among women friends who found Trump's behavior repugnant and decided to do something about it. They formed a group, New Jersey 11th for Change, and become ferocious watchdogs on every move made by GOP Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen. They posted information showing he had moved steadily to the right on policy. They marched outside his offices constantly, as he refused to meet. They even brought home-baked cookies to let him know they would be civil.

And when Frelinghuysen complained to the president of a local bank, saying that one of his vice presidents, Saily Avelenda, was joining these demonstrations, she quit her job and devoted her time to the election instead. "He doesn't seem like someone who is ready to stand up for the district," Avelenda said.

He wasn't. His seat will soon be occupied by Mikie Sherrill, a former Navy helicopter pilot and federal prosecutor, a 46-year-old Democrat who will likely be with us for a long time.

What disturbs me most about the Trump era is not Trump himself, but the overwhelming support he has among Republicans, and the average 44 percent approval rating among all Americans in recent polls. I don't feel the same affection for the country as I once did, and that breaks my heart.

But I believe Trump's brand of politics will fade. He didn't win the most votes in 2016, he's never had the approval of most Americans, and his team just got whacked in the mid-terms.

So, this Thanksgiving, I'm taking a break from worrying, and I'm savoring the push back instead. At a minimum, it will help with the digestion.

More: Tom Moran columns

Tom Moran may be reached at tmoran@starledger.com or call (973) 836-4909. Follow him on Twitter @tomamoran. Find NJ.com Opinion on Facebook.
Ehtasham Z. Chaudhry

A few months ago, a man walked up the main aisle of Our Lady of Grace Church, Hoboken, while a priest was preaching in the center aisle during the Sunday evening Mass, which attracts mostly young adults.

The man was overdressed, took a seat, and then exited the same way after the homily. Quite a few parishioners were spooked.

This prompted us to contact the Hoboken P.D., look at our evacuation procedures during Mass and talk to Mass-goers at all the Masses over several weekends about what we can do if there is a suspicious person in church.

At Hoboken/Weehawken Catholic deanery meetings, we discovered concern for church safety was widespread. And understandably so since in the last several years, there have been nine instances of murders in houses of worship around the country -- in five churches, one mosque, one Sikh temple and two synagogues, including last month's Pittsburgh Tree of Life, where 11 people were murdered.

People's fears are indeed heightened and they are aware "that it could occur anywhere," said Ehtasham Z. Chaudhry, a detective with the N.J. Office of Homeland Security and head of its Interfaith Council.

Chaudhry spoke this month before 15 clergy and staff of six Catholic churches in Hoboken, Weehawken and Jersey City as well as a rep from the archdiocesan property management office.

The purpose of his work, Chaudhry said, is to help houses of worship "prepare and prevent."

He shared a ton of resources, including a self-assessment tool for a house of worship and grant applications. Since the Pittsburgh murders, he said, more clergy and congregations are nervous and reaching out.

There is also active shooter training and supplemental security measures like putting up bollards on the property, installing security cameras and panic alarms, he said.

Mark Smith, standing, director of Homeland Security for the Hudson County Sheriff's Office, meets with Sheriff Frank X. Schillari.

As the first Hudson County Sheriff's Office director of Homeland Security, Mark Smith, a retired police captain and the former mayor of Bayonne, invited Chaudhry to the meeting.

Smith had some practical advice.

He ticked a series of action points: hold an active shooter drill, allow the local public safety officers to survey the premises, train staff, engage parishioners as "eyes and ears," call the police is there is someone suspicious.

"It's better to call police and it turns out to be a false alarm, than not call," Smith said.

Also present at the meeting were Sheriff's Office Lt. Luigi DeCecco and Investigator Mark Santos, who are part of the county's SWAT and Rapid Response teams.

DeCecco alerted me to something I did wrong when I once escorted a suspicious-looking person from a service.

I should have called the police to let them handle it, DeCecco said, and I see his point.

See something, say something, but call the police do something.

The Rev. Alexander Santora is the pastor of Our Lady of Grace and St. Joseph, 400 Willow Ave., Hoboken, 07030, FAX: 201-659-5833; Email: padrealex@yahoo.com; Twitter: @padrehoboken.

Details ...

Resources for houses of worship provided by Detective Ehtasham Z. Chaudhry, Operations Bureau, New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness (njohsp.gov), who can be reached at 609-588-2233 (office) or 609-902-8702 (cell).
By Norrinda Brown Hayat

Newark's business community and politicians may be lamenting Amazon's decision to place one-half of its second world headquarters -- the so-called HQ2 -- across the river in Long Island City, but its low-income and homeless populations (and those who advocate for both) should be breathing a collective sigh of relief.

Newark, already in the midst of a serious affordability crisis, would have slipped deeper into a hole if the HQ2 bid had been successful.

New Jersey put $7 billion on the table in tax incentives to woo the retail giant, but has very little government money at all committed to housing the approximately 9,303 people who are homeless in the state every night, or to stem the estimated 17,000 evictions filed in Newark last year, or to move the 14,000 people off the public housing wait list in Newark.

Newark is simply not a place that can absorb more pressure on the housing market. Supporters of Newark's HQ2 bid hoped that Amazon might lift Newark's existing population out of its economic straits. What affordable housing advocates have learned from Seattle and San Francisco (and a whole host of Silicon Valley cities), however, is that "Amazons" are more likely to exacerbate social problems -- including but certainly not limited to putting upward pressure on housing costs -- than to help solve them. And those same companies are reticent, if not outright hostile, to local governments taking steps to neutralize that pressure.

Exhibit A can be found in Amazon's hometown of Seattle, which has one of the fastest-growing income gaps in the United States. The top 20 percent of earners in Seattle take home over half of the city's total income. In an effort to combat the homelessness that flows from this type of inequity, Seattle's city council unanimously voted last summer to pass a "head tax." The head tax would have collected $275 per employee from mega-corporations, such as Amazon and Starbucks, with $20 million or more in gross revenue, and direct $50 million toward alleviating the city's spiraling homelessness crisis.

Mind you, this is a crisis that these same companies have contributed significantly to by triggering an influx of elite-class, highly educated workers to the city who fought for limited housing stock, causing prices to rise unnaturally and displacing historic residents.

In response to the head tax, Amazon launched a frontal attack on the city of Seattle. Amazon stopped construction on a new campus in downtown Seattle, called the city out for taking "anti-business positions" and engaging in a "hostile approach and rhetoric towards larger businesses" and indicated in subtle (and not-so-subtle) ways that the head tax threatened Amazon's future in its home city.

Ultimately, Seattle's mayor caved and a majority of the council repealed the ordinance. Amazon praised the reversal and promised to continue to donate to two nonprofits "making a difference on this important issue." (Quizzically, Amazon also continues to give out 8,000 bananas daily to the community members as a "public service.") In short, Amazon ended up with no true accountability to the working people of Seattle for a housing crisis it helped create.

There is a lesson to be found in Seattle's summer tale especially for small cities like Newark with deep social problems and a strong desire to woo big businesses. Choose wisely. Your social problems, including but not limited homelessness, will worsen after "Amazons" come and few of them are willing to help cure those problems in any meaningful way.

On the other hand, some headquarter cities are not giving up or in. San Francisco and a number of other Silicon Valley cities -- including Cupertino (home to Apple), Mountain View (home to LinkedIn) and East Palo Alto (near to Facebook) -- are attempting to hold corporations accountable with head taxes similar to Seattle's. And some of those efforts look better-poised for success due, in part, to a willingness of the corporations to accept some social responsibility.

Which offers a second lesson. Just because Amazon was not the right partner for Newark does not mean that the right partner does not exist. Several commentators have predicted that Newark's bid for HQ2 put it on the radar of other business giants for future opportunities. Hopefully, that is true.

Should Newark and the state of New Jersey get the do-over they anticipate, I encourage them to consider exacting a higher price for the partnership -- one that will be equitably distributed from the outset -- to help alleviate the inevitable pressure on the market and attendant loss of affordable housing that will befall Newark's working poor with a new corporate giant in the neighborhood.

In the meantime, Newark's low-income population won last week.

Norrinda Brown Hayat is an associate clinical professor of law and the director of the Civil Justice Clinic at Rutgers Law School in Newark.

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By Patrick Murray

New Jersey's next round of legislative redistricting is two years away, but proposals to change the process are already afoot.

If advocates of reforms currently being considered by the state Legislature have their way, voters will be asked to approve a number of changes to the Reapportionment Commission, including the following question:

"Do you approve of requiring the commission to establish districts that are competitive and fairly represent voter preferences?"

Would you vote yes on that question? Sure you would. Who doesn't want competitive districts?

There's just one problem, though. The way most people use the word "competitive" -- if they are at all conversant in conversational English -- and the way the sponsors of the proposed changes define the word "competitive" are worlds apart. Heck, they aren't even in the same dictionary.

In the parlance of the proposed legislation, a "competitive" district is one that has a built-in Democratic advantage in the range of 5 to 10 percentage points.

"Wait, what?" you say. "How is that competitive?"

In the bill's proposed changes (ACR60/SCR43), competitive is a relative term based on how a party has performed in prior elections. To put it simply, if the statewide electorate tends to prefer Democrats by 15 points, then an 8-point Democratic advantage in a given district could be considered "competitive." There's a little more math to it than that, but you get the drift.

Now, that's not to say having a legislative map that favors one party is inherently a bad thing.

There is a reasonable rationale for why one party should have an advantage when drawing the map if that party also has a historical advantage in electoral performance. This is based on something called the "fairness standard." Proposed changes to the redistricting process would require the commission to apply a partisan fairness test to any new legislative map.

This isn't unreasonable.

Other states do the same. Sponsors of the New Jersey legislation claim their standard is based on the work of the late Donald Stokes, a Princeton University scholar who served on the 1981 and 1991 commissions. Sounds reasonable? The problem is that their process has only a passing resemblance to the test Stokes utilized when he served on the commission.



Other states have handled the balance between designing a map that fairly represents the partisan preferences of their electorate while acknowledging that each commission needs flexibility to apply those standards. For example, Ohio voters in 2015 approved changes to their state's legislative redistricting process with a fairness provision that provides leeway for their commission.



Their new constitutional provisions direct that the share of districts which "favor each political party shall correspond closely to the statewide preferences of the voters." This language is broad enough to allow each decennial commission to negotiate its meaning while incorporating emerging standards, such as the principle of preserving "communities of interest" in the same district.



Democrats in New Jersey have performed very well over the past few election cycles. It makes sense that party leaders want a process that reflects this reality by producing a new legislative map that maintains, perhaps even guarantees, their large majority.

Fair enough.

To the victor goes the spoils. But the problem is that they don't just want this for the 2021 process, but they want to tie the hands of all future commissions as well.



And here's the rub. The only way to impose these new standards is through a constitutional amendment. That means those who are pushing these changes need you, the New Jersey voter, to be a party to their scheme.



They know you wouldn't vote for the type of system they want if they described it honestly.

So they decided to call it "competitive." If the sponsors have their way, that's all the voters will see on the ballot question. Just the word "competitive" with no explanation of their very different definition of that term.



We currently live in an environment where trust in government institutions has eroded to critically dangerous levels; where political leaders at the highest level routinely play fast and loose with the truth to mislead voters.

Now more than ever, we need political leaders in Trenton who look past short-term political gains to consider the long-term detrimental consequences of their actions.



Who wouldn't vote for a legislative reapportionment process designed to "establish districts that are competitive and fairly represent voter preferences"?



You shouldn't, now that you know what it really means.



Patrick Murray is the director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute.

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It's been more than a year since owners of a handful of rural marsh cabins perched along the waterways of Lower Alloways Creek Township reached out for help.

The eight cabins, the remainder of what once were scores of the tiny, mostly one-room structures accessible only by boat, have been deemed illegal by state regulators.

New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection officials had given the go-ahead to demolish some of them, but put that action on hold earlier this year, and are still mulling the cabins' fate.

"The matter remains under review," a spokesperson for the DEP said Monday.

What will happen to the structures scattered over thousands of acres in the Mad Horse Creek Wildlife Management Area and surrounding private lands has the owners of cabins on edge. Some are afraid to go back to visit or even perform needed maintenance until a ruling comes from the state.

"I'd like to get some settlement and, obviously, have a favorable settlement," said Chuck Liber, whose cabin has been in his family for generations. "But we haven't heard a thing."

Four of the eight structures are on state land along Hope Creek in the vast wildlife management area which borders the Delaware River and Bay in Salem County.

The others, including Liber's, are on private property standing along both Hope and Alloways creeks. At least one of those cabins, a floating cabin, has since been removed, according to Liber.

Their owners have used them -- some for generations -- as their base for hunting, fishing or boating. The cabins, too, provide others plying the waters of the marshes as a place to rest or seek refuge from fast-approaching storms. Their doors are never locked.

Liber said during each of his recent visits to his cabin, the log books there contained four of five new entries from visitors who stopped by. The visitors expressed thanks for a place to stop and added their hope the cabins would be there for the future, he said.

Although it owns some of the property, the DEP claimed it did not know the eight remaining cabins existed until the agency received an anonymous tip in early 2017 from someone in the area.

In an email to a DEP official dated Jan. 16, 2017, the person reporting the cabins said "If they (the cabin owners) have permits, please let me know what they are so I can get one too."

The records of the report were obtained by NJ Advance Media via the Open Public Records Act request.

The DEP has said the person providing the tip told him a hunter familiar with the area told them about the structures. The person reporting the cabins reached out to a specific DEP official because they were aware the official was "the Land Use Enforcement inspector assigned to cover that area of the state."

The name of the person who reported the cabins was redacted by the state. Cabin owners have long wondered who reported them and why.

It was that tip that set off a dramatic chain of events.

In March 2017, state inspectors visited the eight cabins. Later, signs were posted on the structures on state land saying they were illegal and no one was to use them. Other cabin owners were told they were in violation of environmental laws.

The cabin owners began a campaign to seek public support for their cause, reaching out to local, county and state lawmakers.

In January 2018, heavy equipment was in place to tear down the four cabins on state land when the incoming DEP commissioner, Catherine McCabe, ordered a temporary halt to the demolition literally at the eleventh hour.

McCabe, accompanied by state Senate president Stephen Sweeney (D-3rd District) and Assemblyman John Burzichelli (D-3rd District), took a boat tour on a raw, rainy day in April to see the cabins for herself.

Legislation was also introduced in Trenton by Sweeney, Burzichelli and Assemblyman Adam Taliaferro (D-3rd District) to save the cabins. At last check, those measures still remained in committee.

Through this past summer, many of the owners of cabins on state land stayed away, awaiting a final decision.

Liber believes environmental issues cited by the state can be remedied by the cabin owners.

He's focused on the bigger picture, just hoping these remaining pieces of rural history can be saved.

"I really wish that the ones that are there, would be grandfathered in...," said Liber. "Some of these cabins have been there since before DEP was formed."

Bill Gallo Jr. may be reached at bgallo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow Bill Gallo Jr. on Twitter @bgallojr. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips
Savitri Bai Phule further said that the Centre was trying to amend the Constitution and deprive 85 per cent of the population of its rights.

Lucknow: In what can be a major embarrassment for the ruling BJP, its MP Savitri Bai Phule has demanded that a Buddha temple should be built on the disputed site instead of a Ram temple.

This will be possible only if Dalits and OBCs come together and make the government realise their power. If I am a MP today, it is because my parliamentary constituency Bahraich is reserved and if it had not been reserved, the BJP would have never given me the ticket. It was Dr Ambedkar who made this provision and I owe my position to him, she said.

She further said that the Centre was trying to amend the Constitution and deprive 85 per cent of the population of its rights. Now that elections are round the corner, the BJP is reviving the Ram temple issue. What was the government doing in the past four and a half years? she asked.

Ms Phule also announced that she would hold a Samvidhan Bachao Rally in Lucknow on December 23 and said that this would be one of the biggest congregations of Dalits and OBCs in Uttar Pradesh.

Meanwhile, Mr Om Prakash Rajbhar, senior minister in the Yogi Adityanath government, said that he welcomed Samajwadi Party Akhilesh Yadavs statement that army should be deployed in Ayodhya in view of VHPs Dharam Sansad.

If the administration is allowing people to gather in Ayodhya, it means that officials have failed to implement a prohibitory order which is a serious issue, he told reporters on Saturday.

It may be recalled that Mr Akhilesh Yadav, during his election tour in Madhya Pradesh on Friday, had said that the army should be deployed in Ayodhya because the BJP could not be trusted with the safety and security of the makeshift temple in the temple town.
Yankees general manager Brian Cashman has proven he's not afraid to wheel and deal in an attempt to upgrade the roster for 2019. His first big move of the offseason was acquiring left-hander James Paxton from the Seattle Mariners in exchange for three prospects, including Justus Sheffield.

The Boston Globe's Nick Cafardo reports Cashman could have more moves up his sleeve:

Cashman also has enough capital in his farm system to make another Paxton-like move. He could look to the Orioles and pick off Dylan Bundy or Alex Cobb. He could inquire, as he once did, with the Giants on the availability of Madison Bumgarner. He also could see if the Mets would part with Noah Syndergaard.

As far as position players, there's always the possibility the Yankees will make a huge splash by signing Manny Machado, who wants to play shortstop in New York. With Didi Gregorius out until at least July after Tommy John surgery, there is an opening there for Machado. Even if Machado eventually has to move to third base, clearly his best position, the Yankees could shift Miguel Andujar to first base.

There are also long-shot rumblings about the Yankees trying to move Giancarlo Stanton. Obviously it's a massive contract, but if the Dodgers ever felt they needed to do something splashy, Stanton isn't that far-fetched, since that's one team to which he would likely approve a trade. Nor would it be far-fetched if the Giants wanted a big hitter to give their staggering offense a jump start, or if the Phillies decided to include Stanton on their list of superstars to acquire. Stanton has about $260 million remaining on his contract over the next 10 years. That would be cheaper than acquiring (Manny) Machado or Bryce Harper. Stanton is 29 years old.

Trading Stanton to clear room for Machado or Harper is one of the boldest predictions we've seen during the offseason.

MLB.com tries to put such a rumor in context:

The Yankees made a blockbuster trade last offseason with the Marlins to acquire Stanton, who was coming off an NL Most Valuable Player campaign in 2017, in which he belted 59 home runs. He didn't fare as well in his first season in the Bronx, slashing .266/.343/.509 with 38 homers.

In terms of choosing whether to sign Harper or Machado should such a scenario arise, the positional need for New York would suggest Machado, since shortstop Didi Gregorius will still be recovering from Tommy John surgery when the '19 season begins.

Mike Rosenstein may be reached at mrosenstein@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @rosenstein73. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
Hes the richest man in China and, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the 19th richest in the world. Now Jack Ma, 54, is stepping down as executive chairman of e-commerce giant Alibaba to return to an old job: teaching school.

Money magazine has a quick biography of Ma and how he grew Alibaba from a website run out of his apartment to one of the biggest tech companies in the world. The company is now worth $420 billion, and Forbes says Ma has a net worth of $35.1 billion.

Ma grew up in a family with little money in the eastern city of Hangzhou. He twice failed his college entrance test and was rejected for many jobs, including ones at KFC, as a police officer and as a waiter. He eventually found work teaching English and, in 1999, started Alibaba with about $60,000 invested by 17 friends.

Climate change a concern of billionaires group, not Trump advisers

. . . . . . .

Drew Broach covers Jefferson Parish politics and education, plus other odds and ends, for NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune. Email: dbroach@nola.com. Facebook: Drew Broach TP. Twitter: drewbroach1. Google+: Drew Broach.
A juvenile was attacked and pulled from her car by two other juveniles, in a carjacking reported Saturday evening (Nov. 25) to New Orleans Police.

The girl was in the 2400 block of 6th Street in Central City at about 6:48 p.m. when two male juveniles approached her. In an initial report, police said the suspects pulled her from her car and attacked her, and she felt something -- possibly a weapon -- touch the back of her ear.

One of the suspects got inside her car and drove away, police said. NOPD later arrested him in the 1500 block of Freret Street, and the car was found in the 1300 block of South Derbigny Street. Police did not identify the arrested suspect, or specify the ages of the suspects or victim.

Among other crimes listed in NOPDs overnight log of major offenses, an aggravated burglary was also reported to police Saturday morning. In the 1800 block of Wagner Street in Algiers at about 7:32 a.m., a man entered another mans home and demanded a wallet from the 73-year-old resident. The victim did not comply and the subject became physically abusive, police said. The suspect fled when the victim fought back, police said.
It is another sign of our politically polarized times that two of the most gracious concepts in the English language  asylum and sanctuary  are now bad words to some.

All matters related to immigrants and immigration have become powder kegs, but it is particularly sad that these terms for shelter, refuge, safety and protection were weaponized in President Donald Trumps efforts to subvert a legal process for political gain.

No, this isnt a call for open borders or shielding criminals from arrest or surrendering our sovereignty to invading forces. It is about an immigration policy that protects our nation while also respecting the dignity and rights of human beings.

For starters, the definition of immigration is the act of coming to live permanently in a foreign country. An immigration policy, then, is about who we allow in the country to dwell here permanently and who we keep out.

Historically, the U.S. policy has been generous. The United States has more immigrants than any other country in the world. Almost 45 million people living in the United States were born in another country, accounting for about one-fifth of the worlds migrants in 2016, according to a study by the Pew Research Center.

Republicans fear deja vu in Louisiana governor's race

The U.S. immigration policys primary emphasis is on family reunification and employment-based migration. Family-based immigration allows applicants to get a green card if they already have a spouse, child, sibling or parent living in the country with U.S. citizenship or, in some cases, a green card. A green card allows a foreign national to live and work permanently in the United States.

Employment-based immigration provides green cards to foreign workers and their families to fill jobs in the United States based on their valuable skills and other criteria. This program also includes temporary visas that allow employers to hire and petition for foreign nationals for specific jobs for limited periods.

In 2016, 804,793 people received family-based permanent residence and 137,893 received employment-based green cards.

A third area of legal immigration is the acceptance of refugees and others seeking asylum from violence, persecution and natural disasters. Many would argue this where a nation reveals its soul, its humanity. But this is where the Trump administration has been its most callous.

After accepting 84,995 refugees in 2016, the United States reduced the number to 53,716 last year, the fewest admissions since 2007. It will be even lower this year after Congress capped the limit at 45,000, the lowest since the modern refugee program was created in 1980.

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Trump took things even further this month with his racist and false statements about the so-called caravan moving up from Central America to the U.S.-Mexico border. With no evidence to support his claims, Trump tweeted that "criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in with the group fleeing poverty and violence. The administration sent about 5,900 active duty soldiers and Marines to border posts in California, Texas and Arizona shortly before the Nov. 6 election, one of the largest such deployments in decades.

Trump also tried to bar anyone who crosses the border illegally from seeking asylum, saying they could only qualify if they waited in line at a legal checkpoint, a move that was blocked by a federal court.

Whatever the scope of the Presidents authority, he may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden, the 37-page ruling said.

The presidents actions have been widely condemned by religious organizations all along the political spectrum.

"Those escaping violence and persecution in Honduras and elsewhere bear the image of God and should be treated with dignity and compassion, Southern Baptist Convention Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission President Russell Moore said in response to Trumps order. As Christians, we should share the heart of Jesus for refugees and others imperiled. Applying for asylum is legal in the United States of America, and the law should be carried out for everyone who seeks to apply. Not everyone will receive asylum, but everyone should have the opportunity to follow the law."

The Rev. Tony Suarez, executive vice president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference and member of the presidents evangelical advisory board, reminded observers that there is nothing illegal about walking toward our border and that our laws provide specific options for those hoping to find sanctuary and protection.

What is Thanksgiving if there is no one to thank? | Opinion

If its wrong to seek asylum, remove this plaque from the Statue of Liberty," Suarez said. "'Give me your tired your poor your HUDDLED MASSES yearning to breathe free the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these the homeless tempest-tossed to me I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

This isnt about subverting the law, its about upholding it. A United States that surrenders its responsibility to help the most vulnerable has lost its way.

Tim Morris is a columnist on the Latitude team at NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune. Latitude is a place to share opinions about the challenges facing Louisiana. Follow @LatitudeNOLA on Facebook and Twitter. Write to Tim at tmorris@nola.com.
Shiv Sena chief took a dig at the BJP and warned that the party should not use the Ram Mandir issue as a poll plank.

'I have no hidden agenda in coming to Ayodhya. Ive come here to express sentiments of all Indians across world,' Thackrey said. (Photo: ANI | Twitter)

Ayodhya: Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray has once again reiterated his demand for a Ram Temple. Addressing a press conference in Ayodhya on Sunday, Thackeray said that whether the party remained in power or not, the Ram Mandir will definitely be built. If it doesnt build it, then this govt may not stay, but the Mandir will still be built, he said.

Thackeray said, I told the saints who blessed me yesterday that the work which we are about to begin cant be done without their blessings. I have no hidden agenda in coming to Ayodhya. Ive come here to express the sentiments of all Indians and Hindus across the world. They are all waiting for the Ram Mandir to be built.

Referring to a statement given by Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Thackeray said, I heard that the chief minister had said, mandir tha, hai aur rahega. (There was a mandir, there will be a mandir and there will remain a mandir.) But that is our conviction, our belief, our emotion. What hurts is that we cant see the mandir. When will we see the mandir? It should be built soon, Thackeray said.

Shiv Sena chief took a dig at the BJP and warned that the party should not use the Ram Mandir issue as a poll plank. If the matter has to go to court, then the party should not use this as a poll plank and should tell the people that this is just another jumla. They should not play with the emotions of Hindus, he said.

Thackeray who had gone to visit the Ram Lalla temple earlier in the morning said that he had sought the blessings of the saints to get the work (construction of the Ram Mandir) done.

Ayodhya: Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray returns to the hotel after visiting the Ram Lalla temple earlier today. pic.twitter.com/Py0I4yPdKd  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) November 25, 2018

On Saturday, Thackeray had, while addressing a gathering at Laxman Quila in Ayodhya, demanded that BJP-led governments at the Centre and in Uttar Pradesh must give a date by which the construction for the Ram Temple will begin in Ayodhya town.
A task force searching for ways to fund courts with tax money instead of fines and fees wants to draft some hard recommendations by the end of the month, though it has only a fraction of the information it has requested.
Today

A mix of clouds and sun. High 72F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph.

Tonight

Partly cloudy. Low 62F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph.

Tomorrow

Sunshine and clouds mixed. High 74F. Winds light and variable.
UP CM attacked Kamal Nath over a video that has gone viral and made a veiled reference to the origins Sonia with an 'Italy' jibe.

Speaking about the video in which Nath is purportedly seen talking about the votes of the Muslim community, Adityanath said, 'You can remain happy with Ali, we have Bajrangbali.' (Photo: File)

Indore: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Aditynath hit out at Rahul Gandhi over the issue of national security Saturday, and hinting at the Congress chief's comments on the Rafale deal, said it was hard to guess whether he was speaking in India or Pakistan.

Speaking at a rally in Indore's Rau area, Adityanath also attacked Madhya Pradesh Congress chief Kamal Nath over a video that has gone viral and made a veiled reference to the origins of UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi with an "Italy" jibe.

"The country is setting new records on the security front and has developed its hitting capabilities, due to which we can enter the territories of enemies like China and Pakistan. This is upsetting the Congress," he told the gathering. Attacking the Congress chief, Adityanath said, "You will be surprised at the fake outlook of the Congress. Do you know what Rahul speaks? Sometimes, we cannot guess from his body language whether he is speaking in India or Pakistan."

Gandhi has been attacking the Centre on the Rafale fighter jets deal and has claimed that the aircraft were being bought for prices much higher than what the previous Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government had agreed to.

The Centre, however, has maintained that the Rafale deal was carried out after following proper norms.

Speaking about the video in which Nath is purportedly seen talking about the votes of the Muslim community, Adityanath said, "You can remain happy with Ali, we have Bajrangbali." In the video, Nath is purportedly heard saying, "If the Muslim community does not record a 90-per cent voting, we will suffer a heavy blow."

The Congress has, however, dubbed the video as a conspiracy of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to divide voters on communal lines. "We (BJP) do not discriminate on the basis of the beneficiaries' caste and religion in government schemes. This is Ram Rajya, in which there should be no discrimination against any person on any basis," Adityanath said.

He alleged that the Congress had turned Hindi-speaking states like Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand into "Bimaru" ones.

"Bimaru" is an acronym for Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh and has regularly been used by economists and political pundits to signify the "bimar" (Hindi for ailing) socio-economic parameters of these states.

"During the Congress rule, there was terrorism in some of these states and Naxalism in some others. Besides, different types of mafia were also active," Adityanath alleged. In an apparent reference to Sonia Gandhi's origins, The Uttar Pradesh chief minister, without naming anybody, said, "Some mafias were brought here from Italy by the Congress as dowry." He also questioned the Congress's pre-poll promise of farm loan waiver, something that has been mentioned by Rahul Gandhi in his election rallies in Madhya Pradesh as well as in other poll-bound states.

"First, the Congress should waive the debts of all farmers in Punjab," Adityanath said. The 230-member Madhya Pradesh Assembly will go to the polls on November 28 and the results will be announced on December 11.
The Ulfa-I, which owned the responsibility of grenade attack at Demow, also regretted the killing of a civilian.

The banned outfit also slammed all Indian investigating agencies, but it has appreciated the Intelligence Bureau (IB).

Guwahati: The outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom (Independent) here on Saturday accepted responsibility for the grenade attack in Upper Assams Sibsagar district on Thursday but outright rejected the report the National Investigation Agency (NIA) wherein it had held Ulfa-I responsible for Dhola massacre.

The Ulfa-I rebels had hurled grenade on a hardware shop in the Demow Chariali area, killing a customer, Anup Gupta, and the shopowner, Kamal Agarwal, on Thursday.

Ulfa-Is publicity secretary Arunoday Asom in a press statement sent to newspapers on email said, Our organisation would like to make it clear that we are not involved anyway in November 1 killing of Dhola. We also challenge NIA to inform the people of Assam that on what ground they are accusing our organisation of that killing.

The banned outfit also slammed all Indian investigating agencies, but it has appreciated the Intelligence Bureau (IB). We feel IB is slightly different from the rest of the agencies. However they are not above suspicion, it added.

The outfit further said, We along with people of Assam have understood that investigative agency like NIA is being used as tools by the government and ruling BJP to fulfil their vindictive agenda.

The Ulfa-I, which owned the responsibility of grenade attack at Demow, also regretted the killing of a civilian. We take responsibility for Thursdays explosion and sooner or later stern action will be taken against those who betray us. But our target was not the customer Anup Gupta but the owner of the shop.

Though, outlawed Ulfa-I has denied the charges, Assam Director General of Police Kuladhar Saikia on Friday said that a six-member team of Ulfa-I militants was behind the killing of five Bengali-speaking persons at Dhola in Tinsukia district on November 1.

According to the preliminary investigations conducted by police and NIA, there was sufficient technical evidence about a six-member team of the Ulfa-I being behind the Tinsukia killing incident, the DGP said while outright rejecting clarification issued by Ulfa-I.
The Mann ki Baat programme is broadcast every month on the last Sunday on the All India Radio and the Doordarshan.

A statement from the Prime Ministers Office issued Friday said that after the episode was aired, the sale of khadi products went up by 120 per cent. (Photo: PTI/File)

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modis monthly radio broadcast Mann ki Baat, which completes 50 episodes on Sunday, has in its previous episodes covered issues of social, national as well as international implication: education of the girl child, tackling exam stress, climate change and drug menace.

In October 2014, in the very first episode of the programme, Mr Modi urged citizens to use at least one khadi product, saying it would help poor weavers.

A statement from the Prime Ministers Office issued Friday said that after the episode was aired, the sale of khadi products went up by 120 per cent.

The Mann ki Baat programme is broadcast every month on the last Sunday on the All India Radio and the Doordarshan.

Taking cue from a listener, Mr Modi dedicated the entire December 2014 episode to making India drug-free. He requested all those active on the social media to create a continuous online movement by using #DrugsFreeIndia hashtag.

The episode in January 2015, was the first ever joint radio address by an Indian Prime Minister and an US President.

Mr Modi and then US President Barack Obama shared some personal stories and accounts and answered questions like what makes you smile after a long day at work? or did you ever think you would reach the position you have reached today? The PM also discussed how exams should be celebrated as a festival.

The PM followed it up with a book titled Exam Warriors which discussed how to deal with exam pressure as well as a community-driven initiative to make exams fun.
LITTLE ROCK, Ark.  Betty Bumpers, whose advocacy of childhood immunization won her national recognition while serving as first lady of Arkansas and after accompanying her husband, Dale L. Bumpers, to Washington when he won a Senate seat, died on Friday in Little Rock. She was 93.

Her son Brent said the cause was complications of dementia. She had been in failing health and had recently fractured a hip, he said.

A native of tiny Grand Prairie, Ark., Mrs. Bumpers had been content with her life as an elementary schoolteacher and homemaker in nearby Charleston, where her husband was born, when he rocketed to the Arkansas governorship in 1970, running as a liberal Democrat and a relative unknown.

Once installed in the governors mansion, Mrs. Bumpers was startled to discover that tens of thousands of Arkansas children had not been inoculated against common but potentially fatal diseases like measles, mumps and diphtheria.
Weve all, in the past generation, grown up with a sense that there is a single superpower in the world, the United States, and most of the issues have been defined as for or against American interests around the world, like radical Islamist terrorism. Thats changing, and its time to just pause and make a statement that its changing.

We spent a big part of the initial effort just gathering data, looking for some of the harder metrics on very broad issues like social mobility or export power or the size of the Chinese internet, to see whether that could help us make some broader statements. It was an attempt, rather than looking for the usual newsy development that allows us to say something broader in the middle of the story, to broaden from the start and tell this in a more explanatory way. So we really set out to put some bigger conclusions and data-driven analysis first, and then figure out the story.

The tricky part is that, when you take on a big project like that early in 2018 and try to land it late in 2018, you dont know what the macro news environment is going to be. For all we knew at that time, we could be at war in the South China Sea, or on the Korean Peninsula, or Trump and Xi could become best friends and resolve the trade war. It kind of worked out, timing-wise, but we couldnt have known that.

Is there anything surprising weve learned about what kinds of China stories will pull people in? We tried something similar to this when I was an editor at The Atlantic seven or eight years ago, but it was hard to get people into it.

Its still hard to get people into it. We have a giant investment in a really high-quality China staff, we translate a lot of things into Chinese, we have everyone from the science desk to Washington paying attention to it.
When George Lucas conceived Star Wars in the early 1970s, he had to create an entirely different look for an entirely different galaxy. That included the costumes. The films production illustrator, Ralph McQuarrie, did the groundwork. The execution went to John Mollo, a British military illustrator and cinematic wardrobe consultant who would win the 1978 Academy Award for Best Costume Design for Mr. Lucass space epic.

On Dec. 11, Bonhams will auction Mollos original sketchbooks for Star Wars and its sequel, The Empire Strikes Back, in its Designing an Empire: The John Mollo Archive sale. The books for the first movie are expected to fetch $130,000 to $190,000, the sequel, $100,000 to $160,000. Also up for grabs are sketches and ephemera from other Mollo movies including Barry Lyndon, Alien, Chaplin and Gandhi, for which Mollo won his second Oscar.

The time pressure on the first Star Wars was intense for Mollo, who died last year. I think my father put it all together in six weeks, Mollos son, Tom, said in an interview earlier this month. He always said he found it frighteningly difficult working with people who were indecisive, and Lucas was not indecisive. Hed put the sketches before him and hed say yes or no.

Lucas said in a memorable understatement, I dont want anyone to notice the costumes, John Mollo wrote in a foreword to Star Wars Costumes: The Original Trilogy by Brandon Alinger . Unlike period films, where there are limits to what is historically correct, there are none in science fiction, and the director can ask for any outlandish thing he wants with the cost being his main handicap. George wasnt like that. He strongly believed that the costumes should be real clothes, and that if they were noticed too much they would distract the attention of the audience .
1. Global warming threatens American lives, cities and jobs, according to a major report by 13 federal agencies, unless the U.S. takes significant steps to rein it in.

At the reports heart: Predictions are coming true  record wildfires, increasing floods, disrupted supply chains  and it could get much worse. Fire season could spread to the Southeast, crop failures could desolate the Midwest and cascading disasters could knock 10 percent off the U.S. economy by 2100.

The findings in the report are directly at odds with President Trumps agenda of environmental deregulation, which he argues will spur economic growth. Here are five key takeaways.
Good Sunday morning, and welcome to a special edition of the DealBook Briefing. Today, were taking a look at how China wrote its own playbook to beat the West at its own game of economic growth.

The land that failed to fail

The Chinese economy has grown so fast for so long it is easy to forget how unlikely its metamorphosis into a global powerhouse was, and how much of its ascent was improvised and born of desperation.

China now leads the world in the number of homeowners, internet users, college graduates and, by some counts, billionaires. Not so long ago, three-quarters of its population endured extreme poverty: Now its less than 1 percent. An isolated, impoverished nation has evolved into the most significant rival to the United States since the fall of the Soviet Union.

This week, the NYT published a series of articles detailing how that happened and what it means for the future. Heres a whistle-stop tour of some highlights.
The state had been under the Governors Rule ever since BJP pulled out of coalition government with Mehbooba Muftis PDP in June this year.

The state had been under the Governors Rule ever since BJP pulled out of coalition government with Mehbooba Muftis PDP in June this year.

New Delhi: The home ministry will recommend to the Election Commission that elections to the recently dissolved Jammu & Kashmir

Assembly be held along with the upcoming Lok Sabha polls since there would be large-scale mobilisation of security forces during that period and it would be easier to re-locate paramilitary forces from states such as Punjab and Himachal Pradesh to J&K once Lok Sabha elections are completed in these states.

The home ministry and the poll panel officials will hold a series of meeting in the coming months to finalise deployment of forces for J&K elections since security in the state remains a top concern.

J&K governor Satya Pal Malik had dissolved the state Assembly on Wednesday.

The state had been under the Governors Rule ever since BJP pulled out of coalition government with Mehbooba Muftis PDP in June this year.

Even though there was speculation that different political parties were exploring various combinations of forming a coalition government in the state, Mr Malik, in a surprise move, announced the dissolution of the J&K Assembly earlier this week.

Home ministry sources indicated that from their side the ministry would suggest to the Election Commission that fresh polls in J&K be held along with the Lok Sabha elections next year as it would be more convenient for them to mobilise security forces during that period.

Since there would be large-scale movement and deployment of security forces during the Lok Sabha elections it would be easier for us to shift them to J&K from other states in North India, especially Punjab and Himachal Pradesh, once voting during general elections there is completed. So, from a logistics point of view, it is best if the J&K elections coincide with those of the Lok Sabha. Or else, we will have to make special arrangements, which would more time-consuming and involve a higher financial cost also, a senior ministry official said.

In the run-up to the Lok Sabha election, which is scheduled for early next year, both home ministry and the Election Commission will hold a series of meetings to discuss security arrangements. During these, sources added, the home ministry will strongly recommend holding Assembly and Lok Sabha polls together in J&K. Ministry officials argued that since the state has already been under the Governors Rule since June this year, there was no urgency to hold immediate elections. Governors Rule, officials added, can be extended for till the Lok Sabha elections so that Assembly polls can also be held at the same time.
Both of my parents have a strong emphasis on education and knowing whats going on in the world around us, Ms. Guillaume said. They were always very encouraging of us to break out of our middle school or high school problems and think about larger forces at play.

But Ms. Guillaumes parents did not want her to spend so much time at The Crimson, hoping she would pursue medicine or law. Its the classic immigrant parent narrative, Ms. Guillaume said. She let out a sigh. Theres a lot of tension that I dont take more science classes.

Ms. Guillaume said she planned to pursue a doctorate in African-American studies and a career in academia, with some writing on the side. She cited the author Ta-Nehisi Coates as a role model.

At Townsend Harris High School in Queens, Ms. Guillaume edited the literary magazine, The Phoenix, which had a rivalry with the schools newspaper, The Classic, where her younger sister, Isabelle, now serves as editor in chief.

At Harvard, Ms. Guillaume has edited Lets Go travel guides on the side, a job that included a stint as a reporter in Lyon, France. And for the past three years, she has been part of The Crimsons news board, which is what the newspaper calls the editors and reporters who cover the campus and beyond. She has written on immigration and, taking on one of the papers most high-pressure beats, has covered the schools leadership. In a recent article, she wrote that, for the first time, four of Harvards schools were led by black women.

She is able to command a room, but also be a really friendly, approachable presence, said Leah Yared, a senior who has mentored Ms. Guillaume at The Crimson, including discussing coverage and writing articles with her at Tasty Burger on Harvard Square.

Ms. Yared, one of the few black women in the papers top echelon, helped with the process of choosing the Crimson president this year. The students involved in the Turkey Shoot followed a process that included implicit bias training.
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WASHINGTON  The Trump White House, which has defined itself by a willingness to dismiss scientific findings and propose its own facts, on Friday issued a scientific report that directly contradicts its own climate-change policies.

That sets the stage for a remarkable split-screen political reality in coming years. The administration is widely expected to discount or ignore the reports detailed findings of the economic strain caused by climate change, even as it continues to cut environmental regulations, while opponents use it to mount legal attacks against the very administration that issued the report.

This report will be used in court in significant ways, said Richard L. Revesz, an expert in environmental law at New York University. I can imagine a lawyer for the Trump administration being asked by a federal judge, How can the federal government acknowledge the seriousness of the problem, and then set aside the rules that protect the American people from the problem? And they might squirm around coming up with an answer.

The 1,656-page National Climate Assessment, which is required by Congress, is the most comprehensive scientific study to date detailing the effects of global warming on the United States economy, public health, coastlines and infrastructure. It describes in precise detail how the warming planet will wreak hundreds of billions of dollars of damage in coming decades.
The couple met in August 2014, after Dr. Wolfs reporting on human rights violations in the Middle East resulted in online threats. When she began inquiring about security, colleagues recommended Mr. OShea.

The first thing she asked me was, How are you doing? he recalled. I thought, Shes my concern, I should be asking her that question.

They embarked on what Ms. Wolf described as a very professional relationship, with Mr. OShea accompanying her to any event with a potential for danger.

We went to a lot of geopolitical events and I admired how she handled herself, he said. She wasnt afraid to ask tough questions, and she was always concerned with getting to the root of a problem, rather than trying to come away with the best sound bite.
Financed by three-year federal grants, the program is intended to ease refugees into the economy by helping small-business ventures. Over the past three-year cycle, it has enrolled 115 clients in the San Diego area, matching almost $420,000 in savings, said Fady Amin, a committee coordinator who worked with the Najjars. Funds are used to help buy assets, like a house, business equipment or a car. (The Najjars just purchased a new Toyota Sienna, which Mrs. Najjar uses to make deliveries.)

In a separate loans program, the organization doled out more than $1.4 million nationwide in 743 small-dollar loans from July 2016 to September 2018. Most borrowers were from Syria or Iraq.

More than a year in, business at the Najjars shop is good, with a steady stream of customers, many from a nearby hookah lounge. They have hired two employees. A wide variety of sweets, which Mr. Najjar bakes daily, are sold at local grocery stores and a university, and wholesalers in Sacramento and Seattle buy them, too.

Early next year, the family will be eligible for citizenship, and they plan to apply. The couples two children, now 13 and 10, enjoy school and sometimes help at the bakery.

In the back room, Mrs. Najjar scrolled on her smartphone through photos of the children, laughing and covered in flour. Others were taken at SeaWorld, where the family has an annual pass.

Here, my children have a good future, she said.
Instead, the suit is a straightforward shareholder fraud case contending that Exxon deceived investors by saying publicly that it had fully accounted for the risks of climate change while in fact deliberately minimizing and, in some cases, ignoring these risks when making its business decisions. These actions, the suit charges, inflated the companys value by making it appear to be on firmer financial footing than it actually was.

Opinion Conversation The climate, and the world, are changing. What challenges will the future bring, and how should we respond to them? What should our leaders be doing?

Al Gore, the 45th vice president of the United States, finds reasons for optimism in the Biden presidency.

Al Gore, the 45th vice president of the United States, finds reasons for optimism in the Biden presidency. What are the worst climate risks in your country?

Select a country, and we'll break down the climate hazards it faces.

Select a country, and we'll break down the climate hazards it faces. Where are Americans suffering most?

Our maps, developed with experts, show where extreme heat is causing the most deaths in the U.S.

Our maps, developed with experts, show where extreme heat is causing the most deaths in the U.S. What does climate devastation look like?

In Sept. 2020, Michael Benson studied detailed satellite imagery. Here's the earth that he saw  and the one he wants to see.

The case is also numbingly complex, involving competing claims about arcane proxy costs  theoretical calculations of the expenses the company would be likely to incur when stringent government regulations kick in to limit the emissions of climate-altering compounds. The suit claims that even as Exxon assured investors that it was applying rigid accounting to operations and holdings, in practice it was not, thus avoiding painful write-downs on oil and gas reserves it might have to abandon if the true costs of regulation were taken into account. In one example, the suit charges, the company failed to apply publicly stated proxy costs to 14 oil sands projects in Alberta, leading to undercounting future regulatory expenses by $25 billion.

To all of this, Exxon has two main responses. First, it says, the attorney general misunderstands the way the company calculates and applies costs. Scott Silvestri, an Exxon spokesman, said in a statement, The company looks forward to refuting these claims as soon as possible and getting this meritless civil lawsuit dismissed. Second, echoing what the company has said from the beginning, it claims that the inquiry is basically a witch hunt inspired by interest groups and Mr. Schneiderman, a politically ambitious Democrat.
To the Editor:

Re Mothers Are Dying. Does Anyone Care?, by Kim Brooks (Sunday Review, Nov. 18):

Ms. Brookss stories of blame and shame remind us once again that health care in America is never just about receiving clinically correct medical treatment. Review committees that look hard at what went wrong  and right  in each case of maternal death or near miss will surely help reduce mortality and improve outcomes. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control reported last year that 60 percent of maternal deaths reviewed in nine states were preventable.

But our research interviewing both labor and delivery staff and recent parents of color in New York City reveals a far deeper human rights challenge. From stories women tell of fear and confusion, even coercion, of expectations crushed, and of humiliation experienced, there emerges a picture of a maternity care system in crisis.

Its literally sickening effects are expressed not only in our shameful national maternal mortality rate ( 46th in the world) but also in the shocking fact that black women die at a rate about four times higher than white women.

Ms. Brooks rightly condemns the apparent impulse to blame women for these stark facts. But it is also a huge mistake to blame this on the providers of obstetric care alone. They too express immense frustration with the perverse incentives and insurance-driven constraints of the system, and champions among them openly question current practice. Hospitals need to look inward to address the implicit biases that contribute to unequal and disrespectful care. Even more urgent, they need to look outward, to recognize how social injustice is reflected in the way maternity care in America is organized and delivered.
On the late November night in 1864 when a band of Southern rebels lighted blazes all over Manhattan, trying to burn the city down, the Booth brothers were onstage in Greenwich Village, doing a benefit performance of Shakespeares Julius Caesar. The great actor Edwin Booth, who for a few more months would be the most famous of the siblings, calmed the audience of thousands when the fire alarm rang out.

He was starring as Brutus that evening, while his brother John Wilkes Booth  not yet President Lincolns assassin, not until April  played Marc Antony, with their older brother Junius Brutus Booth Jr. as Cassius. In retrospect, its an irresistibly dramatic scenario: siblings who split between the Union and Confederate sides in a violently divided country, enacting a tragedy about political conspiracy as a real-life plot bursts into flames around them.

This is the tale that Casey Wimpees The Brutes tells, in a Spit & Vigor production at the New Ohio Theater in the West Village. Directed by Sara Fellini, it would seem potentially well matched to both this time of year and our foully antagonistic national mood. But even when the Booths sit down together for Thanksgiving dinner, and Wilkes, as they call him, provokes a fight about the war, this labored, fragmented play remains frustratingly inert, weighed down by a surfeit of story.

Hamlet was one of Edwin Booths greatest roles, and in The Brutes Edwin (Adam Belvo) keeps encountering the drunken ghost of his famous actor father (Eamon Murphy) backstage, stalking around like Hamlets dead dad. These bits and the plentiful excerpts from Julius Caesar feel, even if you know both plays, like an enervating amount of Shakespeare out of context.
Given the immense power of the special counsels office and the costs to Mr. Papadopoulos of continuing to fight, he will serve his sentence tomorrow, and hopes to move on with his life, Mr. LaVigne wrote in a statement.

Judge Moss dismissed a suggestion by Mr. Papadopoulos that his prison time should be delayed pending the resolution of a challenge to the appointment of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who is leading the investigation into Russian interference and whether there were any connections to the Trump campaign.

Lower courts have affirmed the validity of Mr. Muellers appointment.

Mr. Papadopoulos had suggested that the appeal could theoretically find Mr. Muellers appointment unlawful, and that, in turn, would result in his own conviction being set aside.

Judge Moss, however, said in the opinion on Sunday that Mr. Papadopoulos did not show that the appeal was likely to find Mr. Muellers appointment unlawful and, even if it did, such a finding was not likely to provide any new evidence that could set aside his conviction.

He also rejected what he characterized as Mr. Papadopolouss 11th hour request, filed on Nov. 21, to delay his sentence until he could further appeal any decision about the Mueller case.
WASHINGTON  When Victor and Cynthia Liu landed with their mother on a tropical Chinese island in June to visit an ailing grandfather, they thought they would soon be on a plane back to their East Coast lives  he to start his sophomore year at Georgetown University, and she to work at the consulting firm McKinsey & Company in New York.

Instead, within days, police officers detained their mother, Sandra Han, who, like her children, is an American citizen. They moved her to a secret site, commonly known as a black jail. The children discovered at the airport that they could not leave China, even though the police had said they were not being investigated or charged with a crime, the children told American officials and family associates.

By holding the family hostage, they said, the police are trying to force the siblings father to return to China to face criminal charges. The father, Liu Changming, a former executive at a state-owned bank, is accused of being a central player in a $1.4 billion fraud case.

The children say their father severed ties with the family in 2012, but the Chinese authorities have still held them for months under a practice known as an exit ban  a growing tactic that has become the latest flash point in the increasingly rancorous relationship between the United States and China.
WASHINGTON  Their previous jobs have taken them to the Oval Office, the Situation Room and the Senate floor. One met with a Saudi king and plotted strategy to fight the Islamic State. Another cracked down on human rights abuses in North Korea. Their Rolodexes are flush with former cabinet members and current Pentagon officials who are happy to take their calls.

Nearly a dozen members of the Houses incoming class are far from being gawky freshmen, stumbling wide-eyed through the strange corridors of Capitol Hill, but are instead experienced policymakers who have worked in previous presidential administrations  seven of them for former President Barack Obama. Their return to Washington is, in part, a way to undo what they see as the unspooling of the values and legacy of the nations 44th president.

We have just won a very fragile foothold in one institution in Washington at a time when all the institutions and norms are under attack, said Tom Malinowski, who served Mr. Obama as assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor. This election is not about changing the country. Its about saving the country.

But in a freshman class where confrontation, not cooperation, could be most prized, it is not clear whether the Washington veterans will assume leadership roles or take a back seat to younger, brasher freshmen like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.
Surendra Singh said a controversial comment that if need be, '1992 will be repeated at Ayodhya'.

New Delhi: BLP lawmaker, Surendra Singh has called out the Shiv Sena on its efforts to highlight the BJPs failure to build a Ram temple in Ayodhya. Shiv Senas chief Uddhav Thackeray who is currently in Ayodhya has been relentless in his criticism to its ally BJP. On Sunday, Thackeray demanded the date of temple criticism and warned that the BJP-led government will not be able to retain power if they fail to do so.

How can Shiv Sena hijack the Ram Mandir issue? The people who thrash north Indians and drive them out, who don't even have the mentality to serve humanity, how will they serve lord Ram?" questioned Singh, who earlier threatened to break the law and go against the Constitution to ensure that a temple is built.

Surendra Singh said a controversial comment that if need be, 1992 will be repeated at Ayodhya.

The Shiv Sena and Vishwa Hindu Parishad are holding separate rallies at Ayodhya on Sunday to push for the construction of the Ram temple.

The BJP, a section of its allies and the right-wing groups are hoping that the construction will be well on its way before 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
WASHINGTON  Republicans saw the poisonous fight over Brett M. Kavanaughs Supreme Court confirmation as pure gold in the midterm elections, calling it Kavanaughs Revenge. Senator Bob Casey saw it a little differently in his own re-election bid  as a less-than-decisive issue in what was supposed to be a marquee race.

I think because health care was such an overriding factor, it was down the list, said Mr. Casey, the Pennsylvania Democrat, who won easily despite his strong opposition to Judge Kavanaugh in a state won by President Trump two years earlier. Mr. Caseys performance in the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh suburbs  an improvement from previous elections  suggests that the Kavanaugh fight could have instead benefited him by turning out supportive voters.

In the end, the most contentious Supreme Court confirmation drama in decades resulted in a split midterm decision that suggests that Democrats might have gained ground in their fledgling efforts to make the court as mobilizing an issue to their voters as it has long been to Republicans.

The conservative backlash to the fight seemed to help Republicans capture three Democratic Senate seats in conservative Indiana, Missouri and North Dakota  but Republicans might have grabbed the seats regardless of the uproar over Judge Kavanaugh. The backlash could have influenced the narrow Democratic Senate loss in Florida as well. And the sole Democratic senator who supported Judge Kavanaugh, Joe Manchin III in West Virginia, won in one of Mr. Trumps strongest states.
Mr. Trump has told aides that he believes that Democrats have the potential to appear overly partisan in investigating his family and that voters may be sympathetic to efforts to rebuff them.

Thomas M. Reynolds, a former congressman who was the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee in 2006, agreed that the incoming House majority would be wise not to meddle excessively in the private affairs of the presidents business and two adult sons.

But, he said, were on a thin line here because the president still owns the company.

Congressional inquiries are treacherous, and can be hard to weather. The president is said to be unprepared for the onslaught he is facing, even as the White House Counsels Office, which will be led by a new lead counsel, Pat Cipollone, is hiring a raft of lawyers.

Ms. Trump and her husband, Mr. Kushner, have had a veteran Washington lawyer, Abbe D. Lowell, working with them for several months. But Mr. Trump is famously frugal about hiring personal lawyers, and it is unclear whether he or his adult sons are prepared for how much assistance they will require.

Politically speaking, this is the Achilles heel of the administration, said Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, a Democrat who sits on two of the key investigative panels, referring to the Trump familys business dealings. They have turned the government of the United States into a moneymaking operation for the president and his family and close friends. That is the exact opposite of our constitutional design.

Both Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump were advised by White House lawyers of the risks of joining the West Wing as formal advisers two years ago, since it would open them up to official lines of inquiry, among other issues. On the other hand, people close to them noted that they might be shielded by executive privilege in some instances, whereas the presidents adult sons, who do not serve in the administration, are not.

Democrats have said they will not reflexively file subpoenas, but they have already gotten signals from the White House that cooperation is likely to be minimal. Even if the Mueller investigation ends in the coming months, as Mr. Trumps lawyers believe is possible, the White House is facing a string of congressional subpoenas that could grind the gears of government to a halt, and put a spotlight on areas that the secretive Mr. Trump prefers to keep out of sight.
RIO DE JANEIRO  The elevator attendants are under no illusion: Their days are numbered.

Yet the few thousand operators in Rio de Janeiro who have clung on to their jobs well into the 21st century are hoping the forces of automation wont entirely obliterate their trade, at least for a few more years.

Youre never bored, said Roselia da Conceicao, 53, as she ferried passengers up and down a 23-story building in downtown Rio de Janeiro one morning, commanding her bouncy elevator from a tall stool.

Because youre always talking and interacting with people, you learn a lot and you create a type of intimacy, she said.
SANTIAGO, Chile  The killing of a young indigenous man by an antiterrorism police squad has intensified longstanding criticism over the treatment of native communities in southern Chile by the government and security forces accused of systemic abuses.

The killing of Camilo Catrillanca, 24, on Nov. 14 is the latest flash point in a fight over ancestral lands claimed by the Mapuche, which has led leaders in Chile to treat some indigenous land rights activists as terrorists  by for example, charging and trying them under antiterrorism laws.

Mr. Catrillanca, a Mapuche, was riding a tractor home after working in the fields near the town of Ercilla, in the Araucania region, about 370 miles south of Santiago, the capital, when an antiterrorism police team approached him, apparently suspecting that he had taken part in a car theft.

According to a 15-year-old boy who was riding on the tractor, Mr. Catrillanca turned the tractor around and started driving away from the police when members of the squad, nicknamed the Jungle Commando, shot at them from an armored car.
There is a draft, and that draft isnt the final decision of the election commission, she said.

Nothing officially has been announced, said another election spokeswoman, Kobra Rezaei. A discussion is ongoing because we have to hold four elections next year, and we faced some problems in the parliamentary elections this year, so we are trying to figure out how we can hold fair elections. If a new decision is made about the election date, we will hold a news conference to announce it.

The four elections scheduled for April 20 include the presidential vote, elections for provincial councils from the countrys 34 provinces, and inaugural elections for councils in the countrys 400 districts. In addition, the parliamentary elections that took place across the country on Oct. 20 were postponed in Ghazni Province until April 20 because of poor security.

Since 2009, Afghanistans elections have been dogged by fraud and widespread dissension over the results. The 2014 presidential election nearly collapsed because of claims of large-scale vote theft, until the American government negotiated a power-sharing agreement between the two leading candidates, providing for Mr. Ghani to be president and his leading opponent, Abdullah Abdullah, to serve in an invented position of chief executive.

Part of that deal called for negotiating laws to prevent fraud in future elections, but infighting led to the postponement of parliamentary election due in early 2015.

The parliamentary vote was rescheduled and delayed twice more, until it was finally held Oct. 20. Because of widespread ballot stuffing and other forms of electoral fraud in previous elections, political parties insisted on portable biometric devices being distributed to thousands of polling places to verify the identity of registered voters.

The last-minute program, however, was a spectacular failure. The biometric screening failed even for Mr. Ghani and Mr. Abdullah when they cast their ballots on Election Day. Thousands of the biometric devices  and their data  have yet to be returned to election headquarters in Kabul, officials said.

There has also been criticism of the devices potential to identify voters and how they voted.

Those and other technical problems have greatly delayed the counting of votes: Five weeks later, results have been announced for only five of 33 provinces where voting took place. Estimates are that final results may not be ready until well into January  leaving barely three months to prepare for the next elections.
With her own Conservative Party deeply divided and the opposition Labour Party promising to vote the deal down, Mrs. May faces what most consider to be an almost impossible task.

But she is dogged, and, with Britain scheduled to leave the European Union on March 29, she appears to be relying on giving legislators a stark choice: her deal or a chaotic exit without any deal.

If she fails, what happens next would be anyones guess. Mrs. May could face a leadership challenge or be left to put her deal to a second vote in the British Parliament. There could be a push for a softer Brexit, new elections or a second referendum. Or Britain could lurch toward a no-deal Brexit, an outcome no one wants on either side of the Channel.

In an open letter to the nation, Mrs. May said she would campaign heart and soul to get the deal approved. Speaking in Brussels on Sunday, she added that the British people dont want to spend any more time arguing about Brexit, and that her agreement would allow Britons to come together again as a country.
LONDON  Now comes the harder part.

On Sunday, the 27 other members of the European Union gave the green light to Prime Minister Theresa Mays deal to seal Britains divorce from the bloc.

But she still has huge hurdles to overcome.

Whats next?

 Mrs. May will take the pact to the British Parliament: The prime minister must win the support of lawmakers who agree with rivals like Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg, who had given her Brexit plan scathing reviews, and some members of the opposition Labour Party, which has promised to vote against the deal.

 Lawmakers will vote: A vote is expected before Christmas. Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said on Sunday that the arithmetic to get the votes was looking challenging. Mrs. May took her case to the people, writing an open letter to the nation in which she argued that the deal was one that works for our whole country and all of our people, whether you voted Leave or Remain.

 Transition would follow approval. Both the House of Commons and the European Parliament must sign off on the deal. If that happens, Britain would be on course to leave the bloc on March 29, with a transition period until December 2020.
LONDON  It began, PETA says, as a playful attempt to draw attention to animal cruelty in the wool industry: The animal rights group sent a letter asking the English village of Wool to change its name to Vegan Wool.

But the letter from the British branch of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, received on Wednesday by village officials, attracted scorn and ridicule from residents of Wool after it was posted on Facebook by the local parish council clerk, according to news reports.

With a simple name change, your village can take a stand against this cruelty, Elisa Allen, director of PETAs London office, wrote, pointing to evidence of mistreatment of sheep on farms around the world.

In exchange for the name change, Ms. Allen said, wed be happy to provide every Vegan Wool household that would like one with a cozy, cruelty-free blanket.
MADRID  Thousands of people took to the streets of countries around the globe on Sunday, a day set aside by the United Nations to raise awareness of and to protest violence against women.

It was the beginning of a 16-day campaign urging individuals and organizations to fight the kind of violence that will affect more than a third of women globally during their lives, according to the United Nations.

Michelle Bachelet, the former president of Chile and the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, said in a video on Twitter: I support the millions of women around the world who have dared to speak out against violence and harassment.

Using the hashtags #MeToo, #NiUnaMenos and #NousToutes, she urged women everywhere to keep telling their stories of violence and to demand accountability and reparation.
BEIRUT, Lebanon  Syria called on the United Nations on Sunday to condemn its rebel foes after an apparent attack with unidentified chemicals in the city of Aleppo sent scores of choking victims to hospitals.

Medics reported a flood of patients with breathing troubles, inflamed eyes and other symptoms after a shelling attack on Saturday that Syrian and Russian officials blamed on the rebels.

The Syrian state news service, SANA, said that more than 100 people had been affected by the attack, although it reported no deaths. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group based in Britain, released slightly lower numbers. A spokesman for Russias Ministry of Defense said 46 people, including eight children, had been exposed to chemicals.

It was not immediately clear who had launched the attack on Saturday or what substance was used. Syrias dwindling rebel movement is a patchwork of factions with no central command. A few rebel groups denied the governments accusations.
Singh also spoke on Sushma Swarajs decision not to contest elections in 2019 and on Kartarpur Corridor.

Singh said, 'Sushma has reasons which must be delinked from it. She's committed because of elections and health issues.' (Photo: ANI | Twitter)

New Delhi: Minister of State for External Affairs, VK Singh, in an exclusive interview with ANI responded to various questions including American tourist killed in Andaman, Sushma Swarajs decision not to contest elections in 2019, Ayodhya dispute and on Kartarpur Corridor.

Minister of External Affairs, Sushma Swaraj on Saturday declined Pakistans invitation for Kartarpur corridor and Singh said, Sushma Swaraj has reasons which must be delinked from it. She's committed because of elections and health issues. To read too much into it is wrong. India's committed to ensuring the Kartarpur Corridor comes up fast and would like Pakistan to cooperate.

Questioning on Swarajs announcement on contesting 2019 Lok Sabha polls, VK Singh said that she is a senior and accomplished leader. Swaraj has done extremely well whichever appointment she was in and the decision of not contesting in elections is because of health issue.

On Saturday, Akhilesh Yadav made a statement that Army should be brought in Ayodhya if required because of the events of Shiv Sena and Vishwa Hindu Parishad, to which Singh said, There's enough law and order machinery available. I'm quite sure the government being that of BJP, unlike other parties, will ensure that law and order is maintained.

#WATCH Washington DC, USA: MoS MEA VK Singh responds to Akhilesh Yadav's statement 'Army should be brought in Ayodhya if required.' says "Jab jab BJP power mein rahi hai tab tab dange aur dusri cheezein nahi hui hain. Akhilesh ji ko vishwas dilana chahta hoon aaram se baithiye." pic.twitter.com/MzyYCIukD4  ANI (@ANI) November 25, 2018

Talking about the American tourist who was killed by the Indian tribe in Andaman, Singh clarified that such incidents have happened earlier as well and that is why the government has a policy that nobody should go there. The Indian tribe is a separate group and dont want outsiders. Andaman government will find out who allowed him to go there.
They didnt like the Wests playbook. So they wrote their own.

Liu Ping, center, president of Chinas state-owned Bright Food Group, sampling local yogurt at a dairy farm near Momchilovtsi. A Bright Food yogurt brand is named for the village. Bryan Denton for The New York Times

Beijing is leveraging its commercial and military might to redraw the terms of trade, diplomacy and security, challenging the liberal democratic order.

Under a merciless sun, a dozen Chinese construction workers survey an empty expanse of desert, preparing to transform it into the heart of a new Egyptian capital.

The workers are employed by Chinas largest construction conglomerate through a $3 billion contract from an Egyptian company, with financing from Chinese banks. They are erecting a thicket of 21 skyscrapers, one as tall as the Empire State Building.

The presence of Chinese labor and largess on the sands of Egypt is a testament to Chinas global aspirations. After centuries of weakness and isolation, China is reclaiming what its leaders regard as its natural destiny  supremacy in Asia, and respect around the planet. Through the ventures in Egypt and elsewhere, China is exploiting its formidable economic clout to expand its geopolitical influence, directing investment to woo governments that control vital assets.

A traditional ally of the United States, Egypt controls the Suez Canal, a vital shipping passage where a threat to access could impede Chinas movement around the globe. In constructing a central piece of the futuristic capital, China is ingratiating itself with the canals ultimate gatekeeper, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, while rendering his grandest visions dependent on friendly relations with Beijing.

How China became a superpower

Chinas reach for commercial expansion along with diplomatic influence guides an array of Chinese undertakings, from rail networks and highways taking shape across Africa and Latin America to ports and power stations being constructed in Eastern Europe and South Asia. In Southeast Asia, Chinese entrepreneurs are engineering a crop of web companies just as China projects growing military power in the South China Sea.

Little more than a decade ago, Chinas forays beyond its borders were mainly about bringing home energy, minerals and other resources, often from countries forsaken by the West as pariah states like Iran, Sudan and Myanmar. In foreign policy, China pursued a sole obsession  peeling off diplomatic recognition of Taiwan, the self-governing island that Beijing claims as its territory. Even as China skirmished with neighbors over contested islands, it accepted the dominance of the United States Navy.

Those days are over.

Chinese banks are lending $3 billion to finance the first phase of the new Egyptian capital, which is expected to be completed in three years. A second phase is expected to cost $3.2 billion. Bryan Denton for The New York Times Chinese visitors at the pyramids of Giza in Egypt, which is using workers and financing from China to build a new capital city. Bryan Denton for The New York Times

Under the muscular leadership of President Xi Jinping, China has cast off previous restraints, rejecting deference to an American-dominated global order as an impediment to national revival. In matters of commerce and national security, China is competing with the United States, even in traditional American spheres of influence.

From a Chinese perspective, this reordering is merely an overdue reversion to historical reality as Beijing demands consideration commensurate with its stature.

In the telling of the ruling Communist Party, Chinas modern history is the story of Chinese mastery degraded by colonial depravity. China is the land that invented the compass, gunpowder, paper and printing, amassing stupendous wealth while Europe was still backward. Then came centuries of humiliation  Britains profiting from forcing opium on the populace, Japanese brutality, demeaning lectures about human rights from hypocritical Americans. Now, China is intent on securing its own fate.

China wants to be a great power in the world, says Paul Heer, a former chief national intelligence officer in East Asia for the United States, who now teaches at George Washington University. They think the rest of the world owes them recognition, and a return to what the Chinese see as their rightful place.

Nowhere are Chinas designs clearer than in Asia. China has overtaken the United States as the leading trading partner with Asian nations while pushing back against American naval primacy in the South China Sea. China is disrupting American alliances in the region, from Japan to Singapore to Australia.

Beyond its backyard, Chinas ambitions are boundless. It celebrates its Belt and Road Initiative, a vast collection of infrastructure projects around the world, as the means of recreating the Silk Road, the trails navigated in ancient times by merchants carrying goods between Asia and Europe.

Xi Jinping is leading a China that has influences in all corners of the globe, says Zhang Baohui, a professor of international relations at Lingnan University in Hong Kong. The 2008 financial crisis in the West was the turning point for China. Beijing started to embrace a triumphal mind-set, and pursued global leadership with new confidence on the back of the Wests perceived flaws.

Chinas assertive role in world affairs is grounded in its domestic needs. It is at once spreading into new markets, generating fresh demand for its factory wares just as growth slows at home. It is projecting military strength and influence when the legitimacy of the Communist Party rests on bolstering economic fortunes and international esteem.

Among its neighbors, Chinas rise provokes fears that an unwanted piece of history is being resurrected  the old tribute system that cemented Chinas status as the Middle Kingdom. For centuries, other nations bowed in recognition of Chinas imperial might, bestowing gifts on the emperor and accepting vassal status to secure trade and peace.

Beijing now confronts accusations that it is directing investments to ensnare partners in debt traps as a means of seizing their assets. Last year, Sri Lanka handed control of a port to a Chinese venture after failing to pay back Chinese loans. Malaysia recently canceled a pair of projects involving Chinese financing. Faced with pushback abroad and concerns about mounting debts at home, China is reassessing the breadth and cost of its global ventures, although the scope remains vast.

For the Western powers whose order has prevailed since the end of World War II, China poses a foundational challenge. The United States and its victorious allies erected institutions that were  at least rhetorically  designed to keep the peace by promoting trade and fair competition. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have dispensed aid with conditions, though frequently drawing accusations that they have failed to comply with their standards on protecting human rights and the rule of law.

Chinas investments come with no such strictures. China bankrolls autocrats who control geopolitically valuable real estate. China demands only that its companies gain a piece of the action while recipients eschew criticizing Beijing.

Chinas challenge to the Western-dominated order is amplified by the reality that its primary architect, the United States, is now led by an avowed nationalist. As President Trump wages a trade war and derides international cooperation, he has generated doubts about the perseverance of the liberal democratic philosophy the United States has long championed.

Mr. Xi has sought to fill the vacuum. He has cast himself as the leader of the rules-based international trading system, even as China faces accusations of stealing intellectual property, subsidizing state-owned companies and dumping products on world markets at unfairly low prices.

Whats happening in the United States gives China this golden opportunity to portray itself as the defender of the international order, says Jessica Chen Weiss, a China expert at Cornell University.

Threatening Competition and Cohesion

If the new Silk Road is in part about moving goods from Chinese factories to customers in the rest of the world, the trail seems certain to pass through Central and Eastern Europe.

Already, Chinese investment has turned the Greek port of Piraeus into the busiest shipping hub on the Mediterranean, a gateway to the rest of the European Union, with its 500 million consumers. China has promised to help finance the construction of a high-speed rail link from the Serbian capital, Belgrade, to the Hungarian capital, Budapest. It has also pledged to turn the region into a transportation corridor laced with highways, airports, rail, ports and power stations.

This reality frames the proceedings of the 16-plus-1 group, an economic bloc that China has forged with 16 Central and Eastern European nations. Its latest summit meeting convenes on a drizzly day in July in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia. Officials from the 16 governments  among them the newest, least-affluent members of the European Union  pose for photos with the delegation from China, the one nation wealthy and ambitious enough to finance their visions.

Leaders in the rest of the European Union construe the group as a stealth assault on the rules and cohesion of their bloc. In offering financing for infrastructure projects, China has positioned itself as an alternative to European Union development funds.

Europes money comes with rules protecting labor and the environment, while requiring that projects be awarded to companies on the basis of competitive bidding to ensure fair competition. China tends to distribute its funds with far simpler demands: Chinese companies must gain work, free of competition, while Beijing secures an international ally.

European Union officials are especially worried that Chinese money could weaken the pressure Europe is applying on members that have been breaching democratic norms. Europe has threatened to withhold development funds from Poland and Hungary as punishment for their turns toward authoritarianism. Both have packed courts with government-friendly judges and menaced the press.

Its a mutually beneficial cooperation based on mutual trust without any kind of attempts to interfere into domestic issues, Hungarys foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto, says in an interview before the summit meeting in Sofia.

Bulgaria has high hopes for Chinese investment on highway projects linking its ports. The Bulgarian government has broken with other European Union members in declining to join international statements condemning Chinas human rights record. As Bulgarian officials prepare at the gathering to meet Chinas premier, Li Keqiang, they plan to stick to business.



A Chinese noodle chefs demonstration at a festival in Momchilovtsi, Bulgaria. Bulgaria is one of 16 Central and Eastern European nations that have formed an economic bloc with China. Bryan Denton for The New York Times Bulgarias plans to have a Chinese conglomerate run the airport in its second-largest city, Plovdiv, fell through this year. Bryan Denton for The New York Times

We are talking about different conversations, concrete conversations related to infrastructure, and other conversations related to the level of democracy and human rights in China, Deputy Prime Minister Tomislav Donchev of Bulgaria says in an interview the day before the event. It would not be polite and constructive if we try to merge them into one.

The summit meeting convenes in a hulking convention center that harks back to era of Soviet domination. At a news conference, the Chinese and Bulgarian prime ministers offer assurances that the 16-plus-1 bloc does not aim to divide Europe.

Mr. Li seeks to allay European worries that China poses a challenge to its rules. He promises that Chinese-financed projects will be awarded on the basis of competitive bidding.

There needs to be open and transparent tendering, the Chinese premier declares.

But the Serbian prime minister, Ana Brnabic, has just undercut that assertion. Asked moments earlier about the high-speed rail from Belgrade to Budapest, she says Chinese companies have been promised construction work.

China is a strategic partner, she says. We are not putting out tenders.

Investing for the Future

As a currency crisis ravaged Indonesia two decades ago, angry mobs tore through West Jakarta, killing hundreds of ethnically Chinese merchants. Yet Cheng Tao, a Chinese software engineer turned venture capitalist, can look down from his high-rise office on the same neighborhood and see a tranquil center of Chinese life  grocery shops, restaurants and his own sons school.

Mr. Cheng, 34, is part of an influx of young Chinese financiers, engineers and web designers who rent space in an area full of technology companies. He first came to Indonesia a decade ago with the Chinese telecom company Huawei. He and other veterans of large Chinese conglomerates are increasingly unleashing their own start-ups.

Ten years ago, there were no mainland Chinese here, Mr. Cheng says as he sips tea imported from China. We see opportunities here that no longer exist in China.

The thriving Chinese start-up scene in a neighborhood once devastated by anti-Chinese terrorism illustrates Chinas deepening engagement in Southeast Asia. Only a few years ago, Chinese companies in the region were mainly focused on purchasing natural resources. Today, China is investing for the future, seeding innovative industries with money and brainpower.

Last year, Chinese investors participated in funding rounds for Indonesian start-ups that accounted for 95 percent of the value of those companies, according to a survey by Google and A. T. Kearney, a global management company.

China is Indonesias Silicon Valley, says Adrian Li, a venture capitalist who has a Stanford M.B.A. and moved to Jakarta from Beijing in 2014.

Chinas place in Southeast Asia has proceeded deliberately, and just as the United States has ceded ground.

Programming notes written on a window of Tokopedias high-rise headquarters in Jakarta. Bryan Denton for The New York Times Engineers at Tokopedia, an online marketplace in Indonesia. Jack Ma, the founder of the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, invested $1.1 billion in Tokopedia last year. Bryan Denton for The New York Times

Back in 2003, the prime minister at the time, Wen Jiabao, addressed the yearly gathering of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. A decade later, President Barack Obama did not attend the annual conclave, held that year on the Indonesian island Bali. It was a noteworthy absence given that Mr. Obama had spent time in Indonesia in his youth.

Chinas new president, Mr. Xi, showed up. He even addressed the Indonesian Parliament, using the occasion to announce a new institution  what would become the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, now a rival to the World Bank.

While heads of state forge ties amid pageantry, Chinese businesses have been quietly yet persistently making inroads in Indonesia, guided by bottom-line concerns. At home, Chinese web companies are running out of new customers. Indonesia, a land of 260 million people, is adding more internet users than anywhere else on Earth.

Jack Ma, the founder of the Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba, was early to appreciate this reality, pouring major investments into local shopping start-ups, including $1.1 billion last year into Tokopedia, a thriving online marketplace. During the Muslim holy month of Ramadan this spring, the Tokopedia site drew 78 million people, a 70 percent increase from the previous month.

Such potential fortifies Mr. Mas determination to stay ahead of his biggest global competitor  Amazon. The American e-commerce company operates in Singapore but has yet to significantly penetrate Southeast Asia.

Alibaba has put more than $3 billion into a former regional competitor, Lazada. Its Alipay digital payment system operates across Southeast Asia. Mr. Ma sits on advisory boards in the region that will help set standards and shape consumer perceptions, expanding Chinas traditional reach.

Military Buildup

Beyond money and clicks, China projects its power through a more traditional display of strength  military might.

Alex Pama has watched it unfold from uncomfortable proximity. In the 1990s, when he was a junior officer in the Philippine Navy, he saw Chinese boats landing on Mischief Reef, a glorified collection of rocks claimed by the Philippines in the South China Sea. Chinese crews erected shelters to mark the territory, then began pouring concrete for larger buildings.

The Philippines sought help from its former colonial overseer, the United States. But the Clinton administration demurred. The American Navy was still smarting over losing access to Subic Bay, its longtime base in the Philippines.

That decision was a historic turning point, says Mr. Pama, who would rise to become admiral of the Philippine Navy. From then on, the United States shrank from the region, relinquishing the seas to China.

Thats when the appeasement started, Mr. Pama says.

Two decades later, President Xi ordered the buildup of Mischief Reef and other outcroppings in the Spratly archipelago into islands bristling with reconnaissance gear, aircraft hangars, runways, deepwater harbors and, most recently, short-range missiles. Those bases and Chinas maritime buildup have given Beijing effective control over one of the most heavily trafficked waterways on the planet.

Subi Reef, one of the outcroppings that China has built up in the Spratly archipelago to assert its presence in the South China Sea. Adam Dean for The New York Times A security guard at the Indian Ocean port at Hambantota, which Sri Lanka handed over to Chinese control last year after failing to pay back Chinese loans. Adam Dean for The New York Times

The U.S. should have been more assertive back then and now, says Mr. Pama, now retired.

Dominating the South China Sea and unseating the United States have become central objectives in Mr. Xis bid to return China to glory. Last year, China for the first time staged aircraft carrier drills using advanced fighter jets in the South China Sea.

Chinese state-owned companies control two Chinese-built ports on the Indian Ocean, in Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Two more are on the drawing board for Myanmar and Bangladesh, helping China achieve its maritime strategy of a string of pearls stretching from the mainland to Port Sudan in Africa. Last year, China opened its first overseas military base, in Djibouti on the Horn of Africa.

China has presented these moves as defensive. But the United States and its Asian allies warn that Beijing has positioned itself to hold global trade hostage while diminishing the American presence. Chinas emergence as the regions dominant commercial power combined with its moves toward maritime supremacy has heightened the sense that a changing of the guard is underway.

Over the long term, Chinas power and influence will undoubtedly weaken and ultimately abolish U.S. dominance in the region, says Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing, who advises the government.

The perspective gained momentum during the 2012 standoff at Scarborough Shoal, a horseshoe-shaped chain of reefs that is much closer to the Philippines than to China.

As the Philippine Navy challenged Chinese fishing boats, the Obama administration brokered a deal in which both sides would withdraw. The Philippine vessels departed, but some of the Chinese boats stayed.

China has controlled the shoal ever since. Emboldened, China began construction of seven artificial islands in the Spratly archipelago.

China appears reluctant to build a full-fledged military base on the shoal, lest it stoke nationalist anger in the Philippines, damaging relations with its pro-China president, Rodrigo Duterte.

Any reclamation will outrage the Duterte government, says Zhu Feng, the executive director of the Center for the South China Sea at Nanjing University. China cant afford to lose a good friend like that.

But many Philippine officials fear that this is merely a pause before an inevitable Chinese expansion.

Two large maps of the South China Sea cover the walls of the office of Gary Alejano, a Philippine congressman and former marine. He shows visitors how the Scarborough Shoal sits on the edge of the Bashi Channel, the Chinese Navys entryway into the western Pacific. He points out the artificial islands in the Spratly archipelago. He notes Mischief Reef, where Chinese fighter jets have landed.

Unless someone confronts them, those jets will remain there, using the hangars China built, Mr. Alejano says. Philippine Navy vessels rarely patrol the area, he laments.

Right now, you can feel that China controls the South China Sea, Mr. Alejano says. And the U.S. comes in and out.

Owning the Choke Points

As China charts its global reach, six zones demand special attention: the maritime choke points.

The entryway to the Black Sea from the Mediterranean. The passageway from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean via the Strait of Malacca. The corridor separating Europe from Africa at the Strait of Gibraltar. Bab el Mandeb, off Djibouti in the Horn of Africa. The Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf. Access to the Mediterranean from the Red Sea through the Suez Canal.

At any one, an outbreak of hostilities could imperil Chinas free movement around the globe, jeopardizing its exports and access to resources.

These zones have historically been policed by American naval power, which has made Chinas access dependent on peaceful relations with the United States. To liberate itself, China has been lavishing investment on governments that control the choke points.

Which is how China became financier and developer for the grandiose capital being constructed by President Sisi in the reddish-brown desert east of Cairo. Mr. Sisi craves investment and allies at a time when much of the world has recoiled from his brutal crackdown on dissent.

A Chinese worker in his bunk at a stone-quarrying company jointly owned by Chinese and Egyptian investors outside Cairo. Bryan Denton for The New York Times Egypt is using workers and financing from China to build a new capital city. Bryan Denton for The New York Times

In an interview, Gen. Ahmed Zaki Abdeen, who heads the Egyptian state-owned company overseeing the new capital, railed against American reluctance to invest in his country.

Stop talking to us about human rights, he says. Come and do business with us. The Chinese are coming  they are seeking win-win situations. Welcome to the Chinese.

In backing the new capital, China has furthered an age-old aspiration for the Egyptian powers that be: taming the desert. The project aims to construct a city of 6.5 million people, replacing crumbling Cairo with a technological metropolis engineered to rival Dubai. Construction is expected to take 15 years while costing 200 billion Egyptian pounds, more than $11 billion.

Under a master agreement signed in October 2017, China Construction is building the capitals central business district. A consortium of Chinese state-owned banks is lending $3 billion to finance a first phase expected to be completed in three years. Egypt is obligated to spend the money by hiring the China State Construction Engineering Corporation. A second phase is expected to run $3.2 billion.

Yu Wenchuan dons a yellow safety vest as he works security at the China Construction site. Born and raised in the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan, Mr. Yu, 24, complains about the 100-degree heat and the conspicuous absence of spicy noodles. But he is resigned to spending the next eight years in Egypt.

This is a good way to get experience, he says.

Under the contract, 35 percent of construction materials can be brought from China. Even some of the 65 percent procured from domestic sources stands to enrich China, given the presence of entrepreneurs like Xin Zhu.

Seventeen years have passed since Mr. Xin landed in Cairo from his native Hubei Province. There, he oversaw a factory that processed slabs of granite and marble into flooring and countertops. He had heard that Egypt was rich with quarries full of high-quality, low-priced rock.

He took control of a lot in an industrial area outside Cairo. He endured terrible roads and power failures. I was like a pioneer, he says.

Today, Mr. Xins company employs more than 100 people, mostly migrants from China. He ships most of his production to China. But he aims to sell into the new capital, profiting as Beijing erects a veritable Pharaonic monument for Egypts authoritarian leader.

I was looking for new opportunities outside China, Mr. Xin says. More development is good for our business.
Shanghai (Gasgoo)- Baidu said on November 22 that its Level 4 autonomous bus Apolonga joint effort between Baidu and Fujian-based bus manufacturer King Long, has been put into trial operation at Beijing's Haidian Park for 21 days.

The Internet giant, along with the government of Haidian District, plans to build the Haidian Park into the world's first AI-themed park that allows visitors to experience AI technologies and autonomous vehicles.

There currently are two Apolong mini buses with capacity of 14 people running at Haidian Park. Visitors are given two accesses at the park to have a trial ride from Monday to Sunday.

The world's first mass-produced L4 autonomous mini bus Apolong developed by Baidu Apollo in collaboration with King Long rolled off the production line at its manufacturing facility in Xiamen, Baidu's chairman Robin Li, announced at Baidu Create 2018 on July 4.

Baidu stated then the mass-produced buses would be sent to several cities in China for commercial operation, including Beijing, Xiongan New Area, Shenzhen, Pingtan and Wuhan, etc. Besides, it joined hands with King Long and SB Drive, the autonomous driving subsidiary of Japan's SoftBank Group, to export Apolong autonomous mini buses to Japan in early 2019. Reportedly, the Apolong buses will be used as shuttles in Japan to serve staff from nuclear power station and senior citizen community.

The Apolong carries Baidu's latest autonomous driving system Apollo 3.0 that aims to offer solutions for mass production. Powered by HD map and intelligent sensing technologies, the system is able to detect the information from surroundings and process data collected by HD map, do the optimum route planning and make proper driving decisions by judging vehicles' and pedestrians' behavior intentions.
Thackeray said the BJP should clarify whether it had explored all options during its four and a half years at the Centre.

Ayodhya: Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray said on Sunday that if the BJP cannot take the initiative to build the Ram temple in Ayodhya, then it should admit that its promise on the issue in 2014 was just another jumla (a word that has no meaning). Addressing a press conference before returning to Mumbai, Mr Thackeray said the BJP should clarify whether it had explored all options during its four and a half years at the Centre.

If the BJP government continues to dither on the Ram temple, then the Ram temple will surely come up but the BJP will not form the next government, he said. He noted that Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath had recently said that there was, is and will always be a temple in Ayodhya.

But this is only our faith. When would the temple be visible? That is what I want to know, he said.

He added that the Shiv Sena would support the Narendra Modi government if it brought legislation for the temple. Mr Thackeray reminded that former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee had said Hindus were no longer fearful. But his was a minority government and he could not take the initiative for a temple. But the present government is a powerful one, but there is still no initiative for a temple. Hindus are not going to accept this and will ask the government to declare a date for the temple construction, the Shiv Sena chief said.

Talking about his visit to the makeshift temple earlier on Sunday, Mr Thackeray said he had got spiritual vibes but he felt he was visiting a jail when he saw the deity surrounded by iron bars.
He also trained his guns at Telangana Rashtra Samithi chief, K Chandrashekhar Rao, for demanding reservation for minorities.

'Even if KCR, the Congress, the TDP and Communists come together, I guarantee that till the BJP government is in the Centre, religion-based reservation will not be granted," Shah said in Telangana. (Photo: File | AP)

Nirmal: BJP president Amit Shah on Sunday accused the Congress of supporting "urban Naxals" and said his party will put Maoists in jail if it is voted to power in Telangana.

"Urban Naxals" is a term used to describe city-based supporters working in alleged front organisations of proscribed Maoist outfits.

Addressing a public meeting in Nirmal district, Shah said, "Recently they (urban Naxals) were arrested in Maharashtra. The BJP government there, led by Devendra Fadnavis, put them behind bars but Rahul Gandhi supported them."

"Rahul baba, are you aware that hundreds of people in Telangana have died due to Naxalism?" he asked.

The BJP chief claimed Maoists were "hiding" in different parts of the state and said his party would look for them and send them to prison.

"They have only two options -- either join the mainstream or get ready to face jail," Shah said.

He also trained his guns at Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) chief and the state's caretaker chief minister K Chandrashekhar Rao, popularly known as KCR, for demanding reservation for minorities.

The BJP chief said Rao-led Telangana government had forwarded a proposal to the Centre demanding 12 per cent reservation for minorities despite knowing that it is not possible to do so.

"You dont worry. Even if KCR, the Congress, the TDP and Communists come together, I guarantee that till the BJP government is in the Centre, religion-based reservation will not be granted," Shah said.

He accused Rao of failing to provide employment to the family members of those who sacrificed their lives during the Telangana statehood movement. Shah claimed Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led central government had extended over 2.30 lakh crore for Telangana's development in the last four and half years, but the funds had not been utilised for the state's development.

"Over 2.30 lakh crore has been given by the central government to Telangana. Had it been any other state, problems would have been solved long back by utilising these funds. He (KCR) is not concerned about the children of Telangana, but only about his son and daughter," he alleged.

The BJP chief told the gathering that he had brought a message from Modi which asked the people to bring the party to power in the December 7 assembly polls so that Telangana can be developed as a model state. Shah said the polls will decide the future of every child in Telangana and asked people to strengthen the hands of Modi by defeating the TRS and other parties.
The accused had allegedly struck a deal with people belonging to an international gang of wildlife smugglers.

Mumbai: The Raigad police has arrested three persons who were trying to sell a sand boa (Mandul), and seized three snakes worth over Rs 3 crore from them. The sale of these snakes, which are used for black magic, is prohibited. The police said that the buyers were part of an international wildlife smuggling racket.

The arrested accused have been identified as Jayant Deshmukh (59), Milind More (46) and Rohidas Tandel (44), who were in possession of the endangered species of snake, each of which is priced at around Rs 1.10 crore. The accused had allegedly struck a deal with people belonging to an international gang of wildlife smugglers, and had come to deliver the snakes to their accomplices when they were apprehended.

The trio and the buyers, whose identities are yet to be ascertained, were to meet at a hotel in the Pali area. After information about the said meeting was verified, we laid a trap at the hotel and identified the accused, said a Raigad police officer.

Upon checking the trio, the snakes were found to have been kept in one of the yellow carry bags they were carrying. The officials said that it was a confirmed deal but the buyers remained untraceable. These snakes are used for black magic and medicinal purposes and are more in demand outside India.

The police is now probing past deals that the trio might have struck and sold Sand Boas illegally. A case has been registered against the trio under relevant sections of the Wildlife Protection Act and investigation is underway to identify the place from where the accused procured the snakes.
For terrorists, there is never a need for penetration of the coastline or borders if reliable sleeper agents exist.

For the Pakistan-based terrorists and their sponsors, 26/11 succeeded in all the defined elements of what a terrorist act is meant to achieve. It created anguish and turbulence in the target territory, effected out-of-proportion casualties, rocked the local and international community, caused a major response dilemma for the victim state and gave much publicity about the terrorist capability to hit at will: Indias financial capital and symbol of good life was brought to its knees and permanent scars left on the psyche of its people. It was truly Indias 9/11. But soon afterwards, like America after 9/11, India too got its act together on homeland security. Its a credit not often given by Indian analysts. After 26/11, mass casualty terror attacks in Indian cities have been rarer, many have been prevented, although efforts by terror groups to target us have been rife. If anyone can claim credit for that, it is our intelligence agencies, who have found some method in the madness in the high-risk game of intelligence gathering and foiling attacks. So while Pakistan refuses to change its stance on supporting terror and people get worried by nascent signs of revival of terrorism in Punjab, how secure is India 10 years after the event that caused collective anguish to all Indians?

We must remember a truism about terrorism. A determined set of terrorists hell-bent on self-destruction and causing the maximum mayhem can defeat the strongest protective systems. Whatever the States security set-up does to prevent or deter a terror act, the reality is that it also focuses on how to ensure damage control, to minimise the effect and respond adequately. With time, international borders have become far more permeable for the movement of human resources and war-making material, while modern networks enable effective command and control, finances and communication; all ingredients for an effective terror act. The movement of 40,000 trans-national fighters to join the Islamic State (ISIS, also known as Daesh) is a case in point.

The appointment of a prime ministerial special envoy on counter-terrorism has helped coordinate internationally and ensure a better understanding of the threats at the strategic level. Indias long borders and coastline adjoin 10 or more countries. Therefore, the complete sealing of illegal movements is unrealistic. The LTTE could effectively fight as a terror movement in an island state while getting much of its logistics from overseas, reinforcing this argument. However, what is difficult for terror groups to achieve is the coordination to execute the act, mostly requiring recce, safe houses, finances, transportation and communication. 26/11 proved that modern technology and an element of innovative risk can give the terrorists an even chance. The 10-man Lashkar-e-Tayyaba squad braved the move through the ocean in a dinghy; it struck the same evening, thus offsetting the need for safe houses; effectively used satellite communication; hijacked cabs and other vehicles at will; and there was no need for physical recce, having been briefed profusely on modern digital maps while depending on GPS for navigation to the selected targets. What India has done is to tighten surveillance, although a repeat of the sea route to another significant target through means of deception always remains live. In terms of response mechanisms, we have come a fair distance from the situation where the NSG team from Manesar was stuck in traffic on the national highway near Delhi and delayed in reaching Mumbai on 26/11. The creation of NSG nodes has definitely reduced response time, while the envisaged use of local resources like Army ghatak platoons and police commandos offers a means for the initial containment of damage and setting the stage for the NSG to act. However, not too many coordination exercises at the local level are being done to ensure that continuity is maintained in a system where frequent turnover of personnel is common.

For terrorists, there is never a need for penetration of the coastline or borders if reliable sleeper agents exist. To be effective through this front, terror groups have to get the better of police networks  from the beat policeman to the local station house officer (SHO). In India, this appears a weakness with local community involvement and awareness yet to reach the desired level of effectiveness. An alert community, including house-owners, shopkeepers and vendors, can act as a deterrence and also provide quality intelligence inputs through local alarm schemes.

What should worry us as a nation are the continuing divisive acts which alienate one set of people, create hatred and provide a cause for terror groups to exploit. Seething and alienated segments of society are more dangerous than international terrorists, and always open to seeding for larger exploitation by those awaiting such an opportunity. While India may have improved its internal security capability in terms of intelligence and response times, South Asias strategic environment doesnt inspire much confidence. Kashmir continues to fester without full stabilisation anywhere on the horizon. Having overcome the awkwardness of 1980s Punjab, we have failed to ensure societal stability allowing one of our most progressive states to be exploited by an adversary through as unconventional a route as narcotics. It has opened a window to trigger the re-emergence of instability. Terror seeks such opportunities and is never in a hurry as investment in societal and social tension is always long-term.

Visiting developed smart cities like Singapore or Paris at two ends of the globe always gives me reason to compare and welcome our security and intelligence communities. With persistent threats, these cities remain vulnerable from the angle of physical security measures. Airports, malls and other key points may have smart surveillance systems but are still vulnerable and inspire in me less confidence than Indias comparatively more visible means of such security. That doesnt mean India has turned the corner as in the murky world of trans-national terror, the means to predict the nature and location of the next attack remains highly suspect. Counter-terrorism security is always about being ahead in the information loop, but that is seldom possible because mass casualty terror acts are something in which hostile nations and groups always invest sufficient time, resources and patience. The only action a vulnerable nation like India has to take is better societal stability, deterrence, high-quality intelligence, damage control and suitable response.
Pakistan to allow India to send wheat to Afghanistan through its territory: PM Imran Khan

At SR level talks, India, China decide to resolve boundary disputes

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

New Delhi, Nov 25: India and China have resolved to "intensify" their efforts to achieve a "fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable" solution to the vexed boundary question at an early date as the special representatives of the two countries held "constructive and forward-looking" talks over the issue.

National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and Chinese State Councillor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi met in Chengdu in southwestern Sichuan province for the 21st round of Special Representatives' talks.

While an early solution would serve the fundamental interests of both the countries, the two designated Special Representatives for the border talks also said pending the final solution, the two countries should maintain peace and tranquillity at the borders, ensuring that the dispute does not affect the overall development of bilateral ties.

India needs strong, stable, decisive govt for the next 10 yrs: Doval

The India-China border dispute covers 3,488-km-long Line of Actual Control (LAC). China claims Arunachal Pradesh as part of southern Tibet.

This was the first round of talks for Wang after he succeeded State Councillor Yang Jiechi earlier this year. Wang has become the state councillor, a rank higher than the foreign minister in the Chinese government's hierarchy.

"Recalling the strategic guidance and support to their work provided by the leaders at the Wuhan Summit, the Special Representatives resolved to intensify their efforts to achieve a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable solution to the India-China boundary question at an early date," according to a statement issued by the Indian Embassy in Beijing after the border talks said.

They were referring to the outcome of the first ever informal summit between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping in April this year in Wuhan.

Doval and Wang "underlined the importance of approaching the boundary question from the strategic perspective of India-China relations and agreed that an early settlement of the boundary question serves the fundamental interests of both countries," the statement said.

Special Representatives have agreed that pending the final resolution of the boundary question, it is important to maintain peace and tranquillity in the border areas and to ensure that the boundary question does not affect the overall development of the bilateral relationship, the statement said.

"In this context, they noted the mature handling of issues relating to the India-China border areas since the Wuhan Summit," it said.

Acknowledging the importance of predictability in border management and underscoring the importance of maintaining strategic communication at all levels, the Special Representatives held discussions on various confidence building measures to promote exchanges and communication between their border personnel.

They directed that the bilateral Working Mechanism on Consultation and Coordination for Border Affairs -- which periodically meets to deal with issues arising due to aggressive patrols by the two militaries along the LAC -- to work out further details over it.

Doval and Wang also reviewed recent developments in bilateral relations following the Wuhan Summit and subsequent meetings between Prime Minister Modi and President Xi in Qingdao in June 2018 and in Johannesburg in July 2018.

"The two Special Representatives underlined the importance of sustained and effective implementation of the directions given by their leaders with a view to further strengthening the Closer Developmental Partnership between India and China to mutual benefit and with due respect for each other's sensitivities, concerns and aspirations," the statement said.

They shared the view that stable and balanced development of bilateral relations is a positive factor for peace and prosperity in the region and the whole world, it said.

The Special Representatives also exchanged views on regional and global issues of common interest and agreed to maintain close consultations on such issues, it said.

The talks were constructive and forward looking, and focussed on taking forward the India-China Closer Developmental Partnership in pursuance of the guidance provided by Modi and Xi at Wuhan, the statement said.

"The Special Representatives undertook a comprehensive review of earlier rounds of talks under the SR mechanism," it said.

The last round, held in New Delhi between Doval and Yang, took place in the backdrop of the 73-day standoff between the two militaries at Doklam over Chinese army's plan to build a road close to India's strategic "Chicken's Neck" corridor connecting the north-eastern states.

The standoff ended after the People's Liberation Army halted the plans to build the road.

Officials on both sides say a lot of spadework has been done to ensure peace and tranquillity at the border, though the solution to the border dispute is still elusive even after 20 rounds of talks.

(With inputs from agencies)

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Story first published: Sunday, November 25, 2018, 9:04 [IST]
Ayodhya updates: Will not cede an inch of land for anything but Ram temple, says VHP

India

oi-Madhuri Adnal

New Delhi, Nov 25: Posters of VHP's 'Dharam Sabha' and Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray's programme in Ayodhya are splashed across the streets of the temple town, and many religious 'akharas' have turned into debating venues to discuss the issue of Ram temple.

The 'Dharam Sabha' is being touted as the largest congregation of 'Ram bhakts' in Ayodhya since the 1992 'kar seva'. The congregation on Sunday was held less than two weeks before the 26th anniversary of the demolition of the 16th century Babri Mosque, that had triggered unrest in this town and riots in other parts of India. Hordes of activists of both the VHP and the Shiv Sena, who have gathered here from various parts of the country, bear saffron flags and chant 'Jai Shri Ram'.

Ramji Das of Nirmohi Akhara told VHP's dharam sabha Sunday that dates for the same will be announced early next year during Kumbh in Prayagraj. Addressing the sabha after the inauguration marked by chanting of mantras at the Badey Bhaktmaal ki Bagia, Ramji Das said:"The date for construction of the Ram temple will be declared in the 2019 Kumbh which will be held in Prayagraj". "It is only a matter of few days, and I request you all to show some patience," the seer remarked.

Meanwhile, the Uttar Pradesh government on Saturday night raced to announce key details of the Ram statue it plans to build on the banks of the Sarayu river. The statue is expected to measure 221 metres - topping even the famed Statue of Unity in Gujarat.
No one will be able to destroy Congress, leaders joining TMC 'drama', says Venugopal

Former union minister C K Jaffer Sharief passes away at 85

India

oi-Madhuri Adnal

New Delhi, Nov 25: Veteran Congress leader and former Railway Minister C.K. Jaffer Sharief, 85, passed away on Sunday. He was hospitalised after he collapsed while getting into the car for Friday namaz. He is in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of Fortis Hospital on Cunningham Road.

Doctors had advised Mr. Sharief to get a pacemaker two years ago, when he had complained of uneasiness in the chest.

As reported by the Hindu, his associate told that Mr. Sharief was too stressed out of late as he was busy preparing for the release of the Urdu translation of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad's 'India Wins Freedom'.

The book release was scheduled to be held at Palace Grounds on November 28. Former President Pranab Mukherjee was invited for the function.
Its assuring! Study finds Indian daters to be gender sensitive

India

oi-Shubham Ghosh

New Delhi, Nov 24: The high rate of crime against women and the wave caused by the more recent #MeToo movement might have tainted India's image all over, but a recent study has come with a pleasantly startling fact and it says that Indians approach the gender equations in relationships sensitively than anybody had thought, Mashable India reported.

OkCupid asked about gender roles in relationships to millennials and how they perceive the #MeToo movement and the results were impressive.

#MeToo: Journalist CP Surendran steps down as director of literary fest after harassment allegations

According to the study, 92 per cent of women think the responsibility of running a household and raising children should be borne equally by the partners - a finding which is unsurprising though. However, when the study showed that 88 per cent of male respondents also saying the same, it certainly makes one hopeful about the future.

While 81 per cent of men supported the #MeToo movement, 85 per cent of women also did the same. Besides, 86 per cent of all men and women in the OkCupid community believes that harassment at workplaces is not something to be tolerated and that they would back a colleague who faces such an ordeal.

#MeToo in Sandalwood: Karnataka HC to hear Sruthi Hariharan's petition next week

On the question of feminism, while 80 per cent of both men and women in the OkCupid community called themselves feminist, only 17 per cent of males were concerned whether the person they date is a feminist. In case of women, 53 per cent would not date someone who is not a feminist.
Karnataka: Teary-eyed fans, actors, politicians pay homage to Ambareesh

India

oi-Madhuri Adnal

Bengaluru, Nov 25: Scores of fans and followers led by top south Indian actors like Rajinikanth and Mohan Babu paid tributes to actor-turned-politician Ambareesh Sunday.

Ambareesh passed away in Bengaluru. He was 66. The former Union minister was rushed to a private hospital after he complained of breathing problems, sources said.

Mourners filed past the mortal remains of Ambareesh with occasional outburst of emotions at Kanteerva Stadium here amid tight security with about 1,000 policemen deployed in and around the area.

The state government Sunday announced a three-day mourning and a state funeral for the late leader. The body of the late film actor was taken from the private hospital where he died to his home in the night and was shifted to Kanteerava Stadium for people to pay homage.

From stardom to politics: What will Ambareesh be remembered for

At the Kanteerava Stadium here, superstars Rajinikanth and Chiranjeevi, multi-lingual actress Lakshmi of 'Julie' fame, Telugu star Mohan Babu and Kannada actor Shivrajkumar paid homage to the late actor-politician. Chiranjeevi and Mohan Babu broke down on seeing the body of Ambareesh, who had shared an intimate friendship with the south Indian actors.

Wrapped in tri-colour, the body was then flown in an IAF helicopter to Mandya to facilitate the people of his home district to pay their last respect to "Mandyada Gandu" (man of Mandya).

Thousands of people gathered at the Visweswarayya Stadium in Mandya to have his final glimpse of Ambareesh who had endeared himself to the local masses as an actor and a politician with his down to earth nature.

As the body was flown to Mandya, section 144 of the CrPC, which prohibits assembly of more than four persons at a spot, was imposed from Sunday evening to Monday morning to avoid unwanted congregation of people.

Ambareesh no more : "Will miss you," says Rajinikanth

In a career spanning over 50 years, Ambareesh has acted in over 200 movies. His roles in several popular films earned him the title of 'Rebel Star'. He debuted with the 1972 film Nagarahaavu, and won the national award in his first film itself.

He was also known by the name 'Mandyada Gandu' after portraying several roles as the 'angry young man.'

In politics, he began his career first with the Janata Dal and became an MP in the 12th Lok Sabha from Mandya itself and later joined the Congress party to represent the same seat on two more occasions. He was also the central Minister of State in the Manmohan Singh government but gave up his ministership over disappointment to the Cauvery Tribunal Award in 2006. He chose to skip the May 2018 Assembly elections in Karnataka citing health concerns.
Mandir wahi banega: Ram temple pitch intensifies, all eyes on Ayodhya

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

Lucknow, Nov 25: Scores of people have begun descending on Ayodhya to push for the construction of the Ram Temple. Spearheading the campaign, lakhs of Vishwa Hindu Parishad members, who are organising the Dharm Sabha entered Ayodhya on bikes, SUVs and buses.

This would be a massive show of strength ahead of the Lok Sabha elections in 2019. It is also aimed at pushing the BJP government at the Centre to move fast on the Ram Temple issue.

In a bid to push the cause further slogans by both the Shiv Sena and VHP have been tweaked. The Shiv Sena slogan goes, ' peel mandir pair sarkar. On the other hand the VHP has moved from mandir wahin banega to mandir jaldi banaenge.

On Saturday Shiv Sena chief, Udhav Thackeray said at Ayodhya that the real Kumbhakaran slept for six months. But this Kumbhakaran is sleeping for the past four years. Taking a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he said said that it is important to have a big chest, but you should have a heart inside it.

Immediately after the arrival of Thackeray in the afternoon, the district administration sealed Ayodhya, where 20,000 police and paramilitary troops were deployed and drones used to monitor the movement of crowds. Security personnel were making videos of the crowds that milled into the city, and kept a high profile in Muslim areas.

Ahead of the event, Section 144 has been clamped in Ayodhya. Officials have been conducting rounds in Muslim dominated areas to assure the community of their safety.

The Dharm Sabha will start at around 2 pm on Sunday.

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Story first published: Sunday, November 25, 2018, 7:58 [IST]
Union workers in the UK, Spain, Italy, and Germany staged "We are not robots" protests.

Amazon warehouse workers in Europe staged a wave of protests and strikes against the tech giant's unhealthy work culture on the day of Black Friday.

Black Friday which marks a crazy day of sales for the customers, and a big day for the retailers to see bumper profits, comes with its own share of disappointments when it comes to the warehouse workers who have to work prolonged hours to meet the demand.

According to Cnet, union workers in the UK, Spain, Italy, and Germany staged "We are not robots" protests against Amazon's dangerous, high-pressure work culture, and its aggressive anti-union actions.

The UK-based GMB union said that the conditions are inhuman; there are instances of the workers breaking bones, being knocked unconscious, and taken away in ambulances. Meanwhile, Amazon refuted all these claims and said that it is a fair and responsible employer with positive and safe working conditions.

(Source)
#MeToo: Flipkart ex CEO Binny Bansal filed case against woman who accused him, later close it

India

oi-Madhuri Adnal

Bengaluru, Nov 25: A non-cognisable case was filed against the woman who had levelled sexual assault allegations against Flipkart Co-founder Binny Bansal, who recently quit as the Group CEO, but withdrew it after she apologised.

In his complaint filed with the Koramangala police station, Bansal charged his accuser of blackmail and levelling false allegations against him, an individual familiar with the development told The Economic Times. When the police called her up to record her statement regarding the complaint, she apologised for making the allegations before Walmart.

It's assuring! Study finds Indian daters to be gender senstitive

The firm owner Walmart Inc had announced on Tuesday last that Bansal had resigned as the group Chief Executive Officer after an independent probe into allegations of "serious personal misconduct". Repudiating the charges, Binny, 37, had said that he was "stunned" by the allegations and added that he would, however, continue to remain a large shareholder and Board member of the company that he had co-founded 11 years ago.

Bansal's exit came just months after Flipkartwas acquired by Walmart. He was serving as Group CEO after Walmart's mega USD 16 Billion investment in the Bengaluru-based company.

Non-cognisable offence refers to an offence in which the police has no authority to apprehend a person for crime on theirown. Under this law, the police require a warrant to arrest an accused and a court's prior approval to begin investigation.

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Story first published: Sunday, November 25, 2018, 16:08 [IST]
Modi's Berlin Wall remark: Indication of peace with Pak ahead of LS polls?

India

oi-Shubham Ghosh

New Delhi, Nov 24: The Indian government gave the nod to set up a corridor to connect Kartarpur Sahib pilgrimage site in Pakistan was followed on Friday, November 23, by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's remark that like the fall of the Berlin Wall that had divided Germany into two parts, the corridor could also see people coming together. Modi said this on the occasion of Guru Nanak birth anniversary in New Delhi.

The go-ahead to the corridor to benefit the pilgrims from the Indian side to reach Gurudwara Darbar Sahib in Kartarpur where the Sikh guru lived the last 18 years of his life is significant ahead of the Lok Sabha election in 2019. It is important to note that the PM's remark came hours after the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) accused Pakistan of harassing Indian diplomats and stop them from reaching out to Indian pilgrims visiting gurdwaras Nankana Sahib and Sacha Sauda Sahib on its soil.

Pakistan gives nod to Kartarpur Sahib Corridor, agrees to open border next year

One would think it was unusual that Modi spoke more in the language of peace even after the ministry brought the charges against Pakistan and at a time when the relations between the two nuclear-powered neighbours are at a low. But it is not actually unusual for Modi's time to seek a renewal of his mandate is not too far and it would not be wrong to expect him to take the route of peace and soft talk now.

'Berlin Wall' analogy just days ahead of 26/11 anniversary?

Modi's "Berlin Wall" analogy came up in the wake of the MEA's accusing Pakistan of playing a role in pro-Khalistan terror and also just a few days ahead of the 10th anniversary of the 26/11 attacks. For those seeking to maintain a hot stance on Pakistan, this would sound disappointing but Modi was right in his way of handling the realpolitik.

Modi bridged gap with China in Wuhan this year

Every statesman or political leader tries to give peace and conciliation a chance ahead of a crucial test, more specifically the test of elections. Modi has been seen making amends to his government's stance vis-a-vis China earlier this year after last year's potentially hazardous face-off at Doklam. Modi even went to China to meet its president, Xi Jinping, over an informal meeting in Wuhan where the two sides spoke over a slew of confidence-building measures. He also praised India's ties with China at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore in June which was appreciated by the Chinese side.

The peace initiative had ended with Pathankot attacks; a renewed stance in same Punjab?

It might be not too easy for Modi to go with such a pro-peace agenda with Pakistan given the two countries' ever-boiling relations, but his "Berlin Wall" remark creates a moment of renewed hope on peace with Pakistan, something which has gone to the backseat since Modi paid a surprise visit to Lahore to meet the then Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif. The terror attack in Pathankot in Punjab in early 2016 had ended all of Modi's peace initiative with the neighbouring country and it never got a chance again to return to prominence.

India strongly protests with Pakistan for denial of access to Gurudwara Nankana Sahib

Almost three years since then, did Modi indicate at a thaw in the ties though the setting up of the corridor in the same state of Punjab?
Navy chief Sunil Lanba to begin 4-day Russia visit on Monday

India

pti-PTI

New Delhi, Nov 25: Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Sunil Lanba will begin a four-day visit to Russia on Monday with an aim to explore new avenues for the already close defence ties between the two countries, officials said Sunday.

The Navy chief will hold wide-ranging talks with his Russian counterpart, Admiral Vladimir Korolev, and meet a number of top military officials including General VV Gerasimov, Chief of General Staff and First Deputy Defence Minister of Russia, they said.

"The visit aims to consolidate bilateral defence relations with Russia, as also to explore new avenues for defence cooperation," Navy Spokesperson Capt. D K Sharma said. Adm. Lanba's visit to Russia comes around a week after the two countries signed a USD 500 million deal for construction of two missile frigates in Goa for the Indian Navy. Under the deal, Russia will provide design, technology know how and key materials to Goa Shipyard Ltd. for the construction of the ships in India. Adm. Lanba is also scheduled to visit the Nakhimov Naval School and Admiralty Shipyard. He will also visit the Military Academy of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and deliver a talk on Indian Navys Perspective on Maritime Security, Capt. Sharma said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin visited India last month during which both sides had decided to further ramp up bilateral defence and security cooperation. India is going ahead with mega defence deals with Russia disregarding warnings by the US of sanctions.

The Trump administration has put several Russian firms under sanctions under Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA). The US said countries engaged with Russia's defence firms may also face actions under CAATSA.

India has been hoping to get a waiver from the US on the deals with Russia. Russia has been India's largest defence supplier. The bilateral defence and security cooperation has been on an upswing over the last few years. The Indian and Russian navies cooperate on many fronts, including operational interactions and training. The Indian Navy and the Russian Navy have been conducting the bilateral Maritime Exercise 'INDRA NAVY, since 2003 and INDRA Tri-Services Exercise since 2017.

PTI
In UP, Nadda explains all the good PM has done for farmers

PM Modi to open new campus of Ambedkar School of Economics University on Dec 6

Rajasthan: Congress party is dragging the elections to a new low, says Modi in Alwar

India

oi-Madhuri Adnal

New Delhi, Nov 25: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday attacked the Congress party and said that it has divided the country. He was addressing a rally in Alwar in poll-bound Rajasthan.

"We have united the country. But the Congress party has divided India", PM Modi said.

"Congress party is dragging the elections to a new low. They are unable to talk about the development issues. So, they are playing caste politics. They are asking about my caste. I want to ask one thing--What my caste has to do with the development of Rajasthan?" PM questioned.

Yogi to address his first six rallies in Rajasthan where Muslim population sizable

"Sab ka saath, sab ka vikas is our mantra," he added.

PM also praised Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje.

"Rajasthan CM has done good work in every filed. The work which Congress party had done in 50 years, Raje government has done in 5 years." Modi said.

BJP expels 11 senior party leaders including ministers for taking anti-party stand in Rajasthan

The legislative assembly election in the state of Rajasthan is scheduled to be held on 7 December to elect members of the Rajasthan Legislative Assembly. The polls will be held in a single phase. In the last elections in 2013, the saffron party had won a majority.

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Story first published: Sunday, November 25, 2018, 14:24 [IST]
RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat pushes for legislation on Ram temple

India

oi-Deepika S

Nagpur, Nov 25: RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat on Sunday said if the Ram Mandir issue was not a priority for the judiciary, then the government should bring in a law for the same.

"The matter is in court and the decision should be given early. It has also been proven that the temple was there. The Supreme Court is not giving priority to the case and justice delayed is justice denied," Bhagwat said while addressing the 'Hunkar Sabha' in Nagpur.

"I am not telling you to wait. I myself told you to wait last year but now I am telling you we need to do 'jan-jagran', we need to demand law," he added.

Congress pressurising SC to delay Ayodhya case, says PM Modi; Sibal hits back

The temple town of Ayodhya is witnessing its biggest congregation of Right-wing activists since December 6, 1992 when the Babri Masjid was demolished. Thousands gathered for the VHP's Dharam Sabha to push for a Ram Temple at the disputed site. The rally is also the setting for a battle of Hindutva perception against the Shiv Sena with Uddhav Thackeray warning that the BJP may not come to power if it goes back on mandir promise.

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Story first published: Sunday, November 25, 2018, 19:34 [IST]
BJP stands for Jandhan, Aadhaar and Mobile but SP is for Jinnah, Azam and Mukhtar: Amit Shah

Amit Shah to chair 29th meeting of Southern Zonal Council in Tirupati today, 26-point on agenda- Details here

TMC brings its fight against BJP to Delhi; party MPs meet Amit Shah after sitting on dharna for 4 hrs

Shah attacks KCR, says only BJP can ensure Telangana's development

India

pti-PTI

Parkal, Nov 25: Bharatiya Janata Party chief Amit Shah Sunday accused the Telangana government led by K Chandrashekar Rao of "failing" to keep its promises, and claimed that only the BJP, under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, can ensure the state's development.

He also hit out at Rao for advancing the state polls, claiming that the chief minister did so as he was scared of the "Modi wave".

Addressing a public meeting at Parkal in Warangal district, Shah appealed to people to vote for the BJP in Telangana polls scheduled on December 7, in order to take the state forward.

He said KCR (as Rao is popularly known) failed to fulfil his promise of appointing a Dalit chief minister, and sought to know if Rao would now announce a Dalit as the chief ministerial candidate.

Telangana polls: Congress expels 19 for contesting against official candidates" title=" Telangana polls: Congress expels 19 for contesting against official candidates" /> Telangana polls: Congress expels 19 for contesting against official candidates

Shah also hit out at All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) leader Akbaruddin Owaisi's claim that his party would be the "kingmaker" after the state election.

"Do you want a government which is dependent on Owaisi and AIMIM? Neither the Congress nor KCR can provide such a governance, only the BJP can provide a government which is not dependent on Majlis," he said.

The assembly election in Telangana was expected along with the Lok Sabha election in May next year, but Rao advanced the polls and put the financial burden on people only because "he is scared of the 'Modi wave' and to promote his son and daughter for the chief minister's post," Shah alleged.

Attacking the Rao-led Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) government in the state over its move to provide 12-per cent reservation to minorities, Shah said the Constitution does not allow reservation based on religion and that it is "unconstitutional".

"The BJP opposes religion-based reservations and will neither allow it nor allow others to grant it," he said.

Telangana polls: Naidu's strategy to even out differences between the Nara-Nandamuri families

The senior BJP leader said the Modi government took up several works for Telangana's development and released over Rs 1.15 lakh crore to the state under the 14th Finance Commission, as against Rs 16,596 crore given by the UPA government under the 13th Finance Commission.

"The central government gave over Rs 2.30 lakh crore for Telangana's development in the last four-and-a-half years. Under KCR's rule, a revenue surplus state (when Telangana was formed) has been pushed into a Rs 2 lakh crore debt," he said.

Over 3,500 farmers in Telangana committed suicide under the TRS rule, Shah claimed. And on the other hand, he added, the Modi government announced to provide a higher minimum support price to cultivators for their crops.

Taking a dig at the alliance of parties, including the Congress and the Communist Party of India (CPI), formed in the state ahead of the polls, he said the Communist Party is on a decline across the world and the Congress is on a decline in India.

"The Congress lost power in 14 states and the BJP is in power in 19 states," he pointed out.

The BJP chief also slammed Rao for not celebrating September 17 as 'Liberation Day' "out of fear of Owaisi".

He said if the BJP comes to power in the state, it will celebrate Liberation Day in every village.

The BJP-led government launched the 'Pradhan Mantri Jan Aarogya Yojana for providing health insurance cover, but Rao did not implement the scheme as "he is afraid that Modiji's popularity will further increase," Shah said.

PTI
No one will be able to destroy Congress, leaders joining TMC 'drama', says Venugopal

Telangana polls: Congress expels 19 for contesting against officialcandidates

India

oi-Madhuri Adnal

Hyderabad, Nov 25: Acting tough, the Congress Saturday expelled 19 party workers for six years for contesting against official candidates and nominees of its allies in the December 7 Assembly elections in Telangana.

The orders will come into force with immediate effect, according to a statement from M Kodanda Reddy, Chairman of Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee's (TPCC) Disciplinary Action Committee.

Telangana polls: Naidu's strategy to even out differences between the Nara-Nandamuri families

Separately, the disciplinary action committee expelled five rebels from the party for a period of six years for working against the party's official candidate in Narayanpet Assembly constituency of Mahabubnagar district. Congress is contesting the polls in alliance with the Telugu Desam Party, the CPI and Telangana Jana Samiti.

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Story first published: Sunday, November 25, 2018, 9:36 [IST]
Telangana polls: Naidus strategy to even out differences between the Nara-Nandamuri families

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

Hyderabad, Nov 25: The Kukatpally assembly seat in Telangana will be closely watched. Nandamuri Suhasini, the niece of Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister, Chandrababu Naidu will be contesting from this seat.

There is an interesting story behind why Naidu decided to field from this seat. It could be seen in the context of Naidu trying to groom his son, Nara Lokesh as his political successor in Andhra Pradesh.

By fielding Suhasini, Naidu intends to settle both the Nandamuri and Nara families. While the Nara family would hold on to AP, the Nandamuris would lead the TDP in Telangana. This would also ensure that Lokesh would face no hurdle from the Nandamuri family in Telangana.

Telangana polls video: This Independent candidate is going to voters with a chappal

The Nandamuri family has not been on good terms with Naidu. Nandamuri Harikrishna, father of Suhasini, Jr NTR and Kalyan Ram was not on good terms with Naidu. However Naidu has tried to portray the image that all is well between the two families.

This move by Naidu also comes in the wake of several party men complaining that the Telugu Desam has not focused on Telangana after the state was formed. The Telangana State TD has been stronger in the Telangana region during the days of an undivided Andhra Pradesh. There was pressure from the party workers to either appoint Jr NTR or Lokesh's wife, Nara Bhrahmini to take care of the party's affairs in Telangana.

By bring in Suhasini, Naidu has tried to settle differences and made it clear that the Nandamuri family would call the shots in Telangana.

With Naidu promoting his son in AP, there was talk that the Nandamuri family had not taken this too lightly. If the Prajakutami comprising the TD and Congress comes to power, then Suhasini is sure to get a Cabinet posting. This would even out the decision that Naidu too to make his son Lokesh a cabinet minister in the Andhra Pradesh government.

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Story first published: Sunday, November 25, 2018, 9:15 [IST]
Ram temple in Ayodhya to be ready by 2025, open for 'darshan' to devotees by 2023 end

Foundation works for Ram Mandir to be ready by October, 'garbhagriha' by Dec 2023: VHP

Yogi Adityanath clears 221 meter tall Ram statue in Ayodhya

India

oi-Deepika S

Lucknow, Nov 25: A day before the scheduled Dharma Sabha in Ayodhya for construction of the Ram Temple, the Uttar Pradesh government on Saturday unveiled the picture of Ram statue it plans to build on the banks of the Saryu river.

The figure of Lord Ram itself will measure 151 metres, the pedestal 50 metres, and the "chattra" over his head 20 metres, taking the total height of the statue to be 221 metres, additional chief secretary (information) Avaneesh Kumar Awasthi said.

The new statue while being just 19 meters short of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel's statue at Sardar Sarovar Dam, it will outsize the Statue of Liberty in the United States.

Now, VHP will have six similar and simultaneous rallies across the country

The state government had hinted about the construction of the statue during Diwali celebrations in Ayodhya. On the lines of the Statue of Unity, the Ram statue will also have a museum that will showcase the history, culture and the dynasty of Ram, the government said in a statement.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, had on October 31, inaugurated an imposing 182-metre statue of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the country's first home minister, in Gujarat.

At 182 metres, the Statue of Unity -- made in the image of freedom fighter Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel -- is currently the world's tallest statue. It was built at a cost of Rs. 2,989 crore on a river island facing the Sardar Sarovar Dam.

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Story first published: Sunday, November 25, 2018, 3:11 [IST]
CIA did not conclude Mohammed bin Salman ordering Khashoggi death: Trump

International

oi-Shubham Ghosh

Washington, Nov 24: US President Donald Trump said earlier this week that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) did not conclude about Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's involvement in the gruesome murder of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul, Turkey, in October and that the Saudi leader regretted the death more than he did.

Trump spoke a week after the Washington Post first reported that the agency had assessed that Salman did ordered termination of the 59-year-old journalist who wrote for the same newspaper.

Won't 'abandon' Saudi Arabia over Jamal Khashoggi killing: Donald Trump

The president had earlier declined to either confirm or deny reports that the CIA had arrived at a conclusion about the Saudi crown prince ordering Khashoggi's murder. He also came up with a bizarre answer when asked who should be blamed for the attack, saying "maybe the world" and even referenced to oil prices as a reason not to go after the Middle Eastern kingdom, according to reports.

Also when asked whether the CIA possessed a recording implicating the crown prince, Trump said he didn't want to talk about it and asked the media to ask the agency instead.

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Story first published: Sunday, November 25, 2018, 11:04 [IST]
Waycare, a provider of artificial intelligence-based mobility products helped lead the crash prevention pilot program.

The program uses in-vehicle information, cameras, sensors and other traffic data to develop prediction models to reduce congestion. (Representational image/ Pixabay image)

Artificial intelligence is helping improve safety along a stretch of Las Vegas busiest highway.

The Nevada Highway Patrol says a yearlong partnership between public safety agencies and a startup technology firm resulted in a 17 per cent reduction in crashes along a portion of northbound Interstate 15 just west of the Las Vegas Strip.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports Waycare, a provider of artificial intelligence-based mobility products and services for smart cities, helped lead the crash prevention pilot program.

They hope to use it in other parts of the Las Vegas Valley, including a stretch of US 95 between I-15 and the Rainbow Boulevard curve.

The program uses in-vehicle information, cameras, sensors and other traffic data to develop prediction models to reduce congestion.

The Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada, the Nevada Department of Transportation and the Nevada Highway Patrol teamed up for the pilot program with Waycare. The Israeli startup already carried out a similar program in Tel Aviv, and it started a crash prevention program last year in Tampa, Florida.

The Nevada Highway Patrol says the results from the initial project on I-15 in Las Vegas between Charleston Boulevard and Russell Road came without any additional resources from state or local agencies.

Groundbreaking partnerships like this enable Southern Nevada to continue to lead the way in leveraging advanced technologies to dramatically improve traffic safety and efficiency, RTC general manager Tina Quigley said.

These latest statistics coupled with the fact that we are identifying accidents up to 12 minutes faster with the Waycare platform helps translate what public and private partnerships can do and that AI is working to modernise and create a better transportation system for all.

The platform uses in-vehicle information and municipal traffic data to understand road conditions in real time. When an area at high risk for an incident is identified, Waycare alerts traffic agencies when and where to take preventive action.

The RTC uses dynamic message boards to relay advanced warning of an incident, alerting drivers to reduce speed and drive cautiously.

The NHP then deploys its vehicles in high-visibility mode along the freeway in conjunction with NDOT, which assures that safety barriers are in place for the police officers on freeways.

During the program, 91 per cent of drivers travelling at more than 65 mph slowed down to under 65 mph in areas where preventive measures were deployed, RTC said.

The results of this pilot program are a clear signal that AI and deep learning when deployed in collaboration with traffic management and enforcement agencies, can have a dramatic impact on improving the safety of even our busiest and most at-risk freeways, said Noam Maital, co-founder and CEO of Waycare.

(Source)
2018 to be remembered as most turbulent in Sri Lanka's political history

Many suspects identified, we invite other countries in investigations: Sri Lanka PM

'Lanka didn't arrest citizens who joined IS as joining terror outfit not against law'

Lankan President vows never to reappoint Wickremesinghe as PM

International

pti-PTI

Colombo, Nov 25: Sri Lankan president Maithripala Sirisena on Sunday made it clear that he would never reappoint ousted prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe even as he accepted that the action of removing his arch-rival has created "some form of political unrest" in the country.

Sirisena last month abruptly sacked Wickeremesinghe and replaced him with former strongman Mahinda Rajapksa in a controversial move termed by many as unconstitutional.

The controversial action on 26 October led to a political crisis in the country, with both Wickremesinghe and Rajapaksa claiming to be the legitimate prime minister.

Sirisena, addressing the Colombo-based foreign correspondents, said: "There is no possibility that I will be re-appointing him (Wickeremesinghe). There is some form of political unrest in the country due to my decision, but I do not consider it as a serious political crisis."

The president said that he and Wickremesinghe had developed serious policy differences on their approach to governance.

"The first one was on the appointment of the Cabinet. I had entrusted a committee of academics to recommend ways to appoint a Cabinet based on a scientific division of subjects. But Mr Wickremesinghe ignored those recommendations," he said.

Sirisena said that Wickremesinghe appointed one ministry to handle both the higher education and highways.

One of the major issues of conflict was Sirisena's opposition to Wickremesinghe's nominee to the post of Central Bank governor, Arjuna Mahendran, a Singaporean national. "I told him (Wickremesinghe) that he should not be appointed because he is a non Sri Lankan. He insisted that he (Mahendran) be appointed," Sirisena said.

The president said that Mahendran was responsible for the biggest financial scam in the country over the Central Bank's issuance of bonds. A probe had found Mahendran guilty of providing insider information to a dealer linked to his son-in-law.

"He (Mahendran) is absconding and Ranil Wickremesinghe knows his whereabouts," Sirisena said, adding that he would appoint a special probe on Wickremesinghe's three years as prime minister, accusing his government of being corrupt.

The President described Wickremesinghe as a proponent of destructive neo-Liberal economic policies which are not suitable for Sri Lanka.

"How can I work with a government leader who was ridiculing an attempt on my life," Sirisena said, accusing the ousted prime minister of trying to undermine a probe on an alleged plot to assassinate him.

An Indian national and a senior police officer are currently under the police custody for the plot.

Sirisena claimed that Wickremesinghe's sacking, Rajapaksa's appointment and Parliament's dissolution for fresh elections were all constitutional actions.

"They (the Opposition parties) have only challenged my decision to dissolve Parliament," he said.

Sirisena accused Speaker Karu Jayasuriya of violating Parliament's standing orders in approving the motion of no confidence against Rajapaksa.

He said although the standing orders can be suspended, Jayasuriya's action to approve the motion on the strength of voice was wrong in a matter of changing of a government.

Wickremesinghe has termed his dismissal as invalid and said he still holds a majority in the 225-member Parliament.

Former president Rajapaksa, who ruled Sri Lanka for nearly a decade, was unexpectedly defeated by his deputy, Sirisena, in the presidential election in January, 2015 with the support from Wickremesinghe's United National Party.

However, the power-sharing arrangement between Sirisena and Wickremesinghe became increasingly tenuous on several policy matters, mainly on economy and security.

The country is witnessing a political stalemate since Sirisena sacked Wickremesinghe on October 26.

Sirisena later dissolved Parliament, almost 20 months before its term was to end, and ordered snap election. The Supreme Court overturned Sirisena's decision to dissolve Parliament and halted the preparations for snap polls.

Speaker Jayasuriya then ordered a floor test in the 225-member assembly to end the ongoing political crisis, a move which invited the wrath of the government of Rajapaksa.

The United National Front led by Wickeremesinghe has already moved three motions of no trust against Rajapaksa. Rajapaksa, however, has refused to step down.

PTI
Kinam Kim, president of Samsungs device solutions division, said the company failed to sufficiently manage health threats.

The standoff began in 2007 when taxi driver Hwang Sang-gi refused to accept a settlement after his 23-year-old daughter died of leukemia after working at a Samsung factory. (Photo: AP)

Samsung Electronics apologised Friday for illnesses and deaths of some of its workers, saying it failed to create a safe working environment at its computer chip and display factories.

The announcement by the South Korean technology giant came weeks after the company and a group representing ailing Samsung workers agreed to accept compensation terms suggested by a mediator and end a highly-publicised standoff that went on for more than a decade. The companys apology was part of the settlement.

Kinam Kim, president of Samsungs device solutions division, said the company failed to sufficiently manage health threats at its semiconductor and liquid crystal display manufacturing lines. As detailed in Associated Press reporting over the past decade, dozens of employees who worked there have experienced grave illnesses such as leukemia and brain tumors.

We offer our sincere apology to our workers who have suffered with illnesses and their families, Kim said during a news conference in Seoul, which was also attended by activists and relatives of the workers.

But while cutting a deal and loosely admitting to lapses in safety standards, Samsung has yet to fully acknowledge its workplace environment as the direct cause of the illnesses.

The standoff began in 2007 when taxi driver Hwang Sang-gi refused to accept a settlement after his 23-year-old daughter died of leukemia after working at a Samsung factory. Hwangs efforts to clarify the cause of Yu-mis death and hold Samsung responsible for problems related to working conditions galvanised a broader movement to hold businesses and the government accountable for safety lapses in the chip and display industries, which use huge amounts of chemicals.

No apology would be enough when considering the deception and humiliation we experienced (from Samsung) over the past 11 years, the pain of suffering from occupational diseases, the pain of losing loved ones, Hwang said at the news conference. But I take todays apology as a promise from Samsung Electronics, to improve the safety of its workplaces, he said.

According to the settlement, Samsung will compensate for various illnesses of employees who have worked at its chip and LCD factories since 1984, including as much as 150 million won ($132,000) for leukemia. The compensation also covers miscarriages and congenital illnesses of the workers children such as child cancer.

Since 2008, dozens of workers have sought occupational safety compensation from the government. Few won compensation, mostly after years of court battles. Half the remaining claims were rejected and half remain under review.

Families of the victims often have depleted their savings and sold their homes to pay hospital bills. Some workers end up incapacitated and unable to work.

(Source)
The India-China border dispute covers 3,488-km-long Line of Actual Control (LAC). China claims Arunachal Pradesh as part of southern Tibet.

Beijing: India and China on Saturday resolved to intensify their efforts to achieve a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable solution to the vexed boundary question at an early date as the special representatives of the two countries held constructive and forward-looking talks over the issue.

National security adviser Ajit Doval and Chinese state councillor and foreign minister Wang Yi met in Chengdu in southwestern Sichuan province for the 21st round of special representatives talks.

While an early solution would serve the fundamental interests of both the countries, the two designated Special Representatives for the border talks also said pending the final solution, the two countries should maintain peace and tranquillity at the borders, ensuring that the dispute does not affect the overall development of bilateral ties.

The India-China border dispute covers 3,488-km-long Line of Actual Control (LAC). China claims Arunachal Pradesh as part of southern Tibet.

This was the first round of talks for Wang after he succeeded state councillor Yang Jiechi earlier this year. Wang has become the state councillor, a rank higher than the foreign minister in the Chinese governments hierarchy.

Recalling the strategic guidance and support to their work provided by the leaders at the Wuhan Summit, the Special Representatives resolved to intensify their efforts to achieve a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable solution to the India-China boundary question at an early date, according to a statement issued by the Indian embassy in Beijing after the border talks said.

They were referring to the outcome of the first ever informal summit between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping in April this year in Wuhan.

Mr Doval and Mr Wang underlined the importance of approaching the boundary question from the strategic perspective of India-China relations and agreed that an early settlement of the boundary question serves the fundamental interests of both countries, the statement said.
In 1987, Deng Xiaoping dismissed him as party secretary for tolerating "bourgeois liberalization" and being too close to the students. His funeral triggered the demonstrations and sit-ins on Tiananmen Square, which ended in the bloody repression during the night between June 3 and 4.

Beijing (AsiaNews / Agencies) - After almost 30 years since his death, the Chinese authorities have inaugurated a statue in honor of Hu Yaobang (photo 2), reformist leader and secretary of the Communist Party between 1982 and 1987. In the presence of family members and friends, the ceremony (photo 1) took place on November 18 in Hu's hometown: Liuyang, in the southern province of Hunan.

Hu held the highest office in the Party and led the country through political and economic reforms in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution. In 1987, Deng Xiaoping dismissed him for tolerating "bourgeois liberalization" and being too close to the students, who demanded "more democracy and less corruption in the Party". He died on April 15, 1989, and his funeral (photo 3) triggered the demonstrations and sit-ins in Tiananmen Square, that ended in the bloody repression on the night between 3 and 4 June.

The statue of the leader was approved by the Central Committee of the Party and by the Council of State. Analysts say the move could be the authorities' attempt to focus the spotlight on Party unity. This year the 40 years of economic reforms and openings inaugurated by Deng Xiaoping are celebrated. For others, the official inauguration of the monument is proof that Hu is becoming a less sensitive name in China: the Party would be exploiting his image as a reformist, recognizing his contribution to the regime and minimizing his ties with the dead of Tiananmen.

Hu Deping, Hu's eldest son, spoke at the ceremony, citing for a long time the speech with which President Xi Jinping had commemorated the centenary of his father's birth three years ago. In front of the Party officials present, Hu Deping stressed that his virtues were "in line with Xi's thinking".
"Jesus asks us to let Him become our king". "But we must not forget that the kingdom of Jesus is not of this world. He will be able to give a new meaning to our life, sometimes also tested by our mistakes and our sins, only on condition that we do not follow the logic of the world and its 'kings' ". Yesterday the Holodomor anniversary, "terrible famine caused by the Soviet regime that caused millions of victims".

Vatican City (AsiaNews) - "History teaches that the kingdoms founded on the power of arms and prevarication are fragile and sooner or later collapse", while the kingdom of God, "founded on His love" is destined to last forever, as long as we do not follow "the logics", the "kings" of this world, said Pope Francis before the recitation of the Angelus, to 20 thousand faithful present in St. Peter's Square, despite the rain. "Well, you are brave to come here, despite the rain," the Pope commented.

On the day in which the solemnity of Christ the King, Francis noted that the feast "recalls that the life of creation does not advance by chance, but proceeds towards a final goal: the definitive manifestation of Christ, the Lord of history and of all creation. The conclusion of the story will be his eternal kingdom. Today's Gospel passage (cf. Jn 18,33b-37) tells us about this kingdom, the kingdom of Jesus, telling of the humiliating situation in which Jesus was found after being arrested in Gethsemane: bound, insulted, accused and brought before to the Jerusalem authorities. He is presented to the Roman prosecutor, as one who is attentive to political power, to becoming the king of the Jews. Pilate then makes his inquiry and in a dramatic interrogation asks him twice if he is a king (see verses 33b.37) ".

"Jesus responds first that his kingdom" is not of this world "(v. 36). Then he says: "You say so: I am king (v.37). It is evident from his whole life that Jesus has no political ambitions. We recall that after the multiplication of the loaves, the people, enthusiastic about the miracle, wanted to proclaim him king, to overthrow Roman power and restore the kingdom of Israel. But for Jesus the kingdom is something else, and certainly not achieved by revolt, violence and force of arms. Therefore he withdrew alone on the mountain to pray (cf. Jn 6: 5-15). Now, responding to Pilate, he points out that his disciples did not fight to defend him. He says: "If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have fought because I was not handed over to the Jews" (v.36) ".

"Jesus wants to make it clear that above the political power there is another much greater, which is not achieved by human means. He came to earth to exercise this power, which is love, bearing witness to the truth (see verse 37). This is the divine truth that is ultimately the essential message of the Gospel: "God is love" (1 Jn 4: 8) and wants to establish in the world his kingdom of love, justice and peace. This is the kingdom of which Jesus is the king, and which extends to the end of time. History teaches that the kingdoms founded on the power of arms and prevarication are fragile and sooner or later collapse. But the kingdom of God is founded on his love and is rooted in the hearts, giving to those who welcome peace, freedom and fullness of life. We all want peace, we want freedom, we want fullness. How you do it? Let the kingdom of Jesus be rooted in our hearts to have peace, justice, fullness ".

"Jesus today asks us to let him become our king. A king who with his word, his example and His life immolated on the cross has saved us from death, points the way to the lost man, gives new light to our existence marked by doubt, by fear and by everyday trials . But we must not forget that the kingdom of Jesus is not of this world. He will be able to give a new meaning to our life, sometimes also put to the test by our mistakes and our sins, only on condition that we do not follow the logic of the world and its 'kings'. May the Virgin Mary help us to welcome Jesus as the king of our life and to spread his kingdom, bearing witness to the truth that is love ".

After the recitation of the Marian prayer, the Pope recalled that "yesterday Ukraine commemorated the anniversary of the Holodomor, a terrible famine caused by the Soviet regime that caused millions of victims. The immense wound of the past is a call for all so that such tragedies are never repeated again. We pray for that dear country and for the much desired peace ".
Chemotherapy Induced Nausea and Vomiting (CINV) Drugs Market Research Report Global Forecast 2018-25 Estimated with Top Key Players like GlaxoSmithKline, Heron Therapeutics, Acacia Pharma

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Wireless Charging Market Detail Analysis focusing on Key Players like WiTricity Corporation, Integrated Device Technology, Inc., Texas Instruments, Inc., Qualcomm Inc., Energizer Holdings, Inc

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MarketStudyReport.com Adds New Wireless Charging Market 2017  2024 research report providing information and data By Application, By Technology,Industry Analysis, Regional Outlook, Application Potential, Trends, Competitive Market Share & Forecast spreading across 180 Pages with table and figures in it.The players operating in the wireless charging market include WiTricity Corporation, Integrated Device Technology, Inc., Texas Instruments, Inc., Qualcomm Inc., Energizer Holdings, Inc, PowerbyProxi Ltd., Powermat Technologies, Powercast Corporation among others. The industry is extremely competitive in nature, which has led several manufacturers to develop and commercialize several key technologies that are implemented in smart devices and contribute towards the end-user demand.Request a sample of this premium report at:Wireless Charging Market is set to exceed USD 14 billion by 2024. Growing demand of the technology across the automotive sector owing to rising pollution concerns as well as depleting fossil fuels is expected to drive the wireless charging market over the forecast timeline. Manufacturers have recognized that consumers are increasing their spending capacity and are ready to invest in premium products. Several automotive manufacturers such as Audi, BMW, Daimler and Toyota are actively researching the technology. The industry is characterized by a considerable amount of R&D, which is expected to contribute to overall growth.Healthcare is a promising application segment for the wireless charging market. The usage of medical implants in advanced medical therapies for a variety of chronic conditions is growing, with the ability to safely charge such devices opens new opportunities to several treatment options thereby driving the wireless charging market growth. Moreover, wireless charging technology is offering its end-users the ability to extend the lifetime of an implant as the battery can be recharged, and can also eliminate the battery need in some cases.Resonant technology accounted for more than 25% of the wireless charging market share in 2016. The technology does not require direct contact for charging of devices and allows several devices to be charged simultaneously. It has a competitive advantage over the inductive technology as it offers wireless transfer of power at a long range for multiple devices. The technology is anticipated to become more widely available at coffee-shop tables and in offices under the desks.Request a discount on standard prices of this premium report at:Companies are licensing their product portfolio which include patent rights, and which are beneficial in the manufacturing and distribution of wireless charging products. Moreover, several vendors are extending their businesses to emerging markets such as Asia Pacific and MEA as the North America wireless charging market appears to be comparatively mature in terms of infrastructural development.Table of Content:Chapter 1. Methodology and ScopeChapter 2. Executive SummaryChapter 3. Wireless Charging Industry InsightsChapter 4. Wireless Charging Market, By TechnologyChapter 5. Wireless Charging Market, By ApplicationChapter 6. Wireless Charging Market, By RegionChapter 7. Company ProfilesGet More Details on this report:Related Report:2017-2022 Japan Wireless Charging Market Report (Status and Outlook)The Wireless Charging market size will be XX million (USD) in 2022 in Japan, from the XX million (USD) in 2016, with a CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) XX% from 2016 to 2022.About Us:Marketstudyreport.com allows you to manage and control all corporate research purchases to consolidate billing and vendor management. You can eliminate duplicate purchases and customize your content and license management.Contact Us:Market Study Report4 North Main Street,Selbyville, Delaware 19975USAPhone: 1-302-273-0910US Toll Free: 1-866-764-2150Email: sales@marketstudyreport.comWebsite:Blog:
Schneider Electric, Samsung Profiled in IP camera Market 2024 Report - Apexis, Arecont Vision, Avigilon, Axis Communications, Belkin, Bosch Security Systems, Panasonic, Sony, Toshiba, Hikvision, Honeywell

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The global IP camera market is poised to garner substantial gains in the ensuing years, owing to the growth of the infrastructure industry worldwide which is rapidly deploying internet protocol camera as a security measure. In addition to this, the burgeoning smart homes trend and the penetration of IoT across several industries such as consumer electronics, has stimulated product demand from residential users. Furthermore, government initiatives promoting safe and smart cities would also bolster IP camera market size in the years to come.The global IP camera market is marked by trends such as need for high resolution, government investments to improve security infrastructure, reduction in total cost of ownership, and rise in demand from non-security applications such as smart home devices. The growing demand for these systems in non-security applications such as integration with access control systems in smart home automation, e-Point of Sale (POS) terminals, Automatic Number-Plate Recognition (ANPR) are poised to offer additional opportunities for the network camera market. Moreover, other factors such as improved sensor availability, new video analytics capabilities, wider adoption of thermal imaging, mobile access, intelligent building control, 360-degree vision and de-warping are contributing immensely towards penetration of the network camera market.Request a sample of this premium Research Report at:Notable IP Camera market players comprise Apexis, Arecont Vision, Avigilon, Axis Communications, Belkin, Bosch Security Systems, Dahua Technology, D-Link, GeoVision, Hikvision, Honeywell, Juanvision, March Networks, Mobotix, NetGear, Panasonic, Pelco by Schneider Electric, Samsung, Sony, Toshiba, Tyco International, VideoIQ, Vivotek. WanscamThe IP Camera Market report 2017-2024 provides a comprehensive landscape of the industry, accurate market estimates and forecast split by Product, By Connection, By Application and regions. All quantitative information is covered on a regional as well as country basis. The report provides valuable strategic insights on the IP Camera, analyzing in detail industry impact forces including growth drivers, pitfalls and regulation evolution. The report also includes a detailed outlook on the IP Camera segment competitive environment, diving in to the industry position of each major company along with the strategic landscape.China IP camera market is expected to witness sharp growth due to the presence of a large number of market players offering low cost solutions in the region. Favorable government initiatives on city surveillance, smart city development and penetration of IoT devices are also expected to fuel the demand. Features such as remote monitoring, live video feed on the mobile, single Power over Ethernet (PoE) connectivity, HD resolution and mobile access are driving demand for such solutions in residential applications. Ease of access, remote operation, scalability and flexibility to add more components are some of the key benefits of IP cameras solutions. 4K video surveillance, HD and megapixel cameras are gaining increased penetration across industry verticals.The IP camera market has been segmented by product into Fixed, PTZ and Infrared systems. Compact design, electronic PTZ functions, built in IR sensors, and environmentally resistant structures are trends driving adoption of IP cameras over their analog counterparts. Deployment of a particular type of camera system depends upon the application need, lens type, lighting, cabling systems, power requirements and required resolution.Request a discount on standard prices of this premium report at:Technological proliferation, ubiquity of internet connectivity and the demand for remote monitoring are expected to drive IP camera market growth over the forecast period. Advancement in technology such as 4K resolution, edge-based video analytics and penetration of H.265 high-efficiency video encoding is also poised to stimulate demand. The growing number of players in the network camera market and availability of low-cost manufacturing has been fueling the growth across the globe. Global terrorist attacks in recent years have highlighted the need for governments to pay more attention to public security. In addition, the dropping IP camera market price trend, has helped shorten the gap with analog systems.Outer scope of this report In a recent turn of events, Bosch, a world-leading electronics and engineering company, has made an attempt to advance the usually lengthy camera installation process. Its latest product Flexidome Starlight 8000i Camera installs 55 percent to 60 percent quicker than a traditional camera and requires only one person to commission. Considering the huge number of camera installations performed every day globally, this innovation would definitely uplift the business sphere. In this backdrop, it is judicious to mention that the rapid transition in various avenues of camera technology would add considerable momentum to IP camera market growth rate over the coming years.The competitive spectrum of the global IP camera market is characterized by technological advancements, product innovations, and market expansion through collaborations among global contenders. The expanding Indian economy is a lucrative market for various players  say for instance, Xiaomi has recently introduced the Mi Home Security Camera 360, to uphold its market presence in the region. Previously, D-Link, a Wi-Fi routers & networking products behemoth, had also introduced its DCS-P6000LH Mini HD camera in the Indian market.Table of Content:Chapter 1. Methodology and ScopeChapter 2. Executive SummaryChapter 3. IP Camera Industry InsightsChapter 4. IP Camera Market, By Product (Revenue, Shipment)Chapter 5. IP Camera Market, By Connection (Revenue)Chapter 6. IP Camera Market, By Application (Revenue, Shipment)Chapter 7. IP Camera Market, By RegionChapter 8. Company ProfilesMore Details on this Report At:Related Report:Global Video Management Software (VMS) Market Size, Status and Forecast 2025This report studies the global Video Management Software (VMS) market, analyzes and researches the Video Management Software (VMS) development status and forecast in United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia. This report focuses on the top players in global market, like Genetec, Qognify, Verint, Axis, Aimetis, OnSSI, Video Insight, AxxonSoft, Tyco Security.About Us:Marketstudyreport.com allows you to manage and control all corporate research purchases to consolidate billing and vendor management. You can eliminate duplicate purchases and customize your content and license management.Contact Us:Market Study Report4 North Main Street,Selbyville, Delaware 19975USAPhone: 1-302-273-0910US Toll Free: 1-866-764-2150Email: sales@marketstudyreport.comWeb site:Blog:
North America Microgrid Market Growth Rate Analysis By GE, ABB, Schneider Electric, Alstom, Siemens, Honeywell, Caterpillar Inc, Tesla, Virdity Energy Solutions, EnSync Inc, Toshiba, Hitachi, Advanced Microgrid Solutions

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MarketStudyReport.com offers 2018 report on North America Microgrid market that evaluates industry growth trends through historical data and estimates future prospects based on comprehensive research. The report extensively provides the market share, growth, trends and forecasts for the period 2018-2024.North America Microgrid Market is predicted to reach over USD 7 billion by 2024. Aging grid infrastructure coupled with stringent government policies toward adoption of sustainable power technologies will stimulate North America microgrid market. Economic competitiveness, low power cost & transmission losses and reliability are key the parameters that will encourage the product penetration. In addition, ongoing funding toward the development of distributed generation technology will enhance the industry landscape.Eminent participants in the North America microgrid market include GE, ABB, Schneider Electric, Alstom, Siemens, Honeywell, Caterpillar Inc, Tesla, Virdity Energy Solutions, EnSync Inc, Toshiba, Hitachi, Advanced Microgrid Solutions, Lockheed Martin, Exelon and Power Analytics Corporation.Request a sample of this premium report at:Increasing high-end power consumption across the industries on account of development of new HVAC systems and heavy load machineries will foster the microgrid market. Growing electricity demands across hospitals, retail outlets, automotive, manufacturing operations, offices and industries will encourage product penetration across commercial and industrial application. For instance, as per EIA, the commercial and industrial sector in 2017 accounted about 4.5% and 22.4 % of the primary energy consumption respectively.Ongoing adoption of captive power plants across the manufacturing and industrial sector for ensuring regulated power production will foster North America microgrid market. Increasing investment toward the expansion of decentralized grid coupled with rising investments for the expansion of infrastructure and power sector will accelerate the business growth. For instance, in 2016, the government of Canada, announced an investment of about USD 900 million were financed toward installation of numerous energy sources and R & D across the country.Natural gas microgrid market will grow on account of stringent government measures pertaining to the adoption of lower emission fuel as a replacement for conventional fuel sources. Ongoing investment toward exploration of unconventional fuel reserves owing to escalating gas demand will enhance the industry outlook. Amren Corporation in 2017, developed an advanced microgrid which utilizes, solar, natural gas and wind energy as a source along with an integrated battery storage and automation system.Request a discount on standard prices of this premium report at:Canada microgrid market is predicted to reach deployment of over 400 MW capacity by 2024. Growing electricity demand across remote and off grid areas along with upsurge in investments toward the adoption of clean energy technology will complement the business growth. Furthermore, ongoing development of distributed energy sources to minimize the dependency on conventional grid will enhance the industry outlook. In 2016 Canada government made an investment of USD 2.4 billion for developing wind and solar energy sources.Flow batteries accounted for over 5% of North America microgrid market in 2017. Ongoing investment pertaining to the integration of sustainable grid coupled with innovations toward the development of cost-effective and efficient storage technologies will propel the industry growth. key features including long life cycle and higher efficiency will further encourage the product adoption over available substitutes.Complete report for 2017-2024 on North America Microgrid market is now available atRelated Report:United States Energy Storage battery for Microgrid Market Report 2017United States Energy Storage battery for Microgrid Market research report is added by Market Study report by covering all major market aspects. The report also touches the key scenarios like top players, competition, types, applications, regions, recent developments and future market predictions.About Us:Marketstudyreport.com allows you to manage and control all corporate research purchases to consolidate billing and vendor management. You can eliminate duplicate purchases and customize your content and license management.Contact Us:Market Study Report4 North Main Street,Selbyville, Delaware 19975USAPhone: 1-302-273-0910US Toll Free: 1-866-764-2150Email:sales@marketstudyreport.comWebsite:
Wi-Fi Hotspot Market to Hit 12% CAGR to 2024 | Top Key Player TP-LINK, Ubiquiti Networks, Xirrus, ZTE, Alcatel Lucent, Cisco Systems, Ericsson, Huawei Technologies, Netgear, Nokia Networks

Wi-Fi Hotspot Market, Global Wi-Fi Hotspot Market Size, Wi-Fi Hotspot Industry, Wi-Fi Hotspot Market Trends

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The newly released research at Market Study Report titled 2018-2024 Global Wi-Fi Hotspot Market Report provides data, information, brief analysis, company profiles, statistics for past years and forecasts for next few years.Wi-Fi Hotspot market includes hardware, software, and services. Hardware accounts for more than 55% share in the market. The growing adoption of gateways, access points, and cloud access points among the enterprises and residential users is the major factor supporting the market. These devices have been used by the users to provide authorization, accounting, and authentication for a wireless network.Request a sample of this premium report atEurope is leading the regional landscape with a share of over 35% in the Wi-Fi Hotspot market. The growth of the market is credited to the widespread adoption of Hotspot devices in public places such as restaurants, cafes, hotels, and retail stores. Furthermore, the existence of well-developed digital infrastructure fosters the demand for Hotspot devices. Asia Pacific is anticipated to grow at a CAGR of over 15% during the forecast timespan. The growing demand from the developing countries including India and China propels the market growth. Moreover, the rising adoption of internet services and smartphone in the region also augments the demand for Wi-Fi Hotspot.Wi-Fi Hotspot Market is anticipated to surpass USD 23 billion by 2024 due to the supportive government policies and initiatives for the development of advanced digital infrastructure across countries. The government organizations are rapidly deploying Wi-Fi Hotspot at the public places to provide free internet services to the individuals as a part of their digitalization plan. Moreover, the increasing focus of governments in the developing countries to render services via online platforms to reach the rural population also accelerates the market growth.The increasing adoption of smartphones and rising internet penetration also acts as a major force that is promoting the deployment of Wi-Fi hotspot. Furthermore, the rising adoption of enterprise mobility solutions and Bring Your Own Devices (BYOD) policies among the organization also augments the demand for the Wi-Fi hotspot market.The mobile hotspot devices are anticipated to attain CAGR of over 17% during the projected timespan. The advancements in WLAN technology and the growing incorporation of IoT devices are driving the adoption of the Wi-Fi Hotspot among the residential and business space. The advancements in technology have allowed the Wi-Fi technology to interconnect multiple devices into a network. Moreover, the rapid adoption of the mobile hotspot devices into the automotive also augments their demand in the market.Request a discount on standard prices of this premium report atWi-Fi Hotspot is being widely used in the commercial and community spaces. The commercial application holds over 15% share in the Wi-Fi Hotspot market. The rapid deployment of Hotspots across the public spaces to provide free internet access to the individuals is the primary factor driving the market growth. Moreover, the supportive government initiatives for the development of network infrastructure and digitalization also act as a major factor propelling the demand for the Wi-Fi Hotspot in the commercial space.The deployment of Wi-Fi Hotspot in the community space is anticipated to grow at a CAGR of over 12% during the projected timeline. The growing adoption of home automation and smart home solutions among the residential space is accelerating the adoption and demand for Wi-Fi Hotspot. Furthermore, the growing adoption of smart devices and the rise in disposable income of the population in developing countries also encourage the demand for Wi-Fi Hotspot.The key vendors in the Wi-Fi Hotspot market space are 4ipnet, Aerohive Network, Alcatel Lucent, Belkin International, Aptilo Networks, Cisco Systems, Inc., Cloud4Wi, Boingo Wireless, Edgecore Networks, Ericsson, HPE, Huawei Technologies, iPass, Inc., Junier Networks, Mojo Networks, Netgear, Nokia Networks, Open-Mesh, Ruckus Wireless, TP-LINK, Ubiquiti Networks, Xirrus, and ZTE.Table of ContentsChapter 1. Wi-Fi Hotspot Market Methodology and ScopeChapter 2. Wi-Fi Hotspot Market Executive SummaryChapter 3. Wi-Fi Hotspot Industry InsightsChapter 4. Competitive LandscapeChapter 5. Wi-Fi Hotspot Market, By ComponentChapter 6. Wi-Fi Hotspot Market, By ApplicationChapter 7. Wi-Fi Hotspot Market, By RegionChapter 8. Wi-Fi Hotspot Market Company ProfilesFor more information on this report at:Related Report:United States Wi-Fi Hotspot Market Report 2018In this report, the United States Wi-Fi Hotspot market is valued at USD XX million in 2017 and is expected to reach USD XX million by the end of 2025, growing at a CAGR of XX% between 2017 and 2025.About Us:Marketstudyreport.com allows you to manage and control all corporate research purchases to consolidate billing and vendor management. You can eliminate duplicate purchases and customize your content and license management.Contact Us:Market Study Report4 North Main Street,Selbyville, Delaware 19975USAPhone: 1-302-273-0910US Toll Free: 1-866-764-2150Email:sales@marketstudyreport.comWebsite:Blog:
Crawler Crane Market Report 2018-2024 By Major Regions, Top Players | Terex Cranes, The Liebherr Group, Komatsu Ltd., Kobelco Construction Machinery Co,. Ltd., Tadano Ltd., SANY Group, The Escorts, Hyundai Construction Equipment

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MarketStudyReport.com Adds New Crawler Crane Market 2018  2024 Report that gives meticulous investigation of current scenario of the market size, share, demand, growth, trends, and forecast in the coming years.Increasing demand for fuel-efficient machines creates an awareness to improvise the crane manufacturing processes. Manufacturers in the crawler crane market are enhancing the production process to offer machines with increased fuel capabilities. Additionally, the need of controlling harmful emissions from high-intensity activities in the energy & power sector, eco-friendly initiatives across various sectors, the crawler crane market is witnessing the production of low fuel consuming machines.Request a sample of this premium report at:In the crawler crane market, the energy sector is expected to witness a substantial growth due to the essential operations in wind power generation. These cranes are used in the transportation and assembly of wind turbines, mixing plant operations, and lifting works. The high-capacity cranes also perform the erection of wind turbines and provide increased operator safety during these operations. Precision control and high flexibility are the major factors that increase the deployment of these machines in the production of oil & gas, wind energy, and power. For instance, in November 2017, Demag, a Terex Corporation brand, announced the deployment of four crawler cranes in the Beatrice Offshore Windfarm project in Germany.Key players operating in the crawler crane market include Terex Cranes, The Liebherr Group, Komatsu Ltd., Kobelco Construction Machinery Co,. Ltd., Tadano Ltd., SANY Group, The Escorts, Hyundai Construction Equipment, Manitowoc, and ACE.Crawler Crane Market is expected to exceed USD 3 billion by 2024. The rising demand for high-capacity lifting solutions coupled with the flourishing construction sector across the globe is anticipated to drive the crawler crane market growth. Heavy lifting and material handling requirements at the construction and mining sites result in huge deployments of these machines. Government initiatives and support to develop the public & private infrastructure in countries including India and Canada drive the industry growth. For instance, in May 2018, Canada?s Federal Government announced the financial support of USD 9.08 billion for various infrastructure projects in Ontario.The implementation of innovative control technologies in these machines required to control the heavy lifting operation drives the crawler crane market growth. Intelligent control systems in modern crawler cranes include the combination of hardware and software components to facilitate lifting operations. The functions include display and control instructions for the crane operator, monitoring of all control sensors, and the overload protection. Manufacturers offer increased user-friendliness and operator safety benefits by deploying these control technologies, further developing the crawler crane market. For instance, The Liebherr Group offers its 300 tons crawler cranes implemented with intelligent control systems, which provide several operator control functions such as vertical line finder, user-friendly display, and precise load transport.Request a discount on standard prices of this premium report at:Asia Pacific crawler crane market is anticipated to witness growth owing to the emerging construction and rental sectors in countries including China and India. The growth of equipment rental providers in the region will lead to a high machinery demand. Global companies are expanding their business operations in the region by collaborating with local manufacturers due to increased commercial and residential construction activities in the region, thereby supporting the industry demand. For instance, in December 2016, Jekko s.r.l. collaborated with Lee Hyun Soo and Dennis Shin for establishing the new subsidiary Jekko Korea in Seoul.Table of Content:Chapter 1. Methodology and ScopeChapter 2. Executive SummaryChapter 3. Crawler Crane Industry InsightsChapter 4. Crawler Crane Market, By CapacityChapter 5. Global Crawler Crane Market, By ApplicationChapter 6. Global Crawler Crane Market, By RegionChapter 7. Company ProfilesFor More Details on this Report At:Related Report:Asia-Pacific Crawler Crane Market Report 2017In this report, the Asia-Pacific Crawler Crane market is valued at USD XX million in 2016 and is expected to reach USD XX million by the end of 2022, growing at a CAGR of XX% between 2016 and 2022.About Us:Marketstudyreport.com allows you to manage and control all corporate research purchases to consolidate billing and vendor management. You can eliminate duplicate purchases and customize your content and license management.Contact Us:Market Study Report4 North Main Street,Selbyville, Delaware 19975USAPhone: 1-302-273-0910US Toll Free: 1-866-764-2150Email: sales@marketstudyreport.comWebsite:Blog:
The great cryptocurrency crash of 2018 had its worst week yet.

Bitcoin sank below $4,000 Saturday after it and most of its peers tumbled on Friday, extending the Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index's decline since Nov. 16 to 25 percent. That's the worst weekly slump since crypto-mania peaked in early January.

After an epic rally last year that exceeded many of history's most notorious bubbles, cryptocurrencies have become mired in a nearly $700 billion rout that shows few signs of abating. Many of the concerns that sparked the 2018 retreat -- including increased regulatory scrutiny, community infighting and exchange snafus -- have only intensified this week. Even after losses exceeding 70 percent for most virtual currencies, Oanda Corp.'s Stephen Innes has yet to see strong evidence of a capitulation that would signal a market bottom.

"There's still a lot of people in this game," Innes, head of trading for Asia Pacific at Oanda, said by phone from Singapore. If Bitcoin "collapses, if we start to see a run down toward $3,000, this thing is going to be a monster. People will be running for the exits."

Innes said his base-case forecast is for Bitcoin to trade between $3,500 and $6,500 in the short term, with the potential to fall to $2,500 by January.

The largest cryptocurrency retreated more than 10 percent Saturday, according to Coindesk. At $3,817, 285, its trading close to its the lowest closing level since September 2017. The market value of all cryptocurrencies tracked by CoinMarketCap.com has sunk to $140 billion, down from about $835 billion at the market peak in January.

The rout's biggest casualties: individual investors who piled in just as prices peaked, and companies like Nvidia Corp. that supplied the crypto ecosystem. The California-based chipmaker has lost nearly half its value since the start of October as demand for its cryptocurrency mining chips collapsed and results in its gaming division disappointed.

The economic impact of the crypto collapse has so far been limited, in part because most major banks and institutional money managers have little to no exposure to virtual currencies. For most investors, recent declines in equity markets have arguably been far more important: the $700 billion slump in digital assets since January compares with $1.3 trillion lost from the market value of global shares just this week.

While some crypto bulls have argued that Bitcoin and its peers would act as havens from turmoil in traditional financial markets, this year's losses have undercut those claims. Gold, a traditional haven for investors, has climbed in the past two weeks as virtual currencies tumbled.

"I don't think coins are going to be anywhere near as attractive as some of the other cross-asset plays," Innes said. "Gold prices are going to jump considerably higher and there's an inverse relationship we're starting to see with gold and coins."

-- Bloomberg News
Q: I have $640,000 in a previous employers 401(k) and $100,000 in my new employers plan. Do you recommend I merge the two? Both funds offer similar investment options. My only motivation is based on simplifying paperwork during retirement, although there may be other advantages I am not aware of.

A: The choice of investment options matters less than what you pay for them. If your current plan offers cheaper choices, rolling your previous account into your current one makes sense if your employer allows that.

If the previous employers plan is cheaper, though, leaving the money where it is can make more sense. Once you actually reach retirement age you can decide whether to consolidate the plans or roll them into an IRA.

IRAs give you a wider array of investment options, but keeping the money in 401(k) accounts has other advantages. Larger 401(k)s often offer access to cheaper, institutional funds that arent available to retail investors in their IRAs. A 401(k) may offer more asset protection, depending on your states laws, plus you can begin withdrawals as early as age 55 without penalty if you no longer work for that employer.

Q: My husbands brother had a stroke and is now incapacitated. My husband needs to take over his finances. The bank will not accept the durable power of attorney that they set up 14 years ago because it is too old. Another bank asked me if it was set up less than six months ago, because that would avoid problems. How can you do the right thing if there are so many obstacles?

A: Banks and other financial institutions have gotten so persnickety about accepting powers of attorney that some states have passed laws forcing them to do so  and yet people still report having problems, even in those states!

Many institutions want you to use their own forms, which may not be possible once someone is incapacitated. Even if the person is willing to fill out the form before the fact, using a financial institutions power of attorney can create problems if the language in those forms contradicts the persons other estate planning documents. Then theres the sheer hassle factor, especially if the person has accounts at multiple banks and brokerages.

You may be able to break through this logjam by hiring an attorney to contact the bank. You can get referrals to lawyers experienced in this issue from the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys.

Q: You recently answered a reader who didnt want to keep and rent out the home she inherited with her brother. You mentioned that if he refused to buy her out, she could go to court to force a sale.

Another option is to hire a property management company to provide a buffer between the siblings but also between them and the tenants. The house will provide a healthy income to both bro and sis.

A: Actually, we dont know that. While Mom-and-Pop landlords can make a tidy profit with single-family homes in some areas, just breaking even is hard in others. In many high-cost areas of the country, rents arent enough to cover the considerable costs of ownership, especially if the property still has a mortgage.

Even if its paid off, the house could need extensive repairs or be damaged by future tenants. Vacancy rates could be high in that area, and the property management company would still need to get paid. The siblings also will need additional liability insurance to protect against being sued.

The sister could get a much better return from investments that require a lot less from her. Mutual funds dont call to tell you the roof is leaking or the furnace needs replacement.

The home could turn out to be immensely profitable and still be a bad investment for a sister whos an unwilling business partner and who resents the brother who refused to buy her out when he had the opportunity.

Liz Weston is a certified financial planner and personal finance columnist for NerdWallet. Question? Use the Contact form at asklizweston.com.
A Vancouver girl abducted from foster care disappeared after a bathroom break during a court-ordered visit with her mother at the Vancouver Mall, according to court documents.

Aranza Ochoa Lopez, 4, was taken Oct. 25 by her mother, Esmerelda Lopez-Lopez, after a male Washington state visitation worker gave the parent permission to retrieve her daughter out a bathroom, according to a search warrant affidavit. Lopez-Lopez drove off from the mall with Aranza and a 16-year-old girl that accompanied them.

Lopez-Lopez, 21, is suspected of fleeing with Aranza to Mexico in an acquaintance's stolen car. Authorities still haven't found Lopez-Lopez or her daughter.

Aranza has been in foster care since being removed from her mother's care by a Clark County Superior Court order in 2017. State child protective services determined Lopez-Lopez beat her daughter several times, sometimes causing bruises all over her body, the affidavit said.

Child welfare workers said Lopez-Lopez was a danger to her child because of the history of abuse, her history of erratic behavior and her failure to participate in a mental health assessment, according to the affidavit. Lopez-Lopez was allowed supervised visits with her daughter twice a week as of last month.

Four people have now arrested in Aranza's alleged abduction, which police say also included luring a man to Lopez-Lopez's Vancouver apartment where he was tied up and held for hours while Lopez-Lopez fled in his red 2012 Chevrolet Cobalt.

The 16-year-old girl traveling with them turned herself in to authorities at the U.S.-Mexico border and was extradited to Clark County on Nov. 19, Vancouver police said.

Francisco Hernandez Reyes, 18; Erick Garcia-Valdovinos, 18; a 15-year-old boy and the 16-year-old are all accused of first-degree kidnapping and first-degree robbery. It's not clear how the four people and Lopez-Lopez are connected.

The alleged robbery victim Jose Orellano-Gomez, 23, told police he knew Lopez-Lopez and that he was called to her Vancouver home Oct. 25 to give her a ride to Centralia, Washington, about 95 miles from Vancouver, according to court documents related to the teens' arrest.

Orellano-Gomez said he and Lopez-Lopez were alone in her apartment for about 20 minutes when three people in masks came into the unit carrying knives, pushed him down, tied him up with duct tape and carried him to a bedroom, the documents said. Once there, they taped him to an office chair.

He was held there for more than 12 hours until he was able to free himself, the documents said. He told police he'd been blindfolded, gagged and had headphones put over his ears.

After Lopez-Lopez left the mall with her daughter, she is suspected of using Orellano-Gomez's debit card later that day at a McDonalds in Coburg, about seven miles north of Eugene, according to the search warrant affidavit. Investigators later confirmed with store workers that the mother and the two girls had been there.

Texts from the 16-year-old and a call she made to her grandparents in Mexico indicated to investigators that Lopez-Lopez intended to take her daughter to La Libertad, near the Mexico-Guatemala border, the affidavit said.

On Oct 27, Facebook submitted records to investigators that showed the teen communicating with a man in southwest Tijuana. At some point, the man asked if she was close, the affidavit said.

Two days later, Facebook provided records that showed IP addresses for logins to Lopez-Lopez's account that indicated she was signing in from a device in Mexico, the affidavit said.

The three male teens all arrested in the case told Vancouver police that Lopez-Lopez told them of her plans to take Aranza two weeks before it happened, take the girl to Mexico and that 16-year-old was also in on the plot, the affidavit said. They said Lopez-Lopez communicated with them via Facebook Messenger.

-- Everton Bailey Jr.

ebailey@oregonian.com

503-221-8343; @EvertonBailey
Its easy to rattle off the many issues on which Oregonians are split these days, locked down on either side pointing fingers and accusing the other of moral corruption.

The fodder for division is great. The recent upheaval with the general election and Oregonians choices for governor. Our sanctuary status. The homeless crisis playing out across the state. Oregons massively underfunded public pension system. Mayor Ted Wheelers strategy to address the regular rallies and counter protests in downtown Portland. Freedom of speech. Scooters.

The list goes on and on. And with the closing of some minds, we see a deepening of trenches and a shaming of those who hold viewpoints that dont fall in line.

Steve Allison of Hillsboro wrote about his feelings from one perspective in a letter to the editor earlier this month: Following this recent election, I find myself totally alienated from my fellow Oregonians. Yes, I feel that I am an Oregonian having lived here for 42 years.

I am a conservative who believes in obeying the law, supporting the constitution of the United States as written, secure borders, true freedom of speech and honest debate, fiscal responsibility and holding our politicians responsible to work on our behalf. Beliefs I find not held in Oregon. Despite the upheaval of the recent general election and the signs of division we see every day, so many Oregonians are searching for ways to come together.

Other Oregonians, like Lynn McClenahan of Southwest Portland, have shared from the other side, and offered up ways theyre trying to get by. I don't expect to change someone's mind. I want to respect others' beliefs -- unless they encourage harmful actions -- and I want to be respected by others for my beliefs. This is easier said than done, and I know I need help with this.

I recently attended a workshop facilitated by Better Angels volunteers called Talking across the political divide, she wrote. It provided practical tools for blue and red individuals to reduce political polarization -- but more than that, it gave me hope.

In todays Opinion section, Tom Bowerman and Jackman Wilson of Eugene share a commentary piece, Finding common ground in a not-so-divided Oregon, in which they argue that a majority of Oregonians arent as fractured as we may feel. At least when it comes to caring for our environment and creating a more equitable health care system. Thats reassuring.

The overall picture is one of great complexity, they write. Oregonians see the world in full color, not just red and blue. Deep disagreements do exist, but not nearly so much as agreement.

And, as they do every year, readers of any political stripe can support local programs that will help Oregonians in need access health care, food, educational programs and a variety of other local services through The Oregonian/OregonLives Season of Sharing.

The annual campaign, which launched last week, allows readers to donate to a number of local social service agencies through our 501(c)(3) nonprofit with an understanding of exactly how their dollars will help.

For instance, Oregonians may give $75 to Neighborhood House through Season of Sharing and help to provide 10 rides to medical appointments and shopping trips for seniors who are in need. The Neighborhood House, which was founded more than 100 years ago by the National Council of Jewish Women, offers programs across the city to welcome and support new immigrants to the area during their difficult early transition. A $25 donation can provide 100 pounds of healthy food through the nonprofits emergency food box program.

Or readers may give $10 The Shadow Project and provide sensory tools that will help a student with dyslexia focus while they are learning to read. The Portland nonprofit organizes two dozen volunteers who mentor nearly 1,600 kids in schools across the metro area. A $50 donation can put helpful technology into the hands of a child who is struggling to understand the printed word.

So far, 2018 has been a difficult year. Many of us have found it hard to escape local and national politics and the fear, frustration and powerlessness that often follow. End the year on a higher note, providing hope and support to local groups that work hard every day to help fellow Oregonians, no matter their political views.

-- Laura Gunderson for The Oregonian/OregonLive Editorial Board.

These nonprofits and eight others are featured in print and online at Oregonlive.com/sharing. Read more and donate through Facebook.com/TheOregonian, or send checks to Season of Sharing, Oregonians Credit Union, 336 N.E. 20th Ave., Portland, OR 97232.
SALEM  After being in firefights in Afghanistan and Iraq, members of one of Americas newest elite wildfire crews are tasked with fighting fires in rugged country back home.

On the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's only hotshot crew focused on recruiting veterans, members have traded assault rifles and other weapons of war for chain saws and shovels. But, like in the military, they have camaraderie, structure and chain of command. And the occasional adrenaline rush.

"Being in a firefight is way different than being in a wildland fire, but both are mentally taxing," said Chris Schott, who served two tours in Afghanistan with the Army's 7th Special Forces Group. "In a wildland fire, no one's shooting at you, but conditions can go favorable to unfavorable very quickly."

The Lakeview Veterans Interagency Hotshot Crew, based in Klamath Falls, Oregon, received its hotshot certification after rigorous training and testing, the Bureau of Land Management announced last week. It's now among 112 elite U.S. wildland firefighting teams and the only targeting veterans for recruitment, the agency said.

Crew superintendent Michael McGirr said he and other managers took then-President Barack Obama's initiative to hire veterans to heart.

"We felt it was important for them to transition back home," McGirr said.

Their maturity and ability to follow and lead are benefits that quickly became apparent when the crew started operating in 2012 as a lower-classification unit, McGirr said. Their military experience also means they're used to enduring tough missions.

"It's a lot of arduous hiking in nasty terrain," McGirr said. "The steeper the terrain, that's usually the ground hotshots are on."

Kenn Boles, a member of the crew since 2012 who did three tours in Iraq as a Marine, agreed that veterans can withstand the intense work.

"You're working hard, sweating; the fire doesn't stop because of those things," he said. "It's like in combat  just because you're hungry, tired and thirsty doesn't mean the firefight stops."

The crew is on leave and hasnt been battling the recent deadly wildfires in California.

Of the 25 positions on the crew, 17 are filled by veterans, McGirr said. There are three additional openings, and McGirr said he wants to recruit female veterans, too.

Schott, the Army veteran, said the crew felt they had the potential to achieve elite hotshot status after fighting fires in 2015, including one in Oregon's Crater Lake National Park that they almost had contained when winds picked up and changed direction, pushing the flames behind them.

They worked two weeks in a row, digging fire lines and doing prescribed burns to deprive the fire of fuel. After three days off, they worked another two weeks straight.

"After that, we thought we could be the first veterans hotshot crew in the nation," Schott said.

The crew usually works for nine months, with three months off.

"We spend more time together than with our families," McGirr said. "It's a grueling pace. We eat together, sleep together."

That creates a camaraderie that allows the veterans to share their wartime experiences with those who understand what they endured.

Boles lost a close friend a week after he left Iraq. That was the biggest contributor to post-traumatic stress disorder that hit him later, he said, describing it as "a lot of survivor's guilt." The veterans have each other's backs when PTSD issues arise, acting as a support group.

"Instead of bottling it up, we're really receptive to hearing people's stories and problems," said Boles, who was in the invasion of Iraq and in heavy fighting in Fallujah and Ramadi.

Schott, who served in Afghanistan's Urozgan Province north of Kandahar, said, "A lot of times you think, this can't get any worse. And yet you made it through."

He was in an operations center when he heard radio traffic about someone killed in action. It was his best friend.

"Myself, I was in denial for quite a long time about my PTSD," Schott said, adding that joining the crew and opening up to other veterans "helped me get my life back on track and where it needs to be."

The Bureau of Land Management is proud of the crew and efforts to develop a workforce of veterans, said Jeffrey Fedrizzi, agency deputy director for fire and aviation.

He said the men attaining hotshot status demonstrates the exemplary quality and performance ingrained in this crew.

--The Associated Press
One woman died and two others were injured after a head-on crash near Selma on Friday.

A white 2005 Toyota Corolla heading south on U.S. 199 crossed the center line near milepost 22 around 7:20 p.m. and hit a northbound maroon 2018 Nissan Versa, according to Oregon State Police.

The driver of the Toyota, 27-year-old Briana Varela of Rogue River, was taken to a Grants Pass hospital and then flown for additional treatment to a hospital in Seattle, where she died.

The Nissan driver, Elizabeth Real from the United Kingdom, and passenger Kelly Karaba of Arcata, California, were also flown to hospitals with apparent serious injuries.

State police said someone reported seeing Varela appearing to drive erratically 16 miles away before the crash and asks anyone with more information about the collision to contact their dispatch at 541-776-6111 and reference case number SP18-435402.

 Everton Bailey Jr.
Portland teenager Karina Autar is committed to becoming a lawyer and staying active in social justice causes. Studying centuries-old speeches wasn't part of her academic plan. That is, until she met actors from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

During a school-sponsored trip to Ashland to see a performance of William Shakespeare's "Henry V," Autar discovered that an English playwright from the 17th century still has wisdom to share.

"Henry V is trying to prove to everyone that he is a worthy ruler," concluded the Benson Polytechnic High School senior, who wants to major in political science.

Appreciating theater was a turnaround for the overworked 17-year-old, who admits to sleeping on the "brutal" bus ride in October from her Portland school to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland. On the ride back, however, she said students and teachers couldn't stop talking about their life-changing experience.

This was no ordinary field trip.

Autar is part of a consistent wave of students who witness live theater -- sometimes for the first time -- through the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's education programs, not all of which require time away from home.

Actors also visit campuses throughout the state to present the human condition in a way many people have never thought of before. Students fully engage in exercises that help provide a deeper understanding of great literature, and its meaning and relevance today. And teachers participate in training relevant to their classwork.

The nonprofit theater group's education programs are among this year's 10 beneficiaries of The Oregonian/OregonLive's annual Season of Sharing holiday fundraising campaign. The festival needs donations more than ever since it suffered a devastating $2 million decrease in its $40 million budget this year due to wildfires and smoke. Some outdoor performances were canceled or rescheduled, while many ticketholders requested refunds and stayed away.

Partly because of this, the school visit program, which is one of the largest theater educational outreaches in the country, will be scaled back in 2019.

The program receives funding from the Oregon Arts Commission and private foundations. Individuals can give directly to the multiyear School Visit Partnership Program, which since 2002 has worked with 56 Oregon schools -- from Portland, Salem and Eugene to rural and remote places like Tillamook and Paisley.

Schools reimburse the festival 10 to 15 percent of the costs, according to Katherine Gosnell, the festival's education manager.

Fees for the School Visit Partnership Program vary, based on how long the actors stay. A week can cost $8,825, including the actors' travel, preparation and partnership expenses; the school may pay between $883 and $1,324.

Another program, the Bowmer Project for Student Playgoers, provides free tickets, a backstage tour and post-show discussions for middle and high school students.

All the education programs are designed to draw in more than the drama kids or those who earn As in English.

Actors hold onto the students' attention by skillfully and artfully presenting Shakespeare's powerful dialogue and dynamic scenes. Sometimes, the performers finish a staged fight, then respond, articulately and with honesty and passion, to students' questions. Topics can be as simple as what life is like for an actor to as complex as what is the difference between revenge and justice.

Oregon Shakespeare Festival's education programs also introduce students to new plays. Autar and her Benson High classmates also saw a performance of Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig's "Snow in Midsummer," which is based on an ancient Chinese tale of a wrathful ghost seeking vengeance.

The play's scope, as delivered by an Asian American cast, impressed Autar. Its "message to me was I have to adapt to circumstances to fit in but not to a degree that I'm no longer myself," she said, adding, "I'm Fijian Indian, so it was empowering to see people in the cast who look like me."

In between performances, 50 Benson students and three teachers took a backstage tour to learn production tricks, roamed the costume room and attended a prologue to better understand the complex plays they were seeing.

They also listened to actors explain how they use their voice and gestures, along with works evoking ethos, pathos and logos, to communicate persuasively. This resonated with Autar: "If I'm a politician or lawyer, in front of a jury or judge, I will speak affirmably and effectively about my case."

Benson teacher Cesar Ramirez said that the school's three-year partnership with the festival, and the actors' compelling, sometimes comedic presentations, helped the students become "emotionally invested in theater" and diluted the intimidating feeling of reading classic works aloud.

These interactions will have lifelong benefits, he said, for his students and himself. The teaching tools he learned at workshops and from actors are "malleable lessons" that he uses with all of his students.

"It's more than lessons on 'Romeo and Juliet,' " said Ramirez. "Time with the actors and my educators' training have made me a better teacher."

What your donation can do

$10: Pays for gasoline for actors traveling to schools.

$30: Provides a rental car for a day for actors visiting faraway schools.

$100: Provides teacher curriculum notebooks.

How to donate

Send checks to:

Season of Sharing

Oregonians Credit Union

336 N.E. 20th Ave.

Portland, OR 97232

-- Janet Eastman

jeastman@oregonian.com

503-294-4072

Twitter: @janeteastman
A Maryland man faces a felony charge after police said he stabbed a 45-year-old man Friday in York County.

According to York police, Marvin D. Slaughter Jr., 30, stabbed the 45-year-old at a home on the 900 block of Maddison Avenue in the city of York.

The stabbing, which happened about 9:24 p.m. Friday, was a targeted incident, police said, adding that Slaughter and the man he is accused of stabbing knew each other.

The 45-year-old was transported to York hospital with a stab wound, and police said he is in stable condition.

Slaughter was arrested, and online court documents show that he faces a single felony charge of aggravated assault.

The documents also list Slaughters hometown as Baltimore.

Slaughter was arraigned early Saturday before Magisterial District Judge Jennifer J.P. Clancy. He is to appear for a preliminary hearing at 9 a.m. Dec. 7 before Magisterial District Judge James H. Morgan.

As of Saturday afternoon, online court documents showed that Slaughter remained incarcerated in York County Prison unable to post $100,000 cash bail.
ROME (AP)  The Catholic Churchs global organization of nuns has denounced the culture of silence and secrecy surrounding sexual abuse in the church and is urging sisters who have been abused to report the crimes to police and their superiors.

The International Union of Superiors General, which represents more than 500,000 sisters worldwide, vowed to help nuns who have been abused to find the courage to report it, and pledged to help victims heal and seek justice.

The statement, issued on the eve of the U.N.-designated International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, was the first from the Rome-based UISG since the abuse scandal erupted anew this year and as the sexual abuse of adult nuns by clergymen has also come to light. The Associated Press reported earlier this year that the Vatican has known for decades about the problem of priests and bishops preying on nuns, but has done next to nothing to stop it.

Criticism of the churchs handling of sexual abuse has grown in recent months following the release of a grand jury report which found widespread clergy sex abuse in parishes across Pennsylvania.

In the statement Friday, the UISG didn't specify clergy as the aggressors. While such abuse is well known in parts of Africa, and an Indian case of the alleged rape of a nun by a bishop is currently making headlines, there have also been cases of sexual abuse committed by women against other women within congregations.

The UISG statement was broad, condemning what it called the "pattern of abuse that is prevalent within the church and society today," citing sexual, verbal and emotional abuse as types of mistreatment that festers in unequal power relations and demeans the dignity of its victims.

"We condemn those who support the culture of silence and secrecy, often under the guise of 'protection' of an institution's reputation or naming it 'part of one's culture,'" the group said.

"We advocate for transparent civil and criminal reporting of abuse whether within religious congregations, at the parish or diocesan levels, or in any public arena," the statement said.

To mark the U.N. day calling for an end to violence against women, the head of the Italian bishops' conference, Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti, issued a video message on the subject - but didn't mention sexual violence against sisters by fellow clergymen, evidence of how taboo the subject is within the church hierarchy.

An AP investigation found that cases of priest abusing nuns have emerged in Europe, Africa, South America and Asia, underscoring how sisters' second class status in the church has contributed to a power imbalance where women can be mistreated by men with near impunity.

While some nuns are finding their voices, buoyed by the #MeToo movement, many victims remain reluctant to come forward. Experts told AP sisters have a well-founded fear they won't be believed and will instead be painted as the seducer who corrupted the priest. Often the sister who denounces abuse by a priest is punished, including with expulsion from her congregation, while the priest's vocation is preserved at all cost.

The Vatican has known for years about the problem in Africa after a series of major studies were commissioned in the 1990s. Religious sisters reported that African nuns were being particularly targeted by priests seeking to avoid HIV transmission from prostitutes or other women.

In the wake of the AP report, the umbrella organization of U.S. sisters, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, urged sisters who had been abused to report to both civil and church authorities. Many of the LCWRs members also belong to the global UISG, which can provide a point of contact with the Vatican.


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WASHINGTON (AP)  Call it the chaos theory for picking the next House speaker.

Those Democrats trying to stop California Rep. Nancy Pelosi from reclaiming the job say they don't need a rival candidate just yet. Instead, they plan to show that Pelosi lacks the votes to win the race. And then, they say, new challengers will emerge.

It's strategy that has other Democrats cringing at the prospect of their new House majority in disarray. They say voters swept them to office in this month's elections to govern, not become bogged down by the kind of Republican infighting that sent Ohio Rep. John Boehner to an early exit as speaker and weakened his successor, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan.

The last thing they want is a floor fight over the leadership post when Congress opens work in January.

"If the first Democratic value they see is chaos, I don't think that's very good," said Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., who recently wrote an op-ed with colleagues supporting Pelosi. "I don't think it's a good look at all."

The chaos theory will be put to a test this coming week when House Democrats meet in private for a vote nominating Pelosi to become speaker in January. She held that post from 2007 to 2011, the first woman to serve as speaker.

Several Pennsylvania Democrats have said they support Pelosi but a few have held off on backing her publicly or said they are undecided.

After one potential rival stepped aside, Pelosi is expected to easily win the majority from her ranks. But opponents have hopes of denying her the broader support she needs when the new Congress holds a vote in January.

One of those organizing against her, Rep. Kathleen Rice, D-N.Y., said recently that the lack of a sure-fire challenger is beside the point. The goal is to force the question.

"The whole concept of you can't beat somebody with nobody is a Nancy Pelosi talking point," she said.

As Rice and others in the group led by Reps. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts and Tim Ryan of Ohio see it, it's all in the math.

At the moment, there are at least 15 Pelosi opponents, making for a razor-thin vote. House Democrats won a 233-seat majority in the 435-member House in the November midterm election, with a few races still uncalled. Pelosi needs 218 to win the job, if all Republicans oppose her, which is likely. The margin could expand slightly with absences or if lawmakers simply vote "present."

"The first step is showing that she cannot get to 218," Rice told reporters, "and then I believe the challengers will emerge that can allow new members to say, Ok here's another possibility, now I get it."

Moulton, a Marine veteran, said earlier he hopes it will be "a chaotic debate" for new leadership because "that would be healthy for the party."

But after the election delivered Democrats the House majority, it's an approach that may require a leap of faith that other lawmakers are unwilling to take, especially as Pelosi amasses an outpouring of support from advocacy groups, labor unions and even former President Barack Obama in a display of raw power.

Trying to head off that debate, Pelosi sent a letter to colleagues thanking "so many of you for the strong support you have given me" and asked that "we all support" the party's nominee for speaker when the full House votes. "Our unity is our power," she wrote.

At one point Pelosi's opponents counted 17 Democrats on a letter against Pelosi and were hoping for more. But one by one, some of them started standing down.

A potential rival, Rep. Marcia Fudge, D-Ohio, decided against a challenge, agreeing instead to lead a new subcommittee on voting integrity. Pelosi revived that panel and recommended Fudge for the post, elevating an issue important to the Congressional Black Caucus, especially after close races this month in Florida and Georgia.

Another opponent, Rep. Brian Higgins, D-N.Y., dropped his opposition after he said Pelosi agreed to have him take the lead on his proposal to expand Medicare as an option for those age 50 to 65.

As opponents regrouped, Pelosi was home for the holiday recess in California, working the phones and doling out the kinds of perks that show the potential power of being speaker in ways it hasn't been wielded on Capitol Hill.

Boehner and Ryan struggled to corral their majority since Republicans gained control of the House in 2011. The revolt from within the GOP ranks started with the 2010 tea party election and continued with the Freedom Caucus that pushed Boehner to early retirement. Ryan was able to pass the GOP tax bill into law but the right flank repeatedly flexed its muscle including during California Rep. Kevin McCarthy's recent election as minority leader.

Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn., said she remembers being in the House chamber as the Boehner speaker's race teetered, and thinking the dysfunction on display wasn't good for Republicans or Democrats.

She wrote the op-ed with Beyer in part because she cannot imagine facing voters in the St. Paul suburbs back home if a floor fight emerges as the Democratic majority's first order of business.

"People in Minnesota would be very, very disappointed  from disappointed to outrage  that we are blowing an opportunity," she said. "Those voters aren't looking for chaos. They're looking for effective, responsible governing."

Newly elected members, especially those who pledged to oppose Pelosi and make way for a new generation of leaders, are caught in the middle.

One who supports Pelosi, Rep.-elect Katie Hill of California, said Democrats "need to minimize any internal party strife" and "hit the ground running day one."

Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York said in a tweet: "I hope that we can move swiftly to conclude this discussion about party positions, so that we can spend more time discussing party priorities." She backs Pelosi.

Seasoned lawmakers, including Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., say now is not the moment for a public split.

"I wouldn't want to see it come to the floor, in front of the nation," Cleaver said. "I don't want to shake the confidence of the millions of people who stepped out to vote."

___

By Lisa Mascaro, Associated Press congressional correspondent; Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.

___

Follow on Twitter at https://twitter.com/lisamascaro and https://twitter.com/AP_Politics
State police in Centre County are investigating a rape at a state prison facility in Benner Township.

According to a Saturday news release, state police are investigating the rape of a 25-year-old man at SCI-Rockview.

The man was raped some time between Oct. 28 and 31, according to police.

Police did not include additional details about the incident.

They said only that it remains under investigation.
The month of November is dedicated to many causes, one of which is National Caregivers Month. For many caregivers the holiday season gives rise to stress, frustration and anger, instead of peace and good will.

Caregivers may feel resentful towards other family members who they feel have not offered enough assistance. Managing care for someone who has a cognitive impairment may leave caregivers feeling that they will not be able to participate as fully as they would like in family gatherings. Already feeling overwhelmed with caregiving tasks, stressed-out caregivers may view traditional holiday preparations as more of a drain of precious energy than a joy.

Following are some suggestions and resources that may help make the holidays more enjoyable for you and your loved ones. Keep in mind that the holidays can, in fact, provide unique opportunities to seek better communication, connection and support from family and friends.

Its hard to know how much to communicate about a loved ones decline in cognitive functioning and personal care needs. Whom do you tell? How much do you tell?

Although it is understandable to have reservations about discussing a loved ones impairments, honest communication about the realities of the caregiving situation offers others the opportunity to respond with assistance. Sharing the truths of your situation may help reduce some of the feelings of isolation and lack of appreciation common in caregivers.

Some caregivers have had success in writing a brief note describing the persons condition and enclosing it in a holiday greeting card. This can be a nonthreatening way to inform distant or uninvolved relatives about the realities of the caregiving situation. If written in a tone thats not accusatory or guilt-inducing, family members may be more forthcoming with assistance or, at least, have a better understanding of the effort you are putting into providing care.

It is common for caregivers to be disappointed with family members who they feel are not "pulling their weight" in caregiving responsibilities. If this holds true for you, and your goal is to enjoy the holidays, you must decide how much and when to communicate this disappointment. Consider clearing the air before the holidays or perhaps resolve within yourself to put those feelings on hold, with the intention to discuss the matter after the holiday season passes. In the meantime, try to enjoy the holiday!

Let family members know that your caregiving duties are keeping you very busy and that you only have so much energy for holiday preparation and hosting duties.

Caregivers often have to adapt their traditional role or experience of the holidays. This may mean allowing another family member to host more time-intensive festivities. You may need to modify the amount of time away from home to match the comfort level of your impaired loved one. You may also have to choose which events to attend based on which would be the simplest, least exhausting and most enjoyable for the person for whom you provide careand for you.

Dont expect the person with cognitive impairment to be able to adapt to all situations; you may need to adapt the environment to their needs. See if you can arrange to have another room in the house designated as a quiet place for the impaired person. Many people with dementia find multiple conversations and background noise disturbing. To avoid this anxiety, the person may benefit from time in a quieter room with less stimulus where family members could take turns visiting with them. This has worked wonders with several of my own friends and family members.

Share your own wish list

 Respite: some caregivers ask for time off from caregiving duties as a gift for the holidays. This could mean another family member gives you a break. Sometimes asking for a Saturday off "in the next three months" is more accepted, as family members can then schedule it into their calendars. If this is not possible, perhaps they would consider paying for a home care worker or a stay at a respite facility.

 Home repairs: Do light bulbs need changing, or grab bars need installation? That maddening pile of junk in the garage needs to go to the dump? Tasks such as these may be the perfect way for a family member to help out if providing personal care is too uncomfortable for them.

 Care for you! How about a gift certificate for a massage, facial or manicure? How about an opportunity to spend the day fishing or a walk in the outdoors?

While caregiving, it is easy to get caught up in all the tasks of personal care and homemaking chores. Make a point of setting some time aside this holiday season to enjoy the person you care for in a relaxed, one-on-one context. The best activities are those which take advantage of long-term memoryusually less impaired in people with dementia. Try looking through family photo albums or unpacking holiday decorations, which may stimulate memories.

Reflecting on the rewards of caregiving can help maintain your self-esteem. It may feel very rewarding to know that you are fulfilling a vow or promise you have made to the person for whom you provide care. Your caregiving may be an expression of living up to your personal ideals or religious beliefs. You may also be experiencing a great deal of growth as you learn new skills and meet challenges in ways you never imagined possible.

Aside from the suggestions listed above, Pennsylvania offers some often little-known supports to families who can benefit from any and all help they can receive. For instance, the PA Department of Aging has a program for caregivers of children and adults. 

The Pennsylvania Caregiver Support Program aims to reduce stress on primary, informal, unpaid caregivers. The program supports individuals who care for a spouse, relative, or friend who requires assistance due to disease or disability. The program also supports individuals age 55 and older caring for related children. The program provides coordinated support through an appointed care manager. Services may include caregiving assistance, education and counseling, and reimbursement for supplies used to provide care. For more information on this program, and to find additional resources in your county, visit the website or location of your Area Agency on Aging. There is also an option to apply to become your loved ones paid caregiver.

In addition, the PA Link to Community care, at www.carelink.pa/gov offers a bevy of comprehensive resources for services available in your area. In particular, the Intellectual Disabilities and Autism Services page under In-Home-Care offers several programs including how to receive respite care, in-home assistance, housing upkeep, transportation options and health care related services.

Caregivers are some of the most unsung heroes we will ever meet. The demands can be overwhelming, whether for a disabled child, parent with dementia, or helping someone recover from a serious health problem. I hope during this hectic season, you or someone you care about might find this information valuable as you continue your unique, and very special role.

PennLive Opinion contributor Kirstin Snow is the principal of Snow Public Affairs in Harrisburg. Her Donkeys & Elephants column appears weekly opposite conservative commentator Charlie Gerow.
Health official: 'Unlikely we will reach a level of immunity in the next few years'
The Tibetans believe a completed Kora will purify a lifetime of negative karma. In preparation of this journey, Brice and Sam get their legs acclimated with a game of ring around the rosaries.

We ducked under the low-slung doorway and let our eyes adjust to the dim interior. It was a sanctuary, with a Tantric Buddhist shrine on one wall and a blazing woodstove on the other. A family spanning three generations was sitting on a woolen carpet.

'Mantra rays on a Tibetan hillside.

The massive peaks of the Tibetan hinterlands loom in the distance. Brice and Sam gaze at the sheer walls of granite and mist as thoughts of the impending adventure fills their minds.

This is pure agony, I grumbled, resting my bike against a cluster of bamboo and swatting irritably at the shadowy veil of vectors. At this rate, its gonna take us ages to climb out of this mess.

Not only were we hampered by heavy bags holding ten days worth of supplies, but the heat itself was smothering, with a humidity factor that made breathing feel like an act of desperation.

If the Tibetans' spinning of prayer wheels conveyed their mantras to the heavens, the act of self-propulsion on our rubber-encased wheels paid homage to our other-worldly surroundings.

At 16,100 feet above sea level, the air was shockingly thin. There was little time for ceremony.

We woke to the familiar pitter-patter of raindrops on the tent, signaling a continuation of daily discomfort. Every day so far, the skies had anointed us with their tears, and every item of gearincluding down jackets and sleeping bagswas damp.

Trench foot was now another thing the three of us had in common, and we took perverse pleasure in placing wagers over who would be the first to lose a toenail.

Within an hour, wed lost more than a thousand feet of elevation, and we found ourselves coasting into a wildflower-filled pasture dotted with dozens of yaks and horses. Content in the knowledge that our last day would be mostly downhill.

I was worried. Each wooden bridge was in a worsening state of disrepair, and wading through swift, waist-high currents quickly became the norm.

Eventually, our luck ran out. A bridge over some intimidating rapids was completely destroyed, and we opted to march along the riverbank in the hope we could rejoin the trail.

High in the Himalayan hinterlands of Chinas Sichuan province, three massive mountains soar above the sprawling floodplains and sweltering bamboo forests below.For Tibetans, a successful pilgrimage around the base of these sacred giants - know as the Yadding Kora- is believed to purify a lifetime of negative karma.Inspired by this, three adventurers set out on a 10-day self-supported journey to complete this Kora on mountain bikes.It felt like all that negative karma was landing squarely on our shoulders. Not only were we hampered by heavy bags holding ten days worth of supplies, but the heat itself was smothering, a factor that made breathing feel like an act of desperation.There was no choice but to press on. The trail we were following would eventually lead to a path we could pedal up to higher elevation. This was the price wed have to pay for singletrack salvation.We turned toward the mountains, gaping as the sun seared through the haze. A family of Tibetans appeared from the gloom, spinning prayer wheels and chanting in unison. Just a few hundred feet above us was the trail wed suffered the last four days to join.Having the bikes back underneath us was a novel affairand one we didnt take for granted. We sprinted along the slender corridor, popping over rocks and plowing past the shrubs that plucked at our pedals.The Koras third peak, Chanadorje, sulked ominously in the distance, all but its icy summit obscured by a tremendous thunderhead. Its presence was disquieting.In Tibetan, the word Chanadorje means thunderbolt in hand, and the protector deity is considered a wrathful bodhisattva. In my depleted state, I was not sure whether it was with us, or against us.Ripping through the dense evergreen forest the next morning, our saddlebags emptied of the food wed devoured, we thought we were home free.Completely forgetting the age-old axiom that one should never enter a Chinese river gorge during monsoon season, we plunged headlong into it, descending several miles until it began crisscrossing a river that was rapidly rising.As we waited for Sam to slide back down for a powwow, I noticed another black raven - a bird Tibetans consider magical - watching us from its roost on a tree limb. It let out a grating caw and flew upstream, circling back above us once before continuing its aerial arc up and out of the gorge. It was our sentinel.
Steve O'Dwyer Takes Down Winner-Take-All 3-Handed 25k MCOP High Roller

November 24, 2018 Milko van Winden

None other than Steve O'Dwyer took down the 25,500 Super High Roller at the Master Classics of Poker in Holland Casino Amsterdam. O'Dwyer defeated Patrik Antonius and Stefan Wolzak to win his first Master Classics of Poker tournament. He took home the first place prize of 74,250 ($84,193) and the decorative MCOP plate.

The tournament was supposed to start at 2 p.m. local time but was delayed. O'Dwyer and Wolzak were both seated at the table; waiting for a third player to join the field. Antonius arrived in the casino and registered around 4 p.m., and they had enough players to start the tournament. A couple of other players were interested in the tournament but opted to play either the 1,600 progressive bounty tournament or they joined the high stakes cash game action instead.

Dutchman Wolzak had a very good start of the tournament. Right before the end of the second level, he managed to win a big pot where he had two pair, holding ace-trey, against Antonius. Wolzak entered the first break of the day with over half of the chips in play. Wolzak continued to put pressure on both of his opponents after the break.

Antonius ended up as the first player out of the tournament. O'Dwyer took Antonius' remaining 10,000 after he had three-bet and Antonius four-bet all in. O'Dwyer made the quick call, and he was well ahead with his pocket aces against the king-queen suited of Antonius. The board ran out eight-deuce-four-deuce-six. It was all over on the turn, and O'Dwyer took down a nice pot with pocket aces to get to about the same stack of Wolzak.

The heads-up battle started out pretty slow; most of the pots were won by a single continuation-bet on the flop. The first big pot of the heads-up went to O'Dwyer after he got full value with a full house against a flush of Wolzak. Wolzak was left with 'just' 63 big blinds. From that moment on, it was Wolzak who was trying to fight back, but in the end, he couldn't make the longed-for comeback.

Dutch high stakes player Stefan Wolzak finished runner-up to Steve O'Dwyer

In the final hand of the tournament, it was Wolzak who raised to 600 from the button. O'Dwyer called to see a deuce-ten-six rainbow flop. O'Dwyer check-called a bet of 700 from the Dutchman to see the king of clubs on the turn. O'Dwyer checked again, and Wolzak put in a bet of 2,800. O'Dwyer called, and the jack of clubs completed the board with the third club. O'Dwyer checked for the final time to Wolzak, and he announced a bet of 4,500. O'Dwyer thought about it for a minute before he moved all in. Wolzak went into the tank and called after about two minutes. O'Dwyer opened up five-deuce of clubs for a backdoor flush, and Wolzak had to show pocket aces with the ace of clubs.

O'Dwyer got to collect 74,250 at the cashier for winning the tournament and got to take home his first MCOP trophy. O'Dwyer is a frequent visitor of the Master Classics of Poker, but he had yet to take down a tournament in Holland Casino Amsterdam. Today he finally did so. While he only had to beat two opponents to do so, the plate he received is all the same. O'Dwyer told PokerNews that it was a tough field, despite the tournament having only three entries. He added that he is very happy to finally take down an MCOP tournament so he can add that trophy to his collection.

PokerNews will be back in Holland Casino Amsterdam tomorrow to provide MCOP live updates for the final day of the massively popular 1,600 progressive bounty event.
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A desperate Donald Trump has hired for his new Deputy Campaign Manager, Citizens United President David Bossie, who The Washington Post, which broke the story, notes is a veteran conservative operative who has investigated the Clintons for more than two decades.

Trump told the Post via a phone interview that Bossie, described by New York Magazine as a Clinton nemesis, is A friend of mine for many years. Solid. Smart. Loves politics, knows how to win.

He should have added, a relentless foe of Hillary Clinton, for whom Trump used to have effusive praise. As End Citizens United pointed out, his hiring means Trump has doubled down on his special interest alliance.

There is no disguising the truth: Bossie will be assisting Kellyanne Conway as an anti-Clinton character assassin, and Hillary for America Chair John Podesta released the following statement:

David Bossie is so craven and maniacal that in the heyday of the overreaching, Gingrich-era Congress, the top Whitewater conspiracy theorist in the House had to fire him for doctoring evidence. He has devoted his career ever since to trying to tear down Hillary Clinton. For months now, Citizens United has been acting as an arm of the Trump campaign, and this hiring of Bossie now makes it official. This is just the latest sign that Donald Trump has put the most extreme elements of the right-wing fringe in the drivers seat of his campaign.

Media Matters demonstrates that Podesta accurately describes Bossies role in releasing selectively edited transcripts and video of prison conversations by Clinton confidant Webster Hubbell.

The transcripts and video, whose editing was overseen by Bossie, removed exculpatory statements from Hubbell that downplayed alleged wrongdoing by Hillary Clinton at their former law firm. Then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich responded to Bossies actions by telling then-House Government and Oversight Committee chair Dan Burton, Im embarrassed for you, Im embarrassed for myself, and Im embarrassed for the conference at the circus that went on at your committee.

Bossie was forced to resign as investigator for the House Government And Reform Committee in 1998. Now he is back, hoping to finish the job he started then. George H.W. Bush, by the way, condemned Bossies Filthy campaign tactics during the 1992 presidential campaign, which only serves to recommend Bossies services to Trump, who positively revels in flinging dirt.

And Bossie really wants Clinton to lose, telling Breitbart Radio in August,

Look, conservatives havent been happy and together since Ronald Reagan, so I think what we need to do is put aside the small things, and look at the big global picture of a Hillary Clinton presidency, and that should frighten us all.

If we support and get behind Donald Trump, we can impact him. We can have great impact, as conservatives, in a Trump Administration. We are in the icebox for four years with Hillary Clinton, and America goes down the drain, because four more years of the Barack Obama agenda is a dangerous thing for America.

Trumps move shows his desperation as his campaign is increasingly run as a game of musical chairs, recently adding Steve Bannon, then Kellyanne Conway, and now David Bossie. Media Matters Research Director Matthew Gertz asked in a tweet, Maybe time to stop mocking Hillary over the vast right-wing conspiracy?

Photo: Screen capture  Fox Business
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Finally some people in Washington are doing something about protecting the integrity of U.S. elections from Russian hacking and other threats.

Senators Richard Burr (R., NC) and Mark Warner (D., VA) have decided to take matters into their own hands since the occupant of the White House has not done anything. Many in government and the media have been very critical of President Trumps lack of action in this critical area. They believe that Americas democracy may be at stake, and they want effective action to be taken by government leaders.

So thats what Burr, the Chairman, and Warner, the Ranking Member, of the Senate Intelligence Committee are doing. They have announced a series of actions intended to prevent election hacking:

On Tuesday, they will hold a press conference during which they will preview some of the Intelligence Committees recommendations for improving the nations election infrastructure. On Wednesday, the Intelligence Committee will hold a hearing examining attempted hacks on state elections systems in 2016 and the federal and state response to those efforts. At the Wednesday hearing former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and current Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen will provide their testimony on the vulnerabilities of the election systems. In the near future, Burr and Warner will release a formal report from the Intelligence Committee that will include recommendations for elections officials around the country and also proposals for legislation to help ward off the hacking.

The report to be released soon is expected to be just one of what could be several reports to come out of the Senate Intelligence Committees investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

In the United States there are 10,000 different voting jurisdictions or government entities that hold elections, and most of them use technology that is both obsolete and lacking adequate security measures.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has reported that Russian agents hacked into the election systems of 21 states during the 2016 general election cycle. This report from DHS served as a wake-up call for America, but unfortunately the president did not wake up to address this threat to our country. Instead, he seems to be asleep at the wheel while the nation may be veering off course and headed for a disaster during the 2018 midterm elections to be held in November.

Since U.S. intelligence agencies have already seen evidence that Russian agents are preparing to hack elections this year, there is a sense of urgency, and something needs to be done immediately.

Senator Warner has expressed his belief that the election security processes to prevent Russian hacking need to be significantly improved, and he agrees that President Trump has done very little to address the problem. Yet he is hopeful that its not too late to take some meaningful steps. Weve got bipartisan agreement we have to do something on this, he said.
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Trumps plan to force asylum seekers to remain in Mexico is illegal and will likely be quickly struck down in court, as Trump is trying to break the law.

The Washington Post reported, According to outlines of the plan, known as Remain in Mexico, asylum applicants at the border will have to stay in Mexico while their cases are processed, potentially ending the system, which Trump decries as catch and release, that has generally allowed those seeking refuge to wait on safer U.S. soil.

Human rights experts pointed out that the plan is illegal:

One fact is known: denying entry to an asylum seeker not in a designated safe third country is very illegal. Mexico is not a STC. Remain in Mexico is another name for treaty violation. Demands to apply for asylum at a point-of-entry = also illegal. #Fight4Migrants https://t.co/Uov3Dlo8xp  Community Justice Alliance (@CJAMedia) November 24, 2018

Mexico has huge problems of violence, much of it directed against migrants. It is NOT a safe place to wait while the US considers asylum claims, despite whatever pressure Trump has put on Mexico to force it to agree to this dangerous and illegal fiction. https://t.co/iLrQkuu0KW  Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) November 24, 2018

Trump Keeps Trying To Pull These Illegal Stunts and Ends Up Losing In Court

Trump is trying to dismantle the asylum system by not allowing refugees to apply for asylum. It is the sort of cheap and poorly thought out gimmick that defines the policymaking of the Trump administration. The deal with Mexico is illegal, and it will crash and burn in the courts.

It isnt a coincidence that the White House announced this deal over Thanksgiving weekend when it will fly under the radar of most Americans who will be outraged and disgusted by such a such a fundamentally un-American policy.

Remain in Mexico is another bumper sticker gimmick to appeal to Trumps base.

The deal is illegal, and it wont survive a serious legal challenge.

For more discussion about this story join our Rachel Maddow and MSNBC group.

Follow Jason Easley on Facebook.
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In 2007, while in the Mississippi state Senate, Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith co-sponsored a resolution that honored a Confederate soldier for his efforts to defend his homeland. The resolution also promoted a revisionist, pro-confederacy view of the Civil War.

This is just the latest in a series of racially-charged stories that have come out concerning the GOP candidate for Senator in Mississippi.

According to CNN, the resolution co-sponsored by Hyde-Smith was an attempt to honor Effie Lucille Nicholson Pharr, a then-92-year-old Mississippi resident whose father, Thomas Jefferson Nicholson, served as a soldier in the Confederate army.

The resolution still can be found online. It refers to Nicholson Pharr as the last known living Real Daughter of the Confederacy living in Mississippi and to her fathers work to defend his homeland and contribute to the rebuilding of the country during and after the war.

This resolution  which ostensibly is about honoring the daughter  really seems to be an excuse to glorify the Confederate cause, Nina Silber, president of the Society of Civil War Historians told CNN about the resolution.

It rests on an odd combination of perpetuating both the Confederate legacy and the idea that this was not really in conflict with being a good citizen of the nation, she added.

Hyde-Smiths senatorial campaign has issued no comments so far on her support for the controversial resolution.

Hyde-Smith is facing Democrat Mike Espy, an African American, in a runoff election for the Mississippi Senate seat on Tuesday.

She has faced a barrage of criticism for her controversial statements about race over the past few weeks. According to CNN, Hyde-Smiths comments have evoked Mississippis dark history of racism and slavery.

She was criticized for joking that she would attend a public hanging when prompted by a supporter during a campaign event. Since then, there have been new reports that she attended a school specifically designed to avoid integration of Mississippi public schools during the civil rights era.

This new information and the racial controversies have given Democrats a realistic chance to pick up a GOP Senate seat in deep-red Mississippi.
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This is going to be the second year that we gather around the Thanksgiving table with the COVID-19 cloud hovering over us. Read more
In yesterdays Caravan update I observed that we have here a test of wills between President Trump and the supporters of invasion. Indeed, for his part, President Trump announced twice yesterday via his favorite medium If for any reason it becomes necessary, we will CLOSE our Southern Border. There is no way that the United States will, after decades of abuse, put up with this costly and dangerous situation anymore! He threw down via Twitter:

Migrants at the Southern Border will not be allowed into the United States until their claims are individually approved in court. We only will allow those who come into our Country legally. Other than that our very strong policy is Catch and Detain. No Releasing into the U.S  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 24, 2018

I wrote before word emerged that incoming Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador would work with the Trump administration to keep asylum seekers out of the United States while their applications are pending in court. This obviously represented a resolution of the test in favor of President Trump.

The New York Times reported that Mexico was mulling over such an agreement. Among other outlets, Politico followed up with the report of such an agreement. The New York Post qualified that report, indicating that Mexico might be backing out of the agreement. Indeed, FOX News reported that Mexico disputed reports of an agreement of any sort.

The test continues
President Trump sometimes uses the phrase enemy of the people to describe the news media, or precincts thereof. Is this a fair description? Should Trump use it?

Andy McCarthy takes up these questions in a thoughtful article thats well worth reading in full. I wont try to summarize it. Instead, Ill offer a few thoughts of my own.

I have no problem with Trump referring to the news media as an enemy. It certainly is an enemy of Trump  and Im talking about the mainstream media as a whole, not just a few outlets.

But being an enemy of Trump is not the same thing as being an enemy of the people. Trump is not the people.

If the news media routinely made up stories, the harm to the public might well be egregious enough to justify calling the media the enemy of the people. But the media rarely makes up stories. The term fake news mischaracterizes the problem.

Whats problematic about the media is its relentless spinning of the news in one direction. The public would be better served by straight reporting, or at least a good faith effort at it.

But does spinning the news for partisan purposes make the media the enemy of the people? Not in my opinion. Indeed, after decades of media spin, the people are their own enemy if they cant detect the spin and discount for it.

Keep in mind that the phrase enemy of the people carries with it an inglorious history. Lenin and Stalin used it to persecute political opponents, real and imagined. When Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalins cult of personality, he called for an end to usage of the phrase.

Even apart from its history, enemy of the people is an incendiary phrase. It has the potential to incite violence against those thus branded.

If the slur was bad enough for Khrushchev to avoid, maybe it should be bad enough for Trump too.
 I really thought this Chuck Schumer tweet had to be one of those fake Babylon Bee contrivances, but this is real, and has to be a contender for the most clueless tweet of the year, since it implicitly acknowledges that Trump was right about federal judges:

Of course, Schumer is not without some vigorous competition, like this tweet:

So who is this guy?

It figures.

 If you think Schumers tweet is a doozy, get a load of this story:

Hillary Clinton: Europe must curb immigration to stop rightwing populists Europe must get a handle on immigration to combat a growing threat from rightwing populists, Hillary Clinton has said, calling on the continents leaders to send out a stronger signal showing they are not going to be able to continue provide refuge and support. In an interview with the Guardian, the former Democratic presidential candidate praised the generosity shown by the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, but suggested immigration was inflaming voters and contributed to the election of Donald Trump and Britains vote to leave the EU. I think Europe needs to get a handle on migration because that is what lit the flame, Clinton said, speaking as part of a series of interviews with senior centrist political figures about the rise of populists, particularly on the right, in Europe and the Americas.

Translation: She wants to run in 2020. I especially like this bit of news analysis from the Guardian writer:

Clintons remarks are likely to prove controversial across Europe, which has struggled to form a unified position ever since more than 1 million migrants and refugees arrived in the EU in 2015.

First Schumer, and now Hillary. I think this is what Trump means by winning.

 Business Insider reported a couple years back on a Crowdpac study of the political leanings of different industries and professions, and while there were no great surprises here (hey, lookHollywood leans left!) it was still interesting to see where people fell out when it was charted:

For some reason this study has suddenly started circulating again on social media, with several people observing that the industries clustered in the center (lobbyists, real estate, banking, pharmaceuticals, etc) tend to be the kind of industries engaged in rent seeking, i.e., dependent on government favoritism.
If you study the history of NASAs Apollo program in the 1960s, one thing you come to realize is that the tight timetable to reach the moon by the end of the decade meant that NASA didnt have time to ossify into a bureaucracy, and they did things (i.e., took risks) in those days that would never be permitted today.

But you knew NASA had slipped into the maw of the administrative state when President Obama told NASA administrator Charles Bolden in 2010 that Muslim outreach should be a primary mission for the space agency.

Well now it appears NASA doesnt even want to go to Mars even if it could go to Mars. Gizmodo offers an account of recent panel discussion about Mars hosted by Lucianne Walkowicz, the NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology, and you have to read this, not to believe it, because of course the real problem with going to Mars is that it would represents colonialism. No, seriously, thats what the thinking is:

Lucianne Walkowicz: I cant give you an example of what a decolonized Mars looks like, but it starts by having multidisciplinary conversations about the things that happen here on Earth. I often give examples of Standing Rock as an Earth-based example of interests colliding, where you have indigenous people opposing a large-scale project that, much like space exploration, features cooperation between private industry and the government Gizmodo: What does decolonizing Mars mean to you? Chanda Prescod-Weinstein: Im trying to think carefully about what our relationship to Mars should be, and whether we can avoid reproducing deeply entrenched colonial behaviors as we seek to better understand our Solar System. This includes thinking about why our language for developing understandings of environments that are new to us tends to still be colonial: colonizing Mars and exploring and developing, for example. These are deeply fraught terms that have traditionally referred to problematic behaviors by imperialists with those that we would call indigenous and people of color often on the receiving end of violent activities. . . Decolonization in the Martian context requires asking questions about who is entitled to what land. Can we be trusted to be in balance with Mars if we refuse to be in balance with Earth? Can we be trusted to be equitable in our dealings with each other in a Martian context if the U.S. and Canadian governments continue to attack indigenous sovereignty, violate indigenous lands, and engage in genocidal activities against indigenous people? I think the answer is no. I think we need to clean up our mess before we start making a new mess somewhere else.

If these folks had been with NASA in the 1960s, wed have never made it to the moon.
Liberals constantly assert, without citing any data, that the U.S. is alone among civilized nations in suffering the phenomenon of mass shootings. Like so many claims, it suits the Lefts narrative while being entirely untrue. John Lott explains:

People have been acting for a long time like the United States is the worlds hotbed of mass public shootings. Following a 2015 mass shooting during his administration, President Barack Obama declared: The one thing we do know is that we have a pattern now of mass shootings in this country that has no parallel anywhere else in the world.

This belief is constantly used to push for more gun control. If we can only get rid of guns in the United States, we will get rid of these mass public shootings and be more like the rest of the world, gun-control supporters preach.

But America doesnt lead the world in mass public shootings. Were not even close. 

Over the course of 18 years, from 1998 to 2015, our list contains 2,354 attacks and at least 4,880 shooters outside the United States and 53 attacks and 57 shooters within this country. By our count, the U.S. makes up 1.49 percent of the murders worldwide, 2.20 percent of the attacks, and less than 1.15 percent of the mass public shooters. All these are much less than Americas 4.6 percent share of the world population.

Of the 97 countries where we identified mass public shootings, the U.S. ranks 64th per capita in its rate of attacks and 65th in fatalities. Major European countries, such as Norway, Finland, France, Switzerland and Russia, all have at least 25 percent higher per capita murder rates from mass public shootings.

While Americans are rightly concerned by the increased frequency and severity of mass public shootings, the rest of the world is experiencing much larger increases in per capita rates of attack. The frequency of foreign mass public shootings since 1998 has grown 291 percent faster than in the U.S.
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CHICAGO, IL / ACCESSWIRE / November 25, 2018 / DNotesEDU has announced the release of its Global Digital Currency Industry Insight Report, a 45-page examination of the cryptocurrency industry that covers a broad range of blockchain and crypto-related technologies, trends, and potential risks.DNotesEDU co-founder and report author Brandon Cheliak described the report:"Our industry insight report is the perfect jumping off point for investors, executives, and government officials who need a well-rounded perspective of the industry prior to increasing their involvement." The Industry Insight Report addresses virtually every area of the emerging crypto industry, including development trends, product innovation and applications, exchange trends and areas of risk, and vulnerabilities in a variety of areas. The report also provides an overview of regulatory and law enforcement concerns related to everything from trading schemes to ICO fraud.There are also sections devoted to crypto education, brand trust, and other mass adoption concerns, and chapters that focus on the FinTech revolution, supporting infrastructure, and issues related to corporate involvement with and integration of blockchain technology.Mr. Cheliak offers advice throughout the 45 page report on how to avoid the same mistakes that many of his industry peers made in developing their cryptocurrency business, or integrating cryptocurrency into their existing business. The report gives readers a first hand look at the inner workings of the global digital currency industry, and what are presumed to be the key drivers of growth.The DNotesEDU Global Digital Currency Industry Insight Report is available for purchase on the DNotesEDU website. Purchases can be made using either PayPal or DNotes Pay.About DNotes and Alan Yong:DNotes co-founder Alan Yong is a well-regarded visionary who established Dauphin Technology in 1988. He is the author of the book ''Improve Your Odds: The Four Pillars of Business Success and is well-regarded as a ''thought leader'' in the cryptocurrency industry.DNotes is a digital currency noted for its consistent and reliable growth, and innovative initiatives that actively engage women, young people, small businesses, workers, and others - effectively inviting the world to participate in the digital currency revolution.For more information and to purchase the report please visit: http://dnotesedu.com/ For more information on DNotes Global, please visit: https://dnotesglobal.com/ Media Contact:Name: Alan YongEmail: media@ dnotesglobal.com SOURCE: DNotes Global, Inc.
Activities towards the development of Nigeria into an automotive hub commenced yesterday in Lagos with a kick-off workshop for key stakeholders from the public and private sectors in Nigeria, as well as senior management of Volkswagen led by Thomas Schaefer, the Head of Sub-Saharan Region and Managing Director, Volkswagen South Africa.

The workshop was organised for Nigeria and Volkswagen to agree on the next steps to operationalise a September 2018 agreement for Volkswagen to lead development of Nigeria into an automotive hub.

The Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Okechukwu Enelamah, who declared the workshop open, said that the development of the countrys automotive industry is a key plank of the Federal Governments Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) which aims to grow the economy, invest in Nigerians and build a globally competitive economy.

We believe that this is an idea whose time has come, Mr Enelamah said at the workshop, which lasted all day.

The presence of this strong Volkswagen delegation led by Schaefer is an important show of commitment to make our partnership successful and mutually beneficial.

He said that the $8 billion Nigerians spend in importing vehicles annually is proof that there is a large market for a viable automotive industry in the country that will create jobs and contribute to the growth of the Nigerian economy.

Schaefer agreed that Nigerias time to be an automotive hub is now. Africas time is now and Nigerias time is now. Theres no doubt about that. The National Automotive Industrial Development Plan (NAIDP) is a great base and it would help this country to industrialise.

He said that Volkswagen is more than happy to play the pioneering role and be the role model that will spur the interest of other global players in the Nigerian automotive sector.

Nigeria could outperform the rest of the world. We should not hold back mentally. The fact that Nigeria currently does not have a thriving auto industry presents an opportunity because there are no legacy issues. So the country can invest and prepare now in order to become ripe for the future, Mr Schaefer added.

When the MOU between the federal government and Volkswagen was signed two months ago, the automaker had said that its intentions for Nigeria are subject to commercial viability.

That issue was addressed at the kickoff workshop on Thursday with the discussion of various plans and strategies to ensure the growth of demand for new cars in Nigeria, incentives, as well as reduction of running cost.

At the end of the meeting, three working groups were activated to work on demand, investment and operational costs.

The workshop was attended by several stakeholders including the Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment, Edet Sunday Akpan; the Directors-General of the National Automotive Design and Development Council (NADDC), Jelani Aliyu; Bank of Industry (BOI), Kayode Pitan; Standards Organization of Nigeria (SON), Osita Aboloma; and Nigeria Export Processing Zones Authority (NEPZA), Emmanuel Jime. Others include the Program Coordinator of the Industrial and Competitiveness Advisory Council, Edirin Akemu; Special Adviser to the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Bunmi Adeoye; and representatives of the NIPC, Customs, FRSC, and the private sector.
The National Secretary of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Shehu Gabam, recently led some members of the partys national working committee on a visit to the corporate headquarters of PREMIUM TIMES in Abuja.

During the visit, Mr Gabam fielded questions from the newspaper editors.

Excerpts:

PT: Looking at the whole trajectory and pattern towards the 2019 election, do you have sufficient reasons to be confident that there would be a free and fair election? In other words, if you were going to rate INEC in terms of preparation, what would your assessment look like?

Gabam: Well, you know, perhaps if you know my history, if you follow my participation in some of these very sensitive issues even of recent, I believe INEC is not prepared for this election, and I have made my views known long ago. We keep on pretending about issues. Look at a lot of scandalous issues between the president and the National Assembly, competing for relevance instead of doing what I call national service, to protect the sanctity of the institutions. You see trading blames and counter blames. At the end of the day, INEC has not realised that their institution is designed by the constitution to protect the interest of Nigerians. They believe they are institutions that are made to be subservient to people that are in government. Unless we all rise up and ensure that INEC realises that they are being paid with Nigerian tax money and that their duty is a national duty, it is a very serious business to the extent that it (election) is a public holiday. Every revenue due for government on that very day stands at zero per cent. Every revenue both for private/individuals because of the public holiday is affected also. That is how serious election is and it is part of our constitution, a franchise of an individual to exercise it under very conducive atmosphere.

If you look at the recent by-elections we had both in Ekiti and Osun states and in parts of Bauchi and other places, you can see clearly they are not prepared or ill prepared for this election. If you look at the way some of the by-elections we had have been militarized, and the excessive money that was used, you also know that they havent done their job. In terms of sensitisation, I cant remember when last I heard of the National Orientation Agency sensitising Nigerians on some of these things. Its a collective responsibility. And also if you look at the conflict or the infractions between what the INEC says and what the Police say  who is to report, who is guilty, who has committed an offence  you will know that the institution is still suffering from a lot of deficiencies. And if you look at the budget itself, vis-a-vis what INEC has said, that if they have not gotten the resources six months to the election, it is going to affect whatever they are doing. I only saw today in the papers though I havent read through, INEC said the election is facing a lot of threat.

In 2015, I was one of those who raised alarm that INEC was not prepared and that this election could not hold. Certain people stood up and they wanted to roast me. They said Jonathan gave us N2 billion to scuttle the election but at the end of the day INEC came out and confessed and they had to shift the election. So the last programme I had with one of the directors of INEC on Channels TV I took him up but he couldnt defend it. He kept on saying they were planning. This is a national election, it is not just one or two states that you deploy thousands of policemen. I wondered if the Nigerian government is going to apply to the United Nations or ECOWAS to deploy troops in Nigeria to monitor this election. Our security agencies are overstretched because of crisis. Boko Haram is all over the country and I havent seen anything on ground to suggest that this election will be conducted under free and fair atmosphere. So for me I will love to encourage IENC to be forthcoming, to be honest, and to be transparent so that we will not run into a very bad situation. All of us can put heads together particularly the political parties, to find a way to rescue the situation. So far, they are making us believe that they will conduct the election, that they are ready for the election, so we will keep on monitoring.

PT: Are you discussing all of this at the level of Inter Party Advisory Council (IPAC)?

Gabam: You know IPAC is an association of different political parties. A political party is a party that has gone through the processes of election, have offices nationwide, maintaining their structures and they have been on physical elections, not a boardroom election and appointment and so on and so forth. So those that can tell you that clearly, the consequences or otherwise are mainly two to four parties who have been through the trenches and understand the dynamics and the topography that are involved in dealing with these issues. So, there is nothing much IPAC can do. It is a free association of political parties. But the major institutions that have the responsibility of fixing these problems are the presidency and the National Assembly. They have the overwhelming power and authority to fix this problem more than any other institution. The parties have no subvention from the federal government or through INEC. They survive on their own. Even if they meet to issue a communique, it takes the process of the National Assembly or the intervention of the presidency for any correction to be made. And so far, all the contributions IPAC has made, I have not seen any much changes. I have attended meetings of IPAC with INEC and so on and so forth. It has been argument and counter-argument, being on defensive and so on and so forth. So, generally, the politicians largely are not also prepared or facing the reality. You know we still whip up sentiments along ethnic and religious lines in political discourse and elections. So we have a long way to go as a nation and that is the practical truth about it. I do hope that the parties will brace up the way we will face the challenges or come of age to confront those who feel they have the monopoly of the status quo to create the balance. I do hope other parties will understand that it is a national service; it has nothing to do with personal ego.

PT: We understand that you zoned your presidential slot to the North but somebody from the South emerged as a candidate. One of the aspirants, Jerry Gana is still protesting the emergence of Donald Duke as your candidate? What do you have to say about this? Did you really zone your presidential slot to the North?

Gabam: You know I have a long historical relationship with Jerry Gana, dated back to G7. He was the pioneer secretary of the party you know as of then and I was SA and so we know ourselves too well. Then I want you to know that this period is a peak period of crises for all parties that have gone through elections. You will find out that about five or six persons are contesting for one position. Out of this five, one will win and the others will complain. So every party that goes through election has this crisis to manage but how you deploy skill to manage it is what matters so that they will not escalate. You see we are managing the ones we have more than what PDP and APC are managing. They are chasing even APC chairman out of office. We have been managing ours successfully.

former Minister of Information, Jerry Gana

Before I answer that question, I want to remind you that in 1999, PDP zoned the presidency to the South, not just the South, to the south west, not just the south west but to a state, Ogun State and to a man that was in prison then. I was privileged to know because I was part of the whole movement and some of us opposed it. I was the first person who took PDP to court in 1999. Afe Babalola was defending the party. When we went to court, the court said no, you have no right to say a fellow citizen who wants to aspire to be a president cannot. That was the judgement. But then when the party came back, they said it was their internal arrangement, which means if there is internal arrangement, diplomacy must follow, other considerations must follow to resolve the issues. Now it is the same thing that comes to our situation in SDP. Naturally, zoning is not a constitutional thing but it is a provisional, a law, an understanding of laws of parties themselves, which is subject to the federal law. Now the presidency, because of PDP zoning, affected the decision of other parties to say okay, we are also zoning to a particular zone, targeting votes. That is what zoning is all about. It is vote-targeting. Now despite we said it is coming to the North, we dont have the right to say you cannot buy a form to contest. But ultimately we know there are people who decide, who will be and who will not be, not the party itself but the delegates of the party. They are the ones to decide. And if we say we disqualify this, he goes to court knowing there are previous judgments, it is an exercise in futility. So, Professor Jerry Gana was one of the first to indicate his interest to run for the presidency. John Dara was one of them; Professor Hagher was one of them; Ambassador Osakwe was one of them, Donald Duke was among the first who picked the form, and they all went through process of screening. There was no objection throughout the exercise up till the end of the convention and that is why if you go through, there is nowhere he questioned the process of the convention from beginning to the end. He said it is the right of his zone. We said fine but what we did was to allow the delegates to decide with their votes and we ensured that we did it in a way that we managed the image of the party. We ensured that the cameras were focused on the entire boxes live and every individual will go and vote. It was covered live. The presumption before the end of the voting was that Jerry Gana is popular (and) he was likely to win. There are people that you expect are going to win. The result turned out to be something else. Each of them went and met delegates and campaigned for their votes. We were not part of. We didnt accompany the aspirants when they were visiting the delegates. At the same time, the issue is in court and we are also handling it internally to solve the problem. We have gone a long way to solving the issue diplomatically, politically to ensure that we are strong, vibrant and intact in the course of all this. So, there is no cause for alarm.

PT: You said you are not comfortable with INECs preparations so far. Does that mean that if for example the election had taken place in February and SDP did not actually pull weight as expected, will you have associated that to this particular point you are making that INEC is not prepared?

Gabam: We are talking of preparedness of INEC as an institution, with a series of activities including deployment of materials and ensuring that the polling units where people are coming to vote are properly secured etc. You see it is a two-way thing. INEC would make preparations. If they are fully prepared, then also citizens who are going to vote is another way. It is not just for the institution to put everything in perfect shape and you have people who are disorderly. They will be sponsored by politicians to disrupt the process and you cannot blame INEC for that. What we are talking about the preparedness of INEC to provide the basic requirement for a voter to come freely and cast his vote and go. That is the area we are talking about. Basically, those are the problems of INEC long ago, not just now. It is still the problem. Even the by-election that took place, they still suffered that problem. Some of the card readers were not working. So these are the challenges we are talking about. After every election, INEC has an avalanche of another four years to prepare for an election unless you have midterm or by-elections. So, there is no excuse for you to tell me that within those four years you have not developed capacity to provide the basic technological equipment, produce voters register. There is no moral justification for that. What about the plastic cards? What of the boxes? You will go and register for the voter cards and it will take you six months before you get it. Are you telling me such institution is prepared for elections  when you are disenfranchised? The by-election we had, a lot of people who had temporary voters card that was used before because people couldnt get original, were denied the right of voting. I was there. So can you describe that as part of an institution that is prepared for an election? You cannot. Now those that were denied to vote, if they decided to create a chaotic situation, you cannot have election in that polling unit.

Number two, when citizens are not prepared to exercise their franchise and defend it because they are abusing people of incompetence in terms of governance, ineptitude and your conscience was bought over, you sold your vote for a chicken change or even if you are given N1 million, you were told to fast for another four years. It is a lot of moral issues that as citizens we have to talk about to enlighten the younger ones who do not understand their fundamental basics of exercising that right for change that will directly impact on their lives or their families.

So it is a two-way traffic. We are talking about technical issues for INEC to get prepared. Once you are prepared, you cannot go back and say you are not prepared, then you blame those who subvert the process; that is the electorate and the politicians because the biggest challenge of democracy are politicians. The biggest problem the nation has is the politicians. All these ethnic, religious, breach of security are being driven by politicians. So the politician must be first patriotic and understand that they have a duty to stabilise the system that they want to preside over. So whether SDP won or not, it is an act that people will decide. If they decide and the institution that you rely on to provide basic transparency, basic decency have done their job, why would you complain?

PT: If four months to the election a party is still accusing the umpire of poor preparation

Gabam: It is not only we that are saying it, they themselves are complaining. For instance, they are saying what they budgeted for, they have not gotten it. Are we the ones complaining? No, they are complaining to the institution that is supposed to do their jobs and providing the basic needs they demanded. So, you can see the infractions from where they are coming from. But as a party, we have the right to keep on hitting the issues that matter for INEC to pick up those issues and adjust. The parties are playing a very critical role in ensuring that INEC complies and INEC is taking the heat to ensure they are doing what they are supposed to do. If we do not act from our own side and ensure that we put the necessary heat on INEC, they will go and sleep. Look, we are having a situation where the National Assembly is saying this is the process, the executive is saying no. We are having a problem where the National Assembly has amended the Electoral Act and the president says he is not going to sign and that we should go back to the primitive way of conducting election through manual way of writing result which is very easy to tamper with. Who is programming the card readers? Have you ever found out? What are they programming? Can Nigerians know what they are programming? Can Nigerians know if the card reader can be breached? These are questions you need to ask INEC as part of their contribution to ensure that you keep the heat that you know whatever that is happening and you can explain as an informed journalist. We are doing that as a political party, as part of our national service, not just for SDP but to keep the democratic system very strong and vibrant. We have no other option. We cant think of any other option apart from democracy. So, we are doing our best as political parties.

PT: Before now, political parties were given money by the government to manage their affairs but they were abusing it. We believe that SDP is one of the parties that believe parties should be given grants. If that is achieved, how do you think we should manage this to ensure parties dont abuse it?

Gabam: One, the laws are faulty. If you are giving a grant to either farmers or anybody, there are laws attached to it that guide these processes. You dont just give money to political parties that you are sure they dont have the perquisite structures to service those structures. Because the system is being abused, and people have this mentality of lobbying, even if they dont have what is required to run a party, they will tell you they have. Just like you have mentioned, people go to INEC follow the procedures, cut corners, get their parties registered and put it in the briefcase; but they use that as an instrument to negotiate to get something.

Ballot boxes used to illustrate the story.

So its a structural deficiency which we have to deal with as a nation. There is nothing wrong with subvention, but that subvention must be tied to what you have on ground because political parties have large number of people they employ and they have to pay them every month. You have to pay for offices from local government, to state and to national. That is why you cant find the presence of majority of the political parties anywhere. Because it is not easy to fund it and if you say you cant assist because others have abused it, it means that you are incapable of managing the situation yourself. When you are releasing funds, you must monitor the funds not just by mouth but by physical inspection. If SDP says we have offices throughout Nigeria the federal government has agencies throughout Nigeria that can pinpoint clearly where these offices, the location of the offices. That gives you physical evidence that this party is on the ground apart from paperwork. Funding will be justified to an extent that those things are being followed to the latter. And once the party meets those criteria, it is right to fund them because they also employ. They reduce unemployment, they reduce insecurity in the system, they have taken away redundancy and other issues related to what we are suffering today. If you want to fund parties, you must do what is right, what is necessary, and you must follow to the latter those parties that claim they have structures throughout the country. After all, there are laws of registering political parties that the party has presence everywhere including FCT. Was there any investigation before you gave them the license? The answer is no. So when you look at it you find out where the problem is coming from. It is not about the funding but about due diligence.

PT: Can you tell us your issues or your challenges with your candidate in the last governorship election in Osun State, Iyiola Omisore?

Gabam: We dont have any major issue with Omisore. The party has had some little issues to settle and understand what went wrong which is the legitimate right of the party and we are investigating what went wrong. Before the election, everybody was convinced that SDP was going to take Osun State given his experience, his dexterity, his sagacity and for the fact that he won an election while he was in prison. Every definition of quality you are looking for, you can find in him. How SDP was shortchanged was quite a worrisome thing for SDP as an institution.

PT: So, he didnt consult you when he went into talks with APC and PDP?

Gabam: I think we have reacted to that in our press release that they acted on their own without the approval of the party at the national level. It is part of what we are investigating so that it will serve as a deterrent to other individuals or other state chapters not to do anything outside the directive of the headquarters of the party.
Former Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan joined some Peoples Democratic Party governors to visit the palace of Lamido of Adamawa in Yola on Sunday.

Those present at the meeting said Mr Obasanjo showered praises on Atiku Abubakar, his previously estranged vice president with whom he had reconciled since becoming the candidate of Nigerias main opposition party for the 2019 presidential election.

Mr Obasanjo, president between 1999 and 2007, reportedly recounted his ordeal at the Yola Prisons following his incarceration by the military junta of Sani Abacha in the 1990s.

Mr Obasanjo said Yola Prisons and the Lamidos palace were only separated by a wall. It was a remarkable moment, said Paul Ibe, a spokesperson for Mr Abubakar who was present at the event.

Mr Ibe told PREMIUM TIMES Mr Obasanjo assured the Lamido of Adamawa that Mr Abubakar would not disappoint when he becomes president in 2019.

He said Atiku Abubakar would do his job with dignity, integrity and honour, Mr Ibe said.

Obasanjo, Jonathan and others storm Yola for Atiku. [PHOTO CREDIT: Lim Atom] Obasanjo, Jonathan and others storm Yola for Atiku. [PHOTO CREDIT: Lim Atom]

Shortly after the meeting, Messrs Obasanjo, Jonathan and Abubakar then rode in the same bus with some governors to the home of Mr Abubakar for lunch, it was learnt.

Details shortly
One week after the deadly attack on soldiers at a military base by Boko Haram, the army has threatened to sue persons circulating fake news that aims to undermine national security.

The Nigerian Army on Saturday on its Twitter and Facebook pages said it has continued to observe with great dismay the myriads of photos and video clips being recklessly distributed on various social media platforms by different caliber of persons on the attack in Metele, Borno State.

PREMIUM TIMES reported how last Sundays attack on a Metele army base in Borno left over 100 soldiers and officers dead. Although the army is yet to provide details of the attack, why it occurred, or casualty figure, it has taken a strong stance against the media and other Nigerians for circulating what it considers fake news of the attack.

Earlier on Friday, the army said Whilst it is true that there was an attack on the Nigerian Army 157 Task Force Battalion on November 18, 2018, it has become necessary to correct several misinformation being circulated with regards to this unfortunate event.

The Army said, several social media, print and online publications have been brandishing false casualty figures as well as circulating various footages of old and inaccurate Boko Haram propaganda videos and alluding same to be the attack on 157 Task Force Battalion.

President Muhammadu Buhari on Saturday finally spoke on the Metele attack, saying No responsible Commander-in-Chief would rest on his oars or fold his hands to allow terrorists to endanger the lives of its military personnel and other citizens.

The president pledged to work with the military to ensure the defeat of the insurgents.

The army in a Facebook and Twitter post on Saturday evening expressed concern over what it said was the indiscriminate circulation of different fake video footage, an action it says creates fear and unrest in the society.

It dismissed the videos as false, explaining that they do not portray the situation on ground.

The army said such videos served the purpose intended by the insurgents to misinform and spread panic.

The Nigeria Army has continued to observe with great dismay the myriads of photos and video clips being recklessly distributed on various social media platforms by different caliber of persons.

It is indeed shocking to see how these well doctored propaganda materials from enemies of the state succeeded in creating fear and unrest in the polity.

These doctored materials are obviously serving the purposes intended by the terrorists to misinform the populace; spread panic, hatred, religious intolerance and undermine national security.

The Nigeria Army wants to categorically state that the videos and images making rounds as the purported attack on Metele base are false and do not in any way portray the reality of the situation on the ground, it said.

The army reiterated its commitments to the protection of the nations territorial integrity.

It warned that it would not condone the spread of fake news as it violates the provisions of Nigerias notorious cybercrime laws.

While appreciating the concerns of well meaning Nigerians, who genuinely care for the well being of military personnel, the Nigerian Army wants to draw the attention of its detractors to the fact that spreading fake news is an offense and violation of Section 24 (1) (a & b); and (2) (a), (b), (c), (i), (ii) of the Cyber-crimes Prohibition and Prevention Act, 2015.

In view of this, please note that the Nigeria Army, henceforth, report the infractions and file case against individuals or groups who deliberately spread fake news that aim to undermine national security in courts of competent jurisdictions.

Equally; the Nigeria Army wishes to inform the public of its iReport channels on the NA website, android and iOS platforms through which members of the public can forward meaningful advice, criticism or observations that would enable it to better serve the good people of Nigeria.

The cybercrime law has been criticised by civil society groups for its use as a tool by Nigerian agencies to stifle critical comments and opinions on social media.

PREMIUM TIMES reported how some Nigerians have been arrested and detained by state governments and security agencies over critical Facebook posts and other publications on the basis of the cybercrime law,

The Metele attack is one in a series of recent attacks by the Boko Haram on military bases and formations in North-east Nigeria.

The attacks, including those on civilians, have continued despite the efforts of the military who have limited the insurgents to three North-east states of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe.
Thirty metre high flames burn day and night in the village of Ebedei, in the Niger Delta, Nigeria. The heat from these fires is not soft or warm, it is prickly. The constant noise makes wild animals flee, and people must shout to be heard. Fields of crops, once green, turned yellow or stopped growing. The village no longer has darkness or the respite of cool at night. The air is contaminated with gas and harmful particles.

You cant believe it when I got close to the flare site, I felt first hand the heat, and it was like my skin was being pierced with some kind of needles or tips of broomsticks, said Okonta Emeka, a Nigerian reporter who we collaborated with on this investigation.

Millions of people live within five kilometres of a gas flare in the Niger Delta, the oil-rich region in southern Nigeria. Below the flames, theyre extracting oil. With the oil comes unwanted gas, which is burnt off in a process called gas flaring.

Benjamin Nwaiku lives beside a constant flame. In 2001, he moved back to Ebedei where he grew up, retiring from his job to become a farmer and raise his seven children.

But in 2009, a flow station was erected right near his house to extract oil. He immediately became concerned about the possible effects on his health and his childrens:

We are living under the shade of hazard because of this flaring, Mr Nwaiku said.

The flaring affected his income. He noticed his corn crops growing strangely, shooting up, as he described it, like an electric pole, without any fruit. The rise in soil temperature caused him and others a loss of crop yield.

You plant and before you know it everything is dead, he explained.

It is a disaster.

The noise and light of the flare bothered him too.

If you are not sleeping with the noise and the heat you cant sleep again, said Mr Nwaiku, adding that he missed experiencing total darkness, and that his village hadnt seen it since the flaring began.

During the rainy season, the rainwater was visibly black.

It is not consumable, Mr Nwaiku said, inspecting the sample of water his neighbour collected, no need for a microscope.

He said some in his community risk their lives to drink the rainwater. They know the hazard they see. We cant even use it to bath because it is very, very poisonous to the eye. Almost the whole of this community is having eye problems, said Mr Nwaiku.

The rainwater, he said, corroded his zinc roof. Holes appeared and rotted the wood inside.

water sample from Obodougwa (left), and three water samples from Ebedei water sample from Obodougwa (left), and three water samples from Ebedei water sample from Obodougwa (left), and three water samples from Ebedei water sample from Obodougwa (left), and three water samples from Ebedei

Flaring on the rise

Gas flaring was officially banned in 1984 but the government has repeatedly failed to meet promises to end the practice.

To test whether the governments most recent claims to put an end to gas flaring by 2020 were realistic. this report commissioned a geospatial data expert to analyse infrared data to assess whether the number of hotspots had decreased over time.

The satellite data appears to show a marked increase in radiant heat emitted by gas flares in Nigeria starting late 2017 explained Rory Hodgson, the analyst who compiled the figures.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellite, which collected the data, has recorded infrared readings since 2012. It is the first time since its launch that readings for Nigeria have been so high.

The data points to 2018 having more gas flares burning more intensely than has been seen for the past five years, said Mr Hodgson.

Satellite data Vs official NNCP reports on Nigerian gas flaring  Trends over time

According to the World Banks rankings Global Gas Flaring Reduction Partnership from July 2018, Nigeria is the sixth largest gas flaring country globally, and the second largest in Africa after Algeria, moving up from the seventh global flarer the year before.

While many other top flarers  Russia, Venezuela, and Algeria  have decreased flaring levels since 2016, Nigerias have increased.

Burning money

The practice of gas flaring is incredibly wasteful, with one senior executive at a gas processing plant saying flaring gas is burning money.

In a country where 27 per cent of Nigerians do not have access to electricity, many residents of communities living near gas flares are aware of the irony of the burning of a resource which could be converted into power.

Enizoka Prince, a student from the Niger Delta said, they can convert this gas to light. If there was light, there would be development as well.

Edward Obi of civil society group Gas Alert for Sustainable Initiative (GASIN) agreed, saying it defies all economic thinking.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency greenhouse gas calculator quotes the amount of greenhouse gas emitted by gas flaring in 2016 Nigeria as equivalent to over three and a half million passenger vehicles driven for one year and over four coal-fired power plants running for a year.

Anslem Onyibo is a 35-year-old teacher at a primary school in Obodougwa. The flow station is 500 metres away from his classroom. It began flaring the same year as Ebedeis, in 2009, selling crude oil the following year. Now, instead of talking when he teaches, he says he must shout over the noise of the flare.

It takes a lot of energy, he said, and the student that does not have smart hearing ability will not get through.

You know, some students are shy, he said, they are not hearing what we are saying but they claim to have heard it.

The primary school teacher noticed increased coughing among the 300 or so six to 13-year-olds who attended the school.

Friday Okolo, a father of five whose children attend the school, does not see a solution. The children will still continue to go there to their school, he said.

We have no option, he added.

Doctors are aware of the health impacts of gas flaring, and see the effects daily.

Mr Enebeli, a medical doctor at Trinity Hospital in nearby Obiaruku, sees about 20 patients per day, many of whom come from surrounding gas flaring communities, including Ebedei.

He sees a large number of patients who suffer from breathing problems, coughing and chest infections, particularly among the children.

A lot of people die of chest infections, he said, the children are most affected.

Omisivie Maduka, a medically trained doctor as well as a researcher, is working on an extensive study on the health impacts of gas flaring throughout a two-year fellowship and is still analysing the data.

Just from the reports I was getting from the fieldwork, she said.

There were quite a lot of complaints about respiratory conditions, especially in children.

According to a study, children are particularly vulnerable to the lowered air quality. She also found increased levels of hypertension in gas flaring communities.

As part of her research, Ms Maduka visited primary health centres. She said the data she collected was grossly incomplete, with blank spaces where the diagnosis should be.

There is a whole spectrum of non-communicable diseases including cancers, respiratory conditions, skin conditions, diabetes and hypertension, she said.

There really should be a kind of emphasis on ensuring that we collect that data.

Skin cancer, leukemia, and lung cancer have all been linked to pollutants released from flaring, but the lack of diagnosis and data on these means that assessing whether or not these are occurring is impossible.

But teacher Anslem Onyibo sees some benefits that came with advent of gas flaring, notably on the initiatives funded by the Nigeria company, Energia, which runs the flare.

If you hadnt been to the community in ten years you would not recognise it, said Mr Onyibo.

Our school is paid for by the money we get from there. They are trying to increase the level of employment.

Samuel Ochonogor lives in Obodougwa, and his four children attend the local school. He wants electricity and clear water for his community as well as his crops to grow.

If this issue is not handled now, he said, it will also affect our communitys children.

Though these types of advantages vary from village to village, Dr Maduka believes that development does not have to be accompanied by gas flaring.

My view I think is quite simple, she said, I think oil exploration is a source of development for people living in the Niger Delta. Oil exploration does not need to include gas flaring.

A looming deadline

Lazarus Tamana, who has campaigned for 28 years with the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni people against Shells activities in the Delta said the government lacks the willpower or sincerity to force the oil companies to use modern equipment.

The flow stations Mr Tamana grew up beside were shut down following demonstrations by the Ogoni people over an oil spill in 1993, but he still vividly remembers the daily impact of the flares.

It is just constantly like daytime and in that vicinity, you do not see any living thing, said Mr Tamana.

No insects. Even the wild animals are driven away because of the heat and the noise.

He explained how in the first hour of rain during the dry season, the rain was black. He would let the rain fall and only collect drinking water when it started falling clear.

At the time, he said, he was unaware of the environmental impact.

We didnt take it seriously, he said.

We didnt know the dangers that were surrounding us until we started seeing so many things that were happening. Our mothers, our fathers, our crops had started deteriorating.

But he has spent his adult life campaigning with the MOSOP.

Mr Tamana blames the government for zero implementation of otherwise fantastic laws.

The government doesnt have the willpower or sincerity to force these oil companies to use modern equipment, he said.

If they were operating in a sensible way, whereby we can also farm and fish, while they are extracting their oil then there wont be any difficulties.

As Nigeria advances towards the 2020 deadline to end flaring, the problems linked to the practice are only set to rise because companies are continuing to flare.

Since 1984, flaring occurs through a system of fines and permits. Fines are consistently not implemented, culminating in $14.298 billion of potentially uncollected fines between April 2008 and October 2016.

A former manager of global oilfield services company who wished to remain anonymous said the cause of flaring is the same, anywhere in the world: because theres no distribution network, the source of the gas is too far from the potential client.

Mr Obi, a Catholic priest who founded GASIN nine years ago, said the Nigerian government has not made sufficient efforts to insist that oil and gas companies put down the necessary infrastructure to capture the gas and utilise it.

He is currently working with a group set up by the government to commercialise the gas. He believes the government should not prioritise selling gas for profit because gas as it is is already a hazard, so even capturing it and containing it is already a win.

For Mr Obi, the 2020 flare out date is unrealistic.

Speaking from someone who has worked in these developments over time, I have not seen any significant development that suggests that the 2020 deadline can be met, he said.

Absolutely nothing is on the ground that suggests a realistic 2020 deadline, absolutely nothing.
The presidential candidate of the Allied Congress Party of Nigeria (ACPN), Oby Ezekwesili, says President Muhammadu Buhari has not been an effective Commander-in-Chief in handling security challenges the country is facing, especially the Boko Haram insurgency.

The former minister of education and solid minerals made the comment Friday when she visited PREMIUM TIMES.

The president has not been an effective Commander-In-Chief of the armed forces. He has not been! We cannot have any group whatsoever by whatever name feel this level of freedom to operate in our territory without the decisiveness of action that would end these monumental tragedies that we face all the time, Mrs Ezekwesili said.

Reminded Mr Buhari was a war general, Mrs Ezekwesili, a former Vice-President of the World Bank, retorted, I dont know about titles. I know about productive and effective leadership. You can bear any title you wish but what I am interested in is, has the president been an effective Commander  In -Chief? I think if we put this in a public debate, the majority of Nigerians will say no

At least 118 soldiers and officers were killed when Boko Haram terrorists attacked Nigerias 157 Task Force Battalion in Borno State on November 18.

Military insiders also told PREMIUM TIMES that 153 soldiers remained missing in action as of Saturday morning, nearly a week after the incident.

Those killed in the attack include the commander of the battalion, whom PREMIUM TIMES identified on November 20 as a lieutenant colonel.

Despite widespread condemnation and mourning that greeted the killings, the military has so far failed to explain what led to the loss of such a high number of troops in one attack.

Rather than give details of the incident and what it is doing to curtail further attacks, the Nigerian Army devoted a large part of its statement to bashing the media.

Whilst it is true that there was an attack on the Nigerian Army 157 Task Force Battalion on November 18, 2018, it has become necessary to correct several misinformation being circulated with regards to this unfortunate event, the Army said in a statement on its Twitter handle Friday night.

In his reaction, coming about a week after the unfortunate incident, President Buhari expressed deep shock, assuring at the same time that immediate measures were being taken to ensure that the loopholes which led to the fatalities are blocked once and for all.

He, however, advised Nigerians against making a political capital out of the national tragedy.

Outlining her plans for security and tackling insurgency during Fridays interview, Mrs Ezekwesili said she would be the best Commander  In  Chief if elected.

By the way, I need you to know that you would have the best Commander  in  Chief of the armed forces in me because what it requires is to actually care for your citizens, then you can make the calls that preserve their lives.

Are we not today grieving the news that more than 100 of our soldiers have been killed in the frontline of battle? In other countries, they would still be mourning deeply but people have so died that Nigerians have become desensitised to death. My sadness is that the Nigerian child will actually grow up thinking its OK for people to just be killed with impunity and yet no consequence.

She said the first things she would do as the Commander  in  Chief would be to get a full update of all the killings in the regions, then make a technical assessment of strategies to adopt.

I have already read what is available as a candidate so when I get there, I will simply force it on all to know there is a new sheriff in town. The enemies of our country must know that we are at a mega level of response and that it will be we setting the pace. So the first thing is going to be the technical assessment of what are our strategies towards curtailing any continuous evidence of freedom to operate. They cannot operate in the soil of Nigeria!

The candidate also accused the political class of turning the fight against terrorism into a money-making venture.

We have not obviously invested the way we should and part of this is because people have created a military-industrial complex out of the terrorism situation.

Counterterrorism has more or less become an industry for our parasitic class and because terrorism and countering of terrorism is now comfortable with the way things are, you can see clearly that our capacity to be decisive has weakened considerably.

One of the ways to counter terrorism is to invest significantly in your intelligence asset and I know the world is waiting for us. There are ways to tackle this challenges, we are going to operate at the level of sub-regional, regional, continental and global partnerships.

Mrs Ezekwesili, who was the co-convener of #BringbackOurGirls campaigning for the release of girls kidnapped by Boko Haram, will be contesting the 2019 presidential election alongside dozens of other candidates.
As the industrial action embarked on by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) enters its fourth week, the union has vowed not to return to class until its demands are met.

This was disclosed in a statement by the ASUU National President, Biodun Ogunyemi, on Sunday.

PREMIUM TIMES reported how the lecturers commenced an indefinite strike on November 5 for reasons including governments failure to adhere to previous agreements and poor funding of universities.

Ten days after the declaration of the strike, the first meeting between the Nigerian government and the lecturers ended without resolution of the dispute.

After the meeting, Mr Ogunyemi said the government appears insincere in relating with the lecturers.

In his statement on Sunday, Mr Ogunyemi said the unions struggle is still alive, and the strike would continue.

We met with the Honourable Minister of Education in line with our tradition to honour all invitations with openness to meaningful discussion of issues contained in our demand, so far, nothing concrete has come out of the meetings; rather it is still a projection of their keep-them talking culture.

Our members are enjoined to disregard any information from any source other than the official union source which is the branch chairperson, he said.

The professor also warned university authorities against undermining the strike by organising or attending meetings, examinations, lectures, convocations, conferences or other activities during the strike.

He said any examination taken during this period will be challenged by ASUU after the strike.

Our commitment and integrity are the basis of our pride as Academics. We must avoid actions that undermine our struggle, he said.

The strike has forced hundreds of thousands of Nigerian university students to be out of school with many of them complaining about the situation.

Students Lament

Various students who spoke with PREMIUM TIMES expressed their displeasure over the incessant strike in the educational sector and failure of government to meet the demands of their teachers.

Ade Quadri, a 200-level student of PHE at the Lagos State University told our correspondent that the failure of government to adhere to the demands of lecturers will further worsen the reputation of Nigerian universities.

This present situation is the reason why it will be difficult for us to see our schools rated top in the world. The strike action should not have occurred if government do the needful, he said.

Adeosun Jeleel of the University of Ibadan said: Education is the most important sector but our leaders will never take that serious. You can imagine what we are made to pass through. Four years should be four years but the case is not the case here, he said.

Peace Udofia of the University of Benin said: Im a final year student counting days left for me in school but I cant really say if I will use additional years with this. No project supervisor; on strike. All on strike.

Efforts by PREMIUM TIMES to get the reaction of the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, to the ongoing strike was unsuccessful as at press time as he refused to answer calls and text messages sent to him.
The Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) on Sunday admitted that it received payment to air a live programme of the American University of Nigeria (AUN) but could not do so.

The state broadcaster, however, said its failure not to air the programme as agreed was due to technical issues and not political interference.

The AUN is owned by Atiku Abubakar, a major opposition presidential candidate, while the NTA as a station often does the bidding of any government in power at a time. Apart from being a government-owned and funded media, the NTA top management staffers are government appointees who hold office at the discretion of the government in power.

In Sundays statement, the Director-General of the NTA, Yakubu Mohammed, said the station was compelled to react to the misinformation from the Atiku Media Office, alleging that NTA deliberately and under instruction from the Presidency, refused to broadcast live, the 13th anniversary ceremony of the American University of Nigeria, Yola because of conspiracy at work from the NTA headquarters and working the script of the Federal government and President Muhammadu Buhari.

This is not only far from the truth but very uncharitable, Mr Mohammed said.

The official said, While it is true that NTA received payment for the live coverage, it is also true that the NTA mobilised and deployed its Outside Broadcast crew from Jos to Yola for the coverage.

The crew from Jos got to the location in good time and carried out equipment test and as well uplink and downlink test which confirmed that the signals are in good condition. Few hours to the event DOMSAT (Domestic satellite station at NTA Headquarters) called to report of not receiving Signals. But the uplink was sending out adequate power while DOMSAT was not receiving the signal.

All the uplink equipment are in good working conditions and the downlink equipment also in good working condition. The only factor is the satellite service provider, INTELSAT. DOMSAT had made similar report which the Head of SATCOM had sent a report to INTELSAT and we are awaiting the report. This is a new development and new challenge which we would look at critically and localize the fault and ensure it does not reoccur. It should however be noted that the NTA TRANSMITTED THE AUN EVENT SOON AFTER IT OVERCAME THE TECHNICAL GLITCH IT EXPERIENCED.

Mr Mohammed said the television station was not being dictated to by the presidency.

NTA wishes to inform Nigerians that it has never been dictated to by the presidency in the course of discharging its responsibility since the current management came on board.

The NTA also wishes to appeal to politicians to please leave it out of politics. NTA is a public broadcaster that belongs to all and will discharge its mandate according to the law establishing it, he said.

Mr Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party is expected to be the main challenger to President Muhammadu Buhari in next years presidential election.
The Nigeria Air Force (NAF) on Thursday unveiled various operational equipment developed locally by its personnel to enhance operational efficiency.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the equipment were displayed during the 2018 Intra Command and Research and Development competition held at the NAF Base in Kaduna.

The chief of air staff, Sadiq Abubakar, said the competition was to imbibe the culture of self-reliance among NAF personnel.

Represented by Muazu Suleiman, (an Air Vice Marshal), the chief of air staff added that the annual competition was also to showcase the innovative ideas, solve operational and other service problems as well as reduce over dependence on foreign inputs.

The equipment would go a long way in addressing some contemporary challenges such as terrorism, banditry and general lawlessness that is prevalent in many areas of our society.

The innovations showcased are testimony to the resilience and enormous potentials within Nigerians. Many of these things are problems that are clearly afflicting the air force and the needs that they would address its very immediate.

The theme for the event was Harnessing technological innovations for enhance operation.

NAN reports that 13 projects displayed by different commands included Radio Frequency Identification Device, Mobile Under Vehicle Inspection System, Base Information Management System to enhance access and control of NAF bases, Flying Training Management System among others.

At the end of the competition, 403 Flying Training School Kano which constructed a 3-in-one Test Bench for L-39ZA aircraft, came first, followed by 407 Air Combat Training Group Kainjis Portable Hydraulic Topper while the 461 Nigerian Air Force Hospital Kadunas Lumbar Traction, clinched third position.

(NAN)
A non-governmental organisation, CLEEN Foundation, has called for reservation of some elective positions for female candidates to improve representation of women in government, ascribing the low participation of women in politics in Nigeria to the problem of internal democracy in political parties in the country.

Benson Olugbuo, the Executive Director of the foundation, stated this at a media parley it held Tuesday in Abuja to celebrate its 20th anniversary.

The foundation was originally founded by Innocent Chukwuma in 1998 as the Centre for Law Enforcement and Education to promote public safety, security, justice, research, and advocacy in Nigeria.

Mr Olugbuo said women need to be given the enabling environment to participate actively in politics, and not just through the 30 per cent affirmative action.

He observed that countries like Uganda, Ethiopia and Rwanda have moved beyond Nigeria in the issue of women in politics.

Mr Olugbuo said Nigeria should adopt what is called positive discrimination in South Africa and affirmative action in Uganda, which is a situation whereby some seats are reserved for only women to contest for.

On issues related to elections, he said there is a current disconnect between the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the security agencies, citing experiences from the Osun gubernatorial rerun election.

He explained that security agents arrested some officials of the foundation on the field and asked them to produce a letter to cover the rerun, although INEC confirmed no other letter was needed aside the one issued to observers.

This case shows the disconnect between the two agencies that ought to be working towards one objective, whuch is to organise a free and fair election. If the Constitution has given INEC the power, let every other agency key into it he said.

The reality also is that the constitution also gives police the primary responsibility to maintain law and order. So the question is who has the paramount responsibility to maintain peace and order? I dont think there is a problem with the law, but when it comes to working with one another, there is what we call inter-agency rivalry. Everyone wants to be in charge but we know they are all working for one purpose.

Speaking on the conduct of the police from 2003 to 2015, Mr. Olugbuo described it as a mixed bag, noting that there have been good and bad times in the force.

He stated that the delay in payment of the allowances of police officers during elections contribute to their poor performance.He however urged the security agencies to avoid interfering in politics.

The organisations Election Threats Assessment, which was done in April for 12 states (two states per geo-polotical zones), identified some challenges during elections.

These are related to drug abuse, hate speech, political thugs, extremists, as well as the activities of security agencies and the election management body.

The foundation says it will deploy no fewer than 1,500 electoral observers in the 774 local governments of the country for the 2019 elections with the collaboration of the Police Service Commission.

We are collaborating with two technology-based organisations to help develop a software that will monitor security management during elections. The observers will make use of this application so that individuals can download, Mr. Olugbuo stated.

On post election violence, he said, Election security management which we are working with the European Union looks at the three major cycles of election (before, during and after election) in order to mitigate violence.
The Police in Lagos, on Sunday, said they gunned down a suspected kidnapper and arrested one other during an exchange of gunfire with the syndicate.

The Lagos police spokesman, Chike Oti, confirmed the arrest in a statement, stressing that the incident happened at Agbowa area of Ikorodu, a suburb of Lagos State.

Mr Oti said the two suspects belong to a kidnapping syndicate terrorising some parts of the state, particularly Ikorodu area, stressing that two other suspects escaped with bullet wounds after the exchange of gunfire.

According to him, the anti-kidnapping squad of the state command, acted on the directive of the commands Commissioner of Police, Edgal Imohimi, on Friday, at about 11 a.m.

He said that the command received two separate reports on November 13 and 16 from one Suleiman Ajumobi and one Veronica Ewuru about the kidnapping of their daughter and husband respectively.

While Suleiman Eniola Ajumobi reported that his 7-year-old daughter was kidnapped from his house in his presence.

Veronica Ewuru stated that her husband, one DSP Patrick Ewuru, a police officer attached to Force Headquarters annex, Obalende, was kidnapped from their house in the night when the victim came out to check on the Power Generating Set that suddenly stopped working.

The kidnappers demanded for ransom of N25 million from Mr Suleiman and N10 million from the family of DSP Patrick Ewuru but later settled for N500,000 for both families.

At this point, the CP directed operatives handling the matter to play along with the kidnappers in the interest of the victims, who were still in captivity, he said.

The spokesman said that as soon as the release of the two victims was secured, the kidnappers hideout at Agbowa was busted, where one Festus Abama was killed and Austin Ebimiyenwei surrendered.

Mr Oti said that the arrested suspect confessed to the crime, while the victim had identified them as those who kidnapped them.

He said that concerted effort was being made to arrest those on the run, while the suspect already in police custody would be charged to court. (NAN)
The National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) has arrested the aunty of the late Ochanya Ogbaje.

In a statement made available to PREMIUM TIMES, NAPTIP alleged the accused, identified as Mrs Ogbuja, had knowledge of the repeated rape of the minor but refused to report or speak out.

According to NAPTIP, the arrest of Mrs Ogbuja, a staff of the Catering Department of Benue State Polytechnic, Ugbokolo, came about four weeks after an intensive manhunt. She was said to have disappeared from her house shortly after the minors death.

Miss Ogbaje, a 13 years old student of the Federal Government Girls College, Gboko, died on October 21 after five years of anal and vaginal rape led to vesicovaginal fistula (VVF) and other health complications.

This occurred when she was living with the family of the two men, a father and his son, who raped her.

The statement added that her death was as a result of alleged sexual abuse by Andrew Ogbuja, Head of Department, Catering and Hotel Management at the Benue State Polytechnic, Ugbokolo, Benue State, and his son, Victor Ogbuja, a final year student of Animal Production at the Federal University of Agriculture, Makurdi.

According to NAPTIP, Mrs Ogbuja, who got hint of plans to arrest her, absconded to Lagos and later to Abuja before she finally returned to Markudi were she was arrested Friday afternoon.

Speaking on the development, NAPTIP Director  General, Julie Okah- Donli, said the suspect will be investigated to ascertain her level of connivance in the incident and thereafter charged to court.

I am still pained by the tragic death of the Late Elizabeth Ochaya Ogbaje and the only thing we can do to ensure that her groaning spirit rest in peace is to ensure that full dose of justice is served on all those that are directly or indirectly involved in the unwholesome act that led to her death.

It is important to establish the status of people around the late girl who had knowledge of her ordeal and yet refused to report to the Law enforcement Agencies who would have rescued her.

We cannot continue to fold our hands while our children are been sexually molested and assaulted by people that ought to have protected them. This case at hand will be a case that will be monitored and all those linked in one way or the other shall all be made to face the full weight of the law.

I also want to use this opportunity to appeal to all State Governors to domesticate the Violence Against Persons Prohibition Act (VAPP) which is presently applicable in the Federal Capital Territory. This Act is designed to ensure that our children and other vulnerable classes of the society are protected.

It is important to point out that domesticating the VAPP is another form of giving the citizen real divided of democracy, Ms Okah-Donli said.

Meanwhile, Mr Ogbuja was arrested by the police, arraigned before a Makurdi Upper Area Court in August 2018 and remanded in prison but his son fled.

The death of the victim ignited protests by several civil society organisations in Abuja, Makurdi and other parts of Nigeria.

Mr Ogbuja has been remanded in prison till the next date of hearing of the matter in court on November 29.
No fewer than 15 cow traders from four villages in Maiyama Local Government Area of Kebbi State have been reportedly killed in an auto crash on their way to Lagos on Sunday.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) gathered that the traders, from Andare, Katenga and Maiyama, were heading to Lagos to sell their cows before the unfortunate accident.

It was gathered that the truck, which was loaded with cows, lost control along Maiyama-Koko road, veered-off the road before it tumbled into the bush.

An eyewitness, Garba Maiyama, told NAN that 15 of the traders died in the accident and they have been taken to their respective villages for burial because they are Muslims.

The most unfortunate part of the incident is that a family in one village has about three to five victims.

We dont really know the main cause of the accident for now, said the witness.

When contacted, the Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), Kebbi State Police Command, DSP Danjuma Possy, told NAN that the incident had not been reported officially.

(NAN)
The Senate leader, Ahmed Lawan, on Saturday, dismissed the chances of victory for the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in 2019.

Mr Lawan said the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) will not only retain power but also form majority at the National Assembly.

The lawmaker from Yobe State said the next National Assembly will be dominated and led by the legislators from the ruling party.

Mr Lawan spoke with PREMIUM TIMES on Saturday in Bauchi State, during the partys zonal stakeholders meeting that held in the state capital.

He said the APC and its Senate caucus is not worried by the wave of defections that plagued the ruling party before and after the primaries.

The Nigerian National Assembly is currently led by the opposition party despite the slight majority of the APC.

Mr Lawan who dismissed the candidature of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, the flag bearer of the PDP, said integrity and historical track record will inform the choice of who becomes the next president.

He said APC has, in the last three and half years, impressed Nigerians and exposed the failures of PDPs 26 years of rule.

APC as a political party today, especially in the Senate, and the APC Senate caucus, is more united than ever before, said Mr Lawan.

The defections in National Assembly, particularly, really left us with no options than continue to be united; continue to remain focused; continue to be supportive of President Buhari; to continue the support for our political party APC at all times.

The 2019 general election, especially the National Assembly legislative elections will produce a majority in the Senate and House of Representatives, by the grace of God, for APC.

And this time around, let me say without fear of any contradiction that the members of the House of Reps and senators that will be produced by the APC will be those that will continue to support President Muhammadu Buhari in whatever way he wants to lead Nigeria; that is to make Nigeria better; bring change in Nigeria, and take Nigeria to the next level. We are all prepared to give him all the possible support.

Secondly, we are prepared to remain very loyal to our party, the APC; the decision of our party on all matters will continue to remain supreme.

What Nigerians would expect is an APC-dominated National Assembly; both the Senate and House that will be very transformative in its orientation; an APC dominated National Assembly that will continue to identify with aspirations of Nigerians as espoused by the APC manifesto and programmes of APC.

Nigerians should expect an APC dominated National Assembly that will continue to remain committed to partnering, consulting and cooperating with Mr President Muhammadu Buhari; and an APC dominated National that will not witness any defections.

He said the exit of Senate President Bukola Saraki and Speaker Yakubu Dogara from APC has only strengthened the party.

We have known for a long time that there were people who took advantage of the APC in 2015 and therefore they rode into the National Assembly as members of the party. By the grace of God, our party was sanitised when they left.

Those that have remained are committed, very loyal and patriotic citizens of this country and will continue to remain really responsible and responsive to Nigerians wishes and to our partys programs and manifesto.

It is a decision for someone to defect but let me tell you that we already have finished our primaries; those that have emerged are people of integrity, people of orientation that will continue to be a guiding light for this country.

I want to say that, at the moment, our worry is not for those that have left; our worry is for those that are in.

Our main concern is for those that will win elections; that will remain committed to our party; that will remain loyal and committed to our administration.

And by the grace of God President Muhammadu Buhari will be elected and APC will dominate the Senate as the majority party, and it will do the same in the House of Representatives by the grace of God.

The senator also argued that President Buharis performance has attracted new support for the president and the party.

I want to tell you that there are so many people who, before this time, did not believe in any political party, he said. But after seeing what President Muhammadu Buhari has done, with the little resources at his disposal across country, have now decided to give their support for President Buhari even when they dont believe in a political party.

So many have also told themselves that they now believe that APC is ready to bring positive change to Nigeria;

I want to say that the 2019 general elections will be determined by integrity; the 2019 general elections will be determined by the history of candidates.

The senator also spoke on the privatisation of public facilities executed by the past PDP aspirations. He said Mr Buhari is not someone that believes in a corrupt privatisation process.

We know what other candidates of the other parties were before; we know what they didnt do for us; we know what they did to Nigeria, in the area of destroying Nigeria. They privatised our common patrimony; they sold everything that was government to themselves; and they also intend, if they come back, God forbids, to sell the remaining things to themselves.

We are not going to accept this, President Muhammadu Buhari never desires or intends to do anything like that. Whatever he does is for the interest of Nigeria; whatever he does is for the future of Nigeria. And we believe that Nigerians know these facts and therefore we do not have to do so much in the area of campaign.

But let me remind Nigerians that when President Muhammadu Buhari came in 2015, Nigerias revenue and resources were down; and yet go across Nigeria and see the kind of projects that this government under his leadership is putting on all parts of Nigeria.

In 2014 and 2015 the PDP administration of former President Jonathan Goodluck spent only 15 per cent of the annual budget.

But today we spent over N2 trillion between 2015 and 2018 and we are to spend 2.8 million dollars this year for the 2018 budget.

We are doing so much with so little and I want to assure that Nigerians are not blind or deaf; Nigerian are wise and I want to advise that we will continue to remain focused, that nobody should receive us.

They (PDP) had power and we know how they misused power. They made us suffer; they created Boko Haram; just like a late NSA from Bayelsa State had once said; PDP created Boko Haram; the APC demolished Boko Haram.

So far so good, the president is on his way to a resounding victory, by the grace of God.
As the 2019 general elections draw closer, campaigns for the presidential and National Assembly polls formally started last Sunday, in accordance with the timetable set by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

President Muhammad Buhari, the presidential candidate of the All progressives Congress (APC), and Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) set the pace by releasing their policy documents.

Sunday

 President Buhari pledged to renovate 10,000 schools each year, across Nigeria if re-elected for a second term next year.

Mr Buhari made the promise during the public presentation of his campaign manual titled Next Level at a ceremony at the State House Presidential Villa, Abuja. Hei said if re-elected, he will focus on education.

Monday

 Mr Abubakar of the PDP announced he would present his policy document for the presidential election campaigns at a live Facebook event. He described the document as his vision for a prosperous Nigeria.

Mr Abubakar had spent the preceding months criss-crossing the country, engaging Nigerians on key elements of his Get Nigerian Working Again slogan, with economy, unity and national security taking the front-row.

He said Nigerians would now get a chance to see the entire document when it was unveiled on Facebook and Twitter at 12:00 p.m. , only a few minutes away through the handles: Facebook.com/Atiku.org and Twitter.com/Atiku.

Mr Abubakar said the document would be uploaded on his campaign website, Atiku.org, shortly after the live broadcast, and encouraged Nigerians home and away to download and review it

-As President Buhari and former Vice President Abubakar launched their presidential campaigns Sunday and Monday respectively, two of their rivals warned against choosing either of the two veterans.

Atiku Abubakar

Omoyele Sowore of the African Action Congress (AAC) and Oby Ezekwesili of Allied Congress Party of Nigeria (ACPN) described the two front runners as failed participants in Nigerias democratic history.

According to a statement on Monday, Mr Sowore spoke while addressing Nigerians in Diaspora at a town hall meeting and fundraiser organised by his campaign group, #TakeItBack Movement, at the Christ International Community Church, Columbus, Ohio, United States of America.

He warned Nigerians to be cautious of the fake promises and documents which will be used by some candidates to deceive unsuspecting Nigerians.

Mr Sowore, who is seeking elective office for the first time in Nigeria, said as the campaigns start officially, he would allow the opposition lead while he catches up when he returns to Nigeria.

On the other hand, Mrs Ezekwesili also spoke on Monday but in Abuja, urging Nigerians not to resign to low standards by voting for parties like the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and All Progressives Congress (APC).

She said the mistakes of previous PDP administrations were being repeated by President Buhari of the APC.

The former minister of education assured Nigerians she would fulfill her electoral promises, adding that a situation where elected candidates deny their promises was bad for Nigerias growth.

Tuesday:

-Former President Goodluck Jonathan on the occasion of his 61st birthday launched his book titled My Transition Hours at the Congress Hall of Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Abuja.

This event was attended by notable persons like former Vice President Namadi Sambo, former presidents of Ghana, Benin and Sierra Leone, the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, former Senate minority leader, Godswill Akpabio, former Senate president, David Mark, PDP national chairman, Uche Secondus, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, the national chairman of the governing All Progressives Congress, Adams Oshiomhole, presidential candidate of the PDP, Mr Abubakar, among many others.

-At his book launch, Mr Jonathan railed against the conduct of Barack Obama, describing the former U.S. president as overbearing and condescending in his message to Nigerians ahead of the 2015 general elections.

He said Mr Obama displayed an unusual level of bias by issuing a video appeal to Nigerians which all but advised them on which candidate to give their mandate. Mr Jonathan lost his reelection bid.

Mr Jonathan also suggested a vast conspiracy by the Independent National Electoral Commission partly cost him his re-election in 2015.

Mr Jonathan of the PDP conceded defeat to Mr Buhari of the APC on March 31, 2015, heralding the first victory for an opposition platform in Nigerias presidential election history.

Wednesday:

-A day after the public presentation of his book, My Transition Hour, Mr Jonathan was criticised by the Borno State Governor, Kashim Shettima, who described the book as elementary and containing fiction.

Borno State, Kashim Shattima. [Photo credit: Pulse.ng]

Mr Shettima said the former president lied about the issue of the Chibok schoolgirls, who were abducted in 2014. The issue was included in Mr Jonathans new book.

-INEC asked parties to stick to the electoral laws in their campaigns.

The chairman of the commission, Mahmood Yakubu, said this during a meeting with resident electoral commissioners (RECs) at the commissions headquarters in Abuja.

Thursday:

-A day after two members of the House of Representatives dumped the ruling APC, two others also announced their movement to other parties.

The two lawmakers are Ahmed Abu, who represents Lavun/Mokwa/Idati federal constituency of Niger State, and Olemija Stephen, who represents Akoko North-East/West of Ondo State.

In a letter read by the Speaker, Yakubu Dogara on Thursday, the duo based their defection on the conduct of the APC primaries.

Mr Abu announced he was defecting to the Social Democratic Party (SDP) while his colleague, Mr Olemija, defected to Action Alliance (AA).

Similarly, one of the two members who defected on Wednesday but did not declare for a political party, Mukaila Kazeem, formally announced his membership of Allied Peoples Movement (APM)

-The presidential candidate of ACPN, Mrs Ezekwesili, revealed how her government will tackle Boko Haram insurgency if elected in the 2019 general election.

She said her government will completely overhaul the security system to win the war against Boko Haram.

The former minister of education made this known in an interview on a CNN programme with Christiane Amanpour on Wednesday evening.

-Mr Jonathan has raised an alarm that a fake copy of his book, My Transition Hours, launched on Tuesday, was being pirated online.

PREMIUM TIMES checked through the pirated PDF copy trending on WhatsApp and observed it has 254 pages against the original which has 194 pages.

We have just been informed that a fake document contrived by mischief makers is being passed on as the e-version and hard copy of the just launched #MyTransitionHours, Mr Jonathan stated on Twitter.

-The PDP presidential candidate, Mr Abubakar, mourned dozens of Nigerians soldiers who lost their lives after Boko Haram terrorists invaded their bases in Nigerias volatile northeast on Sunday.

A Nigerian Army commander was also amongst those killed during the pre-dusk raid on 157 Task Force Battalion in Metele, Borno State, PREMIUM TIMES learnt from multiple military sources.

As of Thursday morning, fresh findings by PREMIUM TIMES indicate at least 70 soldiers might have been killed in the attack by the insurgents.

The Nigerian Senate adjourned session on Thursday in honour of the fallen heroes, most of whose loved ones have not been notified by the military. Neither the presidency nor the military has issued a statement about the tragedy, which occurred on November 18.

The killings on Sunday followed months of heavy losses of both personnel and equipment which the insurgents have been inflicting on Nigerian military since resuming their latest campaign in July.

Expressing concerns about the frequency of the attacks, Mr Abubakar said funding has been a major challenge for the Nigerian military, but one which must not be allowed to linger much longer.

-The Senate asked the police in Akwa Ibom to immediately vacate the state House of Assembly complex.

The demand was made after a senator, Bassey Akpan, explained the situation in the states House of Assembly.

The police had on Wednesday sealed off the premises without giving reasons for their action.

The closure came barely 48 hours after angry youth, who are members of the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC), stormed the assembly complex protesting the sacking of a lawmaker, Idongesit Ituen.

Friday:

-The APC condemned moves by the Senate to investigate the situation surrounding the recent Kwara State by-election.

The party, in a statement by its publicity secretary, Lanre Issa-Onilu, said this was an abuse of power, as the Senate is not an election tribunal.

The Senate had on Wednesday directed its Committee on Police Affairs to investigate the alleged harassment, intimidation and molestation by security operatives, before, during and after the Kwara House of Representatives by-election, last Saturday.

This directive came after the senator representing Kwara South Senatorial District, Rafiu Ibrahim, drew the senates attention to the roles allegedly played by the police in the poll.

-The gate of the Akwa Ibom State House of Assembly, Uyo, was reopened for members of the public to go into the assembly complex, three days after the police sealed off the complex following a crisis over the defection of five lawmakers.

This came after the seats of the five lawmakers were declared vacant by the speaker, Onofiok Luke, for defecting from the ruling PDP to the APC.

Saturday:

-Former military head of state, Abdulsalami Abubakar, urged Nigerian youth to stop criticising the failures of government and misrule of bad leaders but rise up and vote out incompetent governments.

The retired general also urged Nigerian parents to dissuade their children and wards from being used for violence in the upcoming general elections in 2019.

Mr Abubakar staid this at the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS) in Kuru, where he delivered a speech at an annual lecture on Election and Security in Nigeria: Policy Options and Strategies ahead of the Graduation Ceremony of the Senior Executive Course (SEC)

-The Sultan of Sokoto, Saad Abubakar III, urged Nigerians to hold President Muhammadu Buhari to his promise on the conduct of free, fair and credible general elections in 2019.

President Muhammadu Buhari

Mr Abubakar made the statement at the 2018 second general meeting of the Nigeria Inter-Religious Council (NIREC), youths wings summit.

-A week after killing of military personnel in Metele village of Borno State by Boko Haram terrorists, President Buhari expressed deep shock over the incident, assuring at the same time that immediate measures were being taken to ensure that the loopholes which led to the fatalities are blocked once and for all.

This was contained a statement Saturday night by a presidential spokesperson, Garba Shehu.

At least 118 soldiers and officers were killed when the terrorist Boko Haram sect attacked Nigerias 157 Task Force Battalion in Borno State on November 18.

Rather than explain details of the incident, and what it is doing to curtail further attacks, the Nigerian Army devoted a large part of its own reaction to bashing the media.
President Muhammadu Buhari warned on Sunday that Nigerians should desist from politicising the deaths of soldiers killed after Boko Haram overran their base in Borno State last Sunday.

At least 118 soldiers were killed and 153 missing in the attack on 157 Task Force Battalion in Metele, Borno State, according to the most-recent finding by PREMIUM TIMES.

After initial silence from both the presidency and the Nigerian military, Mr Buhari condemned the killing on Saturday, six days after the attack, promising to wipe out the insurgency and prioritise the plight of Nigerian troops involved in the counter-insurgency operations.

The presidents comments came a day after the military finally confirmed the attack on Friday night, five days after the attack on November 18. The Nigerian Army said reports of over 100 losses recorded in the media were untrue but failed to provide its internal casualty estimates.

In reiterating his administrations commitment to defeating the insurgency on Sunday, Mr Buhari emphasised the need for Nigerians to see the insurgents as common enemies, and shun the urge to seek political advantage from their evil campaign.

We must resist the temptation to play politics with the tragedy of the deaths of our soldiers, Mr Buhari said on Twitter Sunday afternoon. They are heroes on the frontlines, fighting to make Nigeria a safer place for us all.

Rest assured that the circumstances that have led to these deaths will be comprehensively addressed, the president added.

He did not specifically mention any political parties or individuals whom he had seen as politicising the killings.

Widespread mourning has gripped the country since PREMIUM TIMES first broke the news on Tuesday morning that dozens of soldiers, including their commander, had been killed in the attack, which occurred at about 6:00 p.m. in Melete.

The base had previously been attacked on October 8, but it seemed the military did not fortify it to withstand future aggression from Boko Haram thugs.

Atiku Abubakar, the main opposition presidential candidate, has condemned the attack and offered what he saw as solutions to the ten-year campaign by the jihadists. Mr Abubakar said there should be increased and prioritised focus on both the military expenditures and the timeframe required to approve them.

He also approved scholarships for five selected families of the fallen soldiers and urged the government to set up a trust for the care of fallen heroes families.

His suggestions came on the same day the Nigerian Senate suspended plenary over the killings, one of many that have occured since mid-July when Boko Haram elements raided multiple bases in Borno and Yobe.

The Senate urged the president to investigate to direct service chiefs on proper fortification of military bases to forestal future attacks.
A Nigerian poet, Ikeogu Oke, is dead.

Mr Oke last year won the Nigeria Prize for Literature sponsored by the NLNG for his collection of poems, The Heresiad.

The poet and former journalist died at the National Hospital in Abuja on Saturday, his friends told PREMIUM TIMES.

His death was first announced by his friend, fellow poet and journalist, Uzor Maxim Uzoatu, on his Facebook page.

Two other close friends of the deceased confirmed the death to PREMIUM TIMES

As a journalist, Mr Oke worked at the now-rested Next Newspapers as well as Daily Times.

Mourning him Sunday, Gbemiga Ogunleye, his former colleague at NEXT, wrote on his Facebook Page:

And the poet died!

Like many Nigerians who knew and had a relationship with Ikeogu Oke, I am still in shock.

Ikeogu was part of the star-studded team of Journalists assembled by the duo of Dele Olojede and Dapo Olorunyomi to bring into fruition the NEXT newspaper.

As the Chief Standards Editor, it was my privilege to lead a team that included the talented poet.

One complaint against Ikeogu then was that he was too meticulous!

He spent too much time cleaning out copies than our production time would allow.

Each time I raised my voice to complain, he would disarm me with his smile and a genuine apology.

For him, any story that passed through him must be completely error-free. He, therefore, took his time fumigating every story passed to him.

I need not say that he was a good writer.

His winning the 2017 NLNG prize for poetry was proof-positive of that.

In spite of his celebrity status, Ikeogu was always happy to introduce me as his boss!

The poet, perhaps sure he might not overvome the ailment that eventually took his life, had pulled a fast one on us all by writing his epitaph two months ago!

Or was he afraid of being misrepresented in death?

Ike Ogu had written: HERE LIES A MAN WHO LOVE VIRTUE AND ART. AND GAVE TO BOTH HIS FORTUNES AND HIS HEART  IKEOGU OKE (1967-).

How did Shakespeare put it? Death is a necessary end, will come when it will come.

Ikeogus turn has come! We await ours!

May the good Lord be with his family!

May his gentle soul rest in peace!

Betty Abah, writer, journalist and activist, who, like Mr. Oke, attended the University of Calabar, wrote the tribute below in honour of the departed poet.

Ikeogu Oke: Tearful Ode to Our Poet Laureate

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Just last year, Ikeogu Oke won the NLNG Nigeria Prize for Literature, riding on the wings of his poetic endeavor. It was the crowning of his literary career. He was officially the nations Poet Laureate of the Year since the Prize, worth $100, 000, remains the biggest on the Nigerian literary scene and perhaps one of the biggest on the continent. A poetic genius had been announced to the world.

Yet long before then, some of us had known Ikeogus creative genius. At the University of Calabar, where he had his undergraduate education, Ikeogu was beyond doubt the most prolific and most colourful poet of our time at the English and Literary Studies (ELS) around 1995-1998, and definitely, one of the very brightest students. He was a senior many of us held in awe. A restless and unforgettable soul, he was the one who saw and created poetry from everythinga casual conversation, a fleeting encounter, a classmate of mine with whom he fell in lovejust about everythingand never forgetting his trademark musical rhyming at each verses end. When he contested for the presidency of the English and Literary Students Association (ELSA) around 1997, his campaign slogan of Okey is Okay and general campaign candour stood him out even if didnt eventually win. True, Ikeogu was never one to shy away from controversies yet he never lost his characteristically calm humaneness. Who can forget his warm, handful handshakes and charming smiles?

In recent years Ikeogus poetic ingenuity became more visible and more alluring with the additional feathers of performance poetry he brought into his practice and through which he promoted the Igbo culture on local and international platforms while also creatively breathing life into his thoughts on universal themes, his trademark animal skin dress, traditiobal cap and other paraphernalia to boot.

And just when the wider world began to turn to appreciate his unique gifting, he was gone!

I owe Ikeogu an eternal debt of gratitude. He alongside other seniors including Anayochukwu Agbo, Fidelis Okoroegbe (Fidel Castrol), Mekis Chukwuemeka (Teacher Mekes), Abiye Opuamah, Joy Esukuy Esuku and a few others helped nurture my literary talent from when I made a naive entry into the vibrant ELS, UNICAL aged 21 in late 1995. From encouraging talks to having my poems published on the literary press boards to the departmental magazine, The Quill, they helped fan my literary embers.

Ever so amiable and so down-to-earth, Ikeogu, with my ELS classmate, now eminent Abuja journalist, Emmanuel Ogbeche and ELS junior, and then UNDP staff, Judith Abraham-Ephraim alongside TELL Magazine colleague, Bob Etemiku were my cheerleaders at my public book reading at the Abuja Writers Society in 2012 courtesy of Emman Shehu and facilitated by my publisher, Richard Mammah. Ikeogu brought me a copy of his poetry collection, The Heresiad (which won the NLNG Prize, with the spectacular musical notes at the end). In August last year, after he read my interview in The Daily Trust, he made a cutting and couriered it to me with an autographed copy of his reprinted award-winning book, complete with a warm, handwritten note, in his beautiful, meticulous fashion. Always so thoughtful.

Just this May, the ELS department in UNICAL duly recognized Ikeogu with a merit award during the silver jubilee anniversary celebration of the famous Calabar International Conference on African Literature and the English Language (ICALEL). I was similarly awarded but missed the conference and a last chance of a warm hug and banters with the charismatic poet laureate.

The sudden demise of Abia State-born Ikeogu at only 51 is one that is so very hard to accept. How, how do we lose such huge talent, such personification of intense, accumulated knowledge, such a profound national asset? Did the Nigerian system, as usual, fail him? Could he still have been here, making more inspiring poetry and attaining more creative milestones were our healthcare in a better state? What actually went wrong? Why Ikeogu and why now?

A gem is gone. Our land, our universe is verily diminished.

Good night, dear Ikeogu. And I am still hoping this is a dream. Alas, a very bad dream.
Multiple deaths have been reported after a rescue team dispatched to comb the area in the aftermath of the November 18 Boko Haram attack on Nigerian soldiers in Borno State came under insurgents fire on November 19, military sources have told PREMIUM TIMES.

The rescue, treatment and evacuation team was sent from Baga, Borno State, to Metele, home to the Nigerian Army 157 Task Force Battalion that lost scores of soldiers on Sunday.

The rescue team members were selected from the Nigerian Army 7 Task Force Brigade stationed in Baga.

At least 118 soldiers were killed and 153 missing in the Sunday attack on 157 Task Force Battalion in Metele, Borno State, according to the most recent finding by PREMIUM TIMES.

While recovering the bodies within the Metele area, Boko Haram fighters launched another attack on the team, a top military source told PREMIUM TIMES on Saturday.

Additional casualties were recorded including that of the head of the medical team and scores of others, the source added.

The account of the source was confirmed by another military chief who was amongst those who coordinated the rescue efforts. The officer told PREMIUM TIMES on Sunday Boko Haram appeared to have laid an ambush in anticipation of the rescue teams arrival in Metele.

The leader of the rescue team was identified by military sources as Nsor, a major and physician. He was amongst the scores of rescuers killed during the attack, during which Boko Haram also stole military equipment.

About 152 officers were estimated to have taken part in the rescue efforts, although a military source said the figures could be higher because some troops from another base were asked to join the initial reinforcement from Baga.

Texas Chukwu, a spokesperson for the Nigerian Army, did not return requests for comments on Sunday. John Agim, his Defence Headquarters counterpart, said he has no information about what transpired in Metele.

I do not have any information about the attack in Metele because I am on an assignment since one week ago. I have not returned yet, Mr Agim said in a message to PREMIUM TIMES Sunday evening.

The army in its first reaction to the Sunday attack on Friday evening said reported casualty figures were untrue, although it did not provide its internal figures or details of how the attack occurred.

President Muhammadu Buhari commented on the attack on Saturday, vowing to ensure the end of the insurgency and as well as care for the soldiers deployed in the volatile North-East.

In a video circulated this weekend, Nigerian soldiers deployed in the war-ravaged North-East blamed obsolete equipment and pervasive corruption amongst top military brass for the massive losses in personnel and equipment which insurgents have been inflicting on the Nigerian military since their latest evil campaign of raiding bases began July.
Leaders of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the six North-east states, led by their state governors and National Assembly members, met in Bauchi on Saturday to strategise for what they called a total victory for their presidential candidate in the 2019 general elections, Muhammadu Buhari.

APC governs four of the six states in the geo-political zone where Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Mr Buharis top challenger comes from. APC governs Adamawa, Bauchi. Borno and Yobe while Gombe and Taraba states are run by the PDP.

The APC leaders said defeating Mr Abubakar has become a task they must accomplish. Mr. Abubakar is from Adamawa, one of the six states in the zone.

Mr Abubakar, one of the richest politicians in northern Nigeria, was never known to have made any serious mileage in most of his political outings since 1999 when he won the Adamawa State governorship, before he was later picked as running mate to former President Olusegun Obasanjo.

The political fortunes of Mr. Abubakar, who now holds the traditional title of Waziri (vizier) of Adamawa, since 2011 continued to nose dive until 2018.

For the first time in his political career, he has a chance to contest the presidential election on the platform of the PDP.

The former vice president, who vied for the APC ticket in 2015 but lost to President Buhari, will now be slogging it out with an incumbent he partly assisted to power.

Despite the labrynths of uncleared corruption charges against him, many Nigerians still see his candidacy as a big threat to President Buharis second term bid.

Speaking at the APC zonal stakeholders meeting in Bauchi, the Borno State Governor, Kashim Shettima, said Mr Abubakars candidature will not deny Mr Buhari his most deserved popular votes in the Northeast.

The Northeast is a Buhari territory; and he is the single kinetic entity in the Northeast political firmament, and by Gods will his reelection is almost a forgone conclusion.

We wish the PDP candidate well, but we must not forget the fact that politics is local and is driven by local issues and President Buhari has mostly been responding to our local needs more than anyone else.

And believe me, Buhari will again ride on another victory horse coming from the Northeast.

The governor said his confidence in Mr Buharis victory was driven by historical facts.

We must remember that in Borno State back in 2015, we gave Buhari, as the APC candidate, 97.3 percent of the total votes cast in the state.

And certainly we are going to repeat the feat insha Allah. And so also are other states of the zone.

It is not a subject of dispute but a question of time that Buhari will be resoundingly reelected insha Allah.

As far as Nigerians are concerned, Buhari has done extremely well. Look at the Mambila hydro power project. He met the country in a mess and he came to fix it. Even in the security arena, though there are some challenges; but we must be fair to him. When you juxtapose the state of affairs four years ago and what is obtained now we have to give it to Buhari. Some years ago, about 22 local government areas were under the control of Boko Haram. But today the challenges have subsided.

A senator, Muhammed Ndume, who also spoke to PREMIUM TIMES, said Mr Buhari and the APC were confident of victory come 2019 even though he quickly added that we are mindful of the fact that you dont take even your weakest opponent for granted.

He said as a way forward for the APC, the party had during the stakeholders meeting constituted a reconciliation committee to address grievances that arose from the partys primaries across the country.

Thats why we are doing everything to ensure that we resolve our internal scuffles on time so that we can face the bigger fight ahead 2019.

We all know that the PDP presidential candidate is an aggressive politician, and in recent times we can say he is also a desperate politician. So we dont want to take anything for granted, he said.

The Adamawa State Governor, Jibrilla Bindow, told the APC gathering in Bauchi that the zone must do everything in its powers to ensure his kinsman is defeated.

We cannot pretend not to know the capacity of Atiku Abubakar as a crafty politician who can go extra mile to achieve his goals, he said.

Atiku Abubakar

He said the first step towards defeating the former vice president is to unite the APC and reconcile all the grievances.

The APC leader at the Senate, Ahmed Lawan, said Mr Buharis three and a half years rule has not only transformed Nigeria but also won new converts into having interest in party politics.

I want to tell you that there are so many people who, before this time, did not believe in any political party. But after seeing what President Muhammadu Buhari has done, with the little resources at his disposal across country, have now decided to give their support for President Buhari even when they dont believe in a political party.

So many have also told themselves that they now believe that APC is ready to bring positive change to Nigeria.

He said APC will be selling character and integrity to Nigerians come 2019.

I want to say that the 2019 general elections will be determined by integrity; the 2019 general elections will be determined by the history of candidates.

We know what other candidates of the other parties were before; we know what they didnt do for us; we know what they did to Nigeria, in the area of destroyng Nigeria. They privatised our common patrimony; they sold everything that was government to themselves; and they also intend, if they come back, God forbids, to sell the remaining things to themselves.

We are not going to accept this; President Muhammadu Buhari never desires or intends to do anything like that. What ever he does is for the interest of Nigeria; whatever he does is for the future of Nigeria.

And we believe that Nigerians know this facts and therefore we dont have to do so much in the area of campaign.

The host governor, Muhammed Abubakar of Bauchi, said Bauchi in particular and the North-east in general is the political and electoral home of President Buahari. But he sent out a word of warning for the party not to underestimate the cunny ways of the former vice president.

We all know him very well and we must not take him for granted, he said.
The Akwa Ibom state government has named the Ibom International Airport after Victor Attah, the second civilian governor of the state.

Mr Attah, widely revered as the father of modern Akwa Ibom, conceived and began building the airport when he was governor between 1999 and 2007.

The airport, managed by the state government, is one of the busiest in Nigerias South-south region.

By the special resolution from the Akwa Ibom State House of Assembly, I now rename Akwa Ibom International Airport to Victor Attah International Airport, the state governor, Udom Emmanuel, said on Saturday, during a state banquet organised in Uyo to honour Mr Attah on his 80 birthday.

There was a loud ovation from the crowd at the banquet.

The people kept shouting and clapping, joyfully, as Mr Udom and Mr Attah hugged each other passionately.

Because you have honoured me tonight, in future somebody will also honour you, Mr Attah told the governor.

One group in Akwa Ibom, Greater Peoples Forum for Social & Economic Development, has been leading a campaign for the naming of the Ibom airport after the former governor.

Obong Victor Attah fought and won several battles for Akwa Ibom state, the chief among them being the 13 per cent oil derivation fund which we are currently enjoying in the state. It will be a befitting recognition and honour, therefore, if we as a people do at least this one thing for him.

An international stadium has been named after Senator Godswill Akpabio, while the beautiful state secretariat has been named after the former governor, Otuekong Idongesit Nkanga. It is only natural at this point in our history that the Akwa Ibom International Airport be named after Obong Victor Attah, the group had said in June this year while pleading with Governor Emmanuel to take steps to name the airport after Mr Attah.
After a week of closure due to the hijab controversy, the International School, Ibadan will resume academic activities on Monday.

The chairman of the schools board and deputy vice-chancellor of the parent University of Ibadan, Abideen Aderinto, made the disclosure to our correspondent by phone on Sunday.

Mr Aderinto said the status quo regarding dress code for the pupils would be maintained, despite the agitation from Muslim parents who want their kids to wear hijab to school.

Those seeking the change in the dress code of the school or any other school rule must go through due process, Mr Aderinto said.

And even at that, he added, the ultimate decision still lies with the Board of Governors of the school.

Asked if students wearing their hijab would be allowed in on Monday, the don simply said: All I can say is: [the schools] dress code would be maintained.

Similarly, earlier today, parents had received a text message from the school management informing them of the reopening of the school on Monday.

This is to inform all students, staff and parents that ISI, UI will reopen on Monday, 26/11/2018 to continue the first term (2018/2019) session, reads the message.

PREMIUM TIMES had reported the closure of the school last Monday following the demonstrations by some parents calling for the institutionalization of hijab in the school.

The continuous barring of the hijab-wearing students into the school had sparked the ire of their parents, thereby leading to the demonstration. Though, the school insists on maintaining its dress code.

The demonstrators, led by Ismail Busari, had said the demonstration was to forestall the tests that were slated for last Monday wherein their hijab wearing children wouldnt be allowed to partake in.

Before now, however, series of meetings had been convened among the Muslim Parents Forum (the Forum that kick-started the demand for wearing of hijab), the universitys Muslim community, representatives of the Board of Governors and the university management.

On Friday, the Chief Imam of the university, Abdurrahman Oloyede, during his Friday sermon, advised parents to keep peace in the school now that we have met the vice chancellor and he promised to get back to us.

The opposition of the school management to allow female students wear hijab has been condemned by major Islamic groups in Nigeria including the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs.
"As healthcare continues to transform from a volume- to a value-based approach, and the amount of data available for each clinical decision dramatically grows, our customers are seeking more seamless, integrated solutions to enable more precise diagnosis and treatment," said Robert Cascella , Chief Business Leader Diagnosis & Treatment, Philips. "We've accelerated our pace of innovation, with 70% of our Diagnostic Imaging portfolio renewed within the past two years. We're also harnessing the power of artificial intelligence across the imaging enterprise, from improving workflow to supporting clinical decisions."

AI for radiology

Philips IntelliSpace Discovery 3.0 [1] is a comprehensive, open platform to enable the development and deployment of Artificial Intelligence assets in radiology with the aim to support radiologists in their clinical and translational research. IntelliSpace Discovery is already a proven research platform, used by more than 50 hospitals and academic institutions worldwide for the development of radiology applications for rendering, segmentation, and quantification. For example, it is being used for research and clinical validation and subsequently the tools/applications can be deployed into the radiology workflow on the Philips IntelliSpace Portal [2]. With the introduction of IntelliSpace Discovery 3.0 the platform now provides research applications and tools for radiologists to aggregate, normalize and anonymize data, which can be visualized and annotated to 'train' and validate deep learning algorithms. They can then easily deploy these algorithms as plug-in apps into the research workflow to analyze new datasets and help facilitate clinical research in radiology, oncology, neurology and cardiology.

Lowering the cost of care and improving efficiency

Philips has expanded IntelliSpace Enterprise Edition to include Philips PerformanceBridge. Providing access to real-time departmental performance data in an easy-to-use and interactive dashboard, PerformanceBridge offers a flexible suite of solutions to help optimize operational and workflow efficiency. The combined solution bridges the gap between data and decision-making across the enterprise to drive continuous improvement, supported by dedicated advisors and services. Philips IntelliSpace Enterprise Edition combines the Philips IntelliSpace Radiology and Cardiology portfolios with PerformanceBridge into a scalable, interoperable and secure hospital-wide solution for clinical and operational informatics, providing continuous improvement to enable healthcare enterprises to grow and transform.

Philips' Ingenia Ambition 1.5T MR is the latest advance in the Ingenia MRI portfolio. The portfolio comprises fully-digital MRI systems, healthcare informatics and a range of maintenance and life cycle services for integrated solutions that break down diagnostic boundaries by delivering speed, comfort and confidence, all with the aim to help improve patient care. It includes Philips Compressed SENSE, an advanced acceleration application that reduces exam times by up to 50% [3]. Compressed SENSE is now available across the full Philips Ingenia MR range, including systems that are already installed.

Incorporating Philips' breakthrough BlueSeal fully-sealed magnet, the Ingenia Ambition is the world's first MR system to enable helium-free operations [4], reducing the chance of potentially lengthy and costly disruptions, and virtually eliminating dependency on a commodity with an unpredictable supply. BlueSeal does not require a vent pipe and is about 900kg lighter than its predecessor [5], significantly reducing the siting challenges presented by conventional magnets and lowering construction costs.

Improving health outcomes

At RSNA 2018 Philips will highlight the economic benefits of its IQon Elite Spectral CT systems. Study data demonstrates how the technology can increase hospital efficiency by reducing the volume of follow-up scans [6], as well as enabling some groups of patients to receive lower levels of contrast agent and reduced X-ray dosage while accelerating the time to diagnosis [7].

Philips' Pinnacle Evolution is the next generation of the Philips Pinnacle treatment planning software and the first to feature Personalized Planning to enable clinicians to quickly create patient-specific, high-quality therapy plans. The Big Bore RT is a CT system designed to provide precise treatment planning through enhanced accuracy in lesion identification, tissue density calculation and segmentation. In addition, Philips' new fully-digital Ingenia MR-RT platform comprises the Ingenia Elition 3.0T MR-RT and Ambition X 1.5T MR-RT systems.

Improving the patient experience

The new Philips DigitalDiagnost C90 premium ceiling-mounted digital radiography system [8] supports patient throughput with innovative tools to help drive workflow efficiency. The system's Eleva Tube Head touch screen display transfers operation into the examination room for an even more patient-centered workflow. The live camera helps with patient positioning by providing a clear view of the collimated area, which can help alleviate potential imprecise collimation such as with bariatric patients. The DigitalDiagnost C90 incorporates the Philips Eleva user interface, a common platform across a range of Philips digital radiography systems that's easy-to-learn and customizable to allow a smooth and efficient, patient-focused workflow. The system includes Variofocus X-ray tubes, fixed and wireless detectors and Philips' Unique 2 image processing, which provides superb images of all anatomical areas.

At RSNA 2018 Philips is also highlighting new study data that shows radiologists continue to face efficiency challenges during MR scans. The main challenges reported in the study were patient motion and anxiety, which often results in the need for follow-up scans and an increased time to diagnosis. Whilst most respondents stated they used sedation or medication to reduce rescans, the study highlights more patient-focused approaches to managing patient stress and motion resulting in MRI productivity gains [9]. For example, the Philips Ambient Experience and in-bore Connect solution offers an immersive audio-visual experience may help calm patients, improving the quality of service for the patient. Herlev Gentofte University Hospital in Denmark managed to reduce the number of rescans by up to 70% [10] using the Ambient Experience in-bore Connect solution with its Ingenia 3.0T MR, allowing radiologists to handle more patients per day [11].

Improving staff satisfaction

Many clinicians depend on ultrasound to enhance detection of breast cancers, especially in women with dense breast tissue. Philips' new 'ultimate ultrasound solution for breast assessment' is available with the Philips EPIQ and Affiniti ultrasound systems, and the combination of the eL18-4 transducer and anatomical intelligence. This all-in-one solution brings together high-quality imaging with complementary clinical tools tailored for breast screenings and diagnosis. With the new breast solution, clinicians can efficiently assess, monitor and treat breast diseases, increasing diagnostic confidence.

For more information about Philips' latest innovations at RSNA, please visit www.philips.com/newscenter. Follow @PhilipsLiveFrom for #RSNA18 live updates throughout the event including a livestream of Philips' exclusive 'Insights in Innovation Night' featuring customer and thought leader insights on transforming health for the future (Monday November 26, 18:50 CT). Discover Philips' complete portfolio of integrated imaging systems, devices, informatics and services on booth #6734 in Hall B at McCormick Place.

[1] Philips IntelliSpace Discovery is for Research use only and cannot be used for patient diagnosis or treatment selection.

[2] Tools/applications deployed to ISP are compliant with medical device regulations.

[3] Using Compressed SENSE technology and compared to Philips exams without Compressed SENSE.

[4] The Ingenia Ambition 1.5T contains less than 0.5% of the helium of a conventional system and this is permanently sealed inside the device.

[5] Compared to the Ingenia 1.5T ZBO magnet.

[6] Rajiah P, et al. Benefit and clinical significance of retrospectively obtained spectral data with a novel detector-based spectral computed tomography  Initial experiences and results. Clin Imaging. 2017 Oct 31;49:65-72.

[7] "Economic impact of IQon for patients with renal insufficiency", whitepaper published by Philips, Nov 2017.

[8] DigitalDiagnost C90 is 510(k) pending and not available for sale in USA.

[9] "Realizing productivity gains during MRI scans", whitepaper published by Philips, Nov 2018.

[10] Results from case studies are not predictive of results in other cases. Results in other cases may vary.

[11] Compared to the average of the other five Philips MR scanners without Ambient Experience and In-bore Connect. Results from case studies are not predictive of results in other studies. Results in other cases may vary.

For further information, please contact:

Kathy O'Reilly

Philips Group Press Office

Tel.: +1 978 221 8919

E-mail: [email protected]

Twitter: kathyoreilly

Mark Groves

Philips Group Press Office

Tel.: +31 631 639 916

E-mail: [email protected]

Twitter: mark_groves

About Royal Philips

Royal Philips (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHIA) is a leading health technology company focused on improving people's health and enabling better outcomes across the health continuum from healthy living and prevention, to diagnosis, treatment and home care. Philips leverages advanced technology and deep clinical and consumer insights to deliver integrated solutions. Headquartered in the Netherlands, the company is a leader in diagnostic imaging, image-guided therapy, patient monitoring and health informatics, as well as in consumer health and home care. Philips generated 2017 sales of EUR 17.8 billion and employs approximately 77,000 employees with sales and services in more than 100 countries. News about Philips can be found at www.philips.com/newscenter.

SOURCE Royal Philips

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CHICAGO, Nov. 25, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Perspectum Diagnostics is showcasing the latest version of LiverMultiScan and its newest product, MRCP+, at the 104th Annual Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) meeting, November 25-30, 2018 (South Hall #3975). The company is hosting two reading rooms to demonstrate the latest quantitative biomarkers for liver and hepatobiliary disorders.

QIRR (011) shows the use of multiparametric MRI, the technology underpinning LiverMultiScan, to quantitively analyse liver tissue. This latest version of this technology is slated for release early next year, which will enable radiologists to have access to state-of-the-art, PDFF-based method for hepatic fat quantification, LiverMultiScan IDEAL (LMS IDEAL). Additional features include machine learning-based, automatic segmentation of cT1 and PDFF parametric maps of the liver parenchyma, generated by Perspectum's deep learning algorithms based on initial work published by Irving et al (2017). These new additions to LiverMultiScan, which originally received FDA clearance in 2015, will be accessible on more field strengths across major scanner manufacturers (including GE 3T).

The IDEAL method is shown to be less susceptible to fat-water swaps and image artefacts than the DIXON three-point method when quantifying liver fat. Building on this, recent data released by Hutton et al (2018) demonstrated excellent agreement of LMS IDEAL across vendors and field strengths across a wide range of PDFF and T2* values. This data supports the use of LMS IDEAL as a robust, quantitative biomarker for hepatic fat quantification.

Professor Scott Reeder, one of the pioneers of confounder-corrected MRI to quantify PDFF, stated, "Validation studies such as this are important and encouraging, as they show the reproducibility and standardization of approaches for MRI fat quantification using multiparametric MRI, that can be applied clinically."

In addition to its diagnostic capabilities, LiverMultiScan's cT1 metric is helping to bring NASH therapies to market. Data presented recently at AASLD 2018 provided further evidence that cT1 can be used in NASH clinical trials to assess efficacy, specifically in NASH resolution.

QIRR(012) will highlight quantitative analysis of the pancreatobiliary tract using novel MRCP-based technology, MRCP+, which is pending FDA 510(k) clearance. Although conventional MRCP is used extensively in the evaluation of biliary tree anatomy, its qualitative nature results in operator-dependent reads that are suboptimal for longitudinal assessment of biliary health. MRCP+ allows enhancement of existing MRCP images and quantitative mapping of the biliary tree, enabling identification of strictures and dilations, as well as calculation of bile duct widths and biliary tree volume. Recent research and case studies has shown the diagnostic potential of MRCP+ (AUROC 0.94) in Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis (PSC), (Woodward et al, 2018), a disease currently lacking effective biomarkers in clinical practice and trials. With a standardized protocol and quantitative central reads, MRCP+ has the potential to transform patient management and trial design for this indication.

SOURCE Perspectum Diagnostics
CHICAGO, Nov. 25, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The performance of QVCAD, the first AI CAD system FDA-Approved for concurrent reading of Automated Breast Ultrasound (ABUS) exams, will be covered in research presented at the 104th Annual Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) meeting, November 25-30, 2018 (South Hall #3572).

In the study, "Comparison of Automated Breast Ultrasound (ABUS) QVCAD Standalone Performance on Somov and Invenia Cases (BR253-SD-TUB7, Tuesday, November 27, 12:45-1:15 PM, BR Community, Learning Center, Station #7), researchers evaluated QVCAD standalone performance on somov and Invenia ABUS cases. The study was designed to build on a previous observer study had been performed with somov cases and to infer likely effect of QVCAD on Invenia cases. The study involved 164 somov (31 with cancer) and 145 Invenia (25 with cancer) cases, all of BI-RADS density C or D. Area under ROC curve (AUC), per-patient sensitivity and specificity, and false-positives per volume were compared. Results showed that somov and Invenia results were comparable and QVCAD standalone performance is comparable on somov and Invenia cases. The results suggest that the benefit of QVCAD for reducing reading time and producing non-inferior reader performance can be expected on Invenia cases.

With the recent emergence of AI and the FDA approval of QVCAD as a radiologist assist, Bob Wang, CEO of QView Medical offers his visionary insight into the future of Breast Screening. This whitepaper, "QView's Artificial Intelligence Technology the "QVCAD" and its Potential Impact on Breast Cancer Screening and a Clear Path to Saving Many More Lives," is available at the QView Medical RSNA press room.

QVCAD will also be featured in four sessions of the GE Vender Workshop. The session, "Introduction to QView and QVCAD/ABUS Case Review - The AI Deep Learning Radiology Assist in Reviewing GE Invenia ABUS Cases" will be held Sunday-Wednesday at 11am-12noon in Booth 8156. These sessions, led by Dr Kiyoshi Namba, Director of the Breast Cancer Center at Hokuto Healthcare Group in Japan, will cover the latest technological advancements in ABUS design and performance. Attendees will learn how improvements in workflow and image quality have the potential to increase cancer detection in women with dense breast tissue.

Being demonstrated at RSNA for the first time since being approved, QVCAD reduces interpretation time of screening ABUS exams while maintaining diagnostic accuracy. Based on deep learning algorithms, the AI system is designed to detect suspicious areas of breast tissue that have characteristics similar to breast lesions and highlight suspicious area to distinguish potentially malignant lesions from normal breast tissue. QVCAD is FDA Approved for use with ABUS systems and has received the CE mark for use with ABUS/ABVS systems.

To improve reader productivity, QVCAD provides synthetic 2D images of all six volumetric datasets in a standard ABUS exam to provide an immediately visual overview of the case. The C-thru images, which are minimum intensity projections (MinIP), summarize each 3D ABUS volume in a 2D image and bring attention to specific areas of interest by enhancement of radial spiculations and retraction patterns in coronal reconstructions, which are highly suggestive of breast cancer in ABUS. Users may select any CAD mark or area of interest on the C-thru image and the corresponding original ABUS images will be displayed, enabling users to efficiently review the entire ABUS case.

About QView Medical

QView Medical, incorporated in 2006, developed its deep learning AI-CAD for automated breast ultrasound systems (ABUS). The QVCAD system is FDA approved and can now be used with any currently installed GE Invenia system. For more information, visit www.qviewmedical.com

SOURCE QView Medical
HOUSTON, Nov. 25, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- United Imaging Healthcare (UIH), an international leader in advanced medical imaging and radiotherapy equipment, today announced its official launch in the United States, including the establishment of a U.S. headquarters and manufacturing facility in Houston.

UIH is making its U.S. market debut at the 104th RSNA Scientific Assembly and Annual Meeting, the official meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA), in Chicago, on 25-30th November 2018.

"The United States is the largest, and most important, medical device market in the world and we are proud to make our debut at RSNA this year  we are officially open for business in the United States!" said Dr. Xue Min, UIH's Chairman of the Board & Chief Executive Officer.

"It is UIH's goal to provide premium products and services for customers around the globe. In the past five years, we have established R&D centers in the U.S. that are exploring cutting-edge technology, as well as research on CT, MR, PET-CT, and RT products. We are building our U.S. regional headquarters in Houston, which will integrate R&D, production, training and marketing services to better serve our customers in the U.S."

The newly established U.S. team is made up of experienced industry professionals who will provide customer-centric services to address the specific needs of local markets.

UIH's North American business is led by Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey M Bundy, PhD, who has more than 20 years of industry experience and previously held positions in sales, marketing, and R&D, including serving as a global CEO in the imaging business from 2011 to 2015.

"UIH is a dynamic company focused on innovative technology. Our commitment to advancements in medical imaging and radiology and our ability to innovate at a rapid pace are core strengths," said Dr. Bundy. "I'm inspired by UIH's dedication to creating new levels of access for the underserved, and we are committed to be an agent of positive change in our industry, through our product and services offerings."

UIH's North American production center is located in Houston, adjacent to the Headquarters and the R&D center. This wholly-owned facility is expected to produce multiple UIH product lines by the end of 2019.

"Our Houston production center will allow us to offer localized and customized services, and significantly increase our ability to deliver products and accessories quickly and efficiently," said Dr. Xue Min.

The establishment of the Houston production and R&D facility follows the establishment of U.S. R&D centers in Cleveland, Ohio and in Concord, California.

ABOUT UIH

United Imaging Healthcare Co., Ltd. (UIH) develops and produces a full portfolio of advanced medical imaging and radiotherapy equipment and offers medical IT and intelligent solutions. Founded in 2011 and headquartered in Shanghai, the company has subsidiaries and R&D centers across China, U.S., and other parts of the world. The company has more than 3,200 employees, half of whom are researchers. To date, more than 2,700 hospitals worldwide are using UIH products.

To learn more, visit https://usa.united-imaging.com/

SOURCE United Imaging Healthcare Co., Ltd.
Ankara, Nov 25 : Turkey is uneasy about US' plans to set up observation posts in Syria, Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar has said.

Akar on Saturday said he told the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, Joseph Dunford, during an international conference in Canada that the plans would have a very negative impact on bilateral relations, Xinhua reported.

"The US move will make the complicated situation in the region even more complicated," he was quoted by state-run Anadolu News Agency as saying.

Akar underlined that Turkish Armed Forces are taking all necessary measures to protect the country from all kind of threats, including from across its borders.

He called on US allies to cut their ties with the People's Protection Units (YPG) "as soon as possible".

Relations between Turkey and the US have been strained because of the support provided by Washington to the YPG, which is regarded by Ankara as Syrian affiliates of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
London, Nov 25 : European Council President Donald Tusk has recommended that the EU approve the Brexit deal at a summit on Sunday.

It comes after Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez received assurances from the UK government over Gibraltar, and dropped his threat to boycott the summit, BBC reported on Saturday.

He said he had received the written guarantees he needed over Spain's role in the future of the British territory.

UK Prime Minister Theresa May has arrived in Brussels and held talks with top EU officials, ahead of the summit.

Meanwhile, former UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said the UK would become a "satellite state" under the deal.

The UK is scheduled to leave the EU on March 29, 2019.

The terms of the UK's withdrawal have been under negotiation since June 2016 following a referendum in which 51.9 per cent voted to leave the EU.

Even if the EU approves the deal, it still has to be passed by the UK Parliament, with many MPs having stated their opposition.

Spain had raised last-minute objections ahead of the summit about how the issue of Gibraltar had been handled in the Brexit talks so far.

But EU leaders secured a compromise with the Spanish prime minister, who said that Europe and the UK "had accepted the conditions set down by Spain" and so would "vote in favour of Brexit".

Tusk, who represents EU leaders on the world stage, said he recommended "that we approve on Sunday the outcome of the Brexit negotiations" in a letter to members of the European Council.

He added: "No-one has reasons to be happy. But at least at this critical time, the EU 27 has passed the test of unity and solidarity."

May met the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, and Tusk for talks on Saturday evening.

Then on Sunday, EU leaders will meet for the special Brexit summit. They will be asked to approve two key Brexit documents.

The political declaration, which sets out what the UK and EU's relationship may be like after Brexit -- outlining how things like UK-EU trade and security will work.

The EU withdrawal agreement: a 585-page, legally binding document setting out the terms of the UK's exit from the EU.

It covers the UK's 39 billion pounds "divorce bill", citizens' rights and the Northern Ireland "backstop" -- a way to keep the border with the Republic of Ireland open, if trade talks stall.

There is no formal vote on Sunday but the EU expects to proceed after reaching a consensus.

If the EU signs off the withdrawal deal, May will then need to persuade MPs in the UK Parliament to back it.

A vote is expected in December. Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the SNP and the DUP have all said they will vote against the government's deal, as well as many Conservatives.

Spain threatened to derail the Brexit deal over concerns about its role in future trade arrangements involving Gibraltar -- a British Overseas Territory with 30,000 residents.

But the UK published a letter it had sent to Spain reassuring it over the withdrawal agreement.

After holding emergency talks with Tusk and Juncker, the Spanish Prime Minister dropped his threat.
Tripoli, Nov 25 : The Libyan Army has killed 12 Islamic State militants near Tazerbu, destroyed their vehicles and confiscated weapons and ammunition during a joint operation, a military said.

"Joint forces of military battalions and security elements chased a number of remnants of the terrorists, who were hiding in the uninhabited site west of Tazerbu," it said on Saturday.

The small oasis town, that is the key provider of groundwater in west and south Libya, witnessed the deadly attack on Friday when dozens of gunmen on armed vehicles targeted its police station and a number of government buildings.

Eight people were killed and more than 15 others were injured.

The terrorists also took dozens as hostages before they withdrew from the area. The army then issued orders to "eliminate" the terrorists.

The UN Support Mission in Libya on Saturday condemned the attack, and call on parties in the conflict to "immediately cease targeting civilians and civilian objects in compliance with International Humanitarian Law."
London, Nov 25 : European Council President Donald Tusk has recommended that the EU approve the Brexit deal at a summit on Sunday.

Tusk, who represents EU leaders on the world stage, said he recommended "that we approve on Sunday the outcome of the Brexit negotiations" in a letter to members of the European Council.

"No-one has reasons to be happy. But at least at this critical time, the EU 27 has passed the test of unity and solidarity," he added.

On Sunday, EU leaders will meet for the special Brexit summit. They will be asked to approve two key Brexit documents: The political declaration, which sets out what the UK and EU's relationship may be like after Brexit - outlining how things like UK-EU trade and security will work.

Besides, the EU withdrawal agreement: a 585-page, legally binding document setting out the terms of the UK's exit from the EU. It covers the UK's 39 billion pound "divorce bill", citizens' rights and the Northern Ireland "backstop" -- a way to keep the border with the Republic of Ireland open, if trade talks stall.

There would not be any formal vote on Sunday but the EU was expected to proceed after reaching a consensus.

Brexit's move forward comes after Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez received assurances from the UK government over Gibraltar, and dropped his threat to boycott the summit, the BBC reported.

Sanchez received late on Saturday the written guarantees he needed over Spain's role in the future of the British territory.

Even if the EU approves the deal, it still has to be passed by the UK Parliament, with many MPs having stated their opposition.

Former UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, however, has slammed the developements saying the UK would become a "satellite state" under the deal.

UK Prime Minister Theresa May has already arrived in Brussels and has been holding talks with top EU officials, ahead of the summit. She met the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, and Tusk for talks on Saturday evening.

Spain had raised last-minute objections ahead of the summit, but EU leaders secured a compromise with Sanchez saying he would "vote in favour of Brexit", after Europe and the UK "accepted the conditions set down by Spain", the BBC said.

The UK is scheduled to leave the EU on 29 March 2019.

Its withdrawal negotiations have been on since June 2016 following a referendum in which 51.9 per cent voters agreed to leave the EU.
Bali, Nov 25 : A cargo ship carrying 14 crew members sunk in waters off Bali coast in Indonesia, rescuers said they were searching for seven crew members on Sunday.

KM Multi Prima One cargo ship heading to Waingapu town of East Nusa Tenggara province capsized in Bali Gulf after leaving waters off Surabaya, head of communication for media of national search and rescue office Yusuf Latief told Xinhua.

The search was underway in a radius of 200 nautical miles from the site of the capsize.

The seven crew who survived were rescued by Cahaya Abadi 201 ship, which was passing by the spot, according to him.

Sea water transport is key to Indonesia, a vast archipelagic country home to over 17,500 islands. However, lack of safety standard keeps triggering such incidents.
London, Nov 25 : Days ahead of a seven-nation panel hearing on Facebook, the British Parliament has reportedly seized internal company documents that contain revelations on data and privacy controls that led to Cambridge Analytica scandal.

According to a report in The Guardian on Sunday, the internal documents "include confidential emails between senior executives, and correspondence with (Mark) Zuckerberg".

"Damian Collins, the chair of the culture, media and sport select committee, invoked a rare parliamentary mechanism to compel the founder of a US software company, Six4Three, to hand over the documents during a business trip to London," said the report.

"We are in uncharted territory. This is an unprecedented move but it's an unprecedented situation.

"We've failed to get answers from Facebook and we believe the documents contain information of very high public interest," Collins was quoted as saying.

Facebook, however, defended itself, saying that Six4Three's "claims have no merit, and we will continue to defend ourselves vigorously".

Facebook is set to face an international committee consisting 22 members from seven countries in London this week.

Richard Allan, Vice President of Policy for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), will face in London elected members from the Parliaments of Britain, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Ireland, Latvia and Singapore.

"An unprecedented international grand committee comprising 22 representatives from seven parliaments will meet in London next week to put questions to Facebook about the online fake news crisis and the social network's own string of data misuse scandals," TechCrunch reported on Friday.

According to The Guardian report, the struggle to hold Facebook to account has raised concerns about limits of British authority over international companies that now play a key role in the democratic process.

"We have very serious questions for Facebook," Collins said.

The internal documents seized were obtained during a legal discovery process by Six4Three.

The internal documents are "subject to an order of a Californian superior court, so cannot be shared or made public, at risk of being found in contempt of court".

The report comes at a time when Facebook investors have increased pressure on Zuckerberg -- who faced intense scrutiny in US Congress earlier in 2018 -- to step down as Chairman, which he had refused.
Harare, Nov 25 : Five Finnish nationals -- two business executives a owner of legal firm, a leading IT executive and their pilot -- were killed while on a hunting trip when their private plane crashed in Zimbabwe, police said.

The hunting trip to the southern African country on Saturday included Heikki Vappula, director of the biorefining sector of United Paper Mills, a paper producer, and Pekka Ojanpaa, CEO of the service company Lassila and Tikanoja, Xinhua news agency reported.
Bhopal, Nov 25 : Ahead of the Madhya Pradesh Assembly polls scheduled on Wednesday, the police here in Balaghat district was able to avoid a Maoist attack by killing one from a group of seven.

The Left Wing extremist was brought down during a Saturday encounter near the Godri village. There was also a woman insurgent in the group which was mostly in Khaki fatigues. The rest managed to flee, a police officer said.

To avoid any attacks ahead of the upcoming polls there is a huge deployment of security personnel along the borders with Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh, especially in the Balaghat and Mandla districts, a police statement said.
Bengaluru/New Delhi, Nov 25 : Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, superstars of south Indian film industry and Bollywood, besides thousands of frenzied fans and political leaders from across India on Sunday paid their tributes to veteran Kannada actor-turned-politician M.H. Ambareesh who died here following a cardiac arrest.

Several thousands of fans queued up outside the Kanteerava Stadium grounds in the Karnataka capital, where the 66-year-old actor-turned-politician's body was kept in state since early in the day.

The superstar of the sandalwood industry, Ambareesh, was a dedicated parliamentarian, Naidu tweeted.

"Sad to hear about the sudden demise of Ambareesh. He was not only a great actor but also a dedicated parliamentarian. My condolences to his family, friends and followers," Naidu said.

Modi condoled Ambareesh's death saying the actor will be remembered for his memorable performances and extensive contribution to politics.

The rebel actor, who died at a private hospital in Bengaluru late on Saturday, was described by Modi as "a strong voice for Karnataka's welfare, at the state and central level".

Congress President Rahul Gandhi said his party has lost a valuable member. "He was a famous son of Karnataka, whose work as an actor and in politics, won him a huge following both in the state and across India."

Ambareesh died at around 10.15 p.m. after a massive cardiac arrest a couple of hours after he was brought to the Vikram Hospital following breathing trouble.

A former cabinet minister in the previous Congress government in Karnataka from May 2013 to June 2016 before then Chief Minister Siddaramaiah sacked him along with 13 other ministers in a major reshuffle, the Kannada star enjoyed huge respect across party and linguistic divide.

Tamil superstar Rajinikanth, multi-lingual actors Prakash Raj, Raadika Sarathkumar, Kannada actors Shiva Rajkumar, Puneeth Rajkumar, popular Telugu actor Chiranjeevi and several others from the south Indian film industry paid their homage to the actor.

"Grieved to learn of the passing of a colleague Ambareesh. Condolences and prayers," Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan tweeted.

Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy, Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) supremo and former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) state unit president B.S. Yeddyurappa and ministers from the JD-S-Congress cabinet also paid their respects.

The Karnataka government has declared a three-day mourning and a state funeral for the actor-politician starting Monday.

The actor is survived by his widow and multi-lingual actress Sumalatha and son Abhishek.

Ambareesh entered films as 'Jaleel' in veteran director Puttanna Kanagal's "Naagarahaavu" in 1972.
Ayodhya, Nov 25 : The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) on Sunday said they will not cede an inch of land for anything but a Ram temple and demanded from the Sunni Waqf Board that they withdraw their case over distribution of the disputed land as ordered by the Allahabad High Court (HC).

Champat Rai, International Vice President of the right-wing outfit, told a large gathering of supporters at Ayodhya that the issue is non-negotiable for Hindus.

"The distribution of land is not acceptable to us and we want the whole land for Lord Ram," he declared before the 75,000-strong cheering crowds. He also pointed out that the Hindus will not accept offering of "Namaaz" over any piece of the disputed land.

Warning that no one should test the patience of the Hindu community anymore, he said they have been battling the matter for the past 490 years.

"Some intelligent people think that the whole matter began after the destruction of the Babri mosque in 1992...they are ignorant...the matter goes back to 490 years," the VHP leader said.

He also said that the "dharm sabha" had to be called after a gap of 25 years because some intellectuals think that on December 6, 1992 curtains came down on the contentious issue. "The fire has not been extinguished, it continues to simmer inside our hearts."

Rai added that this is last such congregation to press for Ram temple and the next logical step for the Hindu outfit would be beginning of construction of a grand Ram temple in Ayodhya.

He also demanded that the Muslim litigants should withdraw the case from the Supreme Court and pave way for an early construction of the Ram temple. Another prominent seer Swamy Bhadracharya, however, announced that future plans of the saint community with regard to the Ram temple would be announced after December 11.

This is being seen as a wait-and-watch move by the saints as Prime Minister Narendra Modi at an election rally in Madhya Pradesh earlier in the day accused the Congress of trying to thwart an early solution to the Ram Mandir issue.

Amid talks of a possible introduction of a Bill by the Modi government in Parliament's winter session that begins on December 11, many seers are of the view that a "last opportunity should be given to the BJP government on the issue".

Earlier, hundreds of thousands of VHP workers and supporters trooped into the venue of the "dharm sabha" and Muslim locals showered flower petals on them. Muslim litigant Iqbal Ansari, who had earlier expressed fear at the growing crowds in Ayodhya for the VHP event, on Sunday thanked the Uttar Pradesh government for "good arrangements".
Mumbai, Nov 25 : Actress Rasika Dugal, known for featuring in critically acclaimed movies like "Kshay" and "Qissa", says she has learnt not to take rejections or successes too seriously.

"As an actor, it's (her acting career) up and down. That's the beauty of it and that's the difficulty of it as well. I think over the years, I have learnt to sort of not take either the rejections or successes too seriously because as an actor, you are mostly leaving your life to chance because getting a part in a film that you want, the film getting made, the film releasing...all of these things are...if you think of it logically, these are miracles," Rasika told IANS.

"It's like a house of cards. It can collapse any minute. So, I have decided to leave much of my life to chance. That comes with a lot of insecurities, but it also comes with a lot of excitement," she added.

Her films such as "Manto", "Hamid" and "Kshay" have been to various film festivals. Asked if she fears being labelled as the "film festival actress", she said: "I don't mind. It's a label that I will proudly wear because this is the place where people know maximum about cinema and if I can appeal to an audience at a festival, I would think that my work is good."

She is currently seen in a series titled "Mirzapur".
Chennai, Nov 25 : As part of their retail network expansion plan, India's three state-run oil-marketing companies would open 5,125 petrol bunks in Tamil Nadu over the next two years, said a senior official of Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) on Sunday.

The three companies are IOC, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd., and Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd.

"The three companies plan to add about 5,125 new dealerships, as demand for oil is growing. The demand for petrol is growing at 8 per cent per annum and diesel at 4 per cent," R. Sitharthan, Executive Director, IOC, and also the state-level Coordinator for oil industry, told reporters here.

As on April 1, 2018, the three companies had a retail network of 4,844 petrol bunks in Tamil Nadu. The planned retail expansion will take the number of outlets to 9,969.

The three players will populate the market with their retail outlets, giving the private players like Essar a tough time.

He said the fuel outlets will come up along new highways, agricultural pockets and industrial hubs.

Sitharthan said the process of application for dealerships and allotment has been simplified.

"For the first time, a computerised draw of lots would be held, and opening of the bids would be held under the supervision of an independent agency for greater transparency."

Sitharthan also said the three companies would expand their retail outlets in Puducherry by 132 units, taking the total to 262 bunks.

Indian Oil plans to add 2,615 new outlets, Hindustan Petroleum 1,515 outlets and Bharat Petroleum 1,127 outlets in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.
Kolkata, Nov 25 : An ex-paramilitary man on Sunday shot his friend dead amid suspicion the deceased had an extra-marital affair with his wife, police said.

The incident happened in West Bengal's Nadia district.

"Bibhash Mondal, an ex-Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) man, allegedly shot his friend Subhas Biwas twice on Sunday morning when he was sitting at a shop near his residence in Nadia's palashipara," a district police official said.

"Biswas sustained two bullet injuries in his chest and abdomen. He was rushed to a hospital by his family members and neighbours where he was declared brought dead," the official added.

According to locals, Biswas and Mondal were close friends for many years but their relationship deteriorated recently after the latter suspected Biswas of having an extra-marital affair with his wife.

"He (Mondal) came and started firing at his friend, when he saw him outside the shop at around 7 a.m. Biswas collapsed on the ground as two bullets had hit him," a witness said.

The accused is absconding, police said.

"Mondal is at large since the incident. We are looking for him. His wife and the rest of the family members will be interrogated," the official added.
Hyderabad, Nov 25 : The Bharatiya Janata Party will not allow the Telangana government to implement a 12 per cent reservation for minorities, party President Amit Shah said on Sunday.

Addressing election rallies at four places in the state, he said the BJP would neither provide quota on the basis of religion nor allow its implementation by others.

"As long as the BJP is in power at the Centre, there is no question of giving reservation to minorities," he said at a meeting in Nirmal town.

He was referring to the resolution passed by the Telangana legislature and sent to the Centre, seeking its approval for increasing reservation for Muslims in jobs and education from the current 4 per cent to 12 per cent.

Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) President K. Chandrashekar Rao, during his election speeches, has been targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi for not giving the nod to hike the quota for Muslims.

Terming the TRS government's move as "unconstitutional", the BJP chief pointed out that the Supreme Court has fixed a ceiling of 50 per cent on the overall quota.

He asked the TRS to specify whose quota it proposes to cut to provide reservation to the minorities.

Shah said his party would stand like a rock to protect the reservation for the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and the Backward Classes.

The BJP president, who also addressed rallies in Parkala, Narayankhed and Dubbaka, said that only his party could provide a government in Telangana that would not be dependent on the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) and its President Asaduddin Owaisi.

"Only the BJP can take on Majlis and Owaisi," he said.

Shah said the TRS government had also stopped celebrating Telangana Liberation Day, as it was scared of Owaisi. He said if voted to power, the BJP would celebrate the day on a grand scale in every village.

Recalling that it was in Nirmal that MIM leader Akbaruddin Owaisi had delivered a speech, insulting Hindu gods and goddesses, Shah said the TRS government failed to take action against him.

He said the December 7 election would decide the future of the state. "You have given opportunity to all other parties to form government. Give a chance to us, we will turn Telangana into a model state."

Shah said the TRS chief had imposed the burden of an additional election by going in for early polls to the state Assembly to promote his son and daughter.

He claimed that the TRS chief Rao was afraid of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's impact if the Assembly polls were to be held along with the Lok Sabha elections in 2019.

He claimed that the central government provided over Rs 2.30 lakh crore for the development of Telangana during the last four years. He said half of these funds were allocated under the 14th Finance Commission.

He said Telangana was a revenue-surplus state but the TRS government imposed a burden of Rs 2 lakh crore in the form of loans on the state.

He said that Communists, who were losing ground across the world, and Congress, which was getting wiped out in the country, had come together in Telangana.

The BJP chief alleged that Congress President Rahul Gandhi backed urban Maoists when the Maharashtra government arrested them. "The Maoists have only two options. Either join the mainstream or be ready to go to jail," he added.
Moscow, Nov 26 : Russia has seized three Ukrainian naval vessels off the coast of the Crimean Peninsula in a major escalation of tensions between the two countries.

Two gunboats and a tug were captured by Russian forces. Ukraine says they were fired on and six crew were injured, BBC reported on Sunday.

The countries blame each other for the incident. Ukraine's government said it would declare martial law.

The crisis began when Russia accused the Ukrainian ships of illegally entering its waters.

The Russians placed a tanker under a bridge in the Kerch Strait - the only access to the Sea of Azov, which is shared between the two countries.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called an urgent meeting of his "war cabinet" over the incident, his spokesperson said.

In the morning, Ukraine's Berdyansk and Nikopol gunboats, and the Yana Kapa tug, tried to sail from the Black Sea port of Odessa to Mariupol in the Sea of Azov.

Ukraine says the Russians tried to intercept the ships, ramming the tug. The vessels continued towards the Kerch Strait, but were prevented by the tanker.

Russia scrambled two fighter jets and two helicopters to the area. It accused the ships of illegally entering its waters and said the traffic had been suspended for security reasons.

The Ukrainian navy later said the boats had been hit and disabled as they tried to leave the area. It said the tug had been forced to stop.

Russia's FSB later confirmed that one of its patrol boats had used force to seize the three Ukrainian vessels.

Ukraine said it had informed the Russians of its plan to move its ships through the sea to Mariupol.

Tensions have recently risen in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov off the Crimean peninsula -- annexed by Russia in 2014.
Christie 4k projectors give theme park riders a birds eye view of Europe at Voletarium In Europa-Park we have been using two Christie projectors for quite some time now in our 4D cinema. So we were familiar with their high-quality, bright 3D picture reproduction and reliability.

Dreams of flying are as old as humanity itself and visitors to Germanys Europa-Park are closer to that dream thanks to Christie Mirage 4K35 projectors and Kraftwerk Living Technologies (KLT).

The Voletarium, a new attraction at the Europa-Park in Rust, Germany, is a flying theater consisting of two dome-shaped screens measuring over 4,500 total square feet. The Voletarium invites guests  70 at a time in chairlift-style gondolas  on a fantasy-filled, 3D journey over 15 landmarks and landscapes from across Europe. For the projection, Kraftwerk Living Technologies selected the 4K resolution, 120 Hz, and high light output of three Christie Mirage 4K35 projectors per screen.

Intricate planning and execution by Kraftwerk and Christie

For the breathtaking projections onto the dome-shaped screens, flyover films were made of 14 scenes containing famous European landscapes. Additional effects including wind, water and appropriate fragrances intensify the weightless feeling guests have as they fly through the ride.

Thomas Gellermann, Head of Research and Development at Kraftwerk Living Technologies, explained, Visitors to the Voletarium sit right in the middle of events, inside the screen, so to speak  not outside it or in front of it, but inside it. This gives them a feeling of flying similar to the feeling you get in a simulator, as their entire field of vision of around 180/120 degrees is covered. The interaction of ingenious technologies results in an intensive experience; and, of course, the outstanding images are also crucial.

The decision was made to use a multi-channel projection solution with three 4K projectors rather than a single-projector solution, as used in some other flying theater attractions.

We offered a multi-channel projection solution because it allows a higher light output, as well as higher resolution. In addition to this, you end up with a much more immersive experience than if you have just the one projector in the center, said Gellermann.

To intensify the experience, KLT selected both 4K resolution and 120 frames per second and as Gellermann added, "We have used these projectors for various other projects already and have been very content with their performance so far."

Aldric Muller, Project Manager for AV Media in Europa-Park, added, In Europa-Park we have been using two Christie projectors for quite some time now in our 4D cinema. So we were familiar with their high-quality, bright 3D picture reproduction and reliability.

About Christie

Christie Digital Systems USA, Inc. is a global visual and audio technologies company and is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ushio, Inc., Japan, (JP:6925). Consistently setting the standards by being the first to market some of the worlds most advanced projectors and complete system displays, Christie is recognized as one of the most innovative visual technology companies in the world. From retail displays to Hollywood, mission critical command centers to classrooms and training simulators, Christie display solutions and projectors capture the attention of audiences around the world with dynamic and stunning images. Visit http://www.christiedigital.com.
Her mother, Madam Gifty Hamah, turned 60 years old on Sunday, November 25, 2018.

In a Facebook post, the gender activist penned a heartfelt message to her mum, describing her as lovely.

As a Hindu, she prayed that His Holiness Swami Ghananand Saraswati (her god) guides her mum and grants her long life.

She then concluded her birthday message with a promise that she will soon get married and grant her mums desire of seeing her grandchildren.

Hurraymy lovely mother is 60 years old today! My gift to her is (the best thing to happen to my life) - my experience of my Guru His Holiness Swami Ghananand Saraswati. May my Guru and personal God guide your journey of this life and eternity. On this your special day, Victoria Hamah wrote.

I would like to promise you that with the will of my Guru Swami Ghananand, I will fulfil your desire of seeing me married and most importantly give you lovely grandchildren. Namaste, she added.

Her promise to soon to give her mum grandchildren seems to dispel rumours that the former deputy Communications Minister already has a child with former president John Mahama.

Some years ago, Victoria Hamah came under the spotlight following reports that she was in a relationship with the former president.

A section of the media went on to claim that she even bore a child for Mahama, which has been kept from the publics eye.

However, her latest comments on her plans to soon get married and produce grandchildren for her mum gives the clearest indication that the rumours were perhaps false.
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In 2017, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, in line with the constitution and the Presidential Office Act 1993, forwarded a list of 998 staffers and ministers of state at the Office of the Presidency (OOP) [Jubilee House] to Parliament.

The list included ministers of state at the presidency, persons working directly at the office of the president, senior presidential advisers, presidential staffers, and presidential aides and employees of other Public Services assigned to the Office of the President

Addressing the media, Oppong Nkrumah said the Minority and the peddlers of the allegation of an increase in the numbers were rather confusing the Office of Government Machinery (OGM) with that of the Office of the President (OOP).

Specifically, Office of the President for the avoidance of doubt is expected to reduce by 69 by end of 2019, he said, explaining that the the 998 list will reduce to 929.

He continued: So contrary to the claim of an increase in numbers, there is rather a reduction in numbers by 69 specifically at Office of the President and netreduction of 83 in all at the entire Office of Government Machinery, he said.

"Last week in Parliament and subsequently on several media platforms, the members of the Minority claimed that the government was planning to increase the number of staff at the Office of the President from 998 - 1614. They even further calculated and said an increase of 616 staffers."

"After several requests for them to offer proof to back this claim, they referred to the 2019 budget as the source of their claim and proceeded further to claim any such act will amount to a burden on the public purse."

The former host of the Joy FM Super Morning Show explained the difference between Office of Government Machinery (OGM) and Office of the President "OOP."

Explaining, he said: "The Executive arm of government is organized into Ministries Departments and Agencies. The supervising outfit of the executive arm is referred to as Office of Government Machinery. It comprises 19 difference units one of which is the Office of the President.

In 2018 established posts for OGM was 1697In 2019 it has rather been reduced to 1614(insert extracts from budget statement)

So Indeed the established Posts at OGM has reduced between 2018 and 2019. It has reduced not increased.

The claim of an increase is because the minority is comparing Office of the President(998 in 2018) which was part of the 1697 ceiling, with the entire Office of Government Machinery ceiling for 2019 (1614).

This type of analysis can only be done under 1 of two circumstances

- If the maker confuses OGM & OOP. The two are different. - If the maker is being deliberately mischievous.
On Friday, November 23, 2018, French PresidentEmmanuel Macronannounced his plans to return these artworks to Benin "without delay".

These will include the royal statues which were reportedly taken by the French army during a war in 1892, which happened 126 years old.

According to AFP, President Macron made this decision based on findings of a study he commissioned in 2016 after Benin demanded the French country to return its artworks, carvings, sceptres and sacred doors.

Following the request, which was initially denied, the president gave a speech in a speech in Burkina Faso. In the speech, delivered in November 2016, he pledged to "return African heritage to Africa".

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ALSO READ: Top markets for tourists to visit in Nigeria

Afterwards, Macron asked French art historian Benedicte Savoy andSenegalese writer Felwine Sarr to look into the matter.

They concluded that these artefacts need to be returned as these collections are depriving Africans of their artistic and cultural heritage.

It said, "On a continent where 60 per cent of the population is under the age of 20 years old, what is first and foremost of a great importance is for young people to have access to their own culture, creativity, and spirituality from other eras."

However, the report has made stipulations for the return of these artefacts. These conditions include a request from the relevant country, correct information concerning the works' origins, and proper facilities to house the works in their home country.

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Macron's office added that museums will be invited to "identify African partners and organise possible returns" and establish "an online inventory of their African collections".

The French president has also called for African and European partners to gather in Paris next year to figure out a framework for an "exchange policy" for these African artworks.
Jerome Corsi, a far-right conspiracy theorist and close associate of GOP strategist Roger Stone, is in talks with the special counsel Robert Mueller about a possible plea deal.

The news comes after Corsi said last week that Mueller's office told him he would be indicted for perjury.

Corsi was served a subpoena in August by Mueller to testify before a grand jury. Mueller wasreportedlyinvestigating whether Corsi had prior knowledge of the Hillary Clinton campaign's hacked emails  which were later delivered to and published online by the radical pro-transparency group WikiLeaks  and whether he passed those emails on to Stone.

Stone, a former adviser to President Donald Trump's campaign, is under scrutiny by the special counsel for his connection with Julian Assange (WikiLeaks' founder) and Guccifer 2.0, a Russia-linked hacker believed to be a front for the GRU.

Corsi, formerly the Washington bureau chief of conspiracy-theory-website InfoWars, suggested Mueller had material evidence for his case.

"When they have your emails and phone records ... they're very good at the perjury trap," Corsi told NBC producer Anna Schecter.

BusinessInsider

In 2016, days before a trove of emails were leaked, Stone made several statements on Twitter that eventually attracted attention from investigators. Stone previously tweeted "it will soon [be] Podesta's time in the barrel," in reference to John Podesta, Clinton's embattled campaign manager, whose emails were breached.

Corsi later claimed to be the inspiration behind Stone's tweets that suggested Podesta's brewing troubles. One person familiar with the situation said Mueller's team was reviewing communications with Trump's associates, in which Corsi and Stone appeared to take credit for the release of the hacked emails, according toNBC News. The source added that there has yet to be evidence of their potential involvement in the email's hack or subsequent release to the public.

Corsi denied having prior knowledge of the emails. Stone reportedly described his alleged ties with Russia as a "left-wing conspiracy theory" and claimed Corsi did not tip him off about WikiLeaks' possession of the emails prior to its public release.

"For the record, I have never had any communication of any kind with Julian Assange, WikiLeaks, or Guccifer 2.0, or any Russian agents of any kind, including those mythical Russian agents who the Democrats believe wanted to throw the election for Trump," Corsi reportedly wrote on InfoWars in March 2017.
They are suspected of mutilating a corpse kept for preservation at the St. Raphael Divine Mercy Specialist Hospital in Ikorodu.

According to many reports, the suspects are identified as Michael Olusegun and Olusesi Owamade who were apprehended with five gravediggers, Razaki Abesopiti, Okeowo Kazeem, Babatunde Giwa, Ade Aliu and Musiliu Yakubu.

The second group reportedly work at the at Sabo cemetery also located in Ikorodu.

One other gravedigger identified as Anifowoshe is currently on the run says Lagos State Police Commissioner Imohimi Edgal who reported about the arrests on Tuesday, November 13, 2018.

His men took action against the suspects following a complaint by Anthony Lawani reportedly the sibling of a deceased Mary Ehinlaiye, 51, identified as the corpse.

"Based on the complaint, I directed the Deputy Commissioner of Police, SCIID, Panti, Yaba to investigate the matter.

"Preliminary investigation revealed that the corpse of the deceased was deposited at St. Raphaels Devine Mercy Specialist Hospital Mortuary along Ijede Road, Ikorodu, Lagos, for preservation.

"However, one Olusesi Owamade, aged 41 years, a mortuary attendant, with the approval of his supervisor, Michael Olusegun, aged 65 years, erroneously released the corpse to another family.

"When the relations of the deceased woman came for the release of the corpse for burial, it was nowhere to be found. At this juncture, it dawned on the mortuary attendants that they had released the corpse to the wrong persons.
Present at occasion was the Executive Governor, Mr. Godwin Obaseki, the Executive Chairman of the FIRS, Mr. Tunde Fowler and the immediate past ICAN President, Mr. Ismaila Zakari among other high profile dignitaries.

He reminded the partners that succession planning in an organization is different from just hiring a staff when he stated that when recruiting, recruit someone who can replace you Succession planning is all about leadership.

He congratulated Pedabo on their 20 year of excellent service delivery.

The Managing Partner of Pedabo, Mr. Albert Folorunsho expressed his gratitude to all their longstanding clients for believing in them as an indigenous firm, he also thanked other stakeholders for their support and finally appreciated his staff for their dedication and commitment.

Highlight of the event was the presentation of awards to their long serving clients and cutting of the official cake to mark the 20years milestone.

See more photos.
The Lagos Police spokesman, CSP Chike Oti, confirmed the arrest in a statement, stressing that the incident happened at Agbowa area of Ikorodu, a suburb of Lagos State.

Oti said the two suspects belong to a kidnapping syndicate terrorising some parts of the state, particularly Ikorodu area, stressing that two other suspects escaped with bullet wounds after exchanged of gunfire.

According to him, the Anti-kidnapping Squad of the State Command, acted on the directive of the Commands Commissioner of Police, CP Edgal Imohimi, on Friday, at about 11 a.m.

He said that the command received two separate reports on Nov. 13 and 16 from one Suleiman Eniola Ajumobi and one Veronica Ewuru about the kidnapping of their daughter and husband respectively.

While Suleiman Eniola Ajumobi reported that his 7-year-old daughter was kidnapped from his house in his presence.

Veronica Ewuru stated that her husband, one DSP Patrick Ewuru, a police officer attached to Force Headquarters annex, Obalende, was kidnapped from their house in the night when the victim came out to check on the Power Generating Set that suddenly stopped working.

The kidnappers demanded for ransom of N25 million from Mr Suleiman and N10 million from the family of DSP Patrick Ewuru but later settled for N500, 000 for both families.

At this point, the CP directed operatives handling the matter to play along with the kidnappers in the interest of the victims, who were still in captivity, he said.

The spokesman said that as soon as the release of the two victims was secured, the kidnappers hideout at Agbowa was busted, where one Festus Abama was killed and Austin Ebimiyenwei surrendered.

Oti said that the arrested suspect confessed to the crime, while the victim had identified them as those who kidnapped them.
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Call 281-422-8302 or email david.bloom@baytownsun.com to wish someone a happy birthday. We will print your birthday wish on Page 2 of The Sun.

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"Returned to my house in Malibu after evacuating. Heartbreaking time across California," Butler captioned the shocking photo. He also posted two Instagram stories that showed video footage of the damage.

Wearing a face mask in the clips, Butler said, "Welcome to my home in Malibu. Half gone." He then added in disbelief, "Wow," as he looked around at his property.

AP reports that more than 8,000 firefighters have battled the fires across 400 square miles. On Instagram, Butler also commended the "brave men and women" who have been tirelessly fighting the wildfires in Northern and Southern California.

"Inspired as ever by the courage, spirit and sacrifice of firefighters," he said. "Thank you @LosAngelesFireDepartment. If you can, support these brave men and women at SupportLAFD.org."

On Sunday, California Gov. Jerry Brown issued a statement on Twitter, writing, "We have the best firefighters and first responders in the country working in some of the most difficult conditions imaginable... To those who have lost friends and family members, homes and businesses, know that the entire state is with you."
Buhari made this known in a statement issued on Twitter on Sunday, November 25, 2018, via the handle: @MBuhari

He said We must resist the temptation to play politics with the tragedy of the deaths of our soldiers. They are heroes on the frontlines, fighting to make Nigeria a safer place for us all. Rest assured that the circumstances that have led to these deaths will be comprehensively addressed.

Metele attack

According to Premium Times,118 soldiers were killed when members of the Boko Haram sect attacked their base at Metele on Monday, November 19, 2018.

The attack sparked several reactions from Nigerians on social media who wondered why the presidency did not say anything about the killing.

Buhari issues statement

Days later, precisely on Saturday, November 24, 2018, the President issued a statement over the attack.

Buhari said that fighting terrorism has taken a global dimension, hence, the need for international collaboration among states facing similar security challenges.

The President also promised to give the Army all the needed support in terms of equipment and manpower to succeed in ending Boko Harams renewed threat.

It is late

The Presidents statement however did not go down well with the former Governor of Ekiti state, Ayo Fayose, who described it as a late response.

Fayose also called on Nigerians to reject Buhari in 2019, adding that his time is up.

Army warns

Meanwhile, the Nigerian Army has issued a statement saying that the video making the round on social media is fake.

It said that such videos serve the purpose intended by the insurgents, which is to misinform; spread panic, hatred, religious intolerance and undermine national security.

The Army also warned that it would not condone the act of spreading fake news as it violates the provisions of the cyber-crime law.
Brig. Gen. Texas Chukwu, the Director, Army Public Relations, made the disclosure in a statement issued on Saturday in Maiduguri.

Biu gave the charge during an operational visit to assess the combat readiness of troops of the 82 Task Force Battalion, Ngwoshe, Gwoza Local Government Area of Borno State.

The commander admonished the troops to be more decisive in their approach to confront the terrorists, and endeavor to work in synergy with other security agencies.

While commending the troops for their sacrifices in the protection of the nations territorial integrity, Biu urged them to be confident, professional and work assiduously to end insurgency and other sundry crimes in the northeast.

We must continue to put in our best to consolidate on the efforts of our heroes and ensure that we win the fight against the Boko Haram terrorists with God guiding us, Biu said.

The commander reiterated the commitments of the Chief of Army Staff, Lt.-Gen. Tukur Buratai, to the improvement of the soldiers welfare.

Biu was accompanied by the Commander 47 Engineer Brigade, Brig. Gen. Ignatius Nwogu and other Principal Staff Officers.

Some of the troops locations visited by the commander included Banki Junction; Firgi; Pulka; Gwoza; and Yamteke all in Gwoza Local Government Area of the state.

The commander also interacted with members of the Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF) and hunters at the various locations.
The presidential candidate, in a press statement to commiserate with families of the deceased, on Sunday, wondered why it took the military about a week to confirm the incident whose video already went viral.

She challenged the military authorities and the Commander-in-Chief to prove that they haven't failed the nation's soldiers.

While commiserating with families of the deceased, Ezekwesili demanded that the fallen heroes must not be deprived of their honour.

The ACPN presidential candidate, whose records and global endorsements have shown to be the best person for the job, noted that many questions were begging for answers with the recent killings of soldiers.

She asked the Muhammadu Buhari-led Federal Government to publish the names and authentic figures of fallen heroes for Nigerians to know the extent of damage and for record purposes.

Ezekwesili said, "There are pertinent questions that the Federal Government and the military need to answer. How did this latest in a series of killings of our soldiers in frontline of battle catch our country off-guard? Dont we think the official line that the Presidency and military have been pushing on the state of the terrorism war is endangering our soldiers and nation? Can the government be more honest on the challenges it appears to be facing in prosecuting the war?

"It is no longer acceptable for our heroes to die and not be accorded the honour of gallantry. The FG and the military must accord full military burial rites to the fallen soldiers and also publish the list of others who have died and had been buried discretely in recent times without giving the Nigerian people the opportunity to celebrate their gallantry.

"The FG should immediately take measures to protect and preserve our soldiers, military establishments, our people and territory to avoid further deaths. It is time for a review of current operational strategy being used to prosecute the war. It is also high time that our Intel was revamped.

"FG must take measures to assess the failure of leadership of the Service Chiefs - performance, accountability and consequence has been missing for far too long and must now change."

She subsequently advised the military to improve on its intelligent gathering, saying that would be key to defeating the Boko Haram insurgency.

ALSO READ:

She said, "We express our sympathy and condolence to the families and loved ones of the departed soldiers. They are another set of heroes who have sacrificed their lives for others to live. This calls for a sober reflection and declaration of mourning days by the government.

Nigeria security operatives need to do more on intelligence gathering. It is one of the key apparatus that must not be missing while fighting terrorists.
The monarch said this in an interview with Vanguard recently.

According to The Cable, Oba Akiolu also called on politicians who dont want to hear the truth not to come to his palace.

"Its unfortunate that Buhari did not stay long as Head of State in 1984, Nigeria would have been better. Buhari is one of the few, politicians who are not materialistic.

Majority of them are grab grab politicians. Let me use this medium to tell all those politicians moving about because election is coming, that if they are not ready to hear the truth, they should not come to my palace.

I will tell them that they are thieves, Nigerians know them, and youths should not allow politicians to use them, the monarch added.

Obasanjo, Nigerias major problem

Speaking further, Oba Akiolu also took a swipe at former President Olusegun Obasanjo, describing him as the major problem of Nigeria.

He said The major problem of Nigeria today is former President Olusegun Obasanjo. When he was in government, he was running after Lagos while someone was cornering all the blue-chip companies that belong to the country.

He cannot win election in his ward in Abeokuta. He ignored all Supreme Court judgements which were in favour of Lagos state.

2019 election

Oba Akiolu also called on Nigerians to cast their votes based on candidates manifestos and not because of money.

The monarch said It is unfortunate, many Nigerians are deceiving themselves. The kind of politics we play here is money politics. Politicians should bring their manifestoes and their followers should make sure they deliver on their promises.

But for some people to line-up somewhere and be collecting $20,000, $25,000 to pick a presidential candidate is wrong.

If the person gets there, he will first recoup his money. I pray those people should not get there.
In a video sent to journalists in Maiduguri, the soldiers accused the military authorities of providing them with obsolete weapons, which they said are grossly inadequate to effectively confront the insurgents in the ongoing counter insurgency campaign in the Northeast and save them from further avoidable deaths.

In the amateur video footage, the soldiers also levelled allegations against the military authorities accusing them of negligence which resulted into the death of scores of their colleagues in a series of attacks coordinated by the Albarnawi faction of Boko Haram at Metele in Guzamala Local Government Area of Borno.

Foreign wire agencies reported that dozens of soldiers were killed when the insurgents attacked Metele military base on November 18.

In the video, two soldiers, who claimed to be among the survivors of the attack, narrated the precarious condition of the troops and obsolete equipment which made it difficult for them to repel the insurgents attack.

The video footage showed the level of destruction of military equipment and makeshift shelters, while soldiers were seen packing their luggages, apparently preparing to leave the camp.

In the video, the soldiers appealed to President Buharithey repeatedly appealed to him to intervene to save the situation from deteriorating.

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See what the Nigerian Army has been doing to us, they brought us here. See how they killed our fellow soldiers, they burn them inside the tanks, a narrator in the video said.

They are using us to make money; why? Are we not human beings? They can kill soldiers inside a tank; if Rocket Propelled Grenade (RPG) can penetrate M-RAG vehicle, what of a fellow human being?

This is the location called Metele, This is a place they (the insurgents) took over 40 barrel and these people want to use us, and within one week they killed over 200 soldiers and we are now 147, they want to waste us here. It is a lie, our blood is not here.

This is a Third World vehicle, a tank manufactured in 1972; and Albarnawi broke all of it. They want to use us and we are not getting anything from them. We want to tell the government of our condition.

Please; the Federal Government should intervene before the insurgents come and kill us. They mocked us and said we are zombies; animals, we do not know our rights, any order given to us we will follow.

We are millennium soldiers, most of us are graduates.

Look at what they did to this T12 tank; it is obsolete. It was a 1983 Czechoslovakian tank procured during Shagari's regime. Is this the money the Federal Government provided to procure weapons?

All the equipment are not working. When it fired two shots it stopped. All the weapons are obsolete and bought during Shagari(1979-1983).

We know about the money the Federal Government gave to them but the Nigerian Army had turned us into a business.

All the money federal government gave them to buy weapons Nigerian Army is buying INNOSON. All these are obsolete Oyinbo came here and said they are obsolete. All these weapons were bought during the Shagari regime in 1983 They have turned us to business. Federal Government you will hear about it.

All these weapons are not genuineif you fire two times you have stoppages. This is 1983 when Shagari was head of state Federal Government give them money, they go and buy INNOSON, Nigerian made Federal Government please help us. Help us.

The Nigeria Army on Friday, confirmed on its Twitter handle the attack on 157 Task Force Battalion at Metele, on November 18 by Boko Haram insurgents.

However, the military authorities response, which came five days after, was short on details and the extent of casualties.

The army said that it has laid down procedures for reporting incidents that involve its personnel who become casualties in action, as a form of respect to the families of the gallant troops.

It noted that the families were first to be notified before any form of public information so as to avoid exacerbating their grief were they to discover it from unofficial sources.

It is suffice to observe that several social media, print and online publications have been brandishing false casualty figures as well as circulating various footages of old and inaccurate Boko Haram terrorists propaganda videos, and alluding it to be the attack on 157 Task Force Battalion.

While; it is understandable how such misinformation can spread in this era of social media frenzy, the spurious circulation of some of these videos only contribute to further propagate the propaganda intent of the terrorists, misinform the populace and portray themselves as what they are not?

So far, the situation in the location is under control as reinforcing units had been able to repel the terrorists and stabilize the situation.

In his reaction, President Muhammadu Buhari expressed deep shock over the killing of military personnel in Metele village by Boko Haram terrorists.

He gave an assurance that immediate measures are being taken to ensure that the loopholes which led to the fatalities are blocked once and for all.

Reacting to the tragic incident, the President said that his administration remains ever committed and focused on the security of military personnel and other citizens.

According to President Buhari, No responsible Commander-in-Chief would rest on his oars or fold his hands to allow terrorists to endanger the lives of its military personnel and other citizens.

Our loyal forces have proved their strength over the terrorists and we are ready to give them all the needed support in terms of equipment and manpower to succeed in ending the renewed threat.

In the coming days, I am engaging the Military and Intelligence Chiefs in extensive discussions on the next steps we shall be taking.

The President noted that fighting terrorism has taken a global dimension, which necessitates international collaboration among states facing similar security challenges.

President Buhari reassured Nigerians of his continued commitment to their security and of his efforts to sustain the momentum in the previous significant successes recorded against the terrorists.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the annual event brings together Christian faithful from various denominations as well as political office holders.

Gowon, who took his reading from 2 Chronicles 7: 14, urged the congregation to pray for the nation, saying that God is interested in the Nigeria situation at all times.

The church must provide a moral compass for the nation to make the people imbibe the fear of God and to follow righteousness.

Brethren, it is important to remind us that the church is Gods House of Prayer. With the general elections coming ahead, it is natural for people to become anxious and fearful of what the future holds for Nigeria.

In the light of the wanton killings in the land be it politically motivated or instigated by the dark agents of insurgency like Boko Haram, armed herdsmen or rustlers, there is great need for us to come together to pray and intercede for our dear nation and its people.

Gods solutions to the problems of this country is not in guns, retaliation or physical weapons but in prevailing prayers of the church.

May I ask the people of Nigeria to embrace of the spirit of love, patriotism and commitment to the good of our nation, irrespective of political parties or religious affiliation or tribal differences.

According to him, citizens of this hold important role of maintaining peace and unity for the progress and prosperity of Nigeria.

He cautioned Christians against reprisal attacks, retaliation, vengeance and religious intolerance in the guise of self-defence.

Whatsoever the provocation, whatsoever the threat, for the sake of our country, Nigerian Christians should never resort to retaliation that could lead to a religious war.

I call on the authorities to provide the necessary physical protection for all. We must continue to demand for the government to be alive to its primary responsibilities of protecting lives and properties of poor citizens.

Gowon said that the mission of Nigeria Prays was to mobilise all Nigerians to offer prayers for the healing and transformation of the nation.

The general commended the host minister, Pastor William Kumuyi, for his love and commitment to nation growth and development.

In a message, President Muhammadu Buhari also commended Gowon and Kumuyi for their passionate love for national cohesion.

Buhari, whose message was read by his media aide, Mr Femi Adesina, said that love and commitment of Gowon and Kumuyi to the unity and cohesion of the country was unparalleled.

Prayer is the right thing to do and the way to go. Nigeria is not a mistake. God that brought us this far wont abandon us.

It is right that we pray to God for the unity and prosperity of Nigeria. None of Nigerias challenges is greater than God. In God we trust and He will take us through the challenges.

Also speaking, Kumuyi, who spoke on Divine Assurance When Nigerian Prays said that God will answer if His people, faced with national perplexity can pray.

Nigeria wont disintegrate, we are just starting.
The minister has just approved ember months operations on roads across the state. What this means is that all roads leading into and out of the state would be rehabilitated.

As we speak, contractors are on site along the Benin  Auchi road. The Ekpoma portion of the road has also been approved for rehabilitation, he said.

According to him, the Federal Government is committed to ensuring that the roads were safe during and after the yuletide.
The state Organising Secretary of the party, Mr Johnson Agbaje, spoke in Epe during the campaign flag-off of Princess Abiodun Oyefusi, the Lagos East Senatorial candidate of the party.

He said the party had been repositioned for greatness and the confidence of residents in the party was growing by the day.

Agbaje said that residents were tired of what he called the failures of the APC administration in the state.

The PDP will win in 2019. We are very confident.The people are tired of the APC and their failed promises and they want us to give them hope.

We are the party of the people for the people. We are the party to deliver Lagos and give it to the people.

With the growing confidence in the PDP, we will surely win in 2019, he said.

Agbaje said all the candidates of the PDP for the general elections in the state were people of integrity with the capacity to deliver.

He described Oyewusi as a candidate with a very rich pedigree, saying the party trusted in her capacity to give better representation to the Lagos East in the Senate.

We have given the Lagos East a woman with great capacity. A woman who will bring the needed development for the people of this area.

We have given you a woman with proven track records. We need you to support her and vote for her for better representation, he said.

Oyefusi, a daughter of the late Ayangburen of Ikorodu, Oba Salaudeen Oyefusi, said she was contesting the Senate seat to bring development to the Lagos East Senatorial seat.

She said she was contesting to contribute her quota to nation-building and create opportunities for women.

The candidate urged people of the area to give her the required support, promising not to disappoint if elected.

I am going to the Senate to contribute to laws that will strengthen our communities and bring development, not only to our people here, but to the entire nation.

I will create opportunities for our youths. I will fight for increased representation of women in politics.

I am for the development of this area. By the grace of God, I will make you proud, she said.

Oyefusi urged the people of Lagos East to vote for the PDP, as the party would not disappoint them in 2019.
Malam Mustapha Salihu who is the APC National Vice Chairman for the North East said the president has done much for the sub-region in terms of providing infrastructural development as well as the fight against insurgency.

I want to say that this gathering is mainly an endorsement meeting and to show appreciation to Buharis administration for salvaging us from the shackles of insurgency, no single kilometre is now under Boko Haram.

The meeting is also to reiterate our support come 2019 by giving him triple number of votes as against was given to him in 2015.

On the whole, the meeting is to map out strategies with the stakeholders to see how we will go about the forthcoming general elections to re-elect Buhari for a second term, he said.

Also Speaking Gov. Kashim Shettima of Borno said, the president has done extremely well, as the sub-region is net beneficiary of his administration.

We all know the sorry state of the country, we are the net beneficiaries of President Muhammadu Buharis administration in terms of appointment, securing lives and properties and projects.

Because the Mambilla hydro power project in Gembu Taraba alone, is game changer in this part of the world.

Therefore North East is Buharis territory, believe me the sub-region will solely back him in 2019 general elections, he reiterated.

On his part Senate Leader, Alhaji Ahmed Lawan said senators of APC are more united after the defections and will continue to support the present administration on efforts to provide development in the country.

We are committed, loyal, patriotic and we will continue to support the president to actualised wishes of Nigerians, and we will be committed party members who are supporting the continuity of the present administration.

The 2019 general elections will be determined by integrity, history of candidates we know how they destroyed the resources.

People should remember where we are coming from and where we are, right now.

Buhari has done a lot of very good programmes and projects. Some have been concluded but there is still a lot that needs to be done.

So we need to vote for him and return him as president so that he can complete the good work he has started, Lawan said.

Also, The APC National Secretary Alhaji Mai Mala Buni said that Buhari had performed well in all sectors of Nigerian economy.

President Buhari has performed well in all segments, namely education, technology, employment, insecurity, appointments etc.

I therefore urged all eligible voters to come out and vote for him in 2019.
The party said President Buhari must face Atiku in person, as Nigerians are not ready to accept any representation, whosoever, from him. If, as a Commander-In-Chief, Mr President cannot face a political debate, how then can he vigorously engage international competitors?

According to Vanguard, the PDP made this known in a statement signed by its spokesman, Kola Ologbondiyan.

It also accused the President of abandoning soldierswaging war against Boko Haram in the North-East.

Mr. President should explain why he has been insensitive to the killing of citizens and soldiers by marauders and insurgents, particularly, given allegations that he has been distracting the Armed forces by dragging them to participate in his re-election campaign.

Nigerians recall that at the time our troops were being attacked by insurgents, our service chiefs were attending the launch of President Buharis Next Level campaign mantra, stolen from a foreign institute.

Nigerians await President Buhari to answer to the humongous corruption in his administration; why he has failed to fulfill any of his 2015 campaign promises and why he cannot show any key development project he initiated and completed in his three and half years in office, PDP added.

False promises

The party also alleged that Buhari used propaganda and false promises to get into power.

Adding that President Buhari must be ready to face the over 40 million Nigerians who lost their jobs and millions more whose businesses have folded up due to his incompetence and harsh economic policies.

He must face the victims of human rights violations, extra-judicial killings, illegal arrests and arbitrary detention under his administration.

President Buhari came to power through false promises and propaganda. Now, the day of reckoning has come and he cannot run away from his failures.

On our part, our candidate is ready to face President Buhari, one-on-one. He has his scorecard in governance and his blueprint for national rebirth; wealth creation, youth empowerment and building a prosperous nation, which has become dominant among the aspirations of Nigerians.

Recently, minister of transportation, Rotimi Amaechimade it clear that it is not necessary for Buhari to participate in a presidential debate.
Abubakar made the statement at the 2018 Second General Meeting of Nigeria Inter-Religious Council (NIREC), youths wings summit.

President has vowed to ensure violence free campaign and free, fair and credible 2019 elections. So we will hold him to his words, he said.

He said that Nigerians should take a stand and not to be used by politicians and other stakeholders to cause violence especially during the forthcoming general elections.

Abubakar said that the second summit came at the time Nigeria had been politicised by the political class and that there was the need to sit as a family irrespective of their various religious.

He advised Nigerians to be unite, adding that the summit is aimed at contributing to peaceful participation of inter religious groups on the 2019 election.

The sultan called on the youths not to allow themselves to be used by politicians to instigate violence of any kind.

In his remarks, The President of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN),Rev. Samson Ayokunle said that Nigerian youth should work together irrespective of their differences in their doctrines.

 We should used our different religion to move the country forward, he said.

He advised the youths to emulate the partnership between the Nigeria Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs and CAN in the spirit of love between the leaders.

In his remarks, The National Security Adviser to the President Maj.-Gen. Babagana Monguno, (rtd) represented by Brig.-Gen. Emmanuel Ndagi said: peaceful dialogue is the path way to peaceful coexistence.

Monguno said that security was a collective responsibility, adding that Nigerians should stay peaceful.

He urged the youths to ensure that Nigeria records peaceful elections and that Nigerias President is working to ensure free fair peaceful and credible elections in 2019.

He, however, added that the Federal Government, religious leaders, politicians as well as youths have critical roles in preventing the used of social media to propagate fake news, hate speech and any act capable of instigating violence.

The United States of America Ambassador, represented by David Young, Deputy Chief of Mission of embassy in Nigeria, said that the U.S. is committed to supporting Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to achieve credible elections in Nigeria.

Young commended the role NIREC in mobilising Nigerias Youths towards peaceful 2019 general elections.

He urged Nigerian youths to practice their faith and put it into action by loving God and their neighbors with all their hearts, for faith without works is dead .

Also speaking, the Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Idris said government is working seriously for the success of the forthcoming 2019 general election.

Idris who was represented by Assistant Inspector General of Police Raheed Akintunde vowed that both vote buyers and sellers would be dealt with without fear or favour.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said the jihadists launched "three separate assaults" on Saturday.

The monitor said the counter-attacks targeted the villages of Al-Bahra and Gharanij and an area close to the Al-Tanak oilfield, which is commercially active but is also an SDF military position.

SDF spokesman Mustefa Bali confirmed "a series of attacks" led by IS in these three locations and said fighting had taken place all day, with the Kurdish-led ground forces receiving coalition air support.

The fighting on Saturday alone killed 29 SDF fighters, taking its total losses over the last two days to at least 47, said Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman.

Thirty-nine IS jihadists have been killed -- some in the ground clashes, others in air strikes -- over the same period, the Observatory said.

'A broad attack'

IS confirmed in a statement on Telegram that it had launched attacks near Al-Bahra and Gharanij.

Earlier, the Observatory said IS had broken out of its holdout on Friday to attack Al-Bahra, where SDF fighters and coalition advisers are based.

"IS launched a broad attack on the village of Al-Bahra next to its holdout, taking advantage of the fog," Abdel Rahman said.

The monitor said coalition raids have also killed 17 civilians, including five children, in the IS-held pocket since Friday.

Coalition spokesman Sean Ryan said he had not received any reports of civilian casualties, and insisted air strikes had been "very limited due to the weather".

Deir Ezzor activist Omar Abu Leila said the attack on Al-Bahra was "very scary" and that IS fighters were able to move quickly "taking advantage of the fog".

'Probable chlorine attack'

Meanwhile Syrian regime shelling killed nine civilians including seven children Saturday in a planned buffer zone around the country's last major rebel bastion, the Observatory said.

A teacher and four schoolchildren were among the victims after the shelling hit near a school in the northwestern province of Idlib, said Abdel Rahman.

Later in the evening, in neighbouring Aleppo which is under Syrian regime control, official media accused the rebels of launching an attack with "toxic gas".

Regional head of health services, Ziad Hajj Taha, said it was a "probable" chlorine attack.

It is not the first time such accusations have been levelled against the rebels in Aleppo. On other occasions the Syrian regime has been accused of using chemical weapons against rebel strongholds, which it has always denied.

The anti-IS alliance has repeatedly denied previous reports of civilians killed in its air strikes, and said it does its utmost to avoid hitting non-combatants.

IS overran large swathes of Syria and neighbouring Iraq in 2014, proclaiming a "caliphate" in land it controlled but has lost most of it to offensives by multiple forces in both countries.

In Syria, the jihadists are largely confined to the pocket in Deir Ezzor, but they also have a presence in the vast Badia desert that stretches across the country to the Iraqi border.

Since 2014, the US-led coalition has acknowledged direct responsibility for over 1,100 civilian deaths in Syria and Iraq, but rights groups put the number much higher.
"Migrants at the Southern Border will not be allowed into the United States until their claims are individually approved in court," Trump wrote on Twitter.

He added that the US "will allow those who come into our Country legally" and emphasized: "All will stay in Mexico."

The deal, which would overhaul US border policy, comes with Trump outraged over the presence of thousands of Central American migrants who marched to Mexico's border city of Tijuana hoping to enter the US for a better life free from the poverty and gang violence in their homelands.

"For now, we have agreed to this policy of Remain in Mexico," the Post quoted Sanchez Cordero as saying. The government of new President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador will enter office on December 1.

But her office later issued a statement saying: "There is no agreement of any type between the future federal government of Mexico and that of the United States of America."

Trump has sent almost 6,000 soldiers to the Mexican border in support of Customs and Border Protection agents and National Guard troops already there, to forestall what Trump has called an "invasion" by "very bad people."

After a trek of more than a month from Honduras, nearly 5,000 migrants -- including women and children -- are now in Tijuana living in a makeshift shelter.

A potential breakthrough

Trump "is within his right. He is in his government," but he is not like other presidents in his views of migrants, said a resident of the shelter, Carolina Flores, 38, of Honduras.

AFP

"He sees us as a bug that is going to eat there," she added. "We come for an opportunity!"

Another Honduran in the shelter, Orlinda Morales, 31, a housewife, said the reported new asylum rules seem "very good" because migrants will not be in limbo. "We will get work here," she said.

Hundreds of the migrants lined up this week at a special jobs fair set up for them in the manufacturing city, but others remain determined to reach the US.

No formal agreement has been signed, the Post said, but US officials view the deal, which would see would-be refugees' cases heard by US courts in Mexico, as a potential breakthrough in deterring migration.

US asylum officers will begin implementing the new procedures in coming days or weeks, Homeland Security officials cited by the Post said.

Asylum seekers will be given an initial screening to determine whether they face imminent danger by staying in Mexico, where violence is widespread.

Deportation to the homeland

American officials will be able to process at least twice as many asylum claims under the new system because they would not be limited by detention space at US ports of entry, the Post report said.

AFP

It added that under the new rules, an applicant whose asylum claim is denied would not be allowed to return to Mexico but would remain in US custody pending immediate deportation to his or her home country.

In a statement issued on Thursday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made no mention of a deal but said that he and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen had "a constructive meeting" with Mexico's future foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard over the caravans.

"We have affirmed our shared commitment to addressing the current challenge. The caravans will not be permitted to enter the United States. There are real dangers to the safety and human rights of migrants from those who would prey on them," Pompeo said.

He added that he was looking forward to working with Mexico's new government, including on ways to spur job creation "to benefit the government and people of Mexico."

AFP

In 2018, border patrols registered more than 400,000 illegal crossers, according to Homeland Security, and in the last five years, the number of those requesting asylum has increased by 2,000 percent.

Less than 10 percent of cases result in asylum being granted, the government says.

Last week, a US federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from denying asylum to people who enter the country illegally.
The accident involved a PSV and a lorry happened at Poa Place in Uasin Gishu along the Nakuru-Eldoret highway.

Emergency rescue operations are underway with fears that the number of casualties could rise.

The accident happened when the driver of the 14 seater matatu lost control of the vehicle, ramming into the lorry that was parked by the road.

Eldoret East OCPD Richard Omanga confirmed the incident, adding that the driver of the vehicle is among those injured.

The casualties were rushed to Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret.

The bodies of the deceased were moved to the hospitals morgue with police launching investigations to establish the cause of the accident.

It is not clear how many people were in the matatu that was heading to Eldoret from Nairobi.

ece-auto-gen

Michuki rules and accidents during festive season

The accident comes in the wake of a crackdown on Public Service Vehicles ahead of the festive season.

The operation has since seen the enforcement of several rules, popularly called Michuki rules to ensure safety in public transport.
In a report by Standard, Malong Junior was arrested by a spy agency called the Internal Security Organization (ISO)

In the report, ISO Director General Kaka Bagyenda confirmed that they had the tycoon, but did to reveal more information.

"Malong Junior is being held as a person of interest in the ongoing investigations and I can confirm that indeed we have him," said Bagyenda.

Sources said that the South Sudanese tycoon was arrested for engaging in criminal activities which include; a trading counterfeit gold scam that saw many foreigners lose Billions of shillings.

ece-auto-gen

Mysterious disappearance

The fresh details come days after Police in Uganda started investigations into his mysterious disappearance.

According to Kampala Metropolitan Police spokesperson Luke Owoyesigyire, Juniors family filed a report indicating that he had been missing since November 14.
New Zealands horticulture and viticulture industries are welcoming the Government's decision to allow more overseas seasonal workers into the country.

The Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) scheme cap will increase by 1,750 to 12,850.

The scheme, which has been in place since 2007, allows employers to recruit workers from overseas for seasonal work when there are not enough New Zealand workers.

Horticulture New Zealand welcomes the change, but believes there is still a major problem with labour shortages in the sector, especially as the industry gears up for the upcoming busy fruit harvest season.

"Horticulture is growing rapidly and, combined with wine, we are an industry earning more than $8.8 billion, this includes more than $5.1 billion of exports," said chief executive Mike Chapman.

Mr Chapman told RadioLIVEs Rural Exchange that New Zealand needs to do something more to tempt workers back here, as more head across the ditch for work.

During harvest and pruning periods around 30,000 workers are required by the industry, and about one-third of these workers come from the RSE scheme.

"It is a mature scheme which sees workers come from the Pacific Islands for set periods of time," said Mr Chapman.

He said unemployment in New Zealand is at a low level which makes people who are willing to do outdoor physical work in short supply.

"Our industry is running a lot of programmes designed to get New Zealanders into work, but in the South Island during harvest there are virtually no New Zealanders available," he said.

The majority of RSE workers are in New Zealand from March through to May for the kiwifruit and apple harvests.

Listen to the full interview with Mike Chapman above.

Rural Exchange with Hamish McKay, Sarah Perriam and Richard Loe, 5-7am Saturday and Sunday on RadioLIVE with Carters Tyre Service. Click here for all the ways to watch and listen.

RadioLIVE/Newshub.
Restaurateur John Palino has announced he's running for Mayor of Auckland for the third time.

Mr Palino has run for Mayor twice before and lost both, in 2013 and 2016. He came closest in 2013, coming second to Len Brown. In 2016 he came fourth behind Vic Crone and Chloe Swarbrick.

If it's not third time lucky, he might quit the city altogether.

"If Auckland continues in the way it's going I can't see myself living here," he told RadioLIVE's Weekend Life on Sunday.

A year out from the election he's the only candidate on the right to announce he's running, perhaps boosting his chances.

Nobody else has announced they're running yet, although incumbent Phil Goff and former Labour Party MP John Tamihere have both suggested they will.

"The whole key is whether or not there is other people running 'cause we're just going to split the vote," he said.

"Hopefully it stays that way where it's just one centre-right person and we're able to actually get something done."

Mr Palino said he's currently pulling together a support team with the help of some National Party members, but can't say who's there yet.

He did have plenty to say about Mr Goff's performance as Mayor and the current direction of the city, lashing out at the regional fuel tax, Unitary Plan and bike lanes as contributing to poor affordability and quality of life.

He believes planners in the city are too narrow-minded about how they approach design.

"Auckland planners, they call Auckland a city, they go to the rest of the world and they look at cities in the rest of the world and they study them, but those cities are not like Auckland," he said.

"Those are real cities - Auckland is more like a state or a province or a region. So when you talk about 'how do I fix a city' and then get experts to tell them how to fix a city, they're actually telling them how they should fix Auckland's CBD."

Mr Palino's last campaign was marred by rumours from his first, when it was believed he was involved in the leaking of information about an affair between former Mayor Len Brown and Bevan Chuang.

He has denied he was the person who got Ms Chuang to declare her relationship with Mr Brown after a late-night meeting between Ms Chuang and himself at an Auckland car park.

Ms Chuang has claimed to have been involved with Mr Palino's campaign worker, Luigi Wewege, at the same time as she was having an affair Mr Brown.

Listen to the full interview above.

Weekend Life - the Sunday edition, 10am-2pm Sunday on RadioLIVE and streaming live to the rova app on Android and iPhone.



RadioLIVE/Newshub.
One of the most famous/infamous battles of Maori-Colonial times.

This new book is the first of its kind where the battle is examined from both Maori & Pakeha perspectives.

Graeme speaks with co-authors Buddy Mikaere, a descendent of the combatants, and military historian Cliff Simons.


The Athens' Freemasons lodge, Mount Vernon No. 22, is located at 365 Research Drive off of Barnett Shoals Road. The fraternal organization has increased its community involvement in hopes of encouraging new members.
With finals on the horizon, exercise becomes more relevant as a great way to burn off that Thanksgiving turkey weight and to relieve the stres
'A nation can take a quick decision in a fit of passion or excitement that can be damaging to itself in the long term,' says Aakar Patel, winner of the Prem Bhatia Award 2018 for Political Reporting.

IMAGE: Anti-Brexit demonstrators protest outside the Houses of Parliament in London, November 19, 2018. Photograph: Henry Nicholls/Reuters

Nations usually don't directly take decisions. Democratic nations decide what they are to do through agents -- meaning legislators.

In places where the executive is elected directly, like the United States, the potential decision maker announces his or her intent to do such and such a thing and that manifesto becomes the basis for choosing them.

Once in office, they are expected to carry out the promises made in the manifesto.

The complaint from American voters one hears of most often is that 'Washington' does not change and does not listen to them. Candidates make promises but do not carry them out.

The reason is not that the politician ignores the electorate, but that once elected, his manifesto encounters reality.

Mature democracies do not usually have the space for great change because it is rarely the case that the talents of one individual of genius are awaited.

The only time nations take decisions directly is through a referendum.

A referendum is a general vote on a single political question, usually with a yes/no answer that the nation must provide.

In 2016, the citizens of the United Kingdom (meaning the residents of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) took part in a referendum.

The question they had to answer was: 'Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?'

Two boxes were provided below for the voter to tick with the options: 'Remain in the European Union' and 'Leave the European Union'.

As readers may know, the Britishers chose to leave the European Union, of which they had been a part since 1973, by around 52% to 48%.

The main reasons that Britishers wanted to leave Europe were two. First that their rural areas had seen a lot of migration from Eastern Europe, mainly Poland. This was legal migration.

The idea of a European Union revolves around what is called the Four Freedoms. These are the free movement of goods, services, people and capital.

European citizens can stay, work in and invest wherever in Europe that they want to, without much restriction. They can also import and export from another European country without customs or any checks.

Poland joined the European Union in 2004 and over 8 lakh of them today live and work in the United Kingdom. Many of them are unskilled or semi-skilled workers who labour on farms.

There was some resentment towards such people, particularly in the rural areas that later voted overwhelmingly in favour of leaving the European Union, or 'Brexit', meaning the British exit from the EU.

The second reason that some Britishers felt offended was that the European Union has a common set of laws and rules that member States have to follow. For example, on human rights. No EU State can have the death penalty, for example.

In the area of business and commerce, the EU set up a list of common standards that all its member States had to follow.

Looking at it from the outside, it seems that these were beneficial things but to some Britishers it felt that this was an intrusion on their sovereignty.

For these reasons, the British voted to leave the EU.

The Brexit vote happened more than two years ago, in June 2016. But the United Kingdom has still not managed to negotiate the terms of its new relationship with Europe. One of the most difficult sticking points is about Northern Ireland.

As we know, England is part of an island, to the left of the coast of Western Europe. To England's left is another island, Ireland. This is divided into two parts. About 80% of the country is the Republic of Ireland, which is an independent nation and member of the European Union. About 20% is Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom.

The population of Northern Ireland has a mix of Protestants and Catholics unlike the Republic of Ireland which is almost entirely Catholic. The United Kingdom is, of course, mostly Protestant (under the Church of England). In many ways the issue resembles that of India, Kashmir and Pakistan.

Anyway, in 1998, meaning 20 years ago, after decades of fighting and killing, the three parties agreed to a peace called the Good Friday Agreement. Under it, the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland would be opened up fully and there would be free movement. Because both the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom were members of the European Union, this made even more sense.

For 20 years this arrangement was followed and peace has held.

Now with the United Kingdom wanting to leave the EU and its single market, the question of the border between the UK (including Northern Ireland) and the EU (including the Republic of Ireland) has reappeared.

Once the UK leaves, and this will happen at 11 am on March 29, 2019, there will have to visa checks and customs checks between the two entities. This will inevitably produce the same sort of anger that led to the violence of the past when some Irish thought that they were being separated or being kept apart deliberately.

This is the sort of thing that the UK population had not fully considered when it decided to vote to leave the European Union.

It will be fascinating to see how the UK is able to manage this problem and that of its access to the world's best market, in a few months as it finds its way in the world alone.

A nation can take a quick decision in a fit of passion or excitement that can be damaging to itself in the long term. That is why, generally speaking, I think a referendum is not a good idea.

Aakar Patel is Executive Director, Amnesty International India. The views expressed here are his own.
'Politicians have long appropriated the hero turned god as their totem, but never before with the ferocious intensity of the present regime,' notes Arundhuti Dasgupta.

Illustration: Dominic Xavier/Rediff.com

With election season upon us, Rama is back on the political front burner.

The clamour for a temple at Ayodhya has gained fresh vigour and this Diwali, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh has even renamed a district to honour his birthplace; Faizabad is now Sri Ayodhya, the divine honorific probably meant to transform the dusty and grimy spot on the map into a place fit for the gods.

IMAGE: Participants light earthen oil lamps on the banks of the Sarayu river in an attempt to enter the Guinness World Records for the largest display of oil lamps on the eve of Diwali, in Ayodhya, November 6, 2018. Photograph: Pawan Kumar/Reuters

Politicians have long appropriated the hero turned god as their totem, but never before with the ferocious intensity of the present regime.

However, seeking political capital in Rama's name is laden with risk, not only because he is a flawed hero, but also because different communities have imagined him in different forms.

And casting him in one single image could well alienate significantly large groups of people.

IMAGE: Artists dressed as Rama and Lakshmana at a Dussehra event in Chandigarh, October 9, 2008. Photograph: Ajay Verma/Reuters

Not everyone sees Rama as the muscular bow-wielding figure that finds favour with the present political brigade.

He is a flawed husband, a negligent father, a scared warrior and even a brusque and insensitive king in many versions.

In the Mizo Ramakatha, Rama and Khena (Lakshmana) carry guns and when they go to hunt a barking deer in the forest, they accidentally kill a god's daughter.

In Bengal, Chandrabati's Ramayana shows him to be an uncaring husband and unfeeling father, even calling him a sinner.

IMAGE: Ajay Singh Bisht, Uttar Pradesh chief minister, worships artists dressed as Rama, his wife Sita and his brother Lakshmana during Diwali in Ayodhya, October 18, 2017. Photograph: Pawan Kumar/Reuters

There are many versions where Rama beheads Shambuka, a low-caste ascetic.

He does this at the behest of the then prevalent priestly order that felt threatened by Shambuka's asceticism.

In some tribal versions, Sita is shown to be stronger on the battlefield.

She fights a particularly violent demon king when Rama fails to face up to him.

In one folk tale, he is a king who tires of his people and orders the end of the world, only to realise he has been tricked by a fish that warned a dhobi couple about doomsday and helped them to safety.

The couple survive a deluge that Rama brings upon the world, but when he finds out, he is angry at the betrayal and curses the fish to lose its ability to speak.

IMAGE: Tiharu Ram, a follower of the Ramnami Samaj, who has tattooed Rama's name on his face, outside his house in Chandlidi village, Chhattisgarh, November 16, 2015.

While discrimination on class grounds has lessened and most young Ramnamis today avoid full body tattoos, elderly devotees are still proud of the indelible message their bodies have carried for decades. Photograph: Adnan Abidi/Reuters

Despite the many unflattering versions, Rama's popularity has never been dented.

Possibly because people were free to choose their hero to best serve their time and purpose.

The Ramnamis, a low caste community from Chhattisgarh who tattoo the name of Rama on their entire bodies and chant the Ramcharitmanas, choose to recite only those verses that deal with wisdom, love and compassion.

They leave the rest out of their Ramayana.

To some extent, all Ramayanas play on the knowledge of previous tellings.

In the Adhyatma Ramayana, when Rama is exiled, he does not want Sita to go with him into the forest.

Sita argues with him, says she is his wife and should share his sufferings and so on.

But when he is still unwilling, she rages back at him saying, does he know of any of the countless Ramayanas that have been composed before this where Sita doesn't go with Rama to the forest? Many Ramayana texts acknowledged the existence of many Ramas with a question at the end.

'How many Ramayanas have there been?' A K Ramanujan in his essay, Three Hundred Ramayanas, addresses this question by recounting a folktale.

IMAGE: An artist dressed as Hanuman participates in Vijaya Dashmi celebrations in Chandigarh, October 19, 2018. Photograph: Ajay Verma/Reuters

One day, Rama 's ring slipped off his finger as he sat on his throne and burnt a hole in the ground as it fell, rolling down into the netherworld.

Hanuman, who had the unique ability to shrink and expand to any size he wanted, was sent to fetch it back.

But as he went down the hole, he found himself in the world of bhutas, teeming with spirits that had long left the world.

Upon seeing the tiny monkey, they seized him and put him on a platter of food meant for their king.

When the king asked Hanuman what brought him to the world of the dead, Hanuman replied that he only wanted Rama's ring back.

The demon king then pointed to a large thali full of rings and asked Hanuman to take his pick.

When an astonished Hanuman stared at him befuddled, the king said that these were the rings that belonged to the different Ramas that had come before this one and every time their time ended on earth, the rings would make their way to him.

The motif that nothing in the world is unique recurs in Indian myths and has also shaped the understanding of heroism and divinity in epic and folk literature.

However, as our political leaders vie for eternal glory and cast their heroes in two-dimensional moulds, our ability to live with many truths is fast disappearing.
Once Ram temple is built it will become a 'ghoshit (declared) Hindu Rashtra, a VHP leader told the gathering.

Amidst growing demand for construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya without further delay, Ramji Das of Nirmohi Akhara told Vishwa Hindu Parishads Dharam Sabha on Sunday that dates for the same will be announced early next year during Kumbh in Prayagraj.

Addressing the sabha after the inauguration marked by chanting of mantras at the Badey Bhaktmaal ki Bagia, Ramji Das said: "The date for construction of the Ram temple will be declared in the 2019 Kumbh which will be held in Prayagraj."

"It is only a matter of few days, and I request you all to show some patience," the seer remarked.

The Dharam Sabha, the biggest congregation of Ram bhakts in the temple town convened to discuss the way forward for temple construction, witnessed seer after seer stressing the need for construction of the temple at the earliest.

Nritya Gopaldas, president of the Ram Janmbhoomi Nyas, in his address said: "Such a large attendance shows that how much people from different walks of life are attached to the Ram temple."

"We respect the courts. We have great hopes from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. I request Adityanath to pave the way for construction of Ram temple, he said making a call to the government to do the needful in this regard at the earliest.

The Dharma Sabha venue , which witnessed saffron hue all the way with flags, banners, buntings and head gear in the same colour, also saw the Ram bhakts taking a pledge for construction of Ram temple, vowing by taking the soil of Ayodhya in their hands.

Religious leader Ram Bhadracharya said: "On November 23, I had called a senior Union minister who assured that after the model code of conduct comes to an end on December 11, the PM is likely to sit with them and take such a decision so that Ram temple could be built."

"We were also told we will not be cheated and I feel that ordinance route may be opted in the winter session of Parliament. We should exercise patience... We have been saddened by the court. The court of people will not deceive us," he stressed.

Once Ram temple is built it will become a 'ghoshit (declared) Hindu Rashtra, he told the gathering.

Earlier senior leader Champat Rai declared that no formula dividing the disputed land will be acceptable for temple construction.

"We want the entire land for temple construction ... no formula dividing the land is acceptable."

Though Rai did not spell out the details, his assertions are considered to be in reference to the Allahabad high court verdict dividing the land into three parts.

Rai also said that the delay in the temple construction is not a good sign.

The 'Dharam Sabha' is being touted as the largest congregation of 'Ram bhakts' in Ayodhya since the 1992 kar seva.

The congregation on Sunday is being held less than two weeks before the 26th anniversary of the demolition of the 16th century Babri Mosque, that had triggered unrest in this town and riots in other parts of India.

Hordes of activists of both the VHP and the Shiv Sena, who have gathered here from various parts of the country, bear saffron flags and chant 'Jai Shri Ram'. In the background posters with images of Lord Ram and the slogan 'Chalo Ayodhya' dot the roads.

At many places, passers-by can see small trucks carrying projectors and a screen to showcase 'Ramayana', a famous 1986 TV series.

The VHP has claimed that three lakh people, including seers, will attend its 'Dharam Sabha' to be held at Bade Bhakt Mal Ki Baghia, not far from the controversial Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas-run workshop, where work for building a temple has been underway since 1990.

Posters of the VHP mega event and Sena proclaiming 'Chalo Ayodhya' compete with each other to grab eyeballs of residents, even as rhetoric takes centre stage in the pilgrim town. From Ram ki Paidi to main market areas, huge hoardings have been put up, some in front of parks, bus stands and other public places.

Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray, who arrived here ahead of Sunday's VHP rally for a Ram temple, Saturday asked the Narendra Modi government to wake up from a "Kumbhakarna-like slumber" and declare the date for its construction.

Amid a growing chorus for construction of a Ram Temple, the Sena leader has also urged the government to bring legislation, or an ordinance, for building the temple on the disputed Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri Masjid site in Ayodhya, but he has not linked his own two-day visit to the VHP event.

Haunted by spectre of 1992, some Muslims leave town

The congregation of right-wing activists has triggered the painful memories of the 1992 tragedy among many residents, with a few Muslim families temporarily leaving the town fearing for their safety.

Some Muslim families had left the pilgrim town for good after the large-scale violence that had erupted here post the demolition of the 16th-century Babri Mosque 26 years ago on December 6, and now many others have temporarily left their homes, say local residents.

Despite high security deployment in Ayodhya and the twin town of Faizabad, many families from minority communities have decided to move out, feeling uncomfortable amid the din and provocative speeches surrounding the VHP's 'Dharma Sabha', they said.

The memories of 1992 still haunts many people from both the communities who had directly or indirectly suffered in the violence that had erupted after the Mughal-era mosque was razed by a frenzied army of kar sevaks.

An uneasy calm prevailed in Muslim-dominated areas such as Dharam Kanta, Qaziana and Katra.

"I live here and, many of my Muslim neighbours, who were here till a few days ago, have now left, either to their relatives' places nearby or temporarily shifted to elsewhere, out of Ayodhya," Nisha said, pointing to a locked house in her neighbourhood in the heart of the city.

The situation is similar in Saidwada and Begumpura, and many members of the minority community, who have not left the town, also said that they were feeling a sense of unease seeing so many outsiders whipping up communal frenzy in Ayodhya.

Mohammed Azim, a 46-year-old auto-driver in the city, who bore the brunt of the 1992 tragedy, said, "The communally-charged atmosphere in Ayodhya is reminding me of the painful memories of the tragedy and the violence that had ensued.

"Residents of Ayodhya have always lived in peace, and even after the unfortunate Babri demolition episode, people from both communities are still trying to have an atmosphere of peace. But, then these outsider come to our town and vitiate the atmosphere. So, many have decided to move out temporarily," he said.

Mohammed Muslim, 78, who now drives an e-rickshaw, gets perturbed talking about the 1992 incident, and wished, "Politicians and Hindu-outfits would not whip up communal frenzy. We were unsafe then, and today also we feel insecure with so much of crowd in our town."

"Naturally, Muslims will not feel secure in such a polarised atmosphere, and with many leaders making provocative statements, they do not want to leave things to fate, and thus moved out due to safety reasons.

In Faizabad town, some families have left altogether, while in many cases, women and children have been shifted to relatives' houses in nearby districts," Manzar Mehdi, a local historian told PTI.

Mehdi, a Faizabad resident and also editor of a Faizabad-based bilingual (Hindi and Urdu) publication that promotes communal harmony, said, "Hindus and Muslims have lived and continue to live in peace in Ayodhya. Muslims do not fear for their safety from local Hindus but the outsiders who have gathered here."

Muslim body writes to President, seeks intervention

The All India Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat (AIMMM) on Sunday wrote to President Ram Nath Kovind, seeking his urgent intervention into the developments in Ayodhya.

An umbrella body of more than a dozen Muslim religious and social organisations, the AIMMM said in its letter that the presence of unruly mobs in Ayodhya is a clear pointer to the way things are moving in an unchecked manner in Uttar Pradesh.

If any attempt is made to forcibly change the status quo at the disputed site at Ayodhya, it would tantamount to a gross violation of the orders of the Supreme Court, AIMMM chief Navid Hamid said in the letter.

It said the lives and safety of thousands of innocent people were at stake and alleged that the Uttar Pradesh government was displaying total negligence of its responsibility to maintain peace in the state.

Hamid said the state government cannot abdicate its constitutional responsibility of protecting all citizens.

Ayodhya build up, an open challenge to court: AIMPLB

Terming Dharm Sabha and visit of Thackerey an open challenge to the Supreme Court, All India Muslim Personal law Board on Sunday said a situation is being created against the Muslims.

"It is not the matter of giving a mosque but its a matter of principle that how many mosques will we have to sacrifice gradually. If we talk to someone, it will withdraw and another one will come.

"Sri Sri Ravishankar had offered that we should construct a big mosque outside Ayodhya. But later he cornered himself. Just imagine, what had happened, we entered into an agreement with him," AIMPLB general secretary Maulana Wali Rehmani said while talking to PTI.

"VHP's dharm sansad and visit of Thackerey and similar such programmes, a situation is being created against Muslims and its also an open challenge to the judiciary (SC)," he said.
Pakistani terror group Lashkar-e-Tayiba gave 'sea training' to 26/11 terror attack convict Ajmal Kasab in the high seas of 'Karachi', revealed a new book Fragile Frontiers: The Secret History of Mumbai Terror Attacks.

The sea training, as per the book written by historian Saroj Kumar Rath, also included 'how to fish', something that made Kasab think that 'he had got a job and he could earn a respectable living'.

'He (Kasab) was not informed by the LeT why he was being prepared as a mariner and as a fishermen,' quoted the book from what Kasab told during his interrogation.

According to the book, fearing a leak, the sea route assault plan was kept secret by the top LeT commanders -- Hafiz Saeed, Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi, Abu Hamza and others -- until November 2008.

It also said that before the D-day, the LeT tried to send attackers to Mumbai twice, but 'failed on both occasions'.

'In September 2008, the boat carrying terrorists hit a rock in the sea and the attackers almost drowned before their handlers rescued them.

'The other failed attempt was on 7 November 2008, when an alarmed captain of an Indian boat refused to surrender to the LeT and fled,' it added.

The book, in one of its essay titled 'Ajmal Kasab: The LeT side of the story', recorded that the 2-year training of the recruits for the 26/11 attacks was a 'joint responsibility of the LeT and the ISI'.

'Each terrorist had to undergo a series of training and indoctrination sessions organized by the LeT. All the 10 terrorists recruited for the Mumbai attacks had received four stages of training and after that, received sea training as well,' read the book.

As part of the sea training the recruits were taught how to read maps, how to measure the depth of the sea, how to use GPS for the sea route, how to use the nets of fishermen and how to operate a ship.

'They were also trained on how to use a fisherman's net just to mislead the Indian navy personnel in case of an enquiry.'

Also, other than the sea training, the four stage training received by the ten terrorists under the LeT command was: Daura-e-Sufa (20 Days' Preliminary Training), Daura-e-Ama (21 Days' Combat Course), Daura-e-Khaas (75 Days' Advanced Combat Course), Daura-e-Ribat (30 Days' Training on Intelligence Agencies).

'Kasab received (Daura-e-Khaas) training during May-July 2008. Skills like how to open and close Kalashnikovs, firing of a gun... and how to survive 60 hours without food and still climb a mountain with a heavy load were taught.

'The Mumbai attacks continued for 62 hours and crossing the LoC in Kashmir would take 60 hours as well,' it said.

Besides delving into the interrogation and confession report of Kasab, the book, also tried to answer significant questions like 'Why do young boys like Kasab become terrorists in Pakistan? What is the root cause of terrorism? Or what motivates them to follow a violent lifestyle?'

Kasab, the lone terrorist captured alive after the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, was hanged at Yerawada jail in Pune on November 21, 2012 after the then-president Pranab Mukherjee rejected his mercy petition.

How the secret operation to shift Kasab for hanging unfolded

For the select policemen involved in the covert operation to shift Kasab from Mumbai to Pune, the phrase 'Parcel reached Fox' signalled that the van carrying him had reached the jail where he was to be hanged the next day.

A senior police official involved in carrying out the operation said this was one of the seven code words/phrases used during the exercise, of which only the then state home minister R R Patil and a few top police officials were aware of.

The code 'Parcel reached Fox' was the last code exchanged between two senior officials involved in the operation to transport Kasab, he told PTI.

The hand-picked team was tasked with shifting Kasab from the high security 'Anda Cell' of Arthur Road prison in Central Mumbai to Yerwada Central Prison in Pune, he said.

The lone terrorist captured alive during the 26/11 attacks was covered in a burqa while being taken out of his cell on the night of November 20, 2012 and put in a police vehicle, the officer recalled.

"It was a big responsibility to transport him to Yerwada prison to be hanged. A death warrant was served to him seven days before the execution," he said.

The 'Force One' commando team of police, carrying advanced weapons, accompanied Kasab's vehicle. A State Reserve Police Force team trailing the vehicle a little behind, so as not to arouse suspicions, when it was on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway.

Except for two handsets, mobile phones of all officers and other police personnel involved in the operation were switched off and packed in a bag, the official said.

"During the entire three-hour long journey, Kasab did not utter a single word," he said. His demeanour did not change even when he was handed over to the Yerwada prison authorities at around 3 am," the official said.

By the time their mobile phones were switched on again the next day, November 21, the world knew that Kasab was executed, he said.

Lawyers who defended Kasab in HC yet to get their fees

Two lawyers who defended Kasab in the case on the directions of the Bombay high court are yet to get their legal fees from the Maharashtra government.

While the state government says they have not submitted any bills, the lawyers say that state prosecutors are not supposed to.

The two lawyers -- Amin Solkar and Farhana Shah -- were tasked with defending Kasab by the Maharashtra State Legal Services Department after they were nominated by then acting Chief Justice of Bombay high court J N Patel.

A notification about their appointment was issued on June 8, 2010 after Kasab had expressed his desire to contest the verdict of the trial court sentencing him to death in the Bombay high court.

According to the notification, Solkar was to receive remuneration equivalent to what is sanctioned for a public prosecutor, who conducts a death confirmation appeal, and Shah was to receive fees on par with an assistant prosecutor.

Keeping in tradition with the fairness of the trial, the law allows for appointment of a lawyer from the legal services department if accused is unable to do so.

Solkar and Shah had argued for Kasab in the Bombay high court against his death sentence almost on a day-to-day basis for nearly nine months before it confirmed the death sentence on him.

His conviction was upheld by the Supreme Court a year later.

When contacted by PTI, both Solkar and Shah said they are yet to receive their fees.

Both the lawyers said they had given the case priority as the high court was hearing it on a day-to-day basis from 11am to 5pm.

"I do not know why the state government has not made any efforts to pay us our fees. It has been seven years since the judgment was delivered by the high court. The Supreme Court confirmed the death penalty and Kasab is also dead. But we are still waiting (for the fees)," Solkar told PTI.

He said he was contemplating legal action to get his dues cleared from the state government.

"We are only asking for what is legally due to us. The law says every accused should get a fair trial. To ensure this, we were appointed to defend Kasab... then why this delay in paying us our fees," Solkar said.

Shah, on the other hand, says she has given up hopes that she will get her remuneration for appearing in the case.

"I have now given up. I consider it as a pro bono case (a case taken up voluntarily and without payment)," Shah, who had defended several accused in the 1993 Mumbai serial bomb blasts case, told PTI.

While the exact amount per hearing was not known, sources in the know put the figure somewhere between Rs 1,500 to Rs 2,000 per day.

An official from the state government's law and judiciary department said the government would pay the fees only after the two lawyers submit their bills.

To this, both Solkar and Shah said the need to submit bills does not arise at all as they were appointed by the high court and a notification to this effect was issued by the government.

"Does the government ask for bills from the public prosecutor before giving them their remuneration?" Solkar said.

Abbas Kazmi, a lawyer who had defended Kasab before trial judge M L Tahalayani, claims he has been paid by the government for his services.

"My remuneration was given by the government soon after the completion of the trial," Kazmi said, adding he got his fees without having to submit any bills to the government.
Another major terrorist attack in India of the magnitude similar to the 26/11 strike originating from Pakistan could easily escalate into a regional war, scholars, former diplomats and United States officials have warned ahead of the 10th anniversary of the deadly Mumbai terror attack.

Some 166 people, including Americans, were killed in the attack carried out by Pakistan-based 10 Lashkar-e-Tayiba terrorists. Nine of the attackers were killed by police while lone survivor Ajmal Kasab was captured and hanged after handed down death sentence by an Indian court.

Perpetrators of the 26/11 attack, including its mastermind and banned Jamat-ud Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed, continue to roam freely in Pakistan, indicating that Islamabad is not serious in bringing them to justice.

The JuD is believed to be the front group for the LeT. The US has offered a $10 million bounty for Saeed.

The 26/11 attack case has entered into the 10th year but none of its seven suspects in Pakistan has been punished yet, showing that the case had never been in its priority list.

"The victims of 26/11 have yet to see the masterminds of the attack in the LeT and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) face justice; unfortunately, that is virtually impossible in Pakistan," former Central Intelligence Agency official Bruce Riedel told PTI.

Riedel, senior fellow and director of Brookings Intelligence Project, believes that another terror attack in India of similar magnitude would result in a war between the two countries.

"If another attack of this magnitude occurs, there will be war," he said.

Pakistan's former envoy to the US Husain Haqqani said: "With US-Pakistan relations in a tailspin and hawkish attitudes dominating the subcontinent, one cannot predict if and how the situation would be controlled in the event of another major terrorist attack in India, with clear linkages to groups in Pakistan."

Currently a senior fellow and Director for South and Central Asia at the Hudson Institute, Haqqani said Pakistan 'must fulfil its promise of acting' against the masterminds of the 26/11 attack.

"That it has chosen to let them operate freely raises the justifiable concern that Pakistan's deep state does not want to deter or punish terrorists responsible for attacks in India.

"In 2008, Pakistan's promise of acting against the LeT and those involved in the Mumbai attack prevented escalation of India-Pakistan hostilities. The US also helped calm things down by sharing intelligence with both Pakistan and India," he said.

Agreed a senior Bush administration official, who was inside the White House at the time of the attack.

"That (India-Pakistan war) was a primary concern and a primary scenario that we wanted to avoid," Anish Goel, who was director of South Asia in the National Security Council of the White House at the time of the 26/11 attack, told PTI.

Noting that there was a lot of pressure on then prime minister Manmohan Singh 'to react kinetically', Goel said then president George Bush and secretary of state Condoleezza Rice had to make a lot of efforts including several phone calls to New Delhi, Islamabad and leaders of several US allies to prevent such a scenario.

Bush was very concerned, and got on phone with Singh immediately, offering condolences and urging restraint, he said. Rice travelled to the region trying to cool things.

"There's a lot of public pressure. I think prime minister Singh himself was showing a lot of restraint and was not inclined to do a counter attack right away, but there was a lot of political pressure on him to do so," said Goel.

"The US, I believe -- I don't know for sure, you have to ask the Indian government to know -- having counseling or urging him to show restraint, gave him some sort of political leeway and maneuverability to resist the domestic political pressures from those calling for a quick counterstrike on Pakistan," he said, adding that at no point there was any evidence of military mobilisation.

"There was a sense of nervousness in the then Bush administration about a possible nuclear war in South Asia.

"The Mumbai terror attack started a day before Thanksgiving -- a national holiday in the US -- and did not end till Sunday, the last day of the long weekend.

"Bush not only held situation room meeting on Saturday, but also mobilised his entire administration to try and prevent escalation of the tension," Goel added.

A senior former Obama administration official said if another attack would have happened like that, it would 'quickly escalates into a regional war'.

The current government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has already 'taken a tough line' against Islamabad including a surgical strike, the official said on anonymity.

"I could certainly foresee a situation where he (prime minister Modi) escalates those quite a bit in response to the terrorist attack. Then for the US government, I just don't know if the Trump administration would counsel restraint the way the Bush administration did," he said.

The Trump administration might say they (Indians) are justified, he said.

"Not only are we not going to stop you, but we're going to help you. I don't know that they would do, but I don't know if they would carry the same message of constraints.

"So, when you're talking about what could happen in the region, if there was another Mumbai attack after the Pakistanis have promised there's no terrorists operating in our country and we're going after all of them, I could see a scenario which quickly escalates into a regional war," he added.

*****

'US mobilised special forces to neutralise LeT terrorists during 26/11 attack'

The then Bush administration had mobilised special forces to neutralise Lashkar-e-Tayiba terrorists holding people hostage in hotels during the deadly terror attack, a former White House official has revealed.

But, before the Indian authorities gave the necessary clearances and the special forces could take off for Mumbai from an overseas regional location, Indian commandos had already completed their job, said Anish Goel, who was part of the White House's 26/11 crisis management group.

"I'm a bit hazy on the details now. It's 10 years out. But, we were offering to send like commando teams to Mumbai to infiltrate the hotels and root out the terrorist cells that were there," Goel, the director of South Asia in the National Security Council of the White House at the time of the 26/11 attack, told PTI.

Recalling the developments at the White House during the 2008 Thanksgiving weekend, Goel said the US had 'some (special forces) teams in the region that we're willing to deploy quickly'.

The US also offered forensics assistance to help determine who was the cause of this (attack) and where the attackers were from, he said, adding the White House was ready to help India with 'anything' that they might've wanted to deal with the terrorist attack.

"In the very beginning the Indians were reluctant to accepting US assistance because I think they felt that we can take care of this on our own.

"But, as the attack continued to drag on for two-three day, they became more accepting of US assistance," Goel said.

The Indians 'didn't accept it (US offer) in time for the commandos to arrive and make a difference', he said.

"I think technically they eventually cleared their (US commandos) arrival, but by the time the team was mobilised, the Indian commando teams had taken over and neutralised the attack," he said.

As a result, the US commandos never landed in India.

"It's hard to recall exact details now, but I don't think the US commandos ever actually made it to India," he said in response to a question, noting that at this time, he does not know how big the team of mobilised American commandos was.

"As the attack dragged on after two, three days, I think they came to the realisation that it was much more sophisticated than they had thought," said Goel, who now is a fellow in think-tank New America's International Security programme.

As the news of terrorist attack broke, Goel was driving from Washington DC to his parent's house, some eight hours away.

"On the drive I noticed that my blackberry was filling up with messages, but since as I was driving I didn't check my messages. When I reached my parents' house, I checked my blackberry and that's when I first learned about the Mumbai attacks," he said, recollecting the events of the day 10 years ago.

It was immediately clear that it was a terrorist attack, he added.

Though, he did not immediately rush to Washington DC, but he was constantly on his blackberry, phones and conference calls throughout the weekend.

The then US National Security Adviser Stephen Headley advised everyone involved in the crisis management team to come back to Washington, DC early.

The first reaction, he said, was to try and learn exactly what was going on because there was a lot of misinformation.

"The press was reporting all sorts of things. We didn't know how much of that was true. So the first part was just trying to get a handle on everything, like what actually is happening," he said.

"The second part was to try and understand who is responsible. The third part was to contact leaders in both India and Pakistan to urge restrain and urge calm. The fourth thing we were doing is we were working with the Indian government and offering them as much assistance as they wanted or that we could offer in terms of dealing with the attack," Goel said.

The US, he said, offered technical assistance.

"We were offering law enforcement capabilities. We were offering to send special forces to help bring the attack under control. We were trying to ensure that it didn't result in a larger conflagration in the region. It was very much a multipronged approach, in the first few days," said the former White House official.
Monday, November 19, 2018 at 4:17PM

Embed from Getty Images

If youre using iCloud for Windows and are trying to install the Windows 10 October update, you wont be able to at the moment. A bug has been discovered that creates problems for updating or syncing shared photo albums when using the latest Windows 10 update. Microsoft said its working with Apple to solve this issue. In the meantime, theyve blocked PCs with iCloud installed from getting the latest update. And those who try to install iCloud right now will get a warning that Windows doesnt support this version yet. Heres to hoping Microsoft and Apple fix this issue immediately.

Source: Engadget
TORRINGTON  Vic Muschell of Torrington and Lori Riiska of Winsted have been named to the board of directors of the Northwest Connecticut Community Foundation, which provides philanthropic support to 20 towns in Litchfield County.

Muschell is an attorney who engages in the general practice of law with emphasis on labor and employment and municipal law. He is labor counsel for the City of Torrington and has recently been appointed its Interim Corporation Counsel. He is an alternate member of the Connecticut State Board of Mediation and Arbitration and a former President of the Connecticut Bar Foundation, which is the main funding source of legal aid to underserved residents of Connecticut.

Long an advocate of a revitalized downtown, he is co-president of the Torrington Development Corporation, which is responsible for the completion of Torringtons Municipal Development Plan, providing the outlines of major infrastructure improvements to the downtown area. He serves as Corporate Secretary and board member of the Warner Theatre, a director of Five Points Center for the Visual Arts, Torrington-Winsted Area Rotary Club, the United Way, the Torrington Area Parkinsons Support Group, a director Emeritus of the NW Connecticut YMCA and Trustee of Center Congregational Church.

Muschell is a Corporator of the Torrington Historical Society and the Brooker Memorial and was a recipient of the NW Chambers Business Leader Award, Rotarys Paul Harris award, the YMCAs Legacy award, the Wisdom House Promoter of Community Progress award, and the Boy Scouts Good Scout award.

Lori Riiska, CPA, owner, Lori Riiska CPA, LLC is a life-long resident of Connecticut and a graduate of the University of Connecticut. She is a member of UConn Foundation Board of Directors and is a part of several committees, including the Alumni Committee and Audit Committee. She is also a founding member of Women in Philanthropy group.

She is immediate past Chair of the Connecticut Society of CPAs Peer Review Committee, a trustee of both the Northwest Connecticut YMCA and the Draper Foundation Fund, a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, and is a director of the Northwest Community Bank.

Draper foundation provides $800 K to non profits

The Draper Foundation Fund, a fund of the Northwest Connecticut Community Foundation, recently awarded area nonprofits $800,037.50. The fund awarded $574,087.50 to 19 designated nonprofits and $225,950 in donor-advised grants to nonprofits that provide essential programs and services for residents of Northwest Connecticut.

Noteworthy donor-advised grants include:

$30,000 to Litchfield County Opiate Task Force (fiscal sponsor Charlotte Hungerford Hospital Administration) to support a study led by the Litchfield County Opiate Task Force to develop a system of recommended best practices related to recovery housing.

The need to have a Best Practices for Recovery Housing Owners is due to the current alarming state of Recovery Housing in NW Connecticut, said Thomas Narducci, Administrative Director of Public Health at Charlotte Hungerford Hospital. ...Recovery housing is entirely unregulated and wide discrepancies exist from home to home...The unregulated status of these homes contributes to a lack of consistent safety standards and operational guidelines.

$50,000 to McCall Center for Behavioral Health to support the final phase construction costs for a fully integrated Medication Assisted Treatment unit at 58 High Street.

Availability and acceptability of outpatient treatment, and MAT treatment, remain significant barriers for people with substance use, mental health and Opioid Use Disorders, said Maria Coutant Skinner, Executive Director. We believe that it is essential to integrate MAT care under the umbrella of our Outpatient Clinic. To that end we will challenge those barriers to treatment by providing modem facilities that respect the clients privacy, dignity, and therapeutic needs.

The following is a complete list of nonprofit organizations that received donor-advised grants from The Draper Foundation Fund:

Colebrook Historical Society: $2,400 to support the publication of a book compiling 10 years worth of columns written by the Municipal Historian documenting the history of Colebrook.

CT Public Affairs Network $3,200 to support the 2019 Torrington Region Connecticut History Day Contest.

Educated Canines Assisting with Disabilities: $50,000 to support the capital campaign to increase the size of the facility.

FISH of Northwestern Connecticut: $24,100 to support the purchase of new computers, additional cameras for the existing security system and fund development software.

FISH of Northwestern Connecticut: $17,500 to support the cost of repairs at the Brooker House Shelter for families.

Housatonic Valley Regional High School: $750 to support the cost of transportation to the Financial Reality Fair in Torrington for the senior class.

Litchfield County Opiate Task Force: (fiscal sponsor Charlotte Hungerford Hospital Administration) $30,000 to support a study led by the Litchfield County Opiate Task Force to develop a system of recommended best practices related to recovery housing.

Litchfield County Opiate Task Force: (fiscal sponsor Community Health & Wellness Center of Greater Torrington) $1,000 to support the purchase of fentanyl test strips for the Harm Reduction Rover in service in Torrington.

McCall Center for Behavioral Health: $50,000 to support the final phase construction costs for a fully integrated Medication Assisted Treatment unit at 58 High Street.

New Beginnings of Northwest Hills Litchfield County, Inc.: $15,000 to support six months of operating expenses for The Gathering Place.

Northwest Connecticut Chamber Education Foundation, Inc.: $18,000 multi-year grant to support of the Read Aloud Program in Northwest Connecticut.

RC Productions, LLC (fiscal sponsor Greenwoods Counseling Referrals): $5,000 to support the cost of final post production, marketing and distribution for Uprooting Addiction, a film exploring the roots of drug and alcohol addiction and how communities can play a role in providing lasting solutions.

Torrington Winsted Area Rotary Club: $9,000 multi-year grant to support the Pet Parade.

The following nonprofits designated by the Draper Foundation Fund receive awards twice annually:

Beardsley & Memorial Library, Colebrook Associates, Inc., Colebrook Congregational Church, Colebrook Historical Society, Inc.,Cornell University for the Cornell Feline Health Center College of Veterinary Medicine, W. L. Gilbert Trust Corporation, Greenwoods Scholarship Foundation, Inc., Little Guild of St. Francis, Northwestern Connecticut Community College, Northwest CT YMCA, The Salvation Army, Tufts University, School of Veterinarian Medicine, The University of CT Foundation, Inc. , Vivisection Investigation League, a/k/a The Last Post, We Adopt Greyhounds, Inc., Winchester Youth Service Bureau, Winsted Area Child Care Center, Inc., Yankee Golden Retriever Rescue, Inc.

NCCC receives foundation grant

WINSTED  Northwestern Connecticut Community College recently received a $5,000 grant from the Neighbor-to-Neighbor Fund, a fund of Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation. The funds will be used to support the NCCC Student Emergency Fund, which provides students with emergency short-term financial funds that allows them to continue with their studies when an unexpected expense challenges their ability to continue.

Funds from the Neighbor-to-Neighbor award will be used to help students in the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation Connecticut region, which includes Canaan, Cornwall, Goshen, Kent, Norfolk, North Canaan, Salisbury, Sharon, and Warren.

Since we are the only higher education option in the northwest corner, many students from this region drive 40 minutes or more to attend college, said NCCC President Dr. Michael Rooke. If they experience an unexpected expense, like car repairs for example, it might mean they can no longer get to their classes and continue their education. These funds will help provide an immediate relief to the added unforeseen challenges many of our students face.

The NCCC Student Emergency Fund was created in 2016 through NCCC Foundation funding and private donations to assist students with financial needs based on the students specific need and individual circumstances.

Since it began, our student emergency fund has helped dozens of students and made a significant difference in their ability to finish their degree or certificate, said Rooke.

The Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation was founded in 1987 to serve residents in the four counties where New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut meet. For more information go to www.berkshiretaconic.org.
WASHINGTON  The Glenholme School held its fifth annual Run For Autism in mid-November as part of its tireless effort to raise awareness and funds for students with special needs.

The 3.1 mile race, held in Steep Rock Preserve along the Shepaug River of Washington, Connecticut, attracted 147 runners who stepped up to raise $2,500 to support Glenholmes therapeutic programs. The event has become a community favorite with local business sponsors and area private school students enthusiastically volunteering and participating.
TORRINGTON - Dancing, piano music, a show-and-tell, a generous donation and lively conversations were the highlights of a networking event Nov. 13 at the Nutmeg Conservatory for the Arts, sponsored by the Northwest Connecticut Chamber of Commerce.

Torrington real estate agent Nathanial Zimmerman was one of about 100 attendees at the Business After Hours event, held monthly at chamber member locations.

We are very interested in the arts and in making sure that Torrington is on a healthy course for business and for pleasure, Zimmerman said. We come to interact with our friends and people that we do business with.

He said he has grandchildren who are students at the Nutmeg Ballet. Its a great means for them to establish their way in the arts, he said.

Nutmeg students Rachel Kundzins and Stone Dresser performed the pas de deux from the end of act two of The Nutcracker. They will be one of five couples working on these roles for this seasons production, Victoria Mazzarelli, artistic director, said. Each of six regular performances - four at the Bushnell in Hartford and two at the Warner in Torrington - will feature a different cast, she said.

John E. Janco, president and CEO of Torrington Savings Bank, presented Mazzarelli with a check for $25,000 to help kick off a fund-raising campaign for a new Nutcracker set, now being created by Boston designer Roger LaVoie.

I cant help but think how fortunate we all are to have Nutmeg in our region, right here in downtown Torrington, Janco said. Nutmeg Ballet has been an important part of the arts community since 1969, and we all know how important the arts are, not only to the local community but to the region.

Dioramas of the set design were on display at the event. The new set will be ready for the 2019 production of The Nutcracker, when Nutmeg Ballet celebrates its 50-year anniversary, Mazzarelli said.

Tim Pusch, a manager at Brooks, Todd & McNeil insurance agency, said, Im a longtime fan and supporter of the Nutmeg. Ive gone to the ballet here. We are thrilled to have the Nutmeg. Its a blessing.

Kelley Hutton, a Burlington resident and a dancer, attended at the urging of a friend. As she entered and heard piano music peformed by John Mihaliak, she said, Its hard not to dance. As soon as I came in, I wanted to go to the barre and start doing a warm-up.

She said she was excited to see the dioramas of the new set.

My daughter takes ballet and jazz dancing, and I am interested in finding out about transferring her into Nutmeg to see if she likes it, she said.

For those interested in seeing the final year of performances using the current Nutcracker scenery, there is still time to order tickets. Performances of The Nutcracker at the Bushnell will be Dec. 8 and 9 at 12:30 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. For ticket information, call 860-987-5900. Regular performances at the Warner will be Dec. 15 at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. and Dec. 16 at 2 p.m. For ticket information, call 860-482-7180.
The Pentagon has named a U.S. soldier who died on November 24 in Afghanistans southern province of Helmand and confirmed that the soldier had been critically wounded during a firefight against "enemy forces" in a neighboring province.

In a statement issued on November 25, the Pentagon said 25-year-old Army Ranger Sergeant Leandro Jasso sustained his fatal wounds during combat in the Khash Rod district of Nimruz Province.

He died after being evacuated to the Garmsir district of Helmand Province, where U.S. forces operate an expanded forward operations base known as Camp Dwyer and a smaller military installation known as Camp Garmsir.

Jasso was the ninth U.S. soldier to die in Afghanistan in 2018.

Some 14,000 U.S. soldiers are currently serving in Afghanistan, where the United States and NATO formally concluded their combat mission in 2014.

The remaining Western forces mainly train and advise the Afghan security forces, which have been struggling against attacks from a resurgent Taliban and other militant extremist groups.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said earlier in November that 58 Americans had been killed in Afghanistan since the start of 2015 when Afghan troops took over primary responsibility for Afghanistans security.

During the same period since the withdrawal of most NATO combat troops from Afghanistan, Ghani said nearly 29,000 Afghan police and soldiers have been killed -- a figure far higher than anything previously acknowledged by the government in Kabul.

With reporting by AP, AFP, Reuters, and dpa
In a rare sign of cooperation between Pakistan and India, two Indian ministers were set to attend the groundbreaking ceremony for a new Pakistani border crossing for Sikh pilgrims later this week.

Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said on November 24 he had invited his Indian counterpart to attend the ceremony for the Kartarpur crossing on November 28.

In a letter sent to Pakistans Foreign Office on November 25, Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj declined the invitation due to "prior commitments."

But she said that the Indian minister for food-processing industries and the minister of state for housing and urban affairs will attend the event.

India and Pakistan have a history of bitter relations since gaining independence from Britain in 1947.

They have fought three wars, two of them over the disputed Himalayan region Kashmir, where the two sides still regularly exchange fire.

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan is expected to lay the foundation stone on November 28 for construction to begin on the Kartarpura crossing, which aims at making it quicker and easier for Sikh pilgrims from India to visit a shrine to Guru Nanak, the 15th-century founder of Sikhism.

On November 22, New Delhi also approved the construction of a new border entry point and road on the Indian side of the border to connect the two countries' provinces called Punjab.

Pakistani Information and Broadcasting Minister Fawad Hussain called the Indian decision a "victory of peace lobby in both countries."

"It's a step towards right direction and we hope such steps will encourage voice of reason and tranquility on both sides of the border," Hussain tweeted.

The border corridor indicates a thaw in relations between the two nuclear-armed rivals.

In September, a rare meeting between the foreign ministers of the two countries was scheduled on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.

But India called off the meeting one day after it was announced, following the killing of an Indian border guard in the disputed region of Kashmir.

India has long blamed Pakistan for arming rebel groups in Kashmir and for helping to orchestrate the deadly 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai. Islamabad denies the accusations.

Pakistan used to be home to a large Sikh community, but most of its members went to India during the 1947 partition, with only a few thousand remaining in Pakistan.

Thousands of Sikhs visit Guru Nanaks shrine in Pakistan every year.

With reporting by AP, Reuters, and Dawn
Hundreds of demonstrators protesting against the detention of a Shi'ite Hazara militia commander have clashed with police in the Afghan capital.

Reports said that at least one officer was wounded in the clashes, which saw protesters throwing stones at police. Officers reportedly fired into the air to disperse the crowd.

A number of police checkpoints were also said to have been torched.

The demonstration erupted in the Dasht-e Barchi district, a predominately Hazara neighborhood in Kabul, after security forces in the city arrested Alipur.

It was not immediately clear what the man, who leads a Shiite militia in central Afghanistan, is accused of.

With reporting by AP, Khaama Press, and TOLOnews
Just days before Kyrgyz President Sooronbai Jeenbekov marked one year in power, he faced a challenge from the man who did more than anyone else to help propel him to the presidency -- former President Almazbek Atambaev.

Information was leaked onto the Internet alleging that Jeenbekov had drastically overspent on campaigning for the presidency in violation of election rules.

Then Atambaev appeared on a television station that he has been linked to financially and gave a 90-minute interview, during which he criticized Jeenbekov's policies and said his former ally's time in office was in some ways worse than the presidencies of the Kyrgyz leaders chased from power in 2005 and 2010 -- Askar Akaev and Kurmanbek Bakiev, respectively.

Kyrgyzstan has gained a well-earned reputation as a country with a lively, sometimes too lively, domestic political scene.

Does a very public rift between Kyrgyzstan's current president and his immediate predecessor signal the beginning of a new period of political tension or is there a chance for reconciliation?

RFE/RL's media-relations manager, Muhammad Tahir, moderated a discussion on the recent aggravation in ties between Jeenbekov and Atambaev.

Joining the debate, we had Erica Marat, an associate professor at the National Defense University in Washington D.C. and author of many articles on Kyrgyzstan, and Bakyt Beshimov, who is currently a professor at Northeastern University in Boston and a former member of the Kyrgyz parliament. And, since I'm a big devotee of Kyrgyzstan's domestic politics, I had something to say as well.

Listen to the podcast above or subscribe to the Majlis on iTunes.
The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople and the leader of the Romanian Orthodox Church have inaugurated a massive new cathedral in Bucharest, amid controversy over the use of public funds for the project.

Tens of thousands of people stood outside the People's Salvation Cathedral for a November 25 service led by the Istanbul-based Patriarch Bartholomew I, who is considered the leader of the worldwide Orthodox community, and Romanian Patriarch Daniel.

The inauguration comes less than a week before Romania marks Great Union Day on December 1, a national holiday marking the unification of Transylvania, Bessarabia, and Bukovina with the Romanian Kingdom 100 years ago.

Construction of the 120-meter-high cathedral in Bucharest, which will be able to hold as many as 5,000 worshipers, began in 2010 and is scheduled to be completed in 2024.

It towers over the nearby Palace of the Parliament built under the late communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.

The Romanian Orthodox Patriarchate says the unfinished building has cost 110 million euros ($125 million) so far.

With three quarters of the amount coming from public funds, the cost has created controversy in a country where investment in infrastructure such as hospitals is badly needed.

The patriarchate argues that Romania "needs a representative national cathedral, which symbolizes faith, freedom, and dignity of the people."

Around 86 percent of Romanias population of 20 million are Orthodox believers.

The cathedrals inauguration comes amid tensions inside the Orthodox churches over Ukraine's move to create a national independent church.

Based on reporting by AP, AFP, and Balkan Insight
KYIV -- The Ukrainian Navy says Russian forces opened fire on a group of its ships in the Black Sea off the coast of the Crimean Peninsula late on November 25, striking two warships and wounding two crew members before seizing the vessels along with a Ukrainian Navy tugboat.

The Ukrainian Navy announced the incident on a day of heightened tension after Russia reportedly blocked the three Ukrainian Navy ships from passing from the Black Sea into the Sea of Azov via the Kerch Strait.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova late on November 25 accused Ukrainian authorities of using "gangster tactics" in the Kerch Strait -- first a provocation, then pressure, and finally accusations of aggression.

Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), which oversees the country's border-guard service, said its forces fired weapons at the Ukrainian Navy ships to get them to stop after they had illegally entered Russia's territorial waters.



But the Ukrainian Navy says its vessels -- including two small-sized artillery boats -- were attacked by Russian coast-guard ships as they were leaving the 12-mile zone of the Kerch Strait and moving back into the Black Sea.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said late on November 25 that "Russian special forces have taken over some ships."

Poroshenko called a meeting of his military cabinet to evaluate and determine Ukraine's next steps.

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said it considered Russia's "aggressive actions" to be a violation of international law that would be met with "an international and diplomatic legal response."

Meanwhile, angry demonstrators were gathering in front of Russia's embassy in Kyiv late on November 25 after authorities announced the attack against the Ukrainian Navy ships.

Earlier the same day, Kyiv said a Russian coast-guard vessel rammed the Ukrainian Navy tugboat in the same area as three Ukrainian ships approached the Kerch Strait in an attempt to reach the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov.

Mariupol is the closest Ukrainian government-controlled city to Donetsk and Luhansk, the breakaway regions of eastern Ukraine controlled by Russia-backed separatists.

The Ukrainian Navy said the collision happened because "the invaders' dispatcher service refuses to ensure the right to freedom of navigation, guaranteed by international agreements."

'Complete Disregard' For International Law

The navy also accused Russia of demonstrating an "aggressive nature and complete disregard for the norms of international law."

"The ships of the Ukrainian Navy continue to perform tasks in compliance with all norms of international law," the Ukrainian Navy said in a statement said. "All illegal actions are recorded by the crews of the ships and the command of Ukraine's Navy and will be handed over to the respective international bodies."

After that incident, Russian authorities closed passage by civilian ships through the Kerch Strait.

Russian authorities cited a local port authority to justify the closure on grounds of heightened security concerns.

In Brussels, the European Union late on November 25 called upon Russia "to restore freedom of passage"' in the Kerch Strait.

Meanwhile, NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu said the alliance was "closely monitoring developments" in the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait and was in contact with the Ukrainian authorities.

"We call for restraint and deescalation," she said.

"NATO fully supports Ukraine's sovereignty and its territorial integrity, including its navigational rights in its territorial waters," Lungescu said. "We call on Russia to ensure unhindered access to Ukrainian ports in the Azov Sea, in accordance with international law."

The NATO spokeswoman also noted that the alliance's leaders at their Brussels summit in July "made clear that Russia's ongoing militarization of Crimea, the Black Sea, and the Azov Sea poses further threats to Ukraine's independence and undermines the stability of the broader region."

Areas Of Heightened Tensions

However, the FSB accused the Ukrainian Navy ships of illegally entering its waters and deliberately provoking a conflict.

The Sea of Azov, the Kerch Strait, and the Black Sea waters off Crimea's southern coast have been areas of heightened tensions between Moscow and Kyiv since 2014 when Russia seized Ukraine's Crimea region and began supporting pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine.

A 2003 treaty between Russia and Ukraine designates the Kerch Strait and Sea of Azov as shared territorial waters.

But Moscow has been asserting greater control over the area since its annexation of the Crimean Peninsula -- particularly since May when it opened a new 19-kilometer Russian-built bridge that links the Crimea region to Russian territory to the east of the Kerch Strait.

Both sides have recently increased their military presence in the Azov region, with Kyiv accusing Moscow of harassing ships heading for Ukrainian ports such as Mariupol.

Ukraine's navy said in a statement that it was a Russian border-guard ship, the Don, that "rammed into our tugboat." It said the collision caused damage to the tugboat's engine, outer hull, and guardrail.

Russia's ships "carried out openly aggressive actions against Ukrainian naval ships," the statement said, adding that the Ukrainian ships were continuing on their way "despite Russia's counteraction."

But the Kyiv-based UNIAN news agency reported later that the two small-sized armored artillery boats and the tugboat did not manage to enter the Sea of Azov.

Ukrainian Navy spokesman Oleh Chalyk told Ukraine's Kanal 5 TV that the tugboat "established contact with a coast-guard outpost" operated by the FSB Border Service and "communicated its intention to sail through the Kerch Strait."

"The information was received [by Russian authorities] but no response was given," Chalylk said.

But the FSB said the Ukrainian ships "illegally entered a temporarily closed area of Russian territorial waters" without authorization.

It said that Ukraines ships were carrying out "provocative actions" aimed at creating "a conflict situation in this region."

The FSB statement did not mention the ramming of the Ukrainian tugboat.

Later on November 25, several hours before the reports of Russian forces firing on Ukrainian Navy ships, the FSB said two other Ukrainian ships -- two armored Gyurza-class gunboats  had left Ukraine's Sea of Azov port at Berdyansk and were sailing south toward the Kerch Strait at top speed.

Russian officials said after the reported shooting incident in the Black Sea that those Ukrainian ships in the Sea of Azov turned back to Berdyansk before reaching the Kerch Strait.



The FSB also warned Kyiv against "reckless decisions," saying that Russia was taking "all necessary measures to curb this provocation," Interfax reported.

Aleksei Pushkov, chairman of the Information Policy Committee of the Russian Federation Council, accused Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko of directly ordering the Ukrainian ships to carry out what he called "a purposeful provocation."



"Such things are not carried out without the head of state's knowledge, consent, and -- I think -- initiative," Pushkov told Russia's state-run Rossia 24 TV channel.

With reporting by RFE/RL correspondent Christopher Miller in Kyiv, RFE/RL correspondent Rikard Jozwiak in Brussels, AFP, AP, Reuters, UNIAN, and Interfax.
The number of people injured in a 6.4-magnitude earthquake that struck western Iran near the border with Iraq has risen to more than 700, state media report.

No fatalities were reported yet from the November 25 quake, which occurred in the same area where a quake a year earlier killed more than 600 and injured more than 9,000 others.



State television, citing the emergency services, said that 716 people were injured, but there were no reports of major damage.



It said 33 of those injured remained in hospital in the morning of November 26.



Fortunately, the quake was not near bigger cities, Ali Moradi, the head of Irans seismology center, told Iranian state TV. But it might have caused damage in villages and I hope there are not many villages located where it hit.



According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the quake was at a depth of about 10 kilometers, with its epicenter 114 kilometers northwest of the city of Ilam, close to Irans border with Iraq.



Irans state broadcaster IRIB specified that the quake was centered near the predominantly Kurdish town of Sarpol-e Zahab in Irans western province of Kermanshah.



A 7.3-magnitude earthquake hit the same area near Sarpol-e Zahab in November 2017, killing at least 620 people and injuring thousands.



Irans semiofficial Fars news agency said the quake on November 25 also was felt across six other Iranian provinces.



The Iraqi Geological Survey said the quake was felt in Baghdad and in Irbil, the capital of Iraqs northern Kurdish region.



Kuwaits state news agency, Kuna, reported that the quake was also felt in Kuwait and in coastal areas.



In 2003, a 6.6-magnitude earthquake in Irans southeastern province of Kerman killed some 31,000 people and destroyed much of the historic city of Bam.

With reporting by Reuters, AP, AFP, and dpa
Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis

Mumbai, Nov 25 (PTI) Ram temple is not a political issue, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said Sunday and expressed hope that Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray, who is in Ayodhya, would get the blessings of Lord Ram. A senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader also said that the Sena, which is its ally at the Centre and in Maharashtra, will remain its partner for the Maharashtra and the Lok Sabha polls due next year.

Thackeray, who offered prayers at the Ram Lalla temple in Ayodhya on Sunday, said the BJP government at the Centre "may not last" if Ram temple is not constructed in the Uttar Pradesh city, and demanded that an ordinance be brought to pave for its way. "The construction of Ram temple in Ayodhya is not a political issue. Shri Ram is the deity for entire India, Thackeray would get his blessings too," Fadnavis told reporters at Karad in Maharashtra's Satara district.

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Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray

He was speaking after paying tributes at the memorial of late Y B Chavan, the state's first chief minister. Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar also paid floral tributes to Chavan in Karad along with senior leaders of the party from the region. Meanwhile, Maharashtra BJP chief Raosaheb Danve said the Shiv Sena's stand on the construction of Ram temple supports the BJP and asserted that both the parties will jointly contest the next year's state and general polls.

"It is not like the Sena has backed the BJP recently, but we have been together for decades," Danve told reporters in Jalna district. The Sena has demanded that an ordinance be brought before 2019 for constructing the temple. Dashing it aside, Danve said, "The dispute related to temple or mosque is in court. Hence, despite being in power there are limitations to what a government can do."

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Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar

One has to coin some slogans while undertaking an activity like visiting Ayodhya, "which does not mean we have severe differences with each other", said the Lok Sabha member from Jalna constituency. "To avoid division of votes, the Sena is going to be our partner for the general and assembly elections," he said. The Sena had said earlier that it will fight all the upcoming elections solo.
Sidhu accepts Pak invite

Chandigarh, Nov 25 (PTI) Punjab Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu on Sunday accepted Pakistan's invite to attend the ground-breaking ceremony of a corridor to the Kartarpur Sahib Gurdwara across the border on Wednesday, saying this initiative would open "the borders of hearts and the mind". The foundation stone of the Dera Baba Nanak-Kartarpur Sahib corridor on the Indian side will be laid by Vice President Venkaiah Naidu and Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Monday.

Singh has declined to attend the ceremony in Pakistan, citing its continuous support to terrorist activities in his state and killing of Indian soldiers by Pakistan armed forces. He, however, welcomed the historic occasion and described it as the cherished desire of Sikhs around the world, but said he "must most reluctantly, however, regret his inability to be present". On Sunday, Sidhu wrote to Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, accepting his invitation for the ground-breaking ceremony, where Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan will also be present.

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Kartarpur Sahib Gurdwara

"It is with great honour and unalloyed joy that I accept your invitation to attend the ground-breaking ceremony at Kartarpur Sahib on November 28. I look forward to meeting you on this historic occasion," Sidhu wrote to Qureshi. The Local Government, Tourism and Cultural Affairs Minister wrote that his application "for permission to attend (the ceremony) is now lodged with the Ministry of External Affairs". In the letter, Sidhu said that this day "will indeed break ground."

"As our nations take this first step, the Kartarpur Spirit can make pilgrims of us all, venturing out on a journey that breaks the barriers of history and opens the borders of hearts and the mind," he said. "A journey that our people can walk together towards, a future of shared peace and prosperity for India and Pakistan". Sidhu was responding to Qureshi's letter to him dated November 24, in which the Pakistani foreign minister had said, "This has been a long-standing demand of the Sikh community, especially those from India. You remained a steadfast partner in this endeavour."

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Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi

Sidhu responded, "Good deeds speak for themselves, the hand only interprets their eloquence. Every noble act makes way for itself." The Punjab minister had welcomed the Indian government's decision to develop passage from Dera Baba Nanak in Gurdaspur in his state to the historic shrine in the neighbouring country. The decision coincided with the 549th birth anniversary of Sikhism's founder Guru Nanak Dev on Friday.

The government will build and develop the corridor from Gurdaspur district to the International Border to facilitate Sikh pilgrims from India to visit Gurdwara Darbar Sahib Kartarpur on the banks of the Ravi river. In August, Sidhu had come under fire from opposition parties in Punjab after he visited Islamabad and hugged Pakistan Army chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa during the swearing-in of Imran Khan as prime minister of that country.

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Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa

Sidhu had claimed then that Gen Bajwa had told him about "making efforts to open the Kartarpur corridor". Kartarpur is located in Shakargarh in Narowal district of Pakistan's Punjab. Guru Nanak Dev, the founder of Sikhism, had spent more than 18 years of his life there. The Kartarpur Sahib Gurdwara is located about three-four km from the border in Pakistan.
Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh

SPOKESMAN NEWS SERVICE: CHANDIGARH, NOVEMBER 25: Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Sunday sought the personal intervention of Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari for expeditious clearance of road projects related to the historic towns of Sultanpur Lodhi, Batala and Dera Baba Nanak, associated with the life of Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji, whose 550th Parkash Purab is being observed in November 2019.

In a letter to Nitin Gadkari, the Chief Minister said that he was grateful to the Government of India for acceding to the request of the Punjab Government related to the projects and announcements in this regard, especially the opening of the Kartarpur Corridor to facilitate smooth and easy access to devotees to Kartarpur Sahib.

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Nitin Gadkari

In view of the historic importance of these religious towns, Captain Amarinder Singh sought additional allocation of Rs 150 crore under the Central Road Fund (CRF) for the upgradation of the road network in Sultanpur Lodhi, Batala, Dera Baba Nanak and Gurdaspur. The Chief Minister also sought from the Union Minister four-laning of 21.300 km stretch (from RD 16.800 to 38.100, which is currently two-laned with 10-meter carriageway), at an estimated cost of Rs. 260 crore.

This stretch is part of the Jalandhar-Kapurthala-Sultanpur Lodhi NH-703-A, an important highway which connects the holy town of Sultanpur Lodhi with the rest of Punjab and beyond. Certain stretches of this Highway (0.0 to 16.800) are already four-laned and byepass the Kapurthala town through a circular road but due to the expected increase in pilgrim traffic during the upcoming celebrations, it was imperative to four-lane the stretch of 21.300 Kms, he added.

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Kartarpur Corridor

The Chief Minister also impressed upon Gadkari to immediately declare the Tarn Taran-Goindwal Sahib-Kapurthala Road as National Highway, as it is related to the life of Sri Guru Nanak Dev ji and connects Sultanpur Lodhi with Amritsar. He apprised the Union Minister that the Central Government, vide No. NH-14012/2/2015-P&M of 06.11.2017 has already given in-principle approval for a declaration of the aforesaid road as National Highway.

The Chief Minister further apprised Nitin Gadkari that in view of the announcement to open the Kartarpur Corridor, Dera Baba Nanak should be connected with Batala by a four-laned Highway to enable the devotees to visit Kartarpur Sahib by a short route. Notably, Sultanpur Lodhi is of great religious significance as Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji spent 14 years here and attained enlightenment, before embarking on his missionary travels. In addition, other important places linked to Guru Nanak Dev Ji are Batala, where his marriage was solemnised and Dera Baba Nanak, where he spent the last days of his temporal life.
A public thank you

On Thursday, November 15th around 3:30 P.M. while checking out at the Price Chopper in Malta, my chip card continuously came up as a malfunction. The charge was $53.51.

There was a lovely young woman and I believe her daughter in line behind me, and she offered the cashier her credit card and told me it was her gift to me. Finally though after many removing and reinserting my card many times it was accepted and all ended well.

I apologized to the lady for the delay and thanked her for her kind gesture. I only hope she sees this letter and wish to publicly thank her again.

She truly is a beautiful human being with a big heart and certainly has set a fine example for the teenage daughter who was with her.

I sincerely wish her and her family many, many blessings, not only for the holiday season but for always.

The Annual Saratoga Showcase of Homes Continues as a Win-Win for our community

The areas premiere new home tour, the 2018 Saratoga Showcase of Homes was in full swing again this year with 13 locations from our regions finest builders on display. In what has become a tradition in Saratoga County and now celebrating its 23rd year, this wonderful community event has become part of the fabric in our fall season.

Thank you to everyone involved for making this extraordinary event a Win-Win for our community. It provides a way for the builders and all their suppliers to showcase their work and product to over 3800 visitors. It provides the opportunity for you, the public to tour these spectacular new homes and meet with builders. It provides our over 75 generous sponsors a way to be involved and associated with a first class event that runs for three consecutive weekends. And lastly, it provides the needed support to two important local charities: Rebuilding Together Saratoga County and Habitat for Humanity of Northern Saratoga, Warren and Washington Counties. The Saratoga Builders Association is proud to donate this years proceeds of $63,000 from this event, now bringing the total contribution to nearly 1.2 million dollars.

Thank you to the dedicated, hard-working members of the showcase Committee: Co-Chair Lisa Licata, Drew Aiello, Fran Dingeman, Adam Feldman, Mark Hogan, Mark Johnson, Michelle Larkin, Shannon McCarthy, Yvonne Manso and Pam Stott.

Congratulations to the stars of this show, the exceptional builders for their commitment, incredible talents and award-winning artistry  Bella Home Builders, Belmonte Builders, Blitman Development, Bonacio Construction, Caruso Home Builders, Heritage Custom Homes, Kodiak Construction, La Femme Home Builders, Malta Development, The Earth Source Company, The Form Collaborative and Witt Construction.

And lastly, special thanks to all of you who purchased tickets to tour these magnificent homes, for without you, this show would not be possible. We are so grateful for your continued support.

Barry Potoker

Co-Chair, 2018 Saratoga Showcase of Homes

Executive Director, Saratoga Builders Association
Of the more than 23,000 genes in the human genome, only a handful assume a very central role in signal transduction and growth regulation. Of these, the three genes encoding RAS proteins are particularly important, as they are found mutated in over 25% of human cancers. The processes around the RAS gene products are also involved in a variety of rare human developmental disorders called the RASopathies. RAS proteins are absolutely central regulators of growth and oncogenesis and, in turn, every regulator of RAS is poised to be fundamentally important for cancer and a broad variety of human diseases.

Driven by the interest in identifying underlying genetic determinants of drug response in a specific type of cancer of the hematopoietic system, CeMM now reports on the mechanistic link between the LZTR1 gene, previously associated with a variety of rare disorders and rare cancers, and RAS. These findings provide a new key regulator of a pathway that is one of the best studied signaling pathways in biology. As such, it represents a major advancement. The study not only sheds new light and details on the regulation of a central growth-promoting protein, but also offers a molecular explanation for an unusually large number of pathological conditions, ranging from different types of brain and pediatric cancers to developmental pathologies like Noonan syndrome.

The research team found that the protein called LZTR1, in concert with its copartner cullin 3, regulates RAS by attaching to it a small molecular tag, called ubiquitin. The modified RAS proteins demonstrate altered localization within the cell and reduced abundance. Mutational defects or inactivation of LZTR1 lead to an increase of RAS dependent pathways causing dysregulation of growth and differentiation. LZTR1 can therefore be considered a breaker of RAS action.

Giulio Superti-Furga, the Principal Investigator who directed the study, CeMM's Scientific Director and Professor for Medical Systems Biology at the Medical University of Vienna explains: "The study is part of a long-term effort to understand the mechanism of anti-cancer drugs in leukemia and beyond and I find it very rewarding to have contributed to the discovery of a fundamental aspect of RAS regulation, the key player in cellular growth." Johannes Bigenzahn, the MD postdoctoral fellow and first author adds: "I am very happy from a medical as well as scientific perspective to have discovered a mechanism behind so many different genetic diseases as well as many unusual forms of cancer. It is reasonable to expect that our discovery may lead to the development of new therapeutic strategies targeting RAS-dependent phenotypes in the future."
| BY Kim Shaw |

On the heels of the recent hire of Executive Creative Director Micah Walker and new business wins of Optus, Paspaley and Vision Investment Group 72andSunny Sydney has welcomed key hires to fill growing roles.

Greg Fyson (top left), Executive Producer. Fyson comes to 72andSunny with 15 years industry experience. Carving out his career as a TV Producer at BMF, Greg worked at Saatchi & Saatchi and Rabbit Content, producing jobs for a range of clients including: LION Nathan, MLA, Expedia and P&O. Most recently Greg was an Executive Producer at Blockhead, a boutique visual effects studios specialising in film, advertising and AR.

Mark Carbone (above right), Senior Writer. Carbone joins the 72andSunny Sydney team as a Senior Copywriter with 10 years domestic and international industry experience. He returns to Sydney after four years in New York where he held creative positions at Anomaly and BBDO, working across clients such as Pepsi, Budweiser, Captain Morgan and Lowes. Prior to his work in New York, he worked at BMF Sydney as an Art Director/Copywriter for clients such as ALDI, Beef & Livestock, P&O, BPAY and Commonwealth Bank.

Annalise Dry, Brand Director. Hailing from Los Angeles, Annalise Dry has worked in the industry for 10 years across both project management and account management roles for companies including: TBWA, Deutsch LA, and MAL/FOR GOOD, a division of TBWA\Media Arts Lab.Prior to joining 72andSunny Annalise worked for Clemenger BBDO Melbourne, leading projects for brands such as Mercedes-Benz, Mattel, MARS, National Bank of Australia (NAB) and DrinkWise.

Joel Pearson, Strategy Director. Pearson joins 72andSunny as a Strategy Director with over a decade of experience spanning creative, communications and media planning roles. Previous positions include Global Innovation Director across Unilever for PHD Worldwide out of London, and strategy roles for TBWA and TCO. Most recently he was a Strategy Director at TBWA leading planning efforts across the Foxtel account, among others.

Alice Child, Senior Brand Manager. Child will be working on the Google team, joining from adam&eveDDB London where she worked for more than three years across a range of clients including: John Lewis Christmas, Waitrose & Partners, Volkswagen and Great Western Railway.
AFRICA

Central African Republic

Expected Council Action

In October, Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Jean-Pierre Lacroix will brief the Council on the latest UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) report.

The mandate of MINUSCA expires on 15 November 2017.

Key Recent Developments

The security situation in the Central African Republic (CAR) has worsened as clashes continue among the Muslim-dominated ex-Seleka factions. Since November 2016, two factions in particular, the Union for Peace in the CAR (UPC) and the Popular Front for the Renaissance in the CAR (FPRC), have been involved in heavy fighting amidst attempts to reunite the ex-Seleka. In addition, there has been continued fighting between ex-Seleka factions and Christian-dominated anti-Balaka armed groups, and anti-Balaka attacks against civilians and MINUSCA.

The deterioration in security has resulted in an increase in civilian casualties and violations of international humanitarian law and human rights, increasingly along sectarian lines. On 22 August, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Stephen OBrien briefed Council members under any other business on his recent visit to the CAR, lamenting that he has witnessed early signs of genocide in the country.

There are 600,000 people who are internally displaced, and roughly 450,000 have fled to neighbouring countries. The situation in Basse-Kotto is of particular concern; the UPC has been directly targeting civilians there since May, causing several hundred deaths, according to Amnesty International. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported on 13 September that armed groups killed at least 25 people around the country in the span of a week. In Bangassou, 2,000 Muslims have taken refuge in a church because they fear local anti-Balaka rebels.

Humanitarian assistance in the country has been hampered by the violence and in some places has completely halted. On 3 August, six ICRC workers were killed in an attack on a health centre.

The government, led by President Faustin Archange Touadera, has minimal control outside the capital, Bangui, which is relatively calm. Disarmament efforts have made only limited progress, and factions of the ex-Seleka and anti-Balaka groups remain armed and in control of large areas of the country.

Touadera sacked his defence minister, Levy Yakete, in a move reported to be related to the growing violence. Yakete is on the CAR Sanctions Committee list for his role in the violence during the ex-Seleka coup.

MINUSCAs roughly 10,000 military troops have been partially successful in protecting civilians but are stretched thin, and the level of performance between contingents has varied. They have also been directly targeted by rebel groups, resulting in the death of three Moroccan peacekeepers in two attacks in July. During his monthly luncheon with Council members on 17 August, the Secretary-General asked them to authorise an immediate increase in troop levels to help address the security situation. The US conditioned additional troops on the development of clear benchmarks for the performance of MINUSCAs contingents. In addition, the US insisted that the Secretariat demonstrate concrete plans to address the issue of sexual exploitation and abuse by peacekeepers in the CAR. The Secretariat has informed Council members that in its next report it will provide them with more information regarding the troop increase and the issues raised by the US.

Sanctions-Related Developments

On 6 September, the CAR Sanctions Committee held a briefing open to the full UN membership to discuss the midterm report of the Panel of Experts assisting the committee. The report itself was submitted to the committee on 21 July. The report noted that illegal exploitation of natural resources remains a major source of income for armed groups, both for ex-Seleka factions in the east and local anti-Balaka groups in the west. In addition, the report found that implementation of sanctions remained weak. Travel ban violations by people on the sanctions list continued, including travel by former President Francois Bozize. National authorities have failed to implement the assets freeze, and several listed individuals still collect government salaries. CAR officials continued to criticise the arms embargo, claiming it prevents the rearmament of national security forces. Noting that CAR may still arm its national forces by applying for exemptions from the committee, the panel maintains that some use this argument to blame the UN for the ongoing insecurity.

Human Rights-Related Developments

In his opening statement at the 36th session of the Human Rights Council (HRC) on 11 September, High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad Al Hussein expressed alarm over deteriorating security conditions in the CAR and the persistent reports of atrocity crimes, which have pushed the country very close to a complete breakdown along religious and ethnic lines. Intensifying violence has forced tens of thousands of civilians to flee, and increasing attacks against aid workers have forced a number of humanitarian organisations to suspend life-saving activities, he said.

During its 36th session, the HRC held an interactive dialogue with the independent expert on the situation of human rights in the CAR, Marie-Therese Keita Bocoum, and considered her report (A/HRC/36/64). The report, covering July 2016 to June 2017, concluded there was an increase in human rights violations, mostly perpetrated by ex-Seleka and anti-Balaka armed groups, including killings, acts of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment, sexual violence, abductions, deprivation of liberty and arbitrary arrest, extortion and looting, recruitment and exploitation of children, the occupation of schools and health centres and attacks on them, and denial of humanitarian assistance.

Key Issues and Options

The immediate priority for the Council is to respond to the increased fighting between rebels, attacks against civilians along sectarian lines and the targeting of MINUSCA personnel and other UN and humanitarian personnel.

The Council could authorise additional troops for MINUSCA as an immediate response to the violence prior to or during MINUSCAs mandate renewal in November. During this process, Council members could request the Secretariat to report on actions taken to improve the performance of MINUSCAs contingents.

The Council could also consider acting through the 2127 CAR Sanctions Committee, listing additional individuals and entities, particularly those with links to recent attacks, in an effort to curb violence. To improve sanctions implementation, the Council could call on countries in the region to cooperate with each other and implement the sanctions regime in order to eliminate arms trafficking to rebel groups and the funding of their operations through illicit exploitation of natural resources.

Council and Wider Dynamics

The deteriorating security situation and the governments inability to project law and order beyond Bangui continue to concern all Council members.

Every Council member has expressed support for an increase in MINUSCA troop levels. In contrast to the US position, however, several Council members, including those that are troop-contributing countries, reject steps that they perceive as singling out contingents and publicly shaming them. Moving forward towards MINUSCAs mandate renewal, any language with respect to benchmarks for the assessment of MINUSCAs performance will be contentious and will require careful negotiation.

France is the penholder on the CAR, and Ukraine is the chair of the 2127 CAR Sanctions Committee.

UN DOCUMENTS ON THE CAR
AFRICA

Central African Republic

Expected Council Action

In November, the Council will renew the mandate of the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA), which expires on 15 November.

The Special Representative of the Secretary-General to the Central African Republic (CAR) and head of MINUSCA, Parfait Onanga-Anyanga, will brief the Council on the latest developments and the MINUSCA report.

Key Recent Developments

The security situation in the CAR continues to deteriorate outside of the capital, Bangui. Various national and regional peace and reconciliation initiatives have not gained momentum. The government, led by President Faustin Archange Touadera, has minimal control outside of Bangui, which is relatively calm. Disarmament efforts have made only limited progress, and factions of the ex-Seleka and anti-Balaka groups remain armed and in control of large areas of the country.

Fighting between ex-Seleka factions and Christian-dominated anti-Balaka armed groups is further exacerbated by inflammatory sectarian rhetoric. According to the Secretary-Generals latest MINUSCA report of 18 October, growing intercommunal violence with ethnic and religious undertones heightens the risk of mass atrocities along those lines. The Secretary-General thus notes that the window for reversing hatred and violence is shrinking.

Armed groups have continuously targeted MINUSCA, resulting in the death of 12 peacekeepers in 2017. Humanitarian workers are also under attack, with 12 killed. Meanwhile, the number of internally displaced people has increased by 200,000 in 2017 to a total of 600,000.

In an effort to draw attention to the fragile situation in the country that, in his words, is often far from the media spotlight, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres arrived in CAR on 24 October, United Nations Day. After a meeting with Touadera and members of government in Bangui on 25 October, the Secretary-General stressed the need to strengthen MINUSCA so it can better protect the population. He further warned of religious divisions in the country that are a result of political manipulation that must be condemned and avoided at all costs. Later that day he travelled to Bangassou where he honoured Moroccan and Cambodian peacekeepers killed earlier this year and visited the compound of a Catholic church in Bangassou, where 1,200 Muslims are taking refuge. He then returned to Bangui to meet with UN humanitarian and development workers and civil society.

During his monthly luncheon with Council members on 17 August, the Secretary-General asked them to authorise an immediate increase in troop levels to help address the security situation. The US conditioned additional troops on the development of clear benchmarks for the performance of MINUSCAs contingents. In addition, the US insisted that the Secretariat produce concrete plans to address the issue of sexual exploitation and abuse by peacekeepers in the CAR. The Secretariat later informed Council members that in its next report it will provide them with more information regarding the troop increase and the issues raised by the US. In the meantime, Council members postponed discussion of a troop increase until the mandate renewal.

The MINUSCA report notes that while the mission is trying to adapt to the situation, the escalation and spread of violence across the CAR has left MINUSCA overstretched. In light of the security and political situation, the Secretary-General recommends that MINUSCA focus on its support for the political process, both nationally and locally, on protection of civilians, and on facilitating conditions for the delivery of humanitarian assistance. Other tasks should be streamlined and adjusted, taking into account the capacities of other international actors and establishing a clear division of labour. In addition, the Secretary-General recommends an increase in the troop level by 900 military personnel, stressing that while this will not allow MINUSCA to protect all civilians in the countryit can provide the force with greater ability and flexibility to respond to developing events. In addition, the report says that the increase could help facilitate better conditions for the establishment of state authority in more areas and convince armed groups to participate in the political process.

The report mentions steps that are being taken to implement the Secretary-Generals zero-tolerance policy towards sexual exploitation and abuse by peacekeepers in the CAR. In addition, the Secretary-General intends to carry out a critical assessment of MINUSCAs contingents in early 2018 to examine possible linkages between their performance and conduct.

Sanctions-Related Developments

The Panel of Experts assisting the CAR Sanctions Committee will submit its final report to the committee in November. The committee will then meet with the panel to discuss the report later in the month or in December.

Human Rights-Related Developments

On 27 September, CAR President Touadera addressed the Human Rights Council (HRC) at its 36th session. Taking note of mass violations of human rights, violations based on gender, and the use of child soldiers by armed groups in the CAR, he highlighted the creation of a National Human Rights Commission based on the Paris Principles; it was expected to begin its work in October. Also on 27 September, the HRC held an interactive dialogue with Marie-Therese Keita-Bocoum, the Independent Expert on the situation of human rights in the CAR, and considered her report (A/HRC/36/64). The report describes increased human rights violations, the re-recruitment of thousands of children, the deteriorating humanitarian situation, and the failure of peace and reconciliation initiatives.

On 29 September, the HRC adopted, without a vote, a resolution extending the mandate of the Independent Expert for one year and deciding to hold a high-level interactive dialogue to assess the human rights situation in the CAR, with an emphasis on the impact of peace and reconciliation efforts, during the HRCs 37th session (A/HRC/RES/36/25).

Key Issues and Options

The need to respond to the increased fighting between rebels, attacks against civilians along sectarian lines, and the targeting of MINUSCA personnel and other UN and humanitarian personnel is of key concern to the Council. In this context, the renewal of MINSUCAs mandate will afford opportunities to adjust the mandate and clarify its main priorities. The Council may revise MINUSCAs mandate while also authorising additional troops for MINUSCA as part of its response to the ongoing security and political situation.

During the renewal process, Council members could request the Secretariat to report further on actions taken to improve the performance of MINUSCAs contingents, including in the context of sexual misconduct.

The Council could also consider acting through the 2127 CAR Sanctions Committee, listing additional individuals and entities, particularly those with links to recent attacks, in an effort to curb violence.

Council and Wider Dynamics

The deteriorating security situation and the governments inability to project law and order beyond Bangui continue to concern all Council members.

In light of the grave situation, all Council members have expressed support for an increase in MINUSCA troop levels, in principle. Notwithstanding the US position, several Council members, including troop-contributing countries, reject steps that they perceive as singling out contingents and publicly shaming them. Thus, language with respect to general assessments of MINUSCAs performance will be contentious and will require careful negotiation in order to achieve agreement on additional troops.

There also seems to be a general understanding that MINUSCA must prioritise some of its tasks within its very limited resources. That said, when negotiations start, disagreements may arise as to which tasks should be allocated fewer resources.

France is the penholder on the CAR, and Ukraine is the chair of the 2127 CAR Sanctions Committee.

UN DOCUMENTS ON THE CAR
AFRICA

Central African Republic

Expected Council Action

In February, the Special Representative to the Central African Republic (CAR) and head of the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA), Parfait Onanga-Anyanga, will brief the Council on the latest developments and the most recent MINUSCA report, due on 15 February. Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Bintou Keita is expected to participate in the consultations after the briefing.

Key Recent Developments

The security situation outside of the capital, Bangui, is dire. Self-proclaimed self-defence groups, loosely connected to some members of the anti-Balaka movement, have continued to operate in the south-east of the CAR and are targeting Muslims. Ex-Seleka factions continue to establish illegal parallel administration and taxation structures in areas under their control, preying on the population.

An acute crisis situation has also developed in the north-west of the country where more than half the population has been displaced. Since the end of December 2017, two armed groups, the Revolution and Justice (RJ) and the Mouvement de la liberation de la Centrafrique (MNLC) have clashed to the north of Paoua, in the north-west. Both are trying to control lucrative road checkpoints where large herds of cattle pass through on their way to neighbouring Chad. According to UNHCR, local authorities report that as of 23 January some 15,000 houses have been burned and 487 people killed. The fighting has displaced more than 65,000 people who are now seeking refuge in Paoua, which previously had only 40,000 inhabitants. An additional 17,000 have fled to Chad since the beginning of the year due to the recent violence. An unknown number of people have sought refuge in the bush.

According to UNHCR, the total number of internally displaced people increased from 400,000 in May to 688,700 at the end of 2017, in addition to 542,380 refugees hosted in neighbouring countries.

On the political front, various national and regional peace and reconciliation initiatives have failed to gain momentum. The government, led by President Faustin Archange Touadera, has minimal control outside Bangui, which is relatively calm. Disarmament efforts have made only limited progress, and factions of the ex-Seleka and anti-Balaka groups remain armed and in control of large areas of the country.

Armed groups continue to target humanitarian workers and MINUSCA peacekeepers, resulting in the death of 14 peacekeepers in 2017. Most recently, anti-Balaka elements killed a Mauritanian peacekeeper and wounded three others on 4 December 2017 in Bria in the east.

The Council adopted resolution 2387 on 15 November 2017, renewing the mandate of MINUSCA until 15 November 2018. The priority tasks of the mission include the protection of civilians, support for the peace process, and the delivery of humanitarian assistance. In addition, the resolution increases MINUSCAs troop ceiling by 900 troops to a total of 11,650 military personnel. In his regular reporting on MINUSCA, the Secretary-General is to include the outcome of a performance review of MINUSCAs contingents no later than the end of the first quarter of 2018.

The Secretary-General is also to keep the Council informed through his reports on MINUSCA about the missions progress in implementing a zero-tolerance policy on sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) and on reviews pursuant to resolution 2272 of 11 March 2016. The resolution requests the Secretary-General to replace a troop-contributing country (TCC) when it has not taken appropriate steps to investigate allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse or when the particular TCC has not held the perpetrators accountable.

An independent special investigation appointed by Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, Jean-Pierre Lacroix, to look into attacks on civilians that occurred between 1 May and 31 August 2017, announced its main findings on 24 January. It found that while MINUSCA has a well-established protection of civilians strategy and functioning early warning mechanisms, these did not translate into preventive actions and there were deficiencies in civil-military-police planning, and operations. Additionally, gaps were identified with regard to contingents training and understanding of protection of civilians.

French magistrates decided on 15 January to end proceedings against French soldiers accused of allegedly abusing children in the CAR, citing insufficient evidence. The Guardian reported that an internal UN investigation recorded detailed testimony from children in the CAR who said they were sexually abused between December 2013 and June 2014 by French troops deployed in the CAR as part of the Council-authorised French intervention force and by soldiers from the Chad and Equatorial Guinea contingents of the AU peacekeeping mission before it was re-hatted into MINUSCA.

Sanctions-Related Developments

On 4 December 2017, the 2127 CAR Sanctions Committee met with its Panel of Experts to discuss the final report of the panel and hear briefings by the UN Mine Action Service and UN Institute for Disarmament Research on weapons and ammunition management in the country. The report recommended that the committee encourage MINUSCA to report any acts of incitement to ethnic or religious violence and hatred, and to identify the perpetrators or instigators. It further recommended that in the next resolution extending the sanctions regime, the Council include designation criteria for individuals and entities inciting ethnic or religious violence and hatred, as well as justifying such acts. Also, the panel recommended that the committee encourage neighbouring states to take effective action to counter the illicit flow of weapons and ammunition into the CAR. In a press release on 28 December 2017, the committee emphasised the recommendation of the panel that it was important that states ensured that all funds, financial assets, and economic resources of listed individuals and entities be frozen without further delay. The committee met for the first time under the chairmanship of Ambassador Bernard Tanoh-Boutchoue (Cote dIvoire) on 26 January in an open briefing. The Coordinator of the Panel of Experts, Romain Esmenjaud, briefed the Council. The Council adopted a resolution on 30 January 2018, renewing the sanctions regime until 31 January 2019 and the mandate of the Panel of Experts until 28 February 2019. On top of the existing designation criteria, the resolution decided that individuals who commit acts of incitement to violence, in particular on an ethnic or religious basis, and then engage in or provide support for acts that undermine the peace, stability or security of the CAR may also be sanctioned. Key Issues and Options

The need to respond to the increased fighting between rebels, attacks against civilians along sectarian lines, and the targeting of MINUSCA personnel and other UN and humanitarian personnel is of key concern to the Council.

The Council could consider acting through the 2127 CAR Sanctions Committee, listing those with links to recent attacks and civilians, in an effort to curb violence, and including individuals who have incited ethnic or religious violence.

The performance of MINUSCAs contingents has not been uniform, with some contingents accused of being overly passive and ill-equipped, while others are alleged to have committed SEA. Council members could consider reports from the Secretariat on the performance of MINUSCAs contingents, including in the context of sexual misconduct.

Council and Wider Dynamics

The deteriorating security situation and the governments inability to project law and order beyond Bangui continue to worry all Council members. During the negotiations over MINUSCAs mandate renewal, all Council members agreed that an increase in troop numbers and streamlining MINUSCAs mandate to focus on a few priority tasks was necessary.

However, there continues to be a rift in the Council with respect to the Councils involvement in oversight of specific contingents generally, and with respect to SEA in particular, and the publicity of such oversight. The US, with the support of other Council members, has been pushing for closer scrutiny of contingents and greater accountability, while TCCs and those supporting them on the Council view this approach as an attempt to shame and blame them for the more general shortcomings of the mission.

France is the penholder on the CAR, and Cote dIvoire chairs the 2127 CAR Sanctions Committee.

UN DOCUMENTS ON THE CAR
AFRICA

Central African Republic

In June, Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Bintou Keita is expected to brief on the latest developments in the country and the most recent UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) report, due on 14 June.

MINUSCAs mandate expires on 15 November 2018.

Key Recent Developments

The security situation in the Central African Republic (CAR) is dire. Self-proclaimed self-defence groups, loosely connected to some members of the anti-Balaka movement, have continued to operate in south-eastern CAR, targeting Muslims. Ex-Seleka, largely Muslim factions, continue to establish illegal parallel administration and taxation structures in areas under their control, preying on the population.

Bangui has also seen more violence in recent months, increasingly along sectarian and inter-communal lines. On 10 April, 28 people died after MINUSCA and local security forces launched an operation to clear PK5, a Muslim neighbourhood, of armed groups, leading to deadly clashes. Blaming the UN for the events, demonstrators laid 17 bodies of those killed in front of MINUSCAs headquarters. On 1 May, deadly violence erupted when the authorities attempted to arrest a member of an armed group in the PK5 neighbourhood. In the ensuing violence, a nearby church was stormed in the middle of a service, and 24 worshippers and a priest were killed. In response, a mob burned a mosque and lynched two people believed to be Muslim. In total, 26 people were killed and more than 170 injured from the violence that day.

The security situation in Bambari, located in the centre of the country, where MINUSCA has a significant presence, has also deteriorated. On 15 May it was reported that members of the Union for Peace (UPC), one of the groups forming the ex-Seleka coalition, attacked the mayors office, police and radio stations, and a MINUSCA base. MINUSCA launched an operation in response the following day, and eight people were killed during the fighting.

Armed groups continue to target humanitarian workers and MINUSCA peacekeepers. On 3 April, a Mauritanian peacekeeper was killed and 11 injured in an attack on a MINUSCA base in Tagbara, northeast of Bambari, by suspected anti-Balaka elements. Another Mauritanian peacekeeper was killed and eight were injured in an attack on a convoy they were escorting in the town of Alindao, southeast of Bambari, on 17 May. The Council issued press statements condemning both attacks.

Council members were briefed on the latest violence in the country on 23 May under any other business via video teleconference by the Special Representative and head of MINUSCA, Parfait Onanga-Anyanga.

In accordance with resolution 2387, the Secretary-General submitted to the Council on 16 May recommendations regarding possible support for the redeployment of the CAR security forces. The report recognised that such support should only be given on specific conditions, including that the security forces are inclusive and ethnically representative, have been vetted, and uphold the principles of accountability and the rule of law. It recommended that the Council authorise MINUSCA to provide limited operational and logistical support to the CAR security forces trained by the ongoing EU Military Training Mission for a period of 12 months. It stressed that without this support, the ability of the CAR to restore peace and establish state authority would be undermined.

The country also continues to face an acute humanitarian crisis. According to a report released by OCHA on 10 May, there were 687,398 internally displaced persons and 568,572 refugees in neighbouring countries at the end of March.

On the political front, peace and reconciliation initiatives have failed to gain momentum, and the government, led by President Faustin-Archange Touadera, has minimal control outside Bangui. The African Initiative for Peace and Reconciliation in the CAR has advanced the implementation road map for Peace and Reconciliation endorsed by the AU in July 2017, launching the second round of consultations with 14 armed groups in late February. In a 27 February press statement, Council members reaffirmed their support for the initiative as the main framework for a political solution in the CAR.

Sanctions-Related Developments

On 23 February, the 2127 CAR Sanctions Committee met to discuss the Panel of Experts progress report. The coordinator of the panel said that armed groups continue to strengthen their grip over large parts of the CAR with a view to increasing their leverage in the political process. On 16 March, the panel briefed the committee on its work programme. The committee met to discuss the Panel of Experts latest progress report on 25 May.

Human-Rights Related Developments

During its 37th session, the Human Rights Council held an interactive dialogue on 21 March with the independent expert on human rights in the CAR, Marie-Therese Keita Bocoum, who visited the country from 6 to 16 February to assess the impact of the AUs peace initiative on human rights. In a press release following her trip, Bocoum called for an urgent need to reinstate the criminal justice system, saying that mob justice is in effect replacing state justice in some areas, and urged national authorities and civil society to explore options for a road map on transitional justice and to consider national consultations and collective reparations.

In a 9 May statement, High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad Al Hussein expressed deep alarm at the volatile situation in the CAR, particularly given the worrying hate speech and incitement to violence on the basis of religion, as well as the recent killings and attacks in Bangui, referring to the 1 May attack in Bangui. The statement stressed that the recent violence must not be allowed to undermine the peace process facilitated by the AU.

Issues and Options

The need to respond to the increased fighting between rebels, attacks against civilians along sectarian lines, and the targeting of MINUSCA personnel and other UN and humanitarian personnel is of serious concern to the Council. As part of its efforts, the Council may amend MINUSCAs mandate to provide operational and logistical support to the CAR security forces, as requested by the Secretary-General.

In an effort to curb violence, the Council could consider acting through the 2127 CAR Sanctions Committee, listing those with links to recent attacks on civilians, including individuals who have incited ethnic or religious violence. Sanctions may also be effective in incentivising armed groups to commit to reconciliation.

Council and Wider Dynamics

The deteriorating security situation and the governments inability to project law outside of Bangui and Bambari have been a continuing matter of concern for the Council. After a period of relative calm, these issues have resurfaced in Bangui and Bambari, despite the presence of MINUSCA. Moreover, part of the population sees MINUSCA as a culprit, blaming the mission for the violence and for inability to prevent it.

The issue of support for the CAR security forces has been a sticking point for Council members, as security sector reform, including the vetting of personnel, has gone slowly. In light of this, during negotiations over resolution 2387, Council members disagreed over whether MINUSCA should be assisting the authorities with personnel who have been linked to human rights violations, while faced with the reality that MINUSCA is unable to be present in large parts of the CAR without the deployment of these forces. Regularly monitored, and limited support may prove to be an acceptable middle ground. Additionally, some Council members will want to receive more precise information on the resources that will be required to fulfil the request, along with its merits.

France is the penholder on the CAR, and Cote dIvoire chairs the 2127 CAR Sanctions Committee.

UN DOCUMENTS ON THE CAR
Security Council Elections 2017

To view the full report, please download the PDF here.

The 71st session of the UN General Assembly is scheduled to hold elections for the Security Council on 2 June. The five seats available for election in 2017 according to the regular distribution among regions will be as follows:

two seats for the African Group (currently held by Egypt and Senegal);

one seat for the Group of Asia and the Pacific Small Island Developing States (the Asia-Pacific Group, currently held by Japan);

one seat for the Group of Latin American and Caribbean States (GRULAC, currently held by Uruguay); and

one seat for the Eastern European Group (currently held by Ukraine).

The five new members elected this year will take up their seats on 1 January 2018 and will serve through to 31 December 2019.

In addition, Italy is committed to relinquishing the seat it has held since 1 January 2017 after serving for one year, and a by-election will thus be held for one seat for the Western European and Others Group (WEOG). Two WEOG seats are usually up for election in even numbered years, but this years by-election will be held because Italy and the Netherlands agreed to split the 2017-2018 term. The new member from WEOG will serve a one-year term from 1 January to 31 December 2018, completing the 2017-2018 term.

At press time, all six candidatesCote dIvoire, Equatorial Guinea, Kuwait, the Netherlands, Peru and Polandare currently running unopposed as sole candidates for their respective regional groups.
The Peacebuilding Commission and the Security Council: From Cynicism to Synergy?

To view the full report, please download the PDF here.

For much of its existence, the Peacebuilding Commission (PBC)which was created as an advisory body to the Council and the General Assemblyhas been looked at cynically by some members of the Security Council, as not providing much-added value to the Councils work. Council members, but also the UN general membership and many among the staff in the UN Secretariat, have viewed the PBC as something of a disappointment. They have questioned its ability to advise about conflict-affected situations and have found its meetings redundant, duplicating discussion and information provided by the Secretariat during Council sessions. The PBCs supporters, in turn, have criticised the Council for not being receptive to working with the PBC, thus limiting its ability over the years to demonstrate its value. Tensions have existed since the PBCs creation in 2005, which occurred as Security Council reform stalled, with the P5 seeing the PBC as a forum created by member states to discuss peace and security issues, encroaching on the prerogatives of the Security Council.

Reviews in 2010 and 2015 of the UNs peacebuilding architecturecomprising the PBC, the Peacebuilding Fund (PBF) and the Peacebuilding Support Office (PBSO)found that the PBC had not fulfilled the expectations envisioned when it was created to fill what then Secretary-General Kofi Annan called a gaping hole at the UN in its support to post-conflict countries.

Since the 2015 review, however, there has been new momentum towards strengthening the PBC and improving its relationship with the Council. The review culminated with the adoption in April 2016 by the Security Council and the General Assembly of substantively identical resolutions. To the surprise of many at the UN, the resolutions incorporated most of the ideas of the Advisory Group of Experts (AGE), which had prepared a report as part of the review process. The eight-page resolutions (S/RES/2282 and A/RES/70/262), the UNs most comprehensive on peacebuilding, expanded the understanding of peacebuilding as activities to be undertaken not only in post-conflict situations but also in order to prevent conflict in the first place, as well as during peacemaking and peacekeeping. The same sort of interventions often required in countries after armed conflictrebuilding government institutions, promoting reconciliation between different communities, restarting economic developmentare similar to the challenges many countries face before they fall into conflict: institutions are often already weak, groups of people are marginalised, and economic opportunities are limited. This broader notion of peacebuilding was reflected in the definition of sustaining peace in the two resolutions, which has since become central to the UN reform agenda of Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

Changes in the PBC in recent years have included expanding the country situations it considers beyond the six countries that made up its agenda over the first decade of its existence, while increasing its focus on the regional dimensions of peacebuilding and enhancing cooperation with regional and sub-regional organisations. According to diplomats, PBC meetings have become more interesting and substantive compared to just a few years ago. Among the P5, there have also been signs of increasing interest in and openness to the PBCs supporting the Councils work.

Moreover, under the Secretary-Generals proposed reform of the peace and security pillar of the Secretariat, the PBSO would be bolstered and assume a stronger cross-pillar bridging role in the future as part of a new Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs. The PBC seems poised to see its role enhanced as part of these reforms, which seek to increase UN attention to conflict prevention and sustaining peace by addressing the fragmentation of the UN departments, agencies, and intergovernmental bodies.

The reason for creating the PBC made great sense conceptually: to ensure sustained attention to post-conflict countrieswhich would often wane following the withdrawal of a peacekeeping operation or reaching benchmarks such as the holding of electionsand prevent their relapse into conflict. Likewise, the concept of sustaining peace and the PBCs potential role as outlined by the AGE are generally viewed as well considered. However, these ideas and the envisioned role for the PBC have not been easy to apply in practice, for both practical and political reasons. While there is new momentum that has not existed for some time to enhance the PBC, the challenge remains to translate this energy and vision into a more effective UN body.

This is Security Council Reports sixth report on the PBC and the first following the 2015 review. This report will look at developments in the PBC and its relationship with the Security Council since our last report published in April 2013. It covers not only the 2015 peacebuilding architecture review but also initiatives to advance key ideas regarding the PBC in the Security Council and General Assembly resolutions. The report also seeks to consider challenges in fulfilling the objectives of the PBC while setting out ideas, many of which are currently being developed among member states and by the Secretariat, to enhance the PBCs contribution to the Security Council and make a more meaningful impact on the countries it considers.

The following are some of the main areas of promise for the PBC to improve its relationship with the Security Council and support to conflict-affected or fragile countries:
The UN Secretary-General Selection and Appointment Process: Emerging from the Shadows

To view the full report, please download the PDF.

Security Council Report published its first report anticipating this selection and appointment processAppointing the UN Secretary-Generalin October 2015, setting out the history of the process and procedure, and describing previous proposals for change. Our second reportAppointing the UN Secretary-General: The Challenge for the Security Councilexamined the major developments from October 2015 to June 2016. Throughout the process, we recorded the developments in SCRs regular publications, the Monthly Forecast and Whats in Blue. This final report provides a comprehensive account of developments in the Security Council and General Assembly from the beginning to the end of the process, describing the major changes that culminated in the choice of Antonio Guterres as the next Secretary-General. It includes an assessment of the process based on interviews with the key actors from the Council, the General Assembly and civil society, as well as observations and options for improving the process further.

On 6 October, in a decision which Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin described as maybe the best success of the Security Council in the past five years, the Council recommended to the General Assembly that Antonio Guterres be appointed the ninth UN Secretary-General for a term of office from 1 January 2017 to 31 December 2021. On 13 October, the General Assembly adopted its resolution making the appointment. The selection process that resulted in this appointment was the culmination of a historic change in a process that had been shrouded in secrecy throughout its history. It also marked the first time since 1950 that the General Assembly played a significant role in the selection of the Secretary-General.

The UN Charter devotes just 16 words to the appointment of the Secretary-General. Article 97 of the Charter states:

The Secretary-General shall be appointed by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council.

In 1946, General Assembly resolution 11 (I) established ground rules for the appointment process, including terms and conditions of employment, length of term of officesubject to modificationand possibility of reappointment. It also declared that it would be desirable for the Security Council to proffer one candidate only for the consideration of the General Assembly.

For 70 years, the most significant evolution in this process took place within the Council, as it introduced the use of straw polls to determine the viability of candidates ahead of a formal vote. Since 1997, members of the General Assembly have discussed several proposals aimed at improving the transparency and inclusivity of the selection process, and finding a role for the wider membership of the UN, but these discussions led to no change in the process.

Regarding the selection process that was to culminate in 2016, a strong civil society campaign for change, and a mood among members of the General Assembly that they were not willing to acquiesce quietly in a business as usual exercise after years of increasing frustration at the lack of progress in Council reform, were the drivers behind significant changes in the process. Key roles among member states were played by Costa Rica and Estonia on behalf of the Accountability, Coherence and Transparency (ACT) Group, and Croatia, as one of the two co-chairs of the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Revitalization of the Work of the General Assembly (hereafter the Revitalization Working Group). A strong president of the General Assembly was crucial to effective implementation of the changes. An active group of elected members ensured that the new mood was reflected in the Council, and permanent members, while retaining ultimate control, accepted that the process had undergone some fundamental shifts as a result of the changes generated by the General Assembly.

The first step was a groundbreaking General Assembly resolution, adopted in September 2015, that created the framework for a more transparent process. This led to unprecedented public dialogues with the candidates that tested a broad set of skills, providing the UN membership as well as a global audience with an insight into the thinking of candidates and how they presented themselves in front of a large audience. Council members had to come to their decision on a recommendation to the General Assembly in very different circumstances than in the past. While the modalities in the Councilstraw polls and a private meeting to vote on the recommendationwere not much different from past selection processes, the environment created by the preceding transparent process in the General Assembly impacted the Councils decision-making.
A longtime Bay Area journalist and radio host last seen near a pizza parlor in Kentucky has been missing for two weeks, according to media reports.

Raphael Ray Taliaferro, who was a journalist and news anchor for San Franciscos KGO-AM radio and KRON-TV, was last seen near a pizza parlor called Mellow Mushroom in Paducah, Kentucky, on Nov. 10, according to media reports.

A missing persons flier posted by the Paducah Police Department stated he may have been experiencing disorientation and signs of dementia, according to a KRON 4 report.

Sheriff Ted Holder of the Massac County Sheriffs Office in Illinois told The Chronicle that Taliaferros wife reported him missing around 9:30 a.m. in Massac County on Nov. 10. Around six hours later, witnesses told officials they saw him in Paducah, Kentucky, roughly 20 miles away, just over the state border.

Taliaferros vehicle was found in the parking lot of a bank in Paducah, Holder said. Several people told Paducah police they spoke with him that afternoon, but no one has seen him since, he said.

Holden said police have reached out to the Paducah chapter of the NAACP just in case Taliaferro calls association officials.

Officials with the Paducah Police Department could not immediately be reached for comment regarding Taliaferros disappearance.

Taliaferro helped found the National Association of Black Journalists in 1975 and was honored with the Black Chamber Life Award by the San Francisco Black Chamber of Commerce in 1994, according to the National Association of Black Journalists.

The 1994 award recognized him as a forerunner in broadcasting.

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The association inducted Taliaferro into its hall of fame in January 2011. The association created the Ray Taliaferro NABJ Entrepreneurial Spirit Award in his honor to recognize journalistic entrepreneurship among members of the association.

Anyone with information about Taliaferros whereabouts can contact the Paducah Police Department at 270-444-8548.

Lauren Hernandez is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: lauren.hernandez@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @LaurenPorFavor
Officials with the Coast Guard and the Port of San Francisco surveyed damage Saturday to a Larkspur boat that crashed into a San Francisco Ferry Terminal dock.

The blue-and-white-striped ferry squeaked as it bobbed alongside the docks outer berth Saturday afternoon while officials wearing bright orange vests used a boat to get nearby, snapping photos of gashes on the ferrys prow. Visitors to the Ferry Building lingered near the dock to watch officials check the damage.

Priya Clemens, a spokeswoman with the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District, said the boat was towed to the Larkspur Ferry Terminal on Saturday.

It will be evaluated there for repair, Clemens said.

The cause of the crash is under investigation. Coast Guard officials will release findings of the investigation when it is completed.

2 1 of 2 Lauren Hernandez / The Chronicle Show More Show Less 2 of 2 Lauren Hernandez / San Francisco Chronicle Show More Show Less



Workers along the waterfront pier were serving bustling crowds Friday afternoon when they saw the ferry barrel toward the dock around 2:30 p.m., said Cheryl McKeon, the manager of Book Passage.

McKeon was standing behind the counter when she saw the ferry rapidly approaching the dock in the heavy rain. She ordinarily loves watching the ferries pass by the picturesque Bay Bridge, but she said something was different this time.

I saw it coming this way, and then it was running parallel to the building, which seemed odd, McKeon said Saturday, pointing out the window. I said, This isnt right, and we rushed to the window, then we heard the crash.

She said it sounded similar to the scraping and crunching sound of a car crash. By the time McKeon ran outside, the ferry had knocked down posts and a fence at the edge of the dock and boat passengers were walking around on the deck.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

Michael Wilson, 63, was serving vegan doughnuts at a kiosk inside the Ferry Building when he saw the boat approach the dock, moving faster than he had seen in his six years working in the building.

He quickly ran down the hallway and out onto the pier.

I wanted to see if anyone was hurt, Wilson said. The boat was pushed up on the dock. It was just crumpled.

One worker on the boat had a bruised hip and a passenger had a sore back, but no major injuries were reported.

Lauren Hernandez is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: lauren.hernandez@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @LaurenPorFavor
As Apple flourished in Cupertino, becoming the first American company worth $1 trillion, Vallco Shopping Mall rotted away in its shadow.

The 1976 mall was home to the retail giants of the 20th century: Macys, Sears and J.C. Penney, which all closed their stores in the last three years as foot traffic dwindled and shoppers shifted online. Today, Vallco is a cavernous, mostly empty space of 1.2 million square feet, with a handful of survivors such as Dynasty Seafood Restaurant and the Bay Club hanging on. On the other side of Interstate 280 is Apples new $5 billion headquarters, which includes a sleek visitor center and shop.

Since 2014, developer Sand Hill Property Co. has sought to transform the mall into nearly 2 million square feet of office space, more than 2,400 housing units and a 400,000-square-foot retail center.

Thousands of Cupertino residents have fought back. In 2016, Sand Hill Property submitted a ballot measure to win support for one version of the project, while opponents had a measure that banned office space and housing on the site and kept the retail size the same. Both measures were rejected by voters, throwing the project into limbo.

The notion of replacing Vallco with another mall seems utterly unrealistic: A quarter of Americas 1,100 shopping malls are expected to close within five years.

Opponents, who formed a group called Better Cupertino, say the project will exacerbate traffic, which is already miserable in the wake of Apple Parks opening. The added office space will also worsen the regions jobs-housing imbalance, they say.

The rate of office growth is a lot faster than it used to be. Its unsustainable, said Liang Chao, co-founder of Better Cupertino and a City Council candidate who appears headed for election with some votes left to count. When you talk about growth, its like our body. If I overeat, Im overweight. Now, shall I continue to eat? You need healthy growth.

Vallcos potential transformation would have profound effects on Cupertino, a suburban city of 60,000. The years-long battle also reflects growing unease over the Bay Areas booming economy, where jobs are plentiful but housing is scarce, particularly for less wealthy residents. Some city officials want job growth to slow down, but the roaring tech sector shows little signs of cooling.

The hardest thing Ive had to deal with is the idea that growth is infinite and unstoppable. Cities fill up, said Michael Goldman, a city councilman in Sunnyvale, which borders Apples headquarters.

The negative effects of growth include people fleeing California because of high costs, and giant companies squeezing out smaller ones, Goldman said.

Were going to have three big companies, Goldman said, referring to Apple, Google and Facebook. You know where else had three big companies? Detroit.

Cities in the region have few options to hit the brakes on job growth, but they have powerful control over land use. Projects can be stalled for years through city approval processes, ballot measures and lawsuits.

Sand Hill Property Co.

In the face of withering opposition, developers usually cut a deal, adding community benefits or scaling projects down.

Developer Sand Hill did the opposite at Vallco: Its recent plan doesnt include more than $35 million in city fees compared with an alternative project. It doesnt have a traffic mitigation plan and calls for taller buildings, up to 240 feet, close to the height of San Joses tallest towers.

Cupertino approved it in September.

The reason was SB35, a new California law that requires cities that havent met housing goals  and most in the Bay Area have not  to fast-track projects that include affordable housing. It is a powerful growth tool, exempting projects from years-long hurdles, including environmental reviews and public hearings.

Sand Hills approved plan includes 2,402 housing units, and its biggest concession is that 50 percent will be affordable, which qualifies it for SB35. Cupertino planned to add 1,064 housing units citywide between 2014 and 2022.

SB35s author, state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, said he fully supports the Vallco project. State laws pushing for housing are critical when there are opponents who want to freeze Cupertino in amber and who are unconcerned about whether anyone can actually afford to live in Cupertino, Wiener said in a statement last month.

The battle isnt over, but the developer has seized the initiative. It demolished a parking structure in October, and demolition of the mall is expected to begin early next year, according to a city spokesman.

A nonprofit called Friends of Better Cupertino, a Better Cupertino affiliate, filed a lawsuit against the city, saying that the project doesnt comply with SB35. It alleges that the project isnt two-thirds housing because it includes residential parking space, that its built on a hazardous waste site and that it doesnt have enough green space. (On a list of answers to frequently asked questions on its website, the city denies there is hazardous waste at Vallco.)

A separate referendum was also submitted for 2020 to block the citys alternative development plan, which prompted Sand Hill to pick the SB35 plan instead.

Were under way and were going, and we couldnt be more excited, said Reed Moulds, a managing director at Sand Hill Property. Were not going to be deterred.

The $4 billion project has full financing to move forward, and no public funds are needed to build the affordable housing, Moulds said. Sand Hills equity partner is Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, the sovereign wealth fund with estimated assets over $800 billion. The project is expected to open in 2021 or 2022.

Sand Hill Property Co. / Sand Hill Property Co.

More delays would be costly; construction costs continue to rise because workers are scarce, Moulds said. For a project of this size, we estimate our rate of escalation is $700,000 a day, he said.

Moulds said that the office space will help pay for the affordable housing, while housing will help support stores and offices by providing foot traffic and giving workers places to live.

All of these pieces work together to make a viable project, he said. We have other retail projects in Cupertino that are struggling to keep the lights on, not because business is bad, but because they cant get people to show up to work because their housing is unstable.

Vallcos affordable housing levels are unprecedented, said Adhi Nagraj, San Francisco director of SPUR, an urban planning nonprofit think tank.

To build 50 percent on site with no public subsidy is unheard of, he said, adding that typical projects provide 10 to 15 percent.

You can imagine a lot of Apple employees who are now struggling, sitting in shuttles ... living in these new units, Nagraj said. This is a great reuse of a dying asset, which is a mall, and converting it to a growth asset.

Project critics are doubtful that potential residents of Vallco will work locally. Young Apple employees already choose San Francisco because its more fun, said Steven Scharf, a Cupertino councilman who is sympathetic toward project opponents.

A single person is not that interested in living in Cupertino, he said.

Better Cupertino members said they support the housing but dont want the office space because of traffic.

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Im a numbers person, so I certainly looked at the numbers and said, This is way too much, said Jim Moore, a 42-year Cupertino resident and retired IBM employee. That is going to change the landscape of the city.

But hed be happy to see 2,000 units of housing, especially affordable housing, and a smaller shopping center.

Moore has owned his house for decades, and his daughter was born and raised in Cupertino and worked for a clothing store in Vallco. She was previously a Cupertino public school teacher until she had her first child. She lives in San Jose.

She wasnt able to live here. This is where she grew up. This is where we are. This is where her friends are, Moore said. So Id like a good amount of affordable housing, but all the levels, not just the ones that would satisfy service workers.

Cupertinos median home value is $2.3 million, up 16.6 percent during the past year, according to Zillow. Thats more than 10 times the U.S. median, according to Trulia.

Vallcos SB35 affordable housing plan includes low- and very-low-income units, but not moderate-income units that are typically available for teachers.

Not everyone wants affordable housing. At a September public hearing, Thomas Maiello identified himself as a public school student and gave a presentation opposing affordable housing.

According to the sales pitch, the new housing units would include low-income high-density housing apartments, his presentation said. This would mean that we would have uneducated people living in Cupertino. A lot of other residents and I are concerned that this would make the current residents of Cupertino uncomfortable, and would split our city in half.

The hostile reception for Vallco stands in sharp contrast to nearby Apple Park, the 2.8 million-square-foot headquarters, which has no housing.

I was really pleased when I travel to have people say, when I said Cupertino, Oh thats the home of Apple. It was founded here, Moore said. My wife and I have iPads, and she has an iPhone. We like their products.

Moore said Apples office project is different because the site was already office space, formerly occupied by Hewlett-Packard.

The project, which was approved in 2012, also came before much of the tech boom that has flooded the highways with traffic and led to soaring housing costs. In the wake of the recession, the possibility of Apple moving away helped spur the city to green light the plan, recalls Rod Sinks, Cupertinos vice mayor.

Apple invested $75 million for infrastructure and transit improvements and paid $5.85 million for affordable housing, double what it was required. Cupertino is now studying a potential per-employee tax that would largely affect Apple.

Sinks, who has also voted in favor of redeveloping Vallco, acknowledged that traffic is a major problem, with no solution in sight.

We are a transit desert, he said. The bus system is so ineffective, its almost never an option for anyone who has an alternative.

But Sinks questions the idea of slowing down growth.

Most of us moved to Silicon Valley because of the economic opportunity. The question is, are we affording our kids that same opportunity? he said. I think were beginning to have a change of heart about housing.

Roland Li is a Chronicle staff writer. Email: roland.li@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rolandlisf
Last spring, weeks before the new migraine drug Aimovig hit the market, the phone calls and email started stacking up  patients around the country were contacting the UCSF Headache Center, eager to get on the medication as soon as it became available.

Their enthusiasm was understandable. Aimovig was the first in a new class of drugs developed to treat migraines. It had been decades since any migraine-specific drug had come along, and soon patients would have three new drugs to choose from.

But in the months since the drugs have won approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, actually getting the therapies to patients has proved challenging.

Patients are learning a hard lesson in drug development: Just because the FDA says something is ready for wide release doesnt mean its cost-effective from an insurers point of view. And if its not considered cost-effective, the insurer wont pay for it  which is what is happening with Aimovig and the other new drugs.

We have a lot of very, very good opportunities for treatment emerging nowadays, said Dr. Nina Riggins, a neurologist with the UCSF Headache Center. Were being approached all the time by patients to give our opinions. But we run into problems all the time.

Roughly 1 in 7 people in the United States suffers migraines, according to government statistics. And up to 3 million people have chronic migraines, meaning they have 15 or more days with migraine pain every month.

For those with the worst illness, the condition can be disabling. It can cause not just severe pain, but intense nausea, fatigue, light and sound sensitivity, and a kind of brain fog. For some chronic migraine patients, the symptoms leave them unable to work and severely impact their ability to do even simple tasks like grocery shopping or visiting with friends.

A therapy that could knock their pain from an 8  on a scale of 1 to 10  to a 4 would be life-changing.

An 8 may be I cant stop vomiting. Its like Im a raw nerve and any sensation, any noise, any smell would be hard, said Rebecca Brook, 47. I could function like most people at a 4. If I had a 4, thats no problem.

For years, her doctors at UCSF had told her new drugs were on the horizon. By the time Aimovig was approved, I felt desperate to get it, Brook said. It was like, let me get my life started.

Her insurer refused to pay for the drug, which is given by monthly injection at a cost of about $575 per dose. However, the drug developers, corporate pharmaceuticals Amgen and Novartis, anticipated that some insurance companies wouldnt pay for the medication at first and put together a program to provide patients with it at low or no cost for up to a year  and thats how Brook eventually got the drug. Shes been on it for three months now.

Brook still gets migraines  a few terrible ones, in fact  but she sees signs of improvement. For four days in October, she didnt need to use the drug she takes to treat especially bad headaches. For two of those days, the pain was so insignificant that she dared to leave her home in Berkeley to run some errands in San Francisco.

I was exhausted when I got home, but I didnt have a headache, she said. And I was like, oh my God, this hasnt happened in decades.

Yalonda M. James / The Chronicle

In November, things looked even better  she went eight days without needing her acute headache medication. But shes still hesitant to give credit to the new drug, even though the results seem promising.

Brook has suffered serious migraines since she was a teenager, and shes never found a therapy that consistently reduced her pain, or that worked for more than a few months. She knows she could be experiencing a placebo effect now. Or that the drug is helping at the moment, but will fail eventually.

But almost equally stressful: What if the drug is working? What happens if her insurer never covers it, and she cant afford it once the drug company stops paying?

Every other treatment thats supposed to help migrainers, I have failed, Brook said. And then I had this experience, where for two days something was happening. And I thought, Oh my God, are they going to take away my Aimovig?

Insurance providers said they are reviewing Aimovig and the other new drugs and devices recently on the market. They note that though the therapies won FDA approval, that doesnt mean theyre necessarily useful  or cost-effective  for most patients with migraines.

The drug therapies all cost about the same, and they all work by interfering with the action of a protein called CGRP that is associated with migraines. Aimovig was the first to win approval, in May. Two other drugs, Emgality and Ajovy, were approved in September.

New medical devices approved in the past few years also have increased therapeutic options for people with severe, chronic migraines  but they also are rarely covered by insurance. The devices are wearable instruments patients put on their forehead or the back of their head to stimulate nerves known to be affected by migraines.

The new drugs are all designed to prevent migraines, not treat them once theyve started. The devices are for prevention and treatment  some for one or the other, and some for both.

Patients for decades have relied on a hodgepodge of drugs that arent specifically designed to treat migraines but can help some people, some of the time: antidepressants and anti-seizure drugs, for example, or medications to treat blood pressure. Botox, a neurotoxin used to reduce wrinkles, is an especially popular preventive therapy for people with chronic migraines.

Those drugs work only for some patients, and even those for whom they are effective, they tend to lose potency over time. Plus, they can have side effects that make them unusable for some patients.

The new anti-CGRP drugs so far seem to have fewer side effects, according to clinical trials. And doctors and patients hope theyll be more effective because they were made specifically to affect a known trigger of migraines.

These older drugs, I dont want to dismiss them. We still use them. Im grateful we have them, Riggins said. But we can offer quite a few new things nowadays, which is extremely exciting. The (anti-CGRP) drugs especially are really a game changer.

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The new therapies are not a cure, though, and they will not work for all patients. In clinical trials, up to 20 percent of patients, so-called super responders, were able to prevent almost all migraines while on Aimovig. But fewer than 50 percent saw their number of days with migraine every month cut in half  a target typically applied to migraine drugs. And some patients had no effect from the drug at all.

Similar results have been reported for the other new drugs.

Dr. Robert Cowan, director of the Stanford Headache Program, said his office too has received pleas for the new drugs from patients around the country. But hes not as optimistic as some of his professional peers about their efficacy.

He isnt confident that the drugs will work as well for his most severe patients as they did for people in the clinical trials, who tended to be an overall healthy group aside from suffering frequent headaches. He also worries that the drugs may have side effects that werent picked up in the several thousand patients who have been tested so far.

Im kind of a loyal opposition at this point, Cowan said. I just think theres been a lot of hype around these drugs. Maybe theyre great. I hope theyre great. But I dont have enough information now.

Cessa Marshall, 51, has had two doses of Aimovig, and so far hasnt had any effect from it, positive or negative. For most of October she hardly left her home in San Rafael. Pain, nausea and fatigue left her nearly bed-ridden  just getting up one day for an appointment with Riggins was a challenge. November hasnt been much better.

I cant remember the last time I felt good, Marshall said.

Photos by Yalonda M. James / The Chronicle

Her three teenage children all get migraines too, to varying degrees. What upsets Marshall more than anything, she said, is that her own migraines leave her feeling ill-equipped to support her children.

Trying out migraine drugs can be a roller coaster of emotional and physical effects, she said. She believes she started getting migraines as a child, and then they became serious in her 30s. Ten years ago, the migraines became chronic, hitting her almost every day. But the drugs she tried to treat them often didnt work at all, or caused unbearable side effects.

That the Aimovig isnt yet working for her is discouraging, but not surprising. She may never respond to it. Or it may take a few months for the drug to start working  that is typical of other medications given to migraine patients. That means she has to be patient for a bit longer.

In the meantime, she and her husband have been battling her insurance company to pay for the therapy. Shes been denied twice, and, like Brook, the drug developer is paying for the Aimovig for now.

Honestly, at this point Im trying to stay detached from the whole insurance thing, Marshall said. I cant invest emotionally in all of the nonsense because its too exhausting. And I just dont have the energy.

Erin Allday is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: eallday@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @erinallday
DAMASCUS, Syria  At least 50 civilians were being treated Saturday following a suspected poison gas attack by Syrian rebel groups on the government-held city of Aleppo in the countrys north, according to reports in Syrian state media.

Most of those admitted to hospitals had breathing problems and blurred vision, doctors told state TV. One doctor said two were in critical condition, including a child.

Rebel commanders and opposition figures discredited the government reports, denying they lobbed gas into Aleppo and accusing Damascus of seeking to undermine an existing cease-fire and efforts to kickstart political talks. Earlier Saturday, government shelling of a rebel-held area in neighboring Idlib province killed at least seven civilians.

In Aleppo, local governor Hussein Diab visited the injured at a hospital. He told state TV that 41 people had been admitted and accused rebels of using poisonous gas in the missiles they lobbed at the Aleppo neighborhood. Health official Haj Taha later said the number of injured was up to 50, adding that symptoms suggest the gas used was chlorine. Further tests are needed, he said.

State TV said government troops retaliated, hitting the source of the attack. It didnt elaborate.

A cease-fire in Aleppo and Idlib has been fraying in recent days. Aleppo has come under rebel attack in recent weeks, with missiles falling inside the city. The government has responded with counter attacks on rebel-held areas in the Aleppo countryside.

The opposition fighters dont have chemical weapons or the means to create them, rebel commander Abdel-Salam Abdel-Razek said. On Twitter, he accused the government of staging the attack to frame the rebels.

In the absence of independent monitors, it is difficult to corroborate gas attacks. But both sides of the conflict have accused each other throughout the war of using poison gas.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

A joint team from the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons accused Syrias government of using chlorine gas in at least two attacks in 2014 and 2015, and the nerve agent sarin in an attack in April 2017 in the town of Khan Sheikhoun that killed about 100 people. The U.S. launched a series of strikes on Syrian government sites in retaliation for the attack in Khan Sheikhoun.

Albert Aji is an Associated Press writer.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates  A prominent Saudi royal said Saturday that whether or not heads of state gathering in Argentina this week for the Group of 20 summit warmly engage with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, he is someone that they have to deal with.

Prince Turki al-Faisal told the Associated Press the killing of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi in the kingdoms consulate in Istanbul last month is an unacceptable incident that tars and mars the long record of Saudi Arabias own standing in the world.

We will have to bear that. Its not something that should not be faced. And we do face it, he said.

More for you House results underscore that what's good for Trump isn't so good for the GOP

Intelligence officials and analysts say the operation to kill Khashoggi, who wrote critically of the crown prince for the Washington Post, could not have happened without Prince Mohammeds knowledge. The kingdom, which has offered several conflicting accounts of the killing, denies the crown prince had any involvement.

The crown prince embarked late Thursday on his first foreign tour since the Oct. 2 killing with a visit to the United Arab Emirates. Hes expected to visit other Mideast countries before going to Buenos Aires on Friday for the start of the two-day G-20 summit, where hell come face to face with world leaders.

President Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has kept international pressure mounting on the kingdom, are among those expected to attend.

Whether the leaders in that summit will warmly engage with the crown prince or not, I think all of them recognize that the kingdom as a country and King Salman and the crown prince are people that they have to deal with, the prince said.

Trump insists theres not enough evidence to blame the crown prince for Khashoggis killing, despite a U.S. intelligence reports assessment to the contrary. Trump says the kingdom is an important ally that has helped to lower oil prices.

I thought President Trump was expressing what he felt was in the interest of the United States. He emphasized the strategic relationship between the two countries in the same statement and how Saudi Arabia has been helpful in many instances  not just oil, al-Faisal said.

The prince also firmly dismissed the U.S. intelligence assessments that the crown prince had ordered Khashoggis killing, saying these same intelligence bodies had a remarkably flawed assessment in 2003 in the lead-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

So we dont take it as being, as I said, divine revelation, he said of the U.S. intelligence reports.

Al-Faisal led Saudi intelligence for more than two decades and served as ambassador to the U.S. and Britain.

Aya Batrawy is an Associated Press writer.
A longtime Bay Area journalist and radio host last seen near a pizza parlor in Kentucky has been missing for two weeks, according to media reports.

Raphael Ray Taliaferro, who was a journalist and news anchor for San Franciscos KGO-AM radio and KRON-TV, was last seen near a pizza parlor called Mellow Mushroom in Paducah, Kentucky, on Nov. 10, according to media reports.

A missing persons flier posted by the Paducah Police Department stated he may have been experiencing disorientation and signs of dementia, according to a KRON 4 report.

Sheriff Ted Holder of the Massac County Sheriffs Office in Illinois told The Chronicle that Taliaferros wife reported him missing around 9:30 a.m. in Massac County on Nov. 10. Around six hours later, witnesses told officials they saw him in Paducah, Kentucky, roughly 20 miles away, just over the state border.

Taliaferros vehicle was found in the parking lot of a bank in Paducah, Holder said. Several people told Paducah police they spoke with him that afternoon, but no one has seen him since, he said.

Holden said police have reached out to the Paducah chapter of the NAACP just in case Taliaferro calls association officials.

Officials with the Paducah Police Department could not immediately be reached for comment regarding Taliaferros disappearance.

Taliaferro helped found the National Association of Black Journalists in 1975 and was honored with the Black Chamber Life Award by the San Francisco Black Chamber of Commerce in 1994, according to the National Association of Black Journalists.

The 1994 award recognized him as a forerunner in broadcasting.

The association inducted Taliaferro into its hall of fame in January 2011. The association created the Ray Taliaferro NABJ Entrepreneurial Spirit Award in his honor to recognize journalistic entrepreneurship among members of the association.

Anyone with information about Taliaferros whereabouts can contact the Paducah Police Department at 270-444-8548.

Lauren Hernandez is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: lauren.hernandez@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @LaurenPorFavor
Seventeen days after Californias deadliest wildfire ignited in Butte County, firefighters have officially harnessed the Camp Fire, announcing Sunday that the blaze was at last 100 percent contained.

The milestone comes after protracted horror for the town of Paradise and surrounding areas, and amid news of tragedy that will long outlive the flames. Within days of the Camp Fire erupting on Nov. 8, the monster inferno had eclipsed state records as the most deadly and destructive wildfire.

The death toll stands at 85 victims after search crews recovered no remains Sunday. The number of missing, though, increased from 249 to 296, Butte County officials said.

The Camp Fire leveled 13,972 residences by the time of containment at 153,336 acres. The second most destructive blaze was last years Tubbs Fire in Napa and Sonoma counties, which destroyed 5,636 structures. Californias second deadliest wildfire, the Griffith Park Fire in Los Angeles County in 1933, killed 29 people.

Rain that doused Northern California on Wednesday slowed the spread of the blaze and helped firefighters gain an edge. This sped up containment considerably, said Brigitte Foster, fire prevention officer for the Lassen National Forest and spokeswoman for the Camp Fire efforts.

As recently as last week, crews didnt expect to reach 100 percent containment until Nov. 30. But by early Sunday, firefighters established lines in the remaining remote areas, northwest of Brush Creek.

Crews will continue mopping up affected areas, starting from 50 to 100 feet from the containment line. Theyll mostly be checking for smoldering roots and stumps, which can burn internally. Crews will use tools to dig around the stump, break it open, and manually pack in dirt and water until its cooled.

Once the borders of the burn area are under control, crews will continue working their way inward. With a blaze the size of the Camp Fire, that can take several months in order to call a fire out, Foster said.

Fears of mudslides and debris flows in burn scar areas had mostly dissipated by Sunday, at least for the foreseeable future. None was reported in Paradise or neighboring Magalia after last weeks showers, and rain forecast for this week isnt expected to cause much damage, either.

Even though the rain occurred over a long enough time (last week), it was steady enough that it did not cause any immediate impact, said Hannah Chandler-Cooley, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service. The main concern with debris flows is when you get a large amount of rain in a very short amount of time.

Paradise received 3.22 inches of rain last week, Concow had close to 5 inches and Magalia recorded 5.41 inches, according to the National Weather Service.

Camp Fire by the numbers 100 percent containment 153,336 acres burned 85 confirmed deaths See More Collapse

More rain is expected to begin Tuesday and continue Wednesday through Thursday, Chandler-Cooley said. But this weather system probably wont be as wet as last weeks, with meteorologists predicting 1 to 3 inches over the three days.

Theres a slight chance for heavier thunderstorms Thursday, but the confidence is low right now, Chandler-Cooley said.

Right now we are letting officials at the fire know the potential just so they can plan ahead of time, she added. But we will have to wait and see what happens as the week progresses.

Butte County began consolidating its shelters late last week, transitioning the remaining evacuees to shelters at Glenn County Fairgrounds in Orland or Butte County Fairgrounds in Gridley. As of Saturday night, 350 people were still sleeping at the four remaining Red Cross shelters, said American Red Cross spokesman Stephen Walsh.

Theres no hard deadline for people to leave the shelters, but they are designed as a temporary solution, and Red Cross volunteers are working to pair evacuees with agencies that can secure more long-term aid.

I have heard personally of stories from people who said, I didnt have any insurance, so what I lost in the fire, I lost it, its gone, Walsh said. So thats one of our many roles, is at least trying to get them to tell us what (they) need, and then trying to connect them with the right resources.

In what is his fifth disaster with the Red Cross, Walsh said hes never witnessed a tragedy with as many people unaccounted for. The list of missing people has fluctuated since the beginning of the fire, peaking at more than 1,200. Many of the Paradise and Magalia residents were elderly or disabled, and with the areas spotty cell phone service, many relied solely on landlines.

I was getting anywhere from a half-dozen to a dozen phone calls each day the first week, from people saying I cant find somebody.... Ive never seen that, he said. So that was chilling, for sure.
Re: Council chambers get more security

How strange that our city council feels threatened by one homeless person.

The Agassiz Road residents have been ridiculed for their concerns about 50 homeless moving into their area.

These homeless are dealing with drug and alcohol addiction, mental health issues or a criminal record. Most of us are seniors and are within one block of this property.

Council is protecting its own safety, but is totally unconcerned about ours.

Joanna Blacklock, Kelowna
RICHMOND, Va.  The planned Unite the Right rally by white nationalists in Charlottesville exploded in chaos: violent brawling in the streets, racist chants, smoke bombs and, finally, a car speeding into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing one and injuring dozens more.

Afterward, President Trump stoked racial tensions when he said both sides were to blame, a comment some saw as a refusal to condemn racism.

Fifteen months later, as the man accused of driving the car heads to trial on murder charges, the wounds are still raw. Few in Charlottesville believe the trial will do much to heal the community or the countrys racial divide.

Hopefully, this will signal a chance for healing, although I am not entirely optimistic about that because the entire culture in which we live is so steeped these days in white supremacy and white nationalism that violence is becoming less an exception to the practice of American democracy and more like a brutal showing of it, said Lisa Woolfork, a University of Virginia professor who was in a crowd of counterprotesters when the car seemed to come out of nowhere on Aug. 12, 2017.

Heather Heyer, 32, a paralegal and civil rights activist marching about 100 feet away from Woolfork, was killed. The death toll rose to three when a state police helicopter monitoring the event crashed, killing two troopers.

The rally was organized in part to protest the planned removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. Hundreds of Ku Klux Klan members, neo-Nazis and other white nationalists  emboldened by Trumps election  streamed into the college town for one of the largest gatherings of white supremacists in a decade. The groups show of strength included dressing in battle gear, shouting racial slurs and attacking counterprotesters.

James Alex Fields Jr., a 21-year-old Ohio man known in high school for being fascinated with Nazism and idolizing Adolf Hitler, heads to trial Monday in Charlottesville Circuit Court. His attorneys declined to comment and have provided no hint of what his defense will be.

Fields was photographed hours before the attack with a shield bearing the emblem of Vanguard America, one of the hate groups that participated in the rally, although the group denied any association with him.

Pretrial hearings have offered few insights into Fields or his motivation. A Charlottesville police detective testified that as he was being detained after the car crash, Fields said he was sorry and sobbed when he was told a woman had been killed. Fields later told a judge he is being treated for bipolar disorder, anxiety, depression and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

Prosecutors played surveillance video that showed Fields Dodge Challenger head slowly in the direction of the counterprotesters, then move in reverse before speeding forward toward the counterprotesters.

Star Peterson, whose right leg was virtually crushed by Fields car, has had five surgeries and still uses a wheelchair and cane. She has been unable to return to work and has received help paying her rent and other bills from Heal Charlottesville, a fund set up to help the injured.

Peterson said shes been told by prosecutors that shell be called as a witness at Fields trial.

I feel like its something I can do for Heather, she said. Ill be testifying on her behalf.

White nationalist Richard Spencer, who coined the term alt-right, said he has never had any contact with Fields and does not plan to attend his trial. He said he hopes the trial does not paint all members of the movement as violent.

Its a deeply disturbing incident, and that this one incident could symbolize things that I believe in and things that millions of people believe in, that would be very unfortunate, but I dont think thats going to be the case, he said.

Instead of strengthening the movement, the rally proved to be a disaster. The movements leaders are fighting lawsuits and have been kicked off mainstream internet platforms. A first anniversary rally held near the White House drew only about 30 white nationalists.

Heyers mother, Susan Bro, created the Heather Heyer Foundation to honor her daughter and provide scholarships to students in law, paralegal studies, social work, social justice and education. Bro said she is doubtful the trial will bring her any sense of closure. Fields also faces a separate trial on federal hate crime charges.

Im not obsessed with him, she says of Fields. I feel like Ive turned him over to the justice system. Hes their problem, not mine.

Denise Lavoie is an Associated Press writer.
Photo: The Canadian Press Speaker Darryl Plecas

B.C.'s Opposition Liberals are pushing for an emergency meeting to question Speaker Darryl Plecas about how and why he hired a special adviser to look into his concerns about two top legislature officials.

Liberal Leader Andrew Wilkinson said Saturday that his caucus still has a lot of questions about the Speaker's decision to hire his friend Alan Mullen in January to examine the administrative duties of sergeant-at-arms Gary Lenz and Clerk Craig James.

The Speaker's office forwarded information to the RCMP in August and the Mounties are investigating with the help of two special prosecutors. The legislature, including the Liberal caucus, voted unanimously Tuesday to place Lenz and James on administrative leave.

Wilkinson said he's asking questions now in part because it came as a surprise to him when Mullen revealed Wednesday that he was hired to look into matters of concern for Plecas, including the legislature investigation.

Before Wednesday, the Liberals thought Mullen was a clerical worker and driver for the Speaker, Wilkinson said.

"We have a lot of questions, just as the public do, about how Mr. Mullen was hired and why, and the cash flow and compensation involved in all these recruitments that the Speaker's been engaged in," said Wilkinson.

Plecas said in a statement that the suggestion that Mullen was hired under a cloud of secrecy is "utter nonsense.

"He was hired with a job description and in consultation with human resource and financial officials at the legislature. I hired him without a competition, but that is consistent with the hiring of virtually every other ministerial aide in Canada," he said.

"The notion that he was hired as an investigator of any kind is also utter nonsense. The notion that he has engaged in any form of 'investigation' beyond doing due diligence on concerns expressed to, or observed by, my office is further nonsense. To do less than due diligence would be wildly irresponsible."

Plecas added he was "completely confident that all of this will be abundantly clear to the public once some portion of the police investigation has concluded."

A lawyer for Lenz and James has said the two men deny any wrongdoing and do not know why they have been suspended. Attorney Mark Andrews sent a letter Friday urging the legislature to immediately reinstate the two officials.

The Speaker's office has agreed to arrange a meeting of the Legislative Assembly Management Committee on Tuesday afternoon, but Wilkinson and Liberal house leader Mary Polak are pushing for a meeting as early as 7 a.m. Monday.

The committee, chaired by the Speaker and made up of the three house leaders and other top legislature members, is responsible for the financial accounting of the legislature.

Mullen, who met Plecas while the two worked together at federal prisons in B.C.'s Fraser Valley, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

This week, Plecas hired former B.C. Liberal and attorney general Wally Oppal as a second special adviser.

Oppal said Saturday the Speaker obtained "significant" legal advice before taking any of his actions in this matter.

"I'm not going to get involved in the political aspects ... but I can tell you that he acted in good faith," Oppal said.
OAKLAND (BCN)



A variety of African-American coalitions will come together today to host the Black Sunday Holiday Expo in Oakland in support of black-owned businesses.



More than 15 business will participate in the event located in the 3900 block of Telegraph Avenue at 10:30 a.m. until 4 p.m. today.



The event is being held in conjunction with the Oakland African American Chamber of Commerce, the National Coalition of 100 Black Women, the Organization of Black American Culture and I Love Being Black.





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Ray Taliaferro, an outspoken liberal who from 1977 through 2011 hosted an overnight talk radio program on KGO, has been reported missing from Paducah Ky., near his southern Illinois home, the Massac County Sheriff's Office has reported.



Taliaferro, 79, was reported missing Nov. 10, according to the Massac County Sheriff's Department, based in Metropolis, Ill., across the Ohio River from Paducah. Taliaferro now lives in that southern Illinois county.



The onetime San Francisco radio host was last seen in Paducah on Nov. 10. A flier put out by the Paducah Police Department states that "Ray was last seen talking with the manager of the Mellow Mushroom pizza restaurant in Paducah. He may be experiencing disorientation and signs of dementia."



Taliaferro has a long professional resume, which includes leading the San Francisco chapter of the NAACP. He also is credited with the first black talk-show host in a major market radio station (New York City) and being named San Francisco's first black member of the arts commission.









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San Francisco 49ers linebacker Reuben Foster was arrested at a Tampa Bay hotel on Saturday night in advance of the team's game today against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on suspicion of domestic violence, according to the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office.



The 49ers announced in a brief statement early this morning that Foster will be released from the team.



According to an arrest report from sheriff's officials, Foster - a 24-year-old Santa Clara resident - was arrested by Tampa police around 9:10 p.m. Eastern time at the Grand Hyatt Tampa Bay located at 2900 Bayport Drive in Tampa.



Tampa police said they responded to the scene after a report of a verbal altercation between Foster and a 28-year-old woman who Foster has been in a on-and-off-again relationship with for the past three years.



Police said the victim told officers that Foster allegedly slapped her phone out of her hand, pushed her in the chest, threw an open-handed slap on the left side of her face and left a 1-inch scratch on her collarbone.



Foster has been taken into custody on one count of first-degree misdemeanor domestic violence and booked into the Hillsborough County Jail without bail.



The victim in Saturday's alleged assault wasn't identified.







The U.S. Coast Guard is still investigating a ferry crash Friday afternoon at the San Francisco Ferry Building.



The vessel struck first an outer berth and then the dock at the ferry building around 2:30 p.m. Friday at the terminal along the San Francisco waterfront.



Two passengers suffered minor injuries.



The goal of the Coast Guard's investigation is to understand the cause of the crash and recommend measures that can prevent future incidents, U.S. Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Krysia Pohl said in a statement released Friday. "Our primary concern in any investigation is safety of passengers and the environment."



Pohl is the Coast Guard Sector San Francisco's Inspections Division branch chief.



According to Golden Gate Transit District spokeswoman Priya Clemens, the San Francisco-bound ferry was traveling from Larkspur and had 53 passengers onboard. One passenger suffered back injuries, but refused treatment. Another passenger was treated at the scene for a bruised hip, Clemens said.



Although the vessel and dock sustained some damage, the Ferry Building was not damaged. Additionally, the crash didn't result in any delays.



The ferry vessel's crew was being debriefed Friday and will undergo drug and alcohol testing, which Clemens said is standard protocol during such incidents.



While Clemens said the cause of the crash appears to be mechanical, the investigation into the incident could take days.







The Diocese of Oakland has postponed plans to release names of Catholic clergy "credibly accused" of sex abuse until after the first of the year.



In October, Oakland diocese Bishop Michael Barber had announced plans to publish a list of names in 45 days.



The diocese, however, said this week that the publication would be delayed until after Jan. 1.



On its website, diocese officials said they needed more time to contact survivors before a public announcement and also to verify information on accused priests.



"It's the right thing to do," said Barber said in an Oct. 2 letter to parishioners. "We have nothing to hide."



In the letter, Barber said a former FBI official, Kathleen McChesney, would conduct a review of the list of accused clergy to ensure it is as accurate as possible.



A full text of Barber's Oct. 2 letter is available at https://www.oakdiocese.org/news/diocese-of-oakland-to-release-names-of-credibly-accused-clergy







A 47-year-old pedestrian died early Saturday morning after being hit by a car on Monterey Road, San Jose police said.



The man, whose name had not been released as of Saturday night, was hit at about 3:21 a.m. by a 2014 Mazda traveling northbound on Monterey Road at Rancho Drive, according to San Jose police Sgt. Enrique Garcia.



The victim was not in a crosswalk when he was hit, police said. He was taken to a hospital, where he died a short time later.



The Mazda was driven by a 47-year-old woman who remained at the scene and cooperated with investigators. It doesn't appear that drugs or alcohol were factors in the crash, Garcia said.



The incident is the 18th pedestrian death so far this year in San Jose, and the city's 44th traffic-related fatality of 2018.



Anyone with information about the incident is urged to contact Detective Brian McMahon of the San Jose police traffic investigations unit at (408) 277-4654.







In a separate accident, a driver was killed and a California Highway Patrol officer narrowly escaped serious injury in a crash Saturday morning on U.S. Highway 101 in Sausalito, authorities said.



The wreck happened about 8 a.m. on southbound 101 near the Spencer Avenue off-ramp. A pair of CHP officers had stopped to help an SUV driver whose vehicle had spun out and was blocking the slow lane of the freeway, CHP Officer Andrew Barclay said.



While they were assisting him, they heard the sound of a skidding car and turned to see a Toyota Corolla spinning out of control and headed directly for their CHP patrol SUV.



One of the officers was standing next to the patrol vehicle and had just enough time to jump into the backseat before the Toyota slammed into it, Barclay said.



"Had he not jumped into the patrol vehicle he might have been killed," Barclay said.



The Toyota's driver, a woman, was extricated from the car by Southern Marin Fire District crews. She was taken Marin General Hospital, where she died from her injuries, Barclay said.



The CHP officer had moderate injuries and was taken to a hospital, Barclay said. The other officer was not hurt.



The driver of the disabled SUV that had brought the officers to the scene was not injured.



Authorities were investigating the cause of the crash.







A 24-year-old San Jose man died and three others were injured in a suspected drunken driving crash early Saturday morning on Interstate Highway 280, the California Highway Patrol said.



The solo-car crash happened at about 1:45 a.m. when a 2013 BMW E350 sedan went off the connector from northbound state Highway 17 to southbound 280, according to the CHP.



The BMW failed to negotiate the curve and left the roadway, struck a tree, rolled several times and then ended up on its wheels on southbound 280, authorities said.



The four men in the car, all from San Jose, were taken to a hospital but the 24-year-old succumbed to his injuries. His name was not released.



The 23-year-old driver suffered major injuries and will be arrested on suspicion on driving under the influence after he is treated, the CHP said. Authorities have not released his name.



The other two passengers, ages 22 and 23, were hospitalized with major and moderate injuries.







Ray Taliaferro, an outspoken liberal who from 1977 through 2011 hosted an overnight talk radio program on KGO, has been reported missing from Paducah Ky., near his southern Illinois home, the Massac County Sheriff's Office has reported.



Taliaferro, 79, was reported missing Nov. 10, according to the Massac County Sheriff's Department, based in Metropolis, Ill., across the Ohio River from Paducah. Taliaferro now lives in that southern Illinois county.



The onetime San Francisco radio host was last seen in Paducah on Nov. 10. A flier put out by the Paducah Police Department states that "Ray was last seen talking with the manager of the Mellow Mushroom pizza restaurant in Paducah. He may be experiencing disorientation and signs of dementia."



Taliaferro has a long professional resume, which includes leading the San Francisco chapter of the NAACP. He also is credited with being the first black talk-show host in a major market radio station (New York City) and being named San Francisco's first black member of the arts commission.







A 65-year-old man died Saturday after a single-vehicle kart accident on the Sonoma Raceway track in unincorporated Sonoma County, a raceway statement said Saturday.



The man, whose name was not available Saturday, was competing in a one-day Northern California Karters event on the Sonoma Raceway's primary 12-turn road course. The man's kart spun out and flipped on Turn 8 during the Superkart "Intercontinental E" division race.



On-site ambulance and fire/safety crews at the track responded immediately. The driver was taken by ambulance to Queen of the Valley Hospital in Napa, where he died from his injuries.







Concord police got their man Saturday night, with the help of the California Highway Patrol and the Contra Costa County Fire Protection District.



Police Lt. Kristen Thomas said Concord police tried to serve arrest warrants to two people at an apartment complex on Hillsborough Court, just off Highway 242 in North Concord, at about 5 p.m. Saturday.



Sarah Barela Gleason, 32, was taken into custody immediately and without incident, police said, but 42-year-old Kevin Villatoro fled via the apartment balcony onto the roof of the complex.



CHP personnel in a helicopter told police where Villatoro was, and police used a ladder truck supplied by ConFire to apprehend him.



Both Gleason and Villatoro were taken to the Martinez Detention Facility on charges related to the outstanding warrants - drug-related for Villatoro, and a burglary warrant for Gleason, Thomas said.





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The stuff seems to be the plague  in the truest sense: A British police officer who has determined in the case of Skripal and in contact with the poison Nowitschock was came of his possessions are lost. "Everything that belongs to the children, is the way of the cars, we have lost everything," said Nick Bailey in the BBC program "Panorama". The fighting substance he had been brought involuntarily to take home, because he was all over the door handle of the Skripals.

Poisoned in spite of protective clothing

In the summer, had come in the English of Salisbury, a woman died, who had come with Nowitschok in touch. The agent was apparently in a perfume bottle, which had found the friend of the victim and his partner as a gift. The police believe that the two assassins had thrown away the bottle with Nowitschok after the attack on Skripals house. According to investigators, was left in the bottle enough of the poison to kill thousands of people. The actual target of the attack, the Russian Ex-double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter have barely survived.

In the March of night, called in the Nick Bailey of the house of the Skripals had been, he carried forensic protective clothing. Hours later, he began to feel unwell. "My pupils were like pinpoints, I was hot and I was sweating," said the 38-Year-old. "At first I thought, the sun on Stress and my fatigue." Two days later he felt so bad that he went to the hospital. The Doctors took us days to figure out what exactly is behind the Restbet symptoms. As the experts found Nowitschock as a cause, "is with the jaw lowered," said a doctor.

"countless people could die"

Hardly any of the doctors had to do with the poison. Clear was all that it was a dangerous substance, so the doctor Duncan Murray, the was almost sure that the three Poisoned would die. He was wrong. The treatment, however, have been both painful as well as exhausting. "I had five, six injections in both arms," says Bailey. His body is healed, but his soul has not overcome the incident. Not only that, he contaminated his whole property, and thus unusable  especially the fact that the bombers have, of all things, used Nowitschock, scares him: "It is this disgust is the type that annoys me, it could have died a countless number of people."

The British police has published the new video footage of the two alleged bombers. Images from the surveillance cameras show the men at 4. March in Salisbuy. To see the two alleged Russian secret service agents as they arrive at the train station, in the vicinity of the crime scene move and later back to the station in return.

opinion case Skripal Two "Holy" in Salisbury: The fairy tales of the Kremlin

be just as harmless tourists to Salisbury, claim the two men for the attack on Sergei Skripal responsible. An abstruse representation.

Updated Date: 24 November 2018, 20:01

By Ellen Ivits nik with DPA/AFP


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PRISTINA, Kosovo  Theres a widespread tradition among many Muslims that its better for women to pray at home than in the mosque. But in Kosovo, an old Ottoman-era tradition is bucking that trend, with religious authorities seeking to establish the training of women as spiritual teachers in mosques.

Each day, scores of women gather around Agime Sogojeva, a spiritual teacher known as a mualime, in the Haxhi Veseli mosque in Kosovos northern town of Mitrovica. They discuss the Quran, their rights as women and daily practices, in a scene unthinkable as little as a decade ago.

Sogojeva is one of some 100 female theologians aiming to revive Muslim traditions in Europes newest country. They teach at three Muslim high schools, at Muslim centers, or they work voluntarily.

The move to establish the religious training of women in mosques  where women are allocated places in a separate room from men  is seen by some as a way to make Kosovos approach to Islam more gender-balanced at a time when many in the West view Islam as oppressive toward women.

Although in much of the Muslim world women teach other women, it is more common for that to occur at home or in event halls rather than in the mosques themselves. In some very conservative Islamic societies, women are generally distanced from mosques for social rather than religious reasons.

In Kosovo, there has been a significant increase in the number of women attending mosques in the past 20 years, said Besa Ismaili, a 43-year-old professor of English at the Faculty of Islamic Studies in Pristina.

The women were not only denied access, but their contribution was not recognized sufficiently, she said. We try to break up those stereotypes, those misconceptions.

Kosovo has a strongly patriarchal society but also a long secular tradition, with religious identity significantly weakened during decades of communist rule. Most of its ethnic Albanian majority population is Muslim, but religious expression was generally lax even after the fall of communism in the late 1980s. The country declared independence from Serbia in 2008, nearly a decade after a 1998-1999 war against Yugoslav forces by ethnic Albanian fighters.

Funding for about a dozen of the female theologians comes from Turkeys Directorate of Religious Affairs, or Diyanet, which assists the Islamic Community of Kosovo, or BIK, the countrys executive for Muslims.

Llazar Semini is an Associated Press writer.
LAGOS, Nigeria  Nigerias military on Saturday acknowledged a major attack against it by Islamic extremists after opposition lawmakers said 44 soldiers were killed, while public pressure on President Muhammadu Buhari grew over the failure of his pledge to defeat Boko Haram.

The military statement issued overnight didnt say how many died in the Nov. 18 attack in Metele in the northeast, but it dismissed media reports citing even higher tolls and called the situation under control. Nigeria is often reluctant to expose the number of casualties after such attacks.

As Buhari faces growing pressure over insecurity ahead of next years presidential election, an aide said the president had summoned military chiefs and sent the defense minister to neighboring Chad for an urgent meeting with President Idriss Deby. A multinational force combating Boko Haram is based in Chad.

Nigerias leader is worried by Boko Harams renewed attacks on military bases, aide Bashir Ahmad said in a post on Twitter.

The Islamic State West Africa Province, the largest Islamic State-linked extremist group in Africa and a recent offshoot of Boko Haram, claimed responsibility for last Sundays attack, according to the SITE Intelligence Group that monitors extremist messaging. The group last month caused outrage by killing an abducted health worker despite an urgent plea from the International Committee of the Red Cross to spare her life.

Nigerians are increasingly concerned about reports of growing casualties among troops fighting extremists.

Buhari, who made the defeat of the Nigeria-based Boko Haram a major goal of his presidency when he was elected in 2015, is preoccupied with re-election campaigns while many homes are filled with mourners, human rights activist Okechukwu Nwanguma said Saturday.

The government under Buhari has claimed in the past that Boko Haram was crushed, but the extremists continue to carry out deadly suicide bombings and abductions in the northeast and in the wider Lake Chad region.

In an interview last month, Nigerias information minister Lai Mohammed said that today not a single inch of our territory is occupied by Boko Haram and that peace had largely returned to the northeast.

Sam Olukoya is an Associated Press writer.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates  A prominent Saudi royal said Saturday that whether or not heads of state gathering in Argentina this week for the Group of 20 summit warmly engage with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, he is someone that they have to deal with.

Prince Turki al-Faisal told the Associated Press the killing of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi in the kingdoms consulate in Istanbul last month is an unacceptable incident that tars and mars the long record of Saudi Arabias own standing in the world.

We will have to bear that. Its not something that should not be faced. And we do face it, he said.

Intelligence officials and analysts say the operation to kill Khashoggi, who wrote critically of the crown prince for the Washington Post, could not have happened without Prince Mohammeds knowledge. The kingdom, which has offered several conflicting accounts of the killing, denies the crown prince had any involvement.

The crown prince embarked late Thursday on his first foreign tour since the Oct. 2 killing with a visit to the United Arab Emirates. Hes expected to visit other Mideast countries before going to Buenos Aires on Friday for the start of the two-day G-20 summit, where hell come face to face with world leaders.

President Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has kept international pressure mounting on the kingdom, are among those expected to attend.

Whether the leaders in that summit will warmly engage with the crown prince or not, I think all of them recognize that the kingdom as a country and King Salman and the crown prince are people that they have to deal with, the prince said.

Trump insists theres not enough evidence to blame the crown prince for Khashoggis killing, despite a U.S. intelligence reports assessment to the contrary. Trump says the kingdom is an important ally that has helped to lower oil prices.

I thought President Trump was expressing what he felt was in the interest of the United States. He emphasized the strategic relationship between the two countries in the same statement and how Saudi Arabia has been helpful in many instances  not just oil, al-Faisal said.

The prince also firmly dismissed the U.S. intelligence assessments that the crown prince had ordered Khashoggis killing, saying these same intelligence bodies had a remarkably flawed assessment in 2003 in the lead-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

So we dont take it as being, as I said, divine revelation, he said of the U.S. intelligence reports.

Al-Faisal led Saudi intelligence for more than two decades and served as ambassador to the U.S. and Britain.

Aya Batrawy is an Associated Press writer.
BRUSSELS  The European Union removed the last major obstacle to sealing an agreement on Brexit after Spain said it had reached a deal Saturday with Britain over Gibraltar on the eve of an EU summit.

British Prime Minister Theresa May, who arrived in Brussels on Saturday evening for preparatory talks with EU leaders, will then have the momentous task of selling the deal to a recalcitrant British Parliament and a nation still fundamentally split over whether the U.K. should leave the EU on March 29 and under what conditions.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez announced Saturday that Madrid would support the Brexit divorce deal after Britain and the EU agreed to give Spain a say in the future of the disputed British territory of Gibraltar, which lies at the southern tip of the Mediterranean nation.

Spain wants the future of the tiny territory, which was ceded to Britain in 1713 but is still claimed by Spain, to be a bilateral issue between Madrid and London, not between Britain and the EU.

In a letter, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and European Council President Donald Tusk assured Sanchez that Spains prior agreement would be needed on matters concerning Gibraltar.

Europe and the United Kingdom have accepted the conditions imposed by Spain, Sanchez said. Spain will lift its veto and tomorrow will vote in favor of Brexit.

The move should allow EU leaders speedily to sign off on the Brexit agreement between Britain at a special summit Sunday morning. May hopes to leave EU headquarters on Sunday with a firm agreement on the withdrawal terms for Britains departure from the EU on March 29, as well as a comprehensive negotiating text on how future relations should look like once both sides agree on a trade agreement.

Winning warm greetings from her 27 fellow leaders on Sunday might be much easier for May these days than getting such treatment from her colleagues in government and Parliament once she returns. May is under intense pressure from pro-Brexit and pro-EU British lawmakers, with large numbers on both sides of the debate opposing the divorce deal and threatening to vote it down when it comes to Parliament next month.

Raf Casert, Jill Lawless and Joseph Wilson are Associated Press writers.
A driver was taken to hospital with "moderate injuries" early on Sunday morning after the BMW M3 he was driving slammed into a lamppost and burst into flames in Riverside, California.



The driver was initially trapped in the vehicle but was pulled to safety by members of the public, according to witnesses.



Witnesses also stated that perhaps two vehicles were involved with one leaving the scene and that the two may have been racing down Arlington Avenue when the crash occurred.



Police are investigating the incident and at this time it is unclear whether speed or intoxication were a factor in the crash.
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My wife and I had been in Italy, which we visited regularly before my leg went bad. Yet I hadnt been anxious about that country changing since I was last there, six years ago. Thats why we love Italy: It gives you the feeling of being in a time warp.
PARIS -- French police fired tear gas and water cannons to disperse violent demonstrators in Paris on Saturday, as thousands gathered in the capital and beyond and staged road blockades to vent anger against rising fuel taxes.

Thousands of police were deployed nationwide to contain the eighth day of deadly demonstrations that started as protests against tax but morphed into a rebuke of President Emmanuel Macron and the perceived elitism of France's ruling class. Two people have been killed since Nov. 17 in protest-related tragedies.

Tense clashes on the Champs-Elysees that ended by dusk Saturday saw police face off with demonstrators who burned plywood, wielded placards reading "Death to Taxes" and upturned a large vehicle.

At least 19 people, including four police officers, were slightly hurt and one person had more serious injuries in the day of unrest in Paris, according to police.

Macron responded in a strongly worded tweet: "Shame on those who attacked (police). Shame on those who were violent against other citizens ... No place for this violence in the Republic."

Police said that dozens of protesters were detained for "throwing projectiles," among other acts. By nightfall the Champs-Elysees was smoldering and in the Place de la Madeleine, burned scooters lay on the sidewalk like blackened shells.

"It's going to trigger a civil war and me, like most other citizens, we're all ready," said Benjamin Vrignaud, a 21-year-old protester from Chartres.

"They take everything from us. They steal everything from us," said 21-year-old Laura Cordonnier.

The famed avenue was speckled with plumes of smoke and neon -- owing to the color of the vests the self-styled "yellow jacket" protesters don. French drivers are required to keep neon security vests in their vehicles.

Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said that 8,000 protesters flooded the Champs-Elysees at the demonstration's peak and there were nearly 106,000 protesters and 130 arrests in total nationwide.

Castaner denounced protesters from the far-right whom he called "rebellious," as he accused National Assembly leader Marine Le Pen of encouraging them.

But the Interior Ministry played down the scale of Saturday's demonstrations by highlighting that up to 280,000 people took part in last Saturday's protest.

The unrest is proving a major challenge for embattled Macron, who's suffering in the polls.

The leader, who swept to power only last year, is the focus of rage for the "yellow jacket" demonstrators who accuse the pro-business centrist of elitism and indifference to the struggles of ordinary French.

Macron has so far held strong and insisted the fuel tax rises are a necessary pain to reduce France's dependence on fossil fuels and fund renewable energy investments -- a cornerstone of his reforms of the nation. He will defend fresh plans to make the "energy transition" easier next week.

Paris deployed some 3,000 security forces on Saturday, notably around tourist-frequented areas, after an unauthorized attempt last week to march on the presidential Elysee Palace.

Police officials said that a no-go zone, set up around key areas including the presidential palace and the National Assembly on the Left Bank of the Seine River, has not been breached.

But authorities are struggling because the movement has no clear leader and has attracted a motley group of people with broadly varying demands.

The anger is mainly over a hike in the diesel fuel tax, which has gone up seven euro cents per liter (nearly 30 U.S. cents per gallon) and will keep climbing in coming years, according to Transport Minister Elisabeth Borne. The tax on gasoline is also to increase four euro cents. Gasoline currently costs about 1.64 euros a liter in Paris ($7.06 a gallon), slightly more than diesel.

Far left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon explained to BFMTV the historical importance of this issue in the Gallic mindset: "When tax is no longer agreed to, it's the start of revolutions in France."

By Thomas Adamson. Chris Den Hond and Patrick Hermensen contributed to this report.
Were highlighting some of the activities Staten Island students are engaged in -- both inside and outside the classroom.

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Freshmen students at Staten Island Academy got the opportunity of a lifetime when they traveled to London this month.

Built into the schools academic curriculum, freshmen students traveled to London for a week, chaperoned by faculty members.

The trip was planned as an educational experience where students learned and applied English, history, fine arts, performing arts and more, as they visited new locations.

Students visited the London Eye, Cambridge University, Shakespeares Globe, the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, The British Museum, local markets and restaurants and many other local attractions.

View photos from the trip above.

The trip is offered to students at no added cost to their tuition. To see more photos and recaps from the freshmens London adventures, you can visit Staten Island Academys Twitter.

As part of our education column, In Class, we are highlighting some of the activities Staten Island students are engaged in -- both inside and outside the classroom.

Heres a look at some additional recent education-related happenings.

EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS

Councilman Steven Matteo (R-Mid-Island) teamed up with the American Red Cross to provide emergency preparedness training to thousands of high school students on Staten Island.

The event was held earlier this month at New Dorp High School  which played a role in the recovery efforts after Hurricane Sandy hit the borough in 2012.

I felt there would be no place more suitable to hold disaster preparedness training classes than New Dorp High School, which became a shelter, a community center, a focal point for recovery and relief efforts and a refuge for thousands of families when Superstorm Sandy devastated our East Shore communities, Matteo said.

The sessions taught best practices for preparing and responding to disasters.

Josh Lockwood, the regional CEO for American Red Cross in Greater New York, said its critical for households to learn emergency preparedness.

Its absolutely critical for local households to take the necessary steps to prepare, before a disaster occurs, said Lockwood. Fridays event, in a community that has experienced one of the worst storms in recent memory, will empower a large number of students with critical readiness skill.

The event is part of the Citizen Preparedness Training, a partnership between the Red Cross and New York State providing free emergency preparedness education. It was established in 2014.

The presentation is taught by experienced Red Cross instructors and gives a comprehensive overview on how to prepare for natural and man-made disasters, and how to recover from them.

NEW LEGISLATION

New legislation was signed into law by Gov. Andrew Cuomo that ensures non-public schools arent shortchanged through the state education funding process.

Assemblyman Michael Cusick (D-Staten Island) carried the legislation in the state Assembly. He said its a positive step forward for the nearly 500,000 students across New York State attending non-public schools.

Non-public schools are a critical support network for hundreds of thousands of students in New York, said Cusick. This legislation will prevent schools from losing out on funding theyve already been allocated.

The State Education Department previously calculated school aid based on five to five-and-a-half hour school days. The department had begun calculating instructional time beyond this threshold, without increasing funding to non-public schools. This results in a reduced reimbursement rate, as funding is divided by a greater amount of instruction time.

The legislation will codify SEDs traditional formula in an effort to protect the funding non-public schools have come to rely on, according to Cusicks office.

No school should be penalized by adding instruction time over-and-above the five and a half hour cap, Cusick said. Im proud to have advanced this common sense legislation and want to thank Governor Cuomo for recognizing the importance of this initiative.

Do you have a story idea for the In Class education column? Email education reporter Annalise Knudson at aknudson@siadvance.com.

FOLLOW ANNALISE KNUDSON ON FACEBOOK AND TWITTER.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- A 79-year old New Brighton man, who has been missing since Sept. 25, was found Saturday in a nursing home in White Plains, N.Y., police said.

After he went missing, fliers were posted around the neighborhood about John Jerry Michael, who has been described by his family as a loving person.

It is not known how the man ended up in the nursing home when he was found, police said.

A spokesman for New Jersey State Police said on Saturday that authorities have ruled out that a missing man recently found in New Jersey is Michael.

Michaels goddaughter, who would check on him on a daily basis and go food shopping for him weekly, noted that everything seemed fine days before his disappearance, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

In all five years that hes been here, hes never done anything of this nature. Hence, the reason why the police were involved, she said to the Advance in October.
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Researchers at the University of Chicago Crime Lab have noted much of the violence occurs in highly segregated and impoverished pockets of the city. The labs director, Jens Ludwig, told a City Club of Chicago audience earlier this year that the violence could come down with intensive investment in creating jobs for thousands of residents who are the most at risk to commit or fall victim to violence, along with money spent boosting teens graduation rates and improving data-driven policing.
Australians are bleeding tens of thousands of dollars in retirement savings each because regulators have failed to weed out small, high-cost funds, a Productivity Commission analysis has found.

If the 50 smallest high-cost super funds were forced to merge into the top 10 biggest low-cost funds, there would be an average boost to the retirement nest eggs of Australia's 14.8 million super account holders of $22,000 each, if cost savings from high-cost economies of scale were passed on as fee reductions.

There has been a wave of consolidation among super funds. Credit:Jessica Shapiro

Australians are collectively shelling out $30 billion a year in fees on their superannuation accounts, not including insurance premiums. Retirees now fork out more in super fees each year than for power bills, a recent Grattan Institute report found.

According to a supplementary paper to the Productivity Commission's major superannuation inquiry, released on Monday, members would reap "significant" savings if more were transferred into larger, low-cost funds.
Elyse McWilliam is waiting in the wings while your workplace makes its last-minute decisions about what booze to have at the Christmas party.

We always receive lots of last minute bookings - and are delivering lots of last-minute kegs for Christmas and New Years, the director of Melbourne pop-up bar business Kegs on Legs says.

Elyse McWilliam is making sure your end-of-year work function is sorted for drinks this year. Credit:Justin McManus

Entertainment boom

Australians are expected to spend $51.5 billion this festive season, according to Roy Morgan - and $7 billion of this will be on hospitality events.
Last week, Dr Kevin Donnelly, an education commentator and academic at the Australian Catholic University, called for a return to the so-called good old days, where things were less complicated. Things certainly have changed since Dr Donnelly and I were schoolboys but nostalgia for this bygone era and its educational system is downright destructive. The real lessons schools should learn from 1950s Australia are tough but valuable, particularly for conservatives.

Leading Catholic educator Greg Whitby doesn't want a return to the bad old days of education.

Though Dr Donnelly says that no one had heard of difference in the 1950s and 1960s, many of our classmates felt deeply what it was to be different. Despite his contention that we were all equal, I have sisters, and like other schoolgirls of our era, they are likely to have a different perspective. Few girls had the opportunity to complete high school and post school options were very limited. We have learnt from these failures to nurture girls full potential at school in the past, and continue to dedicate ourselves as educators to high aspirations for each and every student.

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We were all proud of who we were is a curious statement from Dr Donnelly in reference to a time when there was so much shame associated with difference. For so many, the experience of discrimination was a rite of passage, even for us Irish Catholics. Though Dr Donnelly asserts that no one had heard of identity politics when we were kids, the fighting Irish more or less invented it. While it is true that no one had heard of multiculturalism in the 1950s and 1960s, there is much to learn from listening to what school felt like for students from different backgrounds in those days.
Actor Kit Harington has denied claims he cheated on his wife, fellow Game of Thrones star Rose Leslie, following claims made by a Russian model.

In a series of online posts, model and reality TV star Olga Vlasova last week claimed she had a month-long affair with Harington after first meeting the actor in Luxembourg in 2017, when he was already engaged to Leslie, and again after they wed in June.

She also shared nude photos of a man she said was Harington, and claimed he'd promised to introduce her to directors in the US.

Now Harington's team has taken the unexpected step of rejecting the tabloid fodder.
ACT Policing is asking the public for help to locate missing teenager Layla Riches.

Layla Riches was last seen in the Belconnen area on Saturday November 24.

The 15 year old was last seen in the Belconnen area on the morning of Saturday, November 24 and it's believed she may be in the Griffith or Narrabundah area.

She is described as Caucasian, of slim build with light brown hair and about 160 centimetres (5'3") tall.

Police are concerned for her safety and ask anyone with information about her whereabouts to call ACT Policing on 131 444.
James Packer's Crown Resorts solicited a fresh expert report that suggested a nearby development would block harbour views to more levels of its $2 billion casino tower at Barangaroo, days after its own analysis was released showing a small proportion of hotel rooms would be affected.

Crown and infrastructure giant Lendlease are suing the state government in a bid to protect "sight lines" to the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge from their developments at the southern end of Barangaroo.

The Crown Casino under construction at Barangaroo. Its views are under dispute. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer

But documents tendered in the NSW Supreme Court earlier this month showed that concessions already made by the state-run Barangaroo Delivery Authority meant only small sections of Crown's tower would be affected by developments proposed for neighbouring Central Barangaroo.

The company's own expert report showed the most recent plans for Central Barangaroo, prepared by the authority in September, would block views of the base of the Harbour Bridge only from level three to level seven of Crown's 71-storey development, or roughly 15 metres of the 275-metre tower.
Plan to protect Barrier reef

The Prime Minister, Mr Whitlam, said today that the Federal Government would create a marine park on the Great Barrier Reef to protect it from drilling. The report of the Wallace Royal Commission into drilling on the reef was to go before cabinet again but because of the urgent need to protect the reef from despoliation, the government would now go ahead with the creation of the marine park.

More power to the unions

Lord Feather, 66, the former general secretary of Britains Trades Union Congress, arrived in Melbourne today on his first visit to Australia. The Yorkshire peer is planning to meet the president of the ACTU, Mr Hawke. I know him very well. The last time we met I showed him around the House of Lords, he said  On unions, he said: I dont think they have too much power  they should have more.

Poets nightmare
Thank heavens for a little commonsense from Matt Wade on the prevalent immigration hysteria (Puberty blues take hold during citys growth surge, November 24-25). Saying that the growth rate of immigration is unsustainable is a nonsense. What is unsustainable is the failure to keep up infrastructure investment required for a functioning modern city. The result of this short-sightedness is now coming home to roost in such cities as New York and will heavily affect Sydney over the coming decades if nothing is done about it, particularly in public transport which is clearly the poor stepchild of the current government. Making a whipping boy of migrants only diverts attention from the real issues. - Bruce Hyland, Woy Woy

Tom Switzer (Australia, too, must beware the change in the wind, November 24-25) makes the important point that high immigration levels are so inextricably bound up with our economic health we cannot dare reduce it, even if our infrastructure is inadequate to support it. I suggest that before the coming election both parties bring out the big guns in their PR machines to spruik this perspective or risk a surge towards the more extreme elements of our politics. Ordinary people are not economists, all they know is that their quality of life in this city is diminishing in many important ways. But this is probably more of a shock to the old than the young, who are more inclined to enjoy the vitality of living in a big city and have no memory of the pleasures of living in a smaller Sydney. - Lyndall Nelson, Cremorne

Illustration: Pat Campbell Credit:Pat Campbell

Ten years ago when I returned to live in Sydney, I could take a pleasant walk through the CBD at lunchtime and always find somewhere to sit. Now, I have to queue to walk down the street. If the people in front of me are walking at a slower pace than I want, I have to wait for a break in the traffic of people walking the other way in order to pass. There is nowhere to sit. Every available seat, bench or perch is taken. In 2066 we are expected to reach 50million. I wont be here. I hope the afterlife has made appropriate plans for overcrowding. - Sue Durman, Pyrmont

As the least densely populated place on Earth we need more people for security, economic and moral reasons. What people are concerned about is the overcrowding in cities, job competition and entire lack of long-term policy. Solutions: mix the intake with wealthy and needy refugees, using the money of the former to expand our infrastructure and thus providing jobs all over Australia, not just the cities. As we learnt after WWII, refugees can contribute so much. It is not as though we do not need transport, schools, hospitals, energy solutions. We could produce jobs for 50 million. - Peter Le Marquand, Meadowbank
Social media was awash with messages of support after a fire "totally destroyed" the Newtown building housing Chinese restaurant Happy Chef and adult store Max Black on Saturday night.

Three firefighters were injured by debris while battling the blaze that drew a crew of 60, after reports of a major fire on King Street about 10pm on Saturday. No staff or members of the public were injured.

A NSW Fire & Rescue spokesperson described the building as "totally destroyed by fire" and detailed significant structural damage, including partial wall collapse and extensive impact to interiors and products due to smoke.

Happy Chef and Max Black, which occupies the floor above the restaurant, posted on social media on Sunday to confirm that both stores will be closed until further notice, to much sympathy from followers.
When the soldier tried to exit up the stairs, the group attacked him, kicking and punching him in the face and body, Brady said. The attackers beat the soldier to the ground as they tried to rip off his backpack, but he held onto his backpack and phone while robbers took his wallet, which contained his military identification, bank card and firearm owners card.
In what would have been strange sight for passengers taking off and landing at Sydney Airport, a number of footraces were held on one of its operational runways on Sunday morning.

The Sydney Airport Family Fun Runway Run is an annual fundraiser first held in 2015 by Sydney Airport and Cure Cancer Australia.

A series of races were held for runners of all ages, including a 500-metre fun run, a competitive one-kilometre run, a 4x500-metre metre relay and a 100-metre dash for children under 12.

Runners took to a Sydney Airport runway on Sunday morning. Credit:Peter Rae

Participants were ferried by bus to the runway for the event held on one of the airports usually operational strips.
A woman is fighting for her life in hospital after suffering critical head injuries in a two-vehicle crash in Brisbane's north.

Police said a black BMX sedan was allegedly travelling westbound at high speed, along Hamilton Road from Zenith Avenue towards Staib Road at Chermside about 3.45pm on Saturday.

A black Nissan Micra was allegedly leaving The Prince Charles Hospital on Staib Road when the BMW crashed into the Nissan.

A Queensland Ambulance Service spokesman said the driver of the Nissan, a 52-year-old woman, was taken to Royal Brisbane Hospital in a critical condition.

The driver of the BMW, a 24-year-old woman, and passenger, a 24-year-old man, were taken to Royal Brisbane Hospital with minor injuries.
Just over 15 degrees now in the city ahead of a top of 20.

Major delays now on the Craigieburn line. Also delays on St Georges Road due to tran work. They'll last until Saturday.

That's it from us till tomorrow morning. We'll be back at 6am. Have a pleasing day.
Police were pelted with bottles and frightened locals sheltered in businesses after schoolies celebrations descended into chaos on the Mornington Peninsula on Saturday night.

Riot police, dogs and a helicopter were sent to the Rye foreshore as police scrambled to contain a large gathering of youths about 9.30pm.

Police have warned schoolies there will be a "zero tolerance" for troublemakers after some of the rowdy revellers threw bottles at officers. Flares were also reportedly set off from the roof of a house.

A video taken from a car driving down Point Nepean Road shows a line of riot police blocking the street and dozens of other officers with shields and batons.
Five days after the family of a Perth woman found dead in Bedfordale made a public appeal for information, police have charged a 46-year-old man with her murder.

Kym Taylors remains were found by a member of the public in bushland off Canning Dam Road in Bedfordale on Sunday, November 18.

Ms Taylor's mother Courtney (right) and aunt Leanne (left) speak to media on Tuesday morning. Credit:Cameron Myles.

Ms Taylor, 37, lived in Hamilton Hill but was known to also live an itinerant lifestyle.

Police have now charged a man from Girrawheen, who knew her, with murder.
The states ruling out a WA-based climate and energy policy despite federal failure has drawn an attack from the Greens, who urged WA to join other states and take action.

The Morrison government in September dumped former prime minister Malcolm Turnbulls National Energy Guarantee, further eroding Australia's chances of meeting its commitment to the Paris accord, which attempts to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees and thereby save perhaps 10-20 per cent of the worlds coral reefs.

Coal must be phased out by mid-century if we are to have a chance of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees, according to the IPCC. Credit:Peter Braig

Energy Minister Ben Wyatt recently acknowledged the Morrison governments decision meant Australia was unlikely to get a climate change policy until after the federal election.

But he ruled out a state-based approach, saying the WA government supported a national effort as the most efficient and effective way to deliver on Australias international commitments and remained hopeful that Australia would get this approach when the federal government changed.
Labor wants the Commonwealth Bank to be stripped of its association with the Australian of the Year Awards as punishment for bad behaviour, in an escalation of the opposition's response to the banking royal commission.

Frontbencher Matt Thistlethwaite  who would likely become assistant treasurer should Labor win next year's federal election  told Fairfax Media the bank should be "benched" as major sponsor of the nationally televised awards for at least two years.

"Having sat down with many, many bank victims and seen and heard the pain and suffering inflicted on them by the Commonwealth Bank and others, if I were one of those victims I would feel pretty hurt seeing Australia Day plastered with Commonwealth Bank logos and bank executives participating in our national day," Mr Thistlethwaite, who represents the Sydney seat of Kingsford Smith, said.

"Australia Day is a chance to reflect on what it means to be Australian and the values we hold dear  particularly the values of the fair go and generosity of spirit. But given the evidence that has been uncovered in the royal commission I don't think that could be said about the Commonwealth Bank at this point in time."

The demand will put pressure on the National Australia Day Council, which relies on corporate donations to co-ordinate the January 26 ceremony. Cash and in-kind sponsorship from the Commonwealth Bank and other contributors accounted for more than 35 per cent of the organisation's revenue last year.
If images out of Canberra in coming days show our politicians looking a little distracted, dont worry. They will just be wondering if this is the very last time the 45th parliament will sit, before an election is called in January.

Only one of them  Scott Morrison  knows for sure. And it is slightly more likely there will be four more weeks of parliamentary sittings in the lead-up to a May election.

Who knows whether this sitting of Parliament will be the last before an election is called? Prime Minister Scott Morrison does. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

But the mere possibility will lend a frisson to proceedings. What we see from both sides will be as good a guide to pre-election morale as we are likely to get. My guess is that ministers will experience a strange sense of prospective nostalgia as they walk the blue carpet to their offices. Labor MPs will be doing their best not to let anticipation bubble over as they whisper to themselves the old wisdom that the worst day in government is better than the best day in opposition. And given voters in federal elections have so far remained reluctant to throw out first-term governments, both parties will be thinking in six-year chunks.

Some recent polling has shown an improvement for the government, but opinion polls dont whack politicians over the head the way actual votes do. And that will be the other major factor this fortnight.
A toxic site in Fawkner where the component parts of the deadly chemical Agent Orange were once manufactured and stored will be redeveloped, despite protests from locals concerned over contamination left in the soil for decades.

The Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal has granted permission for two warehouses to be built on the site in McBryde Street, Fawkner, where agricultural chemicals maker Nufarm once had a factory.

Fawkner resident Brian Snowden at the rear of the contaminated site approved for redevelopment. Credit:Eddie Jim

Nufarm sold the property four decades ago, but from 1955 to 1974 manufactured a range of herbicides, pesticides and other agricultural chemicals on the site.

Among these were two components needed to make the weapon Agent Orange, used during the Vietnam War to defoliate trees and destroy crops.
The first was that the electorate was hugely unimpressed by the federal Liberal leadership switch, and not particularly impressed by Prime Minister Scott Morrison. To that end, it's no coincidence that in the final week of the campaign, 50 per cent of Labors ads went negative - and almost all of those negative ads featured Guy and the PM, with messages about Liberal cuts to services. Scott Morrison and Matthew Guy pictured together in September. Credit:Simon Schluter The second assumption was that Guy would continue to highlight law and order as one of his key strengths, but would frame the issue through the politics of fear. As such, Andrews would instead talk up his positive and optimistic plans," including the value of improving TAFE and mental health as a way of preventing crime. And the third assumption was that the Liberals slogan Get Back in Control wouldnt stick, as voters could easily be reminded that Victoria had the strongest economy in the nation, with billions of dollars worth of major projects in the pipeline. Theyre hardly the signs of a state in chaos. In many ways, Labors campaign had all the hallmarks of the election-winning strategy that consigned the Napthine government to history after a single term in 2014.

Advertising executive Darren Moss (who helped rebrand Andrews image at that state poll) returned to craft Labors ads, which personalised the Premier while giving a sense of his vision for the state. Andrews' wife, Catherine, once again became a daily fixture at policy announcements. And more than 5000 Community Action Network volunteers signed up, just as they did before, to phone and doorknock on the governments behalf, along with unions in seven target seats: Bentleigh, Mordialloc, Carrum, Frankston, Ripon, Morwell and Bass. Even the Premiers quirky refusal to say Matthew Guys name was adopted from the previous election, in which he refused to mention Denis Napthine in a bid to brand his opponent as irrelevant to my plans". Liberal Party Victorian president Michael Kroger with his controversial protege Marcus Bastiaan. Credit:Facebook But just as Saturdays election result was an overwhelming endorsement of Andrews first-term achievements, it was also a brutal lesson, if ever the Liberals needed one, that lurching further to the right in Australias most progressive state doesnt fly.

Its no secret that up until a few months ago, the Victorian Liberals were embroiled in a distracting culture war led by conservative warrior Marcus Bastiaan, the ambitious young Liberal aligned with party president Michael Kroger and federal MP Michael Sukkar. For years, the conservative forces worked over church congregations, Mormons and Probus groups, pressing them to join the Liberal cause. The policies of the Andrews government  Safe Schools, voluntary euthanasia, access zones around abortion clinics  became effective recruitment tools for their membership drive. But while this may have given the right newfound power in the Victorian branch, it delivered few benefits at the ballot box. Indeed, Labors most surprising gains were across Melbournes "Bible belt" eastern suburbs - in Liberal seats such as Box Hill, Mount Waverley and Burwood. Once thought to be fertile ground for the oppositions Safe Schools fear campaign, they swung to the ALP stronger than anyone had anticipated. Equally telling is that Labor also increased its vote in Frankston, Carrum, Mordialloc and Bentleigh - the marginal sandbelt seats where crime was meant to be a critical factor.

Despite the relentless scare campaigns about African gangs and the politicisation of the Bourke Street attack two weeks ago, law and order clearly didnt have the kind of electoral impact the Liberals had hoped for. Perhaps this is emblematic of a deeper flaw in the Coalitions campaign. Most political observers wouldnt know it, but Guy and his team spent many years developing policies, and are said to have announced more than 170 by election day. The trouble is, the commitments they pushed the hardest often played more to the Liberals' base than voters in the middle ground where elections are won or lost. One late proposal in the wake of Bourke Street - that any breach of bail would result in people being locked up on remand, no matter how minor the offence - was particularly absurd. The government, on the other hand, was far from perfect, but it had a much broader story to tell: on education, health, public transport, the economy. Given the choice between an incumbent with a proven track record and an opposition struggling to understand what voters wanted, Victorians picked Labor in a landslide. The challenge for Andrews now will be to provide what he promised: a strong, stable government for another four years. Hopefully, it's devoid of the rorts and scandal that undermined the last four.
But some members still wish Feinstein would step aside and allow the panel's No. 2 Democrat, Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., who has worked with Graham on matters from immigration to criminal justice reform, to take over. There are some who believe he would be a more reliable and energetic challenger against the oftentimes irascible Graham, especially when it comes to the GOP's efforts to confirm conservative judges, according to people familiar with members' thinking.
Moscow: Ukraine has accused Russia of illegally seizing three of its ships in the Black Sea after opening fire on them, a charge that if confirmed could ignite a dangerous new crisis between the two countries.

At first Russian news agencies cited the FSB security service as saying it had incontrovertible proof that Ukraine had orchestrated what it called "a provocation" and would publicise its evidence soon.

Later the FSB conceded it acted against the Ukrainian ships "after they ignored legitimate demands to stop and manouevred dangerously". It said it "used weapons" to force them to stop, the Russian RIA news agency reported.

The Ukrainian navy says a Russian coast guard vessel rammed a Ukrainian navy tugboat near Crimea, damaging the ship's engines and hull. Credit:Ukrainian Navy/AP

It said the lives of wounded Ukrainian soldiers were not in danger.
Paris: Once again, US President Donald Trump sounded off against France - this time, against protests that have garnered a lot of international attention.

What set him off? Apparently, thousands of people taking to the streets to ask for something that did not involve American interests.

US President Donald Trump. Credit:AP

In Trump's eyes, the protests - held across France for the second Saturday in a row - had failed to take into consideration what he views as unfair trade deals between Europe and the United States.

"The large and violent French protests don't take into account how badly the United States has been treated on Trade by the European Union or on fair and reasonable payments for our GREAT military protection," Trump wrote. "Both of these topics must be remedied soon."
Damascus: Russian warplanes attacked rebel-held areas in northern Syria for the first time in weeks on Sunday, as Syrian officials said more than 100 people were treated at hospitals following an alleged poison gas attack by rebels in the northern city of Aleppo.

Russian military spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov told reporters in Moscow that Russian warplanes destroyed militant positions in northern Syria.

The latest wave of shelling and airstrikes in northern Syria is the most serious violation of a truce reached by Russia and Turkey that brought relative calm to the country's north over the past two months. The rebels, who have denied carrying out any chemical attacks, accused the government of trying to undermine the ceasefire.

Moscow said it would talk to Turkey, which backs some rebel factions and helped broker a ceasefire in the insurgent stronghold of Idlib.
Seffner, Florida: Eighteen months after Sinatra the brown and white Husky disappeared from his home in New York, he ended up wandering in a Florida neighbourhood where 13-year-old Rose Verrill took him in.

Turns out, Sinatra once belonged to 16-year-old Zion Willis, who died in a gun accident in Brooklyn, New York, in 2015. He'll be reunited with her family in Baltimore on Sunday.

The Tampa Bay Times reports that while the dog has been found, no one knows how it travelled 1931 kilometres from New York to Seffner, near Tampa.

Eighteen months after Sinatra the brown and white Husky disappeared from his home in New York, he ended up wandering in a Florida neighborhood where 13-year-old Rose Verrill took him in. Credit:AP

But this much is known. Sinatra was a 14th birthday gift for Zion, who was an avid dancer and an animal lover. The blue-eyed dog loved to chase raccoons and squirrels, the teen's father told the newspaper. One day, a year-and-a-half after Zion's death, the dog never came home. It was a tragic loss for Zion's grieving parents.
West Palm Beach, Florida: US President Donald Trump congratulated himself for falling oil prices. He chided the Federal Reserve over interest rates. He claimed Central American countries were trying to dump "certain people" into the United States.

US President Donald Trump. Credit:AP

Trump's Florida Thanksgiving holiday stay was ending on Sunday with a visit to his golf club for the fifth day in a row. His tweeting took no break.

The president patted himself on the back for a dip in petroleum prices, writing "thank you President T." He also admonished the US central bank over the cost of borrowing money.

In a separate tweet, he called on Mexico to stop caravans of Central American migrants from trying to reach the US border. Unsuccessfully as migrants continued on, even meeting with tear gas at the crossing.
I'll post the link to the whole thing at the end of the article...but PLEASE read the entire article. This is a mind blowing fight. via Times Of Israel...

The raid, in which an Israeli lieutenant colonel  who can only be identified by the first Hebrew letter of his name, Mem  was killed and another officer wounded, degenerated into a gunfight in the street and a frenetic car chase.



The Israeli special forces unit was forced to hastily retreat, calling in airstrikes for cover and the elite search-and-rescue Unit 669 to evacuate them by helicopter.



Recordings of the radio chatter by Hamas fighters were obtained by Hadashot television news earlier this week, which gave no indication as to their origin and declined to broadcast the audio recording itself, in order not to expose a source, the news network said.



The authenticity of the recordings has not been confirmed by Israeli authorities, which have remained almost entirely silent on the nature and outcome of the raid.



According to the Hadashot broadcast, the Israeli special forces team was first identified as suspicious by Hamas security officials, possibly police officers, who saw the car passing by them on the outskirts of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.







To all forces and positions, a blue Volkswagen is driving suspiciously and very fast near the Islamic University, one official says on the radio, according to the transcript.



There are suspicious people in the vehicle. Theyre dangerous. Approach with caution, he adds.



It is clear from later chatter that, at this stage, the Hamas forces still believe they are dealing with either a criminal gang or, possibly, a militia group not under their control.



According to an account of the events provided by Hadashot, Hamas forces then begin trailing the car and are soon engaged in a chase through the streets of Khan Younis. As one Hamas vehicle chases the IDF unit from the west, other Hamas units set up a roadblock to the east.



At some point, someone opens fire. It is not clear from the Hadashot report who it was, but earlier reports from Gaza said Hamas believes the IDF force opened fire first.



It is only then, with the IDF force believing it is exposed and an IDF rescue operation underway, that Hamas officials reportedly realized they were dealing with Israelis.The Hamas radio traffic then resumes, according to the transcript. The car ran through our checkpoint and fired at us from the vehicle. All forces, converge on this location. Everyone must converge on the area to deal with this situation.



Fighter jets are suddenly above us. Everyone be careful, a voice says over the radio. And shortly after: Listen carefully to our instructions. Theyre Jews.



It is roughly at this point that the IDF commander in the field, Lt. Col. Mem, is hit by Hamas gunfire, and mortally wounded.

Side note. Which IDF Special Ops Unit was this? Everyone is pointing to Sayeret Matkal but this wasn't a direct action or even HIGHLY SPECIALIZED undercover assignment so I'm guessing no. Additionally against Hamas? They're low level for those bubbas. Unit 8200 is their intel guys but they're supposed to be like the NSA. Maybe there is an "action cell" inside Unit 8200 that does the field work?

I posted an article on the LT Col's death. I didn't know he was involved in an operation of this type/magnitude. I am NOT casting aspersions on the man but I will state that he did not have the "hard" appearance of a man that was involved in life or death situations where physicality would play a role in his survival (and I know that NOT having that type of look could play to his advantage in certain situations).So having said that it blows me away that the IDF would so casually wade into the lion's den so to speak.This whole thing has me spinning.The infiltration itself sounds like it's out of spy novel. The devices they were planting is also a mystery. Finally how do you mount a rescue operation deep into HAMAS territory without it turning into a clusterfuck from hell...I'm talking about a Thunder Raid on steroids!Simply amazing.I'm certain of only one thing.Just like the US needs to rethink its war in Afghanistan (and Syria), the IDF needs to rethink it's operations against HAMAS. I think they've used the same playbook for so long that they're getting a little sloppy and their enemy knows it just as well as they do.
Rain is forecast to change to snow across the region Sunday, prompting the National Weather Service to issue a winter storm warning for much of northern Illinois. Snow, heavy at times, is likely across the metro area Sunday evening. Strong north to northwest winds will cause blowing and drifting snow as temperatures drop below freezing Sunday night. Much colder air will sweep across the Midwest in the wake of the snowstorm.
NCIS  Friendly Fire - Review



16.08 - "Friendly Fire"

Written by Jennifer Corbett

Directed by Tom Wright

Reviewed by KathM



Loved it.

The story starts out in what seems to be a straightforward manner: man is found dead in a river by an entitled kid doing some community service hoping to fluff up his resume for his application to Yale. The deceased has military ID, so NCIS investigates. They start out with credentials identifying him as a clerk at the Defense Logistics Agency, but when Ellie and Gibbs drop by, they find that the dead guy isnt who we thought he was. Instead of a military employee he was Wesley

Moore, who had washed out of OCS several years ago.

So, what was he doing with the ID? Accessing the DoDs database, thats what. Hes been looking up information on a dozen dead marines in who had been killed in Afghanistan recently and is in frequent contact about it with a Captain Alicia Voit, who is stationed in Afghanistan. They were in OCS together and had stayed friends, so he was helping her out.

It seems to the team that Voit felt like something was going on with the deaths and asked Moore (a computer guy) to investigate, as she didnt feel comfy talking to anyone in her Chain of Command. When they try to talk to Voit, however, they find that she was killed in Afghanistan on the same day as Moore. The mystery deepens

What we end up with is a bewildering view on the politics and economic aspects of war that I cant get my head around. Which didn't mean that I disliked the episode. Moore was killed by a psychopath (Black) so that Black could be reinstated as a defense contractor, and Kinneman wanted the war to go on so that his defense contractor business could continue to thrive. If I were Ellie and McGee, Id have just walked out and left Kinneman with his fellow soldiers instead of arresting him. Did you see the way they were looking at him?

Colonel Park tricked me! Initially I thought that he was in a relationship with Voit, which is why he wanted to stay with her body, or that something was hidden in the coffin that he wanted to protect. He was so aggressive that it unnerved me, particularly in his interactions with Gibbs, and I thought that he was surely involved in the larger plot about the dead Marines. And I was sure that Gibbs was going to deck him after Park questioned Gibbss loyalty as a Marine when he wouldnt release Voits body. Do not EVER go there! But Park was simply a good man doing a hard job, feeling guilty about helping Voit find a soldiers life in the first place by recruiting her into the Corps. When all was said and done Gibbs drove out with him to Captain Voits funeral, which is exactly what Id expect.

The episode felt cohesive and funny in the right parts with perfect bits of poignant sprinkled throughout. My biggest disappointment was that the episode wasnt a two-parter. Things happened too fast for my liking, fell in line too quickly. The story was more than interesting enough to require extra time to unfurl. I mean, McGee and Ellie show up at Camp Russell and theyre told who is responsible for the murders and that theyve already caught him. Then its all, Hi Atwa, Im Ellie and this is Ti Im working with an American, want to know how his name? Just set me free. No. Then Atwa gets shot and things fall into place with annoying speed.

Hilights:

Torres says he doesnt see how men and women (like Voit and Moore) could have a platonic relationship. Hes saying this while standing right next to his goat yoga buddy Ellie, which is wonderfully ironic.

Artist Jimmy is awesome! Nice to see Ellie keeping up with her painting and encouraging Jimmy to be a part of it. She seems to spend the most time with other characters (Torres, Reeves, Jimmy) outside of work, which I like and seems natural.

Ducky hanging up Jimmys pictures in Autopsy was an excellent way for him to pass the torch. And having Ducky rambling out and about the country was a great way to provide an excuse for his absences from the show. Send us some postcards, Ducky! I want to see you trying to be concise.

Mixing up the teams was a great idea. McGee and Bishop arent normally together in the field unless theyre part of the group, and Kasie never goes out as part of an investigation. And what does she get to do? Schlep around the icky river where they found Moores body, looking for clues. Ick! Does calamine lotion work on fly bites?

Meanwhile, Torres handles the land-based part of the search, which consists of watching Kasie work and keeping an eye out for snakes. He does manage to start questioning a random Waterworks volunteer, Xavier Blackburn, though, who you know has more to do with the story because hes too attractive to be just a background player and has lines. And he did!

Kasie gets Torres back for his lack of assistance doing scut work in the river by casually threatening him with snakes she could hide in various unknown places to manipulate him into doing computer work, his least favorite thing. Nick is an action guy, after all. Good for you, Kasie! And props for keeping your theater set-up in your lab, BTW. Bishop looked really comfortable working away on her laptop.


















Stradivarius was written by Vivian Tse and was directed by Abraham himself  Michael Cudlitz. This is Cudlitzs directorial debut, and he delivers a solid episode. Hes helped by outstanding performances from Norman Reedus (Daryl) and Melissa McBride (Carol). The episode starts to give us an indication of the characters who are going to play a more central role now. The scene in which the importance of the arts to humanity is explained by Luke is also a terrific centerpiece.The episode begins with some terrific handheld camera stuff as Rosita (Christian Serratos) staggers through the woods  alone  surrounded by whispering until she finally collapses. Theres no explanation as to what happened to Eugene (Josh McDermitt) or who ultimately rescued Rosita.In one of the major story threads, Carol and Henry (Matt Lintz) stop in with Daryl. Its clear that Carol has been a regular visitor as she comments that he hasnt fixed the boat since last time. Daryl hasnt been completely alone  he has a dog  Dog  now! He also has his camp surrounded by traps. Dog keeps bringing in walker body parts. Carol is clearly concerned about Daryl and asks him when he last ate. He deflects her question by saying the dog ate yesterday.In the other major story thread, Michonne (Danai Gurira) escorts the newcomers to Hilltop. They are taking them to their rig first to get their belongings though. Michonne tells Siddiq (Ari Nash) to just say what he wants to  its clear to her that he has something to say. He admits that hes glad she changed her mind about the newcomers, but she knows hed rather shed let them stay in Alexandria. Siddiq knows she likes them  but Michonne says she that may be, but she doesnt trust them.The newcomers talk amongst themselves  Magna (Nadia Hilker) is still belligerent and wants her weapons. Luke (Dan Folger) is happy to have found some relative security. Kelly (Angel Theory) is clearly thinking theyll just go their own way once theyve picked up their stuff. They are hardly criminal masterminds as DJ (Matt Mangum), who is driving, gives them an incredulous look. Michonne overhears too. Yumiko (Eleanor Matsuura) apologizes to Michonne for Magna, explaining that shes been on edge since they lost Bernie  who clearly meant a lot to Magna. Yumiko tells them about the horrid shirt that Bernie used to wear to get under Magnas skin  so you knew that we were going to see a walker later wearing the shirt.Yumiko wants to know about Hilltop. Michonne admits that she hasnt been there in a while, but she promised her daughter shed get them there. And then were off to Hilltop. It is still the thriving community it was when we saw it last. Tara (Alanna Masterson) has clearly taken on a position of responsibility, and we see her checking in with various people  Enid (Katelyn Nacon) running the clinic/hospital and Dianne (Kerry Cahill) who seems to be in charge of the crops. Is anyone else curious as to why Dianne has never returned to the Kingdom? I get that she was loyal to Maggie (Lauren Cohen)  but we learn immediately that Maggie has indeed gone off to work with Georgie.And a quick note here that while I get not wanting to dilute Andrew Lincolns departure, the way the show treated Lauren Cohens departure was really quite disgusting. She delivered a brilliant performance in the last episode to be sure, but didnt she deserve a bit more of a send off??Jesus (Thom Payne) has taken over for Maggie  who just sent a letter via the twins that shes happy and fine. Jesus, however, is not happy about the list of people who want his attention. I loved the little detail of the noise complaint  and Tara defending that when you find a kazoo, you give it to a kid! We also learn that Jesus is the duly elected leader of Hilltop, having just won re-election though nobody ran against him. Hes clearly not happy to be tied to a deskI loved Carol watching Daryl. I didnt love him shooting and decapitating a snake to wear though. Carol points out that Daryl has been out there longer then he said hed be, but he likes it because its quiet. Daryl asks after the King, and Carol tells him that Ezekiel (Khary Peyton) is having trouble letting go  shes taking Henry to apprentice at the Smithy. Daryl tells her that he appreciates her visit  she seems really good  hes clearly still keeping an eye on her too. But he also knows that theres another motive to her visit.Carol asks Daryl to come with them. She cant stay  theres too much to do at the Kingdom. She wants Daryl to keep an eye on Henry because hes an idealist like Ezekiel  and Daryl is pragmatic like she is. Daryl tells her that hes just going to have to learn  like everybody else did. Like they did.Meanwhile, the newcomers arrive back at where they were found. Its interesting that we get yet another word for walkers. They call them sickos. They are dismayed at how much damage the herd did. The newcomers prove that they have survived for a reason as we see them not hesitate to take care of the walkers left. Michonne watches. Magna is clearly upset as he goes through Bernies things  is she looking for that paisley shirt? Shouldnt she remember that he was wearing it? Yumiko tells her to take something to remember him by.Siddiq finds a recorder  among Lukes other musical instruments. He tells Michonne that it was the first instrument he played as a kid. His Aunt got it for him as a kid and he had it for a week before his mother decided he liked painting better! Its a nice little tie-in to the kazoo story. Michonne stops Siddiq from playing it  for her own sanity. Luke is distraught  hes looking for the Stradivarius of the title, of course. Connie (Lauren Ridloff) tells Siddiq that Luke has a fetish  and Siddiq is happy to learn the sign for fetish!Michonne tells DJ to collect all their weapons. Magna is not happy. Michonne states shes not letting her men take 5 armed strangers into Hilltop  and then Yumiko isnt happy that Michonne isnt coming with them. Michonne says she only came to make sure that their story checked out. Michonne gives them a choice  take their weapons and go or give up their weapons and try for something better. Yumiko is clearly the leader and convinces the others to accept Michonnes rules  at least for now.One of my favorite scenes is when Aaron (Ross Marquand) literally comes out of nowhere and takes Jesus off his horse! The two proceed to have an awesome sparring session. Jesus has clearly been training Aaron. Afterwards the two share some water and catch up on the news. Aaron congratulates him on winning the election. Both are violating protocol  Tara would be furious with Jesus and Michonne with Aaron.Once again the subject of the Fair comes up. Michonne is dead set against letting Alexandria participate. Jesus emphasizes the Fairs importance to bring the communities back together. We learn that Michonne doesnt even know about Maggie  so shes clearly been keeping Alexandria completely separate from the Hilltop  blaming them for Ricks death? Weve heard so much about this Fair that it would seem to be an inevitable event, bringing together all the communities  to be attacked in one place? Clearly, others have been keeping the lines of communication open.Aaron and Jesus are interrupted by a flare going up and find Rosita hurt and alone. Aaron immediately asks where Eugene is because he saw them ride out together. She tells them she left him at the barn. Jesus tells Aaron that they have to go  its going to be dark soon and theres a herd descending upon them. Theyll (and us!!!) just have to hope Eugene will be ok for the night.Daryl cooks dinner  hopefully rabbit stew/soup and not rattlesnake! Dog brings back part of a foot and I loved the look on Henrys face as he asks if the dog always does that. Daryl says hes got his reasons and lobs it on the fire!Henry is not stupid, and quickly asks if theyve come to bring Daryl as his chaperone at Hilltop. Henry insists that he can handle himself  but its clear that Carol isnt just worried about Henry. Shes putting Daryl with him for a reason.The scene with Carol cutting Daryls hair is terrific  even if it doesnt really look to make much of a difference. Daryl tells her that hes not still looking for Rick  but he never did find a body ever. And I loved that Daryl gets the no body, not dead rule of fiction! He also confides that after a while it was just easier to stay out on his own. I love the chemistry and friendship between these two characters. Daryl is able to be vulnerable with Carol as he cant be with anyone else. Carol says thats better  ostensibly referring to the haircut but really referring to Daryls opening up to her and confirming that hes really ok.Over dinner, Carol smiles at dinner, but Henry continues to study Daryl. He asks how Daryl got the scar  and honestly, I had to rewind to the haircut scene to even see it because of how Reedus keeps his hair! Daryl doesnt answer but gets up to feed Dog his dinner. Carol sees Daryl shut off and looks unhappy and Henry just looks frustrated.Back with the newcomers, Michonne is standing guard when she hears a noise. She creeps back in to the building they are holed up in and sees Luke bending over holding something. She tells him to drop it and turn around. When he wont drop it, she slashes it as he turns around. Its a great fake out when he screams  but all shes killed is his Stradivarius.When Daryl leaves camp, Henry follows him. Daryl saves him from a walker and tells him to go back, which of course Henry doesnt do in grand Carl style. They hear Dog barking and hes gotten himself trapped in a walker trap that Daryl has set up. Daryl leaving walker corpses and having walker traps  and even leaving walkers who are trapped alive almost seems like the Sanctuary wall of walkers  and remember from the first episode that Daryl wouldnt let them use walkers as scarecrows. Its hard to tell if this is a step forward or a step backwards for Daryl.It did seem a bit ridiculous that Daryl has lived out there on his own for so long and its only the night that Henry and Carol are there that he comes so close to getting bit that Henry has to save him. I did worry that Daryl had kept that snake head to use the venom on the spikes in the traps and that when Henry got scratched he was going to get very sick or die  but apparently it really was just a scratch. The thing I really did love about the scene is the shot of Carol right at the end with an arrow notched and ready to fire if her boys ran into trouble. Im sure that I wasnt the only one wondering how everyone could leave camp without Carol noticing. Clearly, shes hoping the two will bond.Back at Hilltop, Jesus checks in with Tara about Rositas condition. Shes still unconscious, but just dehydrated so shell make a full recovery. Tara remarks that it was weird to see Rosita and Aaron after so much time. Jesus confesses that hes been training Aaron and keeping the lines of communication open. Tara thinks that Jesus is just trying to avoid his responsibilities at Hilltop. Tara agrees that the Fair is important, but the people of Hilltop want  and need  their leader to be there for them.Jesus says maybe they shouldnt have voted for him  hes clearly not happy being leader. Tara tells him to quit pretending its temporary. Everyone needs him  and btw? Shes going out to look for Eugene in the morning, but Jesus needs to stay there.Back at Daryls, Henry watches closely as Daryl changes his shirt  we see the scars on his back, which can mostly attribute to what happened to him as a child and with the Saviors  but he also has exactly the same X on his back that we saw on Michonnes last week. What does that mean and how does that relate to the scar on his face?Henry is reading by the fire, and Daryl brings him an ointment to put on his leg to keep it from getting infected and joins him by the fire. Daryl tells him that Dog checks the traps and lets him know if he has a walker problem  that would be his reasons for bringing the body parts back. And of course, this is the first time Dog got stuck in one of the traps. Daryl thanks Henry, and Henry thanks him, especially for not telling Mom.Daryl remarks that the traps are no way to die  slow and painful. Hes just trying to keep the walkers out. Henry once again barrels in where polite conversation would keep most people out. He tells Daryl that Carol says that Daryl is her best friend  and that she misses him and worries about him. Daryl tells him she knows where he is and how to find him  and Henry shoots back that she shouldnt have to!Daryl looks a little chastened and asks if thats what Henry wants  Daryl looking over his shoulder all the time. Henry tells him that its not just about him. We know that Henry doesnt want Daryl looking over his shoulder, but he also knows that Carol wants to know that Daryl is safe  and if he isnt, Carol will continue to put herself in danger to check on Daryl  clearly, shes been making the journey alone up until now. And of course, in the end, they both make the sacrifice for Carol.Luke is distraught over the destruction of the original Stradivarius  circa 1725. It seems clear in this scene that Yumiko and Magna are in a relationship  nicely subtle up until here. Siddiq is intrigued that Luke has been traveling with this collection of musical instruments  that hes been adding to as the group traveled. The irony of his fixation on music while traveling with deaf people is not lost on me  but its also a metaphor for the relationship of art to the walkers.Luke replies, Its art! Its all the explanation he needs  and Yumikos here we go clearly shows that its something hes explained before. He gives them a history lesson on how ancient humans defeated the Neanderthals. Archeologists found a 40,000 year old flute in a cave  just like Siddiqs recorder  and lets not forget that his mother turned him to painting  something also found on cave walls  and another art. Luke tells them that ancient humans came together around a fire  like at Daryls camp  they created a common identity, built communities, and grew and as they grew Neanderthals retreated and eventually died out.Like it or not, art is the one thing that separates us from the animals. For better or worse, it brings us together  and if they are trying to rebuild something, they cant ignore that. Yes. The symbolism is a bit heavy handed  but the parallels to the walkers are unmistakable and even Michonne starts to pay attention. Its also clear that she may start to see the importance of the Fair now too. Michonne asks Luke after all that hes seen and done, does he still believe that? And Luke hasnt lost hope. He tells her yes. Its what makes them stronger  sharing  survival of the fittest. And Michonne has no argument for him. This is one of my favorite scenes from the entire series! And it definitely makes Dan Fogler  Luke one of my favorite characters.The next morning as they pack up, Michonne tells Siddiq to take supplies with them. Siddiq tries again to get Michonne to come to Hilltop  hes clearly part of the communication network. He tells her that its the least she can do to make up for killing Lukes violin. When that doesnt work, he tells her that Maggie isnt there and Jesus is running Hilltop. Before she can get an answer about where Maggie is, they are overrun by walkers.Yumiko pleads with Michonne to give them their weapons. When Michonne still wont, Magna picks up a brick to defend them. Finally, when they are clearly being overrun, Michonne tells DJ to give them their weapons. We get to see Kellys prowess with a slingshot  which is a pretty cool new weapon! Luke uses his head to block walkers with a car door, and Yumiko makes a great shot with her bow to take down a shed.Michonne says its the same herd that destroyed their rig  because shes spotted Bernie  in his telltale paisley shirt. Magna is clearly overwhelmed and she cant kill him. Its a new side to her that Michonne hasnt seen. She comes up behind Bernie and slides the blade into his brain gently so as to kill him, but not let Magna see the blade.When Carol gets up the next morning, Daryl is packing his motorcycle. Henry limps by, and she doesnt ask why. Daryl asks how she slept, and she says good  like she didnt see everything! And she asks how he slept  good. Real good.  cuz he wasnt up most of the night with Henry Theyre too adorable. Carol just smiles when he says hell be ready to go in about 10 minutes.As the newcomers continue their journey, Michonne tells Yumiko she knows what its like to have to carry the burden of responsibility for your family. Yumiko says theyll be ok  and Michonne finishes because you have to be. Michonne is ready to leave them. Siddiq finally tells Michonne that Maggie is with Georgie  far away  helping with a new community. Siddiq points out that she can come to Hilltop now, but she insists that shes kept her promise to Judith. Siddiq brings up her promise to Carl  finally!  and Michonne insists its not that simple.The two are interrupted by riders from Hilltop, including a character played by C Thomas Howell. Apparently, Howell did the cameo as a favor to his good friend Michael Cudlitz! He tells them about Rosita. Michonne asks them to take a message to Alexandria  that Michonne and the others are headed to Hilltop and are safe. Connie thinks she sees something in the woods, but ultimately says its nothing. And then we get a great shot from the vantage of something or someone watching them from the woods.At Hilltop, Carol, Henry, and Daryl arrive. Henry wonders if Selena is still there and will recognize him  hes bigger and taller now potential girlfriend? Is this a bigger draw than apprenticing maybe? Carol thinks hes adorable  and he denies it. Tara is clearly thrilled to see Daryl and the two fist bump before hugging it out. As much as I prefer our people together, reunions are always fun too. Jesus greets them too.Aaron and Daryl hug. Aaron tells them about Rosita and that Eugene is missing. They need a good tracker  and Daryl checks with Carol first before saying yes. Henry wants to go, and Carol shuts that down. Jesus insists on going to, so Tara agrees to stay behing  but the next kazoo complaint is on him! The episode ends with a great crane shot of Jesus, Aaron, Daryl and Dog going out for Eugene. We also get another great shot of how much Hilltop has grown.This episode was a lot about getting there. However, we get great scenes with Daryl, Carol, and Henry, and some much needed backstory is filled in  though there are still a lot of questions  like what happened between Michonne and Maggie? How did Michonne and Daryl get those scars? Are Aaron and Jesus a couple? But I loved Lukes lecture on the importance of the arts  remember Michonne helping Judith paint? And the handprints that Carl left with Judith? What did you think of the episode? Was this an acceptable farewell for Maggie - Lauren Cohen? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving.and that means Black Friday follows, with the stress and frenzy of finding just the right gift for those on your gift list. Remember, Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights is early, with the first candle being lit on Dec. 2, so time is short for those on your Hanukkah list.

Each year, I look forward to helping you find the perfect kitchen gadget, food product and cookbooks for foodie friends and relatives, and perhaps yourself. I know these suggestions will fit the bill. Throughout the year, I attend food-related trade shows and events, returning with lots of ideas of what to include here. It is difficult to choose what to suggest.

Best wishes to you this holiday season and let the shopping begin. As in past years, to make it easy for one stop shopping, I have asked WAVE, 1046 Chapel St, New Haven 203-782-6212 www.wavenewhaven.com to carry some of these gifts.

Stay tuned for my cookbook recommendation column for those on your gift listyoure bound to find one you will want to add to your own shelf.

I have been using Butterie , for almost a year. I met Butteries inventor and company founder, Joelle Mertzel, at a trade show. She said, I learned a few years ago that butter does not need to be kept in the refrigerator; that butter can be stored on the kitchen counter for several weeks without spoiling. Having soft butter always available is such a pleasure, there is nothing more frustrating than ripping your toast while trying to use a cold, hard, stick of butter. Yet it amazes me that scores of products, from butter bells to butter graters, have been designed over the years to make butter easier to spread, when the answer was so simple: just keep your butter on the counter. Available in eight colors, it is dishwasher safe, shatterproof, holds two sticks of butter and includes a matching spreader. Once you use Butterie, you will wonder how you ever lived without it. It is available at Bed Bath & Beyond stores or online at www.ButterieDish.com

Booze Cubes are made with the recycled cores from production of the Stone Beverage Dispenser, a Funky Rock Design product I wrote about in a past gift column. Freeze for 3 hours, add 2 cubes to your glass and pour over your favorite spirits or soft drinks. Using these stones instead of traditional ice cubes wont dilute your beverage. They are handmade in Eliot, Maine, from Natural ocean and river stones and locally sourced granite. These cubes bring a little bit of nature indoors in a unique form of functional art. More at https://bit.ly/2ATFkn2 .

I had to try the RapidSlicer to believe it. It will be the recipients (or your) favorite kitchen gadget. It was invented when Cindy Fox had it with slicing tiny, roll-y cherry tomatoes one by one for a salad. So her husband Rob began tinkering to make his own kitchen slicer that did the job faster and easier. Rapid Slicer is the result of Cindys frustration and Robs ingenuity. The made in the USA tool lends a hand when youre slicing tricky foodslike grapes, cherry tomatoes, olives, and Brussels sprouts. It can even help with chicken breast and shrimp.

Non-slip feet give the base better grip, and the lid holds foods firmly in place so you can neatly slice through everything in one pass. Makes a great stocking stuffer. More at https://rapidslicer.com/ .

Another stocking stuffer for the cooks on your list and will be appreciated is the Odor STEELer . They rub their hands with this stainless steel soap and it will be like they never touched fish, onions or garlic. A new feature to a product that has been around for years is the bristled silicone sleeve that can be used to clean up with sudsy soap after use, or used to clean vegetables. More at https://bit.ly/2QvkHmG .

The Cuisinart Air Fryer Toaster Oven is a workhorse in my kitchen. The full-size toaster oven additionally serves as an oven, convection oven, broiler and an air fryer. The latter function is a healthier way to prepare fried favorites like French fries, shrimp and wings..all without the messy cleanup and those extra calories. Many times, I dont need to light the regular oven. It does a great job baking cookies and small cakes. And for pizza lovers, there is an 11-inch pizza stone sold separately. Once this appliance is used they will wonder how they lived without it.

Cold brew coffee is the craze and can be costly in the coffee shops. Cuisinarts Automatic Cold Brew Coffeemaker will be a welcomed gift for cold brew fanatics. The coffeemaker saturates coffee grounds in cool water, never exposing them to the high temperatures that release oils, creating an acidic taste. Being sensitive to acidic coffee, I can attest to the difference in cold brews. Three flavor strength options allows the choice of flavor strength. Coffee can be refrigerated in the 7-cup carafe for up to two weeks.

Celebrate Connecticut (or any other state) with a Fish Kiss plate or platter. Anne Klein creates the state-centric scenes on platters. Made with ThermoSaf polymer. this durable material is microwave-safe and BPA and melamine-free. The print is also available on tea towels, perfect for kitchen or bathroom. Her whimsical illustrations have a quirky, retro vibe that sweetly capture a states highlights, like its birds and flag, tourist attractions and historical landmarks. Design is also available on prints, greeting cards, baby blanket, one-piece jumpsuit and hat. More at www.fish-kiss.com .

Selected as one of Oprahs Favorite Things, The Spice Labs Tequila Salt Shooters have an insert that keeps the tequila from getting too salty. Holding 1.5 ounces, these 3- inch shot glasses have the finely veined look of marble or rose quartz and actually are carved from the finest quality, food grade Himalayan pink salt. Salt is a long-lasting, naturally anti-bacterial mineral so these glasses require just a little care to become a favorite party starter for years to come. More at https://bit.ly/2zSHXUf .

The Spice Lab has created four Seasoning Collections featuring some of their most popular premium spice blends. Each set includes a themed selection of four seasonings in shaker jars packaged in a gift box. These careful-crafted seasonings are all natural, kosher and most are gluten-free. These Seasoning Collections are ideal gifts for your favorite foodie, make great hostess presents; and dont forget to treat yourself to add flavor and flair to your holiday cooking. One of my favorites from the Taste of America Collection is Everything+More; all the popular bagel toppings with pepper flakes for heat. The possibilities are endless with this toasty topping. Slather crackers, toast, or celery sticks with cream cheese and top with the blend. Or, sprinkle halved hard-boiled eggs or buttered popcorn or roasted vegetables. https://bit.ly/2PpBqv1

Who doesnt love delicious and unique treats for the holidays? River Street Sweets , a family owned and operated company in Savannah, GA for over 45 years is the world famous maker of Southern pralines and confections that have been shipped all over the world. I remember those pralines when I visited the shop several years ago. After savoring the confection, I knew why their pralines generate millions of dollars in annual sales and making them the leading supplier of pralines. The Sweet Treat Assortment contains some of River Street Sweets favorite goodies: their World Famous Pralines, Milk Chocolate Bear Claws, Glazed Pecans, Praline Pecans, and Carmel Corn. This delicious package comes in a beautiful red gift box. The Southern Cake Trio (praline cake, Bear Claws Cake and red velvet cake) offers a sweet taste of the South. Some of their items ship for free! www.riverstreetsweets.com 800-793-3876

Bear Paws are sturdy meat shredding claws that can turn the recipient or you into a culinary Edward Scissorhands. Made in the USA, the claws easily shred pulled pork, chicken, or other food you want to tear up. To do such a sensational job shredding, the Bear Paw prongs are super sharp. I find them useful for lifting roasts or turkeys, or to add stability while carving and slicing. The ergonomic shape contours to your grip. Another great stocking stuffer. More at https://bit.ly/2DBoPOW .

The recipient of Nest Lock Multi-Size Containers will thank you for helping them to be organized in their kitchen. The problem with most storage containers, (mine included), is that they take up precious cabinet space when not in use and usually require lids and bases to be stored separately, which make finding and pairing them a hassle. This is solved though with the stacking design of as the container bases nest neatly inside each other and lids clip together. The covers and bases are color-coded, making it easy to match lids with bases. I think you might be purchasing a set for yourself too. More at https://bit.ly/2wtqgcd .

Three health conscious brothers invented Pressa Bottle after they realized that fruit naturally doesnt want to release juice when you put a few slices in a water bottle. They found out it did the opposite, absorbing water with very little, if any fruit flavor in the water. They began to imagine how beneficial and satisfying it would be to press that flavor filled fruit and tap into it. They created a water bottle to flavor water naturally. Just add a couple pieces of your favorite fruit, twist the dial on top of the bottle and press real flavor into your water bottle. Bottle available in glass or plastic. More at https://bit.ly/2T97Vf3 :

Paella is growing in popularity on restaurant menus. The Carmencita Paella Kit , made in Spain takes the fear of making paella at home. The kit includes a paella pan, extra virgin olive oil, fish broth, rice and spices. You just need your favorite shellfish fish or chicken. Watch how easy it is to make. More at https://bit.ly/2z1yVVB https://bit.ly/2De8fE1 .

Fred & Friends are always coming up with whimsical gifts. Fill up Freds SOUP BONE with fresh herbs and whole spices and drop in your soup pot. It delivers flavor as well as laughs. For the children on your list, The Dinner Winner tray provides eat-as-you-go action winding them through an adventure. A special covered surprise awaits at the finish line so even fussy eaters will clean their plate. It is available in five styles: Dino Time, Supper Hero, Enchanted Forest, Pirate; Retro, and Original. www.genuinefred.com

What chef would you like me to interview? Which restaurant recipes or other recipes would you like to have? Which food products do you have difficulty finding? Do you have cooking questions? Send them to me: Stephen Fries, professor and coordinator of the Hospitality Management Programs at Gateway Community College, at gw-stephen.fries@gwcc.commnet.edu or Dept. FC, Gateway Community College, 20 Church St., New Haven, 06510. Include your full name, address and phone number. (Due to volume, I might not be able to publish every request. For more, go to stephenfries.com.)
"This administration has stood strong for a free and independent press and defended the freedom of the press on the world stage." - Vice President Mike Pence, remarks to reporters in Singapore, Nov. 15

- - -

A number of readers asked for a fact check of this statement by the vice president.

Pence made it after he forcefully confronted Aung San Suu Kyi, the de facto leader of Myanmar, over the continued imprisonment of two Reuters reporters who documented the military's role in the persecution of the Rohingya ethnic group. Hundreds of thousands have fled the country, also known as Burma, for neighboring Bangladesh. He urged her "multiple times" to pardon the two reporters, a White House official told reporters.

"In America, we believe in our democratic institutions and our ideals, including a free and independent press," Pence said. "The arrest and jailing of two journalists last fall was deeply troubling to millions of Americans."

When reporters pointed out that the Trump administration was in a high-profile fight with CNN over the revocation of a White House press pass for correspondent Jim Acosta, Pence rejected the connection: "There's no comparison whatsoever between disagreements over decorum at the White House and the imprisonment of the two reporters in Myanmar."

Pence said "the administration" has stood for a free and independent press. What about the president? The story that unfolds is schizophrenic.

- - -

The Facts

It's easy to find examples of Pence publicly defending the media. Indeed, an aide notes that when he was in Congress, after the jailing of New York Times reporter Judith Miller, Pence wrote and co-sponsored reporter shield legislation that would protect journalists' ability to not reveal sources. In 2007, the Columbia Journalism Review called Pence "journalism's best ally in the fight to protect anonymous sources."

As vice president, Pence has often publicly reiterated his strong support of press freedom:

- In an interview with Politico's "Playbook Live," Oct. 30: "I do believe that the only check on government power in real time is a free and independent press. That was enshrined in our Bill of Rights, it was at the core of the American founding, and it's a core American principle."

- On Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed by Saudi agents inside the country's consulate in Istanbul, Oct. 15: "Any attack against an innocent individual should be offensive to any American. But an attack on a journalist is an offense to a free and independent press. . . . Violence against journalists across the globe is a threat to freedom of the press and human rights. The free world deserves answers."

- In Washington, July 26: "When religious liberty is denied or destroyed, we know that other freedoms - freedom of speech, of press, assembly, and even democratic institutions themselves - are imperiled."

Meanwhile, the State Department provided The Fact Checker with an impressive list of more than 25 statements made by senior officials on press freedom.

"The United States is a steadfast supporter of freedom of the press around the world," said spokeswoman Heather Nauert, a former journalist. "It is a cornerstone of democracy, and is essential to transparency and accountability. The media plays a critical role in promoting vibrant debate, informing citizens, and providing a forum to express differing points of view, particularly on behalf of individuals whose voices are not heard in society."

Nauert noted that the State Department assesses press freedom in countries in its annual human rights report and has worked to highlight the plight of Uighur journalists in China and the selective targeting of reporters in Russia and has called for the immediate release of the Reuters journalists detained in Myanmar.

But the tenor of an administration is set by the president. And the president's words - the phrases he utters and the tweets he makes - tell a different story, according to a comprehensive record maintained by factbase (factba.se). His commentary about the media is virtually all about how it affects him, especially if he thinks the news coverage is negative. One searches in vain for statements that mirror the language of Pence or State Department officials.

For instance, in his statement Tuesday pledging support for Saudi Arabia in the wake of Khashoggi's murder, President Donald Trump, unlike Pence, did not mention that Khashoggi was a journalist or take the opportunity to say that killing journalists is abhorrent.

The tone was set by a tweet Trump issued in the final months of the 2016 campaign: "It is not 'freedom of the press' when newspapers and others are allowed to say and write whatever they want even if it is completely false!"

Actually, that's the core of the First Amendment. News organizations have a responsibility to get it right - and good ones correct their mistakes - but as the Supreme Court made clear in New York Times v. Sullivan (1964), a public figure must be able to prove a news organization knew a statement was false or recklessly disregarded whether it was false before libel can be considered. The 9-to-0 ruling setting a standard of "actual malice" notably came in the context of the civil rights movement, as Southern officials repeatedly filed defamation suits to thwart coverage of civil rights.

Once he became president, Trump railed against "fake news," which he has deemed the "enemy of the people." In a tweet nearly a month after taking office, Trump name-checked four television networks and the New York Times as "fake news" and the "enemy of the American people." These are all well-established, professional news organizations, with high standards and a commitment to correcting errors. But Trump has falsely said they make up sources.

Trump has repeatedly claimed that when he uses the term "fake news," he is not decrying the news media at large, just what he appears to view as negative news stories.

The problem is that presidential words have consequences - and reverberate around the world. The nuances that Trump claims he is making appear to be misunderstood overseas. Now, all sorts of odious regimes use the expression - including Myanmar, where a government official said: "There are no such thing as Rohingya. It's fake news." In Libya, after a CNN report showed migrants being sold into slavery, Libyan officials used a tweet by Trump calling the network "fake news" in an attempt to discredit the story.

Unlike President Barack Obama, Trump has not issued statements on World Press Freedom Day. (Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley did.) Reporters without Borders, in its ranking of press freedoms, has downgraded the United States to 45th place, citing the president's rhetoric as undermining trust in journalists and subjecting them to verbal and physical abuse. In October, Trump even celebrated a lawmaker who pleaded guilty to assaulting a reporter as "my guy."

"It's frightening," said Lucy Dalglish, dean of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland. "We are getting away from core democratic practices and beliefs here." She said that Trump's attacks on the media have polarized the nation and that his "language has emboldened people to behave badly" in other countries.

Dalglish noted that Pence has long been a strong supporter of independent media and that other parts of the administration - such as in the State Department and other agencies - also continue to promote press freedoms. "But it's certainly not going on in the Oval Office," she said.

Chris Wallace, in his "Fox News Sunday" interview that aired Nov. 18, sought to pin Trump down on the fine line he appears to draw between "fake news" and the media. Trump asserted that "nobody believes in the First Amendment more than I do" and that "I don't mind getting bad news if I'm wrong." When Wallace noted that "leaders in authoritarian countries like Russia, China, Venezuela now repress the media using your words," Trump rejected any connection and passed up the opportunity to reaffirm his belief in freedom of the press. "I can't talk for other people, I can only talk for me," he said.

On the rare occasions the president has spoken about freedom of the press, it is in reference to himself.

On Nov. 16, for instance, Trump dropped in the phrase in the context of reporters being polite to him: "You have to practice decorum. You were there; you understood, and you understand. We want total freedom of the press; that's very important to me. It's more important to me than anybody would believe. But you have to act with respect. You're in the White House."

For what it's worth, Pence has defended the president's tone, saying that Trump, too, believes that freedom of the press is a "core American principle" and that he's only calling out reports that twist the truth. "President Trump and I are deeply committed to a free and independent press," he told Politico. "We also are committed to the freedom of speech and the ability of public men and women to call out the press when we think that they're not calling it straight."

- - -

The Pinocchio Test

Pence is a part of the Trump administration, and his statements promoting press freedom, especially his comments on the Reuters reporters and Khashoggi, are noteworthy. The State Department also has highlighted press freedom.

That's one arm of the government. But it's impossible to ignore the elephant in the room - the man Pence and State Department officials work for. The president repeatedly uses phrasing that belittles and demeans the news media, so much so that "fake news" is now a tool used by autocrats and dictators.

The president from time to time drops in a reference to "freedom of the press," but it's when he is talking about how he is treated by the media. There's never been a stand-alone statement, fulsome and complete, like the statements that effortlessly are made by Pence, especially in foreign settings. No one has a bigger megaphone than the U.S. president, so the laudable efforts of the rest of the government often are smothered by the fury from the White House.

Pence, speaking just for himself and the State Department, would earn a Geppetto. But speaking for the administration at large, his claim is worthy of Three Pinocchios.

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Video: President Trump started a trend: calling unfavorable news coverage fake. Foreign leaders - especially dictators and authoritarian regimes - have followed suit.(Meg Kelly/The Washington Post)

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People gather for the funeral of Jemel Roberson, 26, on Nov. 24, 2018, at House of Hope Church in Chicago. Roberson, an armed security guard at Mannys Blue Room Lounge in Robbins, was trying to subdue a suspect in a bar shooting early Nov. 11 when he was shot and killed by a Midlothian police officer who responded to the call.

(Erin Hooley/Chicago Tribune)
T he English Channel, the body of water between England and France, is home to eight inhabited islands. Of these islands, Jersey and Guernsey are the most well-known, with Jersey being the bigger of the two.

This location means the islands are home to a mix of French and British culture, resulting in a fascinating history. The islands were occupied during World War II and remnants of this time remain around Jersey today, particularly with the Jersey War Tunnels where German soldiers were creating an underground hospital, away from air raids.

While Jersey and its golden beaches shine in the summertime, its a year-round destination for an island break. From London, easyJet, British Airways and Flybe all offer direct flights to Jersey which take just one hour and start from 27 one-way  meaning you can go after work on a Friday and be home for a Sunday afternoon roast.

Below is our guide for what to eat, drink, and do and where to stay while in Jersey.

Where to eat

Bohemia

Bohemia, located in the Club Hotel & Spa, is where youll find fine dining in Jersey. With one Michelin star and five AA rosettes, they offer a six-course surprise dinner menu on Monday through to Thursday alongside a classic dinner menu, a tasting menu and specific vegetarian and pescatarian menu from Monday to Saturday. Come for the delicious food, stay for the refined atmosphere.

The Museum Courtyard and Bistro

On balmy summer evenings, youll find the Courtyard of the Jersey Museum filled with diners, all enjoying their evening meals with a glass of sparkling wine. The Jersey Museum is located in a historic Georgian House and the fairy light-lined courtyard makes for the picture perfect spot to while your night away. Part of the Tiffin Group, with a number of locations across the island, the Museum offers brunch, lunch and dinner with their evening menu filled with British classics like lamb rump, chicken kiev and herb crusted cod.

The Crab Shack

With three locations around Jersey, in St Helier, St Brelade and Gorey, The Crab Shack is the place to go for your comfort food fix. To really indulge, opt for their fish and shellfish platter or the seafood linguine and taste some of the fresh fish Jersey is known for.

The Works

After a meal at The Crab Shack in Gorey, head to The Works, located just below Mont Orgueil Castle, for your sweet tooth fix. Let the scent of homemade bread lure you in and discover a delicious selection of pastries, and slices (try their salted caramel brownie) or one of their chutneys or preserves. They also sell bottles of Jersey salted caramel that I may or may not have bought four bottles of.

Village of Saint Aubin, Jersey, Channel Islands / Shutterstock

Where to drink

The Blind Pig

Jersey is certainly a fan of their hidden speakeasy bars, and The Blind Pig is the best of the bunch. Finding this bar is the hard part, but once youre in you wont want to leave. With a number of delectable cocktails, new cocktail specials every week and friendly bartenders who will make personalised cocktails for you depending on the types of alcohol and flavours you like, this bar is a hidden gem.

Project 52

Behind an unmarked door, down a cobbled lane, youll climb a gold-edged staircase to a room filled with red brick walls and sumptuous decor  and here youll have found Project 52. The bar was founded by a community of innovators and creators in Jersey  52 to be exact  and the bar was created as a homely space to congregate. Theres a private upstairs floor for members, but the bar is open for anyone to enjoy a good spirit or two.

Ce Soir

The older, Parisian cousin of The Blind Pig, Ce Soir is the place to go for glamourous cocktails in an opulent setting. The velvet bar welcomes a varied crowd who can choose from a wide range of cocktails and dance along to a DJ on occasion. Our cocktail of choice? The Lemonberry, with homemade lemon vodka and vanilla sugar  a drink that doubles as dessert.

What to do

Visit the Jersey War Tunnels

No visit to Jersey is complete without a visit to the Jersey War Tunnels. They offer a comprehensive glimpse into wartime Jersey, housed within an underground tunnel complex built by the Germans using slave labour. Its an emotionally heavy experience, but important nonetheless. Make sure you take a jacket as the tunnels can get cold.

Go for a swim or walk along one of the many beaches

Be sure to rent a car during your time visiting Jersey, this makes exploring the island that much easier. Starting in St Helier, make your way through the narrow laneways of the island to the many beaches. In the summertime, these beaches offer beautiful azure waters and golden sands and in the cooler months, they make for stunning walks. For soft sand and safe swimming, opt for a swim at St Brelades Bay, or go swimming in Marine Lake  a tidal pool in St Aubins Bay. St Ouens bay on the west is perfect for surfers, as the wind can pick up here, and Bonne Nuit bay in the north is a picture-perfect hideaway where you can sunbathe away from the crowds.

Visit Mont Orgueil Castle

Mont Orgueil Castle is just a 15-minute drive from St Helier and has been looking over the fishing village of Gorey for the past 800 years. The Medieval fortress is filled with a number of towers, staircases and secret rooms to explore, and you can learn about the castle through the unique artwork that adorns the walls.

Gorey Bay and Mont Orgueil Castle, Jersey, Channel Islands / Shutterstock

Where to stay

Somerville Hotel

Nestled on a hillside, overlooking the yachting harbour and village of St Aubin this four-star country house-turned-luxury hotel inhabits all the beauty and charm that Jersey is renowned for. The quaint rooms overlook the stunning harbour  that dates back to 1540  and the Jersey landmark, Elizabeth Castle.

Rooms from 105 per night, somervillejersey.com/

Grand Hotel Jersey

Located next to the beach and a 10-minute walk from the bustling St Helier centre, the Grand Jersey Hotel & Spa is a five-star hotel with spacious, design-led rooms and a calming spa. The buffet breakfasts are delicious and the ocean views from many of the rooms offer the perfect place to watch the sunset.

Rooms from 110 per night, handpickedhotels.co.uk/grandjersey

Longueville Manor

Nestled at the foot of one of Jerseys most beautiful valleys, youll find the 18-acre estate that houses Longueville Manor. With magical woodland walks, a restaurant with a seasonal menu and 4,000-bottle wine cellar, this is the place to relax and treat yourself to when visiting Jersey.
D avid and Victoria Beckhams mansion in the Cotswolds has reportedly been the target of a second attempted break-in in a matter of weeks.

No one from the family is believed to have been at the couples home in Great Tew, Oxfordshire, at the time of the incident on November 14.

Seven security guards and two attack dogs chased intruders from the property, The Sun reported.

This now feels like a sustained attempt to target the house when theyre away, a source close to the family told the newspaper.

It comes after reports the couple's property was scoped out last month by three people who were caught on CCTV.

Images showed three people, one seen wearing a balaclava, near the property.

At the time David, 43, and Victoria, 44, were on their way to join the Duke and Duchess of Sussex in Australia with sons Romeo and Cruz and daughter Harper for Harry's Invictus Games.

A Thames Valley Police spokesman said: We was called at around 6.15am on Wednesday following reports of a man behaving suspiciously near a property in Great Tew, Enstone Chipping Norton.

"The Neighbourhood Policing Team has been made aware."
A man has been charged with the attempted murder of a police officer over an alleged knife attack at an east London station.

Daniel Adeyemi is accused of trying to kill the officer at Ilford railway station on Friday night.

The 24-year-old, of Bedford Road, Ilford, has also been charged with possession of a bladed article and common assault against another police officer.

He will appear before Highbury Magistrates Court on Monday, British Transport Police said.

Adeyemi is said to have attacked the on-duty BTP officer at the station at around 9.45pm before being arrested at the scene.

Witnesses described seeing a bloodied officer outside the station as it was put on "complete lockdown".
T heresa May has written an impassioned letter to the British public pleading with them to support her Brexit deal.

In a "letter to the nation", Mrs May said leaving the EU on March 29 2019 would mark "a new chapter in our national life" and there would be a moment of "renewal and reconciliation" after the bitter battles over Europe.

She said Brexit day "must mark the point when we put aside the labels of 'leave' and 'remain' for good and we come together again as one people."

The almost 800-word message is an attempt to speak directly to the public to build support for her deal.

It comes as EU leaders meet in Brussels to agree the withdrawal deal and the future EU-UK relationship. If the EU deal is approved, Mrs May will spend the next fortnight campaigning for it across the country before seeking a parliamentary vote in the second week of December.

The prime minister faces widespread opposition at Westminster including from both wings of her Conservative Party and the Democratic Unionist Party which props up her administration.

Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, welcomes Theresa May at the Commission on Saturday / Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Mrs May said the deal "will honour the result of the referendum" by allowing the UK to "take back control" of its money, laws and borders.

"It is a deal for a brighter future, which enables us to seize the opportunities that lie ahead," she said.

She promised she would be "campaigning with my heart and soul" to win the vote in the Commons.

And "with Brexit settled" the UK will be able to focus on the economy, NHS, building homes and tackling the "burning injustices" in society, the PM added.

Theresa May has made an impassioned plea to the British public over Brexit / EPA

Mrs May will meet the other 27 EU leaders in Brussels after they have given their backing to the Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration thrashed out by negotiators.

The summit after Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez claimed the UK and EU had agreed to its demands for guarantees over the status of Gibraltar in future negotiations.

Madrid's foreign minister Josep Borrell went further, saying the agreement is "highly positive for Spain" and "the most important" since the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 under which Gibraltar was ceded to the UK.

But Mrs May told reporters in Brussels: "The UK's position on the sovereignty of Gibraltar has not changed and will not change.

Theresa May vows to 'stand by' Gibraltar following Brexit row with Spain

"I am proud that Gibraltar is British and I will always stand by Gibraltar."

And Gibraltar's Chief Minister Fabian Picardo used a live TV address to dismiss Mr Sanchez's claims: "What you have heard from the Spanish Prime Minister today was not a reflection of any new position, however much he tried to present it as such."

But the UK has been heavily criticised by her own MPs over the situation.

Tory Brexiteer Nadine Dorries said: "May has capitulated to every single EU demand. She's abandoned NI, and now Gibraltar.

"At no time does she push back."

Boris Johnson says Britain is on the verge of making 'historic mistake' if it accepts current Brexit deal

Meanwhile Eurosceptic Andrew Bridgen, a prominent critic of the Prime Minister, said of Mrs Mays deal: "With regard to the Withdrawal Agreement and the proposed future relationship 'never in the history of our great nation have so many been betrayed, so deliberately, for so little'."

Following the resolution of the row, president of the European Council Donald Tusk sent out formal invitation letters to EU leaders for the summit, saying the deal "found the best possible compromise" and he would recommend that they approve it.

The 27 remaining EU leaders will meet on Sunday morning, with the prime minister joining them once they have decided on their approach.

Mrs May's political difficulties at home show no sign of abating, with speculation that Remain-leaning cabinet ministers have begun secret talks on a Brexit "Plan B" if the deal is rejected by MPs.

The Sunday Times reported that Chancellor Philip Hammond is working with David Lidington, Amber Rudd, Greg Clark and David Gauke on trying to persuade Mrs May to adopt a softer Brexit which may be able to get through parliament if her plan is rejected.

The Sunday Telegraph also reported that "several senior ministers" were working on plans for a Norway-style relationship with the EU.
A federal judge has denied a request by the family to identify the Midlothian officer involved in the shooting, and an attorney for Robersons family has issued a subpoena to the state police requesting that by Friday they turn over all preliminary reports regarding the departments findings about the shooting. That includes all police reports, witness statements and other investigative documents pertaining to the shooting, the name of the Midlothian officer who shot Roberson and any footage from the incident.
Despite clearing a major hurdle, the package has received furious opposition from MPs in the UK who are planning to vote against it in parliament.

A crucial few weeks now lie ahead, with a vote in the Commons expected in December before MPs break for Christmas.

Here is what lies in store for the deal, the prime minister and Britain's exit from the EU.

Battle for parliamentary approval

Many thought it would be near-impossible for Mrs May to secure consensus among all of the EU's leaders back when Article 50 was triggered on March 29, 2017.

Juncker: This is best deal for UK

But few predicted, after Remain campaigners took the government to the highest court in the land in order to secure a meaningful vote for MPs, one of the biggest threats to the deal would eventually come from Brexiteer MPs.

This Commons vote is the major hurdle Mrs May must now overcome if her hard-won deal is to be enshrined in UK law.

The vote is expected to take place before MPs break for Christmas in December.

Eurosceptic rejection

Led by figures including Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg, a swathe of Brexiteer Tories have rejected Mrs May's deal and called for it to be renegotiated.

This raises the prospect of some of Mrs May's own MPs voting against the agreement when it goes before the Commons.

Appearing at the Democratic Unionist Party conference on Saturday, Mr Johnson said the deal will leave the UK a "satellite state" of the EU.

Boris Johnson calls for Northern Ireland border backstop to be 'junked'

In the Sunday Express Mr Rees-Mogg said the deal "does not deliver" on Brexit and "instead of taking back control, in some areas it will leave the United Kingdom with even less control than it currently has: the vassal state".

DUP opposition

The Eurosceptics' rejection of the plans stems in large part from the deal's backstop provision for the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Hardline Brexiteers say it risks the UK being unable to ever fully leave the EU.

The DUP says the backstop would see Northern Ireland adopt a different regulatory regime to Great Britain if a wider UK/EU trade deal fails to materialise.

DUP leader Arlene Foster said the draft deal fails to protect the Union. With 10 MPs in the Commons, their support could be crucial for Mrs May's deal to pass.

Arlene Foster says Brexit agreement fails to eliminate risk of the border backstop

Labour opposition

Labour repeatedly warned that they would vote against any deal that does not pass six tests. Among the requirements are that it delivers the "exact same" benefits, fair management of migration and the protection of workers' rights and protections.

On Wednesday Jeremy Corbyn branded the deal as "botched" and a "leap in the dark". "(It) breaches the prime minister's own red lines and does not meet our six tests", he said.

Uncertain future

There is growing speculation that the deal will be voted down by MPs in its current form, although the PM is expected to have several weeks to build support.

Aware of the widespread opposition among MPs, Mrs May is appealing directly to the public.

Tusk and Barnier Brexit Deal - In Pictures 1 /7 Tusk and Barnier Brexit Deal - In Pictures EU Council President Donald Tusk holds British Prime Minister Theresa May's Brexit letter in notice of the UK's intention to leave the bloc under Article 50 of the EU's Lisbon Treaty at a press conference in Brussels. AP European Union's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier attends a news conference to hand over the Brexit draft text to European Council President Donald Tusk Reuters European Union's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier and European Council President Donald Tusk pose with the Brexit draft text in Brussels, Reuters European Union's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier and European Council President Donald Tusk pose with the Brexit draft text in Brussels Reuters EU Brexit chief negociator Michel Barnier (L) hands over to European Council President Donald Tusk the "draft agreement of the withdrawal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from the European Union" during a press statement at the European Council in Brussels AFP/Getty Images European Council President Donald Tusk shows the "draft agreement of the withdrawal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from the European Union" AFP/Getty Images EU chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, left, and European Council President Donald Tusk flip through the pages of a draft withdrawal agreement AP

On Saturday she issued a "letter to the nation" in which she urged Britons to get behind the deal. She has also sought the backing of business in an effort to encourage MPs to support the deal.

She is also set to embark on a Brexit tour of the country with the aim of appealing in particular to the constituents of more than 80 Tory MPs who are threatening to vote against the agreement.

What happens if it is voted down?

MPs' rejection of Mrs May's plan would open up several possibilities.

These include Britain crashing out of the EU with no deal on March 29, Mrs May having to return to the EU to ask for further talks and a so-called People's Vote that could see Brexit halted altogether.

On Saturday Chancellor Philip Hammond warned that rejecting the deal would leave Britain in "uncharted territory", while he said a no-deal Brexit would unleash "economic chaos".

Could another deal be struck?

EU leaders have warned they will not return to the negotiating table, however a no-deal Brexit would have damaging consequences for both the UK and EU countries.

If talks are re-opened it will likely mean extending the Article 50 period well beyond March 29.

According to reports, officials in Westminster and Brussels are continuing to work on plans for alternative arrangements.

The Sunday Telegraph reported that "several senior ministers" were working on plans for a Norway-style relationship with the EU.

Brexit: Part two

Negotiations up to this point have related to the arrangements for how Britain's divorce from the EU will take place.

If Mrs May's divorce deal is passed by parliament, next comes the long process of agreeing on how the UK will trade with the bloc in the future.

Negotiators have until the end of the transition period, which could run until the end of 2022, to strike a deal. If they fail to do so that could mean the imposition of the backstop to ensure no disruption to the Irish border.
T heresa May warned MPs that they will be opening the door to "more division and uncertainty" if they vote down her Brexit deal in Parliament.

Her remarks came at a historic Brexit summit where the 27 EU leaders endorsed her Brexit withdrawal deal and a political declaration on the future relationship between the UK and EU.

Addressing the public at a press conference in Brussels on Sunday, Mrs May said the upcoming vote in Parliament on her Brexit deal "would be the most significant in the Commons for many years."

Despite backing from EU leaders, opposition from MPs at home showed no signs of letting up with Jeremy Corbyn's Labour and Arlene Foster's DUP vowing to vote down the deal in its current form.

The Standard covered this live, see updates from the time below:
T he prospect of Britain running out of clean water within days of a no-deal Brexit reportedly convinced Michael Gove to back Theresa Mays deal.

Ministers were warned that leaving the EU without a deal could spark a clean water shortage as the chemicals used in purification are imported to the UK from Europe, according to the Mail on Sunday.

Deliveries of the chemicals could get caught up in weeks of border chaos in the event of a no-deal Brexit and the chemicals cannot be stockpiled and usually arrive just in time, the newspaper reported.

It was citing leaked Whitehall contingency plans named Operation Yellowhammer that have been briefed to ministers including the Environment Secretary.

Environment Secretary Michael Gove (Photo: Jack Taylor/Getty Images) / Getty Images

As a result, Mr Gove is said to have judged that no deal is not a viable exit route. The contingency plans, described by a source as Project Fear on steroids, indicate that if water plants run out of the chemicals needed they would probably need to stop the water supply to all their customers.

Schools and office buildings could be forced to close and householders could face a shortage of drinking water, inability to flush toilets, cook, wash clothes or keep themselves clean, the contingency plans said.

TODO: define component type apester
T heresa May has written to the nation pleading with members of the public to support her Brexit deal.

The near 800-word letter details her feeling that the deal "will honour the result of the referendum" by allowing the UK to "take back control" of its money, laws and borders.

It comes as she makes a further push to build support for her plans, which are set to be given the go ahead by EU leaders in Brussels on Sunday.

However, they have seen widespread opposition in Westminster from within her Conservative Party and the Democratic Unionist Party which props up her administration.

Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, welcomes Theresa May to a meeting / Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Letter to the nation - in full

When I became your Prime Minister the United Kingdom had just voted to leave the European Union.

From my first day in the job, I knew I had a clear mission before me - a duty to fulfil on your behalf: to honour the result of the referendum and secure a brighter future for our country by negotiating a good Brexit deal with the EU.

Throughout the long and complex negotiations that have taken place over the last year and a half, I have never lost sight of that duty.

Today, I am in Brussels with the firm intention of agreeing a Brexit deal with the leaders of the other 27 EU nations.

It will be a deal that is in our national interest - one that works for our whole country and all of our people, whether you voted 'Leave' or 'Remain'.

It will honour the result of the referendum.

We will take back control of our borders, by putting an end to the free movement of people once and for all.

Instead of an immigration system based on where a person comes from, we will build one based on the skills and talents a person has to offer.

We will take back control of our money, by putting an end to vast annual payments to the EU.

Instead, we will be able to spend British taxpayers' money on our own priorities, like the extra 394 million per week that we are investing in our long-term plan for the NHS.

And we will take back control of our laws, by ending the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice in the UK.

In future, our laws will be made, interpreted and enforced by our own courts and legislatures.

We will be out of EU programmes that do not work in our interests: out of the Common Agricultural Policy, that has failed our farmers, and out of the Common Fisheries Policy, that has failed our coastal communities.

Instead, we will be able to design a system of agricultural support that works for us and we will be an independent coastal state once again, with full control over our waters.

The deal also protects the things we value.

EU citizens who have built their lives in the United Kingdom will have their rights protected, as will UK citizens living elsewhere in the EU.

A free trade area will allow goods to flow easily across our borders, protecting the many skilled jobs right across the country that rely on integrated supply-chains.

Because our European friends will always be our allies in the fight against terrorism and organised crime, the deal will ensure that security co-operation will continue, so we can keep our people safe.

As Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, I have from day one been determined to deliver a Brexit deal that works for every part of our country - for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, for our Overseas Territories like Gibraltar, and also for the Crown Dependencies.

This deal will do that.

Crucially, it will protect the integrity of our United Kingdom and ensure that there will be no hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland - so people can live their lives as they do now.

It is a deal for a brighter future, which enables us to seize the opportunities that lie ahead.

Outside the EU, we will be able to sign new trade deals with other countries and open up new markets in the fastest-growing economies around the world.

With Brexit settled, we will be able to focus our energies on the many other important issues facing us here at home: keeping our economy strong, and making sure every community shares in prosperity; securing our NHS for the future, giving every child a great start in life, and building the homes that families need; tackling the burning injustices that hold too many people back, and building a country for the future that truly works for everyone.

On 29 March next year, the United Kingdom will leave the European Union.

We will then begin a new chapter in our national life.

I want that to be a moment of renewal and reconciliation for our whole country.

It must mark the point when we put aside the labels of 'Leave' and 'Remain' for good and we come together again as one people.

To do that we need to get on with Brexit now by getting behind this deal.

Parliament will have the chance to do that in a few weeks' time when it has a meaningful vote on the deal I hope to strike today.
B ig game hunters have brought thousands of trophies including almost two tonnes of elephant tusks to the UK from Africa by exploiting a legal loophole.

Dismembered parts have been taken from 400 of the world's most endangered animals including Nile crocodiles, lions, and rhinos over the last decade, the Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting said.

A cross-party group of MPs including Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and Conservative Zac Goldsmith have backed the group's calls for an urgent ban on importing hunting trophies, which is currently exempt under international rules.

Hunters often pay tens of thousands of pounds to go on safari killing expeditions and are free to bring trophies home due to the "extraordinary loophole" in CITES legislation (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species), the campaign said.

In total some 2,500 trophies have been brought home by British hunters over the last ten years, the campaign said, citing CITES figures.

Between 2007 and 2016, there were 922kg of elephant tusks brought in, plus an additional 147 tusks, which typically weigh at least six to eight kilograms each, the group said.

Eduardo Goncalves, from the campaign, said poachers posing as trophy hunters were even taking advantage of the rule to export and sell items like rhino horns.

He said: "This is grotesque, uncontrolled slaughter on a massive scale and it's pushing threatened species to the brink of extinction.

"The government wants to be seen as a global leader on wildlife and animal welfare.

"If it's serious about this, it should commit to an immediate ban on imports."

Conservationist Bill Oddie said the "insane" practice was putting already vulnerable species under even more threat.

He said: "Trophy hunting has always been senseless cruelty. Letting people kill them because they think it's entertaining is just insane.

"When you've got a scattered, dwindling population, the loss of a handful of animals doesn't just cause a ripple effect - it can be like a tsunami wave."

Green MP Caroline Lucas called for the UK to follow the example of Australia, France and the Netherlands, who have banned the practice.

Mr Goncalves said: "UK hunters have killed literally hundreds of elephants, hippos, leopards, zebras and lions - and then brought home their trophies and body parts for show.

TODO: define component type apester

"As well as tusks and mounted trophies, UK hunters bring home 'souvenirs' from their elephant-hunting expeditions that include trunks, feet, ears and tails."
B ookmakers suspended betting on Meghan Markle giving birth to twins after an abnormal number of bets were placed.

Odds were slashed from 5/1 to odds-on after a flurry of high stakes bets on the Duchess of Sussex giving birth to twins in the spring.

Paddy Power said it believed it was possible that someone had inside information after a sudden stream of wagers.

Meghan and Prince Harry are expecting their first child in the spring and it was revealed yesterday that they would be moving out of Kensington Palace next month to go and live at Frogmore House on the Windsor estate.

The Duke And Duchess Of Sussex Visit New Zealand 1 /24 The Duke And Duchess Of Sussex Visit New Zealand Meghan, Duchess of Sussex consoles Joe Young following a meeting with young people from a number of mental health projects AP AFP/Getty Images Prince Harry and the Duchess of Sussex meet schoolboy Joe Young and other children outside the Maranui Cafe in Wellington Reuters AFP/Getty Images Getty Images Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex meet with students from Houghton Valley School at Maranui Cafe in Wellington AFP/Getty Images Reuters Getty Images Getty Images Getty Images Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex meet with representatives of mental health projects at Marenui cafe AFP/Getty Images Getty Images AP Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, meet actors in costumes during a visit to Courtenay Creative, in Wellington Reuters Reuters AFP/Getty Images Reuters Reuters Reuters Prince Harry and the Duchess of Sussex attend Totaranui Campground in the Abel Tasman National Park Getty Images Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex visit Totaranui Campground in the Abel Tasman National Park AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images

The royal couple, who got married in May, currently live in Nottingham Cottage in the grounds of Kensington Palace and are moving because they need more space for their growing family.

At 8/1, Diana is the favourite name for the Duke and Duchess of Sussexs firstborn if it is a girl, while Arthur is 12/1 for a boy.

Parents-to-be Prince Harry and Meghan Markle / Getty Images

A Paddy Power spokesman said on Friday: An unprecedented amount of bets on Meghan and Harry to have twins has forced us to stop taking bets on the market altogether this morning.
A crash on the M25 which involved up to eight vehicles closed a large section of the motorway causing huge tailbacks.

Police, paramedics and fire services were called at about 9am to the anti-clockwise carriageway between junctions 5 and 6 in Godstone, Kent.

There were severe delays on the motorway into the afternoon as a result of the crash.

One person tweeted a picture of queuing cars and said at least 10 emergency services vehicles had rushed to the scene.

A number of people suffered injuries but none were life threatening, police said.

A spokesman for Surrey Police told Surrey Live: "There were some injuries but none were life threatening.

"The road has been cleared within a couple of hours and traffic is flowing freely now. One lane is still blocked but the rest of the traffic is running around that and the flow is not severely restricted.
S cores of activists gathered outside the European Council today to protest against Theresa Mays Brexit deal with one destroying a copy of the withdrawal agreement with a blowtorch.

Protesters lined the streets outside the Europa building in Brussels after the summit of the 27 EU leaders in which the Prime Ministers divorce deal and political declaration were endorsed.

Alongside a Boris Johnson lookalike, activists of all ages held signs asking for the people of Britain to have a final say on the Brexit deal, before claiming 77 per cent of us dont want Brexit.

One activist campaigning against Mrs Mays deal was seen torching a copy of the divorce deal, before police intervened and stopped him from burning it further.

In a tweet directed to the president of the European Council Donald Tusk, the activist wrote: The Brexit agreement youre signing with Theresa May is a betrayal of the British people.

Other protesters, from the campaign group Our Future, Our Choice, used a hammer to destroy a cardboard version of the document before binning it.

The protests come after Mrs May addressed a press conference, when she said that the upcoming vote in Parliament on her deal would be the most significant in the Commons for many years.

Despite backing from EU leaders, opposition from MPs at home showed no signs of letting up, with Labour and the Democratic Unionist Party vowing to vote down the deal in its current form.

In spite of the opposition back in the UK, Mrs May vowed to fight for the deal with the EU and said: We have negotiated the best possible deal available, it is a deal which delivers on the vote.

Boris Johnson's impersonator reacts during a demonstration outside the Brexit summit / REUTERS

After the leaders of the remaining 27 member states took less than 40 minutes to approve the deal on Sunday, she confirmed she would now put it to a vote in the Commons before Christmas.

She said: The British people don't want to spend any more time arguing about Brexit. They want a good deal done that fulfils the vote and allows us to come together again as a country.

"I will take this deal back to the House of Commons, confident we have achieved the best deal available and full of optimism about the future of our country.

Theresa May speaks in Brussels / Getty Images

However, with more than 80 Tory MPs declaring publicly that they intend to vote against the plan, Mrs May faces an uphill battle to make the parliamentary arithmetic add up.

Meanwhile, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker led the warnings that there could be no return to the negotiating table if the deal was rejected by Parliament

TODO: define component type apester

"This is the deal. It's the best deal possible and the EU will not change its fundamental position when it comes to these issues," he said on Sunday.

"Those who think by rejecting the deal that they would have a better deal will be disappointed in the first seconds after the rejection of this deal."
T he northern California wildfire that destroyed the mountain town of Paradise and killed at least 85 people was 100 per cent contained on Sunday, according to state fire officials.

The so-called Camp Fire that started on November 8 burned nearly 154,000 acres of land, left more than 200 people missing and destroyed nearly 14,000 homes in and around Paradise.

The number of people still missing dropped to 249 on Sunday as officials said the fire is now completely extinguished.

The figure was revised down from 475 as people who were believed missing were found in shelters, staying in hotels or with friends, officials said, adding that many did not know they were on the list.

Rescuers will continue their search for the dead on Sunday in the ash and rubble of the horrific fire.

A wildfire burns at the Salvation Army Camp / Getty Images

Searchers will have a few more days of dry weather, but starting late Tuesday, up to five inches of rain is expected to drop on the Sierra Nevada foothills through next Sunday.

It will hamper the searchers' work and renew fears of flash floods and mudslides, forecasters said.

"The fear is that the rain will drop in intense bursts," Brian Hurley, a meteorologist with the federal Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland, said early Sunday.

"All the vegetation has burned away, and that's a dangerous recipe for mudslides," Mr Hurley said.

California wildfires 1 /8 California wildfires A fire fighting aircraft releases water as firefighters battle the thousand-acre plus 'Fish' wildland fire that erupted near the Angeles National Forest, Duarte, Califonia EPA Smoke from wildfires burning in Angeles National Forest fills the sky behind the Los Angeles skyline Ringo H.W. Chiu/AP Jimmy Romo, 73, leads the horses leaving his ranch as a wildfire is burning in Azusa, Calif., Monday, June 20, 2016. New wildfires erupted Monday near Los Angeles and chased people from their suburban homes as an intense heatwave stretching from the West Coast to New Mexico blistered the region Ringo H.W. Chiu/AP A television cameraman shoots a thermometer sign which reads 126 degrees in Palm Springs, California Sam Mircovich/Reuters A wildfire burns around homes built near a hilltop in Azusa, California Nick Ut/AP A water bomber makes a drop on a wildfire as it attacks the flames near Campo, California Mike Blake/Reuters A column of smoke is seen rising, viewed through a windshield, from one of two wildfires in the Angeles National Forest above Azusa, California Gene Blevins/Reuters Flames flare up from a wildfire behind a house along a hillside in Duarte, California Ringo H.W. Chiu/AP

Last week, two to three inches of rain fell there and turned ash from the thousands of destroyed homes into a slurry, complicating the work of finding bodies reduced to bone fragments.

Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea has warned that remains of some victims may never be found.

Paradise was a popular destination for retirees, with people aged 65 or older making up a quarter of its 27,000 residents. Most of the victims of the fire identified so far were of retirement age.

A firefighter searches for human remains in a trailer park destroyed in the Camp Fire in Paradise / AP

With help from the recent rain, firefighters have contained 98 per cent of the blaze, which torched 154,000 acres - an area five times the size of San Francisco, officials said.

Investigators have yet to determine the cause of the fire.

Thousands of people forced to flee Paradise spent Thanksgiving in warehouses in the nearby city of Chico, or with friends or relatives in nearby towns.

The effects of climate change will get worse unless more is done to cut carbon emissions, a report has warned / AFP/Getty Images

In Southern California, more residents were allowed to return to areas that were evacuated because of the 151-square-mile Woolsey Fire as crews worked to repair power, telephone and gas utilities.

About 1,100 residents were still under evacuation orders in Malibu and unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County, down from 250,000 at the height of the fire.

Three people were found dead, and 1,643 buildings were destroyed, officials said.
A judge has ordered a former campaign adviser to Donald Trump who lied to federal agents about his interactions with Russia during the 2016 elections to report to prison on Monday.

The federal judge on Sunday rejected an effort by George Papadopoulos to delay his two-week prison term and said he must surrender on Monday as scheduled.

Mr Papadopoulos sought to delay until an appeals court rules in a separate case challenging the constitutionality of special counsel Robert Muellers appointment.

The former foreign policy adviser pleaded guilty last year to lying to federal agents about his interactions with Russian intermediaries during the 2016 presidential campaign.

He also forfeited most of his rights to contest his conviction.

In September last year, Mr Papadopoulos was sentenced to two weeks in prison, a year of supervised release, 200 hours of community service and a fine of $9,500.

In his appeal, Mr Papadopoulos lawyer argued that the appellate case could constitute new evidence that could allow him to mount a challenge.

However, District Judge Randolph Moss denied the motions to postpone the sentence, saying that the time for Mr Papadopoulos to file an appeal had already expired.
S everal US Republican senators have rejected President Donald Trump's embrace of Saudi Arabia after the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Some lawmakers from his party have also suggested Congress must take additional action after Mr Trump last week vowed to remain a steadfast partner of Saudi Arabia.

In a statement released last week, the US President said it was not clear whether the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman knew about the plan to kill Mr Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate.

Mr Trump said: It could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event. Maybe he did and maybe he didn't!"

President Donald Trump / REUTERS

The president cast doubt on the CIA assessment that Crown Prince Mohammed ordered the Washington Post columnists killing, saying that the agency had not formed a definitive conclusion.

"I disagree with the president's assessment. It's inconsistent with the intelligence I've seen" which implicates the crown prince, Republican Senator Mike Lee said on NBC's Meet the Press.

He cited the killing of Mr Khashoggi as another reason why he has pushed against helping Saudi Arabia's war effort in Yemen.

The US last week imposed economic sanctions on 17 Saudi officials for their role in the killing of Mr Khashoggi.

Senators from both major US parties also introduced legislation that would suspend weapon sales to Saudi Arabia over the murder and for its role in Yemen's civil war.

Jamal Khashoggi was killed at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2 / PA

Democratic US Representative Adam Schiff has promised investigations on the Khashoggi case as well as whether Mr Trump's personal financial interests are dictating his Saudi policy.

"Look, the president is not being honest with the country about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi," Schiff said on CNN's State of the Union program. "What's driving this?"

Mr Khashoggi, a critic of the crown prince, was killed October 2. Riyadh initially denied knowledge of the journalists disappearance, then offered contradictory explanations.

Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman / Amir Levy/Reuters

"I do think we need to look into this further," Republican Senator Joni Ernst said on CNN.

Mr Ernst acknowledged Saudi Arabia's importance as a strategic partner but added: "We also are a very strong nation when it comes to human rights, when it comes to the rule of law.

"And if there are indicators that the prince was involved in this murder then we need to absolutely consider further action."

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Senator Ben Sasse, a frequent critic of Mr Trump, criticized his stance on the killing as weak.

"Making the realist case is a different thing than being so weak that we failed to tell the truth, Mr Sasse said on Fox News Sunday.

Other Republican senators, including Lindsey Graham, Rand Paul and Bob Corker, have been unsparing in their assessments of Saudi Arabia's involvement in the killing.
S tunning video footage filmed from the International Space Station shows the moment a rocket blasts off from Earth.

The minute-long timelapse video was shot by German astronaut Alexander Gerst and posted on his Facebook account.

It shows Russian rocket Progress MS-10 after it launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on November 16.

The cargo spacecraft is an unmanned resupply vehicle destined for the ISS.

Gerst gave details about what can be seen in the footage in his Facebook post.

He wrote: 00:07 Rocket booster separation.

"00:19 Core stage separation.

"00:34:05 Core Stage starts burning in the atmosphere
Migrants approaching the US border from Mexico have been enveloped with tear gas after a few tried to breach the fence separating the two countries.

US agents shot the gas and children were seen screaming and coughing in the mayhem.

Honduran migrant Ana Zuniga, 23, said she saw migrants open a small hole in concertina wire at a gap on the Mexican side of a levee, at which point US agents fired tear gas at them.

"We ran, but when you run the gas asphyxiates you more," she told the AP while cradling her 3-year-old daughter Valery in her arms.

Mexico's Milenio TV also showed images of several migrants at the border trying to jump over the fence.



Migrants cross the river at the Mexico-US border / AP

US Border Patrol helicopters flew overhead, while agents held vigil on foot beyond the wire fence in California.

The Border Patrol office in San Diego said via Twitter that pedestrian crossings have been suspended at the San Ysidro port of entry at both the East and West facilities. All northbound and southbound traffic was halted.

Earlier on Sunday, some Central American migrants pushed past a blockade of Mexican police standing guard near the international border crossing.

More than 5,000 migrants have been camped in and around a sports complex in Tijuana after making their way through Mexico in recent weeks via caravan.

Many hope to apply for asylum in the US, but agents at the San Ysidro entry point are processing fewer than 100 asylum petitions a day.



Some of the migrants who went forward Sunday called on each other to remain peaceful.

They appeared to easily pass through the Mexican police blockade without using violence.

A second line of Mexican police carrying plastic riot shields stood guard outside a Mexican customs and immigration plaza, where the migrants were headed.

That line of police installed tall steel panels behind them outside the Chaparral crossing on the Mexican side of the border, which completely blocked incoming traffic lanes to Mexico.

Irineo Mujica, who has accompanied the migrants for weeks as part of the aid group Pueblo Sin Fronteras, said the aim of Sunday's march toward the U.S. border was to make the migrants' plight more visible to the governments of Mexico and the U.S.

"We can't have all these people here," Mujica told The Associated Press.

Tijuana Mayor Juan Manuel Gastelum on Friday declared a humanitarian crisis in his border city of 1.6 million, which he says is struggling to accommodate the crush of migrants.
T he Ukrainian navy has accused Russia of opening fire on some of its ships in the Black Sea, striking two vessels and wounding two crew members.

The navy made the statement after a day of rising tensions during which Russia stopped three Ukrainian navy vessels from entering the Sea of Azov via the Kerch Strait by placing a huge cargo ship beneath a Russian-controlled bridge.

Posting on Facebook, a navy spokesman said: "After leaving the 12-mile zone, the Russian Federation FSB launched fire at the navy group of the Naval Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

"According to the operational information, small armoured artillery boats 'Berdyansk' [and] 'Nikopol' were struck by the enemy's fire and lost their course.

"Raid tow 'Yana Kapu' also forced to stop. Ships [were] seized by Russian special forces. There is also information about two wounded Ukrainian sailors."

Ukraine's navy said that Russia's border guards rammed one of its tugboats / AFP/Getty Images

Ukraine's president Petro Poroshenko is now convening an emergency meeting of the military's top brass after the warships.

The Russian Federal Security Service has since said that it has evidence that Ukraine is responsible for clashes between Russian and Ukrainian ships in the Black Sea.

The agency, known as the FSB, said in a statement Sunday night that "there is irrefutable evidence that Kiev prepared and orchestrated provocations ... in the Black Sea. These materials will soon be made public."

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Facebook that the incident was characteristic of Ukrainian behavior: provoke, pressure and blame for aggression.

Earlier in the day Ukraine accused Russia of using a coast guard vessel to ram one of its navy tugboats off the coast of the annexed Crimea.

It was travelling on Sunday with two Ukrainian navy artillery boats from Odessa on the Black Sea to Mariupol in the Sea of Azov, via the Kerch Strait.

"Russian coast guard vessels ... carried out openly aggressive actions against Ukrainian navy ships" during the transit, the Ukrainian navy statement said.

It said a Russian coast guard ship damaged the tugboat's engine, hull, side railing and a lifeboat.

The statement added Russia was informed in advance about the planned transit.

Russian jet fighters fly over a bridge connecting the Russian mainland with the Crimean Peninsula / REUTERS

Russia's Federal Security Service, known as the FSB, told news agencies the Ukrainian ships held their course and violated Russian territorial waters, which were temporarily closed.

The FSB accused Ukraine's navy of staging a provocation against Russia. "Their goal is clear," an FSB statement said, "to create a conflict situation in the region".

The statement did not mention ramming a Ukrainian tugboat.

Russia has blocked passage through the Kerch Strait, a narrow body of water nestled between Crimea and the Russian mainland.

The move came after three Ukrainian navy ships made what the Russian coast guard has called an unauthorised crossing through "Russian territorial waters".

It follows months of growing tensions between Ukraine and Russia, which annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and has steadily worked to increase its zone of control around the peninsula.

The Kerch Strait is the only passage into the Sea of Azov beyond it. The strait is crossed by the recently completed Kerch Bridge, connecting Crimea to Russia.

Transit under the bridge has been blocked by a tanker ship and dozens of cargo ships awaiting passage are stuck.

Though a 2003 treaty designates the Kerch Strait and Sea of Azov as shared territorial waters, Russia has been asserting greater control over the passage since 2015.

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry in a statement said Russia's actions were a violation of the UN Charter.
P olice in the US have admitted killing a black man who was likely not the gunman in a shooting at a shopping centre.

An officer shot and killed 21-year-old Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford Jr while responding to the shooting in Alabama on Thursday.

Police initially claimed Mr Bradford was seen fleeing the scene with a weapon but later retracted the statement.

Captain Gregg Rector said investigators now believe that more than two people were involved in an initial fight before the shooting and that "at least one gunman" is still at large who could be responsible.

Rector said police regret that their initial statement about Mr Bradford was not accurate.

Emergency services respond after the shooting at the Riverchase Galleria / AP

The incident unfolded while the shopping centre was packed with Black Friday bargain hunters. An 18-year-old was shot twice and a 12-year-old bystander was shot in the back.

Police said while Mr Bradford "may have been involved in some aspect of the altercation, he likely did not fire the rounds that injured the 18-year-old victim".

"We knew that was false," said stepmother Cynthia Bradford when she heard police were blaming him for the shooting at Riverchase Galleria in Birmingham.

Police initially claimed 21-year-old Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford had brandished a weapon / AP

She described her stepson, who went by the name EJ, as a respectful young man who is the son of a Birmingham police department officer.

More than 200 demonstrators, including several relatives, chanted "EJ" and "no justice, no peace" as they marched past Christmas shoppers at the shopping centre on Saturday.

They held a moment of silence at the spot outside a shoe store where Bradford was killed.

"They should never have killed him," Emani Smith, Mr Bradford's seven-year-old half-sister said, while other family members cried.

Family members described their horror of finding out from social media that Mr Bradford was dead. Video circulated on social media of Bradford lying in a pool of blood on the shopping centre floor.

The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency is investigating the incident as the Hoover Police Department conducts its own internal investigation.
M odel Emily Ratajkowski has hit back at trolls who criticised her for not wearing a bra at a protest against the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

The 27-year-old model and actress had worn a white tank top without a bra underneath it to the protest in Washington DC last month.

She expressed disappointment that critics had chosen to focus on what she was wearing when she was there to make a political point.

Ratajkowski, who was arrested at the protest along with fellow star Amy Schumer, said her outfit seemed completely normal at the time because it was a sweltering hot day.

Emily Ratajkowski was among those arrested at the protest / Twitter/Emily Ratajkowski

She told Stellar magazine: I knew being there would be important and I knew some people would find it controversial but I never expected anyone to talk about why I wasnt wearing a bra under my tank top.

Ratajkowski added: And I was there making a political point. Why would people focus on what I was wearing?

US comedian Amy Schumer and US actress Emily Ratajkowski are detained along with hundreds of other protesters campaigning against the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh

One critic had written to Ratajkowski: put some clothes on and read the constitution sweetheart while another suggested she would have had more credibility had she worn a bra.

Schumer had previously defended the Gone Girl actress in an Instagram post, saying that those who criticised what she was wearing were making comments synonymous with saying what a woman wears insights bad behaviour.

She added: I wasnt wearing a bra either.

Hundreds of people were taking part in a protest against Mr Kavanaughs nomination to the Supreme Court following allegations of sexual misconduct which he stringently denied.
Porter Health Care System presents two upcoming programs for convenient mammograms. Pink at Portage will be held from 7 a.m. to noon Saturday in the Womens Center at Portage Hospital, 3630 Willowcreek Road, Portage. Women can get their annual mammograms and receive a complimentary brunch. Think Pink at Valpo will take place from 4-7 p.m. Dec. 6 in the Womens Center at Porter Regional Hospital, 85 East US Highway 6, Valparaiso. In addition to their annual mammogram, women will receive complimentary hors doeuvres. To participate, a woman must be age 40 or older and know the date of her last mammogram. Insurance will be charged and only covers one mammogram annually. The Womens Centers at Portage Hospital and Porter Regional Hospital offer 3D mammography. More information and registration are at 219-983-8399.
O'Neal was shot to death Nov. 19 in front of Mercy Hospital & Medical Center after her former fiance, Juan Lopez, confronted her about returning her engagement ring. ONeal had broken off the engagement weeks before she was to marry Lopez for reasons unclear to her family, it was reported.
The Dancila Government grants a special importance to preventing and fighting violence against women, through policies meant to support women who fall victims of this scourge, Deputy Prime Minister Ana Birchall said on Sunday, according to Agerpres.

"In 1999, the UN General Assembly established the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on 25 November. Thus, marking this day aimed at raising awareness of a phenomenon that affects the fundamental human rights, such as the right to life, security, freedom, dignity, physical and mental integrity, and which requires long-term efforts by the authorities in terms of prevention and combating,"Ana Birchall wrote on Facebook.

She underscored that she always believed that "one of the most concerning problems of the society is violence."Deputy PM Birchall mentioned she fought for Romania to be among the countries with a modern legislation in terms of preventing and fighting violence against women and domestic violence.Moreover, Deputy PM Birchall conveyed to "the women who suffer in silence" that "they are not alone.""Today, I will make use again of this opportunity to convey to all the women who suffer in silence, prisoners of this phenomenon, that they are not alone. I am proud the the Dancila Government grants a special importance to preventing and fighting violence against women through public policies meant to support the women who fell victims to this scourge. I will personally get further involved, together with all those who support this cause, until domestic violence, the violence against women or the violence against children will remain only scars of our society. Only together can we truly say a firm NO to violence, because, at any moment and at any level, violence raises violence," Ana Birchall said.
Romania is getting close to its 100th birthday with a lot of things to be proud of, but it's important to be united not only in terms of its geographical borders, but also in terms of the opportunities that it gives to all its people, Country Manager for Romania and Hungary of the World Bank Tatiana Proskuryakova told AGERPRES in an interview.

She underscored that Romania has highschool students who win international competitions and great engineers, IT professionals, but not all the country inhabitants have the possibility to get here, because they encounter barriers related to their social background or the fact that they come from rural areas.

In her view, these differences could be diminished as the investments in the education and healthcare systems increase, which would determine more Romanians to stay or return to the country. At the same time, practitioners should be consulted and allowed to decide how to best use the funding.Another paradox which the World Bank representative sees in Romania is the fact that poverty remains high as the country gets richer and richer, this being another proof that not all the people take advantage of the good economic results.Moreover, if she were Romania's Prime Minister, Tatiana Proskuryakova would clearly focus on the development of the country, taking into account that Romania recorded its greatest progress when preparing to join the European Union, when there was a clear vision and everybody knew what to do.AGERPRES: How does Romania look like in its key-sectors?Tatiana Proskuryakova: So, I think that Romania is coming to its 100th birthday with a lot of things to be proud of. It's a very impressive country, a member of the European Union, one of the fastest growing countries in Europe and also together with Poland, Romania is one of the countries that benefited most from the EU Cohesion Policies. So, my main message is that Romania should be very proud of the accomplishments.Another thing that it's important to know about Romania, when you look at how it is developing, is that, unfortunately, as the country continues to grow its social and geographical divisions are not closing up. And that I thing, it's the greatest challenge that Romania is facing today.AGERPRES: Can you tell us which is the most impressive thing in Romania that we did in the last 30 years for example?Tatiana Proskuryakova: I think that Romania has really changed its model of development and the fact that the country has embraced democracy, and has started the process of transition with market economy, joined the European Union, all of these were decisions that are the foundation of today's success for the country and the foundation of the future prospects for Romania. So, I think, that's the most impressive thing that happened and everything else flows from that.AGERPRES: What about the differences between our country and the developed countries?Tatiana Proskuryakova: As I said, in my mind, the greatest challenge that Romania is facing is the continuing divisions, social and geographical divisions in the country. And I think this is a topic that is particularly pertinent as we talk about 100 years of unification in Romania. I think it's very important for Romania to be united not only in terms of its geographical borders, but also in terms of opportunities that it gives to all its people, regardless of where they are from or what social background they come from.This is, I think, the challenge, but also the opportunity, because I think if Romania succeeds in healing this divides, than sky is the limit for its development. Social cohesion within the country is not only the right thing to do socially and morally, but it's also great economic policy, because we see that this could be a foundation of sustained growth in the future.AGERPRES: So what should we do?Tatiana Proskuryakova: I think the most important thing is to invest in education. You might have seen our report recently on human capital and this report makes a very compelling argument, that investment in human capital, in skills and in health of the population is what makes a country competitive and what makes people able to lift themselves out of poverty, and create welfare for themselves and for their neighbors.In Romania what we see is huge contrasts. On the one hand, Romania produces the best professionals in the world. Every year highschool students from Romania win international competitions in science, in technology, we have a very robust IT sector with great engineers and IT professionals. At the same time, we see that in rural areas, often, young people do not have the same advantages. Only one percent of high-performing highschools are in rural areas. But 83 percent of non-performing highschools are in rural areas. And healing this divide, giving opportunities to all children in Romania to do well in life it's something that will set up this country for competitiveness in the future, in a new economy.So, if you ask me for one thing where I would invest, I would invest in education. And if I may, I wanted to tell you a story. I traveled lot in Romania and I met a lot of people, and we have a project called ROSE [Romanian Systematic Education - e.n.], which is focusing on education, and in particular, in helping schools that struggle, helping children at risk of dropping out of school. And I recently visited two such highschools which were put it in our project, one in Pucioasa and one in Iasi, and I was really amazed that with a little bit of incremental funding and allowing school principals to use this incremental funding the way they see fit has allowed these schools to achieve spectacular results. In some cases doubling Baccalaureate pass rate in one year and significantly reducing drop-out rates. So, I see great potential here, but I would like to encourage Romania to invest more in education and skills.AGERPRES: Are we on the right trend?Tatiana Proskuryakova: I think that more can be done in terms of financing, for example, for health and education. As I said, giving a little bit more money to this sectors, but also allowing more initiative by the practitioners, listening to school principals and to hospital directors how the funds are spent. Maybe also rewarding performance more directly. And I think that is what I am trying to do with our programme, the World Bank programme in Romania. We are very much focusing on health and education, and I look forward to working with the Government on these areas.AGERPRES: What can you say about the Romanian health system?Tatiana Proskuryakova: I think Romanian health system just as education can be improved by providing more opportunities to everyone, to have greater access and greater quality of care. We have recently done the analysis of financing in both health and education sectors, and one lesson is that in both of these sectors Romania used to invest more, but also to invest more smartly, more efficiently. And again, giving opportunity to health practitioners on the ground to use resources more wisely is what I would do.AGERPRES: What about the poverty rate in Romania?Tatiana Proskuryakova: So, this is the direct consequence of what I said about the persisting social divisions. This means that poverty remains high as the country gets richer and richer. So, if I were to see one thing improve in Romania is I would like to see more people take advantage of the increasing wealth of this country.AGERPRES: In this moment, who is taking advantage of the fact that Romania is richer?Tatiana Proskuryakova: I think that, in general, in this world, when we have a new economy developing people with better skills are better positioned to compete and to take advantage of new economic opportunities. And this is why, let me repeat again, I think investment in education and skills is the foundation of future growth and prosperity for Romania.AGERPRES: So if you were the Prime Minister of Romania, which would be the first measure you would take tomorrow?Tatiana Proskuryakova: I think that I would be very proud to be Prime Minister of Romania because it is a country with fantastic opportunities, it is a country that has all ingredients for success. What I would focus on is I would focus on a long-term vision for this country. I think the greatest reforms and greatest progress in Romania, in recent years, was made when the country was preparing to join the European Union. Because it gave everybody a clear goal and a clear vision of the future. I think we need to reinvigorate this process and we need to think as a society - where is this country going, how can we create better opportunities for all Romanians, how do we see this country in the future.One of the challenges that I also see in Romania is a demographic challenge. This is a country with shrinking population and a very high level of migration. It is important, in the vision for the future, to see how to make this country attractive for young people so that they stay, that they have families here, that they come back. And again, let me repeat again, that investing in better education and health is, in fact, a very good start for this. Because when you talk to families, whether they want to stay or they want to leave, a crucial ingredient in this decision is the quality of healthcare and education for their kids. So, if I were the Prime Minister of Romania, I would invest in health and education.AGERPRES: I saw displayed at the entrance, at this level, that you have some traditional items from Romanian villages and I wanted to ask you how could Romania benefit from its traditions?Tatiana Proskuryakova: The cultural traditions of Romania, its very rich cultural heritage is one of the riches, one of the assets that Romania has for its future development, together with geographical position, with its wonderful climate, great arable lands, ski resorts, shore line and so on. But the most important that Romania has is its people. So drawing on the traditions and drawing on the future opportunities, investing in skills, investing in better human capital is the way to go. Cultural traditions are a fantastic opportunity to showcase the country and we all have deep roots, Romania certainly has very deep roots, I think it's a great advantage in every area.AGERPRES: What do you tell about Romania to your closest friend, family back home?Tatiana Proskuryakova: I tell them that I'm very fortunate to be here, I tell them to come and visit, and to see the beauties of this country. Not just in Bucharest, but everywhere. We had a chance, we had a family trip last summer, we drove all around Romania and I was really blown away by the beauty of this country, and by the warmth of its people. I've seen many different parts and I think there is beauty and variety as well. I loved the mountains, I loved the sea, the monasteries, but as I said, the most important thing is when you meet the people and they take you to their heart, and this is the most fantastic feeling that you can have. Also, I always recommend the food.
Mother Teresa used to say Weve forgotten that we belong to each other. No man is an island, and all the money in the world will not help you, if you do not rely on other people. If you continue to make enemies at every turn, there will be nobody there to help you in your time of need.
AGERPRES special correspondent Florentina Peia reports: President Klaus Iohannis stated that things are moving in respect to the Romanian Presidency of the Council of the European Union, adding that he has divergences with the Government in may areas, but not in respect to preparing the Romanian Presidency of the EU Council.

"When I made that statement, that was the case. And I thing you've noticed that some things changed since then. I received this very morning, [information] when talking with Mrs Ambassador [Permanent Representative of Romania to the European Union Luminita Odobescu], with other representatives in Brussels, that things are moving. (..) Things are moving in terms of the practical training and logistics. We had left a few logistics issues, equipment, matters that must work from day one and I was assured that these things which remained somewhat uncertain, most of them were unlocked by the new minister, and things are going in a good direction. (...) I do not want to make now any judgments on Negrescu's work, but it's much better now," the head of state said on Sunday, after the extraordinary meeting of the European Council in Brussels.

He underscored that he has no divergences with the Government in respect to the preparation of the Romanian Presidency of the Council of the EU."I have divergences in many areas with our Government, but not in the European Affairs area and not in the preparation of the Romanian Presidency of the EU Council. We must understand that the internal political fight is one thing and another thing is the presidency and we want to have a successful presidency of the EU Council. Things got along well. We work together for the presidency and we will perform well. This is not a problem. I am not going to transfer the divergences of domestic politics to the presidency and I don't think there are any such concerns either on the Government side," Iohannis said.The head of state mentioned that he is currently more optimistic in respect to the Presidency of the EU Council, showing that he gets involved personally in this regard."Not only do I feel, I make [things]. All the meetings and all the discussions that I carry out for this Presidency, and they are many, many more that it is seen directly. There are good talks, people understands that we want to have a successful presidency, they help us, support us. They have concerns after things went how they went, the body here felt that work is still to be done until it works, but I really am more optimistic now than I was a few weeks ago," Iohannis stated.President Iohannis underscored that Romania will be able to coordinate the files that it will manage during the Presidency of the EU Council, such as the budget of the Union."We can certainly do this, but let no one be under the impression that what happens in a Presidency of the Council is only up to the state holding the presidency. It is a presidency that has the majority of technical aspects. (...) Colleagues work in all the Union formats and each one has its vote, but we must have people who are ready to conduct these discussions, these formats, know what it is about and, to the extent that it is a clear Romanian interest, to expose it, not impose it. In these formats we cannot work through imposition, we can work only through exposure and conviction, and we have good people in the relevant areas, and we can do this thing," Iohannis said.He labeled the possibility that Finland takes over Romania's place at the Presidency of the EU Council as "a press story.""In the Council, I stand next to the Prime Minister of Finland [Juha Sipila], to his right and today I have guaranteed him that he won't get the presidency on January 1st and we both laughed, and he accepted. Things don't have a real basis. (...) It was a statement initiated by someone in Finnish journalism, a theoretical matter that led to a little bit more attention, but there was no real foundation for that," Iohannis said.On 12 November, President Klaus Iohannis said Romania is not ready to take over the Presidency of the Council of the European Union."I have to mention a great concern that I have, that I hope you have although it does not concern you directly. It is about the year 2019. You know well that as of January 1, 2019 Romania will take over the EU Council Presidency, an extremely important position, a very honorable position, an extremely demanding position, especially for the Government. My opinion is that we are not prepared for something like this," Iohannis told the General Assembly of the Association of Romania's Municipalities.Iohannis said that "in the Government those responsible for different sectors no longer understand each other, the people who should deal with European issues are leaving or are dismissed and thus, we find ourselves at the last minute totally unprepared. These things are very serious," the head of state said.
Chinese brokerages have stepped up launching asset management products to help finance private companies and promised to invest their own money in the fundraising plans.







As of Friday, 26 securities companies including Everbright Securities and Dongxing Securities had pledged to offer a collective 44 billion yuan (6.35 billion U.S. dollars), the Securities Association of China (SAC) said in an online statement.





The SAC said 15 of them had signed agreements to set up 17 asset management products, including one subsidiary product, and contribute more than 31 billion yuan collectively.





Some had finished their initial funding rounds to help ease the cash crunch of private businesses, according to the SAC.





The group initiated the program nearly a month ago as a plunging stock market posed threats to firms that pledged their shares as collateral to borrow money.





The program is designed to provide liquidity aid to promising firms, support high-quality growth of the private sector and better serve the real economy, with the goal of drawing more than 100 billion yuan of funds from banks, insurance companies, state firms and governments.




The Commission on National Defense Strategy for the US has just released to Congress its report "Providing for the Common Defense, and it opens: In the National Defense Authorization Act of 2017, Congress charged this Commission with providing an independent, nonpartisan review of the 2018 National Defense Strategy and issues of US defense strategy and policy more broadly. The reports co-chairs, Eric S. Edelman and Gary Roughead, say in their accompanying letter to Congress, that the United States will soon face a national security emergency. It doesnt describe that emergency, but uses it to argue that defense spending needs to soar and all other spending by the Government  especially for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other entitlements  needs to shrink, and/or recipient beneficiaries of those programs need to pay more, and taxes need to increase, so that this emergency can be dealt with. They say that the weapons-manufacturers and soldiers need more money, and that this military requirement is an emergency but other federal spending is not.

The Executive Summary says:

Rivals and adversaries are challenging the United States on many fronts and in many domains. Americas ability to defend its allies, its partners, and its own vital interests is increasingly in doubt. If the nation does not act promptly to remedy these circumstances, the consequences will be grave and lasting.

The document strongly urges expansion of the US regimes policing of the world, in the interests of Americas international corporations.

(EDITORIAL COMMENTARY: Neither the U.N. nor any other international body, has appointed the US regime to police the world. Furthermore, the US regime is the most frequent invader of foreign nations; and always, at least since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, is invading on the basis of lies and in violation of international law. But, the US regime nonetheless  as in "Providing for the Common Defense  anoints itself the authority to be police, judge, jury, and executioner, over this entire planet. This US-Government intention is a well-recognized fact recognized by peoples around the world. Hitlers Government likewise viewed itself in this way. US President Obama stated this self-anointed global authority for the US, by asserting that The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation, which means that every other nation is dispensable. Hitler agreed with that viewpoint for Germany, and frequently expressed it.)

On page 63 (80 of the pdf), "Providing for the Common Defense states:

Embracing a Whole-of-Government

Approach to Strategic Competition

This Commission was charged with making recommendations regarding US defense strategy. Yet even if America were to fund the Department of Defense lavishly, and even if all the other recommendations in this report were to be implemented, that would not be sufficient to address the threats and challenges facing the country today. Americas two most powerful competitors  China and Russia  have developed national strategies for enhancing their influence and undermining key US interests that extend far beyond military competition.

It therefore urges placing the US Government on a war-footing, in virtually every governmental department.

On that same page, it states:

Looking ahead, policymakers must address rising government spending and decreasing tax revenues as unsustainable trends that compel hard fiscal choices Congress should look to the entire federal budget, especially entitlements and taxes, to set the nation on a more stable financial footing. In the near-term, such adjustments will undoubtedly be quite painful. Yet over time  and probably much sooner than we expect  failing to make those adjustments and fully fund Americas defense strategy will undoubtedly be worse.

In other words, according to this congressionally mandated report: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, education, public health, safety-regulations, civilian infrastructure, and all other non-defense programs, must be severely slashed in order for the United States to be able to buy more of the machinery of mass-murder from Lockheed Martin and the other American manufacturers of the machinery of mass murder, which now form the basis for the American economy, of foreign conquests and coups, which must now be greatly escalated in order to keep America safe and those weapons-makers investors and executives happy. Similarly, Americas soldiers need more money. Furthermore:

Comprehensive solutions to these comprehensive challenges will require whole-of-government and even whole-of-nation cooperation extending far beyond DOD. Trade policy; science, technology, engineering, and math education; diplomatic statecraft; and other non-military tools will be critical  so will adequate support and funding for those elements of American power.

Their top (#1) Recommendation is:

The United States urgently requires rapid and substantial improvements to its military capabilities, built on a foundation of compelling and relevant warfighting concepts at the operational level of war.

Recommendation #9 states:

Deterring aggression in the Western Pacific will require using focused investments to establish a forward-deployed defense-in-depth posture. To deter a revanchist Russia, the United States and its NATO allies must rebuild military force capacity and capability in Europe.

#11 states:

The Air Force, Navy, and Army will all need capacity enhancements.

#24 urges:

Budget caps were  and still are  harmful to American defense.

In other words: If eliminating, or at least slashing, non-defense spending cant be done, then the Government must go yet further into debt now, in order to be Providing for the Common Defense. If necessary in order to address the defense emergency, everything else now must be sacrificed.

#31 is:

Congress should look to the entire federal budget, especially entitlements, as well as taxes, to set the nation on a more stable financial footing.

So: in case not enough money can be extracted from non-defense, and from increasing the debt, then taxes  including taxes on the non-recipients of entitlements  must be increased, in order to be Providing for the Common Defense. Thats what an emergency is. Only the expenditures for soldiers and for the manufacturers of the machinery of mass murder are to be served, if sufficient extractions fail to materialize from those other sources.

The two chairmen, and the ten other members of the Commission, are all longstanding neoconservatives, supporters of all US invasions and coups and conquests. The first co-chair, the Republican Eric S. Edelman, for example, is so neoconservative that he condemns even neocon Democrats (such as Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden) who pretend not to be neoconservative in order for them to be able to campaign effectively for the votes of Democrats in Presidential primaries. For example, heres from Wikipedias article on Edelman:

In July 2007, Edelman attracted media attention for criticizing Senator Hillary Clinton, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.[10] In a private letter to Senator Clinton in response to a request made to the Pentagon in May 2007 for an outline [of] plans for withdrawing troops from combat in Iraq, Edelman rebuffed her request and wrote:[11][12]

Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia.

The Associated Press described his criticisms as "stinging".[10] According to the Associated Press, Edelman's comments were: "unusual, particularly because it was directed at a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee".[10] The Associated Press pointed out that fellow committee member Republican Senator Richard Lugar had also called for discussions of withdrawing US troops from Iraq, but had escaped Edelman's criticism. Clinton has said she is "shocked by the timeworn tactic of once again impugning the patriotism of any of us who raise serious questions" about the Iraq war.[13]

Senator Clinton needed that anti-neocon pretense in order for her to be able to campaign effectively for the votes of Democrats during the then-upcoming 2008 Democratic Party Presidential primaries. Edelman was that extreme a neocon: he demanded it even of a Democratic Party politician who would soon be running for that Partys Presidential nomination and needing to fool her Partys primary voters in order to have any realistic possibility to receive her Partys nomination.

Edelman was nonetheless appointed by the US Senate on 12 August 2011 to be a Director of the Orwellianly (Newspeak) named US Institute of Peace, and he still is a Director of that pro-US-aggression propaganda-organization.

The other co-chair of this Commission, and of its report, Admiral Roughead, is a Director of Northrop Grumman, which is America's fifth-largest manufacturer of mass-murdering machines, and he also is a writer for the neoconservative Brookings Institution, where, in February 2013, prior to the post-2014 soaring US defense budgets, he co-authored a report, "National Defense in a Time of Change saying:

Our spending [on defense] now constitutes 46 percent of the entire worlds allotment (IISS 2012, 31). The next highest is China, with a reported budget of $89 billion, although this figure is surely underreported and does not account for disparities in compensation, procurement, and infrastructure costs. A remarkable chasm of commitment to strong military forces exists between the United States and most other countries. Comparisons of defense spending as a percentage of gross domestic product do not capture the magnitude of US spending nearly as well as do per capita expenditures, which give a snapshot weighted by population but absolute in terms of input. Our country spends $2,250 per person on our military forces every year; Russia spends $301 per person, Iran $137, and China $57 (IISS 2012, 467473).

So, now that this Grumman Director is working under a President (Trump) who is even more neoconservative than was Obama (or maybe even than Senator Clinton), hes screaming for yet more money for himself and his investors, in the form of increasing defense-contracts.

CONCLUSION

Thats whom Americas troops are actually fighting for  the owners, and their executives  people who want more money and dont care about the millions of people around the world that they help to kill and the millions of others whose continuing lives they make hellish (including even some destitute Americans who need the social services that will be cut in order to fund purchases of yet more bombs and missiles). Americas masters today are such psychopaths as this. Even 46% of the entire worlds military budget isnt enough to satisfy them. Most individuals who become convicted and executed arent nearly as harmful as these people are, who ride so high the American nation, and (they demand) the entire world. Theyre like Hitlers Nazis, but on nuclear steroids. And the US Congress appointed this Commission.
The US announced its withdrawal from the INF Treaty without having an intermediate ground-based missile to deploy. It made arms control pundits wonder what triggered this decision. Even if the China threat were not exaggerated and Russias alleged treaty violations were true, there would be no explanation for National Security Adviser John Boltons statement that the US was leaving the landmark agreement with no land-based intermediate range weapon of its own nearing operational status. Picking up useful bits of information here and there is the best way to find answers to hard questions. It takes time but the effort pays off.

According to the US Naval institute (USNI), the Navy has set up a program office within its Strategic Systems Programs (SSP) to address the conventional prompt global strike mission handed by the Defense Department to the sea service. According to SSP Director Vice Adm. Johnny Wolfe, who spoke this month at the annual Naval Submarine League symposium, each service will field some sort of hypersonic capability to contribute to conventional prompt global strike. We have a program, we are funded, and were moving forward with that capability, which is going to be tremendous to allow our Navy to continue to have the access they need, whether it be from submarines or from surface ships, the admiral noted.

The sea service is to spearhead the effort by developing the hypersonic glide body that all the services will use. The platforms are yet to be determined as the Navy is intentionally keeping its options open.

The idea is to have a booster going up to the upper atmosphere or outer space and a hypersonic glide vehicle able to maneuver while descending to defy air defenses and strike moving targets. With the Avangard operational, Russia is the only country to have such a weapon today.

Unlike the US Air Force, the Navy has been doing its research in high hush-hush mode during a number of years. The first conventional global strike missile test to collect data on hypersonic boost-glide technologies was conducted by the service on October 30, 2017. Initially, it was planned to be held till the end of 2016 but had to be postponed. The glider flew about 2,000 nautical miles (3,800 km) from the Hawaii to the Marshall Islands fired from a ground-based launcher. The $160 million test was a success. The Navy could eventually deploy the conventional strike system on either Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines that have been converted to launch cruise missiles (known as SSGNs) or Virginia-class attack submarines equipped the Virginia payload module.

The DOD budget request for FY2019 indicates that it will conduct a second flight test by the end of FY2020.The funding for the program goes to the Navy. The Congressional Research Service report says, The funding for the program is expected to increase significantly, from a request for $278 million in FY2019 to a request for $478 million in FY2022, for a total of $1.9 billion between FY2019 and FY2022. This is more than twice the amount expected over a five-year period in the FY2018 budget request. If attack submarines can accommodate the weapon, US Navys destroyers and cruisers can do it too. One can imagine the number of sea-based PGS weapons in service when mass production process starts running smoothly.

Installed on Virginiaclass boats, the missile will be excluded from the verification procedures in accordance with the New START Treaty. The weapon under consideration is a sea-based one. At first glance it has no relation to the INF Treaty but not so fast. The Defense Department said the Navy is responsible for a universal weapon to be used by all services, including the Army. The Hawaii missile was launched from land. Its worth to note that by announcing the plans to arm attack submarines with the new weapon the US military actually admits the violation of the INF Treaty because the Romania-based Aegis Ashore uses the same VLS Mk-41 launching pad as ships and submarines. If the PGS weapon is small enough for the MK-41 launcher, or the Virginia Payload Module, it can be installed on a mobile ground platform in open violation of the INF Treaty.

The range of 2,000 nautical miles allows the PGS system to cover most of Russias territory, reaching as far as the Arctic archipelago of Novaya Zemlya or the Siberian city of Omsk, about 2,700 km east from Moscow. Deployed in Japan, the land-based version of the weapon can also threaten China, provided Tokyo gave consent. On July 30, Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera announced a plan to deploy the Aegis Ashore missile-defense system by 2023. The military training grounds in the Akita and Yamaguchi prefectures are prospective sites.

This is a threat for China and Russia. With the Mk-41 used, one can never tell what missile is going to be launched  an interceptor or a prompt global strike missile reaching as far as Russian Primorski Krai (Primorye), the Kamchatka Peninsula where the Pacific Fleet SSBNs are based, and Krasnoyarsk, the third-largest city in Siberia, where Russia plans to deploy its new silo-based heavy ballistic Sarmat missiles. With all only land-based deployments in place, the entire Russian territory will be covered by US PGS weapons. Add to it the naval and aircraft-based PGS component. One can only imagine how strong will be the temptation to deliver a first strike to knock out Russias key infrastructure and strategic nuclear weapons sites, leaving the US strategic nuclear arsenal intact! The missile might have delivered a 2,000- pound payload over a 1,500-mile range, 80 with an accuracy of less than 5 meters. This would allow it to reach its target in less than 15 minutes. The payload is enough to fulfill the mission. True, the increased 2,000 nautical miles range will require a less powerful warhead but the US is working on a low-yield nuclear weapon.

As a result, the strategic balance will be tilted in US favor to give it the advantage of first conventional strike. Moscow will not watch idly. The weapons President Putin talked about in March were a response to US land- and air-based intermediate range advantage. Russia will do it again, if it needs to catch up. With the INF Treaty no longer valid, an unfettered arms race will start and there is no guarantee the US will be the winner. It has already started.
Senior legislators on Saturday met to study and discuss the legislative and supervisory work to foster and regulate the development of artificial intelligence (AI).







Li Zhanshu, chairman of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, presided over and addressed the study session of the NPC Standing Committee Chairpersons' Council.





The legislators said a speech delivered by Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, set the direction and made plans for technological innovation and AI development in the new era, raising specific demands for the people's congresses and their standing committees to promote the healthy development of China's new-generation AI.





They stressed upholding the Party's leadership over the cause of science and technology development and striving to achieve leapfrog development in key scientific and technological areas such as AI. They said the NPC and its standing committee should plan their legislative and supervisory work around this goal.





The NPC special committees, working organs and relevant departments should carry out as soon as possible research on legal issues related to AI, make sound preparations for relevant legislation work, and promote the healthy and orderly development of AI, the legislators said.




Know anyone who drives a BMW, Honda, Isuzu, Lexus, Mazda, Nissan, Subaru or Toyota with airbags fitted? This information could help them prevent serious injury, or worse.

In April, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Kris Faafoi announced that 50,000 vehicles with Alpha-type Takata airbags are subject to a compulsory recall.

MP Angie Warren-Clark says that there are still at least 1,269 vehicles with Takata alpha airbags in Tauranga and the Western Bay of Plenty that are needing to be replaced.

We know the cars most likely to have these at-risk airbags are older models. We need to get as many as possible of these airbags out of the cars out there in the community because these cars are transporting our kids, our whanau.

I also want to ensure people know people can have their airbags replaced for free if it is an Alpha airbag. We know it can be annoying having to put your car in the shop for repairs, but these airbags pose a significant risk.

Overseas there have been 23 known fatal cases of airbags exploding and sending fragments into the vehicle. While the risk of that happening in New Zealand is low due to less humidity in the air, which the airbags are more susceptible to, we need consumers to get on board to bring risk levels down, and keep our people safe.

A voluntary recall of vehicles with affected Takata airbags started in New Zealand in 2013, and around 29,000 of the Alpha-type airbags have been replaced. Alpha airbag inflators pose a significantly higher risk of misdeploying in an accident and sending fragments towards vehicle occupants.

A further 257,000 vehicles are subject to a recall for non-Alpha Takata airbags, with a further 116,000 non-Alpha airbags replaced already. A total of more than 450,000 vehicles are known to be affected by Alpha and non-Alpha recalls in New Zealand, and 100 million globally.

You can find a tool on the Right Car website to see if your car is covered by the recall: https://rightcar.govt.nz/takataalpha
Almost 100 people attended the 2018 Awards Dinner of the NZ Division of the Royal Aeronautical Society, held on October 26 at the James Cook Hotel in Wellington, with a good number of representatives from the Bay of Plenty and Poverty Bay.

Three award recipients from Tauranga and Gisborne brought with them good sized family groups along with others from the Bay of Plenty Branch, RAeS where the three award nominations had been originated.

The Annual Awards event includes awards made to eminent members of the aviation community, as well as members and units of the RNZAF, says Aviation Historian, Des Underwood.

Presentation of these awards were made by the Hon Ron Mark MP, Minister of Defence with Air Commodore Darryn Webb RNZAF presenting awards to the military recipients.

Invited to address those present after the dinner, Ron paid particular tribute to the men and women of the RNZAF he had seen during his time as Minister of Defence and especially to the current NZDF deployment to Antarctica where he had seen them working in the demanding conditions on the ice.

The first recipient was Andy Stevenson from Gisborne who was presented with the EA Gisbon Award for 2018. The award is a memorial to former Wing Commander Esmond A. Gibby Gibson RNZAF, who became the first Director of Civil Aviation in NZ.

The award is to acknowledge substantial technical achievement in the field of agricultural aviation or generally in the field of aviation safety. It takes the form of a silver medal, a certificate and a citation.

The award citation noted it was made in recognition of the extraordinary innovation and excellence in refining agricultural aviation operating techniques and technology in NZ and overseas for more than five decades.

The citation went on to record Andy as having founded Farmers Air Ltd, an agricultural aviation company based in Gisborne. Notably, it noted he was Chief Pilot and Managing Director and had accumulated over 30,000 accident-free house since he started in ag aviation.

After the presentation, Andy said he know of Gibsons work but had never met and appreciated the legacy he had left.

Congratulations went to Andy Stevenson on his creditable record of accident-free flying over more than five decades, says Des.

After the presentation, he was already talking of his next project around another variant of the remarkable Falco XL derived from the PAL XL 750 type.

The Meritorious Service Awards are made to recognise long term contributions and practical achievements in all sections of aerospace in New Zealand.

The award takes the form of a certificate, a citation and a Silver medal. Meritorious Service Awards were made to Andrew Gormlie and Bruce Chapman from Tauranga who are members of the Bay of Plenty Branch.

Andrew is the CEO of Classic Flyers Aviation Museum who was recognised for his enduring efforts in the preservation of classic aircraft and aviation history in New Zealand.

Bruce Chapman, a retired airline pilot with Air New Zealand and who leads the aircraft restoration at Classic Flyers was recognised for his valuable contribution to the aviation industry, flight training and work with the preservation of historic aircraft.

Among the other award recipients, Peter Beck was awarded an upgrade to his earlier Meritorious Service Award with the presentation of the Rhodium Medal.

This is the highest level of the award and only awarded once before. This award advancement recognises Peter Becks part in the recent launch of the Electron rocket into orbit from the Mahia Launch Site by Rocket Lab.
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Peter Carruthers came up with a unique way to celebrate his wife Alisons 90th birthday this week.

Peter, who celebrated his 91st birthday on Wednesday, devised a plan to take Alison to Mayor Island for the first time in 70 years - by helicopter.

They enjoyed a picnic lunch and a chance for Alison to renew some wonderful memories on Tuesday.

We have been together for 40 years and just celebrated our anniversary, says Peter. Alison speaks about Mayor Island from time to time and about the good times they had there.

I thought a bit of a sentimental journey, perhaps.

Alison has clear recollections of summer days and nights spent on Mayor Island during her late teens in the 1940s.

Alongside her family, she travelled all the way from Wellington with her father, Cyril Dentice, who became a life member of the Tauranga Big Game Fishing Club. In 1949 he caught 28 striped marlin in 11 days, with a four per day limit in those days.

The largest fish he caught was a blue marlin that weighed in at 669lb (303kg).

Alison remembers the epic journey from Wellington to Tauranga on hot summer days on rough roads, before the boat trip to the island.

Our hair would be like chalk, because the roads were all pumice, she says. It wasnt an easy ride from Wellington in those days.

Alison shared her fathers love of hunting big fish, and was one of the few teenaged women to land a big marlin back in those days.

I always said I would like to go back to Mayor Island. It is a long time ago and I would never go sword fishing again.

I did actually catch a swordfish. I had a silver badge that says I caught a fish, and I also caught a shark one day.
Katikati has proclaimed itself the Avocado Capital of New Zealand - now its time to capitalise on that status, says Katch Katikatis promotions manager Jacqui Knight.

Ideas and plans to do just that will be the subject of a public meeting in the town this Wednesday, at which Jacqui wants to see a strong turnout from locals to show their support.

We need to know weve got the community behind us, see what some of the ideas and thought are, says Jacqui.

And then from that meeting, it would be nice to get an action group together and see if theyre prepared to drive it and instigate some of the things we can do with it.

The idea has been kicking around for a couple of years, Jacqui says, but momentum to make the most of it has been building in recent months.

Weve been thinking about it probably for a couple of years on and off, having some loose conversations about it.

Then about four or five months ago some local orchardists came and saw me and said why dont we do this?

So they motivated me to take a lead on it.

Signs on the main roads leading into Katikati proclaiming the towns status of Avocado Capital of New Zealand were the first steps, says Jacqui.

We thought well lets put it out there.

The area has always been the biggest producer of avocados and weve got the most growers located here.

Other parts of the country, notably Northland, are getting in on the avocado action too, she says, so the heat is on to make the most of Katikatis preeminent position in the industry.

She doesnt see it conflicting with the title of New Zealands Mural Town Katikati has proudly owned for the last 28 years.

We dont want to be losing that branding and reputation because we are an arts community, but avocados are a super fruit and we feel we are the home of avocados in New Zealand, so we feel that we must be able to work the two together.

Business promotions around the avocado theme are nothing new in the area, so this is an opportunity to pull them together under the Avocado Capital umbrella, says Jacqui.

Weve got the Avocado Food and Wine festival thats been going for about 14 years, and thats really popular.

Through the A&P Show theyve set up a specific avocado industry trade show, so all of the growers and people in the industry are really keen and interested in that.

With the signs weve put up on the side of the road weve had financial support from Apata and Seeka, so theyre keen to get behind it and push it along.

Jacqui says groups such as the Lions Club along with Katikati Open Air Art are backing the idea, and shes been struck by the number of individuals whove shown their support.

Its all just about getting together and working out a bit of a plan.

Jacqui is hoping to get a strong sense of community buy-in at the meeting, to be held in the Information Centres Uretara Room at 5.30pm, so that she can go to Western Bay of Plenty District Council and push for its support.

It all depends on what it looks like, what were trying to do.

Part of the action theyve been taking to bed-in the Avocado Capital idea has been boosting avocado themes and imagery around the town, says Jacqui.

With the revamped Visitor Information Centre weve got the ability to reflect the avocado industry, in some of the furniture weve got here. Were getting a sculpture from the Just Avocados packing shed moved into town to be by the Centre.

Council are planning to upgrade the playground between I-site and Western Bay Museum, so Jacqui has talked to them about doing it with a bit of an avocado feel.

Ive got to come up with some ideas of what that might look like.

We need a few really motivated, dedicated people to drive it and make it happen.

Jacqui is hoping to see as many people as possible at the meeting, with open minds ready to brainstorm ideas.

Yes, absolutely, and just to show support for it so we know were on the right track and we have got the community support.

Then we just want half a dozen or a dozen people to put their hands up and say were happy to run with this and take it further.

The meeting will be in the Uretara Room at the Katikati Visitor Information Centre this Wednesday, November 28, at 5:30.

For further information contact Katch Katikati on 07 549 5250.
In todays weather forecast we are expecting cloudy periods, and a few showers in the afternoon and evening, with a chance of them being heavy with thunderstorms. Also northerlies.

Its a two-clothing layer day today with a high of 21 and an overnight low of 13 degrees. Humidity is 94 per cent.

High tide is at 9.50am and low tide at 4pm (Tay St). Theres a sea swell of 0.4m and sea temperature is 18 degrees. Sunset tonight is at 8.11pm.

If youre going fishing the next best fish bite time is between 3 and 7pm.

On this day in NZ history in 1960 'Kiwi Keith' began a 12-year reign as prime minister. Keith Holyoake led the National Party to victory over Walter Nashs Labour government, and went on to become New Zealands third longest-serving prime minister behind Richard Seddon and William Massey.

In world history on this day in 1774 a congress of colonial leaders criticised British influence in the colonies and affirmed their right to Life, liberty and property.

In 1789 George Washington proclaimed this a National Thanksgiving Day in honour of the new Constitution. This date was later used to set the date for Thanksgiving.

In 1812 Napoleon Bonapartes army began crossing the Berezina River over two hastily constructed bridges. In 1863 the first US National Thanksgiving was celebrated. In 1901 the Hope diamond was brought to New York.

In 1922 Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter, archeologists, opened King Tuts tomb, undisturbed for 3,000 years.

In 1938 Poland renewed its nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union to protect against a German invasion. In 1941 the Japanese fleet departed from the Kuril Islands en route to its attack on Pearl Harbor.

In 1949 India became a sovereign democratic republic. In 1983 at Londons Heathrow Airport, almost 6,800 gold bars worth nearly 26 million were stolen from a Brinks-MAT vault.

Today is the birthday of Willis Haviland Carrier, inventor of the first air conditioning system to control both temperature and humidity. He was born in 1876. Its also the birthday of Charles M. Schulz, American cartoonist who created Peanuts. Born in 1922, he once said All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt.

To get involved in activities around the Bay of Plenty, please check out our Whats on page.

Have a great day!
Bron Bohlar (left) and Charlene Childers (right) were also charged in the Sodus double homicide, according to officials.

SODUS, N.Y. -- The Texas man accused of fatally shooting two people last month in the village of Sodus was arraigned in Sodus Town Court, according Wayne County Sheriff's deputies.

Timothy P. Dean, 32, of Sunray, Texas, was extradited to Wayne County on Friday. He was immediately arraigned on two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of second-degree murder, two counts of second-degree criminal possession of a weapon and second-degree conspiracy, deputies said.

He was remanded to Wayne County Jail with no bail, deputies said.

Dean, a former police chief in Texas, and Charlene Childers, 25, are accused of conspiring to kill Joshua Niles, 28, and Amber Washburn, 24, in Sodus. Niles and Washburn were shot and killed Oct. 22 in the driveway of their home at 29 Carlton St. in Sodus. The couple's 4-year-old son was in the back seat of a car in the driveway at the time. The boy was not injured.

Childers has two children with Niles. Their children were at school when the double homicide happened, according to news reports.

Childers was charged Nov. 5 with second-degree conspiracy and second-degree criminal possession of a weapon, both felonies.

Bron Bohlar was also arrested in connection to the killings. Bohlar, 34, was arrested Nov. 6 at his home in Dumas, Texas, deputies said. He is accused of being part of the conspiracy that led to the deaths of Niles and Washburn.

Bohlar, a police officer in Sunray, Texas, was charged with second-degree conspiracy, a felony, deputies.

Deputies said the investigation is continuing.
James Mustich Jr. has written '1,000 Books to Read Before You Die.' Says columnist Danny Heitman: 'I doubt I'll tackle his thousand books, or even a hundred of them, before I die. But in a new year, it's nice to dream.'
The city-parish is projecting a $500,000 boost in revenue from its red-light camera program in 2019 after renegotiating its deal with the Arizona-based private contractor that runs the system.

The renegotiated contract will give the city-parish an approximately 25 to 30 percent increase in on the rate of return on the tickets that are paid, said Darryl Gissel, the city-parish's chief administrative officer.

"We've been going through all the city contracts to see what we could renegotiate," Gissel said. "There has been an overall effort from the mayor to look at contracts in general to see what we could do to bring better value to the city."

The $500,000 in increased revenue was highlighted in Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome's budget proposal for next year.

The new pricing structure of the city-parish's extended contract with Arizona-based American Traffic Solutions goes into effect Jan. 1. The 12-month agreement includes four annual options for renewal.

Historically, only a fraction of the people who get tickets in the mail for running red lights in East Baton Rouge Parish actually pay them. Only 38 percent of those who received 72,847 first notices of violations in 2017 actually paid them.

The city-parish has the legal authority to boot vehicles with unpaid red light tickets, to report the debt to collection agencies and to request money from offenders through small claims court. However, those options have not yet been exercised.

Gissel said the mayor's office is still evaluating the options they have to collect the more than $43 million in unpaid red-light camera fines still owed the city from tickets issued over the past 10 years since the program was implemented.

The amount ATS gets off the top as a fee from those who do pay the tickets has been a concern for some Metro Council members, including Erika Green. She said she doesn't think the city-parish is getting its fair share of what is collected.

"I know they renegotiated the contract, but I'm still not impressed with it," Green said.

The new pricing structure moves away from ATS earning a percentage of the gross revenue from paid red light tickets to a flat fee rate, which Gissel said will mean a bump in revenue for the city-parish.

Drivers, on average, are fined $117 per ticket for ignoring red light signals, and an additional $35 in late fees after 60 days and then another $15 when the tickets go unpaid for 90 days.

As of Aug. 1, about 6,900 red-light tickets were issued every month in 2018. That generated approximately $217,000 a month, according to city records.

According to the mayor's proposed budget for 2019, the annual revenues from the red-light camera program has hovered around the $2.5 million mark since 2010. Revenue from red-light camera tickets are expected to hit $3.5 million in 2019.

According to previous reports one Baton Rouge man had amassed more than $26,000 in unpaid tickets and late fees, topping the city-parish's top 20 violator list.

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Over the life of the program, half of the people who receive tickets pay them on first notice.

"All of this just came up, and it's just the mayor's second year (in office)," Gissel said. "We just need to sit down a figure out the method we'll use to address it."

The city remains dedicated to making the program work, Gissel said.

Gissel claims the parish's historic data shows that 86 percent of the drivers who are ticketed for running red lights pay and never receive another ticket for blowing through red lights.

In addition to the new pricing structure, the amended contract with ATS also gives the city-parish the ability to add more red-light cameras at traffic intersections at no cost extra cost. There are currently 24 red-light cameras posted at intersections throughout Baton Rouge.

Gissel said there have been preliminary discussions about expanding the program to include speed cameras as well.

"That's really a better option than installing speed bumps in neighborhoods," he said. "We all hate driving over those things. And they also cost about $5,000 a piece."
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Jefferson Terrace Elementary is slated to be rebuilt on 20 acres of nearby vacant property, with construction scheduled to begin in February.

Students will likely leave their current campus on Cal Road for a new school on Azrok Avenue a few blocks away in August 2020. The new, two-story building will hold nearly twice as many students as Jefferson Terrace does now, accommodating middle-schoolers in addition to elementary school pupils. Enrollment is expected to reach 830 students, up from its current 420.

Voters approved a new school for the property in 2008 when they renewed a 1-cent sales tax earmarked for education. The project name has been variously Jefferson Home Sites or "Jefferson Homesite, but residents will get a chance to settle on the best name for the planned school at a public forum at 6:00 p.m. Monday inside the school at 9902 Cal Road.

GraceHebert recommended to design new K-8 school in Jefferson Terrace After a two-month delay, the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board on Thursday recommended GraceHebert Architects of Baton Rouge to design a ne

The new facility is being designed by GraceHebert Architects of Baton Rouge in collaboration with Omaha-based DLR Groups. GraceHebert and DLR jointly designed Lee High, which was recently rebuilt and reopened in 2016.

Residents and parents heard a presentation on the plans for the school at a forum Sept. 10, and the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board received the plans last week.

Marcus Williams, program director with CSRS/Tillage Construction, the private partnership that oversees most school construction in Baton Rouge, did the talking.

I went to Jefferson Terrace so this project is of personal interest to me, Williams told the board.

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Williams showed a series of artist renderings of the new school. Like Lee High, and the new Park Elementary which is under construction, the new Jefferson Terrace is being designed as a 21st Century school.

Williams showed pictures of "collaborative spaces, both indoor and outdoor, with removable partitions dividing rooms. The areas will be outfitted with mobile interactive whiteboards and movable furniture.

A key feature of the school: open learning suites instead of traditional classrooms.

You have six classrooms clustered around a common space and restrooms so that students wont have to leave to get their core classwork, Williams said.

Williams said that construction bids have yet to be advertised for the project, but he expects a bid opening sometime in February with a contract awarded to the winning bidder later that month.

+3 Residents weigh in on EBR school system plans for 20 vacant acres in Jefferson Terrace Vacant for decades, 20 acres in Jefferson Terrace subdivision may soon become something other than a grassy field  but what that might be is 

The 20 acres where the new school is to be built are behind the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana offices off Bluebonnet Boulevard and about three blocks from the current elementary school. Both the Cal Road property and the 20 acres were donated to the school system decades ago when the subdivision was built, but only the elementary school was developed until now.
For those of us who live in Louisiana, these November days after Thanksgiving bring another big reason to be lucky. The Atlantic hurricane season officially ends on Nov. 30, and it appears that our part of the world will be spared damage from a big storm this year.

The hurricane season officially began June 1 and it concludes each year at the close of November. Thats the period when hurricane formation in the Atlantic is most likely. But Mother Nature doesnt always read our calendars, and she sometimes has a mind of her own. Tropical Storm Alberto developed on May 25  the fourth consecutive year that such a storm emerged before the official start of hurricane season.

Alberto proved an omen of an eventful season of bad weather. In September, Hurricane Florence struck the Carolinas, lingering for days and causing widespread flooding. For residents of the Baton Rouge area, Florences rains brought vivid reminders of the Great Storm of 2016, when an unnamed storm system hovered over the region, leaving much of the area underwater. As in 2017, when Hurricane Harvey drowned Houston, Louisiana residents looked to the devastation in North and South Carolina with a There-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I attitude.

Florence alone would have made this years hurricane season one for the record books. But last month, Hurricane Michael struck Florida, bringing more misery to the southeastern United States.

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, so deeply etched in public memory since they ravaged Louisiana in 2005, gave us an enduring sense of what storms can do, an awareness renewed by Hurricane Gustav in 2008.

That reality informed hurricane preparations in Louisiana this year, as the development of storms in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico prompted contingency plans in case the storms hit Louisiana. Were lucky the storms went elsewhere  and also fortunate that officials took measures to prepare for the worst.

Our Views: Been there, done that with FEMA, Congress Thousands going to live in motels, more thousands on the phone or the computer for hours to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

But Louisiana didnt turn its back on those in the path of dangerous hurricanes this year. Relief workers and volunteers traveled to Florida and the Carolinas to help with the response and recovery. The Cajun Navy, of course, led the charge.

Someday, well need to again rely on the kindness and courage of our fellow Americans when a hurricane comes our way.

For this year, though, we should be grateful that we dodged a bullet.
A U.S. Appeals Court panel in New Orleans has just unanimously reversed its own unanimous ruling of two months ago.

Such a prompt admission of fallibility may be regarded either as reassuring or alarming, but it is certainly rare. Federal judges are adept at finding fault  it is indeed their job  but are not generally inclined to introspection.

The lawsuit that occasioned this judicial U-turn, was filed by three young women who challenged a 2016 state law raising the minimum age for strippers in joints serving alcohol from 18 to 21.

The plaintiffs complained the law deprived them of the right to express themselves through dance and forced them to take jobs that paid significantly less. The law, they claimed, imposed a total ban on them.

No, it did not. They remained free to perform their routines for paying customers, so long as those customers weren't buying intoxicants. Nobody goes to Bourbon Street to drink sarsaparilla, and the new law certainly forced younger strippers to find alternative employment. But they could still pursue their artistic ambitions, albeit not in their old workplaces. Unfortunately for them, it is hard to find anybody without a liquor license who is prepared to hire strippers.

It is easy enough to believe the plaintiffs' income plummeted when they quit performing onstage and joined the ranks of shot girls, whose job is to encourage customers to hit the booze. That financial loss evidently strengthened their devotion to Terpsichore and self-expression.

Their lawsuit sought to enjoin Louisiana Commissioner of Alcohol and Tobacco Control Juana Marine-Lombard from enforcing the law; State Attorney General Jeff Landry intervened on her behalf.

District judge Carl Barbier sided with the strippers, finding the law unconstitutional because it could be construed to ban displays of young female flesh in the service of high art, in say, the ballet or theater. He also found it unacceptably vague because it did not specify exactly what parts of dancer's anatomy were allowed to be visible. The state filed an appeal but Appeals Court Judge Leslie Southwick rejected it in a ruling joined by Edith Brown Clement and Carl Stewart.

The appellate judges did not agree with Barbier's ruling that the law was overbroad. Barbier had declined to rely on Marine-Lombard's assurance that it did not apply to mainstream performance art venues, but her affidavit was good enough to Southwick, Clement and Stewart to conclude that only strip joints would be affected. They did, however, agree with Barbier that the statute should be repudiated for vagueness.

That was the only sticking point. Nobody doubted that, although what the euphemism terms exotic dancers have some First Amendment protection, the locales they frequent can attract dangerous and depraved characters. The state, therefore, has a right, if not a duty, to employ whatever constitutional measures are available to prevent pimps and human traffickers from getting their hands on underaged strippers.

The plaintiffs believe that, if 18 is not too young to vote or join the armed forces, it shouldn't be too young to make a living the way they want. The courts, however, accept that the legislature is entitled to set the minimum age.

Marine-Lombard and Landry requested a rehearing, both sides cranked out further pleadings and Southwick, with Clement and Stewart again in full support, issued a substitute ruling. It was identical to the first one right until the final paragraphs, which were dedicated to the vagueness question.

First time around the appeals court panel agreed with Barbier and decided that the plaintiffs were entitled to a statute that specified precisely what they were able to wear and which parts of the anatomy could be uncovered. State law does not allow total nudity, regardless of age. This one required any dancer whose breast or buttocks are exposed to be at least 21.

That, the panel originally decided the law was unconstitutionally vague because the strippers had to guess at which point their breast and buttocks became off-limits.

On reconsideration, however, common sense prevailed. The law requires full coverage of the breast and buttocks and is not therefore too vague. These are commonly understood anatomical terms, the panel opined. The meaning of the statute must indeed be obvious if learned judges can figure it out in a mere two years.

Email James Gill at Gill1407@bellsouth.net.
NAB boss Andrew Thorburn is under sustained questioning over a controversial proposal the bank made to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) about how it would compensate customers who had been charged fees, but not received advice.

NAB wanted to not automatically refund fees to customers who had signed up before the Future of Financial Advice laws (which banned commissions).

Senior counsel assisting, Michael Hodge QC, says this was not just unacceptable but absurd.

Can I suggest this to you: It's beyond simply unacceptable, it's absurd for NAB to be suggesting that it would not simply refund the fees that it had charged for services where it had no evidence of having provided those services, on the basis that had it just stuck with commissions, it could have kept the money without having to provide a service? Hodge says.

Thorburn does not necessarily agree with absurd but he acknowledges it was too technical, and too legal.

Well, absurd - absurd is the word you've used. I mean, I think when you look back on it, Mr Hodge, I acknowledge we got this wrong. I think we were - we were trying to - we had the right intent, but it - you know, we - we were looking at it too narrowly and too technically, and once you look back on it you see it's a very - it's obvious - there was a lot of complexity.

Hodge suggests bank had a revenue reason  he tables a memo to the board risk committee that mentions potential revenue at risk.

Thorburn says its not the reason, but acknowledges it was a factor.

Thorburn: "I actually don't think that was the - the reason. I don't think that was a sort of conscious or openly discussed matter, Mr Hodge, through this."

Thorburn admitted the banks proposed compensation approach was wrong and there were consequences for him, chief legal counsel Sharon Cook, and former wealth boss Andrew Hagger.

Thorburn also maintains the proposed compensation arrangement was not unethical but says it would not have earned its customers trust.
Lucie says "whole islands will disappear" as warming lifts sea levels, and the time for thinking is running out. "We cant just talk about it, we have to act," she says. "We have to make a change." While Lucie hopes to attend the main strike event at NSW Parliament, school principal Stephen Reed has been supportive, she says. Students remaining behind are expected to be involved in school-wide activities. 'Fear' is a motivator Vivienne Paduch, a 14-year-old student from Manly Selective school, says 'striking for climate action is more important than missing a day of school'. Credit:Christopher Pearce

Vivienne Paduch isn't waiting for Friday's gathering - where the Manly Selective school student will also be a speaker - to get active. This Sunday, she'll be busy at a "Crafternoon", creating banners and honing her speech. The 14-year-old says Australia needs to cut its carbon footprint "dramatically" and soon. The run of "crazy, extreme weather events" - from the NSW drought to destruction of the Great Barrier Reef and recent unusual fires within the Arctic circle - are part of her motivation. "Firstly it's fear," Vivienne says. "I'm really scared for me and for my generation and the generations that are going to come after me from the implications of what climate change will mean. "It's only going to get worse if we don't take action now. "Striking for climate action is more important [to me] than missing a day of school.

"With all the support we've got this year, I can see it happening again next year," Vivienne says. "It's very important to keep pressure on the politicians." 'Young people have to step up' Aisheeya Huq, a 16-year-old student from Auburn Girls High School, says young people 'are going to have to face the consequences' of climate change long after the current political leaders are gone. Credit:Christopher Pearce For Aisheeya Huq, a year 10 student at Auburn Girls High School, the School Strike is a natural extension of her volunteer work for the Australian Youth Climate Coalition. The 16-year-old says her generation can't ignore climate change and environmental destruction and the justice issues that flow from them.

"Were going to have to face the consequences [from the work of] a lot of the policymakers and politicians ... due to their lack of understanding and perhaps care for the future," Aisheeya says. "Young people have realised that because we are going to be affected, we have to step up, and we have to do something about it." Politicians talk about the importance of education and shouldn't be surprised when students join the climate dots. "If you care so much about our education and what youre teaching us, why arent you doing anything about it?" she says. 'Massive emergency' Callum Neilson-Bridgefoot (left) and Tully Boyle, Castlemaine students who helped set off an Australian campaign. Credit:Eddie Jim

Students from Castlemaine, a town in the Victorian goldfields north-west of Melbourne, were the originators of the School Strike movement in Australia after reading about Greta Thunberg and also the special Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 1.5 degree report. Tully Boyle, a 15-year-old at Castlemaine Secondary College, has already taken part in several school boycotts, and this week took a train into Melbourne with other students to deliver demands to politicians. "It's a massive emergency," Tully says. "We want all governments to take it seriously." She says heatwaves, flooding and worsening bushfires are a portent of much worse to come if temperature rises reach 4-5 degrees - the course they are now on. Tully would like to see support for renewable energy and greater promotion of electric vehicles given priority.

"Climate change matters more for us," she says. "We need to fight for our future." Students from Castlemaine in central Victoria journeyed down to Melbourne this week to press the issue for urgent climate action from our political leaders. Credit:Eddie Jim Callum Neilson-Bridgefoot, an 11-year-old student at Castlemaine Primary School, has also taken part in four strike activities already. "Sacrificing a little bit of my education will help in the long term," Callum said. "I work really hard when I'm at school. "Any political leader can really make a difference - they have much more power than we do," he says. "Right now what they are doing is not enough."

Greta's actions were a key inspiration. "I was really moved," Callum says. "It was really brave and very powerful." 'It was so easy' Greta Thunberg, the 15-year-old Swedish student whose 'school strike' has drawn international attention and many followers. Credit:Anders Hellberg Greta Thunberg has seen her Friday vigils for action on climate change copied in many parts of the world, including Finland, Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands, Norway, Italy, Canada and Britain. "And Australia of course!" she says. "The thing I think surprised me the most was that it was so easy," she tells Fairfax Media, via email.

"I remember thinking before I started 'why has no one ever done this before?'" The solution, she says, is to keep climate change in front of the public's attention. "All we need to do is treat it like a crisis with headlines and news reporting all the time. And I mean A L L the time," she writes. "As if there was a war going on." Greta wants her Australian acolytes to know she is aware of their actions: "I would tell them that they are making a huge difference. I read about them in newspapers up here in Europe and it's hopeful beyond my imagination. "And Australia is a huge climate villain, I am sorry to say. Your carbon footprint is way bigger than Sweden and we are among the worst in the world."
With property prices are falling across Sydney and Melbourne, people who bought off the plan some time ago and are settling now are likely to be in for a rude shock.

Three out of 10 off-the-plan apartments that settled in September in Sydney were settled for a lower valuation than the original contract sale price, figures from property researcher CoreLogic show. That is more than double the percentage a year ago.

Many off-the-plan buyers are in for a shock when they come to settle on the property and the value is lower. Credit:Glenn Hunt

For Melbourne, the news is almost as grim, with 28 per cent of off-the-plan apartments settling for a lower valuation.

Lenders having toughened their lending criteria over the past couple of years and buyers settling with lower valuations might have to top-up their deposits or struggle to secure finance.
The ACT government has spent more than $88,000 in the past four months on emergency support for people falling through the cracks in the National Disability Insurance Scheme, as warnings of a looming market failure in the sector grow louder.

The new lifeline fund, part of $1.8 million set aside in the most recent ACT budget to address problems with the NDIS, came amid harrowing stories of people forced into hospitals and children surrendered to the government by families in crisis.

Minister for Disability Rachel Stephen-Smith has said the NDIS participant experience needs to improve. Credit:Sitthixay Ditthavong

Four years into the scheme, many of the 6409 Canberrans on NDIS support plans are thriving and the number of disability providers has shot up.

But dozens of organisations also report they have been left in financial trouble, struggling to keep essential services going after the new model saw states largely withdraw from disability funding.
Possible legal barriers include the bills inconsistency with federal laws relating to cannabis, as well as the fact that the Commonwealth Poisons Standard lists cannabis as a prohibited substance. ACT shadow attorney-general Jeremy Hanson said the Liberals would not support the bill. We support the current regime, where although there are penalties, small personal use has been decriminalised, he said. Loading We think that that strikes the right balance. We want to discourage marijuana use. It has a significant impact on psychosis, particularly for younger people and disadvantaged groups.

He had also taken note of the Australian Medical Associations submission to the draft bill. It did not support the legalisation of marijuana. The associations position is that cannabis should be seen primarily as a health issue and not primarily as a matter of law enforcement. Mr Hanson said drug dealers would be the biggest beneficiaries of the bill should it become law. Aside from the quite significant mental health concerns, really the only winners then are organised crime and drug dealers, he said. It's ill-considered. I think there are some other aspects to it. Points have been raised as to whether this would be in conflict with federal legislation, and I think it would be. We'll seek further advice on that, but when you have ACT legislation that is in conflict, then federal legislation takes precedence, so it would be struck out.

"Also, it is putting the ACT at odds with other jurisdictions. I don't think that's helpful. A spokesperson for federal Attorney-General Christian Porter said it was too early to determine the bills impact on Commonwealth law. Its not really an issue he can speculate on until the ACT legislature has considered and made a decision, he said. Chief Minister Andrew Barr, meanwhile, reiterated his support on Friday. Chief Minister Andrew Barr: Supports legalising cannabis use in Canberra, but said Canberra was not able to open the way for legal buying and selling of the drug, which needs federal laws changed. Credit:Karleen Minney

"It's not a retail model - it simply would allow for personal use, he said. He pointed out that the ACT was not in a position to be able to put in a place a retailing system to allow buying and selling of cannabis like in the United States or Canada. "If that was possible, then I would be supportive of that, but we can't, so we're not going down that path, he said. But he said it was open to the federal government change the laws. I think that will happen at some point in the future. But I don't think the rest of Australia is ready for that.

He said making small amounts of cannabis legal for personal use would have an effect on the drug market in Canberra. "It will certainly undercut the business model for those who have been in the business of supplying to people who will wish to use cannabis, he said. Loading "This would be the single most effective measure in undermining the business model of organised crime for this particular drug. You take the money out of it, then suddenly the motivation for a whole range of criminal activity is removed. Mr Pettersson said the fact that he was introducing this bill now was in line with what he described as a global movement.
Liberals must now listen to the electorate True to the Liberal trope, Matthew Guy's "concession" speech follows the template of his federal counterpart. He mentions staying true to their values and defeating the enemy, no mention of the wishes of the electorate, whom they seem to be totally out of step with. Contrast this with John Pesutto, on the ABC broadcast, seemingly about to lose his seat and graciously admitting that the LNP is totally adrift when it comes to the electorate's wishes, calling for a total shake-up of the inner workings of the party. If this is not yet another wake-up call to them we must conclude they just won't listen. Take note, Guy: when the writing is on the wall (and writ large) please take note. Victorians deserve better than this constant combative and negative to-ing and fro-ing in state politics. John Paine, Kew East It's not the right foot that needs work John Pesutto says the Liberal Party needs to "get back on the right foot". I'd say it needs to call on the left to do a lot more work. Look where the right one has taken them.

Benjamin Doherty, West Melbourne Remembrance of things past I long remember the refusal to have a royal commission into banking and the terrible cruelty to tens of thousands of sheep. I remember a seemingly decent prime minister losing his job and his opponent making favours to his mates while refugees and their children suffered. I remembered that I'd voted Liberal for the past 20 years until Saturday, and I also remembered to vote. But did I remember this was a state election? Creighton Parker, Blackburn North Work on policies and winning will come

Blame and subsequent self-destruction are pervasive in politics. The Liberal Party needs to realise its policies and presentation of unattractive outdated plans no longer resonate with voters. Every Liberal politician, many of their party members and so-called supporters in business need to get out of the Howard-era and into the 2020s. They need to get attractive policies that appeal. The policies will "attack" the opposition, that is how you win. Ross Kroger, Highton FORUM Not right way I have never written to a newspaper since migrating to this country 47 years ago. From my first vote, I have always voted Liberal. On Saturday, I voted Labor for the first time. If the federal Coalition believes that change was based solely on state issues, they need to know I will be voting against them in the federal election as well. The lurch to the conservative right is the reason. They can continue to delude themselves and court a federal bloodbath or wake up and reclaim the middle ground.

Belinda Lim, Canterbury Not a policy I was amazed when watching the TV election coverage to see a slogan sign at the base of the Liberal podium that read "jail the gangs". With such a puerile sentiment masquerading as a policy statement no wonder the result. Daniel Holding, Melbourne Not in control

Perhaps the LNP vote is so dramatically down because Coalition supporters became so convinced by the strident claims of their federal and state MPs that crime is so out of control in Victoria that they were too afraid to come out on the streets to visit a polling booth. Peter Fleming, Briar Hill Labor changes All we need now is Malcolm Turnbull to join the Labor Party, replace Bill Shorten as leader of the ALP, blitz the next election and almost everyone will be happy. Anthony Palmer, Croydon

Jewel to thorn Victoria, once the jewel in the crown of the Liberals, is now its crown of thorns. The election result is as much a vote of confidence for a progressive state Labor government as it is a rejection of federal LNP policies, on which Matthew Guy ran hard, fast and loose. It is a portend of what is in store for the Liberal Party at the next federal election. Harry Kowalski, Ivanhoe Eating out Peter Dutton's dire warnings of dangers from so-called African gangs did not stop me from going out to dinner at night. And I'm certainly going out this week to celebrate the community's rejection of unfounded scaremongering.

Maria Millers, Emerald Dark side no more The best few words from Dan Andrews after the election? "We didn't go to the dark side." Maybe that will be the last we hear of the divisive language around race and crime. Wendy Logan, Croydon North Injecting room

The safe injecting room in Richmond survives and the callous ideologues in the Liberal Party who promoted its demise got all they deserved. Its end should only be when there's no longer a need for it and may that be sooner rather than later. Tony Delaney, Warrnambool Pot, kettle, black The Prime Minister Scott Morrison saying on Insiders how Labor has not learned by its mistakes is like calling the kettle black when you look back on his record on mistakes, that is, saying there's no need for a royal commission into the banks for two years. If he is going to call out other people's mistakes the prime minister might be better off first looking in his own backyard. Dermot Mcintosh, Bacchus Marsh

Swing effect Now that Hawthorn is a swinging seat will the railway level crossings at Toorak and Tooronga roads be transformed? Rob Evans, Hawthorn East Looking to future The election results suggest that voters don't live in fear, but do have an interest in a big picture for the future.

Hugh McCaig, Blackburn Stuck in past If the Liberal Party thinks this loss is just about the campaign strategy, it is destined to lose many more elections. The campaign was hampered by attitudes and policies from a bygone era, and until the party wakes up to changed attitudes in Australian society, it is long doomed to failure. Addressing issues related to climate change and refugees, and being inclusive of the diverse nature of Australian community  gender, religion and race, for example  will be essential to rebuilding a connection with the average Australian. One fears, however, that until some high-profile individuals decide it is time to hang up the boots the party will continue to be riven internally by such matters. The Australian community is the worse for such divisions, as it hampers the national political agenda. Gary Heard, Kew

Proud Victorian I'm not proud to be an Australian, but I'm certainly proud to be a Victorian. Anne O'Keefe, Collingwood A loud voice Victorians have voted loud and clear against the divisive "fake news" of lawlessness, African gangs and violence on our streets spread by the Liberals and some parts of the media.

It is now time to reach out, help, support and welcome "new African Australians". We did it after WWII and Vietnam. We must do it again. When you next head out to your local Indian or Italian or Greek or Chinese or African or Vietnamese restaurant, sing proudly "I am, you are, we are Australian". I hope Matthew Guy and the Liberal Party reflect and start to work on building compassionate and generous policies. There has been too much fearmongering, labelling and isolating. Lorraine Ryan, Templestowe Fix the ratio It is patently wrong that a party can win a seat with 0.6 per cent of the vote ahead of a party with 9.3per cent of the vote. The current Federal Parliament has suffered from the same problem. Among my many hopes and wishes for the newly elected Victorian government is that this assault on democracy will be addressed and remedied.

Margaret Callinan, Balwyn Change the law Victoria's electoral laws must be changed before the next election to prevent people like "preference whisperer" Glenn Druery making a lot of money from the electoral system. Under his systems tiny political parties, that almost no one votes for or wants, get seats in the upper house and can potentially control the government elected in the lower house. This is an abuse of democracy and must be stopped. The federal government and other states have outlawed this  Victoria must do so too. Grant Nichol, North Ringwood Still waiting

Throughout this year the Turnbull government followed by the Morrison government assured me that "they would force energy prices down", that I would save several hundred dollars a year due to the pressure that would be applied to the energy companies. Well, it is almost December and I am still waiting for those reductions. Robert Saunders, Box Hill North Terror undefined The reason that "the only form of terrorism being carried out in Australia now is by Muslims" (Letters, 23/11) is that attacks by non-Muslims are not classified as terrorism. Mass killings such as those by Julian Knight (seven shot dead, 19 wounded) and James Gargasoulis (six killed, 27 injured) apparently do not cause terror. Similarly, mass shootings in America, if perpetrated by non-Muslims, do not count as terrorism. This attitude only serves to further demonise Muslims, justifies further political attacks on their community, and no doubt increases resentment among young Muslims, conceivably leading to more attempts to strike back.

Nick Barton, Hillside It's not fair Caitlin Fitzsimmons has missed the mark (Comment, 24/11). We have lived in our home for 40 years. After we had paid it off, instead of buying a bigger home and taking overseas holidays we invested in our future. We contributed to our super and we bought shares from any spare dollars. We were simply being responsible to ensure a comfortable retirement. We are not rich, all we have is our home, super and shares. We do not claim the pension. Simply because we've been prudent, we are now to be penalised? Bill Shorten says "sell 'em (your shares) and get into property". We have nowhere near enough to do that. And what about the tax benefits from owning property? Are investment property owners to be penalised too? Small, self-funded retirees, who have simply done "the right thing", are going to be devastated by this policy. Martin Hayden, Aspendale Birds in peril

The article ("New freeway prompts fears for local roads", The Age, 24/11) is spot on about traffic impacts of the proposed elevated nine-kilometre Mordialloc Freeway. It's not only residents, however, who will suffer. It's also the rare migratory and endangered bird species that use the freeway alignment as a flyway from Edithvale Wetlands north to Waterways Wetlands, Mordialloc Creek, Braeside Park and Woodlands Wetlands. Local bird observers have seen the same bird at the different wetlands along the flyway on the same day. To lose this flyway to a road is to lose a vital staging post in the south-east for vulnerable migratory and local birds, and would increase bird strike. The freeway is to be entirely landfill embankment or flyovers through green wedge, parks and wetlands  a physical barrier to scenic views and native wildlife  bringing noise, lights, pollution to quiet spaces, habitats and residents. Nina Earl, Mordialloc Thanks a lot Wendy Squires espouses the value of saying thanks (Talking Point, 24/11). I couldn't agree more. My only question for you Wendy is, to who?

Andrew Laird, Malvern AND ANOTHER THING Election Surely now the LNP will allow the old mares Fia Mungering and Negativity out to pasture. Michael Brinkman, Ventnor

"Jail the gangs" didn't work out too well, did it? David Hamilton, Hawthorn How gratifying that most Victorians rejected the Trump-style politics of fear, division, innuendo and negativity adopted by Matthew Guy and Liberal Party. Phil Alexander, Eltham Property developers better cancel that celebratory dinner with Matthew Guy.

Matt Mackay, Melbourne Surprised to see so many Labor supporters at their election night function given that we are apparently all afraid to go out at night. Ray Pilbeam, Canterbury Wow, I got my marginal seat. I better get the welcome mat ready for 2022. Andy Wain, Rosebud

The first entity climate change is going to make extinct is the Coalition. Ian Hetherington, Moama Peter Dutton  Victorian Labor's secret weapon. Geoff McNamara, Newry At least the election whitewash of the Liberals should give them pretty good priority picks in the next draft.

Max Horton, Adelaide, SA I'm moving to Victoria. Joe Valence, Cherrybrook, NSW The result proves Victoria needs to secede from the rest of Australia. Jonathan Lipshut, Elwood

The Liberals were right. It's scary for them on the streets of Victoria. Sarah Bone, Wonthaggi I'd like to join all Victorians in welcoming the Black Knight as the new leader of the Victorian Liberal Party. Bob Blanchett, Clifton Hill Election Day 2018  a Danbuster.
Nonetheless, even the short-lived shift emphasises the erosion of support faced by the Coalition in seats previously considered sacrosanct. Hawthorn and Caulfield still in the balance After 53 Years, the Liberals could still lose the blue-ribbon seat of Hawthorn, with the seat of Caulfield also in play. With 68% of the vote counted this morning, Hawthorn incumbent Liberal MP John Pesutto has 50.09% of the vote. With postal votes tending to favour the Liberal Party, Fairfax election analyst Tim Colebatch predicts that the Liberal Party will retain the seat.

Mr Pesutto was not so confident last night, however, as the electoral disaster unfolded on live TV. Somethings gone horribly wrong he said. Held by the Liberal Party since 1955 and passed from former Premier Ted Baillieu to Mr Pesutto in 2014, loss in the seat of Hawthorn emphasises the wipe-out faced by the Coalition in seats previously considered safe. By 9pm, Labor candidate John Ormond Kennedy was in front in Hawthorn with a stunning 11.1 per cent swing.

Mr Pesutto, the Shadow Attorney-General, was obliged to watch the loss of what had previously been considered an unloseable seat from the ABC TV panel, with nowhere to hide. He delivered live what sounded like a concession speech while he trailed by just 2.5 per cent. You get a short time on the stage in politics its a difficult road back. John Kennedy is a very decent man, and Ive enjoyed being on the campaign trail with him, Mr Pesutto told ABC. Shadow attorney general John Pesutto looks like he may lose his blue-ribbon seat of Hawthorn. Credit:Simon Schluter A former school teacher born and raised in Sydney, Mr Kennedy received 38.9 per cent of the federal vote when he ran against federal treasurer Josh Frydenberg in Kooyong in 2013.

Once upon a time we were regarded as a bunch of ratbags in these parts, Mr Kennedy told The Age. Now Labor is becoming more and more acceptable in the eastern suburbs." Mr Pesutto identified new high-density residential buildings as crucial in swaying the outcome. I never regarded Hawthorn as a safe seat. Theres a lot of people coming and going, he said. To take advantage of those new voters, Mr Kennedy says he attended all 11 days of pre-polling, crucial in a seat where approximately one quarter of residents voted early.

Throughout the campaign I certainly thought people were really cynical about law and order. Labor seemed to be more substantial, and Andrews has done a good job, he added. Labor's Sorina Grasso achieved a swing of almost 10 per cent against Liberal MP David Southwick. Credit:Paul Sakkal In Hawthorn on Sunday morning, residents appeared to going about their business unsuprised by the race. Terri Golder voted for Labor for the first time after being a lifelong Liberal voter. She believed the Liberals' complacency in the traditionally blue Hawthorn seat contributed to their poor showing.

It very much felt like they were riding on the fact that electorate would suport Liberals and they really hadnt invested much effort into convincing people that they still needed to back the Liberals. This lack of effort was especially prominent in the Liberal's campaign, Ms Golder said. "I thought it was a bit of a lazy campaign,'' she said. She also said that Labors policies focused on the daily things voters were concerned about, like roads. It very much felt like they were riding on the fact that electorate would support Liberals and they really hadnt invested much effort into convincing people that they still needed to back the Liberals.

For Daniel Gent, 26, this was similarly the first time he had chosen not to vote for the Liberal Party, instead putting them last on his ballot. He voted for the Reason Party first. They really needed to be sent a message, I think", he said. He was not surprised it turned into a close race and believed the Liberal Party's federal issues in the last six months was a contributing factor to their loss. "If they hadn't outed Turnbull I don't think they would have had the same issues.'' He didn't think the Liberal's crime and order messaging was effective. "Daniel Andrews campaign was a lot better than Guy's because he was promoting way more public health initiatives and Guy was campaigning on terrorism which is a really minor issue in the grand scheme of things.. "I think the Liberals were aiming at the wrong thing to start with." "Guy played on fear and Andrews played on the future."

Kerri Hart, 52, who voted Liberal, was surprised at the size of the swing. "People were predicting a swing but I didn't think it would be so large. "I think maybe we didn't hear a lot from Matthew Guy so he just wasn't as obvious, maybe Labor was more obvious." Cautious optimism in Caulfield Labor has declined to declare victory in the blue-ribbon Liberal Party seat of Caulfield, held by Shadow Energy Spokesperson David Southwick. By the end of last night, with 70% of the vote counted, the Liberal Party had garnered 52.92% of the vote.

Never held by Labor in the seat's history, the Labor candidate Sorina Grasso has seen an almost 4 per cent primary swing towards her. Addressing Labor's Caulfield rank-and-file, a largely Jewish demographic, Ms Grasso said "it's looking really, really good". "It's been a wild ride," she said. "Thank you all for accepting and supporting me." Ms Grasso reserved special thanks to the now-federal candidate for McNamara Josh Burns, who in 2014 as the candidate for Caulfield achieved a significant swing to Labor to bring it within the party's reach. She was cautiously optimistic of snatching the seat, noting the need to wait until pre-poll votes had been counted.
Amid the ashes of the Coalition's scorched earth following Labors stunning election win, its easy to overlook the Herculean challenge Matthew Guy accepted when he became opposition leader just under four years ago.

He took the helm of a punch-drunk Coalition that had served just one term in government and achieved precious little in building infrastructure projects.

Opposition Leader Matthew Guy concedes defeat on Saturday night. Credit:David Crosling

In the early days of the Labor government, Premier Daniel Andrews repeatedly taunted his opponents about their record of inertia, saying they did nothing and built nothing.

Against this backdrop, Mr Guy deserves at least some credit for maintaining a cohesive and united team - an incredibly tricky task after losing government.
The Liberal Party may still hold some blue-ribbon seats thought lost in Saturday night's bloodbath, including the wealthy electorate of Hawthorn which its incumbent, shadow attorney-general John Pesutto, was forced to watch swing wildly on live television on Saturday night.

With 68 per cent of the vote counted on Sunday, just 53 votes separated the Liberal incumbent and his Labor opponent John Ormond Kennedy.

The Age's election analyst Tim Colebatch said at noon the seat now looked likely to return to the Liberals, albeit by a razor-thin margin and 8.6 per cent swing to Labor.

"Postal votes tend to favour the Liberals," he said. "Pesutto will probably hold the seat."
Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg is "unable" to testify at a rare joint hearing with lawmakers from seven countries  representing more than 368 million people  who remain frustrated about the social media giant's handling of misinformation online.

Instead, Facebook will dispatch Richard Allan, the company's vice president of policy solutions, to answer questions at a hearing this week featuring top policymakers from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Ireland, Latvia, Singapore and the United Kingdom, according to representatives from the UK.

Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer and founder of Facebook. Credit:Bloomberg

Zuckerberg's decision against testifying at the global gathering could add to Facebook's woes with governments around the world, which have grown frustrated with the company's business practices. It's uncommon for seven countries to band together and seek to question a chief executive, reflecting the heightened threat of regulation and other punishments now facing Facebook and its peers in Silicon Valley.

In Europe, lawmakers recently have taken aim at the way social media companies handle users' personal data and combat hate speech and terrorism online. The European Union previously grilled Zuckerberg at a short, controversial hearing in May. In Brazil, meanwhile, Facebook has had to battle back misinformation on its site during the country's most recent election, while WhatsApp emerged as a major flash point for candidates who felt it had been deployed deliberately to spread falsehoods.
In a sign of worries ahead, Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite tweeted after the deal was endorsed in the summit chamber that the exit process was "far from over". Barnier called the package a basis for close future ties, insisting: "We will remain allies, partners and friends." French President Emmanuel Macron said the Brexit vote showed Europe needed reform. He stressed that Paris would hold Britain to tight EU regulations, notably on the environment, in return for giving it easy trade access. The departure of a nation long sceptical of deeper EU integration was, Macron said, neither a moment for celebration nor mourning, but Britons' free choice.

'This is the maximum we can do' Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, whose country is one of Britain's closest trading partners, praised May's handling of the difficult negotiations and said he was confident that she could see the deal through parliament in the coming weeks. Loading But he also had a warning for those in May's Conservative party as well as the Labour opposition who argue that a better deal can still be done before Britain leaves in four months if lawmakers deny her minority government support on Brexit. "This is the maximum we can all do," Rutte said, shaking his head when asked if the EU might make more concessions.

Saying the EU "hates" Brexit, Rutte said: "Nobody's winning  we are all losing." But, he said, the deal was an acceptable compromise for all that gave May a chance to clinch a solution. The biggest question now facing the EU is whether May's divided minority government can steer the deal, which foresees London following many EU rules to keep easy trade access, through fierce resistance in parliament in the coming weeks from both supporters and opponents of Brexit. Lithuanian President Grybauskaite said there were at least four possible outcomes if parliament blocks the package. She named three - that Britons would hold a second referendum, hold a new election to replace May or return to Brussels to try and renegotiate the package. A fourth is that Britain will simply crash out of the bloc on March 29 without legal clarity. Both sides have been making preparations for such a "no deal" scenario, though the EU insists Britain has more to lose. The pound has strengthened since the deal came together over the past 10 days, but companies and investors remain nervous. Summit chair Donald Tusk said "no one will have reasons to be happy" when Brexit is concluded but quoted British rock star Freddie Mercury of Queen, who died 27 years ago on Saturday, to say: "Friends will be friends right till the end."

The 27 EU national leaders will gather for an hour or so to formally endorse the package, which foresees little changing during a transition period lasting another two to four years. They will then meet May briefly as she seeks momentum to get the package through the British parliament in the coming weeks. British opposition The Democratic Unionist Party, whose votes from Northern Ireland have helped May to govern since she lost her majority in a snap election last year, said it would try to block a Brexit deal it called "pitiful"  partly because it binds London to many EU rules it will no longer help set and partly as the DUP fears it could weaken the province's ties to Britain. In an open letter to the nation May said she would campaign "heart and soul" to get her Brexit deal through.

"It will be a deal that is in our national interest  one that works for our whole country and all of our people, whether you voted Leave or Remain," she said. Sunday newspapers said different factions in her own Conservative party were preparing alternative plans to keep Britain closer to the EU should her deal fail as many expect. Wrangling over how to keep open troubled Northern Ireland's land border with the EU without creating barriers with the Irish Republic dogged much of the Brexit talks. Another relic of the imperial past, Britain's 300-year-old naval base on Spain's southern coast, threatened to derail plans at the last minute. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez threatened to boycott Sunday's meeting if he did not get amendments to the deal to ensure Madrid gets a say in Gibraltar's future ties with the EU. After officials wrangled through the night, he announced on Saturday afternoon that he had such written pledges. Brussels officials said those essentially confirmed what most EU leaders had already understood  that Spain must have a binding say over how any future EU-UK trade pact might affect Gibraltar.
London: Nicolas Roeg, a British director acclaimed for a string of films in the 1970s that included the rite-of-passage Australian tale Walkabout, the psychological thriller Don't Look Now and the David Bowie vehicle The Man Who Fell to Earth died on Friday. He was 90.

Walkabout is set in the outback and stars a teenage Jenny Agutter and Indigenous Australian actor David Gulpilil (in his screen debut). As with Performance, a 1970 drama about the London rock world, Walkabout was a commercial flop on release, but steadily grew in status and acclaim.

Roeg came up through the filmmaking ranks, spending 20 years as a camera operator and cinematographer before serving as one of two directors (along with Donald Cammell) of Performance.

Film director Nicolas Roeg made his name with titles including 'Walkabout', 'Performance' and 'The Man Who Fell to Earth'. Credit:AP

It starred Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones, and Roeg would go on to feature other singers in acting roles  Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth in 1976 and Art Garfunkel in Bad Timing in 1980. Roeg maintained that the seeming challenge wasn't all that formidable.
 Flash

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Saturday that his government had reached an agreement over the future of Gibraltar.





This means Sunday's meeting in Brussels in which European Union (EU) leaders are expected to give their support to the Brexit agreement that would see the UK leave the EU on March 29, 2019, will go ahead as planned.





Spain had threatened to veto the Brexit agreement over what it considered to be a lack of assurances of its future relationship with Gibraltar, the British Overseas Territory situated on the southwest tip of the Spanish mainland.





However, following a reported phone conversation with European Council President Donald Tusk, Sanchez confirmed he would both attend the meeting and support the Brexit deal.





"We have reached an agreement and we will vote in favor of the Brexit," said Sanchez in a declaration made from his official residence at the Palacio de la Moncloa.





"Spain has achieved a historic agreement which would definitively resolve the future of Gibraltar with the United Kingdom in the coming years," said the prime minister.





"Once the UK retires (from the EU), Gibraltar's relationship with the EU will be though Spain," said Sanchez, adding that this decision guaranteed the "national interest, joint prosperity and Spain's key role in the future relationship."





Gibraltar was ceded to the UK in the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht which ended the War of Spanish Succession and has belonged to the UK ever since, much to Spain's frustration and restoring the 'Rock' to Spanish sovereignty is a matter of national pride to many Spaniards.





Nevertheless, 98 percent of the population of Gibraltar voted in 2002 against shared sovereignty between the UK and Spain, while 96 of Gibraltarians voted against the Brexit in the June 2016 referendum in which the UK voted to leave the EU by a narrow margin of 51.89 percent to 48.11 percent.
Chinese President Xi Jinping attends a signing ceremony with Dominican Republic's President Danilo Medina (not pictured) at the Great Hall of the People on November 2, 2018 in Beijing, China. (Thomas Peter-Pool/Getty Images)

Chinese Newspaper Editors Fined for Adding Three Characters to Xi Jinping Thought

Two editors at the state-run newspaper Shaanxi Daily were fined 10,000 yuan ($1,440) and 5,000 yuan, respectively, for a major political error after they added three Chinese characters to the Communist Partys (CCP) new ideological line, Xi Jinping Thought, in a Nov. 15 article.

In October 2017, the CCPs once-in-five-years political conclave, the 19th National Congress, confirmed Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era (known as Xi Jinping Thought) as the Partys guiding political and military ideology.

In the past few decades, former CCP leaders have had their ideologies included in the Party constitution, but without their names attached. The inclusion of Xis name places him alongside Communist China founder Mao Zedong as the only other leader whose name is attached to his thought. Deng Xiaopings name is linked to only a theory.

In March 2018, Xi Jinping Thought was formally written into the Chinese state constitution, further solidifying his power.

Shaanxi Daily is the official newspaper controlled by the provincial-level Party committee of Shaanxi, located in western China. The capital of Shaanxi is Xian, a city that served as the imperial capitals of many Chinese dynasties.

According to Shaanxi Daily internal documents acquired by Hong Kongs South China Morning Post, on Nov. 15, Liu Hui, the editor of Shaanxi Dailys Science and Education & Culture pages, added the three Chinese characters meaning general secretary to the words Xi Jinping Thought in an article. Wang Gehua, the chief editor, signed off on the paper without correcting the mistake.

General secretary is the highest-ranking position within the CCP and its holder is considered the paramount leader of the Chinese regime. Historically, the general secretary has simultaneously held the positions of head of state and head of the militaryexcept for a few inconsistencies during power transitions.

In the early morning of Nov. 16, the papers copyediting team found the error and corrected it before the paper went to print, but the political error was subject to an investigation. Shaanxi Daily found that the two editors should take responsibility, and were fined.

Its not the first time media workers have been punished for political mistakes in recent Chinese history.

On April 23, 2016, CCP mouthpiece Peoples Daily published an article saying that Xi was the general secretary of Singapore. Because all major Chinese media published the article, for half an hour, readers across China saw the mistake.

Very quickly, the propaganda department of the CCP deleted all the articles, and announced that it had punished the responsible reporters and editors. No further details were given about the persons involved or what penalties they received.

About a month ago, the state-run Xinhua newspaper named Xi as the last leader of China in a report. Although Xinhua quickly deleted the article, it was still seen by many readers, Radio Free Asia reported.

In response to the political error, Xinhua held senior editor Li Kai, who had worked at the paper for 14 years, responsible. Li was removed from his position, had his rights to publish articles revoked, and was expelled from the Communist Party.
In this photo illustration, The Twitter logo is displayed on a mobile device as the company announced it's initial public offering and debut on the New York Stock Exchange on November 7, 2013 in London, England. (Bethany Clarke/Getty Images)

Chinese Regime Forcing Twitter Users to Close Their Accounts

Directive comes after shutdown of 200,000 accounts on Chinese social media

Dissidents in the Chinese provinces of Beijing, Chongqing, Shandong, Hubei, Fujian, and Guangdong have claimed recently that they have been forced close their Twitter accounts. Two of them, Liu Jichun from Chongqing and Pan Xidian from Fujian, were arrested by police because they refused the order.

The order comes on the heels of a cyberspace campaign in which censors shut down the accounts of more than 200,000 people using Chinese social media sites, a move that dissidents say is designed to clamp down on politically and socially sensitive speech.

Twitter, an American social media platform, is blocked in China, along with Facebook and Google, and its Asian server is in Singapore. Many Chinese circumvent the Great Chinese Firewallthe popular term for Chinese internet censorshipto post on Twitter, which is free of the censorship that exists in all Chinese social media platforms.

The Chinese Communist Partys latest action is called Clearing Up Twitter.

Wu Gan, a dissident from southern Chinas Fujian Province living in Beijing, was arrested in 2015 when he was participated in a protest in Nanchang, eastern China. He was sentenced prison for eight years in 2017.

Although Wu is in prison and hasnt posted anything online since 2015, his Twitter account @tufuwugan was closed by Chinese police on November 9, and all his tweets were deleted.

Beside Wu, the Twitter accounts of scholar Gao Yu, Chen Yongmiao, journalist Wen Tao, lawyer Qin Yongpei, internet commentators Gu He and Liu Qiangben, and activist He Depu were shut down by the authorities, the U.S.-based Chinese magazine Beijing Spring reported.

Hong Kongs Oriental Daily reported that security forces in Beijing, Chongqing, Shandong, Hubei, Fujian, and Guangdong provinces successfully carried out the ani-Twitter campaign. The report predicts that police from other provinces will follow their actions soon.

Liu Jichun is an activist in Chongqing who runs a small restaurant with his wife. He likes to forward political articles on social media, including Twitter. On Sept. 29, Liu was detained because of his sensitive posts. On Nov. 1, the police announced that Liu had been officially arrested.

American media networks Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Asia (RFA) say that Lius arrestment is related to his tweets.

Later on, Pan Xidian, an activist living in Xiamen, Fujian Province, was arrested because of his Twitter activity. Pan works in the construction business, and has supported other activists since 2010. He been been frequently threatened by police prior to his arrest.

Cai Shenkun, a well-known commentator of Chinese political affairs, tweeted that the anti-Twitter action is one of the means that the CCP uses to threaten Chinese people and silence their opinions.

In order to survive, I have to give up my writing, and say goodbye to my thousands of readers inside and outside of China, Cai tweeted on Nov. 11.

Cai has posted more than 40,000 tweets in the past 15 years. He said: I dont know when I will be able to make accurate and timely commentaries again. I hope it wont be too long, and that the dark night will pass quickly.

While Twitter has been blocked in China since June 2009, this is the first time that the Party has deleted the Twitter accounts belonging to Chinese users.

He Jiangbin, a Chinese economic commentator, tweeted: If China doesnt even allow people to comment on financial matters outside the Firewall, how can you expect President Trump to trust you on anything?

According to He Jiangbin, he is divorced and both his parents are deceased, so he has no family in China and doesnt worry about his statements having repercussions for anyone other than himself. A friend of Hes friend, speaking anonymously, told The Epoch Times that the Party authorities plan to arrest He in future.

Cao Shanshi, another famous economic commentator, tweeted on Nov. 13 after his accounts in Chinese social media were closed: If you talk deeply about medical science, the topic will touch upon the law; if you talk deeply about history, the topic will touch upon political issues; if you talk deeply about the economy, the topic will touch upon government policies; if you talk deeply about the arts, the topic will reveal your values; if you talk deeply about the humanities, it will get you entangled in the subjects of ideology and morality. is theer anything you ae free to talk about [in China]?

Sheng Xue, a well-known freelance writer, told The Epoch Times that the CCP is waging an internet war against the Chinese population to gain greater control over them.

The CCP is trying to cut off all possible means for you to survive [online], Sheng said. It monopolizes your existence, your lifestyle, your breathing, and everything you have, so that it can control you tightly.

Bao Tong, the secretary of Zhao Ziyang, the late former CCP General Secretary known for his failed efforts at political reform, told The Epoch Times that Chinas constitution protects free speech, but that the CCP was violating this principle.

The government suppresses free speech, which means the government is violating the constitution. If the Party doesnt allow people to speak, then the Party is violating the constitution. The Party doesnt follow the constitution and law, which is the same as declaring itself illegitimate.

On November 12, the CCPs Cyberspace Affairs Commission (CAC), which policies Chinas internet, announced that it had shut down over 9,800 blogging accounts in a 20-day sweep.

Then, WeChat and Weibo said that they had closed more than 200,000 accounts suspected of spreading improper information and fake news.

On November 16, the CAC announced again that it had held discussions with 10 major online blogging platforms, including Baidu, Tencent, Sina, Toutiao, Sohu, NetEase, UC, Yidian Zixun, Phoenix, and Zhihu, asking them to implement complete and thorough self-censorship.
An Australian Shepherd dog is seen Sunday, June 19, 2016. in Phoenix. (Kim Leeds via AP)

Dog Missing in Idaho Is Later Found In Memphis After Five Months

A dog that went missing in Idaho has been discovered in Memphis, Tennessee, several months later, WFMY News reported.

I was devastated, Lisa Corbett, the owner of the dog, told the station, adding that she spent forever choosing this doggie.

Missing Dog From Idaho Found In Memphis After Five Months https://t.co/jO7lCVUMe8  WFMY News 2 (@WFMY) November 24, 2018

The dog, named Jake, went missing from her home in Boise. Corbett went door to door and asked neighbors if they had seen the animal and printed out fliers and posted them around town. The woman also paid $100 to a website to send an alert for her missing pup, but Corbett later learned she was scammed.

She believed Jake, a dog she raised from a puppy, would eventually wander home, but he never came.

Friends and neighbors suggested to herafter several monthsthat she should move on after the dog was still missing. I just havent given up, she said. Not a bit. Never.

A day before Thanksgiving, Nov. 22, the dog turned up at Grace Animal Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, located some 1,800 miles east-southeast of Boise.

A woman in Memphis spotted Jake wandering the streets at night, and he jumped in her car when she opened the door, East Idaho News reported. The woman then took Jake to a veterinarian.

I just cant even believe hes here, its just so surreal."    East Idaho News.com     

Veterinarians were able to trace Jake to Corbett because the animal was microchipped.

This is a magnificent day, she told WFMY. I just cant believe it. I cant believe it.

Its not clear how Jake got to Tennessee from Idaho, but Corbett thinks he was stolen from her yard.

Corbett then traveled to Memphis on Thanksgiving and was reunited with the dog the next day, the report said. Now hes with me, and Im complete again, she said.

According to East Idaho News, a person messaged Corbett on Facebook saying they had picked up a hitchhiker near Boise who was traveling with a dog. The hitchhiker was on his way to Kentucky, and the person dropped him and the dog off in Memphis.

Corbett said the dog is in good health, although it had gotten fatter.

This guy is like a Disney character, she said of the dogs disposition. Hes so friendly, hes way too friendly.

In a similar case, a New York dog was found near Tampa, Florida, 18 months after disappearing. The dog was reported missing in Brooklyn, New York, according to The Associated Press.

The dog, named Sinatra, once belonged to 16-year-old Zion Willis, who died in a gun accident in Brooklyn, New York. Sinatra will be reunited with her family in Baltimore on Sunday.

The Tampa Bay Times reports that Rose Verrill and her family searched for the owner with the help from a friend, Jeanne Baldi. An identification chip provided a possible owners name, but the phone number was a digit off. Baldi turned to social media and found Zions father, Lesmore. He says they searched for months for Sinatra and were overcome when they learned their daughters beloved pet was coming home.

Stand by for return details  should be happening soon11.9.18 VILLAGE  WE NEED YOUR HELP!!!! LOOKING FOR    Lost and Found Pets of Hillsborough County     

The dog was also microchipped, according to a local Facebook page about missing dogs.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A Mississippi woman was involved in a Thanksgiving Day crash that left three dead, including her. (Jones County Sheriffs Department)

Driver Involved in Head-On Crash, Killing 3, Days After Fourth DUI Arrest: Police

A Mississippi woman was involved in a Thanksgiving Day crash that left three dead, including her, and it was reported she had been released from police custody after her fourth arrest for allegedly driving under the influence of alcohol.

Five vehicles were involved in a head-on crash on Interstate 59 near Pearl River on Nov. 22, WLOX-TV reported.

Shelley E. Rose, 48, of North Carolina, was traveling in the wrong lane when she caused the initial crash. She collided with a 2007 Saturn driven by Jada Bright, a 23-year-old woman from Picayune, WLOS-TV reported.

Roses van then crashed into a 2003 Nissan Altima being driven by Evans Vincent of Alabama, WLOS-TV reported.

All three drivers died in the accident, the report said.

Two other vehicles, identified by officials as a 2011 Honda CRV and a 2007 Toyota Tundra, were involved in the collision. The drivers and passengers in those vehicles were taken to nearby hospitals with minor injuries.

Two days before, on Nov. 20, Rose was arrested in Lauderdale County, Mississippi, on a DUI chargeher fourth offense. She made bail later that day and was released from custody, according to public records.

Rose was arrested in Jones County, Mississippi, on Nov. 21 for public drunkeness and was released again, public records show.

On a misdemeanor crime, its not like a felony where we can hold them, said Lt. Scott Wuertz with Ellisville police, the report stated. We are only allowed to hold them on public drunk six hours before allowing them to post bond.

Capt. Johnny Poulos with Mississippi Highway Patrol told the station that officials are trying to determine why Rose was driving on the other side of the highway.

Toxicology results have not yet determined if she was drunk or under the influence of drugs when she crashed.

Other details about the crash are not clear.

Pearl River, Mississippi, is located in Neshoba County and is around 75 miles northeast of Jackson, the state capital.

Traffic Deaths Down Across US in 2018

U.S. traffic deaths fell 3.1 percent in the first six months of 2018, according to preliminary figures released in October 2018, Reuters reported.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said that 2017 traffic deaths fell by 1.8 percent to 37,133 after traffic deaths rose sharply in the previous two years, according to final figures.

The U.S. traffic fatality rate fell to 1.08 deaths per 100 million miles traveled for the first half of 2018.

The fatality rate in 2017 was 1.16 million deaths per 100 million miles traveledthe second highest rate since 2008.

This is good news and bad news, said Deborah Hersman, CEO of the National Safety Council, CNBC reported. The total number of fatalities is not getting worse, but the situation is not getting better.

Hersman cited distracted driving and higher speed limits for the number.

There are a number of states that have raised speed limits, some now have stretches at 80 or 85 miles per hour, she said in the CNBC report.

In Texas, for example, she estimated that traffic fatalities jumped 7 percent from 2015 to 2017, in part due to higher speed limits in the state.

We know its happening even though distracted driving data is hard to come by, she said of drivers using smartphones while behind the wheel. Police reports on accidents often dont report if the driver was distracted and in many accidents, people dont self-report themselves.
Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May arrives with Britain's Permanent Representative to the EU Tim Barrow at an extraordinary EU leaders summit to finalise and formalise the Brexit agreement in Brussels, Belgium, on Nov. 25, 2018. (Yves Herman/Pool/Reuters)

EU Leaders Seal Brexit Deal in Landmark Decision

European Union leaders gave the nod to a Brexit deal at a summit in Brussels on Nov. 25, in a landmark decision that brings Britains formal exit from the bloc a crucial step closer.

President of the European Council Donald Tusk announced in a tweet that a deal had been hammered out.

EU27 has endorsed the Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration on the future EU-UK relations.  Donald Tusk (@eucopresident) November 25, 2018

The agreement comes after over 18 months of grueling negotiations that began when the UK triggered the Article 50 withdrawal process in a 2016 referendum vote that the Leave side won by a margin of 51.89 percent to 48.11 percent.

European Union chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker called Nov. 25s endorsement of Brexit a sad day, saying that Britains departure was a tragedy and tough on both sides.

Leaders of 27 EU member states took less than an hour to rubber-stamp the 600-page treaty for Britains withdrawal and the 26-page declaration outlining future trade relations between the UK and the bloc.

The main text of the political declaration (pdf) said the EU and Britain agree to develop an ambitious, wide-ranging, and balanced economic partnership.

This partnership will be comprehensive, encompassing a free trade area as well as wider sectoral cooperation  will be underpinned by provisions ensuring a level playing field.

British Prime Minister Theresa May now must persuade UK lawmakers to approve the deal. Many British members of Parliament have been vocal about their opposition.

This is the deal, Juncker told reporters on his way into the meeting, and expressed hope that May would manage to convince British lawmakers to sign off.

I believe that the British government will succeed in securing the backing of the British Parliament, Juncker said, and added that the EU would not be prepared to offer any further major concessions. I would vote in favor of this deal because this is the best deal possible for Britain, he added.

Gibraltar Anxiety

On Saturday, Tusk signaled that the deal would most likely be approved after Spain withdrew last-minute concerns over Gibraltar.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez threatened to boycott Sundays meeting if he did not get amendments to the deal to ensure Madrid gets a say in Gibraltars future ties with the EU.

After officials wrangled through the night, he announced on Saturday afternoon that he had such written pledges. Brussels officials said those essentially confirmed what most EU leaders had already understoodthat Spain must have a binding say over how any future EU-UK trade pact might affect Gibraltar.

Now it is time for everybody to take responsibilityeverybody, said Michel Barnier, the chief negotiator on the EU side, responsible for grinding out the withdrawal treaty over the past 18 months.

Still Friends

Barnier called the package a basis for close future ties, insisting, We will remain allies, partners, and friends.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, whose country is one of Britains closest trading partners, praised Mays handling of the difficult negotiations and said he was confident that she could see the deal through Parliament in the coming weeks.

But he also had a warning for those in Mays Conservative party as well as the Labour opposition who argue that a better deal can still be done before Britain leaves in four months if lawmakers deny her minority government support on Brexit.

This is the maximum we can all do, Rutte said, shaking his head when asked if the EU might make more concessions.

Saying the EU hates Brexit, Rutte said, Nobodys winningwe are all losing. But, he said, the deal was an acceptable compromise for all that gave May a chance to clinch a solution.

Anticipating a challenging road for May to secure parliamentary approval, Tusk tweeted, But regardless of how it will end, one thing is certain: we will remain friends until the end of days, and one day longer.

Ahead of us is the difficult process of ratification as well as further negotiations. But regardless of how it will end, one thing is certain: we will remain friends until the end of days, and one day longer. #Brexit  Donald Tusk (@eucopresident) November 25, 2018

Get on With Brexit

In a letter to the nation released Sunday, May said she would be campaigning with my heart and soul to win that vote and to deliver this Brexit deal, for the good of our United Kingdom and all of our people.

It will be a deal that is in our national interestone that works for our whole country and all of our people, whether you voted Leave or Remain,' she said.

The EU has repeatedly emphasized that the four freedomsmovement of people, goods, services, and capitalare indivisible foundation stones of the bloc. May sought a way to divide these in her Brexit plan, allowing free movement of goods, but restricting the free movement of people.

May reiterated that promise in Sundays statement, saying, We will take back control of our borders, by putting an end to the free movement of people once and for all.

Instead of an immigration system based on where a person comes from, we will build one based on the skills and talents a person has to offer.

The prime minister said the agreement would allow trade to flow with minimal disruption.

A free trade area will allow goods to flow easily across our borders, protecting the many skilled jobs right across the country that rely on integrated supply-chains, she said.

She said Britains departure from the EU must mark the point when we put aside the labels of Leave and Remain for good and we come together again as one people.

To do that we need to get on with Brexit now by getting behind this deal, she added.

British lawmakers are expected to vote on the deal in early December.

The UK is scheduled to leave the EU on March 29, 2019.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Watch Next:

Brexit Negotiations Explained
A group of students from all over the world and who attend The United World College of Hong Kong, pose for a group picture during a cultural performance designed to raise awareness of Human Rights in Hong Kong, 10 December 2004. (MIKE CLARKE/AFP/Getty Images)

Generous Chinese Scholarship for Southeast Asian Woman Sparks Local Criticism

Netizens direct anger at authorities for prioritizing foreigners over Chinese

A woman from Timor-Leste, a small island country in Southeast Asia, is studying chemistry in eastern China on a government-sponsored scholarship.

After she sang Chinas praises in an interview for giving her enough money to not only study in China but also support her family back home, many Chinese saw it as a reflection of deep social injustices caused by the communist authorities.

In a video interview spread on Chinese social media, the young woman said the scholarship she received from the Chinese government is generous enough to pay all her bills and also remit some back to Timor-Leste to feed her family. According to official statistics, the Chinese government gives each qualified international student 59,200 to 99,800 yuan ($8,540$14,400) each year to cover tuition, living expenses, and medical insurance.

My family hasnt given me any money. Its me who gives them money, the young Timor-Leste girl said in the video, while speaking Chinese. The scholarship is my income.

The woman said shes realizing her fathers dream. In Timor-Leste, her father suffered due to poverty and couldnt go to school. Now, even as a full-time student, she can still support her father. The woman says she plans to go back home to be a teacher after graduating from the university in the city of Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu province.

China is a developed country  the speed of development in China is faster than any other country, the Timorese woman said. Our country gained independence in 2002. The highest building in our country is only seven stories.

However, many Chinese netizens had a different take. Millions of young Chinese cant afford tuition and are forced into the workforce immediately after finishing public school. The interview with the woman from Timor-Leste sparked widespread criticism of Chinese authorities for doling out scholarships to foreigners, while failing to secure the welfare of Chinese.

According to Chinas National Bureau of Statistics, there were more than 3 million poor rural Chinese whose annual income was less than 2,300 yuan ($332) by the end of 2017. Most children in those families cant even afford to go to primary school.

In May 2013, the All-China Womens Federation said that there were more than 61 million children in China whose parents had left them in rural areas, in order to find urban employment. Most of these left-behind children, as they are known, are unable to receive a proper education.

In China, a university education is difficult to come by. In 2016, just 39 percent of the total of 19.1 million children who were aged 17 that year entered a university. And even for Chinese students who are academically qualified and whose families are affluent enough, their lives on campus are totally different from those of international students. In June, a related video, titled One Country, Two Dorms, caused a stir throughout Chinese society.

An English speaker interviewed 12 students from two universities, half of whom were international students, and the other half Chinese. The interviewer found that Chinese students lived in a shared, crowded and shabby room with limited hot water, limited electricity, and have curfews, while international students were given modern and comfortable rooms with unlimited Wi-Fi, hot water, electricity, and other services.

In January 2015, Chinas Ministry of Finance released new standards in Chinese government scholarships for international students. International students can receive 59,200 to 99,800 yuan per year. If students take classes completely in English, they will receive 5,000 yuan more.

The Chinese Ministry of Education said in July 2018 that of the 480,000 international students in China in 2017, almost 12 percent of them received government scholarships. Some 30,000 international students who received scholarships were from Africa.
Immigrant Who Killed Texas Teacher in Hit-and-Run Crash Was in Country Illegally: Reports

A man who was arrested for killing a young teacher in El Paso, Texas, in a hit-and-run crash on Thanksgiving was out on bond for a prior assault charge and appears to be an illegal immigrant, according to local reports.

KFOX in El Paso reported, 24-year-old Joel Velazquez was in the United States illegally and is now being held by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), related to his immigration status. It means he cannot bond out of jail, and if he was legally in the country, his bond would have been set for $125,000.

He was arrested for assault in 2017, but details of that arrest are not clear, according to local news outlets.

In the Thanksgiving crash, Velazquez is facing charges of accident involving death for blowing through a red light. His vehicle hit Amanda Mandy Ferguson Weyant as she was walking in a crosswalk in El Paso, WLOS-TV reported.

He then took off from the accident scene, and police found his vehicle abandoned, the WLOS report said.

Weyant, a sixth-grade teacher at Eastwood Heights Elementary School, was mourned by her family.

Hes destroyed my family. My daughter, Mandy, was the glue that held my family in place, she was my everything, said Dan Ferguson, her father, in a statement to WLOS. On the morning of Nov. 24, he was contacted by the fire department, telling him the man who hit his daughter turned himself into custody two days after fleeing the crash.

I saw where my daughter was hit and where her body was 50 feet from the point of contact. He didnt even attempt to stop to render aid, said Ferguson in the report.

This man, because of his careless actions, has destroyed a complete family, he added.

Ferguson also said his family learned Velazquez had a criminal history and was in the country illegally.

It just doesnt add up, it doesnt seem to be fair, said Ferguson of the details about his past and immigration status.

Now, Weyants family is seeking justice.

Everything was perfect in her life and to have it all taken and senselessly destroyed this is something no parent should go through, her father continued. She was my world, she was my wifes best friend but she was my baby girl, said Ferguson.

Dramatic Shootout Between Illegal Alien, Deputies in Arkansas

More than a week ago, in neighboring Arkansas, an intense shootout between an illegal immigrant and local deputies was captured on video. The suspect, 29-year-old Luis Cobos-Cenobio, opened fire at the deputy during a traffic stop, and it was later revealed in a Fox News report that ICE had also placed a detainer on him.

The suspect is being held in connection with terroristic acts, attempted murder, fleeing, possession of a controlled substance, and possession of drug paraphernalia.

Cobos-Cenobio allegedly told police he wanted to die, local reports said. The incident occurred on Nov. 14.
George Papadopoulos leaves the U.S. District Courts after his sentencing in Washington on Sept. 7, 2018. (Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images)

Judge Denies Motion by Papadopoulos to Delay Prison Sentence

A federal judge denied two motions to delay the prison sentence of George Papadopoulos on Nov. 25, scuttling an 11th-hour attempt to pin the former Trump campaign volunteers fate to a decision in a separate case concerning the legality of the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller.

U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss issued the ruling (pdf) one day before Papadopoulos was scheduled to surrender to prison authorities to serve a 14-day sentence for lying to the FBI.

Papadopoulos filed a pair of motions on Nov. 16 and Nov. 25 to continue his bail and delay his surrender to authorities. In both requests, Papadopoulos argued that a delay is in order pending a decision on the constitutionality of Muellers appointment being heard by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

In the D.C. Circuit case, an appeal argues that Muellers appointment violates the Constitutions Appointments Clause, which requires that principal officers be appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Papadopoulos, who was indicted and prosecuted by Muellers team, asserted that a decision in the D.C. case may end up reversing his conviction and sentencing.

The special counsel is investigating allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, as well as related matters. Mueller has not charged any American for colluding with Russia.

Moss ruled, in part, that Papadopoulos filed the appeal too late, ridding him of rights afforded under The Bail Reform Act.

The Court, accordingly, concludes that Papadopoulos has failed to carry his burden of demonstrating that the Court should continue his current bail status pending a decision by the D.C. Circuit, Moss wrote regarding the motion to continue bail.

Regarding the second motion, the judge pointed out that all of the evidence in the D.C. Circuit case was available to Papadopoulos for months, leaving the defendant with plenty of time to make a motion that would permit an orderly appeal.

Rather than do so, Papadopoulos waited until the eleventh hour to seek relief; indeed, he did not file his second motionthe stay requestuntil the last business day before he was scheduled to surrender to serve his sentence, Moss wrote.

Papadopoulos pleaded guilty in October last year to one count of making false statements. In the plea deal, Papadopoulos admitted to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese professor who the Mueller team cast as a figure deeply connected to Russian officials. Open-source research indicates that Mifsud has extensive ties to Western intelligence, rather than Russia.

In addition to the 14 days of incarceration, the court sentenced Papadopoulos to serve a year of supervised release and ordered him to serve 200 hours of community service and pay a $9,500 fine.

Papadopoulos did not respond to a request for comment. His wife, Simona Mangiante Papadopoulos, shared a message of support on Twitter.

If one loves you will never let you down. Mostly in the moments of need. I am there for you [George]. You dont deserve to go to jail but you will come out stronger. The world will judge ultimately. Love [you], she wrote.

This is why I will always be the luckiest guy in the world, Papadopoulos wrote in reply.

The truth will all be out. Not even a prison sentence can stop that momentum. Looking forward to testifying publicly shortly after. The wool isnt going to be pulled over Americas eyes forever, he added.

After his sentencing, Papadopoulos embarked on a media spree, alleging, in part, that he was the victim on an international conspiracy to shape the 2016 presidential election and undermine Trump. Papadopoulos alleges that British, Australian, and American intelligence services worked to sabotage Trumps team.

At least one FBI spy, Stefan Halper, contacted Papadopoulos in 2016. Halper also contacted former Trump-campaign volunteer Carter Page.

The FBI surveilled Page for one year using a secret court warrant. Top FBI and DOJ officials signed off on the warrant application to surveil Page even though it was based on a dossier of unverified claims compiled by a former British spy. The Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee had paid for the dossier through a law firm.
 Flash

Turkey is uneasy about U.S.' plans to set up observation posts in northern Syria, Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar said on Saturday.





Akar said he told the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, Joseph Dunford, during an international conference in Canada that the plans would have a very negative impact on bilateral relations.





"The U.S. move will make the complicated situation in the region even more complicated," he was quoted by state-run Anadolu News Agency as saying.





Akar underlined that Turkish Armed Forces are taking all necessary measures to protect the country from all kind of threats, including from across its borders.





He called on U.S. allies to cut their ties with the People's Protection Units (YPG) "as soon as possible."





Relations between Turkey and the United States have been strained because of the support provided by Washington to the YPG, which is regarded by Ankara as Syrian affiliates of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
John Harris, 36, is said to have escaped from the low-security Leyhill Prison, Gloucheshire, in October 2018. (Avon and Somerset Police)

Man Described as Every Parents Worst Nightmare Walks Out of Prison, Tries to Grab Girl

A 36-year-old U.K. man, described as every parents worst nightmare, escaped a prison and walked inside a school classroom before putting his arm around a girl and said, Ill just take this child, according to local news reports.

John Harris is said to have escaped from the low-security Leyhill Prison, Gloucheshire, in October 2018 and then went to the playground of a nearby primary school, according to the Daily Mail in a report on Nov. 25.

A judge at the Bristol Crown Court gave him 7.5 years in prison and sent him to a more secure prison to serve out the sentence. He also got another four years of extended license, meaning hell spend 11.5 years in prison, the report said.

Harris put his arm around a girls neck, saying, Ill just take this child after he spoke with a teaching assistant in a classroom. The assistant then escorted him to the reception office and another staff member took the other two children in the class to safety.

Harris then told the assistant that she should call the police. The school then went into lockdown, with locked doors, and lights out, the report said.

According to the Mail, Harris then roamed around the schools playground and looked into windows while trying to open classroom doors, prosecutors said in court. At 9:45 a.m., police arrived and the man told him he had absconded from prison.

I just wanted to take a child, he apparently told police. Officials at the Leyhill prison said they didnt know he was missing, the report said.

Five months before the offense took place, Harris was moved to the Leyhill prison, the Bristol Post reported. Psychiatrists had advised that he shouldnt have been transferred there, saying he posed a high risk to the public.

By that time, he had served eight years in prison over two kidnapping offenses in 2005 and 2008, the Post reported. Both incidents involved him trying to grab a child from a childrens hospital, using a knife. He gained access to the hospital by impersonating a doctor.

Harris entered a guilty plea over the October 2018 incident, but he said did it in a cry for help. He said he was attempting to get help from prison staff for his worsening mental state.

The prison was unable to give him assistance due to stretched resources, the Post reported.

Truly Frightening

Judge Michael Cullum, in the recent hearing, described Harris as a truly frightening and dangerous man, the Mail reported. You are every parents nightmare. A man escaped from prison and tried to take her away, the judge said. Her parents will never forget that, I only hope that she will. But I suspect at the age of eight it will always be known.

Your fantasies are beyond troubling, they are truly frightening, he added in the Bristol Post report.

Officials said in court that the school is now under pressure to implement more security measures following the attempted child abduction.

And the prosecutors stated: It was heart-wrenching to ring the parents of the child and try to explain and comfort them through all of their questions. They had put their precious child into our care and somewhere the system has failed them, the Bristol Post reported. Parents and children are in a constant state of fear. Is this really how we want our children to be taught? they asked.

Watch: Illegal Immigrant Shoots at Police in Arkansas After Traffic Stop
Ryan Leyba dies from electrocution in an apparently Lichtenberg burning practice. (Friends of the Leyba Family via GoFundMe)

Man Dies From Electrocution via Lichtenberg Burning While Making Christmas Gifts

A New Mexico man died while making Christmas gifts on Nov. 11, a GoFundMe page stated. He was electrocuted while apparently using a fractal burning technique.

Ryan Leyba, the victim, was making Christmas gifts with his wife by burning wood with electricity when the incident happened, KOB reported.

The couple had planned to put epoxy on the wood pieces and present them as gifts to friends and family for Christmas.

Every year we make Christmas presents together. Weve done magnets, weve just done random Christmas presents because there were times we just didnt have money to buy them for everybody, his wife Natascha Leyba told KOB.

Unfortunately, Ryans finger slipped and hit the metal of the electric circuit, Natascha said.

Ryan left behind three kids, Abby, Riley, and Van.

He lived in Gallup, New Mexico. His family hosted a viewing at Fairview Memorial Park on Nov. 19, and a memorial on Nov. 24, in the Sacred Heart Cathedral Family Center.

On the GoFundMe page, sponsored by friends of the Leyba family, Ryan is remembered as a loving and dedicated friend, son, brother, and cousin and an amazing dad and husband.

As of Saturday, 39 people had donated over $2,000 to the family via the GoFundMe page, with a goal of $10,000.

Natascha didnt describe in detail what kind of method they employed in making the gift. But its possible they were doing fractal burning, also known as Lichtenberg burning.

According to a publication (pdf) by the American Association of Woodturners (AAW) in August 2017, Lichtenberg, or fractal, burning is an embellishing technique that uses a high-voltage electrical current to produce patterns on wood that resemble lightning flashes.

The practice is named after physicist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, who first documented the technique in 1777.

The popularity has grown rapidly among wood burners.

On YouTube, many videos of Lichtenberg burning can be found uploaded by wood burners.

The AAW noted that the dangers of Lichtenberg burning have not yet been fully understood by wood burners.

The Leyba family apparently werent aware of the danger either.

They said that the electricity just went from finger to finger, Natascha told KOB.

Electrocution happens when high-voltage electricity enters through any part of the body, passes across the heart, and then exits the body, the AAW said.

At least two people have died apparently as a result of doing Lichtenberg burning, AAW added in the publication.

The AAW Board adopted a ban against the practice on May 17, 2017, based on the dangers of Lichtenberg burning.

The following is a statement AAW issued when it banned fractal burning:

It is the policy of the American Association of Woodturners that the process known as Fractal Burning is prohibited from being used in any AAW-sponsored events, including regional and national symposia, and that AAW-chartered chapters are strongly urged to refrain from demonstrating or featuring the process in chapter events. Further, the process of Fractal Burning shall not be featured in any written or online AAW publication, except for within articles that warn against its use. AAW publications will not accept advertisements for any products or supplies directly related to the process.

From NTD News
Man Killed by Officer Responding to Alabama Mall Shooting Likely Not Gunman

A man brandishing a gun while running from a shooting at an Alabama mall on Thanksgiving who was killed by a responding police officer was likely not the same man who shot a teenager and injured a young girl, police officials said.

The initial shooting took place near Footaction. Police officers said a 21-year-old shot an 18-year-old male following an altercation. A 12-year-old female was struck at some point by a bullet.

Police officers responding to the scene said they had shot to death the gunman but the man they killed, identified as Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford Jr., was likely not the gunman, police said.

New evidence now suggests that while Mr. Bradford may have been involved in some aspect of the altercation, he likely did not fire the rounds that injured the 18-year-old victim, Hoover Police Captain Gregg Rector said in a statement.

Investigators now say that more than two people were involved in the altercation and this information indicates that there is at least one gunman still at-large, who could be responsible for the shooting of the 18-year-old male and 12-year-old female.

We regret that our initial media release was not totally accurate, but new evidence indicates that it was not, the department added.

Military Man

Bradford had enlisted in the U.S. Army, said Carl Dean, a former teacher at his high school, Holy Family Cristo Rey Catholic High School in Birmingham.

Dean wasnt sure whether Bradford was still active in the Army but doubted his former student shot someone.

He was a super sweet, funny, kind and goodhearted young man who never had a bad word to say to anyone, Dean told the Hoover Sun.

When I saw this morning that he was allegedly involved in causing the tragedy at the mall last night, I was shocked and in disbelief as well as heartbroken that this young man is no longer with us.

Its not clear whether Bradford shot at the responding officers.

The victims were rushed to nearby hospitals; the 18-year-old had serious injuries while the younger victim was alert and talking.

Shoppers Flee

Witnesses said people quickly fled the scene, as seen in the video at the top of the page, when the gunshots went off.

I was at a kiosk buying some jewelry right outside the food court . and right as I was about to pay, I heard this bang, and  youre thinking Okay, probably not, and then I heard bang, bang and then, it was terrifying, and then everybody started screaming and running as fast as they could, one witness told WBRC. It was very scary.

Another shopper, Lexi Joiner, said she was shopping with her mother when approximately six or seven shots were fired. They were ordered into a nearby supply closet with other shoppers to take cover.

It was terrifying, Joiner told AL.com.

Another shopper, a high school senior, said that he went to his car and heard tires squealing as people fled the scene.

This was my first Black Friday, he said. I knew it would be crazy, just not this crazy.

Riverchase Galleria said in a statement that it was working with the police.

We are devastated by the incident that happened tonight in our shopping center. We are working closely with the Hoover Police Department and are grateful for their swift action to contain the situation. While there is no current danger to our community, the shopping center will remain closed until further notice.

Video credit: Paige Lee Barnett via Storyful

From NTD News
Stock photo of an ambulance in Toronto. (Michael Gil via Wikimedia Commons)

Missing Air Force Family of Four Found Dead in Thanksgiving SUV Crash: Police

A family of four that went missing in Montana on Thanksgiving Day was found dead in a damaged SUV over the weekend. Officials believe their vehicle crashed, citing speed as a potential factor.

The Air Force confirmed Staff Sgt. Anthony James Dean died in the crash along with his wife, 25-year-old wife Chelsi Kay Dean, and their two daughters, Kaytlin Merie Dean, 5, and Avri James Dean, 1, according to Fox News on Nov. 25.

#UPDATE: Staff Sgt. Anthony James Dean, 25, was killed in a vehicle accident near Billings, Mont. over the Thanksgiving holiday, along with his wife Chelsi, 25, and two daughters. Montana Highway Patrol discovered the accident scene early Saturday morning. https://t.co/qR6PMTVoUP  KFYR-TV (@KFYRTV) November 24, 2018

Dean was assigned to the 69th Maintenance Squadron at Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota. Chelsi Dean was also a member of the Manvel Fire Department in North Dakota.

Words are not enough during a time like this, Maj. Eric Inkenbrandt, 69th Maintenance Squadron commander, told the network. AJs family brought a light to our maintenance community, and this loss strikes each of us deeply. May their friends and family be granted the strength and serenity to get through this sorrowful time.

Officials with the Montana Highway Patrol found the crash site on Nov. 24 in Huntley, located about 10 miles from Billings, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported.

The Deans were driving from a relatives home in Caldwell, Idaho, to Ekalaka, Montana, when they disappeared. The two towns are about 260 miles apart.

Officials said they were heading down Interstate 94 when their Toyota went off the road and into a creek. Before resting in the creek, it flew into the air and hit a concrete support.

The Montana Highway Patrol wasnt able to find the SUV until a cellphone was pinged, the report said.

Missing Air Force family of 4 found dead in post-Thanksgiving SUV crash https://t.co/uXo5KXz0AZ pic.twitter.com/AjdUUzrSIp  Covensure Brokerage (@CovensureLLC) November 25, 2018

Mom and Grandma heart is broken into a billion pieces, Anthony Deans mother said via Facebook, the Pioneer Press reported. My poor babies, she wrote. I hope they didnt suffer.

All four people inside the car died at the scene, the Montana Highway Patrol said, adding that they believe speed was a factor in the crash, reported the Montana Standard publication.

A GoFundMe was set up for the familys funeral. Prior to the crash, the family was listed as missing.

No other details about the accident were available, and it is under investigation, reported the Grand Forks Herald.

The family is originally from Caldwell, Idaho, and they moved to the Manvel base when Anthony Dean was reassigned there. He worked as an RQ-4 Global Hawk crew chief, the Herald reported.

U.S. traffic deaths fell 3.1 percent in the first six months of 2018, according to preliminary figures released in October, Reuters reported.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration also reported that for all of 2017 traffic deaths fell by 1.8 percent to 37,133 after traffic deaths rose sharply in the previous two years, according to final figures.

The U.S. traffic fatality rate fell to 1.08 deaths per 100 million miles traveled for the first half of 2018. The fatality rate in 2017 was 1.16 million deaths per 100 million miles traveledthe second highest rate since 2008.

Traffic Deaths Down Across US

U.S. traffic deaths fell 3.1 percent in the first six months of 2018, according to preliminary figures released in October 2018, Reuters reported.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said that 2017 traffic deaths fell by 1.8 percent to 37,133 after traffic deaths rose sharply in the previous two years, according to final figures.

The U.S. traffic fatality rate fell to 1.08 deaths per 100 million miles traveled for the first half of 2018.

The fatality rate in 2017 was 1.16 million deaths per 100 million miles traveledthe second highest rate since 2008.

Reuters contributed to this article.
Shooting Outside Papa Johns Restaurant in Florida Leaves 2 Dead, 2 Injured

Florida police said a shooting outside a pizza restaurant in an Orlando suburb on Saturday, Nov. 24, has claimed the lives of two men and left two others injured.

The Orange County Sheriffs Office said in a news release cited by Fox News that the shooting happened outside a Papa Johns southwest of Orlando at approximately 8:05 p.m. local time.

Police said that the body of one of the victims was discovered beside a vehicle behind the restaurant. The man had been shot several times.

Another man suffering from gunshot wounds stumbled into the Papa Johns pizzeria and asked for help. He was subsequently transported to the hospital, WKMG reported, where he died from his injuries.

Deputies found two other men with serious injuries. The victims were taken to a nearby hospital, with one of the men reportedly undergoing surgery. No further information about their conditions has been released.

A vehicle was spotted fleeing the scene of the shooting, and police set out in pursuit. The car, a silver Hyundai Elantra, was reportedly involved in a crash, before continuing to flee.

Officials from the Orange County Sheriffs Office said that the 21-year-old driver of the vehicle was eventually stopped and arrested. According to WKMG, the man faces charges of evading the police. Officials had indicated the man could be connected to the shooting.

More details were expected to be released by Orange County Sheriffs Office officials on Sunday morning.

The shooting took place in the area of West Oak Ridge Road and South Orange Blossom Trail in Oak Ridge, Fla., a suburb southwest of Orlando.

The crash occurred at the intersection of Sand Lake Road and Orange Avenue, according to WKMG.

It is unknown what led up to the shooting.

Police continue to investigate.
A Texas real estate agent who went to Mexico for a plastic surgery operation has died after the procedure was botched, according to reports. (Laura Avila selfie / Facebook)

Texas Woman Laura Avila Dies After Botched Plastic Surgery Procedure in Mexico: Reports

A Texas real estate agent who went to Mexico for a plastic surgery operation has died after the procedure was botched, according to reports.

Laura Avila, 35, died on Nov. 24, days after she was placed in hospice care and was in a coma, TMZ reported.

Her fiance, Enrique Cruz, also confirmed her death: So, instead of having our wedding in Tulum like we planned, we will be having a ceremony to celebrate her life, to celebrate all the light and love she has given to the world, the Daily Mail reported.

She had went to a clinic in Juarez, Mexico, located just across the U.S.-Mexico border from El Paso, Texas, Fox News reported. Avila went there to get a breast augmentation and a nose job.

Laura Avila traveled to Mexico for a deal on a nose job and ended up in a coma and on life support. Avila's plastic surgery in Ciudad Juarez was less https://t.co/fBa7wkqrAT  SKINCARE (@skincareISA) November 14, 2018

During the procedure, she suffered complications from the anesthesia, which caused brain swelling Then, she suffered a heart attack and was placed in a medically induced coma to prevent further swelling of her brain, Fox reported.

According to the TMZ report, she was trying to save money by getting the procedure done in Mexico, rather than in the United States.

Her attorney, Larry Friedman, told the website:. She had the best of life in front of her until this tragic, unfortunate and senseless death. So that her death is not in vain, people should think of Laura before they look for cross border discount surgery.

Friedman added: They should do their homework and investigate the experience, training and track record of anyone BEFORE they sign up, adding, Always LOOK before you leap.

Cruz, her fiance, said that when he went to the Rino Center at 3:30 p.m. to pick her up after the procedure at 12 p.m., doctors said they were waiting for the anesthesia to wear off. He said that hours passed before they contacted a nearby hospital for help.

Laura Avila, 36, traveled to Juarez for several planned procedures, including a nose job, at the Rino Clinic. https://t.co/cCZ0z9ajZM  NBC Los Angeles (@NBCLA) November 24, 2018

The family explained in a GoFundMe page Avila suffered cardiac arrest for four minutes, and she was later placed into a medically induced coma to prevent further damage to her brain that was caused by the complications she experienced during anesthesia.

Before her reported death, Physicians recently began to slowly remove medications to take her out of the coma. However due to brain lesions, it is too soon to know the state she will be in from the damage she has sustained until she awakens. Laura is still in critical condition. She is currently experiencing seizures as an indication of brain injury, according to the GoFundMe.

We have hired attorneys in Juarez, Mexico, who are assisting us in our quest for her medical records so she can be better assisted. We fear her records will be altered, so aside from worrying about her well -being, we are simultaneously trying to move quickly on the legal end, wrote her family on GoFundMe.

Days later, in an update, the family wrote that she was moved to another facility.

Her fate is in the hands of God. Visitation is limited to immediate family and very close friends. We appreciate your understanding and respect towards our wishes. Thank you for keeping Laura in your prayers and for all of your continued love & support, they wrote.
The Kerch bridge is seen blocked for ships entrance, near Kerch, Crimea, Sunday, Nov. 25, 2018. (The Associated Press)

Ukraine Accuses Russia of Firing on and Seizing Its Naval Ships

Ukrainian officials accused Russias military of opening fire on and seizing several Ukrainian naval vessels in the Black Sea near the Crimean Peninsula on Nov. 25 in an apparent escalation of tensions.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called for a meeting with his top military and security officials on the night of Nov. 25, Reuters reported.

Due to extraordinary events, the president convened a military cabinet, said Poroshenkos spokesman, Svyatoslav Tsegolko, on Twitter, according to a translation.

Earlier on Nov. 25, Russia stopped three Ukrainian ships from entering the Sea of Azov through the Kerch Strait by putting a cargo ship under a bridge controlled by Russia. The move effectively blocked the ships from passing, the report said.

The countrys navy then said two Ukrainian sailors were hurt during the seizure of its ships. The alleged Russian attack happened as the ships retreated and went back to Odessa, Reuters reported.

After leaving the 12-mile zone, the Russian Federations FSB (security service) opened fire at the flotilla belonging to  the armed forces of Ukraine, Ukraines navy said.

Photo: Russian RFCGS 354 'Izumrud', a Rubin Class patrol ship, deployed at Kerch bridge has visible damage, reasons not clear https://t.co/u4eNwCseYo pic.twitter.com/JCDMtFvevg via @norestfor #Ukraine  Liveuamap (@Liveuamap) November 25, 2018

Ukraines navy said two of its vessels were struck by Russian gunfire while coast guard crews boarded them and a tugboat before seizing them, The Associated Press reported.

Ukraine also alleged one of its boats was rammed by a Russian coast guard vessel, AP reported. Russian coast guard vessels  carried out openly aggressive actions against Ukrainian navy ships, Kievs statement said, adding that the Russian vessel damaged a tugboats engine, hull, side railing, and a lifeboat.

Russia was informed in advance of the planned passage under the bridge before Russia blocked it off, Ukraine alleged.

The Berdyansk and the Nikopol gunboats were hit by gunfire and were disabled while trying to leave, the Ukraine Navy told the BBC. Later, Russia scrambled two fighter jets and two helicopters to monitor the ships.

Russias Federal Security Service issued a statement on Nov. 25, saying Ukrainian ships violated Russian territorial waters. Their goal is clear, an FSB statement said, to create a conflict situation in the region.

There is irrefutable evidence that Kiev prepared and orchestrated provocations  in the Black Sea, the FSB also told AP. These materials will soon be made public.

The Kerch Strait and Sea of Azov, under a 2003 treaty, are designated as shared territorial waters, but reports say Moscow has been asserting greater control over the area since 2015.

It also comes about four years after Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine while also attempting to broaden its area of influence around the peninsula. The annexation followed the overthrowing of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich following protests that turned into violent conflict. Fighting in Donbass in southeastern Ukraine has left more than 13,000 people dead.

Russias recent actions were a violation of the United Nations Charter as well as a violation of international law, said the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry. Such actions pose a threat to the security of all states in the Black Sea region, the statement from the ministry reads, and therefore require a clear response from the international community, AP reported.

Russian ships have violated our freedom of maritime navigation and unlawfully used force against Ukrainian naval ships, the ministry also said, according to Reuters.
NEW HAVEN  Two undocumented immigrant families, two very different results.

Salma Sikandar, a Bangladeshi native who got the OK in August from Immigration and Customs officials to remain in the U.S. while the courts reviewed her case, got more good news just before Thanksgiving.

The Board of Immigration Appeals agreed to reopen her case in conjunction with her husband, Anwar Mahmud, both of which will be heard in June.

We have an additional safety net now, Samir Mahmud, her 18-year-old son, said Friday.

Nelson Pinos, who will have been in sanctuary at First and Summerfield United Methodist Church for a year on Nov. 30, was denied a stay of deportation by the Boston office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement which affirmed the ruling by the Hartford ICE office.

There have been numerous rallies in New Haven and in Hartford on behalf of the family to encourage ICE to let Pinos stay with his family while his appeal is heard and a final ruling is issued. Pinos attorney has submitted documentation of the stress on the family, particularly his three children, Kelley, 16; Arlly, 13; and Brandon, 6.

The most recent action was an overnight prayer session outside ICEs Hartford office. The rallies have been attended by U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Gov. Dannel Malloy and Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin, among others.

Pinos, 44, arrived in the U.S. illegally in 1992 and had been working in a factory until he was picked up by ICE, which acted on a deportation order. He sought sanctuary rather than take a one-way flight back to Ecuador , a country he had not seen in 25 years.

We are outraged and appalled at ICEs refusal to provide relief for a family man who has lived in our community for decades, Vanessa Suarez of Unidad Latina en Accion said in a statement. This affirms our demand that ICE stay out of Connecticut so it can stop destroying immigrant families.

A total of eight undocumented immigrants have taken sanctuary in Connecticut churches, but ultimately six of them were allowed to rejoin their families while they awaited court rulings.

Sujitno Sajuti has been staying at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Meriden. He hit the one-year mark in sanctuary on Oct. 17.

The Rev. Vicki Flippin, pastor of First and Summerfield, continues to welcome Pinos to remain in the church for as long as he needs it.

This loving family whose future is agonizingly uncertain is going through such a very personal crisis in a very public way, and they are exhausted, Flippin said in a statement.

Several advocacy organizations, including the Connecticut Immigrant Rights Alliance, Unidad Latina en Accion, CT Shoreline Indivisible, Center for Community Change, New Sanctuary CT and Action Together CT, have pledged to continue to fight for Pinos release.

The day before Sikandar was scheduled to take a plane back to Bangldesh after 18 years here, the provisional officer at ICE granted her a stay for a year.

mary.oleary@hearstmediact.com;203-641-2577
 Flash

Mexico's incoming government has agreed to support the U.S. government's plan to remake U.S. asylum policy, The Washington Post reported on Saturday.





Citing Mexican officials and senior members of president-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's transition team, the newspaper said that the U.S. administration had won the support of Mexico's incoming government for a plan to remake U.S. border policy by requiring asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their claims move through U.S. courts.





"For now, we have agreed to this policy of Remain in Mexico," said Olga Sanchez Cordero, Mexico's incoming interior minister, who will take office on Dec. 1.





The agreement would break with long-standing asylum rules and create a new barrier to Central American migrants attempting to reach the United States and escape poverty and violence, according to the report.





U.S. President Donald Trump renewed a threat on last Thursday to shut down the entire U.S. border with Mexico as part of his administration's efforts to deter the entry of Central American migrants.





"If we find that it gets to a level where we are going to lose control or where people are going to start getting hurt, we will close entry into the country for a period of time until we can get it under control," Trump told reporters in Palm Beach, Florida.





A group of migrants, many of whom say they are fleeing persecution, poverty and violence in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, are making their way through Central America toward the U.S. border for weeks. Many of them want to claim asylum.





Thousands of U.S. troops have been deployed along the country's southern border with Mexico to help strengthen border security.
Newspapers have long argued that scrutinized government means better government. Now theres research proving the point.

Taxpayers end up paying more in communities that lose local newspaper reporting, according to a study authored by professors at Notre Dame and the University of Illinois earlier this year. They found that government officials were more likely to enter into expensive or inefficient financial contracts if journalists werent around to report on what they were doing.

This is highly relevant to Connecticuts financial situation, with state government facing another massive budget deficit this year, as well as long-term pension and debt obligations.

Journalists role in confronting these problems is all the more crucial after the midterm election in Connecticut because one political party will be dominant in controlling the General Assembly, governors office and underticket.

Were bolstering our statehouse coverage in a significant way at Hearsts Connecticut newspapers in response.

This week, we entered a new partnership with CTNewsJunkie.com for state government reporting, on top of a previous partnership we formed with CTMirror.org. Both are staffed by veteran journalists with expertise on the state budget and public policy questions.

CTNewsJunkie, led by Editor Christine Stuart and a team of writers, will provide us with up-to-the minute coverage of the legislature  everything from budget policy to municipal aid, civil rights and the social service safety net, labor negotiations, state bonding, the economy, and more.

In addition to these new partnerships, Hearst Connecticut has more than doubled its own staff coverage of state government over the past few years, with state politics reporter Kaitlyn Krasselt and statehouse reporter Emilie Munson joining veteran political editor and columnist Ken Dixon. We also have investigative reporter Bill Cummings scrutinizing some of the biggest state agencies and issues, and columnist Dan Haar writing about the intersection of state government, public policy and business.

Partnering with CTNewsJunkie and CT Mirror on some of the day-to-day news out of the General Assembly and state government will free our team to look in places where no one else is looking and go deeper into the most vital issues facing our state.
 Flash

The UN Security Council on Saturday condemned "in the strongest terms" Friday's attacks against the Chinese Consulate-General in Karachi and a market in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan.







Members of the council appreciated the swift response of the Pakistani authorities, expressed their deepest sympathy and condolences to the victims' families and to the Pakistani government, and wished a speedy and full recovery of those injured, said the council in a press statement.





The members stressed the fundamental principle of the inviolability of diplomatic and consular premises and the obligations on host governments to take all appropriate steps to protect diplomatic and consular premises against any intrusion or damage, and prevent any disturbance of the peace of these missions or impairment of their dignity and any attack on diplomatic premises, agents and consular officers.





They underlined the need to hold perpetrators, organizers, financiers and sponsors of these reprehensible terrorist acts accountable and bring them to justice, and urged all states to cooperate actively with the Pakistani government and all other relevant authorities in this regard.





They reaffirmed that terrorism in all forms and manifestations constitutes one of the most serious threats to international peace and security, stressing the need for all states to combat by all means threats to international peace and security caused by terrorist acts.





Four people, including two police officers, were killed in the attack on the Chinese Consulate-General in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi. The attackers were killed before they were able to break into the compound.





At least 30 people were killed in a separate attack in the Orakzai region of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in the northwest.




CARLINVILLE  It is best described as a dime-store novel in the genre of Peyton Place.

But 57 years after its release, it still has people talking in Carlinville.

Season of Desire, a 1961 book by former Carlinville resident Augusta Wallace Lyons, remains a topic of debate in town, particularly among older residents. Many believe that Lyons used Carlinville and some of its residents in the plot.

Certainly, I think Carlinville was the basis, said Janet Howard, director of Carlinville Public Library. But Im going on what a lot of other people have told me. Most of them think that Carlinville was used for the book.

The daughter of a Louisville, Kentucky, newspaper editor, Lyons appeared in the Broadway play Tobacco Road in the 1940s. She was married to Edward Lyons, a faculty member in the English department at Blackburn College from 1954 to 1962.

The 128-page book, which sold for 35 cents when released, looks at families, romances, society and race in Canaanville, a supposedly fictional town in the Midwest. Based on Lyons narrative, the town seems to resemble Carlinville.

Included in Canaanville are mentions of Highway 108 and West Second South Street, as well as a million-dollar courthouse. All three exist in Carlinville. In addition, Lyons fictional restaurants of The Cavalier and The Spot were actual establishments in Carlinville in past decades. A town called Litchfield was just over the county line in the narrative, another similarity.

Canaanville is set among the cornfields and is home to a college  two more similarities to Carlinville. Some of the surnames of characters in Season of Desire resemble actual family names in Carlinville, and geographic landmarks also are loosely referenced.

However, the book is hardly flattering. Lyons characters and plot twists portray a seamy underside to small-town life and paint both Canaanville and its locals in a negative light, with graphic sexual situations and adult themes.

Older Carlinville residents still debate the actual identities of the characters and try to trace the subplots to real life in the community.

Most agree, though, that Carlinville was the basis for the novel.

Why Lyons may have used Carlinville for the book is unclear. Some believe she never felt fully accepted in town and wrote the book as a form of revenge. Others claim that the book caused such an uproar that the family was forced to leave town.

Another theory is that Lyons attended a trial in Carlinville and was so enamored with the people around her that she decided to write a book, using the gallery as her characters.

After leaving Carlinville, Lyons eventually settled with her family in Kentucky. An animal lover, she rescued many species and was a devoted champion of social justice and civil rights. Lyons died at her home in Louisville in April 2010 at age 97.

Season of Desire was one of three novels Lyons produced, to mixed reviews. Her best-known work was the 1977 novel Murder at Prospect, Kentucky, described by the Kirkus Review as containing a number of genuinely arresting, even moving moments.

Kirkus, though, criticized the works awkward dialogue and excess contrivance. Lyons also published several acclaimed short stories, most notably The First Flower in 1956.

Outside of Carlinville, Season of Desire has faded into obscurity. An online search revealed that only eight libraries worldwide hold the book and few internet booksellers have it in stock.

Carlinville Public Library, though, routinely fields questions about Season of Desire.

We still have occasional requests for it, Howard said. We dont have as many as we used to, because people from that generation are passing away. But we still have requests for it.

I think people are mostly curious about the book. Some want to tie in the characters of the book to real people from Carlinville, and a few think they have. Most just read the book for fun, a good laugh.

But few readers have many compliments for Season of Desire.

Theres really no literary value to the book, Howard said. It just isnt very well done.
EDWARDSVILLE  The Madison County Sheriffs Department is investigating a complaint from a poll watcher who claims he was improperly told to leave the County Administration Building during early voting on Nov. 5.

Brad VanHoose, a Republican poll watcher from Belleville, said he was told by a Madison County Sheriffs deputy assigned to Administration Building security that he needed to leave the building at the end of the day on Nov. 5. The deputy then escorted VanHoose out.

In an email to the Sheriffs Department dated Nov. 15, VanHoose outlined what he called serious omissions in a report being prepared by the Sheriffs Department about the incident.

According to the email, the officer said he had been ordered to remove VanHoose, but declined to say who had ordered it. VanHoose also stated that he considered the officers behavior to be rude and aloof, and at times, even belligerent during the 10-day period I was present as a poll watcher.

County Clerk Debra Ming-Mendoza confirmed Monday that VanHoose was a registered poll watcher, and had the right to remain in the building after normal closing hours while clerks were conducting election business.

He was waiting for a report, she said. It was my understanding that the deputy did not know that a poll watcher is allowed to stay.

I am aware of the situation, and poll watchers are absolutely allowed to stay, she said, referring further questions to the Sheriffs Department.

VanHoose asked that the Sheriffs Department and Madison County States Attorneys Office investigate the incident, which he claimed was a violation of election law. According to the letter, he had also filed a Freedom of Information request and has sought assistance with the Illinois Attorney General Offices Public Access Counselor to preserve video surveillance footage of the incident. However, that could not be independently confirmed on Monday.

Chief Deputy Sheriff Maj. Jeff Connor said the incident was under investigation and declined further comments until the investigation is complete.
ALTON  If youve called the Illinois State Police in recent weeks in hopes of renewing your concealed carry permit, youve likely heard one thing: ringing.

And ringing, and ringing, and ringing.

Followed by a message telling you that the department is busy and to call back later, followed by a click.

An officer for the Illinois State Police, who declined to give her name, said that the department recently switched to online applications as opposed to the paper ones used previously, and the new process for reviewing applications has caused a slow down. The officer said that, despite having to review all of the applications by hand in the past, its taking even longer to review applications that are using incorrect paperwork.

That could cause further issues next spring, when the first round of concealed carry renewals will start streaming in. The Firearm Concealed Carry Act became law on July 9, 2013, and with permits good for five years, early applicants are now preparing to apply for renewal for the first time  those early applicants are eligible for renewal in February and March of next year. As of May 31, 2017, there were 243,245 active concealed carry permits in the state of Illinois.

The process of getting a concealed permit in Illinois in general is not an easy one. In fact, the state has some of the strictest gun laws in the country. In order to receive a permit, residents must complete 16 hours of concealed carry firearms training and receive an electronic copy of their training certificate, have a valid drivers license and FOID card, complete a background check, have a head shot photograph taken within the last 30 days, provide ten years of residency, and pay $150, just to name some of the steps.

After completing all of these steps, those wishing to get their hands on a permit must then create an online account with the Illinois State Police and wait up to 90 days to receive their permit in the mail. Those filing for concealed carry can also have their fingerprints taken in order to speed up the lengthy process; however, it is not mandatory.

Because of the slow or lack of a response entirely from ISP, some Illinois residents are seeking help elsewhere. Scott Pulaski, owner of Piasa Armory in Alton, says people come in all the time looking for help renewing their permits.

Pulaski says that because of the states all-online registration system, the older population is has sought his help the most of late.

You know, some people dont even want to carry, they just want to have that right, Pulaski said. Its hard for those who want access to their rights.

The unnamed ISP officer said its important to remember that if you receive a paper application from a firearms dealer or from anywhere else besides in the mail after requesting one from the ISP, its void.

So what should you do if you want to renewal your permit or receive your very own concealed carry? You can register online at https://www.ispfsb.com/. However, if you feel uncomfortable using the website or dont understand it, you can call (271) 782-7980 and receive the old-fashioned paperwork in the mail.

However, Richard Pearson, executive director of the Illinois Riffle Association, emphasized patience.

Dont renew early. If your concealed carry doesnt come up until April, wait, Pearson said. There is no reason to renew now.

Most importantly?

Dont get frustrated, Pearson said.

Reach reporter Riley Newton at (618) 208-6460.
A fair that covers the ABCs of college is a valuable tool and Monday, Nov. 19 was the first time the Southern Illinois University Edwardsville East St. Louis Charter High School (CHS), in partnership with the Greater East St. Louis Community Fund (GESLCF), offered the opportunity for its students.

More than 100 CHS students, from grades 9-12, participated in the comprehensive college fair. The students were divided into four groups that rotated to the following four sessions:

Visiting with representatives from 20 colleges and universities

College 101  Selecting Your Perfect College, presented by Maya Sansard, of the Illinois Student Assistance Commission

Writing Your College Essay, presented by Julie Fix Meyer, of the Greater East St. Louis Community Fund

Financing Your College, presented by Robert Elam, of the Scholarship Foundation of St. Louis

This fair makes us competitive with other schools in the area, said Gina Jeffries, CHS director. I especially love that we are exposing ninth graders to college choices and planning. For many of our students, this will be their first opportunity to learn about college opportunities, strategize how to get there and envision themselves as college students.

CHS senior Anaiah Brown wants to major in business, with an emphasis on culinary arts. She is considering attending SIUE, Southern Illinois University Carbondale or Fisk University in Nashville, Tenn.

I want to open my own restaurant, said Brown. I also want to help people with health problems. Diabetes runs in my family, and it is a common problem among African Americans. There are many health challenges that come from not eating healthy.

Keenan Collier, CHS junior, wants to major in business and minor in medicine.

I want to have my own real estate business, and I like medicine, said Collier, who plans to head to the West Coast for college.

Fourteen-year-old Allen Searcy visited the Ranken Technical College table at the fair. I want to learn the plumbing trade, so I can help people with their bathroom and kitchen problems, the CHS freshman explained.

Exposure is key to envisioning the possibilities of the future, said Pamela Saffore, CHS guidance counselor. We want to expose the students to everything they can dream of. This college fair and workshops was an opportunity to keep the mission of our school in the forefront. We are preparing students to be college and career ready.

The students were engaged and appreciative of having the fair, said Makesha Harris Lee, EdD,

assistant director for Pre-Collegiate Programs at SIUE. Harris Lee staffed the SIUE table with Ashlei White, SIUE admissions counselor and recruitment coordinator. A few freshmen expressed their gratitude in having this type of investment made in their educational journey at such an early stage in high school.

Many students we talked to knew what they wanted to major in already, which is a good sign they are focused on their goals, added White.

When it comes to writing your college essay, what things should you include? What are your interests? What makes you unique? Fix Meyer asked the Red Group.

Freshman Evan Bonner, who likes to play the piano and draw, wants to be an animator.

Senior Maliyah Brown wants to be a lawyer. I like to argue, analyze, think and write, she said. I want to be a prosecutor.

Our partnership with the SIUE East St. Louis Charter High School helps strengthen our services to students so they make informed college decisions, said Pamela Coaxum, GESCF executive director. Our goal is to support high school students as they navigate their way through the process of selecting and financing their college education. We want to give students good information, so they can make informed decisions.

The efforts of the Greater East St. Louis Community Fund center on two primary approaches: Collaborations and Partnerships  The Fund looks for projects which involve a broad base of community organizations working together to yield a comprehensive approach to benefit the residents of East St. Louis and Brooklyn. The Greater East St. Louis Community Fund provides scholarships to East St. Louis and Brooklyn residents who meet eligibility requirements.

The SIUE Charter High School is a school-of-choice for families in the East St. Louis School District 189. The mission of the Southern Illinois University Edwardsville East St. Louis Charter High School is to prepare students who are career- and college-ready upon graduation. To achieve this mission, the school and its staff will positively impact the educational and economic lives of East St. Louis, Illinois youth through individualized instruction in core academic subjects, exploration of career interests and aptitudes, assistance in realizing students talents, high academic goals, and expectations that graduates will become competitive employees for the 21st century.
 Flash

At least 44 civilians suffered suffocation as a result of a rebel attack with "poisonous gas" in Syria's northern city of Aleppo on Saturday, state TV reported.







The rebels fired projectiles stuffed with "poisonous gas" on the al-Khalidiyeh and Zahraa neighborhoods as well as the Nile Street in Aleppo city, said the report.





It said 44 people suffered suffocation and were taken to the hospitals, adding that two of them are in critical conditions.





The TV, meanwhile, aired footages from inside one of the hospitals in Aleppo, showing doctors rushing to help the wounded people.





A doctor said the situation of the patients are stable, noting that a child had to be taken to the intensive care unit. The type of the poisonous gas couldn't be identified immediately.





Some reports said it's chlorine gas.





The rebels in the countryside of Aleppo city have repeatedly targeted the city with mortar shells.





But it's the first instance in a while since the state media accused the rebels of firing shells with poisonous gas as the namesake capital city of Aleppo was fully liberated from the rebels in 2016 except the western and northern countryside.





During the more than seven-year war, the rebels and the Syrian government side traded accusations of chemical weapons in the battles.





In 2013, officials of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) arrived in Syria to monitor the dismantlement of the Syrian chemical weapons arsenal, after Damascus officially joined the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Convention.





The Syrian government said that the Western-backed rebels resorted to chemical weapons to frame the Syrian government and draw in foreign intervention.




 Flash

At least four people were killed on Sunday when a Saudi-led coalition airstrike hit a fuel station in Yemen's northwestern province of Hajjah, a medic and residents said.

Five others were wounded in the air attack which struck the station at the entrance of a popular market of Mastaba district earlier the morning.

Saudi Arabia is leading an Arab military coalition that intervened in Yemen in 2015 to support the government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi after the Houthi rebels forced him into exile and seized much of the country's north, including the capital Sanaa.

The four-year-long war has killed more than 10,000 people, mostly civilians, displaced 3 million others and pushed the country to the brink of famine.

United Nations special envoy to Yemen Martin Griffiths left Sanaa on Saturday after a visit, during which the rebels pledged to attend the upcoming peace talks in Sweden.




11 hours ago

Did You Forget to Ask these 8 Money Questions During College Visits?

It's almost Thanksgiving, and at least one well-intentioned family member will invariably ask your high school senior, "Where are you going to college next year?" (In fact, you might want to warn your

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Aussie tourist robbed at gunpoint after dumped by Phuket taxi driver

PHUKET: Police are searching for four suspects who robbed a 19-year-old Australian tourist at gunpoint after he was dumped by the side of a dark road in Phuket by a taxi driver.

tourismcrimepolice

By Eakkapop Thongtub

Sunday 25 November 2018, 06:01PM

The Australian tourist, Terrance John White, 19, of Innisfail, Queensland, reported the incident to Thalang Police yesterday (Nov 24). Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

UPDATE: The Australian tourist has since retracted his claims in the story below and admitted that the claims that he was abandoned by his taxi driver and that he was robbed at gunpoint were both fake. (See story here.)

Police are also looking for the taxi driver, confirmed Lt Col Kittipoom Tinthalang of the Thalang Police.

The tourist was identified as Terrance John White, of Innisfail, Queensland.

Mr White explained to police that he was riding in a taxi back to his hotel room in the Nai Yang area, just south of Phuket International Airport, early yesterday morning (Nov 24) when an argument ensued about the driver not using the meter.

The argument ended with the driver of the taxi stopping the car on the dark coastal road near the intersection of the Mu Dok  Sakoo Rd (intersection of Route 4018 and Route 4031)  at the southern end of Nai Yang, and Mr White getting out of the taxi.

Soon after getting out of the taxi, at about 3am, while Mr White was walking along the road, four persons arrived  presumably on two motorbikes. Two of them had guns and pointed them at him while robbing him, Mr White told the police.

The robbers made off with B10,000 cash and Mr Whites iPhone, he said.

After being robbed, Mr White reported the incident to police at Phuket airport, who took him to Sakoo Police Station to file a formal report, which was received by Lt Col Bandasak Srilert.

Sakoo Police, along with Mr White, reported the incident to the Thalang Police at 4pm yesterday.

It was not made clear in the police report whether Mr White exited the taxi by choice, or if they driver stopped the car to abandon him by the side of the road. However, Mr White did later confirm that the taxi was bearing green licence plates, indicating that the vehicle to be a legally registered commercial passenger vehicle.

Col Kittipoom Tinthalang of the Thalang Police noted that police are now checking CCTV in the area and along the route Mr White travelled for any clues in tracking down the taxi driver and the four robbers.
In defence of the GED

The Senior Director of the GED Testing Service has responded to the article published in The Phuket News titled, The Dark Underworld of Thailands Foreign University Students. The response, in full, is as follows:

Education

By The Phuket News

Sunday 25 November 2018, 11:00AM

The article questioned what kind of academic future are our teens walking into. Photo: Pexels

After reading the recent article, The Dark Underworld of Thailands Foreign University Students (see story here), GED Testing Service would like to provide information about the high quality and acceptance of the GED exam.

The new GED exam that launched in May 2017 is a high-quality exam that measures skills and commensurate with grade 12 level and above. The GED exam is approved by the U.S. Department of Education and has been certified as fully aligned with the U.S. education standards for college and career readiness.

We believe the article incorrectly refers to the GED as a high-school equivalency certificate generally frowned upon by most of the Western world. To date the GED exam and diploma/certificate is accepted by all 50 state departments of education, and the exam has gone through numerous analyses to demonstrate alignment to states high school content standards. The GED diploma/certificate is accepted for admission by more than 98% of U.S. universities. Scores reflecting performance on the GED test above the grade 12 level are also used for college placement in lieu of placement exams as well as awarding of college credit upon entering a university program.

GED graduates can be found excelling in college classrooms in the Western world and beyond  in some cases performing better than traditional high school students. GED graduates are enrolling and re-enrolling in colleges at higher rates than ever. More than 90% of these graduates are persisting from one semester to the next--sometimes at higher rates than traditional high school graduates in the U.S.

The GED diploma/certificate has proven itself to be a highly respected education pathway with the outcomes data to back its credibility.

We welcome any questions you may have about the GED exam and the millions of successful graduates that have used this credential to pursue a number of education and career pathways.

Sincerely,

CT Turner

Senior Director, GED Testing Service
The #MeToo movement makes its effects felt in Thailand

In the age of #MeToo, Thais have become more aware of issues like sexual violence and female empowerment.

CommunityCulture

By Bangkok Post

Sunday 25 November 2018, 10:00AM

Empowering each other through the sharing of experiences. Photo: Plan International

This is evinced by high-profile cases like that of Nitiwadee Mor Nim Pucharoenyos, a victim of domestic violence who was a few months ago spared the death penalty when the appeals court found her not guilty of killing her estranged husband back in 2013, while her mother was sentenced to life imprisonment for plotting the murder out of love for her daughter. It seems like a lot of females have started waking up to the idea of gender justice.

This includes bubbly Chiang Rai-born teens Chaya and Suwannee, who attended the recent International Day of the Girl camp and forum, which was organised as part of Plan International Global Campaign and their Thailand Country Offices key programme area on Gender Justice and Womans Empowerment.

The camp saw attendants aged between 14 and 19 years old.

This experience only served to solidify my belief that as a girl I can choose who I want to be and what my basic rights are, said 14-year-old Chaya.

Held Oct 6-9, the event attracted over 30 young ladies from different parts of the country. The objective was also to raise awareness on the issue of Child Early and Forced Marriages, which often result in holding girls back from gaining access to opportunities that would help them reach their full potential.

During the camp, participants reflected on their experiences and were encouraged to share their ideas on the topic On The Pathway To Gender Equality. Here they learned about such issues as power within, power analysis, gender equality, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, and sex characteristics, identity and intersectionality.

Sixteen-year-old Suwannee shared her sentiments.

I was eager to learn about my rights even though I know we have them. However, there are times as young adults when we are discouraged to use them to the fullest by the environment we are in. Attending this camp has empowered me to further pursue the rights I am entitled to.

Suwannee lives in a small and remote village in Chiang Rai where most of the people who have power are men. Women, on the contrary, have no rights to make their own decisions or express opinions. After the camp, Suwannee hopes to share her knowledge she gained so that people in her neighbourhood realise that women also have the power within.

We have to realise that we have rights so we can than take the next step, said Suwannee.

Despite efforts by NGOs, the problem regarding gender-based violence still continues to spiral out of control in society. According to Supensri Pungkhoksung, womens-rights advocate and director at the Social Equality Promotion foundation, violence against women today is at an all-time high, and thanks to social media we know that a significant number of perpetrators are from the middle to upper-middle-class echelons of Thai society.

Thailand has strong laws against gender-based violence, but victims still find it difficult to report such crimes to law enforcement.

Yvonne Bohwongprasert
Canadian Finance Minister Bill Morneau is signalling he wont cough up money for new rail cars to ship Alberta oil, saying it would take months and wouldnt solve the current price collapse.

Morneau, in an interview with The West Block on Global News that aired on Sunday, said the province of Alberta could buy rail cars with industry should it choose to, but that the federal government was focused on building the Trans Mountain oil pipeline expansion. Rail cars take a significant amount of time to acquire, he said.

Our estimate is it might take at least nine months, perhaps longer, to actually get more rail, Morneau said, according to an advance transcript. If thats a decision that the Alberta government and the industry wants to take, thats a decision that can be taken.

Canadas government is said not to favour Albertas proposal to buy trains to boost crude shipments on rail by 120,000 barrels daily. Alberta Premier Rachel Notley has said she might buy the rail cars herself. Morneaus budget update, released on Nov. 21, included billions in broad-based tax breaks for business but was criticized for not doing enough to help Alberta during its oil crunch.

Morneau said the government has been really clear that the decision around Trans Mountain was the first best way for us to get resources to international markets.

Cheap Alberta oil is having a wide-ranging impact on Canadas economy, including sowing doubts that the countrys central bank will raise interest rates at its January meeting, as had been widely expected until recently.

Western Canada Select crude, the main blend sold by the nations oilsands, closed at $13.46 (U.S.) a barrel on Nov. 15, the lowest in data compiled by Bloomberg stretching back to 2008. Its discount to U.S. benchmark crude exploded to as much as $52.40 a barrel last month, also a record.

The spread is so extreme, the cries of pain from Alberta are so loud, I dont think they can just put blinders on and carry on as if no things changed, Doug Porter, chief economist at Bank of Montreal, said in a Nov. 22 interview about the central banks deliberations.

Read more about:
Walt Disney Co.s Ralph Breaks the Internet beat a wave of new releases over the extended Thanksgiving weekend, as a fresh slate of films drew more Americans to theaters.

The hit movie contributed to what could be a new five-day record total for U.S. and Canadian cinemas, with ticket sales swelling to more than $300 million (U.S.).

The animated sequel, the second release from Disney this month, generated $56.2 million in theaters in the U.S and Canada, Comscore Inc. said Monday. The film had been forecast by Box Office Mojo to earn $50 million over three days and $71.8 million for the five-day holiday. Instead, Ralph racked up $84.8 million.

Key Insights

The three-day results topped the $49 million debut of the original Wreck-It Ralph, despite six years between the films. The first took in $471 million globally in 2012, helping to revive Disneys flagship animation business after years of being overshadowed by Pixar. The new movie had strong reviews, with 87 percent of critics recommending it.

Early indications Wednesday had been that the film could beat the five-day Thanksgiving record for an opening set by Frozen of $93.5 million, according to Box Office Mojo. Creed II, a Rocky sequel from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer with Michael B. Jordan and Sylvester Stallone, placed second with $35.6 million, topping a three-day forecast of $33.5 million. Lionsgates Robin Hood debuted in seventh place with $9.2 million for three days.

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HALIFAXA new aquatic ecosystem study in Nova Scotia dubbed the largest of its kind in the Maritimes will see First Nations partners taking the reins as they work alongside academics.

The $1-million, three-year research program to study culturally and commercially important fish species in Nova Scotia is being led by a collaborative team that includes the Mikmaq Conservation Group, the Unamaki Institute of Natural Resources (UINR), Acadia University and Dalhousie Universitys Ocean Tracking Network.

Shelley Denny, director of aquatic research and stewardship with Cape Breton-based UINR, said the project is important for her and Cape Bretons Mikmaq community because its a true collaboration.

Collaboration starts at the table, not in the field. Were able to design the research that we need that fits into our processesWere not coming in on the back end of Oh, this might be of interest to you as First Nations. This is Hey First Nations, what do you think you would like to learn about or the information that you need to help you make better decisions and so thats the key thing for me, Denny said in an interview.

Were able to help design the research question and once we design the research question, help design the methodsbecause sometimes theres different ways of approaching a problem. So, well have that partnership approach where we consider and work toward doing something that both groups agree on.

The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada research award grant was announced last month. Nikki Beauchamp, spokesperson for Dalhousie Universitys Ocean Tracking Network (OTN), said its the largest strategic network grant project in the Maritimes that co-operates with Indigenous rights holders in this capacity.

In this case, its addressing Mikmaw priorities; establishing how to use aquatic resources in a way that meets the vision of surrounding communities (i.e. the people that use these resources). That starts with partnerships that respect the strengths and differences of various methodologies and knowledge systems, Beauchamp said in an email.

The projects official name is currently a work in progress. Beauchamp said theyre collaborating with Mikmaw partners on an official name. They also intend to commission a First Nations artist to help establish an identity.

The research project will build on existing infrastructure in the Minas Passage and Minas Basin on the mainland of the province and span Cape Bretons Bras dOr Lakes, typically watersheds and gateways.

Acoustic telemetry (remote monitoring) logistically supported by OTN and operated by Mikmaw partners will be used to document the movements and habitat use of culturally and ecologically important species to rights holders and local stakeholders.

Those species include eel, salmon, striped bass, and tomcod.

The Bras Dor Lakes are very important to the Mikmaq people here in Cape Breton. Its where we not only get our food, but its also where we pass on our knowledge, Denny said.

Its about being able to integrate our values and our needs and our way of doing things with natural science and having ultimately a two-eyed seeing approach, so that were both benefitting and were both doing things together and were both learning as were going.

That two-eyed seeing approach blends a Western science worldview with the traditional and ecological knowledge from Indigenous community members and elders.

Denny said for her organization, the end goal is to have evidence-based decision making and to contribute through a natural science research project. But its also about how Indigenous people, Mikmaq people in particular, can contribute using their local knowledge.

For the most part scientists dont really think about where the information goes, they have different values. They want to get that publication, its science for science. We dont see science for science, Denny explained.

It has to have something that helps our people, that helps the ecosystem, that has some sort of purpose to it. Thats our goal, that it needs to be relevant and the more relevance it has to us as First Nations the better that were able to take ownership of it. If we see value in having it done, then definitely it will be done.

The Mikmaq Conservation Group (MCG) is also excited to be part of the new collaborative project. Administered by the Confederacy of Mainland Mikmaq, the conservation group serves as the confederacys aquatics branch.

MCGs fisheries biologist Joseph Beland said the project will enable them to get a good assessment of how the varied species are doing, particularly those used culturally by First Nations people.

I think its really a pioneer project in the respect that we practice a two-eyed seeing approach  and its on a really grand scale, Beland said.

Successful execution of this project hopefully will lead to many more like it in the future.

Alanna Syliboy, the MCGs Department of Environment and Natural Resources community liaison officer, said using a two-eyed seeing approach has many benefits.

(For) Mikmaq people, this is our ancestral territorial land so our elders know a lot more, they look at the world (using) a holistic approach. Combining that with science and the modern technology is important because you get those two views, Syliboy explained.

Then, it strengthens the information, and so if these guys are doing their scientist stuff and then we get an elder that backs it up with ecological knowledge, it just strengthens that knowledge.

Syliboy described the project as a stepping stone that can help bridge the gap between academia and her communitys traditional knowledge, while also giving them a voice.

She said one of the highlights for her personally was that the OTN reached out to her group and invited them to participate in the study because they recognized the communitys knowledge as a valuable collaborative component.

Im a First Nations person myself, and I have the duty and responsibility to make sure that what Im doing today doesnt impact the next seven generations because I have children, too, Syliboy said.

I make sure Im doing whats best for this environment and for the species because I dont want these species to be something that my children learn in a book. I want them to be able to exercise their treaty rights. Thats why its important to prepare what youre doing today for the future.

It looks as if you appreciate our journalism. Our reporting changes lives, connects communities and effects change. But good journalism is expensive to produce, and advertiser revenue throughout the media industry is falling and unable to carry the cost. That means we need you, our readers. We need your help. If you appreciate deep local reporting, powerful investigations and reliable, responsible information, we hope you will support us through a subscription. Please click here to subscribe.

Yvette dEntremont is a Halifax-based reporter focusing on health. Follow her on Twitter: @ydentremont

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A Canada-wide arrest warrant for attempted murder is being sought for a Mississauga man police say is responsible for a shooting in Malton earlier this month.

Police believe that Travon Edwards-Bryan is a threat to public safety, may be armed and dangerous and is evading capture, police said in a news release.

Peel Region police raided the 23-year-old suspects home early Sunday morning, but did not find him.

Edwards-Bryan is wanted for the Nov. 10 shooting in the area of Delmonte Cres. and Brandon Gate Dr. Police were called to the area just after 11 p.m. They found shell casings and a damaged vehicle that had collided with several parked cars.

But everyone involved had fled before police arrived, according to investigators. The targeted victim of the shooting was later found and had not been injured.

Edwards-Bryan is described as Black, six-feet-four and about 170 pounds, with a medium build.

Anyone who knows the whereabouts of Edwards-Bryan is asked to call 911 or investigators with the homicide bureau at 905-453-3311, ext. 3205, or Peel Crime Stoppers anonymously at 1-800-222-8477.

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Pride Toronto is embarking on a federally funded, cross-country examination of the often tumultuous relationship between police and marginalized members of the LGBTQ community.

We want to change the nature of the interaction of our community and police, said Olivia Nuamah, executive director of Pride Toronto. When the report is done, it will be given to the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police along with recommendations. She also wants police at the table during this Canada-wide consultation.

Finance Minister Bill Morneau was in Toronto Saturday alongside Nuamah to announce an initial investment of $450,000 for Pride Toronto. Nuamah said her understanding, following talks with government officials, is that the funds will form part of an eventual $1.2-million commitment over the next five years.

We know that there is a long and turbulent history between the criminal justice system and LGBTQ2 Canadians, said Morneau, referencing the recent experience in Toronto of investigating and discovering violent murders in our community.

Toronto police have been criticized for failing to solve numerous cases where men went missing in Torontos Gay Village. Community members believed there was a serial killer on the loose for many years. Landscaper Bruce McArthur now faces murder charges in the deaths of eight men, all with ties to the citys Gay Village.

Pride Torontos Nuamah said the federal funding will be put toward hiring consultants who will facilitate surveys and public meetings in at least 10 cities across Canada, beginning with Toronto. She said it is important to hear from people who have experienced first-hand the sometimes difficult initial interactions between lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and two-spirited (LGBTQ2) Canadians and police. Among the cities her team will visit are Vancouver, Winnipeg, Montreal, Ottawa and Halifax. There are 122 Pride organizations across Canada and she hopes that, in some way, they can hear from them all.

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We want to be able to provide police with advice from these consultations on what is the best way for police to have that initial interaction with our community, Nuamah said.

Morneaus federal riding of Toronto Centre includes the areas affected by the alleged serial killings. He made the funding announcement at the 519 Church St. community centre. He said Saturday that despite efforts by the community to fix the problems, they continue.

For too long, the LGBTQ2 community has encountered injustice from various institutions in our society, in ways that have prevented people from living their own lives most fully and contributing your strengths to this country, Morneau said. Our government understands fully the injustices that have occurred, and the need for them to be rectified.

He said he hopes the federal funding will help break down the barriers that lead to negative outcomes when the LGBTQ2 communities engage with the criminal justice system.

Nuamah said it is important that police be involved in the examination her group will begin next summer. She said the decision by Pride Toronto to welcome uniformed Toronto police back to the 2019 parade (they had been banned for the last two years due to simmering tensions between police and the LGBTQ2 community) is part of what she hopes will be a more collaborative relationship.

But she knows that on this Pride Toronto road trip there will be difficult stories. Asked if she could relate a story of a positive interaction between police and her community recently, she said she could not.

Our hope is that the stories of abuse we will hear will lead to change, or at least change the nature of the advocacy that our group does, said Nuamah.
A Toronto woman says she fears for her safety because she believes officers with Toronto polices 22 Division leaked information from a statement she gave them to men involved in an underworld casino dispute in the Dominican Republic.

I have learned of the involvement of several organized crime members, specifically the Mafia, the woman said in a complaint filed with the Freedom of Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario in June.

In her complaint, the woman said she learned someone at 22 Division in Etobicoke had released information about her statement when details of it appeared in a civil suit filed by two GTA businessmen against her boyfriend.

The businessmen are connected to the embattled Dream Casino in the Dominican Republic, according to court filings and media reports.

At no time did I ever consent, verbally or otherwise, to the release of my identity, my statement, the police interview notes, or the videotape to anyone for any reason, the woman said in her complaint to the privacy commissioner, adding she never divulged the same information to anyone else.

The Star has agreed not to identify the woman and others involved in the case because she fears for her safety.

In her complaint, she said she has been experiencing physical and psychological symptoms, such as anxiety, depression, panic attacks, and fear out of fear the men have serious organized crime connections.

Toronto police spokesperson Meaghan Gray said the force will defend itself against unsubstantiated allegations.

As a result, we will not offer any specific comment, said Gray, who said her comments were on behalf of Chief Mark Saunders and Det. Const. Marc Beausoleil, a 22 Division officer who is one of the targets of the womans complaint.

In her complaint, the woman said Beausoleil asked her to give a statement at 22 Division on Feb. 18, 2017.

She said she later saw details of that statement in the civil suit against her boyfriend.

In her complaint, she also said Beausoleil repeatedly advised me to stay away from her boyfriend for my own safety  something she says she then did, causing personal anguish and depression to both her and her boyfriend.

The woman said she was later alarmed to learn her complaint with the Privacy Commissioner had been referred back to 22 Division to investigate.

She said she filed her complaint on June 6, and on Oct. 2 was startled to get an email from the 22 Division unit complaints co-ordinator, Det. David Knowles.

I have been assigned to investigate your complaint, Knowles emailed. I would like to discuss it with you at your earliest convenience. Please call me.

The woman said in her complaint to the Privacy Commissioner that she fears for her safety because she saw a report on the CBCs The Fifth Estate regarding an underworld dispute thats underway in the GTA and Caribbean.

I have become aware of the allegations of witness corruption, police corruption and judicial corruption, she said. I have also learned of violent actions taken towards witnesses, including intimidation, both in Canada and in the Dominican Republic.

She said her information concerns the Dream Casino in the Dominican Republic, where security video showed Vito Rizzuto, former godfather of the Mafia in Montreal, getting a tour shortly before his death in December 2013, officially of natural causes.

Rizzuto maintained a home in an exclusive gated community in the Dominican Republic after he was released from a Colorado prison in October 2012 after serving time for his role in three contract killings.

The Dream Casino has been the centre of lawsuits, threats and allegations. According to local reports, the car of a lawyer who worked for the casino was firebombed on Dec. 1.

Dream Casino lawyer Raphael Castro Mercedes was murdered in his Dominican home in August 2014.

The woman told the Star she totally opposes a 22 Division officer investigating her complaints against other 22 Division officers.

For the interest of everyone involved, I decided it would be best that a lawyer handled the matter as I dont want to say anything that would incriminate anyone else any further, she said. This is mostly due to the reason that this officer is from the same division as the officer(s) I made a complaint about.
Medical devices pulled from the market in other countries because of health risks continued to be implanted into unwitting Canadians  sometimes with tragic results.

It is one of the ways Canada lags behind many other countries in protecting the public from medical devices  from artificial hips to breast implants to implantable defibrillators  that have caused debilitating injury and death, an investigation by the Toronto Star/CBC/Radio-Canada has found.

Medical devices have transformed innumerable lives around the world. Pacemakers have restored normal heart beats. Orthopedic implants, among the most popular of devices, have helped people walk again. Millions of Canadians are helped by sophisticated and complex devices every day. The numbers will continue to rise, and as they do, Health Canada is struggling to keep up.

Health Canadas system designed to track incidents where devices may have harmed patients is so hobbled by under-reporting, the toll on Canadians is unknown. Never-before-released federal data shows at least 1,400 Canadians have died since 2008 in incidents involving devices that were designed to help them. During those 10 years, another 14,000 Canadians were injured.

Our investigation has found a flawed and secretive regulatory system:

Some high-risk devices are approved based on evidence from older products and animal studies  not new trials done in humans  meaning patients may unknowingly be subjects in what a leading Toronto surgeon called one large clinical trial. A vaginal mesh sling Canadian researchers say was only ever tested in animals and cadavers was pulled from the market after another country raised safety concerns.

The oversight of devices once they are on the market is reliant on the industry that makes and sells the products. These companies are in charge of reporting potential problems, testing their own products suspected of malfunctioning or causing serious health problems, and hiring private companies to inspect Canadian facilities that manufacture high-risk devices.

Health Canadas warnings about devices can come weeks, months and even years after other countries have publicly flagged risks. Some Canadians are never told their implants have been recalled or subject to safety warnings, leaving them feeling that theyre more likely to be notified about a problem with their car than a potentially defective device inside their bodies.

The government also continues to oppose the creation of a medical device registry, despite calls from doctors, some politicians and patients who say it would help detect emerging health problems connected to medical devices.

In emailed statements, Health Canada said it carefully monitors the quality and safety of medical devices, and responds swiftly to safety risks.

Health Canada assesses the potential impact of product suspension or removal on Canadian patients, including unintended consequences of any regulatory action. Some products that may not be beneficial to some individuals are beneficial to others, the regulator said.

Our highest priority in determining that balance is public safety.

The Star/CBC/Radio-Canada investigation is part of the first-ever global examination of the medical device industry and its overseers. Over the course of a year, more than 250 journalists at 58 news organizations in 36 countries spoke with hundreds of doctors, researchers, industry insiders and patients.

Read More from The Implant Files Investigation:

Breast implant complications, including cancer, kept secret thanks to broken reporting system

This company has paid millions to settle claims it defrauded U.S. government health programs. Now its partnering with Canadian public hospitals

Biocell breast implants at centre of biggest controversy in plastic surgery

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has created a public database: A global compilation of data that frustrated patient advocates have sought from national and international health authorities for years. But it only hints at larger problems. Many adverse events are never reported. Many health authorities refuse to make public, or simply never collect, information about patient harm.

Medical devices are a $400-billion global industry, so expansive that one manufacturer says its products and services benefit more than 70 million people each year  two lives improved every second.

Our industry has a strong track record of safety when you consider the millions of medical devices implanted in Canadians and the devices Canadians use every day, said a spokesperson from MEDEC, an industry association of Canadian medical device and technology companies.

We are very proud of what we do, helping Canadians live longer, higher quality lives through innovative health technologies.

A MEDEC spokesman said medical devices undergo a rigorous review process in Canada to ensure they are safe and effective.

That regulatory scrutiny, however, pales in comparison to what is given to its sister industry, pharmaceuticals. New drugs must go through a randomized controlled trial before they reach the market.

Some high-risk devices implanted in the bodies of Canadians, meanwhile, are approved by this countrys regulator without evidence from studies done in humans.

Instead, they get put on the market based on their similarity to devices already being used.

This was the case for many transvaginal mesh devices, woven synthetic netting surgically inserted through a womans vagina to treat prolapsed pelvic organs or incontinence, which came onto the global market in a flurry of approvals in the 2000s. A 2017 study of U.S. approvals found some of these devices, also known as pelvic meshes, relied on evidence from a mesh that had been recalled by its manufacturer years earlier.

In Canada, the evidence showing a new device is effective often comes from mechanical testing and studies using animals or cadavers.

Imposing a requirement to have a randomized clinical trial for all high-risk medical devices would result in a delay in access to many medical devices in Canada, Health Canada said. This would result in Canada never having access to some medical devices.

There are also ethical and practical reasons industry cannot conduct trials with devices as is done with drugs, said a MEDEC spokesman, including the risks associated with conducting unnecessary surgeries.

The current system puts patients at risk, says Dr. Jan Willem Cohen Tervaert, director of rheumatology at the University of Albertas medical school.

We are allowing medical devices on the market without sufficient proof of safety, he said.

When the Gynecare TVT Secur System, a pelvic mesh sling to treat urinary incontinence, was introduced in Canada in 2006, the device had never been used in a patient, according to a medical journal article written by Canadian doctors and researchers.

Noreen Nonie Wideman was implanted with the mesh sling in June 2008. She remembers it was pitched as a safe and simple 15-minute procedure that would cure her urinary incontinence, a source of embarrassment and frustration for the British Columbia woman.

I really wanted to have a deep belly laugh just once without having wetted myself, she said. In hindsight, I would have just rather kept wetting my pants than to go through everything I have gone through.

An active 53-year-old, Widemans health deteriorated. It hurt to walk up stairs. Its like someone stuck a knife in you and you cant pull it out. The more you move, the more it hurt, she said.

Doctor after doctor couldnt explain what was causing the pain. While doing a self-examination, she felt a hard ridge jutting into her vagina. Using a microscope borrowed from the local school, she studied blue filament threads that she had found in her underwear and her pee. The mesh was eroding inside her. And she needed to get it out.

When she woke up after it was removed in December 2011, the stabbing pain was gone.

The following year, in 2012, Ethicon announced that it would stop selling TVT Secur and three other mesh products. The decision came five months after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ordered Ethicon and manufacturers of other transvaginal meshes to conduct further studies to address specific safety and effectiveness concerns.

In a statement, Ethicon, a subsidiary of Johnson and Johnson, said it stands behind the safety of its pelvic mesh devices which have benefited millions of patients who continue to find relief from the debilitating conditions that led to their surgeries.

The company said the TVT Secur was tested in humans before it was marketed.

The company performed human cadaver labs, collected data on a small group of TVT Secur patients, and performed an interim analysis on short-term data from a subset of patients in a small prospective single-arm clinical trial, an Ethicon spokesperson said in a statement. This research, coupled with evidence supporting an earlier version of its TVT mesh that remains on the market, demonstrated the safety and efficacy of TVT Secur.

The decision to stop selling the TVT Secur worldwide was a business decision, not related to device clinical performance and safety.

In 2017, Australias device regulator banned mesh products with the sole use was to treat pelvic organ prolapse (when pelvic organs such as the bladder or uterus drop from their normal position and push on or through the vagina). A review by Australian authorities concluded there is little evidence to support the overall effectiveness of these surgical meshes. In 2018, the United Kingdom declared a national pause on the use of the vaginal meshes while a special advisory group studies their use.

Health Canada says the benefits of the meshes continue to outweigh the potential risks.

In April 2018, in response to a petition launched by Wideman calling for restrictions on the use of the mesh, the government said it has conducted several safety reviews and considers the adequate evidence of safety and effectiveness has been established.

It made me feel like I have no confidence in the regulatory system, said Wideman. She received an out-of-court settlement from Ethicon earlier this year. The details are confidential. From the money she received, she had to give a significant amount to the B.C. government to cover the costs of removing her mesh, she said.

Compared to other countries, Canada is slow to warn the public about new risks associated with devices.

In 2010, the U.S. FDA issued a warning about vascular filters implanted to prevent pulmonary embolisms. The filters, intended to be removed once the risk of an embolism passes, were being left in, putting patients at risk of a host of problems including filter fractures.

Nearly six years passed before Health Canada issued a similar warning.

The biggest market for medical devices  people 65 or over  will grow by more than 60 per cent to nearly 1 billion people worldwide by 2030, a UBS investment analyst recently noted. Yet the implant industry isnt only counting on favourable demographics to grow its business. Well-established medical devices are regularly upgraded in order to drive innovation and sales. Some experts estimate the standard lifecycle of a device before it is superseded by the next model is now just 18 to 24 months.

Too often, devices get swept onto the market under the guise of innovation, said Dr. Rita Redberg, a cardiologist and editor of the medical journal, JAMA Internal Medicine.

Its not innovative just because its new, Redberg said. To be innovative, you have to have some data that shows this is not just new but safe and effective.

Gloria McSherry was a 53-year-old Toronto woman with an active fitness regimen when she received a metal-on-metal hip implant, the Durom Cup made by Zimmer. It was 2007. For roughly a decade, device makers had marketed these metal-on-metal products as the latest innovation in hip replacement, ideal for younger, active patients who wanted a hip that would last a lifetime.

Soon after McSherrys surgery, she felt something wasnt right. Her hip throbbed. She couldnt go outside when it was freezing or her left side would seize. Her leg shifted around in the hip socket, liable to scrape and jam without any warning, shooting pain throughout her whole body.

I would wake up in the morning for those three years and I would never know what length my leg would be. It would sometimes be an inch off, she said. I had these inserts to put in my shoes depending on what kind of day it was going to be.

It wasnt until she sought the opinion of a U.S. surgeon in March 2009 that she learned the company had temporarily halted sales of the device in the U.S. almost a year earlier following warnings by a prominent surgeon that the implants had a high failure rate.

In a July 2008 letter to U.S. surgeons, Zimmer strongly recommended that doctors stop implanting the Durom Cup until they received additional training on proper surgical techniques.

The Durom Cup continued to be sold and implanted in Canada, where Zimmer said doctors had received substantial surgeon training.

Zimmer continued marketing the artificial hip in Canada after 2010, when, according to U.S. lawyers suing the manufacturer, the company permanently stopped selling the device in America. The Canadian licence for Durom Cup was cancelled in 2012 after Health Canada imposed rigorous conditions to all metal-on-metal hip implants, the regulator said.

While selling the artificial hips, Zimmer had not tracked who was having them implanted. The company only knew that it had sold at least 4,941 Durom Cups to Canadian hospitals. Hospital staff had to dig through records to identify patients so they could be contacted for a class-action lawsuit against Zimmer, in which McSherry took part. The company has since settled the lawsuit, paying more than $172,000 to each patient who had complicated surgeries to replace the implant. The settlement, the company said, was not an admission of guilt.

The company, now known as Zimmer Biomet after a merger, refused to answer questions.

The safety of patients has always been, and continues to be, Zimmer Biomets top priority and it is our honour to be a leader in this industry for the past 90 years, it said in a statement.

Industry influence reaches into Canadian operating rooms, where company sales representatives are routinely invited by surgeons to advise during implantation of devices into patients.

The reps are seen as having an indispensable role on the surgery team, according to a 2017 Canadian study that interviewed 22 surgeons about their relationships with industry. Surgeons said the reps assisted in assembling and inserting complex devices, which could enhance patient safety and mitigate the risk of things going awry.

We cant get along without each other, one physician told the studys authors.

Still, the surgeons were leery of the potential conflicts of interest that came with the interactions, and noted some reps werent as forthcoming when disclosing device defects.

One physician said he disliked having reps in the operating room and the chumminess that came with it.

When you develop a relationship sometimes you get yourself caught in a hole where you dont want to use other implants when sometimes you probably should, the surgeon said.

Even device representatives can find operating room coziness uncomfortable, according to a 2011 U.S. study citing the experiences of 17 device reps who described pushing customer service boundaries by taking part in clinical decisions around how devices were installed, managed and even deactivated.

In places where we do the (device) checks, (patients) dont treat us any differently than any doctor or nurse, one company representative said. We get a lot of them assuming that you are a physician.

Health Canada collects reports of incidents in which devices are suspected to have malfunctioned or caused injury or death. The regulator relies on these reports to look for patterns to detect emerging safety problems.

This post-market surveillance system is hindered by the known and chronic problem of under-reporting of incidents, Health Canada said. Right now, device companies are the only ones required to report incidents to the government.

When you have an adverse event occur, if the manufacturer is the only one thats going to be reporting then you have only their viewpoint of what happened, said Madris Tomes, a former FDA data specialist who runs a company that analyzes adverse events.

Regulations are in the works that would make it mandatory for Canadian hospitals to report incidents involving drugs and medical devices, and may be in place by late 2019.

Meanwhile, Health Canada continues to rely on industry, who has repeatedly failed to quickly notify the regulator about injuries and deaths involving their products, as required by law, our investigation found.

During the past decade, more than 14,800 incident reports  roughly 15 per cent of all the reports filed by the device industry  reached the regulator after the 10- or 30-day deadline. At least 21 recorded deaths were reported more than a year after the company became aware of them.

Health Canada said its working to improve its database to help it better enforce deadline rules.

Its just one part of an oversight system that is heavily reliant on industry to keep itself in line.

When something goes wrong, Medtronic investigates its own product and lets the government know what went wrong. What kind of inspection is that? Jordan Marchant, who is suing the device manufacturer for negligence for alleged defects in one of its high-risk products, said in a statement to the Star.

Marchant was a 22-year-old training to be a pipefitter in Edmonton when he underwent cryoablation to treat a condition that caused his heart to sometimes race. During the operation, the Medtronic-made catheter fractured and Marchant suffered a stroke, his lawsuit said.

Like most broken medical devices, the catheter was sent to the manufacturers lab for testing. Marchants lawyer demanded a hold be put on the catheter to preserve it for independent testing, according to court records.

While Marchant alleges the catheter was defective, no independent analysis could be done. Medtronic had lost the device somewhere in its facilities. In its place, the company offered pictures of the catheter and the results of its lab testing.

Marchant said his life has changed dramatically since his stroke.

Everything is slower than it used to be...I dont have the same friends as I used to; people tell me my personality is different. I seem a lot more angry and frustrated all of the time. I have tried to work at jobs but they dont work out, Marchant said.

I dont feel happy like I was before.

In its statement of defence, Medtronic said the catheter was not defective in anyway, and after the company sold the device, it was under the exclusive care and control of the hospital, its staff and physicians over whom (Medtronic has) no control.

In November 2017, Health Canada inspectors visited Medtronics Canadian headquarters in Brampton and found several deficiencies. The company had expired and unauthorized medical devices for sale, according to a summary posted on Health Canadas website. The company received a compliant rating.

There are no public details about the latest inspection of Medtronics Montreal-area plant, where it manufactures cryoablation catheters like the one used on Marchant.

Thats because Health Canada does not actually inspect these facilities. Instead, the device manufacturers pay an accredited auditing company to inspect that the plant complies with standards. The results of these audits are shared with the regulator but are not made public.

In a statement, Medtronic said it has an unwavering commitment to patient safety, transparency, compliance and ethical business practices.

Health Canada said there are safeguards to prevent device makers from shopping for a favourable audit. The advantages the hired auditors offer outweigh the potential risk introduced by having manufacturers pay for audits/inspections to meet regulatory requirements, the regulator said.

Increasingly, doctors are calling on Health Canada to create a national device registry, which they say would help detect problems before they become widespread.

Among them is Dr. Jagdish Butany, cardiovascular pathologist with Torontos University Health Network. In 1997, Butany noticed eight cases of a new heart valve failing within weeks or months of implantation. The surgeons performing the operations hadnt recognized the trend until Butany connected the dots. The hospital agreed to stop implanting the valves, but the valves manufacturer and Health Canada were more dismissive of his concerns, he said.

The valves continued to be implanted worldwide. In fall 1999, Australia yanked the valves approval over concerns it increased the risk of blood clots. Health Canada did nothing until two months later, when the product was pulled worldwide following negative trial results. By then, the company had sold 36,000 valves, according to court records.

The big thing that couldve been done, that may have prevented this, and will prevent things in future, would be having a registry, Butany said.

A registry would allow doctors and researchers to post details about malfunctioning products and look for recurring problems that may have been ignored as one-offs, he said. There are newer devices that are being put in, we dont know what happens to them, we dont know how long they last, Butany said.

The Canadian government has rejected calls for national registries for implantable devices, saying theyre a costly, regulatory burden for manufacturers that can have limitations to the reliability of the information collected.

Health Canada said it supports the development of patient registries set up by professional associations or manufacturers.

Butany suggests the companies that sell devices could bankroll registries.

You and I and the province paid for that device to be put in, we paid for it to be taken out, now we have to pay again for another one to be put in. Theres something wrong with that scenario, he said.

To each individual (company) it wouldnt be that big an amount, collectively it would be a significant amount. It would spare Health Canada having to use their scarce resources for a registry, which they clearly dont have the money for.

Sometimes, Canadians have to take it upon themselves to have devices removed.

Tracy Hillier was 29 in 2012 when she was implanted with Essure, a form of permanent birth control in which tiny metal coils are inserted through the vagina into the fallopian tubes. She said she experienced chronic pelvic pain and heavy bleeding soon after the procedure. She couldnt run or have sex with her husband without pain.

She bounced between doctors in central Newfoundland trying to figure out what was wrong. It was only when she saw a documentary about Essure in August 2018 that she realized the devices maker had stopped selling Essure in Canada roughly a year earlier.

Hillier was determined to have the coils removed but said she could not wait on  or trust  the healthcare system that had not told her the device was no longer on the market.

Hillier booked a trip to Texas to see a surgeon who specializes in removing Essure implants. In the end, the trip and procedure cost her close to $20,000  a significant chunk of her annual salary as an insurance broker.

I maxed out my credit card but I think its worth it. I needed to get these poisonous coils out of me, she said.

In a statement, device manufacturer Bayer said it stands by the safety and efficacy of Essure which are demonstrated by an extensive body of research, undertaken by Bayer and independent medical researchers, involving more than 200,000 women over the past two decades. Bayer said its decision to stop selling Essure was based on market specific factors, including decreases in sales.

On Sept. 13, the Texas surgeon removed Hilliers fallopian tubes, cervix and uterus. One of the coils had penetrated her uterus and was jutting out, she said.

The experience robbed me of my organs.

Hillier has hired a lawyer, and she plans to join the thousands of people around the world suing the manufacturer of a medical device that they say has caused them harm.

Data analysis: Andrew Bailey, Valerie Ouellet and David McKie

It looks as if you appreciate our journalism. Our reporting changes lives, connects communities and effects change. But good journalism is expensive to produce, and advertiser revenue throughout the media industry is falling and unable to carry the cost. That means we need you, our readers. We need your help. If you appreciate deep local reporting, powerful investigations and reliable, responsible information, we hope you will support us through a subscription. Please click here to subscribe.
BRUSSELSMore than four decades after Britain tied itself to its Continental neighbours, British Prime Minister Theresa May obtained the approval of the other 27 European Union members on a formal divorce pact from the bloc, a consequential step intended to take the country on a new, if unclear, path.

The journey has been long and tortuous for both sides, and the drama is hardly over. May must still get approval for the deal  a dense, legally binding divorce settlement and a set of political promises for Britains future relationship with the bloc  from an outspokenly unhappy British Parliament.

Since Britons voted in 2016 to leave the European Union, May has struggled to define how closely they should remain tied to Continental Europe, ultimately choosing a kind of middle way that has left many dissatisfied.

With her own Conservative Party deeply divided and the opposition Labour Party promising to vote the deal down, May faces what most consider to be an almost impossible task.

But she is dogged, and, with Britain scheduled to leave the European Union on March 29, she appears to be relying on giving legislators a stark choice: her deal or a chaotic exit without any deal.

If she fails, what happens next would be anyones guess. May could face a leadership challenge or be left to put her deal to a second vote in the British Parliament. There could be a push for a softer Brexit, new elections or a second referendum. Or Britain could lurch toward a no-deal Brexit, an outcome no one wants on either side of the Channel.

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post-Brexit bid to curb foreign player imports splits soccer

Opinion | Has U.K.s Brexit binging left it sleepwalking toward decay?

In an open letter to the nation, May said she would campaign heart and soul to get the deal approved. Speaking in Brussels on Sunday, she added that the British people dont want to spend any more time arguing about Brexit, and that her agreement would allow Britons to come together again as a country.

Though several European leaders expressed regret that Brexit was taking place, May pointedly did not when asked at a news conference whether she was sad about the rupture.

No, she replied. But I recognize that some European leaders are sad and some others at home in the U.K. are sad at this moment.

Even as the 27 other leaders of the European Union put their imprimatur on the agreement, they were eager to do nothing to make Mays task any harder. They, like much of the British public, are heartily sick of Brexit, and Europe has other challenges to deal with, including migration and populism, Russian aggression and the Italian budget threat to the euro.

Several European leaders warned on Sunday that negotiations could not be reopened should the British Parliament reject the deal, echoing Mays message that this was the only deal possible, and that Britains lawmakers had nothing to gain by voting against it.

This is the deal, said Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, the blocs executive arm. Its the best deal possible. The European Union will not change its fundamental position.

But Juncker, too, said to the media, Its not a moment for jubilation nor celebration; its a sad and tragic moment.

Prime Minister Mark Rutte of the Netherlands, whose country is one of Britains closest trading partners, also expressed confidence that May would succeed in persuading Parliament to pass the deal. But asked if the bloc might make more concessions, he warned: This is the maximum we can all do.

Britains break with Europe was never going to be easy. Even if Britain ratifies the deal, the end of March will see the beginning of many months, possibly years, of negotiations on its future relationship  from trade and travel to security and intelligence.

European officials have been eager to try to help May get the deal ratified by embracing language in the political declaration about Britains long-term ties with the bloc, which will be closer and of a different kind than any other third country.

Britains allies, including the Netherlands, pressed hard for a reference in the declaration to an ambitious, broad, deep and flexible partnership across trade and economic co-operation, law enforcement and criminal justice, foreign policy, security and defence and wider areas of co-operation.

They hoped to describe a close relationship that went far beyond a trade deal of the kind the bloc has negotiated with Canada and Japan.

But to British critics, the proposals represent the worst of all worlds, a Britain that is neither in, nor fully out, of the European Union. If negotiations fail to produce a good outcome, they fear that Britain could be trapped in Europes orbit, obliged to obey rules for years to come without the ability to shape them or cut its own trade deals around the globe.

Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the opposition Labour Party, described the accord as a bad deal for the country.

The implications of Brexit for Britain and its role in the world are profound, according to experts. The act of signing on the dotted line to leave the European Union is a defining moment in British history, there is no doubt about that, said Anthony Teasdale, author of The Penguin Companion to European Union.

Many of the younger generation take membership completely for granted, Teasdale added. Having been in the EU all their lives, they have difficulty conceptually working out what being outside might look like.

Britain joined the European Unions forerunner in 1973 and embarked, often grudgingly, on a process of integration that accelerated from the mid-1980s. Economic rules are now so intertwined that the former director-general of the World Trade Organization, Pascal Lamy, has likened Brexit to removing an egg from an omelette.

But Britain was always hesitant  or outright resistant  to pooling sovereignty with a group of Continental countries that joined together after World War II, from which the British emerged victorious.

Brexit is probably a bigger break for Britain than for the European Union, as the perception from the Continent has always been that Britain was somewhat aloof and detached and closer to the U.S. than Europe, said Holger Nehring, professor of contemporary European history at the University of Stirling.

Months of difficult negotiations produced the legally binding withdrawal agreement and a vaguer set of pledges concerning a future relationship with the bloc, both of which were officially adopted in Brussels on Sunday.

A few last-minute issues had remained to be resolved, including Gibraltar, which the weak Spanish government is insisting must be treated only as a bilateral issue with Britain. The sovereignty of Gibraltar, a British overseas territory on Spains coast that Spain claims as its own, has always been a point of contention. But after British assurances, Spain ultimately did not hold up the deal.

Under the plan, Britain would leave the European Union in March but adhere to the blocs rules and regulations at least until December 2020, while negotiators try to sort out the longer-term future.

That the divorce agreement would be accepted by May and the European Union has been little doubted since the British Cabinet approved it this month. In addition to approval by the British Parliament, it will also need ratification by the European Parliament.

For the moment, though, the blessing of European leaders on Sunday finally put on the table a formal divorce deal that would chart for Britain a gradual and orderly departure.

That 585-page treaty deals with Britains outstanding payments to the bloc of around $50 billion (U.S.), the rights of EU citizens in Britain and vice versa, and how to prevent physical checks on goods at the frontier between Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom, and Ireland, which will remain in the European Union.

Most of the debate and upset in Britain focuses on the Irish border and a backstop plan to tide the two sides over until technology  or another form of trading arrangement  can dispense with the need for strict physical controls.

The backstop would apply after the 20-month transition period (which could be extended by a maximum of two years) and only if there were no other solution to the Irish border issue. In that case, the whole of the United Kingdom would remain in a European customs union, while Northern Ireland would have to abide by more of the blocs economic regulations.

In theory, at least, the pact will allow the British government time to dismantle a set of laws and structures that have become pillars of British economic, political and diplomatic life, while negotiating with Brussels on a new relationship.

No one in Brussels knows any better than people in Britain about what is coming next, but there is considerable hope that, despite the odds, somehow May will pull it off.

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DAMASCUS, SYRIARussian warplanes attacked rebel-held areas in northern Syria for the first time in weeks on Sunday, as Syrian officials said more than 100 people were treated at hospitals for a suspected poison gas attack in the northern city of Aleppo that Damascus and Moscow blamed on rebels.

The rebels, who have denied carrying out any poison gas attacks, accused the government of trying to undermine a truce reached by Russia and Turkey in September during a summit in the Russian city of Sochi. The targeted area is rebel-held and home to extremist groups opposed to the truce such as the al-Qaida-linked Horas al-Din, which has described the deal as a great conspiracy, and the Ansar al-Din Front.

Russian military spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov told reporters in Moscow that Russian warplanes destroyed militant positions in northern Syria blaming them for the attack with poison gas on Aleppo.

The latest wave of shelling and airstrikes in northern Syria is the most serious violation of a truce reached by Russia and Turkey that brought relative calm to the countrys north for the past two months.

The planes of Russias Aerospace Defence Forces carried out strikes on the detected artillery positions of terrorists in the area, from where the shelling of Aleppo civilians with chemical munitions was conducted late Saturday, Konashenkov said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Thiqa News Agency, an activist collective, said warplanes pounded rebel-held areas west and south of Aleppo city. The airstrikes were the first since the truce went into effect on Sept. 17.

Syrias Arab News Agency, SANA, said Syrian troops pounded rebel positions near Aleppo inflicting heavy losses among terrorists.

SANA said the alleged chemical attack late Saturday was carried out by terrorist groups positioned in Aleppo countryside that fired shells containing toxic gases on three neighbourhoods in Syrias largest city.

Human Rights Watchs Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa Lama Fakih said serious reports of suspected chemical weapon attacks should not be left without investigation. She added that all parties, including the Syrian government and Russia, should facilitate an investigation by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons into the suspected attack in Aleppo.

Konashenkov said earlier that Russian chemical weapons specialists have been dispatched to Aleppo. Russia is a close ally of President Bashar Assad and has intervened in recent years to turn the tide of the civil war in his favour.

According to preliminary data, particularly the symptoms shown by the victims, the shells that bombarded residential areas of Aleppo were filled with chlorine gas, Konashenkov said.

Syrias forensic medicine general director, Zaher Hajo, told The Associated Press that all but 15 of the 105 people who were treated have been discharged. He said two people who were in critical condition have improved.

The Observatory said 94 people were treated, with 31 remaining in hospitals.

Turkeys defence ministry in a statement said Sunday Minister Hulusi Akar spoke with his Russian counterpart Sergey Shoygu about the recent developments in northern Syria. The statement said the two exchanged views on recent provocations that have been evaluated as aimed to undermine the Sochi agreement may continue and the need to be ready.

A joint team from the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons accused Syrias government of using chlorine gas in at least two attacks in 2014 and 2015, and the nerve agent sarin in an attack in April 2017 in the town of Khan Sheikhoun that killed about 100 people. The UN-OPCW team also accused Daesh extremist group of using mustard gas twice, in 2015 and 2016.

The Britain-based Observatory, which relies on a network of activists and contacts throughout Syria, said the airstrikes hit the Rashideen district on the western outskirts of Aleppo and the village of Khan Touman south of the city.

The truce brokered by Russia and Turkey, which supports the rebels, has been repeatedly violated, but until Sunday there had been no airstrikes.

Syrian state media meanwhile reported that rebels shelled the Christian village of Mahradeh in northwestern Syria, causing material damage but no casualties.

In Jordan, local media reported that troops opened fire on six people trying to infiltrate the border from Syria killing four and wounding two.

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Music and booze-filled party cruises around Lake Victoria are a rite of passage of sorts for fun-seeking young Ugandans, but the one that pushed off into the waters Saturday night seemed doomed from the start.

The rickety vessel had been in poor condition and had been docked for some time before people started piling on near Kampala, the Ugandan capital, authorities told The Associated Press. The owners of the boat did not have a license to operate and had overloaded the boat well past the point of being safe.

Making things worse, rough weather had turned the water in Africas largest lake treacherous.

The revelers aboard  including a Ugandan recording artist and a prince  were apparently unaware of the danger until it was too late.

The trouble began about midway through the cruise, not far from shore.

About 7 p.m., the boat overturned and sank, spilling about 90 people into the lake. Inebriated partygoers suddenly found themselves flailing in the water, facing a life-or-death scenario.

Many were not wearing life jackets, authorities said, and their panic was probably increased by their state of intoxication.

Witnesses said they heard people screaming for help, treading water or trying to swim to shore.

They were shouting Help us! Help us! and the boat was sinking very quickly, Sam Tukei, one of several men who used fishermens canoes to try to rescue people, told The Associated Press. By the time the police came, we had saved many people.

Two fishing boats that came to the aid of passengers were overwhelmed with people and capsized, according to the BBC.

Government rescue teams arrived a little later, sending divers into Lake Victoria to recover bodies.

As word spread, dozens of family members and friends gathered along the shoreline, peering through a wire fence, emitting occasional screams or cries at the sight of a loved ones body being pulled from the water, the BBC reported. Others pored over sweaters, wallets, keys and shoes hoping to identify the dead.

Among the rescued was music artist Iryn Namubiru, according to the BBC, and Prince Daudi Kintu Wasajja, brother of the king of Buganda, Ugandas largest traditional kingdom.

The boat was owned by a man named Templa Bissase or Bissaso and his wife, according to a statement that President Yoweri K. Museveni issued to the Ugandan Daily Monitor. The boat was travelling from a private beach and had a capacity of 50 people  but was unregistered, unlicensed and possibly uninsured. The boat partys music was turned up so loud, Musevenis statement said, the people aboard might not have heard the emergency commands of the captain.

Boat accidents are increasingly common on East Africas large lakes, including Lake Victoria, which is surrounded by Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya, and is larger than Switzerland.

Saturdays tragedy was the second large-scale sinking on Lake Victoria in two months. In September, nearly 150 people died after a ferry carrying hundreds of people capsized on the Tanzanian side of the lake, the BBC reported. The ferry had a capacity of 100 people, but 400 people climbed aboard, many of them carrying goods to nearby markets.

Critics directed their rage at the government, which they accused of using an overloaded, undersized ferry on a busy route that crosses Lake Victoria a half-dozen times a day. Compounding problems: It was market day, and the ferry was also loaded with supplies, including heavy bags of cement and corn.

We are really saddened and urge the government to provide a new ferry because the old one was small and the population is big, Editha Josephat Magesa, a resident who lost an aunt, father and younger brother in the boat tragedy, told the BBC.

But closer to Uganda, as authorities continued to pull bodies out of the water, it was unclear who, if anyone, would be held responsible for the deaths.

The couple who owned the boat were listed among the victims.

Obviously, the operators of this boat will be charged with criminal negligence and manslaughter, if they have not already been punished for their mistake by dying in the accident, Museveni said in a statement.
Indigenous women in Ontario are on the front line of a daily battle against violence in their lives that so many Canadians dont see and dont understand.

As the executive director of the Ontario Native Womens Association (ONWA) Ive witnessed our organization grow into a force that provides a respectful safe place for Indigenous women as safety is paramount to healing and addressing violence.

From Indigenous antihuman trafficking to Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls, to domestic violence and rampant institutionalized racism the cycle of violence is real and devastating. The violence that Indigenous women battle each day is external and internal.

Through ONWAs She Is Wise framework, we honour and acknowledge that every Indigenous woman has the potential to reclaiming her sacredness as well as the leadership role in her family and community.

In the past year ONWA served approximately 9,700 community members, delivered over 4,000 community events through 29 programs with 126 partnerships across the province. We are working to deliver transparent change that equates into not only walking the healing journey with Indigenous women but provides concrete economic savings for all Ontarians.

As of October 2018, ONWA saved the provincial government a minimum of $19 million.

Those savings included supporting mothers with 71 family reunifications. We need to put into context the fact that child welfare system costs are approximately $113 per day, $3,390 per month at a cost of $40,680 per child per year. We as an organization recognize the importance of this first relationship and bond between mother and child by keeping children within their families, but also the pressure on organizational and public resources.

We have saved the province over $6 million in costs directly attributed to helping women exit human trafficking. We saved even more in additional costs in emergency room visits, ambulance trips, nights in the hospital, long term medical care and survivor support.

My passion is creating safe spaces for Indigenous women and their families. Those safe spaces include education. From 2006 to 2016 the percentage of Indigenous women (aged 25 to 64) with at least a high school diploma or equivalency rose from 74 per cent to 82 per cent.

The percentage of Indigenous women (aged 25 to 64) with a post-secondary, diploma or degree increased from 49 per cent in 2006 to 57 per cent in 2016. These statistics reveal important and optimistic findings on the road to ending violence in the lives of our women, their children and their communities.

We need all Ontarians to recognize we are all interconnected across genders, races and religions and that ending violence and creating safer communities is the responsibility of every one of us.

On Sunday, the United Nations International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, we ask that all Ontarians stand in solidarity by acknowledging the strength and courage of Indigenous women. The battle to end violence in their lives is every day.
If urban and suburban transit riders, jammed onto the over-crowded Yonge subway line, were hoping for relief from the Ford government, they wont find any consolation in the speech that Ontario Transportation Minister Jeff Yurek gave to the Toronto Region Board of Trade last week.

Yurek outlined the provinces plans for Torontos subway system, which the Ford government plans to take over in the New Year. But not once did he mention the all-important downtown relief line.

Thats right, the No. 1 transit priority of Mayor John Tory, city council and the citys former chief planner, Jennifer Keesmaat, didnt rate a word from the minister in charge. Thats despite the fact the planned line between Osgoode and Pape stations is absolutely necessary to divert thousands of passengers from a Yonge line that is already operating dangerously over capacity.

Yurek emphasized instead that the province would be able to push the subway further into York, Peel and Durham regions, reviving fears that the government wants to upload the subway system to the province simply to pander to voters in the suburbs, where the Progressive Conservatives have strong support.

Even when Yurek was given a chance later to clarify his remarks, he would only concede that the relief line was a top priority, not the top priority.

If suburban transit riders think all that is good news, it isnt.

After all, the relief line wont primarily serve downtowners. By relieving pressure on the main north-south Yonge line it will make it easier for commuters from the suburbs to get to and from their jobs in the central core.

As the Stars Ed Keenan has written: It will provide a faster, more comfortable ride into the city for thousands of daily riders from the north and east of the city, and at the same time allow us to consider ways to better serve further-flung riders by making it possible to contemplate extending the lines we have now.

Now that sounds like a sensible plan all political leaders in the GTA should support.

In fact, they did just that before Doug Ford threw all the cards into the air with his out-of-the-blue announcement last May that he would take over the system if the PCs won the June election.

Back in 2017, York Region Chair Wayne Emmerson, Markham Mayor Frank Scarpitti and Richmond Hill Mayor Dave Barrow joined forces with Tory to ensure that the relief line would proceed at least at the same time as any northward extension of the Yonge line.

The fact is, unless the relief line opens at the same time  or before  the Yonge extension into Richmond Hill, Markham and Vaughan, passengers from all points will find themselves clamouring for a space to stand, never mind sit.

Indeed, capacity for the Yonge line is 28,000 passengers per hour in each direction, but on a typical weekday it carries 28,300. That would explain why riders heading home from work in the downtown core  to all parts of the GTA  already must wait for several trains to go by before they find one they can squeeze onto.

What would happen if the Yonge line is extended before the relief line is built? Already people are in danger of being pushed off congested platforms onto the tracks below every time trains are delayed during rush hour.

It should go without saying that a transit system that moves 1.8 million riders daily shouldnt be a political ping-pong ball. Indeed, the whole region benefits when Torontos transit system works efficiently.

Its not only the smart thing to do from a planning perspective, its the right thing to do for passenger safety. And that should count for something.

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Talk of gun crimes and murder rate and bloodiest year filled chat rooms and talk shows and blogs and newspaper front pages last week as Toronto recorded the most murders in a year, ever.

But there is no crisis. Really.

Humans act in a crisis. We declare an emergency and change protocols and institute changes targeted at the source of the epidemic. SARS was a crisis. The threat of infection changed behaviour. Today, rubber gloves and hand sanitizers are more visible than gauzes and medicine at your local hospital and doctors office.

Viewed through that lens, gun play among disaffected young Black men involved in a disproportionate number of shootings is not a crisis. Not yet. We like to talk when we should act. We throw around words like crisis and epidemic while we live in routine indifference to the real outcomes on the street.

Because, really, it doesnt impact our lives and a significant enough number of our loved ones.

Whats happening to Justice Donald McLeod of the Ontario Court of Justice underscores this. The Ontario Judicial Council, which governs judges behaviour, is threatening to suspend, discipline and/or recommend he be fired. The hearing is Nov. 30 in Toronto. Its being called because another judge complained that in convening and guiding the Federation of Black Canadians (FBC), a 2-year-old non-profit, non-partisan group, Justice McLeod was un-judge-like.

Its nonsense. Its serious.

Just the fact the hearing is being held is a disheartening and disproportionately demeaning and troubling development. The judge didnt beat his wife or sexually assault women or criticize the judiciary or make intemperate remarks or besmirch the integrity of the bench or privately tell a reporter that the colonial construct on which Canada is based is reason enough for people of colour to rise up and overthrow the government.

No. He tried to help his people  a minority besieged with a toxic mix of anti-Black racism, centuries of poor educational outcomes that manifest themselves in huge dropout rates, underemployment, mental health breakdowns, and an incarceration rate four times the national average.

In June 2016 he invited a number of concerned Black folks  social workers, cops, teachers, bankers, civil servants, clergy, mental health practitioners, journalists (I attended) to a meeting in Regent Park and the consensus was to draft a narrative that productively and powerfully lay out the problems, the institutional, clinical and social intersections that feed and disperse the generational dysfunctions. And offer some solutions.

Some 37 people attended. There might have been a few political operatives or wannabe politicians among the group. But whos fussed? It takes all kinds. When you are drowning you dont much care about whos throwing you a lifeline. That consideration is a luxury for when you are hauled ashore.

The produced document, apparently, found some resonance with the federal Liberals, not so much with the Ontario Liberals. The 2018 federal budget contained $214 million to be spread across Canada to address issues highlighted in the report, with $42 million earmarked for the Black community. None of this money or other government money goes to the FBC, which is more preoccupied with educating all political parties and governments and creating a national organization to address regional issues.

As you can imagine, with the money, though a pittance, comes problems.

The crabs in the barrel started working overtime. Community leaders with years of advocacy under their belts felt insulted McLeod and the FBC did not consult them. Others felt their issues were not on the table. Still others groused that their particular cause was not advocated for, so the FBC could not possibly be a legit grassroots and effective voice.

And who is this judge anyway, to think he can speak for Black people? He is a part of the system, they screamed. He is conflicted. He cant speak truth to power when he is part of the power structure. Some called him and the group, Uncle Toms and house Negroes.

An impartial, unbiased judge cant speak to injustices without running afoul of the principles of his judicial office, which say:

Judges must not participate in any partisan political activity; neither contribute to any political party. They must not abuse the power of their judicial office or use it inappropriately. Most critically, judges are encouraged to be involved in community activities provided such involvement is not incompatible with their judicial office.

A conservative, restrictive reading of those clauses might lead a judge to conclude, as most of them do, that on becoming a judge, you should enter a kind of witness protection program and retire to splendid isolation from the community, rising only to sit on the bench and pronounce verdicts.

Justice McLeod knows this view. So, he exchanged several letters with the ethics committee outlining what he was doing with the FBC and getting feedback on where he might cross over the line guiding his actions.

The ethics committee clings to the narrative that the body merely advises and it does not clear a judges activities. What is clear is the ethics committee unanimously did not express actionable concerns to McLeod until the crabs in the barrel started a controversy over his advocacy.

The irony is the community whiners are correct in that McLeod cannot, as a judge, properly advocate for community concerns. He cant be strident and vocal and loud and incendiary enough to adequately reflect the trauma and turmoil and indignation that fuels the demands that must be made. McLeod knows this and has not attempted to. He facilitated the start of the group, chairs the steering committee and intended to be the interim chair until the body established a constitution and a board of directors and a national mandate.

His mistake was in not getting out fast enough  before the initiative became sullied by the government grant  and the resulting jealousies and backbiting. And although he has resigned from roles that caused the filing of the complaint, somebody, it appears, is trying to cut him down to size.

The learned judges might peruse the bios of their peers to see how many of their number sit on boards and participate in activities that, exposed to the same internecine squabbles, might easily exceed the strict standards being applied to Justice McLeod.

The hearing panel will be able to follow the correspondences between McLeod and the ethics committee. If this is a fair hearing, one using the common judicial test of what a reasonable, fair minded and informed person would conclude about the judges behaviour, the verdict will exonerate the justice, while urging even stricter avoidance of community involvement.

The panels words and actions will be couched differently, of course. But that is the impact.

Justice McLeod grew up in Ontario housing in Regent Park and Scarborough in a single-parent home. Boys he ran with are long buried or in jail. He knows what it is like to turn on the oven and leave the door open to warm the apartment because of a backlog in repairs. He got out. As a successful criminal defence lawyer, he took the frantic phone calls late at night from desperate moms looking to get their sons out of jail, armed only with legal aid. He defended one of the infamous Toronto 18 in the international terrorism case. He took on the establishment and argued racial profiling before the Supreme Court of Canada. He rubbed shoulders with O.J. Simpsons lawyer Johnnie Cochran of the, If it doesnt fit you must acquit. He was appointed a judge in 2013. He is as comfortable ordering a Jamaican patty at TinNels as he is a juicy sirloin in the fanciest restaurant. He can pluck down the deposit on a North Toronto mansion and has lived in the ghetto.

In short, he is exactly what we want as a judge  someone with life experiences that speak to the so-called crisis on the street.

In short, he is exactly want we want as an interpreter of Black community concerns. Rallies planned in Ottawa, Vancouver, Toronto and Alberta are expected to highlight this. A petition opposing the hearing has more than 4,000 signatures and rising.

Of course, there are many judges and many interpreters. And many Black folks who can speak their truth. McLeod gave us an organization that serves a valuable purpose  one filling an obvious void.

In majority communities, not much is lost by the muting of credible and informed and critical voices because there are so many more options and ways to collect and affirm the message. In the Black community, the silencing will be deafening  despite the noise from the essential rabble in the streets.

Guns are not the only instruments of death in Toronto, circa 2018; just the loudest.
The CEO of Facebook continues to conduct himself in the manner of a 16th-century autocrat/dictator/emperor.

I imagine him in his Palo Alto compound, surrounded by courtiers in gold brocade pantaloons. And I wonder: where is Thomas More in this play?

The unchecked supreme power of the king  sorry, chief executive officer  has flourished in the person of Mark Zuckerberg. Anyone who caught the interview with CNNs Laurie Segall last week would have been struck as Segall pressed Zuckerberg, twice, on his overarching power at the social media giant.

So youre not stepping down as chairman, Segall asked, after suffering a discursive and off-point answer when she first put the problem of unchecked authority to him.

Thats not the plan, Zuckerberg replied. Would anything change that, she wanted to know? Uh, I mean if eventually, I mean over time. Im not going to be doing this forever.

Zuckerberg is both chairman and CEO of the social media giant, putting him completely at odds with best governance practice. At the moment hes trying to sidestep the toxic glow of speculation around how long Sheryl Sandberg is going to be able to hang in as his chief operating officer. Or maybe thats a deflection he welcomes. For the deeper problem is Zuckerberg himself, as I have written before.

A pileup of stories, most recently a deep investigation by the New York Times, continues to expose a company that apparently does not believe the old phrase, the truth will out. Theres Cambridge Analytica or the hiring of Definers Public Affairs to do work on (i.e., discredit) Facebook critic George Soros or the fist fight over exactly when executives became aware of Russian hackers using Facebook to interfere in the 2016 election.

There are near daily revelations of misuse of the platform (the online sale of an adolescent bride in South Sudan), political missteps (Zuckerberg refusing to present himself to the international committee gathering in London this week to examine the social media/fake news crisis. He will be sending a VP instead, a move that one committee member called a gross failure of leadership), and the increasingly frequent mea culpas (Sheryl Sandbergs eve-of-American Thanksgiving admission that she was the recipient of a small number of emails that referenced the Definers, completely upending her prior assertion that she had not a clue. Sandberg took the opportunity to state that it was never anyones intention to play into an anti-Semitic narrative against Mr. Soros or anyone else.)

And yet Zuckerberg doesnt get it.

In speaking with CNN he tossed out what he clearly thought was a reputation-saving idea. Pretty soon, he said, users will be able to appeal the companys decision to take down content. We might take it down if we find that its hate speech or violates our policies, Zuckerberg said. But if you disagree youre going to be able to appeal to an independent body.

That thought was a nod to his own Facebook post a week prior when he mused that such a body would provide accountability and oversight and prevent an over-concentration of decision making within existing corporate teams. Ideas on how this would work, exactly, are to be piloted in the first half of 2019.

We see the problem here, dont we.

What is missing is the independent body serving as a check on Zuckerberg himself.

I have previously written about the shareholder proposal from Trillium Asset Management pushing for an independent board chair. In its proposal Trillium reminds us of what we know  that Zuckerbergs dual-class shares gives him roughly 60 per cent voting control over the company. An independent chair (and a muscular governance committee) would provide at least some checks and balances, holding management to account.

An independent chair provides the clearest separation of power between the CEO and the rest of the board, the proposal states, adding that this absence of independence has contributed to Facebook missing, or mishandling, a number of severe controversies. Trilliums list of examples include the proliferation of fake news, perpetrating violence in Burma, India and South Sudan, and blocking ads from certain user groups. Russian meddling and the sharing of personal data of 87 million users with Cambridge Analytica are in there too. The list of course would be longer if it were written today.

Who in Zuckerbergs court are his closest counsel? How have they so failed to get him to see the irony in creating a modern-day behemoth run with antique machinery?

Heres what I find confounding: if Zuckerberg did announce that he was stepping down as chair it would go some way toward appeasing his critics. Instead, he has assumed the manner of the cosseted ruler fearing treason around every corner.

Will he sacrifice Sandberg? He said in the CNN interview that he would not. Shes been an important partner for me for 10 years, he noted. And shipping ones number one adviser off to the Tower of London is never a good look.

If Zuckerberg fails to make a move soon about his own role at the company, he may find that its his own head on the chopping block.

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OTTAWAThe oft-delayed purchase of new fighter jets is contributing to a flight of pilots out of the Air Force to the civilian sector, causing a critical shortage of skilled aviators to fly Canadas aging fleet of CF-18s, insiders say.

Flying a 30-year-old jet holds less appeal for pilots who are no longer prepared to sacrifice quality of life and are instead quitting for airline careers, where demand for experienced personnel is sky-high.

The rush out the door has left the Royal Canadian Air Force coping with less experienced pilots flying increasingly outdated jets, former fighter pilots tell the Star.

Its not a winning proposition, one veteran former pilot told the Star.

In a recent report, the auditor general turned a spotlight on the crisis, noting that the Air Force only had 64 per cent of the CF-18 pilots it needs. Between April 2016 and March 2018, 40 fighter pilots left and the Air Force was only able to train 30 new ones. Since then, 17 more pilots have indicated they are out the door.

If that pace continues, there wont be enough experienced pilots to train new ones and the Air Force wont be able to meet its obligations to NATO and NORAD, the report said.

The Star spoke to several former fighter pilots about the situation. They spoke on background because of sensitivities around their current jobs.

They say several factors are at play in the exodus of pilots. These include exasperation over the delayed purchase of replacement jets that are now not expected for a decade or more, as well as a desire for better quality of life away from the two main fighter bases in Cold Lake, Alta., and Bagotville, Que.

But the biggest factor is the huge demand for pilots across Canada and the world, offering military pilots an easy path to the cockpits of commercial airliners.

Theres not enough pilots globally ... so companies are very aggressive in recruiting wherever they can find them. Military pilots are prime candidates, so they get offered good deals and off they go, one former pilot said.

The broader pilot shortage problem could soon be the topic of parliamentary study. Liberal MP Steve Fuhr, a former Air Force pilot who flew the CF-18, has proposed a motion to have the Commons transport committee examine the challenges facing flight schools in training new pilots.

Speaking to the motion earlier this month, Fuhr (Kelowna-Lake Country) said the industry-wide shortage is already having an effect on the civilian sector and the military, and noted that Canada could be short 3,000 pilots by 2025.

As the pilot shortage percolates up, both scheduled and nonscheduled commercial air service will be negatively affected, Fuhr told a meeting of the committee on Nov. 21.

The CF-18s were last deployed in a combat role in Iraq against Daesh, and remain potent fighters. Able to fly at almost twice the speed of sound, they continue to hold appeal for young military pilots.

But delays in purchasing new fighters, first by the Conservative government and now the Liberals, means replacement aircraft are 10 years or more away. With no prospect of flying the next generation of fighter, some pilots see little incentive to stick around and are opting to quit the Armed Forces when their flying tours are complete.

They make the calculation that Im never going to fly anything other than an old 40-year-old F-18 in my entire career, the former pilot said.

However, another veteran pilot downplayed the delayed procurement as a reason for the departures. Realistically, I dont think thats driving people out the door, he said.

After two tours of flying  typically about six years  pilots usually move to a desk job. Thats the point where military pilots who are keen to keep flying decide to jump to the private sector, which offers the promise of a good career and the chance to live closer to big cities.

Thats why guys get out. Whats ultimately driving them out is opportunity, he said.

Whatever the reason, the departures are hitting the RCAF hard. The Air Force has 76 CF-18s and just over 100 pilots qualified to fly them, insiders say. As a result, having almost 60 quit the forces in just over two years marks a huge loss in experience, they say.

The former Air Force veterans stressed that training is good and that the young pilots arriving at the front-line squadrons are well-qualified. Yet they are considered minimum combat-ready, able to initially fly only as wingmen and require another one or two years of experience to be considered qualified to fly all missions and serve as flight leaders.

Thats the danger of this cycle. Theyre not regenerating the same numbers as theyre losing, the pilot said. The experience level is dropping ... With that goes an increase in risk.

By the time they are replaced, the CF-18s will have been in the Air Force fleet for almost half a century, 30 years longer than planned. The auditor general noted that its been 10 years since there was any significant upgrade to their combat capabilities. The Air Force had been relying on the experience of its pilots to overcome shortfalls caused by the age of the aircraft.

You can still fight OK with an old jet if you have very, very skilled individuals flying it. We invest a lot in our training and therefore our people are very capable, adaptive, innovative, the pilot said.

The problem is that those guys are leaving, he said.

In response to the auditor general findings, Lt.-Gen. Al Meinzinger, commander of the RCAF, said the Air Force is taking steps to help retain aircrews, including measures to improve the quality of life along with changes to how the Air Force trains its pilots to give it greater flexibility to better meet future personnel demands.

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Kiwanis Club of Jacksonville recently donated mulch to North Elementary School for the schools playground. A group of Kiwanis members and Illinois College students then donated their time to spread the mulch on the playground.
EDWARDSVILLE  Santa finds himself in court this year when the Edwardsville High School Drama Club presents Parkers No Present Problem at 2 p.m. on Dec. 8 in the EHS auditorium. The high schools annual Christmas show is unique in that each year it is written, produced, directed and performed entirely by the EHS drama students.

EHS Drama Director Ashley Melton, who is in her second year leading the program, explained that the Christmas show is a long-time tradition at EHS.

I think that weve concluded that its been going on about 25 years, she said. The students write the show, they direct it, they do all the producing, the lights, the sets. So the kids get a big taste of what adult leaders do for the main stage production.

The EHS students perform the Christmas show for elementary school kids throughout the district.

We perform for kindergarten through fourth-grade students Dec. 6 and Dec. 7 and then our public performance will be on Dec. 8 at 2 p.m., Melton explained.The Christmas show quickly follows the fall play which the EHS Drama Club just performed Nov. 9 and Nov. 10.

So its about a three-week turnaround which is early and fast, but its about in that amount of space every single year. What we do is we hold auditions for the Christmas show about a couple weeks after we start the fall show. So while the fall show, the main stage production as weve been calling it, is rehearsing every day, the Christmas show meets one day a week to rehearse. So, they have been meeting one day a week since school has started. We have two shows going at once essentially, she said. We took two-and-a-half weeks on pause so we could focus on the fall show and then as soon as the fall show is over we jump right back into the Christmas show full force.

The EHS Christmas show typically follows a formula each year, where the play opens at the North Pole and a child is whisked away on an adventure.

But this year I think we have a different approach to that formula which is that a kiddo on Christmas morning opens his gift and it is empty, Melton explained. He gets his parents involved and they are taking Santa to court. Essentially, its this lawsuit case thats really clever and funny. So the adults get a good taste of some humor and the kids, of course, get to see their favorite characters. Theres always a reindeer and Santa Claus and theres a snowman this year so lots of characters that they recognize.

EHS seniors Leta DeBardeleben and Baileigh Duvall wrote this years play and are serving as co-directors. DeBardeleben reminisced about going to the EHS Christmas play as a young girl.

I just remember as a kid that it was my favorite part of the year, she said. I was so excited to go every single year. It was one of the biggest reasons I actually joined the EHS program here  along with a show I saw in fourth grade that Baileigh actually brought me to. We came and saw Starmites in fourth grade. It was a big reason why I wanted to be apart of the club so bad.

DeBardeleben stressed that being able to write the Christmas play was a huge honor.

It was so great being a part of it last year because I acted in it last year and my brother got to come and see it last year. Its just really cool being with all the kids and seeing the expression on their face when we do chase scenes and things like that or when they understand a joke and they all start laughing. Its just a really cool experience.

DeBardeleben enjoys theater performance so much that she is considering possibly pursuing a minor in theater when she attends SIUE next year.

I actually just went to see their (SIUE) performance of Chicago this past week and it was phenomenal. It just really made me want to continue doing it because Ive been kind of skeptical on whether I wanted to follow it or not, she noted. But I think I do want to minor in it because there are so many benefits that come out of theater programs. Its such a great experience being able to put on shows for people. Even if youre not necessarily in it but if youre apart of it, its a great thing to be a part of.

River Johnson, a junior, is serving as the student technical director for the Christmas play.

Im working really closely with Leta and Baleigh helping them design a set for the show, and then Im also going to be helping with lighting and sound during the show. Ill just be with them creating and turning it into their actual vision, Johnson said.

He explained that his task is to create a set that is a courtroom, with a jury, yet fun.

The whole show is about a trial, Johnson said. So its like a North Pole courtroom. Its going to be very festive, and what were going to try to do is get everybody in the (holiday) spirit. Ive done it (EHS Christmas play) since freshman year, but this year Im able to lead it which is exciting.

Johnson plans to major in technical direction in college.

Anna Bruss, an EHS junior, is one of the actors in the play.

I am playing one of the elves and my name is Nancy Nutmeg, she said. My character is a very sassy elf. She kind of wants what she wants when she wants it and thats all there is to it.

She also attended the EHS Christmas plays as a young girl and especially remembered how happy the EHS students were who participated in it.

The elves at the beginning of the show get to come out and interact with the kids, Bruss noted. Thats one of the best parts about being apart of the show, definitely. Its very fun. Seeing all those kids come out (as a child) was really inspiring. They just wanted to make sure you had the best time ever.

Bruss would also like to continue along the theater and musical theater path in college. And then maybe try to get to Broadway, she said. Ive also thought about doing early childhood education and trying to incorporate theater within my job with children.

The EHS Christmas production of Parkers No Present Problem takes place at 2 p.m. on Dec. 8, and it is free to the public.
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Pakistan has invited External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj to visit the country to attend the groundbreaking ceremony of the Kartarpur corridor next week, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said on Saturday.

A long-pending demand of the Sikh community to build a religious corridor linking India's border district of Gurdaspur with a historic gurudwara in Pakistan may finally be fulfilled with both the countries announcing that stretches would be developed in their respective areas.

"On behalf of Pakistan I have extended an invitation to External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, Capt Amarinder Singh and Navjot Singh Sidhu to attend the groundbreaking ceremony at Kartarpura on Nov 28, 2018," Qureshi tweeted.

In a letter to Qureshi, Swaraj thanked him for the invite and said she was unable to travel to Kartarpur Sahib due to prior commitments including election campaign in Telangana and that India will be represented at the ceremony by Union Ministers Harsimrat Kaur Badal and Hardeep Singh Puri.

Swaraj also hoped that the government of Pakistan will expedite the construction of the corridor in order to ensure that "our citizens can pay their respects at the Gurudwara Kartarpur Sahib using the corridor as soon as possible."

Prime Minister Imran Khan will inaugurate the groundbreaking ceremony of the facilities on the Pakistani side on November 28.

The move to open the corridor could break the chill in bilateral ties. The India-Pakistan ties nose-dived in recent years with no bilateral talks taking place. The ties between the two countries had strained after the terror attacks by Pakistan-based groups in 2016.

India called off a meeting between Swaraj and Qureshi on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York in September, citing the "brutal" killing of three policemen in Jammu and Kashmir and the release of the postal stamps "glorifying" Kashmiri militant Burhan Wani.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi Friday hoped that the Kartarpur corridor would act as a bridge between the peoples of India and Pakistan that might lead to a better future as he referred to the fall of the Berlin Wall to underline the importance of people-to-people contact.

Pakistan Foreign Office on Friday said the "Kartarpur Spirit can be a step forward in the right direction from conflict to cooperation, animosity to peace and enmity to friendship."
Hyderabad, Nov 25 (PTI) Former Union minister and TDP MP Y S Chowdary Sunday said he would appear before the Enforcement Directorate (ED), which has summoned him in connection with an alleged Rs 5,700-crore bank loan fraud case on November 27, after the upcoming Winter Session of Parliament.

The ED Saturday said it had seized six high-end cars, including a Ferrari, a Range Rover and a Mercedes-Benz, reportedly belonging to Chowdary, and summoned him for questioning next week.

The agency had taken the action under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) following raids at eight premises of the Sujana Group of Companies in Hyderabad and Delhi.

The ED had said Chowdary was the man behind the group.

Chowdary told reporters here that all the firms related to him were complying with rules.

Borrowing from banks was not a crime and "loan default is not criminality", he said.

The Rajya Sabha MP of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) said he had informed the ED that he would be able to appear before it only after the Winter Session of Parliament, which is scheduled to begin from December 11.

"All our companies have been filing the necessary reports with the authorities concerned such as the SEBI (Securities and Exchange Board of India) and the RoC (Registrar of Companies) for the last 29 years," he said.

"Taking bank loans is not a crime. If there is a default, then there is a certain procedure. A bank loan default is not criminality. I have no idea why ED officials issued a press release, saying a case under PMLA was filed," Chowdary said.

Responding to a query on the alleged fraud, he said he had no idea how the ED came to a conclusion "overnight" that banks were defrauded by the (Sujana) group to the tune of over Rs 5,700 crore.

The ED had said Chowdary was the man behind the Sujana Group of Companies and that it had gathered evidence that "all directors of various companies of the group act under his instructions".

"I will provide all the information to everyone. This is not a hit-and-run case. Don't indulge in getting vicarious pleasure," the TDP leader said, reacting to media reports.

According to the ED, documents recovered by it indicated that the group was controlling over 120 companies and most of those were non-operating or existed only on paper (shell firms), without any genuine business activity.

Reacting to the ED raids, the Sujana Group of Companies had said, "We have shared all information as sought by them. The businesses are being run lawfully and we condemn certain reports that lookout notices have been issued against some directors." PTI GDK NSK RC
Mumbai, Nov 25 (PTI) Bharatiya Janata Party parliamentarian Meenakshi Lekhi and her co-passengers were stranded at the Indore airport after their flight to New Delhi was cancelled at the last minute due to "technical" reasons.

"Stuck at Indore Airport, people are angry and disappointed by the conduct of IndiGo officials," Lekhi said in a tweet along with a video clip of the angry passengers.

The IndiGo flight 6E 8867, operated by an Airbus A320, was scheduled to take off at 9.20 pm, but the airline informed the passengers that the flight was delayed by half-an-hour. "Fifteen minutes later, IndiGo announced that it had cancelled the flight due to technical reasons," a passenger said.

"The airline also informed the passengers the flight will now depart on Monday at 12.30," he added.

The passengers also claimed that the airline did not accept the request for providing food or hotel accommodations, alleging that the IndiGo staff was not at all cooperative.

IndiGo officials could not be contacted for comments.

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Mumbai, Nov 25 (PTI) Actor Farhan Akhtar says he feels a sense of guilt for not being aware of the indecent behaviour of his cousin Sajid Khan, who has been accused of sexual harassment by several women.

Sajid was accused of sexual harassment by two women -- actor Saloni Chopra and a journalist, following which he stepped down as the director of "Housefull 4".

When the allegations had surfaced, Farhan, who has been a vocal supporter of #MeToo movement, was one of the first celebrities to react and had termed them as "shocking."

"Everytime something like this has happened in the public domain, I've been very vocal with my opinion. When it came to someone within my family, I felt silence on that front would be very, very hypocritical," Farhan said.

"So pretty much on the first day when three women came out and spoke, I felt it was important for me to speak out. Sajid, being my brother, I need to now work with him, try to figure out how he can see this thing through and how it is that he can make the women who have been affected by his actions, somehow feel better," he added.

The actor was in conversation with journalist Barkha Dutt at We The Women event here.

When Barkha said an apology alone would not suffice as sexual violation is a crime, Farhan said, "Absolutely. Whether stuff like this needs to go into the ambit of court is for them to decide. These are the things he (Sajid) has to face."

"To start with apologising is a big step. To say 'I am sorry about what I did' is a big step, it can make a person feel a lot better," he added.

Farhan said when he first heard about the accusations against his cousin, he had conflicted emotions.

"It was surprise, disappointment and strangely, because when it's a member of your family, you also feel a certain level of guilt. It's happened to all of us in the past when we hear something like this and say 'but how come someone so close to him didn't know.'

"The truth is I didn't. If I did know I would've spoken about it way before the story broke. There was this certain guilt about that, how could this be going on and I had no idea. So there were conflicted emotions," he said.

Farhan feels he wishes he had known about Sajid's behaviour and said three women spoke to him privately, accusing the filmmaker of the same.

"There were two-three women who got in touch with me privately to say 'listen you should know whatever is being said is true and he has behaved in a similar way with us as well.' These are the people I've known for 12, 15, 20 years and meet them very often but nobody ever mentioned this to me. I asked them why didn't you ever tell me?

"I have been doing something with MARD for the last five years, I wouldn't have been on his side if you had brought it to my attention but somehow they weren't comfortable to speak about it," he said.

But the actor says it is ultimately a woman's decision when she wants to come out and tell her story and she should be given that environment and space.

"If someone has behaved badly with a woman and she hasn't spoken about it for ten, 20 or 30 years, it's her prerogative when she wants to speak. Even if someone tells me privately, like these three women, I cannot take their names.

"Can I go to the public with that? I can't because she will be answerable then for the rest of her life and may be she first want to be. It's a woman's agency," he added.

Also present at the panel discussion were politician Milind Deora and comedian Cyrus Broacha. PTI JUR RB

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26/11 attack: Nikam blames Pak for delay in trial against

masterminds

Vadodara (Guj), Nov 25 (PTI) Senior lawyer Ujjwal

Nikam, who appeared as special public prosecutor in the 26/11

Mumbai terror attack case, on Sunday blamed the Pakistan

government for delay in the trial against masterminds of the

attack.

On the eve of 10th anniversary of the terror attack,

he accused the neighbouring country of providing patronage to

those accused in the case.

On November 26, 2008, 10 Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT)

terrorists had sailed into Mumbai from Karachi and carried out

coordinated attacks, killing 166 people and injuring over 300.

Nine of the attackers were killed by police while lone

survivor Ajmal Kasab was captured and hanged after he was

awarded death sentence by a court.

Dubbing LeT founder Hafiz Saeed and Zakiur Rehman

Lakhvi as the "real terrorists" behind the attack in Mumbai in

2008, Nikam said the authorities in Pakistan should make

efforts for cancellation of the bail granted to them.

"Still, a decade after the terror attack, there's

little to show that Pakistan has acted against the

masterminds," Nikam said.

Hewas speaking as the chief guestat a conference on

law and justice organised here.

"The Pakistan government is responsible for delay in

the trial (against the masterminds)," he said, adding that the

neighbouring country needs to fight terrorism emanating from

its soil.

In order to bring the guilty to book, the Indian

government had in the past written to Pakistan, suggesting

ways in which the trial could be expedited by cooperation

through the legal channel, he added.

Hafiz Saeed was earlier put under house arrest after

the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack, but was freed by a court in

Pakistan in 2009.

He carries a reward of USD 10 million on his head,

announced by the authorities in the US for his role in terror

activities. PTI CORR

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Mumbai, Nov 25 (PTI) The deadly 2008 terror attack in Mumbai was a result of "misinterpretation of religion", feels a relative of encounter specialist Vijay Salaskar, who was killed while fighting terrorists that day.

The slain police inspector's family members still feel his loss and not a day goes by when they don't remember him, Salaskar's niece Mansi said Sunday.

Salaskar, then Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad chief Hemant Karkare, and IPS officer Ashok Kamte were killed outside the Cama Hospital in south Mumbai after terrorist Ajmal Kasab and his partner Ismail opened fire at their police van during the terror attack on November 26, 2008.

Remembering her uncle ten years after the incident, Mansi said, "I strongly believe religion is being misinterpreted and the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack was the result of it. What my family and I witnessed very closely is terrorism in the name of religion and faith."

She was speaking at an interfaith dialogue, organised by the Jewish community in India and Rotary Club of Bombay Queen City Foundation, on the eve of 10th anniversary of the attack.

Describing Salaskar as a pillar of unconditional strength and love for the close-knit family, she said, "My uncle attained martyrdom in the terror attack... I don't know how to describe the agony and anger we have lived with over the years."

"The plight of 26/11 has left a void in our lives. Ten years later also we feel the loss and pain. He is present in our everyday conversation... not a day goes by when we don't miss him," she added.

Nearly 166 people were killed in the attack carried out by 10 Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorists in 2008.

Nine of the attackers were killed by the police while lone survivor Ajmal Kasab was captured and hanged after he was awarded death sentence by a court. PTI AVI GK AAR
New Delhi, Nov 25 (PTI) Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Sunday he deliberately kept "politics" out of his monthly radio address 'Mann ki Baat' as the programme was about the aspirations of the people and not his or the government's achievements.

He also said he chose radio as a medium to connect with the people as it was a "mighty means" of getting across.

Addressing the 50th episode of the programme, he said the "apprehensions" of the people are not "misplaced" that the programme could have been used as a political tool and to disseminate his and his government's achievements.

"The fact is, if a leader gets hold of a microphone with assured listeners to the tune of millions, what else does he need? ... When 'Mann Ki Baat' commenced, I had firmly decided that it would carry nothing political, or any praise for the government, nor Modi for that matter anywhere. The greatest bulwark in ensuring adherence to my resolve have been you," he said.

As a run up to each episode, the expectations and aspirations of listeners through their letters, online comments and phone calls are crystal clear, he said.

"Modi may come and go, but this country will never let go of its unity and permanence, our culture will always be immortal," the prime minister said.

He said in an era of social media, he preferred radio as he realised its potential in 1998 as a worker of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

In a remote Himachal Pradesh area, it was a tea stall owner who broke him the news of India carrying out nuclear test.

"It was matter of great intrigue to me to see a lone tea seller in a remote, snow-clad hilly place, who possibly kept listening to the radio the entire day watching that particular effect of the news on radio led me to realise and internalise that this was a medium that was truly connected with the masses and that it was a mighty means of getting across," Modi said.

In terms of the reach and depth of communication, radio has been incomparable. I have been nursing that feeling ever since, acknowledging its power and strength. Hence when I became the prime minister, it was natural for me to turn towards a strong, effective medium, he pointed out.

Modi's monthly radio broadcast 'Mann ki Baat' completed 50 episodes on Sunday.

In its previous episodes, he has covered issues of social, national as well as international implication: education of the girl child, tackling exam stress, climate change and drug menace.

In October 2014, in the very first episode of the programme, he had urged citizens to use at least one khadi product, saying it would help poor weavers. PTI NAB NAB DPB

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Srinagar, Nov 25 (PTI) A Pakistani-origin terrorist belonging to the Jaish-e Mohammed (JeM) was killed Sunday in a brief exchange of fire with security forces in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama district, police said.

"On a credible input about the presence of terrorists, a search operation was launched jointly by police and security forces at the Bathien area of Khrew in Awantipora," a police spokesman said.

He said security personnel conducting the search operation were fired upon by the terrorist, leading to a brief exchange of gunfire.

"Consequently, one terrorist was killed. Incriminating materials, including an AK 47 rifle and magazines, were recovered from him," the spokesman said.

He said it was learnt from the recovered materials that the slain terrorist was a Pakistani national code-named "Waseem" and that he was affiliated to the JeM.

Police have registered a case in this regard and area is being searched, the official added. PTI SSB IJT
New Delhi, Nov 25 (PTI) Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu and Prime Minister Narendra Modi Sunday attended a dinner hosted by the Chief Justice of India on the eve of Constitution Day.

Chief justices and judges from Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Nepal and Bhutan, who are here to attend the BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation) conference, were also present.

Naidu posted pictures of the event on Twitter, in which he can be seen with Modi and CJI Ranjan Gogoi.

Constitution Day is celebrated every year on November 26 to mark the adoption of Indian Constitution by the Constituent Assembly in 1949.

This is perhaps for the first time that PM Modi attended an event in the Supreme Court complex.

"Attended the dinner hosted by the Chief Justice of India on the eve of Constitution Day Celebrations. Delighted to have met and interacted with Chief Justices from neighbouring countries," the vice president tweeted. PTI NAB NSD

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New Delhi, Nov 25 (PTI) A 41-year-old Japanese national was stabbed multiple times when he was headed towards a gurdwara in northwest Delhi's Siraspur allegedly by a group of men who then decamped with his valuables, police said Sunday.

The victim has been identified as Tadayuki Kurihara, they added.

The incident took place on Friday at around 6.30 pm when the victim was walking alone towards a gurdwara in Siraspur to attend Guru Nanak Jayanti celebrations, a senior police officer said.

Police said the victim had been on a two-month solo trip and landed in India three days ago.

After stabbing the victim, the group of four men allegedly looted his mobile phone and cash before fleeing from the spot, the officer said.

The victim was rushed to a nearby hospital. He was later referred to the LNJP hospital, where he is currently undergoing treatment, he added.

A case has been registered and the matter is being investigated, Rajneesh Gupta, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Rohini), said.

Footage from CCTV cameras installed in the area are being scanned to ascertain the exact sequence of events, police said, adding the accused were yet to be arrested. PTI AMP IJT
Jaipur, Nov 25 (PTI) The Congress on Sunday alleged that BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi have nothing to talk about development, which is why they are raking up caste and religion in their public rallies.

Former Union minister Jitin Prasada claimed that people had expected the prime minister to speak on development issues at his rally in Alwar on Sunday, but instead of telling that what the BJP government did for Rajasthan, he talked about religion and other such issues.

This reveals that Modi and the BJP have nothing to say anything on development, he said, adding Modi's rally in Alwar was full of "nervousness".

Prasada also accused the BJP government at the Centre of failing to check rise in fuel prices, which affected every household in the country.

Meanwhile, Rajasthan Congress chief Sachin Pilot held public meetings in Jharapatan in support of party candidate Manvendra Singh and claimed that the people of the state were "betrayed" by Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje due to which there is extreme resentment the electorate against the government.

Raje is contesting the Assembly election from Jhalrapatan constituency in Jhalawara district.

Assembly elections in Rajasthan will be held on December 7. PTI SDA NSD

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Nirmal (Telangana), Nov 25 (PTI) BJP president Amit Shah Sunday hit out at Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao for not taking action against AIMIM leader Akbaruddin Owaisi in connection with a hate speech.

Akbaruddin, MLA from Chandrayangutta in the dissolved state Assembly, was arrested by Nirmal police in January 2013 for allegedly using inflammatory and derogatory language against a community during his public speeches in Nirmal and

Nizamabad in December 2012. He was subsequently released on bail.

Shah also claimed that KCR was afraid of the AIMIM, which he described as a 'Razakars party".

The Razakars were an armed militia of the Hyderabad Nizamate who tried to brutally put down a revolt by peasants opposed to the Nizam's decision to not merge with India following Independence.

Addressing a rally here on Sunday, Shah said: "This is the land (Nirmal) where Akbaruddin Owaisi gave a speech. He insulted Hindu gods. There was also a case against him. But this TRS government failed to take further action."

Taking a swipe at KCR on the issue, Shah added, "I want to ask Chandrasekhar Rao, why are you not taking action? Do it now, otherwise you would lose power to take action (TRS government would be voted out)."

Continuing his tirade, Shah said KCR, as the Telangana CM is popularly known, had no time to visit families of the 60 people who died when a overcrowded state bus plunged into a valley in Kondagattu in the state's Jagtial district in August this year.

"This Chief Minister does not have the time to visit the victims of the Kondagattu (bus) accident. But he has time to eat biryani with Owaisi brothers (AIMIM chief Asaduddin and Akbaruddin)," he said.

Alleging that KCR was "scared" of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul Muslimeen, Shah said, "KCR is scared of this Razakars party (AIMIM). That is why he is not holding

(celebrations for) Hyderabad Liberation Day on September17,

Hundreds lost their lives in the crackdown by the Razakars following which the Indian government conducted "police action", codenamed Operation Polo, on September 17, 1948, to merge Hyderabad state into the Indian Union.

Shah also attacked the TRS government over farm distress and claimed that as many as 131 farmers had committed suicide in Gajwel constituency from where KCR is seeking re-election. PTI GDK VVK BNM

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Bengaluru, Nov 25 (PTI) From driving the car of his political mentor and former Karnataka chief minister S Nijalingappa to steering India's Railway Ministry, veteran Congress leader C K Jaffer Sharief's growth in politics and his unflinching loyalty to the party is widely admired.

Popularly called "Jaffer bhai" in the political circles of his times, Sharief was a staunch loyalist of Indira Gandhi, who stood with her through thick and thin, and it also paid him rich political dividends.

Challakere Kareem Jaffer Sharief was born on November 3, 1933 at Challakere of Chitradurga in the then Kingdom of Mysore. He was associated with the Congress from his adolescence.

Though his growth in the Congress was under Nijalingappa's mentorship, Sharief sided with Indira Gandhi when the party split in the 1969, after she was expelled from the organisation for violating the party discipline.

Sharief was rewarded a ticket to contest 1971 mid-term polls.

A seven-time Lok Sabha member from Bengaluru North constituency, Sharief showed his complete loyalty again to Indira Gandhi against the then popular Karnataka chief minister Devraj Urs, who parted ways with her in 1978. Indira Gandhi was out of power then.

This earned a reward for Sharief who was inducted into the cabinet as minister of state for railways by her in 1980.

He also served as the minister of state for coal in the Rajiv Gandhi government, and then went on to serve as the railways minister in the P V Narasimha Rao-led cabinet from 199195. His work towards gauge conversion during his stint as the railway minister was widely acknowledged.

Sharief was married to Amina Bie, who died in 2008. His two sons had died before him and he is survived by two daughters.

He also had rich parliamentary experience, having been a Lok Sabha member seven times. He tasted defeat twice in 2004 and 2009.

Sharief, who gradually faded into political oblivion, had often complained of being sidelined by the Congress. On several occasions, he had threatened to quit the party, sulking for being denied a ticket to him or his family members, but had withdrawn it on being pacified by the party high command.

Known for political maturity and sobriety, Sharief had maintained cordial relations with the RSS.

In April 2017, Sharief had stunned political circles, when he wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi backing RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat as the president of India after Pranab Mukherjee, saying there is no doubt about his "patriotism and commitment to the Constitution."

Questioned if his stance on Bhagwat would not be at variance from that of the Congress, Sharief had defended himself, saying his support for Bhagwat was a matter of "principle".

"Whoever becomes the president will have to function according to the Constitution. What is wrong if Bhagwat becomes the president and works according to the Constitution," he had asked. PTI KSU RA AAR
New Delhi, Nov 25(PTI) Delhi Congress chief Ajay Maken Sunday wrote a letter to Assembly Speaker Ram Niwas Goel, expressing "disappointment" over frequent special sessions of the House called by the ruling AAP over "individual, worthless" issues.

A special session of Delhi Assembly has been called on Monday to discuss, among other issues, the recent red chilli powder attack on Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal at the secretariat on November 20.

Maken, who was Speaker of Delhi Assembly during the Sheila Dikshit government, pointed out that while Congress called three special sessions of the House during its 15-year rule, while the AAP has done so 15 times in its three-and-half years in power.

"No matter of public interest have been discussed in these special sessions called by the AAP government," he alleged.

Maken, in his letter, said special sessions of the Assembly were called by the Congress to discuss conversion of vehicles to CNG, sealing and dilution of Delhi government's powers.

"Calling frequent special sessions of the Assembly on private, worthless issues not only hurts its image but also causes waste of public money," he said.

The Congress leader alleged that the AAP dispensation has no time for calling special sessions on issues like sealing, the "deteriorating" law-and-order situation and dengue, that directly affect the people of Delhi. PTI VIT MNL NSD

NSD
New Delhi, Nov 25 (PTI) A 22-year-old man has been arrested for allegedly abducting and assaulting a woman, police said on Sunday.

The accused, who has been identified as Ram Kaushik, abducted the woman from Millennium Depot in Sarai Kale Khan area on Friday, they said.

The accused was arrested from Meerut and the woman's mobile phone was recovered from his possession, the police said.

Information was received from Max Hospital, Ghaziabad at 1 am on Saturday night that a 24-year-old woman, who had been physically assaulted, had been admitted, they said.

The woman told the police that her mother is employed as a sanitation worker at a public toilet in IP Park area. She was unwell on Friday, so the woman's sister went to work instead of their mother, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Southeast) Chinmoy Biswal said.

The woman said she had gone to deliver lunch to her sister when the accused abducted her, he added.

During interrogation, Kaushik revealed that he had first tried to fool the woman into coming with him by telling her that he knew her mother, the DCP said.

However, the woman refused after she checked with her mother.

Angered by her refusal, Kaushik followed her in his car till Millenium Depot, where he abducted her, Biswal said.

Thereafter, he assaulted her with a glass bottle and stole her mobile phone, before throwing her out of the vehicle, he said. PTI NIT DIV

DIV
Chandigarh, Nov 25 (PTI) Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh Sunday sought the personal intervention of Union Minister Nitin Gadkari for expeditious clearance of road projects in the historic towns of Sultanpur Lodhi, Batala and Dera Baba Nanak.

The towns are associated with the life of Sikhism founder Guru Nanak Dev, whose 550th "Parkash Purb" (birth anniversary) is being observed this month.

In a letter to the Union minister for Road Transport and Highways, the chief minister said he was grateful to the government of India for acceding to the request of the Punjab government related to the projects and announcements in this regard, especially the opening of the Kartarpur Corridor to facilitate smooth and easy access to Kartarpur Sahib.

In view of the historic importance of these religious towns, Amarinder Singh sought an additional allocation of Rs 150 crore under the Central Road Fund (CRF) for the upgradation of the road network in Sultanpur Lodhi, Batala, Dera Baba Nanak and Gurdaspur.

The chief minister also asked for four-laning of a 21.3 km stretch of the Jalandhar-Kapurthala-Sultanpur Lodhi NH-703-A, which is currently two-laned, at an estimated cost of Rs 260 crore. The highway connects the holy town of Sultanpur Lodhi with the rest of Punjab and beyond.

"Certain stretches of this Highway are already four-laned...but due to the expected increase in pilgrim traffic during the upcoming celebrations, it was imperative to four-lane the stretch of 21.3 km," he wrote in the letter Sunday.

The chief minister also impressed upon Gadkari to immediately declare the Tarn Taran-Goindwal Sahib-Kapurthala Road a national highway as it is related to the life of Guru Nanak Dev and connects Sultanpur Lodhi with Amritsar.

He apprised the Union minister of the central government's grant of in-principle approval for declaration of the road as a national highway.

Singh further wrote that in view of the announcement to open the Kartarpur Corridor, Dera Baba Nanak should be connected with Batala by a four-laned highway to enable devotees visit Kartarpur Sahib on a shorter route.

Notably, Sultanpur Lodhi in Kapurthala district is of great religious significance as Guru Nanak Dev spent 14 years of his life here and attained enlightenment, before embarking on his missionary travels. PTI SUN IJT
\R Jammu, Nov 25 (PTI) Many highly-qualified candidates are contesting the ongoing Jammu and Kashmir panchayat polls in to bring a change at the grassroots level in the state.

Sindhu Bhalla Sharma, who has an MPhil degree in Sanskrit, is contesting for the sarpanch post of her native Anjole village in Kishtwar district.

Sharma said she was inspired by Chhavi Rajawat, an MBA graduate quit her corporate career with India's one of the biggest telecom firms to become the country's one of the youngest sarpanchs from Soda in Rajasthan.

The tech-savvy 36-year-old Rajawat, often hailed as the changing face of rural Rajasthan, also addressed delegates at the United Nations' 11th Infopoverty World Conference in 2011.

"Impressed by Rajawat's commitment to the development of her ancestral village in Rajasthan, I decided to contest the panchayat polls to contribute in some way to bring whatever change possible to my remote village," Sharma said.

Another highly-qualified woman, Arti Sharma, from a village of Udhampur, is contesting the Ghordi Khass West Kulan sarpanch seat. "There are many burning issues that I want to resolve. If I get the mandate, I wish to lead and guide the rural women towards empowerment," Arti said.

Prithvi Raj, a PhD in botany, is a sarpanch candidate from the Loharna-A panchayat in Kishtwar. Mansoor Hussain, a masters-degree holder in political science and English, is a sarpanch candidate from the Loharna-B panchayat.

All these highly-educated candidates are keen to work for the development of their respective rural pockets.

"Funds are flowing to rural bodies. My primary concern will be to see that funds are judiciously utilised and not siphoned off," Hussain said.

The panchayat elections are being held in nine phases in the state from November 17-December 11 PTI AB

HMB
Black Friday is seen by shoppers as a time to cash in on big discounts. But analysts monitoring debt at Britains biggest firms say it will not help many retailers.

Moodys warned that the price cuts could shave profits and hamper the ability of some retailers to pay back their debts as the woes of high street firms, from dwindling numbers of shoppers to rising business rates, pile up.

Black Friday largely brings forward purchases from closer to Christmas, often at lower margins, said David Beadle, senior credit officer at Moodys.

Bleak friday: Moodys downgraded the debt of several retailers in recent weeks

Smart retailers that have chosen to participate do so with a carefully thought out strategy including specific buying to protect margins. Others have decided their overall profitability and brand values are better served by avoiding involvement altogether, he added.

Moodys downgraded the debt of several retailers in recent weeks including Debenhams.

It said last week that it would also reduce the credit rating of fashion chain New Look, explaining that current debt levels are unsustainable and that 80 per cent of earnings before interest, depreciations and amortisation in 2019 will be absorbed by interest payments.
Dairy Crest, whose stable of food brands includes Cathedral City cheese and Clover margarine, is among a string of firms interested in gobbling up custard and rice pudding maker Ambrosia after it was put up for sale earlier this month.

Ambrosia owner Premier Foods has reputedly been asking for bids of more than 100million, according to food market sources.

Other interested parties are believed to include German yogurt maker Muller and Ireland-based manufacturer Kerry Foods. The companies declined to be drawn on their interest and Muller said it did not comment on speculation.

On the block: Premier Foods has put Ambrosia up for sale as part of a business review

Premier Foods has raised the for sale sign above Ambrosia as part of a business review and a renewed effort to reduce company debt.

There isnt likely to be a huge number of potential bidders for Ambrosia but the market specialists will see the value and are the ones that will be able to make it work, said one City source.

Ambrosia was founded in Lifton, Devon, in 1917 where is continues to be based. City investors hope money raised will be used to help slash the companys 509million debt.

Analysts say net debt is almost 1billion when the companys pension deficit is taken into account.

Selling Ambrosia will allow Premier Foods to focus on its other brands which include Mr Kipling, Bisto, Angel Delight, noodles brand Batchelors and the licence to produce Cadburys cakes.

Premier Foods chief executive Gavin Darby  who survived an effort by rebel shareholders to topple him as recently as July  plans to leave as part of the overhaul. A clash with a US suitor McCormick in 2016 undermined Darbys reputation and subsequently led to a slump in the share price.

McCormick ultimately dropped its 1.5billion takeover proposal, worth 65 pence a share, amid intense criticism of the board for so readily rejecting the initial overtures.

But Martin Deboo, an analyst at broker Jefferies, said Darby has made a made a positive contribution to the firms culture and competitiveness during his six years at the helm.

He said fresh management led by Keith Hamill, who was appointed after the bid fiasco, could help revive the companys share price.
Former Goldman Sachs boss Lloyd Blankfein has lost almost 60million in a stock price slump since he gave up control.

Goldman shares have dived 14 per cent under successor David Solomon after the bank was caught up in a corruption scandal that wiped 11.4billion off its market value.

It means 64-year-old Blankfeins holding is worth 350million, a fall of 57.5million since he quit as chief executive last month.

Former Goldman Sachs boss Lloyd Blankfein has lost almost 60million

Solomon  who DJs in his spare time under the hip moniker D-Sol  is sitting on a paper loss of 8.6million, and head of Europe Richard Gnodde is down by 8.4million.

Overall, Goldman board members have lost at least 100million between them.

After Solomon took the reins, Goldman was accused of playing a key role in a 2.7billion embezzlement scandal over Malaysias 1MDB sovereign wealth fund.

Former Goldman partner Tim Leissner has admitted money-laundering charges in the US over the debacle and agreed to forfeit 34.1million. Another ex-staff member has been arrested in Malaysia and is facing extradition to America.

Blankfein, who is still chairman of Goldman, met key players in the scandal but is not accused of wrongdoing.

Musical chairs: CEO David Solomon as D-Sol, his DJ alter ego

The lender has also been swept up in a wider US market rout over fears of a trade war and global economic downturn.

Goldmans stock hit an all-time high in March amid exuberance over tax cuts by President Donald Trump, but has since fallen by more than a quarter.

New Yorker Solomon, 56, has worked at the bank since 1999 and earned 16.4million last year.

As house music DJ D-Sol, he has performed at nightclubs in New York, Miami and the Bahamas. He is also a wine enthusiast with a multi-million-pound collection, and owns a home in the Bahamas, a New York apartment and land in the Hudson Valley.

The news comes as Goldman branches out into consumer lending in the US and UK. It launched a market-leading savings account under the name Marcus in Britain two months ago.

Goldman Sachs declined to comment last night.
Criminals are capitalising on Black Friday by offering online deals of their own, with thousands of sets of stolen credit card details available at discounted prices.

Recent analysis of the dark web  a network of hidden websites and untraceable online activity  found more than 1,400 posts on underground marketplaces that mentioned Black Friday and the similar sales event that takes place tomorrow, Cyber Monday.

Cybercrime experts at GCHQ warned shoppers they were prime pickings for fraudsters.

Recent analysis of the dark web  a network of hidden websites and untraceable online activity  found more than 1,400 posts on underground marketplaces that mentioned Black Friday [File photo]

Research by internet security firm RepKnight found one crook offering card details on the dark web at a 25 per cent discount. Thousands of stolen sets of details were available for just a few hundred pounds.

Another fraudster was offering to transfer money obtained by using stolen credit cards to PayPal accounts for a special price of 4.

One crook called nabil999 even wrote a guide explaining how to take advantage of shoppers during the busy weekend of online shopping by luring them to websites that would then plunder their bank accounts.

Criminals are capitalising on Black Friday by offering online deals of their own, with thousands of sets of stolen credit card details available at discounted prices [File photo]

Patrick Martin, cybersecurity analyst at RepKnight, said hackers were taking advantage of the extra cover provided by the huge volumes of web traffic over the busy sales weekend.

He added: Retailers need to take precautions in order to minimise the risk of their corporate and customer data ending up for sale on the dark web as part of an unwanted Black Friday deal.

'Vigilance is very much the watchword.
The Toronto-Dominion Bank, together with its subsidiaries, provides various personal and commercial banking products and services in Canada and the United States. It operates through three segments: Canadian Retail, U.S. Retail, and Wholesale Banking. The company offers personal deposits, such as chequing, savings, and investment products; financing, investment, cash management, international trade, and day-to-day banking services to businesses; and financing options to customers at point of sale for automotive and recreational vehicle purchases through auto dealer network. It also provides credit cards; real estate secured lending; auto finance; consumer lending; point-of-sale payment solutions for large and small businesses; wealth and asset management products, private banking, investment advisory, and trust services to retail and institutional clients; and property and casualty insurance, as well as life and health insurance products. The company also provides capital markets, and corporate and investment banking services, including underwriting and distribution of new debt and equity issues; advice on strategic acquisitions and divestitures; and trading, funding, and investment services to companies, governments, and institutions. It offers its products and services under the TD Bank and America's Most Convenient Bank brand names. The company operates through a network of 1,085 branches, 3,440 automated teller machines, and 1,223 stores, as well as offers telephone, digital, and mobile banking services. The Toronto-Dominion Bank was founded in 1855 and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada.

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New York

Hopes are high in Long Island City that Amazon's plan to open a new headquarters there will bring tens of thousands more residents to a Queens neighborhood that was once heavily industrial but now has a mix of row houses, shiny towers and a slowly growing collection of residential staples like grocery stores and pharmacies.

The first Amazon employees will arrive in January, but because the company will add them gradually, with a goal of 40,000 hires by 2034, Long Island City won't exactly balloon overnight.

Long Island City has been one of the busiest neighborhoods for new construction in New York, according to Localize.city, a building data site. In the first six months of 2018, about 3,000 apartments were completed, representing about a quarter of all the new units in the city, and another 3,300 apartments are expected to come to market there by 2020.

But in the weeks since announcing its move  one marked by contention over $1.525 billion in financial incentives from the state of New York  Amazon has already had an impact on Long Island City's residential market, according to brokers, developers and residents.

Buyers are flocking, developers are circling and prices are rising.

"Once the news leaked, showings went up," Kerry Walton said of her two-bedroom, two-bath condop, which is listed for $815,000.

If there is a wider pool of buyers in Long Island City, it's mostly investors  many from overseas, who are looking to cash in down the road through sublets, said Eric Benaim, the chief executive officer of Modern Spaces, a local brokerage. Modern Spaces is already working with four Amazon employees.

During the Nov. 11 weekend, a few days after reports that Amazon had chosen Long Island City as the site of one of two new headquarters following a 14-month nationwide review, open-house traffic there spiked 400 percent at existing and new apartments, Benaim said. It was equally robust the next weekend. Other firms, like Halstead, saw a more modest, though significant, increase of 250 percent.

"It's a feeding frenzy, and I've never seen it like this," said Brian Dusseau, a Halstead agent who has worked in the neighborhood since 2002. And the surge reverses what had been his "roughest year."

"A lot of people are focused on the Amazon workers that are coming," said Dusseau, who is working with one of them. "But the fact that Amazon is basing its headquarters here is like a security blanket. It's making people comfortable buying again."

And developers are gearing up for the demand.

This month, Galerie, a 182-unit condo at 22-18 Jackson Ave., will file required paperwork with the state to hike pricing, according to Brendan Aguayo, a managing director at Halstead Property Development Marketing, which is handling sales. Another hike is expected in December. About half the units at the under-construction building, which has mostly one- and two-bedrooms, have accepted offers, Aguayo added, with 33 deals in the past two weeks alone. Amazon employees account for two of those deals. Prices at Galerie start at $550,000.

Likewise, Corte, an 85-unit condo on 44th Drive where sales have been underway since July, has raised prices by 10 percent post-Amazon, and will raise them again, Benaim said. The Bond, a 42-unit project on 11th Street, has raised prices twice, and increases are also expected at the condo Craftsmen Townhomes, whose sales team accepted an offer from an Amazon buyer last week, according to Benaim.

Tweaking prices in the midst of marketing a project is not that unusual, but it's rarer in the weeks before the winter holidays. It's also been uncommon as of late in Long Island City, brokers say.

In the third quarter, the average new condo sale price in Long Island City was $976,000, according to Halstead. That was down from an average of $1.32 million in the previous quarter and also shy of the $1.01 million average in the same quarter of 2017, the firm said.

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The average monthly rent for one-bedrooms across Long Island City is $3,100, according to StreetEasy.com. The average for two-bedrooms is $3,900.

Eager to embrace an Amazon wave, developers are also dusting off old plans. The Durst Organization, one of the city's largest developers, hopes to build on a huge site it has controlled for years, a Durst spokesman said. The site, at 44-02 Vernon Blvd. near Anable Basin, can accommodate 1 million square feet of apartments.

Anable Basin, a low-rise medley of docks and warehouses, is where Amazon intends to build a sprawling office complex that could total 8 million square feet  and possibly a helipad, according to state documents.

"Amazon planting a flag is fabulous for the entire neighborhood," said Alan Suna, the chief executive of Silvercup Studios, the Long Island City movie facility that also develops apartment buildings, like the Harrison, a 120-unit condo on 44th Drive. Suna was among the local business leaders who worked on the Amazon pitch.

Despite two decades of residential strides, much of Long Island City still looks like a work zone.

Taxi garages dot blocks scattered with metal foundries, tile shops and the Empire City Iron Works. The sea of asphalt at the junction of Jackson Avenue and Vernon Boulevard functions as a free-for-all parking lot. Jutting out of Borden Avenue, near gleaming apartment buildings, is a Queens-Midtown Tunnel ventilation shaft.

Development has proceeded energetically, especially in two pockets  on the banks of the East River in the Hunters Point section; and in Court Square, sandwiched between the Edward I. Koch Queensboro Bridge and the Long Island Railroad tracks.

While development has been clumped in two compact sections, it has begun to spread out. New buildings are slowly popping up north of the bridge, toward Astoria. That section is also home to Queensbridge Houses, the nation's largest public-housing development.

But in the middle of the neighborhood are a stream of rentals and some smaller-scale condos like the red brick Decker, on 44th Drive, and a row of three town houses on 47th Avenue, containing 18 apartments.

While not as rich in historic buildings as other parts of New York, Long Island City does offer a single-block historic district, along 45th Avenue, between 21st and 23rd streets, which features rows of prewar town houses.
Albany

Uninsured pension plans  called "church" plans  cover thousands of people in the sprawling St. Peter's healthcare system and the 14-county Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany, but workers there can relax, at least for now, as the plans appear financially healthy.

Risks of such pensions, which have no federal insurance to protect workers from financial meltdown, were brought home last month to more than 1,100 workers at the former St. Clare's Hospital who learned they will get either no pension or a monthly check slashed by 30 percent.

In the Capital Region, uninsured "church" pensions are also in place for at nearly 6,700 workers at two major institutions  St. Peter's Health Partners, which employs more than 12,500 people across an array of five regional hospitals and associated facilities, and the Albany Roman Catholic Diocese, which runs a network of 26 parochial schools and a charities arm.

These pension funds are currently much healthier financially than is St. Clare's, according to officials from the Albany diocese and St. Peter's Health Partners (SPHP).

The key to understanding the health of a pension plan is a figure called a target funding percentage. This number is a percentage of what a pension plan expects to need to pay its retirees, and the cash and other assets it has to do that.

A funding percentage of 100 percent means a plan has exactly what it projects to need to pay pensions. A figure above 100 reflects an excess, while a figure below than reflects a shortfall.

Last week, the head of the St. Clare's Corp., which oversees the cash-starved pension plan, said it would need a $29 million transfusion from outside to bring more than 660 people currently without a pension up to the reduced rate.

When St. Clare's officials decided to eliminate and slash pensions last month, that fund was at about 35 percent funded, and was poised to run out of money as soon as 2024 if it kept paying pensions unchanged, said St. Clare's Corp. President Joe Pofit.

For comparison's sake, the SPHP church pension plan was at at 94.5 percent of its projected required funding in June 2018, according to figures released by Corporate Communications Director Elmer Streeter.

And the plan for the Albany diocese was at 96.8 percent funding as of August 2018, according to figures provided by the diocese.

So far, no one has offered to come up with that money to help workers from St. Clare's, a century-old Schenectady hospital that closed in 2008 as part of a state-ordered consolidation with Ellis Hospital. Bishop Edward Scharfenberger has said the diocese does not have the money to do it.

Long affiliated with the Albany Roman Catholic Diocese, St. Clare's Hospital officials got federal permission during the 1990s to convert its private, defined-benefit pension into a so-called "church" plan.

That meant the St. Clare's no longer had to meet federal reporting requirements and pay for pension insurance through the Federal Benefit Guaranty Corp.  but the pension also no longer had the protection of that insurance.

Unlike private pensions, church plans face little regulation and no reporting requirements under the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, reflecting a 1990s exemption that reflects the philosophy that religious institutions serving their missions should be held to a looser standard on worker retirements.

In June 2017, the issue of church pension plans went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that pension plans sponsored by religiously affiliated nonprofit organizations do not have to be "established" by churches in order to be treated as exempt "church plans" if they meet other requirements.

Currently, the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., which insures the private pensions of 37 million Americans, requires private pension plans that fall below 80 percent funding to undergo additional federal reporting requirements and take other steps to address the shortfall. Credit rating agencies use the 80 percent standard as an indicator of public pension plans' financial health.

"Our plans have always paid benefits in full to all participants and their beneficiaries  and it is our intent that they will continue to do so in the future," said Streeter.

Streeter said the funding ratio for SPHP uninsured pensions was better than an industry average for the nation's large private pension plans. In June 2018, that average was 88.1 percent, according to a report by the pension actuary firm Willis Towers Watson.

Diocese spokeswoman Mary DeTurris Poust said that pension plan covered about 3,051 current and former workers at the schools and Catholic Charities.

That plan had about $124 million in it as of August, or enough to cover 96.8 percent of its projected current and future obligations, according to data released by her office.

"Our plan is tirelessly maintained, and each year the audit report is presented to Catholic Charities, the diocesan Finance Council, and the trustees of the pension plan," said Poust.

However, funding ratios are "just snapshots in time," said David Pratt, a labor lawyer at Albany Law School who is working with the former St. Clare's workers.

"With the way the stock market has been going, there are a lot of pension plans that were better funded in June than they are right now." That is because if a pension plan is heavily invested in stocks, and stock values drop, the pension plans funding ratio drops along with it.

Now the Capital Region's largest private employer, SPHP was created in 2011 through the affiliation of three different healthcare networks covering four major hospitals and their affiliates, including St. Peter's in Albany, Albany Memorial in Albany, Samaritan and St. Mary's in Troy.

The organization is part of three different defined-benefit pension systems depending on where someone works _ two pensions that are church-affiliated, and thus, uninsured, and one that is private and insured.

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SPHP also runs two defined-contribution retirement plans, where returns fluctuate with market activity and are not covered under federal pension insurance.

Pratt said the various SPHP retirement plans there were a "hodgepodge," likely reflecting the merger of systems that were Catholic with those that had no religious affiliation.

Streeter said that SPHP's uninsured church pension plan, called Catholic Health East Employees Pension Plan, covers about 3,644 current and former workers from St. Peter's Hospital and nine other affiliated institutions, including Our Lady of Mercy Life Center, Community Hospice and St. Peter's Nursing and Rehabilitation Center.

The Catholic East Plan covered more than 25,000 workers at Catholic institutions in the eastern U.S., and as of June 2018, had about $863 million in assets, which Streeter said enough to fund 94.5 percent of its current and future obligations.

The other defined benefit pension plan overseen by SPHP is called the Trinity Health ERISA Pension Plan, which is protected by federal insurance.

That plan covers about 4,386 local workers from Albany Memorial Hospital, Samaritan Hospital, The Eddy, and about 20 other affiliated institutions in the Capital Region that were part of the Northeast Health network prior to the merger..

With about $297 million in assets to cover about 10,530 current and retired workers here and elsewhere, the Trinity plan was at 93.3 percent of its funding target, as of June 2018, said Streeter.

In August 2014, the Catholic Health East pension plan covering St. Peter's workers merged with Trinity Health Corp., a Michigan-based Catholic healthcare network which took over responsibility for the pension plan.

Two years later, Trinity agreed to pay $75 million to settle class action claims in federal court that it was underfunding pensions by improperly treating them as "church" plans. Part of that money was put into the Catholic Health East pension plan.

Trinity also agreed to run the pension plans in compliance with certain federal funding requirements and worker protection laws for the next 15 years. Court papers indicated the settlement could benefit some 116,000 people who work for Trinity-affiliated entities spread across 22 states.

Meanwhile, there is a third retirement system under the SPHP umbrella for workers at St. Mary's Hospital, which was part of the Seton Health System.

Streeter said that plan is overseen by St. Louis-based Ascension, the largest nonprofit health system in the U.S. and the world's largest Catholic health system, with facilities in 23 states and the District of Columbia.

Ascension Senior Marketing and Communications Vice President Nick Ragone would not answer questions about the status and financial condition of the plan that covers workers at St. Mary's, as well as Schuyler Ridge, a 120-bed skilled nursing facility in Clifton Park.

St. Mary's workers also operate urgent care centers in Albany, Clifton Park, East Greenbush, Saratoga Springs and Troy.

In 2015, Ascension settled a class-action lawsuit that charged it was improperly treating its pension accounts as "church" plans and deliberately underfunding them by hundreds of millions of dollars.

Under the settlement, Acension made a onetime $8 million payment to its plans, and also agreed to guarantee pensions through June 2022 and issue regular financial notices on the condition of its plans.

In the lawsuit, filed in 2013 by a worker at at Michigan hospital, claims were made that pension plans affecting more than 120,000 Ascension workers across the country were underfunded by $444 million.
It may seem too early to start thinking about your tax return, but procrastination could cost you thousands of dollars. Here are a few simple maneuvers that could save you a bundle on your taxes  if you make them by Dec. 31.

1. Move funds to 401(K)

Traditional 401(k)s can shield a decent chunk of your income from taxes. In 2018, you can funnel up to $18,500 ($24,500 if you're 50 or older) of your pay into one and avoid paying taxes on that money until you withdraw the funds. If your employer offers a match on contributions, you'll get free money to boot, and those matching dollars are on top of the $18,500 limit.

If you don't have access to a 401(k), you may still be in luck  you may be able to shield up to $5,500 from taxes ($6,500 if you're 50 or older) by putting the money into a traditional IRA. If you qualify, the size of the tax deduction depends on your income and whether you or your spouse is covered by a retirement plan at work. Bonus: You have until April 15 to move money into an IRA and still make it count as a 2018 contribution. (It's possible to contribute to a 401(k) and a traditional IRA in the same year.)

2. Bunch donations

Itemizing on your taxes generally only pays off when your itemized deductions add up to more than the standard deduction (and in 2018, the standard deduction is much higher: $12,000 for single filers, $18,000 for heads of household and $24,000 for joint filers). That's why charitable donations and other itemized deductions might not get you much of a tax break if they're so small that you just end up taking the standard deduction instead. It's no reason to stop giving, but you may want to tinker with the timing.

Donating one big amount instead of a series of small amounts could change the tax game, said Kerry Garner, a CPA at Patterson Hardee & Ballentine in Franklin, Tennessee. A married couple might not score a tax break from a $15,000 annual donation, for example, but bunching the donations into a $30,000 gift every other year could, he said.

3. Sell the losers

If you made money on the sale of investments in 2018, you might have some capital gains tax to pay in April. But you might be able to offset some of those gains with losses.

"If you've got an event that generates a significant capital gain during 2018  maybe that happened earlier in 2018 or sometime throughout the year  to the extent that you've got investment holdings that are sitting at a loss position, it makes sense to liquidate those losses during the year to offset capital gains," said Nicholas Shires, a CPA and tax partner at Dannible & McKee in Syracuse. If your losses exceed your gains, you may be able to deduct the difference on your tax return, up to $3,000 per year ($1,500 for those married filing separately).

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4. Decide about divorce

If you're still negotiating with your soon-to-be ex and expect to pay or receive alimony, keep an eye on the calendar. For divorces finalized after Dec. 31, alimony payers will no longer be able to deduct their payments, and alimony recipients will no longer have to include that money as taxable income.

5. Meet tax preparer

The sooner your tax preparer has an idea of how your year is shaping up, the sooner he or she can find you more ways to save. That's especially true for people who are self-employed or have unusual sources of income, Garner notes. "I try to do it the first week of December, so it still leaves them plenty of time to actually get things done," he said.
New York

As temperatures drop and winter looms, homeowners and property managers are sweeping chimneys, insulating pipes and swapping screens for storm windows.

They're also going beyond traditional winterizing by installing smart thermostats and home energy monitors aiming to lower utility bills.

Smart thermostats  which let consumers adjust their home temperatures remotely using any internet-connected device  are among the most popular smart home technologies, generating $1.3 billion in sales globally in 2017, according to Navigant Research. Some models use geofencing technology and multiple sensors placed throughout the house to adjust temperatures in individual rooms when a resident walks in, maximizing comfort and efficiency.

Just how much consumers can save by installing smart thermostats  which generally range in price from $150 to $250  depends on a variety of factors, but Nest, one of the most popular smart thermostat companies, estimates users can save $131 to $145 on their energy bills per year.

Customers can save more if their local utility offers rebates or discounts for allowing the utility to occasionally turn their thermostats up or down, as long as consumers are willing.

Many utilities are offering heavy discounts on smart thermostats in exchange for enrolling in so-called "demand response" programs, which let utilities periodically reduce customers' electricity usage so they're not demanding as much energy from the grid, said Dan Wroclawski of Consumer Reports.

"When you join a demand response program, you usually get some sort of rebates, and the best deals we saw were bill credits that happen annually," Wroclawski said. "When you agree to these programs you are ceding some level of control. But if it's bothering you  if you're too cold or too hot  all you have to do is go up to the thermostat and turn it up or down and the demand response program will essentially just realize, OK, they're ignoring us."

Nationwide, nearly 1.4 million customers are enrolled in programs that allow utilities to turn their thermostats up or down, and more than 40 utilities with thermostat programs took advantage and adjusted customers' temperatures eight times per year, according to the Smart Electric Power Alliance. But people sometimes opt out of the programs when, for example, it's a very hot day and they don't want their air conditioning turned down; and that's the exact time utilities need people to stick with the program.

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Some utilities have similar programs that allow them to temporarily turn off customers' electric water heaters, and they find customers are less likely to opt out of those scenarios because they don't really notice an impact.

Other utilities are offering "time of use" or hourly rate programs, which encourage customers to run dishwashers or other appliances at times of day when electricity rates are cheaper. In Illinois, where the two main utilities offer hourly rate programs, customers save about 15 percent off their utility bills per year, said Sarah Gulezian, senior manager of dynamic pricing programs at Elevate Energy. With the utility ComEd, 24,000 customers saved a combined $19 million over the past decade, and at Ameren, 12,000 customers saved more than $11 million, she said.

Customers don't need a smart thermostat for the Illinois utilities' programs, but they do need a smart meter, which is provided by the utility. They can adjust their home temperatures or appliance usage themselves when they get email or text alerts letting them know the electricity price is rising or falling. Such programs benefit low-income households that don't necessarily have access to smart thermostats and whose electricity bills eat into a larger portion of their household income.

"From our research we've found that almost everyone can benefit from this," Gulezian said. "By taking simple actions, you can help save on your electricity bill and have a positive impact on the environment as well."
The weekend of Nov. 11-12 was a good one for classical music lovers with two excellent concerts of music for orchestra, chorus and organ. As the glow of these satisfying listening experiences began to fade, it occurred to me that at both events digital organs were used, even though pipe organs are already in place in the respective venues. This led to some inquiries and also a survey of where audiences can find organ recitals in the Capital Region.

Benjamin Britten's massive War Requiem, performed by the Albany Symphony on Nov. 10 at Proctors, actually calls for two organs  there was one on stage and another in the balcony with the boy choir. But the console of the house instrument, a 1926 Wurlitzer fondly known as Goldie, would have taken up too much space on the stage, which had to accommodate two orchestras, a chorus, and three soloists, not to mention conductor David Alan Miller.

It was Goldie that ostensibly drew the ASO back to Proctors last April. The group's first Proctors appearance in some 30 years featured Saint Saens' Symphony No. 3 "Organ" with soloist James Harp. The ASO's executive director, Anna Kuwabara, said after the show it seems likely the ASO will continue appearing at Proctors at least once a season.

On Sunday afternoon Nov. 11, the action was at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall where the Troy Chromatics drew a sizable audience for a performance by the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir and Tallinn Chamber Orchestra. One of the guest musicians played organ in music by Bach and utilized the same instrument for a celesta effect in a selection by Arvo Part. Meanwhile, right above the stage there was a massive facade of pipes.

According to the Music Hall's executive director, Jon Elbaum, the iconic pipe organ, built in 1882 by the Odell Company, is in disrepair and has not been used in performance in years. Barbara Musial played it a few years ago during the Victorian Stroll but that's the last time anyone can recall. The only time I remember hearing it was during a concert of the Empire Brass in 2007.

In June 2006, the Organ Historical Society held its 50th anniversary convention in our region and toured 21 instruments, from Richfield Springs to Manchester, Vermont, and everywhere in between. (That's known in the trade as an "organ crawl.") A number of local organ technicians pitched in to get the Music Hall's organ into serviceable shape for that one-off occasion.

As for the future of the instrument, Elbaum says he could easily foresee organ music in the hall's regular concerts and educational events, but a refurbishment of the instrument would be a major financial and logistical undertaking.

Bradley M. Day, proprietor of Allen Organ Studios in Delmar, estimates a full-scale rebuild of the iconic organ in Troy would run $1 million. "It's in its original state in its original venue, but it's barely working," says Day.

Selling organs is a going concern for Day, with his business coming 90 percent from churches and 10 percent from private individuals and other institutions. He's also the local source for rentals. In any given year, he'll typically have half a dozen rentals for special concerts. So that weekend in early November was unusually busy, as he had a third rental in the Berkshires.

So it was a pleasant coincidence for listeners that organs, of whatever sort, were featured in two recent orchestra concerts. But if you're wanting to hear organs in their natural environment, churches are the place to go.

One of the most-prominent organists in the region is Alfred Fedak, who is also an internationally recognized composer of sacred music. He and his wife Susan Fedak are ministers of music and arts at Albany's Westminster Presbyterian Church, where they present visiting and local organists in free recitals several times a year.

"We have a loyal core of organ buffs, including a number of area organists, who attend nearly every event," says Fedak. "But we also attract newcomers to every concert, which is especially gratifying."

There are a number of other churches that have concert series, often including organ recitals. Among them are All Saints Cathedral and St. Paul's Episcopal both in Albany, First United Methodist in Schenectady, First Presbyterian in Glens Falls, and Bethesda Episcopal in Saratoga Springs.

The local clearinghouse for all things organ is the Eastern New York Chapter of the American Guild of Organists. Nationally, the AGO includes 300 chapters and 14,700 members. According to chapter dean Susan Lohnas, the local group has 112 members, sponsors four or five educational and social events a year, and publishes a monthly newsletter. It also underwrites the broadcast of "Pipe Dreams" Sunday nights on WMHT-FM.

"There's all the talk that organists are a dying breed," says Lohnas, "but I'm very encouraged by this chapter."

Always looking to spur on the next generation, the chapter offers scholarships for students at any level interested in trying out the organ. "If they know how to play piano, we'll teach them how to play organ. Some stick, some don't," says Lohnas.

Lately the group has gotten more active in producing concerts. Last March at St. Paul's in Albany, five different organists soloed in Handel's five concertos for organ and strings. The impetus was a simple desire by members to perform and hear those rarely revived works. Lohnas was happy that the ticketed audience was large enough to cover the cost of the string orchestra.

Two more events are coming up. On March 2 at the Cathedral of All Saints, there's a tribute to Adolphus Hailstork, a 77 year-old composer who is a professor at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. Hailstork grew up in Albany and was a member of the cathedral's Choir of Men and Boys. The concert will survey his organ music with performances by a number of different players.

Organists will also be joining in the celebration of Tulip Festival. On Saturday, May 11, the AGO chapter is sponsoring a series of 15-minute concerts that repeat all afternoon in five churches around the Center Square neighborhood. "If they're tired from walking around the Tulip Festival, they can come sit down and enjoy some organ music," says Lohnas.

Whether in churches or concert halls, pipe organs are an enduring oddity and thing of fascination for the eyes as well as the ears. The ASO's Kuwabara recalls that after the ASO's concert last April in Proctors, a small crowd gathered around Goldie. "They were looking at her like she was a celebrity."

Joseph Dalton is a freelance writer based in Troy.
Now that the cold weather has arrived, you might be thinking about ways to escape it. Consistently rated among the best beaches in America (and even the world), you can't go wrong with a visit to Destin, Fla. Known for its emerald green yet totally clear water and white "sugar sand" powder soft beaches, Destin will give you the break from reality that you have been craving. If you have yet to make up your mind, let the beautiful scenery, amazing seafood, and endless opportunity for outdoor activities help you arrive to that conclusion.

If you are a fan of seafood, you will be in a foodie paradise. Obviously the fare is as fresh as it gets, being right on the water. Part of Florida's Panhandle (along the northwest of the state, bordering the Gulf of Mexico, and yes  because it looks like a panhandle), people here take seafood seriously. You will find some of the most interesting and unique ways of cooking seafood along the panhandle region. You might have had oysters, but I can guarantee you have not tried them all the ways you will find them here. It doesn't' matter if you prefer "tried and true" dishes or you are more of an adventurous eater, you won't be disappointed in Destin.

At The Crab Trap, you can eat outdoors or inside. I'd recommend out, as this restaurant has the most beautiful views of the beach and the boardwalk below. There, watch beachgoers play volleyball or the waves roll in while you enjoy your meal. The ocean breeze is peaceful and welcome, and it's a very relaxing way to spend your time out as a family. Located directly below you is The Boardwalk at Okaloosa Island, with shops, a small spray park, and other ways to while away your time. Let the kids run ahead of you or enjoy the water while you keep an eye on them. Great restaurant with great food, fantastic service, location, atmosphere, and views. (crabtrapdestin.com)

Make sure you take the time to visit Okaloosa Island Pier after you eat; it's about a block away. Not only the perfect spot to take a family photo, but you can also look for dolphins, fish, seabirds or other marine life. You can also go fishing as well if you'd like. I know, again with the views  but really, they are incredible.

Across the parking lot, in the same center, is the Gulfarium Marine Adventure Park (gulfarium.com). It is a top Fort Walton Beach attraction, and perfect for families and animal lovers. This marine park houses animals such as seals, turtles, alligators, fish, snakes and much more. Learn from trainers and staff members about these animals, their care, and what they do in the wild. There are live shows at set times, and you can also sign up for animal encounters to feed penguins, snorkel with stingrays, and other options. Do this ahead of time so that you have your choice available to you at a time you are able to attend.

We were definitely looking to spend as much time as could outdoors. Getting as much vitamin D as you can while you can is always good, true? If you are looking for some outdoor adventure, book some time with Destin Snorkel & SNUBA Tour (destinsnorkel.com). Easily one of the coolest things we have done in a long time, "snuba" diving is part scuba, part snorkel, and perfect for almost any age and any level of swimmer.

Head over to the (save time to walk and shop) boardwalk, where you will meet your snuba professional and get your snuba-suit on. Yes, it's just a wetsuit and fins, but you will feel so much cooler thinking of it that way. Once you are ready, head onto the boat where you are driven to safe, calm and clear waters. First, you will receive a 30-minute orientation where you are shown how to use all equipment and explanations are given, as well as questions answered. Then, you can swim and snorkel for a while. After that, you are able to dive up to 20 feet, with the rest of your group and your snuba instructor swimming along with you. Your mouthpiece is connected to an oxygen tank, and you are able to breathe fairly easily after you get used to it. You can see quite a variety of ocean life, and it's a really awesome experience to be completely submerged underwater for such long stretches of time. Literally otherworldly, and very peaceful.

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Not a great swimmer? Believe it or not, that's OK. Got kids? Also fine. Call ahead and talk to them about restrictions, but there are far fewer then you might think. If you have never experienced snuba, or are thinking about scuba diving but have not yet, you must try this. An absolute "must try" experience for anyone.

While you are in the area, and you've worked up an appetite, head to Harbor Docks for some lunch. This Destin seafood restaurant staple has been locally sourcing food for more than 35 years, and you can really sense the pride and connection to the community. The menu offers only fresh, locally grown or locally caught options and flavors. Harbor Docks prides themselves on their long established relationships with local growers, fisher people and seafood markets. In addition, you will find an unusual for the area cooking style, brought to you by Yoshia Eddings (sushi chef) as well as Dang McCormick, who is from Chiang Mai, Thailand, and runs the kitchen.

For an interesting way to see some of the local landscapes, Destin Airboat Tour offers informative tours, views you won't see many other ways, and the enjoyment of riding in an airboat (destinairboat.com). The kids will really love this. The six-passenger-capacity airboat's owner and operator, Captain Frank, has been described as "a crusty Ozark mountain hillbilly with a sense of humor and love of nature." I don't disagree  he is definitely a character, and amusing. Again, the kids will get a kick out of him. They will get a turn to drive the boat as well if they want (anyone can, should they like to), and my own kids gladly took the opportunity. Captain Frank is also the proud owner of the only mobile, floating chapel I have ever seen, and should you be looking to get married, he can spirit you off to do so. In a floating church. Really. (That's enterprising, no?)

Some of the best food we ate while in Florida was at this "off the beaten path" place called Cafe Organic. The food was local when possible, organic, natural and delightful. The menu changes seasonally, based on what is available.
When Joseph Dalton landed in Washington, D.C., as a high school student for a weeklong model Congress on Capitol Hill, he met his older cousin for lunch. Hope Ridings Miller, a former society editor for The Washington Post who chronicled presidential administrations and wrote books, took him to the National Press Club. Later, she was a source of inspiration to Dalton, who also became a journalist.

Dalton, a general arts reporter and classical music critic for the Times Union, began playing with the notion that he'd like to write a book about his cousin 16 years ago. He read all of her books, starting with "Embassy Row: The Life and Times of Diplomatic Washington."

"She goes for the drama and the humor and you realize as you read it that many of the things she's talking about  she was there," Dalton said. "She's not writing from historic sources, she's writing from her own memories and notes and that was pretty exciting."

After about a decade of intense research, following her life from her Texas roots to her 70-year career in the nation's capital, what's resulted is the fascinating "Washington's Golden Age: Hope Ridings Miller, the Society Beat, and the Rise of Women Journalists" (Roman & Littlefield).

"She told me about the basics of her career. I always knew she was a society editor for The Washington Post and I knew she had some books. But I never grasped what she really saw and all the people she really knew until I started doing the research," Dalton said.

While Miller embodied white-gloved Washington society with her manners and presence, she also was the only woman on The Washington Post's city desk for a time, covered administrations from FDR to LBJ and later edited a glossy magazine.

Dalton's research is exhaustive. He traveled to D.C. and Texas multiple times, reading her papers and was able to download all of her Washington Post bylines through the Williams College library. He read all 1,200 stories, as well as her books and her magazine writing.

The book is filled with choice excerpts from her stories, like an account of the 1939 royal visit by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth:

"While the King, who looks much younger than his photographs, and the Queen, who is twice as pretty as any of her pictures, mingled with their guests on the portico, others who had come to see them stood silently, hopefully, watching every move. Many a feminine eye weighed her Majesty's gown in the balance and found it more than satisfactory. Flounced and full, it was fashioned of white net with embroidered panels, edged with ruffles, and horizontal tucks giving it a quaint, Victorian effect ... one of the prettiest frocks ever seen in Washington."

But her writing wasn't limited to hemlines and appearances. Soon after, she was reporting on Eleanor Roosevelt's response to claims of her possible ties to communists:

"The First Lady said she had no way then, or now, of determining political philosophies of her guests; that she had no intention then, or now, of having any censorship imposed on her guest lists."

In July 1942, Miller's column "Farewell to Society" proposed a change to how the paper covered society during the war. She wrote that they would focus on people, rather than parties and what people ate and wore: "For the duration  and probably longer  we are finished with society-as-such. We are interested only in contributing our bit toward preservation of the only kind of world in which any of us would care to live."

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Dalton opens and closes the book with his relationship with Miller. She attended his concerts while he was a student at Catholic University in D.C. and she threw a graduation dinner party for him.

Miller, who kept her age a carefully guarded secret through her life, died in 2005 at age 99. One of Dalton's favorite stories about her is when he asked her age:

"Well," she replied, "Can you keep a secret?"

"Oh yes, yes," he told her. "Definitely."

"So can I."

Donna Liquori is a frequent contributor to the Times Union, and writes the occasional Bibliofiles books column in Unwind.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo's campaign contributed $10,000 Sunday to help the family of the late state Sen. Jose Peralta pay for funeral and visitation services.

A GoFundMe site is asking for $25,000 to cover the costs for services honoring Peralta, 47, who died unexpectedly Wednesday.

Peralta, who represented parts of Queens, was the first Dominican-American elected to the New York State Senate in 2010. He was serving out the final year of his term after losing this past fall in a Democratic primary.

As of Sunday afternoon members of Cuomo's staff had also contributed to the fund for Peralta, as well as state Assemblymen Democrat Danny O'Donnell, who gave $1,000. Cuomo put out a statement Sunday that read in part "the family of New York will come together to ensure he receives a fitting memorial."

Peralta died after he had been experiencing ear pressure, headaches and a fever, his wife Evelyn, told the New York Post.

She said Friday that Peralta's cause of death was septic shock, but it's unknown yet what led to the blood infection that ultimately caused the senator's organs to fail. Peralta died at Elmhurst Hospital Wednesday night after suddenly being unable to breathe at home. He is survived by two sons, ages 21 and 13.

Peralta previously served as a state assemblyman for eight years. As a senator, he was a member of the now-defunct Independent Democratic Conference, a breakaway Democratic group that, for a time, formed a coalition with Republicans to control the chamber.

Cuomo brokered a deal earlier this year to reunify Senate Democrats, but six of the IDC's eight former members were soon ousted in party primaries.

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News of Peralta's death brought an outpouring of sympathy from officials and the soon-to-be-senator who ousted him in September's primary. "When I met him in 2003, I saw a world of promise for our community," Sen.-elect Jessica Ramos wrote on Twitter. "Though years later we'd disagree on tackling the issues, I know in his heart he loved his community."

Cuomo ordered flags on state buildings to be flown at half-staff until Peralta's funeral, which has yet to be scheduled.

"Senator Peralta was a tireless advocate for Queens and for all New Yorkers, including our immigrant communities," Cuomo said in a statement released Friday. "His support for the DREAM Act in particular has been instrumental in our fight to ensure that all New Yorkers have access to an affordable college education."






Governors have a wide range of priorities they want to tackle in the coming year, from tax reform to education. Yet it's a topic that receives less attention on the campaign trail and in their speeches that could determine their success  natural disasters.

In the last two years alone, storms and natural disasters have killed scores of people, damaged or destroyed tens of thousands of homes and cost tens of billions of dollars.

Wildfires in the West and hurricanes in the South have been especially destructive, and scientists say climate change is making this more common. As the severity escalates, governors are finding they have to make disaster planning a priority or risk the consequences of inaction.

Handling disasters and emergencies was a prime topic last week when the National Governors Association held a three-day seminar in Colorado that most of the nation's 19 governors-elect attended.

"As California's wildfires, a spate of hurricanes, and unfortunate acts of mass violence have demonstrated, such events can occur at any time," Scott Pattison, the nonpartisan association's chief executive, said, "including a governor's first day in office."

For many Democratic governors especially, the main concern is how climate change appears to be worsening the effects of natural disasters.

In California, half of the 10 most destructive wildfires in state history have occurred since 2017, and the costliest have been in each of the past three years, according to the state firefighting agency. The state has spent $500 million from its emergency firefighting fund just since July 1.

The state is dealing with its most destructive wildfire ever, a Northern California blaze that leveled a town of 27,000 this month, killed at least 80 people and left thousands homeless. That blaze, and another that roared through Malibu at the same time and left at least three dead, are the latest in a string of catastrophic wildfires that have put the state in what seems like a perpetual state of emergency.

Outgoing Gov. Jerry Brown has called California's fires "the new abnormal" as climate change turns the state warmer and drier.

The escalating destruction prompted state lawmakers to pass a series of wildfire-related bills this year. They provide millions of dollars to cut trees and brush, make it easier for property owners to clear their land and require the state's utilities to step up their fire-prevention efforts.

During his campaign, incoming Gov. Gavin Newsom said wildfire planning would be a priority and outlined steps he wants to take. Among them is a more aggressive approach to clearing trees and brush, particularly the state's millions of dead trees.

"I'd rather see our National Guard working on those kinds of emergencies than being on the border," Newsom told the nonprofit news organization CALmatters over the summer.

He also proposed deploying a network of infrared cameras to detect wildfires early, improving the emergency alert system and boosting funding for fire departments statewide.

A spokesman, Nathan Click, said Newsom is putting together a comprehensive wildfire strategy as he prepares to take office in early January. But the governor-elect also has been clear that the long-term goal must be reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

California's fire season has been especially severe, yet other Western states also have experienced ever-intensifying wildland blazes in recent years.

In Colorado, the two most destructive wildfires in state history erupted within the last six years, killed a total of four people and destroyed more than 850 homes combined. Both are believed to be caused by humans, leading Democrat Jared Polis, Colorado's governor-elect, to call for a public education campaign to reduce the possibility of manmade wildfires.

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Florida has been hit with two deadly and destructive hurricanes in roughly a year's time. Hurricanes Irma last year and Michael in October caused billions of dollars in damage.

Even without hurricanes, many coastal communities are dealing with flooding from high tides and storm surges. Incoming Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, has already said he will work with local governments to address rising sea levels, but has been criticized by Democrats for avoiding any mention of climate change in his environmental plan.

DeSantis has said he is neither a climate change "denier" nor a "believer." That could be a problem for identifying long-term solutions to keep coastal communities safe, said Jen Hensley, the director of state lobbying and advocacy at the Sierra Club.

She said one reason Hurricane Michael was so devastating was a lack of strong statewide coastal development standards.

A federal report released Friday warns that disasters such as wildfires and hurricanes are worsening in the United States because of global warming.

It's similar in Texas, which has seen destruction from hurricanes and where Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has been noncommittal about whether he thinks human activity is affecting the climate.

Texas has sought $12 billion from the federal government for a 60-mile coastal "spine" of concrete seawalls, floating gates and steel levees as a defense against future hurricanes and higher tides expected from climate change. That's just a fraction of the work the state estimates needs to be done over the next decade to reduce the impact of flooding.

Governors in New York and New Jersey pushed for changes after Superstorm Sandy devastated the region in 2012. In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, signed a law requiring sea level rise projections to be used whenever the state considers approvals or funding for projects. Then-New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, pushed policies to buy homes in some flood-prone areas, although environmentalists criticized him for not addressing climate change.

Those groups cheered when Democrat Phil Murphy was elected to replace Christie, but they have been critical of him too. Earlier this month, Murphy experienced the perils of falling short on the basics of emergency preparedness when an early season snowstorm hit without plows at the ready, bringing roads and the transit system to a standstill and stranding thousands of commuters.
A British farmer was crushed to death last year by a forklift driven by his pet dog, an inquest has confirmed.

The UK's Press Association learned that 70-year-old Derek Mead was killed on June 4, 2017 after leaving his Jack Russell Terrier in a forklift while exiting the vehicle to open a gate.

Mead left the forklift in neutral and the dog somehow hit the shuttle lever, which put the forklift back in drive.

The forklift was then sent forward toward Mead and crushed him to death against the gate.

At the time of the death, principal investigator Simon Chilcott hypothesized that the dog was responsible for setting the forklift in motion.

"We think the most reasonable explanation is that within the cab of the vehicle there was a small dog," he said. "Whether the dog has been jumping up to see where his master has gone, or put his paws up on the door to await the return of Derek  it seems most likely that he has collided with the lever."

Chilcott added that it's unlikely Mead failed to properly put the forklift in neutral when he first exited the vehicle.

Peter Harrowing, the assistant coroner for Avon, reached the same conclusion.

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"The most likely explanation, which I accept, is that the dog that he had in the cab with him on that day inadvertently moved the shuttle lever, causing the forward motion on the Manitou which sadly trapped Mr Mead against the solid gate, causing injuries which he did not survive," he said. "I'm satisfied that this death of Derek Mead was one of a very tragic accident."

Eric Ting is an SFGATE staff writer. Email him at eting@sfchronicle.com and follow him on Twitter

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ALBANY  The limousine crash in Schoharie that killed 20 people on Oct. 6 was a grim reminder of a mass casualty event that rocked the Capital Region 12 years earlier, almost to the day: the sinking of the Ethan Allen tour boat on Lake George, which also claimed 20 lives.

On Oct. 2, 2005, the Ethan Allen capsized and 20 of its 47 passengers, many of them Canadian tourists, drowned. Several others sustained serious injuries.

In Schoharie, the limousine's 17 passengers  on their way to a birthday celebration  as well as the driver and two pedestrians outside the Apple Barrel store where the vehicle crashed all died of traumatic blunt force injuries.

Both these horrific tragedies might have been prevented, and from a legal standpoint they have much in common, including the fact that both the boat and the limo were regulated by the state.

Still, relatives of the limo crash victims can expect to encounter similar obstacles that families of the Ethan Allen passengers faced in their legal battles to seek damages from private entities and, once those were tapped, from New York state, which is largely immune to such claims.

James Hacker, a personal injury attorney, sued the state in the Court of Claims on behalf of 27 families in the Lake George tragedy. The outcome of that case, Metz v. State of New York, set a precedent that eliminates a potential avenue of recourse for the families of the limo wreck victims, he said.

His firm, E. Stewart Jones Hacker Murphy, has now been retained by the family of one of the victims in the Schoharie crash, which he says involves similar questions of state culpability.

"I'd love to give it another shot. Every case is fact-specific and we are certainly going to look very closely at it," Hacker said. "But this is a tragedy that could have been prevented on multiple occasions by multiple entities."

Before any claims are made against the state, lawsuits will be filed against the limousine company, its owners, and other private entities.

A civil lawsuit has already been brought on behalf of one of the victims against Shahed Hussain, the owner of Prestige Limousine, and his son, Nauman, who has been charged with homicide for renting out the vehicle that state officials had ordered taken out of service.

A 'special duty'

As a public vessel, the Ethan Allen had been subject to yearly state inspections since 1979. An inspector from the state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation would have issued a certificate indicating the vessel's maximum passenger capacity. When the boat sank, it was within the 48-passenger maximum in the certificate of inspection.

An investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board later determined the boat's capacity should have been capped at 14 passengers following the installation of a wood canopy in 1989.

SKIP DICKSTEIN

Following a lengthy Court of Claims battle, the Court of Appeals ruled that state inspectors who failed to update the occupancy limits once the boat had been modified did not have a "special duty" to the victims. Rather, the officials were acting in a public capacity. A "special duty" refers to a narrow set of circumstances in which the state may be held responsible for a claimant's injuries.

"Although the law is clear, the upshot is that, regardless of any negligence on the part of the state, the victims of this disastrous wreck are essentially left without an adequate remedy," then-Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman wrote.

The idea of sovereign immunity is that it would bankrupt the state if it could be held liable every time it failed to thwart a criminal act or a missed inspection involving one of its employees.

The modified 2001 Ford Excursion sport utility vehicle in the Schoharie crash failed state inspections and was ordered taken off the road by the Department of Transportation and State Police. Random inspections on March 21 and on Sept. 4 revealed problems with the vehicle's brakes and that the car was not certified to carry the 10 passengers it could originally hold before it was expanded into a stretch limo.

The Times Union investigation found that the limo had been driven 1,300 miles between the inspections.

State Police, who are also probing the crash, noted that the driver, who died in the wreck, was not properly licensed to operate the passenger vehicle.

But if laws or regulations were broken, the state's responsibility to ensure the safety of commercial vehicles might be treated similarly by the law: as a general duty owed to the public, rather than as a "special duty" to the victims.

"Some of the same legal principles apply," said E. Stewart Jones, founding partner of E. Stewart Jones Hacker Murphy. "I think our case may be stronger than the case we had in Lake George because in Lake George, the state had a far less direct role. The goal would be to distinguish this case from the principles enunciated in the Lake George case. "

Jones, who declined to identify his firm's client, said he intends to file two claims on behalf of the deceased, a wrongful death claim and an estate claim based on "fear of impending death."

"These victims all knew what was unfolding before them, and because they knew it would happen, they suffered the emotional and psychological fear associated with that vehicle barreling down the highway, out of control," he said.

If the victims were parents, a claim can be filed on behalf each child for the loss of parental support, Jones said.

In the coming days, Jones's firm and attorneys for other victims' families expect to preemptively file notices of claim, notifying the state that they intend to sue. But without information from National Transportation Safety Board  a preliminary report is expected "in the next few weeks," and investigations take up to two years to complete  a legal strategy is unclear.

Road conditions

If the NTSB report finds that the contour of the roads or a highway defect contributed to the accident, claimants may sue the state Department of Transportation, which about 10 years ago realigned the intersection where the crash occurred.

At the time of the realignment, there were objections from residents about the proposed construction, according to Schoharie Supervisor Alan Tavenner.

"It was sort of a wide, non-standard intersection. They wanted it to be the same so people know what to expect when they come to an intersection," Tavenner said. "These roads started when there were horses and buggies on them, and now you have thousands of vehicles flying down them. There's only so much you can do with them."

Minutes from town meetings, and notices about the realignment plan, were lost in flooding during Tropical Storm Irene, he said.

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The alignment straightened the road to create a T-intersection, but neighbors have for years complained of its hazards. After at least two tractor-trailers heading downhill toward the intersection veered off the road, crashing into the same embankment as the limo, an 18-ton weight limit was implemented.

"Based on anecdotal reports from people around that intersection, those types of near-misses started after the realignment," Tavenner said. "(The intersection is) probably the worst one in the town of Schoharie."

The NTSB had drones mapping the site on the day of the accident, Tavenner noted.

There are also questions of visibility of the stop sign, which the limousine blew through before crashing into a parked car and two bystanders.

While claimants must file a notice of claim within 90 days, no lawsuits will be filed until the NTSB releases its initial findings, according to Jones.

"If you have a situation where this driver never even applied the brakes or the driver applied the brakes and the brakes were defective, that complicates the case against the county and the state of New York," Jones said.

Prestige Limo

While two DOT inspections resulted in citations issued to Prestige Limousine, the company continued using the vehicle despite major mechanical defects, including faulty brakes that have become a focus of the ongoing investigation.

Lee Kindlon, an attorney for the family, said the state should take responsibility for its lapses.

"I think he came up over that hill unfamiliar with the territory. You just can't stop something like that," Kindlon said. "I think the state has been warned about that intersection for years and the Department of Transportation is just looking to point a finger."

Unlike the tour boat company that operated the Ethan Allen, Prestige Limousine's limited insurance coverage and assets are insufficient to cover the claims of all 20 victims and their children, and claims will be paid on a first come, first served basis.

Lawsuits were settled against Shoreline Cruises, which owned the Ethan Allen, the boat's captain, Richard Paris, as well the Canadian tour company that organized the Lake George tour.

"I think what makes a difference in two regards is that most of the people in the Lake George tragedy were not as young and did not have young children as these victims do, and did not have social and emotional connection to the community as the Schoharie victims do," Jones said.

Other avenues

In catastrophes of this scale, parties that indirectly contributed are at risk of being sued.

In September 2010, the families of the Ethan Allen victims settled a lawsuit against the Lake George Steamboat Co. in U.S. District Court alleging that the Mohican, a vessel owned by the steamboat company, caused a wake that tipped the Ethan Allen.

For victims of the Schoharie crash, other avenues of recourse include suing private parties that modified the Ford Excursion and whoever was responsible for maintenance and care of the limo, according to Jones.

Schoharie County could present another avenue for recourse for victims' families because counties do not have the same sovereign protection as states and municipalities.

While the highway, speed limits, and vehicle weight limits are implemented and enforced by the state, the response of volunteer emergency workers from the town of Schoharie, who rushed to aid the victims of the limousine, may be scrutinized.

"I am concerned that somehow the fire department and ambulance department will be brought into this. It's a shame that the financial burden falls on us," Tavenner said. "The whole thing is just sad, from start to finish."
Dubai

A prominent Saudi royal said Saturday that whether heads of state gathered in Argentina next week for the Group of 20 summit warmly engage with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, he is someone "that they have to deal with."

Prince Turki al-Faisal told The Associated Press the killing of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi in the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul last month is "an unacceptable incident that tars and mars the long record of Saudi Arabia's own standing in the world."

"We will have to bear that. It's not something that should not be faced. And we do face it," he said.

Intelligence officials and analysts said the operation to kill Khashoggi, who wrote critically of the crown prince for The Washington Post, could not have happened without Prince Mohammed's knowledge. The kingdom, which has offered several conflicting accounts of the killing, denies the crown prince had any involvement.

The crown prince embarked late Thursday on his first foreign tour since the Oct. 2 killing with a visit to the United Arab Emirates. He's expected to visit other Mideast countries before going to Buenos Aires on Friday for the start of the two-day G-20 summit, where he'll come face to face with world leaders.

President Donald Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has kept international pressure mounting on the kingdom, are expected to attend.

"Whether the leaders in that summit will warmly engage with the crown prince or not, I think all of them recognize that the kingdom as a country and King Salman and the crown prince are people that they have to deal with," the prince said.

He said Saudi Arabia will continue to play a role on the world stage and that Trump's statement of support for Saudi Arabia recognizes the importance of the kingdom.

Trump insists there's not enough evidence to blame the crown prince for Khashoggi's killing, despite a U.S. intelligence report's assessment to the contrary. Trump says the kingdom is an important ally that has helped to lower oil prices.

"I thought President Trump was expressing what he felt was in the interest of the United States. He emphasized the strategic relationship between the two countries in the same statement and how Saudi Arabia has been helpful in many instances  not just oil," said Prince Turki.

The prince also firmly dismissed the U.S. intelligence assessments that the crown prince had ordered Khashoggi's killing, saying these same intelligence bodies had a "remarkably flawed assessment" in 2003 in the lead up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

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Prince Turki, who led Saudi intelligence for more than two decades and served as ambassador to the U.S. and Britain, worked closely for years with Khashoggi before the writer became an outspoken government critic. The prince said Khashoggi worked under him as a spokesman for the Saudi Embassy in London and later in Washington, and that he last spoke to him three years ago.

The prince's father is the late King Faisal and his brother is Prince Khalid al-Faisal, governor of Mecca.

Prince Turki said reports of discontent within the ruling Al Saud family over the crown prince's rise to power do not reflect the "extraordinary support" that King Salman and his son, the crown prince, enjoy.

"I see no signs of such disquiet or uncertainty vis-a-vi the king and the crown prince," he said.

The prince spoke Saturday during a policy briefing by the Beirut Institute Summit The prince is a board member and supporter of the summit, which draws upon recommendations of its participants to put forth policy ideas for the Middle East.

Among its recommendations is support for the Arab Peace Initiative, a Saudi initiative dating back to the early 2000s that calls for east Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state including the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in exchange for Arab state recognition of Israel and normalized relations.
Plymouth, Mass.

Thanksgiving is nothing to celebrate for Native Americans, who are gathering in the town where the Pilgrims settled for a solemn National Day of Mourning observance.

Thursday's noon gathering in downtown Plymouth, Mass., will recall the disease, racism and oppression that the European settlers brought.

It's the 49th year that the United American Indians of New England have organized the event on Thanksgiving Day.

Moonanum James, a co-leader of the group, says: "Native people have no reason to celebrate the arrival of the Pilgrims."

Participants will beat drums, offer prayers and make public speeches. They'll also express their solidarity with refugees from Latin America who are being denied entry to the U.S., and condemn pipeline projects and fracking that they say needlessly and recklessly degrade the environment.
Washington

Strutting isn't just for turkeys anymore.

We're reminded of this nearly every day, but Donald Trump outdid himself Thanksgiving Day when a reporter asked the president what he's most grateful for. In a nutshell, with only a tiny bit of editing: himself. OK, he mentioned his family first but then went on to extol his own virtues.

Of course he did. Thanksgiving, after all, is really about Trump, n'est-ce-pas? One can hardly wait for Christmas when we'll learn, oh joy, that unto the world a Trump was born.

Meanwhile, we have a few weeks to digest his self-appraisal. Elaborating upon his gratitude, Trump told a press gaggle at Mar-a-Lago: "This country is so much stronger now than it was when I took office that you wouldn't believe it."

Correct. You wouldn't believe it.

He also said, "I've made a tremendous difference in the country."

Indeed. (See midterm elections 2018.)

And when it comes to foreign policy and America's status in the world, not that anyone asked, he said: " When I see foreign leaders, they say, 'We cannot believe the difference in strength between the United States now and the United States two years ago.'"

If true, he surely was referring to Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, commonly referred to as MBS, and not the nations of NATO, many of which have lost faith in the U.S. since Trump took office.

He can't have been referring to Germany, which recently canceled arms sales to Saudi Arabia given MBS' apparent responsibility for last month's murder of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi. German Chancellor Angela Merkel did the thinkable  cut off all arms sales to Saudi Arabia  while Trump has done the unthinkable: Dismiss the Central Intelligence Agency's conclusion finding that MBS ordered the Washington Post columnist's killing and dismemberment.

Give the president credit where due: He tells it like it is, which is that we're going to pretend the CIA report is wrong and continue as before. Maybe MBS knew about it, maybe he didn't, says Trump. Sure, and maybe some Mexicans are nice people, maybe not. Yes, sure, sure, that awful slaughter and dismemberment thing was bad, really bad, but let's not allow an over-there thing interfere with arms sales and, who knows, perhaps some future Trump developments.

Merkel earlier had said Germany would cancel future arms sales pending the investigation into Khashoggi's death. She has now ended current sales, and Denmark and Finland have followed suit. But the U.S., England and France, as of this writing, failed to take such measures. Obviously, geopolitical considerations are complex, but there are surely other options to suspending arms sales, though such a move by the U.S. would doubtless be welcome in other parts of the Arab world. Yemen comes to mind.

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Since 2015, when Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries formed a coalition to combat Yemen's Houthi insurgency, the civilian cost has been devastating. The situation is beyond dire, with hundreds of thousands dislocated and tens of thousands killed, including nearly a generation of children. The London-based Save the Children organization estimates that 85,000 children may have died of hunger and disease since the conflict began.

This is no mere sidebar to U.S. strength, as Trump measures it, but is paramount to his flawed argument that we can't afford to criticize MBS lest we blow a big, big deal. Apparently, he'd rather implicitly condone the murder of a journalist (and U.S. resident) and turn a blind eye to what some have termed genocide in Yemen, assisted by the U.S.

Unsurprisingly, the White House refuses any suggestion that taking a moral stance is appropriate or necessary. But if strength is what Trump wants to convey, he should do exactly that. He could say that America is committed to the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and considers a free press essential to a free society. Therefore, either the arms deal is dead or MBS is no longer our negotiating partner.

Trump might further add that America won't play a role in a war made worse by the coalition's involvement  and hold Saudi Arabia to account for any war crimes it has committed. For real strength is about taking a moral hardline even when it hurts. As improbable as these scenarios are, they'd at least give Trump something to strut about.

Kathleen Parker's email address is kathleenparker@washpost.com.
You know you want the best TV, but finding the right model for your home and budget isn't always easy. Checking all the right boxes is tough, especially as features like 8K resolution, OLED and QLED displays, mini-LED, HDR, smart home connectivity, voice control and more make it increasingly complex to find the TV you want.

It's not as simple as buying the most expensive model you can afford. You want the whole package: great picture quality, rich sound, and all of the smart features available today, and it would be nice to save a buck or two while you're at it.

Weve tested and reviewed the latest TVs from all the best TV brands including LG, Sony, and Samsung to help you choose the right TV for your home. Every TV goes through hours of testing and eyes-on viewing, so that we can find the best TV for your budget and needs.

People like to throw around a lot of acronyms and numbers when theyre talking about the best TVs, but weve made it our mission to offer you real-world advice that cuts through all the jargon and explains exactly what these TVs can do for you. Well let you know about the specs, of course, but well also explain what this will mean for your viewing experience, whether thats the improved picture quality that 4K resolution brings, or the vibrant colors that HDR TVs offer. Toms Guide has your back when it comes to finding the best TVs.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday TV deals

Black Friday deals are here, bringing the best TV prices of the year. With major discounts from retailers like Amazon, Best Buy and Walmart, you can score many of the best TVs on this list for a cheaper price. For example, we've seen a 50-inch 4K TV for just $199 at Walmart.

Be sure to check out our Black Friday TV deals page, which we're frequently updating with all the latest sales. And bookmark our Cyber Monday deals page to keep on saving.

What are the best TVs?

For our standout favorite, the Samsung QN90A Neo QLED is the best TV we've reviewed, delivering superb picture quality with its combination of QLED color and mini-LED backlight (the ingredients that make up Neo QLED). Pair that performance with fantastic sound, rich smart features and a stylish design, and you've got the best TV we've reviewed this year. Just be aware that this premium 4K smart TV doesn't come cheap.

The TCL 6-Series Roku TV (R635) is the ultimate in affordable TVs, giving you the best 4K smart TV we've seen for less than $1,000. In fact, ignoring the budget-friendly price, it's still one of the best TVs on the market, thanks to a quantum-dot enhanced LCD and mini-LED-backed display and feature-rich Roku TV interface. Combine this with superior gaming features and a refined design, and it's got plenty to love. (And if you're looking to get similar quality on a more expensive 8K TV, the new TCL 6-Series 8K Roku TV R648 does it at a surprisingly reasonable price.)

The best TVs you can buy in November 2021

(Image credit: Samsung)

1. Best TV overall: Samsung QN90A Neo QLED TV The ultimate QLED TV Specifications Available Screen Sizes: 55, 65, 75, 85 inches Screen Type: QLED Refresh Rate: 120 Hz HDMI ports: 4 HDMI (1 HDMI 2.1) Size: 56.9 x 32.6 x 1 inches Weight: 53.8 pounds TODAY'S BEST DEALS View at Samsung View at Best Buy View at BHPhoto 758 Walmart customer reviews      Reasons to buy + Beautiful, thin design + Neo QLED delivers incredible brightness + Impressive anti-glare abilities + New solar-chargeable remote Reasons to avoid - Visible blooming at times - Just one HDMI 2.1 port - No Dolby Vision support

The Samsung QN90A Neo QLED TV combines Samsung's highly refined quantum dot technology with the tight control of mini-LED backlighting, resulting in one of the best TV displays you'll ever see. Brilliant color and unmatched brightness make for superb performance, and Samsung pairs that with a bounty of smart TV functions and genuinely intelligent features, like a solar-powered remote control that eliminates the need to swap out batteries  delivering eco-friendly design and unbeaten convenience at the same time.

The whole thing is packed into a gorgeous 1-inch-thick design that contains a huge array of smart features, potent Dolby Atmos sound and some of the best performance we've ever seen. HDMI 2.1 connectivity comes standard, along with gamer-friendly features and impressive 12.6-millisecond lag time for an unparalleled gaming experience. It's the best TV we've seen this year, and the winner of the 2021 Tom's Guide Award for Best TV, and a second award as the best gaming TV of the year.

Read our full Samsung QN90A Neo QLED TV review.

(Image credit: TCL)

2. Best TV value: TCL 6-Series Roku TV (R635) The best TV value Specifications Available Screen Sizes: 55, 65, 75 inches Screen Type: QLED Refresh Rate: 120 Hz HDMI ports: 4 HDMI, 1 USB Size: 48.3 x 28.1 x 2.8 inches Weight: 41.9 pounds TODAY'S BEST DEALS View at Amazon View at Walmart View at Best Buy Reasons to buy + Excellent QLED and mini-LED display + Great gaming performance + Roku TV offers a huge app selection and easy interface + Improved Roku remote Reasons to avoid - Sound is a little weak - Roku is missing some of the latest apps

The TCL 6-Series Roku TV (R635) offers enormous value for it's affordable price, offering premium picture quality and a great smart TV experience for much less than the competition. As TCL's best mainstream smart TV the R635 ups the ante with mini-LED backlighting in addition to QLED. The result is impressive color and brightness, with some of the best HDR performance we've seen on anything this side of an OLED display. It's enough to win a 2021 Tom's Guide Award for best innovation in TVs.

But TCL keeps delivering more, like THX Certified Game Mode, which makes the 6-Series one of the best gaming TVs available, even for yet-to-be-released consoles like the PS5 and the Xbox Series X. From the design's smart touches, like cable management in the stand, to the always-solid Roku TV platform, the TCL 6-Series R635 is the best TV value, and it's not even close.

Read our full TCL 6-Series Roku TV (R635) review .

(Image credit: LG)

3. Best home theater OLED: LG G1 OLED TV A premium OLED with stunning design Specifications Available Screen Sizes: 55, 65, 77 inches Screen Type: OLED Refresh Rate: 120 Hz HDMI ports: 4 HDMI 2.1 Size: 56.9 x 32.7 x 0.9 inches Weight: 63.9 pounds TODAY'S BEST DEALS View at Amazon View at BHPhoto View at Best Buy 80 Walmart customer reviews      Reasons to buy + Exclusive OLED evo panel delivers brighter picture + More affordable than last years Gallery Series + Same stunningly-thin design + New remote is a major improvement Reasons to avoid - OLED evo offers minimal improvement - WebOS 6.0 is disappointing

The LG G1 OLED TV is the updated version of LG's superb Gallery OLED, boasting a premium 20 millimeter-thick design and sleek flush-to-the-wall mounting setup. The design is impeccable  enough to win best TV design in the 2021 Tom's Guide Awards. It's still the best 4K OLED TV made by LG, but as the first TV with LG's second-gen OLED evo technology, it falls short of some claimed performance improvements we were pretty excited for.

That said, the LG G1 OLED is still an impressive OLED set, and LG has even knocked the price down a bit, while updating almost everything else about the set. The slim OLED features more comfortable remote control, enhanced gaming features, and the latest version of webOS, all while delivering the same excellent picture quality and impeccable sound that we expect from LG's best OLED models. The LG G1 OLED TV stands as a reminder of just how far modern TV technology has come  we just hope it hasnt plateaued.

Read our full LG G1 OLED TV review.

(Image credit: TCL)

4. TCL 5-Series Google TV (S546) A killer QLED value with Google TV Specifications Available Screen Sizes: 5, 55, 65, 75 inches Screen Type: QLED Refresh Rate: 60 Hz HDMI ports: 3 HDMI (1 eARC) Size: 57 x 32.7 x 3 inches Weight: 70.1 pounds TODAY'S BEST DEALS View at Best Buy View at Best Buy View at Best Buy Reasons to buy + QLED display with local dimming for excellent HDR performance + Great color quality and smooth motion + Google TV is a serious upgrade from Roku + Affordably priced Reasons to avoid - Limited viewing angles - Audio is good, but not great

The TCL 5-Series Google TV (S546) wowed us with its combination of smart TV features, solid performance and great value for your dollar. Building on the foundation of the already-good 5-Series, the move to Google TV gives the affordable 4K smart TV a more premium smart TV platform, one that offers personalized and customizable suggestions, a huge assortment of smart features, and deep Google Assistant integration that makes it a viable center for the entire home of connected gadgets.

But it also offers a step up in other aspects of the TV. From color quality to lag times, the 5-Series Google TV is a more polished version of the 5-Series TV, delivering an excellent QLED 4K display, a slick remote control, and a surprisingly wide array of gaming features for a 60Hz TV. For a smart TV that sells for under $1,000 for most size options, it's easily one of the best TVs on the market.

Read our full TCL 5-Series Google TV (S546) review .

(Image credit: LG)

5. Our favorite OLED: LG CX OLED Last year's hottest TV Specifications Available Screen Sizes: 48, 55, 65, 77 inches Screen Type: OLED Refresh Rate: 120 Hz HDMI ports: 4 HDMI 2.1, 2 USB Size: 57.0 x 32.7 x 1.8 inches Weight: 52.9 pounds TODAY'S BEST DEALS Prime Low Stock View at Amazon View at Best Buy Prime View at Amazon Reasons to buy + Stunning picture + Excellent smart TV features + Top notch sound capabilities + Ultra thin design Reasons to avoid - Relatively high price

The LG CX OLED is the best 4K smart TV, and the best TV overall, with an amazing display, built-in Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa support, and a ton of other smart features. From LG's webOS 5.0 to the addition of smart home control and an intuitive motion-control remote, it's one of the smartest TVs we've ever seen.

LG has improved on its superb OLED with a more powerful processor, the addition of Dolby Vision IQ (which adjusts HDR performance based on the ambient lighting) and beefs up the sound with AI-powered audio tuning. And while the LG CX OLED's premium price might put off some shoppers, it packs in more premium value than more expensive OLED competitors, while still delivering an unparalleled picture. It's the TV to beat.

Read our full LG CX OLED review .

(Image credit: Vizio)

6. Best OLED TV value: Vizio OLED TV Incredible OLED quality at an affordable price Specifications Available Screen Sizes: 55, 65 inches Screen Type: OLED Refresh Rate: 120 Hz HDMI ports: 4 HDMI, 1 USB Size: 48.3 x 30.6 x 2.2 inches Weight: 44.9 pounds Vizio OLED TV View at Best Buy View at Best Buy View at Best Buy Reasons to buy + Ultra-low price for an OLED + Generally strong picture and audio quality + SmartCast provides plenty of smart features and free video content Reasons to avoid - Gaming performance could be better - Cumbersome stand

The Vizio OLED TV is the most affordable OLED TV on the market, and the first to offer a less-premium alternative to offerings from LG and Sony to shoppers in the United States. Selling for hundreds of dollars less than the competition, the Vizio OLED packs plenty of smart features alongside the 4K OLED display, and delivers the sort of premium picture quality that normally costs much more.

Vizio's SmartCast smart TV platform has also expanded its app selection significantly, and all of the major apps you might want  from Netflix to Disney+  are available right on the TV. The few that aren't offered on the home screen (HBO Max is the most glaring omission) can still be enjoyed through the TV's built-in Google Cast and AirPlay 2 support. Combine all of this with an improved remote control design and great sound with better-than-average bass, and you've got an easy pick for affordable OLED TVs, and the winner of the 2021 Tom's Guide Award for best value TV.

Read our full Vizio OLED TV review .

(Image credit: Sony)

7. Best Sony OLED: Sony Bravia XR A80J An excellent OLED with next-gen tech Specifications Available Screen Sizes: 55, 65, 77 inches Screen Type: OLED Refresh Rate: 120 Hz HDMI ports: 4 Size: 57.1 x 33 x 2.1 inches [65in model, w/o stand] Weight: 49.2 pounds [65in model, w/o stand] TODAY'S BEST DEALS View at Best Buy Prime View at Amazon Low Stock View at Walmart Reasons to buy + Outstanding picture, audio quality + Lots of dynamic and smart features that really work + Powerful Google TV interface Reasons to avoid - Dynamic adjustments needed for best picture - Not all HDMI ports support HDMI 2.1 - Bravia Core streaming service doesnt dazzle

The Sony Bravia XR A80J is absolutely packed with futuristic technologies: this 4K OLED TV has HDR, a 120 Hz refresh rate, ATSC 3.0 tuner, Google TV streaming and Sony's own Bravia Core service, Acoustic Surface Audio+ technology the list goes on. Sure, not everyone will need everything here, but it's nice to have the option.

Just as importantly, it also excels at the basics  contrast is superb, colors are rich and varied, viewing angles are impressive and it handles upscaling well. Sound is also excellent and Google TV is a big upgrade on the older Android TV. Against that, the XR A80J requires a little more tweaking in order to look its best; it's fine out of the box, but to really reach its full potential, you'll want to play around with various modes. It's not the cheapest and other sets beat it purely based on picture quality, but as an all-round package the A80J is a great choice.

Read our full Sony Bravia XR A80J review.

(Image credit: Hisense)

8. Best Hisense TV: Hisense U8G Android TV A great Android TV Specifications Available Screen Sizes: 55, 65 inches Screen Type: LCD with Quantum dot Refresh Rate: 120 Hz HDMI ports: 4 (2 HDMI 2.1, 2 HDMI 2.0) Size: 57.1 x 33.1 x 4.1 inches Weight: 53.4 pounds TODAY'S BEST DEALS Prime View at Amazon Low Stock View at Walmart View at Best Buy Reasons to buy + Very bright + Excellent sharpness, color and contrast + Low lag time Reasons to avoid - Overactive motion smoothing - Mediocre viewing angles

The Hisense U8G Android TV is our favorite Hisense model, and one of the best Android TVs around. With a quantum dot color and integrated Chromecast and Google Assistant, it's a full-featured smart TV that offers great quality for a reasonable price. With support for both Dolby Vision and HDR10+, it also offers the best HDR format support you can find, along with Dolby Atmos sound. It has built-in voice control with room-listening microphones, effectively letting you use the TV as a smart speaker, and offering the sort of smart home integration and control that would normally cost much more.

In our review, we were especially impressed by the U8G's brightness, which exceeds 700 nits of peak brightness and combines with the better-than-average HDR support for great performance that brings out highlights and shadows. With few complaints and lots of great perks, the Hisense U8G ANdroid TV is easily our new favorite Hisense model.

Read our full Hisense U8G Android TV (65U8G) review.

(Image credit: TCL)

9. Best budget QLED: TCL 5-Series Roku TV (S535) Quantum dot enhancement for less Specifications Available Screen Sizes: 50, 55, 65, 75 inches Screen Type: LCD with Quantum dot Refresh Rate: 60 Hz HDMI ports: 4 HDMI 2.1 Size: 48.4 x 28.1 x 3.0 inches Weight: 32.6 pounds TODAY'S BEST DEALS View at Walmart Prime View at Amazon View at BHPhoto Reasons to buy + Faithful colors + Built-in Roku smarts + Excellent price Reasons to avoid - Mediocre sound - Modest brightness

The TCL 5 Series Roku TV does what TCL does best, delivering a surprisingly great mix of features and performance at an excellent affordable price. With even the largest model selling for less than $1000, you get the superb color and brightness of QLED, as well as Roku's user-friendly smart TV interface, which puts thousands of apps right at your fingertips.

In addition to the excellent color accuracy and full color gamut offered by the QLED display, it offers top-of-the-line HDR support, with Dolby Vision in addition to basic HDR10 and HLG formats. With input lag clocking in at 13.1 milliseconds, it's also one of the best affordable gaming TVs you can buy. And it's roughly half the price of Samsung's equivalent QLED TV, making it one of the best values in smart TVs.

Read our full TCL 5-Series Roku TV (S535) review .

(Image credit: Hisense)

10. Hisense U7G Android TV (65U7G) A killer gaming TV Specifications Available Screen Sizes: 55, 65, 75 inches Screen type: QLED Refresh rate: 120Hz HDMI ports: 4 (1 ARC, 1 HDMI 2.1) Size: 57.0 x 33.1 x 3.5 inches Weight: 43 pounds TODAY'S BEST DEALS View at Walmart Prime View at Amazon View at Best Buy Reasons to buy + Bright + Good color and sharpness + Low lag time Reasons to avoid - Lack of detail in dark scenes - Overactive motion smoothing

The Hisense U7G Android TV is being marketed as a TV built for gaming, and the specs make it easy to see why: The Quantum Dot display boasts good color and sharp images, the panel's 120Hz refresh rate will handle the most demanding game console output, and a pair of HDMI 2.1 ports offer the best connectivity you can get for high-frame rate gaming.

And any TV that's good for gamers will usually do pretty well at everything else. Handling both Dolby Vision and HDR10 Plus formats, it's got some of the best HDR support available, and Dolby Atmos sound means it has the audio to match. It impressed us in our testing, and it's more affordable than you'd expect given the feature set. Gamer or not, the Hisense U7G Android TV is a solid 4K smart TV.

Read our full Hisense U7G Android TV review.

(Image credit: Toshiba)

11. Toshiba C350 Fire TV (2021 model) The best Amazon Fire TV Specifications Available Screen Sizes: 43, 50, 55 inches Screen Type: LCD Refresh Rate: 60 Hz HDR support: Dolby Vision, HDR10 HDMI ports: 4 HDMI (1 ARC) Size: 37.9 x 22.0 x 2.9 inches Weight: 15.0 pounds TODAY'S BEST DEALS View at Amazon View at Amazon View at Best Buy Reasons to buy + Responsive Fire TV + Good color in standard mode + Low lag time Reasons to avoid - Flat HDR - Inconsistent backlighting

The Toshiba C350 Fire TV is the 2021 addition to the small family of Amazon-powered smart TVs, offering good features and decent performance for its extremely affordable price. It's a decent example of the Fire TV template, combining good-enough 4K picture quality, impressively short lag times, and Amazon's great Fire TV smart features, like built-in Alexa voice control, a pretty big app store and (of course) an interface that puts Amazon's Prime Video service front and center. With even the largest 55-inch model selling for less than $500 (and likely much less during sales events), it's one of the smartest affordable TVs you can get.

The C350 doesnt come with the latest bells and whistles, such as HDMI 2.1 or Dolby Atmos support, but it does Dolby Vision and HDR10  though not very well. But with excellent color accuracy, low lag time and a good looking design, it's still a solid TV for the price, and better than many Fire TV models we've seen in the past.

Read our full Toshiba C350 Fire TV review.

(Image credit: SunBriteTV)

12. SunBriteTV Pro 2 Outdoor TV Made for sunshine and shade Specifications Available Screen Sizes: 49, 55, 65 inches Screen Type: LCD Refresh Rate: 60 Hz HDMI ports: 2 Size: 45.1 x 26.9 x 4.8 inches Weight: 84 pounds TODAY'S BEST DEALS Check Amazon Reasons to buy + Solid 4K picture with basic HDR + Rugged outdoor design with internal climate control Reasons to avoid - Expensive - No built in audio or smart functions

The average TV isn't made to handle rain, snow, dust or heat. But the SunBriteTV Pro 2 outdoor TV is built for those conditions, with a rugged design that can withstand the elements. Whether it's in a cold garage or out on an open porch, the weather-sealed chassis fends off precipitation, dirt and bugs, and even has a sealed compartment for HDMI hookups. The screen is made to be viewed in full sunlight conditions where even other outdoor sets would falter. Be sure to check out our guide on how to buy the best outdoor TV for more tips on how these sets differ from others.

With basic HDR capability and strong overall performance, the SunBrite is a great TV for any outdoor setting. And with optional weatherproof soundbar or speakers you can enjoy sound that's just as tough. If you want a great set for your yard, this is the best TV to get for outdoor viewing.

Read our full SunBriteTV Pro 2 outdoor TV review.

(Image credit: TCL)

13. Best 8K TV: TCL Roku TV 6-Series 8K (R648) A stunning 8K TV for less Specifications Available Screen Sizes: 65, 75 inches Screen Type: QLED + Mini-LED Refresh Rate: 120 Hz HDMI ports: 4 (2 HDMI 2.1) Size: 57 x 32.7 x 3 inches Weight: 70.1 pounds TODAY'S BEST DEALS Prime View at Amazon Low Stock View at Walmart View at Best Buy Reasons to buy + Technical picture quality is good + Well-conceived remote redesign + Fine gaming performance on consoles and PCs Reasons to avoid - 65-inch model struggles to prove worth of 8K resolution - Very little 8K content available in the wild - Poor off-angle viewing - Mediocre sound

When it comes to 8K TVs, there are plenty of ultra-premium sets you can choose from, but TCL has stepped things up by bringing the price down. The TCL 6-Series 8K Roku TV (R648) is the most affordable 8K TV on the market, and it's even more affordable than some of the 4K sets we recommend. Plus, it's got everything we love about Roku TVs, along with excellent performance and short lag times for gaming.

By offering next-gen resolution at current-gen prices, it's the 8K TV we recommend  or, that we would recommend, if we thought people should be buying 8K TVs (which we don't). Our only issues with the TV's performance were the 8K panel's limited viewing angles and the mediocrity of the audio, which can be solved with a simple soundbar. But the bigger issue is one facing any 8K TV out there  there's next to nothing you can watch in 8K, and that may not change anytime soon.

Read our full TCL 6-Series 8K Roku TV (R648) review.

How to choose the best TV for you

If you're trying to find the right TV for you, there are several factors to consider, from the basics of screen size and resolution, to the specific smart features and ports offered on a given model. We recommend most homes opt for a 55- or 65-inch TV with 4K resolution. We're also big fans of smart TVs, which let you stream all of your favorite shows and use dozens of apps without a second device.

We have extensive shopping advice, like our TV buying guide and figuring out what size TV you should buy. And if you still have questions about smart TV features and capabilities, check out Smart TVs: Everything you need to know.

Performance: Our TV reviews also look at how well each TV performs in key areas, like picture quality and sound, so don't forget to look up the model you're interested in to see our TV reviews.

Ports: We generally recommend opting for more ports, so that you never have to manually unplug and re-plug HDMI cables to switch from your Bl-ray player to your game console or other device. Three ports is common, but nicer TVs usually have 4 HDMI ports. You'll also want make sure at least one is HDMI 2.1; our guide to the best HDMI 2.1 TVs can help here. (Still confused? Check out TV ports explained: What all those HDMI, USB and other connections are for?)

Extra USB ports are also handy for powering antenna amplifiers or streaming sticks, as well as viewing media from USB storage.

HDR: Most TVs offer high dynamic range (HDR) support, with Dolby Vision being the top format and HDR10 the most basic. But more important is the backlight, with OLED TVs and LED sets with local dimming offering the best HDR capabilities.

Smart software: Some of the TVs are among the best Alexa compatible devices and best Google Home compatible devices you can own, so pay attention to which smart home platform the sets offer before choosing.

Price: You can find smaller 4K TVs that sell for less than $500, which will spare you some cash for some of the best soundbars or best streaming devices to go with your set. However, you'll want to pay more for features like HDR support and a decent number of HDMI ports.

Generally speaking, you'll pay around $500 for a lower-price, 55-inch, 4K TV and at least $900 for a 65-inch model. Premium 4K TVs can sell for thousands of dollars, but we find that the sweet spot for superior performance and value is right around the $2,000 mark.

8K TVs, on the other hand, run from pricey to mortgage-your-house levels of expense, with new smaller models selling for as little as $3,000, but running up to the tens of thousands.

Get a broader view of everything the best TV brands have to offer by checking out the full roster of 4K and 8K TVs from every major manufacturer.

If you've narrowed down your TV shopping by brand, price range or screen size, check out our picks for the best TVs in each.

Best TVs | Best 4K TVs | Best smart TVs for streaming | Best TVs for gaming

The best TVs under $1000 | The best TVs under $500

Best TV brands | Best Samsung TVs | Best TCL TVs | Best LG TVs | Best Roku TVs | Best Google TVs | Best OLED TVs | Best QLED TVs | Best 8K TVs | Best HDMI 2.1 TV | Best TVs with ATSC 3.0 | Best TVs with Chromecast

The smallest smart TVs | Best 43-inch TVs | Best 50-inch TVs | Best 55-inch TVs | Best 65-inch TVs | Best 70-inch TVs | Best 75-inch TVs | Best 85-inch TVs

And don't forget to watch out for the latest TV reviews.

How we test TVs

Evaluating TVs is about more than just kicking back to watch a movie. We lab test every TV, measuring color gamut, color accuracy and brightness to objectively see which sets are the best for these key indicators. We also test for lag time  a key detail for gaming  measuring to the millisecond how long it takes for content to travel from the original source to the screen. We use these results to make numbers-based comparisons about color and display quality.

We also spend time with each set for real-world evaluation and see how our lab results translate into more subjective performance. We also compare sets side by side and view samples from the latest movies, specialized test patterns that highlight strengths and weaknesses of each display, and a range of content across several sources. With that information, we can tell you which TVs look best, sound best and offer the best viewing experience.

Finally, we evaluate the smart TV functions and apps for each TV, looking at everything from the remote control design to the voice interaction
Intel's 9th Gen CPUs seem to be coming to laptops sooner rather than later. Three new processors have shown up on a spec sheet for the Lenovo IdeaPad S530-13IWL, though we don't know specifically when the notebook or the chips will arrive.

The spec sheet lists the following processors:

Intel Core i7-8565U Intel Core i7-9550U Intel Core i5-8265U Intel Core i5-9250U Intel Core i3-8145U Intel Core i3-9130U

While those 8th Gen processors are on the market, the i7-9550U, i5-9250U and i3-9130U are all new. Because the IdeaPad S530 will offer both sets of chips, it's possible that they share the same (or very similar) pin-out as their 8th Gen brethren.

Previous leaked documents have suggested that the ninth-gen chips will release in Q2 of 2019, and that they are quad-core chips with 15W TDP and 2MB of cache per core.

Because of the difference in architectures, one can speculate that these are Intel's fabled 10-nanometer "Ice Lake" chips, though they could also be the rumored Comet Lake. As with all early information, we'll keep digging until we find more definitive information. This seemingly finished spec sheet from Lenovo may suggest an announcement soon, possibly at CES 2019 in Las Vegas.

Update 11/25, 4:20 p.m.: Some readers have pointed out that IWL in the code likely stands for "Intel Whiskey Lake." The 8th Gen CPUs are indeed Whiskey Lake, but the 9th Gen processors are unknown.
The little town known as Acquetico in Italy recorded a mind-boggling 58,568 speeding violations in just two weeks! After residents, largely comprising of senior citizens, complained about speeding vehicles on a certain stretch of road, the Mayor decided to install speed cameras that may now become permanent fixtures thanks to the results.

The roads here are like the Autobahn or what?

The Speed Camera Trial in Acquetico Could Become Permanant

According to BBC, Mayor Alessandro Alessandri installed speed cameras as a trial test in September after receiving over 120 complaints from the residents.

When the data was extrapolated, they found out that a speeding car passes by every few minutes in the 50 kilometer per hour zone (31 miles per hour) on average.

Its really madness, considering that we have inhabitants who regularly move within the village and cross the road, Mayor Alessandri told Italys ANSA news agency.

The Root Cause Of Acquesticos Speeding Problem

The roads passing through the village connect the Piedmont region with Italys northern coast.

Mayor Alessandri told the local newspaper, Corriere Della Serra, that the village is an ideal route for the travelers because the roads are high quality and Aquetico is not looked after seriously.

Two wheelers love to rip the roads here, thanks to the ideal asphalt, good width, and continuous bends, which make this nothing short of a race strip. Riders are seen racing between towns here. As for the car drivers, this is a smooth road that has no speed breakers, tolls, or radar traps - until now, anyway.

This Is A Major Safety Concern

e an effective deterrent to motorists and that they can benefit the citizens of Acquetico, because you do not want to make cash with the fines, but it is necessary to protect peoples safety, Mayor Alessandro Alessandri told the news agency.

The worst violation saw a motorist touch 135 kilometers per hour (84 miles per hour); which is almost three times the legal limit.

Another thing the mayor noticed was that the top offenders were speeding in broad daylight. One publication suggested that half the cars passing through were speeding.

Conclusion

Borderline violations are acceptable, but not when motorists ride or drive at triple-digit speeds. The Mayor is now seriously considering installing these cameras permanently to counter the problem. Do you think that will sort the problem? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Source: BBC
(CNN)  Dolce & Gabbana is facing a major crisis in China where top e-commerce sites are dumping its products over accusations of racism.

Thousands of D&G goods have disappeared from platforms run by companies like Alibaba (BABA) and JD.com (JD).

The backlash against the Italian luxury fashion brand began earlier this week after it launched video ads featuring a Chinese woman struggling to eat pizza and other Italian food with chopsticks. The situation was then made worse by offensive comments that were allegedly sent from co-founder Stefano Gabbana's personal Instagram account.

The videos and comments spread rapidly on Chinese social media, drawing accusations of racism and calls for boycotts from celebrities. The furor forced D&G to cancel a high-profile fashion show in Shanghai hours before it was due to start on Wednesday.

The scandal could deliver a heavy blow to the company, as Chinese consumers account for more than a third of global spending on luxury products.

The fashion house is now trying desperately to limit the fallout. On Friday, Gabbana and co-founder Domenico Dolce appeared in a video message posted on social media to apologize to "all Chinese people around the world."

"Our families taught us to respect all cultures of the world," Dolce said. "We hope to receive your forgiveness for our cultural misunderstandings."

The company has apologized previously and also said the offensive messages sent from Gabbana's Instagram account were the result of hackers. But that hasn't stopped the backlash so far.

Retailers yank D&G products

E-commerce company Yangmatou said in a social media post Wednesday that it had removed 58,000 D&G products, declaring that "the motherland is more important than anything else."

Lane Crawford, a Hong Kong-based fashion retailer with several outlets in mainland China, said Friday that it is halting the sale of the Italian brand's goods in stores and online after customers started returning them.

"We believe that brands need to be aware of the cultural implications of their actions and understand the potential backlash when customers feel their values have been disrespected," Lane Crawford said in a statement.

Pages for D&G products on shopping sites operated by Alibaba and JD.com have been taken down, and the brand's products weren't showing up in searches on the sites. Alibaba and JD.com did not respond to requests for comment.

D&G products were also unavailable on other online retail sites in China, including those of Yoox Net-A-Porter. A spokesman for Yoox Net-A-Porter acknowledged Friday that the brand's products were unavailable on the company's China sites but declined to comment further.

'I don't think anyone will touch them'

Analysts warned that D&G's apologies may not be enough to prevent a sharp drop in sales in the world's second largest economy.

"The damage to the brand in the eyes of Chinese consumers has already been done," said Ben Cavender, a senior analyst at China Market Research in Shanghai.

On social media, people posted videos of themselves burning the brand's clothes or cutting them into pieces and using them to wash their toilets.

Cavender suggested another risk is that shopping malls in China choose to start shutting down D&G stores.

Hung Huang, a prominent Chinese fashion commentator and magazine publisher, said the Italian brand's use of celebrities to help market its products is likely to encounter difficulties.

"I don't think anyone will touch them," she told CNN.

Chinese celebrities are already "under pressure" to demonstrate their patriotism following movie star Fan Bingbing's recent temporary disappearance and allegations against her of tax evasion, according to Hung.

"China is on a very patriotic bent right now so it's going to very difficult to get support," she said.

But Hu Xijin, the editor-in-chief of nationalistic Chinese tabloid Global Times, wrote in a social media post that D&G shouldn't be too heavily penalized because of the incident.

He argued that China needs to be more tolerant in order to show the world it's an open market.

This story was first published on CNN.com, "Dolce & Gabbana has a big China problem after ad causes outrage."
editorial@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

Bathinda, November 25

Even as the district Health Department has issued an advisory regarding the spread of swine flu in the district, the isolation ward meant for H1N1 patients is lying locked at the Civil Hospital.

While cases of swine flu have started surfacing in neighbouring districts already, the ill-preparedness of the district Health Department came to the fore as the swine flu ward, situated inside the mini ICU building, is still non-operational at the government hospital.

Notably, Dr Hari Narain Singh, Civil Surgeon, Bathinda, on November 15 issued an advisory to all academic institutions and city residents regarding the spread of swine flu. Dr Hari Narain Singh said by being alert and proactive, the spread of the contagious disease could be prevented. But the ground reality is totally different.

A senior functionary at the government hospital on condition of anonymity said swine flu patients needed ventilation support and ventilators were not available at the Civil Hospital. And any patient requiring ventilator support is either referred to Government Medical College and Hospital, Faridkot, or a private hospital in the city.

Sources said the mini ICU was introduced in the government hospital in 2012-13 with the motive of providing quality medical care to critical patients, but owing to shortage of staff and adequate equipment it could not be made fully-operational.

The sources said the state unit of the Health Department had been intimated about the matter on numerous occasions but they did not take any concrete steps to make the unit operational. As a result, patients are asked to seek treatment at private hospitals in the city where they are being charged hefty fee.

Dr Hari Narain, Civil Surgeon, said, Swine flu cases often surface during the winter season. City residents do not need to panic and take necessary precautions to avoid the disease. I will ensure that the swine flu ward is made operational in the first week of December.
shriaya.dutta@tribuneindia.com

Jaipur, November 25

Home grown auto major Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) has put on hold plans to introduce SsangYong brand in the US, a top company official said.

The company is also averse to introducing SsangYong Motor Company branded cars in India in the short to medium term.

"If we had done the launch of SsangYong in the US we probably would have launched it with a different name...in fact we have decided right now to put it on hold (US launch)," M&M Managing Director Pawan Goenka told reporters here on the sidelines of the launch of SUV Alturas G4.

He was replying to a query if the Mumbai-based firm was planning to change the name of its South Korean subsidiary which it acquired in 2011.

Goenka said the jury is still out on the matter, with some supporting a name change while others opposing it.

"Our global distributors are against it. As of now we have not decided on it as this matter is not in our priority list right now" he added.

Last year, Mahindra Group Chairman Anand Mahindra, while inaugurating its USD 230 million new plant in Detroit in the US, had indicated that the company may enter the American car market with its South Korean subsidiary.

However, the company later launched off-road model Roxor under the Mahindra brand in the market.

Commenting on bringing the brand to India, Goenka said: "In the short term to medium term horizon we don't see SsangYong brand coming here".

He added that there is really no need because Mahindra brand is fairly established in the domestic market.

"As long as we are able to get connect with the Korean manufacturing and engineering, I don't think we need to bring SsangYong brand here," Goenka noted.

The company sells Alturas G4 brand in Korea under SsangYong Rexton brand but has launched the vehicle here under the Mahindra badge.

It also plans to launch the upcoming compact SUV code-named S201, which is based on SsangYong Tivoli, under the Mahindra brand.

"To establish a new brand in any new market is huge effort and not something that can easily work. Many well known big SUV brands have not been able to sell (in India). It is a wise thing for us to do," Goenka said.

M&M Saturday forayed into the premium SUV space with the launch of Alturas G4 priced between Rs 26.95 lakh and Rs 29.95 lakh (ex-showroom).

The company is aiming to sell around 450-500 units of the new model per month.  PTI
editorial@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, November 25

Panjab University Campus Students Council President (PUCSC) Kanupriya today said if they were stopped they would retaliate.

When asked about the threatening tone of other Students for Society (SFS) leaders, Kanupriya while endorsing their statements, said: The dhamaka, which the SFS is talking about, will happen at the gates of the PU authorities. We are ready for the Vice-Chancellors office. We will bring our questions. We will not go without taking our answers. We will retaliate, if we are stopped.

Kanupriya and her associates have been protesting outside the gate of hostel numbers 3 and 4 to open girls hostels 24X7. Today (i.e. Sunday) was the 29th day of the protest. The women students are sleeping outside the hostels in protest.

We will continue to sit here. The forms of protest can change, she said.

SFS activists are facing a case of pelting stones when they were protesting against the fee hike.

On Sunday, outsiders also joined the SFS protest. There were only about 50 girls in the protest, probably because of three consecutive holidays.

Patiala MP Dharamvira Gandhi, while addressing the students, said whenever any deprived section had raised his voice against injustice, they had to face opposition who wanted to keep them under their control.

But such forces have always been defeated. Truth always prevails... Giordano Bruno was burnt to death as he said the earth revolves around the sun. Now, even a first class student is taught that the earth revolves around the sun, Gandhi said.

He said, The house where a woman is not free, man is also a slave.

SFS spokesperson Hassanpreet Kaur compared the hostel restrictions as illegal confinement.

Prof Surjeet Singh from Punjabi University, Patiala, said his daughter used to study at the MCM DAV College for Women in Sector 36, but there were hostel restrictions.

The next year, I got her shifted to a paying guest accommodation. Freedom is not needed just to go to library. But overall freedom is required, he said.

Punjab and Haryana High Court advocate Rajeev Godara also addressed the students. Theatre artiste Neelam Man Singh Chowdhry was also called, but she did not turn up.

PU teacher comes out in support of SFS

Chetan Pranami Memorial Trust funded Sundays protest of the SFS. Janaki Srinivasan, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Panjab University, who represented the trust during the Sundays programme, said: We have funded it. She also spoke about the Chetan Pranami in whose name the trust was named.

Talking about the Saturdays circular of the PU where protesters are advised not to disturb the residential areas, she said: If residences have ownership, the same applies on hostels...Roads belong to us. No one can tell us what to do. Private and public spaces should have equality...Without equality there will be no safety. You people are thinking that is why patriarchy is terrified.
Naeem Akhtar

Naeem Akhtar

Former Minister, J&K

FIDDLING with democracy in J&K is nothing new. But that it is happening even after 70 years of democracy in the rest of the country is a stark reminder to the Muslim-majority state that it can expect only regulated dozes of self-governance. The explanation of the Governor and the justification discourse of the BJP make it clear that the Muslim leadership of the mainstream secular parties cannot be trusted with the guardianship of the state in spite of the largest concentration of security agencies.

The Governor's action has understandably evoked sharp criticism from political parties, commentators and experts. The Raj Bhavan fax machine has, in fact, become the new metaphor for subversion of the democratic process in the state and extended to the rest of the country as well in the context of allegations against the Modi government's attempts to compromise institutions. The social media has had a great time inventing a fresh response to the developments.

It is unfortunate that the BJP is guided by its own narrow kiryana vision of the biggest political challenge to the country. While it is an established fact that democratic deficit has been a big reason for Kashmir having become what it has, the current ruling party has refused to learn the basic truth of it: that J&K must have a government chosen by its people rather than that made in Delhi. This has been grossly violated and unabashedly justified in the present case.

End of PDP-BJP coalition

The PDP-BJP coalition was hailed as historic by none other than the Prime Minister himself. How it was destroyed after three-year attrition is history. But it did not stop at dismantling only a legitimate democratic arrangement. Going a step further, it started a mission to destroy the party, the PDP, itself by attempting defections through the lure of money, power and intimidation. It even used state institutions to twist the arms of PDP legislators. What, however, is more shocking is the fact that the BJP and its local Trojan horse openly declared the 'support' of legislators from other parties, with the PDP being the main target. What was it if not horse-trading?

The ruling party at the Centre made it clear that it was setting up a government through defections and its pointman for the state Ram Madhav, who incidentally was involved in stitching the earlier alliance, made frequent trips to Srinagar, holding meetings with some PDP legislators and deliberately circulating them on the social media. Such an atmosphere was built for an expected government through intrigue that even businessmen of Srinagar were called to pay 'tribute' to the new leadership. The allout effort to elect a mayor of Srinagar, identified by the Governor even before the elections through questionable means proved to be the proverbial last straw. More important than that was the fact that the Damocles sword of the state's special status continued to hang on them through an unending string of litigation. They know if these laws are scrapped or even diluted, the mainstream politics in Kashmir will be buried for good.

Hobsons choice

The Centre clearly tried to push the mainstream parties, the NC, PDP and Congress already working in life-threatening conditions, into a corner. They had a Hobson's choice: either be stifled to death or try and fight back. Mehbooba Mufti, with her gracious offer to the seniormost leader of the state and NC patriarch to head the proposed coalition or Omar Abdullah to head it, was reciprocated with equal grace by the NC. The Congress came on board soon. This was an unprecedented assertion by the Kashmir-based parties which buried their political differences and got united for the protection of the special status.

Had it not been stymied by the Centre, the political dividends of such an arrangement would have been immense, given the fact that it was a response to popular sentiment shorn of any separatist shades. It would have been the glorious moment of mainstream politics of Kashmir amid a depressing and gloomy winter of desperation.

But even with the stillborn attempt, mainstream parties in the state, except the BJP, have reinvented themselves. They have now discovered a larger horizon of possibilities when it comes to making coalitions in a state where local parties, being bitter rivals had to look up to the national parties for support. That may be a blessing in disguise for the state.

Even as Ram Madhav and local leaders of the BJP accused the NC and PDP of taking instructions from Pakistan, the Governor brought in the security aspect into government-formation by the non-BJP 'terror friendly' parties. That is a completely new dimension to democracy in the state. Would the parties in the state have to pass the security test for government-formation even if they secure a majority? Is it not an idea from Pakistan where ideological scrutiny of the prospective representatives is done?

Coalitions in this country have, by and large, become ideology-neutral. But it appears that the BJP in the process has hit itself so badly that it may forget the dream of ever getting into the state Secretariat in the foreseeable future. Its allies will have to come from Kashmir and no party will possibly get near it without the risk of being wiped out. It made lavish use of money to fight and 'win' local body and panchayat elections without votes to please only itself. It thought boycott could see it through the Assembly elections as well. But given the new realisation about the party's real intentions, it is likely to spur greater participation by voters, even if only to thwart BJP plans. To that extent, the BJP may have cooked its own goose in J&K on Thanksgiving Day.

Governor Satya Pal Malik complained that even his cook was not available in the Raj Bhavan because of the holiday on the Prophet's birthday (even though J&K Raj Bhavan has the dubious distinction of not having a single Muslim employee). Who knows, he might have been busy roasting the goose for his political masters!
Vappala Balachandran

Vappala Balachandran

Ex-Special Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat

THE November 26, 2008, Mumbai attack was as significant in the annals of global terrorism as 9/11, which saw planes used for the first time as terror weapon. The assaults (26/11) on six locations were the first streaming assaults controlled from abroad when Lashkar leadership utilised Indias free visual media for escalating or diverting attacks. It also inspired the IS to use the same methodology at six places in Paris in 2015.

But there is a world of difference how these attacks were followed up by us and other governments. The US Department of Homeland Security publishes yearly updates on implementing 9/11 commission recommendations. Their congressional committees hold annual hearings on new threats and preparations by Counter Terrorist (CT) machinery. US think tanks also publish assessments. French Parliamentary Commission recommended US-style National Counter-Terrorism Centre (NCTC) to coordinate their intelligence agencies reporting to different ministries.

In India, the Centre did not constitute any inquiry, despite serious national security lapses. The state-appointed committee was given only a limited mandate. We gave 26 recommendations on better intelligence and CT management. The report was suppressed from the public by treating it as top secret, exhibiting indifference to 166 victims, including 17 police officers. Only ritualistic observance is done on 26/11 anniversaries, with no authoritative updates if we are safer now.

The reason: crime, including terrorism, is State subject and the Centre has no legal responsibility under Schedule 7 of our Constitution. No government has rectified this anomaly. All legal roadblocks to centralised CT management were removed by the US Congress by amending laws within 46 days after 9/11.

Neither our National Security Council nor Central intelligence agencies have any legal responsibility to prevent terrorism. The Modi government came to power on muscular response to terror but has not set up an effective agency to coordinate or advise state police on new trends in terrorism. The entire legal responsibility rests on our fragmented police system. Also, except for verbal propaganda, there is no official report to update the public whether the promised coordination between the Coast Guards and Coastal police and between the BSF and state police is actually working.

That we are vulnerable is apparent by the November 2018 UNSCs Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate warning that the IS continues to retain thousands of supporters who are active online, while ISs online messaging remains effective for radicalisation, recruitment and instruction purpose. Theoretically, it should be possible for intelligence agencies to penetrate jihadi groups. Stephen Tankel, a well-known authority on LeT, says that since 2002, US agencies were documenting regular meetings between Lashkar and the ISI. Why could we not know what they were planning? We could have strengthened coastal security and resistance capability.

Intelligence alone cant prevent terrorism. No agency has been able to pin-point the timing of any major attack in recent history. Surprise is the keyword of terrorism. Bureaucracy in any country is inelastic by following only linear thinking. For them, past experience is the only guide to organise preventive methodology. After 26/11, the efforts of our governments were to build up capability against seaborne commando attacks. We were surprised when terrorists changed strategy, reverting to hidden bomb attacks in the 2010 Pune German Bakery and 2011 Mumbai triple attacks.

Experience reveals that only exponential thinking, analysis and interpretation of trends could remedy this inelasticity. After 9/11, it was revealed that over 100 public and private institutions contributed to national security. Hence, they changed their organisational structure to bring in diverse elements into the CT dialogue. Prior to 9/11, domestic terrorism from hate groups was dealt with by the police and international terrorism by the FBI. After 9/11, they realised that this could be countered only through joint efforts and adopted a multi-agency model through joint task forces located in 104 centres. The same pattern is more or less followed by the UK.

In addition, they created public-private partnership in key areas. In India this pattern is not followed despite 26/11 committees recommendations. All responsibility is on the overworked state police.

Government and private groups should be encouraged to set up dedicated centres for studying terrorism. However, governments have not thought of sharing terrorism-related data with any private group or university. Researchers have to depend upon media reports. For calibrating any meaningful counter-terrorist methodology, it would be necessary to have research data.

A 2010 research into 86 attacks in the US, by Duke Universitys Homeland Security Solutions revealed that 18 took place (including 9/11) while 68 were foiled. Only 13 were detected through advance intelligence, 20 by vigilant public, 15 by police and 20 by federal agencies. Another research by the Heritage Foundation in 2011 revealed that 39 terror plots were foiled since 9/11 due to domestic and international cooperation, as well as efforts in tracking down terror leads among local communities. Bruce Hoffman in his book Inside Terrorism has said only strong confidence-building ties with the communities from which terrorists are most likely to come or hide in could be the solution. This has been rendered impossible by official or semi-official spokespersons of the Modi government in Kashmir, the hatchery of domestic terrorism, by alienating the local community through partisan agenda.

The writer was a member of a committee set up by Maharashtra to inquire into police response to 26/11 attacks
uttara@tribuneindia.com

Washington, November 25

The Sikhs in America have hailed the Indian governments decision to build a religious corridor linking border district of Gurdaspur with historic Kartarpur Sahib gurudwara in Pakistanfulfilling a long pending demand of the community.

Kartarpur Sahib in Pakistan is located across the river Ravi, about 4 km from the Dera Baba Nanak shrine in Punjabs Gurdaspur district. It was established by the Sikh Guru in 1522. The first Gurdwara, Gurdwara Kartarpur Sahib, was built here, where Guru Nanak Dev is said to have died.

Both India and Pakistan have announced that stretches would be developed in their respective areas.

The Indian governments decision to develop and open the Kartarpur Sahib Corridor is historic, Jasdip Singh, the chairman of the Sikhs of America, said during his meeting with visiting Union Minister of State for External Affairs Gen (retd.) VK Singh.

A delegation of eminent Sikh of America led by Jasdip Singh on Saturday met the minister here.

From the very first day after coming to power, the Prime Minister has not only been sympathetic to the concerns of the Sikh community but has also acted to address all our concerns, he said.

Welcoming the decision, Gurinder Singh Khalsa, a community leader, said that this is just a beginning for greater good of the region and the humanity.

Incarnation of God, Guru Nanak became corridor between Hindus and Muslims, rich and poor, Pundits and Dalits during the most troubled times. I am a firm believer that now again after 550 years, with the grace of almighty, Kartarpur (town of God) corridor will be a pathway for sustainable peace between the two countries of India and Pakistan, Khalsa said.

This is a historic decision, said Adapa Prasad, vice president of Overseas Friends of BJP.

The decision regarding construction of the Sikh corridor has the potential to kick-off peace between India and Pakistan. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been a great friend of the Sikhs. This was one of our long pending decision, said Puneet Ahluwalia, a Republican leader from Virginia.

In a memorandum submitted to the visiting minister, Sikhs of America organisation urged the prime minister to bring to justice the masterminds of the 1984 riots.

The memorandum also urged the Indian Government to provide visa to the Sikhs in the US who have received political asylum.

Singh, who is currently on a three city US trip to inaugurate Passport Seva projects in New York, Washington DC and Atlanta, was felicitated at a Baltimore Gurdwara in Maryland in recognition of some of the decisions being taken by the Indian government for the Sikh community.

The local Sikh community from Maryland and Virginia representing the Sikh Sewa presented a Saropa to the minister at a community reception later in evening. PTI
laxmi@tribune.com

CP JOSHI had once contrived to lose an election by one vote when he was the front-runner for the Rajasthan CMs post. This time when the Congress apparently stands a good chance of pulling off a win in Rajasthan, the veterans immoderation may have disqualified him from the contest even before the votes are cast. A livid Rahul Gandhi arm-twisted Joshi to withdraw his statement that only Brahmins know about Hindu religion while questioning the authority of non-Brahmins Narendra Modi, Uma Bharti and Sadhvi Rithambara in the context of their campaign for the Ram temple. Joshi in one stroke demolished two cardinal principles that define Independent India: all humans are created equal and religion is a personal and individualistic affair that allows believers to find their own answers.

Joshi ought to be aware that the practice of upper-caste priests, mostly Brahmins, trying to manage society by their stranglehold over religious rituals began to be progressively loosened with the arrival of the British. The 2014 elections in particular dealt a body blow to this traditional preserve with the political emergence of a new breed of sadhus and sadhvis, other than the names he mentioned from the non-Brahminical fold. The enhanced political competition by the non-Brahmins would have been a cause for irritation for Joshi rather than his innocence of caste dynamics, as was the case with the Twitter official.

If at all the Hindutva brigade is to be halted, it is by pointing out their un-Hindu tendencies, chief of which is their strategy of coercion, a sure- shot recipe for chaos and civil disharmony. It is the task of political India to dismantle the inequality by birth of different communities within Hinduism. Joshi and his party may win the election, but his prescriptive approach falls short of that ideal and is no different from that being espoused by his rivals who want one size to fit all. His world view of priestly patriarchy as the sole arbiter of matters of religion seems to emulate the cloak of uniformity Hindutva seeks to impose.
editorial@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

Solan, November 25

Nine persons were killed and 49 injured when the bus they were travelling in plunged into a river near Dadahu in Sirmaur district around 3:45 am onSunday.

The bus, which was en route from Shri Renukaji-Nahan, broke the railing erected along the bridge and plunged into the river. The exact cause of the accident was yet to be ascertained, said DSP Babita Rana.

Babita Rana said preliminary inquiries revealed that the bus was running late for its destination and was in high speed. The bus was also overcrowded with passengers.

The victims were rushed to Dadahu hospital for preliminary treatment from where 43 were referred to Nahan. Being a rocky surface with little water in the river, the victims suffered fatal head injuries.

Four persons, including a couple Bhagwanti and Satya Ram, who hail from Jaitak village, and another women Uma Devi, were killed on the spot while one person was yet to be identified. Another five persons, who were referred to Dr YS Parmar Medical College at Nahan, were declared brought dead.

Besides this, 43, who had suffered injuries, were admitted to the Nahan medical college. Two injured were also referred to the PGI, Chandigarh, as their condition was stated to be serious. Among those injured was also a 12-year girl who was yet to be identified and a child who was unable to disclose his identity.

Preliminary reports indicate that the bus was overloaded and was in speed.

Little preparedness was noticed in the Nahan hospital when the injured arrived around 6:30 pm with the scant staff and unavailability of stretchers to carry the injured drawing flak from the locals.

Deputy Commissioner, Sirmaur, Lalit Jain said Rs 20,000 to those killed and Rs 10,000 to the injured has been granted. The SDM has been directed to conduct a magisterial inquiry into this accident and will submit his report within 20 days.

He said a team of 25 doctors were treating the patients and he was monitoring the situation in the hospital.
ROBINSINGH@TRIBUNE.COM

Solan, November 25

As many as 18 tourists from Delhi were injured when a bus (DL-IP-C-4180) plunged into a gorge near the Kyari nullah near Sadhupul village on the Chail-Junga road around 12 noon today.

SHO, Kandaghat, Deshraj Guleria said rash and negligent driving appeared to be the cause of this accident. He said 18 persons were injured, including the driver, and there were 21 people on board. A case for rash and negligent driving had been registered against the driver and further investigations were underway.

The bus plunged into a bushy nullah due to which those on board escaped with injuries and a major tragedy was averted, informed a local villager.

The locals rushed to their rescue and also informed the police which swung into action and transported the injured to the nearest hospital at Junga. All injured tourists were referred to the IGMC, Shimla, after being given preliminary treatment. Their condition was stated to be stable.  TNS
shriaya.dutta@tribuneindia.com

Shimla, November 25

Temperature across Himachal Pradesh on Sunday showed a rise due to the prevailing dry conditions, which the Met said will be there till Tuesday, when the western disturbances will set in.

"There are chances of rain or snowfall in the high-altitude region on November 28," an India Meteorological Department (IMD) official told IANS.

The western disturbances  storm systems originating from the Caspian Sea and moving across the Afghanistan-Pakistan region  would be active in the region from November 27.

Most of the prominent tourist towns located in mid-hills, including Shimla, Narkanda, Kufri, Manali and Dalhousie, have been witnessing long sunny days, he added.

Keylong in Lahaul and Spiti district was the coldest place with a low of minus 2.9 degrees Celsius.

Shimla recorded 12.1 degrees Celsius, five degrees above season's average, while the minimum in Manali was 1.6 degrees, 13 in Dalhousie and 9.2 in Dharamsala.  IANS
editorial@tribune.com

Our Correspondent

Palampur, November 25

District president of the BJP Vinay Sharma on Sunday said Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur had sanctioned development projects worth Rs 50 crore during his two-day visit to the town recently.

Addressing a press conference here, the BJP leader said the Chief Minister laid the foundation stone of a Rs 25 crore water supply scheme for the town, which would cater to the needs of half of the Palampur constituency.

He said a multi-storey parking project, which had been pending since 2008, had been sanctioned. Earlier, its foundation stone was laid by former Chief Ministers Prem Kumar Dhumal and Virbhadhra Singh twice, but the project failed to take off.

He said Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur had promised to release Rs 10 crore for the project within two months. A DPR had also been prepared. The Municipal Council had provided six canal for the project.

He said the Chief Minister had released Rs 5 crore for the construction of Palampur Circuit House. The BJP leader said the previous Congress government had earmarked Rs 50 lakh for the project, but the construction work was stopped midway due to the lack of funds. However, when the issue was brought to the notice of the Chief Minister, he immediately directed the Principal Secretary, PWD, to release Rs 5 crore for the project, he said.

Sharma said the Chief Minister gave in principle approval for the creation of the Palampur municipal corporation after the completion of the tenure of panchayats.

Besides, Rs 16 crore had been approved for two water supply schemes in the Kandwari and Gopal areas.

Three tube wells had also been sanctioned for the town.

He said at present, Palampur was being represented by a Congress MLA, but the government had directed local BJP leaders to look into the issues of residents.
pardeepdhull@gmail.com

Majid Jahangir

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, November 25

An Army soldier and six militants were killed in a gunfight in south Kashmirs Shopian district on Sunday, officials said.

A civilian was also killed, while over a dozen were injured in clashes that broke out at the encounter site following the gunfight, the officials said.

The slain soldier has been identified as Lance Naik Nazir Ahmad Wani (38) of Cheki Ashmuji village in Kulgam.

The gunfight broke at Kapran village of Shopian around 1.30 am when a joint team of the police, Army and CRPF were carrying a cordon and search operation after a specific input about the presence of militants in the area.

As the forces zeroed in on the suspected area, the militants opened fire, triggering a gunfight. In the gunfight that followed, one Army soldier and six militants were killed, a police officer said.

This is the second major encounter in south Kashmir since Friday. On November 23, six local militants, including a top Lashkar-e-Toiba commander accused of murdering top journalist Shujaat Bukhari in June this year, were killed in a gunfight in Bijbehara area of Anantnag district.

The six militants have been identified as Mushtaq Ahmad Mir, alias Hammad, district commander of Lashkar-e-Toiba for Shopian; Mohammad Abass Bhatt of Cheki Mantribugh Shopian; Umar Majeed, alias Maaz, alias Abu Hanzalla, of Souch Kulgam; and district commanders of Hizbul Mujaideen for Shopian and Kulgam, respectively, Mohammad Waseem Wagay, alias Saifullah, of Amshipora, Khalid Farooq Malik, alias Rafi, of Aliyalpora, Shopian.

One militant is suspected to be a Pakistani.

An unverified picture of militant commander Umar Majeed had surfaced on social media recently walking around Lal Chowk, the heart of Srinagar.

J&K Police said slain militant Abbas Bhat was wanted in the killing of Lt Ummar Fayaz.

Lt Fayaz was abducted by militants from Batpora village of Shopian on the evening of May 9, 2017, where he was attending the marriage ceremony of a cousin. His bullet-riddled body was found the next morning in an orchard.
editorial@tribune.com

Suhail A Shah

Anantnag, November 25

An Army man, a civilian and six militants, three of them district commanders, were among eight persons killed on Sunday during a gunfight in Shopians Batgund village, 53 km south of Srinagar.

More than 15 civilians were injured as security forces fired bullets, pellets and tear gas shells to quell protesters at the encounter site.

Lance Naik Nazir Ahmad of 34 Rashtriya Rifles, a resident of Ashmuji area in Kulgam district, was injured in the initial burst of fire. He later succumbed to his injuries, a senior police official said. He identified the killed civilian, who had a bullet in his chest, as Noman Ashraf Bhat of Bolsoo village.

The slain militants were identified as Umar Majeed Ganaie of Kulgam (Hizb district commander); Mushtaq Ahmad Mir of Cheki Cholan, Shopian (LeT district commander); Muhammad Abbas Bhat of Mantribugh, Shopian (Hizb district commander); Muhammad Waseem Wagay of Amshipora, Shopian (Hizb) and Khalid Farooq Malik of Aliyalpora, Shopian (Hizb).

The militants were believed to be behind the recent spate of abductions and killings in Kulgam. Hizb district commander Umar Majeeds picture, posing in front of Ghanta Ghar in Lal Chowk area of Srinagar, had gone viral on the social media. But the police had called it doctored.

The police official said material found at the encounter site indicated that one of the militants could be a Pakistani, possibly a Lashkar operative.

He said a search operation was launched by a joint team around 11.30 pm on Saturday night. After about an hour-and-a-half, the forces zeroed in on a house where the militants were hiding and were fired upon. Lance Naik Nazir Ahmad was injured. He later died. The gunfight lasted more than six hours. Two houses were gutted.

At the break of dawn, hundreds of residents assembled at the encounter site. The security forces opened fire, leaving more than 15 hurt, six of them with bullet injuries.

A health official at the hospital said they had received 15 injured persons, six with bullet wounds and nine with pellet injuries, including an 18-month-old girl. Later in the day, the bodies of the militants, barring one, were handed over to the families.

IGP (Kashmir Range) Swayam Prakash Pani said: We have been able to make a considerable dent in terror groups. Two days ago, a module of six militants was eliminated at Bijbehara in South Kashmir, which included a militant wanted in the assassination of journalist Shujaat Bukhari.

Prime accused of Lt Fayaz killing shot

One of the six militants killed in Shopian, Mohd Abbas Bhat, was the main accused in the abduction and killing of Lt Ummer Fayaz, police said. Lt Ummer, 22, was abducted from Batpora village of Shopian on May 9, 2017, where he was attending a marriage. His body was found the next morning.
editorial@tribune.com

Sumit Hakhoo

Tribune News Service

Jammu, November 25

With India and Pakistan agreeing to open Kartarpur Sahib corridor for Sikh pilgrims from Punjab, Kashmiri Pandits have expressed hope that both the countries should now allow devotees from J&K to visit the ancient Sharda shrine in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK).

A revered Hindu pilgrimage centre for centuries on the banks of the Kishenganga river (Neelam) in PoK, divided by the highly militarised Line of Control (LoC) opposite Kupwara district, several religious and social organisations have been demanding the right to pilgrimage since two South Asian countries agreed to start the cross-border bus service between the divided parts of J&K in 2005.

Former Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, who headed the PDP-BJP coalition government for three years, had also taken up the issue with Prime Minister Narendra Modi a few times. Senior BJP leaders are part of the Save Sharda Committee, a group created to pursue the matter.

The last pilgrimage was organised just before the invasion of the state by tribesmen supported by Pakistan in 1947.

We welcome that India and Pakistan have agreed to create a corridor for pilgrims to visit Kartarpur Sahib between two Punjabs. A similar arrangement should be made for the Sharda shrine. It would be the biggest confidence-building measure to bring people together, said Vinod Pandit, chairman, All Party Migrant Coordination Committee.

Despite the cross-border bus service between J&K and PoK, only those persons can travel on the bus whose relatives are on the either side of J&K. Hindus and Sikhs are unable to use the service as there are members of minority community are not living in the areas under the occupation of Pakistan since 1947.

The weekly bus service crosses the LoC from Rawalkote in Poonch and Uri in Kashmir.

Residents of the state want to visit the shrine in PoK. Pakistan should now take an initiative as the supreme court of PoK has already given a landmark judgment on the preservation of ruins of the Sharda temple, said Ravinder Pandita, one of the founder members of the Save Sharda Committee.

Several prominent historians and social activists in Pakistan have also supported the demand and have visited India to take part in seminars and conferences on the issue.

Farooq expresses happiness

Srinagar: National Conference (NC) president Farooq Abdullah on Sunday expressed happiness over the proposed Kartarpur corridor between India and Pakistan, saying he hoped the spirit would replicate itself in Jammu and Kashmir. He said the initiative would help the Sikh community to realise their long-pending demand of paying obeisance at one of their holiest places located across the border. The invitation from Pakistan to Indian leaders and legislators on the opening ceremony of Kartarpur corridor will bequeath both India and Pakistan a chance to further the cause of brotherhood and amity, he said. The initiative will help the people from across the border to know cultural similarities between the two nations, Farooq, an MP from the Srinagar Lok Sabha constituency, said. The NC president said Jammu and Kashmir appealed for such initiatives, like opening of borders and greater people-to-people contact across the border. We in Jammu and Kashmir suffer immensely due to the animosity between India and Pakistan. The need of the hour calls for replicating similar initiatives in our state, he said. He said his party, for past 70 years, had been vouching for affable Indo-Pak relations as these would usher in a new era of peace and prosperity in the state. I have time and again said constituency of peace-loving people in the two nations far exceeds those who want war. PTI
editorial@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, November 25

The Kashmir Economic Alliance (KEA), an amalgam of several traders bodies, on Sunday threatened an agitation against the government decision to turn J&K Bank into a public sector undertaking (PSU).

Moderate Hurriyat leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq also flayed the move and termed it a grand ploy to cripple the Kashmiris on political as well the economic front.

Other PSUs like the State Road Transport Corporation and the State Financial Corporation are only consuming money from taxpayers and are yet to give profits. Is the Governor planning to make it (J&K Bank) ineffective just like other PSUs? If the decision is not rolled back, we will launch an agitation, KEA chairman Mohammad Yaseen Khan said while addressing a press conference here.

On Friday, the SAC meeting chaired by Governor Satya Pal Malik had decided to turn J&K Bank Ltd into a PSU.

Fearing that the decision to turn the bank into a PSU may turn it into a loss-making unit, Khan said J&K Bank had always come to the rescue of the local business community.

Bringing the bank under the RTI ambit is welcome as accountability is must.but why the decision was taken suddenly after 80 years? The bank has given loans worth Rs 25,000 crore to the people of the state and it is our only listed company in the National Stock Exchange. Other nationalised banks working in the state do not even contribute 10 per cent of what J&K Bank does. The business community has been suffering after the 2014 floods. Only J&K Bank came forward. If it becomes like J&K Industries and State Financial Corporationwho will take the responsibility? he asked.

Addressing a seerat conference here, Mirwaiz said: They want to cripple us politically, socially and economically and now the Governors administration on the directions of the BJP-RSS combine is trying to capture J&K Bank. They know that how this institution, in which the Kashmiris have faith, has sustained our trade and economy.

He warned that the people of Kashmir cant remain silent about the new ploy of the government while urging them to forge unity on the lines of the 2016 mass agitation to fight the move.

Meanwhile, Khan said such steps were part of the conspiracy to fiddle with the special status of the state and these decisions were usually taken by an elected government.

Such decisions are taken by elected governments. On whose directions are you (Governor) doing this?... You are just a makeshift arrangement to ensure sadak, bijli and paanithe bank has reached heights because of our money.the interest paid by us, he added.
editorial@tribune.com

Majid Jahangir

Tribune News Sevice

Srinagar, November 25

Security forces dealt a major blow to militants on Sunday when they killed a top ultra accused in the killing of Lt Ummer Fayaz and another one allegedly involved in the killing of at least 19 policemen.

Six militants, including three district commanders Mushtaq Ahmad Mir, alias Hammad of the Lashkar-e-Toiba, Mohammad Abbas Bhat and Umar Majeed, both of the Hizbul Mujahideen, were killed in a fierce gunfight that also left a soldier from Kulgam dead.

Abbas Bhat was the main accused in the abduction and killing of Lt Ummer Fayaz, Superintendent of Police (SP), Shopian, Sandeep Choudhary said.

Lieutenant Ummer, 22, was abducted by a group of militants from Batpora village of Shopian on the evening of May 9, 2017, where he was attending the marriage ceremony of a cousin. His bullet-riddled body was found the next morning in an orchard. Days later, the police had released photographs of three Hizbul Mujahideen militants believed to be involved in the abduction and killing. One of the pictures was that of Abbas Bhat.

The police said Abbas Bhat, who was the district commander of the Hizbul for Shopian, served five years in a jail in a murder case and joined militant ranks in 2016 while he was out on bail.

In the recent past, he was involved in killing of at least seven policemen and several civilians, the SP said.

Another top militant Umar Majeed, alias Maaz, was also killed in the gunfight. Recently, Umars picture had surfaced on the social media, showing him at Lal Chowk in Srinagar. Umar was the district commander of the Hizb for Shopian and had escaped a gunfight at Batamaloo, Srinagar, on August 12 which had left a cop of elite counter-insurgency unit dead.

He (Umar) was involved in killings of at least 19 policemen in south Kashmir, mostly in Kulgam, since 2016, the ShopianSP said.

Umar had joined militancy in 2015 and was the key planner of the group in various attacks and a close confidant of Hizb operational chief Riyaz Naikoo.

The SP said Mushtaq Mir was involved in a series of bank robberies in south Kashmir. He was also involved in several attacks on security establishments and civilian killings, he said.

The killing of six militants is a huge blow to the militant groups in south Kashmir, a senior security officer in Srinagar said.

Pak Jaish militant killed in Pulwama

Srinagar: A suspected Pakistani Jaish-e-Mohammed militant was killed in a brief gunfight in Pulwama on Sunday, the police said. The encounter took place hours after security forces killed six militants in a gun battle in the neighbouring Shopian district. They said a search operation was launched by security forces at Bathien Khrew, Awantipora, after an input about militant presence. As the search operations were on, a police patrol was fired upon by the terrorist. The fire was retaliated. Consequently, one terrorist was killed, a police spokesman said. He said an AK-47 and magazines were recovered from the slain militant. From the material recovered, it is learnt that the killed terrorist is a Pakistani codenamed Waseem. He was affiliated with the Jaish-e-Mohammed, he said. TNS
editorial@tribune.com

Mumbai, November 24

Rex Bakery, opposite the Chabad House building, was given a fresh coat of paint but the bullet marks on its wall were circled in red, a symbol of the citys spirit of defiance, on the tenth anniversary of the Mumbai terror attack.

We condemn the 26/11 terror attack on Mumbai, reads a message on the wall painted by Kuresh Zorabi, who runs the bakery.

The five-storey Chabad House building continues to stand tall in a quaint lane at Colaba in south Mumbai after it was attacked by Pakistan terrorists on November 26, 2008.

Israels Counsul General in Mumbai Yaakov Finkelstein says the attack has not dented Israels relation with India and even today people from Israel feel safe and secure here. The terror attack brought India and Israel even closer. Terrorists thought they could break our spirits or come between us but actually the opposite (happened). What impression we get from our local community is that they feel secure, and welcomed in Mumbai, said Finkelstein.

According to him, there are about 4,000 Indian Jews in the city.

Echoing his views, Samsun Mosses, a local Jew, said: There are security measures in place here (at Chabad House). We like coming here. There is no issue of security or safety.  PTI
shriaya.dutta@tribuneindia.com

Bengaluru, November 25

The Karnataka government on Sunday declared three-day mourning for actor-turned-politician MH Ambareesh who died at a private hospital on Saturday night following a cardiac arrest.

"As a mark of respect to the departed leader, government has declared an official mourning of three days," a statement from Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy's office said.

The 66-year-old super star of the sandalwood industry was a former cabinet minister in the previous Congress government from May 2013 to June 2016.

He was also the Union Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting in the first United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government from 2006-2007 and a Parliament member from Mandya Lok Sabha constituency, about 100 km from here.

This is the second time in November the state government declared mourning after doing so to late Union Minister Ananth Kumar on November 12 when he died in the city.

Ambareesh died around 10.15 pm on Saturday after a massive cardiac arrest a couple of hours after he was brought to Vikram Hospital due to respiratory problem.  IANS
uttara@tribuneindia.com

Naveen S Garewal

Tribune News Service

Hyderabad, November 25

Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah announced on Sunday that his party would not allow reservation based on religion, coming in direct confrontation with caretaker Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) that has advocated 12 per cent reservation for the Muslim minority in the state.

Telangana has about 12.7 per cent Muslims. Caretaker Chief Minister Kalvakuntla Chandrashekar Rao (KCR) has promised them special reservation.

Shah, who is in Telangana on a day-long election tour, was addressing a public rally at addressing a public meeting at Parkal in Warangal district. The BJP will never let any government implement the 12 per cent reservation for minorities as this is opposed to the Supreme Court directive that has fixed a ceiling of 50 per cent reservation for all categories of reservation, making any further reservation unconstitutional.

The Telangana State Assembly that was dissolved on September 6, forcing early elections in the state had passed a resolution for increasing reservation for Muslims in jobs and education from current four per cent. The resolution was sent to the BJP Government at the centre for a nod. Chief Minister Rao has been targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi for approving its proposal for the quota. Shah said his party would stand as a rock to protect the reservation of Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and backward classes.

The BJP President has made this announcement two days ahead of Prime Minister Modis visit to the state, raising the election pitch in the state that goes to poll on December 7 along with four other states. Making a strong appeal to vote for the BJP that is going along in the Telangana poll, Shah said: If voted to power, our government will not be dependent on the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) like the TRS.

MIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi is considered friendly towards TRS.

Telangana has an 85.1 per cent Hindu population, 12.7 per cent Muslims, 1.3 per cent Christians and 0.9 per cent others. The BJP president clearly targeted the majority Hindu populations by appealing to the majority voters trying to polarise voters by suggesting that their interest was at stake if the BJP was not voted to power.

Shah criticised KCR for imposing a burden on the state by announcing early election just because KCR was afraid of Modis impact if the Assembly polls were to be held along with the Lok Sabha elections in 2019. He added that KCR was not interested in the development of his state, but only in promoting his son and daughter in politics.

Appealing to people to vote for the BJP, Shah said BJP alone could provide a government which could save Telangana and take it forward on the path of development. He said the Modi government took up several works for Telanganas development and released over Rs 1.15 lakh crore to the state under the 14th Finance Commission, as against Rs 16,596 crore given by the UPA government under the 13th Finance Commission.

The central government gave over Rs 2.30 lakh crore for Telanganas development in the last four-and-a-half years. Under KCRs rule, a revenue surplus state (when Telangana was formed) has been pushed into Rs 2 lakh crore debt, he said.
uttara@tribuneindia.com

Shahira Naim

Tribune News Service

Ayodhya, November 25

If the BJP cannot take the initiative to build the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya then it should admit that promising in the 2014 manifesto to explore all constitutional options was another jumla, Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray said on Sunday.

Speaking to the press at his hotel before leaving for Mumbai, Thackeray questioned the BJP on the options they had explored in the past four-and-a-half years.

If you will simply wait for the Supreme Court verdict, then say so and admit that promising to explore all options under the Constitution was just another jumla, he said. If the BJP government continues to dither on Ram Mandir, then the Ram Mandir will surely come up but the BJP will not form the next government, said Thackeray reiterating the Pahle mandir, phir sarkar (First mandir, then government) slogan.

He said that Chief Minister Adityanath recently stated there was, is and would be a mandir in Ayodhya.

But this is only our faith. When would it the mandir be visible? That is what I want to know.

Bring a law or an ordinance but build the mandir. We will support you. But stop using the issue for mere political gains, warned Thackeray.

Thackeray said that former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee had said that Hindus were no longer fearful. But his was a mixed government and he could not take the initiative for a mandir. But the present government is a powerful one still no initiative for a mandir. The Hindu is not going to accept this and continue questioning the government to declare a date for the mandir, said the Shiv Sena chief.

Speaking of his visit to the makeshift Ram temple earlier in the day, Thackeray said that the place definitely gave spiritual vibes.

Referring to the high security in the makeshift temple the Shiv Sena chief said: When I was going to the mandir, it felt as if I was visiting a jail.

Thackeray, however, parried questions about violence against people from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in Maharashtra claiming that one should not make judgements from a distance.

We are capable and doing our duty. Sitting here please dont pass judgements," he retorted.

Within hours of Thackeray demanding to know the date of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya on Saturday Chief Minister government released the model of the proposed Ram statue to come up in Ayodhya.

Principle Secretary Information Avanish Awashti released a photo of the statue late last night stating that the 151 metre tall statue would have a 20 metre chattra (canopy) and a 50 metre pedestal. The total height would hence be 221 metres.
editorial@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

Lucknow, November 25

If the BJP cannot take the initiative to build Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, then it should admit that promising in the 2014 poll manifesto that it will explore all Constitutional options was a mere jumla, Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray told the media here on Sunday.

If you will simply wait for the Supreme Court verdict, than say so... If the BJP government continues to dither on Ram Mandir, the mandir will surely come up, but the BJP will not form the next government he warned, reiterating pehle mandir, phir sarkar (first mandir, then government).

Bring a law or an ordinance, but build the mandir withour further delay. We will support you, he reiterated, warning the BJP to stop using the issue for only political gains. Election time par Ram, Ram aur phir aaram nahi chalega. Thackeray observed that while the Vajpayee government was a coalition government, the present government is a powerful one. Yet there has been no initiative on Ram Mandir. Referring to the high security in the makeshift temple, the Shiv Sena chief remarked: On a visit to the mandir, it felt as if I was visiting a jail.

He parried questions on violence against those from UP and Bihar in Maharashtra. He later returned to Mumbai in a private chartered plane.

Interestingly, within hours of Thackeray demanding a date on Ram Mandir, the Adityanath Yogi government on Saturday released the model of the proposed Ram statue in Ayodhya.

Principle Secretary Information Avanish Awashti released a photo of the statue, stating it would be 151 metres in height with a 20 metres canopy and a 50 metres pedestal. The total height would be 221 metres.

Muslims call for Prez intervention

All India Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat on Sunday wrote to President Ram Nath Kovind, seeking his intervention into the developments in Ayodhya. It said presence of unruly mobs pointed to way things were moving in unchecked manner in UP. PTI

An open challenge to court: AIMPLB

Terming VHPs Dharam Sabha and visit of Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray to Ayodhya an open challenge to Supreme Court, All India Muslim Personal law Board said on Sunday that a situation was being created against the Muslims. PTI
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Kolkata, November 25

During the change of duty on Saturday, "accidental firing" took place at the state Secretariat, 'Nabanna' without hurting anyone, police said.

As per the investigation, the incident took place in a bunker near the north gate of the highly secured Secretariat when a shot went off from the service rifle of a constable posted with the Armed Police around 12.25 pm.

However, no one was injured in the incident as the bullet hit the wall of the bunker, police said.

An inquiry has been initiated to find out more details about the incident and the CCTV footages are being checked, the official added.  IANS
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Shahira Naim

Tribune News Service

Lucknow, November 25

The Vishwa Hindu Parishad does not want the division of the disputed site in Ayodhya and wants the entire land for building the Ram Mandir said VHP international vice- president Champat Rai on Sunday.

This is directly challenging the 2010 Allahabad High Court verdict that had given 2/3 of the site to the Hindus and one third to the Muslim petitioners.

Addressing the massive crowd assembled at the Bada Bhakt Mahal Bagiya in Ayodhya for the Dharam Sabha, Rai said that the struggle for a Ram Mandir in Ayodhya is 500 years old.

Hindus now want the whole land for the Ram Mandir. Building a masjid here is unacceptable. Muslims should withdraw their case, he said.

Charging the Supreme Court of dragging its feet on the Ram Mandir issue, he said that the court is not giving the issue the priority it deserves.

We have come to remind some people that the Ram Mandir issue did not end on December 6, 1992. That is why we have to organise this Dharam Sabha after 25 years. BJP may do politics but we are not ready to accept anything less than the Ram Mandir, said Rai.

Swami Rambhadracharya of the Tulsi Peeth made another startling revelation when he told the gathering that a central minister had assured him of a positive development regarding the Ram Mandir in January once the model code of conduct was withdrawn.

Very tight security was in place for the Dharam Sabha, which began at around 11 am after recitation of mantras and continued till 3 pm.

RSS Sah Karyawah Krishna Gopal was presiding over the meeting and among the large number of saints present on the dais were acting president of Ramjanambhoomi Nyas Mahant Nrityagopal Das, Premanand Maharaj and Dashrath gaddis Brajmohan Das and many others.

Among chants of Jai Shri Ram and Jab kesariya lehrayega ,hosh thikane ayega the large number of Ram Bhakts, mostly youth had assembled at Ayodhya were from mainly from 45 districts of central and eastern part of the state.

They had come equipped with sound systems and broke into impromptu dance on religious songs.

Meanwhile, Tapasvi ji ki Chavni ashramsMahant Paramhans Das and his supporters had arrived at the venue with bricks on their heads symbolically demanding speedy building of the temple.

Later this Mahant was house arrested in his ashram. Last month he had resorted to hunger strike to press for his demand of a Ram Mandir and was forcibly picked up and admitted to a Lucknow hospital.

Meanwhile, in Lucknow the Pragatisheel Samajwadi party Lohia head Shivpal Singh Yadav met Governor Ram Naik demanding the dismissal of the Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath for allowing such a large gathering in Ayodhya when Section 144 was in force.

He along with a large number of supporters marched to the Raj Bhawan and staged a dharna there till the governor invited a delegation to meet him.

Presenting a memo to the governor Shivpal Yadav said that for the last few days a build up has been allowed in Ayodhya against the law.

ADG Law and Order Anand Kumar reiterated that that foolproof security arrangements had been made in Ayodhya .

He described as social media rumour news of IB inputs of likelihood of terrorists disguised as saints entering the Dharam Sabha venue.

Drone cameras were being used to keep an eye on the crowds.
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Ajay Banerjee

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, November 25

In what shows Indias diplomatic dexterity of having a parallel military relationship with the US and Russia, simultaneous military exercises are currently on with the two countries, which are not on the best of terms with each other.

The US has imposed sanctions on Russia and threatened to sanction countries that purchase military equipment from Moscow. Despite the US threat, India has gone ahead and signed a contract for the S-400 air-defence missiles from Moscow.

From December 10, India will conduct a two-week military exercise with China at Kunming in South-eastern China, becoming probably the only major country to have, in recent times, conducted joint military exercises with the US, Russia and China.

The US and China are on a confrontation path of their own over maritime rights in the contentious hydrocarbon rich South China Sea. The India-China exercise will be the first since the 73-day military standoff (June 16 to Aug 28, 2017) at Doklam.

The India-Russian and India-US exercises commenced almost simultaneously, on November 18 and November 19, respectively. The military exercise with the Russians called Indra is being conducted at Babina (near Jhansi in UP) the mandate is combating insurgency under the aegis of United Nations (UN).

The one with the US is being conducted at the Mahajan firing ranges, near Bikaner (Rajasthan), around 600 km west of Babina.

The 11-day India-Russian exercise involves mechanised infantry. Both countries operate a common Infantry carrying vehicle (ICV) of Russian parentage. The aim of the exercise is to enhance interoperability of the two armies in peacekeeping and enforcement environment. It focuses on enhancing team building, special tactical-level operations such as cordon and search, house intervention, handling and neutralisation of improvised explosive devices.

The India-US exercise Vajra Prahar is about special forcesthe teams that carry out covert operations. The Special Forces Group of the United States Pacific Command is here. The 12-day exercise focuses on joint training in semi-desert and rural terrain to enhance the interoperability. They will train on different aspects, including hostage rescue, building intervention, desert survival, medical aid and combat firing.

The US and India already have a sea-based exercise called Malabar and the annual Yudh Abhyaasthis time conducted in India in September. It had simulated a scenario where both nations work together in counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism environment in mountainous terrain under the UN charter.

Indra, Vajra Prahar exercises underway
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Boston, November 25

A signed letter, penned by Mahatma Gandhi a year before Indias Independence, thanking a British lord for wishes on his birthday is expected to fetch over USD 20,000 at an online auction.

Signed M K Gandhi, the one-page letter to Lord Pethick-Lawrence, Secretary of State for India and Burma, was written from New Delhi on October 10, 1946.

Dear friend, It was good of you to send me your wishes for my birthday which is synonymous with the rebirth of the spinning wheel in 1918, the letter reads.

Gandhis reference to the spinning wheel is exceptionally important, as he had adopted it as a symbol of economic independence very early on in his movement, US-based RR Auction said in a statement.

Shortly after World War I, he developed a broad base of support from Indians for peaceful non-cooperation.

After December 1921, Gandhi expanded his non-violence programme to include the swadeshi policythe boycott of British goods.

From this originated his spinning wheel, as he encouraged all Indians to wear khadi instead of British-made textiles.

He furthered this concept by exhorting Indian men and women, rich or poor, to spend time each day spinning khadi in support of the Independence movement.

Thus the spinning wheel became symbolic of the movement towards Indian independence.

While Lord Pethwick-Lawrence was involved with the negotiations that led to Indias freedom, it was Prime Minister Clement Atlee who made the governments principal decisions in the matter.

The bidding for the online auction ends on December 5.  PTI
uttara@tribuneindia.com

New Delhi, November 25

India has decided to fast-track three projects, including construction of two dams, to arrest the unutilised water of its share under the bilateral Indus Waters Treaty with Pakistan, government officials said.

The three projects include the Shahpur Kandi dam project, a second Sutlej-Beas link in Punjab and the Ujh Dam project in Jammu and Kashmir, they said.

These (three) projects were stuck in red tape and inter-state disputes. But it has been decided to expedite the execution of these projects, one of them added.

Under the Indus Waters Treaty, waters flowing in three of Indus tributariesthe Sutlej, Beas and Ravihave been allotted to India; while the Chenab, Jhelum and Indus waters have been allotted to Pakistan.

Of the total 168 million acre-feet, Indias share of water from the three allotted rivers is 33 million acre-feet, which constitutes nearly 20 per cent.

India uses nearly 93-94 per cent of its share under the Indus Waters Treaty. The rest of the water remains unutilised and goes to Pakistan, an official added.

The Ujh dam is a proposed hydroelectricity and irrigation multipurpose project in the Kathua district of Jammu over the Ravi river with a capacity to generate 196 MW of electricity. The total water utilisation from this project is 172.8 million cusec metre (mc), but it has the capacity to store 925 mcm of water, the officials said. The estimated cost of the project is Rs 5,950 crore. The Jammu and Kashmir government has forwarded the Detailed Project Report (DPR) to the Centre for its appraisal, which is expected to be approved by the Advisory Committee of the Ministry of Water Resources for clearance, they said.

After the Uri attack in Kashmir in September 2016, the government had sought to use the Indus Waters Treaty to put pressure on Pakistan. The measures included effectively using Indias share of waters that flow into Pakistan. This also included fast-tracking irrigation and hydropower projects by resolving the inter-state disputes. The Centre has also asked the Punjab government to prepare a feasibility report of the second Ravi-Beas link that is expected to further help in increasing utilisation of Indias share of water under the treaty.

In September, the Punjab and the Jammu and Kashmir governments signed an agreement to resume works on the Rs 2,793-crore Shahpur Kandi project. Though the work on the project began in 2013, it was halted due to certain issues raised by the J&K.

The Punjab government also submitted a revised cost estimate of Rs 2,793.54 crore and requested the Centre to include the project in the prioritised list of the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana (PMKSY)/Accelerated Irrigation Benefit Programme (AIBP) projects.

The project, when implemented, will enable the up-stream Ranjit Sagar Dam project power station to act as a peaking station, besides having its own generation capacity of 206 MW and irrigation benefit of 37,173-hectare to Punjab and J&K. PTI
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New Delhi, November 25

A 41-year-old Japanese national was stabbed multiple times when he was headed towards a gurdwara in northwest Delhis Siraspur allegedly by a group of men who then decamped with his valuables, police said on Sunday.

The victim has been identified as Tadayuki Kurihara, they added.

The incident took place on Friday at around 6.30 pm when the victim was walking alone towards a gurdwara in Siraspur to attend Guru Nanak Jayanti celebrations, a senior police officer said.

Police said the victim had been on a two-month solo trip and landed in India three days ago.

After stabbing the victim, the group of four men allegedly looted his mobile phone and cash before fleeing from the spot, the officer said.

The victim was rushed to a nearby hospital. He was later referred to the LNJP hospital, where he is currently undergoing treatment, he added.

A case has been registered and the matter is being investigated, Rajneesh Gupta, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Rohini), said.

Footage from CCTV cameras installed in the area are being scanned to ascertain the exact sequence of events, police said, adding the accused were yet to be arrested.  PTI
editorial@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, November 25

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday visited the Supreme Court to meet judges attending an international conference here.

The Prime Minister, who has been busy campaigning for BJP in the Assembly elections in five states, took time out to be with Indian and foreign judges at the Supreme Court premises.

The PM came around 9.20 pm and was there for almost 40 minutes, an apex court official told The Tribune, adding it was for the first time that an Indian Prime Minister visited the top court.

The Prime Minister briefly interacted with Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi and other judges before leaving the Supreme Court  the venue of the conference of judges of Bay of Bengal Initiative for multi-sectoral technical and economic cooperation (BIMSTEC)  a regional organisation of seven member nations.

Besides the Chief Justice of India and other Indian judges, chief justices and judges of Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Nepal and Bhutan are attending the international conference to discuss a range of issues, including access to justice, adjudication of terrorism-related cases, trans-national organised crimes such as human trafficking and drug trafficking and use of technology in justice delivery.
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Smita Sharma

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, November 25

As India Pakistan prepare to flag off the Kartarpur corridor project foundation, Islamabad hopes it will send a message globally.

Ahead of the ground-breaking ceremony by Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan on November 28, his Information and Broadcasting Minister Fawad Chaudhary today said the step proves that Islamabad means peace.

In remarks alluding to the Narendra Modi governments U-turn on proposed talks in September in New York when Foreign Ministers Sushma Swaraj and S M Qureshi would have discussed the Kartarpur issue, Chaudhary tweeted, Pakistan through its conduct has once again showed who stands for peace in South Asia and which force is not sincere. PM @ImranKhanPTI (Imran Khan) has clearly shown Pakistan stands for peace  #KartarpurBorderOpening is history in the making, history will judge those who stood on wrong side.

Meanwhile, Union Minister of Housing and Urban Affairs Hardeep S Puri, who along with his cabinet colleague Harsimrat Badal would attend the ground-breaking ceremony on Wednesday as GoI representatives, in series of tweet hailed the movement forward on the matter.

Calling it one pilgrimage every Sikh longs for, Puri in a series of tweets wrote, I feel blessed that I will be able to pay obeisance at Gurdwara Sri Kartarpur Sahib, the first ever Gurdwara established by Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji which is also his final resting place. On behalf of the Sikh Sangat I express my gratitude to PM Shri @narendramodi Ji for the unprecedented gift of the Sri Kartarpur Sahib corridor to Sikhisms first Gurdwara & to the town established by Guru Nanak Dev Ji.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Qureshi in a letter on Saturday had invited Swaraj to attend the ceremony. But Swaraj citing poll campaign schedule in Telegana expressed her regret and instead nominated two cabinet colleagues, both from the Sikh Community, to be the Indian government representatives.

The American Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (AGPC) has also welcomed the move by to open the corridor for free flow of pilgrims to Kartarpur Sahib Gurdwara inside Pakistan from Dera Baba Nanak near International Border in Gurdaspur district of Punjab.

Sounding a cautionary note the AGPC said that no individual should take undue credit for the opening up of the corridor referring to leaders across political parties in Punjab and the Centre patting their own backs. AGPC president JS Hothi and coordinator Pritpal Singh in a joint statement said, Punjab Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu and other politicians cannot take credit alone as it is the collective efforts of all Sikh organisations that have made it possible.
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Noida (UP), November 25

The United Nations on Sunday officially invited Uttar Pradesh's Noida and Greater Noida to become a member of its initiative which aims to create 25 model cities across the world that will be fully compliant with the sustainable development goals by 2025, officials said.

The twin-cities in Gautam Buddh Nagar district, adjoining the national capital, have been selected in the "University City" category ahead of Mumbai and Bengaluru, which were also under UN consideration for the initiative, as the only invitee from India, a senior UN official said.

"Noida (along with Greater Noida) has been formally invited to participate in this showcase 'Race to Sustainability' among 25 global cities to become fully compliant with the Sustainable Development Goals by 2025 under the UN Global Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) cities initiative," Senior UN Adviser and CEO UN Global Sustainability Index Institute (UNGSII) Roland Schatz told reporters here.

Schatz formally extended the invitation Sunday to Gautam Buddh Nagar District Magistrate Brajesh Narain Singh in the presence of Shubhro Sen, the principal adviser, India, SDG Initiative, and Ajay Davessar, Adviser to UNGSII India.

In September 2015, the UN General Assembly adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development that includes 17 SDGs, otherwise known as the Global Goals, a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity.

Schatz highlighted that the SDG cities initiative will lead to an unprecedented inflow of global knowledge, resources and capacity-building into Noida and Greater Noida via various UN agencies, partners and corporate supporters.

According to the official invitation letter, agreeing to the invitation for the long term project would entitle Noida-Greater Noida for a "multi-million US dollars finance and implementation know-how for each of the 17 SDGs along the defined KPIs (key performance indicators)," among other benefits.

Shcatz said the goal is to work together with other participating university cities like Cambridge, Palo Alto, Trondheim, Espoo and Heidelberg to create Sustainability Innovation and Research Hubs.

"We need to get Noida on the map not only in India but all over the world because if the United Nations is managing together every person on the planet to reach these so called SDG by 2030, we need to understand and learn from each other," he said.

District Magistrate Singh said he would forward the invitation to the government for its approval as he hailed it as a "significant moment" for the district, which has lakhs of students.

"This is a proud moment for Noida and Greater Noida to be selected for this exciting global showcase. Now I will forward this invitation to the Uttar Pradesh government which is very positive about development works," Singh said.

"We are about 600 government schools at primary level, 139 schools which are affiliated with CBSE, eight universities with more than 50,000 students they need direction and to be linked with what is happening elsewhere in the world. This initiative, I think, will also overall growth in both Noida and Greater Noida," he added.

Sen said the 25 cities will be first selected which will serve as role models for other cities in the world towards achieving the SDG 2030 goal.

Noida has the basic infrastructure and is going to the city of future if we bring here the global expertise, knowledge and resources in this sustainable development connection then Noida's can grow even more quickly and become an important city in the world, he said.

"Once the state government agrees to the invitation, the doors of the United Nations would be opened for Noida-Greater Noida under this initiative," he said.

Asked about the measures to be taken during the seven years for achievement of the SDGs, Schatz said the cities would analysts and experts along with data-based evaluation systems to monitor performance every three months.

"We bring a team from UN smart cities programme who have developed a matrix on all the 17 parameters like how much water do you need, who much energy is required, is gender equality there ... and now we have these matrix in place to bring in transparency to find where are we in 2019, 2021 and where are we going to be in 2025, he said. - PTI
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Vadodara (Gujarat), November 25

Former VHP leader Dr Pravin Togadia said on Sunday that Prime Minister Narendra Modi failed to enact a law for the construction of Ram temple at Ayodhya despite the BJP having a full majority.

He was reacting to Modis statement earlier in the day alleging that the Congress threatened Supreme Court judges with impeachment when they tried to hear the Ayodhya dispute.

After sixteen years of enjoying power, twelve years as Gujarat chief minister and more than four years as prime minister, Modi spoke about Ram temple, Togadia said, referring to Modis speech at Alwar in Rajasthan.

Now Modi blames the Congress for delay in construction of Ram temple, claiming that Congress lawyer asked the Supreme Court to hear the case after 2019, he said.

The BJP had passed a resolution at Palampur in 1989, promising to build a grand Ram temple in Ayodhya by passing a law in Parliament after securing a majority, Togadia said.

For four and a half years, why did Modi not pass a law for Ram temple despite having a full majority? he asked.

It was the BJP which had promised Ram temple at Ayodhya, not the Congress, Togadia said.

The saffron party is raking up the issue ahead of elections as its promise of development has proved to be hollow, he said.

Togadia, who left the Vishwa Hindu Parishad in April this year, said just because other parties are anti-Hindu, one should not assume that the BJP supports Hindu causes.

Speaking at an election rally at Alwar, Modi alleged that the Congress threatened Supreme Court judges with impeachment when they tried to hear the Ayodhya dispute cases earlier this year.

Congress partys Rajya Sabha members, who are also lawyers, tried to scare away the apex court judges to ensure the hearing is delayed until after 2019 Lok Sabha election, he said.  PTI
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Vishav Bharti

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, November 25

Three civil surgeons, who got promotion allegedly on the basis of fake disability certificates, have been exposed in a probe conducted by the state government.

The authorities had ordered fresh medical examination following the complaints that Dr Balwant Singh, Dr Arun Kumar Gupta and Dr Parvinderpal Singh, who are currently serving in Kapurthala, Sangrur and Ludhiana, respectively, are not physically challenged to the extent of being eligible for quota promotion, yet all of them got the benefit on fake certificates.

As per the report submitted by Government Medical College, Patiala, Dr Parvinderpal Singh, Civil Surgeon, Ludhiana, was found 24 per cent disabled as compared to the certificate of 45 per cent. His certificate had mentioned that he was suffering from forward bending of spine and ankle disability. He has now become ineligible for disability quota promotion.

As per the disability certification guidelines, any person having only more than 40 per cent physical disability is eligible for the promotion under the quota.

The percentage of disability of Dr Balwant Singh, Civil Surgeon, Kapurthala, has been reduced by 13 per cent from 53 to 40.6 percent. He can retain the post as his disability is determined above 40 per cent after the review.

The disability of the Sangrur Civil Surgeon could not be determined as the case was referred to the PGI, Chandigarh, on the pretext of non-availability of a neurologist. The sources said the actual reason behind referring the case to the PGI was because of the fact that the previous disability was determined by the same orthopaedics department of Government Medical College, Patiala, which was asked to do the fresh probe.

As per a list of government physically challenged doctors prepared on January 17, 2013, only Dr Balwant Singh was among the six doctors who were placed in the disabled category. The remaining two, Dr Gupta and Dr Parvinderpal Singh, were included in the list just before their promotions were due.

Satish Chandra, Additional Chief Secretary, Health, confirmed the findings of the re-examination and said that they would forward the report to the CMO and Commission for Disability from where they had got the directions to probe the matter.

Fake disability certificates
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Sanjeev Singh Bariana

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, November 25

Citing continued terrorist attacks in Punjab and the killing of Indian soldiers by Pakistan troops at the LoC, Punjab Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh today turned down the Pakistan Foreign Ministers invitation for the stone-laying of the Kartarpur corridor on November 28.

His Minister for Tourism, Cultural Affairs and Museums Navjot Singh Sidhu, though, will be flying to Pakistan to attend the ground-breaking ceremony by Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan. Talking over phone from poll-bound Madhya Pradesh, where he is campaigning for the Congress, Sidhu said: I have the permission of the CM and have informed the Ministry of External Affairs, as required.

In a letter to the Pakistan Foreign Minister, Sidhu wrote: On this momentous day, the hearts of the Sikh community will overflow with hope and gratitude as they contemplate their chance to pay obeisance at the historical gurdwara.

Capt Amarinder welcomed the historic occasion but said he could not make it. He expressed hope that the Pakistan PM will do all he can to bring the countries together on the road to peace.

To islamabad: cant go, because...

"Not a day passes when Indian soldiers are not killed or wounded on LoC; secondly, because of ISIs nefarious activities in Punjab" Capt Amarinder Singh

Ray of hope for boosting ties, says Sidhu

"I had sought the CMs permission for a cause. I see it as a ray of hope for boosting India-Pakistan ties. I will attend the state function in Amritsar too." Navjot Singh Sidhu
editorial@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

Patiala, November 25

Amritsar Nirankari Bhavan grenade key accused Avtar Singh was booked for assault years ago. He later struck a compromise, which was signed by his father. The police had claimed he had no criminal record.

Documents with The Tribune show that an FIR was registered against Avtar Singh for allegedly attacking Sikh scholar professor Inderjit Singh Ghagga. On October 17, 2010, Avtar Singh and his accomplice Jujhar Singh barged into Ghaggas house in Patiala on the pretext of meeting him and attacked him, reads the FIR registered with the Sadar police station.

Avtar and Jujhar were arrested on October 31 and sent to jail. Later they reached a compromise with the victim. We are going through financial and mental stress due to the case against us and the repeated court hearings. Even our families are facing harassment. We believe we should not have committed the offence of attacking the Sikh scholar, they wrote following which they were acquitted on August 23, 2014.

Karan Sher Singh, then Sadar SHO, who is now DSP, said: During questioning, Avtar had told me he would go to any extent to target preachers and gatherings he considered violating the Sikh tenets. He believed Prof Ghaggas writings were against the Sikh religion and, therefore, had attacked him.

Was hurt by dera heads act

As per DGP Suresh Arora, Avtar's links have been traced to Harmeet Singh Happy alias PhD, the self-styled chief of ISI-backed KLF, based in Pakistan. "During initial investigations, the accused has admitted that he initially got radicalised in the wake of the 2007 incident when Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim appeared in public in the attire of Guru Gobind Singh," Arora said.

Police raid draws a blank

Amritsar: The police reportedly failed to find anything significant during the raid conducted at the residence of Italy-based Paramjit Singh Baba in Beas last evening. Paramjit Singh, who originally hailed from Wadala village here, allegedly arranged weapons for Avtar Singh. Karamjit Singh alias Kamma, sarpanch of Wadala village, said Paramjit shifted to Italy around 10 years ago and sold his property in the village. According to the police, Paramjit's elder brother Sarabjit Singh, a constable in the state police, had joined terrorist ranks of the Khalistan Liberation Force (Budhsingwala) during the heydays of militancy. He was killed in an encounter near Rayya in 1992. TNS
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Ravi Dhaliwal

Tribune News Service

Dera Baba Nanak (Gurdaspur), November 25

Utter chaos prevailed at the venue of the function where Vice President Venkaiah Naidu is scheduled to lay the foundation stone of the Dera Baba Nanak-Kartarpur Sahib corridor on Monday with the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) officials failing to even get the stage erected leave alone getting other infrastructure in place.

With barely hours to go before the Vice President flies in the city in a chopper from Amritsar where he will arrive by a special IAF aircraft from New Delhi, just one tractor could be seen levelling the residue of paddy crop.

Work on erecting the stage was yet to commence by the time this report was filed.

NHAI officials and Deputy Commissioner Vipul Ujwal were engaged in a blame game throughout the day even as time was fast running out to make preparations.

Ujwal maintained that the NHAI was the agency which has been asked by the central government to make arrangements. On the other hand, the NHAI maintained that since they knew nothing about Dera Baba Nanak it was the responsibility of the DC to ensure that things were in place.

A senior officer said the function could well hang in jeopardy and the only way out of the imbroglio was to request either the Army, stationed at Tibri cantonment, or the BSF, headquartered in Gurdaspur town, both entities 40 km away, to take charge.

"It is an insurmountable task for either the civil administration or the NHAI to complete the preparations on time. The Vice President, Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh and his entire cabinet are scheduled to arrive before 11 am but till yet not even single brick has been laid. It is a function which is to be presided over by the second most important constitutional head of India and is not a second rate political rally. Everything has to be spick and span which is not the case right now. The authorities should take the help of the army or otherwise many heads are likely to roll," averred a minister.
editorial@tribune.com

Harshraj Singh

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, November 25

Following a fake viral message of campus interview by a reputed company, hundreds of ITI passouts from various districts of Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana and Rajasthan reached the Government Industrial Training Institute at Gill Road, Ludhiana, this morning.

The candidates, majority of them freshers, were a harried lot when they came to know that there was no such event scheduled for the day.

They said a message about the recruitment of fitters, welders, electricians and mechanics at a salary of Rs 22,700 per month had gone viral on WhatsApp and social media platforms.

The contact numbers mentioned in the message were switched off. Some candidates from other states had landed in Ludhiana last night, while many others travelled through the night.

Satish Kumar (21) from Kangra in Himachal said, I got a message on WhatsApp about a test and interview. When I reached, I was shocked to see candidates leaving as no firm was conducting recruitments. I travelled through the night and could not sleep. Somebody has played a crude joke.

I came to Ludhiana hoping to get my first job, but the effort proved to be a sheer waste. Around 400 unemployed youths faced harassment, said Ranjit Singh (20) from Hoshiarpur.

I came from Ambala with great expectations. Whosoever spread false information on social media should not be spared, said another youth.

Ludhiana ITI principal Jaswant Singh Bhattal said: There seems to be a fake message. We had organised a job fair from November 19 to 22. We will file a complaint.
editorial@tribune.com

New Delhi, November 25

As India and Pakistan prepare to lay the Kartarpur corridor project foundation, Islamabad hopes it will send a message globally.

Ahead of the ground-breaking ceremony by Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan on November 28, his Information and Broadcasting Minister Fawad Chaudhary today said the step proved that Islamabad meant peace.

In remarks alluding to the Modi governments U-turn on proposed talks in September in New York, Chaudhary tweeted: Pakistan, through its conduct, has once again showed who stands for peace in South Asia and which force is not sincere.

Meanwhile, Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri, who, along with Cabinet colleague Harsimrat Badal, will attend the ceremony, hailed the movement forward. Calling it one pilgrimage every Sikh longs for, Puri tweeted: I feel blessed that I will be able to pay obeisance at Gurdwara Sri Kartarpur Sahib.

The American Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee has also welcomed the move to open the corridor. However, sounding a cautionary note, it said no individual should take undue credit, referring to leaders across parties in Punjab and the Centre patting their own backs.  TNS
editorial@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

Patiala, November 25

Malaysian humanitarian aid worker Rishiwant Singh Randhawa, also known as the Flying Sikh, died in a road accident here on Sunday.

Randhawa was a member of the United Sikhs Malaysia Humanitarian Aid Organisation. The mishap took place near Guru Nanak Ashram, Rasulpur Saida. He lost control of his bike while trying to avoid a collision with another two-wheeler, the police said. Randhawa was rushed to Government Rajindra Hospital, where he was declared brought dead. Randhawa had landed in Amritsar on November 13. He was here to serve at the Guru Nanak Ashram along with 15 other Malaysian nationals.

Meanwhile, the police have registered two cases of causing death by negligence against an unidentified person and a Bathinda resident after two persons were killed in road accidents in Patiala and Samana.

In his complaint, Rachpal Singh of Kauli village said his cousin Harbhajan Singh, who was on his way to the village on a motorcycle, was hit by an vehicle.

He said the driver fled from the spot. Harbhajan was taken to a hospital, where he died. The police have registered a case against the unidentified driver.
editorial@tribune.com

Ravi Dhaliwal

Tribune News Service

Dera Baba Nanak, November 25

The venue of the function at which Vice President Venkaiah Naidu will lay the foundation stone for the Kartarpur Sahib corridor here on Monday was changed twice in 24 hours due to a dispute between the National Highways Authority of India and the Gurdaspur district administration.

Deputy Commissioner Vipul Ujwal said the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) had been mandated by the Centre to make arrangements for the event. However, the NHAI said since their officials knew nothing about Dera Baba Nanak, it was the DCs responsibility to do the needful.

On Saturday, it was decided to hold the function in a ground where Cooperation Minister and local MLA Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa is scheduled to host a thanksgiving rally on Monday.

On Sunday morning, the NHAI insisted that the function be held at the original venue  4 km from the rally ground. Later, when the officials found that the site was unfit to construct a stage and other infrastructure, they informed the Deputy Commissioner of their inability to organise the function. The DC then asked Randhawa to let them use the rally venue. The minister agreed.

The Chief Minister should order an inquiry to nail the officials who have messed up. When a VVIP of the Vice Presidents stature comes calling, all arrangements have to be made 48 hours in advance, a legislator said.

Akalis to attend event

Chandigarh: The SAD on Sunday announced that party leaders and workers would attend the foundation stone-laying ceremony at Dera Baba Nanak. In a statement, party spokesperson Dr Daljit Singh Cheema said the leaders led by Sukhbir Badal would reach Dera Baba Nanak. He stated that after offering prayers, the sangat would march to the ceremony site. SGPC president Gobind Singh Longowal, SAD core committee members, district presidents, MPs, legislators, former MLAs, former ministers and SGPC members will be among those present, he added. TNS
shriaya.dutta@tribuneindia.com

San Francisco, November 25

Apple will head to the US Supreme Court this week to block a group of customers from suing the tech giant for monopoly abuse, media has reported.

The company is battling a group of iPhone owners who claim Apple forces them to overpay for apps by forbidding rivals to the multibillion-dollar App Store.

After the customers won the right to launch a class action lawsuit against the company in 2017, Apple is now appealing to the Supreme Court to have the decision overturned, The Telegraph reported late on Saturday.

If Apple fails, the business model of the App Store, one of the company's fastest-growing and most profitable divisions, could be threatened, it added.

Apple makes billions each year by taking a 30 per cent cut of apps sold through the App Store, which are created by developers. App revenues grew by around a third in 2017 to $38.5 billion even as sales of Apple's iPhones and iPads stalled.

The customers argue that its sizeable commission is evidence of the company exploiting its monopoly position over iPhone users. They argue that "iPhone consumers nationwide have paid (Apple) hundreds of millions of dollars more for iPhone apps than they would have paid in a competitive market".

Apple is seeking to dismiss the case by appealing to a Supreme Court ruling made in 1977 that said only "direct purchasers" can seek damages for antitrust abuse.

The company argues that because the app developers themselves set the price of apps in the App Store and not Apple, iPhone users are purchasing the apps from the developers directly.

Its opponents claim that because Apple sets the rules about the App Store, such as the minimum price, it is effectively selling the apps on to users.

The Supreme Court is due to hear the arguments on Monday, although it is likely to take months until its judges announce any decision.

If Apple fails to overturn the previous decision, the company is likely to face years of legal wrangling in a case that dates back to 2011.  IANS
pardeepdhull@gmail.com

Kampala, November 25

Thirty people drowned and more than 60 were feared dead after a pleasure boat sank in Lake Victoria, Ugandan police said on Sunday, in the latest such incident on Africas largest body of water.

Thirty bodies have been recovered and 27 people rescued, said police spokesperson Zura Ganyana, adding the boat had sunk 150 metres from the lakeshore.

According to one of the survivors there were more than 90 people on board, said Asuman Mugenyi, director of operations for the Uganda police.

Witnesses claimed the vessel may have been rushed back into service following a renovation in order to take advantage of the profitable end-of-year party season.

The boat carrying nearly 100 revellers sank in bad weather on Saturday in the latest deadly incident to affect passenger boats on Africas largest lake.

Lawn games at the Mutima Country Resort, close to the capital Kampala, were pushed aside Sunday to make way for an open-air morgue where police collected the bloated bodies of victims.

Boat rides, with drinking, dancing and music, are popular on the lake.

Its a big party, said Washington Serunjogi, whose sister Justine Namayanja was missing after taking the cruise on Saturday.

Justine had been on three cruises before and I knew something was wrong yesterday because she always updated her WhatsApp and Facebook with selfies but last night she didnt, Serunjogi said.

Serunjogi said that, like many Ugandans, his sister did not know how to swim.

James Matovo, a 26-year-old youth leader at the Buzindere fish landing site, who saw the boat capsize on Saturday evening, said it had been cold and very windy when the boat pitched over.

He said that rescue services were slow to respond.

If people had help earlier so many more people would have survived, Matovo said.

Instead, local fishermen went to help.

We rushed to help but the passengers couldnt swim and when we got beside them with our boats they grabbed us, he said.

Matovo said some of the rescuers also drowned as a result.

People kept coming on the fishing boats and (one man) was overwhelmed. He was pulled down and he drowned, he said.

Ive seen a lot of accidents but nothing as bad as this, said Matovo, whoalong with other witnesseshad recently seen the boat being fixed up.

Richard Kikongo, a local official, described the distinctive boatwhich sported shark-style teeth painted on the bowas not in good condition.

The boats owner and his wife were among the dead.

Mugenyi said overloading and bad weather were likely to blame.

We expect (the number of passengers) is beyond the capacity of the boat. It was overloaded and unfortunately people were drunk, Mugenyi said.

We suspect the mechanical condition of the boat and the weather contributed to the sinking.

Police spokesman Emilian Kayima said rescue efforts were continuing.

Lake Victoria is the site of many boat disasters. In September, hundreds died when the MV Nyerere passenger ferry sank on the Tanzanian side of Lake Victoria.

With a surface area of 70,000 square kilometres, the oval-shaped lake is roughly the size of Ireland and is shared by Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya.

Ferry accidents are not uncommon on the lake and the number of fatalities is often high due to a shortage of life jackets and the fact that many local people cannot swim.

In 1966, more than 800 people lost their lives on Lake Victoria when the MV Bukoba sank off the mainland town of Mwanza, according to the Red Cross.  AFP
shalender@tribune.com

Brussels, November 25

European Union leaders on Sunday approved a landmark Brexit deal, the basis of Britains divorce from the 28-member economic bloc, hours after UK Prime Minister Theresa May vowed to campaign with heart and soul to get the agreement approved by Parliament amid stiff opposition.

The leaders of the remaining 27 countries of the European Union (EU) signed off on the controversial Brexit withdrawal agreement.

European Council President Donald Tusk, after a special summit in Brussels this weekend, tweeted: EU27 has endorsed the Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration on the future EU-UK relations.

May now faces the final and biggest hurdle of getting the deal approved by the UK Parliament where many MPs from her own party remain vehemently opposed to it.

European Union leaders also warned the British parliament not to wreck Mays Brexit deal, saying a package agreed with her was the best Britain will get.

Those who think that, by rejecting the deal, they would get a better deal, will be disappointed, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker told reporters after the 27 other EU leaders formally endorsed a treaty setting terms for British withdrawal in March and an outline of a future EU-UK trade pact.

Asked whether there was any chance Brussels would reopen the pact if an alliance of pro- and anti-Brexit forces votes it down in the House of Commons, Juncker simply stressed this is the best deal possible-although summit chair Donald Tusk sounded more guarded, saying he did not want to consider hypotheticals.

May used a post-summit news conference to make a sales pitch for her plan, telling television viewers at home that it was the only possible deal, offering control of UK borders and budgets while maintaining close cooperation with EU regulations that was good for business and the security of the broader region.

In any negotiation, you do not get everything you want. I think the British people understand that, said May, who arrived after the endorsement to voice hopes for continued close ties.

Parliaments vote could open the door to a brighter future or condemn the country to more division, she said. I will make the case for this deal with all my heart, she added, declining to answer whether she would resign if parliament rejects it.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the blocs veteran guiding force, echoed that unwillingness to speculate on what she called a historic day that was both tragic and sad. But Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, whose country chairs EU meetings till the end of the year, said there could be no more negotiations.

There is no Plan B, said Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte. If anyone thinks in the United Kingdom that by voting No something better would come out of it, they are wrong.

Amid praise for Michel Barniers team for bringing home a deal after 18 months of gruelling talks, Juncker said it was no time for champagne, as one of Europes great powers walks out after its 2016 Brexit referendum. The harder work of building new relations now lies ahead, he added.

French President Emmanuel Macron said Brexit vote showed Europe needed reform. He stressed that Paris would hold Britain to tight EU regulations, in return for giving it easy trade access.

Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite spoke of several scenarios if Parliament blocks the package: that Britons would hold a second referendum; hold a new election to replace May or return to Brussels to try and renegotiate the package.  Agencies

Now, All eyes on UK Parliament
shalender@tribune.com

Dublin, November 25

The Brexit deal marks a clear victory for Ireland-one no-one in Britain saw coming and one which has raised the Irish governments standing at home and abroad.

Ireland is tethered to Britain through a common history, enmeshed economies and a border with the British province of Northern Ireland that held up negotiations for months.

Some British hardliners had argued that Ireland would simply follow along in any exit deal-a sentiment that caused outrage among many Irish and helped harden resolve.

At the centre of the dispute was a legal guarantee to keep the Irish border open, known as the backstop, which Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar and his EU allies insisted on and Britain eventually and very reluctantly agreed to.

Ireland was opposed to Brexit and is fearful both of the impact on trade with biggest economic partner Britain and any destabilising influence on the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which ended three decades of sectarian conflict.

When the draft accord was published earlier this month, Irish politicians across the spectrum lauded it as the best possible outcome for the Republic in contrast to the deep divisions in the British parliament over its merits.

The Irish governments key preferences were all reflected in the divorce settlement, said Etain Tannam, a senior lecturer at Trinity College Dublin. Bi-partisan party support in the Irish parliament for the governments Brexit policy has been noteworthy since the withdrawal process began, she said.

In the tug-of-war of international interests, Irelands government now has greater traction and is earning a reputation as a shrewd bargainer-at the same time as Britains prestige is on the wane.  AFP
gspannu7@gmail.com

Lahore, November 25

The vice chancellor of a leading university in Pakistan has come under fire for allegedly making controversial remarks against the countrys powerful army saying that terrorists were making up to its top ranks.

A petition was filed on Saturday with the Punjab province Governor and Chancellor of the University of Punjab Chaudhary Muhammad Sarwar, seeking the removal of the varsitys VC Niaz Ahmed for the remarks.

In the petition filed by one Muhammad Ali said that Ahmed, in a speech on campus, had claimed that the Pakistan Army was facing the challenge of terrorists making up to its top ranks.

A terrorist had made up to high rank in the Pakistan Army. In fact, he was working for the Taliban and had killed many of soldiers during the Swat Operation (in 2009), Ali alleged.

He also said the VC further claimed that in Swat, there was an army major, who went on leave three-to-four times and every time he told his subordinate soldiers not to retaliate to the Talibans firing as per an understanding (undercover deal) between Taliban and the army.

The petitioner said the VC instead of narrating stories of valour of the Pakistan Army martyrs, mentioned an incident which has no relevance.

He also said that slogans against the Pakistan Army were written on one of the underpasses at the varsitys campus but the VC did not take any action, and alleged that he patronises activists of Islami Jamiat Tulaba.

PU spokesperson Khurram Shahzad told PTI that the vice chancellor did not mean anything that could harm repute of the institution of the army which is defending the boundaries of Pakistan.

He said in the ceremony, the vice chancellor highlighted the sacrifices of the Pakistan Army in 1965 War and his speech was taken out of context as all allegations against him are baseless.  PTI
uttara@tribuneindia.com

ABU DHABI, November 24

A senior Saudi prince cast doubt upon the reported CIA finding that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul last month, saying the agency could not be counted on to reach a credible conclusion.

The CIA is not necessarily the highest standard of veracity or accuracy in assessing situations. The examples of that are multitude, Prince Turki al-Faisal, a senior member of the royal family, told journalists in Abu Dhabi on Saturday.

The prince, a former Saudi intelligence chief who has also served as ambassador to the United States, said the agencys conclusion that Iraq possessed chemical weapons before the US invasion in 2003 showed it could be unreliable.

That was the most glaring of inaccurate and wrong assessments, which led to a full-scale war with thousands being killed, he said, speaking at an event hosted by the Beirut Institute think tank.

I dont see why the CIA is not on trial in the United States. This is my answer to their assessment of who is guilty and who is not and who did what in the consulate in Istanbul. The CIA has concluded that Prince Mohammed ordered the operation to kill Khashoggi, as first reported by the Washington Post, and briefed other parts of the US government on its findings, sources told Reuters last week.

US President Donald Trump has disputed that the agency reached a conclusion on the murder, saying instead they have feelings certain ways.

A Turkish newspaper also reported on Thursday that CIA director Gina Haspel signalled to Turkish officials that the agency had a recording of a call in which the crown prince gave instructions to silence the journalist.

Khashoggi was killed at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2 in an operation that Turkish authorities have said was ordered by the highest level of Saudi leadership, prompting the kingdoms biggest political crisis in a generation.

After offering numerous contradictory explanations, Riyadh said Khashoggi was killed and his body dismembered after negotiations to persuade him to return to Saudi Arabia failed.

The kingdoms public prosecutor is seeking the death penalty for five suspects charged in the murder, but has said Prince Mohammed had no prior knowledge of the operation. Reuters
shalender@tribune.com

BRUSSELS, November 25

Spain will revive its bid for shared sovereignty over Gibraltar once Britain has left the European Union, the countrys prime minister said on Sunday, adding Madrid had the support of the bloc to resolve the 300-year-old dispute.

Speaking after an EU leaders summit, Sanchez said Spains position over Gibraltar, a British territory since 1713, was stronger after the agreement of a Brexit deal on Sunday because Spanish policy effectively became EU policy.

We are going to resolve a conflict that has been going for over 300 years, Pedro Sanchez told a news conference, adding he had said the same thing to British Prime Minister Theresa May, who met the EUs 27 leaders to endorse the withdrawal treaty that she will now put to the British parliament.

Asked if Spain would seek a discussion over joint sovereignty once Britain leaves the bloc next year, Sanchez said: We will discuss all issues. The small peninsula attached to Spain is a major point of contention in Anglo-Spanish relations. Spain has long claimed sovereignty.  Reuters
uttara@tribuneindia.com

Taipei, November 25

Voters in Taiwan have delivered a strong rebuke to the islands pro-independence ruling party in local elections, emboldening the China-friendly opposition, one of whose main figures says he will now reach out to Beijing to forge more friendly ties.

The ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) suffered major elections loss on Saturday, losing two key mayoral races, while the opposition Kuomintang took or retained control of 15 cities and counties, leaving the DPP with only six.

With little more than a year before presidential elections, Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, who has had tense relations with Beijing since her election in 2016, on Saturday took responsibility for her partys losses and resigned as DPP chairwoman.

The Kuomintang mayor-elect of the southern port city of Kaohsiung, formerly a DPP stronghold, moved swiftly on Saturday night to reach out to China, telling local media he will set up a working group on China relations and will break down barriers.

We have no walls around our hearts, said Han Kuo-yu, who has previously described Taiwan independence as being more scary than syphilis.

The Kuomintang has sent delegations to China since Tsai took office, where they have been warmly received. China has refused to have direct contacts with Tsais administration.

China, which claims Taiwan as a wayward province, said the elections showed people wanted peaceful relations with Beijing.

The results reflected the strong will of the Taiwan public in hoping to continue to share the benefits of the peaceful development of relations across the Taiwan Strait, and their strong wish in hoping to improve the islands economy and peoples wellbeing, said a statement by Chinas policy-making Taiwan Affairs Office and carried by state media.

Taiwans Mainland Affairs Council said China should respect Taiwans internal affairs and democracy and not interpret the expectations of Taiwans people towards relations across the Taiwan Strait.

In an implicit warning to China not to contact newly-elected Kuomintang officials, the council said deliberately political Chinese approaches to local governments and people would not help positive interactions with Taiwan.

Voters also rejected a referendum that would have seen the island join the 2020 Tokyo Olympics as Taiwan, rather than Chinese Taipei, a move which would have angered Beijing.

Chinas Taiwan Affairs Office said it showed voters putting Taiwanese athletes interests at stake is against peoples will. The attempts of Taiwan independence are doomed to fail, it added.

The WeChat account of the overseas edition of the Communist Partys official Peoples Daily said Han had realised one important reality: Taiwan will only be good if relations across the Taiwan Strait are good.

China is suspicious that Tsai wants formal independence, a red line for Beijing that regards Taiwan as its own.

Tsai says she wants only the status quo with China, but will defend Taiwans security. Chinese law mandates the use of force to prevent the island from seceding.

Tensions across the Taiwan Strait have heightened with China conducting military drills around the island and snatching away Taiwans dwindling number of diplomatic allies.

DPP Secretary General Hung Yao-fu, asked on Saturday about whether the China factor had played a role in influencing the elections, reiterated there had been a problem with fake news.

I think this time was a deep lesson, in terms of fake news messing up with a lot of peoples judgment or not getting clear information, he told reporters.

This is a global problem not just Taiwans unique problem.

Special marriage equality law

Taiwanese voters on Saturday also rejected a referendum on legalising same-sex marriage, another blow for Tsai, who in her 2016 campaign promised marriage equality. However, she has made little progress on the issue.

In an Asian first, Taiwans constitutional court declared in May of last year that same-sex couples had the right to legally marry, and set a two-year deadline for legalisation.

But voters instead backed a referendum that defines marriage as between a man and a woman.

This is a victory for all the people who support family values and education for the next generation, the Coalition for the Happiness of Our Next Generation, a group opposed to same-sex marriage, said in a statement.

Taiwan cabinet spokeswoman Kolas Yotaka told Reuters a special law will be drafted for marriage equality, and that the government continued to support the issue.

Rights activists called a special law for same-sex marriage discriminatory and that the referendum was illegal and against the constitution.

Dozens of supporters for marriage equality gathered in the capital Taipei early on Sunday, with some weeping as the result became clear. Chi Chia-wei, a veteran gay rights activist, said he remained positive about the fight for equality.

The ones opposing us are getting fewer and fewer, he told Reuters.

Taiwans capital Taipei celebrates an annual gay pride parade that showcases the vibrancy of its lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community. The one-week celebration in October, largest in Asia, contributes more than $3.3 million to the economy, according to Taipei Times. Reuters
A number of children in Trinidad and Tobago has contracted the Covid-19 virus within the pas
We traveled from Omaha, NE to San Francisco on the Zephyr on 11/8, arriving 11/10/18. None of the nightmare scenarios I'd read in some posts came to pass. We didn't run out of food, toilets didn't back up, etc. We had a great time and got to see some of the country that we had only flown over previously.

Our journey started at the Amtrak station which is right in the city, near restaurants and bars in case you want someplace to spend time before boarding. The online schedule stated departure would be 11:30, but we received a text stating 11:05. However, that evening we started receiving texts notifying us of delays, and after some amusing/annoying games of "it's delayed again," "it's made up some time," "nope, delayed again" we finally boarded at around 12:30 AM. Thankfully the station was enclosed and had vending machines and restrooms, and plenty of seating when we were there.

We boarded and were greeted by helpful staff even though they must have been tired. We were shown where to stash our luggage (steps away from our roomette; we kept valuables with us) and soon settled in to sleep.

The next morning breakfast was announced (first come first served, all members of party must be present for seating, no saved seats). One of my favorite parts of train travel is sitting across from someone new every meal, watching the country go by while conversing with interesting people. There were plenty of menu choices from pancakes to omelettes. After breakfast, we went back to our roomette, magically converted (by Chris, our helpful sleeper car attendant) to a pair of seats facing each other in a private room. Most of our time was spent in the Observation Car, snapping photos of very picturesque, un-Floridian landscape. There were interesting announcements in the observation car with information about the country through which we were traveling. My neck was actually sore from trying to get photos at all the best angles!

Lunch was again first come first served, while dinner offered a choice of 3 seating times. I was fine with the meal choices, although I guess if you traveled for 3 days instead of 2 you might get a bit bored. They did run out of 1 or 2 things that I noticed by the last day.

We disembarked at Emeryville, the end of the line, and asked at the ticket booth to buy shuttle tickets to San Francisco (about 20 minutes? for $5.50 each); we had to ask the shuttle driver which stop would be closest for our hotel, and then take a taxi ($13) to the Coventry Inn on Lombard Street.

Some things to be aware of: The roomette is a fun option for 1 or 2, if one person doesn't mind climbing up and rolling into a top bunk that is pretty tight. I didn't really have trouble climbing in/out, but getting the blankets spread out over my legs was a challenge due to the low ceiling. And boy did the train rock! I'm a side sleeper and at times it caused me to roll right onto my back, which disturbed my sleep since I kept feeling I might roll out of the bunk altogether! (There is a sort of safety net you hook up, but it only reached from about my knees to my waist, so I could picture myself hanging head down from the waist, lol!) Additionally, walking down the narrow corridors could be an issue if the train rocked suddenly; I did a lot of staggering and had to be careful when moving from one car to another, and a couple of times was thrown against a wall or table. I'm skinny, and my more padded husband didn't notice this at all so I guess that was his advantage! Word to the wise though, if you have any joint pain issues. We met a lady who makes the trip a couple times a year and never books a sleeper because she spends 18 hours a day in the lounge or observation car chatting with people. If your back can handle it, that would be a pretty sweet deal at about $190 plus meals. For our money, the roomette ($618 for two for 2 days/nights, all meals included) was also a good deal, although next time I will either take a sleeping pill or spring for the bigger room!

There were at least 2 restrooms in the lower and at least 1 in the upper level of each sleeper car; they are about the size of airplane restrooms. I noticed some unpleasant odors in the vicinity of some of the restrooms by the end of the first full day (second, if you come from Chicago), which was gone the next morning. Would not have wanted to be sleeping opposite those. There is a shower/dressing room which I found adequate, although again some agility comes in handy since there was no seating, and available shelves were covered with wrapped extra towels, etc. There is a lounge car that also offers snack and drink items for sale; it closes for breaks occasionally, which are announced overhead.

All in all, highly recommend if you're adventurous and enjoy seeing new parts of the country, but be aware of the physical challenges!

Edited: 3 years ago
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Hi all,

I have recently read a few posts about the challenges of train travel and restaurant/site/shop closings around New Year. I have a trip booked with a friend from December 25 to January 6, and the overall dates cannot change. Our planned itinerary is below. A few questions that would be very helpful to hear advice on are:

1. Is a JR pass going to save us money? If so, would the 7 day JR pass work well for us or do we need to book the 14 day pass?

2. What is the best way to ensure we can travel between these cities despite the New Year's travel crowds, if we cannot reserve train seats online? Should we use the SmartEx app?

3. Would you recommend Kyoto or Osaka for New Years, and do you know of any way to find what restaurants etc will be open around that time?

4. A friend recommended staying in Fujieda overnight for a traditional experience. Is this worth removing one night from Tokyo, Kyoto, or Osaka?

Itinerary:

- Dec 25-29: Arrive in and explore Tokyo. Potential day trips include Hakone, Nikko, Kamakura, and Jigokudani Monkey Park

- Dec 29-Jan 1: Travel to and explore Kyoto. Potential day trip to Nara

- Jan 1-3: Travel to and explore Osaka. Potential day trip to Kobe

- Jan 3-4: Travel to and explore Hiroshima

- Jan 4-6: Travel back to and explore Tokyo. Potential day trips remaining from above

- Jan 6: Depart Tokyo

We are booking our hotels this week, so any advice would be amazing! :)
Hi! I just returned from my first trip to Japan and thought I'd post a trip report and some general advice you might find helpful.

GENERAL:

*Getting around Tokyo and Kyoto via transportation is so easy, even for someone whose Japanese is very limited. I purchased a JR Pass even though I was only making a round trip trip from Tokyo to Kyoto and still found it a bargain. I also used two apps: "Learn Japanese" by Codegent and "Japan Transit" by Jorudan. "Japan Transit" was absolutely indispensable and easy to use as long as you have an internet connection

*For an 9-day trip, I packed very light with only one pair of shoes (everything in a small backpack and carry on). In retrospect, I would have packed even lighter and bought clothes in Japan. The Japanese are so incredibly stylish! Imho the best dressed people in the world. Next time, I'm going to bring 1-2 outfits and buy the rest there. I also took ANA Airlines. OMG... the best experience!

*What to wear: no one really cares what you wear, it seems, as long as you don't wear something that reveals a lot of skin. I wore nice, yet comfortable clothes (except for my leather Vans, which took a while to break in). Japanese people, for the most part, tend to dress very stylishly and individually, don't wear a lot of super bright colors, and don't, as a general rule, wear "athleisure." No one really seemed to care what tourists wore, but I would recommend wearing your best, most comfortable clothes. I have a tattoo on my arm and one on my back/neck. Luckily, it was winter and so easy to cover up, but I didn't try to stay at a ryokan or use an onsen. There are a couple of websites though with recommendations on onsens that accept people with tattoos.

*Get a Pasmo or similar card at the airport, as well as exchange your money there. I brought $700 USD and exchanged $600 of it. I ended up spending $500 on everything (including lots of souvenirs and about $100 in Pasmo transit refills) with some credit card purchases. This excludes accommodation

*Vending machines are the bomb! Carry some change around to get a quick water or coffee (blue buttons are for cold drinks, red for hot/warm drinks) on the go

*I made all my itineraries through browsing this forum and through japan-guide.com. I had every day planned out with room for spontaneity

*November weather: for most of the trip, a Uniqlo down jacket and cotton scarf worked, but I wish I had brought lightweight gloves and a hat

*I'm a middle aged, racially ambiguous single woman--Japan is safe as long as you are careful and I never, ever felt threatened or harassed as I have in other parts of the world

REPORT (Tokyo)

*I stayed with Japanese friends in Chofu. You don't need to stay in the heart of Tokyo to get around easily. It is SO EASY to take Japanese public transportation. Everything is coded by line name, color, and number. There were a few times I got confused, but the Jorudan Japan Transit Planner app was so very helpful

*Things I really enjoyed seeing: Edo-Tokyo Museum; Sensoji Temple (plan to stay 2-3 hours at least here and in the adjacent neighborhood); Imperial Palace (it wasn't open when I was there--poor planning on my part--but I walked the entire perimeter and it was a good workout. You'll see lots of people jogging around it); Yurakucho, Ginza, Asakusa, Shibuya, Shinjuku, Harajuku districts; and Meiji Shrine

*I used the Yelp app for dining recommendations when I wasn't eating in or out with my friends

*Regrets: I saw an act of Kabuki Theater and really wish I had paid a bit extra and seen an entire play. You can read about whatever play is being staged ahead of time to understand what the plot is. You can also see sumo wrestling practice in north Tokyo near the Edo-Tokyo Museum by purchasing tickets. Unfortunately, all the teams were traveling when I was there. I also wished I had planned ahead of time to get tickets to the Studio Ghibli Museum. As a huge Miyazaki fan, that might have been the highlight of my trip

REPORT (Kyoto)

*I took the Shinkansen (bullet train) from Tokyo Station to Kyoto Station. Super easy to use. I recommend buying a bento box lunch at the station and eating it on the train

*I stayed at an Airbnb in Kyoto adjacent to the Gion District. Kyoto is also super easy to navigate via public transportation

*Highlights: one of my favorite days was wandering around eastern Kyoto visiting shrines. In late November, the leaves are absolutely beautiful. I took a bus from the subway station and just followed a tour group to the start of the Philosopher's Path. I visited Nanzenji and Heian shrines and stopped at many others along the way. There are little shops along the Philosopher's Path that are cute to visit as well. Nishiki Market is also something not to miss. I went there twice (going during the day when all the shops are open is ideal) and had an incredible sushi experience in a tiny restaurant in the market (I can't remember the name, but it has a tiny bar and everyone has their own sushi chef). Nijo Castle is amazing, too.

*Regrets: I didn't have time to see either the Sento or Kyoto Imperial Palaces. I might be in the minority here, but I also didn't enjoy Arashiyama. It's easy to get to via JR train, but it was very crowded and the tickets for the Sagano Romantic Train were sold out. The Monkey Park, Tenryuji Shrine, Bamboo Forest and Okochi Sanso were nice, but so crowded. The Togetsukyo Bridge was kind of a nightmare. It was packed and nothing special. I would recommend skipping Arashiyama and opting instead for another day of Kyoto or a different day trip.

Hope you all have an equally wonderful trip to Japan!
Hi ChrisH! I just returned from my first trip to Japan and thought I'd post a trip report and some general advice you might find helpful. This is more of a trip report (I had 9 days to spend in Tokyo and Kyoto), but I cover the four questions your pose.

GENERAL:

*Getting around Tokyo and Kyoto via transportation is so easy, even for someone whose Japanese is very limited. I purchased a JR Pass even though I was only making a round trip trip from Tokyo to Kyoto and still found it a bargain. I also used two apps: "Learn Japanese" by Codegent and "Japan Transit" by Jorudan. "Japan Transit" was absolutely indispensable and easy to use as long as you have an internet connection

*Get a Pasmo or a similar card at the airport to use transportation in both Tokyo and Kyoto

*I made all my itineraries through browsing this forum and through japan-guide.com. I had every day planned out with room for spontaneity

REPORT (Tokyo)

*I stayed with Japanese friends in Chofu. You don't need to stay in the heart of Tokyo to get around easily. It is SO EASY to take Japanese public transportation. Everything is coded by line name, color, and number. There were a few times I got confused, but the Jorudan Japan Transit Planner app was so very helpful. Japan, compared to Europe and most other places, is very safe as long as you are careful, so I don't think you have to worry much about which neighborhoods to stay in.

*Things I really enjoyed seeing: Edo-Tokyo Museum; Sensoji Temple (plan to stay 2-3 hours at least here and in the adjacent neighborhood); Imperial Palace (it wasn't open when I was there--poor planning on my part--but I walked the entire perimeter and it was a good workout. You'll see lots of people jogging around it); Yurakucho, Ginza, Asakusa, Shibuya, Shinjuku, Harajuku districts; and Meiji Shrine

*I used the Yelp app for dining recommendations when I wasn't eating in or out with my friends

*Regrets: I saw an act of Kabuki Theater and really wish I had paid a bit extra and seen an entire play. You can read about whatever play is being staged ahead of time to understand what the plot is. You can also see sumo wrestling practice in north Tokyo near the Edo-Tokyo Museum by purchasing tickets. Unfortunately, all the teams were traveling when I was there. I also wished I had planned ahead of time to get tickets to the Studio Ghibli Museum. As a huge Miyazaki fan, that might have been the highlight of my trip

REPORT (Kyoto)

*I took the Shinkansen (bullet train) from Tokyo Station to Kyoto Station. Super easy to use. I recommend buying a bento box lunch at the station and eating it on the train

*I stayed at an Airbnb in Kyoto adjacent to the Gion District. Kyoto is also super easy to navigate via public transportation. I don't think you need to stay in the heart of the city to see everything if you have budget concerns, but it was also really nice to walk to Nishiki Market and throughout the Gion from my Airbnb.

*Highlights: one of my favorite days was wandering around eastern Kyoto visiting shrines. In late November, the leaves are absolutely beautiful. I took a bus from the subway station and just followed a tour group to the start of the Philosopher's Path. I visited Nanzenji and Heian shrines and stopped at many others along the way. There are little shops along the Philosopher's Path that are cute to visit as well. Nishiki Market is also something not to miss. I went there twice (going during the day when all the shops are open is ideal) and had an incredible sushi experience in a tiny restaurant in the market (I can't remember the name, but it has a tiny bar and everyone has their own sushi chef). Nijo Castle is amazing, too.

*Regrets: I didn't have time to see either the Sento or Kyoto Imperial Palaces. I might be in the minority here, but I also didn't enjoy Arashiyama. It's easy to get to via JR train, but it was very crowded and the tickets for the Sagano Romantic Train were sold out. The Monkey Park, Tenryuji Shrine, Bamboo Forest and Okochi Sanso were nice, but so crowded. The Togetsukyo Bridge was kind of a nightmare. It was packed and nothing special. I would recommend skipping Arashiyama and opting instead for another day of Kyoto or a different day trip.

Hope you and your wife have an equally wonderful trip to Japan!
Hi ,

I had a very tight transit duration from Narita to Haneda (end destination Chitose) and return Haneda to Narita (end destination Singapore).

I cannot be very sure how much time I can clear immigration and claim baggage, hence I like to ask

1. it is necessary to book limousine bus in advance as I am afraid delays in baggage claims may miss the bus time

2. Can I just buy the bus ticket on the spot for the next earliest bus time when at the airport ?

3. If I make advance booking and unfortunately miss the timing, can I still use the same ticket to hop on to the next available bus?
TROY, N.Y.  Small businesses in Troy and Saratoga Springs opened their arms to the holiday season Saturday with the ninth annual Small Business Saturday.

It was a day where shoppers could buy the unique items they sought while doing their part in preserving local vibrant communities.

The two cities continue to see revitalizations in their core business areas thanks to the hard work and dedication of their respective small business owners.

Saturdays temperatures may have moderated from Thursdays frigid cold but the day still struggled to get above freezing. The crowds from years past that had once packed the sidewalks of both cities were smaller.

However, those families or groups of friends who were out shopping were as enthusiastic as ever and their holiday spirit was contagious.

At T & J Handcrafted Soap, 271 River Street, Troy, the air was filled with the scents from co-owner Theresa Van Duynes handmade soaps, bath balms, and lotions.

The packed room of customers moved from one table of items to the next, each more interesting than the last.

The Troy community comes out for this day, Van Duyne said holding special bars of fragrant soap called, Silent Night and Sugared Spruce. It grows each year. You can see theres a bigger push. It gives people an impetus to come out.

It gives families a chance, an excuse, to go explore their communities, in this instance its the downtown business community.

Dawn Agro and Sarah Thron were two of those explorers. Each was purchasing Sponselle, a body wash and infused buffer. Agro was attracted to the holiday scents why Thron wanted the lavender and honey blossom.

We love coming out on Small Business Saturday, Agro said. We dont go out on Thanksgiving to shop and we dont shop the big box stores on Black Friday. We wait for Small Business Saturday.

It was equally busy up the street at the Copper Fox, 279 River Street, Troy. This business is a unique boutique, one that offers consignment clothing, vintage clothing and brand new clothing in the same spot. It also carries personal accessories, jewelry, and skin care products.

Today has been great. Its been busier than other days, said Kate Emma from behind the cash register. Weve had crowds coming in throughout the day. It seems they want to do some shopping in downtown Troy and get some unique items.

I really think the small businesses keep downtown Troy interesting for families.

Shopping in the store were Stacey Hamilton from Albany and Lisa Randles from Saratoga Springs.

We made a special effort to get out and shop somewhere on Small Business Saturday, Randles said. We came here because this downtown district is next to the Farmers Market and we wanted to go to both.

Originally from Cambridge, NY, Randles said she makes it a point to go back there to do some shopping.

Downtowns have to remain because its better for the community. If you lose your downtown, you lose your community, she said.

Shoppers Tori Roggen and Kevin Todisco were also drawn to Troy for the Farmers Market. After stocking up there they took a stroll to shop the nearby stores.

As they browsed artwork from Weathered Wood, an artists collective that exhibits at Twin Pots, 13 Second Street, Troy, Roggen displayed their purchases.

I try to go to small businesses when I shop, she said. Theyre so close. Today we picked up some ornaments that have Troy written on them. We couldnt get those anywhere else.

At the always festive Collar City Sweet Shoppe, 45 Third Street, Troy, owner Ron Ferrigan took time from filling orders for sweets to critique the days business as having been great.

Weve been here four years and my first year when I heard about Small Business Saturday I didnt think itd be anything different, he said. But my God, its been great. People really turn out for it. Our biggest seller is always the chocolate truffles.

We have them in a variety of flavors. Ive refilled those trays a couple of times today.

In Saratoga Springs the shopping was equally intense despite the absence of packed sidewalks. As usual the display windows at G. Willikers, 461 Broadway offered anyone walking by a special take on the magic that is the holiday season.

Weve had a lot of people coming in today and those who arent from here all say, what a great downtown we have, owner Linda Ambrosino said. People in this community are extremely concerned that their downtown remains.

As she expanded on small businesses in an age of competition with big box stores and the internet, Ambrosino noted the personal contact one gets from shopping at a small business is hard to beat.

People need the contact, she said. They want to try it on. They want to know how to play a game before they buy it. I have a game expert here.

Across the street at a packed Celtic Treasures, 456 Broadway, it was much the same.

We love small Business Saturday, said owner Paul ODonnell. Traditionally we do more business on this day than on Black Friday. Its a fun holiday, people showing their support for mom and pop stores.

Its a made up American holiday we love it.
- Keval Shah,was booked to appear at Kibera court on Monday, November 26

- This is despite traffic department noting the equipment was not mandatory for private vehicles

- The department said police officers arresting anyone for not having it were breaking the law

Contrary to a notice issued by the National Police Service (NPS) which indicated private vehicles need not have fire extinguishers and first aid kits, another motorist has been arrested over the same.

A private motorist, Keval Shah, on Saturday, November 24, took to social media to express his disappointment after he was booked to appear in court for lacking the two in his car.

Send 'NEWS' to 40227 to receive all the important breaking news as it happens.

READ ALSO: Outrage as private motorist is arrested for lacking fire extinguisher, first aid kit

Shah was arrested by Dagoreti Police who impounded his car along Waiyaki way.

Source: UGC

READ ALSO: First aid kit, towing rope, fire extinguisher not mandatory for private motorists - Police

According to the notice issued to Shah, he is to appear at Kibera courts on Monday, November 26, for driving a vehicle without an extinguisher.

He was arrested by Dagoreti police who impounded his car along Waiyaki Way on the afternoon of Saturday, November 24.

The motorist claimed to have explained only Public Service Vehicles (PSVs) were strictly required to have the facility according to the notice by the NPS but the officers ignored him.

READ ALSO: 7 stringent traffic rules that died with late Transport Minister John Michuki

His arrest came barely days after there was public uproar when another motorist was arrested in Murang'a county for lacking the said safety equipment despite the notice.

According to the circular, only PSVs are required to have the fire extinguisher, particularly the ones which travel long distances.

Traffic Police Commandant Samuel Kimaru had earlier on elaborated police who fined private motorists for lacking such equipment were doing so illegally

READ ALSO: Government resurrects forgotten Michuki rules, gives PSVs two weeks to comply

TUKO.co.ke earlier reported according to Chapter 403 of the Traffic Act subsidiary legislation, a personal car can have the safety tools in case of a fire or accident, but it is only compulsory for PSVs.

Every motor Omnibus or matatu shall carry an efficient fire extinguisher which shall be maintained in perfect order and shall be carried in such a position as to be readily available for use at any given time, reads the Act.

Every matatu which operates outside the limits of its municipality shall carry a first aid outfit sufficient to deal with any reasonable emergency. Such an outfit shall always be kept in first class condition, the law adds.

Do you have a hot story or scandal you would like us to publish, please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690 and Telegram: Tuko news

Kenyans React To Reinforcement of Michuki Rules | Tuko TV

Source: Tuko Breaking News
- The Baringo senator was forced to travel on a boda boda after failing to get a vehicle to take him to a funeral venue

- He landed at Gaitheri Primary School to attend the burial of Kasarani MP Mercy Gakuya's father

- Kenyans were, however, not pleased after he rode on the bike without a helmet and a reflector jacket

Baringo Senator Gideon Moi on Saturday, November 24, made his way to a funeral in Kiharu, Muranga County on a boda boda, a move that left him on the spot for flaunting traffic rules.

This was after a chopper that had flown him to the venue missed an open space for landing and the pilot chose to land at a nearby primary school.

Send 'NEWS' to 40227 to receive all the important breaking news as it happens.

READ ALSO: Another private motorist arrested for lacking fire extinguisher

This was after a chopper that had flown him to the venue missed an open space for landing .Photo: Peter Kiptoo

Source: Twitter

READ ALSO: Kisumu Governor Anyang' Nyong'o wants Uhuru Kenyatta to run for presidency again

There was, however, no vehicle available to ferry the senator to the funeral venue, forcing him to travel on the only available means of transport in the area; a boda boda.

Kenyans were, however, not pleased with the move as he rode without a helmet and a reflector jacket, with many accusing Gideon of having no regard for road safety.

Although it was a rare moment but equally spectacular to the locals whose attention had been drawn to the landing chopper, his critics did not waste time to hit back at him.

READ ALSO: Kilifi Governor joins Duale in calls to change laws to allow castration of men impregnating teenagers

When I landed, my vehicles had not arrived and to my amazement, motorcycle operators came for me and requested to give me a ride," said the senator.

According to the KANU party national chairman, this was his ever first time he rode on a boda boda since he was born and promised to return to see how he could can work together with the riders.

Gideon was was in the company of Tiaty MP William Kamtet and were attending the burial of Kasarani MP Mercy Gakuya's father at the Muringa village.

READ ALSO: Police offer KSh 1 million bounty on three suspects behind kidnapping of Italian woman in Malindi

There were those who argued the senator should have been arrested in accordance with the revived Michuki rules.

They also faulted the leaders of not being proper role models by being the first ones to break laws while expecting citizens to follow them.

Some viewed it as a show of humility while others dismissed it as a PR stunt to shake off the dynasty tag Gideon has been associated with ahead of the 2022 General Election.

Supporters of his rival, Deputy President William Ruto, previously accused him of seeking to ride on his fathers name to State House unlike the DP who is touted as a self-made hustler.

Do you have a hot story or scandal you would like us to publish, please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690 and Telegram: Tuko news.

Kenyans Mixed Reactions Over The 2/3 Gender Rule Bill| Tuko TV.

Source: Tuko
- The two leaders have met at least twice in the past one week

- They met during the commissioning of Kenya Coast Guard Service

- They met again during Mozambique President Filipe Nyusi's Mombasa tour

- In both occasions, no bitter words were exchanged

- Tension between Ruto and Joho hit fever pitch during 2017 campaigns when Ruto questioned Joho's academic papers

- The friction, however, reduced following the March 2018 handshake between Uhuru and Raila

Deputy President William Ruto and Mombasa governor Ali Hassan Joho seem to have finally buried the hatchet.

The two politicians, who until recently could not see eye-to-eye, met for the second time in less than a week during Mozambique President Filipe Nyusi's Mombasa tour and this time they did not throw barbs at each other.

Send 'NEWS' to 40227 to receive all the important breaking news as it happens

READ ALSO: Governor Joho holds closed-door meeting with ex-president Moi at his home

Deputy President William Ruto and his long time political nemesis Governor Ali Hassan Joho shaking hands during their meeting in Mombasa on Saturday, November 24. Photo: Ombati Edwin.

Source: Facebook

READ ALSO: Uhuru to meet all six Coast governors days after reunion with Joho in Paris

TUKO.co.ke observed Ruto and Joho exchanged pleasantries and even appeared to crack jokes, a sharp contrast compared to their previous encounters, especially during the 2017 electioneering campaigns when they could publicly lecture each other at any given moment.

The two leaders, who accompanied Nyusi during his visit, chose to talk more about development issues and also hailed their party bosses, Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga, for making deliberate efforts to unite Kenyans.

READ ALSO: 59% of Kenyans prefer Hassan Joho as presidential candidate to William Ruto - TUKO poll

The deputy president disclosed the national government was in the process of increasing capital and human investment at the Port of Mombasa.

"We are at the same time leveraging on cutting-edge technology and infrastructure to improve cargo handling, storage facilities and boost competitiveness. The Port supports economic activities in the mainland and the larger region as a conduit of goods, services, people and enhances cross-border trade. I am delighted to take Mozambique President Filipe Nyusi on a tour of the Port of Mombasa," Ruto said.

READ ALSO: Ruto pleads with Raila, Mudavadi to support his bid in 2022

The governor, on his part, invited Kenyans to visit Mombasa for their holidays as he also showed Nyusi some of the most attractive sights in the coastal county.

"I was honoured to host Mozambican President H.E Filipe Nyusi and the First Lady H.E Isaura Nyusi at the recreational Haller Park in Mombasa. In the company of Foreign Affairs CS Monica Juma, our guests got to see some of the sights and sounds of Mombasa. As the festive season approaches, I wish to invite all holiday makers to Mombasa. I particularly wish to encourage Kenyans to visit Mombasa and the Coast,"Joho said.

He added it was important to promote domestic tourism by supporting cultural exchange as one of the tools for Building Bridges.

READ ALSO: William Ruto impromptu meeting with retired president Daniel Moi aborts

Based on their statements, it was clear the two politicians had moved on and were now focusing on development, at least for the time being.

The possibility of the duo forging a political alliance ahead of the 2022 General Election may seem far fetched, but it can also not be ruled out.

Ruto have been making major inroads in Opposition strongholds, including Mombasa where Joho enjoys massive support, and chances are he could be trying to win over the equally ambitious ODM party governor despite their ugly past.

READ ALSO: Joho wants to be president, let him be elected - Raila

Joho, who is serving his last term and therefore could be strategically repositioning himself for an even bigger position, had also made peace with Uhuru.

The two have since become close friends, thanks to the March 2018 handshake.

It is just another reminder that in politics there are no permanent enemies or friends.

Do you have a hot story or scandal you would like us to publish, please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690 and Telegram: Tuko news.

When Uhuru, Ruto and Raila Met at State House - On Tuko TV

Source: Tuko.co.ke
- The suspected thieves allegedly drove the cattle from their sheds then slaughtered them

- At least a cow and a donkey was slaughtered during the Saturday night raid

- Similar incidents were reported three months ago during which several animals were killed

- The local farmers believe the meat was being sold in the black markets in Thika and Nairobi

Two farmers from Gathiga village in Murang'a County are counting heavy losses after thieves raided their homes, slaughtered their animals and carted away the meat.

The horrifying incident, which reportedly took place on the night of Saturday, November 24, left the villagers in shock as they gathered around the skeletons and carcasses, left behind by the alleged thieves.

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READ ALSO: Muranga villagers storm home of notorious women's underwear thief

Skeletons and carcasses of cow and donkey belonging to the two farmers from Gathiga village in Kandara that were slaughtered by unknown people who are still at large.Photo: Tuko.

Source: Original

READ ALSO: Thieves caught on camera raiding Roysambu home

Speaking to TUKO.co.ke, Mary Muthoni Wakaba, one of the affected farmers, said she woke up at dawn to milk her cow as she usually did only to find it was missing from the shed.

"At around 6.00am, I was alerted that a cow skeleton had been spotted at a coffee farm located a short distance away from my home. When I rushed there, I found it was my cow that had been slaughtered," she said.

READ ALSO: Armed gang raids Nairobi Regional Coordinator's home, steal AK-47 rifle

Muthoni lost a dairy cow worth KSh 80,000 while the other farmer, identified as Mungai Karaini, lost a donkey worth KSh 20,000.

According to Muthoni, the cow was the only source of income to her family as it provided milk and manure.

Karaini said he was able to identify his animal by the head and the hide that were left at the scene after it was butchered.

He, on the other hand, relied on his donkey to fend for the family by fetching water and carrying items for the area residents at a fee.

READ ALSO: 50-year-old Muranga man torches nephews house over a borehole

Karaini said it was a major blow to him, having lost another donkey about three months ago in the same manner.

The first donkey was also allegedly slaughtered together with three others that belonged to other farmers, identified as Eustace Kamande, Mukundi and Kang'ethe Ngugi.

The two incidents are among the many others that continue to be witnessed in different parts of Muranga County.

Suspected thugs armed with machetes have reportedly been raiding homes at night and driving away the animals from sheds before slaughtering them.

The farmers have called on the police to intensity patrols at night by mounting roadblocks in order to intercept those behind the never ending theft that have left many families without source of livelihood.

READ ALSO: Angry Murang'a residents torch man's house for stabbing his brother to death

Other farmers who talked to Tuko.co.ke said they suspected the meat was being sold in the black market in parts of Thika and Nairobi.

The farmers called for concerted efforts between the police and the public health departments to crack the whip and dismantle the market.

Muranga County public health boss, Muthui, in whose backyard the incidents occurred warned it was dangerous for people to eat meat that has not been inspected.

"It is alarming that some of the areas where the vice is widespread has had cases of anthrax and there could be chances some of the animals may contract the disease and once the meat is eaten or comes into contact with human beings it may lead to death," he said.

Story by Mark Wachira, Muranga County

Do you have a hot story or scandal you would like us to publish, please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690 and Telegram: Tuko news.

Kenya's Former Gangsters Now Cleaning Nairobi City - Kenya Untold Stories - On Tuko TV

Source: Tuko.co.ke
- Maina Nyambura was mad at his nephew Mwangi Wanjiru for reporting him to police after they quarreled over borehole

- Wanjiru reported Nyambura to police after he refused to cover the borehole located next to his house

- Wanjiru argued the borehole was a death trap for his two young children who played near it

- Nyambura was attacked by angry villagers who nearly killed him for cutting his nephew with a panga

A 50-year-old man from Murang'a County has narrowly escaped death in the hands of an irate mob that was baying for his blood after he allegedly slashed his nephew with a panga and torched his house following dispute over a borehole.

Maina Nyambura, a resident of Kagongo village in Kiairathe location, was incensed by his 35-year-old nephew Mwangi Wanjiru's decision to report him at Kangema Police Station for being adamant to put lid over a 20-feet borehole located next to his house, which he argued was a death trap for his two young children whom he feared could fall into the hole.

Send 'NEWS' to 40227 to receive all the important breaking news as it happens

READ ALSO: Angry Murang'a residents torch man's house for stabbing his brother to death

The house belonging to Maina Wanjiru at Kagongo village in Kangema that was set ablaze by his uncle Maina Nyambura. Photo: Tuko.

Source: Original

READ ALSO: Man killed in Murang'a and private parts mutilated

Speaking to TUKO.co.ke on Saturday, November 24, Gerrishon Mwangi Njoroge, a village elder, said he reported the two relatives to the area chief who reprimanded and ordered them to report to his office on Monday, but that did not stop them from quarreling over the borehole.

According to the village elder, the borehole that had become a source of bitter dispute between Wanjiru and his uncle Nyambura was dug by Nyambura's late mother to provide water to the family.

Maina Nyambura set his nephew's house ablaze after he reported him to the police for refusing to cover a borehole. Photo: Tuko.

Source: Original

READ ALSO: Police launch manhunt for Murang'a man linked to brutal death of a barmaid

Nyambura was therefore expected to cover the borehole, which provided both families with water for domestic use, but he declined to do so despite Wanjiru's complaint that the uncovered hole posed a danger to the children.

Wanjiru then took matters into his own hands and started to return the soil back to the borehole to fill it, a move that angered his uncle and the two picked a fight before neighbours moved in and separated them.

READ ALSO: Murang'a residents treated to rare funeral as remains of old man are buried in record 10 minutes, no wailing

Wanjiru who was the aggrieved party in this case was advised to go and file a report at Kangema Police Station, about three kilometres away.

Wanjiru went to report as we kept vigil at the home and after a few minutes he came back saying he was advised that he goes back to the station with people who had witnessed the incident so that charges could be filed against his uncle. As he and the witnesses were about to leave, Nyambura went berserk and cut him with a panga before rushing back to his house and set it on fire," Njoroge said.

READ ALSO: Neglected Murang'a granny living in dilapidated house gets help from kindhearted Kenyans

The inferno that gutted the two-roomed house was reportedly accelerated by a gas cylinder that exploded and burnt all the household items among them Wanjiru's boda boda (motorycle).

Neighbours who rushed to the distress call had to demolish a kitchen adjacent to the house to prevent the fire from spreading further.

The assailant who is unmarried then escaped as a blood thirsty mob pursued him and caught up with him at a relatives home where the family had locked him in the kitchen.

The mob descended on him with kicks and blows before the area chief arrived and saved him from the jaws of death.

He was then arrested and handed over to police as the nephew was rushed to hospital.

Paul Kimani Mbaru who is a former civic leader in the region and who rushed to the home, told Tuko.co.ke the assailant had a few days earlier appeared like somebody who was confused, adding that he was suspected to be using drugs.

We were surprised to find that there was an opening at the back of his house that he used to sneak in and out of the house. It was hard for one to establish when he was in the house or out of the house as it was always closed with a padlock.

Mbaru called on the residents to sort their differences amicably instead of resorting to violence and blood shed.

Story by Mark Wachira, Muranga County

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Kenya Untold Stories: Rejected For Naming Son Uhuru Kenyatta - On Tuko TV

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- It is estimated close to 100 people were on the ill-fated vessel at the time of the accident

- Police were able to rescue more than 40 people and recover 10 more bodies on Sunday, raising the death toll to 23

- Among those who were on the boat was Prince David Wasajja, brother to Buganda king Ronald Muwenda Mutebi II

- The incident comes about two months after a Tanzanian ferry killed more than 40 people in Lake Victoria

At least 23 people have been confirmed dead and more than 40 others rescued after a boat capsized in Lake Victoria, TUKO.co.ke has learnt.

It was not immediately clear how many people were on the ill-fated boat at the time of the tragedy, which reportedly took place in Mpatta sub-county in Mukono district, Uganda, on Saturday, November 24.

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READ ALSO: 44 confirmed dead as Tanzania ferry capsizes in Lake Victoria, rescue operations underway

The ill-fated vessel capsized in Mpatta sub-county in Mukono District, Uganda, on Saturday, November 24, killing more than 10 people. Photo: CitizenTV.

Source: UGC

READ ALSO: Five feared dead as boat carrying 12 passengers capsizes in Masinga Dam

Ugandan police reports indicated the more than 40 survivor were rescued by the marines who also recovered 23 bodies, a significant increase from 13 bodies that were found on Saturday night, from the deep waters.

"Uganda police force marine unit rescues over 40 people alive on lake Victoria. Ten died. Rescue mission still on," Uganda Police Force tweeted at 8.49pm on Saturday.

READ ALSO: Tanzania ferry with over 100 on board sinks, rescue operations launched

Although no official figures have been provided, it was estimated close to 100 people, among them Prince David Wasajja, brother to Buganda king Ronald Muwenda Mutebi II, were on the boat.

The victims were reportedly having a party on the boat when the accident happened.

TUKO.co.ke understands rescue operation being carried out by the Uganda Police Force and Uganda People's Defense Force (UPDF) is underway.

READ ALSO: Lake Victoria named as a disaster zone

A similar tragedy unfolded in September 2018 when a ferry that was carrying more than 400 people capsized on the Tanzania side of Lake Victoria and left over 40 people dead.

The MV Nyerere ferry which was plying between Bugorara and Ukala islands in Tanzania was believed to have toppled over when crowd on board moved to one side as it docked.

According to the officials who conducted the rescue mission, some 100 people were rescued following the accident.

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What is Your Worst Experience in a Matatu? - On Tuko TV

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Detectives have detained a consignment of 1,000 lethal guns imported in the county at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA).

TUKO.co.ke has learnt that the Belgium designed and US manufactured FN Scar rifles belong to a local gun dealer and are valued at over KSh 300 million.

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The Belgium designed and US manufactured FN Scar rifles belong to a local gun dealer and are valued at over KSh 300 million. Photo: UGC

Source: UGC

The importer of the weapons, Sailesh Mistry of CatEyes Ltd, declined to comment on the nature of his business fearing that the government might strike, Standard reported on Sunday, November 25.

We dealers have been suspended until we are cleared. That is that. There is nothing big about it. You will put me in the limelight and the authorities might come for me and I dont want anything like that to happen, Mistry said.

It is not yet clear whom Mistry had imported the guns for or whom he sells the weapons to.

However, it has emerged that Kenya Defense Force (KDF) commando unit, the Special Forces (SF), has since 2011 been using a similar rifle.

It has emerged that Kenya Defense Force (KDF) commando unit, the Special Forces (SF) has since 2011, been using a similar rifle. Photo: UGC

Source: UGC

The US Navy SEALs and US Marines are also among the special security units that use the FN Scar rifles which cost at least KSh 310,000 per piece.

In a separate story, TUKO.co.ke reported that Interior CS Fred Matiang'i disbanded the Firearms Licensing and Control Board in a move to reduce arbitrary issuance of guns to civilians.

Matiang'i ordered all licensed firearm holders who had been given permits by the disbanded board to surrender them for fresh vetting.

All firearms licenses have been suspended countrywide. It is a process of reviewing all licenses, said Interior Ministry spokesperson Wangui Muchiri.

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Kenyans Mixed Reactions Over The 2/3 Gender Rule Bill| Tuko TV.

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- Six people have been arrested and will be arraigned after completion of investigations

- The rival gangs, Kasa and Military, have been terrorising residents in the recent past

- They confronted each other after burial of a gang leader, killed one civilian and injured three

Two people have died in Likoni, Mombasa County, after two rival gangs clashed on Saturday, November 24.

TUKO.co.ke has learnt that the bloody altercation happened after the burial of a gang leader who was stabbed to death Friday, November 23, at Millennium area by a rival.

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READ ALSO: Uhuru wants Ambira High School boys who bragged of cheating in exams taught a lesson

READ ALSO: 1000 sophisticated guns from Belgium impounded at JKIA

Confirming the incident, Likoni OCPD Benjamin Rotich, said the gangs involved are identified as Kasa and Military, and have been unleashing terror on local residents.

Rotich said the attack is suspected to be a revenge mission, and they slashed anyone they found on their way during the confrontation.

READ ALSO: Robbers raid Muranga homes, kill cows, donkeys and steal meat

"The gangs started slashing anyone who was around their territory and three people sustained machete injuries, said Rotich.

Police, the OCPD said, responded to the incident and shot dead one suspected gang member while one civilian succumbed to machete wounds inflicted by the attackers

Six suspects were arrested and will be arraigned once investigations in the case are completed.

Three people were injured and were rushed to Likoni sub-county Hospital where they are receiving medication

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Kenyans Mixed Reactions Over The 2/3 Gender Rule Bill| Tuko TV.

Source: Kenya Breaking News Today
- The 94-year old is reportedly unable to walk as he receives treatment

- President Emmerson Mnangagwa made the revelation during a recent rally in Mugabe's hometown

- He however quelled any tension, saying Mugabe's plight was a result of old age

Former Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabes health has deteriorated to the point of being unable to walk, TUKO.co.ke has learnt.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa made the revelation on Saturday, November 25, adding that the former iron-fist president has been undergoing treatment for the past two months.

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Mugabe has reportedly been in and out of hospital in Singapore

Source: UGC

READ ALSO: 23 people confirmed dead, dozens missing after boat capsizes in Lake Victoria

Mugabe, prior to his ouster in 2017, had been in and out of hospital in the latter stages of his presidential stint.

While speaking in Mugabes hometown, Mnangagwa reiterated Mugabes health was not a serious health concern since the former head of state was old.

Mugabe was ousted from power in 2017

Source: Getty Images

READ ALSO: 92 year old president Mugabe confirms he will run for 2018 elections

"He is now old. Of course, he now is unable to walk but whatever he asks for we will provide," he said as quoted by AFP.

As TUKO.co.ke reported earlier, Mugabe was forcefully ejected from power after a resolute intervention from the army in 2017.

Prior to his ousting, Mugabe had served as head of state for a staggering 37 years in a reign which not many would have imagined would end in the manner it did.

READ ALSO: Robert Mugabe is safe but we are moving in to get criminals - Says Zimbabwe military

The military reportedly had to intervene to avoid Mugabe installing his wife as his successor.

Regardless the 94-year old has established himself in the history books not only for his lengthy tenure, but also because of some of his infamous quotes which make for nice comedy in the 21st century.

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- Police say the boat was overloaded besides also being in a bad mechanical shape

- Thirty people have been confirmed dead and 27 others were rescued from the lake

- President Museveni has said the operators of the boat, if still alive, will be charged

- The boat was en route from a private beach, headed to another a beach in Mukono

It has merged that the boat that capsised in Lake Victoria on the night of Saturday, November 24, was overloaded by an excess of about 70 people.

As earlier reported by TUKO.co.ke, the accident involving a Ugandan boat which had dozens revelers on board, happened at Mpatta sub-county in Mukono district, Uganda.

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READ ALSO: 23 people confirmed dead, dozens missing after boat capsizes in Lake Victoria

The accident happened at Mpatta sub-county in Mukono district, Uganda. Photo: UGC

Source: UGC

READ ALSO: Fraudsters hack Jubilee Party Twitter account, advertise fake jobs

In a statement, Uganda President Yoweri Museveni said preliminary investigations indicated that the boat had a capacity 50 but nearly 120 travelers were on board.

"It seems the boat was overloaded because whereas it had capacity for 50 people only, it had about 120 passengers on board, who also seemed to be partying with a lot of music. They might not have heard the emergency commands of the captain, who is still unaccounted for," tweetwed Museveni.

READ ALSO: Fraudsters hack Jubilee Party Twitter account, advertise fake jobs

At least 30 drowned bodies were recovered on Sunday, November 25, and 27 survivors rescued by a team of Ugandan police who are still pursuing other bodies.

Among the survivours of the accident is Prince David Wasajja, brother to Buganda king Ronald Muwenda Mutebi II.

At least 30 drowned bodies were recovered on Sunday, November 25, and 27 survivors rescued by a team of Ugandan police who are still pursuing other bodies.Photo: UGC

Source: UGC

Museveni has, nonetheless, condemned the operators of the vessel for what he termed as negligence.

He said those who were entrusted with the boat will be dully prosecuted even as he passed his condolences to the bereaved families

"Obviously, the operators of this boat will be charged with criminal negligence and manslaughter, if they have not already been punished for their mistake by dying in the accident. May the souls of all those departed in this tragedy rest in peace," the head of state.

READ ALSO: 2 killed, 3 hospitalised after rival Likoni gangs clash in revenge attack

According to Museveni, the boat was owned by a Uganda citizen identified as Templa Bissase and his wife.

It was en route from a private beach and headed to another private beach in Mukono area.

"The boat was owned by somebody called Templa Bissase or Bissaso and his wife, both of whom, apparently, perished in the accident. They were coming from a private beach and headed to another private beach in Mukono area," said Museveni.

Uganda police have said the accident was caused by overloading and that the boat was also poorly maintained.

This video is believed to have been captured on the boat before the accident.

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The Farmers Union stands by their increase in price of goat meat saying that, feed and pharm
With all still to play for in the group stage, there are plenty of contenders for the captain's armband on matchday five; UEFA.com picks out six of the leading candidates.

TUESDAY

Cristiano Ronaldo (11.9m) vs Valencia (H)

After a nightmare UEFA Champions League start for Ronaldo at his new club, the all-time top-scorer in the competition got his account up and running with a stunning volley against former employers Manchester United on matchday four. The Portuguese superstar is now scoring regularly in domestic action and on Tuesday evening will look to make up for his matchday one misdemeanour in the reverse fixture against Valencia.

Edin Dzeko (10.1m) vs Real Madrid (H)

In a crunch match which could decide who tops Group G, Roma will once again look to their talisman Dzeko for inspiration. Hardly surprising given the Bosnian's form in the competition, with all five of his goals in this season's competition having come in Roma's two home games in the group. Not only that, but the Stadio Olimpico has become something of a fortress for Roma in the UEFA Champions League in recent years, further raising Dzeko's stock as a captaincy choice.

Anthony Martial (7.5m) vs Young Boys (H)

Although Martial has not scored in the competition since a matchday one strike in the reverse of Tuesday's fixture, the Frenchman has been in blistering form domestically having scored six goals in his last sixPremier League appearances for the Red Devils. With Jose Mourinho's men hosting Young Boys in a hotly contested Group H, Martial will look to translate his form to the European stage and he represents a brave but tempting differential option for the armband.

WEDNESDAY

Lionel Messi (11.6m) vs PSV (A)

An arm injury kept the Argentinian out of Barcelona's double-header against Internazionale, but he returned to action before the international break with two goals in the Spanish Liga, so he naturally comes straight back into the captaincy debate ahead of matchday five. Fantasy managers may recall that Messi bagged a hat-trick against PSV in September so, if he wasn't a tempting option already, that certainly strengthens his case. The Catalan giants' form was wavering slightly prior to the break, but with their talisman back in the fold that blip may well be over.

Harry Kane (11.0m) vs Internazionale (H)

Kane's Fantasy output has grown steadily throughout the group stage and his double against PSV on matchday four  which kept alive Tottenham's hopes of qualification from the group  highlighted his importance to the team. After scoring another vital goal on England duty recently, Kane is approaching his usual prolific self and he is an excellent candidate to skipper your side in Wednesday's must-win Group B match.

Antoine Griezmann (10.5m) vs Monaco (H)

Atletico are currently duking it out with Dortmund for top spot in Group A and will be targeting a victory on Wednesday at home to struggling Monaco. The French side have won just once under the stewardship of Thierry Henry and have not tasted victory in the UEFA Champions League in their last 12 matches. Griezmann has netted three times in his four appearances in this season's competition and will be trusted to fire his team to victory once more.
The Ukrainian Navy says that Russian special forces have seized three Ukrainian ships that were originally blocked and then fired by Russia in the Kerch Strait.

"According to the latest reports, small armored artillery boats Berdiansk and Nikopol have been damaged by the enemy's fire and lost their course. The Yany Kapu tugboat was also forced to stop. The ships have been seized by Russian special forces. There is also information on two wounded Ukrainian sailors," the press center of the command of the Ukrainian Navy said.

As reported, on November 25, Russian border ships carried out openly aggressive actions against two Ukrainian small armored artillery boats Berdiansk and Nikopol and the Yana Kapu tugboat, which carried out a planned journey from the port of Odesa to the port of Mariupol in the Sea of Azov, and the Russian side was informed about the journey in advance. According to the command, the Russian ship Don rammed a Ukrainian tugboat, damaging the ship's main engine, shell plating and guard railing, and its life raft was lost.

The Ukrainian Navy said that it had notified the Russian side of the intention to make the journey and that it acted within international law.

At the same time, Russia's FSB said that three Ukrainian warships in the Azov Sea "illegally entered the territorial waters of the Russian Federation and headed for the Kerch Strait."

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry emphasized that aggressive actions by Russian ships are considered as a violation of the norms of the UN Charter and the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
Many refugee women risk sexual violence while carrying out basic tasks such as collecting water and firewood.  UNHCR/Roger Arnold

UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi called today for renewed and bold action to better protect refugees and displaced people from sexual and gender-based violence, or SGBV, in the workplace.

The world of work can be particularly risky for refugees and other forcibly displaced people. Many are left with no choice but the informal sector, exposing them to unsafe and abusive working conditions, including gender-based violence, said Grandi, echoing this years theme for the 16 Days of Activism, End Gender-Based Violence in the world of work.

As the world marks the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, UNHCR regrets that access to safe and lawful employment remains a distant reality for many refugees in their countries of asylum. Granting them the right to work and to access markets where they can sell their products would undoubtedly reduce the risk of sexual violence. It would also enable them to be more self-reliant and to contribute to the economies of their host communities in safety and dignity.

We need bolder and stronger measures to protect refugee women and girls who continue to be exposed to sexual and gender-based violence. For many, the risk of being raped or sexually abused permeates every aspect of their life, even the most basic tasks such as collecting water and firewood. I hope the international community will renew its commitment to ending these violent acts, and its focus on urgent practical solutions, said UNHCR Special Envoy Angelina Jolie.

Since 2014, UNHCR, in partnership with Safe from the Start, an anti-SGBV initiative supported by the US Government, has developed 15 new projects to reduce the risk of SGBV through access to cooking energy and the creation of livelihood opportunities for refugee women. For instance, the MADE51 artisan initiative allows refugee artisans, many of them women at risk of SGBV, to receive expert product development support and access to international marketing channels and sustainable livelihoods.

The High Commissioner noted that the organization is also actively engaged in the fight against sexual violence affecting its own personnel. Sexual harassment is both unacceptable and unjustifiable and we have taken a series of decisive actions to ensure a safe and respectful work environment for all colleagues. These include an independent helpline for colleagues who want to report misconduct or need advice. This is a key priority for the organization," he said.

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Kidnapped and held captive by Boko Haram militants at just 13 years of age, Adia* faced a bleak choice: marry one of the fighters, or face public execution.

They would bury people alive, leaving just their head above the ground until they were dead, she explains. If you speak, if you beg for pity or mercy for the person, then they execute you too, she adds.

Snatched by the group near Nigerias border with Niger, Adia had been held captive for five months. Separated from the boys, they were held inside the compound surrounded by a high spiked fence, their every need at the whim of their captors.

We ate and drank when they felt like it. We often went days without food, she says.

The boys were there to train to fight. The girls were there to become their wives or otherwise to become human bombs  being forced to enter villages and markets with explosives strapped to their bodies, which are detonated remotely by Boko Haram.

They would bury people alive."

While they awaited their fate they were forced to work like slaves, and when they were not working, they were subjected to religious teachings. If they did not follow orders, they were beaten.

The militants would come to take the girls one by one, to marry one of the fighters. When they came for Adia, she refused. Others who had refused were publicly executed in front of the children.

See also: Grandi calls for better protection of refugees against sexual violence in the workplace

Fortunately for her, the leader of the Boko Haram group decided to grant her some more time to change her mind. In the meantime, a battle broke out nearby, and most of the fighters left to fight. A group of young girls and boys seized the opportunity to escape, knowing that if they were caught, they would face the public executions they had witnessed.

The group walked together at night for a week before they reached Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State in northeastern Nigeria. There, Adia took a vehicle going to neighbouring Niger, where she was told that she would be safe. Sadly, her ordeal only deepened.

A UNHCR worker listens to the story of 14 year old *Aisha, who was kidnapped by Boko Haram.  UNHCR/Louise Donovan

Adia reached Kindjandi, in Diffa region in southeast Niger, which hosts approximately 25,000 people uprooted by violence, including refugees and internally displaced children, women and men. She had nothing but the clothes she was wearing, and no knowledge of where her family were. Forcibly married at 13 to a man 20 years her senior, her husband had disappeared.

A group of young girls of a similar age took pity on her and allowed her to share their shelter. But with no means of earning an income, and no humanitarian aid, the youngsters had little option but to resort to prostitution, or more accurately survival sex.

I fell pregnant very quickly, after just a month or two... I have no idea who is the father of my baby she says, as she rocks her baby on her knee. He is a year and a half old.

I dont like to do what I do... but if I dont, he will go hungry. Often they dont pay me, they just give me some food that I share with my baby. If I cant find a man in the day, then we go hungry that night, she adds.

See also: Somali torture survivor reunited with her sons in Niger

The 15-year-olds story is unfortunately all too common. Adia is one of more than 118,000 Nigerian refugees in Diffa who have fled Boko Haram, as well as more than 25,000 Nigerien nationals who were forced to return from living in Nigeria due to the conflict.

Almost 105,000 persons have also been internally displaced in the Diffa region itself, since the violence spread across the border from Nigeria in 2015.

More than half of those force to flee are female, while 55 per cent of them are under 18 years of age. At least 3,500 of these people are survivors of sexual or gender-based violence, known as SGBV.

SGBV can take many forms. Violence and abuse affect not only women and girls who have fled Boko Haram, but the entire family, the community as a whole, destabilizing, humiliating, marginalizing and stigmatizing, says Alessandra Morelli, the representative for UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, in Niger.

"We need to recognize SGBV as a crime."

The plight of young girls being kidnapped and forcibly married or used as human bombs by Boko Haram came under the spotlight in 2014, when almost 300 girls were kidnapped from a school in Chibok, in Borno. However, this was not an isolated incident and women and girls continue to be kidnapped on a regular basis. Even if they escape, many face stigmatization in their communities.

UNHCR is the lead organization in providing protection and assistance to refugees and displaced populations in the region of Diffa. However, the interest of donors is waning.

In January 2018, UNHCR launched a regional Appeal seeking US$157 million to respond to the needs of refugees displaced by Boko Haram in the Lake Chad Basin  comprising Niger, Chad and Cameroon. By the end of July, just 32 per cent of the required funding had been received.

In the Diffa region, UNHCR works with partner organizations, as well as with community-based protection groups to enhance prevention of SGBV, and to ensure access to adequate response services, including medical, psychosocial, economic and legal support. But with underfunding in the protection sector, this assistance does not reach everyone.

We need to recognize SGBV as a crime and a gross violation against the well-being, freedom and integrity of a person, emphasizes Morelli.

UNHCR is seeking appropriate solutions for Adia. They start with moving her to the refugee camp where she will have access to basic services, including education and a range of support services, and also include the possibility of resettling her to a third country  help she urgently needs.

As Adia left us, her tiny frame sagged under the weight of the baby she carried on her back, as well as the weight of all that she has endured.

*Name changed to protect the identity of the survivor
The incident happened on the morning of November 25.

German politician and Member of the European Parliament Rebecca Harms has commented on recent developments in the Sea of Azov after a Ukrainian tugboat was rammed by a Russian coast guard ship, saying that escalations there are serious.

"The escalations in the Sea of Azov are serious and need more of your attention," she tweeted on Sunday, having tagged High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice President of the EU Commission Federica Mogherini, German Minister for Foreign Affairs Heiko Maas, his counterparts Linas Linkevicius of Lithuania and Margot Wallstrom of Sweden, U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations Kurt Volker, and the official Twitter account of the European Parliament Committee on Foreign Affairs.

Read alsoUkraine's Foreign Ministry: Provocations of Russia in Black and Azov Seas cross the red line

As UNIAN reported earlier, the 'Yany Kapu' (Yan Qap) tugboat of Ukraine's Navy was rammed by a Russian coast guard ship in the Sea of Azov on November 25, when a group of Ukrainian vessels, namely two small-sized 'Berdiansk' and 'Nikopol' armored artillery boats and the 'Yany Kapu' tugboat were carrying out a planned transfer from the port of Odesa to the port of Mariupol of the Sea of Azov.

The Ukrainian side said notification about the transfer plans had been done in advance in accordance with international rules to ensure safe navigation. In turn, the FSB of the Russian Federation accused the Ukrainian ships of "illegally crossing the Russian border."

According to information available, the Yany Kapu's crewmen were not injured during the ramming incident.

The press service of the Ukrainian Navy assured that the Ukrainian ships were heading to the port of Mariupol despite the Russian Federation's acts of aggression.

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry stated that the provocative actions by the Russian Federation in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov had violated the norms of the UN Charter and the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
No urgent mobilization of Ukraine's army is expected.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko says he supports the Military Cabinet's proposal that martial law should be introduced in the country after an attack by Russia's special forces on Ukrainian vessels near the Kerch Strait on November 26; Ukraine's parliament may have its say at a special meeting on Monday.

"I've decided to support the Military Cabinet's proposal, introduce a relevant motion to the NSDC [National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine] and submit it to the Verkhovna Rada [Ukraine's parliament]," he said at a NSDC meeting in Kyiv in the early hours of Monday, November 26.

Read alsoRussia seizes three Ukrainian boats, two wounded; Poroshenko gathers Military Cabinet

Poroshenko expects that the parliament will support the decision at the special meeting on Monday.

Parliament speaker Andriy Parubiy announced the parliament would gather at 16:00 Kyiv time on Monday, November 26, for the special meeting.

According to Poroshenko, this decision does not provide for urgent mobilization, but the first line reserve of Ukraine's army should be ready, he added. He also says that there will be no restrictions on the rights and freedoms of citizens if martial law is introduced.

UNIAN memo.Martial law is a special legal regime that is introduced in Ukraine or its individual areas in the event of armed aggression or threat of attack, a threat to Ukraine's state independence, its territorial integrity, and gives authorities, the military command and local self-government the powers that are necessary to prevent threats and ensure national security. It also foresees temporary threat-related limitations on constitutional rights and freedoms of a person and a citizen and the rights and legal interests of legal entities, indicating the duration of such restrictions (Article 1 of the Law on the Legal Regime of Martial Law).
The helicopters will be used to monitor the border in Kharkiv and Odesa regions.

Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov has handed certificates for two modernized Mi-8 helicopters over to Ukrainian border guard detachments in Kharkiv and Odesa regions.

The certificates for the helicopters were given to the commanders of Kharkiv and Odesa separate aviation squadrons, the ministry's media liaison office said.

"Today we are handing over two certificates for the modernized Mi-8 helicopters, but this is a transitional option. Very soon, the Ukrainian Border Service will receive new weapons and new Airbus helicopters, which will be used, among others, by the Kharkiv squadron," Avakov said.

The Mi-8 helicopter (medium transport helicopter) is designed to transport passengers, cargo, troops, perform special patrol tasks, search and rescue operations and sanitary tasks. It has modern flight and navigation equipment. It is also equipped with special equipment: searchlight, cargo winch, meteorological, satellite communications and radio navigation systems, as well as in-cabin audio and video recorder and an onboard weapons system.

Also, the State Border Service of Ukraine uses the Diamond patrol aircraft. It is intended for air monitoring of the state border, controlled border areas, the territorial sea and the Ukrainian part of the waters of the Sea of Azov.

The aircraft has modern flight navigation equipment and is equipped with special equipment.

The first Airbus helicopters are expected to arrive in Ukraine in December 2018.
Ships of Ukraine's Navy have been waiting for several hours to cross the strait.

Russia has blocked the passage to the Kerch Strait between the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea for civilian ships after the 'Yany Kapu' (Yani Qapi) tugboat of Ukraine's Navy was rammed by a Russian coast guard ship in the Sea of Azov on Sunday morning.

"At 13:12 local time, two Ka-52 attack helicopters were spotted as heading for an attack course with their onboard weapon control systems aimed at the Ukrainian Navy's boats," the press service of the General Staff of the Navy of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said on Facebook on November 25.

The Ka-52 Alligator is an all-weather attack helicopter operated by the Russian Air Force. It was developed by Kamov Design Bureau (part of Russian Helicopters) as a twin-seat model of the Ka-50 attack helicopter.

The ships of the Ukrainian Navy have been waiting for several hours to pass through the Kerch Strait, the press service said.

Read alsoUkraine's Foreign Ministry: Provocations of Russia in Black and Azov Seas cross the red line

As of 13:42 local time, traffic on both sides of the Crimean bridge was reportedly blocked in connection with a tanker stranded in front of the bridge in the Sea of Azov, according to the Kerch traffic control system, it said. However, this report has not yet been confirmed by the international shipping control system, the Ukrainian side added.

As UNIAN reported earlier, the 'Yany Kapu' (Yani Qapi) tugboat of Ukraine's Navy was rammed by a Russian coast guard ship in the Sea of Azov on November 25, when a group of Ukrainian vessels, namely two small-sized 'Berdiansk' and 'Nikopol' armored artillery boats and the 'Yany Kapu' tugboat were carrying out a planned transfer from the port of Odesa to the port of Mariupol of the Sea of Azov.

The Ukrainian side said notification about the transfer plans had been done in advance in accordance with international rules to ensure safe navigation. In turn, the FSB of the Russian Federation accused the Ukrainian ships of "illegally crossing the Russian border."

According to information available, the Yany Kapu's crewmen were not injured during the ramming incident.

The press service of the Ukrainian Navy assured that the Ukrainian ships were heading to the port of Mariupol despite the Russian Federation's acts of aggression.

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry stated that the provocative actions by the Russian Federation in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov had violated the norms of the UN Charter and the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
The small-sized Berdiansk armored artillery boat was damaged.

Russian coast guard ships opened fire on a group of vessels of the Ukrainian Navy as they were leaving the Kerch Strait, one person has been wounded.

"Having left the 12-mile zone, the naval group of the Ukrainian Navy came under fire opened by the coast guard service of Russia's FSB. The small-sized Berdiansk armored artillery boat was damaged. The boat is dead in the water, one person is wounded. [The Russians] shoot to kill," the press service of Ukraine's Navy said on Facebook at 20:28 local time on November 25.

As UNIAN reported earlier, the 'Yany Kapu' (Yani Qapi) tugboat of Ukraine's Navy was rammed by a Russian coast guard ship on November 25 when a group of Ukrainian vessels, namely two small-sized 'Berdiansk' and 'Nikopol' armored artillery boats and the 'Yany Kapu' tugboat were carrying out a planned transfer from the port of Odesa to the port of Mariupol in the Sea of Azov. The Ukrainian side said notification about the transfer plans had been done in advance in accordance with international rules to ensure safe navigation.

Russia, in turn, claims that the Ukrainian vessels "illegally" entered the temporarily closed water area of the territorial sea of the Russian Federation. The FSB alleges that the Ukrainian side did not file an application for passage and its boats were not included in the timetable for navigation through the Kerch Strait.

The Russian side also claimed navigation under the Crimean bridge was not possible on Sunday as it was blocked by a civilian vessel.

Read alsoRussia blocks Kerch Strait between Azov and Black Seas, two Ka-52 attack helicopters scrambled (Video)

The Ukrainian vessels had to make a U-turn on Sunday evening as Russia blocked entry to the Sea of Azov across the Kerch Strait; Russians demanded they stop and threatened to use weapons.

"After the group of the Ukrainian navy's vessels started leaving the Kerch Strait, Russian ships and boats began pursuing, demanding they stop and threatening to use weapons," the press service of the Ukrainian Navy said on Facebook in its previous update as of 19:00 local time on Sunday, November 25.

It also said that there was information that Russian special forces had been transferred on board the 'Don' ship of the Border Service of Russia's FSB Federal Security Service in order to make a boarding attempt to seize the Ukrainian vessels. Despite the threats and provocations, the boats of the Ukrainian Navy continued performing their task, it said.
The vessels have been captured by Russia's special forces.

Russia has seized three Ukrainian vessels amid their leaving the Kerch Strait; Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is gathering the Military Cabinet over the incident.

"According to updates, two small-sized 'Berdiansk' and 'Nikopol' armored artillery boats have come under enemy fire and are now dead in the water. The 'Yany Kapu' tugboat has forcibly been stopped. The vessels have been captured by special forces of the Russian Federation," the press service of Ukraine's Navy said on Facebook on Sunday evening.

The Ukrainian Navy also reported the number of the Ukrainian sailors wounded in the incident grew to two persons.

Read alsoRussian coast guards fire on Ukraine's armored artillery boats near Kerch Strait, one wounded (Video)

There have been no reports whether the Ukrainian servicemen fired back.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is gathering the Military Cabinet for a meeting over the Russian attack on the Ukrainian boats in the Kerch Strait.

"At 22:00, President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko is gathering a meeting of the Military Cabinet over the situation in the Kerch Strait and the attack on the Ukrainian military boats," Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Oleksandr Turchynov's press service told UNIAN.

As UNIAN reported earlier, Russian coast guard ships opened fire on a group of vessels of the Ukrainian Navy as they were leaving the Kerch Strait on Sunday evening. Originally, one Ukrainian sailor was reportedly wounded.

The 'Yany Kapu' (Yani Qapi) tugboat of Ukraine's Navy was rammed by a Russian coast guard ship on November 25 when a group of Ukrainian vessels, namely two small-sized 'Berdiansk' and 'Nikopol' armored artillery boats and the 'Yany Kapu' tugboat were carrying out a planned transfer from the port of Odesa to the port of Mariupol in the Sea of Azov. The Ukrainian side said notification about the transfer plans had been done in advance in accordance with international rules to ensure safe navigation.

Russia, in turn, claims that the Ukrainian vessels "illegally" entered the temporarily closed water area of the territorial sea of the Russian Federation. The FSB alleges that the Ukrainian side did not file an application for passage and its boats were not included in the timetable for navigation through the Kerch Strait.

The Ukrainian vessels had to make a U-turn on Sunday evening as Russia blocked entry to the Sea of Azov across the Kerch Strait; Russians demanded they stop and threatened to use weapons. "After the group of the Ukrainian navy's vessels started leaving the Kerch Strait, Russian ships and boats began pursuing, demanding they stop and threatening to use weapons," the press service of the Ukrainian Navy said on Facebook in its previous update as of 19:00 local time on Sunday, November 25. It also said that there was information that Russian special forces had been transferred on board the 'Don' ship of the Border Service of Russia's FSB Federal Security Service in order to make a boarding attempt to seize the Ukrainian vessels.
The occupation forces used grenade launchers of various systems, large-caliber machine guns and small arms.

Russia's hybrid military forces mounted seven attacks on the Ukrainian army in Donbas, eastern Ukraine, in the past day, using proscribed weapons twice; the Ukrainian side reported casualties.

"The occupation forces opened fire to attack our positions seven times. In two cases, they used weapons banned under the Minsk agreements," the press center of Ukraine's Joint Forces Operation (JFO) Headquarters said in a morning update on Facebook on Sunday, November 25.

Read alsoUkrainian troops get under control another village in occupied Donbas (Photo)

The enemy employed grenade launchers of various systems, large-caliber machine guns and small arms near the villages of Krymske, Vilny, Novoluhanske, Lebedynske, and the town of Krasnohorivka.

In particular, they used 120mm mortars to shell Ukrainian positions near Novoluhanske, while Krymske came under 82mm mortar fire.

"As a result of the attacks, one Joint Forces soldier was fatally wounded. According to Ukrainian intelligence reports, two Russian invaders were killed, three more were injured in the past 24 hours," the JFO HQ said.

As was reported, the Russian-led forces opened fire from 120mm mortars and portable anti-tank missile launchers to attack Ukrainian troops on November 23. The Ukrainian army fired back, having killed two enemy troops. One more enemy soldier was wounded.
Two of them are reportedly in serious condition.

The number of the Ukrainian navy sailors wounded by the Russian special forces in a Sunday incident in the Black Sea not far from the Kerch Strait has grown to six.

"According to recent updates, the 'Berdiansk' armored artillery boat and the 'Yany Kapu' tugboat tug are being towed. The 'Nikopol' armored artillery boat is being blocked and escorted by the occupation forces. The boat is not damaged. Six Ukrainian servicemen have been wounded," the Ukrainian Navy's press center said on Facebook in an update as of 22:20 Kyiv time on Sunday, November 25.

Read alsoRussia seizes three Ukrainian boats, two wounded; Poroshenko gathers Military Cabinet

A source in the Ukrainian Defense Ministry told the news portal InfoResist that six Ukrainian navy men had been wounded, two of them are in serious condition.

As UNIAN reported earlier, Russian coast guard ships opened fire on a group of vessels of the Ukrainian Navy  two small-sized 'Berdiansk' and 'Nikopol' armored artillery boats and the 'Yany Kapu' tugboat  as they were leaving the Kerch Strait on Sunday evening.

Prior to that, on Sunday morning, the 'Yany Kapu' (Yani Qapi) tugboat of Ukraine's Navy was rammed by a Russian coast guard ship while the Ukrainian vessels were carrying out a planned transfer from the port of Odesa to the port of Mariupol in the Sea of Azov.

The Ukrainian side said notification about the transfer plans had been done in advance in accordance with international rules to ensure safe navigation. Russia, in turn, claims that the Ukrainian vessels "illegally" entered the temporarily closed water area of the territorial sea of the Russian Federation. The FSB alleges that the Ukrainian side did not file an application for passage and its boats were not included in the timetable for navigation through the Kerch Strait.

The Ukrainian Navy's command insists that under Articles 17 and 38 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and Article 2 of the Treaty between Ukraine and the Russian Federation on cooperation in the use of the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait, Ukrainian warships enjoy freedom of navigation, and therefore can pass through the Kerch Strait at any time, subject only to navigation safety rules.

Later, it became known that a Russian special ops unit had seized the three Ukrainian boats when they were leaving the Kerch Strait. Early reports said that two Ukrainian navy sailors were wounded.
Its ships are heading to the sea.

The entire Ukrainian Navy has been placed on alert.

"All the units of Ukraine's Navy have been placed on alert. All the ships and other vessels are heading to the sea," the Ukrainian military news portal mil.in.ua said Twitter on Sunday evening.

As UNIAN reported earlier, Russian coast guard ships opened fire on a group of vessels of the Ukrainian Navy  two small-sized 'Berdiansk' and 'Nikopol' armored artillery boats and the 'Yany Kapu' tugboat  as they were leaving the Kerch Strait on Sunday evening. Prior to that, on Sunday morning, the 'Yany Kapu' (Yani Qapi) tugboat of Ukraine's Navy was rammed by a Russian coast guard ship while the Ukrainian vessels were carrying out a planned transfer from the port of Odesa to the port of Mariupol in the Sea of Azov.

The Ukrainian side said notification about the transfer plans had been done in advance in accordance with international rules to ensure safe navigation. Russia, in turn, claims that the Ukrainian vessels "illegally" entered the temporarily closed water area of the territorial sea of the Russian Federation.

The FSB alleges that the Ukrainian side did not file an application for passage and its boats were not included in the timetable for navigation through the Kerch Strait.

Read alsoNumber of Ukrainian navy men wounded by Russians in Kerch Strait incident grows to six

The Ukrainian Navy's command insists that under Articles 17 and 38 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and Article 2 of the Treaty between Ukraine and the Russian Federation on cooperation in the use of the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait, Ukrainian warships enjoy freedom of navigation, and therefore can pass through the Kerch Strait at any time, subject only to navigation safety regulations.

Later, it became known that a Russian special ops unit had seized all the three Ukrainian boats when they were leaving the Kerch Strait. Six members of Ukraine's Navy were wounded, two of them were in serious condition.
(@rukhshanmir)

The 14th edition of much awaited annual event National Inter Schools Mathematics Olympiad (ISMO) was held in 28 branches of Pak Turk international school and college and around 14,000 students participated from all over country.

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 24th Nov, 2018 ) :The 14th edition of much awaited annual event National Inter Schools Mathematics Olympiad (ISMO) was held in 28 branches of Pak Turk international school and college and around 14,000 students participated from all over country.

The purpose of the Olympiad was to provoke interest among the students.

Educationists have the point of view that there are not enough chances for our students to exhibit their talent to the world, says a press release issued here on Saturday.

The school has special consideration for the subjects which are thought to be boring and tedious.

One of such subjects is mathematics. There is an immense need of such programs for our brilliant youth. This unique competition provides a great chance for the students of class 5, 6, 7 and 8 to show their incredible potential and win handsome prizes.

This competition was open for the students of government schools as well as for private schools.

It was held in 30 cities of Pakistan simultaneously where the same exam papers were held at same time in these venues.

Students competed in this unique Olympiad which is aimed at imparting interest in mathematics education.

Chairman Pak Turk Foundation Alamgir Khan, Director Education Israr Shah and principal college Maryam Usman H-8 branch welcomed the students in a ceremony before start of examination.

In her welcome address, Maryam Usman said mathematics was the mother of sciences and first Muslim mathematician Al-Khwarizmi is the title of ISMO.

This competition tends to make participants very sharp minded and clever problem solvers.

Attractive cash prizes in addition to plaques and certificates will be given for the national position holders. First position holders from 5, 6, 7 and 8 class students will get a cash prize of Rs. 50,000 each. Second position holders from 5, 6, 7 and 8 class students will get a cash prize of Rs. 40,000 each. Third position holders from 5, 6, 7 and 8 class students will get a cash prize of Rs. 25,000 each. Moreover, top 15 position holders in each region will also get attractive prizes. The total cash money award will be approximately Rs. three million. It is worth mentioning here that top position holder of class 8 category will be awarded the title of "Al-Khwarizmi of Pakistan" which will remain with that student for the period of one year.Students, teachers, head of educational institutes, educationists and parents also visited the schools. Every year increasing number of the participating students showed the credibility and transparency of the event. The guests also appreciated the excellent arrangements for the students and for the visitors as well. result of the competition will be announced on 11 December 2018 through website and an attractive prize distribution ceremony will be held after that.
(@ChaudhryMAli88)

by Muhammad Aamir ABU DHABI, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News / WAM - 25th Nov, 2018) The UAE's emphasis on ensuring stability in the middle East and North Africa, MENA, region is "very important" and "really needed", according to the EU Ambassador to the UAE, who also praised the country's tolerance endeavours, saying diversity of people and cultures at Dubai Mall depicts the bigger picture of the UAE's tolerance model.

"UAE's keenness on stability is very important and really needed in the region, which has been under pressure in these last years, " Patrizio Fondi told the Emirates news Agency, WAM, in an exclusive interview at the 'Sheikh Zayed and Europe: a Journey' exhibition held at The Founder's Memorial in Abu Dhabi.

Fondi, the former Italian Ambassador to Amman, added, "The UAE is a country to whom Europe is very attached in that we share a lot of values."

He went on to say that the UAE is the only Arab country in the region granted the Schengen visa waiver. "The Emirati people could go without any problem to Europe without visa," Fondi enthused.

He hailed the UAE's tolerance and coexistence model in promoting peace and stability in the region, giving an example of the diverse population seen at Dubai Mall as a depiction of the tolerance observed in the country as a whole.

"At Dubai Mall, you go through this great experience of seeing people from all over the world with their (different) clothes, habits, and languages. You see them all together without any problem, respecting each other," he said. "I think this is a good model (of tolerance) for all over the world."

The 'Sheikh Zayed and Europe: a Journey' exhibition is being held under the patronage of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, and is organised by the Delegation of the European Union to the United Arab Emirates from 25th November until 31st December 2018.

The exhibition showcases rare photographs and footage of Sheikh Zayed's trips to Europe, and some of his European-made items, and other artefacts related to the cultural and historical exchange between the UAE and Europe, some of which were never displayed before.

"This exhibition is very important to us because of the celebrations of the friendship between the UAE and EU," the Ambassador said, adding that Sheikh Zayed was a key to the consolidation of this friendship. "And now we are continuing this friendship with the current leadership of the UAE," he went on to say.

"I think it is very important for us to underline the great work that Sheikh Zayed did in his life, especially about humanity, tolerance and having respect for all human beings," Fondi, who was appointed Ambassador of the EU to the UAE in 2016, said.

"I think this exhibition is just giving the human point of view of Sheikh Zayed and his political endeavours," adding that the exhibition is "something we care about a lot, and as an Ambassador of the European Union I feel very privileged to celebrate this great man in the Year of Zayed."

Fondi also spoke about the possibility of holding the exhibition in Europe, saying, "I think it would be a great endeavour," adding that the EU would be "ready" to cooperate with the UAE authorities if they were interested.

"We would be really happy if people in Europe could have a look to these objects, audios, videos and photos, because this (collection of) memorabilia is a really exceptional experience that we've been researching for a year," he said.

The EU Ambassador concluded, "This exhibition is being held at The Founder's Memorial and we are the first exhibitor; this is an exceptional privilege that we appreciate UAE authorities for giving it to us. It will be an event to be remembered throughout the years."
(@FahadShabbir)

DUBAI, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News / WAM - 25th Nov, 2018) Dubai Investments announced that it has expanded its healthcare portfolio with a 20 percent stake in an equity partnership in the AED465 million Clemenceau Medical Centre, a new development which will offer specialty care across multiple disciplines in Dubai Healthcare City Phase 2.

The equity partnership with Khansaheb Investments (55%) and CMC SAL (25%) is the latest addition to the Dubai Investments healthcare portfolio, which also includes an equity partnership for a multi-disciplinary hospital and day care clinics in Dubai, operated under the world renowned British teaching hospital, Kings College Hospital London. Construction at the Clemenceau Medical Centre is now 68 percent complete, and the 110-bed specialty care facility is expected to open in June 2019.

"Healthcare is one of the core development sectors of the nation, and there are concerted initiatives to strengthen it and bring world-class medical facilities to the region. Through our equity participation in the new Clemenceau Medical Centre in Dubai, we are underpinning our focus on strategic investments in the sector that will contribute to the well-being of the people and improve upon the reputation of the Emirate as a hub for world-class medical care.

"The investment is part of a diversification strategy into identified sectors which achieve key business objectives for Dubai Investments, align with the long term plans of the UAE government and play an important role in supporting the momentum of the Dubai economy.

We will work closely with CMC management to ensure we deliver a cutting-edge facility that serves the community," said Khalid bin Kalban, Managing Director and CEO of Dubai Investments.

CMC Dubai Healthcare City will offer six operating theatres, 44 consultation clinics, a state of the art cardiac centre, an advanced and robotic surgery suite, along with wide-ranging inpatient and outpatient services, offering the latest technologies and medical procedures.

Dubai Healthcare City is managed by Clemenceau Medicine International and part of the Clemenceau Medicine Network, which includes the Clemenceau Medical Centre in Beirut and Clemenceau medical centre in Riyadh. Clemenceau Medical Centre Beirut has been selected by John Hopkins Medicine International as one of its affiliate medical institutions.

It will represent a landmark in the health sector, not only for its superior medical care services, but for also promoting medical tourism one of the citys growing fields via a dedicated department and multilingual patient coordinators to handle the needs of medical tourists.
(@ChaudhryMAli88)

ABU DHABI, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News / WAM - 25th Nov, 2018) H.H. Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Presidential Affairs, received on Saturday at the Presidential Palace First Deputy Prime Minister of Kazakhstan Askar Mamin, who is currently visiting the UAE.

During the meeting, they discussed cooperation between the two countries and ways to enhance bilateral relations in all fields. They also tackled a number of issues of mutual interest and the latest regional and international developments.

Rashid Saeed Al Ameri, Under-Secretary for Government Coordination Sector at the Ministry of Presidential Affairs, attended the meeting.
DUBAI, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News / WAM - 25th Nov, 2018) Dubais Roads and Transport Authority, RTA, has won two middle East Customers Experience Excellence Awards during the American Congress of Customer Experience Week Middle East, hosted by IQPC. The event attracted a large participation by public and private entities representing business sectors in various countries. RTA was the winner in the categories of Customer Experience Change Management Leader, and the Best Use of Technology for Customer Engagement.

Mattar Al Tayer, Director-General and Chairman of the board of Executive Directors of RTA, expressed his pleasure with winning these two awards, upon accepting them from Yousef Al Rida, CEO of Corporate Administrative Support Services Sector. Attendees at the event included Ahmed Mahboub, Executive Director of Customers Happiness, and employees of RTA.

"These two awards echo RTAs endeavours to push customers happiness and satisfaction ratings to the highest levels and embrace it as one of RTAs strategic goals.

Nevertheless, we needed to redouble our efforts to maintain this superb performance level," commented Al Tayer.

Mahboub also expressed his satisfaction at winning the two coveted awards. "These awards are the culmination of RTAs relentless efforts to enhance the use of cutting-edge technologies in offering customer service. We are also committed to developing best-in-class change methods to enable clients to see the most benefits from their experiences as customers. After all, this epitomises our foremost strategic goal, which is People Happiness," he noted.

"RTA is always keen to empower clients by offering them user-friendly channels, including smart apps, among others. These efforts are part of our efforts to deliver the Smart City concept rolled out by Dubai Government, ensure people happiness and raise their satisfaction levels," added Mahboub.
The collective funeral prayers of 23 victims killed in Kalaya Bazar, Lower Orakzai blast were offered at Kalaya Headquarters here on Saturday amid tears and sobs.

HUNGU, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 24th Nov, 2018 ) :The collective funeral prayers of 23 victims killed in Kalaya Bazar, Lower Orakzai blast were offered at Kalaya Headquarters here on Saturday amid tears and sobs.

The funeral prayers were attended by civil and military officials, tribal elders, relatives of victims and large number of people.

The bodies of victims were later handed over to relatives for burial in their native areas. Stringent security measures were being witnessed during the funeral prayers.

Funeral prayers of ten victims were offered on the day of blast while the last rituals of remaining 23 were performed today.

It merits to mention that a total of 33 persons were killed in the blast while 56 sustained injuries in the incident among which 42 havebeen discharged from hospitals after giving necessary treatment.
(@ChaudhryMAli88)

QUETTA, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 25th Nov, 2018 ) :Federal Minister for Religious Affairs Dr. Pir Noor-Ul-Haq Qadri Sunday said that government was utilizing all resources to provide best facilities to Hajjis (pilgrims) so that they could perform this religious obligations peacefully.

He expressed these views while addressing a Hajj conference 2019 and training of pilgrims in this regard, organized by the Hajj Organization Association Pakistan.

The Minister said that government and non-government organizations were taking steps to organize training camps for Hujaj.

Hajj was a central pillar of the religion, he added.

He said that efforts were underway to arrange direct flights to Saudi Arabia from Quetta for Hujaj, adding concerned authorities were trying to resolve all technical issues in that regard.

Hajj Organization Association Pakistan's Chairman, Waheed Iqbal and director Hajj Saeed Malik, joint secretary religious affairs Zainab Bangish were also present on the occasion .
(@rukhshanmir)

MIRPUR (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 25th Nov, 2018 ) , Nov 25 (APP):Former Prime Minister of Norway, Kjell Magne Bondevik on Sunday visited Muzaffarabad and discussed the latest situation of Occupied Jammu and Kashmir with Azad Jammu and Kashmir President, Sardar Masood Khan.

Mr. Bondevik, who visited Azad Kashmir on the invitation of President Masood had just returned from the visit of Indian Occupied Kashmir, where he met top Hurriyat leaders Syed Ali Shah Gillani and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq at Geelani's residence in Srinagar.

Mr. Bondevik briefed the AJK president about his visit to IOK and meeting with the Joint Resistance Leadership (JRL) of Indian Held Kashmir.

During his meeting with Norway's leader, President Masood Khan said that the grim situation in Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK) requires diplomatic and political initiative by international community to end the suffering of the Kashmiri people.

"Diplomacy can help us bridge divides and come to understanding on a just and lasting resolution on the Kashmir dispute," AJK President said and added that UN Security Council Resolution on the Kashmir Dispute adopted under chapter 6 of the UN Charter outline the modalities for the pacific settlement of the dispute.

The president said unsettled Kashmir dispute is a danger to regional and international peace and security and, therefore, resort to negotiation, mediation, and observation was important to break the current deadlock.

"The unresolved dispute of Jammu & Kashmir Poses serious threat to peace and security and therefore, UN Security Council cannot leave Kashmir in the lurch. It must step forward to reactivate mechanism for the implementation of the UN Security Council Resolution that calls for plebiscite in Kashmir," he emphasized.

Kashmir, he said was not just a legal dispute about territory; it is about the political destiny and future of the people of the Jammu & Kashmir.

The President Masood Khan went on to say that Pakistan and Azad Kashmir welcomed former Norwegian Prime Minister's keen interest in the resolution of the dispute of Jammu & Kashmir and assured full support to his initiative.

"We welcome initiatives made in good faith," he said. Norway had a long history of constructed and impartial diplomacy and we do hope that the country will play a role in peaceful settlement of Kashmir dispute too, President Khan said and praised Mr. Bondevik for this role as peace maker.

President Masood said Kashmiris strongly believe that there was no military solution of Kashmir and India will have to sit across the table with Pakistan and genuine representatives of Kashmiri people to work out modalities for peaceful settlement of the dispute.

Speaking on the occasion, Mr. Bondevik while referring the report of United Nations' Human Rights Commission expressed his grave concerned over growing incidents of human rights violations in Indian Held Kashmir.

He said peaceful settlement of Kashmir issue through dialogues and other means is imperative for lasting peace and stability in the region.

He expressed his wish that all the parties to the Kashmir dispute including representatives of Kashmiri people sit together to find an amicable solution to the 7 decades old conflict of Jammu and Kashmir.

Mr. Bondevik also held meeting with the representatives of All Parties Hurriyat Conference AJK Chpater and discussed matters relating to Kashmir dispute and visited Line of Control (LoC).
(@ChaudhryMAli88)

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 25th Nov, 2018 ) :One person was killed while 35 others were injured as a passenger bus collided with dumper in Chiniot in wee hours on Sunday morning.

According to police, the passengers carrying bus was on its way to Islamabad from Sadiqabad when it collided with dumper near Tahirabad in Chiniot, reported a private news channel.

The sources said over-speeding was the main reason of the incident.

Rescue teams reached the spot and shifted the bodies and injured to nearby hospital.
(@FahadShabbir)

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 25th Nov, 2018 ) :Tajikistan is willing to resume direct flight operation with Pakistan to exploit tourism potential existing between the two countries, Tajikistan's ambassador Sherali Jononov said on Sunday.

"Resumption of flight of less than an hour duration can help the two geographically close countries Pakistan and Tajikistan to strengthen their people-to-people relations," Ambassador Jononov told APP here at an event held at the Foreign Affairs Ministry.

Ambassador Jononov said Tajik Air had approached Pakistan's Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) for resumption of flight operation, to which a response was awaited.

He mentioned that earlier Tajikistan had launched direct flights of Somon Air between Dushanbeand Lahore in 2016 twice a week however, regretted that the operation was suspended later on.

The Ambassador said besides promotion of tourism, the direct air link between Pakistan and Tajikistan would also help enhance the bilateral economic relations.
Maputo, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 25th Nov, 2018 ) :Twelve people have been killed in a suspected Islamist attack in northern Mozambique, with thousands of villagers fleeing the area into neighbouring Tanzania, police sources said Sunday.

Early Friday, "there was an attack in Nangade district, where there are no security patrols. The attackers killed 12 people, mostly women and children," a police source in Cabo Delgado province, who asked not to be named, told AFP.

The attack took place in the village of Chicuaia Velha, just a few kilometres (miles) from Tanzania, forcing several thousand people to cross the border to seek safety, police said.

A local journalist said the villagers were killed by machete or died when their houses were set on fire by the attackers.

It was the third such incident in the last month in Cabo Delgado, leaving 20 dead in all.

The authorities have responded with a crackdown, rounding up some 200 suspects.

Over the past year, hardline Islamists have been active in the region, stoking unrest just as the government in Maputo is pushing ahead with oil and gas development in the province.
(@ChaudhryMAli88)

BRUSSELS (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 25th November, 2018) The UK intention to withdraw from the European Union has brought into focus the need of a "profound" reform of the bloc, French President Emmanuel Macron told reporters on Sunday.

Macron said ahead of the EU leaders' summit that its participants had to discuss the future relations between the United Kingdom and the European Union, stressing that London would continue playing an "important role" even after Brexit, and that its role could also evolve.

"This summit is an important stage, and we should all draw conclusions from it. This proves that the European Union is fragile to some extent, and that there is always obviously a room for improvement.

It finally shows that Europe need reforms, this is obvious, and I support it, we continue working on it. I believe this is what the upcoming debates ahead of the European elections [to the European Parliament, scheduled for May 2019] should focus on," Macron said.

He specified that "profound reforms" should be introduced to the European Union for the benefit of its citizens.

Macron also voiced his support to the Brexit withdrawal agreement, qualifying it as a "good" one.

At the summit, which is currently underway in Brussels, the EU leaders are expected to endorse the Brexit withdrawal agreement and approve the draft political declaration outlining the future EU-UK relations.
MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 25th November, 2018) Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his Portuguese counterpart Augusto Santos Silva have agreed to promote trade, economic, and investment cooperation between the two countries, including in the high technologies area, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Sunday.

During his official visit to Portugal on Saturday, Lavrov held a meeting with Silva, while he was also received by Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa.

"The parties advocated for the further deepening of political dialogue ... It was also agreed to boost trade, economic and investment cooperation, including in the high-tech area, take measures to upgrade the treaty framework between the two countries, expand inter-regional ties and grow the number of contacts and projects in the cultural and humanitarian area," the statement read.

According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, Lavrov and Silva have discussed not only the current state of the bilateral relations, but also the two countries' cooperation on the international scene.

"When discussing international agenda issues, special attention was given to cooperation on multilateral platforms, primarily at the UN and OSCE [Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe], enhancing European security, current relations between Russia and the EU and NATO," the statement read on.

The sides have also discussed the Ukrainian, Syrian, and Libyan conflicts, the ministry added.

After his talks with Lavrov on Saturday, Silva called Russia an important partner of Portugal, adding that the two states shared common interests in the international agenda.
Dubai, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 25th Nov, 2018 ) :Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was due to visit Bahrain on Sunday on the second leg of a regional tour, his first since critic Jamal Khashoggi's murder.

Prince Mohammed, who began his tour Thursday with a visit to Abu Dhabi, will hold talks with Bahrain's King Hamad, the state-run Bahrain news Agency said on Saturday.

Quoting a royal court statement from Manama it said that the Saudi crown prince and King Hamad will discuss the "deep-rooted fraternal and historic relations binding the two brotherly countries and peoples, in addition to (the) latest regional, Arab and international developments".

Saudi Arabia has been facing intense global criticism over the killing of insider-turned-critic Khashoggi in its Istanbul consulate on October 2.

The murder of the journalist who wrote for The Washington Post has tipped the kingdom into one of its worst crises.

He was killed and reportedly dismembered in what Saudi Arabia said was a "rogue" operation, but CIA analysis leaked to the US media pointed the finger at Prince Mohammed.

Saudi Arabia has warned criticism of the crown prince is a "red line".

On Wednesday Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said that calls for the crown prince to be held accountable for the grisly killing would not be tolerated.

Prince Mohammed began his regional tour at the request of his father, King Salman, according to the Saudi Press Agency which said he would visit "brotherly" Arab countries.

The tour started Thursday in the United Arab Emirates, a close ally that is part of a Saudi-led coalition battling Iran-aligned Huthi rebels in Yemen.

And the prince is also set to travel to the Tunisian capital on Tuesday, a presidential source in Tunis told AFP.

Prince Mohammed is expected to attend the G20 summit in Argentina next week.
PRAGUE (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 25th November, 2018) Slovakia will not sign the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, known as the UN migration deal, the country's prime minister, Peter Pellegrini, said on Sunday.

The UN migration deal is set to be formally adopted at the UN conference in Morocco on December 10-11. Several EU countries including Austria, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Hungary and Poland have already announced that they would not be part of the UN global pact on migration. The United States has also no plans to join the agreement.

"As the head of the government I reject the text of the migration deal and refuse to put it into effect in Slovakia," Pellegrini told Slovak reporters after the meeting of the European Council in Brussels, as quoted by the Pravda newspaper.

The prime minister said that participation of Slovak Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajcak in the UN conference in Morocco may be canceled as the country has no plans to join the deal.

On Saturday, the Slovak foreign minister said that he may resign if he is recommended to refrain from taking part in the UN conference. As head of the 72nd Session of the UN General Assembly in September 2017 - September 2018, Lajcak took part in the work on the migration deal.
(@rukhshanmir)

BRUSSELS (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 25th November, 2018) As two parliaments  the European Parliament and the UK Parliament  have to approve the agreement on UK-EU post-Brexit relations yet, it is too early to celebrate success, and UK Prime Minister Theresa May is likely to have a "sad" Christmas,Russian Permanent Representative to the European Union Vladimir Chizhov told Sputnik on Sunday.

Later on Sunday, the EU leaders will hold a special meeting in Brussels, during which they are expected to endorse the Brexit withdrawal agreement and to approve the draft political declaration outlining the future EU-UK relations.

"Many UK lawmakers  both members of the opposition and members of May's party  have already made it clear that while the prime minister says that this 'deal' is the best option that could have been achieved, they are not satisfied with it ... The voting will be held in December, and I'm afraid it's quite fair to assume that this year Theresa May will have a sad Christmas," Chizhov said.

Chizhov recalled that for over six months, the United Kingdom could not coordinate its negotiating position on the Irish border. He qualified the Irish border as "the most difficult withdrawal issue.

"

"And on November 14, Theresa May finally achieved the government's consent to the option that the European Union proposed  the one under which Northern Ireland will temporarily remain in the EU Customs Union and the EU Single Market," Chizhov added, recalling that the consent had been achieved at the cost of several resignations in May's Cabinet.

According to Chizhov, the EU leaders are likely to approve the withdrawal agreement at their Sunday meeting.

"However, everyone understands that it's too early to celebrate, as the document also needs approval of two parliaments  the European Parliament and the UK Parliament," Chizhov explained.

Last week, May defended a draft Brexit deal in the UK Parliament's House of Commons. The agreement faced criticism both from the opposition and from the ruling party, with several members of May's Cabinet having resigned over the disagreement with the deal. While some lawmakers called for a new Brexit referendum, May rejected the idea and called on the parliament to approve the agreement in order to avoid "more division" and "more uncertainty."
CUOG and the CUA are pleased to announce the first annual premiere meeting for Uro-oncology specialists entitled, Canadian Uro-Oncology Summit (CUOS). In consultation with GUMOC, GUROC and CNUP we have decided to all come together and establish a meeting where Canadian expertise can exchange ideas, new research findings and clinical expertise.This meeting will include poster, podia and plenary sessions. Separate breakout sessions for specialty-specific concerns also will be featured. All abstracts will be published in the Canadian Urological Association Journal (CUAJ).Dr. Neil Fleshner


The Smith Center for the Performing Arts, announced that over 1,000 Southern Nevada families attended its sensory-friendly performance of Broadway musical Disneys The Lion King on November 17.

Marking The Smith Centers very first sensory-friendly performance of a Broadway production, this performance was specially designed for audiences with sensory sensitivities and other intellectual and developmental disabilities. This included the reduction of jarring noises and lights in the performance, and providing designated areas in the lobby for audience members to take breaks as needed.

It was amazing to see so many community members enjoying this show together in a judgment-free environment, knowing that their families special needs would be accommodated and accepted, said Myron Martin, president and CEO of The Smith Center. The Smith Center was created to make the performing arts accessible to everyone, and this performance provided just that.

The Smith Centers Education and Outreach Department led efforts for roughly a year with planning how to accommodate sensory-friendly audiences for The Lion King. This included consulting with numerous community organizations, and attending sensory-friendly productions across the country.

This performance also followed The Smith Centers success with presenting its first sensory-friendly performances of a live theater production in April of family show, Shh! We Have a Plan.

Organizations from across Southern Nevada provided support and expertise to help The Smith Center present this sensory-friendly performance of The Lion King, including: Grant A Gift Autism Foundation, Touro University Nevada Center for Autism and Developmental Disabilities, University of Nevada Las Vegas Ackerman Center for Autism, FEAT of Southern Nevada, Nevada PEP, Opportunity Village, Sport Social, Wellman Therapy Services, Autism Coalition of Nevada, and the Center for Child and Family Development. Bank of America also provided additional volunteer support.
Indian onlookers gather near a plunged bus after an accident in Kanagana Maradi village in Mandya District, some 130km from Bangalore on November 24, 2018. (Photo: AFP)

Police said they retrieved 28 bodies from the private passenger bus after it veered off the road and fell into the canal in the Mandya district of the southern state of Karnataka.

A police officer at the scene told AFP that many of the victims were children returning from school.

"Many children are among the 28 dead," a police official told AFP by phone.

Police could not provide the exact number of passengers on board or the cause of the crash but said the driver was apparently speeding.

Local media said around 35 people were in the vehicle.

Video footage on television showed locals using ropes to reach the submerged bus and pull out the bodies. Emergency workers and divers joined the volunteers to help.

According to NDTV news channel, the victims were unable to get out of the bus, which had fallen on its side, as the doors were trapped against the floor of the canal.

State chief minister H D Kumaraswamy promised help to the families of the victims.

Road crashes in India claim the lives of more than 150,000 people each year. Most accidents are blamed on poor roads, badly maintained vehicles and reckless driving.

About 50 people were killed in neighbouring Telangana state in September after a bus plunged into a valley in September.

On Thursday, six school pupils were killed after their van collided with a bus in central Madhya Pradesh state.
Brazil's President-elect Jair Bolsonaro at a military anniversary ceremony in Rio de Janeiro. (Photo: AFP/Fernando Souza)

The Venezuelan immigrants "are not merchandise or some product that can be returned," he said after attending a military anniversary ceremony.

His comments followed a suggestion by the governor-elect of the state of Roraima that a "return program" be developed to deal with the influx of migrants that have poured into the poor border state from Venezuela.

Bolsonaro said the Venezuelans "are fleeing a dictatorship supported by the PT, Lula and Dilma, and we can't leave them to their fate."

Bolsonaro, who takes office in January, was referring to former presidents Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff, who had close ties to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his predecessor, the late Hugo Chavez.

"Venezuela cannot be treated as a democratic country," he said.

The United Nations says at least 2.3 million people have fled Venezuela's economic and political crisis since 2015.

More than 100,000 have entered Brazil over the past three years, with three quarters of them requesting immigration papers from Roraima's state government.

The Brazilian government has allowed them to enter, but has ordered the military to step up security in the area.
Viettel Post general director Tran Trung Hung hits the gong at the Unlisted Public Company Market to mark the listing of his companys share.-VNS Photo

By close, the price of the stock had risen to VND95,000 ($4.15) with buyers waiting to buy another one million shares.

The company had sold nearly 41.4 million shares at VND68,000 (US$3).

Last year, the companys turnover rose by 37.6 per cent to over VND4 trillion ($174 million). Its profit before tax was VND213.5 billion ($9.3 million).

In the first half of this year, they were respectively VND1.9 trillion ($82.6 million) and VND147 billion ($6.4 million).

Viettel Posts success is thanks to combining electronic commerce with traditional postal services, Tran Trung Hung, general director of the company, said.

It has 1,300 post offices around the nation and 17,000 staff.

It also offers international and domestic express delivery services, logistics and other related services.

Since July this year it has been managing 1,000 telecom shops and 6,000 delivery spots.

It is the only company to offer express delivery services to Cambodia and Myanmar.

Viettel Post plans to dramatically change its operations, especially from express delivery to logistics, Hung said.

The strategic goals of Viettel Post are to become the first logistics company in Viet Nam with a turnover of $500 million and achieve 30 - 35 per cent market share by 2020.
A Saudi-led military coalition resumed air strikes against rebel supply lines around Hodeida on Sunday two days after a U.N. envoy visited the lifeline Yemeni port city, pro-government military officials said.

The airstrikes targeted convoys of rebel reinforcements at the northern entrance to Hodeida and south of the city, which is held by Iran-aligned Huthi insurgents, the officials told AFP.

The raids came alongside sporadic firefights on the eastern and southern edges of the port city, a resident told AFP.

The renewed violence came after U.N. envoy Martin Griffiths visited Hodeida on Friday to assess the humanitarian situation ahead of peace talks between Yemen's coalition-backed government and the rebels set to take place in Sweden in December.

Rebel spokesman Mohammed Abdessalam said on Twitter there had been "35 air raids over the last 12 hours on Hodeida, accompanied by artillery bombardments."

No reports of casualties were immediately available for the air raids and the fighting.

Under heavy international pressure, the Yemeni government and the coalition had until Sunday largely suspended a five-month offensive against the port city.

Fighting had intensified in early November as Yemeni forces backed by the coalition attempted to enter Hodeida, but calm returned after Griffiths arrived in Yemen on Wednesday.

After visiting Hodeida on Friday, Griffiths on Saturday met Mohammed Ali al-Huthi, head of the Huthi rebels' Higher Revolutionary Committee, in the insurgent-held capital Sanaa.

The U.N. envoy is due to hold talks with Yemen's internationally recognized government in the Saudi capital Riyadh on Monday, according to a U.N. source.

U.N. agencies say up to 14 million Yemenis are at risk of starvation if fighting closes the city's port, from which nearly all imports and humanitarian aid pass.

According to U.N. figures, nearly 10,000 people have been killed since the coalition joined the conflict in 2015 to reinforce the government, triggering what the U.N. calls the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

Rights groups fear the actual toll is far higher.
Australia is proposing new laws to make it easier to strip citizenship from convicted terrorists. Legislation is to be introduced before the end of the year, and follows a deadly Islamic State-inspired knife attack in Melbourne in early November.

Under current laws, the Australian government can strip citizenship only from people who have been sentenced to at least six years in prison. The measures have allowed authorities to revoke the Australian citizenship of nine individuals, but Prime Minister Scott Morrison is proposing further changes.

He wants to alter the threshold for stripping Australian citizenship, allowing it to be taken from anyone convicted of a terrorist crime.

No longer welcome

Morrison says people who commit such crimes on Australian soil will no longer be welcome.

People who commit acts of terrorism have rejected, absolutely, everything that this country stands for, Morrison said. They have rejected the beliefs of this country, the values of this country, they have disrespected every other citizen who shares that privilege of citizenship with them.

First of all, we will seek to introduce legislation before the end of 2018 to enable the minister to strip an Australian citizen of their citizenship for anyone who is convicted of a terrorism offense in Australia. There will be no condition on the length of sentence, he said.

Other citizenship

Under the proposed changes, the Australian government would only have to be reasonably satisfied that a convicted extremist had the citizenship of another country to fall back on.

Lawyers, though, have argued the changes could see individuals refused citizenship by another country languish indefinitely in immigration detention.

Ministers also want to ban people involved in terrorism overseas from returning to Australia for two years. It would be similar to legislation in the United Kingdom.

The Morrison government is also urging the Australian parliaments powerful intelligence and security committee to finish considering new legislation that would allow law enforcement agencies to access encrypted messages.

Earlier this week, three men were arrested on suspicion of plotting a mass killing terror attack in Australias second biggest city, Melbourne. The men, all Australian nationals of Turkish descent, were detained in counterterrorism raids Tuesday. They have been charged with terrorism offenses and are to appear back in court next year.

On Nov. 9, a Somali-born migrant killed one man and injured two others in central Melbourne. Authorities said the man had been inspired by the Islamic State militant group. The suspect died after being shot by police.

Intelligence agencies say 90 people have been charged in connection with 40 counterterrorism investigations across Australia since September 2014.

The nations official terror threat level remains at probable.
British Prime Minister Theresa May announced parliament will hold a vote on December 11 to approve or reject the Brexit deal she negotiated with the European Union.

May warned lawmakers on Monday that Britain will be thrust into the unknown if parliament rejects the deal, as lawmakers from both sides of the political spectrum continued to criticize the agreement.

"There is not a better deal available," May told the House of Commons.

"Our duty as a Parliament over these coming weeks is to examine this deal in detail, to debate it respectfully, to listen to our constituents and decide what is in our national interest,'' she said.

Both critics in May's own Conservative government and opposition parties have threatened to vote against the Brexit deal.

A spokesman for Britain's Labour Party said its leader, Jeremy Corbyn, would "relish a head-to-head debate with May about her botched Brexit deal and the future of our country."

May had suggested in an interview with The Daily Telegraph that she was keen to challenge Corbyn to a television debate about Brexit, as she launches her campaign to pass the deal through Parliament.



European Approval

It took May and 27 other European Union leaders just 40 minutes to sign the Brexit deal on Sunday in Brussels after two years of tortuous negotiations.

However, as they endorsed the 585-page agreement, and a 26-page accompanying political declaration that sets out the parameters of negotiating a possible free trade deal between Britain and the European Union, powerful political foes in London plotted strategies to undo it.

There is little evidence Britain's embattled prime minister will have sufficient support to win legislative endorsement of the deal in a House of Commons vote next month.

That was clearly on the minds of European Commission officials Sunday as EU leaders gave their backing to the terms of Britain's split from Brussels after 44 years of membership.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker warned that Britain cannot expect to get a better deal, if its parliament rejects the agreement. "Now it is time for everybody to take their responsibilities, everybody," he said.

"This is the deal, it's the best deal possible and the EU will not change its fundamental position when it comes to this issue, so I do think the British parliament, because this is a wise parliament, will ratify this deal," he added.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she was relieved the bloc "had made it to this point."She said, "I think we managed to make a diplomatic piece of art."

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte warned British lawmakers that no better deal was on offer from the European Union, urging them to back the agreements.

If I would live in the UK I would say yes to this, I would say that this is very much acceptable to the United Kingdom, Rutte said, because the deal limited the impact of Brexit while balancing the vote to leave. In a bid to help the prime minister, he said May had fought very hard and now there was an acceptable deal on the table.

You know I hate [Brexit], but it is a given, he told reporters. No one is a victor here today, nobody is winning, we are all losing.

Opposition in Britain

Maybe it is a "given" in Brussels, but in Britain that is another matter altogether.

Both Remainers and Leavers in the British Parliament are warning that May doesn't have the necessary support with the all the opposition parties lined up against the deal and as many as 100 lawmakers, Remainers and Leavers among them, from May's ruling Conservatives pledging to vote against it as well.

Iain Duncan Smith, a former Conservative leader, said he would continue to oppose the deal because it "cedes huge amounts of power" to the European Union.

In Scotland, first minister and leader of the Scottish Nationalist Party Nicola Sturgeon said, "This is a bad deal, driven by the PM's self-defeating red lines and continual pandering to the right of her own party.Parliament should reject it and back a better alternative."

She wants a second Britain-wide referendum, like a majority of Britons, according to recent opinion polls.

The agreement calls for Britain to stay in the bloc's customs union and largely in the EU single market, without the power to influence the rules, regulations and laws it will be obliged to obey for a 21-month-long transition period following formal withdrawal on March 29. The deal would allow an extension of "up to one or two years" should the negotiations over "the future relationship" not be completed by the end of 2020.

May is campaigning to sell the agreement to the British public, hoping she can build enough support in the wider country to pressure the House of Commons to endorse the deal.European Parliament approval is almost certain.

In an open letter to the British public published Sunday, May promised to campaign "with my heart and soul to win that vote and to deliver this Brexit deal. "If she is unable to do so, Britain would be plunged into what May herself has called, "deep and grave uncertainty."

Her aides say she is banking on the "fear factor," daring the House of Commons to vote down a deal which if rejected would leave Britain most likely crashing out of the bloc, its largest trading partner, without any agreements, which would be costly economically and would almost certainly push the country into recession.

Ominously, the Northern Ireland party, the Democratic Unionist Party, whose 10 lawmakers May's minority government relies on to remain in power, says it will vote against the deal.And DUP leader Arlene Foster warned Sunday she is ready to collapse the government to block a deal that would see Northern Ireland treated differently than the rest of Britain.

And senior Labour lawmaker Tony Lloyd said there was a "coalition of the willing" in the Parliament ready to reject May's deal and support a softer Brexit. So, if the deal is voted down, what then? A vote against could trigger a general election, a second Brexit referendum or even more negotiations, despite Brussels' threat there can be no other deal.
Cameroon medical doctors say they are overwhelmed with patients as many of their colleagues seek better pay and working conditions elsewhere.

A two day old baby boy cries as his mother watches helplessly outside Sante Pour Tous, a private hospital in Cameroon's economic capital, Douala. Francine Tamenang said she has not slept since a traditional birth attendant helped her deliver the baby.

She said she wants to see the doctor because she has not got money to pay for an injection the nurse says will save the life of the baby she delivered at home. She said the doctor has not even cared to examine the baby, but is instead promising to negotiate with the pharmacist to see if the price of the drug could be reduced.

Cameroon has a population of nearly 25 million people, who have been joined by 350,000 refugees fleeing the carnage in the neighboring Central African Republic and about 100,000 Nigerians escaping Boko Haram terrorism. The country also has 300,000 people internally displaced by Boko Haram conflicts in the north and the separatist crisis in its English speaking regions.

Central African refugee Emeline Boganda said she lost her best friend at a Cameroon government health center in Betare Oya because of negligence by the hospital staff.

She said she brought her friend Mariam to the health center and no one attended to her until she died. She said she has a strong feeling that if the nurses and doctors paid just a little attention, Mariam's life could have been saved. She said she does not know what hospitals are for if not to save lives.

The vice chairman of Cameroon's National Order of Doctors, Tetani Ekwe, said the health and humanitarian needs of the displaced and refugees increase by the day, yet the doctor-patient ratio stands at one doctor per 50,000 inhabitants in rural areas instead of the one doctor per 10,000 inhabitants recommended by the World Health Organization. He said in towns like Douala and Yaounde, the doctor-patient ratio does meet the WHO standard.

He said while only 15 to 20 percent of Cameroonians go to conventional health centers, the acute shortage of medical doctors, trained nurses and laboratory technicians means not all of them can be attended to. He said with the lack of universal health coverage plans, sick people, who are quite often the very poor, cannot pay their hospital bills and resort to Cameroon traditional medicine, some of which is not scientifically proven to be effective.

More than 500 medical doctors and 5,000 nurses are trained in Cameroon every year. But in 1996, when the economy worsened, the pay of doctors was reduced by 60 percent, to about $300 per month, and many of them went abroad. Some still leave now, complaining of low pay.

In August, Cameroon reported that medical staff were fleeing hospitals in the troubled English-speaking regions after attacks left several nurses dead and many others wounded.
In the recently built resettlement village of Lay Kay Kaw in eastern Myanmar, returning Karen refugees struggle to adjust after more than six decades of conflict and displacement. Steve Sandford spoke with Karen returnees about the challenges that lie ahead for a sustainable  and peaceful  future.
In a bittersweet landmark, European Union leaders gathered Sunday and sealed an agreement on Britains departure next year, the first time a member country will have left the 28-nation bloc.

European Council President Donald Tusk says the European Union has approved a Brexit deal with Britain.

Tusk tweeted that 27 EU leaders meeting in Brussels endorsed the Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration on the future EU-UK relations.

At a summit in Brussels, the leaders were preparing to endorse a withdrawal agreement that would settle Britains divorce bill, protect the rights of U.K. and EU citizens hit by Brexit and keep the Irish border open. They will also rubber-stamp a 26-page document laying out their aims for future relations after Britain leaves at midnight Brussels time March 29.

British Prime Minister Theresa May hailed the deal as the start of a new chapter for Britain, but European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said the U.K.'s departure was a tragedy.

Its a sad day, Juncker said as he arrived.

He told reporters that deal was the best possible, but the summit is neither a time of jubilation nor of celebration. Its a sad moment, and its a tragedy.

May now faces the tough task of selling the deal to a skeptical U.K. Parliament.

EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier said now that the first phase was done, Britain and the EU needed to work for an ambitious and unprecedented partnership.

Now is the time for everybody to take their responsibility  everybody, he said.

Nobody is winning

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said the deal, the product of a year and a half of often grueling negotiations between Britain and the EU, was regrettable, but acceptable.

I believe that nobody is winning. We are all losing because of the U.K. leaving, Rutte said. But given that context, this is a balanced outcome with no political winners.

The last big obstacle to a deal was overcome Saturday, when Spain lifted its objections over the disputed British territory of Gibraltar.

EU, British parliaments

The deal must still be ratified by the European Parliament, something parliament President Antonio Tajani said was likely in January.

More dauntingly for May, it also needs approval from Britains Parliament.

May is under intense pressure from pro-Brexit and pro-EU British lawmakers, with large numbers on both sides of the debate opposing the divorce deal and threatening to vote it down when it comes to the House of Commons next month. Brexiteers think it will leave the U.K. tied too closely to EU rules, while pro-Europeans say it will erect new barriers between Britain and the bloc, its neighbor and biggest trading partner.

May insists her deal delivers on the things that matter most to pro-Brexit voters  control of budgets, immigration policy and laws  while retaining close ties to the U.K.s European neighbors.

She plans to spend the next couple of weeks selling it to politicians and the British public before Parliaments vote in December.

Working with heart and soul

In a letter to the nation released Sunday, May said she would be campaigning with my heart and soul to win that vote and to deliver this Brexit deal, for the good of our United Kingdom and all of our people.

It will be a deal that is in our national interest, one that works for our whole country and all of our people, whether you voted Leave or Remain, she said.

She said Britains departure from the EU must mark the point when we put aside the labels of Leave and Remain for good and we come together again as one people.

To do that we need to get on with Brexit now by getting behind this deal.
A one-time foreign affairs adviser to then-Presidential candidate Donald Trump has been ordered to start serving a 14-day jail term on Monday for lying to investigators about his role in Russia's interference in the 2016 U.S. election.

George Papadopoulos had sought to delay his brief sentence while awaiting an appellate court ruling in a separate case challenging the constitutionality of the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller, whose ongoing investigation of Trump campaign aides' links to Russia ensnared Papadopoulos.

U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss on Sunday rejected the bid by Papadopoulos to remain free and delay his jail term, noting that when he pleaded guilty to lying to investigators he had waived his right to appeal his plea agreement. Moss had also fined Papadopoulos $9,500 and ordered him to perform 200 hours of community service.

Moss also noted that two other judges had already upheld the constitutionality of Mueller's appointment and said there was only a "remote" chance that the new challenge would end with a "contrary conclusion."

The 31-year-old Papadopoulos is a relatively minor figure in the 18-month Mueller investigation. He pled guilty to lying to investigators in January 2017 about the extent of his contacts with people who had connections with Russia and the timing of the contacts.

In discussing the names of his advisers during the 2016 campaign, Trump once described Papadopoulos as "an excellent guy." In March 2016, Trump posted a picture on Instagram of his foreign affairs advisory council, with Papadopoulos sitting at the then-candidate's table for the meeting.

But when news of Papadopoulos's guilty plea surfaced, Trump said on Twitter, "Few people knew the young, low-level volunteer named George, who has already proven to be a liar."

Another Trump campaign aide disparaged Papadopoulos as a volunteer "coffee boy."

But that assessment drew a rebuke from Papadopoulos's then fiancee and now wife who said he was constantly in touch with high-level officials in the campaign.

Moreover, she said, he did not know how to make coffee.

Trump, who often has dismissed Mueller's probe as a "witch hunt," last week submitted written answers to the prosecutor's questions about the 2016 campaign, but it is not clear whether Mueller will seek to further question the president.

Besides Papadopoulos, several Trump aides have been convicted or pleaded guilty to various offenses linked to the campaign or lobbying work before joining Trump's 2016 campaign.
French police clashed with demonstrators across the country for an eighth straight day Saturday as thousands protested rising fuel costs.

Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said more than 100,000 protesters took to the streets nationwide, with 8,000 on the famed Champ-Elysees boulevard of Paris. There were 130 arrests across the country.

Paris police used tear gas and water cannons to disperse protesters who had built barricades and torn down traffic lights and street signs, evoking scenes reminiscent of the citys 1968 civil unrest.

Shame on those who attacked (police), French President Emmanuel Macron posted on Twitter. Shame on those who were violent against other citizens.  No place for this violence in the Republic.

The French news agency AFP reports that some protesters commandeered highway toll booths, either allowing free passage or creating go-slow vehicle processions. The tactic was meant to bring attention to the demonstrators core complaint of escalating taxes on car fuel, especially diesel.

The diesel fuel tax has gone up nearly 8 cents per liter, and Transport Minister Elisabeth Borne says it will continue to climb in the coming years. The gasoline tax is set to rise, too. Gasoline currently costs $1.85 a liter, slightly more than diesel.

Macron insists the fuel taxes are needed to reduce Frances dependence on fossil fuels and to fund renewable energy investments. Next week, the president is scheduled to reveal new plans to make the energy transition easier.
Countries around the world have their own versions of pasta. In Germany there is spaetzle, in Greece there is orzo, throughout Asia there are dishes with noodles, and in Latin America you can find countless variations of spaghetti and other pastas. Voice of America reporter Iacopo Luzi visited the famed company Pasta Mancini in Monte San Pietrangeli, Italy, to see how they make this global staple.
Six people were killed Saturday at the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic after an argument, authorities said.



Haitian police inspector Harry Deny told The Associated Press that the four customs officers and two civilians died in the town of Malpasse.



He said the incident began when one officer shot a person who tried to cross the border with merchandise without stopping. A group of people then retaliated against the officers and burned them to death as they took refuge at a police station.



No further details were available.



The killings came as Haiti faced a seventh day of protests that have shuttered schools and government offices.



Demonstrators are demanding that President Jovenel Moise resign for not investigating allegations of corruption in the previous government over Petrocaribe, a Venezuelan-subsidized energy program.



Moise said in a brief televised address earlier in the week that people had the right to protest but that he was not stepping down.



"The Haitian people have elected me as president in free and fair elections,'' he said.



Moise did not address the allegations of corruption but said he was keeping all victims in his thoughts, especially police officers who were killed. He also appealed for dialogue and said the government would take all necessary measures to ensure people's safety and restore peace to Haiti.



At least 11 people have died during protests that have spiraled out of control. Police on Friday fired tear gas at a crowd as people threw rocks, tried to loot stores and broke car windows in Port-au-Prince.



Separately, another six people were killed Wednesday when a government car lost control.
For the first time in a generation, Tashkent has an outward-looking foreign policy.

During its first 25 years of independence, Uzbekistan was a prickly neighbor, mired in disputes with its Central Asian neighbors and swinging from support to opposition and back again in its relations with the major powers. But the launch of economic reforms by a new leadership in 2017 shuffled the deck.

Because Tashkent now needs stable external relations to implement its development strategy, it has opened up for business and begun seeking cooperation. But it has been made clear to companies, NGOs and others interested in working with Uzbekistan that their activities must advance the country's reform agenda.

In the last of a three-part series, VOA's Navbahor Imamova examines what Uzbekistan under President Shavkat Mirziyoyev wants from the world and how the international community has responded.

A new chapter

When he became president in 2016 after the death of Islam Karimov, an autocrat who had ruled for 27 years, Mirziyoyev declared that Uzbekistan sought a place in the international community linked to universal principles, norms and laws. Tashkent, he said, would be a reliable partner and good neighbor.

The new president pledged to improve the country's brutal, corrupt and closed image. He declared that a new Uzbekistan was stepping out: "We are committed to forming a new image of the country  to build a democratic state and a just society.  We have looked at ourselves from the outside, not only to objectively assess our potential and opportunities but to pay close attention to our failures and mistakes."

With this new candor, Uzbekistan's second leader quickly won respect, including from the long-skeptical United States. America's top diplomat for South and Central Asia, Alice Wells, told VOA the U.S. observed "with great excitement and approval this ambitious reform program. And we want to be of assistance."

Recently departed U.S. Ambassador Pamela Spratlen similarly argued that Mirziyoyev should be seen as a dynamic reformer. These positive assessments earned Mirziyoyev an Oval Office visit in May 2018.

"I think the two [presidents] connected," says Lisa Curtis, the regional adviser on Trump's National Security Council. She noted improvement on several issues that had been problematic in U.S.-Uzbek relations, including a lack of religious freedom and transparency.

"We have to see a level playing field created for U.S. businesses," she adds, and says Washington will closely watch Uzbekistan's progress on human rights and the rule of law in the hope that positive steps open new opportunities for military-to-military cooperation.

World powers approve

But even as Tashkent has acted on its yearning for investment from American companies, Mirziyoyev has hedged his bets by pursuing agreements seemingly everywhere. He has visited and hosted other major powers and regional players, signing billions in deals with China, Russia, France, India, Egypt and most important, as he puts it, with Uzbekistan's neighbors, who had unusually turbulent relations with Tashkent in Karimov's time.

Washington, the U.N., and others seem pleased with the trajectory, if not every aspect of the results thus far.

"They're opening up," says Sam Brownback, U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom. "They want investment coming in."

Brownback's advice to Uzbek leaders: "If you want more security and economic growth, then religious freedom is a piece of it."

Uzbekistan's Foreign Minister Abdulaziz Komilov is open to the admonition, arguing that Tashkent's strategy for balanced relations with foreign partners means pursuing multidimensional ties in security, business, investment and trade. But, he says, a reforming Uzbekistan "is comfortable discussing any issue with the international community."

Relations with the United Nations have also progressed. Resident Coordinator Helena Fraser says the world body supports Mirziyoyev's reforms.

"Many of the openings we're seizing build on support, advice and input from the U.N. over decades," she says. And Fraser sees and feels new pressure for change in Tashkent.

"The balance between long-term strategic objectives and quick wins is always challenging, particularly in Uzbekistan, which is really trying to transform on all fronts at once," she said.

Those efforts are welcomed by the U.N.'s International Labor Organization, which forged a partnership with the government in Uzbekistan's cotton fields, where forced labor has long been the norm.

"The government has been open, willing to work with everybody because at the end of the day we share the same goal: to eradicate forced and child labor," says Jonas Astrup, the ILO's leading expert in Tashkent.

Vital link to Europe

Eduards Stiprais, the European Union ambassador to Uzbekistan, says these partnerships are working, in part because outsiders are letting Uzbekistan lead, rather than trying to impose change from outside. He says Uzbekistan has a long way to go, but this is possible because there is a demand-side pull for advice and expertise that didn't exist even two years ago.

"We don't expect anything more than Uzbekistan itself has subscribed to," Stiprais says. "We're not going to come and do something instead of the Uzbek people [doing so]. But we can assist."

Partners see Uzbekistan as a vital link between Europe and Asia, and this has given Tashkent newfound confidence to market itself to outside powers as a pivot for their infrastructure and trade-related ambitions and initiatives.

Ilhom Nematov, Tashkent's point person in negotiations with neighbors, says Uzbekistan knows what's expected of it.

"No one said better relations would come easily," he said. "But we've chosen this path, which we know is right, so we work for progress. We've learned lessons from the past and are getting better by trying."

Uzbekistan is also looking for help from another external source, its expatriate "sons and daughters" living around the world from Brooklyn to Beijing. They increasingly connect the country, strategically and practically, with the outside.

Farhod Inogambaev, an executive at New York's Oppenheimer investment bank, recently visited his native Uzbekistan after 15 years abroad. He sees new opportunities "to unlock hidden potential." But to succeed, he says, "Uzbekistan should stay on its current track of deepening change and opening."
For decades, Americans have migrated toward urban areas seeking opportunities, emptying out large swaths of countryside. In their wake, they have left shrinking communities that struggle to support multiple businesses, schools and hospitals.

This is a common theme in the Midwestern state of Iowa, whose population has grown by less than a million people in the past century. As family farms have consolidated into megafarms run by large corporations, rural residents have moved to cities like Des Moines, the state capital, or left the state altogether.

Shrinking rural America

The northwest region of Iowa has been hit especially hard, forcing those who remain to drive farther and farther for things like groceries, education and health care.

At its peak, the town of Mallard hosted several grocery stores and restaurants, four churches, a cinema and two schools, one of them private. Today, its population of about 265 supports little more than a gas station and a couple of bars. The 100-year-old Catholic Church closed last summer, and the public school will close next year, forcing students to ride on buses to a neighboring town.

Kayla Lanning, a former horse training assistant, takes it all in her stride.

Were used to it. Its not any big deal to us to have to travel a little ways, she said. In her case, a little ways can mean a two-hour drive.

When Lanning learned she would be giving birth to twins, she was told that she could either schedule a cesarean section at her nearest hospital, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) away, or travel to a better-equipped hospital 135 kilometers (85 miles) away. She and her husband, John, chose to make the long drive and avoid the C-section.

Luckily for the Lannings, the drive to the hospital was uneventful, aside from a police officer pulling them over for speeding. The babies were delivered in the hospital, but prematurely; that meant being transferred to yet another hospital, even farther away.

Lanning admits to being a little irritated by the distances involved, but accepts it as the part of the trade-off for staying in Mallard.

Fewer options

But not everyone is able to make it to a hospital with a proper obstetrics unit.

Its not uncommon for me to get a call from an ER (emergency room), where they say, We have a patient. She started bleeding, shes 28 weeks along, and she came in here to a hospital with no such unit, said Dr. Neil Mandsager, who specializes in high-risk pregnancies.

Many hospitals dont even have an ultrasound machine to check the status of a baby, said Mandsager, the medical director of obstetrics at Mercy Medical Center in Des Moines. As a result, he travels about 865 kilometers (540 miles) each month to pay weekly visits to patients in rural health care centers.

The problem isnt isolated to Iowa, which ranks 36th among the 50 states in terms of population density. According to a University of Minnesota study published earlier this year, 18 million reproductive-age women live in Americas rural counties, but over half of these counties have no hospital where a woman can give birth.

Bigger gaps

Mandsager said Iowa does a pretty good job of creating a system that works as best as it can for the pregnant woman, but theres still definitely some gaps, and these gaps are getting bigger as these small hospitals close.

Typically, obstetrics services in one to three maternity hospitals or obstetrics units close in Iowa each year, but this year, the number has spiked.

I cant remember a year when eight [obstetrics units] closed. Thats a pretty high number, he said.

Mandsager, along with Stephanie Trusty, a nurse clinician at the Iowa Department of Public Health, attributes the closings to concerns over quality of care, malpractice insurance, profitability and low patient volume. They say its also difficult to attract and retain physicians.

In rural Iowa, delivering babies is not scheduled. If theyre a single practitioner in a rural area, then theyre on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You know, thats hard, Trusty said.

In addition, there is the worry that so few deliveries can impact a physicians and nurses ability to keep up their skills. Trusty said she looked at the maternity records of the eight hospitals that closed their obstetrics units or shut down altogether this year and found that three of them averaged less than one birth per week.

New mothers surveyed

The Iowa Department of Public Health for years has used a survey given to new mothers as a way to assess concerns. The patient survey collects data on issues such as distance traveled and quality of care received. Trusty said the survey has had an extremely high response rate. Of the 40,000 yearly births in the state, the department receives about 20,000 survey responses.

Surprisingly, she said, those responses havent reinforced their fears.

We asked did they have trouble getting prenatal care, and very few were refused care, and most people said it was still easy to get access, Trusty said. On how many miles they drove? The data didnt change for years and years, so we took it off our survey.

That was five years ago. Because of the large number of maternity ward closings this year, Trusty said they will reintroduce the question about distance traveled in next years survey.

As for whether couples may be dissuaded from settling in smaller towns because of these longer commutes, Lanning said it didnt factor into her decision.

We are so grounded here. John grew up here, and everything we know and do is here. So yeah, that doesnt affect that, she said.
A week before Donald Yamamoto arrived in Mogadishu, three car bombs exploded in the heart of the city, just outside the Sahafi Hotel.

Dozens of nearby motorists and pedestrians were killed or maimed. A fourth bomb went off when first responders arrived, bringing the death toll to at least 52, with more than 100 casualties.

It was the latest in a string of attacks by the Islamist terror group al-Shabab, which for more than a decade has sought to dismantle the Somali federal government.

But Yamamoto, the United States new ambassador to Somalia, isnt deterred. By strengthening its institutions and economy, Somalia can achieve security and stability, Yamamoto told VOAs Somali service.

We see hope. I think, for the first time in a long time, were seeing opportunities that are expanding and growing, Yamamoto said.

Weve got to be seen

Yamamoto brings 20 years of experience, both in Somalia and the broader East Africa region, to his new post. He has held top diplomatic positions in Eritrea, Ethiopia and Djibouti.

In Somalia, his experiences include engagement with both the Islamic Courts Union and the Somali Transitional Government, competing factions that preceded the current federal government.

Yamamoto hopes to use his experiences to build on unprecedented rapprochements among East African neighbors to create new opportunities for Somalia.

Now, the goal is to establish a permanent diplomatic presence in the capital, Mogadishu, and find ways to support the Somali people in their efforts to build peace and prosperity.

What is the old American adage? Its 90 percent is to be seen? And so weve got to be seen. Weve got to be present. And I travel through most of Somalia, so I think Id like to do that as well, Yamamoto said.

He plans to be operating out of Mogadishu on a permanent basis, with a small team, in the next few weeks.

Multipart strategy

Yamamoto acknowledges the work ahead wont be easy. Despite an international presence, routine U.S. airstrikes, and elections in 2016 and 2017, security remains elusive.

Is it dangerous? Sure. Is it challenging? I think it is. But we need to do it because its important, he said.

Yamamoto has nearly four decades of experience in U.S. Foreign Service. He attended Columbia College, at Columbia University, in New York. His graduate degree in international affairs and language studies prepared him for his career in diplomacy where, at the State Department, he has received four Superior Honor awards for exceptional service.

In testimony to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations this summer, Yamamoto said he would, as ambassador, strengthen institutions and governance; shift security responsibilities from AMISOM, the African Unions peacekeeping mission in Somalia, to Somali forces; build economic opportunities, particularly for Somalias young labor force; and address humanitarian food and health crises.

Local, regional, international integration

Key to those efforts, Yamamoto said, is integration  within Somalia and beyond.

You cant have peace in East Africa without peace in Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya, Somalia, Tanzania. Theyre all interrelated, and I think they can all benefit from a vibrant economic program. And thats what were trying to do, not just for Somalia, but for the whole region, he said.

For Yamamoto, that means tapping into a broad set of resources in East Africa  Djiboutis port and sea cargo facilities, Eritreas strategic coastline and mining industry, and Ethiopias level-one airport in Addis Ababa, which permits direct cargo shipments to the U.S.

Yamamoto also sees a need for better communication within Somalia.

You have to have a really strong integration and coordination and cooperation between the federal government and the federal member states, he said.

The country is now experiencing growing pains, he added, and that highlights the importance of factions in the country understanding one anothers needs and demands.

Encouraging collaboration with a gamut of international players, from Gulf states to Russia and China, is also important, Yamamoto added.

Weve talked to the Chinese and the Russians very closely on a lot of areas. We see a lot of commonality. We also see some competition. We see some differences. So we have to resolve differences and emphasize commonality, but more important, we need to  focus [on] what is in the benefit of Somalia and the people of Africa, and hows it going to help them.

An African future

Yamamoto cautioned that ignoring Africa isnt an option.

In less than a century, he said, 40 percent of the worlds population and 30 percent of its labor force will be African. Those numbers mirror United Nations projections.

So Africa is going to be a major, major player. And you want a stable, vibrant, economically progressive continent. You do not need an unstable or a divided continent, Yamamoto said.

And that, he added, is cause for optimism.

The future really is, I think, potentially very bright, particularly in Somalia.

This story originated in the Somali service, with Sahra Abdi Ahmed conducting the interview with the ambassador and Salem Solomon writing the article.
Nigerias president has finally broken his silence about the deaths of dozens of soldiers killed by Islamist militants a week ago in the northeastern state of Borno.

President Muhammadu Buharis office issued a statement Saturday, saying that he had expressed deep shock over the killing of military personnel.

Immediate measures are being taken to ensure that the loopholes which led to the fatalities are blocked once and for all, according to the statement.

The president said he will meet with military and intelligence chiefs in the coming days to plan their next steps.

At least 40 soldiers were reported to have been killed Nov. 18 at a military base in the village of Metele.

Security sources, however, told Reuters that around 100 Nigerian soldiers were killed in the attack that they say was carried out by the Islamic State in West Africa.

The Nigerian Army did not acknowledge the attack until Friday and has not provided information about casualties.
Spain is drafting ambitious plans to switch its energy matrix to renewable sources and ban fossil fuel vehicles by 2040, according to a climate change law unveiled by socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez last week.

But some argue the initiative, which follows the lead of other European Union governments, may be too ambitious for a country whose car industry is ill-prepared for such a dramatic transformation.

Spain lags far behind other European nations in electric vehicle market share, with electric accounting for 0.22 percent of its market compared with about 2 percent in France, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands.

Ill-timed measure

The measure could also be politically ill-timed, coinciding with mass protests in neighboring France that present a significant challenge to the year-old government of President Emmanuel Macron.

The protests in France are drawing right-leaning populists following a 6 percent increase in fuel taxes meant to discourage the use of diesel and gasoline. Hundreds were wounded and at least two people have killed in the past week during disturbances that progressive governments across Europe are nervously watching as they put their own green policies into effect.

Environmental concerns

The fervor to address global warming concerns and protect the environment spread vigorously to Spain. Sanchez, a leftist who took office this year, affirmed his commitment to fight climate change when he addressed the United Nations General Assembly in September.

Spains secretary of state for the environment, Hugo Moran, said this month the administration plans to work with municipal governments to facilitate a transition towards emission-free mobility.

The country is facing a great challenge, Moran said. If we are not able to arrive on time we will miss the train.

Auto industry concerns

But opponents, including Spanish automakers and labor unions, warn that forcing the elimination of fossil fuels could cause major social upheaval, large-scale unemployment and serious disruptions to the countrys rapidly growing automotive industry. Over the past decade Spain has grown into Europes second largest auto producer after Germany, and the sector accounts for nearly 10 percent of the countrys GDP.

A spokesman for Spains most powerful labor federation, the Workers Commissions, accused the government of mounting what its leaders say is an inquisition against fossil fuel vehicles.

All EU members have subscribed to the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change by which almost every nation in the world committed to reduce carbon emissions.

The U.S pulled out of the agreement under President Donald Trump, who decried what he said is its potentially negative impact on the American economy.

Major investment

European Union governments responded by working to enshrine the agreement in their laws, but the conversion is proving to be a challenge among member states that are less prepared in terms of economy and infrastructure.

Britain, France and Germany have each budgeted more than $1.1 billion to subsidize programs such as buybacks of fossil fuel vehicles, and invested in new infrastructure, including electric charging stations, and converting auto assembly plants.

The Spanish government has so far earmarked less than $86 million.

Under Sanchez, Spain this year established a new Ministry for Ecological Transition. Officials told reporters they are working to define a new system of tax incentives. The government, the officials said, eventually plans to devote 20 percent of the national budget to battle climate change.

Mario Armero, executive vice president of ANFAC, Spains largest association of car manufacturers, said in a television interview the governments draft proposal this month came as a surprise. Spain, he said, is not prepared to provide the level of aid the auto industry would require to move away from fossil fuels.

Of the 31.6 million vehicles registered in Spain, fewer than 4,000 are electric, according to government statistics. Of the 2.8 million vehicles produced in the country last year, barely 0.33 percent had electric engines despite government efforts under way to promote their production.

Jobs on the line

According to ANFAC, 9 percent of Spains active labor force depends directly or indirectly on the auto industry, and switching to electrical cars could result in major layoffs, as their manufacture is less labor intensive and requires fewer parts.

Even medium-term goals of expanding the quota of electrical vehicles to 25 percent of the total produced could involve an 11 percent reduction in auto jobs, association officials say.

Unlike Germany or France, Spains car industry largely depends on foreign investors, including the U.S.-based Ford Motor Co., which shows few signs of moving to electric cars, according to industry analysts.

The new minister for Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, hopes to attract private sector support for the green initiatives.

Our proposal sends clear and predictable signals to investors and financial agents on the model of decarbonized development where Spain is headed, she said earlier this month.

Market analysts see signs of growing interest among private investors in the acquisition of Spains renewable energy assets.

But Lloyd Schultz, an American investment banker in Spain with Syntaxis Capital Limited, says that real growth in renewables is best achieved gradually through market incentives.

Doing it by fiat risks generating a bubble, he said.
As the United Nations is working with local and international stakeholders to draft a new Syrian constitution, Syrian women demand a seat at the table to ensure their concerns and insights are considered in a future Syrian state.

The demand for women's participation comes amid a renewed international push for intra-Syrian negotiation to end the country's seven-year-war.

Stakeholders are discussing formation of a committee that would oversee the drafting of a constitution.

"It is crucial for women to be part of the making of the constitution, Rima Flihan, a Syrian writer and human rights activist based in Australia, told VOA. If they arent, there will not be real guarantees for their rights in the legislative process in the future."

Flihan said the constitution would be the basis for all future legislation and a female presence is crucial in writing it to safeguard the rights of all Syrians, including women and minorities.

Some analysts said having women represented in politics will have long-term positive effects.

Rachel Dore-Weeks, acting deputy director and adviser on peace and security for Arab states for the U.N. Women organization, told VOA that female participation in the peace process has statistically been proven effective elsewhere and Syrian stakeholders should not ignore women in the country's politics, including in discussions about the constitution.

"We know statistically, through empirically sound data, that there is a direct, positive correlation between a more diverse and more represented peace process and the durability of the peace that is brokered," Dore-Weeks said. If women are engaged, she said, "they are more likely to get to the peace table and get people to talk to each other, and the peace agreement will more likely be brokered and more likely to last."

Some Syrian women, however, said the political discussions are not Syrian-led or Syrian-owned, as different actors, states and groups are leading them.

'Meaningless'

"At this point, women's participation in writing the constitution is meaningless. I don't agree with the way that the constitution is currently being written. The situation in Syria is unstable and will not permit for a fair and full participation of all Syrians, including women and minorities, in writing the constitution," Azza Al Bahra, a Sweden-based Syrian journalist, told VOA.

"Only when real regime change takes place, and refugees go back home, then we will have an effective political process," Al Bahra added.

Nisreen Trabulsi, a U.K-based Syrian analyst, echoed Al Bahra's concerns.

"In my opinion, Syria is under occupation from different parties, and the people are unable to voice their real aspirations," Trabulsi said. "The current process of writing the constitution is illegitimate."

Staffan de Mistura, the U.N. special envoy for Syria, has recently stepped up his efforts to reignite the political process in Syria before the end of his tenure this year, and drafting a new constitution for the country is one of his goals.

De Mistura was supposed to leave his post this month, but he has extended his tenure at the request of U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres as part of efforts to keep the momentum going toward formation of a constitutional committee.

This month, de Mistrua met with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to discuss the constitutional committee, and the U.S. reiterated its support for the U.N.-led efforts in Syria "under the auspices of U.N. Security Council Resolution 2254," the State Department said.

The peace process in Syria is proceeding through parallel channels: the U.N.-led Geneva process that is supported by the United States and Europe, and the Astana process that is led by Russia.

The late Kofi Annan, when he was U.N. envoy to Syria, began the Geneva process in June 2012. He presented a six-point plan that called for an end to fighting and the initiation of an "inclusive Syrian-led political process to address the legitimate aspirations and concerns of the Syrian people."

The Astana process began in 2017, with delegations from the Syrian government and opposition groups meeting to discuss peace. This track, spearheaded by Russia, with Turkey and Iran as parties to it, has led to creation of four de-escalation zones in Syria. The Syrian regime controls all zones except for Idlib.

The Astana agreement prevented a major military offensive on Idlib, which is one of the last rebel strongholds in Syria and home to several militant groups with tens of thousands of fighters.

The fragile deal has survived and prevented warring sides from waging full-scale war, but many analysts warn it will not withstand the pressure of competing interests and priorities of different local and international stakeholders.
Syrian state media and a Syrian watchdog say about 100 people in Aleppo have been hospitalized, complaining of breathing difficulties.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says 94 people were treated and 31 remain hospitalized.

Russia, the top backer of Bashar al-Assad's government in Syria, said Sunday it believes rebel forces fired missiles with chlorine. Russia's Defense Ministry said it launched air strikes on the Syrian rebels in retaliation.

"Air strikes were carried out by Russian air force planes," Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in comments reported by TASS state news agency, adding that "as a result of the strikes, all of the rebel fighter targets were destroyed."

SANA, Syria's state news agency, said Sunday that 107 people were injured in Aleppo after militants in Idlib hit areas with projectiles that probably contained chlorine. Russia has also blamed the injuries on rebel-launched missiles with chlorine.

Rebel officials, however, denied the charges and accused Syria of trying to frame them. "We at the National Liberation Front deny the criminal, lying regime's allegations that revolutionaries targeted the city of Aleppo with any missiles and especially not any containing chlorine gas," the rebels said Sunday.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry urged the U.N. Security Council Sunday to take action against whoever conducted the strikes. The ministry said the Syrian government "calls on the Security Council to immediately and strongly condemn these terrorist crimes... [and take] deterrent, punitive measures against the actions and regimes that support and fund terrorism."

Zaher Batal, the head of the Aleppo Doctors Syndicate told Reuters, "We can not know the kinds of gases, but we suspected chlorine and treated patients on this basis because of the symptoms."

In addition to difficulty breathing, symptoms included eye inflammation, shivering and fainting.

The West has accused Damascus of using chemical weapons on several occasions, something Syria has consistently denied.




Several U.S. lawmakers broke with President Donald Trump on Sunday, disagreeing with his assessment that it was uncertain whether Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was involved in the killing of a Saudi dissident journalist inside Riyadh's consulate in Istanbul.

Congressman Adam Schiff, set to become the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee when Democrats take control of the House in January, told CNN, "I have been briefed by the CIA and, while I cannot discuss the contents of the briefing in any way, I can say that I think the president is being dishonest with the American people."

Schiff said, It causes our standing in the world to plummet, it telegraphs to despots around the world that they can murder people with impunity, and that this president will have their back as long as they praise him.

Trump last week said the U.S. would stand by Saudi Arabia and that he did not know whether the crown prince had knowledge in advance of the killing of Jamal Khashoggi. While living in the U.S., Khashoggi wrote opinion columns for The Washington Post that were critical of Mohammed bin Salman and Riyadh's involvement in the long-running Yemen conflict.

"It could very well be that the crown prince had knowledge of this tragic event  maybe he did and maybe he didnt!" Trump said.

Trump concluded, "In any case, our relationship is with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. They have been a great ally in our very important fight against Iran. The United States intends to remain a steadfast partner of Saudi Arabia to ensure the interests of our country, Israel and all other partners in the region."

Saudi Arabia has indicted 11 of its agents in connection with the Khashoggi killing, with five of them facing the death penalty if convicted.

Senator Mike Lee, a Utah Republican, also disputed Trump's equivocation on whether the crown prince had knowledgeable of the Khashoggi killing.

"I disagree with the president's assessment," Lee told NBC's "Meet the Press." "It's inconsistent with the intelligence I've seen," which implicates the crown prince.

Human rights factor



Another Republican, Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, said on CNN, "I do think we need to look into this further." She said that while Saudi Arabia is a strategic partner of the U.S., "We also are a very strong nation when it comes to human rights, when it comes to the rule of law. And if there are indicators that the [crown] prince was involved in this murder, then we need to absolutely consider further action."

Ernst said she did not think Trump was exonerating Saudi Arabia, but added, "I think at such a time when it becomes necessary, the president also needs to speak directly to the Saudis and say enough is enough."

Republican Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, a frequent Trump critic, said on Fox News, "Making the realist case (about the need for a U.S.-Saudi alliance) is a different thing than being so weak that we failed to tell the truth." He said Mohammed bin Salman "contributed to murdering somebody abroad and it is not strength to sort of mumble past that. Strength is telling the truth even when it's hard."

Numerous U.S. lawmakers have said they intend to push for U.S. sanctions against Saudi Arabia because of Khashoggi's killing. Trump, in his statement last week, said, "I will consider whatever ideas are presented to me, but only if they are consistent with the absolute security and safety of America."

He said, "After the United States, Saudi Arabia is the largest oil producing nation in the world. They have worked closely with us and have been very responsive to my requests to keeping oil prices at reasonable levels  so important for the world. As president of the United States I intend to ensure that, in a very dangerous world, America is pursuing its national interests and vigorously contesting countries that wish to do us harm. Very simply it is called America First!"
Uzbek officials say a program of broad government reforms initiated by President Shavkat Mirziyoyev is meant to be permanent, a point regularly stressed by the president himself as he seeks to build the state's credibility with citizens who lived under the autocratic rule of his predecessor, Islam Karimov, for 27 years. But how far have these reforms gone, and what is the ultimate political goal? In the second of a three-part series, VOA's Navbahor Imamova examines Mirziyoyev's commitments and their implementation. Her next piece will be on Tashkent's engagement with the world.



Shavkat Mirziyoyev's messaging has been consistent: "We want to build a prosperous and democratic state, trusted and respected by its people and the international community."

His initial agenda leaned heavily on stabilizing Uzbekistan's previously turbulent relations with neighbors, major powers and international organizations. Clearly, Tashkent understands that the country cannot move forward without significant assistance from the outside.

Two years into Mirziyoyev's rule, a more stable external climate has been largely achieved and the nation's leadership has turned its attention to those issues closest to people's lives  economic opportunity, employment, growth, education and welfare.

Akmal Burhanov, head of the government-backed Development Strategy Center in Tashkent, argues that change lies "at the heart of a five-year development agenda" adopted in 2017.

"We're moving faster in some spheres than others," he admits, but adds: "Analyzing sector by sector, we've advanced in each of them."

Burhanov is also a member of the Oliy Majlis, Uzbekistan's parliament. He and other lawmakers claim to be playing a bigger institutional role than in the past, gaining some trust from citizens. Notably, they spend more time in their districts, listening to citizens and conveying their concerns to the capital, Tashkent.

But some things haven't changed: No parliamentarian dares to question Mirziyoyev's policies or decisions. Uzbekistan doesn't have a political opposition, and critics expect little in terms of the "democracy" Mirziyoyev promises. All agree, however, that the system is being modernized.

Challenge to status quo

Political activity is a sensitive matter in Uzbekistan, but a few outspoken individuals have called for a credible new party to challenge the status quo. One group of bloggers told VOA they support Mirziyoyev's reforms but want the leadership to take bolder steps toward pluralism.

"There is so much talk, yet so little delivery. I don't notice any big change other than rhetoric," says Anvar Nazir, an independent analyst who is critical of both the establishment and society generally.

"We haven't started fighting corruption in a real way. Mostly, political figures are the ones behind it, and many sit next to the president. So, we need to define what change means."

Mirziyoyev has moved cautiously against the nation's entrenched interests, taking care not to alienate them. He has fired many Karimov-era government officials but given them other positions.

For example, Rustam Inoyatov, longtime head of the National Security Service, was shuffled into the Senate. Mirziyoyev then tackled the renamed State Security Service by ordering it to focus on protecting the state rather than watching and harassing citizens.

Uzbeks say the service's officers are more professional now, treating citizens with some level of respect. Yet the system remains opaque and completely closed to media scrutiny.

In some of his most important reforms, Mirziyoyev has released Uzbekistan's best-known political prisoners and banned torture. To improve its human rights record, his government is working with international watchdogs such as Human Rights Watch, which has pushed for systemwide reforms.

"Human rights, justice, rule of law  these top the agenda," says Uzbekistan's ombudsman, Ulugbek Muhammadiev, discussing his expanded role as a parliamentary special representative. Muhammadiev now visits Uzbek prisons without warning and hears hundreds of grievances each month.

"It's obvious the system can't solve every problem," he says, "but it must serve the people, not the other way around. There's no place to be an official if you can't deal with new realities, where public opinion and pressure matter more than ever."

Administration officials say government ministers, heads of agencies and committees, regional governors, mayors and law enforcement officials at every level have unique tasks and must regularly report to Tashkent.

We feel pressure to deliver. The president and our people expect it from us," says Sherzod Kudbiyev, Uzbekistan's labor minister, whose top assignment is to end the use of forced labor in the cotton fields and other sectors. Kudbiyev, a former mayor and farmer, calls himself a public servant committed to reforms.





Impact of political reforms

Justice Minister Ruslanbek Davletov says the impact of the political reforms can be seen in growing public demands for honesty and integrity in government.

"We must implement hundreds of laws and decrees, reforming by performing our day-to-day tasks and delivering services," Davletov says. "We are connected to our people."

Other ministers and deputies echo this, stressing that they are focused not just on Uzbeks at home but millions of fellow citizens now living abroad.

A reforming system needs expertise and technical support, says Ibrokhim Abdurakhmonov, minister of innovative development. So, Uzbekistan is recruiting compatriots in the West and elsewhere.

"We are open to work even with those Uzbeks who are now foreign citizens," Abdurakhmonov adds.

Mirziyoyev has issued decrees to enable expatriates to return, and those who have done so say there is no need to await a special invitation to join the government or contribute in other ways. But don't expect miracles, they caution.

"The country needs you, so the time to serve is now if you want reforms to succeed," says Deputy Minister of Public Education Atabek Nazirov, the first Uzbek-American hired by Mirziyoyev's administration. Others like him work in finance, economics, technology and tourism.

So far only a few women have joined them in high office, and those who have mainly deal with women's and family issues. Deputy Prime Minister Tanzila Narbayeva, who chairs Uzbekistan's Women's Committee, says the country needs more female leaders.

Women do control nearly one-third of Uzbekistan's private sector, and Gulnora Mahmudova, who runs the Association of Business Women, says the female voice in decision-making is crucial. Her association has lobbied for a comprehensive program to boost their contribution.

"Each of us has to chip in to make reforms work," she urges. "There's no way back."
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Photo: Nickelodeon

Between Ren & Stimpy, Rockos Modern Life, and the incorrigible Stu Pickles in Rugrats, 90s era Nickelodeon reigned supreme with its adult-oriented and just plain bizarro humor, a welcome reprieve from the Disney Channels default wholesome programming. This golden age of Nicktoons continues to leave a prominent legacy in television history two decades later, a fact that Joe Murray, the creator of RML, is still amazed by  mostly because the era was rampant with the networks executives turning their backs and low-key granting animators full creative control, giving everyone a sense of freedom that would be unheard of in 2018. We snuck in there when things were still kinda loose and crazy. I call it the Wild West sometimes, because there was a lot of people that we were getting now starting to work in television, Murray told Polygon in a new interview. There were stories of some execs at Nickelodeon who didnt see [the show] until it got on the air. It was kind of a crazy time, so it was perfect for what we did.

Murray noted, though, that Nickelodeon would never allow two certain things  the use of the word hell or any satanic joke. But besides that, he believes the network took on this laissez faire stance with unconventional, surrealist humor because of the thoughtful way it was being presented to children. Our thing was, we dont talk down to kids. We treat kids as the intelligent beings that they are, Murray explained. But we also know that there are gonna be aspects of the show that theyre not gonna understand. So Nickelodeon did really, at the beginning  they didnt come down on us very much about it. They saw the ratings and the breakout that was happening. If you, just like us, are now feeling awfully nostalgic for Nicktoons, know theres a place to stream them all.
To celebrate 'Small Business Saturday,' many shoppers had the chance to catch deals at locally owned stores.

Small business owners prepared all year for this moment, but it's something shoppers also look forward to. Many of the great deals last all holiday season.

Taylor Ramirez enjoyed shopping at Roosevelt & Company. He thinks it's important to keep his money local.

"The local places are going to tailor to you and they are able to tailor their own store and to their local climate and everything. These jackets, you can't find better jackets anywhere else that's for sure," said Taylor Ramirez.

Store owners believe it's good to invest into your community.

"The more we sell, the more important taxes we are collecting for the community, which goes back into the city to keep it clean and beautiful," said Dana Reeves-Garding who co-owns Lawren's Gift Shop.

The Alabama Retail Association said it expects Alabamians to spend $12 billion in November and December, which is an increase from last year.
We know 62 million girls are not in school. Why is that the case, and how can we do better? We are told one in five women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime. How accurate are those numbers, and what can they really tell us about safety? We have heard women outlive men, often by a decade or more. What does life look like after a partner dies?
TRUMP: What do you do when a persons right? There is no collusion. . . . So if he said there is collusion, Im supposed to be taking somebody that says there is? Because then I wouldnt take him for two reasons, but the number one reason is the fact that he would have been wrong. If he said that theres no collusion, hes right.
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Sloane discovered this by accident. He teaches writing at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston and in the mid-2000s started seeing more students there who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Veterans were writing these searing stories about what they had been through, Sloane said. He wasnt sure how to work with students processing such exceptional experiences. He couldnt find much in academic literature about teaching writing to veterans, so he called the two elite schools he had attended, Williams and Yale, for advice. He wasnt expecting their response: Why are you asking us? We dont have any veterans.
She supported her husbands political ambitions, which were realized when he triumphed against long odds in the 1970 Arkansas governors race running as a liberal Democrat. He immediately became a national name and face of the New South after besting former governor and segregationist Orval Faubus in the Democratic primary and the incumbent, Winthrop Rockefeller (R), in the general election. Four years later, he defeated J. William Fulbright, a five-term U.S. senator, in the Democratic primary.
It was not immediately clear how many heeded that suggestion, or how many remained indoors after noon as well. But during much of the day it appeared that anyone venturing outdoors might have been well served by an affinity for damp and gloom.
Those were the people McKinney thought of this past summer, as the toll of overdoses climbed higher. In the past few months, she estimates, she saw as many as 20 people lying out on the street, overdosing  zombified. She became convinced she had to do something to help, even if it seemed to her that so many people in Congress Heights, where she raised her seven children, were resigned to the presence of K2 as just one more drug to work its way through the neighborhood.
There are some hard-right legislators from the suburbs, including Sen. Richard H. Black (R-Loudoun), who represents a district where 58 percent of voters chose Kaine earlier this year. Four Democrats have already lined up to challenge Black, known for his vocal opposition to abortion and gay rights and support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Some Republicans say privately their only hope of holding the seat would be for a moderate Republican to be the nominee, although no candidate has declared. In any case, Black has no plan to rebrand himself.
This inner conflict didnt arise out of an excessive emphasis on professionalism within my medical school, which is humanistic and encourages self-reflection. Perhaps it was a response to the larger medical culture  one in which medical practitioners with white coats and the learned behaviors we call professional are separated from their patients by an invisible boundary. Even this early, Ive seen enough to know that its a culture of burnout, in which practicing doctors tell you to hold on to your idealistic naivete as long as you can.
But I had paid only cursory attention to the consent form I was given before treatment, mostly because I was crazy-scared. In 2013, my mother was similarly hyper-focused on the dangers and benefits of her proposed lung cancer surgery, and neither she (nor I, her advocate) read the form closely. Neither of us considered what might become of her tissues and organs, and we would have been shocked if anyone had told us shed agreed for them to be sold or licensed for research.
Russian official pledges to verify U.S. moon landings: The head of Russia's Roscosmos space agency has said that a proposed Russian mission to the moon will be tasked with verifying that the American moon landings were real, though he appeared to be making a joke. "We have set this objective to fly and verify whether they've been there or not," said Dmitry Rogozin in a video posted on Twitter. Rogozin was responding to a question about whether NASA actually landed on the moon nearly 50 years ago. He appeared to be joking, as he smirked and shrugged while answering. But conspiracies surrounding NASA's moon missions are common in Russia. The Soviet Union abandoned its lunar program in the mid-1970s after four experimental moon rockets exploded.
Death sentences upheld in Egyptian prosecutor's killing: Egypt's highest appeals court has upheld death sentences against nine defendants convicted of involvement in the 2015 killing of the chief prosecutor. The court also commuted to life imprisonment death sentences against six other defendants. Death sentences also were handed down in July 2017 to 13 defendants tried in absentia. Hisham Barakat, the chief prosecutor, was the most senior government official killed by Islamist militants since the military's 2013 ouster of Islamist President Mohamed Morsi.
In this case, there is no legitimate balancing of economic benefit vs. moral leadership. There is only one message that should come from an American president: This cannot stand. No amount of lost deals, even ones worth billions of dollars; no danger of escalating oil prices; no worries of strategic alliances can outweigh the responsibility of the president of the United States to stand tall for a free press and freedom of speech everywhere. The only acceptable response is this: If a country retaliates with the torture and murder of a journalist representing a U.S. news outlet, there will be a steep price to pay.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 25)  The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) said it supports the intent of Memorandum Order (MO) No. 32.

In a statement from AFP Spokesperson BGen Edgar Arevalo Sunday, the AFP said, "Suffice it to say that we support the intent of the MO as it envisions to suppress lawless violence and acts of terror and to prevent such violence from spreading and escalating in other parts of the country."

The statement added, "We say we support MO 32's intent primarily because to protect the people and secure the state is the AFP's constitutional mandate."

Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea issued MO 32 on November 22, citing "sporadic acts of violence" in the provinces of Samar, Negros Oriental and Negros Occidental, and the Bicol Region.

The order is in line with an earlier memorandum issued in September 2016 that provided guidelines for the military and police under Proclamation 55 issued by President Rodrigo Duterte. The proclamation declared a state of national emergency on account of lawless violence in Mindanao.

However, the AFP statement also said it was also deferring on making any more comments on MO32, as it would still meet with the Department of National Defense to thresh out details on how the government troops would "operationalize its provisions on the ground."

In a separate media briefing on Friday, November 23, Arevalo said it remains unclear how exactly this memo will be carried out.

"We cannot give you (a) definite answer yet, because these are matters that we still have to vet with the General Headquarters, together with the commanders of the Area Command that will be affected by this particular issuance," he said.

Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) founding Chairperson Jose Maria Sison also gave a statement Friday, saying MO 32 was a prelude to an '"expected declaration" of nationwide martial law.

"The (Memorandum Order No. 32) is actually a declaration of state of national emergency. It comes close to the expected declaration of martial law nationwide," Sison told CNN Philippines News Night.

"As far as lawless violence is concerned, it is actually being committed by the AFP and PNP by following the orders of Duterte to commit extrajudicial killings," Sison countered.

"It is Duterte and his armed minions who are responsible for the nationwide lawless violence in order to prepare the way for martial law nationwide," he said.
Appearing on This Week, Kasich said we need different leadership, there isnt any question about it. He said he saw merit in running even if the chances of winning were slim, as long as he could make a good showing that would send a message that can disrupt the political system in this country.
Papadopoulos, who was sentenced to spend 14 days in prison, had argued that it was possible that the constitutional challenge in a separate case would result in his conviction being set aside and that he should therefore be allowed to remain free on bail. But U.S. District Judge Randolph D. Moss noted that Papadopoulos had not appealed his conviction, having waived his right to do so when he pleaded guilty. Moss also wrote that Papadopoulos had not shown that the appeals court in the separate case probably would conclude that the special counsels appointment was unlawful.
Lewandowski and Bossie write that these officials attack the administration with a thousand cuts. They do this in complete disregard to the millions of Americans who voted for Donald Trump. They do it only for their own ends. There are far too many people in the deep reaches of the federal government who harbor as deep a hatred of Trump as does anyone from the Clinton/Obama cabal. The thing is, they get away with it when no one is looking.
But some members still wish Feinstein would step aside and allow the partyspanels No. 2 Democrat, Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), who has worked with Graham on matters from immigration to criminal-justice reform, to take over. There are some who believe he would be a more reliable and energetic challenger against the often irascible Graham, especially when it comes to the GOPs efforts to confirm conservative judges, according to people familiar with members thinking.
One bipartisan proposal in the Senate calls to impose additional sanctions on Saudi Arabia and others thought to be fomenting unrest in Yemen, and to stop the sale and transfer of all weapons to Saudi Arabia until the Yemen campaign is scaled back. A bipartisan pair of senators also have invoked the Global Magnitsky Act, which enables sanctions over human rights offenses, to force Trump to formally say within a few months whether he thinks Mohammed was responsible for Khashoggis death.
In order to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland, a nation in the U.K. and the Republic of Ireland, a member of the E.U., the two sides agree to a backstop, a kind of insurance policy. This backstop means that if the two sides fail to achieve a future trade deal that would free both countries from the need for inspections, controls and tariffs at the Irish border, then the U.K. would remain under an E.U. customs union umbrella.
We have asked the U.S. side or those claiming that there are problems with the freedom of navigation in the South China Sea many times to produce a single piece of evidence to prove which ship or plane from which country has encountered problems, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said on Nov. 16. However, up to now, no one can give us a clear-cut answer.
Alipur escaped from central Ghowr province during a government raid in October and is wanted by Kabul for alleged human rights abuses. He had built a reputation as a brutal warrior but maintained strong popular support among fellow ethnic Hazaras, especially those in central Afghan provinces, including Ghazni, that have recently come under Taliban attack.
Under the terms, Britain will face a $50 billion bill to pay its financial commitments on its way out the door. It will be tied to E.U. laws and regulations for years in some areas, and its ability to negotiate its own trade deals  a key demand of the Brexiteers who led a successful rebellion against the established order in 2016  could be tightly limited. But it will no longer be obligated to allow E.U. citizens to live and work within its borders, and May has sought to promote that as a major victory, even as other leaders shake their heads about the situation.
The mood in Kiev was bellicose. It is now likely possible that Russia plans further acts of aggression at sea or on the ground. We must be ready for this, Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said on Twitter.
The election was overshadowed by allegations from Tsais Democratic Progressive Party that China was seeking to influence the election through a misinformation campaign on social media and by illegally financing pro-China publications. But Tsai said Saturday night that she took full responsibility for the DPPs losses and acknowledged the reversal reflected the peoples will on a day when Taiwanese queued for hours to cast their ballots.
Federal Labor backbencher Michael Danby has given notice of a private member's bill he hopes will bring some sense of justice to the families of Australians killed when Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down by a missile over eastern Ukraine in 2014.

The International Human Rights and Corruption (Magnitsky Sanctions) Bill 2018 would enable the government to impose sanctions on individual foreign actors involved in breaches like the shooting down of flight MH17, in which 38 Australians were among the 298 passengers killed.

It would allow the government to name individuals who breach international law or engage in corruption, banning them and their families from travelling to, or investing in, Australia.

Families of those killed in the shooting down of flight MH17 are still waiting for justice. Credit:Reuters

Mr Danby, who is set to retire at the next election after two decades in Parliament, said a Magnitsky bill  similar to those in force in the United States, United Kingdom and Canada  would send a strong message that Australia was not prepared to stand by and watch its citizens be mistreated.
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 24/11/2018 (1095 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The last Waver is gone.

James Starr died Thursday evening at the Southeast Personal Care Home in Winnipeg.

COURTESY JIM BEAR James Starr (left) and his brother Nelson Starr were know far and wide for waving to passing vehicles on Highway 59.

He was 73.

Starr, along with his brother Nelson Starr, put Scanterbury and Brokenhead Ojibway Nation on the map.

Together, the pair spent more than 20 years standing in the tall grass that separated their home from Highway 59. Four days a week, the brothers waved at passing cars.

The first brother, Nelson Starr, died at age 71 in 2007 and, sometime after that, James retired the custom, but not before they became small-town celebrities known for their friendly greetings to passing motorists.

Their sister, Eunice Galvin, said Saturday from her home in Brokenhead she will remember how friendly her brother always was.

"If he knew someone, Jimmy would always walk up and shake their hand. He was always smiling," she said.

After Nelson died, she said, her brother was lonely and ill health made it difficult for him to get around. He moved to the Southeast Tribal Councils personal care home in Winnipeg seven years ago. He died there around 8:30 p.m. Thursday evening.

"I will remember him as he was. He was like a child. He always loved trains and cars and people. He was always very friendly with people," she said.

The impact the brothers made in the wider world has taken on extra shades of meaning since the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2015.

"They were doing reconciliation long before many of us," former Brokenhead chief Jim Bear said Saturday. "Even this past week, my friend who went to Israel heard a couple talking about the two brothers while he was on a tour bus. They were known far and wide."

A generation of Winnipeggers bound for Grand Beach and surrounding communities slowed their vehicles, waved back, honked their horns and stopped to offer water and gifts.

"There was a quiet dignity to the ditch wavers; an implacable Mona Lisa-like mystery to the matched set of stout men in ball caps," the late Lindor Reynolds wrote in a Winnipeg Free Press column about the brothers in 2012.

Nobody expected theyd become famous.

When it happened, it was a surprise; it was hard to say who was more delighted: the Starrs, their fans or their community. Brokenhead embraced the pair and motorists did, too.

The Ojibway First Nation, located about 60 kilometres north of Winnipeg, opened a service station and convenience store on Highway 59 and named it Wavers in the brothers honour.

Brokenhead resident John Bear built a giant Adirondack chair to remember the pair. A second chair was made as well, and both occupy prominent places in the community to this day.

"They loved the tooting from the horns and the people waving back at them. And people enjoyed that, too," Galvin said.

She said the two brothers first started waving to passing trains, standing to watch as the cars rattled by on the tracks and raising their hands as the caboose brought up the rear.

When the trains stopped running, the pair shifted their attention to the highway and started waving to passing motorists, which is when the practice came to public attention.

On Facebook on Friday, dozens paid their respects under a post that read "RIP James Starr... If you are driving through Brokenhead Rez, hit you(r) horn. Show support to the family through these tough times. Condolences to the family."

"I remember both of them growing up on the drive out to Hollow Water. My mom would always tell us kids, Make sure you wave." one comment read.

"It was always a pleasure to wave as I passed you and your brother as I drove out to my dads," wrote another poster, who addressed the brothers directly in her condolences. "You and your brother have always made me smile when I passed by you both and I even honked my horn to make sure you both knew I seen youse."

Galvin said there will be a wake Tuesday at 4 p.m. followed by a funeral Wednesday at 1 p.m. The service will be held at the Private Tom Chief Memorial Hall, across from the South Beach Casino on Highway 59  close to the spot where the Starr brothers used to stand and wave.

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca
The following companies are subsidiares of BlackRock: Acero Cooperatief U.A., Acero Holdings I B.V., Amethyst Merger Sub LLC, AnalytX Hosting LLC, AnalytX LLC, AnalytX Software LLC, Aperio, Aperio, Aquila Heywood, Asia-Pacific Private Credit Opportunities Fund I (GenPar) Ltd., BAA Holdings LLC, BFM Holdco LLC, BLK (Gallatin) Holdings LLC, BLK SMI LLC, BR Acquisition Mexico S.A. de C.V., BR Jersey International Holdings L.P., Beijing eFront Software Company Limited, BlackRock (Barbados) Finco 1 SRL, BlackRock (Channel Islands) Limited, BlackRock (Luxembourg) S.A., BlackRock (Netherlands) B.V., BlackRock (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., BlackRock (Singapore) Holdco II Pte. Ltd., BlackRock (Singapore) Holdco Pte. Limited, BlackRock (Singapore) Limited, BlackRock AP Investment Holdco LLC, BlackRock Advisors (UK) Limited, BlackRock Advisors LLC, BlackRock Advisors Singapore Pte. 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Premium Brands Holdings Corporation, through its subsidiaries, manufactures and distributes food products primarily in Canada and the United States. It operates in two segments, Specialty Foods and Premium Food Distribution. The company provides meat products and snacks, deli products, beef jerky and halal, sandwiches, pastries, specialty and gourmet products, salads and kettle products, entrees, panini, wraps, subs, hamburgers, burgers, muffins, breads, pastas, and baking and sushi products, as well as processed meat products. It is also involved in the distribution of food products, including meat, seafood, and halal food products, as well as operation of retail/convenience store and concessionary, and provision of food and seafood processing services. The company operates under the brand names of Harvest Meats, Hempler's, Grimm's Fine Foods, Piller's, Freybe, Isernio's, Expresco, SJ Fine Foods, McSweeney's, Made Rite, Fletcher's, Deli Chef, Belmont Meats, Conte Foods, SK Food Group, Oven Pride, Hygaard, Quality Fast Foods, HQ Fine Foods, Creekside Custom Foods, Stuyver's Bread, Bread Garden Express, Audrey's Patisserie, Duso's, Gourmet Chef, Island City Baking, Skilcor, Leadbetter's, Mclean Meats, Buddy's Kitchen, Raybern's, Partner's Crackers, Shaw Bakers, Oberto, Concord Meats, Country Prime Meats, The Meat Factory, and Golden Valley Farms. It serves chains and large format retailers, independent and specialty retailers, foodservice operators, foodservice distributors, and other food manufacturers and food brokers. The company was founded in 1917 and is headquartered in Richmond, Canada.

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Canadian Western Bank has been the subject of 5 research reports in the past 90 days, demonstrating strong analyst interest in this stock.

According to analysts' consensus price target of $41.67, Canadian Western Bank has a forecasted upside of 34.7% from its current price of $30.94.

Canadian Western Bank has received a consensus rating of Buy. The company's average rating score is 2.70, and is based on 7 buy ratings, 3 hold ratings, and no sell ratings.

4.4 Community Rank

Outperform Votes Canadian Western Bank has received 112 outperform votes. (Add your outperform vote.)

Underperform Votes Canadian Western Bank has received 57 underperform votes. (Add your underperform vote.)

Community Sentiment Canadian Western Bank has received 66.27% outperform votes from our community.

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

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Cellcom Israel Ltd. operates and maintains a cellular mobile telephone system in Israel. It operates in two segments, Cellular and Fixed-line. The company offers cellular communications services, such as basic cellular telephony services comprising voice mail, cellular fax, call waiting, call forwarding, caller identification, and conference calling; text and multimedia messaging; and cellular content and data services. It also provides international roaming services; value-added services, such as short message and multimedia messaging; cloud backup; and content services, including Cellcom Volume music, Cellcom TV, and other applications. In addition, the company sells handsets, tablets, streamers, smart watches, and home security cameras, as well as offers repair services. Further, it provides internet infrastructure and connectivity services, over-the-top TV services, international long distance services, and landline telephony and transmission services; transmission and data services through fiber-optic infrastructure and complementary microwave links; IP switchboard services; and cloud services and data protection products, as well as operates and manages business telecommunication systems to selected business customers and telecommunications operators. As of December 31, 2019, the company had approximately 10.6 million cellular subscribers. Cellcom Israel Ltd. was founded in 1994 and is headquartered in Netanya, Israel.

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Comerica, Inc. engages in the provision of financial services. It operates through the following segments: Commercial Bank, Retail Bank, Wealth Management, Finance and Other. The Commercial Bank segment involves in the middle market businesses, multinational corporations, and governmental entities by offering various products and services such as commercial loans and lines of credit, deposits, cash management, capital market products, international trade finance, letters of credit, foreign exchange management services, and loan syndication services. The Retail Bank segment includes small business banking and personal financial services, which consist of consumer lending, consumer deposit gathering, and mortgage loan origination. The Wealth Management segment offers fiduciary services, private banking, retirement services, investment management and advisory services, investment banking and brokerage services. The Finance segment comprises corporation's securities portfolio and asset and liability management activities. The Other category consists of income and expense impact of equity and cash, tax benefits, charges of an unusual or infrequent nature that are not reflective of the n

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Concord Medical Services Holding Ltd. engages in the operation of radiotherapy and diagnostic imaging centers. It provides radiotherapy and diagnostic equipment leasing services to hospitals; and sale of medical equipment and the provision of radiotherapy and diagnostic equipment leasing and management services to hospitals, It operates through Network Business and Hospital Business segments. The company was founded on November 27, 2007 and is headquartered in Beijing, China.

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PetroChina Company Limited, together with its subsidiaries, engages in a range of petroleum related products, services, and activities in Mainland China and internationally. It operates through Exploration and Production, Refining and Chemicals, Marketing, and Natural Gas and Pipeline segments. The Exploration and Production segment engages in the exploration, development, production, and marketing of crude oil and natural gas. The Refining and Chemicals segment refines crude oil and petroleum products; and produces and markets primary petrochemical products, derivative petrochemical products, and other chemical products. The Marketing segment is involved in marketing of refined products and trading business. The Natural Gas and Pipeline segment engages in the transmission of natural gas, crude oil, and refined products; and sale of natural gas. As of December 31, 2020, the company had a total length of 31,151 km, including 22,555 km of natural gas pipelines, 7,190 km of crude oil pipelines, and 1,406 km of refined product pipelines. The company is also involved in the exploration, development, and production of oil sands and coalbed methane; trading of crude oil and petrochemical products; storage, chemical engineering, storage facilities, service station, and transportation facilities and related businesses; and production and sales of basic and derivative chemical, and other chemical products. The company was founded in 1999 and is headquartered in Beijing, the People's Republic of China. PetroChina Company Limited is a subsidiary of China National Petroleum Corporation.

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Energy Select Sector SPDR Fund's stock was trading at $33.67 on March 11th, 2020 when Coronavirus reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization. Since then, XLE shares have increased by 72.0% and is now trading at $57.91.

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Nevsun Resources Ltd. engages in the mining and development of mineral properties in Europe, Africa, and North America. It explores for gold, copper, zinc, and silver deposits. The company's principal assets include Timok project, a copper-gold development project in Serbia; and Bisha copper- zinc mine in Eritrea. It also holds exploration licenses and permits in Serbia and Macedonia, as well as in the Bisha mining district. The company was incorporated in 1965 and is headquartered in Vancouver, Canada. As of January 7, 2019, Nevsun Resources Ltd. operates as a subsidiary of Zijin Mining Group Company Limited.

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

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HDFC Bank Ltd. engages in the provision of banking and financial services, including commercial banking and treasury operations. The firm also provides financial services to upper and middle income individuals and corporations in India. It operates through the following segments: Treasury, Retail Banking, Wholesale Banking and Other Banking Operations. The Treasury segment consists of bank's investment portfolio, money market borrowing and lending, investment operations and trading in foreign exchange and derivative contracts. The Retail Banking segment provides loans and other services to customers through a branch network and other delivery channels. The Wholesale Banking segment provides loans, non-fund facilities and transaction services to large corporates, emerging corporates, public sector units, government bodies, financial institutions, and medium scale enterprises. The Other Banking Business segment includes income from para banking activities such as credit cards, debit cards, third party product distribution, primary dealership business, and the associated costs. The company was founded by Aditya Tapishwar Puri in August 1994 and is headquartered in Mumbai, India.

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SPDR Gold Shares' stock was trading at $153.93 on March 11th, 2020 when COVID-19 reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization. Since then, GLD shares have increased by 8.6% and is now trading at $167.12.

View which stocks have been most impacted by COVID-19.
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KBR, Inc. engages in the provision of differentiated professional services and technologies across the asset and program life-cycle within the government services and hydrocarbons industries. It operates through the following segments: Government Solutions, Technology Solutions, Energy Solutions, Non-strategic Business, and Other. The Government Solutions segment provides full life-cycle support solutions to defense, space, aviation, and other programs and missions for military and other government agencies. The Technology Solutions segment combines KBR's proprietary technologies, equipment, and catalyst supply and associated knowledge-based services into a global business for refining, petrochemicals, inorganic, and specialty chemicals as well as gasification, syngas, ammonia, nitric acid, and fertilizers. The Energy Solutions segment provides full life-cycle support solutions across the upstream, midstream and downstream hydrocarbons markets. The Non-strategic Business segment represents the operations or activities which the company intends to exit upon completion of existing contracts. The Other segment includes corporate expenses and general and administrative expenses not all

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CF Industries Holdings, Inc. engages in the manufacture and distribution of nitrogen fertilizer. The firm owns and operates nitrogen plants and serves agricultural and industrial customers through its distribution system. It operates through following segments: Ammonia, Granular Urea, UAN, AN, and Other. The Ammonia segment produces anhydrous ammonia, which is company's most concentrated nitrogen fertilizer product as it contains 82% nitrogen. The Granular Urea segment produces granular urea, which contains 46% nitrogen. The UAN segment produces urea ammonium nitrate solution, which is a liquid fertilizer product with a nitrogen content from 28% to 32%, is produced by combining urea and ammonium nitrate. The AN segment produces ammonium nitrate, which is a nitrogen-based product with a nitrogen content between 29% and 35%. The Other segment includes diesel exhaust fluid, nitric acid, urea liquor and aqua ammonia. The company was founded in 1946 and is headquartered in Deerfield, IL.

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KION GROUP AG provides industrial trucks, warehouse technology, supply chain solutions, and related services worldwide. The company operates through Industrial Trucks and Services, Supply Chain Solutions, and Corporate Services segments. It develops, manufactures, and sells forklifts and warehouse trucks, such as counterbalance trucks with electric drive and internal combustion engine, ride-on and hand-operated industrial trucks, and towing vehicles under the Linde, Fenwick, STILL, Baoli, and OM Voltas brand names. The company also manufactures and sells spare parts; leases industrial trucks and related items; offers maintenance and repair, and fleet management services, as well as provides finance solutions. In addition, it provides integrated technology and software solutions, including conveyors, sorters, storage and retrieval systems, picking equipment, palletizers, and robotic solutions under the Dematic brand. The company was formerly known as KION Holding 1 GmbH. KION GROUP AG was founded in 2006 and is based in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

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Bunge Ltd. operates as a holding company, which engages in the supply and transportation of agricultural commodities. It operates through the following segments: Agribusiness, Edible Oil Products, Milling Products, Sugar and Bioenergy, and Fertilizer. The Agribusiness segment involves in the purchase, storage, transportation, processing, and sale of agricultural commodities and commodity products. The Edible Oil Products segment includes production and sale of vegetable oils, shortenings, margarines, and mayonnaise. The Milling Products segment consists of production and sale of wheat flours, bakery mixes, corn-based products, and rice. The Sugar and Bioenergy segment comprises manufacture and marketing of sugar and ethanol derived from sugarcane, as well as energy derived from the sugar and ethanol production process. The Fertilizer segment focuses on producing, blending, and distributing fertilizer products for the agricultural industry. The company was founded by Johann Peter Gottlieb Bunge in 1818 and is headquartered in Chesterfield, MO.

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There is not enough analysis data for BlackRock Enhanced International Dividend Trust.

4.5 Community Rank

Outperform Votes BlackRock Enhanced International Dividend Trust has received 112 outperform votes. (Add your outperform vote.)

Underperform Votes BlackRock Enhanced International Dividend Trust has received 52 underperform votes. (Add your underperform vote.)

Community Sentiment BlackRock Enhanced International Dividend Trust has received 68.29% outperform votes from our community.

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

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The following companies are subsidiares of Whirlpool: 1900 Holdings Corporation, ADC, Aeradriatica S.p.A., Airdun Limited, B. Blend Maquinas e Bebidas S.A., BUD Comercio de Eletrodomesticos Ltda., BWI Products Limited, Bauknecht AG, Bauknecht Hausgerate GmbH, Bauknecht Limited, Beijing Embraco Snowflake Compressor Company Limited, Bill Page Orchestra, Bill Page Orchestra Inc., Brasmotor S.A., Brunson Place Properties, Brunson Place Properties LLC, CNB Consultoria Ltda, Cannon Industries Ltd., Centro de Desarrollo Tecnologico e Innovacion WHM S. de R.L de C.V., Comercial Acros Whirlpool, Comercial Acros Whirlpool S. de R.L. de C.V., Consumer Appliances Service Limited, Ealing Compania de Gestiones y Participaciones S.A., Elera Delaware, Elera Delaware Inc., Elera Holdings Corporation, Embraco Europe S.r.l., Embraco Eurosales S.r.l., Embraco Industria de Compressores e Solucoes em Refrigeracao Ltda., Embraco Luxembourg S.a r.l., Embraco Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Embraco Mexico Servicios, Embraco Mexico Servicios S. de R.L. de C.V., Embraco North America, Embraco North America Inc., Embraco RUS LLC, Embraco Slovakia S.r.o., Everest Campus, Everest Campus LLC., General Domestic Appliances Holdings Ltd, General Domestic Appliances International Ltd., Guangdong Whirlpool Electrical Appliances Co., Guangdong Whirlpool Electrical Appliances Co. Ltd., Haceb Whirlpool Industrias S.A.S., Hefei Rongshida Sanyo Electric, Hefei Whirlpool Enterprise Management Service Co. Ltd., Hoover Comercial Limitada, IRE Beteiligungs GmbH, Indesit Argentina S.A., Indesit Company, Indesit Company Beyaz Esya Pazarlama A.S., Indesit Company Beyaz Esya Sanayi ve Ticaret A.S., Indesit Company Ceska S.r.o., Indesit Company Domestic Appliances Hellas Mepe, Indesit Company International Business S.A., Indesit Company Luxembourg S.A., Indesit Company Magyarorszag Kft, Indesit Company Nordics AB, Indesit Company Polska Sp. zo.o., Indesit Company Singapore Pte. Ltd., Indesit Company UK Holdings Ltd., Indesit IP S.r.l., Indesit International ZAO, Indesit Ireland Ltd., Indesit Middle East FZE, Indesit Ukraine LLC, Industrias Acros Whirlpool S. de R.L. de C.V., Industrias Acros Whirlpool S.A. de C.V, Jackson Appliances Ltd., Joint-Stock Company Indesit International, KitchenAid, KitchenAid Australia Pty Ltd, KitchenAid Australia Pty Ltd., KitchenAid Delaware Inc., KitchenAid Europa Inc., KitchenAid Global, KitchenAid Global Inc., KitchenAid Inc., KitchenAid Korea Limited, KitchenAid Promotions, KitchenAid Promotions LLC, KitchenAid Trading Co., KitchenAid Trading Co. Ltd., LAWSA S.A., MLOG Armazem Geral Ltda., Maytag Corporation, Maytag Limited, Maytag Properties, Maytag Properties LLC, Maytag Sales, Maytag Sales Inc., Maytag Worldwide N.V., Merloni Domestic Appliances Ltd., Nineteen Hundred Corporation, Polar S.A., Qingdao EECON Electronic Controls and Appliances Co., Qingdao EECON Electronic Controls and Appliances Co. Ltd., South American Sales Partnership, THC Assets Corporation, Up Points Servicos Empresariais S.A., Vitromatic S.A. de C.V., WCGP Nova Scotia Co., WHirlpool EMEA Finanace S.a r.l., Whirlpool (Australia) Pty. Limited, Whirlpool (B.V.I.) Limited, Whirlpool (China) Co. Ltd., Whirlpool (China) Investment Co., Whirlpool (China) Investment Co. Ltd., Whirlpool (Hefei) Trading Co., Whirlpool (Hefei) Trading Co. Ltd, Whirlpool (Hong Kong) Limited, Whirlpool (Japan) Co. Ltd., Whirlpool (Thailand) Limited, Whirlpool ASEAN Co., Whirlpool America Holdings Corp., Whirlpool Argentina S.r.l., Whirlpool Asia B.V., Whirlpool Asia Holdings S.a r.l., Whirlpool Asia Inc., Whirlpool Asia LLP, Whirlpool Belux N.V./S.A., Whirlpool Bermuda Euro Ltd., Whirlpool Beyaz Esya Sanayi Ve Ticaret A.S., Whirlpool Bulgaria Ltd., Whirlpool CIS Ltd., Whirlpool CR, Whirlpool CR spol. s.r.o., Whirlpool CSA Holdings S.a r.l., Whirlpool Canada Co., Whirlpool Canada Co. (post 9/1/05 amalgamation company), Whirlpool Canada Holding Co, Whirlpool Canada Holding Co. (post 4/18/06 amalgamation company), Whirlpool Canada Investments S.a r.l., Whirlpool Canada LP, Whirlpool Canada Luxembourg Holdings S.a r.l., Whirlpool Chile Limitada, Whirlpool Colombia S.A.S., Whirlpool Comercial Ltda., Whirlpool Company Polska Sp. z o.o., Whirlpool Company Ukraine LLC, Whirlpool Croatia Ltd., Whirlpool EMEA S.p.A., Whirlpool Ecuador S.A., Whirlpool Eesti OU, Whirlpool El Salvador, Whirlpool El Salvador S.A. de C.V., Whirlpool Electrodomesticos S.A., Whirlpool Eletrodomesticos AM S.A., Whirlpool Enterprises, Whirlpool Enterprises LLC, Whirlpool Europe B.V., Whirlpool Europe Coordination Center, Whirlpool Europe Holdings Limited, Whirlpool Ev Aletleri Pazarlama Ve Ticaret A.S., Whirlpool Finance B.V., Whirlpool Finance Center Corp., Whirlpool Finance Luxembourg S.a r.l., Whirlpool Finance Overseas Ltd., Whirlpool Financial Corporation, Whirlpool Financial Corporation International, Whirlpool Floor Care Corp., Whirlpool France Holdings SAS, Whirlpool France SAS, Whirlpool Germany GmbH, Whirlpool Global B.V., Whirlpool Global Investments B.V., Whirlpool Greater China Inc., Whirlpool Guatemala, Whirlpool Guatemala S.A., Whirlpool Hellas S.A., Whirlpool Holdings Corporation, Whirlpool Home Appliances B.V., Whirlpool Home Appliances Limited Liability Company, Whirlpool Hungarian Trading Limited Liability Company, Whirlpool India Holdings Limited, Whirlpool Insurance Company, Whirlpool Insurance Company Ltd., Whirlpool Internacional S. de R.L. de C.V., Whirlpool International GmbH, Whirlpool International Holdings S.a r.l., Whirlpool International Manufacturing S.a r.l., Whirlpool Ireland Appliances Limited, Whirlpool Ireland Limited, Whirlpool Italia Holdings S.r.l., Whirlpool Italia S.r.l., Whirlpool Japan Co. Ltd., Whirlpool Japan Inc., Whirlpool Kazakhstan LLP, Whirlpool Latin America Corporation, Whirlpool Latvia S.I.A., Whirlpool Lietuva UAB, Whirlpool Ltd Belgrade, Whirlpool Luxembourg Holdings S.a r.l., Whirlpool Luxembourg Investments S.a r.l., Whirlpool Luxembourg S.a r.l., Whirlpool Luxembourg Ventures S.a r.l., Whirlpool MEEA DMCC, Whirlpool Magyarorszag Kereskedelmi Korlatolt Felelossegu Tarsasag, Whirlpool Management Services S.a.g.l., Whirlpool Maroc S. a r.l., Whirlpool Mauritius Limited, Whirlpool Mexico Holdings LLC, Whirlpool Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Whirlpool Mexico S.A. de C.V., Whirlpool Mexico Ventures LLC, Whirlpool Microwave Products Development Limited, Whirlpool NAAG Holdings Corporation, Whirlpool NAR Holdings, Whirlpool NAR Holdings LLC, Whirlpool Nederland B.V., Whirlpool Nordic, Whirlpool Nordic A/S, Whirlpool Nordic AB, Whirlpool Nordic AS, Whirlpool Nordic OY, Whirlpool Oceania Inc., Whirlpool Overseas Holdings, Whirlpool Overseas Holdings LLC, Whirlpool Overseas Hong Kong Limited, Whirlpool Overseas Manufacturing S.ar.l., Whirlpool Peru S.R.L., Whirlpool Polska Appliances Sp. z o.o., Whirlpool Polska Sp. z o.o., Whirlpool Portugal, Whirlpool Portugal S.A., Whirlpool Product Development (Shenzhen) Company Limited, Whirlpool Properties, Whirlpool Properties Inc., Whirlpool Puntana S.A., Whirlpool R&D S.r.l., Whirlpool RUS LLC, Whirlpool Realty Corporation, Whirlpool Romania S.r.l., Whirlpool S.A., Whirlpool SSC Limited, Whirlpool Slovakia Home Appliances spol. s.r.o., Whirlpool Slovakia spol. s.r.o., Whirlpool South Africa (Proprietary) Limited, Whirlpool Southeast Asia Pte, Whirlpool Sweden Aktiebolag, Whirlpool Taiwan Co. Ltd., Whirlpool Technologies LLC, Whirlpool UK Appliances Limited, Whirlpool UK Pension Scheme Trustee Limited, Whirlpool Ukraine LLC, Whirlpool WW Holdings B.V., Whirlpool do Brasil Investements B.V., Whirlpool do Brasil Ltda., Whirlpool of India Limited, Whirlpool Osterreich GmbH, Whirlpool Osterreich GmbH, Xpelair, Xpelair Ltd., Yummly, Yummly Canada Ltd., and Yummly Inc..
TwentyFour Select Monthly Income Fund Limited is a closed-ended fixed income mutual fund launched by Numis Securities Ltd. The fund is managed by TwentyFour Asset Management LLP. It invests in fixed income markets of the United Kingdom. The fund primarily invests in Aless liquidA instruments across the debt spectrum, including asset backed securities, bank capital, corporate loans, high yield bonds, and leveraged loans issued by a wide variety of issuers. It employs fundamental analysis with both top-down and bottom-up security selection approaches, focusing on such factors as economic fundamentals, market technicals, sentiment, valuations, and risk/stress analysis to create its portfolio. TwentyFour Select Monthly Income Fund Limited was formed on March 13, 2014 and is domiciled in Guernsey.

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Unifi, Inc. engages in the manufacture and sale of synthetic and recycled products made from polyester and nylon. It operates through the following segments: Polyester, Nylon, Brazil, and Asia. The Polyester segment sells polyester-based products to other yarn manufacturers, knitters, and weavers that produce yarn and fabric for the apparel, hosiery, home furnishings, automotive, industrial, and other end-use markets in U.S. and El Salvador. The Nylon segment offers nylon-based products to knitters and weavers that produce fabric for the apparel and hosiery markets in U.S. and Colombia. The Brazil and Asia segments comprises polyester-based products to knitters and weavers that produce fabric for the apparel, home furnishings, automotive, industrial, and other end-use markets principally in South America and Asia. The company was founded by George Allen Mebane IV in 1969 and is headquartered in Greensboro, NC.

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The following companies are subsidiares of Valero Energy: AIR BP-PBF DEL PERU SAC, BELFAST STORAGE LTD, CANADIAN ULTRAMAR COMPANY, COLONNADE TEXAS INSURANCE COMPANY LLC, COLONNADE VERMONT INSURANCE COMPANY, DIAMOND ALTERNATIVE ENERGY LLC, DIAMOND ALTERNATIVE ENERGY OF CANADA INC., DIAMOND GREEN DIESEL HOLDINGS LLC, DIAMOND GREEN DIESEL LLC, DIAMOND K RANCH LLC, DIAMOND OMEGA COMPANY L.L.C., DIAMOND SHAMROCK REFINING COMPANY L.P., DIAMOND UNIT INVESTMENTS L.L.C., DSRM NATIONAL BANK, ENTERPRISE CLAIMS MANAGEMENT INC., GCP LOGISTICS COMPANY LLC, GOLDEN EAGLE ASSURANCE LIMITED, HAMMOND MAINLINE PIPELINE LLC, HUNTWAY REFINING COMPANY, MAINLINE PIPELINES LIMITED, MAPLE ETHANOL LTD., MICHIGAN REDEVELOPMENT GP LLC, MICHIGAN REDEVELOPMENT L.P., MRP PROPERTIES COMPANY LLC, NECHES RIVER HOLDING CORP., NORCO METHANOL LLC, OCEANIC TANKERS AGENCY LIMITED, PARKWAY PIPELINE LLC, PENTA TANKS TERMINALS S.A., PI DOCK FACILITIES LLC, PICKARD PLACE CONDOMINIUM ASSOCIATION, PORT ARTHUR COKER COMPANY L.P., PREMCOR USA INC., PROPERTY RESTORATION L.P., PURE BIOFUELS DEL PERU S.A.C., PURE BIOFUELS HOLDINGS L.P., Parkway Pipeline, Premcor, Pure Biofuels Del Peru, SABINE RIVER HOLDING CORP., SABINE RIVER LLC, SAINT BERNARD PROPERTIES COMPANY LLC, SUNBELT REFINING COMPANY L.P., THE PREMCOR PIPELINE CO., THE PREMCOR REFINING GROUP INC., THE SHAMROCK PIPE LINE CORPORATION, TRANSPORT MARITIME ST. LAURENT INC., ULTRAMAR ACCEPTANCE INC., ULTRAMAR ENERGY INC., ULTRAMAR INC., Ultramar Diamond Shamrock, V-TEX LOGISTICS LLC, VALERO (BARBADOS) SRL, VALERO (PERU) HOLDINGS GP LLC, VALERO (PERU) HOLDINGS LIMITED, VALERO ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES DE MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., VALERO ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES DE MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., VALERO ARUBA ACQUISITION COMPANY I LTD., VALERO ARUBA FINANCE INTERNATIONAL LTD., VALERO ARUBA HOLDING COMPANY N.V., VALERO ARUBA HOLDINGS INTERNATIONAL LTD., VALERO ARUBA MAINTENANCE/OPERATIONS COMPANY N.V., VALERO BROWNSVILLE TERMINAL LLC, VALERO CANADA FINANCE INC., VALERO CANADA L.P., VALERO CAPITAL CORPORATION, VALERO CARIBBEAN SERVICES COMPANY, VALERO COKER CORPORATION ARUBA N.V., VALERO CUSTOMS & TRADE SERVICES INC., VALERO EAST BAY LLC, VALERO ENERGY (IRELAND) LIMITED, VALERO ENERGY ARUBA II COMPANY, VALERO ENERGY INC., VALERO ENERGY LTD, VALERO ENERGY PARTNERS GP LLC, VALERO ENERGY PARTNERS LP, VALERO ENERGY UK LTD, VALERO ENTERPRISES INC., VALERO EQUITY SERVICES LTD, VALERO FINANCE L.P. I, VALERO FINANCE L.P. II, VALERO FINANCE L.P. III, VALERO FOREST CONTRIBUTION LLC, VALERO GRAIN MARKETING LLC, VALERO H2 PIPELINE COMPANY LLC, VALERO HOLDCO UK LTD, VALERO HOLDINGS INC., VALERO INTERNATIONAL HOLDINGS INC., VALERO LIVE OAK LLC, VALERO LOGISTICS UK LTD, VALERO MARKETING AND SUPPLY (PANAMA) LLC, VALERO MARKETING AND SUPPLY COMPANY, VALERO MARKETING AND SUPPLY DE MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., VALERO MARKETING AND SUPPLY DE MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., VALERO MARKETING AND SUPPY INTERNATIONAL LTD., VALERO MARKETING IRELAND LIMITED, VALERO MKS LOGISTICS L.L.C., VALERO NEDERLAND COOPERATIEF U.A., VALERO NEDERLAND COOPERATIEF U.A., VALERO NEW AMSTERDAM B.V., VALERO OMEGA COMPANY L.L.C., VALERO OPERATIONAL SERVICES DE MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., VALERO OPERATIONAL SERVICES DE MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., VALERO OPERATIONS SUPPORT LTD, VALERO PARTNERS CCTS LLC, VALERO PARTNERS CORPUS EAST LLC, VALERO PARTNERS CORPUS WEST LLC, VALERO PARTNERS EP LLC, VALERO PARTNERS HOUSTON LLC, VALERO PARTNERS LOUISIANA LLC, VALERO PARTNERS LUCAS LLC, VALERO PARTNERS MCKEE LLC, VALERO PARTNERS MEMPHIS LLC, VALERO PARTNERS MERAUX LLC, VALERO PARTNERS NORTH TEXAS LLC, VALERO PARTNERS OPERATING CO. LLC, VALERO PARTNERS PAPS LLC, VALERO PARTNERS PORT ARTHUR LLC, VALERO PARTNERS SOUTH TEXAS LLC, VALERO PARTNERS TEXAS CITY LLC, VALERO PARTNERS THREE RIVERS LLC, VALERO PARTNERS WEST MEMPHIS LLC, VALERO PARTNERS WEST TEXAS LLC, VALERO PARTNERS WYNNEWOOD LLC, VALERO PAYMENT SERVICES COMPANY, VALERO PEMBROKESHIRE LLC, VALERO PEMBROKESHIRE OIL TERMINAL LTD, VALERO PLAINS COMPANY LLC, VALERO POWER MARKETING LLC, VALERO RAIL OPERATIONS DE MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., VALERO RAIL OPERATIONS DE MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., VALERO RAIL PARTNERS LLC, VALERO REFINING AND MARKETING COMPANY, VALERO REFINING COMPANY-ARUBA N.V., VALERO REFINING COMPANY-CALIFORNIA, VALERO REFINING COMPANY-OKLAHOMA, VALERO REFINING COMPANY-TENNESSEE L.L.C., VALERO REFINING-MERAUX LLC, VALERO REFINING-NEW ORLEANS L.L.C., VALERO REFINING-TEXAS L.P., VALERO RENEWABLE FUELS COMPANY LLC, VALERO SECURITY SYSTEMS INC., VALERO SERVICES INC., VALERO SKELLYTOWN PIPELINE LLC, VALERO TEJAS COMPANY LLC, VALERO TERMINAL HOLDCO LTD, VALERO TERMINALING AND DISTRIBUTION COMPANY, VALERO TERMINALING AND DISTRIBUTION DE MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., VALERO TEXAS POWER MARKETING INC., VALERO ULTRAMAR HOLDINGS INC., VALERO UNIT INVESTMENTS L.L.C., VALERO WEST WALES LLC, VRG PROPERTIES COMPANY, VTD PROPERTIES COMPANY, WARSHALL COMPANY LLC, and ZELIG COMMERCIAL INC..
Xcel Energy, Inc. operates as a holding company, which engages in the generation, purchase, transmission, distribution and sale of electricity. It operates through the following three segments: Regulated Electric Utility, Regulated Natural Gas Utility and All Others. The Regulated Electric Utility segment generates, transmits and distributes electricity primarily in portions of generates, transmits and distributes electricity in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Dakota, South Dakota, Colorado, Texas and New Mexico. In addition, this segment includes sales for resale and provides wholesale transmission service to various entities in the United States. It also includes commodity trading operations. The Regulated Natural Gas Utility segment transports, stores, and distributes natural gas primarily in portions of Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, Michigan and Colorado. The All Others segment engages in steam, appliance repair services, nonutility real estate activities, processing solid waste into refuse-derived fuel and investments in rental housing projects that qualify for low-income housing tax credits. The company was founded in 1909 and is headquartered in Minneapolis, MN.

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ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) - In New York state government news, talk of legalizing recreational marijuana is heating up ahead of the 2019 session.

Lawmakers last week held hearings on the topic in Buffalo and Binghamton and advocates are planning for a big conference on legal pot next month.

Proposals to legalize, regulate and tax recreational marijuana are expected to loom large over next year's legislative session.

Meanwhile, Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo is dismissing a report that he has contacted Iowa Democrats about a potential run for president.

Cuomo was elected to a third term this month and has said he intends to serve a full four years. Cuomo told reporters this week that he intends to "stick with New York state."

(Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)
UPDATE -- Rome police say a drug-deal gone bad resulted in a weekend shooting, and Monday police have identified the men charged.

An 18-year-old was shot in the leg while on the porch of a home on the 100 block of North Doxtator Street around 8 p.m. Saturday night.

Mug shots provided by Rome Police Department Mug shots provided by Rome Police Department

Police say three people went to a nearby residence on West Liberty Street for drugs, and an attempted robbery. A fight broke out over the handgun, and police say a teenager and dog were hit.

Two men, 27-year-old Antoine Williams of Rome, and 23-year-old Kendell Savage, also of Rome, were both taken into custody without incident.

Williams is facial drug and assault charges, while Savage is facing second-degree criminal contempt. Police say further charges are pending.

The teen shot was sent to St. Elizabeth's Hospital for treatment of injuries not considered to be life-threatening.

Rome police say they found 159 grams of cocaine and crack cocaine in the house, four pounds of marijuana, cash and a loaded gun.

The dog did not survive.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------NEW INFORMATION- The Rome Police Department has confirmed one male was shot, and they have two people in custody with pending charges.

According to an investigator with the Rome Police Department, an 18-year-old male from Rome was shot in the leg. They told us they were called to a residence on W. Liberty street in Rome. They said when they arrived, they found two people arguing over a gun and sometime during the argument a third party was shot in the leg.

They took the two people into custody and the victim was taken to St. Elizabeth Medical Center and has since been treated and released.

Police did have the corner of Liberty Street and Doxtater Street bocked off for a few hours.

The two people are in custdy with charges pending.

The investigation is ongoing.

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ROME- Crews were called to a residence on Doxtater street in Rome Saturday night for a reported shots fired incident. The corner of Doxtater Street and Liberty Streets were blocked off.

According to the NEWSChannel 2 camera crews, they saw a person being handcuffed and put into a patrol car. They also said a man walked up to the scene and said "his son had been shot."

We're told the victim was transported to a local hospital. No word on extent of injuries and no word as to whether anyone was arrested.
GREATER LAFAYETTE, Ind. (WLFI) -- When it comes to buying gifts, people often think of shopping at the big corporations. Well this holiday season, small business owners are working to bring attention to shopping local.

The Greater Lafayette Commerce hosted its second annual Small Business Saturday on Main Street Nov. 24.

The day is focused on getting the community to come out and shop local.

Jenica Holland is a volunteer at City Foods on Main Street. The grocery store is a nonprofit and has been in the Greater Lafayette community for decades. She said shoppers deciding to buy local is important, especially for smaller communities like Lafayette.

The power and I think the magnificents of shopping local is that you're really, truly powering your community because most of your money is staying here, said Holland.

Holland said she's noticed community members shifting their focus to shopping local.

A lot of people that I spoke to yesterday that came in were actually looking to avoid the Black Friday masses and the waves. That was kind of the bulk and the majority of the people that were shopping downtown yesterday, said Holland.

Michelle Greene is a Lafayette resident who often stick to buying locally owned goods. She said she likes shopping local because she finds things you can't get anywhere else.

I just wanted to come out today and kinda support our local small businesses and see what kind of unique things are available in the downtown area today, said Greene.

Greene was raised in the Lafayette area and wants more residents to consider shopping local.

I think its really cool to see so many of the smaller downtown stores sort of being rejuvenated and I think if people dont shop at them, then they wont stick around so we have to do our part, said Greene.

Holland urges the community to think locally when gift shopping this season.

It's just kind of more for the heart rather than choosing something that's mass produced that someone has desired for and wished for or like maybe needing a replacement of versus, I saw this and I immediately thought of you and I knew it had to be yours, said Holland.

Shoppers were encouraged to "Snap a Selfie" and use the #ShopSmall.

You can find all of the 2018 Small Business Saturday action on the Greater Lafayette Commerce Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
Nearly three dozen people were arrested Saturday in connection to a cock fighting ring in eastern Nebraska.

Cass County Sheriff Wm. C. Brueggemann said on Saturday, at 12:33 p.m., Cass County deputies, along with Nebraska State Patrol responded to an anonymous tip regarding a cock fighting ring located at 11317 Highway 50, Louisville, Nebraska.

On the morning of November 24th the Nebraska Humane Society Advised that they received an anonymous tip from a patron that cock fighting was going to be taking place at this location on Saturday, November 24th. Upon arrival of the residence Officers could spot numerous cars parked on the property. Officers spoke with both property owners who advised that they had no clue why there were so many people on their property. Officers gained consent from both parties to search their land, and investigate further.

Upon approaching the east side of the property numerous people flooded out of a barn and took off into the trees and fields to the north of the property. Officers detained as many as they could but many got away in the fields to the north and east of the property. Deputies requested and received assistance from Plattsmouth Police Department to help transport and search for more parties involved. Deputies also received assistance from Cass County Emergency Management and Nebraska Humane Society.

Upon receiving a search warrant for the property Cass County Deputies, Cass County Emergency Management and the Nebraska Humane Society seized 186 live roosters, 11 dead roosters, and had to euthanize 1 rooster on scene. Inside of the barn many items were seized in relation to cock fighting. Many blades, syringes, and string were found on the inside of the barn, as well as a fighting pen for those involved. Upon the people arrested cash, and gambling sheets were found. Many of the roosters found inside of the barn were in small boxes, or crates. Many with fresh injuries sustained while fighting.

In total, 32 people were arrested and transported to the Cass County jail for suspicion of participating, viewing, or promoting cockfighting and some were also cited for Obstruction of a peace officer.
TUPELO, Miss. (WTVA) - President Trumps appearance in Tupelo on Monday has been moved to one hour earlier than previously scheduled.

Instead of 5 p.m., the president is now expected to appear at the Tupelo Regional Airport at 4 p.m.

There is no word as to why the time change was made.

Also, new information was released Saturday concerning the presidents visit from the city of Tupelo:

Beginning at Noon on Monday, November 26, Jackson Street Extended will be closed to thru traffic from Air Park to Gun Club roads to allow for a campaign stop at the Tupelo Regional Airport by US Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith and President Donald Trump.

That portion of Jackson Street Extended will remain closed until Air Force One leaves the area. Individuals who work in that location will be allowed to come and go to their places of business closed off by the Presidents security detail, if they possess proper identification.

The President is expected to arrive shortly before 4 p.m. to campaign for Hyde-Smith. He will leave Tupelo for a similar campaign stop in Biloxi at 8 p.m. Tickets are required for entry to the event. Those tickets may be obtained at the Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. website.

The City of Tupelo, Mississippi Highway Patrol, Lee County Sheriffs Office and Tupelo Regional Airport Security are working in support of President Trumps security detail.

Those driving their vehicles will park at the Tupelo Furniture Market on Coley Road. A bus will transport those people to the Tupelo Regional Airport.

Those planning to walk to the event should access the venue through the Jackson Street entrance to the Tupelo Regional Airport. All will be cleared through metal detectors.

No parking will be allowed on Jackson Street Extended to Coley Road.

As Air Force One enters Tupelo airspace, Coley Road from West Main to Jackson Street Extended will be temporarily closed.

Aviators within 30 nautical miles of the Tupelo Regional Airport should check for times and restrictions before making flight plans that afternoon.

Those attending the campaign event are urged to be careful and plan their travel accordingly.

Please note that this event is not planned, organized, or hosted by the City of Tupelo. This event is hosted by the Cindy Hyde-Smith Senate Campaign and/or Donald J. Trump for President, Inc., who are responsible for the ticketing, parking, ingress and egress, timing, and other logistics of the event.
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When it comes to summer time many people can get confused on when they should wear sandals and when they should wear flip flops. You will want to make sure that you know when Nike Kyrie 4 each one is appropriate. This will keep you from wishing that you had worn one or the other when you see everyone else wearing a certain type shoe. Being that it is summer time the first situation we will cover is the beach.

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Make sure that your shoes are comfortable whenever you travel, and easily removed. You will have to remove them for security checks. The number one concern is comfort. On planes and in airports, you will walk a little but sit a lot, so heavy-duty support is not necessary. Women Flip Flops make great travel footwear.

Pursuit of beauty is woman's nature, and high heel is one of the most important factor Kyrie 4 Shoes in becoming beautiful. Each girl may have had an experience to wear mother's high-heeled shoes. Little feet, into the big shoes, sidewalks on heel tapping the floor, hoping to grow up quickly and have their own high heels. Today, finally grown up and got her first pair of high heels, then the second pair, until a cupboard full of shoes. Those narrow little shoes, perfect curves and gloss, impressed people from the first sight, although sometimes they are not comfortable, but possessing of them is a kind of satisfactory.

Birkenstock sandals for women are an incredible summer luxury. Birkenstocks have been around for a while so they don't get the new wow factors that some other sandals get. However, Birkenstock women's sandals are now some of the most stylish and comfortable sandals in the market. Whether it's the Birkenstock Gizeh or a great pair of Birkenstock clogs, your feet will thank you. This is especially important if you have a job that requires you to stand a lot. This woman adores her Birkentocks and wants to tell you why.

Many people are embarrassed by their large feet and to hide their embarrassment think that it is best to keep them confined in sneakers. Some women also have trouble finding the right size or the size they want. If you want to make your feet smaller, then you should wear high heels instead of flats. High heels are not good for your body but they will make your feet look smaller in size. If you are not comfortable with pencil heels then you must know that the wedge heels make feet look smaller and not the pencil heel. They chunky heels are more comfortable wear and they do not give serious backaches or body problems.
By Aaron Ross and Marine Pennetier

DAKAR/PARIS (Reuters) - France will return 26 works of art to Benin, Emmanuel Macron's office said on Friday, as the French president took delivery of a report recommending the widespread return of cultural artefacts removed from Africa during the colonial era.

The report by Senegalese economist Felwine Sarr and French art historian Benedicte Savoy marks a potential milestone in the fight by African countries to recover works pillaged by Western explorers and colonisers.

Macron became the first Western leader to initiate a comprehensive review of colonial loot after telling Burkinabe students last year that "African heritage can't just be in European private collections and museums".

Some 90 percent of Africa's cultural heritage is now believed to be in Europe. The Quai Branly Museum in Paris alone holds some 70,000 African objects, as does London's British Museum, Savoy told Reuters earlier this year.

Western museums have traditionally resisted appeals to return objects to their countries of origin, which they often argue lack the necessary resources to care for the works.

Earlier this week, the governor of Chile's Easter Island led a delegation to the British Museum to request the return of a prized sculpture.

The French report calls for legislation to ease the return of artefacts from museum collections, according to newspaper reports. It identified around 46,000 objects at the Musee du Quai Branly museum in Paris that would qualify for repatriation.

"We have sensed a real desire by the executive to act," Sarr told daily Liberation. "I was sceptical at the beginning. I am now convinced this is not just a publicity stunt."

The 26 artefacts to returned to Benin from Quai Branly were seized in 1892 as the spoils of war. They are among some 5,000 works requested by the West African country.

Several European museums agreed last month to lend works to a new museum in Benin City, Nigeria. British soldiers seized thousands of metal castings, including the iconic Benin Bronzes, from the Kingdom of Benin in 1897.

But other governments, such as Ethiopia and Greece, have rejected the idea of loans, saying they should not have to borrow back their own stolen property.

(Editing by Laurence Frost and Toby Chopra)
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 25)  Vice President Leni Robredo on Sunday said she supports the deployment of more troops in some parts of Southern Luzon and the Visayas that are affected by insurgency.

"Wala tayong objection sa pag-augment. Very welcome iyon na balita na i-o-augment iyong ating kapulisan ng mga miyembro ng AFP," Robredo said on her radio program BISErbisyong Leni.

[Translation: We have no objection to augmenting troops. We welcome the news that the members of AFP will augment the police.]

Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea on Thursday issued Memorandum Order No. 32 (MO 32), directing the deployment of more police and military personnel in the provinces of Samar, Negros Oriental, Negros Occidental, and the Bicol Region. Malacanang said the order aims to prevent what it called "lawless violence" from "spreading and escalating elsewhere in the country."

The order was issued following a string of attacks in the said areas. On November 17, six policemen were wounded in an ambush involving members of the New People's Army in Libmanan, Camarines Sur. Another clash with communist rebels wounded two soldiers in Lope de Vega, Northern Samar on November 6. On October 30, suspected communist rebels attacked policemen in Guihulngan City in Negros Oriental.

While she supports MO 32, the Vice President said there is distrust over the use of "lawless violence" as the basis for the order.

"Marami kasing, parang, distrust. Dahil hindi masyadong klaro iyong pinaka-sadya, maraming natatakot kapag ginamit na iyong term na 'lawless violence'," she said.

[Translation: There is a distrust because the purpose is not clear, many are afraid when the term "lawless violence" is used.]

Robredo said many people fear that the order may lead to the declaration of martial law nationwide.

"Lawless violence kasi isa sa grounds ng pag-deklara ng Martial Law. Natatakot iyong mga tao na baka parang platform ito para mag-deklara ng Martial Law na palagay ng lahat, kahit pa may ambush dito, hindi naman kailangan," she said.

[Translation: Lawless violence is one of the grounds for the declaration of Martial Law. People are afraid that it may be used as a platform to declare Martial Law which many think is not necessary.]

According to Robredo, augmenting government forces is just one way to address insurgency. Instead, she said, the government should look into why insurgency intensified in the last two years.

"Noong nakaraang administrasyon, halos wala na talaga. Kailangang pag-aralan bakit ba bumalik? Bakit ba lumalakas ulit? Hindi sapat na, parang, response iyong pag-deklara na may lawless violence," she said.

[Translation: It was almost gone during the last administration. We should study why it returned, why it intensified. Declaring that there is lawless violence is not enough.]
Photo credit: Apic/RETIRED - Getty Images

From Men's Health

A foreboding cloud of black ash blocks out the sun from Europe to Asia. An outbreak of bubonic plague coincides with a piercing cold snap. Crops fail. Starvation, darkness, and squalor abound.

All of these conditions were pervasive throughout the northern hemisphere in the year 536 A.D. The year was a tipping point in an era of unprecedented devastation. It was so bad that researchers are now labeling that year the worst time to be alive in the history of humankind. Or as Harvard History professor Michael McCormick told Science: "It was the beginning of one of the worst periods to be alive, if not the worst year."

Although the origins of the black, ashen cloud were previously a mystery, a new paper published in the journal Antiquities indicates that a massive volcanic eruption in Iceland triggered the 18 months of darkness. Two more eruptions in the years 540 and 547 would compound the cloud.

The ash blocked out the sun, ushering forth frigid temperatures that blighted crops, resulting in starvation. Adding to the gloom, an outbreak of bubonic plague spread throughout the Eastern Roman Empire in 542 A.D., killing droves and giving way to an economic downturn that lasted 30 years.

The study-co-authored by McCormick, Nottingham University history professor Christopher Loveluck, and glaciologist Paul Mayewski at the Climate Change Institute of The University of Maine in Orono-measured ice samples in the Swiss Alps for evidence of pollutants and atmospheric change that could potentially shed light on the dark cloud's origins. While conducting the study, researchers discovered lead pollutants in the ice, created by the surge of volcanic activity.

Ironically, historians believe these pollutants sparked the European economy's revival, pulling it out of the deep, depressing chasm around 100 years later. Lead was crucial in the production of silver, which eventually spurred an economic resurgence as the sky cleared and the pestilence waned. As Loveluck told CNN: "There is evidence of total economic transformation between 640 and 660."

Story continues

So count your blessings. We've got nothing approaching that cataclysmic level of abject despair. At least, not yet.

('You Might Also Like',)
Maputo (AFP) - Twelve people have been killed in a suspected Islamist attack in northern Mozambique, with thousands of villagers fleeing the area into neighbouring Tanzania, police sources said Sunday.

Early Friday, "there was an attack in Nangane district, where there are no security patrols. The attackers killed 12 people, mostly women and children," a police source in Cabo Delgado province, who asked not to be named, told AFP.

The attack took place in the village of Chicuaia Velha, just a few kilometres (miles) from Tanzania, forcing several thousand people to cross the border to seek safety, police said.

A local journalist said the villagers were killed by machete or died when their houses were set on fire by the attackers.

It was the third such incident in the last month in Cabo Delgado, leaving 20 dead in all.

The authorities have responded with a crackdown, rounding up some 200 suspects.

Over the past year, hardline Islamists have been active in the region, stoking unrest just as the government in Maputo is pushing ahead with oil and gas development in the province.
MUKONO, Uganda (AP)  Ugandan divers retrieved 31 bodies and expected to find more in a capsized vessel in Lake Victoria, making it one of the country's worst maritime disasters and prompting the president to call for more stringent safety regulations.

The vessel was believed to be overcrowded with nearly 100 passengers, said Zurah Ganyana, a senior police officer at the scene. At least 27 people were rescued overnight, lower than earlier reports, she said.

The boat, on a routine pleasure cruise and full of mostly youthful revelers, overturned and sank at about 7 p.m. on Saturday, she said.

Among the many tragic stories was one of a man who went out to help rescue people and drowned when he was dragged underwater by a desperate passenger.

The MV Templa was in poor condition, had been grounded for some time and lacked a valid license to operate, authorities said. Marine police tried to prevent the boat from embarking on the cruise, but they were overwhelmed by the presence of two local princes among the passengers, they said.

"Such boats cannot carry more than 50 people," said lawmaker Johnson Muyanja, who represents part of the district of Mukono, the site of the accident. "Here we don't have limits. Our problem is that we don't have control. The number of people on board was too much compared to the size of the boat."

The steel-built narrow vessel was said to have recently undergone repairs, including patching up holes in the hull. It was in and out of business, its operators allegedly dodging inspectors who wanted to impound the boat, said Aggrey Bagiire, the state minister for transport.

"Out of this calamity we can now take some steps that are solid and punitive," he said. "Someone just buys a yacht and puts it on the water, without having registered it, without taking it for inspection. There is impunity."

The boat had gone about half its journey when the captain noticed the hull was "taking in water very quickly from welded spots," said Henry Ategeka, Uganda's principal marine inspector, citing findings from a preliminary investigation.

Story continues

The disaster has shocked many in this East African country where a cruise on Lake Victoria is an increasingly popular weekend activity for young people in Kampala.

The boat capsized close to shore, near a Mukono beach resort. Witnesses said they heard people calling for help as they tried to stay afloat and others tried to swim ashore. Many were women.

"They were shouting 'Help us! Help us!' and the boat was sinking very quickly," said Sam Tukei, one of several local men who used fishermen's canoes to rescue people. "By the time the police came we had saved many people."

A stampede ensued when the rescue boats arrived, and at least one man in the rescue party was drowned by the people he had come to help.

"They took him down with them. In the morning, when they found his body, another dead man was still grabbing him," said Maureen Nagawa, speaking of her drowned cousin.

Early Sunday a police helicopter hovered low over the spot where the boat sank, as a team of divers searched for bodies under calm waters. As the death toll rose, so did the crowd of onlookers at the beach abutting a quiet village surrounded by agricultural fields.

Police carried victims in tarpaulins and hauled them into a waiting truck, occasionally drawing loud wails from some of the onlookers. One young woman, seeing a victim she apparently recognized, fainted and was rushed to hospital.

One reason many people died so close to shore was likely "intoxication," said Asuman Mugenyi, national director of police operations. Citing the accounts of some survivors, he said there was a good number of life jackets aboard the doomed vessel that passengers neglected to wear.

The boat's passengers, in a party mood, likely panicked when the vessel started to sink, he said.

Other officials said that the captain's emergency commands may have been drowned out by loud music.

Among the victims were the couple who owned and operated the boat, according to police officer Ganyana.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said on Twitter that he had ordered the electronic registration and monitoring of all boats "so that we can know who is where on the lake and why."

"Obviously, the operators of this boat will be charged with criminal negligence and manslaughter, if they have not already been punished for their mistake by dying in the accident," he said. "Let everybody take the warning from this tragedy."

Boat accidents are increasingly common on East Africa's major lakes, including Lake Victoria, which is surrounded by Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda.

More than 200 people were killed in a Tanzanian ferry disaster in September, with officials saying it had been dangerously overcrowded.

___

Follow Africa news at https://twitter.com/AP_Africa
Tehran (AFP) - A strong 6.4-magnitude earthquake hit Iran's western province of Kermanshah late Sunday, Iran's institute of geophysics said.

The epicentre of the quake was 17 kilometres southwest of the city of Sarpol-e Zahab, according to the institute, which said it struck at a depth of 7 kilometres.

At least 115 were injured in Sarpol-e Zahab and the neighbouring Gilan-e Gharb city where the quake was also felt, Kermanshah governor Houshang Bazvand told Fars news agency.

The region was rocked by seven weaker aftershocks an hour after the initial tremor, the strongest of which had was magnitude 5.2, the geophysics institue said.

There were also reports that the quake was felt across the border in Iraq.

Morteza Salimi, an official with the red crescent society of Iran, told semi-official news agency ISNA that the quake rocked areas "just reconstructed" after a major tremor last year.

Kermanshah was hit by a devastating 7.3-magnitude quake last November which killed 620 people, mostly in Sarpol-e Zahab.

It left more than 12,000 people injured and damaged some 30,000 houses, with huge numbers made homeless at the start of the cold season in the mountainous region.

Local officials said the estimated cost of reconstruction would be measured in billions of dollars, at a time when Iran was struggling to cope with a tanking economy.

The western province was also hit by a 6.0-magnitude quake in August that killed two people and injured more than 250.

Iran sits on top of two major tectonic plates and sees frequent seismic activity.

The country's deadliest quake was in 1990, a 7.4-magnitude earthquake in northern Iran that killed 40,000 people, injured 300,000 and left half a million homeless, reducing dozens of towns and nearly 2,000 villages to rubble.
Lagos (AFP) - After a 15-year career in banking and marketing, Nigerian Mike Dada was looking for a platform to "communicate the strength of Africa to the rest of the world".

He decided to set up Afrima -- the All Africa Music Awards -- Africa's equivalent of the Grammys, whose fourth edition takes place this weekend in Ghana's capital, Accra.

In 2014, penniless but passionate about music, he worked with private sponsors in Nigeria and a partner in Kenya.

Together, they organised the awards ceremony to "create jobs" and "make Africans proud", he told local media, earning the backing of the African Union.

In four years, Afrima has managed to carve out a space as a platform to showcase the bubbling, innovative and prolific African music industry that has exploded in the past decade.

In Accra, it's not World Music the continent is going to celebrate.

Instead, it's Afropop, the Nigerian-born style which mixes Congolese soukous, Ivorian coupe-decale, Ghanaian Highlife and Jamaican dancehall that has got Africa's youth dancing.

"Music is a bridge," said Olivier Laouchez, chief executive of Trace TV, a French music channel popular on the continent.

"In Senegal, we listen to Nigerian hits in nightclubs and South Africa's kwaito (afro-house) is exported to all radio stations on the continent.

"Today, what is bringing Africa together... is sport and music."

- Diaspora -

One category has been dedicated to artists from the vast diaspora.

This year, the contenders include Franco-Malian Aya Nakamura and the surprising Afrotronix, an artist of Chadian origin who dresses like Daft Punk and makes house music with Sahelian rhythms and lyrics in Spanish.

Maitre Gims, who comes from Democratic Republic of Congo and is repeatedly played on French radio, has racked up more than 200 million views on YouTube with "J'me Tire" ("I'm outta here") and is Afrima's most nominated artist this year.

Story continues

The rapper is as much of an unknown to English-speaking Africa as Nigeria's Davido is to French audiences, despite his 100 million-plus views on YouTube.

"Thanks to Afrima we get to know musicians from all over the continent," Oris Aigbokhaevbolo, a journalist with the Music in Africa website, told AFP.

Take, for example, Diamond Platnumz, a Tanzanian who hit the spotlight after winning three Afrima awards two years ago.

"Love you Die", his duet with Nigeria's Patoranking, is now being played around the world.

"Ghana has always been good (in terms of music) and countries like Sierra Leone or even Gambia are coming up," said Aigbokhaevbolo, who in 2015 was named the continent's best music journalist.

"It makes us feel that we are not the only country producing music on the continent", said the Nigerian.

- Nigeria v South Africa -

Still, despite efforts to create regional "best artist" categories, Nigeria and South Africa will dominate the evening.

The big names are regular features from one year to the next: Nigeria's Davido, Wizkid and Tiwa Savage are fixtures, while South Africa's Cassper Nyovest and Nasty-C have made repeat appearances.

The two countries, sub-Saharan Africa's biggest economies, have gone head-to-head for years.

Today, they are virtually the only countries on the continent to have sophisticated music industries, with professional production facilities, agents and copyright lawyers.

Even though South Africa may have a more modern industry, Nigerian artists benefit from a local market of 190 million people, boosting audience numbers.

"We had to limit Nigerian songs for our new ranking show of African hits," Laouchez said.

"Otherwise they would have outshone the entire continent!"

Nigeria has been a clear leader of the Afropop revolution for 10 years.

But it remains to be seen if they will maintain their edge on Saturday night against a continent that wants to be finally heard.
Dubai (AFP) - A Saudi-led military coalition resumed air strikes against rebel supply lines around Hodeida on Sunday, two days after a UN envoy visited the lifeline Yemeni port city, pro-government military officials said.

The raids came as firefights on the eastern and southern edges of the rebel-held city killed 26 insurgents in the past 24 hours, the officials and doctors in two different hospitals said.

Five pro-government fighters were killed in the clashes with the Iran-aligned rebels and by landmines, the officials told AFP.

The air strikes targeted convoys of rebel reinforcements at the northern entrance to Hodeida and south of the city, they said.

The renewed violence came after UN envoy Martin Griffiths visited Hodeida on Friday to assess the humanitarian situation ahead of peace talks planned for December between Yemen's coalition-backed government and the rebels.

Rebel spokesman Mohammed Abdessalam said on Twitter there had been "35 air raids over the last 12 hours on Hodeida, accompanied by artillery bombardments".

"This escalation destroys the efforts of the UN envoy", he said.

Under heavy international pressure, the Yemeni government and the coalition had until Sunday largely suspended a five-month offensive against the port city.

Fighting had intensified in early November as Yemeni forces backed by the coalition attempted to enter Hodeida, but calm returned after Griffiths arrived in Yemen on Wednesday.

After visiting Hodeida on Friday, Griffiths on Saturday met Mohammed Ali al-Huthi, head of the rebels' Higher Revolutionary Committee, in the insurgent-held capital Sanaa.

The rebel leader on Sunday described the renewed air raids and other hostilities in Hodeida as "an insult" to the UN envoy.

Griffiths is due to hold talks with Yemen's internationally recognised government in the Saudi capital Riyadh on Monday, according to a UN source.

UN agencies say up to 14 million Yemenis are at risk of starvation if fighting closes the city's port, from which nearly all imports and humanitarian aid pass.

According to UN figures, nearly 10,000 people have been killed since the coalition joined the conflict in 2015 to reinforce the government, triggering what the UN calls the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

Rights groups fear the actual toll is far higher.
Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford Jrs family has employed Benjamin Crump who previously represented the families of shooting victims Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown to also represent them: WVTM

The family of a 21-year-old black man who was shot by a police officer at shopping centre in Alabama on Thanksgiving has hired a national civil rights lawyer to represent them.

Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford Jr was fatally shot on Thursday night by a police officer who was responding to reports of gunfire at Hoovers Riverchase Galleria near the city of Birmingham.

Authorities said a Hoover police officer who was working as security at the shopping mall confronted an armed man running away from the scene and fatally shot him.

Police initially said Bradford, who was known as EJ, fired the shots responsible for injuring an 18-year-old man and a 12-year-old girl, but investigators have since said they believe he likely did not fire the shots.

They said the gunman is still at large.

Bradford's family has employed Benjamin Crump, who previously represented the families of shooting victims Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown.

In a press release, Mr Crump said Bradford was a veteran who was licensed to carry a concealed firearm.

Bradfords family said they were completely shocked, heartbroken and devastated by his death.

EJ was a devoted son and brother who dedicated his life to serving his country and always doing the right thing, they said in a statement.

As we continue to grieve, rest assured that we are working with our legal team to determine exactly what happened and why this police officer killed our son.

Hoover police spokesperson Captain Gregg Rector said the police regret their initial media release was not totally accurate now new evidence has emerged.

Over the past 20 hours, the Jefferson County Sheriffs Office investigators and crime scene technicians have interviewed numerous individuals and examined several critical evidentiary items, he said.

New evidence now suggests that while Mr Bradford may have been involved in some aspect of the altercation, he likely did not fire the rounds that injured the 18-year-old victim.

Story continues

More than 200 demonstrators marched past Christmas shoppers on Saturday at the shopping centre where he Bradford was killed to demand justice.

The protesters, who included several of Bradfords relatives, chanted EJ and no justice, no peace. They held a moment of silence at the area outside a shoe store where Bradford was killed.

We knew that was false, Bradfords stepmother, Cynthia Bradford, said when she heard police were blaming him for the shooting.

She described her stepson as a respectful young man whose father worked at a jail for the Birmingham Police Department.

Family members described the terror of discovering he had died via social media, where video footage of him lying in a pool of blood on the mall floor has circulated.
Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard law professor and frequent defender of President Donald Trump, has a grim prediction for the president regarding the outcome of special counsel Robert Muellers Russia investigation.

I think the report is going to be devastating to the president, Dershowitz told ABCs This Week on Sunday. And I know that the presidents team is already working on a response to the report. ... When I say devastating, I mean its going to paint a picture thats going to be politically very devastating.

Dershowitz expressed doubt that Muellers findings would result in criminal charges against the president, stating that collusion is not criminal. He also dismissed host George Stephanopoulos suggestion that the special counsel could accuse Trump of conspiring to cooperate with an attempt to defraud the U.S. government.

Its too much of a stretch, Dershowitz told Stephanopoulos. What I think Mueller is going to do if hes smart  hes not going to take the chance on being rebutted ... hes going to lay out the facts, leave it to Congress to decide whether that rises to the level of an impeachable offense.

Alan Dershowitz, a frequent Trump defender, says the Mueller report will be devastating for the president: "It's going to paint a picture that's going to be politically very devastating. I still don't think it's going to make a criminal case https://t.co/KqWAc6L38G #ThisWeek pic.twitter.com/kso9lYW45u  This Week (@ThisWeekABC) November 25, 2018

Muellers investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether Trump obstructed justice is reportedly expected to come to a close within the next few weeks. Trump reportedly submitted written answers to Muellers questions last week, after months of back-and-forth between the presidents legal team and the special counsels office.

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The investigation has been the subject of Trumps persistent ire since it began roughly 18 months ago. He has repeatedly railed against the probe, calling it a witch hunt and attempting to undermine Muellers credibility.

Trump announced earlier this month that he was replacing Jeff Sessions as attorney general. He named Matt Whitaker, a former federal prosecutor who previously served as Sessions chief of staff in the Justice Department, as acting attorney general  an appointment that drew backlash from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle who worried Whitaker, a sharp critic of the Russia probe, would shut down or significantly limit the investigation.

Dershowitz said Sunday that Whitakers appointment made it very hard to predict when and under what circumstances Muellers report would be released to the public.

It will be made public probably with a response alongside, he told ABC. The president will say, Ah look, its political. Theres their account and theres our account. And the American public will have to judge the credibility.

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5 Times Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker Critiqued The Mueller Investigation On CNN

Inside Trumps Refusal To Testify In The Mueller Probe

Roger Stone Associate Jerome Corsi In Plea Negotiations With Mueller: Report

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Asylum seekers hoping to enter the United States will be required to wait in Mexico while their claims are processed, according to a new deal reportedly struck between the Trump administration and Mexicos incoming government.

Quoting senior members of President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obradors team, the Washington Post reports that while a formal agreement has yet to be signed, the Remain in Mexico plan will prevent those seeking asylum from stepping onto U.S. soil until their applications are approved.

The deal marks a dramatic change in government policy, which currently allows those seeking asylum to remain in the U.S. while awaiting the decisions on their applications.

Seven-year-old Honduran migrant Genesis Belen Mejia Flores waves an American flag at two U.S. border control helicopters flying overhead near a shelter in Tijuana, Mexico. (Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS)

However, as HuffPost previously reported, its unclear if the Remain in Mexico plan would survive a court challenge.

Lee Gerlent, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, told the Post that while it was too early to comment on potential litigation, the government ought to concentrate on providing a fair and lawful asylum process in the U.S. rather than inventing more and more ways to try and short-circuit it.

President Donald Trump seemed to confirm the report in a series of tweets Saturday evening.

Migrants at the Southern Border will not be allowed into the United States until their claims are individually approved in court, he wrote. We only will allow those who come into our Country legally. Other than that our very strong policy is Catch and Detain. No Releasing into the U.S.

Migrants at the Southern Border will not be allowed into the United States until their claims are individually approved in court. We only will allow those who come into our Country legally. Other than that our very strong policy is Catch and Detain. No Releasing into the U.S...  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 24, 2018

....All will stay in Mexico. If for any reason it becomes necessary, we will CLOSE our Southern Border. There is no way that the United States will, after decades of abuse, put up with this costly and dangerous situation anymore!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 24, 2018

Earlier Saturday, Mexicos incoming Interior Minister, Olga Sanchez Cordero, told Reuters that there were no plans for the country to host asylum seekers.

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The future government does not consider ... that Mexico assumes the status of safe third country for Central American migrants, or from other countries, who are on Mexican territory or for those who will reach it in the future, she said in a statement.

But in an interview with the Post, Sanchez Cordero said that the incoming government had agreed to this policy of Remain in Mexico, referring to it as a short-term solution.

The medium- and long-term solution is that people dont migrate, she said. Mexico has open arms and everything, but imagine, one caravan after another, that would also be a problem for us.

Members of a caravan from Central America trying to reach the United States sleep under a road bridge next to the U.S.-Mexico border in Tijuana, Mexico. (Photo: Lucy Nicholson / Reuters)

News of the deal comes after Trump repeatedly castigated a migrant caravan making its way to the U.S.-Mexico border from Central America.

The president painted those traveling in the group as criminals and went so far as to announce that he had authorized troops to use lethal force against them.

Several thousand members of the caravan who have already arrived in the border city of Tijuana are in a state of limbo as they await their fate in makeshift migrant shelters. According to The New York Times, officials expect at least 1,500 more people will arrive in the coming days.

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U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents stand guard at the San Ysidro port of entry on the U.S.-Mexico border, seen from Tijuana, Mexico. (Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Last week, Trump tweeted that the U.S. was ill-prepared for this invasion, and will not stand for it before hinting at the new policy.

Catch and Release is an obsolete term. It is now Catch and Detain. Illegal Immigrants trying to come into the U.S.A., often proudly flying the flag of their nation as they ask for U.S. Asylum will be detained or turned away.

The Mayor of Tijuana, Mexico, just stated that the City is ill-prepared to handle this many migrants, the backlog could last 6 months. Likewise, the U.S. is ill-prepared for this invasion, and will not stand for it. They are causing crime and big problems in Mexico. Go home!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 18, 2018

Catch and Release is an obsolete term. It is now Catch and Detain. Illegal Immigrants trying to come into the U.S.A., often proudly flying the flag of their nation as they ask for U.S. Asylum, will be detained or turned away. Dems must approve Border Security & Wall NOW!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 18, 2018

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A two-year-old boy has died in hospital after falling out of an upstairs window a week ago (Picture: Getty)

A two-year-old boy has died in hospital after reportedly falling out of a window last week.

The youngster was found lying on a pavement with a head injury outside a house in Liverpool on November 17.

He was taken to hospital in a critical condition but has now reportedly died.

On Saturday, the Liverpool Echo reported that relatives of the toddler had told them that the decision had been taken to switch off his life support on Friday night.

In a statement issued on Saturday, Merseyside Police confirmed that it is carrying out an investigation on behalf of the coroner following the death of a two-year-old boy in Liverpool.

The boy was found lying on the pavement outside a house in Fairburn Road, Tuebrook, Liverpool on November 17 (Picture: Google Maps)

It said: Officers are working to establish the circumstances of what happened. It is believed the boy may have fallen from an upstairs window.

The statement added: They are particularly appealing for a woman, believed to be aged in her 50s, who came to the assistance of the boy.

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Specialist family liaison officers are supporting the childs family and a post-mortem will be carried out to establish the cause of death.

The boy was found outside a house in Fairburn Road, Tuebrook, at about 4.10pm on November 17.
Philip Hammond has sought to calm the fears of DUP Brexit rebels as Theresa May heads to Brussels with her deal under threat from all sides.

DUP leader Arlene Foster, whose party props up the government, indicated she was prepared to ally with Labour to thwart the prime ministers Brexit blueprint, which she said was worse for the UK than a Jeremy Corbyn-led government.

Ms Foster will tell her party faithful that the draft deal is not in Northern Ireland's long-term interests when DUP members gather in Belfast for their annual conference on Saturday, where Ms May's rival, Boris Johnson is due to make a star appearance.

The prime minister will hold last-minute talks with European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker and European Council president Donald Tusk before a summit of EU leaders on Sunday which is expected to endorse her agreement.

However she faces tensions over the future of Gibraltar, as Spain's prime minister Pedro Sanches has threatened to "veto" the deal without further guarantees.

Speaking ahead of the summit, Mr Hammond appealed to MPs to support the deal, which he said was better for the UK than remaining in the EU because it would help heal the divisions in the country.

The chancellor told BBC Radio 4s Today programme: The DUP has understandable concerns about anything which proposes solutions - even if they are very unlikely to ever have to be brought into effect - where there would be any kind of difference in treatment between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.

I absolutely understand those concerns and its our job to reassure them, firstly that we are never likely to get into that situation and secondly that we have done everything we possibly can to minimise any difference there would be during any temporary backstop period and that it could only ever be a temporary period.

Mr Hammond warned that a no-deal Brexit would unleash "economic chaos", adding: "If the meaningful vote is lost we are in uncharted territory.

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"We will be faced with potential economic chaos, I am sure we would get a very negative reaction from the business community, from investors, from the markets.

In a sign of the significance of the DUP support, Mr Hammond flew to Belfast on Friday to woo senior figures and Northern Ireland business leaders.

The DUP has threatened to torpedo the confidence and supply agreement it has with Ms May over their opposition to her Brexit deal, a move which could bring down the government.

The 10 unionist MPs have been flexing their muscles by refusing to vote with the government on key budget votes.

Sajid Javid, the home secretary, was also forced to water down proposals to prohibit .50 or higher calibre rifles in the long-awaited Offensive Weapons Bill, due to pressure from DUP and Tory MPs.

Asked by The Times if the PM's deal was a greater threat than a Labour government, Ms Foster said: "I think it is, and the reason I say that is on day one of us leaving the European Union there would be no difference, we would be exactly the same as the rest of the UK but in year five or ten we would be different."

Shadow home secretary Diane Abbott also refused to rule out an alliance with the DUP, despite longstanding differences between the parties.

Ms Abbott told the BBC's Political Thinking podcast: "We would only want to ally with a group of MPs who agreed with us on the issues at stake.

"At this point, we don't agree with the DUP on the issues at stake, but in this sort of parliamentary turmoil you can't necessarily rule anything out.

"I always say to my MP colleagues that the people of Hackney send me to parliament to get rid of the Tories and if it's all about getting rid of this Tory government you do what it takes."
Award  Trooper Ross Woodward, from 1st The Queens Dragoon Guards, received the Queens Commendation for Bravery for helping those injured in the Las Vegas massacre (Picture: PA)

A British soldier has been handed a bravery award for rushing to help those injured in the Las Vegas massacre.

Trooper Ross Woodward, from 1st The Queens Dragoon Guards, was on a trip to Las Vegas after a desert training exercise in Nevada when gunman Stephen Paddock opened fire on festival-goers at the Mandalay Bay Hotel.

As bullets rained down, the 24-year-old helped lead people to safety and tended to the injured.

Trooper Woodward has now been awarded the Queens Commendation for Bravery in the latest round of military honours.

Anyone in the military would have done the same, he told the Press Association.

To me it just felt like the right thing to do, because people were there and needed my help, I just did not want to walk away and leave them. If I ever need help, I hope and pray that someone would help me.

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Trooper Woodward, from Beeston, Nottinghamshire, said they had undertaken a team medic course just weeks before the training exercise, so the skills were fresh in his mind.

When he found himself caught up in the massacre in Las Vegas, the father of one said there was a lot of chaos, with people screaming, shouting, looking for loved ones.

The mass shooting at the Mandalay Bay resort and casino on the Las Vegas Strip was the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history (Picture: AP/John Locher, File)

He said the first casualty he treated was a man who had been shot in the back, saying: I came across a man who was in distress, in a lot of discomfort  he was on the floor.

With the man in pain and struggling to breathe, Trooper Woodward discovered he had been shot in his lower left back and proceeded to try and help stop the bleeding.

I tried to reassure him that I wasnt going to leave him, he thought I was going to go  I promised I wasnt going to go anywhere, he said.

I stayed by him, and a few moments passed and there was no response from him  I found out that he had passed away.

Six soldiers were caught up and helped in the wake of the shooting in Las Vegas in October last year (Picture: Getty)

Six soldiers from 1st Queen Dragoon Guards were caught up and helped in the wake of the shooting in October last year, which saw at least 58 killed and hundreds of others injured.

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His award citation says that Trooper Woodward displayed conspicuous bravery, outstanding leadership and unwavering selflessness during the incident.

He consciously, deliberately and repeatedly advanced towards danger, moving people to safety and treating casualties, it adds.

There is no doubt that his assistance to the US first responders saved lives. His actions were exceptional and he is fully deserving of nation-wide recognition.
Los Angeles (AFP) - The deadliest and most destructive fire in California's history was finally brought totally under control by firefighters, more than two weeks after it erupted, authorities said on Sunday.

"#CampFire ... is now 100% contained," Cal Fire, the state fire authority, said in its latest bulletin on Twitter.

The fire, which broke out on November 8, is so far known to have killed 87 people although another 249 people remain unaccounted for. That figure has fallen sharply over the weekend, having stood at 474 on Friday.

Only 54 of the fatalities have been identified, according to the local sheriff's office in Butte County, around three hours drive north of San Francisco.

A total of 153,336 acres were affected by the fire, with nearly 14,000 homes and hundreds of other structures destroyed.

Heavy downfalls that have soaked the firezone in the past days helped douse the remaining flames, but also made it more difficult for crews searching for bodies.

The Camp Fire was the second major blaze to hit California in recent weeks with a fire in the Malibu area near Los Angeles also killing three people.

The smoke from the Camp Fire was so intense that schools in San Francisco had to close at one point earlier this month as did the city's famed cable car and Alcatraz Island.

California's governor, Jerry Brown, has warned that the state can expect a growing number of major fires as a result of global warming.

US President Donald Trump, who visited one of the worst-hit towns called Paradise last weekend, caused some consternation by saying that the fires were due in part to forestry mismanagement.

Ahead of the announcement that the fire has been totally tamed, authorities had already begun letting residents return to some of the worst hit areas to inspect the damage to their homes.

In a joint bulletin posted on Saturday, the police and fire service said evacuation orders that had in place for some areas over the last fortnight were being lifted for both residents and non-residents, while warning that essential services were still "very limited".

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"Prior to returning home, residents are encouraged to take steps to ensure they have food, water and fuel for their vehicles," said the statement.

While Brown has warned that mega fires such as those in Butte and Malibu will cease to be "abnormal" events, the state has allocated about $1 billion over the next five years for fire prevention.

Much of the cash will go on education and suppression activities such as clearing grasses and other vegetation, according to officials.

But many experts are calling for more restrictions on housing being built in forests as a means of eliminating danger before the blazes even break out.

A recent study found that one third of all US houses now are located in what researchers refer to as the wildland-urban interface, where houses and forest vegetation intermingle.

While Trump has repeatedly expressed skepticism about global warming, a new report by his administration warned Friday that climate change will cost the US hundreds of billions of dollars annually by century's end unless drastic action is taken to cut carbon emissions.
Kyebi (Ghana) (AFP) - Ghana's President Nana Akufo-Addo smiles and waves from fading billboards in his hometown of Kyebi, in the Akyem Abuakwa area of the country's Eastern Region.

Nearby is another sign for the Atewa Range Forest Reserve, whose steep slopes and cloud-topped peaks rise from the fields of cassava and trees of ripening bananas and cocoa pods below.

"Save Atewa Forest Now!" it reads in a message to the president and his government in the capital Accra, 90 kilometres (60 miles) away.

The upland evergreen forest, with its waterfalls and cliffs, deep caves and valleys, has been described as one of the richest places for biodiversity on the planet.

Its thick vegetation is home to endangered primates and pangolins, rare frogs, birds and butterflies.

But the ground also contains large deposits of bauxite, which gives the earth its distinctive red hue and is the essential component in aluminium production.

In a scenario familiar across Africa, China has promised Ghana billions of dollars' worth of infrastructure projects in exchange for access to mine the rock.

Environmentalists fear for the forest. Locals, though, are swayed by the prospects of jobs and money.

Akufo-Addo's government is pushing a policy of "trade not aid" and rural development. All eyes are now on the president to see if that comes at the expense of the environment he has vowed to protect.

- 'Big, big trouble' -

A team of forest rangers and volunteers carrying machetes to hack through the undergrowth currently polices the forest against poachers and illegal loggers.

The surrounding landscape bears scars of gold-mining activities that Akufo-Addo halted by introducing measures against illegal operations.

Campaigners, however, say mining bauxite is an even greater risk, as swathes of trees would have to be cut down and soil removed in the forest's upper reaches.

Daryl Bosu, deputy national director of the environmental group A Rocha Ghana, said that could cause "big, big trouble".

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"The way bauxite mining is done is not like gold, where you can take out the sand, put it somewhere and fill it back," he told AFP.

"You are actually taking away the whole soil and with it you have to clear the forest to be able to get to that."

Deforestation raises the risk of landslides and pollution in the sources of three rivers providing water for communities downstream, including the five million people in Greater Accra.

With fewer trees, rainfall would be affected, with a knock-on effect on agricultural yields.

Signs by the road warn about endangered primates in the forest, which is also home to the world's only kaleidoscope of Atewa dotted border butterflies and a rare colony of Togo Slippery Frogs.

"If the forest goes, all these animals lose their habitat," said Emmanuel Akom, project manager for A Rocha in Kyebi.

- Jobs and money -

Mining bauxite reserves has been talked about for at least a decade and the evidence is in Asikam village, one of the 50 or so communities found around the forest.

In 2008, Prince Amankwa said he helped US aluminium giant Alcoa and the state-owned Volta Aluminium Company Ltd (Valco) drill for samples in the hills.

Ten years on, those samples lie in dusty plastic bags in a shed in Asikam. Locals say the project was likely abandoned because it would have been too controversial.

Amankwa said government mining officials and a Chinese team had recently been in the area.

He says he is in favour of the mining project, as is the village chief Bafour Kyere Koranteng, although he conceded that if the wider community thought otherwise, he would support that position.

"My opinion is that it (mining) is a very good thing because the youths are not getting jobs," he added.

It's not hard to see why there would be support. There may be tarmac roads and mobile phone masts in Kyebi, but there are also mud-brick homes and many adverts for quick cash loans.

Most people are subsistence or small-scale farmers. Mining could be more lucrative.

- Mounting opposition -

Ghana's parliament is moving ahead with the legal framework to allow bauxite mining to take place in the Atewa forest. But as it does so, there is increasing opposition at home and abroad.

Concern has been voiced about the impact of the China deal on Ghana's debt profile. International petitions have been launched to urge the government to think again.

There are also fears that the traditional council, headed by the Okyenhene, or king, of Akyem Abuakwa, has backtracked on its initial position opposing mining.

Earlier this year, hundreds of people trekked from Kyebi to hand in a petition at the president's official residence, Jubilee House, in Accra, to urge him to think again.

"He's very much aware of the issue," said local assembly member Emmanuel Tabi, who is from Akufo-Addo's ruling New Patriotic Party. "He has uncles, cousins, a sister here in Kyebi."

Tabi remains unconvinced about the potential employment and economic benefits of mining. Instead he wants the forest designated a national park to give it greater protection.

Developing tourism would be better and more sustainable, he argued, but acknowledged Akufo-Addo's supporters locally were looking to him to bring in jobs and money.

That could make preventing the diggers from moving in more difficult, he said.

"We're not actually against bauxite mining, but we are against the destruction of this forest," he added.
Jerusalem (AFP) - Chadian leader Idriss Deby Itno on Sunday became the first president of his country to visit Israel and pledged a new era of relations when meeting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decades after ties were severed.

Both leaders called the visit "historic" as they met in Jerusalem with security issues high on the agenda.

Netanyahu said as they spoke to journalists after their meeting that "we never fully stopped our contacts ... but we are now expanding them at a very rapid rate".

"And we wish to do so in all areas, first of all in fighting terrorism."

He said he hoped to visit the Muslim-majority central African nation.

Deby spoke of the two countries committing to a new era of cooperation with "the prospect of reestablishing diplomatic relations".

But Deby also highlighted the Palestinian cause, saying pursuing relations with Israel did not change his country's concern for the long-stalled peace process.

Chad remains "deeply attached to the peace process between Israel and Palestine", he said.

The two men were to hold further discussions over dinner.

In a meeting Sunday evening with Israel's President Reuven Rivlin, Deby said he wanted to "restore diplomatic relations" with the Jewish state.

"Your country is an important partner in our eyes," he told Rivlin.

- Warming Arab ties? -

Chadian security sources say the country has acquired Israeli equipment to help battle rebels in the country's north.

Chad is also one of several African states engaged in Western-backed operations against Boko Haram and Islamic State jihadists in West Africa.

Earlier this month, the United States donated military vehicles and boats worth $1.3 million (1.1 million euros) to Chad as part of the campaign against Islamist militancy in the country.

Netanyahu portrayed the visit as the result of hard-won diplomatic efforts, referring to his three visits to Africa over the last couple years and his surprise trip to Oman in October.

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The visit to Oman, a major coup for Netanyahu, was an apparent sign of Israeli progress in improving ties with Gulf countries.

Frozen peace efforts and Israel's continued occupation of Palestinian territory have been obstacles to Israeli attempts to win official recognition from countries in the Gulf.

But there has long been talk of under-the-radar contacts, particularly over Iran, which is the enemy both of Israel and Gulf states.

Netanyahu said "there will be more such visits in Arab countries very soon", without providing details.

Jordan and Egypt are the only two Arab nations with peace treaties with Israel.

Pressure from Muslim African nations, accentuated by the 1967 and 1973 wars between Israel and its neighbours, led a number of African states to drop their relations with the Jewish state.

But in recent years, Israel has held out the prospect of cooperation on a range of issues, from security to technology and agriculture, to improve ties on the continent.

Diplomatic relations between Israel and Chad, a country of some 15 million people, were severed in 1972.

Deby is one of Africa's longest-serving leaders.

He took over the arid, impoverished nation in 1990 and won a disputed fifth term in April 2016.

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House Intelligence Committee ranking member Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) (L) speaks with reporters following a news conference about the Trump-Putin Helsinki summit in the U.S. Capitol Visitors Center July 17, 2018 in Washington, DC.

California Rep. Adam Schiff, the presumed next chairperson of the House Intelligence Committee, says that House Democrats will examine the evidence gathered in regard to the killing of American-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi, according to CNN.

Schiff says the House will also examine the overall relationship between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, long-term allies in the oil industry. The Democrats will look at intelligence gathered about the killing and compare it to statements made by Donald Trump.

Then it will be quite clear whether the President is relying on the intelligence community and our best source of information or whether the President is representing something very different, Schiff said.

Should the intelligence conflict with things that Trump has said, Congress will be armed with good enough information that it can take action to make sure that our national interests are protected and that we base our policy on the facts.

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Washington (AFP) - Democrats intend to probe US President Donald Trump's financial ties to determine whether they are the "hidden hand" driving US foreign policy on Russia and Saudi Arabia, the incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said Sunday.

Adam Schiff, currently the ranking Democrat on that committee, accused Trump of being "dishonest" about the role of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

A Republican senator privy to the intelligence also challenged Trump's denial this week that the CIA had concluded that the crown prince ordered the October 2 assassination.

"What is driving this?" Schiff asked, questioning "whether there's a financial motivation; that is, his own personal finances."

"Is his personal financial interest driving US policy in the Gulf? Vis-a-vis the Russians? We don't know, but it would be irresponsible not to find out," he said on CNN's "State of the Union."

Khashoggi, a critic of the crown prince, was a Washington Post columnist who lived in Virginia; he was murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul by a special team flown in for the job.

The Saudis, who changed their version of events as evidence was made public in Turkey, have insisted that Prince Mohammed had no prior knowledge of the assassination -- an interpretation which Trump has accepted.

"The CIA doesnt say they did it," Trump said Thursday. "They do point out certain things, and in pointing out those things, you can conclude that maybe he did or maybe he didnt."

Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah, an opponent of US involvement in the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen's civil war, said Trump's assessment was "inconsistent with the intelligence I've seen."

"The intelligence I've seen suggests that this was ordered by the crown prince," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

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Democrats, including Schiff, will have power of subpoena to pursue questions about the CIA's findings as well as about Trump's financial ties when they assume leadership of the House in January.

"I think others will also have responsibility of looking at: Are there financial entanglements with the Gulf? Are there financial inducements that the president has to not want to cross the Saudis? That cannot be allowed to drive US policy."

Schiff declined to comment on a report that the committee is recruiting money-laundering and forensic accounting experts in preparation for those probes.

But he said that among the issues that had not been investigated under the Republican leadership of the House "is whether the Russians have been laundering money through the president's businesses and this is the financial hold that the Russians may have."

"Is this the hidden hand in American foreign policy? We ought to be able to tell the American people, yes, it's true or no, it's not."
Senior Democrats have vowed to investigate the US intelligence communitys assessment of who was behind the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, after Donald Trump insisted  contrary to reports  the CIA had not concluded Saudi Arabias crown prince was responsible.

Congressman Adam Schiff, who in recent days has become a target for what many consider the presidents childish habit of name-calling, said it was essential to discover who ordered the 2 October murder of the Saudi writer.

Certainly we will be delving further into the murder of Khashoggi, and I want to make sure that the committee is fully debriefed on it, Mr Schiff, who is set to become chair of the House of Representatives intelligence committee, told The Washington Post.

We will certainly want to examine what the intelligence community knows about the murder, Mr Schiff added.

Saudi Arabia has denied that Crown Prince Mohammed had anything to do with the killing. The Saudi public prosecutor has blamed a rogue kidnap operation for the killing of Mr Khashoggi.

Last week, it was reported that the CIA had concluded with high confidence that due to Crown Prince Mohammeds position as de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia the killing would have required his endorsement.

Mr Schiff, who some have touted as a possible future speaker for the House of Representatives, made the comments after Mr Trump again insisted the CIA had not concluded Mohammed bin Salman had ordered the killing of Mr Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

They did not come to a conclusion. They have feelings, certain ways, but I have the report, the president told reporters during a Thanksgiving Day telephone press conference. They have not concluded. Nobodys concluded. I dont know if anyone could conclude that the crown prince did it.

Asked who should be held accountable for the killing if not Saudi Arabia, the president replied: Maybe the world should be held accountable because the world is a vicious place. The world is a very, very vicious place. You look at whats happening in China, you look at whats happening in so many different countries, I could name many countries. You look at whats happening in terrorism all over the world.

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Mr Trump has been widely criticised for giving what many consider a pass to the Saudi authorities in order to retain a long-standing strategic and economic relationship with the nation. Mr Trump has certainly not sought to play down what he says is his main motivation, saying he wants to ensure access to weapons sales and cheap oil.

The 59-year-old journalist went missing after entering a consulate in Turkey to prepare for a trip to Saudi Arabia to get married. Turkish investigators believe the journalist was dismembered and his body parts removed by a 15-strong hit squad.

The Washington Post said CIA officials were confident in their assessment of what was behind the killing, even if they were unable to provide Mr Trump what he has termed a smoking gun. They based their assessment on multiple sources of information, the newspaper said.

Mr Schiff said congressional scrutiny of the issue would seek to flesh out what the intelligence community had concluded, and how firm the basis was for its conclusion.

Well look at what the intelligence community assessments are at any given time, he said. Then it will be quite clear whether the president is relying on the intelligence community and our best source of information or whether the president is representing something very different.

He added: There are a whole set of potential financial conflicts of interest and emoluments problems that congress will need to get to the bottom of. If foreign investment in the Trump businesses is guiding US policy in a way thats antithetical to the countrys interests, we need to find out.

The White House has yet to comment on Mr Schiffs remarks. Reuters said that in 2015, Mr Trump told a rally he earned hundreds of millions of dollars from Saudi purchases. However, speaking to reporters before he left for Florida, he claimed that self-interest had no place in his decision.

We are staying with Saudi Arabia, and by the way, I have no business with Saudi Arabia. I couldnt care less, he said. This is about America first.

Turkeys top diplomat has said the Saudi crown prince, currently in the UAE as part of a tour of Arab states, has requested a meeting with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the sidelines of the upcoming Group of 20 summit in Buenos Aires.

Mevlut Cavusoglu told Turkeys CNN-Turk television that Turkey saw no obstacle for a meeting between the two, but added that Mr Erdogan would make the final decision on whether to meet the prince at the two-day G20 summit that starts on 30 November. It would be the first meeting between the two since the killing of Mr Khashoggi.
By Teis Jensen COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Discontent among Danske Bank customers remains high, although sentiment improved slightly in the last month as the Danish bank moved to address a 200 billion euro ($227 billion) money laundering scandal, figures from Voxmeter show. Four in ten customers say they are considering leaving the bank within the next year, although the number mulling a move has fallen slightly since the exits of chief executive Thomas Borgen and chairman Ole Andersen, the polling firm's data shows. These management changes and the effort Danske Bank has placed on talking to its customers and apologizing for the scandal are beginning to have an impact, Voxmeter chief executive Christian Stjer said on Friday. "A softening of opinions almost always begins from the inside," Stjer said, adding that many dissatisfied customers do not in the end shift bank, even though they are considering it, because they find it too troublesome. The figures from Voxmeter, which interviews almost 40,000 persons a year about banks, show there is still a very strong negative view of Danske Bank from customers at other banks. Danske Bank said it was not surprised by the poll. "What happened in the Estonia case is deeply regrettable. Just as much as we are apologizing for the whole course of the case, just as focused are we on learning from what has happened to ensure that nothing like that can happen again," a spokesman for the bank said. "We are fully aware that we have a huge task ahead of us in order to regain the public's trust," he added. The scandal over suspicious payments between 2007 and 2015 through Danske Bank's tiny Estonian branch has damaged Danes' trust in banks, which have also been hit by a wider European dividend stripping scandal and other money laundering cases. Negative media coverage of Danske Bank has spiked to a level not seen since recordings began seven years ago, other figures from Voxmeter showed. Graphic on Danske Bank: https://tmsnrt.rs/2R9MGIE (Reporting by Teis Jensen; Editing by Alexander Smith)
Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk has claimed there is a 70 per cent likelihood he will make it to Mars on one of his spacecraft  despite there being a good chance of death.

The 47-year-old founder of Tesla, who is among several businessmen seeking to find a way to reach the red planet, said while some consider his vision a fantasy, he thinks making the journey could be possible in as little as seven years from now, with the price of a ticket as low as a couple of hundred thousand dollars.

I know exactly what to do, Mr Musk told Axios on HBO. Im talking about moving there.

Mr Musk, who is also involved in a project to build a high-speed mass transit system underneath the streets of Los Angeles, is known for making remarks that frequently secure him both striking headlines and mocking derision.

Yet, in an interview with the programme, he insisted he was being serious in his predictions. He also said he did not see moving to Mars as an escape route for the super rich.

Your probability of dying on Mars is much higher than Earth, he said.

Really, the ad for going to Mars would be like [Sir Ernest] Shackletons ad for going to the Antarctic [in the early 20th century].

He added: Its going to be hard. Theres a good chance of death, going in a little through deep space.

Mr Musk said even if someone was successful in reaching the planet, which at its closest is at least 34 million miles from the Earth, they would be working nonstop to build the base.

So, you know, not much time for leisure. And even after doing all this, its a very harsh environment. So....theres a good chance you die there, he said.

We think you can come back but were not sure. Now, does that sound like an escape hatch for rich people?

Yet he said he was determined to try and go.

Theres lots of people who climb mountains, he said. People die on Mount Everest all the time. They like doing it for the challenge.

Mr Musk is the head of one of several private projects seeing to develop a way to reach Mars. Richard Bransons Virgin Galactic and Jeff Bezoss Blue Origin, are among the main competitors.

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Last month, Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder, said he hoped to see the solar system populated by one trillion people.

The dynamism that I have seen over the last 20 years in the internet where incredible things have happened in really short periods of time, Mr Bezos, who accepted $500m (390m) from the US military to help develop his project, said at an event in San Francisco to mark the 25th anniversary of the launch of Wired magazine.

Critics of have seized on the potential implications for the environment of Mr Bezoss vision, and his willingness to work with the military. His comments came shortly after the UNs climate science body, the the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said there was barely a dozen years to make massive changes to global energy infrastructure to limit global warming to moderate levels.

Michael Mann, a climate expert and Professor of Earth Sciences at Penn State University, said it was sometimes difficult to distinguish real word stories from satire.

I know Bezos has been looking for ways to leverage his immense wealth for the betterment of mankind. But I cant help but wonder why these captains of technology always look away from the earth rather than towards it, when talking about confronting the challenges that face humanity, he told The Independent.
Elon Musk says there is a 70 percent chance he will visit Mars and denies it is an escape hatch for the rich.

The prospect of colonizing Mars is one which continues to inch forward with the passing of time, and in the final episode of Axios four-part documentary series, which is due to be aired on Sunday evening on HBO, Elon Musk has stated that there is a 70 percent chance that he will personally be visiting the planet himself, while dismissing the false notion that heading to Mars is somehow an escape hatch for the very wealthy.

As Gizmodo reports, Elon Musk has stated that for those who would like to venture to Mars one day, traveling to the planet with his SpaceX company will most likely cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars. This is much less than one might think, and when giving a talk last year in Guadalajara, Mexico for the International Astronautical Congress, Musk asserted that it would be quite impossible to build a colony on Mars if SpaceX were to charge people extravagant sums of money to get there.

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Police lights flash as they respond to a crime scene.

Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford Jr. went into Alabamas largest mall on Thanksgiving evening looking to do some shopping, but never made it out alive.

Now, the family of the man they knew as EJ is demanding to know why police shot and killed him in an apparent case of mistaken identity during a shooting. As CNN reported, a police officer fatally shot Bradford at close to 10 p.m. CST on Thursday inside the Riverchase Galleria in the Birmingham suburb of Hoover. Police had initially claimed that Bradford opened fire during a fight, injuring two other people, but as the investigation continued they found that Bradford did not fire any shots. Instead, the real gunman escaped the mall and remains at large.

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Another night, another long-time Maple Leaf comes home.

A month after former linemate and good friend Tyler Bozak got honoured with a lengthy ovation and video tribute in his return Toronto as a member of the St. Louis Blues, James van Riemsdyk was back in his old stomping ground.

Now a member of the Flyers, JVR was given the crowd appreciation and Jumbotron montage he deserved after six productive seasons in the Blue and White.

Thank you James. pic.twitter.com/SQc0cgvkQS  Toronto Maple Leafs (@MapleLeafs) November 25, 2018

Van Riemsdyk is on his second stint with the Flyers after the club selected him second overall in the 2007 Draft. He was acquired by former Leafs general manager Brian Burke  in what turned to be out one of the more favourable trades in the clubs history  during the 2012 offseason in exchange for blueliner Luke Schenn, and re-signed in Philadelphia as a free agent this past summer after being victimized by the Leafs salary cap squeeze.

Over 413 regular season games with the Buds, JVR potted 154 goals  averaging 30 per 82 games and added 140 helpers for 294 points in six campaigns.

The 29-year-old tallied seven goals (five on the powerplay) and 14 points In 20 postseason contests with Toronto.

More NHL coverage on Yahoo Sports
Paul Pogba and David de Gea could be on their way.

Manchester United are in the news again, as it appears both David de Gea and Paul Pogba could be leaving the club.

First, De Gea. Having watched the performance in front of him against Crystal Palace on Saturday, there seems little chance United are going to persuade him to stay with the promise of titles and trophies. Instead, it seems likeliest that he will look at his Wikipedia page, scroll down to Honours, and decide to run down his contract.

Thats what the Mail on Sunday believe, too. They think that with the 28 year old having less than a year left on his current deal, he will be happy to run it down, sign a pre-contract agreement with Paris Saint-Germain and leave in the summer.

While that move would guarantee a Ligue Un trophy every season, there are problems with the story. The first is that PSG have Financial Fair Play worries already, and have Gianluigi Buffon in goal, with French international Alphone Areola as a second option, so spending such a huge amount may not be viable. And secondly, United have the option to extend De Geas contract by another 12 months, which would at least they can sell him to raise some funds in the summer.

READ MORE: Rugby Union  Jones thrilled with Wales depth

READ MORE: Sarri frustrated as Chelsea fail to heed his warning

READ MORE: Pochettino wants Spurs to be humble after Chelsea triumph

Hes not the only player who could be off, either. The Sunday Mirror believe that Paul Pogba is wanted by Inter Milan as they start to rival Juventus at the top of Serie A.

Despite Pogbas poor performances for his club, Ed Woodward is reluctant to sell, meaning a special offer will be required if it is to convince the executive to sell his prime marketing asset. To that end, Inter will offer two players, plus cash, in a deal worth around 200 million.

The first player mentioned is 23-year-old central defender Milan Skriniar. He has long been linked with United, and Jose Mourinho wants to reinforce his defence having had Chris Smalling in his squad. Another to be offered is Ivan Perisic, who has fallen out of favour with the Italian side this season, and has been linked to United for the past two summers, with Woodward unwilling to meet the clubs valuation.

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Whether Pogba would wish to move to Inter when he has his sights set on either a return to Juventus or to Barcelona is another matter.

Benitez set for Chinese Super League

Rafael Benitezs time at Newcastle United could soon be up. His strained relationship with owner Mike Ashley has shown no sign of improvement, and there have been no stories of any guarantees over spending in the winter transfer window.

He could soon have an offer of employment elsewhere, as Chinese Super League club Guangzhou Evergrande want to replace manager Fabio Cannavaro. They would be willing to offer Benitez 10 million pounds a year over the course of a three-year deal, but need an answer before the end of the year.

While the money is attractive, Benitez would have to consult with his family over moving to such an unfamiliar country, say the Sun.





Arsenal line up two deals

After a 14-match unbeaten run, Arsenal are set to back their new manager Unai Emery in the winter transfer window.

They are interested in another central defender. The name in the frame is Ezri Konsa, a 21 year old who moved from Charlton to Brentford in the summer and who has put in a string of impressive performances. 15 million could be enough to sign him.

The second is Leandro Trossard, a 23-year-old Belgian international, who plays on the wing for Genk. He has been in exceptional goalscoring form for his club, with 15 goals in 18 appearances for the side so far this season, the Sun claims.
Jerusalem (AFP) - Israel's cabinet on Sunday approved the appointment of Aviv Kochavi, a former military intelligence head, as the army's new chief of staff, a government source said.

Kochavi will take up his new position at the start of 2019, succeeding General Gadi Eisenkot.

He was selected for the job by now former defence minister Avigdor Lieberman in October.

Kochavi has served as head of the army's northern command and as military intelligence chief during the 2014 war against the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in Gaza.

He was also deputy chief of staff since 2017.

Kochavi, 54, is a graduate of the prestigious universities of Harvard and John Hopkins in the United States and holds a degree in international relations.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had welcomed the choice of Kochavi after his selection by Lieberman in October, saying he was "the most worthy candidate" to become the next chief of staff.

And Eisenkot had also congratulated him at the time and described him as "a distinguished officer with extensive combat experience from multiple combat theatres".
Jerusalem (AFP) - Israeli police arrested the Palestinian governor of Jerusalem for the second time in as many months on Sunday after an investigation related to a land sale.

Adnan Gheith was arrested in east Jerusalem overnight, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said in a statement, without providing further details.

Jerusalem magistrate's court extended his remand until Thursday at noon.

Judge Chavi Toker was presented with secret evidence and said the reason for his arrest was unlawful collaboration with Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces, which Israel says violates the Oslo accords.

No further details were given.

On October 20, Gheith was detained for two days of questioning before being released, with Israel's Shin Bet domestic security agency saying it was over "illegal activity by the (PA) in Jerusalem".

He was also taken for questioning a number of times in recent weeks and his office was raided on November 4.

The PA's Jerusalem affairs minister, Adnan al-Husseini, has also been given a three-month travel ban by Israeli authorities, according to Palestinian officials.

Israeli media have reported that authorities have been investigating the governor following the PA's arrest of a man in October accused of being involved in selling property in east Jerusalem to a Jewish buyer.

Such sales are considered treasonous among Palestinians concerned with Israeli settlers buying property in east Jerusalem.

But among Israelis, there have been calls for authorities to free the man arrested by the PA over the sale.

Israeli newspaper Haaretz has reported that the man is a Palestinian with US citizenship. A US embassy official had not immediately responded to a request for comment on Sunday.

Fuad Hallaq, a senior advisor to the Palestine Liberation Organisation in Jerusalem, told AFP that he believed the latest arrest was part of Israeli efforts to pressure the Palestinian leadership to release the man.

The judge said in court Sunday that the arrest of the governor was connected to the land sale investigation, but that there were new allegations which she did not publicly detail.

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A lawyer for Gheith said that the governor had committed no crimes, adding that "the feeling is that the police are trying to prevent the defendant from functioning in his position".

Israel occupied east Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed it in a move never recognised by the international community.

It considers the entire city its capital, while the Palestinians see the eastern sector as the capital of their future state.

PA activities are barred from Jerusalem by Israel.

As a result, the PA has a minister for Jerusalem affairs and a Jerusalem governor located in Al-Ram, just on the other side of Israel's separation wall from Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank.
Jamal Khashoggi Memorial

Jamal Khashoggis body was brought to a sink and drained of blood immediately after he was murdered so he could be more easily dismembered, a gruesome new report claims.

The murder of the Washington Post journalist has still been shrouded in some mystery as his body has never been found, but a new report from Turkeys Hurriyet Daily News claims that one of the members of the team of Saudi agents that killed Khashoggi had a very detailed plan to dismember and dispose of the body.

The report claimed that Dr. Salah al-Tubaigy, who serves as the head of the Saudi Scientific Council of Forensics, worked quickly to make sure that Khashoggis body would be easily disposed.

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Outgoing Ohio Gov. John Kasich on Sunday acknowledged hes very seriously considering a White House bid in 2020 against President Donald Trump.

The Republican leader, a two-time presidential candidate, told ABCs This Week that hes been discussing the possibility of challenging Trump for the GOP nomination virtually every day with friends and family.

Look, we need different leadership  there isnt any question about it, Kasich said. Im worried about our country  and not just in the short-term, but Im worried about our country in the long-term.

Outgoing Ohio Gov. John Kasich tells @gstephanopoulos he is considering a 2020 run against President Trump "very seriously"



"We need different leadership, there isn't a question about it ... I'm worried about our country in the longterm" https://t.co/P6iz1j1VA4 #ThisWeek pic.twitter.com/DT3xa8COII  This Week (@ThisWeekABC) November 25, 2018

Kasich was one of Trumps main rivals in the 2016 Republican primaries and since then has emerged as one of the presidents most vocal critics within the GOP.

In his Sunday comments, Kasich pointed to Trumps tone and lax stance on Saudi Arabia, as well as differences with him on immigration policy and concerns about the countrys rising debt, as some of the reasons motivating him to consider a 2020 run.

The question for me is, what do I do about this? said Kasich, whose term as Ohio governor ends in January. Do I run because Ive determined that I can win? Or is it important for me to make such a good showing that I can send a message that can disrupt the political system in this country? So yeah, I have to think about it.

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Lets be clear: Im not being coy, he added. Im [not] just trying to do this for some kind of a game. This is really, really serious to me.

A former House member from Ohio known as a fiscal conservative, Kasich briefly entered the race for the 2000 GOP presidential nod. He dropped out before a single vote had been cast in a nomination contest due to poor fundraising numbers.

He hosted a show on Fox News, Heartland with John Kasich, from 2001-07, and was first elected Ohios governor in 2010.

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Jean-Claude Juncker welcoming Theresa May to Brussels for Sundays summit (Reuters)

European Union leaders have approved UKs withdrawal agreement with the bloc and have urged the British public and politicians to back prime minister Theresa May over the Brexit deal.

After almost 18 months of tough negotiations, leaders of the 27 nations took just 38 minutes to approve the deal at a summit in Brussels today.

European commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said it was a sad day but described the agreement as the best possible deal for both sides. After delivering their seal of approval, EU leaders immediately turned their attention to helping May get the deal through the UK parliament.

Juncker told journalists: Im inviting those who have to ratify this deal in the House of Commons to take this into consideration: this is the best deal possible for Britain, this is the best deal possible for Europe, this is the only deal possible, the only deal possible.



MORE: May vows to stand by Gibraltar after accusation of caving in to Spain

Asked whether pro-EU MPs could help the UK stay in the EU by voting down the deal, Juncker replied: Im totally convinced that this is the only deal possible. Those who think that by rejecting the deal that they would have a better deal will be disappointed in the first seconds after the rejection of this deal.

Other EU leaders also stressed that this deal is their final offer. Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte said: I do think Theresa May has fought very hard and if I would live in the UK I would say yes to this. I would say this is acceptable for the UKthis is the max that we can do.

Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar said leaders had taken a concious decision not to consider the possible failure of this deal, stressing: There is no plan B. Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz said: One thing is clear. There will be no further negotiations.

EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier said: We have reached a fair and balanced agreement with the UK. This is the best deal possible given the circumstances. Its time for everybody to take their responsibilities.

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Donald Tusk with Theresa May at Sundays special Brexit summit in Brussels (Reuters)

However outspoken Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaite veered off the official script, saying everything could happen when asked about the possibility of MPs rejecting the deal.

She raised the possibility of a second referendum, a general election or a request to reopen negotiations. Asked for her preference, she said only: We would like to see everything settled as soon as possible.

European leaders are deeply irritated with Spain for raising last minute objections to the deal over Gibraltar, which were resolved in an eleventh hour compromise on Saturday evening.

One EU diplomat said their complaints had no factual justification whatsoever and said the assurances received by Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez were not legally binding.

MORE: Leaked document: EU to take tough stance on fishing at Brexit summit

I hope that they havent made it more difficult for May in parliament because she has it difficult enough already, they added. If that would tip it over the balance that would be very unfortunate, very unfortunate.

While UK MPs present a possible roadblock to concluding the deal, the European parliaments president, Antonio Tajani, predicted its members would sign-off the deal by February.

We will vote probably in favour of the agreement, there is a majority, said the Italian. This is a message to our friends in the British parliament because this is a good agreement for both  for the United Kingdom and the European Union.

Tajani told Yahoo Finance UK that he has invited May to address the European parliament ahead of their vote.




Kaley Cuoco took some time out of her Thanksgiving celebrations to aid a young sea lion in distress.

The Big Bang Theory star said in an Instagram post Thursday that she and husband Karl Cook were at his familys beach house in California when saw the pup  which she initially thought was a seal  obviously lost and in pain.

She called the hotline for the Santa Barbara-based Channel Islands Marine & Wildlife Institute, and though she worried no one would be able to respond because of the holiday, multiple volunteers came to the beach.

Im thankful these gracious people left their thanksgiving plans to help an animal in need, Cuoco wrote in the post, which included a video showing the sea lion and the volunteers.

Volunteers were unable to attempt a rescue due to the sun setting and the sea lions location on the rocks, CIMWI director Ruth Dover told HuffPost in an email. But on Friday, the male pup was spotted on some rocks about 7 miles south of where Cuoco first saw him. From there, volunteers were able to successfully rescue the sea lion, Dover said.

The nonprofit posted photos of the sea lion on Facebook, noting that the male pup was was their 99th patient of the year and was very underweight.

#99 is most likely a newly weaned pup that is not adept at foraging for fish on his own, the post read. CIMWI will provide medical and rehabilitation care for this pup with the goal of returning him back to the wild after he gains back his health and the extra weight to jump-start his reintroduction to his natural habitat.

Cuoco also posted a photo of the baby sea lion on social media after his rescue, thanking CIMWI for their work, adding that she was calling the pup Sandy.

The groups website makes it clear that Cuoco did the right thing by calling in experts rather than attempting to intervene herself. CIMWIs guide on helping stranded marine mammals said that laypeople who see a wild animal they think needs help should keep a safe distance, note the animals physical condition, characteristics and location, and then call for aid.

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Fans of Cuoco probably wont be surprised she went out of her way to help a critter in need. The animal-loving star has numerous pets  including an Insta-famous rabbit, Simon  and has supported multiple animal advocacy groups.

Kaley Cuoco, pictured at the 8th Annual Stand Up for Pits event at the Hollywood Improv Comedy Club, is known for supporting animal advocacy causes. (Photo: Amanda Edwards via Getty Images)

This story has been updated to reflect that the sea lion pup has been rescued.

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An impressive timelapse captured by astronaut Alexander Gerst while on board the International Space Station shows the Russian Progress MS-10 launching into space on November 16.

Gerst gave the following information regarding key moments in the video as the cargo spacecraft launches: 00:07  Rocket booster separation. 00:19  Core stage separation. 00:34:05  Core Stage starts burning in the atmosphere. 00:34:19 Progress separates from rocket.

The Progress MS-10 spacecraft carried 2.5 metric tons of supplies to the astronauts on board the International Space Station on the day of its launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Credit: ESA/NASA/Alexander Gerst via Storyful
Paris (AFP) - French President Emmanuel Macron is to address his nation on Tuesday following persistent and sometimes violent protests over fuel taxes that are morphing into a movement against his business- and environment-friendly policies.

Paris saw clashes between police and demonstrators Saturday on the Champs-Elysees where barricades were set on fire, luxury shop windows smashed, and traffic lights uprooted. Some 30 people were injured and 101 arrested, police said.

The government blamed much of the violence on a small minority of "ultra-right" activists who shadowed the 8,000 demonstrators who were wearing the yellow, high-visibility vests that symbolise their week-long protests.

Bruno Le Maire, the economy minister, acknowledged Sunday that "the current crisis goes far beyond just a question of fuel", adding that it was important that "work be better paid" to improve living standards.

"It is time to listen to the French," he said on BFM television, suggesting that Macron would call for "grassroot debates" throughout the country on government policies.

- French back protests -

The presidential palace said Macron would make a speech on Tuesday on ecological transition and was expected to address the protests.

Opposition leaders have been quick to note that the protests, mostly organised by grassroot protesters coordinating by way of social media rather than by traditional political parties or trade unions, have won wide popular support.

"When a movement has the backing of three quarters of French people, you give them an answer, you don't just dismiss them as a gang of thugs," Olivier Faure, the opposition Socialist Party leader told Le Parisien newspaper.

Guillaume Peltier, a leader of conservative The Republicans party, told the daily it was "all too easy to stigmatise the 'yellow vests' ... and equate their movement with that of a few unacceptable acts".

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Far-right leader Marine Le Pen voiced her full support for the protesters, telling the LCI channel the unrest revealed grievances held by "the immense majority of the French" who were being ignored by "a miniscule cast working only for itself".

Former investment banker Macron was elected on a pledge to put more money in workers' pockets. But the effects of his pro-business reforms on unemployment and purchasing power have been limited so far.

He has seen his popularity slide to just 25 percent, according to one poll a week ago, and the protests reflect broader frustration with a leader critics label as aloof and a "president of the rich".

US President Donald Trump, whose initial friendly ties with Macron have chilled under the French leader's criticisms, sought to place the French protests in his frequent grumbling over US-EU trade relations and NATO spending.

"The large and violent French protests don't take into account how badly the United States has been treated on Trade by the European Union or on fair and reasonable payments for our GREAT military protection," Trump said on Twitter. "Both of these topics must be remedied soon."

- Macron 'acting like Louis XIV' -

Macron himself had taken to Twitter on Saturday, to condemn the violence and cry "shame" on those who assaulted or intimidated policemen, journalists and other citizens.

Several media workers based in France's southwestern city of Toulouse said Sunday they would boycott the "yellow vests" movement after five journalists were threatened or beaten by scores of demonstrators while covering protests in their region.

Faced with the public anger, many politicians suggested Macron -- often perceived as aloof or arrogant -- might use his speech to announce measures softening the impact of rising petrol and diesel taxes and restore dialogue with trade unions.

"When you act like Louis XIV, you can expect revolts (...) The French back the 'yellow vests' because Macron promised them a new world, and they see that his policies aren't delivering," Bruno Retailleau, who heads the Republican opposition in the Senate.

The French "see environmental matters as an alibi for fiscal belt-tightening," he told le Journal du Dimanche newspaper.

The "yellow vests" come overwhelmingly from non-urban areas of France. They feel overlooked and penalised by policies they see as being pushed through by elitist politicians in Paris.

Many of the often low-income "yellow vest" protesters are particularly incensed at Macron's decision to hike anti-pollution taxes on diesel, while scrapping a wealth tax on the rich.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Mexico's incoming government has agreed to back the Trump administration's plan to change U.S. border policy by requiring asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their claims move through U.S. courts, the Washington Post reported on Saturday. Citing Mexican officials and senior members of president-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's transition team, the newspaper said the agreement would break with long-standing asylum rules and mount a new obstacle to Central American migrants attempting to reach the United States and escape poverty and violence. Reached for comment by Reuters, incoming deputy interior minister Zoe Robledo said details of the "Remain in Mexico" scheme were still being worked out. He confirmed the plan in essence foresaw migrants staying in Mexico while asylum claims are being processed, and said the incoming government wanted to find jobs for them in sectors that are short-staffed, such as maquila assembly plants. "What we're aiming for is that people leaving their countries due to security issues or violence can find a place to stay in Mexico if that is their decision," Robledo said. Lopez Obrador has vowed to try to eliminate the causes of migration by creating more jobs and improving living conditions in Mexico and Central America. In exchange, he hopes U.S. President Donald Trump and the Canadian government will agree to help spur economic development in the region. Outgoing President Enrique Pena Nieto has also sought to stem the flow of migrants north by offering jobs to them, and has received backing from the private sector in his efforts. Olga Sanchez Cordero, Mexico's incoming interior minister and the top domestic policy official for Lopez Obrador, who takes office Dec. 1, told the Washington Post the plan, known as Remain in Mexico, was a "short-term solution." "The medium- and long-term solution is that people don't migrate, Sanchez Cordero said. "Mexico has open arms and everything, but imagine, one caravan after another after another, that would also be a problem for us." The paper said that according to the outlines of the plan, asylum applicants at the border will have to stay in Mexico while their cases are processed, potentially ending the system Trump decries as "catch and release" that has until now generally allowed those seeking refuge to wait on safer U.S. soil. Alison Leal Parker, U.S. managing director for Human Rights Watch, a New York-based rights organization, said the policy was a pathetic attempt by the United States to shirk responsibility. Central Americans have faced serious harm in Mexico." The effect, Parker said, would likely "push people fleeing for lives into riskier attempts to find safety, including using criminal human smugglers who will gain power under this new policy. There was no immediate comment from the White House on the deal that the Washington Post said took shape last week in Houston during a meeting between Marcelo Ebrard, Mexicos incoming foreign minister, and top U.S. officials including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. Without confirming the deal, James McCament, Homeland Security's Acting Under Secretary for Policy, said the U.S. government has been working since the Mexican elections with its current and incoming Mexican counterparts on trade, border policy and other issues. "We appreciate the leadership and partnership the Mexican government has shown," McCament said. Trump has been seeking to block thousands of Central Americans traveling in caravans from entering the United States, and has ordered that immigrants who enter the country illegally from Mexico are ineligible for asylum. That order has been temporary suspended by a U.S. judge. (Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; additional reporting by Dave Graham and Delphine Schrank in Mexico City and David Brunnstrom in Washington; Editing by Tom Brown and Marguerita Choy)
By John Miller ZURICH (Reuters) - Novartis's price-setting muscle is about to be tested after it won European Union approval for a blindness-fighting gene therapy whose $850,000 list cost in the United States has been labeled too expensive by some groups. Luxturna, sold by Spark Therapeutics in the United States and by Novartis elsewhere after the Swiss drugmaker bought the rights, is a one-time treatment for a rare genetic disease that causes blindness in about 1 in 200,000 people. "EU approval of the one-time gene therapy Luxturna marks a milestone in reimagining medicine and can bring real value to patients, their families and society as a whole," said Paul Hudson, who heads up Novartis's drugs division. The therapy's list price, however, has raised eyebrows and could face hurdles in Europe where authorities are taking a tough look at expensive medicines. Earlier this year, a non-profit U.S. cost-effectiveness watchdog, the Boston-based Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER), labeled Luxturna too expensive and suggested steep discounts to make it worth their while. With European Union approval in hand, Novartis now must convince cost-conscious government price regulators across the bloc and in non-members such as Switzerland to pay up to start selling the drug. Among others, Britain's National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has been pushing back at companies demanding high prices, including a Vertex Pharmaceuticals cystic fibrosis drug and Biogen's $750,000 Spinraza treatment for spinal muscular atrophy (SMA). "If you consider that this is a one-time treatment of a condition that otherwise leads to blindness, then it seems like the sum being demanded is acceptable," Zuercher Kantonalbank analyst Michael Nawrath said. PRICE CLAMPDOWN "Even so, the price negotiations in Europe cannot be underestimated, because drug companies are focusing more and more on rare diseases, while the authorities are seeking to reduce incentives by clamping down on prices," Nawrath said. Novartis Chief Executive Officer Vas Narasimhan is banking on rare diseases to help transform the Basel-based company from a broad healthcare conglomerate into a specialized drug company. In addition to his deal with Spark over Luxturna, Narasimhan has a stable of prospective gene therapies, including a one-time treatment for SMA due for approval in the first half of 2019. That drug, AVXS-101, will likely be even more expensive than Luxturna, as Novartis has already pegged its value at between $4-$5 million for healthcare systems. Payers have already started putting up resistance. (Reporting by John Revill, editing by Tassilo Hummel, editing by Louise Heavens)
MULTAN, Pakistan (AP)  Police in an ongoing crackdown arrested some 1100 supporters of a detained radical Islamic cleric, who disrupted daily life with nationwide rallies following the acquittal of a Christian woman sentenced to death for blasphemy, officials said Saturday.

Senior police officer Tahir Mahmood said that supporters of the Tehreek-e-Labbaik party were picked up in sweeps across the country, mainly in Punjab province, following the arrest of its leader, Khadim Hussain Rizvi. Mahmood said police teams raided Labbaik party seminaries, the homes of party leaders and supporters and hiding places to net them.

He said police also arrested scores of Rizvi's supporters as they took to streets to protest his overnight arrest. He said most of the arrested men were sent to prison for one month. He added that those charged with violence and arson in their protests over Asia Bibi's acquittal would be dealt with according to relevant laws.

Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry said the current crackdown on Labbaik party supporters has nothing to do with Asia Bibi's case. He said the arrests are being made to contain those exploiting the situation in the name of religion to gain political strength.

Rizvi's supporters held violent rallies against the Supreme Court's Oct. 31 acquittal of Bibi. Rizvi has called for more protests on Sunday in the capital, Islamabad. Pre-empting the possible protest, police in the capital have set up security posts near a vital intersection that connects the capital with the garrison city of Rawalpindi. Rizvi and his supporters earlier this year blocked that intersection for 20 days protesting the change of a religious reference in a parliamentary document. That protest led to the resignation of the law minister of previous government.

Pakistan's hard-line Islamists have threatened to kill anyone who insults Islam or speaks out against the country's blasphemy laws.

___

Associated Press writer Zarar Khan in Islamabad contributed to this report.
Rioting erupted on the Champs-Elysees on Saturday as police fired tear gas and water cannons at thousands of demonstrators protesting against fuel tax increases and President Emmanuel Macrons economic reforms.

The bottom of the Arc de Triomphe was obscured by clouds of tear gas while yellow vest demonstrators set fire to a trailer and barricades on Pariss most famous avenue. They chanted Macron demission (Macron resign) and some sang the U2 song Sunday Bloody Sunday, about the shooting of protesters in Northern Ireland in 1972.

Christophe Castaner, the interior minister, accused Marine Le Pen, the far-Right leader, of encouraging her supporters to clash with police. The ultra-Right is mobilised and is building barricades on the Champs-Elysees, he said. Ms Le Pen, who has backed the protests, said: I never called for any violence whatsoever.

Mr Castaner blamed the clashes on a minority of casseurs (troublemakers) who hurled rocks and bottles at police while most of the protesters demonstrated peacefully.

The authorities said about 8,000 people took to the streets of Paris, 5,000 of whom gathered on the Champs-Elysees. Some 3,000 police were deployed in Paris and thousands more outside the capital.

A fire rages as men wearing yellow vests protest against rising fuel prices on the Champs-Elysees Credit: Getty

The yellow vests  so-called because they wear high-visibility jackets  are part of a grassroots movement that began as a fuel tax revolt but now encompasses broader grievances over the high cost of living.

Mr Macron justifies the tax increases, which have caused diesel prices to rise by 23 per cent over the past 12 months, as an anti-pollution measure. Only about a third of Parisians own cars, but the hikes have provoked fury in rural areas and smaller towns less well served by public transport.

A protester gestures during a "Yellow vest" protest against higher fuel prices during clashes on the Champs-Elysees in Paris Credit: BENOIT TESSIER/REUTERS

Across France, the demonstrations attracted less support than similar protests last weekend, when roads and motorways were blocked by more than a quarter of a million yellow vests . The interior ministry said 81,000 protesters joined the demonstrations yesterday on Saturday.

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The unrest represents a major challenge for the beleaguered centrist president, whose approval ratings have plummeted below 30 per cent. Opinion polls suggest that more than three-quarters of French people sympathise with the protests.

A man wearing goggles as he shouts after being sprayed by the the police water cannon as they protest against rising fuel prices Credit: Getty/ Chesnot

Patrick Perez, 42, a demonstrator from the south-west, said: Macron has to understand that Paris is not France.

Sylvie Poireau, 46, from a small town outside Paris, said: Were made to pay higher taxes while theyve scrapped the wealth tax on the rich. My daughters handicapped and I struggle at the end of every month to buy food.

Opposition parties are trying to tap into the discontent, but the yellow vests have no unified leadership or political orientation.

Protesters wearing yellow vests, a symbol of a French drivers' protest against higher fuel prices, build a barricade during clashes on the Champs-Elysees Credit: BENOIT TESSIER/REUTERS

Jean-Luc Melenchon, the far-Left leader, said: History shows that when taxes are not accepted, that starts revolutions in France.

Police arrested 42 people on the Champs-Elysees on Saturday and 20 were injured, including four police officers. One protester received a serious hand injury. Several shops were vandalised during the protests on the famed boulevard.

A journalist was reportedly assaulted by protesters in Saint-Etienne du Rouvray, northern France.

Mr Macron tweeted: Shame on those who attacked other citizens and journalists... No place for violence in the Republic.

The interior ministry said more than 106,000 protesters took part in the demonstrations across France and 130 were arrested, including the 42 in Paris.

Over the past week of protests, two people have been killed in accidents and more than 700 injured including 136 police officers.

This is going to start a civil war and were ready for it," said Francois Lebrun, 25, a protester from Orleans.
Protesters in Myanmar's troubled Rakhine state demonstrated Sunday against the planned repatriation of Rohingya Muslims from Bangladesh, referring to them as "runaway refugees".

About 100 people led by Buddhists monks marched through the state capital Sittwe holding red banners and chanting slogans.

"There will be no benefits to us or our country if we accept the Bengalis," one monk said, according to a live video streaming of the protest.

Bengali is a derogatory term for the Rohingya in Myanmar that falsely implies they are newcomers from Bangladesh.

The demonstration comes 10 days after Bangladesh and Myanmar were supposed to officially start repatriating members of the Rohingya minority who had fled violent military operations in August 2017.

Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh said Myanmar's armed forces raped women, murdered their relatives and burned down their houses in a bid to drive them permanently out of the country after decades of persecution.

The deal to bring them back was struck a year ago but Rohingya in the Bangladesh camps fear returning without guarantees of citizenship, safety, and equal access to healthcare and education.

They also are wary of hostility from the non-Muslim residents in Rakhine.

The Buddhist protesters in Sittwe on Sunday reflected that view, holding signs that included calls for authorities to not "allow resettling (of) the runaway refugees" in parts of northern Rakhine state.

"The government should take precise action against illegal immigrants from Bangladesh," said Kyawt Sein, a member of the protest committee.

UN investigators have called for Myanmar's top brass to be prosecuted on charges of genocide at the International Criminal Court or an ad hoc tribunal.

Myanmar denies almost all claims of atrocities and says it was defending itself against Rohingya militants.

Demonstrations against the Rohingya are not uncommon in Sittwe, where intercommunal violence broke out in 2012, killing hundreds and sending more than 120,000 Rohingya into internal displacement camps where most remain today.
Set against a White House that has become known for tweets, leaks and tell-all books from former staff, Robert Muellers Russia probe has been an oasis of calm and quiet.

The investigation has been virtually leak-proof, even with it representing the shadow which has followed Donald Trump through the entire 18 months of his presidency.

Weeks of public silence about the probe  imposed due to not wanting to undermine the midterm elections which took place earlier in November  look like they are coming to an end and a sense of urgency is returning.

First, a reminder of the scope of special counsel Muellers FBI investigation. The brief has been to look into Russian interference in the 2016 US election, and any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump.

So far, that has led to 32 indictments or guilty pleas involving around two dozen Russian nationals, three Russian companies and four former Trump campaign officials.

Of those four officials, former Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI, as did Trumps former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Not directly related to the investigation into election meddling, former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and his associate Rick Gates eventually accepted plea deals having been charged with financial crimes over political lobbying activities in Ukraine. Rick Gates was first, while Manafort was convicted of a number of counts at a trial in Virginia, with a mistrial declared on other counts. Manafort then accepted a plea deal to avoid a second trial in Washington DC.

The Manafort plea is the most interesting of those, as he offered cooperation with the Mueller probe as part of the deal back in September and could possibly be rolled out as a star witness in any future attempts at trials.

As for the president himself, this week he finally submitted written answers to Muellers team  who are also looking into the possibility of the president having obstructed the investigation. Mueller and Trumps legal team have been negotiating for months about a sit-down interview with the president, but Trump has said that is probably off the table.

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However, Rudy Giuliani  the presidents lead lawyer dealing with the Russia probe, has not ruled out more questions from Mueller. Well consider them and answer them if necessary, relevant and legal, Giuliani said this week. If it was something that would be helpful, relevant  not a law school exam.

The answers to Muellers questions from the president relate to the 2016 presidential campaign and the time before Trump was sworn into office, however it is unclear how much the answers go into what happened during the presidents transition into the White House.

Trumps lawyers have also made clear they would push back against any questions involving the time in office  which includes firing the former head of the investigation then-FBI director James Comey  by citing executive privilege. Trumps feelings on the investigation have always been clear; there was no collusion and it is a witch hunt against him and his administration.

While Mueller could return to Trump once his answers have been assessed, it has not stopped his team from nibbling around the edges of Trumps world. Conservative commentator Jerome Corsi is the latest to say that he is in plea negotiations with Muellers team.

Corsi is an associate of long-time Trump ally and confidante Roger Stone, with questions likely to be surrounding Wikileaks and the release of thousands of Democrat emails in the last weeks of the 2016 election. It could bring Muellers team closer to determining whether Trump or his advisers were linked to the release of the emails.

During the 2016 campaign, Stone publicly bragged about having backchannel communications with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and on several occasions appeared to predict the WikiLeaks releases.

The questions Corsi has likely faced in his hours of interviews with investigators relate to any possibility he acted as an intermediary for Stone.

In the two years since the election, Stone has walked back his claims and Wikileaks have also denied coordination. Stone denies that he ever told Trump about WikiLeaks dumps before they became public. He also denies colluding with Russia.

However, it seems clear that Muellers team seem certain that talking to Stones associates, and maybe eventually Stone himself, could open up new avenues of inquiry.

Beyond the minutiae of the investigation, there have been growing fears in Congress about the threat of interference with Muellers probe as he enters the beginning of the end of the investigation. Those worries have been exasperated by Trump using the end of the midterms as an excuse to force out the attorney general Jeff Sessions and replace him with the acting attorney general Matthew Whitaker.

Sessions had recused himself from the Russia probe last year, with deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein overseeing the investigation. However, Whitaker  who has previously expressed doubts over the scope of Muellers activities and suggested cutting funding is a way to limit them  is now in charge.

A number of attempts have been made to challenge Whitakers appointment in the courts, while legislation protecting Mueller has been suggested in the Senate, but knocked back by Republican Party leadership.

Amid it all, Mueller and his team have silently been going about the business of gathering potential evidence. Mueller is the only one that knows how far away he is from finishing, and the probe could stretch into next year given how close we are to Christmas. But do not bet against the type of surprise indictments, or even the full report, that Mueller and his team have so far been able to keep veiled from the prying eyes in Washington DC.
Robert S. Mueller testifies before the House Appropriations Committee.

Head of the Special Counsel investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, Robert Mueller, is not done asking questions, according to President Donald Trumps lawyer Rudy Giuliani. In an interview with CNN Giuliani revealed that Mueller will likely seek additional answers from Trump. The questions will concern alleged obstruction of justice and not the so-called Russia collusion.

Its not on the table, but could be put back on the table, Giuliani explained, adding that Muellers questions will be evaluated by Donald Trumps legal team. Well consider them and answer them if necessary, relevant and legal. If it was something that would be helpful, relevant  not a law school exam, the lawyer said.

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An image released by the Crimean Branch of the Russian Federal Security Service apparently shows three Ukrainian vessels as Russian ships close in - TASS

Russian coast guard vessels opened fire and seized three Ukrainian navy vessels on Sunday night as they sailed through disputed waters around Crimea, raising fears of a new regional crisis.

Nato and the European Union issued demands for restraint after Ukraine accused Russian FSB border guards of damaging two armoured artillery boats and injuring six crew members.

All three of its vessels were immobilised and stormed by Russian special forces, the Ukrainian defence ministry said.

The FSB confirmed it seized the ships, claiming they had sailed illegally into Russian territorial waters.

Weapons were used with the aim of forcibly stopping the Ukrainian warships, it said in a statement circulated to Russian state media.

Ukraine denied its ships had done anything wrong and accused Russia of military aggression.

Petro Poroshenko, the Ukrainian President, has asked parliament to vote on Monday on whether to impose martial law on the country for 60 days, after his Military Cabinet recommended the move in a late-night meeting.

Throwing his weight behind the measure, which is far from guaranteed to pass, he said it "in no way means that Ukraine will carry out any offensive actions".

"I want to emphasise separately that we have all irrefutable evidence that this aggression, this attack on the Ukrainian Navy's warships was not a mistake, not an accident, but a deliberate action," he said in a statement.

The United Nations Security Council is due to discuss the developments on Monday at the request of Russia, said Deputy Russian UN Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy.

About 50-100 people gathered outside the Russian Embassy in Kiev to protest against Moscow's actions. An embassy vehicle was set on fire, according to reports.

Russia seized Crimea in 2014 and strengthened its grip by building a road bridge connecting the peninsula to southern Russia across the Kerch Strait, a narrow stretch of water linking the Black Sea to the Sea of Azov, which is home to two of Ukraines most important ports.

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The result is an uneasy tension between the two countries as Russia tries to increase its control of the waters around Ukraine.

The seizure of its vessels came at the end of a day of mounting tension, beginning in the Kerch strait when three Ukrainian vessels tried to pass from the Black Sea into the Sea of Azov.

The Ukrainian navy said a Russian border guard ship, the Don, rammed and damaged a tug boat as the flotilla approached the strait in the morning.

Russia attack jets fly over the Kerch bridge while a cargo vessel blockades the channel below Credit: PAVEL REBROV/REUTERS

Shipping in both directions was later suspended when Russia moved a large cargo ship under the arch of the Kerch bridge.

Russian military ships were deployed near the bridge over the strait and military helicopters and fighter jets were seen patrolling overhead throughout in the day.

Russian state media cited Alexei Volkov, the director of the Crimean Sea Ports, saying the closure was for safety reasons.

Ukraine's defence ministry accused Russia of openly aggressive actions against Ukrainian naval ships, and said Russian helicopters had also flown on an attack course at the vessels.

Russia's FSB, which runs the country's border guards, said the Ukrainian vessels illegally entered a temporarily closed area of Russian territorial waters and accused Kiev of failing to notify Russia about the ships' movements in advance.

Their aim is clear: to create a conflict situation in this region, the agency said in a statement.

A screen shows the Don, a Russian border guard vessel, trying to stop a Ukrainian Navy tug boat en route from to Black Sea port of Odessa via the Kerch Strait to Mariupol on the Sea of Azov. The picture was released by the Ukrainian Navy on Nov 25 Credit: Ukrainian Navy/Handout via REUTERS

The three Ukrainian vessels were being sent from the Black Sea port of Odessa to Mariupol, a key strategic port in Eastern Ukraine.

Russia has claimed waters around Crimea since it annexed the peninsula from Ukraine in 2014.

Its sovereignty over the peninsula and the surrounding waters is not recognised by Ukraine or Western countries.

Though a 2003 treaty designates the Kerch Strait and Sea of Azov as shared territorial waters, Russia has been asserting greater control over the passage since 2015.

A Nato spokeswoman called for de-escalation.

We call on Russia to ensure unhindered access to Ukrainian ports in the Azov Sea, in accordance with international law, she said.
Russian Navy ships deployed at sea, in formation.

Russia has allegedly fired upon  and reportedly captured  ships belonging to the Ukrainian navy, the BBC reports. According to reports being issued forth from the Ukrainian navy, Russian naval vessels have seized two Ukrainian gunboats in addition to a tugboat in the aftermath of a chase. Russian special forces were apparently involved in the seizure of the Ukrainian boats, in a move which is almost certain to escalate the existing tensions between the two nation states.

Occurring off the coast of Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in 2014 in a conflict which is still tumultuous, per CNN, it appears that neither side is offering up the same version of events. For their part, Russia remains silent on the apparent exchange, though it had earlier accused Ukraine of illegally entering waters under Russian jurisdiction. The Russians then moved to blockade a vital waterway in the Sea of Azov with a tanker placed beneath a bridge in the Kerch Strait, per Al Jazeera.

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PRAGUE (Reuters) - Slovakia will not support the United Nations pact on the treatment of migrants worldwide, Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini said on Sunday after the European Union summit. The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration was approved in July by all 193 member U.N. nations except the United States, which backed out last year, and is due to be ratified formally in December. The pact was conceived after the biggest influx of migrants into Europe since World War Two, many fleeing conflicts and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and beyond. "Slovakia will not support this United Nations pact under any circumstances and will not agree with it," Pellegrini told reporters in Brussels after the summit where EU leaders approved the agreement on Britain's withdrawal from the bloc. A Slovakia rejection of the migration pact could lead to a shake-up of Pellegrini's government, given that Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajcak has threatened to resign if the government shuns the agreement. Lajcak was President of the United Nations General Assembly when the migration pact was adopted. Pellegrini said that he believed Lajcak would stay even when the pact is rejected by Slovakia. "I will do everything I can to keep him in his seat," the prime minister said. (Reporting by Robert Muller; Editing by David Goodman)
Glass of cola and cubes of sugar

Drinking too many sodas can adversely affect a persons health. In fact, sodas have the potential to increase the risk of diabetes more than other sugary foods, a new report has revealed.

The report was prepared by the researchers at St. Michaels Hospital and Toronto University in Canada who conducted a study to determine how different foods that are rich in sugar can affect the levels of glucose in the blood.

According to an article published by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC), the current research  published in the British Medical Journal  examined 155 previous studies on the said topic. Researchers involved in the project assessed diabetic and non-diabetic participants for up to 12 weeks.

After the analysis of the results, it was revealed that most foods naturally contain fructose sugar  including fruits, natural fruit juice and vegetables  that do not affect blood glucose levels, the report said.

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Mining asteroids for either the minerals they contain or the water they hold isnt some outlandish fantasy. In an interview three years ago, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson said that Earths first trillionaire would be the person who exploits the natural resources on asteroids.

A number of entrepreneurs are taking their shot. The splashiest space-mining startup, Planetary Resources, was founded in 2012 and boasts investors including movie director James Cameron and Google cofounder Larry Page.

At the start of 2018, Planetary Resources was literally flying high. It had just launched a brand-new miniature satellite of its own design, one that would use a mid-wave infrared imager to sniff out sources of water beyond Earths atmosphere. It was the first step toward its longer-term mission to eventually stake the first asteroid-mining claim.

A Planetary Resources Arkyd-6 spacecraft undergoing thermal vacuum chamber testing.

Two years earlier, the company had raised $21 million, and then another $28 million through a partnership deal with the government of Luxembourga country trying to position itself as the Earth-based hub for all things interplanetary miningrelated.

But the commercial space venture based in Redmond, Wash., soon found itself in trouble: A fundraising shortfall led to employee cutbacksreportedly shrinking a staff of about 70 workers to roughly 10and to Luxembourg selling its 10% stake in the company. By the end of August, CEO Chris Lewicki, who declined an interview for this story, was planning to auction off laptops and other equipment.

While asteroid mining is a potentially lucrative businessa Goldman Sachs report estimated the platinum found on one asteroid to be worth as much as $50 billionthe technical challenges of mining them are still being figured out. Outside observers say that any company interested in drilling space rock had best be prepared for a long wait.

There are going to be a lot of bumps in the road to create this entirely new field, so any startup company that had these grand ambitions has to be pragmatic about establishing a revenue stream, says George Sowers, a professor in the space resources program at the Colorado School of Mines.

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A Planetary Resources competitor, Deep Space Industries (DSI), in San Jose, has abandoned its focus on mining asteroids until it can be reliably certain that the cost of traveling to them wont bankrupt the business.

For the past 18 months, DSI has instead been developing spacecraft that will cost less than $10 million. Theres a big need for low-cost transportation to deep space, says its CEO, Bill Miller. A commercially viable strategy; thats what were focused on today.

Then, in October, the asteroid-mining industry collided with another technology vying to define the rest of the century. Planetary Resources assets were acquired by ConsenSys, a Brooklyn-based blockchain company founded by Joe Lubin, cofounder of the cryptocurrency Ethereum.

Just what, exactly, a blockchain startup wants with a space-mining company is anyones guess. Details about the transaction are confidential, and in a statement, Lubin made it sound as if adventuring into space is a natural outgrowth for his company, noting that the purchase reflects our belief in democratizing and decentralizing space endeavors. For the broad endeavor of fracking the galaxy for profit, however, the underlying message is a simple one: Find an alternative source of funding, at least for the time being.

According to University of Arizona professor Dante Lauretta, a principal investigator for NASAs Osiris-Rex asteroid mission, the idea of space mining within the next decade seemed like a viable goallast year. This year, he says, it feels much more lofty.

It takes a long time to get up to an asteroid, to process material, to deliver that material. Its a multi-decade kind of prospect, says Lauretta, who serves on Planetary Resources scientific advisory board (which last met in December 2017).

But that doesnt mean a future in which asteroids are mined for resources is out of reach. The Osiris spacecraft is approaching an asteroid named Bennu and will attempt to land on its surface in the summer of 2020 to collect a sample to return to Earth.

Im still of the opinion that the scientific and engineering challenges of asteroid mining are completely surmountable. Theres nothing we cant solve, Lauretta says. Its just a matter of getting the business case in place.

A version of this article appears in the December 1, 2018 issue of Fortune with the headline Space Mining Comes Down To Earth.
By Elizabeth Piper and Alastair Macdonald

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Prime Minister Theresa May will seal a Brexit package deal with European Union leaders in Brussels on Sunday after an agreement to reassure Madrid on a future say on Gibraltar lifted a threat of a Spanish veto.

The 27 EU national leaders will gather for an hour or so to formally endorse both a detailed treaty setting out the terms on which Britain will leave in an orderly manner on March 29 and a declaration outlining how Britain can keep close to its biggest market by following many EU rules after a 2-4-year transition.

They will then meet May briefly as she seeks momentum to get the package through the British parliament in the coming weeks in the teeth of fierce opposition from many of her own allies.

The Democratic Unionist Party, whose votes from Northern Ireland have helped May to govern since she lost her majority in a misjudged snap election last year, said it would try to block a Brexit deal it called "pitiful" - partly because it binds London to many EU rules it will no longer help set and partly as the DUP fears it could weaken the province's ties to Britain.

No one knows what will happen if parliament rejects May's plan, which she and EU leaders say is the best deal available.

Wrangling over how to keep open troubled Northern Ireland's land border with the EU without creating disruptive customs barriers with the Irish Republic dogged much of the 18 months of talks before accords were struck this month. Another relic of the imperial past, Britain's 300-year-old naval base on Spain's southern coast, threatened to derail plans at the last minute.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez threatened to boycott Sunday's meeting if he did not get amendments to the deal to ensure Madrid gets a say in Gibraltar's future ties with the EU.

After officials wrangled through the night, he announced on Saturday afternoon that he had such written pledges. Brussels officials said those essentially confirmed what most EU leaders had already understood - that Spain must have a binding say over how any future EU-UK trade pact might affect Gibraltar.

May will meet Sanchez for face-to-face talks during the summit, officials said.

(Additional reporting by Gabriela Baczynska and Jan Strupczewski in Brussels; writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Marguerita Choy)
Tehran (AFP) - A strong 6.4-magnitude earthquake hit Iran's western province of Kermanshah late Sunday, the country's institute of geophysics said, with local officials reporting some 260 people injured.

The epicentre of the quake was 17 kilometres southwest of the city of Sarpol-e Zahab, according to the institute, which said it struck at a depth of 7 kilometres.

At least 260 people were injured in Sarpol-e Zahab and the neighbouring city of Gilan-e Gharb, close to the Iraqi border, Kermanshah governor Houshang Bazvand told state television.

"We've had no reports of fatalities so far. The situation is currently under control," Bazvand said.

"There were power and water cuts in both cities, but they lasted only a few minutes."

The head of Iran's emergency medical services Pirhossein Kolivand said in televised comments that most of the injuries were due to "people panicking and fleeing their homes".

The number of those hurt could rise as 18 emergency teams dispatched from neighbouring provinces were still assessing the damage, he said.

Sarpol-e Zahab resident Fariba Babayi described the fear that swept the city when the quake hit.

"Lights went out, walls looked as if they were going to fall and all the neighbours were screaming," Babayi, 36, told AFP by telephone.

"I didn't run this time, even though my mother was out calling to me."

Those living in the city are all too familiar with the devastation earthquakes can bring after it bore the brunt of a 7.3-magnitude termor last November that killed 620 people and injured thousands more.

Partial rebuilding work on Babayi's house finished just a month ago after it was razed in that quake and her family are still paying construction costs.

"We cannot go back to normal life anymore. There are all the bad memories, the trauma people live with," she told AFP.

There were no official details of any damage to buildings and infrastructure after the latest earthquake.

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The region was rocked by seven weaker aftershocks an hour after the initial tremor, the strongest of which was magnitude 5.2, the geophysics institue said.

There were also reports that the initial quake was felt across the border in Iraq.

- 'Just reconstructed' -

Morteza Salimi, an official with the red crescent society of Iran, told semi-official news agency ISNA that the quake rocked areas "just reconstructed" after the tremor a year ago.

The quake last November damaged some 30,000 houses, with huge numbers made homeless at the start of the cold season in the mountainous region.

Local officials said the estimated cost of reconstruction would be billions of dollars, at a time when Iran was struggling to cope with a tanking economy.

There was criticism that new social housing built as part of a scheme championed by ex-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had failed to withstand the tremor.

The western province of Kermanshah was also hit by a 6.0-magnitude quake in August that killed two people and injured more than 250.

Iran sits on top of two major tectonic plates and sees frequent seismic activity.

In 2003, a 6.6-magnitude tremor struck the southeast of the country, decimating the ancient mud-brick city of Bam and killing at least 31,000 people.

The country's deadliest was a 7.4-magnitude quake in 1990, that killed 40,000 people in northern Iran, injured 300,000 and left half a million homeless.
Damascus (AFP) - Syria's regime has accused armed groups of carrying out a "toxic gas" attack that left dozens of people struggling to breathe and prompted government ally Russia to launch retaliatory air strikes on Sunday.

Around 100 Syrians were hospitalised with breathing difficulties after the alleged chemical attack in the regime-held city of Aleppo on Saturday, state media and a monitor said.

Russia accused "terrorist groups" of being behind the alleged chlorine attack, and carried out the first air raids in months on the outskirts of a major rebel bastion west of the city.

It was the latest accusation of a chemical attack in Syria's grinding seven-year civil war, which has killed more than 360,000 people and displaced millions.

State news agency SANA reported "107 cases of breathing difficulties", after what health official Ziad Hajj Taha said was a "probable" chlorine attack on Aleppo city.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor, said a total of 94 people were hospitalised after "the smell of chlorine" was reported in the city, but most were discharged.

On Saturday, an AFP photographer saw dozens of civilians, including women and children, stream into an Aleppo hospital, some on stretchers or carried in by their relatives.

The injured seemed to be dizzy and breathing with difficulty.

Staff gave them oxygen masks, through which they breathed for 15-minute sessions, either sitting or lying down.

- Rebel denial -

The regime controls Aleppo city, but rebels and jihadists are present to the west in the country's last major opposition bastion of Idlib.

On Sunday, Russian air raids hit a planned buffer zone on the edges of that stronghold, the Observatory and Moscow said.

They were the first air strikes to hit the expected demilitarised area since a September deal between Moscow and rebel backer Ankara to protect Idlib from a massive regime assault.

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On Sunday, Moscow said "terrorist groups" based in that buffer zone carried out the alleged toxic attack in Aleppo.

Russian defence ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said they fired shells filled with chlorine on a residential area of Aleppo.

He said the shelling came from an area of the buffer zone controlled by the jihadist-dominated Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) alliance.

Syrian state media accused "terrorists" of carrying out a "toxic gas" attack on Aleppo, using a term it uses to mean both rebels and jihadists.

A rebel coalition on Sunday denied any involvement.

"We at the National Liberation Front deny the criminal, lying regime's allegations that revolutionaries targeted the city of Aleppo with any missiles and especially not any containing chlorine gas," it said.

Neither HTS, nor the Al-Qaeda-linked Hurras al-Deen group present in the area, have commented on the alleged attack.

- 'Pretext' -

The Russia-Turkey buffer zone deal on September 17 intended to prevent a major regime attack on Idlib, which is home to some three million people.

But its implementation has stalled after jihadists refused to withdraw from the planned demilitarised zone on time, and sporadic shelling and clashes have rocked the area.

On Sunday, Turkey's defence minister and his Russian counterpart spoke on the phone about the "latest provocations" in the Idlib region, Ankara reported, without providing more details.

Syria's regime has insisted that the buffer zone deal is temporary and that Idlib will eventually revert to government control.

After the alleged toxic attack, Nasr al-Hariri, who heads Syria's mainstream opposition, accused Damascus of seeking a "pretext to launch a military offensive in northern Syria".

Over the course of Syria's war, international human rights groups have repeatedly accused the regime of carrying out chemical attacks.

Last year and in April, the allegations caused the United States to carry out punitive strikes in Syria.

A joint commission of the United Nations and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has also accused the Islamic State group of using toxic weapons.

The Damascus regime on Sunday called on the UN Security Council to denounce the attack.

"The Syrian government demands the UN Security Council immediately and harshly condemn these terrorist crimes," the foreign ministry said.

Syria's war has evolved into a complex conflict including world powers and jihadists, since starting in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests.
LGBT activists in Taiwan fear their newly won right to marriage equality is under threat, while the president is battling for her political future after a wide-ranging vote that saw the island swing towards conservatism.

Rival referendums on same-sex unions saw "pro-family" groups defeat pro-gay campaigners in what Amnesty International called a "bitter blow and a step backwards for human rights in Taiwan".

The referendums ran alongside local elections in which the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) suffered a massive loss in city and county seats, prompting President Tsai Ing-wen to resign as party leader and sparking questions over whether she will be able to run for re-election in 2020.

The Beijing-friendly main opposition Kuomintang (KMT) made gains in the face of China's increasing pressure on the island, which it sees as part of its territory to be reunified.

Tsai has promoted Taiwan as a beacon of democracy in the region since she took office, pitching it as a counterpoint to China's authoritarianism.

Rights activists worldwide also lauded Taiwan after its top court voted to legalise gay marriage last year, the first place in Asia to do so, with the change due to be implemented next year.

But analysts said Saturday's vote showed mainstream sentiment was still uncomfortable with such reforms.

"Taiwan is a conservative society and not quite ready for the progressive label it's been given in some quarters," said Jonathan Sullivan, director of China programmes at Nottingham University.

Pro-gay marriage campaigners say they fear the new laws will now be weakened as the government faces conservative opposition.

"The Taiwanese government needs to step up and take all necessary measures to deliver equality and dignity for all, regardless of who people love," said Amnesty, urging authorities not to use the referendum as an "excuse" to undermine rights.

- 'Protest vote' -

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Observers said the DPP's shock defeat in local polls was an indictment of policies they felt had not helped ordinary people.

Although GDP is rising in Taiwan, voters say they are not seeing the benefits and many have been incensed by cuts to pensions and public holidays.

Some traditional DPP supporters had said ahead of the elections that they would punish the party as they felt tensions with China were damaging their businesses.

The DPP leans towards independence and Beijing has upped military and diplomatic pressure since Tsai took office, unilaterally cutting all official relations.

Tsai and the DPP repeatedly accused China of a "fake news" campaign ahead of the vote, which Beijing denied, and authorities are probing Chinese influence through campaign funding of candidates.

Kerry Brown, professor of Chinese Studies at King's College London, framed the result as a protest vote.

"This is not a wholehearted endorsement of anyone else -- just a sign of how much like other countries Taiwan now is -- divided, very frustrated and looking for chances to protest," he told AFP.

Observers agreed Tsai's re-election prospects had been severely weakened although some said she still had a chance to run, in the absence of an obvious successor.

Tsai had described the vote as a chance for Taiwan to stand up to China, while the KMT pitched it as a no-confidence test.

Analysts said that Taiwan's sense of separateness from China was ingrained, but that voters wanted a cross-strait relationship that did not damage the island economically, a balance that successive governments have found difficult to strike.

"(The electorate) remain attached to Taiwan's de facto independence and democracy," said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, professor of political science at Hong Kong Baptist University.

"They want to see their purchasing power increase and their government to show more competence."
MADRID (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of protesters, many wearing purple, marched through Madrid and other Spanish cities on Sunday to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. Protesters chanted slogans and carried signs reading "For Those Who Arent With Us" and "Justice". In Madrid, the protest ended with a reading of the names of the 44 women killed in Spain last year in incidents of domestic violence. Earlier this year, women across Spain went on strike and held hundreds of rallies to protest against gender inequality. The two largest unions said around 6 million women took part in the strike, the first of its kind to be held in Spain on International Womens Day. Spanish courts received more than 166,000 gender violence complaints in 2017, up 16 percent on the previous year, according to the General Council of the Judiciary. (Reporting by Silvio Castellanos; Writing by Sam Edwards; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)
Paris (AFP) - Tens of thousands of people rallied across Europe on Saturday against sexist violence, with more than 30,000 turning out in Paris.

Demonstrations across France drew around 50,000 people in all, according to organiser Caroline de Haas, to answer a citizen collective's call for a "feminist tidal wave" of outrage against gender violence brought into sharp focus by the #MeToo movement.

Elsewhere, a thousand people braved driving rain in Rome while similar protests drew several hundred demonstrators in Geneva and Athens on the eve of the UN's International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on Sunday.

In Spain's capital Madrid, several hundred people took to the streets to march to loud drumming as some shouted "We are all here, the murderers are missing".

Authorities put the Paris turnout at 12,000 and similar marches in Lyon, Marseille and Rennes at between 1,000 and 2,400, but De Haas felt moved to salute "the largest (feminist) mobilisation France has known", far bigger than a rally that drew some 2,000 last year.

French President Emmanuel Macron offered his support, tweeting: "The fight against violence against women is progressing daily but our society has a long way to go -- everyone must act and fight as this is everybody's business."

Participants clad in purple, the colour of the #NousToutes women's activist protest movement, shouted slogans including "sick of rape", "end impunity for aggressors" and "a woman is never responsible for the violence she suffers", while also demanding sufficient government resources to tackle the issue.

"I am here to support all the victims and continue this struggle which started long before I came along," said French actress Muriel Robin, who had organised a similar rally last month in the capital.

- Rise in violence cases -

The rallies drew a number of men, including Tanguy, a 19-year-old student who turned out in the western city of Rennes to declare backing for "a movement which is not based on sex -- it's not a fight pitting men against women but a fight by men and women, together, against inequality."

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The #NousToutes movement started out in France in September, inspired by the #MeToo campaign that began last year since when the number of cases of sexual violence reported to police in France has risen 23 percent.

Latest French government figures say 2017 saw 225,000 cases of domestic violence against women by their partners while 2016 saw 123 deaths.

Further marches are planned for Sunday in a number of cities across Europe to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

Macron last year made sexual equality a priority of his presidency.

But "if the money is not forthcoming public policy won't follow on", warned De Haas, speaking two days after several civil organisations called for a huge increase in public resources dedicated to the problem.

French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe announced on Saturday that an online platform for reporting sexual violence and sexism will be launched on Tuesday.

"This is the first milestone, technical and political, to eradicate" violence, said he said in a Facebook post.

"From now, a few clicks can help everyone make a new start: for themselves, for their family. And perhaps avoid the worst."

burs-pid/je/qan
ISLAMABAD (AP)  The assault on the Chinese Consulate in Karachi was the latest in a series of attacks on China's growing influence in Pakistan, where Beijing is financing tens of billions of dollars' worth of megaprojects that critics fear will plunder the country's resources and leave it with crippling debt. Friday's attack, which killed two police and two Pakistani civilians, was claimed by ethnic Baluch separatists who have long accused the federal government of unfairly exploiting the oil and mineral-rich Baluchistan region. But concern about China's growing involvement in Pakistan is more widespread. The relationship has come to be defined by the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, or CPEC, a sprawling package that includes everything from road construction and power plants to agriculture  and has an estimated cost of up to $75 billion.

HONG KONG (AP)  A Chinese researcher claims that he helped make the world's first genetically edited babies  twin girls born this month whose DNA he said he altered with a powerful new tool capable of rewriting the very blueprint of life. If true, it would be a profound leap of science and ethics. A U.S. scientist said he took part in the work in China, but this kind of gene editing is banned in the United States because the DNA changes can pass to future generations and it risks harming other genes. Many mainstream scientists think it's too unsafe to try, and some denounced the Chinese report as human experimentation.

LUCKNOW, India (AP)  Tens of thousands of hard-line Hindus rallied Sunday to demand a Hindu temple be built on a site in northern India where hard-liners in 1992 had attacked and demolished a 16th century mosque, sparking deadly Hindu-Muslim violence. The Hindu hard-liners are building pressure on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government to move quickly on the issue. Modi had promised to build the temple in 2014 elections that brought him to power. The next national elections are due before May. Thousands of police and paramilitary forces were deployed in and around Ayodhya, 550 kilometers (350 miles) east of New Delhi, to prevent any attacks on Muslims, who comprise 6 percent of the town's more than 55,500 people.

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BEIJING (AP)  Don't mess with China and its growing cadre of powerful luxury consumers. Dolce&Gabbana learned that lesson the hard way when it faced a boycott after Chinese expressed outrage over what were seen as culturally insensitive videos promoting a major runway show in Shanghai and subsequent posts of insulting comments in a private Instagram chat. The company blamed hackers for the anti-Chinese insults, but the explanation felt flat to many and the damage was done. The Milan designers canceled the Shanghai runway show, meant as a tribute to China, as their guest list of Asian celebrities quickly joined the protests.

TOKYO (AP)  The board of Mitsubishi Motors is meeting Monday to decide whether to oust Carlos Ghosn as chairman at the Japanese automaker, which is allied with Renault-Nissan. Ghosn was arrested a week ago on suspicion of under-reporting his income by millions of dollars for five years. Nissan Motor Co., which already ousted him as its chairman, has said that an internal investigation found Ghosn abused company money and assets. Mitsubishi Motors Corp. said the seven members of its eight-member board will meet later in the day. Ghosn's arrest on Nov. 19 marked a stunning fall for an executive who dominated the Japanese auto industry for two decades and spearheaded Nissan's alliance with Renault SA of France.

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP)  Voters in Taiwan passed a referendum asking that marriage be restricted to one man and one woman, a setback to LGBT couples hoping their island will be the first place in Asia to let same-sex couples share child custody and insurance benefits. The vote on Saturday, organized by Christian groups that make up about 5 percent of Taiwan's population and advocates of the traditional Chinese family structure, goes against a May 2017 Constitutional Court ruling. Justices told legislators then to make same-sex marriage legal within two years, a first for Asia, where religion and conservative governments normally keep the bans in place.

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP)  Formerly conjoined twins from Bhutan were released from an Australian hospital on Monday more than two weeks after they were separated in a delicate surgery. The 15-month-old girls Nima and Dawa were joined from the lower chest to just above the pelvis and shared a liver. They were separated during an operation at Melbourne's Royal Children's Hospital on Nov. 9 that lasted almost six hours. A major challenge had been to reconstruct their abdomens. "Thank you, everyone," their grateful mother, Bhumchu Zangmo, said as she wheeled her daughters from the hospital where their lives have been transformed since their arrival on Oct.

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP)  Three Chinese nationals will be charged by the country's anticorruption authority for paying a bribe to influence the outcome of fraud investigations, Kenya's director of public prosecutions said Sunday. The three Chinese men work for the China Roads and Bridge Corp. at the Standard Gauge Railway in the coastal city of Mombasa, Noordin Haji said in a statement. Haji said the three will be charged with giving a bribe of $5,000. Part of the Chinese Belt and Road initiative, the majority-Chinese financed Standard Gauge Railway is Kenya's largest infrastructure project since independence from Britain in 1963. Critics say the 610-kilometer (380-mile) project is overpriced and isn't value for money.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP)  North and South Korea are making a first joint bid for an international recognition of Korean traditional wrestling. South Korean culture officials on Monday said a UNESCO committee is set to determine whether to add the Korean wrestling to its list of "Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity" this week. The Koreas had earlier pushed separate bids for the sport's UNESCO recognition, but the cooperation follows an easing of tension on the divided peninsula amid a flurry of exchanges this year. The Koreas were originally a single country before their 1945 separation. They now use different English Romanization rules.

NEW DELHI (AP)  Police said they have mapped the area of a remote Indian island where tribespeople were seen burying the body of an American adventurer and Christian missionary after allegedly killing him with arrows this month. But before they can even attempt to recover the body of 26-year-old John Allen Chau, authorities have to learn from experts "the nuances of the group's conduct and behavior, particularly in this kind of violent behavior," said Dependra Pathak, the director-general of police of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, where North Sentinel Island is located. During their visit to the island's surroundings on Friday, investigators spotted four or five North Sentinel islanders moving in the area from a distance of about 500 meters (1,600 feet) from a boat and studied their behavior for several hours, said Pathak.
Trump denied that US intelligence blamed Saudi crown prince

Adam Schiff: I think the president is being dishonest

Trump at bay: Democrats load subpoena cannon

Donald Trump with Mohammed bin Salman. Trump declined to blamed Prince Mohammed for Jamal Khashoggis murder: I dont know if anyones going to be able to conclude the crown prince did it. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP

Senior Democrats in Congress have accused Donald Trump of lying about the CIAs findings on the involvement of Saudi Arabias crown prince in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.

Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said on Sunday it was false for Trump to claim the CIA did not come to a conclusion on whether Mohammed bin Salman ordered the killing of the dissident journalist.

I think the president is being dishonest with the American people, Schiff told CNNs State of the Union. He said he had been briefed by the CIA on the agencys assessment of Khashoggis killing, which reportedly concluded that Prince Mohammed was directly involved.

The intelligence Ive seen suggests that this was ordered by the crown prince Senator Mike Lee

Schiffs remark followed similar comments from Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, who said on Friday Trump was lying about the CIAs findings. On Sunday, Senator Mike Lee, a Republican from Utah, also contradicted the presidents comments.

Khashoggi, a frequent critic of Prince Mohammed, was killed after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on 2 October. The Saudi government has given contradictory explanations but consistently denied high-level involvement.

Trump has been sharply criticised for his passive response. The president said repeatedly on Thursday that, contrary to media reporting that cited senior intelligence officials, the CIA had not found Prince Mohammed responsible.

They didnt conclude, Trump told reporters in Florida. No, no, they didnt conclude. Im sorry. No, they didnt conclude. They did not come to a conclusion. They have feelings certain ways. I have the report  they have not concluded, I dont know if anyones going to be able to conclude the crown prince did it.

Reed, the senior Democrat on the Senate armed services committee, answered yes on Friday when asked by CNN if Trump was lying.

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The CIA concluded that the crown prince of Saudi Arabia was directly involved in the assassination of Khashoggi, he said.

Reed said the CIA had high confidence in its assessment.

Its based on facts, its based on analysis, he said. The notion that they didnt reach a conclusion is just unsubstantiated. The CIA has made that clear.

Trumps unflinching support for Prince Mohammed has caused disquiet among some Republicans. Lee, a conservative, said on Sunday the killing should prompt an overhaul in the US-Saudi relationship including a withdrawal of support for military action in Yemen.

I disagree with the presidents assessment, Lee told NBCs Meet the Press. Its inconsistent with the intelligence Ive seen  the intelligence Ive seen suggests that this was ordered by the crown prince.

Ben Sasse, a Republican senator from Nebraska, said Prince Mohammed had contributed to murdering somebody abroad and urged the administration to be strong enough to tell the truth.

Making the realist case is a different thing than being so weak that we failed to tell the truth, Sasse told Fox News Sunday.

Another Republican senator, Joni Ernst of Iowa, told CNN Congress should take further action against Saudi Arabia if Prince Mohammed is shown to have been involved in the murder. Last month the US imposed sanctions on 17 Saudis alleged to be connected to the killing.

Schiff said that the House intelligence committee, which he is expected to chair from January, will investigate Trumps business connections with influential Saudis in addition to long-promised inquiries into his financial ties with Russia.

Trump has cited a desire to protect US-Saudi economic relations in explaining his reluctance to respond forcefully to Khashoggis killing. But he has falsely claimed to have no personal business interests with Saudis.

Schiff said Trumps response to the Khashoggi murder signalled to despots that they can murder people with impunity and that this president will have their back as long as they praise him, as long as they do business with him potentially.
WASHINGTON (AP)  Incensed by a ruling against his migrant asylum policy, President Donald Trump demanded "some common sense" from America's judges and directed his ire at a liberal-leaning appeals court. He professed respect for Chief Justice John Roberts, with whom he is engaged in a startling public dispute over the independence of the judiciary, yet shrugged off the Republican appointee as someone who "can say what he wants."

Trump, still seething over Monday's decision by a President Barack Obama-nominated judge, began his Thanksgiving Day by asserting on Twitter that courts should defer to his administration and law enforcement on border security because judges "know nothing about it and are making our Country unsafe."

The president, spending the holiday in Florida, later told reporters that law enforcers and military service members he has sent to the U.S.-Mexico border "can't believe the decisions that are being made by these judges."

Trump has gone after federal judges before who have ruled against him, but the current dustup is the first time that Roberts, the leader of the federal judiciary, has offered even a hint of criticism of the president.

Roberts issued a strongly worded statement Wednesday defending judicial independence and contradicting Trump's claim that judges are partisans allied with the party of the president who nominated them.

It is highly unusual for a president to single out judges for personal criticism, and a chief justice's challenge to a president's comments is unprecedented in modern times.

In challenging a co-equal branch of government, Trump complains that his opponents file lawsuits in courts that are part of the liberal-leaning 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That's where an appeal of the recent asylum ruling would normally go.

It's not unusual for those challenging a president's policies to sue in courts they consider likely to back their claims.

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"Everybody files in the 9th Circuit," he said with exaggeration. "I think we're going to have stop that somehow. The judges are going to have to get together or Congress is going to have to get together and stop it because they're taking advantage of our country." Trump did not elaborate.

Conservative groups tended to bring challenges to Obama-era policies in Texas, part of the conservative-leaning 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.

"I like him and I respect him," Trump said about Roberts, "but i think we have to use some common sense. The 9th Circuit, everybody knows that it's totally out of control."

Trump began the holiday by tweeting that Roberts "can say what he wants, but the 9th Circuit is a complete & total disaster."

He even raised the topic during his call to service members, saying the 9th Circuit "has become a big thorn in our side. ... It's a terrible thing when judges take over your protective services, when they tell you how to protect the border. It's a disgrace."

With Roberts' court feeling the heat over the president's appointment of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Roberts and several of his colleagues have gone out of their way to rebut perceptions of the court as a political institution divided between five conservative Republicans and four liberal Democrats.

Trump's appointments to the Supreme Court and lower federal courts have themselves spurred charges that the courts are becoming more politicized. Roberts, as the justice widely seen as closest to the court's middle, could determine the outcome of high-profile cases that split the court.

The new drama began with remarks Trump made Tuesday when he went after Jon S. Tigar, the San Francisco-based judge who had ruled against Trump's asylum order. The president claimed, not for the first time, that the 9th Circuit was biased against him.

Roberts had refused to comment on Trump's earlier attacks on judges, including the chief justice himself. But on Wednesday, after a query by The Associated Press, he spoke up for the independence of the federal judiciary and rejected the notion that judges are loyal to the presidents who appoint them.

"We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges," Roberts said. "What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them."

He concluded: "The independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for."

Trump responded by questioning the independence of federal judges appointed by his predecessor and confirmed by the Senate. He especially criticized judges on the 9th Circuit.

"Sorry Chief Justice John Roberts, but you do indeed have 'Obama judges,' and they have a much different point of view than the people who are charged with the safety of our country," the president tweeted.

Trump has never been reticent about criticizing the judiciary. Last year, the president scorned the "so-called judge" who made the first federal ruling against his travel ban. During the presidential campaign, he criticized Roberts for the chief justice's decisive vote in 2012 to preserve President Barack Obama's health care overhaul.

Trump also referred to an Indiana-born judge of Mexican descent, who was presiding over a fraud lawsuit against Trump University, as a Mexican who would be unable to rule fairly because of Trump's proposal to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The president's remarks on Tuesday came when a reporter asked for his reaction to a ruling by Tigar that put the administration's asylum policy on hold. Under that new policy, Trump declared no one could apply for asylum except at an official border entry point. That tends to back migrants up for weeks if not months. A number of migrants remain in Tijuana after traveling in a caravan to reach the U.S.

"Every case that gets filed in the 9th Circuit, we get beaten," Trump said. "And then we end up having to go to the Supreme Court, like the travel ban, and we won."

The president went on to say about the asylum ruling: "This was an Obama judge. And I'll tell you what, it's not going to happen like this anymore. "

The initial travel ban ruling in 2017 was issued by U.S. District Judge James Robart, an appointee of President George W. Bush in Washington state. Roberts, too, was appointed by Bush.

The 9th Circuit is by far the largest of the federal appellate courts, covering Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington. Some Republicans in 9th Circuit states have proposed splitting the circuit in two, but legislation has not advanced.

The court has long had a majority of judges appointed by Democratic presidents, with the current breakdown at 16-7. But Trump has the opportunity to narrow that edge significantly because there are six vacancies, and he already has nominated candidates for five of them.

___

Colvin reported from Palm Beach, Florida.
By John Miller ZURICH (Reuters) - Just weeks after Novartis floated the idea that $4-5 million was fair value for its new gene therapy against a deadly neuromuscular disease, a major benefits manager is pushing back. The Swiss drugmaker's assessment of AVXS-101's value for treating spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) has put the company front-and-center in the debate over what "super drugs", for rare diseases afflicting relatively few patients, are really worth. Among the first to react was pharmacy benefits manager Express Scripts, which helps U.S. employers manage workers' prescription costs. Its chief medical officer, Steve Miller, told Reuters he "loves the science" behind Novartis's therapy, a potential cure for newborns who are diagnosed early. But $4 million or more per patient? "You just can't keep pushing these price points up," Miller said. "I just don't think we can allow it. It is not sustainable over time." Novartis, which bought U.S.-based AveXis for $8.7 billion in April to add the SMA therapy to its portfolio, is still mulling its asking price as it awaits U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval, likely in early 2019. But the company has begun its campaign to convince insurance groups and governments to cover AVXS-101, contending the one-and-done infusion will save society money over the long haul, even with a cost near the highest ever for a one-time therapy. There's now only one approved drug for SMA, Biogen's two-year-old Spinraza, and it is listed at $750,000 for the first year and $350,000 thereafter. Spinraza is not a cure and must be taken indefinitely. "When we look at 10-year costs, you see somewhere between $2.5 million to $5 million being spent by societies to care for these types of patients," Dave Lennon, AveXis's president, said. "Four million dollars is a significant amount of money, but we believe this is a cost-effective point." Though newborns may stand to benefit the most from AVXS-101, depending on the durability of its effect, the therapy is also being tested in older SMA patients with more advanced disease in hopes it will improve their symptoms, too. A CHILD'S LIFE A diagnosis of SMA, which affects one in 10,000 live births, is devastating. Forty percent of victims have the severest form and historically die within months. Children with less severe SMA can live to adulthood, although with profound physical disabilities. Though cognitively normal, many cannot feed themselves and require 24-hour care, wheelchairs and machines to help them breathe and cough. Janice Kress, a Pennsylvania woman, lost her grandson to the disease at 5 months. Today she volunteers for SMA charity events and knows families who have fought their U.S. insurers for access to Biogen's Spinraza, as payers seek to rein in costs using eligibility criteria like age or when symptoms began. "A child's life -- how can you say no?" Kress said. PRICE WATCHDOG As Novartis prepares to launch AVXS-101, it also hopes for tacit endorsement of its pricing strategy from the non-profit Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER), which is currently reviewing the cost-effectiveness of SMA therapies. The Boston-based non-profit, established in 2006, carries out cost-benefit analyses on drugs that it calls independent of "Big Pharma", insurers and government. Unlike European price regulators, ICER cannot dictate costs. But it has steadily gained influence in the U.S. pricing debate, as companies like Express Scripts and CVS Caremark and governments rely on its analyses. ICER has conducted 11 assessments in 2018, some covering multiple drugs. In seven of the reviews, it concluded drugs' prices aligned with their benefits, like when it said Roche's $482,000 hemophilia medicine Hemlibra could save the U.S. system up to $1.9 million for the hardest-to-treat patients. Four times, however, ICER concluded drugmakers were asking too much, giving payers ammunition to bargain them down. For instance, the New York Department of Health told Reuters that ICER's finding that a $270,000-per-year cystic fibrosis drug from Vertex Pharmaceuticals represented "low long-term value" helped underpin the state's demand for a steep discount. JUST ONE FINGER Novartis and Biogen, as well as Switzerland's Roche, which also has an SMA drug in development, are all lobbying ICER to broaden what it considers a meaningful benefit, potentially helping their therapies fare well in the group's review. The ability to move one finger might not seem like much, but Biogen told ICER such a measure should be considered, since it might allow somebody with SMA to steer an electric wheelchair and maintain a level of independence. "We recently spoke with a young man who is...now losing ability and power in his fingers," said Sangeeta Jethwa, Roche's head of patient partnerships, told Reuters. "He wants to be able to go out with his friends and open his own bottle of drink. That for him is fantastically meaningful." For its SMA review, ICER aims to quantify factors like quality of life, direct medical costs and how patient and caregiver productivity losses may burden society. A head-to-head comparison of Spinraza's and AVXS-101's financial impacts over time is also planned before ICER issues its final report in March. ICER spokesman David Whitrap said ICER's review takes eight months so it can "rigorously evaluate all of the available evidence." The stakes are high for Biogen, after Britain's healthcare cost agency, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, has concluded Spinraza was too expensive to be cost-effective. Though Spinraza, whose nine-month 2018 sales hit $1.25 billion, is available in the United States and elsewhere in Europe, Biogen wants to avoid a negative ICER assessment that gives payers more leverage to demand rebates. "We are confident in the evidence supporting the value it provides," a Biogen spokeswoman said. SIGNS OF PROGRESS Treatments for rare diseases like SMA are increasingly popular among drugmakers, because they command high prices while insurers are hard pressed to reject claims, especially for sick children. Sales of rare disease therapies will rise 11 percent annually, nearly twice the overall market rate, through 2024, when they'll hit $262 billion, consultancy Evaluate Pharma has forecast. Novartis Chief Executive Vas Narasimhan, with ambitions of treating hundreds of SMA patients annually, highlights 90 kids in AVXS-101 trials over four years, including some who would otherwise have been incapacitated and fed through tubes. "With AVXS-101... patients are alive and thriving," Narasimhan said. There were no SMA therapies, however, when Victoria Gusset, an eight-year-old Swiss girl with a shy smile and love for horses, was diagnosed as a toddler after failing to stand independently. Today, Victoria is in a trial testing how Spinraza may improve muscle control or halt its decline in older children. Every four months, Victoria and her mother, Nicole Gusset, load her electric wheelchair into their van and drive two hours from their home near Bern to a German hospital for a spinal infusion. Victoria looks forward to each trip, though she sometimes suffers from nausea and headaches following treatment. "I get to go shopping with mum," she said. After her daughter's diagnosis, Nicole Gusset founded an SMA patient organization and has been lobbying the Swiss government to expand access to Spinraza. Children under 20 have coverage, but most insurers refuse to pay for adults. Gusset said Novartis's $4 million announcement sent shockwaves through Switzerland's SMA community, heightening fears that escalating costs will keep new treatments out of reach for some who might benefit. "The best therapies are useless if patients cannot get them," she said. (the story vorrects paragraph 22 to show ICER conducted 11 assessments in 2018, not reviewed 11 treatments) (Reporting by John Miller in Zurich, Deena Beasley in Los Angeles and Caroline Humer in New York; Editing by Mike Collett-White)
MOSCOW (AP)  Russia's coast guard opened fire on and seized three of Ukraine's vessels Sunday, wounding two crew members, after a tense standoff in the Black Sea near the Crimean Peninsula, the Ukrainian navy said.

Russia blamed Ukraine for provoking the incident, which sharply escalated tensions that have been growing between the two countries since Moscow annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, and it has worked steadily to bolster its zone of control around the peninsula.

Earlier in the day, Russia and Ukraine traded accusations over a separate incident involving the same vessels, prompting Moscow to block passage through the narrow Kerch Strait, which separates the peninsula from the Russian mainland.

The Ukrainian navy said two of its gunboats were struck and Russian crews boarded and seized them and an accompanying tugboat.

Russia's Federal Security Service, known as the FSB and which oversees the coast guard, said there was "irrefutable evidence that Kiev prepared and orchestrated provocations ... in the Black Sea. These materials will soon be made public."

The FSB confirmed early Monday that it fired on the vessels to force them to stop, and then seized them.

An emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council was called for Monday morning over the escalating situation, according to U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley. The European Union and NATO called for restraint from both sides and for Moscow to restore access to the strait, which Ukraine uses to move ships to and from ports on either side of the peninsula.

Ukrainian authorities said they had given advance notice to the Russians that the vessels would be moving through the strait, which connects the Black Sea to the Sea of Azov.

Russia said the three Ukrainian vessels made an unauthorized passage through Russian territorial waters, while Ukraine alleged that one of its boats was rammed by a Russian coast guard vessel.

The tugboat, which was rammed, was traveling with the two Ukrainian gunboats from Odessa on the Black Sea to Mariupol, an eastern Ukraine port, via the Kerch Strait.

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"Russian coast guard vessels ... carried out openly aggressive actions against Ukrainian navy ships," the Ukrainian statement said, with the tugboat suffering damage to its engine, hull, side railing and a lifeboat.

The Kerch Strait is the only passage into the Sea of Azov. The strait is spanned by the recently completed Kerch Bridge, connecting Crimea to Russia. Transit under the bridge has been blocked by a tanker ship, and dozens of cargo ships awaiting passage are stuck.

Russia has not given any indication of how long it will block the strait, but a long-term closure to would amount to an economic blockade of Ukrainian cities on the Azov coast. Russia's Black Sea Fleet greatly outmatches the Ukrainian navy.

Ukrainian ports on the Sea of Azov include strategically vital centers such as Mariupol, the closest government-controlled city to Donetsk and Luhansk, the breakaway regions of eastern Ukraine controlled by Russia-backed separatists. Thousands of people in those regions have been killed in fighting between Ukrainian troops and the separatists since 2014.

The FSB told Russian news agencies after the first incident that the Ukrainian ships held their course and violated Russian territorial waters.

"Their goal is clear  to create a conflict situation in the region," the FSB statement said. It did not mention that a Ukrainian tugboat was rammed.

Although a 2003 treaty designates the Kerch Strait and Sea of Azov as shared territorial waters, Russia has been asserting greater control over the passage since 2015.

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said earlier that Russia's actions violated the U.N. Charter and international law, and pledged to "promptly inform our partners about Russia's aggressive actions."

"Such actions pose a threat to the security of all states in the Black Sea region," the statement said, "and therefore require a clear response from the international community."

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, after a meeting with his National Security Council, said in a statement he would ask parliament Monday to take up the issue of whether to implement martial law over the incident.

About 50-100 people gathered outside the Russian Embassy in Kiev to protest Moscow's actions.

Dmitry Kiselyov, a commentator on Russian state-controlled TV, told viewers of his Sunday evening news program that Poroshenko, encouraged by the U.S., is looking to pick a fight with Russia in the Black Sea.

The talk show host also alleged the U.S. talked Poroshenko into staging a provocation against Russia as a means to disrupt an upcoming meeting between Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump at this week's Group of 20 summit in Argentina.

"What is happening now at the (Kerch) bridge threatens to turn into a very unpleasant story," Kiselyov said.
Tijuana (Mexico) (AFP) - Mexico deported scores of Central American migrants arrested after hundreds forced their way through a Mexican police blockade and headed for the United States but were met with tear gas and rubber bullets.

Around 500 men, women and children, part of a caravan of roughly 5,000 mainly Hondurans who have been trekking toward the US for weeks, scrambled over a rusted metal fence and surged into a concrete riverbed toward San Diego on Sunday.

The group was stopped by a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire and US Border Patrol agents firing tear gas and rubber bullets. At least one man was wounded.

Chief Patrol Agent Rodney Scott told CNN that "numerous" migrants -- mainly men -- had made it across, however, and 42 of them were arrested.

Mexico's National Institute of Migration Commissioner Gerardo Garcia confirmed the 98 arrests on his country's side, saying there were "instigators" in the migrant caravan pushing people to illegally cross the border.

The incident was the most serious flashpoint in a weeks-long crisis that US President Donald Trump used to drum up support in this month's midterm elections.

Trump hit out again by threatening a permanent closure of the frontier, and defended the use of tear gas by US border patrol, saying it was "very safe."

"They had to use (it) because they were being rushed by some very tough people and they used tear gas and here's the bottom line: nobody's coming into our country unless they come in legally," Trump told reporters.

"The tear gas is a very minor form of the tear gas itself. It's very safe," he later added.

Mexico sent a diplomatic note requesting that US authorities "conduct a thorough investigation of the events during which non-lethal US weapons were used in Mexico."

Trump also claimed, without providing evidence, that some people at the border he dubbed "grabbers" clutch unrelated children to make it safer for themselves and increase their chances of getting into the US.

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"They grab a child because they think they'll have a certain status by having a child. You know, you have certain advantages in terms of our crazy laws that frankly Congress should be changing," he said.

- 'Broken hearts and hopes' -

Most of the migrants stumbled back into camp in the northwestern Mexican city of Tijuana, dirty, scared and with ripped clothes.

"We're here with broken hearts and hopes," said Andy Colon, a 20-year-old woman who traveled from Honduras with her sister and two children.

"We were deluded into believing that we had already reached the United States, and that they would grant us asylum," Colon told AFP.

The San Ysidro border post across from Tijuana -- the busiest crossing on the US-Mexico border -- was closed to traffic and pedestrians for several hours following the incident.

Trump, who for weeks has been condemning the caravan, lashed out once more.

"Mexico should move the flag waving migrants, many of whom are stone cold criminals, back to their countries," he tweeted.

"Do it by plane, do it by bus, do it anyway you want, but they are NOT coming into the U.S.A. We will close the border permanently if need be. Congress, fund the WALL!" Trump said, referring to his central election pledge to build a wall across the US-Mexico border.

- 'Lots of kids fainted' -

Many of the migrants say they are fleeing violence and poverty in Honduras in search of asylum north of the border.

Around 1,000 migrants, including women and young children, had been holding a peaceful midday demonstration in Tijuana when half of the group bolted toward the border.

The sudden rush overwhelmed the Mexican police, who were deployed with full riot gear.

Several hundred made it over the first barrier, with video clips posted on Twitter showing crowds of people dashing across a shallow concrete riverbed toward the United States.

When they neared the second fence, US border agents fired tear gas and rubber bullets at them as helicopters buzzed overhead.

People covered their faces to protect themselves from the acrid gas, as mothers clutched their young children and fled back to Mexico for safety.

"We were told that if we crossed (the first barrier) they would give us asylum, because we were already in the United States," said Flor Jimenez, a 32-year-old Honduran woman who was among those who turned back along with her husband, sister and young daughter.

"But now it seems that they want to kill us, and we got very scared."

US Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen accused the migrants of seeking to harm US border patrol personnel "by throwing projectiles at them."

But one Honduran man, who did not give his name, told AFP that American officers had "got upset because we were close to the border."

"The alarm went off and they began throwing tear gas at us. A lot of people started to go down. A person got hit and lots of kids fainted. So some people got rocks and threw them because many kids were fainting," he said.

Another Honduran who gave his name as Wilmer said "they started throwing tear gas and they hit a journalist in the head."

A third man, who requested anonymity, showed AFP what he described as injuries from rubber bullets. He had two fresh round bruises in his abdomen.

- Asylum demands -

Trump has deployed nearly 6,000 troops to the border, on top of more than 2,000 members of the National Guard, but Scott said the Department of Defense was not involved in Sunday's engagement.

To enter the US legally, migrants must apply for asylum, but the wait for those requests to be processed can last up to a year.

The Washington Post reported Saturday that the Trump administration had gained the support of Mexico's incoming government for a plan to require asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for their applications to be processed.
School administrators announced Wednesday that the students who appeared to make a Nazi salute in a viral photo will not face punishment.

According to Madison.com, Baraboo School District Administrator Lori Mueller sent a letter to parents on Nov. 21 saying that part of the investigation into the Wisconsin students prom photo is already done. She said the students in the picture will not face any punishment because their actions are protected by the First Amendment.

As previously stated, we cannot know the intentions in the hearts of those who were involved, Mueller wrote in the letter. Moreover, because of students First Amendment rights, the district is not in a position to punish the students for their actions.

In November, a photo of a group of male students in the Baraboo school district, who appeared to be headed to prom, went viral. Many of the teens had their right arm extended upwards, in what has been interpreted as a Nazi salute.

The photo even drew condemnation from the Auschwitz Memorials official Twitter account, which said the incident is an example of hateful Ideology rising.

It is so hard to find words...



This is why every single day we work hard to educate. We need to explain what is the danger of hateful ideology rising. Auschwitz with its gas chambers was at the very end of the long process of normalizing and accommodating hatred. https://t.co/13AzZaMGJR  Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) November 12, 2018

After the photo gained notoriety, the school district announced they were conducting an investigation into the events leading up to it.

According to Madison.com, the investigation concluded that the photo was taken in May 2018 before prom, outside the Sauk County Courthouse, and was taken by a parent of one of the students. Those pictured were a mix of past and current Baraboo High School students, Madison.com said.

Mueller said the school plans on holding meetings to address hate with students and the community.

We must come together and, in a meaningful way, consider the travesties of the past that were fueled by hatred and embrace the celebration of diversity fueled by love and acceptance, Muellers letter read.
Mandip Gill, Jodie Whittaker and Tilly Steele in Doctor Who: The Witchfinders (BBC)

The eighth episode of Doctor Who S11 has landed. Heres everything you need to know about The Witchfinders:

Whats it about? In 17th century Lancashire, the Doctor and friends encounter witch trials, King James I and an alien mud invasion. Clearly, things are about to get messy.

Verdict: Sometimes its hard to be a woman  and never more so than in Lancashire in the early 1600s, where 10 women were tried and executed for witchcraft in the area surrounding Pendle Hill.

As a result, The Witchfinders is the first Doctor Who story of the Jodie Whittaker era thats forced to confront the Doctors recent change of gender head on. Honestly, if I was still a bloke, I could get on with the job, and not have to waste time defending myself, she says at one point. (Tell us about it, mutters half the audience.)

That said, it isnt designed to serve as a clunking allegory for some of the more unreconstructed opinions that surrounded Whittakers casting last year. (I dont think even the below-the-line commenters on Mail Online went so far as to actually say burn the witch Did they?) Rather, its a richly atmospheric slice of folk horror from writer Joy Wilkinson and director Sallie Apprahamian  only the second such all-female team in the shows 55-year history, incidentally.

Wilkinson cracks through an awful lot of story in a short space of time, without ever feeling too frantic or hurried, and takes care to leaven the darker, more grisly aspects of the script with plenty of Team TARDISs trademark zingers.

Like all this years stories, it also looks incredible: leaden skies and ribbons of dank fog lie low over the Lancashire hills, skeletal trees rise up from blasted heaths and even the sporadic low winter sun fails to add much warmth or cheer to the landscape. TV people often talk about the grade  the bit of post-production where the pictures are rendered in certain tones  and the work colourist Gareth Spensley has done here is stunning. If you hear anyone talking about 50 shades of grey in this episode, believe me its nothing to do with the Doctor being tied up with ropes (though that happens as well).

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Alan Cumming as King James I in Doctor Who: The Witchfinders (BBC)

Into this gloomy, fearful land of sickness and blighted crops, Alan Cummings King James I brings a splash of colour, and more than a dash of panto. A preening, strutting peacock of a monarch, his entrance stops just short of bursting out of a cake, and Cumming is obviously enjoying himself enormously (a little too much, perhaps?). I rather like the drama, he purrs at one point. You dont say.

The King is quick to dismiss the Doctor as a wee lassie, while taking a shine to Ryan (my Nubian prince), and appoints Graham his Witchfinder General, presumably because it gives Bradley Walsh the chance to wear a funny hat.

Cumming isnt the only star booking, though, and Siobhan Finneran is reliably brilliant, bringing a real messianic fervour to the role of landowner and enthusiastic witch-dunker Becka Savage.

Its a demanding script for Jodie Whittaker, this one: alongside all the expository heavy lifting, shes landed with a fairly hefty amount of earnest, slightly theatre-in-education speechifying  including telling the King of England You want to know the secrets of existence? Start with the mysteries of the heart. This has been a running theme of this years series, and I cant help thinking it might be a blessing to dial down some of the more Wonder Years stuff and remember that, with the Doctor, whats left unsaid can be just as powerful.

That aside, theres much to relish in Wilkinsons dialogue: I particularly enjoyed the application of modern management jargon (special measures, flat team structure) to the business of Jacobean witchfinding. In fact she had me at mud tendril.

Mandip Gill, Jodie Whittaker and Bradley Walsh in Doctor Who: The Witchfinders (BBC)

Amidst this enjoyable persiflage, The Witchfinders doesnt shrink from moments of pure horror, most explicitly when the rotting corpses of the undead rise from the rutted earth, while the tree roots burning with green fire is a striking image loaded with pagan, folkloric symbolism.

As Doctor Who elevator pitches go, The Crucible meets alien mud invasion is fairly irresistible, and so this proves to be. This is way too dark for me, says Ryan at one point during the story. Id have to respectfully to disagree on that point. In fact, slight excess of Hallmark card emoting from the Doctor notwithstanding, my only major quibble is: why on earth wasnt this shown at Halloween?

Doctors notes: She loves apple bobbing (of course she does). Shes good at holding her breath and getting out of chains, thanks to a very wet weekend with Harry Houdini.

Fellow travellers: Yaz had the year from hell (not literally) at school when Izzy Flint turned the whole class against her. She calls King James I mate. Ryan initially mistakes the 17th century for some kind of hipster pop-up happening. The King has a thing for him and wants him to be his protector.

Isnt that? Alan Cumming (James I) is an Olivier, Tony, Emmy and Golden Globe-winning star of stage and screen known for roles in GoldenEye, The X-Men and The Good Wife, among many others. The Witchfinders is his first brush with the world of Doctor Who since his appearance alongside Jon Pertwee, Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy in unlicensed straight-to-video spin-off The Airzone Solution (1993). Siobhan Finneran is one of Britains most in-demand actors, best known for playing Sarah OBrien in Downton Abbey, Janice Garvey in Benidorm and Clare Cartwright in Happy Valley, for which she was BAFTA nominated.

Siobhan Finneran as Becka Savage in Doctor Who: The Witchfinders (BBC)

Location, location, location: Bilehurst Cragg, Lancashine, in the early 1600s.

Scary monsters: The Morax, an ancient warrior race imprisoned for billions of years beneath Pendle Hill, Lancashire.

Quote unquote: If were not being drowned were being patronised to death. The Doctor discovers the downside of being a girl.

Together we shall save the souls of the my people  even if it means killing all of them! Tough love, Becka Savage-style.

You, with your alluring form and your incessant jabber. King James Is verdict on the Doctor. But why is he making it sound like a bad thing?

Were all the same. We all want certainty, security and to believe that people are evil or heroic. But thats not how people are. Except on Twitter, obviously.

Best bit: The Doctors trial by ducking stool is a great moment of high drama. But

Worst bit:  they could have made much more of her disappearance and triumphant escape, rather than having her pop up, a little soggy but none the worse for wear, literally seconds later. A missed opportunity.

Scariest bit: The rotting corpses of the undead rising from the rutted earth. A classic slice of Doctor Who teatime terror.

Funniest bit: Careful, its my pricker is surely destined to join the ranks of Doctor Whos most immortal lines, alongside No, not the Mind Probe! and Youll contaminate my spores!

Back in time: The idea of aliens being responsible for enduring British myths and legends is something Doctor Who has explored numerous times, from the Loch Ness Monster (Terror of the Zygons, Timelash) to King Arthur (Battlefield).

Next time  It Takes You Away: On the edge of a Norwegian fjord, in the present day, The Doctor, Ryan, Graham and Yaz discover a boarded-up cottage and a girl named Hanne in need of their help. What has happened here? What monster lurks in the woods around the cottage  and beyond?

Read more

Kerblam! recap

Christopher Eccleston took legal action after Doctor Who exit

Doctor Who viewers split over historical plots
John Robinson talks with his lawyer during his trial at Yakima County Superior Court in Yakima, Wash. on Thursday, July 13, 2017. State prosecutors are arguing that Robinson, who is considered a sexually violent predator and has been convicted of multiple crimes including first-degree kidnapping and rape, should not be released. (JAKE PARRISH/Yakima Herald-Republic)
In his forthcoming book, "From zero to a 100" which will be published in the coming months by Yedioth BooksGuy, a paramedic in IAF's special Airborne Rescue and Evacuation Unit 669, describes a day that started just like any other day, but ended with the dramatic rescue operation for missing teens who were swept away in the flooding of the Zafit Stream.

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Guy, 24, from Hoshaya community settlement in northern Israel, was released from the army a few months ago, after a long army service. From the beginning of his basic training course until his discharge day, Guy documented his experiences as a paramedic in one of the IDF's most elite and intriguing units.

Guy, connected to a Black Hawk helicopter by a rescue cable

Unit 669 participates in every possible combat scenario from rescue and evacuation missions under fire to secret operations beyond enemy linesand its skilled soldiers possess all the necessary fighting and rescue skills.

Rescue fighters on call in Tel Nof or Palmachim air bases dont know where their job will take them in fifteen minuteswill they be on their way to rescue hikers caught in a flood? Or wounded soldiers trapped in the heart of Gaza? For this reason, they must be prepared for every possible scenario.

The following is an excerpt from Guy's book which describes the dramatic rescue operation of high school student from the southern Zafit Stream, following the flash flood disaster which left 10 teenagers dead

The names of the unit's combat soldiers, commanders, paramedics, and doctors were changed for information security purposes.

Teens killed in flash flood disaster

* * *

I'm sitting down inside the helicopter. The mechanic nods back at me. Just as he opens the Black Hawk's door, I shout "Gonen, I'll be discharged soon; this is my last rescue operation!"

"Good luck, Guy!" Gonen says with a fatherly smile. Because of the age difference between us, he could have been my father.

Gonen opens the Black Hawk's door and the cable pulls me back. Turning to the two remaining fighters inside, I stand on the threshold of the helicopter door, looking down at the stream that bends back and forth hundreds of feet below me.

The helicopter descends as Gonen lowers me to the ground. Like in a dart board game, he has to point me like an arrow and carefully place me on a big rock on which Yochai, the squad commander, and Alex, the doctor, are waiting.

I am suspended in the air, 65 feet above ground, when I begin to stretch my legs as far as I can, preparing to hit the ground. Yochai reaches out his hand and I land gracefully on the ground.

We quickly climb up the steep slope of the mountain before us, getting closer to the injured man who is trapped over there. He is fully conscious and screaming with pain. While hiking on the mountain, he unexpectedly fell from30 feet and rolled downhill until he stopped here, on the rocky ground.

His right leg is shattered. He is losing blood quickly. Alex and I stop the bleeding and administer First Aid on the ground. "Yossi, how are you feeling?" I ask him gently. "Okay... is there any chance I could keep my leg?" he mutters, under the heavy influence of morphine.

"There is a chance Yossi, there is definitely a chance," I tell him. This is not the time to tell him that chances are slim.

"It is a 15 minutes' flight to Hadassah Medical Center," Yochai announces on the radio, while Yossi screams in pain. I prepare another dose of morphine and consider whether to administer a blood transfusion.

* * *

"Guys, listen to the radio!" Yochai suddenly calls out. "There is another incident in the south. It is not yet clear what is going on. Air force control center instructed us to fly over there as soon as possible. We will land at the hospital in seven minutes," the pilot says.

We continue to treat the injured man and prepare him for landing. Anxiety levels soar. We land at Hadassah. The ambulance is waiting for us at the landing. Alex and I update the medical team. "Guy, we've got to get out of here, go back to the helicopter!" Yochai shouts.

"Yossi, feel better, good luck," my comrade whispers in Yossi's ear. He mutters something that sounds like 'thanks', and we quickly run back to the helicopter and take off.

I open the radio.

"There is a report about an incident in the south. The situation is still unclear; the 669 crew is on is on its way from Tel Nof to the south. You will fly to Nevatim Air Base to refuel."

We're flying south. Jerusalem Mountains are quickly replaced by the yellowish landscape of Hebron and the northern Negev. I take my cell phone out of my pocket, remove my latex gloves with my teeth, and write to Gili, my girlfriend:

"Hi sweetie, I'm in the helicopter, we'll probably be back in Palmachim in an hour. We'll go on our trip as planned."

Five minutes before landing in Nevatim, the pilots receive an update: "this is apparently a school bus that was swept up by a flood in the Arava Stream, get fuel as fast as possible and head out."

I look outside. This is the end of April. The air is foggy, but there are hardly any clouds. They talked about rain, but a flood? What the hell is going on here?

In the meantime, more details about the incident start coming in: "apparently parents and children went hiking in the Arava Stream and were caught in a flood. There are over 20 missing persons."

What the hell is going on here? I try to imagine the scene we are about to witness. Frightened parents and children are stranded on a mountain, injured. I remind myself the correct order of operation, and memorize the dosages of children's medicine.

* * *

Gonen opens the door. Yochai and I walk towards the on-scene commander, a police officer in blue uniforms and senior ranks.

"It's a pre-military academy school trip," he says, trying to catch his breath.

"The flood caught them by surprise, they found the first body."

"Found what?" I ask, not sure if I heard correctly.

"A body!"

I feel as though I have been punched in the stomach. I had already seen what happens to a person in a flash flood, but I refused to acknowledge it. The word "body" resonates in my ears for a few seconds.

The helicopter is flying low. A group of boys are standing 30 feet up a steep slope. They look frightened, but they're standing on their feet, waving to the helicopter. The water blocks them from one side, while on the other side  a cliff.

"We just got a call about two figures drifting in the water further down the stream!"

"But there are people here who need to be rescued, we don't know what's their condition and what can happen to them," my comrade says.

"Should we begin to rescue these people, or take a risk and continue to look for these figures further down the stream?" the pilot asks.

"Keep going!" we are told.

Everyone's eye turn outward as the helicopter continues its slow flight down the stream.

65 feet down the stream, in a widening curve, two figures are stretched out motionless on the ground, a few feet from the water surface. The right hand of one rests on the left hand of the other. Blood drips from one figure and a huge bush covers the other's face. Despite the wind caused by the helicopter, they lie immobile on the ground, their skins pale as chalk.

"I see two bodies!" someone calls on the radio.

"Two injured!" The commander shouts. "You will not mention the word 'body' until you physically touch it."

669 combat soldier lifts an injured man into a helicopter

* * *

My face is glued to the plastic window of the helicopter, looking for any sign of life: something moving in the stream, an item of clothinganything. I cling to the hope that there is someone out there we can save.

"Down here!" my comrade screams eagerly. I quickly pass to the other side of the helicopter and look out the window. Just below us we spot a shoe, further down you can see the shapes of a body.

The mechanic opens the door and we jump off. We step into the stream until the water reaches our waists. It's pretty warm. The ground is muddy. We make our way through, clinging to the slim chance that there is life on the other side.

We arrive, panting. "Guy, check the pulse, give me a rundown," says Yochai behind me.

We pull the body out of the murky mud and turn it overa beautiful girl. Dark bruises and scratches cover her body. Her bright eyes are wide open. I put my fingers on her neck, searching for a pulse, but in vain. I shake my head and gently shut her eyelids.

"Please bring us a stretcher and a gray blanket," Yochai asks.

Guy and Yochai, treat an injured man in the Judean Desert shortly before they got the call to the Zafit Stream

* * *

My comrades, Davidi and Shemer, spot two figures lying down motionless on the ground. The pilot tilts the helicopter slightly to the right and they land on the banks of the stream.

They run towards the two frozen figures. The first one turns out to be a young boy. The boy begins to cry as soon as Davidi comes near. The other figure, a curly-haired girl with bright eyes, screams in alarm, as if we removed some magic spell. Her hair is tangled in a thorny bush and she has a deep cut on the side of her body. Davidi approaches and sits down. Another soldier examines the boy. His big eyes look fearful. His entire body is covered with scratches and bruises.

The two weep.

"They're both alive, I repeat, the two injured youths are alive!" they report on the radio. Davidi wraps the weeping girl in his arms. He embraces her and whispers: "We're here to rescue you; everything is going to be okay."

* * *

"Take a look at six o'clock, what's that white thing over there?" The pilot asks.

"It looks like a piece of white cloth," mutters the mechanic.

"What do you suggest we do?" The pilot asks the lieutenant.

The lieutenant thinks. He has been a rescue fighter for many years and has seen almost everything. But how can you tell what's going on here? It could be just a piece of cloth, and it could also be a sign of an injured person seeking help, or a corpse. Do you risk a fighter's life for a piece of cloth?

"Can you even get a fighter down there?"

"I think so," the mechanic mutters.

"Ron, get ready to go down, start tying a loop," says the deputy commander.

The mechanic, almost 300 feet above Ron, is playing with the cable and with Ron like a marionette. With one skillful gesture, he hits the target and lands Ron on the ground.

Ron moves his body away from the crumbling limestone walls. He is an experienced fighter who had participated in dangerous rescue operations. But he never went into a stream by himself.

One thing he does know: he mustn't drift off into the waterfall. Climbing slowly toward the white piece of cloth, he hears noises and leaps over the curve.

In front of him, on the edge of a rock, near the running water, stands a boy waving a white t-shirt in the air. You cannot see the helicopter from here. The boy is waving his shirt slowly, in despair. Behind him are three other teens, two boys and a girl, crammed inside a small cave. The four of them look at Ron in amazement.

"Hey, I'm Ron, are you all right?" He asks, panting. The four nod. They look exhausted, but healthy and sound.

Ron straightens up, wipes the sweat off his forehead and smiles: "I've come to get you out of here."

Search effort in south Israel for missing teens ( ")

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* * *

We sit in our little helicopter. Behind me, covered with a gray army blanket, lies the body of the girl. I look out, searching for a sign, a clue. If only we could find someone we can help.

"Yochai, look ahead!" I hear the pilot calls in the radio. We all look ahead and spot a figure lying face down on the muddy ground.

Our helicopter lands on the bank of the stream, near a swamp. A moment before we get off, Yochai asks for a "stretcher and a blanket."

Our wall of denial is quickly falling apart.

Flash floods (Photo: Central Arava Regional Counci)

* * *

We fly to the stomping ground to evacuate the bodies. This is our second fly today. Each time we bring a girl, and come back to bring another.

I look at them. They lie silently inside the helicopter, covered in gray army blankets. I am trying to keep my cool, but I feel like I'm choking as I struggle to stop the tears from falling. My hands are shaking. No one dares to speak.

The second girl had to be plucked from the mud, leaving a hole in the ground where she was lying. Her gaze is calm and relaxed. Her hair is tangled in desert bushes.

Not far from the girl's body floats a large purple backpack. "We'll bring the bag with us to the helicopter, so that the parents will have one final memory," I mutter to Yochai. The bag was terribly heavy, soaked in water. Now it is lying next to me on the helicopter floor. Colorful clothes spill out of it.

I look at them with blurred eyes. Why the hell are they all girls? What kind of pre-military academy is this? I look at my comrades who are watching the covered stretchers with damp eyes.

Guy

* * *

The radio booms in my ears. The reports do not stop. It's unbearable.

Another helicopter found another body. We still don't know how many injured or dead teenagers are waiting for us down the stream. We receive warnings about the weatherit is going to rain soon. Fighter jets fly above us. My head is exploding. I drop the radio transceiver. Suddenlyquiet.

I imagine the victim's families who still don't know that their world has turned upside down . Whole families would collapse in a moment. One phone call. A knock at the door. 'Your daughter will not be coming home.'

We land at the pick-up area. A long line of ambulances is waiting. People are crying everywhere. I put the stretcher at the end of a long line of covered bodies. A stretcher and another stretcher lie mute.

We fly a few hundred feet and land in a large dirt field where a control room was set up.

There are thousands of people there: vehicles that were stopped on Route 90, hundreds of police officers, firefighters and members of the police rescue unit.

I approach Yochai. He puts his hand on my shoulder. "Bro, I'm wrecked. This was heavy," he says quietly, without looking up. "There are no words to describe this rescue operation," I say. "Yes," Yochai mutters quietly. His eyes move from side to side, as if looking for an anchor to hold onto.

"Guy, the only thing that keeps me from falling apart is knowing that we did the right thing. without us and without all the fighters who came here from Tel Nof or from home, they couldn't have evacuated all the injured and bodies. I nod, biting my lower, lip and sighing.

Yochai's phone rings.

"Yochai, there's a call for you: a police vehicle got swept by the flood on Route 90 in the northern Dead Sea area."

"Copy. We are on our way," Yochai replies. His back straightens up and his broad shoulders tighten. "Come on Guy, load the equipment, get ready for takeoff, there's someone who needs us," he shouts and runs toward the on-call room.
A stun grenade was thrown Sunday at an entrance to a house in Abu Ghosh, west of Jerusalem.

There were no casualties and no damage was done.

Police forces, including a police sapper, were operating at the scene. The police said the incident, which is under investigation, was criminal in nature.
Dozens of teenegers living in communities near the Gaza border demonstrated Sunday at the entrance to the Eshkol Regional Council in protest over the security situation in the south.

Earlier, a handful of demonstrators blocked the trucks carrying goods through the Kerem Shalom border crossing.
A 95-year-old man has been charged with more than 36,000 counts of being an accessory to murder on allegations that he served as a guard at the Nazis' Mauthausen concentration camp, Berlin prosecutors said Friday.

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Hans Werner H., whose last name wasn't released because of privacy regulations, is accused of serving as an SS guard in the camp in northern Austria from mid-1944 to early 1945.

During that time, 36,223 people were killed at Mauthausen, primarily by gassing, but also by lethal injection, shootings, starvation or exposure, prosecutor Martin Steltner said.

Mauthausen concentration camp (: shutterstock)

The suspect isn't accused of a specific killing, but prosecutors argue that as a guard he helped the camp function. Overall, about 95,000 people are believed to have died in the Mauthausen camp system including 14,000 Jews, but also Soviet prisoners of war, Spaniards who had fought against Gen. Francisco Franco, and others.

"With his service as a guard he aided or at least made easier the killing of many thousands of inmates," Steltner said, adding that the suspect denies the charges.

Efraim Zuroff, the top Nazi hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, noted that Wiesenthal himself was an inmate at Mauthausen when it was liberated by Americans in May 1945. Wiesenthal died in 2005 after devoting his life to tracking down Nazi war criminals so they could be brought to trial.

"In a sense it gives a certain very nice closure that someone like this is brought to justice, which I'm sure would have been Simon's dream," Zuroff said in a telephone interview from Jerusalem.

The SS Rottenfuehrer, roughly equivalent to corporal, is accused of serving both in the outer perimeter of the camp and inside, as well as guarding prisoner work details at a nearby quarry.

In this role, Steltner said the man is alleged to have "known about the various methods of killing as well as the disastrous living conditions of the imprisoned people."

Crematorium at the Nazis' Mauthausen concentration camp (Photo: Shutterstock)

As such, he is alleged to have "been aware that a large number of people were killed with these methods and that the victims could have only been killed with such regularity if they were being guarded by people such as himself," Steltner said.

A court must review the charges and determine whether the suspect is fit for trial. Steltner said his office considers him able to stand trial.

New legal reasoning in Germany advanced in recent years holds that former Nazi camp guards can be charged with accessory to murder even if there is no evidence they participated in a specific killing.

The argument has been upheld by the country's highest criminal court and has led to a string of prosecutions, including an ongoing case at the Muenster state court where a 94-year-old former SS guard at the Stutthof concentration camp, Johann Rehbogen, is being tried on hundreds of counts of accessory to murder.
The tires of several vehicles were slashed and slogans "enough with administrative orders" and "price tags" were spray-painted overnight Sunday in a Palestinian village in Jenin.

The security forces are investigating whether the incident was a result of a hate crime.
Hamas released new information last week about the botched IDF Special Forces mission in Gaza which was discovered by the Palestinians and led to a fire exchange that ended in the death of Lt. Col. M. prompting the IDF censor to release an unusual statement urging the Israeli media not to disseminate any details about the November 11 incident.

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Even though most of Hamas's actions in this incident are already known to the Israeli public, the Israeli media is limited in reporting it, let alone analyze what had happened.

But it appears Hamas is well prepared for psychological warfare. In the recent rounds of fighting with Israel, Hamas has shown an impressive use of the media: by documenting almost every terror cell infiltration to Israel as well as filming in high-quality and from several different anglesthe Cornet missile that was fired at an Israeli bus.

Alleged photos of IDF fighters that took part in botched mission

The IDF invests a fairly negligent sum of some NIS 20 million a year in psychological warfare. The new IDF chief already has a recommendation waiting on his desk to double the sum next year.

Some compared the failure of this operation to the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, which was attributed to the Mossad, leading to the fast and erroneous conclusion that such operations can no longer be done in the age of technology and mass communications. But fear not: James Bond-style operations won't be limited to movies. They've happened since Mabhouh's assassination (just with the necessary precautions) at larger scales and without being exposed.

Alleged photos of IDF fighters that took part in botched mission

The issue is how to improve and better hide the soldiers' presence on social media, and how much that is really feasible. In this day and age, it's hard to believe the unusual message from the IDF censor could stop the deluge of information. It could reduce the damage, but little more than that. Incidentally, the IDF censor knew more information was bound to leak out and prepared their statement days in advance.

Now the IDF censor is under attack, as if its statement only fueled the public's curiosity. On the other hand, if the IDF censor hadn't released such a message, it would've been criticized as well.

As of this weekend, the IDF believes Israelis have shown great responsibility and complied in not spreading the photos.

Conversely, the details being released are not necessarily from Gaza and not necessarily true. Hamas is still trying to gather a lot of information coming from civilians on social media in an effort to connect the dots and get a clearer picture of what happened.

Alleged photos of vehicles used in botched mission

Over the weekend, Hamas was looking for a truck it believes was used by the IDF force or its collaborators in the operation. The terror group's military wing believes the truck is still in the strip and that finding it could help shed new light on the Israeli mission.

Hamas believes the Israeli force was sent to plant listening devices on internal communication networks used by the military wings of the Palestinian factions in the strip. The terror organization also believes this operation was one of a series of incursions done over a long period of time, and not a one-off mission.

Meanwhile, it appears Israel has been able to hide quite a lot of the details.
The European Union (EU) condemned on Saturday the demolition of 21 structures in Shuafat refugee camp in east Jerusalem, which the municiaplity said was done to benefit the residents.

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"Last week, Israeli authorities demolished around 20 Palestinian commercial buildings in the Shuafat Refugee camp in east Jerusalem, only weeks after the Jerusalem municipality advanced plans to build 800 new housing units in the Israeli settlements of Ramat Shlomo and Ramot in east Jerusalem," the EU said in a statement.

"In addition, settlers in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan continue to promote legal proceedings that could lead to the eviction of up to 700 Palestinians living in the area."

House demolition in Shuafat (:  )

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"The European strongly opposes Israel's settlement policy, which is illegal under international law, and the actions taken in this regard, such as forced transfers, evictions and demolitions. The European Union expects the Israeli authorities to reconsider and revoke these decisions.

"The policy of settlement construction and expansion in east Jerusalem continues to undermine the possibility of a viable two-state solution, with Jerusalem as the future capital of both states, which is the only realistic way to achieve a just and lasting peace," the EU's statement read.

Demolition of 21 structures in Shuafat refugee camp (Photo: Israel Police)

However, the Israel Police and the Jerusalem municipality said the demolitions were done following complains from Shuafat residents that the main axis crossing the heart of the refugee camp is very crowded as a result of illegally built businesses, which create a safety hazard for pedestrians and vehicles. During the operation, 18 commercial lots and three illegal gas stations were demolished.

The demolition was "unprecedentedly approved following the request of Shuafat's residents. The Jerusalem Police and the Jerusalem Municipality carried out an extensive operation in which illegally built shopsthat caused intolerable traffic jams in the center of the campwere destroyed," the spokesman said.

The outgoing Jerusalem mayor, Nir Barkat, responded to EU's criticism.

"The residents of the Shuafat refugee camp are fed up with the hypocrisy of the European Union, which prefers politics to residents' well-being. Tests and surveys conducted by the municipality show that the residents of the refugee camp are fed up with the failed services of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), including their cleaning services, education, and social services," he said.

"The residents welcome the municipality's decision, including the recent demolition of buildings that endangered the camp's students. The EU should understand that it's time to stop lying. Jerusalem is a unified and sovereign city. It has no refugees but residents, which will now receive municipality services just like any other Jerusalem resident," Barkat added.

Demolition of 21 structures in Shuafat refugee camp (Photo: Israel Police)

The plan to build 800 housing units in Ramat Shlomo and Ramot in east Jerusalem is in fact a governmental plan to construct 640 housing units beyond the Green Line, which was submitted for approval to the Jerusalem District Planning and Building Committee in October.

500 of the units are located in Ramat Shlomo, a neighborhood in northern east Jerusalem. The plan was frozen for nearly a decade due to government policy, and has now been approved by the District Planning and Building Committee, which is subordinate to the Ministry of Finance.

Aviv Tatarsky, a researcher at the left-wing Ir Amim (City of Nations) organization, who submitted reservations to the Planning and Building Committee, criticized the state's housing plan.

"The government is working to expel hundreds of Palestinians from their homes in the entire neighborhood of Silwan. The Israeli control of east Jerusalem constitutes a violation of the most basic rights... The European Union's response shows that the world doesn't accept this reality. The Palestinians don't accept this reality and there is no reason why we, Israelis, should agree to this policy, which only undermines the possibility of a fair arrangement in Jerusalem."
Irans President Hassan Rouhani called Israel a cancerous tumor on Saturday in a relatively unprecedented comment.

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Irans leaders frequently condemn Israel and predict its demise, but Rouhani, a relative moderate president, rarely employs such rhetoric.

Addressing an annual Islamic Unity Conference in Tehran, Rouhani said one of the ominous results of World War II was the formation of a cancerous tumor in the region.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani (Photo: AFP)

The Iranian president went on to refer to Israel as a fake regime set up by Western countries, and called for unity in the Muslim world.

"Today, there is no way for Muslims except unity and solidarity. If we unite, we can undoubtedly score a victory against the Zionists and the Americans. The Muslim world is alone and Muslims should join hands. Relying on outsiders is the biggest historical mistake," he declared.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (Photo: AP)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed Rouhani's statement, saying "Israel knows very well how to defend itself from the murderous Iranian regime. Rouhani's slander, which calls for the destruction of Israel, proves yet again why the nations of the world need to join in the sanctions against the Iranian terrorist regime which threatens them."

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz also condemned the Iranian president's remarks. "I strongly condemn the recently unacceptable statements made by President Rouhani's regarding Israel," wrote Kurz on Twitter.

"Questioning Israel's right to exist and calling for its destruction is absolutely unacceptable," said Kurz and added that Austria has a historic responsibility to fight against all forms of anti-Semitism and support Israel. "Israel's security is not open to negotiations," he stressed.
The city council of Beverly Hills in California voted unanimously last week to withdraw apartment listings for the city from Airbnb after the home rental giant decided to remove some 200 ads for accommodation units located in Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

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The city councils decision is part of a wider resolution condemning the San Francisco-based companys deplorable actions.

On behalf of our residents, this unanimous resolution reflects the city council's ongoing commitment to Israel and to exposing hatred anywhere it exists, Beverly Hills Mayor Julian Gold stressed in an official statement.





Los Angeles, California (Photo: AFP)

The citys Vice Mayor John A. Mirisch added that Beverly Hills is determined to fight the disease called Jew hatred.

Airbnb is not welcome in Beverly Hills as long as its policies are based on anti-Jewish double standards. We can try to inoculate others against this malady but we also must protect ourselves against its effects, vented Mirisch.

The statement went on to emphasize that Airbnbs decision stems from anti-Semitism and therefore will not be tolerated.

"Airbnbs decision to remove all listings in Jewish settlements in the West Bank demonstrates hatred, prejudice, ignorance and hypocrisy," the city council resolution stated. "Airbnbs actions are antithetical to the values that we hold dear in Beverly Hills  prejudice and discrimination based on religion have no place in our community, country and world.

West Bank settlements (Photo: EPA)

The resolution then presents a list of demands and actions to be taken by the city council in order to combat the companys discriminatory decision to remove listings for Israeli West Bank settlements.

The City of Beverly Hills hereby calls upon Airbnb to correct this act of disrespect to the land of Israel and restore its original services immediately; In the event that Airbnb does not stop, we call upon all civilized people across the globe to boycott Airbnb until such time as they desist from these despicable anti-Semitic actions," the resolution concluded.
Commando Brigade in training (:  ")

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The IDF released photos and video on Saturday night from a large-scale military training exercise of the Ground Forces' Commando Brigade, which drilled fighting on two fronts: against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

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While the IDF is prepared for dropping its top forces on one front, such as the Gaza Strip, fighting on two fronts at the same time will be an entirely different story.

In such a scenario, the northern frontwhere Israel will face Hezbollahwould be considered the main front. The military's operational flexibility, alongside the home front's ability to withstand thousands of rockets and missiles fired every day from both fronts, would be tested in a way not seen in Israel in decades.

Commando Brigade in training (Photo: IDF Spokesman's Office)

Defense officials estimate the majority of the IDF's quality resources in the air, land, sea, and intelligence, would be allocated to the northern front, with reserve brigades maneuvering inside enemy territory.

It is possible the political leadership's desire to reach an arrangement with Hamas is because Israel is trying to do everything it can to avoid conflicts on two different fronts at the same time, particularly in light of the increasingly explosive nature of Iranian military entrenchment in Syria and Hezbollah's project of converting their thousands of existing rockets into accurate missiles.

Commando Brigade in training (Photo: IDF Spokesman's Office)

The Commando Brigade forces that took part in the drill were from the Duvdevan, Maglan and Egoz units.

The exercise lasted 10 days, taking place all across the country, and included extensive aerial and ground attacks done in close cooperation between IAF aircraft and the soldiers on the ground.

The IDF said the Commando Brigade drilled a quick transition between fighting on one front to another as well as fighting in both built-up and open areas in Gaza and Lebanon, while incorporating new capabilities the three elite units have acquired.

Commando Brigade in training (Photo: IDF Spokesman's Office)

This is the Commando Brigade's sixth training exercise since its establishment three years ago. The brigade has yet to face war in its new formation, but its soldiers have already participated in dozens of operations and skirmishes with terrorists on the Gaza border and in the West Bank.

IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot visited the troops during the drill and spoke to the commanders of the Commando Brigade. He also saw his son, Staff Sgt. G., who serves in the Maglan unit.

IDF chief Eisenkot with his son, Staff Sgt. G., who serves in Maglan (Photo: IDF Spokesman's Office)

"The Commando Brigade is a new tool in the IDF's toolbox, which provides operational solutions to a variety of challenges and threats," the IDF Spokesman's Office said in a statement.

"The commanders and fighters in the brigade successfully faced the missions that were being drilledboth simple and complexand demonstrated a high level of professionalism. This exercise proves the Commando Brigade is prepared and ready for any scenario and any enemy it will be required to face on any front."
Chadian President Idriss Deby will meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Sunday, the first such visit by a leader of the Muslim central African nation, which severed bilateral ties in 1972, Netanyahu's office said.

"This is an historic meeting. This is the first visit of a Chad president in Israel since the establishment of the state (of Israel). It follows many diplomatic efforts led by Prime Minister Netanyahu in the last few years," Netanyahu's office said in a statement.
Czech Republic President Milos Zeman will arrive in Israel Sunday for an official visit, during which he will inaugurate a cultural center as a preliminary step in his plan to move the Czech embassy to Jerusalem.

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Zeman will be joined Tuesday by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the opening of the "Czech House," a cultural center in Jerusalem responsible for the Czech Republic's cultural, economic, tourism and scientific activities in Israel.

The Czech leader will also meet with President Reuven Rivlin and deliver a speech in the Knesset, before heading back to his country on Wednesday.

Czech President Milos Zema (Photo: AP)



Zeman is in favor of moving his country's embassy to Jerusalem and even marked the move as a top priority in his foreign policy. His Prime Minister Andrej Babis, meanwhile, opposes the move, fearing it could lead to a confrontation with the European Union.

Nevertheless, Zeman is pushing the head with the move, taking two preliminary steps before relocating the Czech embassy from Tel Aviv to the capital: the appointment of an honorary consul in Jerusalem and the inauguration of the cultural center

President Zeman, an avid supporter of Israel, was one of the first European leaders to publicly support US President Donald Trumps recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital , and even condemned the European Union's (EU) concerted attack against the decision, denouncing its leaders as cowards.

"The European Union, cowards, are doing all they can so a pro-Palestinian terrorist movement can have supremacy over a pro-Israeli movement," said Zeman.

In addition, Zeman also boasted of being a defender of Israel.

President Milos Zeman with PM Benjamin Netanyahu (Photo: Kobi Gideon/GPO)

During my visit to Israel four years ago, I said I support the transfer of the Czech Embassy to Jerusalem. Perhaps we will follow the US sooner or later. Every state has the right to decide which city is its capital, he declared.

Last year, the Czech president managed to astonish the European Parliament when a British MP asked him about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and he responded with an unprecedented speech in support of the Jewish state.

"My answer may disappoint you. I am a friend of Israel... deep friend of Israel, and that is why I think that peace in the Middle East must be based primarily on the safety of Israel. I know the history of all the wars starting in 1948. Every war was victorious for Israel, but defeat would mean the end of the Jewish State," he replied.

"I think, unfortunately, that in some countries or movements, including Hezbollah, Hamas and others... there's a tendency to diminish and destroy Israel. What can we do in order to have peace in the Middle East? We need to disarm terrorist organizations, Hamas and Hezbollah first and foremost," Zeman stressed.

Last summer, the Czech president appointed Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Martin Stropnicky as ambassador of the Czech Republic to Israel.

Stropnicky had already visited Israel and submitted his credentials to President Rivlin.

Similar to Zeman, the Czech ambassador is also a staunch supporter of Israel. For instance, as foreign minister he issued a public statement supporting Israel's right to defend itself in the face of of the 'March of Return' rallies in Gaza

According to Stropnicky, Hamas alone was responsible for the deaths of Palestinians during Gaza border riots, and stressed that no state would accept Hamas's provocations.

Stropnicky also criticized the terror organization for using young men and women as human shields.
Chadian President Idriss Deby will meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Sunday, the first such visit by a leader of the Muslim central African nation, which severed bilateral ties in 1972, the Prime Minister's Office said.

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"This is an historic meeting. This is the first visit of a Chad president in Israel since the establishment of the state (of Israel). It follows many diplomatic efforts led by Prime Minister Netanyahu in the last few years," the PMO said in a statement.

President Deby and Prime Minister Netanyahu will hold a one-on-one meeting in the Prime Minister's Office, following which they will give statements to the media. In the evening, Netanyahu will host Derby for dinner at the official residence.

Chad President Idriss Deby (Photo: AFP)

"This is an additional diplomatic breakthrough," Netanyahu said. "This is an historic and important visit that comes against the background of the efforts we have led. I welcome the President of Chad on his arrival in Israel."

President Deby will also meet with his Israeli counterpart Reuven Rivlin at the President's Residence in Jerusalem on Sunday evening.

Two N'Djamena government sources confirmed Deby's trip.

"The visit is focused on security," one source told Reuters, adding that Israel has supplied the Chadian army with weaponry and other equipment this year to help in its fight against northern rebels.

Chad President Idriss Deby (Photo: AFP)

This visit is the first by a president of Chad, a central African nation, to Israel since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.

Israel had diplomatic ties with Chad in the 1960s, but in 1972even before the Yom Kippur Warofficial ties were severed. Even after cutting ties, however, the two countries continued holding talks, reportedly also maintaining security ties.

In 1995, Shimon Peres met with Chad's foreign minister. In 2005, reports surfaced that Chad was considering renewing its ties with Israel, but N'Djamena eventually went back on its decision.

In 2016, then-Foreign Ministry director general Dore Gold visited Chad and met with President Deby at his birthplace, to have exploratory talks on improving bilateral relations.

In that meeting, Deby praised the IDF and said he was interested in meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu, and the two agreed to arrange the Chadian president's visit to Israel.

Then-Foreign Ministry director-general Dore Gold meets with Chadian President Deby in Chad (Photo: Foreign Ministry)

Gold told Israel Radio on Sunday that his Chadian hosts told him that they had cut off ties 44 years prior under Libyan pressure, a factor removed with the toppling of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

Recently a delegation of Israel's National Security Council visited Chad as well.

Netanyahu has made great efforts to extend Israeli diplomacy to Africa and has visited the continent several times in recent years. It's part of an overall policy of seeking allies among developing countries that have historically sided with the Palestinians at the UN and other international forums.

Chad, home to 15.8 million people, is not an exclusively Muslim country: 52.1 percent of its citizens are Muslims, while 44 percent are Christiansboth Catholic and Protestant. The spoken languages in the country are French and Arabic (the official languages) and over 120 indigenous languages.

Even though Chad began exporting oil in 2003, 40 percent of its citizens are still living in poverty and over 10 million people do not have electricity. Over 65 percent of citizens are under 25, but the mortality rates are still considerably high.






An investigation by an Israeli security company has uncovered a plot by the former president of Georgia to assassinate the chairman of the European country's ruling party.

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The second round of Georgia's presidential elections are scheduled for this Wednesday. The country's citizens will decide between two candidates: Grigol Vashadze, the candidate for the ruling party, and Salome Zurabishvili, who is backed by former president Mikhail Saakashvili.

Saakashvili does not currently live in Georgia. He was forced to leave the country four years ago due to suspicions of corruption and now lives in Ukraine.

Grigol Vashadze

CGI Group, a business intelligence and security consultancy company owned by Israeli businessman Zvika Naveh, and headed by former Shin Bet director and former minister Yaakov Peri, was hired by the ruling party several months ago to seek information about corrupt behavior of candidates from the rival party, or any other pieces of information that could sway public opinion in favor of Vashadze.

Mikhail Saakashvili. (Photo: AP)

CGI investigated and in the course of their work they discovered that someone was looking for a "sniper" to assassinate former prime minster and the country's richest man Bidzina Ivanishvili, now serving as the chairman of the ruling party.

Zvika Naveh and Yaakov Perry (Photo: Yaron Brenner)

CGI conducted an exhausting investigation to discover who was behind the assassination plot and eventually came across a recording implicating those responsible: former president Saakashvili and his cousin Taimur Alsaniya.

Ivanishvili (L), Salome Zurabishvili

The two can be heard discussing hiring a professional sniper to kill Ivanishvili. The recording also contains foul language and slurs aimed at the Georgian people, defined by the two as "stupid and screwed up."

The recordings were examined by one of the top sound labs in the world, which confirmed that Saakashvili and his cousin are the speakers. The report was sent to the authorities in Georgia, who launched an investigation.

The revelation did not remain a secret for long. Within a short time, the CGI Group report made its way to Georgia's leading news website, PIA.

"We do not discuss our clients nor comment on them to the media, but as for the Georgian project, the client chose to publish the findings of the investigation, which speak for themselves," said Yaakov Peri.
Yinon Reuveni, who is serving a 5.5-year sentence in prison for setting fire to the Church of Loaves and Fishes in 2015 , has made an unusual confession and expressed remorse for his crime in an effort to ease his conditions.

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The Jewish settler was initially sentenced to four years in prison. He appealed the ruling to the High Court of Justice, which decided to increase his sentence to five-and-a-half years.

Reuveni wrote a letter two months ago, which has only just come to light, expressing remorse. "The years that have passed gave me a lot of time to think, and today I'm in a different place," Reuveni wrote.

Yinon Reuveni

A year ago, Reuveni got married in prison at a small wedding that included only first-degree relatives. Since then, he has been asking the Israel Prison Service (IPS) to ease his strict imprisonment conditions so he could have a relationship with his wife.

Reuveni gets married in prison (Photo courtesy of the family)

"There are a lot of examples of Hilltop Youth who were in one place and, after having started a family, are now in a different place," Reuveni wrote, referring to extremist right-wing settler youth who live in illegal outposts. "They became productive members of society, and that is exactly what I want to be. I love the state and the people. I got here because I didn't think enough. Today I still love this country and want to be loyal to the homeland and follow the laws of the State of Israel."

Reuveni was also questioned in connection with the Duma arson affair and the murder of the Dawabsheh family , and on suspicions of additional Jewish terror offenses. He was one of the top targets of the Shin Bet's Jewish Division.

Damage caused in the fire to the Church of Loaves and Fishes, (Photo: Northern District Fire Department)

Reuveni was, until recently, both a prisoner and a detainee. His legal status changed after the district court ordered to release him from detainment as part of a price tag case against him, and now he remains only a prisoner. Reuveni and his family hope the change in legal status would mean a change in his conditions.

"Now his legal status is similar to that of many other Jewish security prisoners who are imprisoned in religious wings and are allowed phone calls and visits from their families," one of Reuveni's relatives explained. "There's no reason Yinon can't have the same conditions. We hope the cruelty towards him ends. He got married, he wants to start a new life, to be rehabilitated and start a family. There's no reason why he shouldn't be allowed that."

Graffiti against idol worship left by Reuveni and other perpetrators (Photo: Avihu Shapira)

The Church of Loaves and Fishes, which is run by the Order of Saint Benedict, is considered one of the most important churches in Israel. Christians believe the church is built on the site where Jesus performed the Miracle of the Multiplication of the Loaves and the Fishes. It is a traditional site of pilgrimage in the Holy Land.

In June 2015, Reuveni and several others torched the church , causing extensive damage to two rooms and the structure's exterior. Reuveni also defaced the limestone wall with red paint denouncing the worship of idols.
More than 100 people were wounded in a suspected toxic gas attack in Syria's Aleppo late on Saturday, which a health official said was the first such assault in the city.

The Syrian government and its ally Russia blamed the attack on insurgents, which rebel officials denied.

Russia's defense ministry said on Sunday its warplanes bombed militants who had fired chlorine gas at Aleppo.
WIZO, the Women's International Zionist Organization, released its domestic violence index last week in preparation for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, according to which the number of women murdered by their relatives since the beginning of 2018 has continued to rise and stands at 21 a 30% increase from last year.

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About a month has passed since a group of female activists protested against domestic violence, but so far, nothing has changed.

According to the organization, more than 13,000 women have been treated for violence in the past year. Just last week, a man from a Bedouin town in southern Israel allegedly shot his sister, 43, to death.

Women who were murdered during past year

About half of the women murdered in the past two years had filed complaints with the police.

In addition, according to WIZO's report, some 200,000 battered women live in Israel, as well as half a million children who witnessed abuse. The police open an average of 50 domestic violence cases on a daily basis.

'I was afraid he would murder me'

"My husband was abusive towards me in every senseverbal, mental, financial and physical," Rachel (alias), a mother of two in her 30's, said.

"If he didn't like the food I cooked or if I said something that upset him, he would throw the entire Shabbat table on the floor and pull the head covering off my head. When I mentioned going to the police or brought up divorce, he threatened to kill me," she continued.

Rachel (alias)

Her son also suffered from his father's verbal abuse. Rachel explained that the effect domestic abuse had on her son is what prompted her to seek help.

I decided to seek help after seeing that my son's condition was deteriorating. He became very introverted and quiet, and did not communicate with other kids. He even started stammering and suffered from anxieties. At some point he started saying he wants to die and wrote suicide lettersat the age of eight. "

However, Rachel was too afraid to turn to a women's shelter. "Once a week, for four years, I received treatment in a violence prevention institute close to home, without my husband's knowledge. They suggested I'd go to a shelter, but I was too afraid he would murder me, so I stayed," she confessed.

After filing a complaint with the police, the court issued a restraining order against Rachel's violent husband. Nevertheless, the abuse continued. "He took the cars and credit cards, and when I managed to get a car he slashed its tires. My son would meet with him without supervision and come back to me in a catastrophic stateshouting and having fits of rage. It was then that I realized that we were in immediate danger, and so we moved into a shelter. "

At the beginning, living in a shelter wasn't simple, but Rachel and her children adapted with time. Today, in retrospect, she is certain she made the right decision.

"When we entered the shelter, I was in shock, I wanted to run away. The staff did not give up on me and helped me through it all; they even offered assistance with legal proceedings.

"After a year and two months I got divorced and moved out of the shelter. Today, my ex-husband has someone else, so he is less preoccupied with me. I insist on living far away from him, I live in the south and he lives in the north. I rented an apartment and found a job and I hope to find success in my new life," Rachel concluded.

A decrease in the number of women who stay at women's shelters (please change title)

In 2017, 686 women and 945 children suffering from domestic violence stayed at women's sheltera moderate decrease of 5% since 2016.

An analysis of the factors that propel women to seek help in battered women's shelters shows that 77% of the women turned to the shelters following an extreme violent attack, while 9% came to the shelter after committing to change their lives. 8% of the shelter's residents sought help due to an external intervention, whereas 1.5% of the women moved into a shelter after a violent assault against their children.

Fifty-nine % of the women, who received treatment in women's shelters in 2017, did not go back to live with their assailant, as opposed to 19% who did. Some 13% received follow-up treatments, and the remainder either moved to social services funded apartments or provided no information about their whereabouts.

The Executive Director of the Yachdav Association, Col. (res.) Yair Be'er, explains that the women's shelter in the south, in which Rachel stayed, is the only shelter in Israel that provides assistance to mothers of teenage children. This is a national pilot in which, for the first time, adolescents are not separated from their mothers and stay with them in designated apartments set up for this purpose.

Col. (res.) Yair Be'er

"The treatment we provide, which focuses, among others, on empowering women, equips women with all the necessary tools they need to recover and lead an independent life," Be'er stated.

'Children who grew up with violence lose self confidence'

Galit (alias), a woman in her 40s from the north, has struggled for years with domestic abuse without anyone's knowledge.

Eight years ago, her husband broke a bottle of beer and slammed it in her face. "Only when I saw my sister with a bruised and battered face did I realize she kept the hell she was living in a secret," said Smadar (alias), Galit's younger sister.

Domestic violence often influences extended family members, friends and the battered women's immediate surroundingsthey, too, bear the emotional and financial burden of coping with the situation.

"From the moment a woman is verbally, mentally, and physically abused, if she doesn't know how to stop the abuse, she might lose her self-esteem, and sink into despair," Smadar added.

We need to treat domestic violence like social terrorism

The president of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ), Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, explained that "To prevent the next murder, women must know that once they leave their violent environment, they will receive assistance until they manage to get back on their feet and be financially independent.

Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein (Photo: Yossi Zwecker)

"The Israeli government must develop a comprehensive program, providing professional training, proper shelters to house all the women who need assistance, and financial help that will enable them to live with dignity," he added.

"The Lobby for the Prevention of Violence against Women headed by Knesset members Pnina Tamano-Shata (Yesh Atid) and Leah Fadida (Zionist union) held a special discussion this week, during which additional women told about the domestic violence they had experienced.

"When we hear such devastating testimonies, we should remember all those hundreds of orphan children, who are left alone in the world the day after (their mother's) murder," MK Tamano-Shata said.

MK Pnina Tamano-Shata (Photo: Knesset)

"One of the things that shocked me, was discovering that after their mother's murder, the children are left coping with legal absurd procedures of properly division with the murderer.

"This week it was published that a woman, who cheated on her husband, would not receive 50 percent of (their joint) apartment. However, according to the law, a husband, who murders his wife, is entitled to 50 percent of their joint apartment, instead of passing the apartment on their children's names," she lashed out.

"Does the despicable murder should benefit from his crime? The prosecution signs plea bargains with first-degree murderers and convicts them with merely manslaughter just to get them to renounce the apartment," Tamano-Shata accused.

WIZO Israel Chairwoman Gila Oshrat called for the establishment of a national network to fight the violence against women. "Only a body, whose sole responsibility would be to fight violence against women, which will treat the killings of women as social terrorism rather than another marginal event in society, would be able to eradicate this phenomenon and address the matter on all required levelspolicy, legislation, punitive measures, treatment and budgets allocation."

On Sunday, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, a rally in protest of violence against women was held at Tel Aviv's Cinematheque plaza.
(CNN)  When Taiwan's high court passed a resolution in May 2017 ruling it was unconstitutional to ban same-sex couples from getting married, it was seen as a rare beam of light in a region infamous of its repression of LGBT people.

But the ruling, which gave legislators a two-year deadline in which to enshrine marriage equality into law, could soon be in doubt.

Conservative groups have taken advantage of government deadlock to rally against the change, forcing the issue to a public vote, devastating LGBT couples and potentially plunging the administration of President Tsai Ing-wen into a constitutional crisis.

On Saturday, three referendum questions on same-sex marriage will be put to Taiwanese voters when they head to the polls for local government electionstwo drafted by conservatives and one by LGBT activists.

If one of the questions opposing same-sex marriage passes, the government could be compelled to enforce a law already ruled unconstitutional.

Further complicating matters, there remains broad disagreement among legal experts on whether Tsai's administration is mandated to enact the result into law.

One lawmaker from the president's Democratic Progressive Party told CNN any positive result "must pass" in the next legislative session, but a legal expert insisted it was "up to lawmakers" how they dealt with the result.

Changing opinion

Taiwan is home to one of Asia's largest and most vibrant gay communities. Many of its citizens take great pride in the island's progressive, LGBT-friendly values. If it does approve same-sex marriage, it would become the first place in Asia to do so.

But as the voting day nears, fears are growing that those same values are beginning to shift, amid what gay and lesbian groups claim is a flood of deliberate disinformation spread to confuse the public ahead of the landmark ballot.

A campaign budget of more than $3.24 million has reportedly been raised by leading conservative group the Alliance for the Happiness of the Next Generation, whose advertisements have been seen on billboards and front pages of newspapers.

"The referendums have already caused great divide and damage in our society. There are so many conflicts erupting on the streets," said Lin Yiru, who is hoping to marry her girlfriend Chen Yiling if legislation is passed.

"It's not just about the referendum anymore... Whatever the results, damage has already been done," added Lin.

Across social media, rumors have circulated as to what could happen in Taiwan if same-sex marriage became legal, including false reports that other places that have passed the laws have regretted it.

"The opposition says, 'If Taiwan passes marriage equality, HIV-positive people will come to Taiwan and flood our health system' and 'The government ministers are going to teach same-sex behaviors in elementary school from first grade," same-sex marriage advocate Jennifer Lu told CNN.

"We're practicing how to discuss political issues with people of different opinions. It's not just about same-sex marriage, it's about our democracy, where all views are protected," added Lu.

Groups opposed to same-sex marriage becoming legal in Taiwan were contacted by CNN for this article but did not return requests for an interview.

Do you agree?

Saturday's referendum is confusing to say the least.

With three separate questions being asked on the issue of marriage equality, there's nothing to stop a single voter agreeing to a variety of different, contradictory answers, meaning the Taiwan government could end up being forced to try to legislate both outcomessimultaneously.

There's even confusion as to why the issue is being put to voters and not decided directly by lawmakers.

In May 2017, Taiwan's Constitutional Court ruled that same-sex marriage was a constitutional right, giving legislators a two year deadline in which to enshrine it into law.

But the parliament couldn't agree on the legislation and became deadlocked.

With the government stuck, Taiwan's conservatives saw a chance to use the newly revised referendum lawunder which any suggested question that gets a minimum of 280,000 signatures must be put to the peopleto stall same-sex marriage.

After exceeding the number of signatures required by electoral authorities for a referendum to go ahead, they successfully submitted two on same-sex marriage: "Do you agree that Civil Code regulations should restrict marriage to being between a man and a woman?" And "Do you agree that the right of same-sex couples to live together should be protected through ways that do not require amending the Civil Code?"

In response, LGBT activists gained enough signatures to add their own question to the referendum: "Do you agree that the Civil Code marriage regulations should be used to guarantee the rights of same-sex couples to get married?"

Adding to the confusion, there's a separate LGBT-related question, also proposed by conservative groups, that looks to curb LGBT-inclusive education in the island's elementary and high schools.

In total, voters will be faced with 10 separate referendum questions on a variety of issues.

A pre-election survey conducted by the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation, and published earlier this month, showed that as many as 77% of respondents believed marriage should be defined as between a man and a woman only.

But that doesn't mean the vote is a forgone conclusion. For a referendum to pass, 25% of the nation's eligible voters must vote "Yes," which equates to about 4.7 million votes, while also outnumbering "No" voters.

Asia's LGBT crisis

While Taiwan is facing a slow but steady battle for equality, many of its neighbors in Asia are regressing in their recognition of LGBT people.

In Indonesia, declining secularism has led to deepening discrimination against the country's gay, lesbian and transgender communities. Earlier this year there was even the suggestion of a possible ban on same-sex relations in the country.

While Indonesia is one of the more serious examples, Malaysia and the Philippines are also following its lead.

In September, two Malaysian women were publicly caned for attempting to have sex in a parked car, the first time a punishment of its kind has been imposed in the country.

In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte has said he would protect LGBT rights in the country but it came not long after he hurled one of his characteristic insults, calling a U.S. ambassador a "gay son of a bitch."

In mainland China, where homosexuality is legal but prejudices and discrimination against LGBT people persist under Communist Party rule, an author of same-sex erotic fiction was sent to jail for 10 years in November.

Human Rights Watch senior researcher Maya Wang said despite the troubles around the referendum, Taiwan was seen as an inspiration for LGBT rights activists in the region.

"What's happening in Taiwan has been generating a lot of excitement in the region for LGBT activists, including ones in mainland China and Hong Kong, where the possibility of it being legalized will generate pressure for other governments in the region to follow," she told CNN.

Both Chen and Lin, the LGBT activists in Taiwan, said the fight will be worth it, if it encourages change in the region and allows them to marry and adopt children one day.

"Even though there's been hardship and suffering along the way, I think the referendums have helped bring this issue to surface. In the past, we don't even talk about it," Chen said.

This story was first published on CNN.com, "'A great divide': Inside the battle to stop same-sex marriage in Taiwan."
Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, who was approved Sunday as the IDF's next chief of staff, was the natural candidate for the job. He has operational, tactical and administrative experience, and he had a hand in shaping military strategy and policy.

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He is thorough, creative and has the "temperament of an IDF chief." Just like there's a judicial temperament, the IDF chief also needs the ability to motivate people, and earn their confidence and trust, even in difficult situations in which decisions are made fast. In addition, Maj. Gen. Kochavi knows how to communicate with the political leadership openly and without pandering, and speak to civilians at eye level.

Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi

So from the moment the candidacy of Maj. Gen. Yair Golan was removed due to inappropriate political reasons, then-defense minister Avigdor Lieberman or Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had no choice but to pick Kochavi , who is more suitable in almost every aspect to fill the role of IDF chief than the other two candidatesMaj. Gen. Eyal Zamir and Maj. Gen. Nitzan Alon.

Zamir was chosen to be the deputy IDF chief, and it is likely Alon will succeed him. This in itself means they are head and shoulders above other commands and worthy in every aspect, but they are not yet ready to enter the IDF chief's office, unlike Kochavi.

Kochavi will enter the IDF chief's office on January 15, 2019, two weeks after the planned retirement of Eisenkot, after the two officers asked to have a few more weeks of training.

Former defense minister Avigdor Lieberman (L) and PM Netanyahu (Photo: EPA)

Eisenkot is leaving Kochavi a military ready for war on two frontsand perhaps even moreat the same time. A military that sticks to its values and is well equipped to face the challenges ahead. One can say the IDF is at one of its best positions over the past 20 years.

But Kochavi won't be able to settle for just that. Primarily, because the Middle Eastern front is constantly changing. The new IDF chief will have to formulate a new policy including strategy and tactic methods to thwart Iranian military entrenchment in Syria and prevent the transfer of advanced weapons to Hezbollah, as well as stop the Lebanese terror group's efforts to make its arsenal of rockets and missile into precision-guided projectiles.

Things have changed since the Assad army accidentally shot down a Russian intelligence plane something it blamed on Israel, whose fighter jets were attacking in the area, prompting the Syrian anti-aircraft fireand Kochavi will have to reshape the IDF's "war between wars" campaign, bringing a different attitude to resolving the problems and dilemmas that now emerge on the northern front.

Kochavi will also have to aid the Security Cabinet and the prime minister to shape a strategy for the southern border, which will help establish calm on the Gaza border and further deepen the effectiveboth militarily and diplomaticallycooperation with Egypt. On this front Kochavi has rich experience as the former commander of the Gaza Division, where he secured many achievements but also one massive failurethe capture of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit. It was in this role as the Gaza Division head that Kochavi received the most criticism, but he has paid the price and learned the lessons, and it is safe to assume he is now prepared to propose new ways to handle this abscess.

Maj. Gen. Eyal Zamir (L), and Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi

It's also safe to assume Kochavi will continue his predecessor Eisenkot's efforts to upgrade the Ground Forces' capabilities. He will also have to formulate a multi-annual plan to replace the one led by Eisenkot, the Gideon Plan

As Eisenkot's deputy, Kochavi has already started working on establishing the IDF's Cyber Corps and on adding a significant number of surface-to-surface missiles to the IDF's arsenal, as former defense minister Lieberman demanded with the support of the current General Staff. The latter seeks to allow the IDF to carry out attacks from the ground or the sea that it had only done from the air so far.

Kochavi will also have to lead the army through an election campaign, which at the very latest is expected in November 2019. He will have to carefully maneuver to ensure the IDF is not dragged into the political battle.

There are just a handful of the tasks on Kochavi's desk as he enters the IDF chief's office, and there's no doubt he will experience some difficult times, even though there is no big war on the horizon right now.

Netanyahu's rush to appoint Zamir

Even though Lieberman and Netanyahu both agreed on Kochavi as their preferred candidate to inherit outgoing IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot, the announcement was delayed because Netanyahu insisted on including the selection of Maj. Gen. Zamir, his erstwhile military secretary, as the next deputy IDF chief. Lieberman insisted not to include Zamir in the announcement about Kochavi, fearing his appointment to be seen as a political appointment done by the prime ministeras the deputy IDF chief is selected by the defense minister (which he still was at the time) and the incoming IDF chief, and them alone.

Maj. Gen. Eyal Zamir (Photo: IDF Spokesperson's Unit)

Still, Zamir's appointment was met with criticism. Some claim it was Netanyahu's personal and political interests that landed Zamir the no.2 job in the IDF.

No one questions Zamir's professional and leadership skills or his integrity. But critics have pointed to the fact Zamir only had one major general positionthe GOC Southern Commandand had no experience in managing a department in the General Staff before being sent straight into the deputy IDF chief's office.

While Lieberman was able to postpone the announcement on Zamir's selection, his resignation allowed Netanyahu, who took on the defense portfolio, to announce his choice. But haste makes waste, and it is not wise to have both the IDF chief and his deputy to assume office at the same time. It's better for the IDF chief to first enter office, and only after a short period of adjustment and experience as the commander of the army alongside the veteran deputy who could support him, should Zamir enter office as well.

The political lobby led by Netanyahu is tainting Zamir's appointment as a political one, implying he does not deserve to serve as the deputy chief of staff. .Zamir did an impeccable job as the military secretary to Netanyahu, and as far as I know of, without being involved even once in the Prime Minister's Office's political scandals.

It's not easy to maintain a clean performance as a professional officer, when one is a close associate of and advisor to the most influential political figure in Israel. Zamir succeeded in that. In addition, his performance as the GOC Southern Command gained many praises, and rightfully so.

Zamir was the one who began the through treatment of the cross-Gaza border terror tunnels, which bore fruit even then, prepared the IDF for its major next activity in the strip, and managed to prevent Gaza from blowing up in our faces despite the severe humanitarian crisis there.

Those abilities are required especially in an organization headed by people who make crucial decision and fast. But, it appears it does not really bother Netanyahu. He trusts Zamir, and everything is probably less important to him. I do not know who would Kochavi choose to serve as his deputy, had he the liberty to decide himself, even though I know for a fact he appreciates Zamir.

PM Netanyahu (Photo: AFP)

I assume Kochavi would have preferred for Zamir to serve another major-general position as division head in the General Staff before becoming his deputy, who should be capable of managing and leading the entire military infrastructure and to fill in for the chief of staff when he is unable to fulfill his duties in times of routine, emergency or war. In any case, in my opinion, Kochavi did wisely when he chose not to confront with the prime minister on this matter, which is hardly a matter of life and death.

There is no doubt that Maj. Gen. Alon could have also been an excellent deputy chief of staff, but the combination between Kochavi the paratrooper and Zamir the tanker creates a balanced duo in the IDF's top military brasswhich is a good thing. Kochavi will know to identify strategic twists and demonstrate operational creative thinking during Israel's war between wars and asymmetrical confrontations, while Zamir will make sure the army has the abilities and infrastructures, enabling it to face any kind of confrontation. On this matter, Kochavi is leaving Zamir a great legacy.

If a war does not break out, Zamir's most important task upon assuming the deputy chief of staff position would be to head the team leading the next multi-annual plan to replace the Gideon Plan. An equally important task would be bolstering the IDF's capabilities, developing its fighting methods, and improving the ground forces' abilities to survive in the battle field.

The incoming deputy chief of staff will have to urgently attend to the IDF's deficiencies in preparedness for war, and the impairment discovered by the committee appointed by Eisenkot to examine the army's readiness for war. And those are only a few of the not so simple tasks Zamir would have to cope with as the deputy of the next chief of staff.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held Sunday a joint press conference with Chadian President Idriss Deby, asserting that "Great changes are taking place in the Arab world in its relations with Israel," while the African leader said that the resumption of diplomatic ties between his country and Israel will not solve the Palestinian issue."

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Deby's visit to Israel is the first-of-its-kind by a leader of the Muslim central African nation, which severed bilateral ties with Israel in 1972.

Chadian President Idriss Deby (L) and PM Netanyahu speaking at a joint press conference in Jerusalem (:  )

X

Speaking about the relationship between Israel and Chad, Netanyahu said," I'm delighted that we are resuming our friendship. We never fully stopped our contacts, but we are now expanding them at a very rapid rate," to which the Chadian President replied, "We seek to begin a new era of diplomatic ties. However, the resumption of these ties will not make the Palestinian issue go away."

Speaking to reporters, Netanyahu said," Chad is a very important country. It's an important country in Africa. It's an important country for Israel.

"In the last two years I've been three times in AfricaEast Africa and West Africa. Now I'm going to drop a big hint, I hope to come to the center of Africa. And I wish to bring with me Israeli entrepreneurs, Israeli experts, Israeli companies, everything that can improve the life of the peoples of Africa, which is something we believe in. Israel is coming back to Africa, Africa is coming back to Israel," he went on to say.

One of the issues Netanyahu and Deby discussed was Israel's intention to launch a direct fight route from South America to Israel crossing Nigeria, Sudan, and Chad's skies, to which Deby reportedly agreed.

Chadian President Idriss Deby (L) and PM Netanyahu

The Chadian president stressed that Israel is very close to a breakthrough in its relations with Sudan that is defined as an enemy country, but has been tightening its relations with the US over the past several years.

Deby promised to assist in convincing Sudan to open its skies to Israeli flights.

Elaborating on Israel and African countries' common interests, Netanyahu said, "Fighting terrorism is a common goal of all countries. Give our peoples what they deserve: security, food, water, clean water, health, medicine, all the things that our cooperation can produce for the benefit of both our countries. Israel in fact was cooperating in this fashion with the countries of Africa in the 1960s and early 70s, especially in agriculture and water. This was discontinued and now it's flourishing back again.

"A few minutes ago we discussed in my office the great changes that are taking place in the Arab world in its relations with Israel. And this was manifested in my recent visit in Oman with Sultan Qaboos. And there will be more such visits in Arab countries very soon," Netanyahu continued.

"As a leader of an African country, an important African country, a majority of whose population is Muslim, you are coming to Israel to renew our friendship and our relationship. I think it is a testament of what is going to happen with other such countries in Africa as well, and I believe that you are paving the way for many others," he added.

The African leader, who also expressed his desire to resume diplomatic ties with the Jewish State, said, "I'm happy to be here in your beautiful country. This visit will allow us to turn over a new leaf in the relations between both countries. This visit is historic for Israel as well as for Chad."

"I myself have said several times at the United Nations, that my country wishes for a peace treaty to be achieved between Israel and the Palestinians. We think such an agreement should reflect the principles of the Security Council, the Arab League, and the Madrid Accords, as well as to include bilateral agreements between both sides," he elaborated.

Chadian President Idriss Deby (L) and PM Netanyahu

When asked whether he had discussed arms deals with Netanyahu, Deby refused to respond, with the prime minister stating, "We discussed what we discussed."

After his meeting with Netanyahu, Deby met with President Reuven Rivlin, who echoed the prime minister's remarks, saying, "We are delighted to renew links with Chad after too many years.

Chad is an important country, a country that fights terror, and Israel is at your side in this just war. We see great importance in developing relations with Africa, the cradle of civilization. For us, Africa is the future, Chad is the future, and Israel wants to share its experience with you," Rivlin stated.

Stressing his desire for a full resumption of diplomatic ties between Israel and Chad, Rivlin added that he hopes a Chadian ambassador to Israel be appointed soon.

Chadian President Idriss Deby (L) and President Reuven Rivlin

With your help, I want to call on the other African states with which we do not have relations to be part of this change, and to see Israel as a partner and an ally, he went on to say.

Reiterating that the resumption of diplomatic relations would not make the Palestinian issue disappear, Deby added, "Of course, peace has yet to be achieved in the region. Peace is what all people need to lead a good life.

"The Palestinian issue is a crucial issue that must be dealt with. Israel has also endured hardship throughout its history, but it is important that people talk. It is very easy to pull the trigger but it is hard to stop the fighting.

"Finding a solution to this problem is very important, a solution that reflects all the decisions taken by the UN Security Council on the matter.

Africa is the continent of the future. And your country has a place in that future, he concluded.

Wasel Abu Youssef, a senior Palestinian official, voiced displeasure over Deby's visit.

"All countries and institutions must boycott the extremist government of Israel and impose a siege on it because of its settlement activities, its occupation of Palestinian land," Youssef said.

Deby, 66, has been in power since 1990 and has been an ally of the West in a fight against Islamist militants in West Africa. However, impoverished Chad itself faces destabilizing forces on multiple fronts, including jihadists with links to al Qaeda and Islamic State.

He is also trying to prevent an influx of militants fleeing the Libyan conflict and in January closed Chad's border with its northern neighbor.

In July 2016, Deby hosted the then-director of Israel's Foreign Ministry, Dore Gold, for exploratory talks on improving bilateral relations. Gold said on Israel Radio on Sunday that his Chadian hosts told him they had cut off ties in 1972 under Libyan pressure, a factor removed with the toppling of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
The Russian Federal Security Service says that it has evidence that Ukraine is responsible for clashes between Russian and Ukrainian ships in the Black Sea.

The agency, known as the FSB, said in a statement Sunday night that "there is irrefutable evidence that Kiev prepared and orchestrated provocations ... in the Black Sea. These materials will soon be made public."
Expert Interviews with Kevin Turner. 26/11/2018

In the latest Herron Todd White Month in Review, it is easy to see how far the markets, reliant on resources, have fallen in value.

Adrian Haks from HTW says in some areas it will take up to 10 years to claw back the losses. We talk to him about the report and tell you how you can get a copy of it



Listen to the interview now:

Transcript:

Kevin: Its really interesting. In the latest Herron Todd White Month in Review, which weve got available for you as a complete download. Just look below and youll see it. Weve loaded it to the site. Go and have a look at it. Ill give you a rundown, state by state, on some of the major issues that youre going to find inside that report. But I want to focus very much on central Queensland as an indication of just how dramatic the downturn has been in that area. Impacted, I guess, on the back of whats happened with mining.

Kevin: Joining me to talk about this, Adrian Haks. Adrian is the Director of Valuations Residential for central Queensland for Herron Todd White. Adrian, thanks very much for your time.

Adrian: Thank you, Kevin.

Kevin: I noticed in the report, particularly in relation to Rockhampton, you talked there about renovation, which is the major focus of this report. But you talk about finance for major renovations in that area, we have to go back something like 10 or 15 years to see any improvement in capital growth because of the downturn. Thats pretty dramatic, isnt it?

Adrian: Yes, it is, it is. And we sort of see that the peak of the residential market was in that late 2008, early 2009. And then it has been on a gradual decline since then. So, yeah, that 10 year period is not many residential homes have seen much growth at all.

Kevin: Now, we talked there about having to go back 10 to 15 years to see any appreciable growth to borrow against, but I guess the same or even a worse impact would be on those who are looking to sell. Theyre facing the prospect of a fairly large loss.

Adrian: Yeah, thats correct. Yeah, thats correct. Unfortunately, not many people would be seeing any improvement on the sale price of what they paid in that period. So, yeah, unfortunately we have been seeing a little bit of mortgagee in possession situations on the back of that.

Kevin: Is there any indication, Adrian, as to how long its going to take to come back to norm, do you think?

Adrian: Well, I think that during the peak it was quite high, the values, and in some cases unaffordable to many people. And on the back of that downturn in the mining and so forth, we lost a lot of employment opportunities and lost a lot of population. Which, as you would probably know, its very simple economics with regards to a lot of the real estate and value in real estate. Its supply and demand. So on the back of new projects in the area, thats where we can draw more population and employment opportunities and perhaps stabilise, which we think it is sort of stabilising now, and build on that in the near future.

Kevin: Just staying in central Queensland for a moment. Gladstone, is it in the same category as Rockhampton?

Adrian: Yeah. Gladstone, it actually suffered a lot worse than Rockhampton and a lot of other places because they had some fairly major projects underway with the LNG construction, the plant on Curtis Island and so forth. They had a major influx of population and a lot of construction of new dwellings, and a lot of investment by investors, both local and non-local, to take on that opportunity. But as soon as the construction was over, there was all of a sudden an increase in vacancy rates and empty houses, and a dramatic reduction in values over the last few years as a consequence.

Kevin: Yeah. Well, you can certainly get a feel for the impact of that downturn by checking it out. Its the Herron Todd White Month in Review, and the full download is available for you. Ive been talking to Adrian Haks, who is Director of Valuations Residential for central Queensland for Herron Todd White. Adrian, thanks for your time.

Adrian: Thank you, Kevin.

Kevin: Interesting to note too a few other highlights from that report. In Canberra they refer particularly to the Mister Fluffy asbestos issue, which weve raised in this show in the past. But interesting to see that the demolition or the acquisition of a number of those properties, and the then demolition, has brought a lot more vacant land onto the market in Canberra. With the bonus there being that the councils have allowed much more density into those blocks, so I guess thats on the upside.

Kevin: Also an extensive coverage in the report in New South Wales about Sydney east, and duplex sites there that are too small for subdivision are being developed under company title. In Victoria, Melbournes southwest, many councils there are considering planning changes to reduce minimum lot sizes as well. Were seeing this quite a lot around Australia. Were getting a lot more density into some of these capital city locations. Northern territory, Darwin, grants and discounts offer great incentive to purchase and renovate under $500,000. Good news for there.

Kevin: And in Tasmania, higher inner CBD prices are pushing renovation options further away from the city. Once again, not a bad thing at all. But you can get a full coverage by downloading the report, which is available on our site. Now, look for the link just underneath this interview in the commentary, and that is the Herron Todd White Month in Review report. Download it. Quite a large document, but youll find it very, very interesting.

Real Estate Talk  the only place where you hear all Australasias leading property experts.

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Border News

Nogales, Arizona - U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers at Arizonas Port of Nogales arrested 3 Mexican nationals involved in connection with separate failed attempts to smuggle a combination of heroin and methamphetamine into the United States over the weekend worth more than $678,000.

CBP officers at the Dennis DeConcini Crossing referred a 44-year-old Nogales, Sonora, Mexico man for further inspection of his Chevrolet sedan Friday. A CBP narcotics detection canine alerted to a scent it was trained to detect within the vehicles rocker panels. Officers removed more than a dozen packages that were identified as almost 26 pounds of meth, worth nearly $78,000.

Later that night, officers at the DeConcini Crossing referred a 38-year-old Nogales, Sonora, Mexico man for an additional search of his Ford truck. Following an alert by a CBP canine, officers removed from the vehicles heater coil. The drugs were identified as nearly 21 pounds of meth, worth almost $63,000 as well as nearly 18 pounds of heroin, worth more than $481,000.

Officers seized a combination of meth

and heroin from the smuggling

vehicle's heater cool

Sunday evening, officers at the DeConcini Crossing referred a 33-year-old Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico, man for a further search of his Honda sedan. A CBP canine alert to the dashboard, led officers to discover and remove more than a dozen packages of drugs. The seizure was identified as nearly 19 pounds of meth, worth nearly $57,000.

Officers seized the drugs as well as the vehicles. The subjects were arrested and then turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcements Homeland Security Investigations.
Border News

Douglas, Arizona - Douglas Station Border Patrol agents arrested a previously convicted felon Friday after he illegally entered the United States near Douglas.

During processing, agents conducting records checks learned that David Montalban-Blanco, a 48-year-old Mexican national, has felony convictions in Alabama, including conspiracy to produce false U.S. identification documents and possession of a firearm by an illegal alien.

Montalban will remain in federal custody to face charges for re-entering the U.S. as an aggravated felon.

All persons apprehended by the U.S. Border Patrol undergo criminal history checks using biometrics to ensure illegal immigrants with criminal histories are positively identified.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials welcome assistance from the community. Individuals can report suspicious activity to the U.S. Border Patrol and remain anonymous by calling 1-877-872-7435 toll free.
Yuma News

Yuma, Arizona - Yuma Sector Border Patrol is ramping up border security efforts by welcoming 50 U.S. Border Patrol agents from various sectors in support of Operation Secure Line.

Yuma Sector Leadership briefs incoming

deployed agents on their are of

responsibility Nov. 19.

U.S. Border Patrol agents from other sectors started the first day of their detail Monday morning as part of Operation Secure Line. They are assigned to Yuma Sector to enhance border security as migrant caravans continue to arrive in areas of the U.S. border with Mexico. The length of tours vary and are subject to change pending mission requirements.

Yuma Sector has been inundated with family unit groups from various Central American countries, said Chief Patrol Agent Anthony Porvaznik Having additional trained border security professionals will do much to ensure our border is protected and our agents have the backup they need to safely conduct our mission of protecting America.

Year to date apprehensions in Yuma Sector are up almost 150% compared to this date in Fiscal Year 2018. Total Fiscal Year 2018 numbers were more than double total Fiscal Year 2017 numbers.

Federal law allows agents to charge individuals by complaint, a method that allows the filing of criminal activity charges without inferring guilt. An individual is presumed innocent unless and until competent evidence is presented to a jury that establishes guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials welcome assistance from the community. Individuals can report suspicious activity to the Border Patrol and remain anonymous by calling 1-877-872-7435 toll free. Reporting illicit activity could result in saving someones life.
Today

Clear skies. Low 58F. Winds N at 15 to 25 mph. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph.

Tonight

Clear skies. Low 58F. Winds N at 15 to 25 mph. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph.

Tomorrow

Sunny. Gusty winds diminishing in the afternoon. High around 75F. Winds N at 20 to 30 mph. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph.
Former Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe has been receiving medical treatment in Singapore for the last two months and is no longer able to walk, though he should return home next week, President Emmerson Mnangagwa said on Saturday.

Mugabe, 94, who ruled the southern African nation for nearly four decades since independence from Britain in 1980, was forced to resign in November 2017 after an army coup.

Mnangagwa told ruling ZANU-PF supporters at a rally in Murombedzi, Mugabes village some 100 km (60 miles) west of the capital Harare, his predecessor had been due to return on Oct. 15 but that his poor health had delayed the journey.

Zimbabwe's former president Robert Mugabe. Source: Supplied

Source: Facebook

READ ALSO: Moesha Boduong releases wild and scary secrets about Efia Odo

He did not say what treatment Mugabe had been undergoing.

We have just received a message that he is better now and will return on Nov. 30. He can no longer walk but we will continue taking care of him, Mnangagwa said, referring to Mugabe by his totem name Gushungo.

During his later years in power, Mugabe made several medical trips to Singapore.

Officials often said he was being treated for a cataract, denying frequent reports by private local media that he had prostate cancer.

Mnangagwa, who won a disputed July 30 presidential vote, repeated the armys previous justification for last years coup, saying his former mentor Mugabe had been surrounded by criminals.

READ ALSO: How free SHS parents can easily register for TIN

When the army rolled its tanks into Harare, military leaders said they were targeting criminals around the president. A bitter Mugabe said later, however, that the armys action had forced him to resign.

Meet Ghana's Peculiar Female Tiler: Faces of Ghana| #Yencomgh

READ ALSO: My husband of 8 years has infected me with HIV/AIDS - Woman breaks down

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Mohamed Salah was on target as Liverpool reigned supreme over Watford by winning 3-0 on Saturday.

With the win, the Reds are two points of leaders Manchester City at the top of the Premier League.

Trent Alexander-Arnold's stunning free-kick and Roberto Firmino's tap-in added to the score for the Reds, but it was far from a comfortable afternoon for Jurgen Klopp's side, who had captain Jordan Henderson sent off in the second half.

READ ALSO: Manchester City ease past West Ham United

Despite establishing a defensive club record for this stage of a top-flight campaign, Liverpool looked shaky at the back throughout.

And the hosts were aggrieved to not be given a penalty when Reds defender Andy Robertson appeared to foul Will Hughes while the score was level.

It proved a pivotal moment for the Hornets, who were then unpicked by the visitors on the counter-attack once they had fallen behind.

READ ALSO: Paul Ince believes Jose Mourinho has suffocated Paul Pogba at Man United

Though Liverpool were far from at their best, the manner of this result endorses their credentials as challengers to City, while Watford slip to ninth in the table.

Street Quiz Ghana: What Would Be Your Message to the President Should You Meet Him? | Yen.com.gh:

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Source: Yen News
A flamboyant Bungoma politician and philanthropist commonly known as 'Aliko Dangote' has been entangled in a vicious love triangle that might threaten his young relationship.

Known for his flamboyance and love for finer things in life Moses Nandalwe has been spotted at different posh and luxurious joints dining with the who-is-who in the country.

Despite playing his cards well for years, he recently let the cat out of the bag when he was spotted with a beautiful woman identified as Selly Amutabi, the daughter of Maurice Amutabi - a famous TV political analyst.

READ ALSO: Moesha Boduong shakes her 'heavy tundra' in new video

Word on the street has it the two might be headed to the sheets if at all they are yet to roll in each others arms sweating it out in thrusts of happiness.

Known for his flamboyance and love for finer things in life Moses Nandalwe has been spotted at different posh and luxurious joints.

Nandalwe shot to limelight when he led university students to revolt against then Kenyatta University vice chancellor Olive Mugenda.

He then unsuccessfully tried to run Sirisia MP John Waluke out of town in the 2017 elections on an Orange Democratic Movement ticket (ODM).

After the defeat, he turned to philanthropy under his Nandawe Foundation where he offers education scholarships to needy students, housing and water projects to the needy, ICT centres, developing schools besides engaging in other philanthropic activities.

READ ALSO: Shatta Wales I know my level is like a gospel song to me  Bright of Buk Bak

However, it is the recent appearance with Selly Kadot while boarding a helicopter at Wilson Airport that has left tongues wagging with locals wondering if he has developed appetite to start eating women besides his lovely and gorgeous partner.

He was spotted with a beautiful woman identified as Selly Amutabi.

READ ALSO: AFRIMA 2018: Davido tops all; Stonebwoy, Shatta Wale, Sarkodie win awards

Many argue that he acquired his wealth while working with his guardian, the COTU Secretary General Francis Atwoli.

COTU, however. Denied any association with the lad and published a clarification in the dailies.

Our attempts to get his comment on the love allegations proved futile as he was said to be out of the country.

Street Quiz Ghana: What Would Be Your Message to the President Should You Meet Him? | Yen.com.gh:

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A law lecturer, Dr. Maurice Ampa, has explained that the teachers who were sacked by the Ghana Education Service (GES) for sexual misconduct or immoral act with their students can fight their dismissal in court.

The teachers, about 10 in number, who were dismissed for various misconducts are:

Mr. Vincent Nii Amah Otoo of St. Francis SHTS, Akim Oda,

Mr. Lester Ansah Djan, Benkum SHS, Larteh  Akuapem,

Mr. Adjetey Anum James, Okumaning Ugars Basic, Okumaning Eastern Region, among others.

Ampaw has dared the affected teachers who feel theyve been hard done by the GES and their rights trampled upon to proceed to court to seek redress.

READ: Ghana's military ranked the 107th strongest in the world but behind Sudan and co

The GES says it is committed to cleaning its ranks. Photo credit: Government of Ghana

Source: UGC

The law teacheris quoted by kasapafmonline as saying: Which of the teacher can dare go to court to challenge his dismissal? None of them can say hes been treated unfairly, administratively.

No lawyer worth his salt who knows the law, respects him or herself and is disciplined will ever tolerate such nonsense suit. We say he who comes to equity must come with clean hands."

YEN.com.gh earlier reported that the Service has sacked 10 teachers under their watch for various offenses including sexual misconduct and stealing in their respective schools.

READ ALSO: Bungomas Aliko Dangote finally lands radio girl to warm his bed

Six of the teachers were found guilty of sexual misconduct while four others were found guilty of stealing and one other, found guilty of defilement by an investigative committee set up by the Education Service and convicted by a court.

Street Quiz Ghana: What Would Be Your Message to the President Should You Meet Him? | Yen.com.gh:

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Source: Yen
Nana Kwasi Opoku Mintah, Chief of Kwahu Tafo in Afram Plains, has thanked the president of the Republic, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, for visiting the Afram Plains North constituency by road, and seeing for himself the nature of the road network.

According to Nana Kwasi Opoku Mintah, some presidents and governments, in times past, only came to visit Donkorkrom using helicopters, and, as such, did not appreciate the difficulties the people go through.

Classfmonline.com reports that Nana Kwasi Opoku Mintah made this known on Saturday, 24th November, 2018, when President Akufo-Addo visited Donkorkrom on the final day of his 3-day tour of the Eastern Region.

The president is on a tour of his home region of the Eastern Region to familiarise himself with projects and interact with the people.

READ ALSO: I won't date a poor guy who can't buy me a brand new car - Kumawood actress Yaa Jackson

But the Afram Plains chief seized the opportunity to make his thoughts known to the president.

He is quoted as saying: You have proven to be different, and we pray that your Government will come to our aid and construct these roads, which have been in a deplorable state for many years".

In his remarks, he thanked President Akufo-Addo for energising Ghanaian youth across the country with his Free Senior High School policy.

This policy, he added, has given Ghanaian youth the opportunity to chart progressive futures for themselves adding that an investment in education is always for the future.

READ ALSO: I want a Range Rover as my 11th birthday gift - DJ Switch stuns fans at AFRIMA 2018 (Video)

In the 1992 Constitution of Ghana, chiefs are barred from engaging in partisan politics but this has not stopped them from going as far as to endorse political office candidates.

Street Quiz Ghana: What Would Be Your Message to the President Should You Meet Him? | Yen.com.gh:

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New Delhi: Salman Khan, Katrina Kaif and Disha Patani's 'Bharat' has been high on the buzzword ever since it was announced. The gripping teaser of the film was revealed in August this year and had left fans even more excited for the film.

Along with the makers - Ali Abbas Zafar and Atul Agnihotri, Salman too has been giving the fans regular updates from the sets. Recently, Salman and Katrina shared their looks from the film by posting a picture on Instagram. In the pic, the lead actors were seen standing at the Wagah border with their backs facing us.

And now, Salman's brother-in-law and film producer Atul Agnihotri revealed on the social media that the team has headed to New Delhi for the next schedule. Sharing a video on Instagram, Atul wrote, "#Bharat in #Delhi @bharat_thefilm @beingsalmankhan."

Take a look at the video in which Salman is sitting on the front seat of the car adjusting his seatbelt:

Yesterday, Zafar too had shared the news by sharing a photo of Katrina and wrote, "Katrina kaif , script reading sessions, shoot begins in Delhi tomorrow @Bharat_TheFilm."

Katrina kaif , script reading sessions , shoot begins in Delhi tomorrow @Bharat_TheFilm pic.twitter.com/fGkVFhzraT  ali abbas zafar (@aliabbaszafar) November 23, 2018

'Bharat' has an ensemble star cast with the likes of Disha Patani, Sunil Grover, Tabu and popular television actor Aasif Sheikh playing pivotal roles. The shoot of the film began in July this year. Earlier, the team as shot in Mumbai, Malta, Abu Dhabi and Punjab's Ludhiana.

The film will be set in the backdrop of India in 1947 and will take us through the events during the countrys partition. Not just that, the film will showcase significant events over a period of 70 years since partition. 'Bharat' is scheduled for an Eid 2019 release.
Criminal Investigations Department (CID) has recorded a statement from Police Chief Pujith Jayasundara this morning over the Anti-Corruption Force convener Namal Kumaras allegations, police said.

They said that the latest statement was recorded as a part of the investigations into the alleged assassination plot on President Maithripala Sirisena and former Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa.
An agreement on the UK's withdrawal from the European Union and its future relations has been backed by EU leaders after 20 months of negotiations.

The 27 leaders gave it their backing after less than an hour's discussion in Brussels, saying it paved the way for the UK's "orderly withdrawal".

Mr Tusk signalled on Saturday the deal would be approved after Spain withdrew last-minute concerns over Gibraltar.

The deal needs to be approved by the UK Parliament, with many MPs opposed.

Mr Tusk, the president of the European Council, broke the news on Twitter.

It follows more than 18 months of negotiations between the two sides, which began when the UK triggered Article 50 in the wake of the 2016 referendum leave vote.

The UK is scheduled to leave the EU on 29 March 2019.

The UK Parliament is expected to vote on the deal in early December but its approval is by no means guaranteed. Labour, the Lib Dems, the SNP, the DUP and many Conservatives MPs are set to vote against.

Prime Minister Theresa May has appealed to the public to get behind the agreement, arguing it is the best deal she could have struck - and honours the result of the Brexit referendum.

The EU leaders have approved the two key Brexit documents:

The EU withdrawal agreement: a 585-page, legally binding document setting out the terms of the UK's exit from the EU. It covers the UK's 39bn "divorce bill", citizens' rights and the Northern Ireland "backstop" - a way to keep the Irish border open, if trade talks stall

The political declaration, which sets out what the UK and EU's relationship may be like after Brexit - outlining how things like UK-EU trade and security will work

There was no formal vote on Sunday, with the EU proceeding by consensus.

In a one-page document confirming its decision, the European Council said the deal would pave the way for the UK's "orderly withdrawal" and it wanted the "closest possible" relationship in the future.

Before the meeting, European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said the UK's departure was a "tragedy" for the EU, adding that there are "no smooth divorces".

While the rest of the EU wanted it settled as soon as possible, Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite said there were a number of possible outcomes if the UK Parliament rejected the deal, including an extension of the negotiations or another referendum.(BBC)
(AFP)-

President Maithripala Sirisena on Sunday reignited the power struggle that has crippled Sri Lanka's government for more than a month, vowing never to reappoint arch-rival Ranil Wickremesinghe as prime minister.

Wickremesinghe's party has a majority in parliament and Sirisena's bid to bring back the country's former strongman Mahinda Rajapakse has already failed.

But Sirisena choked back tears in a meeting with foreign correspondents as he accused Wickremesinghe, who he sacked on Oct 26, of being "highly corrupt".

"Even if the UNP has the majority I told them not to bring Ranil Wickremesinghe before me, I will not make him prime minister," he said, referring to Wickremesinghe's United National Party.

"Not in my lifetime," he added.

Sirisena dismissed Wickremesinghe following a host of personality and political clashes since they formed a coalition in 2015. He named Rajapakse as new premier and tried to dissolve parliament but the Supreme Court and legislators blocked the president's moves.

Wickremesinghe, who occupies the prime minister's residence, and Rajapakse, who has the premier's official offices, have both refused to back down.

But the country officially has no prime minister, heightening international fears about Sri Lanka's stability and looming foreign debt repayments.

Sirisena told foreign correspondents at his official residence that he will appoint a commission to investigate corruption under Wickremesinghe since January 2015.

"He is corrupt. His economic policies are not good for local industries. He pursed an extremely liberal form of government that is not compatible with our culture."

Sirisena fought back tears as he recalled how he asked Wickremesinghe to step down in February when their respective parties were beaten in local council elections.

"I told him that we lost the election because his economic policies had failed. I told Ranil in this very room to step down, but he refused," Sirisena said.

He added that there had been "over 100 instances" of open clashes between the two and that their power struggle had become an open secret in the cabinet.

Sri Lanka's parliament meets on Nov 27 and 29 to discuss a motion by the UNP to cut off government spending.

Government finances will stall on Jan 1 unless a 2019 budget is passed.

If the UNP wins the vote, it could force Rajapakse to withdraw his claim to the leadership, and make Sirisena to name a prime minister from the party.

"If the UNP shows a majority, I believe Mahinda will do the right thing (and stand down)," said Sirisena, although he reiterated that he would still not reappoint Wickremesinghe.

Sirisena insisted that it was not a personality clash but a "disagreement over policy".

Asked if he could constitutionally ignore the leader of the largest single party in parliament, Sirisena said he would rely on tradition.

"There is a tradition that the person appointed PM should be able to work with the president. I cannot work with Ranil. The UNP will have to bring somebody else."
Today November 26 marks the day when Maha Adikaram Keppetipola and Maha Nilame of the Uva Madugalle were executed on the banks of Bogambara Wewa on the orders of the British Governor. The marketing phrase that the Independence for Sri Lanka had been won without a shedding a drop of blood is a fallacy

Today November 26 marks the day when Maha Adikaram Keppetipola and Maha Nilame of the Uva Madugalle were executed on the banks of Bogambara Wewa on the orders of the British Governor.

It was left to Dr Henry Marshall, a friend of Maha Adikaram Keppetipola to take away the head of Keppetipola and send to the Edinburgh Phrenological Society to study the head. Later it was handed over to the museum of the medical faculty and it lay there until a relative of Keppetipola, Upali Keppetipola, petitioned the British Government for its return.



This cranium of Keppetipola is the link of the Kandyan kingdom and present independent Sri Lanka. Credit should go to President Maithripala Sirisena to freeing the Kandyan Freedom Fighters from the stigma of Traitors.

It was the brilliant swordsman of the Kandyan kingdom Udagabada Nilame and Dissawa of Wellassa Madugalle who set the ball rolling on December 7, 1816 for the freedom of the country.

He was sent twice to prison by the British for these acts and they feared him for his skill in warfare. He was in prison for two years in Jaffna Fort but was released on the birthday of George IV.

No doubt that the cranium of Keppetipola lies at the foot of the stone pillar, but Madugalle also should be commemorated on the same day at this very place, because both were executed on the same day on the banks of Bogambara Wewa.

"Realising that entire Sinhala people were misled, Keppetipola thought that the time had come to avenge the plot of Robert Brownrigg"

The head or the decapitated body of the warrior was buried in cognition by the British army who was in charge of the execution and no one has found where he was buried. But the fact remains that both were executed on the same day.

Then why not we commemorate both at this spot - Keppetipola and Madugalle.

The marketing phrase that the Independence for Sri Lanka had been won without a shedding a drop of blood is a fallacy.

Over the years, since the advent of foreigners to Sri Lankas shores from around 1505 MANY HAVE fought to regain the Independence of the territory they had forsaken.

Among them comes Keppetipola Maha Adikaram born at Matale. But unfortunately, he was A Traitor to the country he was born and sacrificed his life for the country, fighting the ruthless British of that era.

It is recorded that officers like Lieut. J. Maclaine of the 73rd Regiment used to hang captured prisoners in front of him while taking his breakfast. So was another Lt. Col. Hook.



Keppetipola Maha Nilame was a heroic fighter, who fought the British in the 1818 rebellion. Governments after Independence have come and gone, which promised that the name of Keppetipola would be De-gazetted from the Gazette of the British, which had declared that Maha Nilame was a Traitor, to the Imperial Government of Britain.

The blood and the toil of the people of the country went to force the Colonial powers to restore Independence back to the people

It brings us to mind the way the British treated one of their own kinsmen William Walsh a Scotsman, who resemble the Kandyan freedom fighters when he was quartered on the orders of Edward the First and his flesh thrown around. In the case of Keppetipola, his Cranium was stuffed with salt for preservation and was taken away to the British Empire and kept in the Tower of London first and later taken to Edinburgh.

The Cranium was later returned, to Sri Lanka and kept in the Colombo Museum for nearly ten years before this valuable property was brought to Kandy - Thanks to Upali Keppetipola.



Valiant fighter Monaravila Keppetipola was one outstanding man who did not seek pardon from the British, even though they were very willing if he did ask for it. Instead, he gave his life for the people of Sri Lanka on the Banks of Bogambara Wewa, which area is now within the Keppetipola Memorial Hall.

Keppetipolas cranium lies buried at the Sacred Mahamaluwa in Kandy over which there is a monument.

The cranium is within a glass case, which was deposited after it was exhibited to the public at the Kandyan audience hall, behind the Sri Dalada Maligawa.

Keppetipolas birthplace is in the district of Matale and this is the only connection. It is alleged that he had a son who was from a second bed, but fearing the British would destroy him after Keppetipola, he entered into Sangha hood and has since then his whereabouts are not known He is alleged to have died while been a priest and the direct descendent of Keppetipola expired.



But, there are many who are connected to his ancestry. But, in the recent past, there is a number of people who are trying to claim relationship to this nobleman. The only man who could ever be thought of was Upali Keppetipola who was instrumental in getting down the cranium which had been removed to the Edinburgh Phenomenological Society. In fact, there was a time, when Upali Keppetipola alone paid homage at the monument at Maha Maluwa, Kandy, by placing a wreath of flowers.

The background of Monaravila Keppetipola begins with Governor Robert Brownrigg who avoided the issue of placing a Kandyan on the Throne of Kandy or even allowing to administer the Kandyan Provinces.



The fact remains that after the disposal of the King, it was said that the reins of the administration of the Kandyan Provinces would be handed over to the Kandyan Chiefs. But they did not realise, the cunning British Diplomacy and the trained Civil Servants who were sent to Sri Lanka and also the spies like Sir John D Oyly.

An innocent set of Kandyan Chiefs was caught in the intricacies of British administration and lost the country through a set of rules that the Britishers called Treaty.

The Kandyan Chiefs only realised that they were taken for a ride by the British State of Art of conquering the countries through diplomacy.

It was an unwritten promise that British would place one of Kandyan Chiefs on the Throne. But, Brownrigg, did not honour his word and was at one time questioned in the British Parliament for his acts.



Realising that entire Sinhala people were misled, Keppetipola thought that the time had come to avenge the plot of Robert Brownrigg, with his posting to Uva to quell the riots of Wellassa. Monarawila Keppetipola tried to redeem the land of his birth. Thus began the Rebellion of 1817-1818 with Monaravila Keppetipola at the helm.

The shameful nature of bringing down the rebellion by the British, especially on the orders Sir Robert Brownrigg, was such that even law officers of Britain recorded that it was unimaginable horror and ruthlessness of the British.



Kandyan Families were completely wiped out and the best of the Kandyan gentry went into hiding, while some sought toed with the British and earned their favours and also converted themselves into the faith of Christ. So much so it is recorded that pandemonium reigned in House of Commons. It was debated by British Parliamentarians even to the extent of condemning their own King for having a representative who knew no decency - that was Robert Brownrigg.

Most of the people, who after the British - Kandyan Treaty thought it fit to enter into the service of the British, had plum offices, while others were stripped of their positions.



When the Kandyan Treaty was signed, Keppetipola Maha Dissawa was the Dissawa of Matale and subsequently the British appointed him to Uva as well. While he was in Uva, a chance utterance to the Translator David de Alwis, cost him his future and his life. He had one day told the translator in conversation that it was time for the British to bid goodbye to the country and place a Sinhala King on the Throne of Kandy.



There was also a time when Keppetipola, punished officers under him who were trying to curry-favour with the Government Agent of Badulla. The Governor became so vexed that he told the Kandy Commissioner and the resident representative Doyly that the people were rising against the Representative of the British King.

Keppetipola also frowned on the methods employed where his work was being interfered with the British. The British on the other hand had their own favourites in Sabaragamuwa, where the people of these areas helped the British to find their way into Kandyan Territory.

"So, it should be noted that the real force for the freedom of the country were people like Keppetipola and other Chieftains"



He also indicated that as the Dissawa, he had the right to obtain the dues from Kataragama Devale. These led to the events of the Rebellion.

A relative of Kirthi Sri Rajasinghe was roaming the area named Doaraiswamy, whom the British suspected as a claimant to the Kandyan Throne.

In the meantime, the Assistant Government Agent Sylvester Wilson sent Hadji (Who was appointed Dissawe of Uva) to capture Doraiswamy.

From the very commencement, the people of Wellassa did not take a liking over the appointment of Hadji. When he went to Wellassa, he had to face an armed gang, where he was taken into custody and his brother who accompanied him was hurt.

Wilson who heard about these incidents made an attempt to arrest the armed gang with a band of Java soldiers. But, he could do nothing and he succumbed to a fatal shot of the gang by bow and arrow. Not content with these incidents, Brownrigg offered to pay 2000 pagodas to anyone leading to the arrest of anyone who killed Wilson.



It is recorded that the British who recruited the scum of their country for adventure, had people like Lt. O Neill and others of their kind used to hang prisoners of the rebellion before their breakfast table and eat in front of them. That was the scum that entered the British Army at that time.

So by first January 1818, the entire Kandyan Province was under war, with the British. A quick discussion was held at the Audience Hall of Kandy by Robert Brownrigg and it he was told that under no condition, would the Kandyan Provinces be handed over to the Sinhala People.

At this meeting, it was also stated that Robert Brownrigg declared that if anyone brought the Head of Keppetipola, he would be offered 2000 Pagodas (The type of currency at that time )



By February 18, the British moved, declaring that anyone who should bring the head of Madugalle or Pilamatalawa was offered 1000 Pagodas. But, with more troops of the British being brought in to quell the rebellion it became a failure, with the intrigue within the rebels. By August, the rebellion was an utter and miserable failure.

But on 28 October, Lt. ONeil captured Keppetipola, due to a sneaking trader who had gone to barter goods to the village where Keppetipola stayed. Three days later Madugalle was arrested, and by November 4, under a heavy guard, both were brought to Kandy. By November 13 both were brought before a Kangaroo Court.

Both were executed on November 25, 1818 with several other Kandyan chiefs. Ellepola Nilame was executed on October 27.

So, it should be noted that the real force for the freedom of the country were people like Keppetipola and other Chieftains. The lands and properties of those who were in the rebellion were confiscated by in January 1818. as belongings of Rebels, Outlaws, and Enemies of the British.

The list of eighteen whose lands was confiscated to the Crown was head by Keppetipola, the former Dissawe of Uva.
Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen announced her resignation Saturday as head of the Democratic Progressive Party after the party suffered a "crushing defeat" in local government elections, according to state media.

The Central News Agency reported Tsai apologized to supporters for the ruling party's "disappointing performance" in a speech at its headquarters, and she took full responsibility for the party's losses.

Although she resigned as the party head, Tsai -- the first woman to be elected President of Taiwan -- will serve out the remainder of her term. The next presidential election is scheduled for January 2020.

According to CNA, Tsai said while her administration is moving in the right direction, the election results were proof that the Taiwanese people are setting a higher standard for their government.

The pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party is expected to undergo a "major reshuffle" soon, Tsai said, to prepare for the challenges ahead, CNA reported.

Premier Lai Ching-te echoed Tsai in a Facebook post, saying the election results indicated the public's dissatisfaction with the government's performance.

Lai had offered to resign earlier Saturday and take ownership of the party's defeat, but Tsai asked him to stay on as premier to ensure the continuity of the government's policies and initiatives.

Tsai was elected President in a landslide victory in January 2016 after a political career mostly as an outsider. She joined the Democratic Progressive Party in 2004 and was its chairwoman by 2008. She lost her first bid for the presidency in 2012 and resigned as the party head before taking the mantle back up in 2014.(CNN)
Justice is not perfect. But its better than no justicewhats the alternative?

The sentencing of the two senior most living leaders of the murderous Khmer Rouge regime of Kampuchea will probably be the high water mark of a controversial trial, which has lasted 12 years and cost $320 million.

Pressure from the Government of Prime Minister Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge leader who later defected, has hindered the process considerably.

Khieu Samphan, 87, Khmer Rouge Head of State, and Nuon Chea, 92, second-in-command to Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, were already serving life sentences given in 2014 for crimes against humanity committed between 1977-79.

This time, they were convicted of genocide and mass rape which occurred through a state policy of forced marriages.

"They were convicted of genocide and mass rape which occurred through a State policy of forced marriages"



The verdict, given by Judge Nil Nonn, detailed the horrific acts committed inside the infamous S-21 prison, overseen by Nuon Chea for two years. As the list of crimes was read out, Nuon Chea, described as Pol Pots right hand and asked to be led out of the courtroom.

The judgement, by a panel of three Kampuchean and two international judges, said that Khieu Samphan encouraged, incited and legitimized the criminal policies that led to the deaths of civilians on a massive scale.



Khieu Samphan represented Kampuchea during the Non-Aligned Conference in Colombo in 1976. The court declared both men responsible for murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, imprisonment, torture, persecution on religious, racial and political grounds, enforced disappearances and mass rape. By 1979, when a Vietnamese invasion forced the Khmer Rouge to flee, one in four Kampucheans (about 1.7 million people) had been killed.

The trials were conducted by the extraordinary chambers in the courts of Cambodia (ECCC) and face faced criticism over snails pace progress and the low number of convictions.

"Khmer Rouge leaders are sentenced for Crimes Against Humanity"



There have only been three so far. The first to be convicted was Kaing Guek Eav (Comrade Duch), who ran the SS-21 camp where at least 14,000 people were tortured to death.

There are three more Khmer Rouge leaders awaiting trial, but Hun Sen is opposing this, claiming that further cases risked plunging Cambodia into civil war.

But Alexander Hinton, director of the Centre for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights, and UNESCO chair on genocide prevention at Rutgers University said:

Justice is not perfect. But its better than no justice. And whats the alternative? Impunity for mass murder.

Source: The Guardian UK
Indicating that his party could support a motion in the House to ask President to dissolve Parliament and go for an election, UNP Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe said over the weakened that Parliament could decide on having an election, the type of election and the time it should be held.

Parties in Parliament will decide on the election. They will decide on the date of the election as well, he said.

They can also decide whether to hold the Presidential Election first or the General Election.

Parliament can decide on the elections with a two thirds majority. However, the main issue is not an election, but to safeguard the rights of the people, Mr Wickremesinghe said at a public rally in Kandy on Saturday.

Election is not the main issue. The main issue is to safeguard peoples rights; to ensure that the Constitution of the country is followed.

If a group does not have a majority they should resign. They cannot hold on to office like leaches. If they did not resign even after November, 29 when the next vote is taken in Parliament, we will have to take to the streets, he added.(Yohan Perera and J A L Jayasinghe)
The loss of biodiversity crosses the 'red line'

"We are starting the sixth extinction"

The accelerated loss of biodiversity can lead to the extinction of the human species. Is the message compelling and bleak that it has launched Christian Pasca Palmer, executive director of the UN Convention on Biodiversity, which convened this month in Egypt to its 196 member states, in light of the recent report from the WWF that has given the voice of alert for the extinction of 60% of the population of vertebrate animals since 1970.

"The loss of biodiversity is a death silent," warns Pasca Palmer, in a statement to The Guardian. "It is different to climate change, whose impact can be felt in the daily life. The loss of biological diversity starts to be noticeable when it is already too late."

Cristiana Pasca Palmer, a former minister of Environment in Romania, aims to follow in the steps of the costa rican Christiana Figueres, who led the UN's action to address climate change and was the "godmother" of the Paris agreement. Palmer has to face the challenge of achieving an ambitious global agreement for the protection of the biodiversity conference that will be held in Beijing in 2020.

The two previous attempts in 2002 and in 2010, they crashed against the lack of political will (united States of America, in the age of Obama, participated as a mere "observer"). Since then, the scientific community has reached virtually to the consensus that we are witnessing the sixth mass extinction in the history of the planet, aided this time by human activity.

as dangerous as climate change

"The destruction of nature is as dangerous as climate change", warns Bob Watson, a chemist from the University of East Anglia that takes years to build bridges between the two pressing environmental problems. "Ecosystems are vital for the human species, are your life support. Without them, the production of food, generation of energy or the supply of water would be impossible. Nature also regulates the climate, mitigates pollution and is conducive to the pollination".

Watson is referred to the recent Living Planet report by the WWF, released makes barely a week, to illustrate the need for urgent action: "human actions are destroying nature at an unacceptable rate and are putting at risk our own well being and that of future generations".

The report of WWF, in collaboration with the Network's Global Footprint and the Zoological Society of London, analyzes 16.700 populations of 4000 species of vertebrate on the planet. In just four years, the decline has gone from 52% to 60%, in which the 59 scientists who collaborated in the study defined as "a massacre of wildlife."

The main cause of the loss of biodiversity is the degradacio of natural habitats, principalente by agriculture, logging indiscrimada and urban pressure and overcrowding. Today, three-quarters of the planet have been subjected to the "human action". The commitment to increase the area protected from 10% to 17% of the surface of the planet has fallen on deaf ears.

poaching, cattle ranching, pollution...

The loss of population of species has been aggravated in the tropics: Central and South america has been an alarming decrease of 89%. Almost 20% of the Amazon has disappeared in the last 50 years and the trend, with the recent political changes, is to accelerate the destruction.

The overexploitation of species is another determinant of poaching to the intensive livestock, passing by the unsustainable practices of fishing. The pollution also affects directly and indirectly to the wild populations, as well as the arrival of invasive species, fueled in large measure in the last century the increase of temperatures.

For the first time this year, the scientific experts on climate change and on biodiversity have joined forces and have begun to coordinate their actions under the umbrella of the UN. Critiana Pasca Palmer warns that the close cooperation will be vital, but will require a shift in the public opinion and the political will to address the severity of the problem.

"nature is very resilient and there are cases hopeful of recovery of the ecosystems," warns the director of Biodiversity of the UN. "But the predictions that we face are very worrying: in 2050, Africa will have removable drives that are lost 50% of its mammals and birds, and the fisheries of Asia can be collapsed by those dates. The numbers are staggering... I Hope we are not the first species to document its own extinction."

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Updated Date: 25 November 2018, 20:00

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Good design, great screen and a price against which few brands can compete in Spain: 269 eur

Xiaomi has announced next to the Xiaomi Mi 8 Pro, your mobile most powerful of the moment

Xiaomi has fulfilled a year since its official launch in Spain. Although the chinese brand was well known already in our country before due to its mix of performance, price and because it was easy to import from China (something that is already more complicated, by the way), your arrival has disrupted fairly of the national market.

The new Xiaomi Mi 8 Lite is a good sample of why this has been so: it is a terminal with the look and features of phones of high range, but its price does not reach the 300 euros in the most basic configuration.

Your version with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage is sold in exclusive temporary Phone for 269 euros. If we went up to 329 euros, it is possible to get one with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of space for photos, videos and others. There are phones with of these latest options that double easily that figure.

of course, it is a phone with its limitations: no radio FRM, no NFC for contactless payments, your screen is not OLED, the dual rear camera for photos, although good, is not up to the height of the most advanced models of Samsung, Google or Huawei; and a processor, the Snapdragon 660 Qualcom, nor is it the most powerful on the market, although it is enough for Whatsapp, Facebook, Instagram and applications used in the day-to-day work with fluency.

what is Perhaps most interesting of My 8 Lite is that it does not fall short in your battery, something that can always criticize the phones more affordable. With 3,350 mAh battery, it can endure a day of continuous use without falling short in the afternoon. This will depend on each user and if you play a lot or you use the GPS all the time, but in my use case has been as well.

it Is a pity that does not come updated to the latest version of Android, since launch carries in its interior MIUI 8 on Android 8.1; but Xiaomi promises that in a few weeks will be updated, along with other devices, to the latest version of Android. Posts to ask, would be great to launch in the near future to have a My 8 Lite with Android One, which makes the Xiaomi Mi A2 to be as good phones (and its competitor, more direct inside of the house), but that is somewhat unlikely.

Xiaomi Mi 8 Pro

Next to the My 8 Lite, Spain will receive the most advanced version of this range of phones from Xiaomi. The My 8 Pro cost more expensive, 599 euros for the launch version of the 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage.

Among its strengths, the screen children.6, 21 the reasonbehind inches and AMOLED panel and the Snapdragon processor 845, the most powerful on the market. Its camera is also superior, and its design is exquisite, as his back panel mimics the interior of the device, showing its putative components.

According to the criteria of

Updated Date: 25 November 2018, 08:00

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Lerch, who served 12 years with the U.S. Coast Guard and another 30 in the reserves, died on Sunday evening of cancer.
GA English on Sunday : News in Brief from Bonn and the region

BONN/REGION Deutsche Post staff plant oak trees in Kottenforst, prominent buildings in Bonn join the campaign against violence towards women, Oberkassel Christmas market has been cancelled, a car accident in Siegburg and the next Astronomy on Tap meeting on 27th November ... here is a round-up of our news in brief on Sunday.

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500 oak trees planted in Kottenforst

KOTTENFORST. This week employees of Deutsche Post DHL Group planted around 500 new trees in the Kottenforst, which is supported under the EU Life+Nature Conservation project "Villewalder - Wald und Wasserwelten" (forests and water worlds). The company approached the Regional Forestry Office last year with the idea and planted a number of oaks; this year the cooperation has continued. The initiative is part of Deutsche Post DHL Groups GoGreen environmental protection program, which aims to reduce all logistics-related emissions to zero by 2050 and to plant one million trees a year. A total of 80 employees were deployed over three days in small groups, each planting five oaks, on the assumption that at least one of these will survive. According to Klaus Striepen who leads the Villewalder project, if you plant 500 trees on one hectare of forest like this, in 30 to 40 years you would still have 100 grand oaks. And other tree species would come by themselves. (Original text: Stefan Kopp)

Post Tower and UN light up in orange

BONN. On Saturday as dusk fell the Post Tower, UN Tower, Deutsche Welle building and the Sinn department store glowed orange for one evening. These highly visible Bonn buildings joined the worldwide "Orange your City" campaign, initiated by women's organisations around the world to commemorate the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

In addition to the UN Women group, two Zonta Clubs are active in Bonn with many UN employees amongst the enthusiastic members. The Bonn club is participating in the campaign for the first time. There are already plans for further Bonn buildings to get involved next year. Under the motto "Zonta says no to violence", Zonta representative Adelheid Feilcke chaired a panel discussion in the lounge of the Post Tower, Kurt-Schumacher-Strae on Saturday afternoon. Elisabeth Auchter-Mainz, NRW victim protection officer, Katja Schulke, deputy equal opportunities officer of the city of Bonn, and Conny Schulte from the counselling centre against sexual violence in Bonn also took part in the discussions. (Original text: ham)

No Christmas market in Oberkassel this year

OBERKASSEL. The ninth Christmas market in Oberkassel, due to take place on the second weekend in Advent and billed as the second largest market on the Beuel side of the Rhine has been cancelled. Helmut Priebe, the driving force behind the association Forderverein Weihnachtsmarkt Bonn-Oberkassel explains this is due to a lack of personnel and inability to cover the costs of running the market. The pre-Christmas festivities were due to take place in the park at the Magdalenenkreuz, on the site of the fairground in Oberkassel. St. Nikolaus, his servant Ruprecht and even an angel were all going to pay a visit.

The association remains in place for the time being and is planning to start again next year. "We could organise the Christmas market back on the market square and in the Burgerpark, perhaps combined with a music event and possibly together with a Christmas Evening with local advertisers, says Priebe. After the Burgerverein (citizens group) stopped organising the event a few years ago, the market relocated away from the town centre to the fairground site and the Werbegemeinschaft Oberkassel (advertising association WOK) pulled out. (Original text: Rainer Schmidt)

Car accident in Siegburg leaves man seriously injured

SIEGBURG. Early on Saturday evening, a 29-year-old man overturned his car on the main road in Siegburg-Seligenthal. According to local police, the Skoda was turning right from the main road around 6.15 p.m., where it overturned and finally stopped on its roof. The driver was seriously injured in the accident. The main road was closed off completely for almost two hours whilst the vehicle was recovered, and investigations were carried out. Six firefighters and two rescue workers attended the scene and a towing service was also requested. (Original text: ga)

Astronomy on Tap: How astronomers discovered the third dimension

BONN. On Tuesday 27 November at 7pm Dr. Florian Pacaud and Laila Linke, Msc who work at the Argelander Institute for Astronomy will talk about mapping the universe - how astronomers uncovered the 3rd dimension (in English) and how big the world is (in German) at the Fiddlers Pub (Frongasse 9, Bonn-Endenich). This event is part of the worldwide initiative called Astronomy on Tap, where professional astronomers explain diverse topics about the universe in a friendly atmosphere. Join the local astronomers for talks, quizzes and prizes. For more information follow Astronomy on Tap on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter.
Haas is not ruling out appealing the ruling of the stewards in Abu Dhabi.

In a complex case, the American outfit protested against Force India, alleging that after the sale to Lawrence Stroll, the Silverstone based team had not technically built its own cars.

Force India accused Haas of being "hypocritical", saying the outfit designs many more parts of its car than the Ferrari-linked American team does.

But the dispute is essentially over about $60 million in official F1 income that boss Gunther Steiner claims Force India should no longer be eligible for.

"As a new team, we had to wait two years without prize money, and so should they. This is a question that had to be dealt with," said Steiner.

The stewards did not agree, and Steiner is now considering an appeal.

"I cannot say whether we will or we will not, but after consulting with our lawyers we will decide soon," he said.

Steiner insists that the protest was never about getting more money for Haas, but rather that Force India competes with the same rules as other new teams.

"We will decide what to do next after the race weekend, because for now we have other things to do in Abu Dhabi. We will deal with the issue on Monday or Tuesday," Steiner said.

(GMM)
Images: Netflix The promotional images for season 2 of The Witcher have hit the web and it only makes us more excited for December 17th! We...

GQ Spain gave us a preview of its interview with Henry and now we have the video. He talks about The Witcher, Superman, Enola Holmes, and m...

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New photos of the family of five who went viral after their mental condition was brought to the attention of the public by a former National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) member, Progress Oberiko, has emerged online

The family of Mr. & Mrs. Ben Ogar also know as the Ogoja mentally deranged couple were rescued few months ago following weeks of intense search by a team from the Cross River State Government and Federal Neuro Psychiatric hospital, Calabar, Cross River State.

According to his wife, Mr. Ben and his wife lost their means of livelihood about the same time six years ago while still resident in Abuja with their two kids, and what followed was a mental disorder leading to the Mr. Ben relocating himself and his wife to his country home in Ogoja where he opted to stay in a shanty rather than his fathers house.

His family rescued his first set of kids from him when he started showing signs of this disorder, and six years of roaming the streets of Ogoja produced the three kids he was rescued with.

Doctors confirmed Mr. Ben to be suffering from a mental disorder, while his wife is only having the folie a deux syndrome as a result of her husbands ideation. The children, two girls and a boy, are in very stable condition and are responding to treatment very well.

According to Progress Oberiko, unfortunately, support is yet to come from the government who initiated their rescue.
Vanguard

Sun, 25 Nov 2018

The Chairman of Forte Oil, Mr Femi Otedola, has testified in court how he blew the whistle on subsidy scam during the immediate past administration.

The Nation



To kick start campaign in Lagos on November 28To embark on house-to-house campaignTackle APC on issues as SW voters cannot be led by the noseTo leverage on influence of Obasanjo, Afenifere leadersThe Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, has launched a covert plan aimed at defeating the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, President Muhammadu Buhari, in the Southwest in the 2019 poll.

This Day



Ekiti Former National Publicity Secretary of Alliance for Democracy (AD), Hon. Opeyemi Bamidele saturday asked All Progressives Congress (APC) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) not to set Nigeria on fire their comments and speeches. Bamidele, an APC senatorial candidate in Ekiti Central, equally called political actors across the divides to pray

Guardian



In the last few weeks, the Church had been telling anybody that cares to listen how the state has been divided into denominations, with one of the orthodox churches enjoying undue favour over the others, apparently because the headship of government is its member.

The Sun

Wife of the President, Aisha Buhari has demanded the intervention of the Inspector-General of Police, Mr. Ibrahim Idris, on the case of Ochanya Ogbanje, who was allegedly molested for years by her auntys husband and son, Andrew and Victor Ogbuja. Speaking during an advocacy visit by members of the Federal Government Girls

Daily Times



insists past government worsened insecurity situation A civil society group, the Coalition Against Terrorism and Extremism in Nigeria (CATE) has warned the Peoples Democratic Party

Daily Trust



The National Working Committee (NWC) of the APC, led by Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, had, on Wednesday, November 21, inaugurated the National Peace and Reconciliation Committee for each of the six geo-political zones in the country, majorly due

Leadership



Delta State Governor, Dr Ifeanyi Okowahas described PDP Presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, GCON, Waziri Adamawa as a great patriot, democrat and man of faith for his legendary and remarkable contributions to the growth of democracy in Nigeria. Okowa poured the encomium on the ex-Vice President as he turns 72 years on Sunday November 25, 2018

Tribune



PRESIDENTIAL candidate of the Peoples Democracy Party (PDP), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, has described the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) as a party of deceivers, noting that it blindfolded and led Nigerians into poverty.
President Muhammadu Buhari has warned against playing politics with death of slain soldiers at Metele in Borno state by Boko Haram last Sunday.

The President who expressed deep shock over the death of the gallant soldiers, said that the soldiers keep fighting to keep every Nigerian safe, and therefore restated his administrations commitment to the welfare of the military.

Buhari, while assuring Nigerians noted that the circumstance, surrounding the death of the soldiers, will be dealt with.

In his words:

We must resist the temptation to play politics with the tragedy of the deaths of our soldiers. They are heroes on the frontlines,fighting to make Nigeria a safer place for us all. Rest assured that the circumstances that have led to these deaths will be comprehensively addressed.

See tweet
Chelseas unbeaten run to the current season has been brought to an abrupt end after they were decimated by Tottenham hotspur during their domestic league clash today at Wembley stadium.

They Blues who were the only unbeaten team across Europes top five league prior to the clash today were beaten by three goals to one by their London rivals during the clash.

The Blues who had gone 19 matches unbeaten prior to the clash today were made vulnerable at the back mostly by David Luis who was culpable for all the goals.

As a result of his unimpressive display today, Chelsea fans have been on social media calling out the Brazilian.

What fans are saying:

https://twitter.com/Triumphantell/status/1066410813483876352

https://twitter.com/CFCWriter/status/1066410459677511680
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and his wife Dolapo Osinbajo are celebrating their 29th wedding anniversary today November 25, 2018.

And the date in 2018 makes their marriage that has been blessed with both male and female children 29 years old.

His beautiful wife, Dolapo Osinbajo took to her official Instagram page to share an adorable family photo and wrote:

Two hearts

29 years

All glory to God

#WeddingAnniversay

#

See her post:

The photo has in it all their biological children and the familys latest addition, their son-in-law, Seun Bakare.

From the photo shared, it shows that the Osinbajos family are blessed with four lovely children, two sons and two daughters namely; two beautiful daughters Kiki and Kanyinsola, handsome son Fiyinfoluwa Osinbajo and another. The whole family was caught taking hearty laugh by the photographer.
Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara has hailed the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party(PDP), Atiku Abubakar on occasion of his 72nd birthday.

The former vice President, who has dedicated his birthday to the soldiers recently slain by Boko Haram in Metele, Borno state has received several accolades from many of his colleagues.

Dogara, in his birthday message to Atiku, hailed him for being a philanthropist and a role model to many.

Speaking via Twitter on Sunday, the House of Reps Speaker wrote:

Happy birthday, Your Excellency Atiku Abubakar. You are indeed a democratic icon and philanthropist par excellence with remarkable dexterity and uncommon sagacity, courage and capacity who is well prepared and poised to take Nigeria out of the woods.

You, Atiku are a role model, who mentors and inspires young and upcoming leaders, as well as provide opportunities for youths through the establishment of schools, cottage industries and other manufacturing concerns across the country.

As you mark your 72nd Birthday, I wish you Gods guidance, protection and sound health to continue rendering invaluable services to the nation and humanity.
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UNs hitherto accomplishments are not yet sufficient for the scale of the global challenge posed by climate change. The time for lip service and negotiations is over  full mobilization for action is needed.

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Climate change is perhaps the quintessential global or United Nations issue, involving as it does a major threat to human security without regard to national boundaries, deeply entwined national interests, and development and equity challenges. It is therefore a source of pride that the United Nations has, over the past 30 years, delivered 3 important, near-universal, multilateral treaties, 5 increasingly-conclusive scientific assessments of the problem, an integrated 2030 agenda for sustainable development fully integrating climate considerations, numerous summits and high-level engagements, and a robust treaty implementation regime that promotes transparency and engagement, including by non-state actors.

The accomplishments listed above, heartening as they may be, are, nevertheless, completely insufficient for the scale of the problem the world currently faces  and to the opportunities presented by addressing the climate challenge in a concerted manner. The vision enshrined in the Paris Agreement is extremely ambitious: global temperature change thresholds, peaking global emissions as soon as possible, carbon neutrality in the second half of the century (i.e. a no carbon future), and adapting to the already inevitable impacts of climate change. The United Nations system must embrace its goals and push all-out to achieve them  with determination, optimism and courage. The time for lip service and negotiations is over  full mobilization for action is the order of the day.

From the time the Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was adopted in 1992, through the adoption of the landmark Paris Agreement in 2015, much of the credit for keeping climate change on national and international agendas must go to the United Nations  from the on-going UNFCCC negotiation process, with its supporting secretariat, to the leadership of the Secretary-General in highlighting the need for action among world leaders and with the broader public.

However, we have entered a new era and different roles must come to the fore. In the wake of the adoption and entry into force of the Paris Agreement, the locus of action now shifts fundamentally to the national level, with local and regional entities and the private sector also having critical roles to play. Four imperatives can be identified:

1. Full implementation of the Paris Agreement, especially of its underlying nationally determined contributions (NDCs), and doing so in conjunction with achieving the full set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

2. Constant positive reinforcement of, and pressure for, enhanced action. This means mobilization by all sectors from governments, civil society, and business, and especially high-level political engagement to lead the way.

3. The ongoing response to the climate challenge must be centred around a commitment to a just world  in the coming crucial decade and for future generations. The most vulnerable people need to be supported by governments and the international community, and the economic transformations that will be necessary need to be planned carefully and promote socially just outcomes.

4. The final imperative is the need for more and better information: what can be done (and how), and what is happening in the atmosphere and the environment, in the economy, and in the implementation of response strategies. This is key to moving forward and to fairness and transparency.

What can and should the United Nations be doing to advance these four imperatives? Activities can be grouped in four thematic areas:

Convening and advocating at high level

Given the urgent, and ongoing, need to accelerate and intensify action to reduce emissions in all countries and to adapt to climate change impacts, all relevant UN agencies must use their convening and advocacy powers to push for greater ambition, showcase the leaders and shame the laggards. Heads of state and government need to be periodically engaged so that the vision they launched in Paris is carried through and not frustrated by competing internal agendas.

Supporting implementation

In line with the need to advocate for enhanced action is the obligation to do a much better job at country level, and in inter-agency work, of supporting the development and implementation of nationally determined contributions, and the related national and sectoral plans, including effective adaptation planning and support. Finance is essential for ambitious implementation. The Secretary-General and the UN can direct at changing investment patterns and unleashing the power of capital flows to achieve climate and sustainability objectives.

Holding states and other actors accountable

The UN, especially UNFCCC in collaboration with other agencies, has a central role in holding governments, business and local authorities to account for doing what they have promised. The status of implementation of nationally determined contributions (NDCs) and what is the impact on emission trends  nationally and globally  are crucial pieces in the UNs watchdog role.

Sharing scientific information and good practices

Sharing and promoting information on what adaptation and emission-reduction actions can be taken, their estimated costs and their impacts can be a powerful promoter of action. It reinforces the case that action is not expensive but rather reduces significantly the climate-related losses and brings about other benefits  and that the problem is solvable. The UN, working with the scientific community and partners like environmental NGOs, community leaders, progressive business and the media, can help to ensure well-informed decision-makers and publics.

Conclusion

The challenges posed by global climate change are huge and there is no time to lose. All actors must play their appropriate roles  national governments, the private sector, sub-national governments, civil society and an informed citizenry. Among them, the United Nations family of organisations has several indispensable roles to play, within its competencies and expertise: to convene, hold accountable, share information and support. These should be the UNs climate objectives for the next 25 years.

This is an abridged version of an article under the same title prepared in the context of the UN2100 Initiative of the Foundation for Global Governance and Sustainability (FOGGS). For the full article see here.
A scene from JTBC's new drama "SKY Castle" / Courtesy of JTBC



By Park Jin-hai



A new JTBC drama, featuring high class families' education craze to help their children gain a ticket to Seoul National University (SNU) and rise to "Kennedy family" status in Korea, has been unveiled.



"SKY Castle," premiered on Friday, starring veteran actresses Yum Jung-ah, Lee Tae-ran, Yoon Se-a, Oh Na-ra and Kim Seo-hyung, reveals the strategies and dirty tricks of elite mothers from families of medical doctors and law professors living in affluent residences to secure their children a position to attend the SNU medical school.



"SKY" alludes to the prestigious trio of universities, Seoul National University, Korea University and Yonsei University.



"SKY Castle" is a satirical look at Korea's education system today, where it has become harder for poor families to climb the social ladder through the means of education. The story is told through the tales of rich families' twisted ambitions.



The first episode started with a luxurious celebration party for Lee Myung-ju's son, played by Kim Jeong-nan. Her son was just accepted to the most coveted SNU medical school. Han Seo-jin, played by Yum, is desperate for her daughter to make the family reach three generations of medical doctors, and plans from A to Z and throws the posh party for the son wishing to obtain his portfolio.



Yet the seemingly perfect Lee Young-ju's family meets a tragic end in the second episode with the suicide of Lee. Their son left the "hellish" family leaving behind a diary stored on a tablet.



The son they knew as gentle and smart wrote, "I want to die. Just kill me. I searched on the web how to commit suicide Since elementary school, mother has hit me when I wrote even one wrong answer in the exam. I thought it was normal to any family I want to slice my wrist. From 10, my only wish is to escape this house. Until then just study hard as if I'm dead."



From hiring illegal help from a law professor to write an application cover letter to a college entrance coordinator that costs over 100 million won a year to hire, the black comedy with the help of great acting performances of veteran actresses immersed drama fans in the stories of SKY Castle, where "Korea's 0.1% elite live together to rise even higher, endless greed spreads its wings."



"I'm a ball of greed. I live desperately in the belief that my husband and two children's success is the same as my own success," said actress Yum on her character during the press conference, Thursday. "By looking at the stories of parents and children who run around like crazy (for this one goal), as a mother myself, I was shocked and worried if this is what I will really face in the future."



Director Cho Hyun-tak said, "The drama is about very limited number of people. Looking at their lives, audiences might feel that they are watching them outside from a window, but they can also draw some similarities to their own lives as well. That can be interesting."



"SKY Castle" airs at 11 p.m. on JTBC on Friday and Saturday.


By Jhoo Dong-chan



Korea's pharmaceutical and bio shares have managed to hold up well despite financial authorities' recent ruling that Samsung BioLogics, the nation's largest bio stock, intentionally violated accounting rules in 2015.



Market analysts say the decision has rather cleared away uncertainty that has clouded the future course of the biopharmaceutical arm of Samsung Group.



On the day after the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC), the auditing unit of the Financial Commission Services (FSC), concluded Nov. 14 that the company cooked its books by inflating net profits in 2015 before it went public in 2016, other major bio shares enjoyed an upturn.



According to the Korea Exchange, major pharmaceutical and bio shares such as JW Life Science, Celltrion and Yuhan gained over 1 percent on the Nov. 15 closing. These shares have since remained volatile.



"It is Samsung BioLogics' problem. It doesn't need to influence other bio shares on the Seoul bourse," Hana Financial Investment analyst Sun Min-jung said in a research note.



"The SFC's ruling is rather a positive factor to eliminate uncertainty that has clouded the future course of Samsung BioLogics and other bio shares."



Ha In-hwan, an analyst at SK Securities, said investors are likely to buy Samsung's rival shares reflecting their high expectations on the nation's pharmaceutical and bio shares.



"Ironically, prices of other bio shares nosedived while the share price of Samsung BioLogics enjoyed a gain on the closing before the SFC's decision," he said.



"Now, uncertainty has diminished regarding the issue. Investor confidence is likely to recover further."



Korean firms' alliances with global players are also expected to provide the impetus for the growth of the nation's bio shares.



Kolon Life Science, an affiliate of Kolon TissueGene, also said on Nov. 19 it signed a deal with U.S.-based Mundipharma to license out Invossa, its gene therapy designed to treat osteoarthritis, for the Japanese market. The firm said the deal could be potentially worth 667.7 billion won ($591.60 million).



Analysts now pick Hanmi Pharmaceutical as the next rising star among the nation's bio shares.



Hanmi said on Oct. 31 that firm's new drug candidate for the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia has been designated as an orphan drug by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This is the third time a Hanmi-developed drug candidate has obtained orphan drug designation from the U.S. FDA. The term orphan drug denotes a pharmaceutical agent developed to treat a rare medical condition.



Hanmi's hyperinsulinemia drug candidate Glucagon Analog and oral cancer drug Oraxol were given orphan drug status in February and April, respectively.




Analysts suggest policy prioritizing innovation, productivity



By Park Hyong-ki



President Moon Jae-in's key economic policies supporting fast minimum wage hikes and income redistribution without spurring productivity and innovation in the private sector have hurt the economy and its future potential, analysts say.



The side effects caused by the so-called income growth policy do not pose a downside risk as much as the ongoing trade war between the U.S. and China.



But analysts say the severe impact from the wage hikes and structural reform delays has "exacerbated" the uncertainties over the Korean economy.



And it has led to a "significant lowering" of the country's growth potential in the medium to long term, they said.





Christian de Guzman, Moody's Investors Service vice president

"The Moon government's labor market measures do not pose as much downside risk as the U.S.-China trade conflict. Rather, they add to or exacerbate the uncertainties from the U.S.-China trade conflict," said Christian de Guzman, vice president & senior credit officer at Moody's Investors Service, in an email interview.



"In an environment of slowing growth, those measures have gained limited traction. Conversely, they could have gained more traction under more supportive growth conditions."



He added the country's exposure to the U.S.-China trade row and the tightening of global liquidity pose the most "prominent near-term risk" to the economy, leading it to project Korea to grow 2.5 percent in 2018 and 2.3 percent in 2019. This is lower than the Bank of Korea's forecast of 2.7 percent in 2018 and 2019.



Its fundamentals remain strong as its economy is well diversified with a high level of competitiveness when compared with its peers.



However, the administration's policy won't work in times of a slowdown, but has only weakened the job market.









"In other words, the current environment of slowing economic growth in Korea  precipitated in part by the deteriorating outlook for global growth  does not provide a sufficient buffer for the labor market to adjust to the government's measures without weakening unemployment," De Guzman said.



Alicia Garcia Herrero, chief economist of Natixis Asia, called Moon's income growth policy "detrimental and outdated," saying it cannot help boost either income or growth amid the slowdown.



She suggested the administration's second economic team, which will soon be headed by the incoming Finance Minister Hong Nam-ki, to change its strategy by putting priority on spurring innovation and labor productivity backed by reforms.





Alicia Garcia Herrero, Natixis Asia chief economist

"The only solution is productivity, which basically boils down to innovation and human capital," Herrero said.



"The reason its income policy is so detrimental for Korea is proven by the reduction in employment creation by small- and medium-sized enterprises as one would expect."



Herrero said she considered the policy had more adverse effects on the economy than the challenges from the U.S.-China tit-for-tat tariffs.



"The trade war might, ironically, help Korea as it makes Chinese products less competitive in the U.S. market. In that regard, I do think the income policy is more detrimental for Korea than the trade war," she said.



One of the adverse effects from the income growth policy Korea saw was an increasing number of companies leaving the country to establish production plants in Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam.



"Samsung is one of the first movers, but smaller companies pushed by Moon's policy are following," she said.





Rajiv Biswas, IHS Markit Asia chief economist






A college student gives a speech during a rally organized by progressive activists at Gwanghwamun Square, downtown Seoul on Nov. 18, to welcome North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's possible visit to the South. / Korea Times photo by Suh Jae-hoon







By Yi Whan-woo



Progressive-minded activists are calling for North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to visit Seoul promptly to speed up inter-Korean reconciliation.

But this has irked some conservatives because the activists are holding rallies where they speak highly of Kim and demand that South Koreans should welcome him in a "respectful manner."

On Nov. 18, left-wing activists organized a rally at Gwanghwamun Square in downtown Seoul. The rally was the second of its kind since the group was launched on Nov. 7.

The group, roughly translated as the Committee for Paektu Praise, is named after the Mount Paektu bloodline, a three-generation lineage of North Korean leadership descended from founding leader Kim Il-sung.

The rally was held only 50 meters from the U.S. Embassy in Korea. The event involved speeches in which participants welcomed the young North Korean leader's possible visit to the South in advance.

They underscored Kim's promise to come here during his September summit with President Moon Jae-in in Pyongyang and hung massive photos of the two leaders holding hands and a panoramic view of Mount Paektu.

Among the placards were ones reading "We welcome Chairman Kim Jong-un's Seoul visit," and "Let's bring forward unification by implementing the agreements reached by the leaders of the South and the North."

"It is a courtesy for us to welcome Kim, as President Moon was welcomed by North Koreans," said senior committee member Kim hang-sung. "It is good for peace and unification of the Korean Peninsula."

Participants wear flower-shaped masks and hold placards and flags of the Korean Peninsula to welcome North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's possible visit to Seoul. / Korea Times photo by Suh Jae-hoon



Some participants wore flower-shaped masks and wore stickers reading "Seoul," "visit," "fervently," and "welcome" on their cheeks.

During the speeches, seven participants, including four college students, shared what they thought of Kim and how his possible visit would contribute to inter-Korean relations.

"My first thought was that he has a really good voice," said a Hongik University student surnamed Koo, referring to Kim's New Year's address at which he proposed reconciliation after carrying out a series of military provocations a year ago.

"I believe what we saw on television is Kim's genuine character," Koo said.

A Kwangwoon University student surnamed Lee said, "Everyone should welcome the visit of North Korea's supreme leader, because praising and encouraging inter-Korean relations will take us to unification."

A Sungkyunkwan University student surnamed Kim accused the U.S. of "preventing Kim's visit," saying, "The U.S. has been separating the South and the North and Kim's trip will prove how we can overpower the U.S."

Another student surnamed Choo said Kim's New Year's address was "full of his thoughts to resolve the people's issues in an autonomous and self-reliant manner."

The speeches were followed by artistic performances, including a play in which the actors and actresses criticized conservative lawmakers for opposing Kim's visit and called for "a unified effort" for peace.

Another play was about Naengmyun (cold noodle) and taedonggang beer that gained public attention in Seoul during Moon's Pyongyang visit.

The audience chanted and cheered as the actors sang a song about delicious North Korean food.

At a separate rally also held at Gwanghwamun Square, 10 anti-U.S. activists, including a pastor, held a prayer meeting. They called for "kicking U.S. imperialists out of the peninsula" while protesting against the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery in the South.

"The U.S. is only asking North Korea to denuclearize without mentioning a peace treaty at all," said the pastor, whose name was withheld. "The U.S. should declare an end to the Korean War if it deems the South as its ally. Otherwise it is merely plotting to separate the two Koreas forever."

Some conservative activists organized a rally protesting the pro-Kim rally.

"I don't understand how they can advocate Kim and not denounce him," one protester said. "Kim has no intention of giving up his nuclear program and those pro-Kim activists are committing treason. The rallies should be stopped immediately."

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Unification said on Nov. 19 that Kim could visit the South within this year, despite little progress being made in the Washington-Pyongyang talks on denuclearization.

"We will make preparations to ensure that the agreements that the South and the North agreed upon, including Kim's trip to the South, take place without a hitch within this year," ministry spokesman Baik Tae-hyun said. "I hope that progress in the denuclearization talks can help speed the peace process on the Korean peninsula."

Regarding the talks between Washington and Pyongyang and their impact on Kim's possible Seoul trip, he said, "It is a matter that needs to be worked out by those countries."

Chung Dong-young, chairman of the liberal Party for Democracy and Peace, said the National Assembly should arrange a speech for Kim if he visits Seoul.

Chung, a unification minister during the Roh Moo-hyun presidency (2003-2008), visited the North.

"Kim's declaration of denuclearization and a new vision of state strategies in an address to the National Assembly will mark a turning point on the peninsula," Chung said at a party leadership meeting.

"The issue was discussed during a dinner meeting between National Assembly Speaker Moon Hee-sang and leaders of five major political parties on Nov. 16 and conservative opposition parties didn't express negative or opposing views on Kim's parliamentary speech."

Chung said the North Korean leader should keep his promise to visit Seoul, saying it would also be beneficial to the North.

Twenty-four members of the Jeju provincial council presented a motion for a resolution calling for the leaders of the two Koreas to visit Mount Halla together.

The measures came after President Moon said on Oct. 28 that he could climb Mount Halla on South Korea's southernmost Jeju Island with Kim.

Paektu and Halla are the tallest mountains in their respective countries.

Political sources believe Kim's possible visit to Mount Halla will facilitate cross-border reconciliation.
By Yi Whan-woo



The two Koreas may start a joint field study this week at the earliest on reconnecting their railways, according to a unification ministry official, Sunday.



The study will be possible if the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) Sanctions Committee on North Korea grants a sanctions exemption, Friday.



The United States on Sunday also granted an exemption to its independent sanctions and allowed the study to proceed.



Such developments fuel speculation that other inter-Korean projects may proceed, under a condition that they faithfully observe sanctions on Pyongyang and sufficient consultations are made with the UNSC in advance.



The UNSC had thwarted the rail inspection plan for months, amid U.S. concerns it may violate nuclear sanctions that include severe limits on shipments of fuel and other goods into the North.



The survey would require the South to bring to the North fuel, food and a variety of equipment, including cars to test on northern tracks, as well as engineers.



"The joint field study can begin soon, possibly this week," a unification ministry official said. "We're coordinating the final schedule with the North."



If realized, it will begin at both west and east coasts simultaneously.



With UNSC and U.S. approvals, the two Koreas plan to hold a groundbreaking ceremony by the end of this year. But moving beyond surveys and tape-cuttings is still not likely without lifting of U.S.-led sanctions against North Korea, according to analysts.



"The U.S. wants to have leverage on North Korea in denuclearization talks. And it does not want South Korea to push ahead with inter-Korean projects too quickly and apparently weaken sanctions," said Shin Beom-cheol, a senior researcher at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies. "Of course, the South will be careful not to violate the sanctions but it still can be misunderstood as diverting from the alliance against the North."



Some analysts speculated the approval for the joint field study may have positive impact on the Washington-Pyongyang dialogue for denuclearization.



The two sides were scheduled to hold high-level talks in the U.S. early this month. But the plan was called off at the last minute as they failed to narrow differences on to what extent the sanctions should be eased and also to what extent the North's denuclearization should be verified.



The inter-Korean projects come in line with agreements reached between President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un during their summits this year.



They include modernizing underground cables at the truce village of Panmunjeom and restoring North Korea's forests.



On Nov. 20, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo apparently raised concerns over a rift in the U.S.-South Korea alliance amid faster-than-expected cooperation between the two Koreas.



"We do want to make sure that peace on the peninsula and the denuclearization of North Korea aren't lagging behind the increase in the amount of interrelationship between the two Koreas," he said. "We view them as tandem, as moving forward together."




By Kim Hyun-bin



The government's lack of policies and budget to contain highly infectious tuberculosis is stirring fears of a possible outbreak.



In the wee hours of Nov. 19, a tuberculosis (TB) patient in his 40s left a TB specialized hospital where he was in quarantine and disappeared. The patient only identified by his surname Kim was diagnosed with TB and had been getting treatment at the Seobuk Hospital in Seoul for three months.



Kim took advantage of the lax nighttime security at the hospital and changed into ordinary clothes and departed, according to police.



The Eunpyeong Police Station in Seoul has been trying to trace Kim's whereabouts but has so far been unsuccessful.



The U.S. Centers for Disease Control notes, "The bacteria that cause TB are spread through the air from person to person when a person with the disease coughs, speaks or sings. People nearby may breathe in these bacteria and become infected. People with TB usually have symptoms and may spread the TB bacteria to others."



TB patients are treated separately from other patients due to the highly infectious nature of the disease, however, when a patient runs away it becomes a desperate chase by police and creates public fear of a possible outbreak.



Even though there have been several cases of TB patients on the loose, the government has been irresponsible in its response; and the lack of a budget has made it difficult to prevent and manage TB patients.



Among the 35 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) nations Korea has the most TB patients accounting for 77 out of every 100,000 people.



Police pursuit of runaway patient



There have been several incidences where a TB patient has broken quarantine. On Oct. 4, a patient in his late 50 ran and was caught on the subway in Seoul still wearing a hospital gown.



Hundreds of passengers on the subway had to be evacuated and health officials had to conduct an investigation.



Currently, there are no government countermeasures but to chase after TB patients who defy quarantine measures.



The Korea Center for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) has requested the government and the National Assembly to allow isolation wards to be built in the hospital to prevent TB patients from fleeing, but has been rejected for three consecutive years.



"When a TB patient is hospitalized they are not allowed to leave, however, we do not have isolation wards that prevent such patients from leaving. They are being treated in ordinary wards that have open access," Seo Hye-sook head of the medical treatment department at Seobuk Hospital said.



Under the Fire Services Act, it is mandatory for regular wards to be in an open area, allowing medical staff to constantly watch over patients.



However, most treatments are provided for free and there is a lack of budget and personnel to manage TB patients.



"It wouldn't be a surprise if all medical staff became infected with TB. The working environment here is really bad. When Kim left the hospital during the weekend, there were only two medical staff on duty. We are heavily short of personnel," Seo added.



Only 500 million won in gov't support



The problem comes down to money. The isolation units requested from the government are estimated to cost 4 billion won ($3.5 billion) each, however, it is having trouble coming up with the money.



"We have asked the Seoul city and central governments to pay for 2 billion each to construct the isolation units. The city government came up with the funding but the central government did not. That is the reason we are strongly requesting the National Assembly for the money," a KCDC official said.



There is a shortage of government funds to be appropriated for specialized TB hospitals. According to the KCDC, there are seven hospitals nationwide that provide free TB treatment for families in need. However, the total yearly budget to treat the patients is 500 million won each.



"We have more TB patients than any other OECD nation, but there is a big hole in managing them. Even just one TB patient on the loose could become a grave threat to the public. Facilities to treat TB patients are direly needed but we are having difficulty receiving the funds we need," a KCDC official said.




South Korean small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are finding it hard to even hire foreign workers amid rising wages and sluggish economic conditions, a poll by a local business federation said Sunday.



According to the Korea Federation of Small and Medium Business (KBIZ) that checked member companies that did not report hiring foreign nationals with E-9 visas this year, despite having done so in 2017, firms cited the business downturn as the main reason for opting to not hire foreign workers.



The survey was carried out on 577 manufacturers from Monday through Wednesday as the number of companies that sought the government's permission to hire foreigners dropped off this year.



KBIZ said 38.3 percent of companies said high labor costs had become a burden, followed by 24.1 percent that claimed a generally adverse environment was the reason for not hiring employees.



As of January, the country's hourly minimum wage rose by 16.4 percent on-year to year to 7,530 won ($6.20) per hour, from 6,470 won in 2017. The government has set a goal of pushing the base wage up to at least 10,000 won by 2020.



The latest poll then showed only 40.4 percent of SMEs were contemplating hiring any workers next year, which is not good for the job market overall.



In particular, smaller sized companies said they will probably only retain their present staff or even cut down on the workforce in 2019, as they are worried about possible economic hardships going forward.



Besides wages and lack of confidence in the future, SMEs said they were reluctant to hire foreign workers, due to communication issues, low productivity compared with the wages they must provide, idleness, frequent switching of jobs, and generally complicated administrative red tape and hassle related to finding lodging and insurance arrangements.



"Up till last year, there was considerable demand for foreign workers among firms who could not find local employees, but this year things have changed in the face of the minimum wage hike and general uncertainties," a KBIZ source said. (Yonhap)




By Kim Rahn





Former Gwangju Mayor Yoon Jang-hyun
By Kim Rahn





Gyeonggi Province Governor Lee Jae-myung speaks to reporters at the Seongnam branch of the Suwon Prosecutors' Office, Gyeonggi Province, Saturday, after being questioned over multiple allegations involving his family and violations of the Election Law. / Yonhap
South Korean President Park Chung-hee, left, waves hand with his U.S. counterpart Jimmy Carter during a welcoming ceremony for the latter's Seoul visit in June, 1979. Korea Times file



The United States pushed for high-level talks with South and North Korea on reducing military tensions in the late 1970s amid a controversy over a troop pullout or reduction plan, declassified diplomatic documents showed Sunday.



The rift between the presidents of the allies at that time  Park Chung-hee and Jimmy Carter  about the size of the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) was highlighted in a transcript of their talks in Seoul on June 30, 1979.



"I can't promise that we will freeze forces levels," Carter told Park, according to a White House document on their hourlong conversation.



Carter questioned South Korea's commitment to a hike in defense budgets to counter North Korea's rapid military buildup.



Park stressed his military was making efforts to beef up combat power but needed more time.



Cater asked, "My understanding is that you are particularly concerned about the presence of the Second (Infantry) Division and the Combined Forces Command. Do you also want the U.S. to maintain its protective nuclear umbrella as well?"



Park said yes. And Carter asked again, "If we decide to modify or reduce other force levels, you would like adequate notification and consultations?"



Park also said yes.



In the summit, Carter confirmed South Korea's clear opposition to either the withdrawal of the USFK or a scale-down, with the North's military threats growing. The 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.



Carter soon accelerated a drive for dialogue with North Korea on easing tensions.



He picked Jakarta as the venue for the planned trilateral meeting of senior officials.



It's "particularly convenient to all three parties, since each has official representation in the capital which can serve to support delegations for tripartite talks," according to another diplomatic cable.



The Indonesian government played the role of messenger between the U.S. and North Korea at that time.



Carter expressed his gratitude to Indonesian President Suharto for the Southeast Asian country's support in a personal letter.



"Your statesmanlike gesture has made it possible to begin a process which can only serve to reduce tensions in Asia and contribute to peace in the world," Carter said in the 1979 document found and released by James F. Person, a U.S. scholar.



Person, a professor of Korean Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, is leading a research project on U.S. diplomatic documents related to Korea.



A separate document suggested that Carter sought such a tripartite session from the early months of his tenure in 1977.



His National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski sent a note, dated on Aug. 5, 1977, to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, reading, "The President has read your paper concerning possible trilateral discussions between North Korea, South Korea and the United States, and has indicated that you should proceed to implement the suggested steps."



The U.S. also had a plan to invite China for a four-way "political conference" either as a full-time member or a mere observer.



"Alternatively, if the Chinese choose not to participate at all, we would be prepared to join trilateral discussions with the North and South Koreans to consider matters of mutual concern, including the future of the UN Command and other measures to reduce tensions on the peninsula," the message read.



But the Carter government's efforts for such talks bore no fruit, apparently as the North showed a tepid response. (Yonhap)


By Yi Whan-woo





Cho Kuk, senior presidential secretary for civil affairs, asked the country's progressive Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) to join a presidential panel aimed at tackling labor and employment issues.







Launched on Nov. 22, the panel  the Economic, Social and Labor Council  is comprised of 17 representatives from firms, labor activist groups and government officials.







The KCTU, one of the country's largest labor umbrella groups and a staunch supporter of President Moon Jae-in, refused to join amid criticism that it is going too far to protect its vested interest.







"I wish heads of the council and the KCTU will join hands," Cho wrote on Facebook.







His comment comes after President Moon on Nov. 22 asked the KCTU to join the council to resolve labor market polarization.







The President said the relevant parties should talk to each other, make a compromise and share pain, instead of waging protest for its voice to be heard.







In a separate Facebook post on Nov. 22, Cho said the Moon government "cannot accept demands of all civic groups right away."







He referred to civic groups that have been supporters of Moon but are complaining about his policies.







Among them are the KCTU, People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy and Lawyers for a Democratic Society.







"What I can promise is that the Moon government is willing to talk with leaders of civic groups in a sincere and earnest manner," Cho said. "At this point, the government is to take a half-step to prepare for another half-step. And I encourage the KCTU, People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy and Lawyers for a Democratic Society to take a half-step together, although they are welcomed to criticize the government."


Rep. Chung Dong-young, center, leader of the minor opposition Party for Democracy and Peace, speaks during a press conference at the National Assembly, Monday. / Yonhap



By Park Ji-won



The minor opposition Party for Democracy and Peace (PDP) is seeking to introduce a bill to classify coercing others into drinking alcohol as an "act of violence."



This is part of measures the party drew up after PDP lawmaker Lee Yong-ju was caught for drunk driving in early November, party officials said.



Last week, party Chairman Rep. Chung Dong-young, while issuing a statement to apologize for Lee's behavior, vowed to take measures to change the country's drinking culture, including tougher punishment against drunk drivers.



As a follow-up measure, the party is preparing a bill to define coercing others into drinking as an act of violence.



"Coercing others to drink is still common in Korean society. But this violates individuals' rights. Such an act should no longer be condoned," a PDP official said.



Rep. Lee's case drew public attention because he himself had earlier proposed a bill to strengthen punishment against drunk drivers. Regardless of a court's decision, the party suspended his membership for three months, and recommended him to volunteer 100 hours to help victims of drunk driving.



There has been a fierce debate on the weak penalties for drunk driving, as it carries a maximum three-year prison sentence for an ordinary car accident involving a driver under the influence of alcohol. Specific measures had not been introduced until recently.



Yoon Chang-ho, a 22-year-old soldier of the Korean Augmentation Troops to the United States Army, was killed by a drunk driver in Busan on Sept. 25, when he was on leave during the Chuseok holiday. The incident drew public attention attracting more than 400,000 signatures on the presidential office's petition website in one month urging 104 lawmakers to propose a bill to toughen punishment for those offenders.



Meanwhile, the Supreme Court's Sentencing Commission is also moving to toughen punishment against drunk driving.



The commission had a seminar Monday to discuss the level of sentencing for drunk driving and came up with the idea that South Korea is too generous regarding drunk driving and the level of the punishment lags behind what people actually feel.



"(Overseas punishment for drunk drivers), are imposed by the level of danger and based on science. But our law is not enough to meet that level," Choi Hyung-pyo, researcher of the Supreme Court's Sentencing Commission, Tuesday during the seminar.






KAI engineers assemble the company's FA-50 light attack fighter jet to be exported to the Philippines, at its manufacturing facility in Sacheon, South Gyeongsang Province, in this file photo. / Courtesy of KAI



Gov't urged to support local aerospace players



By Lee Min-hyung





KAI CEO Kim Jo-won
Supporters of Chinese Nationalist Party mayoral candidate Han Guo-yu wave flags during a campaign rally in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, Nov. 23. Taiwan's 2018 Midterm Elections will take place on Nov. 24. EPA



Taiwan began voting on Saturday in local elections, a key test of support for the island's pro-independence ruling party ahead of presidential polls in just over a year, and will also hold a referendum on same-sex marriage.

The results will be closely watched in China, which claims self-ruled and proudly democratic Taiwan as its own and which has ramped up pressure on President Tsai Ing-wen and her administration since taking office in 2016.

In the run-up to the election, Tsai and her government have repeatedly said China is attempting to sway election results with its "political bullying" and "fake news", accusations Beijing denies.

"This is a fight for democracy," Tsai said at a rally in northeastern Taiwan on Friday.

"Our vote is a demonstration to the world that false information and external forces will not defeat Taiwan's democracy and the dignity of the Taiwanese."

More than 11,000 seats are up for grabs in municipalities, counties, townships and villages, with the southern city of Kaohsiung a key battleground for the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which has held the city for two decades.

Candidates have fanned out across the island to press the flesh and canvass votes, and have held noisy, colourful rallies that have become the hallmarks of Taiwan's vibrant democracy, in marked contrast to China where the Communist Party tolerates no dissent to its rule.

Tensions across the Taiwan Strait have heightened with China conducting military drills around the island and snatching away Taiwan's dwindling number of diplomatic allies.

Tsai's domestic reform initiatives, from the island's pension scheme to labour law, have also come under intense voter scrutiny recently.

Confidence in the government has waned in recent months after reform moves upset both the opposition and some supporters, who said Tsai had backed away from promises to reduce the deficit and cut pollution.

Underscoring Tsai's challenge will be a series of public votes on Saturday on whether to make same-sex marriage legal, an issue which has deeply divided Taiwan.

Tsai has made little progress despite campaigning on a promise of marriage equality in the run-up to elections in 2016.

In Asia's first such ruling, Taiwan's constitutional court declared in May last year that same-sex couples had the right to legally marry, and set a two-year deadline for legalisation.

Voters will also be asked whether the island should join the 2020 Tokyo Olympics as Taiwan, rather than "Chinese Taipei" ? the name agreed under a compromise signed in 1981.

A vote to compete under a Taiwan banner would further rile Beijing, which has never renounced the use of force to ensure eventual unification. (Reuters)




South Korea's Defence Ministry on Thursday (November 22) released a video of South amd North Korean military officers meeting at the border to reconnect a road across the two countries.

In the video, which was filmed in mid-November, military officers from the two Koreas were at the military demarcation line (MDL) during the road construction in the demilitarised zone (DMZ). Military officers from the two Koreas had short talks about the schedule and progress of construction, the ministry added.

The two Koreas reconnected a road across the MDL inside the DMZ on Thursday in joint efforts to exhume remains of soldiers killed duringKorea War, which was part of military agreement signed in latest inter-Korean summit in Pyongyang.

The 3 km-long tactical road was established in a site that the two parties have designated for the project as it was a notorious battle site of the war. (Reuters)




Kim J.M.



By Hwang Jae-ho



"Yes, I have a dream and I believe in that dream. Just watch me, facing up to the wall named destiny that is standing frigidly."



This is a part of the popular Korean song "Goose's Dream" by Insooni.



Most people have their own dreams, although they are in the middle of rough destiny. However, when I savor the lyrics of this song, North Korean defectors come to my mind. They seem to be near us, but at the same time they might be standing the farthest from us.



Some Koreans might be indifferent to North Korean defectors. However, the distance between South Koreans and the defectors cannot be narrowed down because although we wish to go near, some might be hesitant because they do not want to give defectors any unexpected offense.



On the other hand, it might be the same vice versa. The defector community is maybe not expanding itself because they are afraid of the biased gazes from South Koreans and their society. When each side hesitates, the distance never can be narrowed. We need to interact closely, listen to what is deep in their minds, and start melting them into our future.



Kim J.M. who I interviewed this week, has lived in South Korea more than 10 years already. What is her story? And what future will she have?





Kim J.M.


By Mahmood Elahi



This refers to the most cogent analysis: "Election 2018: House win means Democrats can scrutinize Trump's foreign policy," by Trudy Rubin, published in The Korea Times on Nov. 11.



American democracy has spoken. By electing Democrats in the House of Representatives, the voters have put a check on the tyranny of the Republican majority, controlling both houses and the presidency.



Democracy was invented by the ancient Athenians who believed aristocrats and oligarchs did not have any divine right to rule and ordinary people must have a say in governing as it touches their own lives. So they invented a system of government involving ordinary citizens and called it Demokratia  government by the people.



Democracy of the government by the people is a brilliant idea and like all brilliant ideas, it has some apparent contradictions  the most seductive one is majority rule. But this is not democracy, simply rule by the majority. When the Athenians allowed the majority to rule, the poor majority imposed heavy taxes on the rich minority who conspired to bring down democracy.



During the first hundred years of democracy in Athens, the party of the poor were so often triumphant that the rich and the well-born felt completely marginalized. They formed the party of the few, the oligarchs. When the people's party became tyrannical, the oligarchs plotted civil war.



After several bouts of civil war, the Athenians took practical steps to stem any tyranny of the majority and make democracy work for all.



Central to this was the Athens Council, composed of 500 people chosen through lottery, to represent a cross section of society. All social classes were equally represented. The Athens Council had the power to override any decision that ignored the legitimate concerns of the minority. The idea of checks and balances was born.



Today, in post-industrial America, the poor are not the majority. The majority is middle-class, blue collar, mostly white. The poor African-Americans and Latin Americans are the minority.



About 65 percent of Americans are white and the other 35 percent are black and brown. A slim majority of whites, about 40 percent, support the Republicans. With the Republican Party, backed by their support, controlling all branches of government for the last two years, the checks and balances inherent in the separation of power have all but disappeared.



Now with a rainbow coalition of black, brown and young college-educated white minorities, the Democratic Party has been able to defeat the lily-white Republican majority in the House of Representatives, restoring checks and balances in the government.



In a rapidly changing multicultural America, the multi-ethnic Democratic House truly represents the diversity of America. The House now has its first Native Americans, Somali Americans and a second Korean-American as its members.



This is in stark contrast to the earlier overwhelmingly white Republican-controlled House, in a society where blue-collar whites, although a majority, are a steadily declining share of the population, rural in a society that is growingly urban, and less educated in a society becoming highly educated.



The victory of the Democratic coalition will have important ramifications in the coming days. With the control of various House committees, the Democrats will be able to scrutinize Trump's autocratic and even anti-democratic exercise of power. This might encourage some moderate Republicans to join hands with the Democrats to stop Trump's undemocratic activities in the name of executive privilege.



However, if the Republican-controlled Senate decides to oppose the House Democrats in the name of partisan solidarity with the president, things might turn ugly. Though the Democrats will not be able to pass legislation without the approval of the Republican-controlled Senate, neither can the Republicans pass any legislation without the consent of the Democrats. As such, any confrontation between the House and the Senate will lead to a legislative gridlock in Washington. America does not have any nonpartisan Athens Council to override such an impasse.



The Democratic victory will also have important implications for foreign policy. As Rubin so correctly points out: "the shift to a Democratic majority in the House gives Democrats control of key foreign policy committees, along with the power to hold investigations and issue subpoenas. That will have a public impact the president can't ignore."



This will also put pressure on President Trump to show results in his negotiations for denuclearization of North Korea. Although North Korean leader Kim Jong-un agreed to dismantle his nuclear stockpiles after his summit with President Trump, he has not taken any steps toward the goal. Trump's pressure to denuclearize through maintaining sanctions on North Korea has not worked. Trump will need South Korean President Moon's dual-track diplomacy of gradual normalization of North-South relations and incremental lifting of sanctions to push North Korea to denuclearize. House Democrats will demand Trump to show progress.



Beyond that, the Democrats and the Republicans will have to find some modus vivendi to make American democracy work.



Mahmood Elahi (omega51@sympatico.ca) is a freelance writer in Ottawa.




By Chang Se-moon





With new leadership in place for economic policies in Korea, this may be a good time to explore midterm corrections of President Moon Jae-in's economic policies.



My suggestions below are based on the understanding President Moon has a great sympathy for the poor in Korea, which should and will remain the same.



My suggestions are also based on my lifetime studies of the economy that has its own mind and does not always behave the way leaders with a big heart such as Moon want it to behave.



I hope my suggestions will move the Korean economy closer to one that Moon envisions in the long run.



The latest policy initiative in Korea appears to be joint ownership of profits of large businesses with their supplier firms.



In brief, the initiative is to take a portion of profits away from large businesses and give it to small and medium-sized businesses that supply intermediate goods to these large businesses. Some may call it profit sharing, but I will call it redistribution of profits (RDP) from large, successful businesses to their supplier firms.



My suggestion on RDP is to forget it. Calculating corporate profits, large or small, is more an art than a science. The policy will eventually dry up corporate profits from their accounting ledgers.



Tax revenues from corporate income tax will dry up as well. Resolution of disputes arising from the policy, if implemented, will require creation of another useless bureaucracy that will waste a lot of tax revenues.



As to labor-management disputes, work stoppages through labor strikes should no longer be allowed for the next five years. Any pending and future disputes during the period should be required for resolution by a special nine-member Labor Management Task Force with members coming equally from unions, large business groups and the academic Korea Economic Association.



As I suggested in my Jan. 22 article of this column, when demands by labor unions are excessive enough to jeopardize the very existence of businesses, these businesses will move to other countries. There are many countries, developed as well as developing, that are anxious to have Korean businesses on their soil.



The policy that requires all employers, both the public and the private sectors, to convert part-time employees to full-time employees should also be suspended for the next five years.



There is no way the policy can be implemented fairly in Korean society that stresses friends and family above any fair competition. More importantly, this policy will simply lead private sector employers to stop hiring anyone beyond absolute minimum requirements.



Higher minimum wages are strongly recommended, but should no longer be required for the next five years. Retail markets in Korea consist of numerous micro-businesses run by hardworking Koreans. Many of these businesses are barely surviving.



The policy of a dramatic minimum wage increase is good for those who have jobs and are now paid higher wages. These higher wages, however, are paid not by business owners, but by those who lost their jobs.



Another policy idea floating around in Korea today relates to flexible working hours subject to the average maximum of 52 hours per week. This policy will have negative impact not only on employers who may have to meet fluctuating demand for their products, but on employees as well who will not be earning overtime pay.



Flexibility is especially important for businesses that depend on exports to other countries. My suggestion is to suspend any limitation of weekly working hours beyond the requirement of overtime pay, and allow full flexibility of businesses.



Just imagine that the government controls every aspect of the highly popular Namdaemun Market. It is simply not possible to operate the market as efficiently as it is now, if it is run by government planning and regulation.



The only reason why the market works and is such a popular place is because it is operated by supply and demand with numerous sellers who try to earn a living through blood and sweat.



As I stressed in my Aug. 20 article in this column, businesses should be allowed to breathe. If we choke them through numerous regulations, even if these regulations are well intended, they will simply not survive and those that can leave Korea will leave.



I do not want new leaders in economic policy to abandon the so-called income-led growth policy that reflects the intention of President Moon.



All I want to see is for these new policymakers to suspend some of the new policies for the next five years, allow the economy to grow, and then revisit what can be done to implement the noble idea through, for instance, progressive individual income taxation and increased social safety net.



The current policies and floating ideas, unless corrected, will hurt exactly the people President Moon wants to help.





Chang Se-moon (changsemoon@yahoo.com) is the director of the Gulf Coast Center for Impact Studies.




By John J. Metzler





UNITED NATIONS  The continuing crisis in Yemen, a country beset with tribal fault lines, jolted by sectarian clashes and magnified by a clash of cultures between Arab monarchies and the Islamic Republic of Iran, has shaken the Arabian Peninsula to the core.







Now after five years of warfare between a teetering central government and Iranian-backed rebels, an already battered and impoverished land has now emerged as the world's leading humanitarian crisis.







Earlier this year U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres warned, "Yemen is the world's worst humanitarian crisis. As the conflict enters its fourth year, more than 22 million people, three-quarters of the population, need humanitarian aid and protection."







Tragically the situation has only worsened with punishing rounds of Saudi Arabian airstrikes on the Iranian-backed Houthi insurgents. Civilians comprise the tragic collateral damage of a conflict that has expanded ever since 2011 when the so-called Arab Spring triggered revolts.







Yemen slipped into chaos in autumn of 2014 when the Houthi militants seized the capital, and subsequently control of the government.







A lethal proxy war has emerged in fractured Yemen between the central government composed of largely Sunni Muslims supported by the Saudis and an Arab coalition and the Shiite rebels backed by Islamic Iran. The rebels hold the capital Sanaa while the government holds the strategic port of Aden. The country remains effectively divided.







A recent Security Council briefing highlighted the depth of the humanitarian crisis. The Famine Early Warning Systems Networks, which is supported by the United States, warned, "Yemen faces the largest food security emergency in the world, and the worsening humanitarian outlook requires urgent action to reduce the likelihood of significant loss of life." Yemen's food security was characterized as facing a "catastrophic deterioration."







Mark Lowcock, the U.N.'s humanitarian coordinator, told the council, "From the two famines declared this century, in Somalia in 2011 and in South Sudan in 2017, a very painful lesson is that most fatalities occur before the famine is declared." He added, "I am not saying that widespread famine has already taken hold in Yemen. But that is what we are trying to prevent."







Nonetheless Lowcock said, "It is abundantly clear that Yemen is already facing mass hunger and severe food insecurity." He added, "The U.N. and humanitarian agencies are implementing the largest aid operation in the world, reaching nearly 8 million Yemenis across the country every month."







Delivering humanitarian aid to the besieged civilians involves open ports, working infrastructure and a viable ceasefire or peace agreement among the warring parties.







U.N. Special Envoy for Yemen Martin Griffiths told the council that both the government and the Ansar Allah Houthi rebels are committed to working on a political solution. Both sides made assurances to attend peace talks, though such willingness often disappears as fast as the morning dew.







United Kingdom Ambassador Karen Pierce remarked, "It again bears repeating that only a political solution will actually bring this dreadful conflict to an end."







Naturally a political compromise is difficult after a bloody knockdown civil war which is as rooted in sectarian Islam as in Yemen's own quilt of tribal politics.







Interestingly the Sultanate of Oman has quietly served as an honest broker between the Saudis and Iran in this brutal conflict.







Back in the 1960s former North Yemen was mired in conflict. In this case the Saudis, Jordanians and British backed a monarchist force facing a left-wing insurgency supported by Nasser's Egypt. North and South Yemen were unified only in 1990.







The former Obama administration once presented Yemen as a shining success story in a turbulent Middle East. That was before the country fell into its current turmoil. When the Saudi coalition became directly involved in 2015, the U.S. assumed the problem would soon be solved. The Obama administration shifted to a haphazard hands-off policy.







The Trump team inherited the crisis but then too eagerly embraced the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia while supporting robust counter-terrorist actions against Al-Qaida. But in light of the Saudis' ham-handed handling of the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the U.S. has quietly reappraised policy toward a vital Middle East partner.







U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stated in Washington, "The U.S. calls on all parties to support U.N. Special Envoy Martin Griffiths in finding a peaceful solution to the conflict in Yemen." He stressed, "It is time to end this conflict."







) is a United Nations correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues. He is the author of "Divided Dynamism: The Diplomacy of Separated Nations: Germany, Korea, China."





John J. Metzler ( jjmcolumn@earthlink.net


When fast-moving fires swept through both suburban neighborhoods and rural enclaves in California wine country last year, many residents complained that they only learned of the late-night blaze from neighbors banging on their doors, barking dogs or calls from friends  not from official emergency alerts.



With flames at their doorsteps, people had to grab what they could and flee. Some didn't evacuate in time; 44 people died. That terrifying scene has continued to play out, again and again.



During the Carr fire last summer in Redding and Shasta County, some residents didn't receive evacuation orders in time, or at all. A grandmother and her two grandchildren died when fire engulfed their trailer. Their family said they never got word of the evacuation order and didn't know they were in danger until it was too late.



And this month, many residents in Paradise said they didn't get emergency alerts as the Camp fire closed in on the town. Others said they received official notifications only after it was already obvious that their lives were in danger. More than 60 people died in the fire and more than 600 people were still missing Friday.



In each case, local officials said the fires moved so fast and so unpredictably that their emergency alert systems couldn't keep pace. And it is certainly true that California has been experiencing more ferocious, destructive, swiftly spreading fires in recent years  fueled by drought and warmer temperatures.



But the disasters have also revealed that the state's emergency warning systems, which are generally administered by cities and counties, are not working adequately.



Residents understandably assume they'll receive notification well before they are in imminent danger, and with clear instructions on what to do, even if they haven't signed up in advance for alerts.



And why wouldn't they? We live in a hyper-connected world, and we're used to being bombarded with robocalls and Amber Alerts. There is an expectation that local authorities will use that technology in emergencies to provide accurate, essential information.



However, a state audit report following the wine country fires found that Sonoma County's emergency alert procedures were "uncoordinated and included gaps, overlaps and redundancies."



Those problems are not unique to Santa Rosa, experts say. Local alert systems across the state are inconsistent, underfunded and ill-prepared for fast-moving emergencies.



Many counties and cities in California have relied on reverse 911 systems that automatically dial landlines. But as more people use cellphones instead of landlines, that system becomes increasingly ineffective. Because of that, officials in some communities have relied on residents to voluntarily sign up for emergency phone calls. But sign-up levels are low.



Local authorities can tap the federal Wireless Emergency Alert system to send an Amber Alert-like message to any mobile phone within range of a working cell tower. But investigations following the recent deadly fires found that officials haven't used the system much, relying instead on private vendors' systems that don't reach as many people.



Some agencies, particularly in small counties with limited staff, were unfamiliar with how to use the federal system. Others feared a mass message that went out too broadly could cause a panic that makes evacuations more difficult. Those are legitimate issues.



In response, the Federal Communication Commission adopted new rules earlier this year requiring wireless providers to deliver emergency alerts to more geographically precise areas by November 2019. That should encourage local authorities to use the alerts more frequently. A bill signed by Gov. Jerry Brown in September will set statewide standards for when and how to warn the public about wildfires, floods and other emergencies.



If California is going to protect its residents from the growing threat of wildfires, the state has to prepare for the unpredictable. Alerts alone won't save lives. Even if every resident of Paradise had received the first official notification of the fire and had begun to evacuate, they still might have been overtaken by the incredibly fast-moving fire or possibly been trapped in traffic on the few roads out of town.



Yet compared to the other more expensive and more politically fraught work needed to make California more wildfire-resilient _ such as requiring property owners to retrofit their homes with fire-safe materials, restricting development in high-fire areas and thinning and burning dense, overgrown forests  developing comprehensive, reliable emergency alert systems should be a relatively easy way to save lives.





The above editorial appeared in the Los Angeles Times. It was distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.




Moon's approval ratings slips further



President Moon Jae-in's job approval ratings have dropped to a record low since he took office in May 2017. A Realmeter survey showed his job approval rating was down to 52.2 percent. Moon had received a 65.3 percent job approval rating following his third summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in September, but the rating has since declined for eight straight weeks. A Gallup poll also showed a similarly low popularity level.



With Moon approaching the third year of his five-year term, it is worrisome that he is already losing much of the public support he received upon arriving at Cheong Wa Dae with the promise of building better lives for the people. Being elected on the heels of the corruption scandal of former President Park Geun-hye, Moon was one of the most popular presidents at the beginning of his presidency. But his promise of becoming the "jobs president" now seems laughable given his disastrous performance in this regard.



The continued slip in the President's job approval rating reflects the people's growing frustration with his failure to revive the economy and improve the hopeless job situation. The unemployment rate hit 3.5 percent in October, the highest for that month in 13 years, and the number of unemployed people hit 973,000, the highest since 1999. The President has become particularly unpopular with people in their 20s, those hailing from the country's southeastern region and the self-employed, who have fiercely protested the Moon administration's swift increase of the minimum wage.



Many people think Moon is not really in touch with the hardships Koreans endure amid stagnant wages and soaring taxes or the deep despair of the jobless and self-employed.



The main problem with the President is that he is still fixating on the failing income-led growth policy, which is taking a toll on many workers and the self-employed. Although he recently made nominations to replace his economic team, the President still seems intent on keeping income-led growth as the backbone of his economic policy.



Another serious flaw is Moon's obsession with North Korea, which is not something in which many people are interested during such harsh economic times. Moon has pushed for Kim Jong-un to visit Seoul within the year and has been rushing for progress in inter-Korean economic projects, causing some rifts with the U.S.



"We have made clear to the Republic of Korea that we do want to make sure that peace on the peninsula and the denuclearization of North Korea aren't lagging behind the increase in the amount of inter-relationship between the two Koreas," Pompeo said at a recent news conference. "We view them as tandem, as moving forward together. We view them as important parallel processes."



Many people would like to see Kim make a historic visit to Seoul and more inter-Korean exchanges would desirable, but they must all happen under the right circumstances. In the coming year, the President should reorganize his priorities and concentrate on demonstrating more capable economic leadership rather than focusing too much on inter-Korean relations. Otherwise his approval ratings will continue to slip.


Korean shops circa 1900s. Photos from Robert Neff Collection



As Foulk and the governor of Jeolla Province entered Naju, a large number of minor officials and government employees rushed ahead and drove the population back into their homes "as well as they could, yet every doorway was filled with curious people, all pleasant enough looking."



Foulk and Park ascended the South Gate and looked upon the city. Foulk was told that the city had more than 2,000 houses within the walls but he was convinced it was an exaggeration. There were, however, just outside the gate about 400 buildings  many of them for government use including an imposing old drill pavilion.



In his diary Foulk wrote:



"There are two streets properly to the place, the roads leading to the four gates. They meet in a clear square place by the Yongmun, in which there are a large number of old memorial shrines and all of iron (as I saw). Right in front of the Yongmun, to the east is a very loft, imposing building, the Kaksa (great quarters)."



While in Seoul, Foulk had heard a lot about Naju's manufactured goods: pillows, lacquered goods (black, red and brown) including writing boxes, stools, candlesticks and fans  which were said to be the best in the country  and were highly prized by the upper class. He expected to see large shops producing these items, but found "only a few poor shops in all of Naju, none showy, indeed wretched hovels, where beef and fruit, or a few poor paper boxes were sold" along with sandals, paper and small silk articles.

He later discovered "the makers [of the goods prized in Seoul] are people who work in their own huts, one here, one there, each making only a few pieces."









With the sightseeing concluded, Foulk thanked the governor for his kindness and told him he would be leaving in the morning. He then returned to his quarters to prepare to leave.



The following morning Foulk woke in a foul mood. It was raining and his servants had failed to wake him on time. It was about this time that he discovered that some of his servants had been involved in a brawl in an ale shop and that four of the servants had been beaten with clubs, two very badly.





Eating and drinking circa 1900s
By Baek Byung-yeul





Starbucks Coffee Korea employees pose with LG Electronics' ceiling mounted air purifying system at a Starbucks store in Seoul, Nov. 21. / Courtesy of Starbucks Coffee Korea
KT Chairman Hwang Chang-gyu bows to apologize for the network damage caused by a fire a day earlier at the firm's facility in Ahyeon-dong, Seoul, Sunday. / Yonhap





Subscribers to have 1-month bill waiver







By Baek Byung-yeul







KT Chairman Hwang Chang-gyu vowed Sunday to make every effort to "actively compensate" its customers for damages or losses caused by a network blackout after a weekend fire at its building in Seoul.







The fire began in KT's building in Ahyeon-dong, western Seoul, which manages underground network cables, at around 11 a.m., Saturday. The fire was extinguished about 10 hours after at 9:30 p.m.







Despite no casualties reported, its customers in Seodaemun-gu, Yongsan-gu, Mapo-gu and Jung-gu experienced difficulties in using the internet, credit card transactions, IPTV, and wired and wireless telephone services.







"By fully cooperating with related authorities, we will prepare a plan to actively compensate individuals and business owners who have suffered damages," Hwang said.







"Around 63 percent of the mobile network and 97 percent of the internet lines including those linked to credit card transactions have been repaired as of Sunday 6 p.m.," a KT official said.







On Sunday evening, KT announced a compensation plan that it will waive the amount of one month's bill for subscribers who suffered network blackouts on fixed-line and mobile services.







For small business owners who had problems processing credit card transactions, the company said it will come up with compensation plans later.







Explaining the details of the accident, Hwang said the firm is cooperating with the fire authority to investigate the cause of the fire.







"Thanks to a quick response from the fire authority, the fire was fully extinguished and KT deployed mobile base stations to minimize the inconvenience of our customers," Hwang said. "To figure out the cause of the fire, we are fully cooperating with the fire authority and I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience our customers had."







Hwang also said KT will have safety inspections on its network facilities to avoid any recurrences. To minimize losses of small business owners, KT added it will provide about 1,000 wireless routers to enable credit card tractions through a WiFi connection.







"To prevent the outbreak of similar accidents, we will carry out safety inspections on all network facilities in the country," Hwang said.







To resolve the issue, Min Won-ki, vice minister of the Ministry of Science and ICT also presided over a meeting with officials from the Ministry of Science and ICT, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, the Financial Services Commission, the Korea Communications Commission and SK Broadband.







"We urged KT to repair its damaged network lines by today to minimize any inconvenience people may have and come up with active measures so people who suffered losses can be compensated properly," Min said.







The science ministry also said it will inspect major network facilities across the country together with related telecommunication business operators and prepare for measures to prevent a recurrence by the end of the year.







While KT announced it will come up with a compensation plan, it remains to be seen how much compensation its customers, especially those using credit card transaction services, will receive. The shop owners near accident sites suffered difficulties in operating their businesses.


Supporters of the opposition Nationalist Party cheer in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, Saturday, Nov. 24, 2018. Taiwan's ruling party suffered a major defeat Saturday in local elections seen as a referendum on the administration of the island's independence-leaning president amid growing economic and political pressure from China. AP



Taiwan's ruling party was handed a major defeat in local elections Saturday that were seen as a referendum on the administration of the island's independence-leaning president amid growing economic and political pressure from China.



Soon after the results came in, President Tsai Ing-wen resigned as head of the Democratic Progressive Party. She will remain as president and her resignation will have no direct effect on the business of government, although the results bode ill for her re-election chances in two years.



Rival China said the results reflected a desire of Taiwanese for better relations with the mainland. Ma Xiaoguang, the spokesman for Beijing's Taiwan Affairs Office, said his government will continue to treat Taiwan as part of China and ''resolutely oppose separatist elements advocating 'Taiwan independence' and their activities,'' according to the official Xinhua news agency.



In another victory for China, voters rejected a proposal to change the name of its Olympic team to Taiwan from the current Chinese Taipei. They also approved a referendum opposing same-sex marriage in a setback to LGBT couples, though ballot initiatives in Taiwan are non-binding.



The DPP lost the mayoral election to the Nationalist party in the southern port city of Kaohsiung, where it had held power for 20 years. The Nationalists also defeated the DPP in the central city of Taichung, home to much of Taiwan's light industry, while Ko Wen-je, the independent mayor of Taipei, the capital, narrowly won a second term. The Nationalist candidate in Taipei has asked for a recount.





Opposition Nationalist Kuomintang Party (KMT) Kaohsiung mayoral candidate Han Kuo-yu celebrates after winning in local elections, in Kaohsiung, Taiwan November 24, 2018. Reuters





Supporters of Taipei city mayor and city mayoral candidate Ko Wen-je cheer in Taipei, Taiwan, Saturday, Nov. 24, 2018. Taiwan's ruling party suffered a major defeat Saturday in local elections seen as a referendum on the administration of the island's independence-leaning president amid growing economic and political pressure from China. AP





Supporters of Taipei city mayor and city mayoral candidate Ko Wen-je cheer for Ko's victory in Taipei, Taiwan, Sunday early morning, Nov. 25, 2018. Taiwan's ruling party suffered a major defeat Saturday in local elections seen as a referendum on the administration of the island's independence-leaning president amid growing economic and political pressure from China. AP



At a brief news conference at DPP headquarters late Saturday, Tsai announced she was stepping down as DPP chair and said she had refused Premier William Lai's resignation, saying she wanted him to continue her reform agenda.



''Today, democracy taught us a lesson,'' Tsai said. ''We must study and accept the higher expectations of the people.''



The elections for mayors and thousands of local posts were seen as a key test for Tsai's 2-year-old administration, which has been under relentless attack from Beijing over her refusal to endorse its claim that Taiwan is a part of China.



Tsai and the DPP won a landslide victory in 2016, but China swiftly responded by cutting all links with her government. Beijing has been ratcheting up pressure on the island it claims as its own territory by poaching its diplomatic partners and barring its representatives from international gatherings, while staging threatening military exercises and limiting the numbers of Chinese tourists visiting Taiwan.



The Nationalists, known also as the KMT, had campaigned on their pro-business image and more accommodating line toward Beijing.



Since her election, Tsai has walked a fine line on relations with China, maintaining Taiwan's de facto independent status that the vast majority of Taiwanese support, while avoiding calls from the more radical elements of her party for moves to declare formal separation from the mainland.



Taiwanese officials had warned that Beijing was seeking to sway voters through the spread of disinformation online similar to how Russia was accused of interfering in U.S. elections.





Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, speaks after election results in Taipei, Taiwan on Saturday, Nov. 24, 2018. Taiwan's ruling party suffered a major defeat Saturday in local elections seen as a referendum on the administration of the island's independence-leaning president amid growing economic and political pressure from China. Tsai announced her resignation as head of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party. AP





An LGBT supporter cries after losing the referendum in Taipei, Taiwan November 24, 2018. Reuters
When Christopher Cacho is home, the 23-year-old data specialist doesnt do much out of the ordinary. He may run a computer analysis at his desk, play a video game or lie down with a good book.

But when he does, hell do it from a roughly 11-by-8-foot space thats cordoned off by a foldable tan wall on wheels.

To make the pricey Southern California real estate market work for him, Cacho turned to a company that rented him a partitioned section of a living room. Inside, hes set up his bed and television. In the corner, theres a tiny, square end table and ottoman.

It works well as a converted desk, the recent college graduate said.

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Hard-pressed families have long turned couches into beds, and its common for recent graduates to bunk with friends in a house. But amid a sharp rise in housing costs in booming U.S. cities, a growing number of companies say the affordability crisis has become so severe that theres significant money to be made in offering, if not solutions, at least some relief.

Some companies are selling dividing walls or curtains to create new bedrooms. Others are filling rooms with bunk beds. And some  armed with Silicon Valley backing and a brand of co-living  are offering a variety of sleeping situations and services that make it easier to find roommates and then live with them.

In the largest sense, these outfits effectively are adding bedrooms in a region thats hard-pressed to build enough new houses and apartments to meet demand.

People are sharing spaces at a very large rate, said Tyler Lundmark, chief executive of RoomDividersNow, which sells partitions. We have ridden that wave.

Such set-ups have grown more noticeable because of the housing situation in many large cities, which have added lots of jobs but not enough residential units. Median rent for a vacant apartment in the already pricey cities of Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco is one-third higher than it was in 2012, according to Zillow.

The median, Zillow data show, has dipped slightly in recent months as more supply comes online and tenants become tapped out. But thats been little relief for the roughly half of people in major California metro areas who pay rents that experts deem unaffordable.

The tried-and-true way to cut down on costs is to double or triple up. Nationally, the number of people per housing unit has been on the decline. But in California, that rate has increased from 2.79 per unit in 1990 to 2.97 this year, according to data from the states Department of Finance.

The percentage of renters in crowded situations  more than one person to a room  jumped during the recession, then started declining, before taking off again in 2014 as rents climbed. As of 2017, the most recent year for census data, crowding was higher than before the downturn.

Many companies that facilitate sharing cater to people who can afford added services, if not their own comfortable apartment.

(Los Angeles Times)

Cacho, for example, moved to the L.A. area from Northern California to take a job as a data specialist for a local nonprofit organization. He wanted a nice, affordable place in a safe neighborhood, with parking and an in-unit washer and dryer. To get it, he turned to a San Francisco company called HomeShare, which contracts with major landlords in expensive cities to create additional bedrooms and match roommates.

Cacho now lives in a new luxury building named the Griffith on Los Feliz Road in Glendale. The 220-unit development from Dallas-based Mill Creek Residential provides parking, in-unit washers and dryers and much more. Theres a gym, pool and even a skydeck with foosball and a kegerator.

Cacho pays $990 a month for his partitioned space in a two-bedroom unit he shares with two roommates found through HomeShare.

Its not cheap, but neither are other options. The smallest unit advertised on the Griffiths website is a one-bedroom for $2,565.

Last Tuesday, in the surrounding neighborhood, there were no units listed on Zillow below $1,000. The nearest was a $950-a-month studio five miles away in Hollywood. It was close to the 101 Freeway and provided no parking and no private bathroom. The showers and toilets are located down the hall, shared with others.

If Cacho wanted to share a larger apartment, there were seven three-bedroom units in the area that would come out to less than $1,000 each if split evenly. The buildings had parking, but were older, without the bells and whistles. The amenities, Cacho said, that was the tipping point for me.

Cacho, who recently started repairing electronics on the side to help pay down his student debt, could have saved even more if he had found two people on his own to rent a two-bedroom at the Griffith, maybe sleeping on a couch or buying a partition himself. Thats because HomeShare charges a fee thats embedded in the monthly rent.

HomeShare founder and Chief Executive Jeff Pang declined to disclose the companys fee but called it small and worth it. Thats because its often difficult to find roommates, especially for people new to a city who need to find a place in a hurry.

HomeShare asks potential residents about their personality, cleaning habits and more. It plugs answers into a proprietary algorithm that spits out ideal matches. We basically treat it as a big math problem, Pang said.

If relationships turn sour, even during the lease, Pang said, HomeShare will transfer residents to another unit for free, absent any fee the landlord may charge.

Other co-living firms carve up entire buildings to add additional bedrooms. Starcity, another San Francisco company, recently partnered with Worthe Real Estate Group to cut up a Venice building that Starcity said Snap Inc. formerly used for corporate housing.

Rent there, less than 500 feet from the sand, starts at $2,050 and includes furniture, concert tickets, utilities and services such as cleaning of common spaces. For those on more of a budget, RoomDividersNow sells partitions for as low as $80.

In East Hollywood, Echo Park and nearby neighborhoods, a firm called Up(st)art has taken over houses in places where most studios  even in 1920s buildings  rent for more than $1,000.

Jeremiah Adler, the companys founder and chief executive, said his firm signs multiyear leases with property owners, at rates usually 10% to 15% above market. He then adds bunk beds or stacked, enclosed sleeping pods that rent for between $695 and $775 a month.

Adler said his company operates as a club, which allows him to rent beds only to artists and other creative types. Included in the rent are acting and dance classes, as well as the use of onsite recording and photo studios.

This is the future, Adler said. There are more people coming here, and the only way to solve the problem is people are going to have to start taking up less space.

Unlike Adlers company, HomeShare works with developers to divide individual units. The company has units in New York City, San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Seattle and the Los Angeles area  some of which HomeShare doesnt subdivide but only matches with roommates. It declined to disclose the total number of units, but it does have 11 at the Mill Creek building where Cacho lives.

Chris Cacho at the door of his bedroom, a subdivided living room, in the Glendale apartment he shares with two roommates. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Christine Franz, vice president of West Coast property management for Mill Creek, said Mill Creek doesnt receive a portion of HomeShares fee, nor does it charge HomeShare residents extra in some other way  which is how the service operates with other landlords, Pang said.

Instead, Franz said HomeShare is attractive because it matches people with roommates and allows a broader pool of people to afford apartments, thus making it easier to fill vacant units.

This provides us another avenue for a market we havent really tapped into, she said.

According to Pang, theres an added benefit: Once a unit is rented through HomeShare, it stays that way longer than it might through a traditional lease. Thats because if one person leaves at the end of the lease, his company can just plug in a new tenant. In a traditional case, if someone bails, remaining tenants may just leave, creating a costly vacancy because they didnt want the hassle of finding a new roommate who would be a good fit.

Rick Palacios, director of research with John Burns Real Estate Consulting, said companies like HomeShare are especially attractive to landlords now because the rental market is slowing after years of rapid growth. Thats particularly true on the high end, where most new construction is concentrated and theres a limited pool of people who can afford studios that run upward of $3,000 a month.

Any developer you talk to, they are no longer as excited about top-notch luxury apartments in these gateway markets, said Palacios, who has not done work for HomeShare.

Franz said Mill Creek isnt having trouble renting its apartments. But in theory, if developers can fill more units with HomeShare, theyd have less of an incentive to lower rents or offer the sort of concessions that have been on the rise, such as a months free rent.

Pang doubted landlords could reduce rent to HomeShare levels. Builders still want to make money and often have loans that cover high land and construction costs.

We are able to better utilize supply and take what is already out there and enable more people to enjoy it and more people to access it, he said.

Staff writer Ryan Menezes contributed to this report.

andrew.khouri@latimes.com

Follow me @khouriandrew on Twitter
The first time that Barry Alexander Brown was nominated for an Oscar, it was as co-director of the 1979 documentary The War at Home. If hes nominated again this year, it will be for film editing  he worked on BlacKkKlansman, his sixth collaboration with director Spike Lee.

Brown kicked off his eclectic career neither as a director nor a film editor. He started as an actor at the Little Theatre in Montgomery, Ala. His love of cinema inspired a move to New York, where he befriended a New York University film student named Spike Lee.

We were all young and broke and just helping each other out, Brown said.

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Brown cut a scene in Lees 1986 feature Shes Gotta Have It  then kept on helping.

It took me years to even think of myself as an editor, even after I was editing films like Do the Right Thing and Salaam Bombay!  said Brown. It was just my friends had hired me, and my friends were Spike Lee and Mira Nair. Finally, when I did Malcolm X, I thought, You know, maybe Im an editor!

On BlacKkKlansman, Brown helped tell the story of Ron Stallworth, played by John David Washington. As an undercover African American detective in the 1970s, Stallworth broke the color barrier of the Colorado Springs Police Department  and, in a way, of the KKK.

One striking scene is a speech by civil rights activist Kwame Ture, intercut with faces in the crowd. How did that evolve?

When I read the script and I read that scene, I thought, were going to lose a lot of this. This is long, and hes not really going to be a character in this movie. But I cut the whole speech. And then Spike had shot those portraits of people in another room while the speech was going on. And I dont know whether it was Spike or me who thought, lets marry some of these together. And the more things I did, the more Spike liked it. And what John David is doing there as Ron Stallworth is really effective and really fun too. And to some extent, that scene is really about him and about how its affecting him, and even to some extent, how it affects the cops outside.

Harry Belafonte delivers another key speech describing a lynching, which you intercut with footage of the KKK induction and The Birth of a Nation. How did you juxtapose these?

In the script, theyre big blocks, as you would expect. And then once its shot, I can go in and play more with how they get intercut, and tying Ron to the character that Harry Belafontes playing. Because he said, I had to run and hide in a room above the shoeshine place I worked in, and look out on this through a window. And there was this footage of Ron Stallworth walking into this attic area, and then looking out over the Klan induction. So now they become sort of one character: the witness. And for me, its also a little bit playful at times. At the end, theyre all chanting, Black power! Black power! Black power! And I run that chant into where [the Klan is] about to do the toast.

How did you approach the phone calls between Stallworth and David Duke?

I was thinking, man, theres so many phone calls. What are we going to do here? So I thought, Im sliding somebody on, and were doing the 70s thing of [a split screen with] two images, so we actually see them talking together. Spike loved it right away. There was one in which we have a diagonal slice, and Im sometimes using different takes. So there are times when they actually change places in the diagonal, but you dont feel we have jumped into a different take, a different moment. And I was shocked that I could get away with it.

So your job is to keep things moving.

I do keep things moving. Probably my greatest weakness is I go too fast, and people have to slow me up. People say to me, like Spike or Mira Nair, Wait a second. Weve got to breathe here for a moment. Just let that shot go. Let him walk all the way across the room.

What are you most proud of?

Im proud of how well the end works, the Charleston [2017 car attack]. Thats the thing that could have become something that felt like an addendum. And it had to really get under your skin and grab something deep in you, to where this whole movie now becomes real. [The Klansmen are] not just a bunch of clowns in Colorado Springs that blow themselves up. These people are dangerous. And theyre with us.

Any thoughts on the Oscars?

Its hard to think about. I mean, I was nominated when I was really young for my first film, The War at Home. And it was really meaningful, far too meaningful, and it screwed me up. And I felt like a fraud, that I didnt deserve it. But the thing that Spike says over and over and over, and has from the beginning, he says, Its the work. Listen, if I get nominated or I dont, its still going to be the work. And thats whats going to live on.
The rise and fall of Gary Hart has somehow slowly been lost to history. The Colorado senator ran for the presidency twice and was widely seen as the Democrats likely nominee in 1988. Just after announcing his candidacy, however, Harts political life took a turn that in many ways signaled a major change in how Americans view their elected officials. The scandal surrounding him, and if there truly was one, is the subject of Jason Reitmans The Front Runner, which finds Hugh Jackman playing the embattled candidate in a searing performance.

The 41-year-old director of films such as Up in the Air and Juno was reminded of Harts downfall after listening to a Radiolab podcast in early 2016. After talking to his producing partner, Helen Estabrook, he realized she had a completely different response to this story even though they are around the same age and have similar political leanings. That was something he continued to encounter throughout the production whether it was one of the films large acting ensemble or a member of the crew.

Everyone had a completely different response to what the Gary Hart story means in 2018, Reitman says. One person may look at it and go, The man has a private life that doesnt involve us, he should be able to kind of shut the door in his bedroom. The next few may go, This is the first moment of truth to power and bringing down a leader who needs to be exposed.

Reitman believes Gary Harts story serves as an interesting litmus test. If a candidate had great ideas but was also simultaneously an irrefutably flawed person, would it be important if he made an irresponsible mistake? Does any questionable action mean a candidate should no longer run for office? Considering the reaction to Donald Trumps candidacy when Reitman, Matt Bai and Jay Carson were writing the script, it seemed to be a very timely question.

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I felt going into the presidential election that this country was already at a moment of conflict of what we wanted to know about the private lives of the people we were electing, Reitman says. I mean before [Trump] was elected we were already talking about how much we should know about his private life. And I think that goes for previous presidents as well. I mean, I think we obviously went through this debate on Clinton, and kind of a variety of people and not just in respect to their sex lives.

But there are huge differences between the current cultural landscape and what Hart encountered 30 years ago. At the center of his scandal was Donna Rice (portrayed by Sara Paxton), a Florida woman who Hart was accused of having an affair with after she was photographed going into his Washington, D.C., townhouse. Both Hart and Rice refuted the report, but with more tabloid-esque stories of Harts womanizing in the news, he withdrew from the race.

In order to truly capture the sometimes frantic nature of a campaign, Reitman and his screenwriters watched films such as Michael Ritchies The Candidate and the Bill Clinton documentary The War Room for inspiration. One technique Reitman learned from Ritchie, that was often seen in the work of his contemporary, Robert Altman, was having the actors ricochet off one another with simultaneous conversations as the camera zooms from one part of a room to another.

In order to make this as realistic as possible, Reitman and his writers needed to compose additional dialogue for numerous characters in each scene. He notes, We would write the script, but then we would write pages for other characters. Like therell be addendum pages for other characters to have dialogue [during the scene].

Its unclear what audiences appetite will be for such a distinctly political tale after a long and passionate midterm campaign, but Reitman is hoping Front Runner is a conversation starter for many.

None of my movies have ever had a message, Reitman says. The purpose of my film has never been think this. I choose the stories I do because I think they are reflective. I think that they are movies that hopefully you see yourself in and the story becomes a prism through which you can talk about the things that are on our minds today.

WATCH: Video Q&As from this seasons hottest contenders 

calendar@latimes.com
Hello! Im Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.

The documentary Amazing Grace, a chronicle of the recording of Aretha Franklins landmark 1972 album of the same name over two days at Los Angeles New Temple Missionary Baptist Church, had long been delayed from release due to ongoing rights issues. Since Franklins death in August those issues have cleared up and the movie is now in limited release, including in L.A.

Reviewing the film for The Times, Justin Chang wrote, Aretha Franklin didnt transcend the gospel or gospel music; as first her album and now this marvelous documentary remind us, she did more than most to fulfill its potential for truth and beauty, devotion and art.

For the New York Times, Wesley Morris added, It doesnt matter how much time youve spent with Amazing Grace the album. No suitable preparation exists for the experience of witnessing its recording.

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There are still plenty of L.A. Times events focusing on awards season coming up, including a screening of The Hate U Give, followed by a Q&A with cast members Amandla Stenberg, Regina Hall, Algee Smith and director George Tillman Jr. on Dec. 7, plus a special panel on documentaries on Dec. 9. For info on all these events, go to events.latimes.com/screenings

A scene from the Roma, by Alfonso Cuaron. (Carlos Somonte / Netflix)

Roma

In making Roma, a story based in his childhood, Alfonso Cuaron wrote, produced, directed, photographer and co-edited the film, making it an intensely personal and deeply felt experience. The story focuses on a family in Mexico City and their nanny/maid, Cleo (Yalizta Aparicio, in her first acting role), amidst personal issues and larger sociopolitical conflicts. The movie arrives on a wave of expectations, having won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival and being given a rare exclusive theatrical run by Netflix.

Reviewing the movie for The Times, Kenneth Turan wrote, One of Romas gifts is its ability to subtly interweave the political state of the nation with this personal story, culminating in a visually extraordinary re-creation of a notorious moment in modern Mexican history, the 1971 Corpus Christi massacre of university students . Though it takes the risk of appearing too quiet too long, Roma and its melding of the personal with a glimpse of a society veering toward collapse is incontestably persuasive, a film whose like we will probably not see again.

For the New York Times, Manohla Dargis wrote Few directors tell large-scale stories with as much sensitivity as Cuaron . In Roma he has further refined his style by marshaling various narrative strategies, including cinematic spectacle. Many directors use spectacle to convey larger-than-life events while reserving devices like closeups to express a characters inner being. Here, Cuaron uses both intimacy and monumentality to express the depths of ordinary life.

The website Remezcla brought together a group of Latino critics to write about the movie, including Claudia Puig, Kiko Martinez, Carlos Aguilar and Monica Castillo. As Puig wrote, A technical marvel, the story is at once achingly intimate and epically sociopolitical. Cuarons gorgeous, revelatory opus feels recognizable even to those who grew up on the other side of the border. An exhilarating masterpiece, Roma is at once quintessentially Mexican and profoundly universal.

Rachel Weisz, left, and Olivia Coleman in The Favourite. (Yorgos Lanthimos / Fox Searchlight Films)

The Favourite

Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, The Favourite is a delightfully savage satire set amidst the court of Britains Queen Anne. Powered by three outstanding performances from Olivia Colman as the queen and Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone as two women vying for her attention, affection and access to power, the movie has made waves since it also premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where it picked up the second place Grand Jury prize and a best actress prize for Colman.

In his review for The Times, Justin Chang wrote, The Favourite is a caustic swirl of a chamber epic, a bawdy, backbiting historical riff on All About Eve carried along on gusts of palace intrigue, lofty vitriol and illicit desire. It may be more pure, devious fun than any other great movie this year.

For The Times, Emily Zemler spoke to Lanthimos and screenwriters Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara about their storys relationship to historical fact.

I remember Yorgos saying in a meeting, Anyone who comes to this movie looking for a history lesson is in the wrong movie, McNamara said. Often in period things the details drag the story down. The slavishness to the detail, the slavish to the truth of it. Whereas were more interested in the relationships.

At the New York Times, A.O. Scott wrote, The best  and also the most troubling  thing about The Favourite is its rigorously bleak assessment of human motivations and behavior . A sentimental soul might wish for a glimpse of something else, but at the same time its hard to say that anything is missing from this tableau, which is also a devastating, flattering and strangely faithful mirror.

For Time, Stephanie Zacharek added, The Favourite is a wicked delight, a fantastic little cupcake of a movie laced with thistle frosting . If youre into treachery, manipulative erotic escapades, and flamboyant early 18th century fit-and-flare shooting outfits for ladies (courtesy of costume goddess Sandy Powell), The Favourite is the movie for you.

Shoplifters director Hirokazu Kore-eda. (Katie Falkenberg / Los Angeles Times)

Shoplifters

Winner of the top prize at this years Cannes Film Festival, Shoplifters is the latest film from veteran Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda. In the film, a couple (Sakura Ando and Lily Franky) struggling to get by take in a young girl (Miyu Sasaki), making their makeshift lifestyle even more tenuous. The movie was also recently nominated for a Spirit Award for best international film, alongside both Roma and The Favourite.

In his review for The Times, Kenneth Turan called the film delicate, poignant and unexpectedly powerful, adding, Shoplifters well understands that family is the most intimate and problematic entity in all our lives. It calls on us to rethink its very nature, its limits, pleasures and responsibilities, unfolding a story that grows in complexity and intimacy almost without our knowing it.

Justin Chang sat down with Kore-eda for an interview in Los Angeles. Of the makeshift group who come together in his latest film, Kore-eda said, Do you have the right to say this group is not a family? That was the question Im throwing at the audience. Or to put it another way: Is your family connected more and better than this family?

At Slate, Inkoo Kang noted, For all its gentle groundedness, a quality that suffuses much of Kore-edas work, Shoplifters strenuously resists romanticizing its main characters. Its compassion is more convincing for it. So is its brilliance.

Email me if you have questions, comments or suggestions, and follow me on Twitter @IndieFocus.

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A pool of red spilling across a church altar. Two naked bodies writhing in intimate communion. Three figures making their way across a desert, dwarfed by the landscape behind them and the blazing sun above them. A woman peeling off her beautiful white mask to reveal the grotesque, worm-eaten visage within.

English director and cinematographer Nicolas Roeg, who died Friday at age 90, spent his career making brilliant, searing images, the kinds of images that burrow into your brain and take your memory captive. The stunning early run of pictures he directed in the 1970s  Performance (a collaboration with Donald Cammell), Walkabout, Dont Look Now and The Man Who Fell to Earth  established Roeg as a great sensualist and a poet of the irrational, a filmmaker who could make the screen positively shudder with beauty, eroticism and danger.

It was not a career many might have imagined for a man who began his film career fetching tea for employees at Londons Marylebone Studios. He eventually became a clapper loader, or second assistant camera, and worked his way up the ladder from there. The credits he amassed during his first two decades or so behind the camera were impressive; he was a second unit cinematographer on David Leans Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and he later served as cinematographer on Francois Truffauts Fahrenheit 451 (1966) and Richard Lesters Petulia (1968).

Petulia was the last film Roeg shot before he turned his attention to directing, and that movies atmosphere of unease, as well as its French New Wave-influenced vocabulary of flashbacks and flash-forwards, clearly became aesthetic foundations of his own work. From his 1973 horror masterpiece, Dont Look Now, to his twisty, flashback-laden 1980 thriller, Bad Timing, Roeg often delighted in stringing scenes and moments together in ways that defied conventional narrative logic, and not just for the sake of a showily nonlinear presentation. Few directors were as good at evoking a sense of the world being ruptured from within, or forcing their formal syntax to mirror the jagged, violent stories they were telling.

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British film director Nicolas Roeg in London, 2012. (Ash Knotek / Snappers / Zuma Press)

In Dont Look Now, adapted from a Daphne du Maurier short story, Roeg gave us one of the cinemas great erotic passages as well as some of its most indelible shocks. The movies signature images still have the power to astound: a lovemaking scene between Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie so intense and passionate that more than a few assumed it was unsimulated; a final-act reveal that will change the way you see Venice, raincoats and the color red forever.

The genius of the movie, however, lay in Roegs obsessive splintering of narrative, the way he employed jump cuts, cross-cutting and other editing techniques to build an intricately layered, densely expressive montage. Stranding his characters in a terrifying psychological and supernatural labyrinth of their own making, he spun their feelings of grief, desire and dread into a convulsive yet startlingly coherent visual language.

It wasnt the first or last time Roeg would play so aggressively with form. In their sordidly arresting 1970 debut, Performance, conceived under the heady spell of Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, Roeg and Cammell turned an unclassifiable gangster drama into an early psycho-thriller experiment, a test of the ever-blurry boundaries separating reality and fantasy. They also had the inspiration to give Mick Jagger his screen acting debut  not the last time Roeg would turn a rock stars persona to his advantage.

The most famous example of this, of course, was The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), in which Roeg didnt cast David Bowie as an alien so much as reveal the alien who was lurking there all along. An eccentric, melancholy speculative fiction that races, meanders and stumbles on deep reservoirs of emotion, the movie drank deeply from the well of Bowies singular screen presence, his sublime Otherness. He was the most alien of humans and vice versa.

David Bowie in the movie The Man Who Fell to Earth. (BFI)

It also confirmed that Roegs sense of beauty was never merely decorative or pictorial; he used his actors to brilliant effect, often by setting them in meaningful conflict with their surrounding environs. As a study of an individual adrift in a strange land, The Man Who Fell to Earth would make a sublime double bill with Walkabout, Roegs mesmerizing 1971 odyssey through the Australian Outback, which remains one of his most beautiful and affecting films.

Like his countryman Ken Russell, who died in 2011, Roeg was never afraid to push into areas of sexuality and violence that ran afoul of the censors. And like so many artists who pushed the expressive boundaries of the medium, he was often underappreciated by critics and audiences, and also by an industry that could seem indifferent at best and punitive at worst.

British cinema has never much cared for its visionaries, the Independent film critic Geoffrey Macnab astutely noted in 2011. And so it has been with Roeg, who is plenty revered now  his play with narrative and temporality has had an especially profound influence on filmmakers like Steven Soderbergh and Christopher Nolan  but who was increasingly banished to the margins of the industry as his career progressed. His later films were not without their pleasures and rewards, as latter-day admirers of Eureka (1983) and Insignificance (1985) can attest, but they failed to reclaim the sustained vitality of his 70s heyday.

Anjelica Huston in the movie The Witches. (Warner Bros.)

With one crucial exception. The Witches (1990), one of the last films Roeg directed, also happens to be the first of his films I ever saw, when I was a 7-year-old with a serious Roald Dahl addiction. Roeg was not what youd describe as a director of films for children, and yet with this thrillingly macabre fantasy, he gave us both a sterling example of the form and a surprisingly effective introduction to his work.

Here could be found Roegs shivery skill with actors  Anjelica Hustons Grand High Witch remains one of her crowning achievements  and also his superb eye, the impish wit with which he visualized the perverse and grotesque. Here too were all the sensations and emotions I still associate with so much of Roegs work even now: wonderment and surprise, terror and gratitude.

justin.chang@latimes.com
A federal judge on Sunday rejected a last-minute bid by former Trump campaign foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos to delay his two-week prison term and ordered him to surrender Monday as scheduled.

Papadopoulos sought the delay until an appeals court had ruled in a separate case challenging the constitutionality of special counsel Robert S. Mueller IIIs appointment.

But in an order Sunday, U.S. District Court Judge Randolph Moss said Papadopoulos had waited too long to contest his sentence after it was handed down in September.

Moss noted that Papadopoulos had agreed not to appeal in most circumstances as part of his plea agreement, and the judge said the challenge to Muellers appointment was unlikely to be successful in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Four federal judges have upheld Muellers appointment as proper.

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The prospect that the D.C. Circuit will reach a contrary conclusion is remote, Moss wrote.

Tweeting in response Sunday, Papadopoulos said he looked forward to telling the full story behind his case. In recent months, he has spent many nights posting on Twitter, as has his wife, venting anger about the FBI and insisting he was framed by the government. He has also offered to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, if hes granted immunity or other conditions.

The truth will all be out. Not even a prison sentence can stop that momentum, Papadopoulos wrote Sunday. Looking forward to testifying publicly shortly after. The wool isnt going to be pulled over Americas eyes forever.

Papadopoulos had filed an initial motion Nov. 16, nearly two months after the deadline for appealing his conviction or sentence. He followed up with a request to delay his sentence pending that motion on Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving.

Papadopoulos waited until the eleventh hour to seek relief; indeed, he did not file his second motion  the stay request  until the last business day before he was scheduled to surrender to serve his sentence, Moss 13-page order states. He has only his own delay to blame.

George Papadopoulos and his wife, Simona, arrive at the E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse in Washington on Sept. 7. (TNS)

Papadopoulos pleaded guilty last year to lying to federal agents about his interactions with Russian intermediaries during the 2016 presidential campaign. He also forfeited most of his rights to contest his conviction.

His lawyer argued that the appellate case could constitute new evidence that could allow him to mount a challenge. That case was brought by a witness refusing to comply with a Mueller grand jury subpoena.

Papadopoulos sentence, issued by Moss on Sept. 7, was far less than the maximum six-month sentence sought by the government but more than the probation that Papadopoulos and his lawyers had asked for.

Moss at the time noted that many similar cases resulted in probation but said he imposed a sentence of incarceration partly to send a message to the public that people cant lie to the FBI.

Papadopoulos, the first campaign aide sentenced in Muellers investigation, triggered the initial Russia investigation two years ago. Memos written by House Republicans and Democrats and now declassified show that information about Papadopoulos contacts with Russian intermediaries set in motion the FBIs counterintelligence investigation in July 2016 into potential coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign. That probe was later taken over by Mueller.

The White House has said that Papadopoulos was a low-level volunteer on the campaign.

UPDATES:

4:10 p.m.: This story has been updated throughout with background and comments from Papadopoulos and Moss.

This story was originally published at 8:35 a.m.
When I began trying to learn more about child poverty in Los Angeles earlier this year, I knew that at some point the story would take me to school.

If you measure poverty by the number of students whose family income is low enough for them to qualify for meals at school, eight out of 10 children in the L.A. Unified School District hit that mark.

Thats an astonishing figure, given L.A.s wealth and Californias standing as the worlds fifth-largest economy. But photographer Francine Orr and I wanted to see the faces and find the stories behind the statistics. Telfair Elementary in Pacoima seemed like the logical place to do some exploring, partly because it has more homeless students than any other school in the district.

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For two months, Orr and I made frequent visits to the school, the neighborhood and the homes of those living in motels and garages. We found adults whod had their own difficult childhoods, only to struggle as parents, but we werent there to judge them.

Our focus was on the children. Orr and I shared dual, conflicting emotions. The kids didnt create their circumstances, and we wanted to protect their innocence as much as possible even as we felt obligated to tell the truth about the faces of poverty.
Sam Little had been arrested for murder at least twice in the 1980s. Both times, he walked away a free man.

It would take three decades before DNA evidence would conclusively link him to the brutal strangulations of three women in Los Angeles.

At his 2014 trial, survivors of attacks in other cities recounted their experiences with Little, a onetime boxer who seemed to wander aimlessly across a wide swath of the nation.

But after his conviction, the cops who had chased him wrestled with an uncomfortable suspicion  they knew Little had killed more women. But they didnt know when or where.

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Time passed. Witnesses disappeared or died. Little refused to speak with the Los Angeles police detective who captured him, a woman he despised. All the while, questions that have tormented scores of families across the nation went unanswered.

That is until Little began talking this year after a Texas Ranger who suspected him of a homicide murder in that state paid a visit and won the trust of the convicted killer.

Since September, Little has been giving Texas authorities details of at least 90 slayings he claimed he committed across the country from 1970 to 2005, a bloody ledger that would make him one of the deadliest serial killers in U.S. history, authorities said. In almost every case, investigators say he targeted prostitutes and drug addicts  women that wouldnt be missed, as one detective put it.

Of the 90 slayings he claimed responsibility for, at least 30 have already been corroborated by police in about 19 states, said Ector County Dist. Atty. Bobby Bland, who is prosecuting Little in connection with a 1994 killing in Odessa, Texas.

Little confessed to killing 20 women in Los Angeles in the 1980s  including the three he was convicted of murdering  and claimed responsibility for a homicide in San Bernardino, authorities said. Investigators here have not corroborated his claims in any of the California killings.

But unlike other infamous serial predators, who were able to continue killing behind a veil of anonymity, Little was in law enforcements grasp more than once. Each time he slipped away, his body count grew, to the frustration of those who finally took him down.

Did he kill 10 women? Did he kill 20? asked Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Beth Silverman, who secured Littles 2014 conviction. I think he made a mockery of the justice system up and down the United States.

Despite Littles readiness to talk, some cautioned against assuming hes being entirely truthful.

Silverman said Little opened up only after he was granted a request to transfer from the California prison system to a Texas facility, and police will have to conduct exhaustive investigations to corroborate his statements. Little was sentenced to life in prison without parole in California in 2014, and providing information on other crimes grants him attention and recognition, which Silverman believes Little craves.

For years, Little had refused to speak with investigators, said LAPD Det. Mitzi Roberts, who guided the effort to capture him in 2012. She and Silverman have long believed Little killed for sexual gratification, that he took a perverse glee in having power over a womans life, and he resented the idea that he had been captured and imprisoned by two women.

So when Texas Ranger James Holland visited California in May 2018 to talk to Little about a cold case, Roberts said she urged Holland to play into that hatred. The move proved integral to building a rapport between the two, Roberts said, and Little finally started to share tales of horrific violence against women that stretched back decades.

In most cases, Little did not provide the names of the victims he said he killed, according to Silverman, who has observed some the Texas interviews, and Roberts. But he offered locations and approximate times, they said. In a few cases, he may have actually drawn images of crime scenes.

Officials said it might be possible to match Littles descriptions to specific cases in smaller cities across the Southeast, where hes been linked to several killings. But in Los Angeles, where Little says he is responsible for the unsolved killings of at least 17 women in the mid- to late 1980s, the task could prove herculean, Silverman said.

The period overlaps with the acts of other notorious serial killers, including the Grim Sleeper, Lonnie Franklin Jr., and a drug boom that claimed the lives of vulnerable women  the type Little targeted.

During the time period that he was convicted of murdering three women here in L.A., we were in the middle of a crack cocaine epidemic, Silverman said. During that time period, there were more than 100 women of color who wound up dead in alleyways in South L.A.

Bland, the Ector County district attorney, insisted Little was volunteering information on his own, rather than responding to prompts from cold-case investigators. He declined to comment on specific cases or details provided by Little, who has been indicted in the 1994 slaying of Denise Brothers in Odessa, Texas.

Justice for the victims of Samuel Little may have been delayed, but because of these efforts, justice is no longer denied, Bland said in a statement this month.

The Texas Department of Public Safety declined a request from a Times reporter to interview Holland, and a spokesman declined to answer specific questions about the case. Little is scheduled to appear in court in Odessa on Monday. His attorney, Jason Leach, did not respond to a request for comment.

Los Angeles police Det. Mitzi Roberts, left, headed the investigation that led to Littles capture in 2012. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

Little was born in Reynolds, Ga., in 1940 and raised in Lorain, Ohio, Roberts said. A former boxer and artist, he quit school in the eighth grade and it was unclear whether hed ever held a steady job, she said.

Property records also show Little lived in Florida and Louisiana for several years, but investigators mostly described him as a transient who tended to float in and out of cities throughout the Southeast. Court records show he has been arrested at least 30 times on minor offenses, including shoplifting, petty theft and battery, in Ohio, Florida and Mississippi.

Often, investigators said, Little would stay in either halfway houses or hostels, eschewing a permanent address as he moved from city to city.

Each place he went, they said, a similar pattern would emerge: Little would pick up a prostitute  often a black or Latino woman  and she would wind up fighting for her life. Rarely would the woman win.

All of his known victims died by strangulation, investigators said.

Police believe that in the early 1980s, Little brutalized several women in Pascagoula, a city on the Gulf of Mexico in southern Mississippi, leaving at least one dead and two lucky to escape, said Pascagoula police Lt. Darren Versiga, who has reviewed the cases.

Versiga said Little picked up 24-year-old Melinda LaPree outside a low-income housing complex known for prostitution in 1982. LaPree had recently given birth and was being forced into prostitution by her boyfriend when she crossed paths with Little.

A month later, police found her body in a cemetery six miles outside the city, he said.

Little was arrested and police located at least two other women who alleged that he tried to choke them, but prosecutors were unable to build a case against him. LaPrees body was badly decomposed, and several witnesses refused to testify, Versiga said.

The case would highlight a recurring issue for police and prosecutors trying to hunt down Little. His choice of victim almost seemed to insulate him from punishment.

At that time frame, through societal ways, we just didnt believe prostitutes when they cried rape, Versiga said.

Little confessed to LaPrees killing while in custody in Texas this year, Versiga said. He also said he killed a second woman in Pascagoula during the period, though investigators have found no evidence of a slaying that matches his description.

Versiga said he believes Littles claims, adding that the killer seems to want credit for what he did.

Did he kill 10 women? Did he kill 20? I think he made a mockery of the justice system up and down the United States. L.A. County Deputy Dist. Atty. Beth Silverman

Despite his hatred of women, Little often traveled with a female companion who some investigators described as his girlfriend. An older woman, estimated to be in her 70s at the time of the Pascagoula attacks, was spotted with Little in several cities across the Southeast, Versiga said.

Though he did not describe her as an accomplice to the killings, Versiga said she probably was aware of Littles actions since she often cleaned his car, which he sometimes used as a killing ground. She died of an aneurysm in the mid-to-late 1980s, according to Versiga, who said Little had been accused of beating her as well.

Pascagoula was not the only place where police tried, and failed, to end Littles spate of killings. In October of this year, he claimed to have killed Patricia Mounts in Gainesville, Fla., in the early 1980s, said Art Forgey, a spokesman for the Alachua County Sheriffs Office. Little had been tried, and acquitted, in that case more than 30 years ago, Forgey said.

In 1984, Little attacked and choked two women in San Diego, authorities said. At his 2014 trial in Los Angeles, one of the San Diego survivors told a harrowing tale: Little kidnapped her off the street, bound her hands with stockings in the backseat of a car and began choking her near the point of unconsciousness.

Then hed let her breathe. Then hed start over again.

He liked to feel me swallow with his thumb on my neck, she told jurors. It became a game  right before Id go unconscious, as my eyes started rolling back, hed let go and ask me to swallow again.

Little was convicted of assault and false imprisonment, but sentenced to only 30 months in prison. By 1987, he was released and headed to Los Angeles.

In July of that same year, Carol Alford was found dead in South L.A. Two years later, Audrey Nelson and Guadalupe Apodaca were also found strangled in Los Angeles. Each victim was found in the Central Avenue-Alameda Street corridor, just south of downtown.

He would answer for those killings nearly 25 years later, when Roberts led an LAPD investigation into the cold-case slayings.

After obtaining warrants for his arrest in 2012 based on DNA evidence found at the original crime scenes, Roberts and other investigators traveled to several cities throughout the Southeast where Little had been arrested or linked to attacks. But Littles flighty lifestyle made him hard to track, Roberts said.

We were always two days behind, she said.

Eventually, Roberts learned that Little often used a pre-paid benefits card to cover expenses and got the account information from a local law enforcement official. By calling the cards customer service line and entering the account information, she was finally able to find Little through his most recent purchases. He was arrested in Louisville, Ky.

Little was convicted of each murder and sentenced to life in prison in 2014, after a trial that hinged on both the forensic evidence and testimony delivered by women who had managed to escape during attacks in San Diego and Pascagoula.

Silverman, the L.A. prosecutor, said that during portions of Littles confession he also claimed to have killed women in Omaha; Las Vegas; Flagstaff, Ariz.; Phoenix; Jackson, Miss.; Portland, Ind.; and San Bernardino, although many of the assertions are still uncorroborated.

Police in San Bernardino and Phoenix said they are reviewing his claims, and officials in Gulfport, Miss., are probing Littles connection to a killing there.

In a statement, the FBI confirmed it has provided assistance in tracking Littles killings, but declined to provide a full timeline of his crimes or a complete account of his confession.

While some officials said they were hopeful that Littles confessions would bring closure to dozens of victims relatives across the country, Silverman said the full accounting of his crimes is anything but a victory for law enforcement. Its simply a tally of the carnage he caused.

The amount of women who lost their lives. The amount of children who lost their mother. The amount of parents who lost their kid, she said.

james.queally@latimes.com

Follow @JamesQueallyLAT for crime and police news in California.
Tony Hicks was 14 when he killed a pizza delivery driver in a botched robbery.

Now 38, he will get his first chance at parole.

But is Hicks suitable for release? A former district attorney says yes. So does the judge who sentenced him to 25 years to life in prison.

Most notable among those who support him is Azim Khamisa, father of the San Diego State University student Hicks killed.

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Hicks was still in junior high school when the killing occurred on Jan. 21, 1995  21 days after a change in the law allowed prosecutors to try a juvenile as young as 14 as an adult.

He was the youngest Californian at that time to face that legal fate. Eventually, the teen faced a San Diego judge and admitted killing Tariq Khamisa in a robbery gone wrong.

Im sorry for killing Tariq and his family, he told the sentencing judge in 1996. My grandfather promised me that he will be Mr. [Azim] Khamisas friend and help him in any way he can for the rest of his life.

Promise kept. Grieving father Azim Khamisa teamed with Ples Felix, Hicks grandfather and guardian, to create the Tariq Khamisa Foundation, or TKF, an organization devoted to stopping gang violence.

That kept promise may be one of the biggest factors in Hicks potential release.

Tariq Khamisa was 20, a full-time college student and a part-time pizza delivery driver in North Park when a bullet fired during a robbery ended his life.

The skinny Hicks was known to some at the time as Bone, a 5-foot4 junior high school student, when he fired the 9-millimeter handgun that killed Tariq Khamisa. The shooting came at the urging of an 18-year-old fellow gang member, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported in 1996.

By the time he pleaded guilty, Hicks was 15. He entered the prison system for juveniles.

The next year, the state relocated its 16- and 17-year-old inmates, taking them from youth prisons and putting them in with adults. At 16, Hicks was at Folsom State Prison.

He was 21 when he stabbed a prison guard with an 8-inch shank in 2002, authorities said.

District Attorney Summer Stephan said she cant ignore that part of Hicks record.

That is a serious violent offense, and that is several years after the murder when he was already an adult, she said. I have to weigh the real compelling interest of how old he is but also public safety  and if he is ready for parole.

Typically, prosecutors formally oppose parole at an inmates first hearing, especially if that person has committed a violent act in prison.

The district attorneys office has not taken a position in Hicks case. Not yet.

In Hicks favor, Stephan said, are his age at the time of the crime, that he has been free of violations in prison for a few years, and the support he has on the outside.

At the request of the victims family, Stephan will attend Hicks parole hearing Wednesday in San Luis Obispo.

I am going to listen and weigh and keep an open mind, Stephan said, and hopefully hear enough information that he is ready.

She said she is mindful of the work of TKF, established by the victims father and the killers grandfather.

They have turned their pain into optimism, she said.

Azim Khamisa and Felix were working on restorative justice  the idea that reconciliation with victims furthers rehabilitation of the offender  before it became a movement.

The Tariq Khamisa Foundation has great reach in San Diego County. The organizations website says it has connected with more than 500,000 young people across the county since 1995 with a goal of stopping teen violence.

In November 2017, the founders gave a TED talk at a conference in New Orleans telling their story. The transcript of their presentation was translated into 17 languages.

Hicks has earned a high school diploma and college credits in prison. Hes also been writing a blog for TKFs website, speaking of the shame of his actions and the destructive impact he had.

The blog contains answers to questions from students. It includes what is essentially an open letter to his victim, written earlier this year. It reads, in part:

I cant comprehend what you must have felt that night I ambushed you, turning around to see me standing there with a loaded gun pointing at you demanding the pizza that you had already returned to the back of your car. You were courageous in that moment refusing to allow yourself to be robbed and for standing for what was right.

I often wonder if I would have your strength now? I know that I didnt have it then. I was scared and weak inside trying to hide those feelings and others behind the mask that being a part of a gang provided me and the gun that I pointed at you.

If Hicks is granted parole, he wont get out until next year. And if he is released in 2019, a coming change to the law gives his case notable bookends.

On New Years Day in 1995  21 days before the killing of Tariq Khamisa  state law changed to allow juveniles as young as 14 to be tried for murder.

On New Years Day 2019, thats no longer the case. Under a new law, no one under 16 can be charged as an adult in California for any crime.

teri.figueroa@sduniontribune.com
Two weeks after Californias deadliest and most destructive wildfire sent thousands of evacuees fleeing the town of Paradise, No Vacancy signs have become a feature of the landscape here.

A second disaster is unfolding.

Across Butte County  a primarily agricultural area known for its walnut, almond and rice farms  towns are struggling to absorb the roughly 50,000 people displaced by the Camp fire. Through no fault of their own, the evacuees arrival has worsened the states housing crisis and raised the possibility that they could be evicted from the region again, not by fire but by a scarcity of suitable dwellings.

Hotels and motels from Sacramento to Redding are full. The vacancy rate in the rental market, which hovered around 3% before the fire, has fallen to near zero. Unable to find single-family homes in the area, evacuees have resorted to renting individual bedrooms, buying recreational vehicles and purchasing travel trailers. Others are simply leaving California for other western states with a lower cost of living.

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Temporary shelters run by the Red Cross to house wildfire survivors still hold more than 600 people people, many of them elderly and impoverished.

Butte County Housing Authority Executive Director Ed Mayer said that nearly 14,000 homes burned to the ground on Nov. 8, a loss of about 14% of Buttes housing stock. Before the fire, the countys homeless population numbered about 2,000. Now, it is expected to grow.

The real question is where do people go? Mayer said. And at first blush, the answer is: probably leaving California, if they can go anywhere. Because there is no availability in California.

In the immediate aftermath of the fire, many evacuees found shelter and comfort in the homes of relatives and obliging strangers. The North Valley Property Owners Assn. created a website  CampFireHousing.org  where hundreds of people offered their spare bedrooms and guest cottages to people who had lost their homes. Offers of help poured in from across the country.

The housing market is flush with goodwill, but little in the way of permanent solutions.

On the day before the fire broke out, the city of Chico had 243 homes for sale, said Adam Pearce, president of the North Valley group. About a week later, less than a third of them were still on the market. Pearce said that many of those that remain are new construction and are still being built.

The sudden surge in demand has led to bidding wars, with desperate families willing to pay cash sending home prices soaring.

Some of these buyers, they dont care if theyre going over asking [price] because they just want a home over their head, Pearce said. People are dipping into their retirement accounts in order to purchase property.

Adding to the difficulty of finding long-term housing for evacuees is the fact that Butte County  like the rest of California  already had fewer homes than it needed before the fire. In Chico and Oroville, more than a third of renters were spending more than half of their income on housing each month.

The shortage has been particularly devastating for people who were struggling to make ends meet before the fire.

After the Camp fire turned her home in Paradise to ash and took everything she had, Leeanne Watts and her family of six people, four dogs and one bearded dragon lizard, found themselves stuck in a hotel in Yuba City.

Although she had recently received a voucher from the federal governments Section 8 program that would subsidize her rent payments, Watts 41, quickly learned that Butte County landlords wouldnt even entertain her inquiries. The voucher, which at first seemed like a stroke of unbelievable luck, had become a mark against her as a flood of tenants able to pay higher rents entered the market.

Watts said her hotel stay is being paid for by an attorney representing her in a lawsuit against Pacific Gas & Electric Co., the utility company whose high-voltage line malfunctioned just minutes before the first flames were reported. She can stay until the end of the month, but where she and her family go after that is a source of great anxiety. They have been subsisting on her husbands and sons disability payments and are running out of money.

This has completely ruined our lives, she said. I dont know what were going to do. Theres nothing.

Watts is not alone in her desperation. According to the countys housing authority, more than 300 Section 8 tenants lost their homes in the fire.

Complaints about landlords drastically raising rents have multiplied.

Though price gouging is illegal and Chicos city council recently strengthened renter protections, real estate agents and house hunters alike said the practice has become commonplace in the rental market. One of Mayers employees at the housing authority who lost her home in the fire looked into renting a four-bedroom house for her family that was listed at $2,100. When she called, the landlord clarified  it was $2,100 per week.

Another unwelcome side effect of the devastation is already making its presence felt. Several evacuees said that real estate speculators have approached them with offers to buy the land under their incinerated homes.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has stepped in to move wildfire evacuees out of shelters and into temporary housing, such as hotels and trailers. Frank Mansell, a spokesman for the agency, said it has offered 3,800 households rental assistance certificates and is putting up 90 families in hotels.

Firefighters and recovery workers are moving into a newly built base camp at the county fairgrounds, Mansell said, part of a effort to free up hotel rooms for evacuees.

Mayer said he has been told to expect a delivery of about 2,000 FEMA trailers, though precisely when they will arrive and where they will be placed is still under discussion. Authorities have cautioned residents who lost their homes against moving trailers onto their properties, many of which are believed to contain toxic ash.

Faced with the loss of their homes and the worsening shortage of affordable housing, some fire evacuees are giving up on California.

Jessica Swisher, 26, and her husband Eric Busby, 38, had moved into the Butte Creek Mobile Home Park about four months before the fire. It had taken them two years to save enough money for a deposit and first months rent. When the blaze swept through the park, it caused their barbecue grills propane tank to explode and left their daughters bunk beds twisted and charred.

While Busby talks about his desire to help rebuild Paradise, the couple and their four young daughters, ages 7 months to 9 years, are preparing to leave. A donation of $5,000 enabled them to buy a deeply discounted and well-used RV. Once its brakes are repaired, they plan to leave the shelter where they have been staying and make their way to Las Vegas, where they have relatives and the hope of steady work.

There are so many people from Paradise that lost their homes that housing here is just nonexistent, Swisher said. I think this could be a clean start for us.

Many evacuees said they feel paralyzed and are reluctant to make decisions about their future they might regret later.

For 18 years, Genesee Salamon and her husband owned a home in Paradise. Two weeks ago, it burned to the ground with her five dogs inside.

Unable to find a place to rent, the couple recently purchased an RV, buying themselves some time to stay in the area and map out new lives. Salamon is eager to go back to work as a counselor at a Chico charter school. She knows some people are already talking about rebuilding Paradise, but shes not one of them.

People are in shock  Im still in shock  and Im trying to be mindful of moving slowly and thoughtfully, she said. This is just such deep devastation.

anna.phillips@latimes.com

Twitter: @annamphillips
After years of unsuccessful attempts, supporters of legislation that would allow people to carry concealed handguns without a permit in South Dakota anticipate revived prospects once GOP Gov.-elect Kristi Noem takes office in January.

The legislation languished under retiring Republican Gov. Dennis Daugaard, but Noem in her campaign offered support for a so-called constitutional carry law. GOP state Sen.-elect Lynne DiSanto, who as a member of the state House of Representatives sponsored a permitless concealed carry bill that Daugaard vetoed, said such legislation is likely in the upcoming session and shes optimistic about its prospects.

There are a lot of Republicans that are very excited to have a conservative governor, said DiSanto. I think under a new governor its very likely to pass.

Daugaard has said the states current gun laws are reasonable. Right now, its a misdemeanor for someone to carry a concealed pistol or to have one concealed in a vehicle without a permit. At the end of October, there were nearly 108,000 pistol permits in South Dakota, according to the secretary of states office.

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Daugaard vetoed DiSantos proposal in 2017 and also rejected a similar measure in 2012; constitutional carry legislation failed during the 2018 session after he issued a veto threat. Bill supporters have argued that getting a concealed pistol permit can be burdensome.

Backers are likely to get a boost from Noem, who triumphed over Democratic state Sen. Billie Sutton in the Nov. 6 election. Noem in January urged passage of a permitless carry bill.

At the time Noem didnt endorse a specific plan, though her campaign said she supported the policy in principle. Transition team spokeswoman Kristin Wileman said in a statement this week that Noem wont commit to legislation until she can review its text, but said shes a strong 2nd Amendment supporter and thinks provisions like constitutional carry can protect and even strengthen this right for South Dakotans.

The governor-elect will work to find a way that law enforcement and gun right proponents can come together around a solution, Wileman said.

Staci Ackerman, executive director of the South Dakota Sheriffs Assn., said the group hasnt discussed 2019 legislation yet. But she said the organization supported a bill in the 2018 session that allowed permitless carry for state residents with a South Dakota drivers license or identification card; the measure didnt advance out of the Senate.

The 2019 session is scheduled to run Jan. 8 to March 29. Republicans will control both houses of the Legislature as well as the governorship.
After being in gunfights in Afghanistan and Iraq, members of one of Americas newest elite wildfire crews are tasked with fighting fires in rugged country back home.

On the U.S. Bureau of Land Managements only hotshot crew that is focused on recruiting veterans, members have traded assault rifles and other weapons of war for chain saws and shovels. But, like in the military, they have camaraderie, structure and chain of command. And the occasional adrenaline rush.

Being in a firefight is way different than being in a wildland fire, but both are mentally taxing, said Chris Schott, who served two tours in Afghanistan with the Armys 7th Special Forces Group. In a wildland fire, no ones shooting at you, but conditions can go favorable to unfavorable very quickly.

The Lakeview Veterans Interagency Hotshot Crew, based in Klamath Falls, Ore., received its hotshot certification after rigorous training and testing, the Bureau of Land Management announced last week. Its now among 112 elite U.S. wildland firefighting teams and the only one targeting veterans for recruitment, the agency said.

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Crew superintendent Michael McGirr said he and other managers took then-President Obamas initiative to hire veterans to heart.

We felt it was important for them to transition back home, McGirr said.

Their maturity and ability to follow and lead are benefits that quickly became apparent when the crew started operating in 2012 as a lower-classification unit, McGirr said. Their military experience also means theyre used to enduring tough missions.

Its a lot of arduous hiking in nasty terrain, McGirr said. The steeper the terrain, thats usually the ground hotshots are on.

Kenn Boles, a member of the crew since 2012 who did three tours in Iraq as a Marine, agreed that veterans can withstand the intense work.

Youre working hard, sweating; the fire doesnt stop because of those things, he said. Its like in combat  just because youre hungry, tired and thirsty doesnt mean the firefight stops.

The crew is on leave and hasnt been battling the recent deadly wildfires in California.

Of the 25 positions on the crew, 17 are filled by veterans, McGirr said. There are three additional openings, and McGirr said he wants to recruit female veterans, too.

Schott, the Army veteran, said the crew believed it had the potential to achieve elite hotshot status after fighting fires in 2015, including one in Oregons Crater Lake National Park that it almost had contained when winds picked up and changed direction, pushing the flames behind the firefighters.

They worked two weeks in a row, digging fire lines and doing prescribed burns to deprive the fire of fuel. After three days off, they worked another two weeks straight.

After that, we thought we could be the first veterans hotshot crew in the nation, Schott said.

The crew usually works for nine months, with three months off.

We spend more time together than with our families, McGirr said. Its a grueling pace. We eat together, sleep together.

That creates a camaraderie that allows the veterans to share their wartime experiences with those who understand what they endured.

Boles lost a close friend a week after he left Iraq. That was the biggest contributor to post-traumatic stress disorder that hit him later, he said, describing it as a lot of survivors guilt. The veterans have one anothers backs when PTSD issues arise, acting as a support group.

Instead of bottling it up, were really receptive to hearing peoples stories and problems, said Boles, who was in the invasion of Iraq and in heavy fighting in Fallujah and Ramadi.

Schott, who served in Afghanistans Oruzgan province north of Kandahar, said, A lot of times you think, this cant get any worse. And yet you made it through.

He was in an operations center when he heard radio traffic about someone killed in action. It was his best friend.

Myself, I was in denial for quite a long time about my PTSD, Schott said, adding that joining the crew and opening up to other veterans helped me get my life back on track and where it needs to be.

The Bureau of Land Management is proud of the crew and efforts to develop a workforce of veterans, said Jeffrey Fedrizzi, agency deputy director for fire and aviation.

He said the men attaining hotshot status demonstrate the exemplary quality and performance ingrained in this crew.
He described marijuana as a very real danger and has said its effects are only slightly less awful than those of heroin. Once, during a drug hearing when he was a Senator, he said he wanted to send a clear message: Good people dont smoke marijuana.

So when Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions was ousted recently, a collective sigh of relief rose up from proponents of legalized pot  activists, politicians, investors  who felt targeted by the nations top law enforcement officer.

Sessionss departure has translated into spiking stocks for cannabis companies and a reset of sorts for the legalization movement which, since 2012, has seen nearly a dozen states pass recreational pot measures.

Colorado governor-elect Jared Polis, a staunch supporter of legal pot, said Sessions had it out for states that have legalized marijuana.

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No question about that, Polis, a Democrat, said in an interview. In an ideal situation, the next attorney general would recognize the rights of states, like Colorado, to responsibly legalize and regulate marijuana and not interfere or even threaten to interfere.

Even Cory Gardner, a staunchly conservative Republican senator from Colorado, tweeted a subtle jab at Sessions after his departure: I look forward to continuing to work with the president to fulfill his campaign position to leave the regulation of marijuana to the states.

While its hard to know exactly what, if anything, acting Atty. Gen. Matthew Whitaker will do on the issue, activists are hopeful theyve escaped the toughest scrutiny. Although he hasnt spoken at length about his views on marijuana, Whitaker, during his 2014 candidacy for an Iowa Senate seat, sympathized with users of medical cannabis.

Ideally, the next attorney general would not only strip away the threat of federal interference, but also lay out guidelines for states with laws on the books, said Michael Collins, director of the Drug Policy Alliance, which advocates for marijuana legalization.

The hope is that the next attorney general has drug policy ideas that are not straight out of the 1980s, Collins said.

The markets reacted swiftly to Sessions resignation. Cannabis producer Tilray quickly saw its stock rise 31%, Canopy Growths stock jumped 8.2% and Cronos Groups stock was up 8.4%.

Stuart Titus, CEO of Medical Marijuana, Inc.  one of the first publicly-traded cannabis companies in the U.S. believes Sessions departure is a harbinger of good times for the industry.

Sessions stance on cannabis had been a major impediment toward cannabis reform, he said, and now industry participants hold new hopes for sweeping change at the federal level.

Former Atty. Gen Jeff Sessions once called marijuana a very real danger. (Mandel Ngan / AFP-Getty Images)

From the outset of his tenure as top cop, Sessions hardly shy about sharing his anti-marijuana stance.

Last year, he penned letters to governors of states with legalized pot explaining he had serious concerns about the effects of legalization and suggesting the states could face crackdowns from the Justice Department.

In his letters to three Democratic governors and the Independent governor of Alaska, Sessions cited recent reports on the impact of pot legalization, listing problems with security, distribution and the controlled use of marijuana in the four states.

The Department remains committed to enforcing the Controlled Substance Act in a manner that efficiently applies our resources to address the most significant threats to public health and safety, Sessions wrote.

While he didnt take any concrete steps to curb the sale of legal pot, his threats continued.

In January, Sessions rescinded an Obama-era policy that directed federal prosecutors not to target marijuana businesses that operate legally under state law. Even so, in April, President Trump  who has remained neutral on the topic  assured lawmakers, including Gardner, that the federal government would not interfere with the will of states.

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, who received a letter, said Sessions repeatedly ignored state constitutional amendments legalizing marijuana.

He was a stubborn stickler for the status quo, Hickenlooper said in an interview.

Mason Tvert, a spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project, a group dedicated to ending marijuana prohibitions, said the turbulent talk from the head of the Justice Department has caused uneasiness in the industry.

[Sessions] rhetoric and some of his symbolic actions had significant financial consequences for the state-legal cannabis industry, Tvert said. Businesses were not shut down and operators were not arrested, but investments got pulled and deals went south, creating significant headaches.

Despite Sessions stance, the legalization movement has forged ahead.

Voters in Michigan this month passed a ballot measure legalizing the sale and possession of up to an ounce of marijuana for anyone over the age of 21, joining nine other states with similar laws. In addition, conservative states like Utah and Missouri passed medical marijuana reforms this month. Thirty-two states currently allow medical pot.

Support for legalization remains high. A Pew Research Center survey from October showed 62% of Americans support legalized marijuana, compared with 34% who want it to remain illegal. Support is double what it was in 2000 when 31% believe pot should be legalized. Nearly seven-in-ten Democrats say it should be legal.

Even former Republican House Speaker John A. Boehner, who for years had opposed legal marijuana saying it was a gateway drug, has reversed his position and now supports it. Hes joined the board of Acreage Holdings as a paid advisor. The company has cannabis operations in several states, and Boehner is delivering speeches across the country touting legal pot.

Last year, Democrats introduced legislation aimed at ending federal prohibition on marijuana. So far, its stalled in Congress.

But that soon could change when Democrats take control of the House in January and with Sessions out at the Department of Justice, said Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), a staunch supporter of ending federal pot prohibition.

Time and time again, he attempted to impose his own views on reforming our outdated marijuana laws, which did not match the majority of the American people, he said of Sessions.

Blumenauer added: Its time to finally end the federal governments policy of prohibition.

kurtis.lee@latimes.com

Twitter: @kurtisalee
Protesters marched Saturday through an Alabama shopping mall where police had killed a black man they later acknowledged was not the triggerman in a Thanksgiving night shooting that wounded two people.

An officer shot and killed 21-year-old Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford Jr. of Hueytown on Thursday while responding to the mall shooting. Police said Bradford was fleeing the scene with a weapon.

Hoover police initially told reporters Bradford had shot a teen at the mall, but later retracted the statement.

We knew that was false, stepmother Cynthia Bradford said when she heard police were blaming him for the shooting. She described her stepson, who went by E.J., as a respectful young man and the son of a Birmingham police officer.

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Hoover Police Capt. Gregg Rector said investigators now believe that more than two people were involved in the initial fight before the shooting, and that at least one gunman who could be responsible is still at large.

Police said while Bradford may have been involved in some aspect of the altercation, he likely did not fire the rounds that injured the 18-year-old victim. Rector said police regret that their initial statement about Bradford was not accurate.

More than 200 demonstrators, including several relatives, chanted E.J. and No justice, no peace as they marched past Christmas shoppers at the mall. They held a moment of silence at the spot outside a shoe store where Bradford was killed.

They should have never have killed him, said Emani Smith, Bradfords 7-year-old half-sister, as other family members cried.

Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford Jr, at his fathers home near Birmingham in his senior year of high school. (Emantic Bradford Sr / AP)

Family members described the horror of finding out from social media that Bradford was dead. Video circulated on social media of him lying in a pool of blood on the mall floor.

Carlos Chaverst, an activist in Birmingham who organized the protest, said that when authorities acknowledged that the person killed was not the shooter, that sent us in an uproar. He said they want justice for the family and he called for police to release body camera and surveillance footage. More protests will be held in the future to hold officials accountable, he added.

When we found out about this incident, there were questions from the jump. People were upset because a man was shot and killed by police in our own backyard, he said.

The incident began Thanksgiving night with a fight and shooting in suburban Birmingham at the Riverchase Galleria, a mall crowded with Black Friday bargain hunters. An 18-year-old was shot twice and a 12-year-old bystander was shot in the back.

The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency is investigating the incident since it is an officer-involved shooting. The Hoover Police Department is conducting its own internal investigation.

The officer who shot Bradford was placed on administrative leave while authorities investigate the shooting. The officers name was not released publicly. No officers were hurt.

Bradford is shown in photos on Facebook in an Army uniform and described himself as a combat engineer. A spokesman for the Army, however, told the Washington Post that he never completed advanced individual training, and so did not serve.

Video posted on social media by shoppers showed a chaotic scene as shoppers fled the mall, which closed for the remainder of Thursday night.

A witness, Lexi Joiner, told the news website Al.com she was shopping with her mother when the gunfire started. Joiner said she heard six or seven shots and was ordered, along with some other shoppers, into a supply closet for cover.

It was terrifying, Joiner said.

A woman who described herself as the mother of the injured 12-year-old posted on social media that the girl was on a Black Friday shopping trip with other family members when the shooting happened, and didnt immediately realize that the pain in her back was from a bullet.

She was hurting a lot, but very brave and positive as always, the mother wrote after seeing the girl when she arrived at a hospital.

Hoover police said Friday morning that the girl was in stable condition.
A mother who scaled the U.S.-Mexico border fence near the San Ysidro Port of Entry fell and was impaled by pieces of rebar Friday night, Border Patrol said Saturday.

The 26-year-old Guatemalan woman was with her two children, ages 3 and 5, when she crossed illegally, said Border Patrol Agent Tekae Michael. The woman told agents she was not part of the massive migrant caravan camped out in Tijuana, Michael said.

The mother climbed the fence east of the border crossing, where construction crews have been working to replace decades-old primary fencing with a new barrier. When she fell, pieces of rebar pierced her side and buttocks.

Border Patrol arrived to render medical aid about 8:25 p.m. and requested assistance from the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department. She was taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

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Her children were also evaluated at the hospital for potential fall trauma and, showing no injuries, were released back to Border Patrol custody.

Entering our country illegally, particularly over our walls, is not only dangerous, but also very foolish, San Diegos chief Border Patrol agent, Rodney Scott, said Saturday. This woman placed her own life and her childrens lives in peril. She could have easily died if not for the quick response by our agents and EMS.

Authorities said the rebar was part of the ongoing border fence construction and not related to the militarys recent mission to fortify the fence in response to the caravan. The military has primarily been stringing concertina wire across the top of the fence. It was unclear whether there was concertina wire where the woman and her children crossed.

A worker connects rebar for the concrete foundation of the border wall in Granjeno, Texas, in February 2009. (Eric Gay / Associated Press)

kristina.davis@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @kristinadavis

Davis writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.
One hundred years ago, when Madeleine LEngle was born  on Nov. 29, 1918  no one had heard of the particular rallying cry she persisted. LEngles story, however, and that of her masterpiece, A Wrinkle in Time, is exactly about female perspicacity.

In the 1950s, LEngle  a married mother of three in Connecticut  had published a few books, but she was turning 40 and well into a self-described decade of failure. She felt spasms of guilt for trying to write rather than behaving like a good New England housewife and mother. After yet another rejection notice from yet another publisher, LEngle covered her typewriter, sure she was done.

She uncovered it again, though, after what she recorded as a moment of decision in her journal: If I never had another book published, and it was very clear to me that this was a real possibility, I still had to go on writing.

A Wrinkle in Time made the rounds of publishers for two years, garnering forty-odd rejections  each one a wound.

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On a family camping trip to the Painted Desert, she had an idea for a new novel, inspired by something Albert Einstein wrote about the possibility that space and time might warp and wrinkle. When she finished the book, she tried it out on her then-editor, who rejected it. It made the rounds of publishers for two years, garnering forty-odd rejections each one a wound.

LEngle might have lost confidence in it, but instead she seized an opportunity through a friend to put it into the hands of John Farrar at Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Two weeks later her young son appeared at her bedside, saying her agent was on the phone and had told him to wake her.

A Wrinkle in Time was published in 1962. It won the 1963 Newberry Medal, Americas top annual award for childrens literature, and went on to become the second most popular childrens book of all time, wedged between Charlottes Web at No. 1 and Harry Potter at No. 3.

LEngle started writing at age 5 with a story about a little gurl. That her most famous book would come to her from reading something Einstein had written is remarkable, given that LEngles grades in science and math were so poor she might not have graduated from high school with her class.

While still in school, though, she submitted poetry to Good Housekeeping magazine, garnering a form rejection slip of the kind familiar to most writers. She pasted hers in her journal and wrote beside it, I got this delightful little refusal from Good Housekeeping today, & my poem was returned all dirtied. Someday Good Housekeeping will ask me to write poems for it!

In college, LEngle tried her hand at plays. After graduation, she ended up acting with a traveling theater troupe, still writing on the side. She finished her first novel that way, writing between scenes and while traveling city to city.

In 1946, she married Hugh Franklin, who described her to his parents as not so much blond as light-haired, with a high forehead which she camouflages with bangs and poor eyesight. She hates to wear glasses, consequently cant see well. One of her legs was slightly shorter than the other, although her husband-to-be didnt mention that.

Hugh was an actor who would eventually land a lifetime role on the soap opera All My Children, but he was getting only small parts or none at all as she was collecting rejections for A Wrinkle in Time.

One of the last publishers to reject it suggested the book should be cut by half. LEngle was willing to rewrite but, she wrote, I wont destroy my book for money for some editor who completely misses the point.

Even after Wrinkle was accepted, the men at Farrar didnt expect much. One of their outside readers wrote about it, I think this is the worst book I have ever read. It was science fiction with a female protagonist when, as LEngle herself said, That just wasnt done. Her editor, Hal Vursell, in his letter seeking blurb quotes for it, said it would be a hard sell. Were young readers up to the dystopian setting and its complicated concepts?

Enter the Fray: First takes on the news of the minute from L.A. Times Opinion 

The answer was a resounding yes. Young readers immediately took to the story of Meg Murrys journey to find her father  transcending time, space and even the limitations of her own mind  in the company of her brother Charles Wallace, a boy named Calvin, and three supernatural old ladies named (without periods, to make them more otherworldly) Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who and Mrs Which.

There are now more than 10 million copies of A Wrinkle in Time in print. A new audio version offers LEngle reading it herself. Its based on an old recording  LEngle died in 2007  but her deep, slightly gravelly voice lives on, full of the same love for Meg that readers feel. Also new this year is Becoming Madeleine, a biography written by her granddaughters that includes journal pages, photographs and a report card showing LEngles Ds in algebra, Latin and geometry.

In LEngles Newberry Medal acceptance speech, she said she couldnt possibly explain how she came to write A Wrinkle in Time. It was simply a book I had to write. I had no choice.

And the best advice she ever received about writing sounds a lot like distilled persistence: Just to write.

Meg Waite Clayton is the author of six novels. Her latest is Beautiful Exiles, about Martha Gellhorn and Ernest Hemingway.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinionand Facebook
Its been three decades since Dr. James Hansen told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee with 99% confidence that the Earth was getting warmer, that this real warming trend could be linked to the greenhouse effect, and that we could expect more extreme events in our weather.

That was in 1988. Its now 2018, and we still havent fully addressed the many ways were altering our climate.

A scientific report released Friday by 13 federal agencies warned that climate change could eliminate 10% of the American economy by the end of this century if significant steps arent taken to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Theres evidence that most people in this country want swift action. A recent survey by ABC News, Stanford University and the nonprofit Resources for the Future shows that 61% of Americans want Washington to be doing a great deal or a lot about global warming, and that 53% favor immediate action over further study.

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When it comes to adaptation, we cant wait for a top-down solution.

What Washington chooses to do is only one part of the equation, however. More and more, people concerned with climate change are plagued by a seemingly simple question: What can I do?

I found the beginnings of an answer on the rugged coast of southeast Alaska, where over a period of five years I studied how global warming is affecting forests there, as well as how the local Alaskans are adapting to their changing environment.

There were a variety of both effects and responses, of course. But there was a clear takeaway that those of us in warmer latitudes would be wise to take to heart: The warming may be global, but adaption will need to be local.

From roughly 2010 to 2015, my colleagues and I watched carefully as forests in the Alexander Archipelago underwent changes caused by global warming. Our research focused primarily on protected lands in four inlets: Slocum Arm, Klag Bay, Dicks Arm and Graves Harbor.

In vegetation surveys conducted regularly at 50 plots, we observed a host of effects. For instance, many of the forests transitioned from being dominated by the Alaska yellow cedar, a conifer whose shallow roots need snow for insulation from the cold, to being dominated by the western hemlock. This transition was also associated with other changes in the surrounding plant community. Mosses and other bryophytes  land plants that are nonvascular and seedless  became less abundant, for example, while grasses and shrubs became more abundant.

I took thousands of measurements of trees with my team. But I also conducted scores of interviews with locals, hoping to understand how they were grappling with the changes to their landscape. Here, too, we found a host of effects.

Some locals were looking for ways to benefit from the changes. For instance, they were finding new uses for the dead trees and taking advantage of easier hunting conditions in areas affected by dieback.

Some were adapting in other ways. A number of forest managers were altering their management practices, for example. They were experimenting by planting certain species in places where they were more likely to survive, protecting individual trees by insulating their roots from sudden temperature changes and, in some instances, substituting the use of one species for another.

As one might expect, there was a strong correlation between knowledge about climate change and the motivation and ability to adapt. Knowing that the dying trees were linked to climate change led to different adaptive responses. Those who were most connected to nature and knowledgeable about the effects of warming were the most prepared.

Enter the Fray: First takes on the news of the minute from L.A. Times Opinion 

People who had made the connection between the dying trees and climate change were also the ones to report behavioral changes targeted at the global nature of the problem. In addition to grappling with the local consequences, they chose to educate others about climate change by using their local trees as an example. They were also adopting new transportation methods to reduce their energy consumption, such as biking to work.

For those who had made the connection, there was also a strong psychological component to adaptation. This often began with grief over the loss of a tree species and connecting with other people who were affected by the same losses. In particular, people needed to find a way to cope with the understanding that the local changes were spurred by a seemingly uncontrollable, global driver.

Although climate change will affect every continent, every coast, every mountain range differently, the Alaskans who are already coping with its many impacts offer a glimpse into all of our futures. When it comes to adaptation, we cant wait for a top-down solution.

We know what needs to happen at the global scale: We need to curb emissions.

But as more of us are beginning to learn every year, from the extensive coral bleaching in Australias Great Barrier Reef to the massive wildfires that have been ravaging California, climate change will inevitably hit home for all of us.

Lauren E. Oakes is a conservation scientist at the Wildlife Conservation Society, an adjunct professor in the Department of Earth System Science at Stanford University and the author of In Search of the Canary Tree: The Story of a Scientist, a Cypress, and a Changing World.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion or Facebook
To the editor: The Israeli governments response to Airbnbs decision not to list units in West Bank settlements is priceless: There is no distinction between this part and that part of the state of Israel, according to the government official responsible for addressing the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.

If that is true  if the West Bank is in fact fully part of the state of Israel  then why is there a military occupation? Why is there military law for the majority of West Bank residents? Why do the millions of Palestinians who were born and live in the West Bank not have full civil rights along with other Israelis?

While we are at it, why are citizens of Israel restricted from entering most parts of the West Bank and all of Gaza?

Erica Hahn, Monrovia

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..

To the editor: Jews have owned property in places like West Bank towns Gush Etzion and Hebron for centuries. Under the new Airbnb policy, rooms and units located in those places will not be listed by the company.

But if an Arab owns some property a hundred yards away and purchased it a week ago, it can be listed. That is religious profiling.

Clearly, Airbnbs foray into foreign policy is naive and discriminatory.

David Eliezrie, Yorba Linda

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To the editor: This is the BDS movements most significant victory yet. Congratulations to the human rights activists who made this happen.

There were two issues with Airbnb operating in settlements. First, the listings commonly did not indicate they were in illegal settlements. Second, BDS activists object to any company doing business in the occupied territories.

The first issue could be resolved by Airbnb insisting that listings explicitly state they are located in illegal, segregated Jewish-only settlements in Palestine. But, that would not satisfy BDS activists who want to pressure Israel with a boycott.

Jeff Warner, Los Angeles

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook
To the editor: Lopsided partisan representation survives in some states in spite of equal vote totals between the two parties because of the brazen attempts by the Republican Party to unconstitutionally set electoral boundaries according to party affiliation instead of population numbers.

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts will forever be known as the man who gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013 by eliminating the rule of oversight on states setting their own voting restriction activities.

Shortly after that decision in 2013, several states dominated by Republican politicians enacted voter suppression laws, disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of low-income voters and effectively those of color. Furthermore, the court has favored Republicans in gerrymandering cases.

Roberts has ensured that democratic ideal of one citizen, one vote is now dead in states with Republican Party dominance. Is he proud of his legacy?

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Marcy Bregman, Agoura Hills

..

To the editor: At its heart gerrymandering is undemocratic. It wastes votes of the majority of citizens. To support this practice is to support the tyranny of the minority.

A quick solution that renders gerrymandering impotent is to implement proportional terms of service. Under this system, any candidate with a vote count in excess of 30% of the total would be obligated to serve in office a time period relative to his or her vote percentage.

Third-party candidates may feel emboldened, and the total number of wasted votes would be minimized. This could be accompanied by longer terms and more frequent censuses.

Desperate times require desperate solutions.

Jim Benson, Altadena

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More than a dozen Californians will win their first terms in the state Legislature or U.S. Congress if current election results hold, most for two-year terms in office. But they wont even get half of that time  less than any freshmen lawmakers in more than a decade  to do the job before the pressure of fundraising, opponents and electoral politics begins to build again.

The endless campaign season will return to California thanks to a new law that aims to make the state a powerful player in the 2020 presidential race. Trouble is, it will drag 153 legislative and congressional contests along with it.

Last year, Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation that permanently moves Californias primary from June to the second week in March. And, yes, youve seen this movie before: Elected officials spent a decade of tinkering, beginning in 1996, on ways to make the states primary a star attraction in the quadrennial presidential circus. After all, no state sends more delegates to the two major parties national conventions.

Even with some very close races left to decide in California, a recount of ballots is rare 

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But lost in news coverage of the 2017 law was the impact the early primary will have on the rest of the California political universe.

The dominoes for a primary in the late winter of 2020 start to fall next summer, less than six months into the real work of legislating by the class of freshmen in the state Assembly and Californias delegation in the House of Representatives. Thats when donors and potential opponents will have to make key decisions about the campaign season that lies ahead. The formal filing season for California races begins on Sept. 12 and runs through early December. Candidate statements for voter guides will be drafted over the Thanksgiving holiday. County elections officials will mail ballots to overseas and military voters just after New Years Day a year from this January.

The calendar may shrink on the front end of Californias election cycle in 2020, but it will be stretched out when it comes to how long it takes to actually win office. There will be 245 days between the legislative and congressional primary and Novembers election day. When the Legislature acted in 2004 to reestablish the June primary, supporters of the effort to abolish March primaries said all the earlier elections had done was ensure that more political cash needed to be raised and spent by state and local candidates. The Times Editorial Board that year called the early primary absurd for those offices.

But to hold a separate presidential primary  what California did once, in 2008  presented its own headaches, not the least of which was a $97-million price tag for elections operations.

The real unknown to the new law is how presidential campaigns will react. In the current national schedule, Californias primary is one of nine contests on the same day, a new version of the classic Super Tuesday. Caucuses in Iowa and Nevada and primaries in New Hampshire, New York and South Carolina would come before it. And no state will be more expensive for presidential hopefuls to compete in  buying a week of statewide TV ads here can cost $3 million.

None of that matters, of course, to the men and women elected to serve in Sacramento and on Capitol Hill. They need voters in 2020 to care about more than the fate of President Trump or any of his myriad potential Democratic challengers. But theyll have to do so using an election calendar that begins three months early, with key decisions on their electoral future to make before the ink is dry on their official office stationery.

john.myers@latimes.com

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Demonstrators angry at French President Emmanuel Macron and rising fuel taxes clashed with police in the heart of Paris on Saturday, turning the Champs-Elysees into a fiery battleground.

Thousands of protesters wearing high-visibility vests, known as Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests), converged near the Arc de Triomphe in a challenge to Macron and his centrist government. Many came from rural areas where locals accuse national leaders of ignoring increasing hardship and poverty. As they marched in defiance of an order from authorities to keep away from the thoroughfare popular with tourists, police responded with tear gas and water cannons.

Some of the demonstrators responded by building barricades and setting fire to them. Interior Minister Christophe Castaner blamed ultra right hooligans for turning what was expected to be a peaceful demonstration into a violent one.

The right to demonstrate is a fundamental right and we will protect that, Castaner said at a news conference. But we cannot protect those carried away by violence  those who only want to protest should withdraw and denounce the violence.

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Saturdays clashes came after the Yellow Vests, an ad hoc movement with no official leader, organization or political affiliation, relied on social media to call for a second wave of demonstrations following a first wave a week ago. In the first, 280,000 people, according to government estimates, took part in protests at 2,000 sites across France. Two people died and more than 600 were injured. This week, officials said, more than 106,000 people have taken part in protests across France.

The civil unrest has been sparked by increases in gasoline and diesel taxes. Earlier this year, Macron raised the tax on diesel by 7.6 cents per liter and gasoline by 2.9 cents. Further increases of 6.5 cents per liter for diesel and 3.9 cents for gasoline are due in January. Ministers say the hike is an environmental measure to wean the French off their dependence on fossil fuels.

But the anger has transformed to reveal a more profound dissatisfaction with Macron and his centrist administration.

Demonstrators accuse the government of being out of touch with those on low incomes living in rural areas who can no longer afford to run the vehicles they need to live and work, and say the fuel tax hikes are a final straw. Macron is also accused by protesters of catering to the rich through labor law changes that curtail some rights and privileges of workers, while cutting taxes for businesses and the wealthy.

There are so many things we are fed up with, said Bruno Binelli, 66, a retired carpenter, who left his home near the southeastern city of Lyons 250 miles away in the early hours of Saturday to join the demonstration in Paris. We pay our taxes, then they add more taxes. Its all too much. We have the feeling that those of us who live in the countryside are forgotten. Paris sucks us of money for new museums, new buildings, the Olympic Games, but nobody listens to us. Macron listens to nothing.

An opinion poll by the consulting firm BVA published Friday found Macrons popularity had dropped to 26%, three points down from last month and well below those of his immediate predecessors Francois Hollande (48%) and Nicolas Sarkozy (29%) at the same stage of their term in office.

Another survey for the newspaper Le Figaro indicated nearly 80% of those polled support the fuel protest and more than 80% want Macron to drop the tax hikes.

Joel Mouilleseaux, 24, a student from Creil in northern France, said he was demonstrating because things need to change.

Its always the same people who pay. We work, we pay, work some more, pay some more. Its been like that for years, Mouilleseaux said. Were here because weve had enough. I want to be heard, listened to and get a response.

On Saturday evening the Yellow Vests called for further demonstrations next weekend. The event published on Facebook was called Act 3: Macron Resign.

Willsher is a special correspondent.
Ugandan diving teams are retrieving bodies from Lake Victoria, where police say at least 30 people died in a boat accident near the capital, Kampala.

The boat overturned and sank about 7 p.m. Saturday night, said senior police officer Zurah Ganyana. She said that 27 people were rescued overnight, lower than earlier reports. More than 90 passengers were on the boat, leading officials to believe that the death toll will rise.

Ganyana said the boat was in poor condition and had been grounded for some time. She said it did not have a valid license to operate.

The boat was taking passengers on a pleasure cruise on Lake Victoria, a popular weekend activity for young people in Kampala, when it capsized close to shore.

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Early Sunday a police helicopter hovered low over the spot where the boat sank, as a team of divers searched for bodies under calm waters. As the death toll rose, so did the crowd of onlookers at a beach abutting a quiet village outside Kampala.

Police carried victims in tarpaulins and hauled them into a waiting truck, occasionally drawing loud wails from some of the onlookers. One young woman, seeing a victim she apparently recognized, collapsed and was rushed to a hospital.

Witnesses who were there on Saturday night said they heard people calling for help as they tried to stay afloat and others tried to swim ashore. Many were women.

They were shouting, Help us! Help us! and the boat was sinking very quickly, said Sam Tukei, one of several local men who used fishermens canoes to rescue people. By the time the police came we had saved many people.

One reason many people died so close to shore was likely intoxication, said Asuman Mugenyi, national director of police operations. Citing the accounts of some survivors, he said a good number of life jackets were aboard the doomed vessel that passengers neglected to wear.

The boats passengers, in a party mood halfway through their journey, likely panicked when the vessel started to sink, he said.

The boat is believed to have been on a routine weekend cruise that is popular among some young Ugandans. Victims include the couple who owned the boat, according to police officer Ganyana.

Boat accidents are increasingly common on East Africas major lakes including Lake Victoria, which is surrounded by Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda.

More than 200 people were killed in a Tanzanian ferry disaster in September, with officials saying it had been dangerously overcrowded.

UPDATES:

2:50 a.m.: Updated with reporting from Mukono, quotes from a witness and a higher death toll.

This article was first published at 1:35 a.m.
Russian warplanes attacked rebel-held areas in northern Syria for the first time in weeks on Sunday, as Syrian officials said more than 100 people were treated at hospitals for a suspected poison gas attack in the northern city of Aleppo that Damascus and Moscow blamed on rebels.

The rebels, who have denied carrying out any poison gas attacks, accused the government of trying to undermine a truce reached by Russia and Turkey in September during a summit in the Russian city of Sochi. The targeted area is rebel-held and home to extremist groups opposed to the truce.

Russian military spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov told reporters in Moscow that Russian warplanes destroyed militant positions in northern Syria, blaming them for the alleged poison gas attack.

The latest wave of shelling and airstrikes in northern Syria is the most serious violation of a truce reached by Russia and Turkey that brought relative calm to the countrys north for the past two months.

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Russia is a close ally of President Bashar Assad and has intervened in recent years to turn the tide of the civil war in his favor.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Thiqa News Agency, an activist collective, said warplanes pounded rebel-held areas west and south of Aleppo city. The airstrikes were the first since the truce went into effect on Sept. 17.

The state-controlled Syrian Arab News Agency, or SANA, said government troops pounded rebel positions near Aleppo inflicting heavy losses among terrorists. The Syrian government routinely calls rebel groups terrorists.

SANA said the alleged chemical attack late Saturday was carried out by terrorist groups positioned in Aleppo countryside that fired shells containing toxic gases on three neighborhoods in Syrias largest city.

Konashenkov said earlier that Russian chemical weapons specialists have been dispatched to Aleppo.

Medical staff treat a boy after a suspected chemical attack in Aleppo, Syria, on Nov. 24, 2018. (Syrian Arab News Agency)

According to preliminary data, particularly the symptoms shown by the victims, the shells that bombarded residential areas of Aleppo were filled with chlorine gas, Konashenkov said.

Syrias forensic medicine general director, Zaher Hajo, told the Associated Press that all but 15 of the 105 people who were treated have been discharged. He said two people who were in critical condition have improved.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 94 people were treated, with 31 remaining in hospitals.

The Turkish National Defense Ministry said in a statement Sunday that Defense Minister Hulusi Akar spoke with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Shoygu, about the recent developments in northern Syria. The statement said the two exchanged views on recent provocations that have been evaluated as aimed to undermine the Sochi agreement may continue and the need to be ready.

A joint team from the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons accused Syrias government of using chlorine gas in at least two attacks in 2014 and 2015, and the nerve agent sarin in an attack in April 2017 in the town of Khan Sheikhoun that killed about 100 people. The U.N.-OPCW team also accused the Islamic State extremist group of using mustard gas twice, in 2015 and 2016.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of activists and contacts throughout Syria, said the airstrikes hit the Rashideen district on the western outskirts of Aleppo and the village of Khan Touman south of the city.

The truce brokered by Russia and Turkey, which supports the rebels, has been repeatedly violated, but until Sunday there had been no airstrikes.
Home > Archives (2006 on) > 2018 > Dr Ambedkar and Politics of Caste

by S.R. Darapuri

Dr Ambedkar is said to be the father of Dalit politics because he was the first person to fight for the political rights of Dalits. He was the person who during the Round Table Conferences (1930-32), called in connection with the framing of future Constitution of India, got the Dalits (Depressed Classes) recognised as a minority distinct from the Hindus and got the right to separate electorate just like Muslims, Sikhs and Anglo-Indians. On the announcement of the Communal Representation Award in 1932, whereby the Depressed Classes also got a right to separate electorate, Mahatma Gandhi declared to resort to fast unto death under the plea that it will break the Hindu society whereas he had no objection to the similar right given to Sikhs and Muslims. At last under great pressure and to save Gandhis life Dr Ambedkar had to sign the Poona Pact whereby he had to sacrifice the Dalits right to independent politics and agree to joint electorate with reserved seats.

As per the decision taken in the Round Table Conference, a new law named Government of India Act1935 was enacted and this came into force in 1936. Under this Act the first election was declared to be held in 1937. In order to participate in this election Dr Ambedkar established in August, 1936 the Independent Labour Party which contested elections on 17 seats in the Bombay Presidency and won 15 seats. After this on July 19, 1942 he formed another party known as the All India Scheduled Castes Federation (AISCF). This party contested the elections held in 1946 and 1952 but lost them under the adverse impact of the Poona Pact. As a result of it Dr Ambedkar himself lost the election in 1952 and 1954. At last Dr Ambedkar dissolved the AISCF on October 14, 1956 at Nagpur and announced the formation of the Republican Party of India (RPI). He himself drafted the constitution of this party. In reality this party came into existence on October 3, 1957 after his death on December 6, 1956. According to these details, Dr Ambedkar established three political parties during his life-time. Out of these only the RPI has survived but is badly fragmented.

In the present context it is to be seen whether through these parties caste politics or politics based on different classes was pursued. This requires an in-depth analysis of the agendas of these parties established by Dr Ambedkar.

Let us first of all see the agenda of the Independent Labour Party. Dr Ambedkar, while enunciating the aims and objectives of this party, had said having regard to the fact that the present was no time for parties communally organised, in agreement with the wishes of friends, broadened the name and programme of the party so as to permit political co-operation between other classes and the Depressed Classes. The nucleus of the party would still be the 15 members of the Depressed Classes. But the members of the other classes were free to join the party. The manifesto of the party included solution to the problems of landless, poor farmers, tenants and labourers, to re-establish old and set up new industries, consolidation of small land holdings, expansion of technical education, state management of industries, to stop exploitation of tenants by landlords and expulsion there from, laws for the protection of workers, to punish every type of orthodoxy and reaction, expansion of education with donations, to re-plan village housing for cleanliness in order to change their mindset and establish library, hall and cinema house. The party mainly emphasised on the welfare of workers and farmers. The main effort of the party was to educate the people in democratic methods, to put the correct ideology before them and to organise them through political actions. Thus it is clear that the partys politics was not based on caste lines; rather it was based on common issues and Dalits were at the centre of this party. It was a party in opposition to the Congress Government of Bombay Presidency. During this period the party got many useful laws enacted. Due to opposition by this party the Industrial Disputes Bill could not be passed.

Now let us have a look at the aims, objectives and agenda of the AISCF established in 1942. By establishing this party Dr Ambedkar had aimed at creating a balance between the Congress and Socialist parties. The main issues of its manifesto were: All the Indians are entitled to equality, in favour of political, religious and economic equality for all Indians, state responsibility to keep all Indians free from want and fear, to protect liberty, equality and fraternity, freedom from exploitation of man by man, class by class and nation by nation and duty of the state to protect the democratic system and under an economic programme: nationalisation of insurance, compulsory insurance for all government employees and prohibition. Although under the adverse effect of the Poona Pact this party could not show much electoral victories, but still the partys agenda and peoples movements like land movements made the Untouchables to organise under one flag which instilled confidence in the Dalits. From the programme of the AISCF it is clear that although the Dalits were at the centre of the party but instead of caste politics the party pursued a broad agenda-based politics.

As mentioned earlier, keeping in view the changed circumstances and needs of the people Dr Ambedkar announced the formation of a new political party, named the Republican Party of India (RPI), on October 14, 1956 at Nagpur. He himself drafted its constitution. In estab-lishing this party his objective was to have a party whose aims and objectives should be in accordance with the promises made in our Constitution and to pursue for their fulfilment. He did not want to it to be a party of the Untouchables only because a party formed in the name of caste and class cannot win power as at the most it can become a pressure group only. The main objectives behind the formation of the RPI were: (1) the inequalities should be removed from the society so that there is no privileged and deprived section, (2) there should be a two-party system: one in power and one in opposition, (3) equality before law and equal protection of law, (4) to establish moral values in society, (5) equal treatment with minorities, (6) to develop a feeling of humanity which has been lacking in Indian society.

In the preamble of the constitution of the party the main aims and objectives mentioned are: To realise liberty, equality and fraternity. The party programme was very broad. Dr Ambedkars main idea behind formation of this party was to bring minorities, poor Muslims, poor Christians, poor and low caste Sikhs and poor class untouchables, backward class people, aborigines and all those people who want end of exploitation, justice and progress under one flag and protect their constitutional rights by confronting the capitalists. (Dalit Politics and Organisations by Bhagwan Das)

The RPI was officially established in 1957 after the parinirvaan of Babasaheb. The party contested the General Elections of 1957 and 1962. In addition to Maharashtra the RPI won many seats in other parts of India. In 1957 it won 12 Lok Sabha and 29 State Assembly seats. In 1962 it won three Lok Sabha and 20 State Assembly seats. In 1967 it won one Lok Sabha and 22 State Assembly seats. It also launched struggle for land distribution, reservation in services, minimum wages, reservation for neo-Buddhists. Persons from Muslims, Sikhs and Jains also joined the party. Among them Rajinder Singh Sparrow from Punjab, Dr Abbas Malik from Delhi, Rahat Molayi, Dr Chhedi Lal Saathi and Nasir Ahmad from Uttar Pradesh, S.H. Ghosh from West Bengal, Rao Bahadur N. Shivraj (Madras) were prominent persons. The party launched a nationwide land movement from December 6, 1964 to February, 1965 and more than three lakh people courted arrest. The Congress Government under this pressure had to accept land distribution and all other demands. During this period the RPI emerged as a strong party of Dalits, Muslims and Backward Classes but after 1962 the party started disintegrating. The main reason was that by this time the RPI had become a threat to the then ruling Congress Party. The main weakness of this party was that its membership was mostly confined to the Mahars in Maharashtra and Chamars in Uttar Pradesh. The Congress leaders started exploiting this weakness to break it. To begin with, they enticed Dadasaheb Gayakvad and made him a Member of the Rajya Sabha. At this point the party broke into two groups: Dadsaheb Gayakvad Group and B.D. Khobragade Group. After this the party fragmented into groups after the name of its leader. At present the party is divided into many factions that have become totally ineffective. Although these factions use the name of the RPI, they have nothing to do with its agenda. Now and then they enter into alliances with different political parties and gain a little sometime.

After the downfall of the RPI, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) came up in northern India and promised to fulfil the RPIs objectives

From the above analysis one thing becomes clear: Dr Ambedkar never favoured politics of identity because it strengthens casteism. It indirectly strengthens Hindutva. Dr Ambedkar had aimed at destroying caste and make the Indian society a castless and classless society. The parties formed by Dr Ambedkar were not caste parties because their aims, objectives and agendas were broad. It is true that Dalits were at their centre but their programmes were broad and case-neutral. They were for the upliftment of all the poor classes. So long as the RPI followed the principle of never making any alliance with orthodox Hindutva parties and stuck to its radical agenda, it succeeded in uniting Dalits, workers and minorities. So long there was internal democracy in the party and it struggled for peoples issues, it flourished. But as soon as it fell into the trap of politics of individualism and casteism, it declined.

Hence, if the present fragmented Dalit politics is to be rescued and revived it has to come out of caste politics and adopt issue-based politics. It will have to free itself from the clutches of selfish caste leaders. Dalits should know that caste politics gives sanction to hero worship and dictatorship. In caste politics individuals become primary and issues become secondary. The experience so far has proved that caste politics gives rise to caste confrontation and caste rivalry which is an obstacle in the unity of the castes. That is why many small sub-castes of Dalits have joined hands with the BJP in reaction against the bigger sub-castes; this is a big danger for the unity of Dalits. Hence in the face of this danger it is necessary that Dalits should revaluate their political parties and political leaders. They should themselves get rid of these divisive forces and adopt pro-people, progressive and issue-based politics. In fact our country now does not need casteist political parties but a united anti-caste alliance. Otherwise castes will get strengthened thus nurturing the politics of religion which is the biggest danger for democracy.

The author is a retired IPS officer and currently the organiser of the Jan Manch, Uttar Pradesh.
Home > Archives (2006 on) > 2018 > Being a Proud Indian

From N.C.s Writings

Amidst the profusion of tributes paid to Indira Gandhi on the tenth anniversary of her martyrdom on October 31, perhaps the most eloquent but concise was by the eminent scientist-philosopher, Professor Yash Pal, who said she had made us feel proud of being an Indian.

To be proud of belonging to our motherland was the constant injunction that my generation had to abide by when we were young studentsthat was before the country became independent. The galling yoke of foreign rule was not allowed to thwart the personality of a true Indian. How elated we used to feel those days when our young revolutionary heroes mounted the gallows singing Rabindranath Tagores memorable linesBlessed is my life that I am born in this land! It was the same spirit which could be suppressed neither by the bullet and the bullying of the Raj nor by the incessant ideological refrain of the White Mans superiority.

This by itself was the surest guarantee for the triumph of our freedom struggle. All our great leaders have not only harped on the greatness and grandeur of our civilisation but instilled into millions upon millions of their countrymen the sense of irrepressible pride of being an Indianborn out of the soil of this mother earth that is India. Not everybody could face the trials and tribulations of being an activist in the freedom struggle, but everybody, even those who could not come forward to make the sacrifice for the struggle for independence, were mandated not to bend their heads in servility before the foreign ruler. Even today we could get a touch of that unbending spirit as we watch scene after scene in Attenboroughs Gandhi. To be kowtowing to the Raj or be a scab was the worst form of disgrace in the eyes of the awakened public those days.

This feeling persisted even after independence, rather our leaders who were wielding power could perceive the strength of this pride as a national asset and could draw upon it for the rebuilding of our country after independenceits economy, its culture, its foreign policy. Nowadays we hear a lot of attacks on the Nehruvian model of development. But any unbiased observer would concede that what Nehru tried to achieve was the rebuilding of a strong economy shattered by colonial depre-dation. The preference was for the industrial revolution model. The government had to step in because the private sector was at that time too weak and bereft of resources to undertake the building of the basic industries, in short providing for the necessary infrastructure. As for external help, the World Bank authorities made it abundantly clear that they were not interested in underwriting a programme of industrialisation of the country.

At this point, the strength of our national movement came into full playinstead of submitting to the dictates of the powerful vested interests of the developed countries and their friendly multilateral agencies, we in our country launched our unique programme of industriali-sation. We had no hesitation in seeking the advice and cooperation of a whole galaxy of economists from many countries cutting across the Cold War dividing lines. That was how our mixed economy was planned, which held to the motto of self-reliance.

Without this, we would not have been where we are today. We might have had a sort of imported industrialisation that would have been at the mercy of the industrial giants abroad. More likely we would have met the fate of Pakistan, which lagged miles behind in economic growth while burdened with a bloated military outfit that was tied to the Pentagon while bringing in instability in government and politics of the country. Much as our pundits of today may run down the economic strategy of the Nehru era, it needs to be realised that with all the shortcomings of that strategy, there could have been no economic growth today without the foundations laid yesterday.

In a sense, our foreign policy strategy of non-alignment has been the manifestation of that same urge to be proud of being an Indian. After having liberated itself from the rule of the mightiest empire of the time, India was in no mood to be subjected to pressures by any outside power in foreign affairs. As the world got virtually bifurcated into two blocsthe Western bloc under Washington and the communist bloc under Moscowour leaders refused to submit to either. Hence came non-alignment. As decades passed, more and more countries joined the ranks of the non-alignedincluding a number of those who had originally joined one power bloc or the otherthe snooty critics, some of whom had branded non-alignment as sin, found themselves out of step with the growing worldwide urge against bloc politics until one of the superpowers collapsed thereby bringing an abrupt end to the Cold War itself. Non-alignment marked the triumph of self-respect in international politics.

During the current drive for economic reforms in our country, the term very much in fashion today is globalisation. There is certainly no place for an autarky in todays interdependent world. Both the advance of technology and extension of the frontiers of knowledge have made narrow nationalism anachronistic and definitely harmful to our economy and polity as well. At the same time, a copycat importing of any foreign model would not only be repugnant but harmful for our country.

The subservient implementation of diktats from the Fund-Bank bosses that the Finance Ministry mafia has all the time been clamouring for, can only harm the economy and in effect would undermine the very purpose of the economic reforms as befitting this country. What is missing in the present dispensation is a pride in our own achievements; instead has come the mortgaging of the fate of our economy to the new Moghuls of the world economy, the giant conglomerates miscalled multinationals. The spirit that fought tenaciously to overthrow the domination of the Raj fifty years ago can hardly be expected to bow to the dictates of the super-moneylenders of the Fund-Bank caucus. If we allow ourselves to be subservient to the Fund-Bank order, we shall be swamped by the economic overlordship of the G-7. Already when we talk about our impressive foreign exchange reserve, we do not at the same time tell the country the enormous debt servicing that we have to bear now and this will continue for years to come.

Does that mean that we should have chosen to wallow in the backwardness of a stagnant economy? Not in the least. What a self-respecting country led by a government proud of its strength and accomplishments would have done would be to carefully review its own unique experiment of mixed economy for four long decades, and on the basis of such a re-examination of the past, design its own model of modernising the economy, removing the shackles that are impinging on its growth and rousing the entire nation with the vista of a strong economy that could harness the nations wealth, tap its human resources and ensure the social well-being of its billion strong people. All this demands the discarding of inferiority complex and rekindling the spirit of being a proud Indian. Globalisation in that case would not be mere subservience to the giant marauders that prowl the world market. Its time the Prime Minister had spelt out the sign-posts of his Middle Way.

(Mainstream, November 12, 1994)
Home > Archives (2006 on) > 2018 > Tribute to Anees Chishti / Reproduction of Anees Chishtis Articles

TRIBUTE

Veteran writer and journalist Anees Chishti, who passed away in New Delhi after a brief illness on October 10, 2018 (just two days before his 77th birthday), was the biographer of our late President Dr Zakir Hussain. What is more, he covered the Bhopal gas tragedy which struck on December 3, 1984 and also wrote a book on the mishap, entitled Dateline Bhopal, a Newsmans Diary of the Gas Disaster.

He was a theatre critic for the Shankars Weekly anda journalist with Seminar, Economic and Political Weekly and Mainstream. He worked in Mainstream in the early years after this journal was founded in September 1962 and wrote on subjects close to his heartarts, politics, sports, poetry, languages and science. For sometime he functioned as this periodicals Assistant Editor.

Subsequently he founded and co-edited with his wife, economist Prof Sumitra Chishti (who predeceased him), Alpjan, a forum for voices of people that went unrepresented, voices of various types of minorities. He was keen to see it go online but that did not eventully take place.

He was also a member of the Governing Body of the South Delhi Polytechnic.

Active and alert till the end, Anees Chishti will be deeply missed by his large circle of friends and associates besides his family. His daughter, Seema, holds an important position in the editorial staff of The Indian Express while his son-in-law, Sitaram Yechury, is the current General Secretary of the CPI-M.

He was laid to rest in the shadow of the Jama Masjid at the Jamia Millia Islamia Qabristan on October 11, 2018.

A memorial meeting for him took place in the Capital on November 22, 2018.

As a token of our tribute to his abiding memory we are reproducing two pieces written by him in this journal: (a) an analysis of the Sachar Committee Report that appeared in the Mainstream Annual, 2006; and (b) a brief report on his association with this periodical that was published on the occasion of this publications 50th anniversary in the Mainstream Annual, 2012.

Sachar Committee Report: A Review

The report of the High-Level Committee appointed by the Prime Minister under the chairmanship of Justice Rajindar Sachar, retired Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court, to study the Social, Economic and Educational Status of the Muslim Community of India, has been a subject of wide discussion in the press, among parliamentarians and other politicians as well as in other informed sections of the society.

The seven-member Committee had as its members eminent personalities like Sayid Hamid, former Vice-Chancellor of the Aligarh Muslim University and currently Chancellor, Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi, Prof T.K. Oommen, former Professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru University and a sociologist of world renown, among others. Dr. Abusaleh Shariff, Chief Economist, National Council of Applied Economic Research, who is noted for his perceptive research on various issues of national concern, was the Member-Secretary. There was no woman member: surprising, as the condition of women is very important for any survey of the social scenario among the Muslims. And, the Committee has tried to look at the predicament of the Muslim women in as good a manner as it could.

The Committee had several consultants from different disciplines and had commissioned specialists on various aspects of the subject under coverage to write papers for its use in its study of the complex issues.

The Committee collected data from the various Censuses, the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO), banks and, of course, from the Central and State governments.

The members of the Committee visited different parts of the country to assess the grassroots situation and grasp the realities by experience rather than merely with the help of statistics brought to their desks by investigators.

The Committee tried to sift the perception of members of the Muslim community (as well as of non-Muslims) and understand the nature and magnitude of the communitys grievances, to be able to judge the veracity or otherwise of the expressions of negligence and deprivation.

Most of the grievances of the community are common knowledge and those who have access to the Urdu press in different parts of the country are fully aware of the endless stories of woes and miseries of the community. But a systematic study of these grievances had to be made and the Sachar Committee ventured to do that. We shall deal with the grievances briefly later but, first, a review of the findings of the Sachar Committee in different areas of its concern.

II

It would be appropriate to begin a survey of the Sachar Committees findings with the fundamental issue of education.

The literacy rate for Muslims in 2001 was, according to the Committees findings, far below the national average. The difference between the two rates was greater in urban areas than in rural areas. For women, too, the gap was greater in the urban areas.

When compared to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes the growth in literacy for Muslims was lower than for the former. The female urban enrolment in literacy ratio for the SCs/STs was 40 per cent in 1965 that rose to 83 per cent in 2001. The equivalent rate for Muslimsthat was considerably higher in 1965 (52 per cent)recorded a figure of 80 per cent, lower than the figure for the SCs/STs.

According to the Sachar Committees findings, 25 per cent of Muslim children in the 6-14 age-group either never went to school or else dropped out at some stage.

The disparity in Graduate Attainment Rates between Muslims and other categories has been widening since the 1970s in urban and rural areas. According to the Sachar Committee, only one out of 25 undergraduate students and one out of 50 post-graduate students in premier colleges are Muslims. The percentage of graduates in poor households pursuing post-graduate studies is significantly lower for Muslims: Hindus General (29 per cent); SCs/STs (28 per cent); OBCs (23 per cent); Muslims (16 per cent). The unemployment rate among Muslim graduates is the highest among all Socio-Religious Categories (SRCs), poor as well as non-poor.

In the midst of the widespread discussion about the role of madrasas in the life of Muslims, it is interesting to note that only three per cent of Muslim children go to madrasas.

Some figures of the Committee are very revealing, when the situation of OBCs is considered. In education upto matriculation, graduation and employment in the formal sector all OBCs lag behind in terms of the all-India average. Muslim OBCs (that have been defined here a little later) fall below the Hindu OBCs in all categories. And, General Muslims fare the worst being behind both Hindu and Muslim OBCs.

An important cause for the low level of attainment of Muslims in education is the dearth of facilities for teaching Urdu and other subjects through the medium of Urdu (mother tongue) in lower classes, the Committee points out. It cites the better examples of Karnataka and Maharashtra in this context. These two States are much better equipped with Urdu medium schools at the elementary level. Karnataka has the additional feature of concurrent facilities for English medium as well in a good number of schools, the Committee points out.

In an indirect reference to the utility of reservation, the Committee says that the SCs/STs have reaped advantages of targeted government and private efforts thereby pinpointing the importance of affirmative action.

Employment

According to the findings of the Sachar Committee, Muslims have a considerably lower representation in jobs in the government including those in the Public Sector Under-takings compared to other SRCs. According to these findings, in no State of the country the level of Muslim employment is proportionate to their percentage in the population.

It is pointed out that the situation of government jobs is the best in Andhra Pradesh where a fairly close representation (in proportion to the population) has been achieved. Other States with a better picture of represen-tation are: Karnataka (8.5 per cent job share in a population proportion of 12.2 per cent); Gujarat (5.4 per cent against 9.1 per cent); Tamil Nadu (3.2 per cent against 5.6 per cent).

According to an analysis, in all other States, the percentage of Muslims in government employ-ment is half of their population proportion. The highest percentage figure of government employ-ment for Muslims is in Assam (11.2 per cent) even though it is far less than the States Muslim population (30.9 per cent).

The most glaring cases of Muslims depri-vation in government jobs are found in the States of West Bengal and Kerala where, according to common perception, egalitarianism has been the cherished norm in all walks of life. In West Bengal, where almost 25 per cent population practises the Muslim faith, their share in government jobs is a paltry 4.2 per cent. In Kerala the Muslim representation in government jobs is 10.4 per cent, a figure that is short of half of their population percentage. In Bihar and UP the percentages of Muslims in government jobs are found to be less than a third of their population percentages. Those governing these States need to monitor their actions to bring the situation in conformity with their professed objectives and claims.

There are some factors that need to be considered in view of the low employment figures for Muslims on an all-India basis. The Sachar Committee observes that the low aggregate work participation ratios for Muslims are essentially due to the much lower participation in economic activity by the women of the community. Also, a large number of Muslim women, who are engaged in work, do so from their homes rather than in offices or factories. Their figure in this regard is 70 per cent compared to the general figure of 51 per cent

There is a high share of Muslim workers in self-employment activity, especially in urban areas and in the case of women, the Committee points out. Whether this trend is due to compulsion or their non-expectation for jobs in the government or non-government formal sector, or due to their inclination for certain types of work that are done best under a self-employment scheme, would be an important subject for study. The fact has to be considered that Muslims in regular jobs in urban areas are much lower in numbers compared to even the SCs/STs. And, surprisingly, the Muslim regular workers get lower daily earnings (salary) in public and private jobs compared to other Socio-Religious Categories, as the Committee points out.

The point that needs special notice is that, according to the Committees findings, Muslim participation in professional and management cadres is quite low. Their participation in security-related activities (for example, in the Police services) is considerably lower than their population share (four per cent overall).

In the context of employment of Muslims at the level of the Central Government, the Committees findings are very revealing. In the Civil Services, Muslims are only three per cent in IAS, 1.8 per cent in IFS and four per cent in IPS. (While the figures are shockingly low compared to the population percentage, the fact also needs to be considered that there were only 4.7 per cent Muslims among the candidates at the Civil Services examinations in 2003-04. The figure would be almost identical for other years.)

In the Railways, 4.5 per cent are Muslims and, significantly, almost all (98.7 per cent) are in low level positions. Are you listening, Laloo Prasad Yadav?

Figures for other Departments are: Education 6.5 per cent, Home 7.3 per cent, Police Constables (for which no special educational qualifications are required) six per cent.

Also to be considered is the finding that in the recent recruitments by State Public Service Commissions, the employment of Muslims has been as low as 2.1 per cent.

Minorities other than Muslims are not placed as delicately as the Muslims. According to the Committees findings, 11 per cent of Group A jobs are with minorities other than Muslims.

Deprivation of Muslims in the State judical set-up seems to be among the most worrying aspects of their overall backwardness.

The data collected by the Committee in this sector are about all levels of the officers and employees: Advocate Generals, District and Sessions Judges, Additional District and Sessions Judges, Chief Judicial Magistrates, Principal Judges, Munsifs, Public Prosecutors, and Group A, B, C and D employees.

The overall Muslim presence of 7.8 per cent in the area of judiciary in 12 States with high concentration of Muslim population is considered very low by experts.

To come back to an old theme, in West Bengal with a Muslim population of over 25 per cent, the figure of Muslims in key positions in the judiciary is only five per cent. In Assam with a Muslim population of 30.9 per cent, this figure is 9.4 per cent. Surprisingly, in Jammu and Kashmir (where the Muslim population is 66.97 per cent), the communitys share in the State judiciary is only 48.3 per cent. Andhra Pradesh once again scores over other States in terms of equitable and even more than equitable sharing of jobs: Muslims have a share of 12.4 per cent in the State judiciary against a population share of 9.2 per cent.

Experts feel that for an inclusive democracy, an equitable share for all sections of the society in the judiciary is essential: it creates greater public confidence in the judicial process. It would be useful to survey the situation in this regard in some other developing and developed countries to be able to arrive at some remedial measures for this crucial sector of decision-making.

Health and Population

Along with education and employment, health and population welfare are the other areas that have to be assessed for estimating attainments of any society. The Sachar Committee has done this exercise in a comprehensive manner.

First, the overall population picture: According to the 2001 Census, the Muslim population of India was 138 million (13.4 per cent of the total population). This figure is estimated to have crossed the 150 million mark in 2006. According to the estimate cited by the Committee, the share of the Muslim population would rise somewhat and stabilise at just below 19 per cent in the next four decades (320 million Muslims in a total population of 1.7 billion). There are many areas where the Muslim population is 50 per cent or more; and in nine out of 593 districts (Lakshadweep and eight districts of Jammu and Kashmir) the Muslim population is over 75 per cent.

On the positive side, the period 1991-2001 showed a decline in the growth rate of Muslims in most States. According to the Committees findings, the Muslim population shows an increasingly better sex ratio compared to other Socio-Religious Categories. Infant mortality among Muslims is slightly lower than the average. (It is beyond the Committees understanding how Muslims should have a child survival advantage despite lower levels of female schooling and economic status.) Life expectancy in the community is slightly higher (by one year) than the average, and this should again surprise many.

The Committees finding is important that the Muslim child has a significantly greater risk of being underweight or stunted than is the case with other Socio-Religious Categories: the risk of malnutrition is also slightly higher for Muslim children than for Other Hindu children. This again seems to be a contradiction vis-a-vis the reported child survival rate.

Economy

Related to the existing economic condition of Muslims is the issue of providing legitimate support by state and private agencies for the members of the community to improve their position. One would like to examine the situation with regard to trends in the support system of existing instruments.

Banks have been seen as an important source of credit to support citizens economic and commercial ventures. The picture regarding bank loans to members of the minority is not bright, according to the findings of the Sachar Committee. It says that the share of Muslims in amounts outstanding is only 4.7 per cent. This figure is 6.5 per cent in the case of other minorities. Further, on an average the amount outstanding per account for Muslims is about half that of the other minorities and one-third of others.

The pity is that, according to the report, many areas of Muslim concentration have been marked by many banks as negative or red zones where giving loans is not advisable. Something would, indeed, have to be done to put an end to such blanket bans, particularly in view of the Committees finding that very large numbers of Muslims are engaged in self-employment ventures.

The Reserve Bank of Indias efforts at banking and credit facilities under the Prime Ministers 15-Point Programme for the welfare of minorities have, according to the Committees findings, mainly benefited minorities other than Muslims, thus marginalising Muslims.

Apart from the formal banking sector there are two other institutions that are meant to extend loans to the disadvantaged for economic ventures: the National Minorities Development and Finance Corporation (NMDFC) and National Backward Classes Finance and Development Corporation (NBCFDC). For loans from the NMDFC, one has to obtain a guarantee from the concerned State Government. According to the Committee, this is the biggest hurdle in the processing of loan applications. And members of minority communities are very adversely affected due to this factor.

Poverty Factor

The Committee has found that substantially large proportion of Muslim households in urban areas are in the less than Rs 500 expenditure bracket.

According to calculations mentioned in the Committees report, using the Head Count Ratio (HCR),

overall 22.7 per cent of Indias population was poor in 2004-05. In absolute numbers, this amounts to over 251 million people spread across India. The SCs/STs together are the most poor with an HCR of 35 per cent followed by Muslims who record the second highest incidence of poverty with 31 per cent people below the poverty line. The H(indu)-General is the least poor category with an HCR of only 8.7 per cent and the OBCs hold the intermediary level HCR of 21 per cent, which is also close to the all-India average.

The Committee has observed that the inequality is higher in urban areas compared to rural areas in most States. It says that poverty among Muslims is the highest in urban areas with an HCR of 38.4 per cent. Significantly, the fall in poverty for Muslims, according to the data provided to the Committee, has been only modest during the decade 1993-94 to 2004-05 in urban areas, whereas the decline in rural areas has been substantial.

Poverty leads to neglect, or the other way round: the Committee found a significant inverse association between the proportion of Muslim population and educational and other infrastructure in small villages. Areas of Muslim concentration are, somehow, not well served with pucca approach roads and local bus stops.

An analysis by the Committee showed

a fall in the availability of medical facilities with the rise in the proportion of Muslims, especially in larger villages. A similar but sharper pattern can be seen with respect to post/telegraph offices.

Affirmative Action

Under the existing constitutional provisions, affirmative action in the form of reservation cannot be possible for the entire Muslim community even though, according to the findings of the Sachar Committee, the entire community has been left behind in terms of education, employment and economic status. A way can be found to lift a significant segment of the communitys population if social stratification is defined and officially accepted within the Muslim community. It could be done in case of Hindus, and subsequently for Mazhabi Sikhs and neo-Buddhists in terms of caste demarcation. But it would not be easy to have official acceptance of the caste principle. The resistance against acceptance of social stratification on caste lines among Muslims would come largely from the clerics and other orthodox sections of the Muslim community itself which would be adamant in its insistence that caste does not exist within the community. This, even though the fact is that, whether one likes it or not, the Muslim community is divided with caste demarcations almost on the lines of the Hindus. A via media has to be found for a clearly defined backward class like the OBCs among the majority community.

The Sachar Committee has talked of the issue of social stratification among Muslims. It points out that the 1901 Census had listed 133 social groups, wholly or partially Muslim, in India. This classification thus recognised the fact of social stratification in the community.

The Committee has identified different groups of Muslims based on studies by sociologists. The community, according to these studies, as mentioned by the Committee, is placed into

two broad categories, namely, ashraf and ajlaf. The former, meaning noble (emphasis added), includes all Muslims of foreign blood and converts from higher castes. While ajlaf, meaning degraded (emphasis added) or unholy, embraces the ritually clean occupational groups and low ranking converts. In Bihar, UP, Bengal, Sayyads, Sheikhs, Moghuls and Pathans constitute the ashrafs, The ajlafs are carpenters, artisans, painters, graziers, tanners, milkmen, etc. According to the Census of 1901, the ajlaf category includes the various classes of converts who are known as Nao Muslim in Bihar and Nasya in Bengal. It also includes various functional groups such as that of Jolaha or weaver, Dhunia or cotton carder, Kulu or oil presser, Kunjra or vegetable seller, Hajjam or barber, Darzi or tailor, and the like.

The 1901 Census also recorded the presence of a third category called Arzal:

It consists of the very lowest castes, such as Halalkhor, Lalbegi, Abdal and Bedia.

The Committee has taken note of the fact that the Presidential Order (1950), officially known as Constitutional (Scheduled Caste) Order, 1950, restricts the Scheduled Caste status only to Hindu groups having unclean occupations. Their non-Hindu equivalents have been bracketed with the middle caste converts and declared OBCs.

The Committee has noted that at least 82 different social groups among Muslims were declared OBCs by the Mandal Commission (1980). Owing to this declaration many Muslim social groups got reservation in different parts of the country under the Backward Classes category. Only two States, Kerala and Karnataka, have provided reservation to the States entire Muslim population (minus the creamy layer). The roots of this policy have to be traced to the colonial days.

In Karnataka (the erstwhile princely state of Mysore), affirmative action started in 1874 (with 80 per cent posts in the Police Department having been reserved for non-Brahmins, Muslims and Indian Christians).

In Karnataka today, all Muslims with income of less than Rs 2 lakhs per annum enjoy four per cent reservation in jobs and admission to institutions in the category of More Backwards. In Kerala Muslims enjoy 12 per cent reservation, with some other communities and social groups too being provided reservation.

Tamil Nadu, which had a tradition of reservation to Muslims since 1872, withdrew such reservation following independence. Currently even though there is no reservation in the State on the basis of religion, nearly 95 per cent Muslims have been provided reservation as Backward Classes, according to the data provided by the State Government to the Sachar Committee. Significantly enough, reservations in Tamil Nadu stand at 69 per cent, much above the limit of 50 per cent fixed by the Supreme Court.

Looking at the state of public employment for OBCs the Committee found that unemployment rates were the highest among Muslim OBCs when compared to Hindu OBCs and Muslims General. In the formal sector (government/PSUs), the share of Muslim OBCs was much lower than those of Hindu OBCs and Muslims General.

At the workers level, the Committee estimated that out of every hundred workers about eleven were Hindu OBCs, three were Muslims General and only one was a Muslim OBC.

The Committee had divided public employment into six agencies of the Central Government including PSUs and universities. It found that the Hindu OBCs were under-represented. But their under-representation was less than that of Muslim OBCs in five out of the six agencies, less than that of Muslims General in three out of the six agencies.

In the State services the Committee found that Muslim OBCs had a better share at the Group A level, but their presence was insignificant at other levels.

In the context of Muslim OBCs, the Committee concluded that the

abysmally low representation of Muslim OBCs suggests that the benefits of entitlements meant for the Backward Classes are yet to reach them.

The Committee also concluded that the conditions of Muslims General are also lower than the Hindu-OBCs who have the benefits of reservations.

III

While the Sachar Committee has done a laudable job of assembling a huge body of data and presenting it in an easily digestible manner, it has not been as meticulous in formulating its recommendations. Perhaps it was due to the fatigue after an enormous amount of legwork on a national scale and the subsequent analysis of the compiled information that its members had to do in about 15 months of actual work, coupled with the desire of submitting its report rather urgently and the fact that much of the information about its findings had already been accessed by a section of the press. In view of the mind-boggling findings and the very sensitive nature of the ground it was traversing a very comprehensive matrix of recommendations should have been presented by an able and competent panel blending experience and fresh thinking. Unfortunately this could not be achieved by the Committee.

The most important recommendations of the Committee can be summarised as under:

 Creation of a National Data Bank (NDB) where relevant data about different Socio-Religious Communities could be stored to facilitate any study and subsequent action.

 Setting up of an autonomous Assessment and Monitoring Authority (AMA) for a regular audit of the benefits of different programmes of the government reaching the concerned communities or groups.

 Establishing an Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) to examine and analyse the grievances of deprived groups, the inspiration understandably for it coming from the Race Relations Act, 1976 of the United Kingdom that finds mention in the Committees recommendation.

 Exploring the idea of introducing some incentives to a Diversity Index in the realms of education, government, and private employment and housing programmes. Special mention has been made of a possible programme of incentives to colleges and institutions under the University Grants Commission linked to diversity in the student population.

 Evolving some sort of a nomination procedure for enhancing the levels of inclusiveness in governance.

 Certain measures like removal of anomalies in Reserved Constituencies for General Elections against complaints of declaring Muslim concentration areas as SC/ST reserved seats.

 Institutionalising evaluation procedures for textbooks, alternate admission criteria in regular universities and autonomous colleges; cost friendly reasonable hostel facilities for minority students as a priority; making teacher training oriented to ideals of pluralism; state-run Urdu medium schools for primary education in mother tongue; ensuring appointment of experts from minority community on interview panels and boards; linking madrasas with higher secondary schools facilitating shift of students who might opt for a mainstream education system after a few years; recognition of degrees from madrasas for competitive examinations (a recommendation hard to find acceptance in any section of concerned quarters); on the economic front, provision of financial and other support to initiatives built around occupations where Muslims are concentrated and that have growth potential.

The above suggestions have given considerable food for thought with regard to the panacea for deprivation of the Muslim community in various spheres. But a more comprehensive and concrete programme should have been suggested by the Committee.

This task could have been performed best by the able members of this panel who had travelled far and wide and acquainted themselves with the grassroots realities rather than leaving it for another possible committee for a start from a scratch. This was essential to get action initiated on the basis of its findings instead of letting this venture too meet the fate of the earlier Gopal Singh Committee over two decades ago that had similar findings (although it had a narrower coverage than the Sachar Committee).

Now it is for the Prime Minister and his government to decide the future course of action to remedy the situation regarding the travails of the Muslim community.

IV

Much of the Sachar Committees endeavour was in pursuance of the perception among Muslims of utter neglect and apathy, and even suspicion, towards the Muslim community on the part of governmental agenciesright or wrong! An oft-repeated remark by many members of the community was that Muslims carried a double burden of being labelled as anti-national and as being appeased at the same time. Or, whenever any act of violence or terror occurs Muslim boys are picked up by the police. Every bearded man is considered an ISI agent, the Committee has quoted someone as saying. It was also pointed out that social boycott of Muslims in certain parts of the country have forced them to migrate from places where they lived for centuries.

The Committee has also observed that identification of Urdu as a Muslim language and its politicisation has complicated matters. A worrying observation is that Muslims do not see education as necessarily translating into formal employment. And, many a time madrasas are the only educational option for Muslims.

On the economic front, the Committee observes that liberalisation of the economy has resulted in displacement of Muslims from their traditional occupations, thus depriving them of their livelihood.

The Committee has reported that there were many complaints of Muslims names missing from electoral rolls. It could not look into the veracity or otherwise of this complaint. But what the Committee found in case of complaints that a number of Muslim concentration Assembly constituencies are declared as reserved seats for the SCs (deliberately?) should certainly worry those involved with the work of delimitation of constituencies. Its analysis of reserved constituencies for SCs in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal proved that there was truth in the allegation of the members of the minority community in this regard.

With the perception of Muslims not being quite favourable to official agencies, the revelation of the findings of the Sachar Committee with regard to over-representation of the community in the countrys prisons, reported (before the submission of its report to the Prime Minister) by The Indian Express, in its series of reports entitled The Missing Muslim, created a sensation. The Urdu press was on fire and questions were asked why prisons were the only place where Muslims were over-represented compared to all other communities and in some cases their represen-tation being much higher than their population proportion.

In Maharashtra, the percentage of Muslim jail inmates in all categories was found to be way above their share in the population (share in population: 10.6 per cent; share in prison inmates: 17.5 per cent). In Gujarat the position was: share in population: 9.06 per cent; share in jail inmates: over 25 per cent). The situation was on similar lines in other States too although the jail inmate share might not be as bad in other States as in the States mentioned above.

Following the submission of the report to the Prime Minister, The Indian Express reported that the data with regard to prisons were edited out of the Sachar report, following the concern expressed on these figures in different quarters. Some observers felt that the prison figures should not have been omitted, as they would have given a clear picture of some of the Muslim grievances with regard to the more sensitive issues.

The remedy for the travails of the Muslim community can be found largely by the communitys bolder initiatives in the field of education that would empower them as nothing else would.

The government, on its part, seems to be ready for whatever remedial measures can be adopted by its different agencies. The recent initiative taken by the Deputy Chairman of the Rajya Sabha, K. Rehman Khan, to arrive at a consensus for action on an all-party basis, through a conclave of Muslim MPs (including some from the Bharatiya Janata Party, which has been very critical of the very appointment of the Sachar Committee), seems to be a significant one. One only hopes that such an initiative would have the support of the government and some concrete steps would be taken without much delay.

(Mainstream Annual 2006December 23, 2006)

Mainstream: An Enlightening Half-Century

Fifty years is a long period for any forum to survive and move from strength to strength. Mainstream can look with great pride to its role in the five decades of its existence, particularly because it started publication without big money support and could sustain only with the help of a small group of conscious individuals. The group kept getting larger and larger with each passing month and year, without any worth-while revenue coming by way of advertisements. The beginnings were almost entirely marked by voluntary efforts of the lovers of Mainstream.

It is my privilege to say that I have been associated with this beautiful magazine in some way or the other almost since its birth. The warmth for it has only grown with the passage of time during the fifty years I have lived in the Capital. It was launched exactly one month after I came to Delhi from Aligarh to pursue my higher studies. I was in search of an opportunity to be associated with a forum to begin a career in journalism, a vocation I had decided to take up despite my formal education in the scientific discipline.

It was at the suggestion of a senior journalist friend, M.B. Lal of the Statesman, that I dared to climb up the stars in Connaught Circus M-Block to reach the office of Mainstream with a piece on art that I had somehow prepared and desperately wanted published. I had come to know of Mainstream while it was in its first year of publication during my frequent visits to the the Central News Agency in Connaught Circus and the first Annual Number was so intimidating with contributions from some of the best known names in writing and scholarship that I would not have dared to consider it as a possible forum for the beginning of my career as a journalist but for Mr Lals encouraging suggestion.

My first piece was glanced through by a generous and very likeable gentleman who told me that he would pass it on to the concerned person to have a look at it and take a decision about its publication. My surprise knew no bounds when I saw the next issue of Mainstream carrying my article with its title prominently displayed on the cover page, even before I could make an inquiry about the fate of my article. I came to know later that the gentleman I had met at the Mainstream office was Nikhil Chakravartty who was the moving force behind the journal even though he was not then designated as the Editor. A team of dedicated journalists and academics were working, most of them voluntarily, to make Mainstream a success under Nikhildas wings as it were. Soon I became a frequent contributor to the journal and subsequently had the privilege of working as its Assistant Editor for sometime. The pleasure of writing for Mainstream came to be even more than one could imagine. You write a piece on the legendary cartoonist, Shankar, and none other than Pothen Joseph, one of the best friends of the cartoonist, quotes it as the foreword to his own tribute to Shankar in his weekly column; write a tribute to scientist J.B.S. Haldane and the chief of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, in your first meeting, praises you for the sensitivity of the article; nervously make efforts to introduce yourself to Romesh Thapar, the celebrated editor of the Seminar monthly and another idol of mine, for some writing assignment, and get the bewildering response: Yes, I read your articles in Mainstream! Such experiences kept on happening making the revelation of the wide range of very distinguished persons reading Mainstream, then a newjournal.

I found the environment very friendly and cooperative, congenial for journalistic work, and Nikhilda and his colleagues like the late C.N. Chitta Ranjan and D.R. Goyal were out to locate and encourage new talents, an effort that made Mainstream extremely refreshing and enlightening.

Special articles on politics, economics, current affairs and aesthetics were among the main features. But effort was also made to go deep into issues pertaining to science and its politics, probe the work being done in the institutions of scientific research and examine its utility in the realms of industry and allied fields. This was a distinguishing feature of the journal since the beginning and it is a matter of great satisfaction that under the editorship of Sumit Chakravartty this tradition is being carried forward admirably.

Mainstream has gone through periods of hardships and crises that are known to those associated with it since the beginning. But it has always stood by its commitment to the ideals that it had pledged to hold dear and promote despite the vicissitudes that it had to encounter from time to time.

Content-wise, the rise of Mainstream can be traced to the very beginning of its publication. A high point was the first Annual Number which had articles from some of the best brains of enlightened India. Among the many contributions in that issue, one would remember the piece by the veteran journalist, editor of National Herald, M. Chalapathi Rau, on covering Parliament. He had watched the greats of Indias parliamentary history from the press gallery and presented a very lively picture of parliamentary proceedings, something perhaps no other parliamentary correspondent of that time could do. To my knowledge, many perceptive readers of analytical articles on Indian politics and society started reading Mainstream after the publication of the first Annual Number. And, the stage, as it were, set for a large audience of this little magazine. No wonder, it has got the large readership it has now.

Another landmark was, in the late nineteen sixties, when Mainstream had exposed the unfair practices of a leading business house with a profound collection of documents supporting the exposure. As it happened, within a day of the release of this issue all news stands in Delhi had exhausted copies of Mainstream. The natural reaction was that the explosive material about the monopoly business house was the object of curiosity of readers who were not subscribers of the journal. But, a little probe about circulation pattern revealed that many of the news stands had copies sold in bulk. Further investigation revealed that the concerned business house got panicky by the material presented and the credibility of the journal and made efforts to buy the entire lot in the market before it could reach new readers. Similar buying spree was reported from some other big cities where Mainstream had become quite popular.

There was some talk of reprinting and circulating some extra copies for those who were denied the chance to read that issue of the magazine. I do not remember if some additional copies were printed but I do remember that there was a lot of noise in Parliament where some influential members raised the issue citing Mainstream as the source. I feel that it was a very important landmark for Mainstream from the point of view of investigative journalism. Innumerable instances this type have been there during the last fifty years.

Mainstream has been in the forefront of campaigns of progressive nature. It was, in fact, the objective of the launch of Mainstream to promote progressive and rationalist trends among conscious Indians. Helping the cause of Left unity was its primary concern. Unfortunately, within two months of its launch came the Chinese attack on Indian borders and the anti-Left forces got the chance to launch an attack on the Left in India. I consider this phase of Mainstream as a very important challenge and Mainstream, under the leadership of Nikhilda, rose to the occasion and through articles and reports from well-known journalists and commentators, it held a very important section of the Left in India together and proved to be a great morale booster for the Left then under attack by the reactionary forces. That strand of journalism is being followed even now and the journal has stood its ground despite some criticism of its stand on some recent developments in West Bengal, for instance, and it has proved to have been right.

A setback of sorts for Mainstream, was a libel case against it for a piece in the Scrapbook column of Mainstream, that was very popular among journalists and academics alike. Mainstream did not bow down and fought the case in the court. As a result D.R. Goyal, then editor of Mainstream, had to undergo a prison sentence. But Goyals and Mainstreams commitment was strengthened and not weakened after the period he spent in the Yerwada jail. The readers of Mainstream appreciated the journals commitment to what appeared in its pages instead of apologising and avoiding prison.

But the most trying time was during the Emergency declared by the Indira Gandhi Government in June 1975. Most newspapers and periodicals had chosen to toe the governments diktats and submit their editorial matter to the almost despotic H.D. DPenha of the Press Information Bureau for censorship. Nikhilda refused to comply with the governments censorship orders and when it became impossible to continue publishing without censorship Mainstream chose to suspend publication. It was a dark but glorious hour for Mainstream for having refused to bend before the whims of the government. Nikhildas piece in the issue declaring suspension of publication brought tears to the eyes of many who had shared the ideals and commitments of the journal over the years. The rest is history.

Under the title; Goodbye to All That, Nikhilda wrote on Christmas day of 1976: There comes a moment in the life of a paper, as in the life of many an individual, when the sense of purpose is in danger of being lost by the constraints of circumstances. Such a moment has come today for Mainstream, after more than fourteen years of toil and tribulations, of success as well as setbacks.

He went on:

Times have changed, and with them, the values. The political process, its semantics and its very style and purpose, pose questions which Time alone can answer. And to face such an extraordinary situation requires couragecourage not of the foolhardy but of the patient and the silently alert. Battles may be lost but wars are won by firm adherence to clear perspective. In this week of the birth of Christ, it is well to remember his words:

Wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there be that go in thereat.

Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be and find it.

...There is no room for depression. As winter has come, spring cannot be far behind. And with the first sproutings of spring shall Mainstream reappear.

We shall overcome

And we overcame and Mainstream did appear and continues to appear in its fiftieth year.

Looking back on the fifty years of Mainstream, one feels satisfaction that the journal not only continues to enjoy the popularity that it had in the past, but it is finding new frontiers of success and progress. Mainstream under Sumit Chakravartty has, apart from the high standard of articles and analyses carried in the journal, is very highly regarded for publishing documents of vital importance, and has added much value to the material contained in the journal. This feature is attracting a very large number of younger readers and researchers to Mainstream.

Mainstream has always been a crusader against the monster of communalism And, today, the need for fight against this menace is perhaps greater than ever before. Todays Mainstream reflects its commitment against communalism as powerfully as before and one hopes it would continue to wage its struggle against commu-nalism and for the strengthening of our secular fabric with the same zeal and vigour in future.

Concern for the masses of India was a hallmark of Mainstream when it was founded. It has become more important to guard the interests of the masses today while any number of diversionary and anti-people steps are being taken in the name of globalisation and economic reforms. One hopes that Mainstream would continue to give prime importance to the interests of the common man and woman, as it is doing now.

Nothing can be more laudatory for any forum than the feeling that it has lived up to the ideals and expectations with which it was originally conceived. And, fifty years after the birth of Mainstream one finds that it is as relevant and powerful a medium as it was in the years gone by. In fact, its voice is being heard in a much wider area now than before. And, one sincerely hopes that with the passage of time its following would continue to grow and the journal would continue to enlighten a growing number of readers in India and abroad.

Fifty years! Looking back, it does not seem to be too long a period: perhaps only yesterday, or a week or fortnight ago. Spending long Tuesday night hours, correcting galley proofs, sitting in a small room at Kesar Kiari Printing Press near Bara Hindu Rao surrounded by racks loaded with tons of lead in the form of type faces to be used for hand composing of pages of Mainstream to be ready for printing by the morning. Small delights like savouring delicious mutton curry and tandoori rotis from a dhaba, in good company, at times with the loved one who was later to become the life-partner. Thanks, Mainstream, for these delights!

Looking at Mainstream, displayed in the best known news stands from Thiruvanthapuram and Bangalore to Delhi, from Kolkata to Mumbai, all those fifty years seem to be a dream, a delightful dream, indeed!

(Mainstream Annual 2012December 22, 2012)




1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.

2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.

3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.

4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.

5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.

6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.

7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.

8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.

9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.

10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.

11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)

12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.

13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.

14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.

15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.

16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.

17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.

18. Gain control of all student newspapers.

19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.

20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.

21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.

22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."

23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."

24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.

25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.

26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."

27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."

28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."

29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.

30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."

31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.

32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.

33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.

34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.

36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.

37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.

38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.

39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.

40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.

41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.

42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.

43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.

44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.

45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
Home > Archives (2006 on) > 2018 > LIC Making Unwarranted Investments: Policy-holders Money at (...)

by N. Sundaramurthy

LIC  IDBI Deal

The respective boards of the LIC and IDBI bank have approved the transfer of 51 per cent of the ailing banks shares to the LIC. Not lagging behind, the Insurance RegulatorIRDAIhas approved the deal. According to the IRDAI Act, the LIC cannot hold more than 15 per cent stake in a company. A primary question arises: how could the IRDAI breach its own rules? As on June 30, 2017, the LIC held 18.91 per cent stake in the Corporation Bank. (In the year 2000 or so, when the LIC entered into a strategic partnership with the Corporation Bank, it was around 26 per cent The main conside-rations for the strategic partnership were bank assurance and premium collections.) But there is a big difference between 18.91 per cent and 51 per cent! Did the IRDA have the discretionary power to relax the upper limit?! The dictat could have come from the PMO. In such an eventuality, was it a policy-matter of the government to transfer the majority stakes of the IDBI Bank to the LIC? What were the underlying reasons for such a policy, which could pose threats to the security of the LIC policy-holders money?? The government needs to come clean in this matter. Further, the deal needs to be cleared by the RBI, SEBI and it has to conform to the provisions of the Banking Regulations Act. We have to wait and see how things will unfold.

There is yet another factor. The IDBI Bank has its own joint venture life insurance company called the IDBI Federal Life. As on July 31, 2017, the cumulative share of First Year Premium of the IDBI Federal Life was 0.40 per cent and the cumulative share of the number of policies was 0.49 per cent The same for the LIC were 73.68 per cent and 74.86 per cent respectively. There is no comparison between the LIC and IDBI Federal Life. This piece of business statistics apart, how will the LIC deal with the IDBI Federal Life after it acquires majority stakes in the IDBI bank? The two are competitors.

The print media and leading experts have vehemently opposed the IDBI stake sale to the LIC. The leading unions in the insurance and banks have criticised the deal. In this context, a few issues need to be understood.

The full form of the IDBI is the Industrial Development Bank of India and it was given birth on July 1, 1964. It came into existence after the passage of the IDBI Act 1964. It was registered under the Companies Act. It was a Development Financial Institution and entirely owned by the Central Government. Thus since its inception, the IDBI was a public sector entity. It was to finance mainly large scale industries that had the potential to generate mass employment. Thus, the IDBI as a financial institution had a clear-cut role and purpose.

In 1969, 14 private banks were nationalised. This was followed by the nationalisation of five more private banks in 1980, taking the total to 19.

In 2004, the IDBI was converted into the IDBI Bank Ltd., a limited company, by enacting the Industrial Development Bank (Transfer of Undertaking and Repeal) Act 2003, simply called the Repeal Act.

With effect from April 2, 2005, the IDBI Bank Ltd., which was a wholly owned subsidiary of the IDBI Ltd., was amalgamated with the IDBI Ltd., in terms of the provisions of Section 44 (A) of the Banking Regulations Act, 1949. The change of its name to IDBI Bank Ltd. became effective from May 7, 2008. The Government of India owned majority stakes in the bank. We need to take note of a subtle difference about the character of the IDBI. From the inception, it remained a public sector institution, another example being the SBI, and not a nationalised entity.

The present status of the IDBI Bank is very disturbing. There is a serious financial crisis. According to its books, 28 per cent of the loans advanced has turned into toxic NPA. In absolute terms, it could be in the range of Rs 55,000 crores. In reality, it could be about 35 per cent There are also reports of other financial irregu-larities, favouritism and nepotism while advancing loans, mismanagement etc. Some of them are being investigated by the CBI. But no disciplinary action was initiated against the banks delinquent top executives who were responsible for the present state of affairs. Why should such a bank be inherited by the LIC? In the first place, whether the LIC should have a banking arm is an issue that needs careful scrutiny. In the year 2000, when the insurance sector was opened up for competition, the management of the LIC was mulling the idea of starting its own bank. The unions in the LIC firmly opposed the move. The argument of the management was that if banks could open insurance companies, why should the LIC not open a bank? The employees unions said the LIC is best in insurance and it should strive to retain that pride of place. There was no need to puncture holes in our own boat was the refrain of the unions. The matter was put in the cold storage. Today the LIC is the largest life insurance company in the world, with outstanding claims settlement performance. It has the sovereign guarantee and has emerged as the most preferred life insurance brand in India. It has also emerged as the largest institutional investor in India. Some of the investments made by the LIC in the recent period are vulnerable. Such investments were mandated by the government. Thus, the NPA of the LIC could be rising. This is a cause for worry. There is a questionis the LIC the ATM of the government for all its ill-conceived financial experiments?

If the LIC is allowed to own 51 per cent stake in the IDBI Bank, it will amount to Rs 10,000 to Rs 13,000 crore investment in the sick bank. By investing that much money, the LIC will be inheriting Rs 55,000 crore NPA of the bank. This surely does not make business sense.

Secondly, what is the investible surplus in the LIC? The LIC was started in 1956. The Government of India invested a paltry Rs 5 crores in the LIC, not as capital, but to meet the initial establishment expenses. Theoretically speaking, an insurance company, more so in life insurance, does not need capital. The money paid by the insurance customers in the form of premiums constitutes the capital. Thus the LIC is a mutual company, which means it is run with the money of the customers. For a long time the ICICI Prudential and Standard Life Companies were mutual companies. This continued almost upto the year 2008, the year which witnessed the global financial crisis, the great meltdown. Therefore, the money, the surplus, in the LIC belongs to the over 30 crore life insurance customers. The dividend paid by the LIC to the Government of India out of its Valuation Surplus for just one year 2016-17 was Rs 2,206.70 crores, on the initial investment of Rs 5 crores by the government. That truly reflected on the strength of the LIC. The LICs total investment in the government and social sectors, as on March 31, 2017, was Rs 17,32,579 crores.

The government cannot take the savings of the LIC customers for granted, by investing it in sick entities like the IDBI Bank. Has the government arm-twisted the IRDAI to relax the 15 per cent stake sale limit? The buck may not stop at that. The sick bank will require regular infusion of capital from the LIC for several years. The IDBI Bank has the highest NPA among all banks and posted heavy financial losses for the last three years in a row.

It will be interesting to revisit the infamous Mundhra deal that rocked the LIC in 1957 and compare it with the present-day financial frauds happening in the country. Haridas Mundhra was a Calcutta-based industrialist and a stock broker. He got the LIC to invest a sum of Rs 1,26,86,100 in six of his troubled companies. This investment was done at the behest of the government. The LICs Investment Committee was not consulted. It was obvious that Mundhra had certain influence on the Finance Ministry. The dubious investment turned out to be a scam and became sensational. Parliament was plunged into turmoil. The man most agitated was Feroze Gandhi. He was an MP belonging to the ruling Congress party. He was the son-in-law of the Prime Minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. But he did not spare the government and demanded a Commission of Inquiry into the financial scam. Nehru had the fortitude to appoint M.C. Chagla, the retired Chief Justice of Bombay High Court, as the one-man Commission of Inquiry. In one of the most transparent investigations ever in India, M.C. Chagla worked remarkably fast and submitted his findings to the government in just 24 days. The hearings were conducted in public. He held the Finance Ministry responsible for the LICs questionable investment in Mundhras companies. Owning moral responsi-bility, T.T. Krishnamachari, the Finance Minister, resigned from his post on February 18, 1958. Mundhra was arrested and sent to jail.

The amount involved in the Mundhra deal was just around Rs 1.26 crore. Today, we cannot even buy a 30x40 site in any major city with that money!

What stood out during the Mundhra deal was the speed with which the inquiry was conducted in a transparent manner, fixing of the moral responsibility on the Ministry and the punishment dealt to the wrong-doer. In todays India, can we even imagine such a parallel? The thrust of the Chagla Inquiry Commission Report was: the LICs policy-holders money cannot be frittered away.

What could be next on the assembly line? The government is thinking of capital infusion into banks, which are facing serious crisis because of the capital inadequacy propelled by the mounting NPAs. It is already in the news that the LIC may be mandated to subscribe to the banks Recapitalisation bonds to the tune of Rs 1.35 lakh crores.

LIC to bail-out IF&LS Limited

The LICs finances are under pressure and the pressures are coming from the Union Government. A serious doubt is raised whether the LIC has control over its investments.

Now, the LIC has been asked to invest more capital in the private infrastructure development company, the IL&FS Ltd., in which it already has 25.34 percent stakes. IL&FS is in serious financial crisis with a debt burden of Rs 91,000 crores. The LIC is turning out to be a milch-cow. Instead of using peoples money for peoples welfare, the peoples money is used for private loot.

The IL&FS Ltds debt burden of Rs 91,000 crores is three times the amount the government has gifted to Anil Ambanis firm in the Rafale deal. Why this generosity for a private company that is going to cause financial instability in the economy?! In 2007, when Narendra Modi was the Chief Minister of Gujarat, projects in the State worth Rs 70,000 crores were assigned to the IL&FS Ltd. Till date those projects have remained dormant. The IL&FS Ltd. has more than 160 subsidiaries of which only six are registered. Taking over the IL&FS Ltd by the government and pumping more and more of the LICs funds in it may create a volatile situation. The LICs valuation surplus and dividend to the government and bonus payable to loyal customers may suffer repercussions. The country is racing towards a serious economic crisis and in the process the LIC is bound to be hurt. Renowned economists have compared the IL&FS to the Lehman Brothers that triggered the global financial crisis in 2008. (The Great Economic Meltdown

As a result of the risky investments, the LICs NPAs are steadily rising which is a matter of alarm. The following data is revealing.

According to indications, the gross NPA of the LIC for the year 2017-18 could be 6.5-7 percent.

The government says that at any cost the IL&FS has to be kept afloat. It is a NBFC. What were the government and RBI doing all these years, when the finances of the IL&FS were in trouble? Now, the government has superceded the Board of Directors of the IL&FS and has appointed a new board with banker Uday Kotak as the Executive Chairman. There is more to it than what meets the eye!

The LIC is the largest domestic institutional investor in India and every year it invests in the equity market something like US $ 7 to 8 billion.

The LIC may try to comfort us by saying its investments are safe, prudent, conservative, long-term and it buys shares when prices are cheap. And that the size of the LICs assets and the continuous flow of fresh monies may take care of the market fluctuations. Still, there can be cause for worry. We have seen how demonetisation flopped. We are seeing how the government is handling the Rafale deal, endangering the security of the nation. An internal document of Dassault Aviation showed that the joint venture with the Anil Ambani-led Reliance Defense Ltd. was an obligatory trade-off and mandatory for the Rs 59,000 crore deal. It was quid-pro-quo! It is evident that the Modi Government forced the French to give the defence contract to Ambani. The economic security of the country and its sovereignty will be in peril if the government persists with its sinister agenda of weakening the LIC by gambling with its funds and, in the longer run, use it as a ploy to privatise the LIC. That is what the international financial capital is waiting for.

The LICs top executives may say that the LICs investments are sound. This is only a stock reply. Four years ago the ONGC was a highly profitable and cash-rich company. But today it is in dire streets. The culprit was the Central Government and its regressive economic policies. We are expressing concerns about the LICs investments not to raise a scare or to tarnish its image. We love the LIC; it is the backbone of Indias economy. It is a nation-builder. It upholds and serves the countrys economic sovereignty. The LIC must be allowed functional autonomy. We need to speak truth to power.

Will LIC be instructed to go Public?!

The Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley, has gloated that the LIC would be the countrys most valued company, if listed (in the Stock Exchange). Is it an indication of the likelihood of floating the LIC?! The Insurance Act is amended and the government has directed the PSGI companies to go public. The IPOs may feed the governments coffers. But, they will grossly dilute the objectives of nationalisation and will alter the character of the public sector institutions.

The LIC is the repository of the peoples money. To misuse their money to bail-out the sick entities means public loot of the peoples savings. The people of India have abundant trust in the LIC. That trust cannot be allowed to be damaged or eroded. A greater sinister design is discernible. The LIC could be converted into a dumping ground for all toxic NPAs. When the toxic substances start corroding the vitals of the LIC, it can be used as a ploy to declare privatisation of the LIC. That suits the agenda of the mindless policies of market liberalisation. Scamsters loot the banks. The LIC will be asked to use the policy-holders savings to bail out the banks. The LIC policy-holders must not be taken for a ride. The LIC is vital to the countrys economic sovereignty. It shall not be undermined. A bleeding LIC is unthinkable.

Post-script: The CBI is in tatters. The autonomy of the RBI is in peril. With demonetisation a flop, the government is eying the RBIs Rs 3.6 lakh crore capital reserves to fund populist schemes in the election season. The fiscal deficit is burgeoning and is double the Budget estimate. The once cash-rich ONGC is in financial crisis. Key institutions like banks, the LIC are in the line of fire. The HAL was side-lined in the Rafale deal. People see a method in the madness. At the same time, it is raining bonanzas for the Ambanis, Adanis, Dalmiyas and Vedantas. This is ominous! Which way is the country being directed? It is time for introspection.

The author is the Vice-President, All India LIC Employees Federation.
Home > Archives (2006 on) > 2018 > National Academic Event Cancelled

The 42nd Indian Social Science Congress (ISSC) was scheduled to be held in association with the Banaras Hindu University (BHU) between December 15-19, 2018, at Varanasi, with the focal theme of Human Future in the Digital Era. With the experience of 41 earlier events, it was planned with considerable advance spadework of organising programmes, sessions, etc., and inviting papers for its various sessions across multiple academic disciplines, involving several Indian universities. The announcement brochure for the 42nd ISSC included a warm welcome from Dr Rakesh Bhatnagar, the Vice-Chancellor of the BHU.

However, a mere six weeks before the commencement of the Congress, the BHU, which was to host the national event, reportedly withdrew from the event, forcing its cancellation. This eleventh-hour cancellation of a national event has its inevitable repercussions on the academic standing and credibility of both the hosting university, on the organising body, namely, the Indian Academy of Social Sciences, and indeed on Indian universities in general.

ISSA

The Indian Academy of Social Sciences (ISSA, when abbreviated) is the first National Science Academy of independent India. Other academies of national stature, namely, the Indian National Science Academy (INSA), Indian Academy of Sciences (IAS) and National Science Academy of India (NSAI) were formed in pre-independence times.

The ISSA was formed on August 15, 1974 at the University of Allahabad. It symbolised the beginning of a new scientific approach, and heralded the beginning of a movement to organically link the natural sciences, social sciences and technology, especially in the Indian context. It is a broad-spectrum academic endeavour to include teachers, research students, scientists, social activists, policy-planners and independent thinkers/philosophers of multiple and diverse disciplines.

The ISSA membership is open to scientists, social workers and policy-planners, and to universities, colleges and research institutes, national and regional laboratories, associations of scientific disciplines and other institutions/ organisations including industrial organisations.

The ISSA organises annual Congresses in Indian university campuses which support the national event, especially in terms of the involvement of academicians and the logistics of auditoria and venues etc. involved. The ISS Congresses, usually held over five days, are events at which there are national and inter-national participants and eminent invited speakers of international repute.

Without Precedent

The BHUs withdrawal from the planned event is more than strange. A reputed national university like the BHU, which has the experience in hosting academic conferences, would not have agreed to hosting the 42nd ISS Congress in its campus if its logistics were otherwise committed for the planned period.

There are inevitable raised eyebrows at cancellation (postponement according to the ISSA, but amounting to cancellation for the announced dates) of the Varanasi ISS Congress, due to the BHU expressing logistic inability for eleventh-hour withdrawal from its commitment. The cordial initial welcome from the BHUs VC is clearly at odds with the expressed logistic inability to conduct the national event. It leaves one to wonder if there is more to the withdrawal than meets the eye.

Without speculating regarding behind-the-scenes pressure to scotch the 42nd ISS Congress at such a late stage, cancellation of the national event leads to the question of whether the VCs writ really runs in the BHU.

In Asia, the top universities are in Japan, Singapore and China, and in international ranking, no Indian university stands in the top 200. The cancellation of the 42nd Indian Social Science Congress at the BHU, Varanasi, will reflect on the credibility of Indian universities and indeed on Indias institutions of higher learning. The road to institutional recovery even to the 200 to 800 range of international rankingis sure to be long and hard. The Department of Higher Education under the Union Ministry of HRD would do well to investigate the body blow to the credibility of Indian universities due to the unprecedented cancel-lation of a national academic event.

S.G. Vombatkere holds a Ph.D in civil structural dynamics.
Home > Archives (2006 on) > 2018 > Enigma of Alienated Youth in Kashmir

by M.M. Khajooria

Alienation of the youth of Kashmir from India is the hot topic today. Governor Malik has spoken, so have politicians cutting across the political divide. There appears to be a broad consensus on the fact of youth alienation. The perception about its causation is wide-ranging, confused and generally motivated. Pakistan pedalled the perception that the Kashmiri Muslims were being oppressed by Hindu India. The Muslim youth picked up the gauntlet and are fighting the war of independence against Indian occupation and atrocities by its armed forces.

This position is contrary to recorded history and false and frivolous to the core. Still this preposterous Pakistani narrative has a large number of takers in the world community thanks to the inability and unwillingness of our political class and establishment to mount a forceful, consistent, well-documented counter. Ironically, both the political class and establishment have in essence come to treat the alienation of the youth as synonymous with their option for Pakistan even though some half-baked politicians in power in Delhi will have us believe that the youth of Kashmir have overnight turned into Indian patriots. Such simplistic wishful projections from men in power only further confuse and complicate a hugely difficult security and political situation in the sensitive border State.

That the youth of Kashmir is indeed the dominant player in the terrorist onslaught and political calculus cannot be denied. It is therefore of paramount importance to explore the factors that impact the thought processes of the educated, politically conscious and free-thinking Kashmiri youth.

Looking up my pile of relevant material I came across a write-up by Aarif Muzzafar Rather (a student of BA LLB at the Central University of Kashmir at that point of time), titled I Refuse to be Complacent. The piece is undated, most probably published in GreaterKashmir, Srinagar. That it relates to recent times is obvious. Hence its relevance is beyond question.

The write-up appears to have been triggered by comments made by the then Prime Minister of Pakistan, Sahid Khakan Abbasi, that the idea of independent Kashmir was not based on reality. He was interacting with students of the London School of Economics This, according to Rather, became a point of great debate across the subcontinent as one could see on the social media. He was further scandalised by Ali Shah Geelanis claim that Jammu and Kashmir was a natural part of Pakistan.. I read these two statements from these two important people connected with the Kashmir dispute with a sense of great shock, he said and told Gellani bluntly: He should not be doing this. Why? Here are some of reasons advanced by him in justification of the position he has taken.

One. When you claim Kashmir is a natural part of Pakistan because of its Muslim majority, many Muslim leaders of India contest this point as a reason for Kashmir joining with India.

Two. Your statement is exploitative in nature because it further alienates the people of Ladakh and Jammu. It also puts an end to Kashmirs struggle becoming a peoples movement or a collective struggle of Jammu and Kashmir. And he asserts: My freedom of thought cannot hamper someone elses freedom.

Three. No part of Kashmir is being ruled by its own choice. The political freedom of Azad Kashmir is yet to be seen. When Pakistan got hold of the territory of occupied Kashmir, the first thing Mushtak Gurmani, the Pakistan envoy, did was to Divide and Rule Azad Kashmir following the autocratic practices. and feudal politics. Chowdery Ghulam Abbas would often make complaint to the Pakistan administration that the decisions taken by the Pakistan envoy were taken without any consultation with the Azad Kashmir Government. Many Azad Kashmir Ministers and officials were treated by Pakistan as second-class citizens. (Source: The untold story of the people of Azad Kashmir by Christofer Snoddaen) If occupation on one side is a curse, the other cannot be thrust upon us as a blessing, he concluded.

Four. When Pakistan launched its military operation in Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) its Army killed millions of Bengalis and raped scores of women to suppress their call for freedom. This systematic violence, genocide, genocidal rape is blot on the Pakistan Army. Imagine Azad Kashmir giving a call for freedom, he said, and wondered: How Pakistan deals with them is a matter of great debate, if I am not being judgmental.

Rather apparently belongs to that segment of youth who are emancipated, idealists, secular and democratican offshoot of the freedom struggle led by Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, though they may not own it publicly. My impression is based on interaction with small groups of young men at the peak of terrorism. Their broad preference appeared to be for an independent, secular, democratic Jammu and Kashmir as it existed on August 14, 1947.

They were frustrated with India both on account of denial of democratic rights and excesses by its armed forces. Their rejection of Pakistan as an option for accession is, of course, primarily unequivocal and final. And they hate the Pakistan Army. The idea in somewhat vague form drove a significant percentage of Kashmiri youth of all social persuasions.

A small but noisy segment either belonging to or under the influence of Jamaat-e-Islami and Ahal-E Hadith were pro-Pak, primarily committed to the Whahabi/Salfi brand of militarist Islam. As of today, they are small in numbers but hog the limelight because of their terrorist onslaught and brutal atrocities. They also draw strength from their global connection and regular flow of funds from foreign sources. In the absence of any contest from the Sufi/Rishyat Islam that the vast majority of Kashmiri Muslims have faith in and practise there was a huge potential for mischief in their ascendency. They were reinforced by paid agents of the Pak ISI, the youth fed on drugs by the Pak handlers and odd hangers-on. Their ranks could, however, swell with the spread of the Wahabi, Salfi Ahal-I-Haidth cult which is currently making waves in Kashmir. Its spill-over has begun to be felt in the Doda area.

Herein lies the greatest danger as well as challenge to national security, a challenge, which the political class and establishment have miserably failed to appropriately and accurately perceive. As a consequence they have been criminally negligent in crafting and mounting preventive and punitive measures aimed at destroying the ideological roots, neutralising the motivators and promoters and eliminating their terrorist foot-soldiers on the ground. Mere killing of the terrorists and hitting those gathering on the scenes of conflict to facilitate the terrorist operations amounted to chopping off branches of Salfi/Wahabi tree while its roots get regular irrigation and fertiliser. Obviously, an exercise in futility. It will naturally be wrong to treat them as alienated youth. They are sworn enemies of India and all that it stands for. They are driven by a militarised Islamist, anti-civilisation destructive ideology or are agents of an enemy state waging a proxy war aimed at bleeding India by thousand cuts. They must be relentlessly hounded and neutralised.

On the positive side, we have youth who are committed to moving on in the modern world, determined to brighten their prospects, improve their quality of life and benefit from the enormous and hugely lucrative openings in government as well as corporate sectors. They concentrate on their studies and dedicatedly prepare for competitive examinations or what-ever tests the corporates, in both national and international arenas, prescribe. Their performance has been laudable and should be a source of inspiration to others. Obviously, everything possible should be done to facilitate their endeavours.

Then there is the largest percentage of youth who accept their being Indians by birth or fall in the politically grey area. They mostly seek jobs preferably in the police and other uniformed forces, or Education Departments/universities.

Kashmiri Muslim youth have a somewhat compelling fascination for uniformed services. This yearning was rooted in history and drove the ambition of young men/women, some consciously but most sub-consciously. This explains the pride with which men in uniform carry their weapons or new recruits to terrorism flaunt their uniforms and weapons on the social media.

The tragedy was that most of the Kashmir experts, official as well as non-official, chose to define Kashmiri psyche and character in terms of the period dating from the Mughal occupation when Akbar finally succeeded in over-running Kashmir after a number of failed invasions. He was determined to break their morale for good by de-martially singing the notes of the nation. They refused to accept that Kashmiri society, culture and exalted institutions of scholarship and theology were thousands of years old. And there was enough incontrovertible evidence that they were a martial race. They disregarded these pleas and stubbornly fashioned an anti-terrorist policy to deal with a community of cowards. This erroneous premise resulted in fashioning policies and strategies which predictably proved mostly inadequate and at times disastrous. And yet despite unprecedented huge loss of life and limbs, the resistance endured. Should this not compel a radical and realistic change in fundamental thinking of the Indian Government?

As for the segment of youth represented by Rather, we need to engage them in serious dialogue. There is so much in common between them and the attributes of the Indian state like faith in democracy, secularism, composite culture and a commitment to preserve the status of J&K State as it existed on August 14, 1947. As it is, the dream of an independent Kashmir stands shattered by Pakistan itself. The emergence of Wahabis wedded to jihad for Allah, Islam and a Global Caliphate and the inroads they are making further enhance their difficulties in pursuing their objective.

The patriots and those in the politically grey area need to be protected, promoted and preserved through a holistically crafted strategy that addresses both the educational, societal and ideological fronts. The situation demands that the strategists, commanders of security forces as well as ideological pundits rush to the drawing board, put their heads together and come up with well-conceived, pro-active, thoroughly professional preventive and operational responses both at the operational and ideological fronts before a lot more damage was done to us as well as the Kashmiri Muslim society. The Wahabi/Salfi Ahil-i-Hadth storm is gathering momentum by the day.

The author is a retired DGP and the Chairman, J&K Ex-Policemens League, Jammu.
Home > Archives (2006 on) > 2018 > The Great Lankan Betrayal

In the midst of the unique political turmoil in Sri Lanka since October 26 one important voice was missing. Both Sri Lankans and foreigners wondered why former President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga was silent.

Their curiosity was mitigated on November 15 when Kumaratunga spoke up for the first time since the October 26 morning coup by President Maithripala Sirisena when he summarily sacked Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe and swore in the immediate past President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

In her statement, Kumaratunga called Sirisenas action as a betrayal of the popular mandate that had seen him propelled to the presidential chair in January 2015. It is so by all definitions. It is a betrayal of such magnitude that by one stroke, Sirisena has almost destroyed the political and democratic edifice that Sri Lankans had built over the last seven decades. It is such a fell blow that Sri Lankas slow and unfinished recovery from the political, economic, social and ethnic destruction wrought over the last three decades and more is now pushed to a new precipice.

Destruction of democracy is always facilitated by a deceleration of political parties which act as instruments of democracy, and Kumaratunga said that this is exactly what Sirisena has accomplished. She recalled that the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), founded by her father S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike and later led by her mother Sirimavo Bandaranaike, built a massive unprecedented movement with other parties (the most remarkable of which is the United National Party, its traditional rival) to forge a brighter future for the country.

It is regretful, she said, that some sections of our beloved party find it fit to betray all our policies and once again join hands with a political group that destroyed fundamental rights, democracy, democratic institutions and built a destructive network of graft and corruption, in an apt summing-up of the Rajapaksa regime of ten years (2005-2015).

When the political storm broke out with the sudden ouster of Wickremasinghe, who continues to enjoy a clear and stable majority in the 225-member Parliament (as many as 122 MPs signed the motion of no-confidence submitted against the usurper Rajapaksa), the move delivered a double blow to the prevailing political landscape as his replacement proved to be none other than Rajapaksa, till then a sworn enemy of Sirisena. The consequences of the Presidents wayward actions since then have turned out to be nothing short of a political earthquake. But this earthquake is increasingly resembling one without rhyme or reason.

Of course, Sirisena has since then presented a host of reasons to justify the steps he has taken, which could be interpreted as washing his governments dirty linen in public. A day after the October 26 coup, Sirisena addressed the nation by defending his action of sacking the incumbent Prime Minister and said that the latters conduct was uncivilised.

Wickremasinghe and his group, the President said, belonged to the privileged class and did not understand the pulse of the people, and conducted themslves as if shaping the future of the country was a fun game they played. Once in the government, Wickremasinghe arrogantly and stubbornly avoided collective decisions, and tended to take individual decisions. This behaviour led to many conflicts. It must be noted that every word of this indicment is true and nothing is exaggerated. The President added that all his efforts to correct the Prime Minister bore no fruit. He had advised that the Prime Minister worked in tandem with the senior government leaders collectively, and that the government should take decisions after proper discussion to achieve the goals of good governance. However, the Prime Minister continued to ognore the aspirations of over six million people.

The Central Bank of Sri Lanka bond scam that broke out a little after the government was formed and morphed into the biggest financial scandal of the country understandably figured prominently in Sirisenas address. He recalled how Wickremasinghe had barged into his residence when he was about to visit the bank in the wake of the countrywide agitation over the scandal and sought to block his visit and how he brushed aside his objection, saying that as the President of the country, I have the right to visit that place.

Irrespective of the fact that the Presidents actions since October 26 are unconstitutional and unsupportable, it is equally undeniable that he has put his finger squarely on the precise differences between Wickremasinghe and himself. Sirisena represents the rural south of Sri Lanka, peopled by the largely poor villagers who are by their very nature suspicious about the city-based, foreign-educated and sophisticated leaders like Wickremasinghe and the majority of the UNP leadership. He has also grown into the party, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), through a long career in party politics, though he was bested by Rajapaksa who was born into a rural political family in his party game.

In a sensitive analysis of the tussle for power between the President and the deposed Prime Minister, Ahilan Kadirgamar, a political economist based in Jaffna, wrote that the economic crisis in Sri Lanka, which had escalated during the last few years and was once acknowledged by the government, brought to the fore long simmering concerns over neglect of the rural economy, particularly in the context of a protracted drought. The political fallout of the restricting fertiliser subsidies to farmers, policies of market pricing of fuel and the rising cost of living delegitimised the government. (See Sri Lankas national crisis for what it is, The Hindu, November 14, 2018) He also held the rise and spread of authoritarian regimes across the world along with the onward march of neoliberal policies as responsible for affecting Sri Lankan politics.

Several Sri Lankan analysts concur with Kadirgamars view that in these circumstances, Rajapaksa and Sirisena are bound to rise to power at the cost of Wickremasinghe and his party.

While Sirisenas declaration that fresh parlia-mentary elections will be held on Janaury 5, 2019 is now beholden to the Supreme Courts verdict, the Rajapaksa-Sirisena combine is certain to win the polls whenever they are held. Meanwhile, by formally joining the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), largely made up of SLFP members who broke away from Sirisena earlier this year, and finally forsaking the Sirisena-led SLFP, Rajapaksa has served the final notice on the President that it is he and not the latter who will call the shots in future. Already reduced to the stature of a junior partner in the Wickremasinghe-led govern-ment, the rump SLFP led by Sirisena is now further decimated and will necessarily have to live on Rajapaksas small mercies.

It is wiser not to over-emphasise the role of international players in the Sri Lankan crisis. They, like India, China, the United States and the European Union, are at best peripheral characters and do not influence the turn of events in any meaningful manner.

The crisis, it must be emphasised, is entirely home-made and has its roots in domestic political dynamics and history. It is in a way misleading to read a heightened play of geopolitics in it. The value of geopolitics has already been exploited fully by Rajapaksa in his earlier avatar to whip up the Buddhist-Sinhalese xenophobia against possible international intervention, and any attempt by the Wickremasinghe camp (as has already been done by his Finance Minister Mangala Samaraweera on November 4 when he said that the uncertainty created had triggered an immediate negative impact at a time of tremendous fragility in global financial markets) would be effectively countermanded by the Rajapaksa-Sirisena camp. The present Foreign Minister, Sarath Amunugama, said on November 10 that the new government would not seek any confrontation with the Western powers who were critical of Sirisenas actions.

As was only to be expected, the crisis has brought back the Tamil and Muslim minorities closer once more to an unwelcome period of uncertainty and probable a slide-back to the re-enactment of renewed Sinhalese chauvinism. Ever since 2014, events have unfolded in a way to only feed the minorities fears, led and instigated by Buddhist monks and Rajapaksas supporters. With the rising unpopularity of the National Unity Government and the forceful show of Rajapaksas steady rise to power, they were already apprehensive of their future. Their apprehensions now seem to be on the verge of being confirmed. One manifestation of this was available when the Tamil and Muslim parties together rejected Rajapaksas approach to get them on his side at the time of the voting on the two motions of no-confidence brought against his government by the UNP and Jatiya Vimukthi Peramuna earlier this month.

Apratim Mukarji is an analyst of South and Central Asian affairs. His forthcoming book, Annihilating the Demons of Sri Lanka: An Unfinished Task, will be published shortly.
Raul L. Lambino

When Secretary Raul L. Lambino took over as Administrator and CEO of the Cagayan Economic Zone Authority middle of last year, he made an ocular survey of the heavily-silted Cagayan River, once called Rio Grande by Spanish colonizers for its magnificence. I promised to myself right there, we will restore the mighty river to its old glory and usefulness, said Lambino. Now, 18 months later, the Ceza chief is taking the extraordinary first step to fulfill this vow. Two new units of XCMG XD600 cutter suction dredgers are in Port Irene awaiting the first performance trial to be conducted by the Department of Public Works and Highways. Lambino said the DPWH has permission from CEZA to test the performance and durability of the new machines before acceptance by the public works department. Jinyi Import and Export Trading Co., Ltd., a CEZA-registered locator, supplied the suction dredgers, which have just finished assembly in Santa Ana town, home of the Cagayan Special Economic Zone and Freeport.One dredger unit will be deployed at the rivers mouth, one of its most heavily silted portions, causing the mighty waterway to overflow its banks and inundate nearby communities whose economies are agriculture-based. Its an annual cycle of destruction, Lambino said. Our hope is to alleviate the suffering of our rural communities along the river banks. Dredging, Lambino said, could be the solution to the problem of perennial floods and bank erosion in the area. Lambino said the Cagayan provincial government recommended the dredging of the silted parts of the countrys longest river, a move supported by no less than President Rodrigo Duterte.
Precious Metals Moving In Unison For A Massive Price Advance: Part II

As we continue to explore our custom research into the metals markets and our presumption that the metals markets are poised for a massive price rally over the next few months/years, we pick up this second part of our multi-part article illustrating our research work and conclusions. If you missed the first part of this article, please take a minute to review it by before continuing further (Link to Part I).

We left off in Part I showing a number of supply and demand components and briefly highlighting our newest research using a custom Gold/Silver/US Dollar ratio index. Our attempt at finding anything new that could help us determine the future outcome of the metals markets and to either support or deny our future expectations that the metals markets are poised for a massive price advance was at stake. This new research would either help to confirm our analysis or completely blow it out of the water with new data. Lets continue where we left off and start by showing even more data related to our new custom metals ratio.

This Monthly chart showing our custom gold pricing ratio and the correlative price of Gold illustrates a number of key features. If you remember from Part I, the current ratio level (the Blue Area chart) is near the top of the Upper Boundary level (0.80 or higher). Whenever the ratio level enters this Upper Boundary level, it typically only stays there briefly before falling towards the Lower Boundary level. Weve highlighted what we believe to be key elements of this type of ratio/price reaction. On the chart, below, weve highlighted every major ratio level decline from near the Upper Boundary level and the associated reaction to the price of Gold as well as the indicator reaction near the bottom of the chart. With each instance, we can clearly see that price advanced, in some cases dramatically, as the ratio level declined from the Upper Boundary towards the Lower Boundary. The biggest move occurred between 2002 and 2012 where two of these ratio rotations occurred.

Near the right edge of this chart, we can see that the ratio levels have already started to decline from recent peaks. We believe this could this be the start of a broader ratio level decrease that prompts a massive price rally in the metals markets. We believe this ratio swing could be accelerated by rotation and volatility within the US Dollar price and increased demand from Investors over the next 4~6 months.

Again, this Monthly chart paints a very big picture  planning many years in advance of this move. We believe this new metals market rally is setting up to be something that Gold traders have been thinking about for decades  a potential of Gold reaching $5000 or higher in a dramatic price rally that correlates with broader global market events. We dont know what those events are at the moment, but we could certainly guess as to the nature of their origination.

Our research supports our opinion that the metals markets are dramatically underpriced in relation to global risk and potential future events. The only thing, in our opinion, that could prevent a new price rally from forming over the next 6+ months is a continued malaise in investor sentiment or continued strength in the US Dollar. If either of these two components continues for any length of time, the price of Gold and our custom ratio will likely continue to base near current levels or slightly lower.

Our expectation is that currency issues as well as rotation or some weakness in the US Dollar will likely prompt an impulse rally in Gold where prices rally above $1300 before April 2019 and form a price base for the rest of the expected rally. Once the conditions ripen within the market and investors begin to pile into the long gold trade, the ratio will reflect this move and demand from the investor side will drive prices higher with the expectation that some type of crisis event cycle is about to unfold.

This next Monthly Gold chart shows what we believe will be the initial impulse move higher (towards and above $1300) before the rally really starts to gain speed. A rotation above $1300 would establish a new price base near or above recent highs and start the accumulation by Investors  driving the demand side of the equation. This move would also push the ratio a bit lower in support of our expectations.

This Monthly Silver chart clearly shows the extended opportunity for skilled investors ahead of this move. We believe Silver is one of the most undervalued investments on the planet right now and that our analysis supports a longer-term view that Silver could reach the $40 to $50 level very quickly if the events we suspect are unfolding actually do unfold as we are suggesting. This would equate to a 280%+ swing in price before an even bigger move higher unfolds.

This Monthly Platinum chart shows the pricing pressures over the past 5+ years that have plagued the metals markets. If you were to take a look at the custom metals ratio chart near the top of this article, you would see that this pricing pressure is related to a number of key factors  most of which relate to lack of investor demand and lack of true price exploration (rotation of the ratio levels). In other words, price levels in the metals markets have been operating in a very narrow void or any real price rotation or exploration. We believe this environment is about to end and we believe the continued price malaise will end with a massive impulse move higher.

You can see from this chart we expect Platinum to rally to near $1150~1200 in the initial impulse move, then form a base before a further price advance.

In conclusion, if our longer-term analysis is correct and prices do begin to move higher with a shift in Investor sentiment and a renewed pricing advance supported by US Dollar or foreign currency weakness, our researchers believe $2456 and $3016 levels in Gold could become prime upside price targets. To put that in relative terms, this would be a 200% to 246% price advance in Gold. One could expect Silver to advance to near $40 and $50 which would be a 278% to 348% price advance. Depending on the scope and scale of the event cycle that unfolds, these levels could be considered conservative targets for upward price moves.

Please keep in mind that this research post is very long-term in scope and expectations. This is not going to happen next week or even over a few weeks. This is going to be years in the making and it could change how you adapt your investment styles over the next few years. Our efforts to bring this advanced research to you is our attempt to alert you to a pattern that is unfolding in the metals markets that could provide you with a huge opportunity for future success. Once this pattern starts to unfold further, expect the global stock markets to start reacting to this new fear element and prepare to adjust your trading styles accordingly.

We believe you wont find a better team of researchers, traders and analysts than with www.TheTechnicalTraders.com. Our proprietary research, price modeling systems, and predictive analysis tools help to keep our members well ahead of the market with each turn.

Chris Vermeulen

www.TheTechnicalTraders.com

Chris Vermeulen has been involved in the markets since 1997 and is the founder of Technical Traders Ltd. He is an internationally recognized technical analyst, trader, and is the author of the book: 7 Steps to Win With Logic



Through years of research, trading and helping individual traders around the world. He learned that many traders have great trading ideas, but they lack one thing, they struggle to execute trades in a systematic way for consistent results. Chris helps educate traders with a three-hour video course that can change your trading results for the better.



His mission is to help his clients boost their trading performance while reducing market exposure and portfolio volatility.



He is a regular speaker on HoweStreet.com, and the FinancialSurvivorNetwork radio shows. Chris was also featured on the cover of AmalgaTrader Magazine, and contributes articles to several leading financial hubs like MarketOracle.co.uk

Disclaimer: Nothing in this report should be construed as a solicitation to buy or sell any securities mentioned. Technical Traders Ltd., its owners and the author of this report are not registered broker-dealers or financial advisors. Before investing in any securities, you should consult with your financial advisor and a registered broker-dealer. Never make an investment based solely on what you read in an online or printed report, including this report, especially if the investment involves a small, thinly-traded company that isnt well known. Technical Traders Ltd. and the author of this report has been paid by Cardiff Energy Corp. In addition, the author owns shares of Cardiff Energy Corp. and would also benefit from volume and price appreciation of its stock. The information provided here within should not be construed as a financial analysis but rather as an advertisement. The authors views and opinions regarding the companies featured in reports are his own views and are based on information that he has researched independently and has received, which the author assumes to be reliable. Technical Traders Ltd. and the author of this report do not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any content of this report, nor its fitness for any particular purpose. Lastly, the author does not guarantee that any of the companies mentioned in the reports will perform as expected, and any comparisons made to other companies may not be valid or come into effect.

Chris Vermeulen Archive

 2005-2019 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.




1) Met with a Swiss company who found us because of our agri-processing business cases. We worked with the Montana Department of Ag and numerous partners to develop eight agricultural processing business cases that demonstrate opportunities in Montanas Golden Triangle  the Great Falls Montana trade area. If youre interested in learning more, call Barnett at 406-750-3285.

2) As we get ready to move into our new office at West Bank Landing, its time for us to say goodbye to some great furniture, office equipment, office supplies and artwork that wont fit in our new space. GFDA investors, non-profit organizations and teachers get first dibs on great stuff. Desks, file cabinets, fireproof file cabinets, chairs, whiteboards, bookcases, reception desk, mobile tables, folding tables, office supplies, prints and much more. Stop by our "Office Moving Extravaganza" this Thursday, November 29, from 3:00-5:30 PM to make your best offer. Were on the 4th floor of the downtown US Bank Building, 300 Central Avenue. Arrangements can be made to pick stuff up in December.

http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?m=1101450799075&ca=6dea8fd0-06e5-4cf0-8bb1-1058f33bb81a
Donald Trump has been described as a narcissist by some, and he isnt doing himself any favors by making everything about him and the US. Hes even found a way to make French demonstrations over rising fuel prices about America.

The US president took to Twitter on Sunday to address protests in France over rising fuel costs, which turned violent in Paris and led to tear gas and water cannon being deployed by police.

The large and violent French protests dont take into account how badly the United States has been treated on Trade by the European Union or on fair and reasonable payments for our GREAT military protection. Both of these topics must be remedied soon, he tweeted.

He then went on to toot his own horn for falling oil prices. Thank you, President T, he wrote.

The internet, unsurprisingly, had a few things to say about his most recent tweets.

Some were left completely blown away as to why Trump was dragging the US and himself into a French domestic matter.

One person attempted to offer a bit of logic as to why Trump was getting involved.

And a French person took to Twitter to point out that while citizens are angry at President Emmanuel Macron, everyone in France seems to at least agree on one thing: At least we dont have Trump.

Trumps tweets come as his relationship with Macron remains at a low point, after Macron announced his support for a European army to protect the continent against the likes of China, Russia, and even the United States of America.

The US president responded by slamming Macron and his low approval rating on Twitter, and went on to say that Germany (whose chancellor, Angela Merkel, also supports the idea of a European army) was Frances problem during both World Wars  not China, Russia, or America.

The Sunday tweets come just days after Trump was asked a common Thanksgiving question by a reporter: What are you thankful for? His answer was, well, himself.

Ive made a tremendous difference in the country, he confidently told reporters.

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Gurbir Singh By

Express News Service

Not being able to tackle the serious problem of growing unemployment in Chhattisgarh, the BJP government did the next best thing  it created an air-conditioned library, called the Nalanda Parisar, for students to study for competitive exams. The state that has just completed polling has 25 lakh registered unemployed. The problem is so serious that the Opposition Congress and the Ajit Jogi-led alliance have both promised unemployment stipends of up to Rs 2,500 a month if voted to power.

In poll-bound Telangana, Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao (KCR) and his ruling TRS party called for a snap election, confident that the slew of welfare schemes like the Rs1 lakh marriage dole for brides would see them through with a thumping majority. Suddenly, the large and growing unemployed youth in the state has become an opposition constituency, and KCR is now not sure anymore.

If the poll trends in these two states are any indicator, the failure to tackle joblessness will be among the most important issues the BJP and Narendra Modi will face in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

Sample how serious the problem is: when the Indian Railways advertised a slew of 1,00,000 jobs across categories in March this year, it received 28 million applications; or nearly 300 aspirants for each post. Thats competition for you!

POOR JOB CREATION

In mid-August, Narendra Modi, in an interview with ANI, dismissed these worries as an Opposition rant ahead of the elections and claimed 10 million jobs had been created over the last year in infrastructure, technology and tourism. Facts, however, belie this claim. Data released by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) for February-March this year shows there were 31 million active unemployed seeking jobs. According to CMIE, the unemployment rate by August 2018 had climbed to 6.32 per cent  almost double the unemployment rate of 3.4 per cent in July 2017.

Among the various estimates, the World Bank says that about 1.3 million working-age people are being added to Indias population every month, and about 8 million jobs need to be added on every year to keep the unemployment rate in check. According to CMIE, the country added only 1.43 million jobs in the calendar year 2017.

The perception in the street is worse, as providing jobs was a major plank for Narendra Modis election juggernaut. In a rally in Agra on November 22, 2013, the then PM-contestant promised to create 1 crore (10 million) jobs every year if voted to power. The BJP election manifesto for the Lok Sabha polls for 2014 did one better  the party promised to create 250 million new jobs over 10 years!

Having created this groundswell of hope among the youths, disillusionment and non-performance is creating the kind of a backlash that more speeches and promises will not be able to deal with. There are 130 million first-time voters for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections  young people who tend to vote with their heads and hearts  and they turn out in large numbers. An online survey by LocalCircles on the NDAs four-year performance showed that 54 per cent of the respondents believed the government had failed in reducing the unemployment rate.

SPEED BREAKERS

Why has job creation been so slow? The BJP-led government had launched a series of programmes designed to kickstart the economy and generate jobs. Make in India was directed at boosting the neglected manufacturing sectors share to about 25 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product by 2020 from a stagnant 15 per cent inherited from the Congress. The programme was a failure with manufacturing registering a dismal average growth of around 1.5 per cent over the last four-five years. Other flagship programmes like Start-up India and Digital India have gone the same way.

Finally, the debate is not only about job creation, but of job losses too. The two big disruptive policy initiatives  demonetisation and the single Goods and Services Tax (GST)  have both worked as speed breakers. The November 2016 withdrawal-of-big-notes shocker fractured thousands of small cash-based industries, disrupted farm operations and threw millions out of jobs. GST may have positive long-term benefits, but in the short term, it has set back business operations and taken away jobs.

In the immediate year after the November 2016 demonetisation, the economy is estimated to have lost 9 million jobs. Similar regressive policies like banning the trade and slaughter of old livestock have severely damaged the rural economy and traditional job-creating sectors like leather goods. In the election run-up, it is now the economic distress versus religious symbolism. It will be interesting to see which will prevail.

The CMIE data for February-March 2018 shows there were 31 million active unemployed persons seeking jobs. If the poll trends in Chhattisgarh and Telangana are any indicator, failure to tackle joblessness will be the most important issue the BJP will have to face.

Why job creation has been slow

 Make in India was directed at boosting the manufacturing sectors share to about 25% of GDP by 2020. The sector saw an average growth of around 1.5% over the last 4-5 years

 Similar was the

fate of Start-up India and Digital India

 Note ban fractured small cash-based industries, throwing millions out of jobs

 GST has set back business operations and taken away jobs
By Express News Service

CHENNAI : Repco bank celebrated its 50th year foundation day on Saturday during which the bank launched a new loan scheme for its retail customers. As part of its golden jubilee celebrations, the bank launched its first Facebook page and a souvenir to mark five decades of service. By having a presence on social media, we will be able to connect with our 11 lakh plus customers across the country and also serve them better. Also, the newly launched `50 lakh plus loan scheme will have lower monthly EMI and 100 per cent processing fee waiver, said R S Isabelle, managing director of the bank.

Established in 1969, Repco bank falls under the administration of Freedom Fighters and Rehabilitation Division of the Ministry of Home Affairs. It was initially founded to cater to repatriates rehabilitated from Burma, Sri Lanka and Vietnam.

Principal Secretary to Public and Rehabilitation Department, P Senthil Kumar, was the chief guest.

Other guests included TS Krishnamurthy, chairman of Repco Home Finance Ltd; and Dinesh Ponraj, director, Repco Bank. In the past five decades, our profits after tax amounted to `105 crores and our business mix was more than `14,300 crores. We have also consistently declared 20 per cent dividend, said Senthil Kumar, who is also the chairman of Repco bank.
By Express News Service

BENGALURU: A 21-year-old girl committed suicide by hanging in her college hostel at Prashanti Kutiram Arogyadhama in Jigani on Friday.

The deceased, Changala Kusumalatha was in pursuing her third year in BAMS at a private college in the city. She left a suicide note saying that her uncle had taken away her mobile phone, saying that she needed to concentrate since she did not appear for her previous exams. Upset over this she took this extreme step.

A senior police officer said that the incident took place in the evening and she was found hanging from the ceiling by her roommates. The staff at the Prashanthi Kutiram were alerted and the Jigani police rushed to the spot. Preliminary investigations revealed that Kusumalatha was suffering from depression ever since her parents died.
By Express News Service

BENGALURU: Putting an end to speculations about the contents of the additional chargesheet filed by a special investigation team probing the murder of journalist Gauri Lankesh, IGP Bijay Kumar Singh, who is heading the team, detailed how the investigation, with more than 200 officers, was carried out.

A statement released by him on Saturday said, Artificial Intelligence systems were used to extract images of suspected persons and vehicles and to compare with the footages obtained from 200 terabytes of video data from the CCTV cameras installed at major roads and junctions by the Bengaluru police.

More than 2,500 persons were interviewed and examined. Based on the clues given by them, nearly 10,000 suspected two-wheelers from all over the state were examined and owners quizzed.

The first breakthrough was achieved when the forensic ballistic analysis established that the pistol used to murder Gauri was the same pistol used to murder Prof MM Kalburgi in Dharwad and Govind Pansare in Kolhapur, Maharashtra. Based on the clues, mastermind Amol Kale, Ashok Wagmore and 14 others were arrested while two others - Vikas Patil and Rushikesh Deodikar are absconding.

The investigation so far has revealed that all the 18 accused are active members of an organised crime syndicate. This syndicate was formed in 2010-11 under the leadership of Dr Virendra Tawade. One former editor of Sanatan Prabhat provided financial support to this syndicate. The members of this organisation targeted persons who they identified to be inimical to their belief and ideology. The members strictly followed the guidelines and principles mentioned in Kshatra Dharma Sadhana, a book published by Sanatan Sanstha.

The members of the organized crime syndicate met, conspired and trained at various places in Karnataka and Maharashtra. In August 2016, the main members of the syndicate identified Gauri as a Durjan as told in the Kshatra Dharma Sadhana based on her speeches and writings. They jointly hatched a conspiracy to murder her in furtherance of the achievement of their goal, the statement said.

Post operation hideout

The duo - Parashuram Waghmare and Ganesh Miskin- who killed Gauri Lankesh escaped on a bike to the place where Amit Baddi was waiting and handed over their pistols, rounds (ammunition), clothes, helmets etc and went to the Kumbalgodu house. Bharat Kurne was waiting for them and dropped them off near Nelamangala toll gate and they escaped individually. Meanwhile, Amit Baddi took the articles in the Maruti Omni van and kept inside the home of H L Suresh at Seegehalli and escaped.
By Express News Service

HYDERABAD: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Saturday continued searches it began a day back at companies owned by TDP Rajya Sabha member Sujana Chowdary and issued an order summoning him for questioning on Tuesday, even as AP Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu cried hoarse that his partys leaders are being targeted by Central agencies at the BJPs behest.

Chowdary, a close aide of the yellow party chief, is accused of having cheated various banks of over Rs 5,700 crore. The Sujana Group of Companies is under the scanner of the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence and the CBI for alleged violation of Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA). Preliminary inquiries by the ED found certain loans to the companies were sanctioned against the personal guarantee of Sujana Chowdary. Six high-end cars registered in the name of shell companies operated by the group were also seized under provisions of Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). The CBIs Bengaluru Banking Security and Fraud Cell had earlier registered three FIRs against Best & Crompton Engineering Projects Ltd, , Chennai (BCEPL)  a part of Sujana Group of Companies  based on a complaint from three banks alleging a fraud of Rs 364 crore (Central Bank of India, Rs 133 crore; Andhra Bank, Rs 71 crore and Corporation Bank, Rs 159 crore) by falsification of accounts and submission of false statements.

Based on the FIRs, ED Chennai initiated investigations under PMLA and conducted searches at the residence and offices of top officials of BCEPL at Chennai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad in October.

Verification of the documents indicated BCEPL and other firms of Sujana Group of Companies were functioning under the chairmanship of YS Chowdary alias Y Satyanarayana Chowdary alias Sujana Chowdary. In voluntary statements, directors of BCEPL had inter alia stated that Sujana Chowdary is the person responsible for the entire activities of Sujana Group of Companies and that they all have acted and rendered their signatures on the insistence of Sujana Chowdary, either directly or through officials of Sujana Group of Companies and that they are namesake directors and had no idea as to how the funds of BCEPL were utilized, an ED release said.

The ED conducted simultaneous searches at seven locations at Hyderabad and one at Delhi of Sujana Group of Companies. Further, documents indicating Chowdarys control over 120 companies, most of which are without any genuine business activities, were also seized. Meanwhile, Sujana Group of Companies condemned the false reports.

This is an attempt to defame the Sujana Group of Companies. We have provided all information as required by the ED. There is a false rumour that lookout notices were issued to the directors of the group, a statement by the group said.
By Express News Service

HYDERABAD: Taking a potshot at those who question All India Majilis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) regarding employment in Old City, partys Chandrayangutta candidate Akbaruddin Owaisi urged people to make him the Chief Minister and assured them of bringing jobs.

Speaking at a public meeting at Salala Barkas, Owaisi said, Today we (AIMIM) are working, and people ask, What have you done for employment?. Creating employment is not the job of an MLA. It is the Prime Ministers and Chief Ministers responsibility.

For MLAs, there is the MLA fundwith which one can construct roads, lay water lines, bring electricity. Has there been any funds set aside in the MLA fund to create jobs?, the partys floor leader in the State Assembly added.

He finally said to a resounding cheer, Make me the CM, I will show you how many jobs can be created. Will you do that? The Prime Ministry is with you, the Chief Ministry is with you.. Every ministry is with you, and we dont have anything. Despite that we have created thousand of jobs in all the Owaisi Hospitals and Esra Hospital. In my schools, there are 400 women teachers. There are jobs in engineering colleges, MBA colleges and MCA colleges. This is AIMIM. 

Golconda Forts tourism

Speaking at a public meeting at Karwan, under which the Golconda Fort comes in, All India Majilis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen chief Asaduddin Owaisi said that they would a tourism policy so that the area around the Golconda Fort gets beautified. Owaisi said, Many tourists come at the fort. We want to beautify the place, create more facilities so that tourists are benefitted.

BJPs Raja Singh terms Owaisi bros mad dogs

Hyderabad: Former BJP MLA from Goshamahal T Raja Singh hit out at Akbaruddin Owaisis claim of being a kingmaker in the Assembly elections and termed the Owaisi brothers as mad dogs. If the steering of TRS car is in Akbaruddins hands, what would be the situation of Hindus? I will send them out, not just from Telangana but also from India, said Raja Singh on Saturday.
By Express News Service

KOCHI: Aham Brahmasmi - Njan Thanne Anu Satyam, the Malayalam translation of Swami Bhoomananda Tirthas first book Brahmavidya Abhyasa, was released here by writer M K Sanu by handing over a copy to DMRC principal adviser E Sreedharan at TDM Hall on Saturday.

This book must be read slowly and by understanding all the concepts discussed. It will take time, but it will be worth it. Swami is showing a pathway to mukti or at least reaching nearer to it in life, said Sanu.Brahmavidya Abhyasa was originally published in English in 1968. E Sreedharan remembered the time he met Swami in Delhi and how he was overwhelmed by Swamis grasp on English language.

I was interested in spiritual discourses which led me to his event. After that, I was present at many of his discourses. This book will be a wealth of knowledge, he said.

Swami Bhoomananda said this was the first time he was holding a book release even though he has already published numerous books by now.

I was motivated to do this by the thought that everyone should know and have access to this knowledge, he said.
By Express News Service

VIJAYAWADA: Expressing dismay over the lack of response from DGP RP Thakur and the State government over the request to provide security to senior party leader Nadendla Manohar even after one month, Jana Sena chief Pawan Kalyan has sought an explanation from Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu.

Addressing a well-attended public meeting at Mandapeta in East Godavari district on Friday, the Jana Sena chief minced no words in targeting Naidu for resorting to such tactics against Opposition party leaders. Do not forget how you suffered when Z category status was removed to you when Rajasekhara Reddy was the Chief Minister and how you got it back after a request made to then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Why do you want to employ similar tactics? he questioned.

Pointing out at road mishap to his convoy a couple of days ago when a lorry hit the vehicle of his bodyguards, Kalyan said hours later, in Hyderabad, a sand-laden lorry hit the car in which Nadendla Manohar was travelling. He luckily escaped unhurt. We did not make it a political issue such as YS Jagan Mohan Reddy and left it to the police. However, if it was found that the ruling party was behind it, we will not remain silent and confront them in a democratic manner, he said.

Stating that the DGP is not taking all these issues into account or acting upon the request for security, he said if anything happened to him or his people, the DGP has to own the responsibility.

The Jana Sena chief started his last-leg of his tour of East Godavari district and will be taking up another novel public outreach programme on Saturday (November 24). He will be travelling in Pallevelugu bus from Rajahmundry to Rampachodavaram and interact with tribals, who got displaced due to irrigation projects. Earlier, he travelled in a train from Vijayawada to Tuni for reaching out to public and knowing their problems.

At 1 pm, he along with party leaders will set out from Rajahmundry in the bus and travel to Rampachodavaram. He will interact with people at Gudala, Korukonda, Gokavaram and address a public meeting at Rampachodavaram.

The main objective is to experience the difficulties the tribals face daily, as Palle Velugu bus is their only mode of transport. During the journey, the focus will be on knowing the ground reality at the places where the displaced tribals are being rehabilitated, Nadendla Manohar told TNIE. He observed that most of the tribals have lost their lands, which is the only source of income for them, and they are in dire straits. Our effort is to know firsthand their difficulties and find a solution, he said.
By PTI

ALWAR: In north-west Rajasthan's Alwar, the BJP would go to the people banking on the developmental works, it claims, its government did in the last five years, amid the Congress' assertion of no growth and progress at all in the area.

The Congress accused the BJP of failing in providing drinking water and roads besides inducing an all out developmental lag in the district, notified as part of the National Capital Region.

The saffron party, however, has countered the Congress' claim citing benefits of the Centre's Ujjwala scheme and state's Bhamashah scheme.

Alwar with its 11 assembly seats, spread across 8,380 sq kms, has a population of 36.74 lakh with females constituting over 17.35 lakh, according to the 2011 census.

About 30.17 lakh of them reside in rural areas.

As per the 2013 assembly polls figures, Alwar's eleven assembly segments together had a total of 20,62,966 voters, including 11,08,086 males, 9,54,880 females and 13,572 service voters.

Alwar's total population includes around 9 lakh scheduled castes and scheduled tribes with Mevs of Muslim community having a sizeable presence in constituencies like Tijara and Ramgarh, infamous for mob lynchings by cow vigilantes.

In the 2013 assembly elections, the BJP had won nine out of 11 seats in Alwar but the election figures thrown up after a 2018 Lok Sabha bypolls, necessitated due to the death of Alwar's BJP MP Mahant Chandnath Yogi show that the electoral winds that blew in the favour BJP during the 2013 assembly elections, might have reversed in the favour of the Congress.

The Alwar Lok Sabha seat falling vacant by Yogi's death was grabbed by Karan Singh Yadav of the Congress with a huge margin of over 1.96 lakh votes and he had demonstrated an edge over the BJP in most of the 11 assembly seats within the Alwar Lok Sabha constituency.

Yadav now is contesting the upcoming assembly polls from Alwar, imparting the requisite impetus to the Congress in all assembly segments across Alwar, where it had established a clear lead over the BJP.

"Our only agenda is development, the usual one since beginning.

We want to fight the polls on basis of developmental works done in Rajasthan by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje," BJP's Alwar unit chief Sanjay Singh Narooka told PTI.

He said the BJP government has worked for upliftment of the poor, who have been largely benefitted from the healthcare schemes like Bhamashah and government's initiatives on education.

The BJP has provided LPG gas connections to the households and a Rs 1,000 crore worth Amrit scheme was being implemented to resolve the drinking water problem in Alwar, which falls in 'dark zone', he added.

"The Congress only used to talk about working for the poor, but the BJP has positively worked for it," Narooka asserted.

On the issue of civic amenities, he said the focus has been on developing the rural areas with "Gaurav Paths", as well as the urban streets, which had been in bad shape due to improper sewer lines in the city.

The Congress' Alwar unit chief Tikaram Jully, however, sought to enlist a slew of shortcomings in the BJP's governance and developmental works in Alwar district.

He said the previous Congress government in the state had secured the Centre's approval for several projects, including one for the establishment of an ESIC medical college and hospital in Alwar, but the BJP failed to pursue it.

He claimed the medical college plan was cancelled because the BJP could not identify the site for the medical college in five years.

He said the work on a university and 12 paramilitary recruitment and training centres that were brought to Alwar by the previous Congress regime have been going on at a snail's pace for the last five years during the present regime.

Even the height of a mini secretariat which had been proposed to be a five-storey structure has been reduced to a three-storey one by the Raje government, he said.

"These works could have emerged as milestones in the development of Alwar," said Jully, who will be contesting the assembly polls from one of the assembly seats in the Alwar district.

On the national level, he said, the BJP talked of building Ram temple, cleaning the Ganga and making smart cities, but it was the Congress which introduced the schemes like MNREGA, the Food Security Act, Indira Awas Yojna and the Right to Information Act among others.

Additionally, Jully said, former Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot's had distributed laptops to youths under the Digital Education scheme in the state.

"The BJP government has only reduced the number of beneficiaries in various public welfare schemes like the pension schemes and the food security programme.

"Promises of jobs to the youths and doubling the farmers' income have so far remained unfulfilled.

They neither waived the farmers' loan nor bought their crops at the enhanced 'minimum support price as promised," he alleged.

Jully said the Congress was now focussing on farmers, youths, middle class and small traders and exuded confidence of adding to the momentum established during its victory in the Alwar Lok Sabha bypoll.

The elections to the 200 assembly seats in Rajasthan would be held on December 7 and its results will be declared on December 11.

In 2013, the BJP had won 8 out of 11 seats in Alwar with a vote share of 41. 6 per cent.

The Congress had been able to manage victory on a single seat with its vote share being just 26.8 per cent.

Eleven assembly segments of Alwar are Alwar urban, Alwar rural, Tijara, Ramgarh, Behror, Bansur, Kishangarh-Bas, Thanagazi, Kathumar, Mundawar and Rajgarh-Laxmangarh.

Two of these assembly seats are reserved.
By Express News Service

HYDERABAD/VIJAYAWADA: Congress president Rahul Gandhi and TDP supremo N Chandrababu Naidu will tour in Telangana on November 28 and 29.

Rahul Gandhi and Chandrababu Naidu, who exhibited bonhomie during their meeting earlier in New Delhi, will share the stage in poll-bound Telangana, as the arch-rivals joined hands to put an end to TRS rule. While it has been decided that Rahul-Babu duo will campaign in undivided Rangareddy, Mahabubnagar, Khammam and Hyderabad districts, the exact locations are yet to be finalised.

Both Rahul Gandhi and Chandrababu Naidu have confirmed that they will be touring in Telangana on November 28 and 29. While undivided Khammam, Mahabubnagar and Greater Hyderabad regions have been selected for joint campaign, we will finalise the venues by Sunday. They will address public meetings and also participate in roadshows. All Grand Alliance parties have participated in Sonia Gandhis meeting sending signals of unity among all. This has gone down well with cadres of all parties. Naidu and Rahul s joint campaign will further galvanise our cadres and set stage for our victory, said TTDP chief L Ramana.

TPCC chief Uttam Kumar Reddy, Telangana Congress in-charge R C Khuntia, TPCC campaign committee chief Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka will hold a meeting with TTDP senior leaders on Saturday night or Sunday to finalise Rahul-Chandrababu campaign schedule. In fact, the TRS leaders have been targeting Chandrababu Naidu more than Congress. Now not just Grand Alliance leaders, but political enthusiasts from all parties are eagerly waiting to see the response for the joint campaign of Rahul and Naidu.

Meanwhile, the announcement made by the UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi in Telangana that the Congress will accord special category status (SCS) to the State after coming to power at the Centre has come as a shot in arm for the TDP to rubbish the criticism of Opposition parties over its alliance with the grand old party.

Though Naidu and other leaders are defending the alliance with Congress citing Rahul Gandhis assurance on SCS and Congress Working Committees (CWC) resolution, the TDP came under severe criticism from almost all Opposition parties in the State, who termed it opportunistic politics.

Sonias statement on SCS in Telangana is proved our commitment to the State, feel TDP leaders.

When contacted, Agriculture Minister Somireddy Chandramohan Reddy said, The TDP, despite opposing the Congress for the past four decades, has joined hands with the Congress in the larger interests of the State and nation. The BJP, which had promised to extend SCS to AP for a period of 10 years, betrayed the people of AP. And now it is time for YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, Pawan Kalyan and BJP leaders to persuade PM Modi to announce such a promise on SCS, Somireddy said.
By Express News Service

HYDERABAD: Taking strong exception to UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhis assurance, at Medchal election meeting here on Friday that Congress would accord special category status (SCS) to Andhra Pradesh, several TRS leaders wondered how Sonia can talk about APs prospects in Telangana. Speaking to newsmen here on Saturday, Karimnagar MP B Vinod Kumar demanded that the Congress should first define what special category status is. In the present circumstances, no State can get SCS, Vinod Kumar said.

He reiterated that the TRS was not against the sanction of special funds for development of Andhra Pradesh, but no other State would agree to granting Special Category Status to it. Sonia Gandhi is being misled by the Telangana Congress leaders, he said. Meanwhile TRS leader KT Rama Rao also alleged that the Telangana Congress leaders prepared the speech and Sonia Gandhi read out the same.

Irrigation Minister in the caretaker government T Harish Rao told reporters in Mahbubnagar that injustice would be meted out to Telangana, if SCS was accorded to AP. Speaking at an election meeting in Telangana, how could Sonia Gandhi shower sops on AP, Harish Rao wondered. Sonia should have talked about providing industrial, tax concessions to Telangana too, he said and asked why she failed to announce anything to Telangana.

TRS MP Gutta Sukhender Reddy said in Nalgonda that the Sonia read out the script prepared by Telangana Congress leaders. She does not know anything about Telangana. But, tried to get public sympathy to come to power in Telangana, he alleged. Another TRS leader G Jagadish Reddy has said that Sonia read out Naidus script. No one can save Congress, he remarked.

Kavitha blasts Sonia for speaking Naidus language

Jagtial: TRS leader and Nizamabad MP K Kavitha lambasted AICCs former president and UPA chairman Sonia Gandhi for speaking in favour of Andhra Pradesh and insulting Telangana during the latters speech in Hyderabad on Friday. Speaking to reporters on Saturday, Kavitha said: Sonia Gandhi has read out a script written by AP CM Naidu. She has insulted Telangana by speaking about the welfare of AP on Telangana soil. Sonia Gandhi, during her address on Friday, said that AP deserves SCS to be given by the UPA if it comes to power. Kavitha said that Congress leader T Jeevan Reddy and TTDP president L Ramana never think about TS rights.
By Online Desk

After a dreamy wedding on the banks of Lame Como, Italy and reception in Bengaluru on November 21, Bollywood's most celebrated couple Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh returned to Mumbai on Thursday. On their return, Ranveer's sister Ritika Bhavnani threw a party for the duo -- photos and videos of which have now gone viral on social media.

The newlyweds can be seen having fun at the party, jiving to popular Bollywood and English music. But one video, in particular, has taken the internet by storm. Netizens are going gaga over this video, where Ranveer is seen making a speech, saying that he "married the most beautiful girl in the world."

CLICK ON THE IMAGE BELOW TO WATCH VIDEO:

He also thanked her for obliging him by wearing a dress similar to the kind Mexican artist Frida Kahlo often wore. "We are here to celebrate what will be an epic future, baby, you and me!" he added. The crowd responded with loud cheers and Deepika was all smiles.

Deepika's lehenga was from Sabyasachi's Kesribai Pannalal collection while Ranveer upped his out-of-the-box fashion game with what looks like a glow-in-the-dark ensemble.

The festivities don't end here. A Mumbai reception is scheduled for November 28, while a party is said to be hosted later on December 1.
By IANS

BENGALURU: The body of Kannada cinema star M.H. Ambareesh was on Sunday flown from here by an Air Force helicopter to his hometown Mandya in south Karnataka for a last glimpse by his fans and the public, said an official.

"The glass casket containing Ambareesh's body was flown to Mandya in the evening (at 5.00 p.m.) and kept at MV Stadium for the public to see him one last time and pay their respects till Monday morning," an official told IANS here.

Ambareesh, 66, died Saturday night following a heart attack at a private hospital in the city.

GALLERY: Here are some rare pictures of the South Indian actor Ambareesh

His wife and multilingual actress Sumalatha, son Abhishek and a few relatives who accompanied the body, were seated around the body in the stadium.

Mandya is about 100km from Bengaluru on way to Mysuru.

Thousands of people, including children, from Mandya and Mysuru districts thronged the stadium to see the body of their 'rebel star' draped in the tri-colour and the famous Mysuru 'peta' (headgear) crowning his head.

"The body will be flown back to Bengaluru on Monday morning for a State funeral at the Kanteerva Stadium in the city's northwest. It will be kept at the Kanteerva Stadium in the City Centre till afternoon for the public to pay their homage," said the official.

"The state government sought the Defence Ministry's permission to use the Indian Air Force (IAF) helicopter for flying Ambareesh's body to Mandya and bring it back to Bengaluru for the last rites as a special case," added the official.

ALSO READ: Actors and politicians mourn loss of Kannada 'Rebel' actor Ambareesh

Among the prominent people who paid floral tributes to Ambareesh were Suttur Mutt pontiff Shivarathri Deshikendra and Adichunchanagiri Mutt pontiff Nirmalananda, who also consoled the bereaved family.

The administration imposed prohibitory orders in Mandya district to maintain law and order and regulate the crowd going to the stadium.

"Sale of liquor has also been banned till Monday night across the district to prevent any untoward incident during the three-day mourning period," Mandya Deputy Commissioner N. Manjusri told reporters.

The administration has also deployed about 2,000 police personnel in and around the stadium to regulate the movement of the people.
By Online Desk

Actor-turned-politician M H Ambareesh (66), fondly known as 'Mandyada Gandu' and rebel star died of cardiac arrest in the city on Saturday. The actors death came barely hours after he had expressed his grief at the death of 30 people in a bus accident earlier in the day in Mandya district. He is survived by his wife, actress Sumalatha and son Abhishek.

ALSO READ: Actors and politicians mourn loss of Kannada 'Rebel' actor Ambareesh

Ambareesh was rushed to Vikram Hospital after he complained of breathlessness in the evening. The hospital statement read, "Sri Ambareesh (M H Amarnath) aged 66 years was found unresponsive at his residence, resuscitation efforts were initiated at his residence and continued en route and shifted to the hospital. Despite all aggressive resuscitation effort, he could not be revived and is declared deceased at 10.15pm on 24.11.2018." The state government has announced a 3-day mourning.

GALLERY: Here are some rare pictures of the South Indian actor

After the family announced the demise of the legendary actor, a large group of his fans gathered outside the hospital. His Friends, fans and colleagues from the film fraternity expressed grief over the loss of the 'Rebel' actor.

Superstar Rajinikanth was a close companion of the late actor. He took to his social media handle to express his sadness. Apart from the '2.0' actor, many well-known Kannada stars and politicians have paid their last respect to Ambareesh.

A wonderful human being ... my best friend ... I have lost you today and will miss you ... Rest In Peace #Ambrish  Rajinikanth (@rajinikanth) November 24, 2018

The duo has acted together in several Tamil and Kannada movies - Priya (Tamil), Thai Meethu Sathiyam (Tamil), Killadi Kittu (Kannada) to name a few.
Madhumita Prabhakar By

Adwaita Gadanayaks sculptures carry a heavy scent of spirituality and culture, which he associates with his upbringing amidst nature in Odisha. The unabashedly humble sculptor, who is the Director General of

National Gallery of Modern Art, has created the National Police Memorials central structure. Back in his hometown, which is in the heart of a jungle in Dhenkanal, he was just another man who found shape and form in all elements of nature.

Dunking in water, climbing trees and gazing at the wildlife seated atop stone towers were common childhood memories for him. We dont do idol worship. My mother prays to trees, rivers and plants, and having grown up in such an environment, everything to me looked like a sculpture, he reminisces.

Talking about stones, he narrates, Did you know every layer of stone has a history associated with it?

He explains that there are male and female stones, and they can be differentiated through texture, sound and other techniques. Male sculptures are made with female stones since these are strong and create a linear sound, thus making it easy to carve sculptures that dont need heavy ornamentation, he says.

Gadanayak cites examples of how people interact with stones in different countries. In Mecca, pilgrims worship the black stone, also known as the Kaaba stone. In Jerusalem, Jews talk and cry to the Western Wall, also known as the Wailing Wall, he says adding, Back in Odisha, pilgrims embrace the Garuda statue in Puri Jagannath Temple. Such is the power of stones. They carry our message to the Supreme Being.

Gadanayak pursued his interest in art by joining the BK College of Arts and Crafts, Bhubaneswar and completed his education at the Slade School of Fine Arts, London.When I returned to India, I realised that the market was ruled by the mafia and you gain recognition largely through money, fame and knowing the right people. In fact, I never entered a gallery or did art show before this, he confesses.

Talking about his latest masterpiece  the National Police Memorial Gadnayak says, There was already a monument erected in the place where the National Police Memorial exists today. There was controversy around it, hence a call was taken to replace it.Gadanayak was selected among several artists who were invited to submit blueprints for the project. His natural instinct was to build something from stone since they are oldest beings in this planet. The memorial was inaugurated along with a museum on the October 21, which is marked as the Police Commemoration Day.

The memorial stands as a testimony to the valour and service of Indias police forces. It is a holy abode for families who visit the memorial. Some people wonder what the stone depicts but if you observe, it looks different from every angle. Some places look polished, some look raw. It creates an illusion,

he explains.
G Parthasarathy By

As Chinese economic and military power grows rapidly, countries across Asia are debating how they are going to deal with growing Chinese arrogance and use of its power. American unpredictability in the era of the mercurial President Donald Trump has rendered policy-making difficult. Trump has led his country out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, bringing together countries from the US and Canada, to Australia and Vietnam, in an inter-continental free trade agreement, which was initiated by his predecessors.

Moreover, American allies such as Japan and rivals such as China have faced Trumps wrath, with his imposition of stiff tariffs on trade. American unpredictability has rocked the Asia-Pacific. This has been accompanied by Trumps desire to boost military ties across the Indo-Pacific region, with India playing an important role in balancing Chinese power, across the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

Prime Minister Modi has responded skillfully to this challenge. It is not in Indias interests to exacerbate tensions with a powerful China, merely to please an unpredictable American President. It is, however, imperative for India to work with other powers in the region, to see that China cannot use force, to fulfil its territorial ambitions and claims. The Doklam military standoff last year demonstrated that India would challenge China, if Beijing sought to cross into Indias territory. The Modi-Xi Jinping Summit meeting in Wuhan has laid the basis for closer cooperation between the militaries of India and China to defuse tensions, which could result from Chinese intrusions into territory claimed by India.

China is now determined to use its vast economic power, to win over Indias neighbours, ranging from Maldives and Sri Lanka to Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal. Expanding Chinese military cooperation, primarily with Pakistan, is reinforcing this. China is also ready to reinforce its massive economic aid in infrastructure projects, by contributing financially, to back leaders it believes would be less than friendly to India. Beijing is reported to have a cosy relationship with Begum Khaleda Zia in Bangladesh, Khadga Prasad Oli in Nepal, Mahenda Rajapakse in Sri Lanka and Mohammed Solih in Maldives.

China evidently has a flawed understanding of democratic processes. It often goes wrong in its political assessment of the dynamics of development in democracies. It has also wrongly read the adverse long-term implications of its mercantilist aid policies, even in countries like its all-weather friend Pakistan, where its motivations are being questioned, on the much-touted China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. India cannot match China in providing resources for projects/aid abroad.

Japan is, however, increasing cooperation with India to fund projects separately and jointly, across the Indian Ocean region. The US and its European allies are also evidently becoming increasingly aware of the need for cooperation and coordination with Japan and India, for financing projects in the Indian Ocean Region. India has to work with other like-minded countries, to balance Chinese power, even as it builds its military strength and expands security cooperation across its Indian Ocean neighbourhood.

dadpartha@gmail.com
By PTI

AHMEDABAD: A 2007 Ajmer dargah bomb blast accused, who was on run since the last 11 years, was arrested Sunday by the ATS from Bharuch in Gujarat.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA), which is probing the case, had announced a reward of Rs 2 lakh on head of the accused, identified as Suresh Nair.

As per the NIA, Nair had allegedly supplied a bomb to the planters at the famous sufi shrine in Rajasthan and was also present at the spot, the Gujarat Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) said in a statement.

Three persons were killed and 17 others injured in the blast that occurred on October 11, 2007.

After he was apprehended from Bharuch, Nair was shifted to Ahmedabad for further investigation, the ATS said.

He is a resident of Thasara in Kheda district of Gujarat.

"Officials of Gujarat ATS had received a credible information that Suresh Nair will visit Shukaltirth in Bharuch in near future, following which a close watch was kept at the place," the agency said, adding that Nair was apprehended from the spot.

He will be handed over to the NIA, it said.
By PTI

Nahan (Himachal Pradesh): At least nine people were killed and 51 injured when a speeding bus they were travelling in fell from a bridge into a river in Himachal Pradesh's Sirmaur district on Saturday, police said.

The accident took place near Khadri village on the Renuka-Dadahu-Nahan road, about 168 km south of Shimla, at around 4.30 pm.

The private bus was on its way from Renuka Ji to Nahan when the driver lost control, broke the railing of the Jalal bridge and fell 40-feet down into the Jalal river, said Additional Superintendent of Police (ASP) Virender Singh Thakur.

Four passengers, including three women, died on the spot, while five critically-injured persons succumbed to their injuries in a hospital.

Fifty-one people are under treatment in the Nahan medical college and Dadahu sub-divisional hospital, the ASP told PTI.

Thakur, who reached the spot and supervised the rescue operation, said prima facie the accident happened due to the negligence of the bus driver.

According to eyewitnesses, the bus was overspeeding when it was crossing the bridge.

The process is on to identify the deceased, most of whom are local residents, the officer said, adding that the police had started an investigation.
By Express News Service

BHOPAL/JAIPUR: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday hit out at the Congress in rallies in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan for dragging his parents into the election campaign across Assembly poll-bound states and claimed the opposition partys chief, Rahul Gandhi, was allowing leaders to do so.

A Congress leader first used abusive language for my mother, who doesnt even understand the R of Rajneeti (politics) and neither knows where actually Madhya Pradesh is. But the leaders of Congress didnt stop there. When they didnt get anything by abusing my mother, theyve now dragged my father into their political speeches. Are they bereft of all other issues that they are now dragging my mother and dead father in their speeches? asked Modi while addressing a poll rally in Union minister Sushma Swarajs parliamentary constituency Vidisha.

ALSO READ: Who is Narendra Modi's father? asks Congress leader Vilas Muttemwar

On Sunday, a video of former union minister and Congress leader Vilas Muttemwar addressing a party meeting on Saturday, surfaced on social media. In the video, Muttemwar, who hails from Maharashtras Vidarbha region is seen saying, Who knew you (Modi) before you became the PM. Even now, nobody knows the name of your father, but everybody knows the name of Congress president Rahul Gandhis father and other ancestors.

My father died 30 years ago. No one from my family, even in the last 100 generations, has been associated with politics we belong to a small poor family. But they (Congress leaders) have now dragged my dead father also in their politics. Whats reason behind it? questioned Modi.

The naamdaar of Congress (Rahul Gandhi) says even I comment about his family, but let me tell him that I dont speak about his family members. We speak about the former PMs of the country and the former top leaders of the Congress. If anyone of my family was associated with politics at any point of time, Naamdaar, you had full right to comment and seek account of their performance, said Modi.

He further said, The words spoken by the Congress leaders about my mother and dead father are not of those speaking them, but instead the words of their top leader, the Naamdaar (Rahul Gandhi). Everyone knows that right from a Congress worker in a lane to the Congress worker in Delhi, none of them can speak anything without Naamdars permission. So its very clear, whose words are being uttered by these leaders.

In his first rally in Alwar, Rajasthan in the final phase Modi kept up his attack on the Congress and saying he party was indulging in caste-based politics. The Congress does not have any issue that is why they abuse my mother and question my caste. I know it is all being done on the instructions of the naamdaar (Rahul Gandhi), he said.

He added that the Congress should stick to a debate on the work of the Vasundhara Raje government. They cant come out to debate on current governments performance, he added.
Amit Agnihotri By

Express News Service

NEW DELHI: The Congress will launch a 90-day nationwide drive from Nov 26 in a major push to mobilize its traditional Dalit vote bank ahead of the 2019 national elections.

Though the event would largely be a Congress show, party managers have also roped in CPI-M's Sitaram Yechury, CPI's D Raja and LJD's Sharad Yadav to broad base the platform.

The starting point, said Nitin Raut, in charge of AICC SC department, would be a mega Dalit conclave in Delhi on Nov 26, to be observed as the "Save Constitution" day. The drive would be branded as "Samvidhan Se Swabhiman Tak" (from Constitution to Self Respect) basically reminding the community how the BJP has been against it since 2014 and all that the previous Congress government's did for Dalits.

"We want to connect with each Dalit voter in the country. We will hold parleys with community groups at the panchayat level," Raut told this paper.

Party insiders acknowledged launching a nationwide drive would come with huge logistical challenges given the neglect that party organization has suffered over the past decades.

However, a five phased blueprint to take the message down to the community clusters in villages has been drawn up. This would include family interactions, marches and taking a pledge to fight the BJP followed by rallies wherever Dalits are over 10 percent of the population, save Constitution events at the district level culminating in bigger rallies at the state level.

Besides, party units at all these levels would also be set up over the coming weeks to nurture Dalit leadership, said party leaders.

A key element of the drive would be the government diluting the law meant to protect the Dalits and blocking special funds for community welfare.

An online initiative Dalit Shakti, on the lines of Project Shakti, to strengthen booth level teams would be started on Monday, Raut added.
Fayaz Wani By

Express News Service

SRINAGAR: A soldier and six militants of the Lashkar-e-Toiba and Hizbul Mujahideen, including top commanders of both outfits, were killed in a fierce gunfight in south Kashmirs Shopian district on Sunday. A civilian, who was among a group of locals who threw stones at security forces during the encounter, was also killed. Over three dozen others sustained injuries.

On receiving intelligence inputs about the presence of militants at Batagund in Kapran, the police, CRPF and army men conducted searches on Saturday night. During the operation, they came under fire from militants hiding in residential buildings there, triggering an encounter. The gunfight went on till morning. An army jawan, Naik Nazir Ahmad, of 34 RR was grievously injured.

He was evacuated to the military hospital, where he succumbed to injuries, a security officer said, adding that Ahmad was a highly decorated soldier who was awarded the Sena Medal twice. The deceased militants were identified as Mushtaq Ahmad Mir alias Hammad alias Musha, of Shopian, Mohammad Abass Bhatt, R/o Shopian, Umar Majeed Ganaie alias Maaz alias Abu Hanzalla alias Abdul Rehman, R/o Kulgam, Mohammad Waseem Wagay alias Saifullah, R/o Amshipora, and Khalid Farooq Malik alias Rafi alias Talha, R/o Shopian.

While Mushtaq alias Hammad was the LeTs district commander for Shopian, Abaas and Umar were the Hizbs district commanders of Shopian and Kulgam respectively, a police official said. One of the deceased militants was a Pakistani who was involved in slitting the throat of a civilian in Shopian last week. Hizb had claimed responsibility for the attack, saying the victim was an army informer. The deceased civilian was identified as Nouman Ashraf Bhat. He was shot in the head and succumbed to injuries in a hospital.
Prabhu Chawla By

Elections are here once again. So what? In India, elections are the only business that survives and thrives with bulls and bears romping on the political fairgrounds. Mysterious investors bet on the outcome with multicoloured political chips. Some rake in huge returns. Some come a cropper. In this national game of vote and scoot, state elections rarely make a countrywide impact. But something unusual rides the winds blowing from middle and south India that smells of change and chance.

The results of the Assembly elections in Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh will go beyond deciding the fate of the BJP and the Congress; as well as the provincially picayune TRS. They will dictate the future colour and composition of the new regional and national leadership. If May 2014 catapulted a charismatic chief minister into the hot seat of Indraprastha as the most powerful prime minister after Indira Gandhi, the December 2018 Assembly poll verdicts will define the destiny of future prime ministerial aspirants.

They will also shake and shape the present stature of Narendra Modi and his tested and trusted party president, Amit Shah. It is Minimum Modi and Maximum CMs. If ground reports are true, the PM has decided that chief ministers and local party chiefs would lead from the front. Modi will confine himself to the role he is best at: the Mass Maximus whose acerbic aggression can storm the stoutest citadel. Brand Modi was the magic wand that conjured up saffron victories in most of the previous state polls. None of the current chief ministers was projected as a future CM. Two-third of the states had come under the Modi spell and surrendered to the BP and its alliessurpassing the Congress record under Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi.

It is the first time since 2014 that chief ministers like Shivraj Chouhan, Raman Singh and Vasundhara Raje are testing their personal popularity instead of invoking Modis hypnotic personality as their ballot magnet. The Congress, on its part, is using Rahul Gandhi sparsely on its publicity material. Previously, hoardings, buntings, ads and social media campaigns would boast big pictures of Modi and Shah while the state-level leaders had only pygmy presence or were altogether missing. Election rallies were dominated by roaring slogans that exalted Modi.

The emotionally enlivened and reverberatingly responsive audiences of those days were unwilling to listen to any other leader. But the BJP would soon lose Delhi, Bihar and Punjab and later Karnataka. It has shifted its battle strategy from Modi-driven campaigns to assaults anchored by the incumbent chief ministers. While Chouhan in Madhya Pradesh and Singh in Chhattisgarh have been in office for three terms, Rajasthans Raje is completing a second term after losing in 2008. All three face double incumbency at both the state and the Centre.

In 2013, they fought and won on their own with none of the national leaders to amp up their people power. History is being repeated in 2018 as they are left to fend for themselves so that the Central leadership is insulated from a possible blowback. Modi and Shah are addressing fewer rallies in these states as compared to Karnataka and Gujarat. Victory or vanquishment will have far-reaching implications for the party. If Singh and Chouhan secure a fourth term, they are bound to become even more powerful.

The leader to watch is the 59-year-old Chouhan, since he is the youngest and healthiest of the second-generation BJP politicians groomed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee and LK Advani. Both Raje and Raman are eight years older. Chouhan trounced incumbency in 2013, when Modi had little chance to campaign in his favour. Even now his popularity is higher than his partys in MP. Despite corruption charges, he has earned the reputation of a man with a method and a mission. He has spent more days (4,710) in office than Modi as chief minister (4,510).

Before Modi captured Raisina Hills, it was Chouhan who was seen as the BJPs future national leader with his backward and modest background. Raman Singh holds the national record of occupying the CMs office for 5,463 days. But his interests are limited to his state. However, tremors would be felt in Rajasthan and Delhi were Raje to win this time. Her hallmark is her defiance of the Central leadership. Victory would make her one of most the important players in BJPs national politics. Chouhan and Raje together contributed 52 of the BJPs tally of 282 Lok Sabha members.

Chouhans role in national politics was negligible until Rajnath Singh made him a member of the central election committee and the partys all-powerful Parliamentary Board. With Sushma Swaraj, one of the BJPs tallest and most credible leaders, announcing her decision not to stand for elections next year, the role of elected satraps like Chouhan over unelected netas will definitely get a boost. Amongst the active national leaders, Modi is the oldest, followed by Rajnath Singh, who is a year younger. Swaraj and Arun Jaitley, too, are younger, but both have health issues limiting their campaigning mobility. Shah, Yogi Adityanath and Devendra Fadnavis are yet to acquire national stature.

It is not just the fate of the BJP chief ministers that hangs in the balance. An electoral backlash for KCR in Telangana will cause tremors in Delhi, thereby affecting Modis clout. The TRS is the only powerful regional outfit which is expected to be a BJP ally in 2019. Other likely rule-buddies like Jagan Mohan Reddy in Andhra and the AIADMK are unlikely to play significant roles in determining the power balance since they are dithering in their own states. The BJP is betting on huge gains from the south and east India to compensate for possible losses in the north and the west.

A saffron rout in the three states will create a maha manthan and weaken the BJPs local leadership and hasten the Mahagathbandhan formation against Modi. Since the BJPs loss would be Congresss gain, it would enhance RaGas acceptability among leaders who have been ignoring him so far. Though Opposition parties havent declared their captain yet, the officer ranks are of different ages.

Akhilesh (45) and Rahul (48) are under 50, while Pawar at 77 is the oldest, followed by Naidu, Mamata and Mayawati. In the Age of Modi, they are willing to talk the walk but not walk the talk yet. Expect December 11 to change that. The outcome is guaranteed to accelerate the geographical and generational shift in Indian politics before the 2019 political Mahabharata.
By Express News Service

VIZIANAGARAM: To increase the hospital deliveries in tribal areas and also to decrease the MMR and IMR, Parvatipuram ITDA officials started establishing hostels for pregnant women in tribal mandals.

While a hostel was established at Salur, another is in the pipeline at Gummalaxmipuram. Pregnant women are made to shift to the hostels prior to the delivery dates from remote areas. Earlier, a few women died while being shifted to hospitals. Similarly, several deliveries also took place in the ambulances while being shifted to hospitals. Some of the villages in the tribal areas have no road connectivity while many other villages are located far away from the hospitals. Taking all the parameters into account, ITDA officials started setting up hostels for pregnant women.

Several deliveries occurred en route hospitals from tribal villages while death of a few women was reported from the tribal areas in the past, said district medical and health officer K Vijaya Laxmi. To reduce the MMR and IMR and also to increase the hospital deliveries in the purview of the ITDA, Parvatipuram ITDA PO Dr Laxmisha had decided to shift all the pregnant women on the hilltop and other remote areas in the tribal region close to the hospitals. To provide a shelter with care, the PO started the hostels. One was opened at Salur while another is on the cards at Gummalaxmipuram.

Out of the 68 PHCs in the district as many as 34 are being operated from the tribal region. Based on the expected delivery date (EDD), we have been shifting the pregnant women to the hostel at least a month in advance of the EDD. The home-like care and support are being provided to the pregnant women in the hostel. Nutritional food and intensive medical care under the close observation of gynaecologist is the highlight of the hostels.

HV and ANM have been deployed in the hostel while the gynaecologist would attend on call. Similarly, a separate ambulance was also granted to the hostel. After delivery they would be shifted to their homes by Tallibidda Express, the PO said. We have shifted about 35 pregnant women from tribal villages to the hostel at Salur and all had safe delivery. Asha workers, ANMs and other medical officials have been creating awareness about the hostels, he added.
By Express News Service

RAJAMAHENDRAVARAM: Jana Sena president Pawan Kalyan travelled with tribals of agency area in East Godavari district in Palle Velugu bus on Saturday afternoon from Rajamahendravaram to Rampachodavaram to know their problems. Explaining their woes, displaced tribals said though State government in its report to the Centre claimed to have paid a compensation of `11.5 lakh per acre, in reality, they received between `3 lakh and `7 lakh per acre.

They informed Kalyan that each tribal was provided two acres of land, which was not suitable for farming. Further, the houses given to them as part of rehabilitation are of poor quality and leaked at places when it rained. They urged Kalyan to take up the issue with the government.

Tribals of Gadala, Korukonda and Gokavaram villages accorded him a warm welcome. While interacting with them on Bhupathipalem project in Suddigomma, Kalyan said projects are important for development, but rehabilitation to the displaced is equally important too. He inspected the lands given to the displaced and listened to their grievances.

He was told that though lands are on banks of Musurmilli canal, water is not provided them. Women complained that toilets being constructed under Swachh Bharat Scheme are incomplete, forcing them to go out in the fields. He assured to take up their cause and strive for a solution.

On the request of the tribals, Kalyan beat the drums and danced with them on the occasion. Later, addressing a public meeting at Rampachodavaram, Kalyan lashed out at TDP government and YSRC for ignoring the welfare of tribals. Tribals can get justice only with Jana Sena at the helm of affairs.
By Express News Service

BENGALURU: As the demand to bring actor Ambareesh's mortal remains to Mandya by his fans is growing, Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy said that the government is contemplating to airlift the body and allow public in Mandya to pay last respects to their favorite actor and politician.

Speaking to reporters at Kanteerava Stadium where Ambareesh's body is kept for public to pay last respects, Kumaraswamy said that he is trying to get in touch with the Defence Minister.

READ | Rebel star Ambareesh dies of cardiac arrest in Bengaluru

"We will request them to provide an IAF helicopter and if they agree, we are thinking of air lifting the body to Mandya by afternoon. From 4 pm to 6 am on Monday, the people of Mandya will be allowed to pay homage. After that, the body will be brought to Bengaluru again for last rites," he said.

Meanwhile, actors Rajanikanth, Sarath Kumar, Prakash Raj and others paid homage to Ambareesh while most of the personalities from Kannada film industry have camped at the stadium
By Express News Service

MANDYA: When news about the tragedy spread like wildfire, at least 20,000 people made a beeline to the accident spot in Kanaganamardi leading to tension in and around the village.

As the bodies were recovered and relatives slipped into grief, villagers expressed their anger against local politicians and officials for not plying KSRTC buses to the village. At least 4,000 bikes and hundreds of cars and goods vehicles brought people to the accident spot. Sensing trouble, police diverted KSRP platoons that were heading to Mangaluru and Bengaluru for VHP rallies to Kanaganamardi instead. They also summoned fire engines from Mandya and Mysuru to the accident spot and diverted vehicles to other routes.

Police had a tough time making way for convoys of Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy and ex-CM Siddaramaiah. Many villagers left the place only after the CM announced compensation.

District Minister C S Puttaraju rushed to spot and saw that the dead bodies were fished out. He also summoned Health and Revenue officials as well as police officers to ensure that the bodies were handed over to relatives.

Transport Minister D C Thamanna said an inquiry has been ordered into the accident as there is prima facie evidence of technical snag.

The villagers raised slogans against the Transport Minister and the government for pressing for withdrawal of private buses and demanded that KSRTC buses be operated.

Raje Gowda, a resident, said the government withdrew KSRTC bus service two years ago stating that there was not much revenue. Why should the government look for revenue collection when it is its duty to ensure a safe journey? he asked.

CM visits, announces compensation, orders probe

Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy cancelled all his programmes and dashed to the village where he announced D5 lakh compensation and ordered a probe into the accident. Hearing about the tragedy from the relatives of the victim, the chief Minister was left in tears when a women narrated that her family lost the only bread winner in the accident. Meanwhile, former CM Siddaramaiah consoled the family.
Biju E Paul By

Express News Service

ALAPPUZHA: Malayali expats languishing in prisons abroad, especially those in the GCC member-states and African countries without recourse to legal aid or understanding of the justice delivery system there, will soon be able to avail themselves of the assistance of legal liaison officers being recruited by the Non-Resident Keralaites Affairs(NORKA) Department. Applications from prospective candidates for appointment as legal liaison officers have been invited by the committee formed by Norka for the purpose.

K Harikrishnan Nampoothiri, Norka CEO, said the move follows the realisation lack of legal assistance is posing immense hardship to expats in need of it.

Several of the Malayalees incarcerated in prisons abroad have only petty cases against them. Lack of awareness regarding the local laws and communication problems are mainly to blame. So we will appoint legal experts, mainly those practising law in the respective country. The knowledge of local language is a must. The committee constituted by Norka for the purpose will appoint the liaison officers on an honorary basis soon, Harikrishnan said.

According to Johnson Mamalassery, Pravasi Malayali Federation vice president, The move by Norka will be a huge relief to the Malayali expats lodged in foreign jails .

Though MoS, External Affairs VK Singh had informed Parliament there are around 7,737 Indian nationals lodged in foreign jails, Norka authorities said they do not have the exact number of Malayali inmates. Norka will ensure embassy assistance and services of liaison officers to those facing issues pertaining to passport, visa and employment which will be taken up by the liaison officers.

The main focus will be on the GCC countries, Iraq, and Central-East Asia. The cell will extend help only to those who went abroad on employment visas.

Those on visit visa, hajj or umrah visa will not receive the assistance. The Malayali expats serving a sentence awarded by a criminal court in a foreign country earlier will not get the help. Law graduates having a minimum of two years professional practice, who are proficient in Malayalam and the language of the respective country, will be appointed as legal liaison officers.

They should have work experience of at least two years in the country to which they have migrated.

Helping the hapless
By Express News Service

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The state Health Department has landed in a soup after two international medical journals reported the actual death toll due to Nipah outbreak to be much more than what the state had claimed. The government, however, maintained its figures were based on lab-confirmed reports and ruled out any mix-up.

The reports, co-authored by the Health Secretary, also suggest one more health worker  in addition to nurse Lini Sajeesh  is suspected to have succumbed to Nipah. The governments claim of identifying the outbreak with the second case itself is thus being questioned.

After two international medical journals stated that Nipah deaths in the state were higher than the official toll, the family of an assistant radiologist, who died during the outbreak, has claimed that she had succumbed to the deadly virus infection.

After an article co-authored by Additional Chief Secretary (Health) Rajeev Sadanandan in the journals courted controversy, T Vinod Kumar, husband of assistant radiologist Sudha, said that she contracted the disease from Mohammad Sabith, suspected to be the index case of the viral infection.

Though Sabith died on May 5, Nipah infection was diagnosed only after his brother Mohammed Salih also died later on May 17.

Vinod told Express that his wife Sudha had treated Sabith when he was admitted to Medical College. She had been working as an assistant radiologist. She fell ill on May 12 and became critical by May 17. She died on May 19. She had shown the same symptoms of other Nipah-infected patients, he said.

If Vinods claim is proven true, Sudha would be the first health staff to die due to Nipah infection. As per official records, the first and only health staff to succumb to the fatal viral infection is nurse Lini Puthussery.

When Express contacted Director of Health Services R L Saritha to confirm whether Sudhas samples were sent for detailed analysis, she said It could not be immediately confirmed. The samples were collected and sent to Manipal by the doctors at the Medical College. We have to check the documents to verify this, she added.

Vinod said that he had applied for the job of his wife and the process is on. I am working on a temporary basis at Kozhikode Medical College Hostel. It would be of much help if government gives me the job of my wife for which I had applied. I would also like to meet Health Minister K K Shailaja to seek her help in resolving his problems, he said.


By Express News Service

SABARIMALA: In continuing police crackdown on pilgrims defying ban orders in Sabarimala, 30 people were rounded up at the Sannidhanam late on Saturday evening for conducting namajapam. Those arrested were later taken to Pampa under police cover after the rendering of Harivarasanam.

The namajapam was conducted in front of the Vavaru nada and outside the barricade after a group of pilgrims split into two around 10.15 pm. Pilgrims are presently barred from assembling at the thirumuttam and Vavaru nada. There was a huge posse of police deployed there from 9 30 pm. Sannidhanam SP Pratheesh Kumar spoke with the devotees and arrested them for violating Section 144.

Court declines Surendrans bail plea

Pampa: BJP general secretary K Surendran, who was jailed on charges of conspiring to attack a 52-year-old devotee at Sannidhanam in Sabarimala on Chithira Attavishesham day, was denied bail by the Ranni Judicial First Class Magistrate on Saturday.
By Express News Service

CHENNAI: The city is expected to get light rain in the next few days as the low-pressure system over the Arabian Sea will bring heavy rain to southern and delta districts, according to the meteorological department.

"Chennai will receive light rain, but southern districts such as Tirunelveli, Tuticorin, Rameswaram and delta regions will receive heavy rainfall in the next 24 hours," said S Balachandran, Deputy director-general of Regional Meteorological Centre, claiming rains will gradually reduce in the State.

Between Friday and Saturday evening, Rameswaram recorded the highest rainfall in the State- 23 cm. With rain expected to wane across the State, the monsoon deficit is slated to increase. The State is facing a nine per cent deficit in monsoon rain. However, Chennai is facing almost a 50 per cent deficit.

"Chennai has received only 32 cm of rain as against the 58 cm average for this date," said N Puviarasan, director of Agromet Advisory Service Unit, while addressing the press on Saturday. The monsoon deficit is evident from the storage in the city's reservoirs which stands at a meagre 15 per cent of full capacity.

Poondi, Cholavaram, Red Hills, and Chembarabakkam reservoirs currently hold a total of 4510 mcft of water. The rains over the last week have increased the levels only by six mcft. The storages on November 17 was 4504 mcft.

No fisherman warnings have been issued with the absence of cyclonic activity and low-pressure systems over the Bay of Bengal.
By Express News Service

COIMBATORE: A 22-year-old youth was grievously injured when a gang of three hacked him on the Coimbatore district court premises, where he had come to comply with the bail conditions in an attempt to murder case, on Saturday.

According to the sources, M Surya (22), a resident of Kamatchiyamman Kovil Street at Sungam near Ramanathapuram, was on the court campus around 10 am when three bike-borne men swooped down on him and hacked him with sharp weapons. However, Surya managed to evade further onslaught after seeking refuge at a fruit stall on the premises.

An injured Surya was rushed to government Coimbatore hospital by the city police. Meanwhile, the Race Course Police registered an attempt to murder case and formed three special teams, which reportedly nabbed the assailants.

Preliminary investigations revealed that the attack was a fallout of the previous enmity. Surya was an accused in a murder case filed by the Ramanathapuram Police Station on September 29.

The three assailants -- Deepak (22), a resident of Mariyamman Kovil Street in Vellalore, Sachin alias Sanjay (21) from Olympus and Sujith (23) from Vellalore -- had been nursing a grouse against Surya and his friends -- Dinesh, Deependiran and Arun -- for allegedly stabbing Karthik, an accomplice of Deepak.

Before the September 26 incident, the two gangs were on friendly terms. During a binge session, tempers flared and Karthik intervenes to soothe the frayed nerves. However, Surya allegedly stabbed Karthik, sparking a rivalry. The attack was allegedly carried out to avenge Karthik.
NAMITA BA J PA I By

LUCKNOW: On the eve of the VHPs mega Dharma Sabha, Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray parachuted into Ayodhya on Saturday and demanded the BJP-led central government to announce the Ram temples construction date.

Addressing a gathering of Shiv Sainiks and seers of Ayodhya, he assured full support if the Centre brought an ordinance or a law. The Dharma Sabhas anticipated harping on the legislation route could be part of a scripted effort to drum up popular support as RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat indicated in Haridwar, though the Ayodhya title suit was still pending before the Supreme Court. I dont have to repeat it time and again.

We have made our stand very clear that the government of the day should bring a law in Parliament to facilitate the temple construction in Ayodhya as it cant be built anywhere else in the world, Bhagwat said.

According to highly-placed RSS sources, the Sangh has drawn up a four-pronged plan: one, holding Dharma Sabhas simultaneously at Ayodhya, Bengaluru and Nagpur; two, approaching MPs and governors to pressure the government; three, organising a huge rally in Delhi on December 9; and four, conducting yajnas and poojas across India.

If the Centre fails to do anything in this direction, a final decision will be taken by the highest body of seers at the Dharma Sansad in Prayag on January 31 and February 1, 2019, said the RSS source. Ayodhya on Saturday resembled a fortress with massive security deployment and drone cameras and ant i - ter ror commandos keeping vigil.

JILANI said the BJP has been politicising this matter since 1989. With general elections approaching, many others have picked up the issue. The Shiv Sena is pushing the issue in order to corner the BJP. Iqbal Ansari, the original litigant in the Ram Janmabhoomi- Babri Masjid title suit, said he was satisfied with the security arrangements ahead of the Dharam Sabha but said there were concerns among Muslims because of 1992.

We have no objection to the Dharam Sabha and the Government has made all arrangements to ensure peace. But in the backdrop of what had happened in 1992, I have heard that some people have moved out, Ansari said. Kamal Farooqui of the All- India Muslim Personal Law Board said, By making irresponsible statements, some people are undermining the position of the Supreme Court and are doing great harm.
Richa Sharma By

NEW DELHI: Country's first river interlinking project connecting Ken and Betwa rivers to provide water to Bundelkhand region in UP and Madhya Pradesh is back to drawing board with Union water resources ministry approaching the ministry of environment and forest to relax conditions imposed as part of forest clearance accorded in May 2017 for diversion of forest in the Panna Tiger reserve (PTR).

The problem before the water resources ministry, which is implementing the project, is one of the conditions imposed by the Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) while according Stage-I clearance to the project. The committee had recommended that the project proponent and state government should consider equivalent non-forest area (6,017 ha) adjoining to PTR from the revenue and private land and add to the PTR as a part of core/corridor (for tiger movement) with other areas or satellite core area.

According to water resources ministry, they are unable to find land adjoining to PTR.

The land adjacent to PTR has many villages and we can relocate those villagers just for expansion of PTR. We cannot provide land adjacent to PTR, said source in the water resources ministry. The ministry has now asked the environment ministry that whatever land adjacent to PTR we can get, we will give. For rest, we are allowed to give double the degraded forest land for carrying compensatory afforestation. We want relaxing partly one of the conditions.

Based on our communication, now joint verification is happening at PTR, the sources added. The damage the project can cause to big cats was highlighted by the environment ministry committee in March 2017, saying Panna is emerging as an important source population of tiger in the entire landscape and the proposed project will certainly cause alarming habitat loss and fragmentation to the entire tiger population in the landscape.
Sana Shakil By

NEW DELHI: As Ayodhya geared up for the largest congregation of Ram bhakts on Sunday, Muslim leaders expressed concern over the security of minorities in the holy town. Minority community leaders told this newspaper they had heard of some families shifting out of Ayodhya for fear of violence. Their claims, however, could not be independently verified.

Babri Masjid Action Committee convener Zafaryab Jilani said the proposed gathering of VHP and Shiv Sena activists had made the locals anxious. He, however, said the heavy security deployment and the seemingly cautious approach of the state government had ensured the situation was markedly different from what it was in 1992, when the Babri Masjid was demolished.

Some Muslims must have shifted out, especially those living in secluded areas. But because of the governments careful approach, the situation seems better than 1992, he said. The disputed Ram Janambhoomi- Babri Masjid site was put under three-tier security, restricting the movement of people. For his part, Faizabad divisional Commissioner Manoj Mishra said, We have met the Muslim community and assured it of fool-proof security. We have told them not to panic. The bitterness Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray has been nurturing for quite some time vis a vis its age-old ally, came to the fore in his indirect jibe against Prime Minister Modi when he claimed, I am here to wake the Kumbhkaran of the present times from his four-year-long slumber.
Harpreet Bajwa By

CHANDIGARH: Punjab police have arrested one of the key perpetrators of the Nirankari Satsang Bhawan grenade attack from Adliwal village near Amritsar on Saturday. The accused, Avtar Singh, 32, was caught from the tube well motor shed of his uncle on Saturday morning. He would be produced in the court and the police would seek his remand, said Punjab DGP Suresh Arora. He added that there was strong evidence against the suspects.

Also, the police, based on the disclosure of Avtar, recovered the two pistols which the perpetrators were carrying on the day of attack. Initial investigations have revealed that Avtar was contacted on WhatsApp a few months ago by one Javed, who claimed to be a Pakistani national. Subsequently, he put Avtar in touch with Harmeet Singh Happy self- styled chief of ISI-backed KLF, based in Pakistan. Happy would allegedly try to motivate him to carry out terrorist acts in Punjab.

According to preliminary investigations, Avtar disclosed that his maternal cousin, Paramjit Singh is based in Italy and about two months ago, he contacted Paramjit to arrange weapons to settle his enmity with some people of his village.

Towards the end of October or beginning of November, Avtar got a WhatsApp message from a foreign number with details of a location where weapons had been buried. After retrieving the weapons, Avtar and his accomplice Bikram carried out a recce of the Nirankari Satsang Bhawan and decided to target it on a chosen day, police said.

Weapon recovery

l The weapons recovered include two pistols (.32 bore), one of them US made, four magazines and 25 live rounds

l He got radicalised in 2007 when Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim appeared in the attire of Guru Gobind Singh
Prasanta Mazumdar By

AIZAWL: The BJP hardly has any base in poll-bound Mizoram but the shadow of the party is chasing the ruling Congress. The Congress and the states principal opposition Mizo National Front (MNF) are the two key players in this Christian-majority state. However, the attack of the ruling party has been invariably on the BJP whose presence is scarcely felt.

The BJP, which never won a seat in Mizoram, however, may end up winning two to three seats in areas of the ethnic minorities such as the Brus (Reangs) and the Chakmas who are a mix of Hindus and Christians.

The Congress is jittery about the BJP, primarily because of its political engineering which helped the saffron party grab power in states like Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur.

We have no doubt the BJP has a tacit understanding with some regional parties including the MNF. The BJP wants to rise to power in Mizoram through the backdoor, Congress spokesman Maliana told reporters in Aizawl on Monday.

BJP leader and Assam minister Himanta Biswa Sarma countered the Congress leader saying, We will have it through the front door.Sarma said, We will surprise everyone by winning Mizo seats too. We have friends in the Congress and the MNF. If there is any shortfall (post-election), we have enough friends in both the parties.

BJP senses a chance of turning tables on Congress

Taking The Congress and the states principal opposition Mizo National Front (MNF) are the two key players in this Christian-majority state. However, the attack of the ruling party has been invariably on the BJP whose presence is scarcely felt. The BJP, which never won a seat in Mizoram, may end up winning two to three seats in areas of monorities such as the Brus (Reangs) and the Chakmas
By PTI

WASHINGTON: Democrats intend to probe US President Donald Trump's financial ties to determine whether they are the "hidden hand" driving US foreign policy on Russia and Saudi Arabia, the incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said Sunday.

Adam Schiff, currently the ranking Democrat on the intelligence committee, accused Trump of being "dishonest" about the role of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

"What is driving this?" Schiff asked, questioning "whether there's a financial motivation; that is, his own personal finances.

ALSO READ | Impeach Donald Trump? House Democrats saying not so fast

Is his personal financial interest driving US policy in the Gulf? Vis-a-vis the Russians? We don't know, but it would be irresponsible not to find out," he said on CNN's "State of the Union.

Trump this week denied reports that the CIA had concluded that the Saudi crown prince ordered the assassination of Khashoggi, a critic and Washington Post columnist who lived in Virginia.

He was murdered October 2 in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul by a special team flown in for the job.

The Saudis, after changing their version of events as evidence was made public in Turkey, have insisted that Prince Mohammed had no prior knowledge of the assassination -- an interpretation which Trump has accepted.

"The CIA doesn't say they did it," Trump said Thursday.

They do point out certain things, and in pointing out those things, you can conclude that maybe he did or maybe he didn't.

Schiff will have power of subpoena to pursue questions about the CIA's findings as well as about Trump's financial ties when he takes over as chairman of the Intelligence Committee in January as part of a new Democratic majority.

"I think others will also have the responsibility of looking at: Are there financial entanglements with the Gulf? Are there financial inducements that the president has to not want to cross the Saudis? That cannot be allowed to drive US policy.

ALSO READ | 'Maybe he did, maybe he didn't': Donald Trump says CIA has not found Saudi prince culpable in Khashoggi murder

Schiff declined to comment on a report that the committee is recruiting money-laundering and forensic accounting experts in preparation for those probes.

But he said that among the issues that had not been investigated under the Republican leadership of the House "is whether the Russians have been laundering money through the president's businesses and this is the financial hold that the Russians may have.

Is this the hidden hand in American foreign policy? We ought to be able to tell the American people, yes, it's true or no, it's not.
By AFP

BRUSSELS: European Union leaders meet Sunday to approve a historic Brexit deal, which British Prime Minister Theresa May said would deliver her country a "brighter future".

At a special summit in Brussels that was almost derailed by a row over Gibraltar, the other 27 leaders will gather to sign off the agreement before May joins them to mark the milestone.

Forged during 17 months of tough negotiations, the deal covers financial matters, citizens' rights, Northern Ireland and a transition phase, and sets out hopes for future security and trade ties.

But it is not the final stage, as the House of Commons in London must still approve the deal before Brexit day on March 29, 2019 -- and many MPs have warned they will not back it. Until the agreement is approved, all sides are still planning for the potentially disastrous possibility that Britain ends its four-decade EU membership with no new arrangements in place.

READ | The short, sharp shock of no-deal Brexit

'Reduce risks and losses'

EU Council President Donald Tusk (Photo | AP)

EU Council President Donald Tusk, who has always said he would prefer Britain not to leave, said on the eve of the summit that "no-one will have reasons to be happy" when Brexit happens. But he said terms had been agreed that would "reduce the risks and losses", and recommended that EU leaders sign off on the deal.

Eurosceptics in May's Conservative party and their Northern Irish allies warn they will not support the agreement when MPs vote as expected next month. But in an open "letter to the nation" on Sunday, May said it delivered on the 2016 referendum vote to leave, and was a "deal for a brighter future".

Britain remains deeply divided over the decision, but the prime minister said that finally leaving could be "a moment of renewal and reconciliation".

"To do that we need to get on with Brexit now by getting behind this deal," she said.

Gibraltar tensions

May arrived on the eve of the summit for final talks with Tusk and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, after which Tusk's spokesman tweeted: "We are on track for tomorrow."

But nothing in the negotiations has gone smoothly and the summit risked being derailed by a late objection to the deal by Spain over the British territory of Gibraltar.

People coming from Spain cross the airport of Gibraltar to take part at the National Day celebrations at the British territory of Gibraltar. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said in a press conference on Wednesday Nov. 21, 2018 that his government is "annoyed" that the divorce agreement being prepared for Britain's exit from the European Union doesn't specify that Gibraltar's future must be decided directly by officials in Madrid and London. (Photo | AP)

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez threatened to reject it unless his country kept a veto over future changes to EU ties with "The Rock", which borders Spain and which it has long claimed.

The impasse was resolved when Britain promised to continue bilateral talks with Madrid after Brexit -- although that itself caused further tensions.

Sanchez claimed that discussions would cover the "co-sovereignty" of Gibraltar, something residents overwhelmingly rejected in a 2002 referendum.

May was quick to correct her Spanish counterpart, saying: "The UK's position on the sovereignty of Gibraltar has not changed and will not change."

In legal terms, Spain's disapproval would not have halted the divorce settlement.

Fishing rights

But it would have been an embarrassing split for EU leaders who have proved remarkably united in the painful negotiation.

British MPs are most concerned about an arrangement in the withdrawal agreement to keep open the border between British Northern Ireland and Ireland, which could see the province follow EU rules for years.

But there are also concerns in EU capitals about fishing rights and commercial rules Britain must follow to maintain access to the bloc's markets.

A diplomatic source said the minutes of Sunday's summit meeting of the 27 leaders would record those concerns, although it was not clear if they would be made public.
By PTI

COLOMBO: Sri Lanka's controversially appointed prime minister Mahinda Rajapaksa said Sunday that stability in the country could only be restored through a fresh round of parliamentary elections.

The country is witnessing a political crisis since President Maithripala Sirisena last month abruptly sacked prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and replaced him with former strongman Rajapaksa in a move termed by many as unconstitutional.

ALSO READ | Will not make Ranil Wickremesinghe the PM in my lifetime, says Sri Lanka President Sirisena

Both Wickremesinghe and Rajapaksa have been claiming to be the legitimate prime minister since October 26.

Rajapaksa, in his first televised address since becoming the prime minister, said on Sunday that the purported government, led by Sirisena, was only an interim arrangement and that stability could only be restored through a fresh round of parliamentary polls.

He said that President Sirisena has entrusted him to resurrect the falling economy and living standards of the people.

"It is now barely a month since the change of government on October 26. What we have now is only an interim government.

When a downward trend manifests itself, it is difficult to turn things around in a month or two," Rajapaksa said in the address.

Rajapaksa said Wickremesinghe's United National Party is hesitant to face elections unlike all other parties.

ALSO READ | Sri Lankan economy on brink of 'anarchy' due to President Srisena: Ousted Finance Minister

He alleged that the Wickremesinghe government borrowed USD 20.7 billion in three years due to which "it will take a while to turn things around".

Rajapaksa has so far failed to prove his parliamentary majority. He has been defeated in at least three no trust motions in Parliament.

However, he has refused to step down and said that these motions are not recognised, accusing parliamentary Speaker Karu Jayasuriya of bias.

Jayasuriya has said that Parliament will not recognise Rajapaksa until he proved his majority in a floor test.

ALSO READ | Sri Lankan President asks legislators to call for another no-confidence vote against government

The political crisis began with Wickremesinghe's sacking on October 26. Sirisena later dissolved Parliament, almost 20 months before its term was to end, and ordered snap election.

The Supreme Court overturned Sirisena's decision to dissolve Parliament and halted the preparations for snap polls.

Speaker Jayasuriya then ordered a floor test in the 225-member assembly to end the ongoing political crisis, a move which invited the wrath of the government of Rajapaksa.
By PTI

BOSTON: A signed letter, penned by Mahatma Gandhi a year before India's independence, thanking a British lord for wishes on his birthday is expected to fetch over USD 20,000 at an online auction.

Signed 'M K Gandhi', the one-page letter to Lord Pethick-Lawrence, Secretary of State for India and Burma, was written from New Delhi on October 10, 1946.

"Dear friend, It was good of you to send me your wishes for my birthday which is synonymous with the rebirth of the spinning wheel in 1918," the letter reads.

Gandhi's reference to the spinning wheel is exceptionally important, as he had adopted it as a symbol of economic independence very early on in his movement, US-based RR Auction said in a statement.

Shortly after World War I, he developed a broad base of support from Indians for peaceful non-cooperation.

After December 1921, Gandhi expanded his nonviolence programme to include the swadeshi policy -- the boycott of British goods.

From this originated his spinning wheel, as he encouraged all Indians to wear khadi instead of British-made textiles.

He furthered this concept by exhorting Indian men and women, rich or poor, to spend time each day spinning khadi in support of the independence movement.

Thus the spinning wheel became symbolic of the movement toward Indian independence.

While Lord Pethwick-Lawrence was involved with the negotiations that led to India's freedom, it was Prime Minister Clement Atlee who made the government's principal decisions in the matter.

The bidding for the online auction ends on December 5.
By AFP

SITTWE: Protesters in Myanmar's troubled Rakhine state demonstrated Sunday against the planned repatriation of Rohingya Muslims from Bangladesh, referring to them as "runaway refugees".

About 100 people led by Buddhists monks marched through the state capital Sittwe holding red banners and chanting slogans.

"There will be no benefits to us or our country if we accept the Bengalis," one monk said, according to a live video streaming of the protest.

Bengali is a derogatory term for the Rohingya in Myanmar that falsely implies they are newcomers from Bangladesh.

The demonstration comes 10 days after Bangladesh and Myanmar were supposed to officially start repatriating members of the Rohingya minority who had fled violent military operations in August 2017.

READ: Rohingya flee camps fearing forcible return to Myanmar

Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh said Myanmar's armed forces raped women, murdered their relatives and burned down their houses in a bid to drive them permanently out of the country after decades of persecution.

The deal to bring them back was struck a year ago but Rohingya in the Bangladesh camps fear returning without guarantees of citizenship, safety, and equal access to healthcare and education.

They also are wary of hostility from the non-Muslim residents in Rakhine.

READ: Young Rohingya girls largest group of trafficking victims: UN Migration Agency

The Buddhist protesters in Sittwe on Sunday reflected that view, holding signs that included calls for authorities to not "allow resettling (of) the runaway refugees" in parts of northern Rakhine state.

"The government should take precise action against illegal immigrants from Bangladesh," said Kyawt Sein, a member of the protest committee.

READ: Australia slaps sanctions on Myanmar army generals over violence against Rohingya

UN investigators have called for Myanmar's top brass to be prosecuted on charges of genocide at the International Criminal Court or an ad hoc tribunal.

Myanmar denies almost all claims of atrocities and says it was defending itself against Rohingya militants.

Demonstrations against the Rohingya are not uncommon in Sittwe, where intercommunal violence broke out in 2012, killing hundreds and sending more than 120,000 Rohingya into internal displacement camps where most remain today.


By AFP

COLOMBO: President Maithripala Sirisena on Sunday reignited the power struggle that has crippled Sri Lanka's government for more than a month, vowing never to reappoint arch-rival Ranil Wickremesinghe as prime minister.

Wickremesinghe's party has a majority in parliament and Sirisena's bid to bring back the country's former strongman Mahinda Rajapakse has already failed.

But Sirisena choked back tears in a meeting with foreign correspondents as he accused Wickremesinghe, who he sacked on October 26, of being "highly corrupt".

"Even if the UNP has the majority I told them not to bring Ranil Wickremesinghe before me, I will not make him prime minister," he said, referring to Wickremesinghe's United National Party.

"Not in my lifetime," he added.

Sirisena dismissed Wickremesinghe following a host of personality and political clashes since they formed a coalition in 2015. He named Rajapakse as new premier and tried to dissolve parliament but the Supreme Court and legislators blocked the president's moves.

READ: Explainer: Political crisis in Sri Lanka and the key players

Wickremesinghe, who occupies the prime minister's residence, and Rajapakse, who has the premier's official offices, have both refused to back down.

But the country officially has no prime minister, heightening international fears about Sri Lanka's stability and looming foreign debt repayments.

Sirisena told foreign correspondents at his official residence that he will appoint a commission to investigate corruption under Wickremesinghe since January 2015.

"He is corrupt. His economic policies are not good for local industries. He pursed an extremely liberal form of government that is not compatible with our culture."

Sirisena fought back tears as he recalled how he asked Wickremesinghe to step down in February when their respective parties were beaten in local council elections.

"I told him that we lost the election because his economic policies had failed. I told Ranil in this very room to step down, but he refused," Sirisena said.

He added that there had been "over 100 instances" of open clashes between the two and that their power struggle had become an open secret in the cabinet.

Sri Lanka's parliament meets on November 27 and 29 to discuss a motion by the UNP to cut off government spending.

Government finances will stall on January 1 unless a 2019 budget is passed.

If the UNP wins the vote, it could force Rajapakse to withdraw his claim to the leadership, and make Sirisena to name a prime minister from the party.

"If the UNP shows a majority, I believe Mahinda will do the right thing (and stand down)," said Sirisena, although he reiterated that he would still not reappoint Wickremesinghe.

Sirisena insisted that it was not a personality clash but a "disagreement over policy."

Asked if he could constitutionally ignore the leader of the largest single party in parliament, Sirisena said he would rely on tradition.

"There is a tradition that the person appointed PM should be able to work with the president. I cannot work with Ranil. The UNP will have to bring somebody else."
Champaign, IL (61820)

Today

Sun and clouds mixed. High around 55F. Winds SSW at 15 to 25 mph..

Tonight

Cloudy with occasional rain late. Low 39F. Winds SW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch.
Sen. Lieut. Gen. Phan Van Giang (left), Chief of the General Staff of the

Vietnam Peoples Army and Deputy Defence Minister, and Gen. Prawit Wongsuwon,

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defence of Thailand

(Photo: VNA)

At a meeting with Gen. Prawit Wongsuwon, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defence of Thailand, in Bangkok on November 23rd, Giang applauded Thailands important role in maintaining solidarity and development in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).



The officer noted his belief that Thailand will successfully assume the ASEAN Chairmanship in 2019 and urged the country to share its experience with Vietnam which will take over the position in 2020.



Extending greetings of Vietnamese Defence Minister Gen. Ngo Xuan Lich to Gen. Prawit Wongsuwon, Giang said the Vietnamese minister hopes to welcome Gen. Prawit Wongsuwon in Hanoi at an earliest date to discuss issues regarding the bilateral defence ties.



Giang expressed his belief that Gen. Prawit Wongsuwon will continue to create favourable conditions for collaboration in military and national defence between the two countries.



In reply, Gen. Prawit Wongsuwon said Giangs visit will contribute to consolidating and developing the bilateral strategic partnership.



The host also said he wants to pay an official visit to Vietnam to discuss issues of shared concern.



While in Thailand, Giang held talks with Gen. Pornpipat Benyasri, Chief of Defence Forces of the Royal Thai Armed Forces, during which the two sides agreed to increase the exchange of delegations, including young officers, and enhance cooperation in training and air and naval forces, while seeking collaboration possibilities between the two armies.



They believed that with political will and resolve displayed by leaders of the two countries and armies, the bilateral defence ties will make new progress, bringing pragmatic benefits to both sides.



On this occasion, Giang visited the Counter Terrorism Operations Centre of Thailand and the Vietnamese Defence Attache Office in Bangkok./.
It is part of our practise to carry out specific operations targeting specific crimes so given that this is a new law, we will roll out such operations so that we enforce the law to full effect.




Anyone harbouring Presidential ambitions should sit back, relax and leave the ruling party and State President to mend the economy without disturbances, Vice-President Dr Constantino Chiwenga has said.





Introducing President Emmerson Mnangagwa to thousands of Zanu-PF supporters at a Thank You rally at Murombedzi Growth Point in Zvimba yesterday, VP Chiwenga said it was folly for anyone to think the Head of State and Government was leaving his post anytime soon. He said focus should be on economic development.





The rally coincided with the first anniversary of President Mnangagwas ascendancy to the Presidency, and was organised to thank the people of Mashonaland West for voting backing Zanu-PF and its Presidential candidate in the July 2018 harmonised elections.





No one must dream of being the President. We want our country to prosper and it is time to move the country forward. Its no longer time for bickering and politics. From here going forward, we are now talking of politics of development, of building the country and moving the country forward, said VP Chiwenga. VP Chiwenga said, In all the coming elections, no one is going to remove Shumba Murambwi (President Mnangagwa). We are here until he feels it is the time to go and when we have fully restored our country to its former glory and when everything is in order.No one must dream of being the President. We want our country to prosper and it is time to move the country forward. Its no longer time for bickering and politics. From here going forward, we are now talking of politics of development, of building the country and moving the country forward, said VP Chiwenga.





The VP added: Politics of childs play will not help us in any way. Shumba Murambwi is there to stay because he is an anointed one from the King. Never ever dream that after so and so years it will be your time, there is no vacancy, there is nowhere to get in. Listen and listen very carefully. To those who were howling in these last days, keep quiet and keep quiet forever. We want to build a strong Zimbabwe that can move forward. There is nothing he has done wrong, the son from the Shumba clan, he said.





The VP said it was no coincidence that the first Thank You rally was in Mashonaland West, where the Second Chimurenga for Zimbabwes Independence started in Chinhoyi in 1966. President Mnangagwa, VP Chiwenga said, was a God-fearing man. He said despite many challenges, the President never betrayed the struggle and never sought revenge. VP Chiwenga urged Zimbabweans to unite in support of President Mnangagwas vision for development.The VP said it was no coincidence that the first Thank You rally was in Mashonaland West, where the Second Chimurenga for Zimbabwes Independence started in Chinhoyi in 1966.





So today on the 24th of November, he (President Mnangagwa) is here in Murombedzi to thank you firstly VaZvimba and your family for voting resoundingly for Zanu-PF. You voted for our President overwhelmingly here . . . Here in Zvimba President Mnangagwa garnered 55 000 votes and this unsettled little bishop (opposition leader Mr Nelson Chamisa) who got 26 000 votes.





Speaking at the same occasion, Zanu-PF National Chair, Cde Oppah Muchinguri-Kashiri, who is the Defence and War Veterans Affairs Minister, said the professionalism of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces in last years Operation Restore Legacy was exemplary. Prior to President Mnangagwas speech, Cde Muchunguri-Kashiri said through Operation Restore Legacy, the military had upheld its constitutional duty of protecting Zimbabwe and its citizens. Cde Muchinguri-Kashiri also applauded Vice-President Dr Chiwenga for his role during and after the liberation struggle.




The Zimbabwe Revenue authority has thrown a lifeline to private motor vehicle buyers who paid for car imports on or before November 22, 2018, exempting them from mandatory duty in foreign currency.



The revenue collector said individuals who imported vehicles on or before November 22, and whose cars are scheduled to arrive in Zimbabwe on or before January 3, 2019 can also pay duty through RTGS, bond notes or foreign currency.



On Thursday, Finance and Economic Development Minister Professor Mthuli Ncube said payment of motor vehicle duty in foreign currency would be mandatory from midnight last Friday.



In a statement yesterday Zimra said, The payment of duty in foreign currency applies to any person or company importing goods designated as foreign currency dutiable that were purchased after the 22nd of November 2018;





Goods purchased on or before 22nd November 2018 and consigned for export to Zimbabwe on or before 3rd January 2019; (and) motor vehicles imported under suspension of duty for use by physically handicapped persons.





About 300 second-hand vehicles arrive at Beitbridge Border Post daily, with around 200 import entries are processed daily.





Zimbabweans spend roughly U$500 million on vehicle imports annually.
We now have more than one million tonnes in the Strategic Grain Reserve so that means there is no family that will go hungry because you will receive the grain for free. You should work with your councillors, headmen and chiefs and they will assist you
NASA Rocket

Is Now On

Its Way to

Dimorphos
(Newser)  Has Washington struck a new immigration deal with Mexico? Depends on who you ask. According to the Washington Post, the two sides have agreed in principle that asylum seekers will wait in Mexico for courts to assess their claimsand anyone denied gets sent back to their home country. "For now, we have agreed to this policy of Remain in Mexico," says Olga Sanchez Cordero, a top official in the incoming administration of President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Calling it a "short-term solution," she adds that "the medium- and long-term solution is that people dont migrate. Mexico has open arms and everything, but imagine, one caravan after another after another, that would also be a problem for us."

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But Sanchez tells the AP a different story, saying "there is no agreement of any sort between the incoming Mexican government and the US government." The issue may be the deal's official status, or unresolved detailsno agreement has been signed, after allbut the notion was apparently hashed out last week in Houston meetings between a top incoming Mexican official and senior US officials including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. If it happens, the Post notes, the agreement could trigger more crossings at unofficial crossing points and endanger asylum seekers stuck in violent Mexican border states. As it stands, US policy generally lets refuge-seekers stay in America while their cases are considered. (In arresting one illegal immigrant, ICE had to arrest 27 protesters.)
At a meeting with Gen. Prawit Wongsuwon, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defence of Thailand, in Bangkok on November 23, Giang applauded Thailands important role in maintaining solidarity and development in the ASEAN.

The officer noted his belief that Thailand will successfully assume the ASEAN Chairmanship in 2019 and urged the country to share its experience with Vietnam which will take over the position in 2020.

Giang expressed his belief that Gen. Prawit Wongsuwon will continue to create favourable conditions for collaboration in military and national defence between the two countries.

In reply, Gen. Prawit Wongsuwon said Giangs visit will contribute to consolidating and developing the bilateral strategic partnership. The host also said he wants to pay an official visit to Vietnam to discuss issues of shared concern.

While in Thailand, Giang held talks with Gen. Pornpipat Benyasri, Chief of Defence Forces of the Royal Thai Armed Forces, during which the two sides agreed to increase the exchange of delegations, including young officers, and enhance cooperation in training and air and naval forces, while seeking collaboration possibilities between the two armies.

On this occasion, Giang visited the Counter Terrorism Operations Centre of Thailand and the Vietnamese Defence Attache Office in Bangkok.
(Newser)  A Guatemalan woman was impaled by rebar when she attempted to enter the US illegally Friday night. The 26-year-old, who was traveling with her 3-year-old and 5-year-old, scaled a US border fence near California's San Ysidro Port of Entry. The San Diego Union-Tribune reports she was in an area that is under construction as crews work to replace decades-old fencing. She fell, and rebar from the new construction pierced her side and buttocks. Border Patrol arrived on the scene and ultimately called for the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department; the woman was taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

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The Union-Tribune doesn't specify whether the children also fell from the fence, but does say they were "evaluated ... for potential fall trauma" and found to be OK. "Entering our country illegally, particularly over our walls is not only dangerous, but also very foolish," San Diegos chief border patrol agent said Saturday. "This woman placed her own life and her childrens lives in peril. She could have easily died if not for the quick response by our agents and EMS." The woman told authorities she was not part of the large migrant caravan group currently in Tijuana. It was not clear whether her intention was to request asylum in the US, Fox 5 San Diego reports. (President Trump recently threatened to close the entire border with Mexico.)
(Newser)  The parents of a man killed by Alabama police Friday are calling for justice after authorities apparently shot the wrong guy, ABC News reports. "I'm outraged as a mother because I carried him for nine months," says April Pipkins, mother of police-shooting victim Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford Jr., 21. "As a mother, no one understands how I feel. It's like someone ripped my heart out." Police initially said they had shot the gunman who wounded an 18-year-old male and 12-year-old girl at Riverchase Galleria Mall in Hoover, a Birmingham suburb, but later admitted Bradford was not the shooter. A new family lawyer says Bradford was a Good Samaritan trying to calm the situation by legally carrying a handgun in an "open carry" state. For more:



Trying to help: "The police calling him a killer, when they had the video there," says Ben Crump, the family lawyer. "They wanted to justify the killing and that's why they were so quick to assassinate his character. When the police saw him, all they saw was the worst, when the young man was trying to help the situation."

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Ask questions later : Crumpwho represented the families of Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin in other high-profile cases, notes AL.comsays Bradford was standing over the 18-year-old victim's body when police "shot first ... [and] asked questions later, because he was a black man." Crump is calling for police to release videos of the shooting.

: Crumpwho represented the families of Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin in other high-profile cases, notes AL.comsays Bradford was standing over the 18-year-old victim's body when police "shot first ... [and] asked questions later, because he was a black man." Crump is calling for police to release videos of the shooting. Guns in Alabama : Bradford's family says he had a concealed-gun license, the Washington Post reports. The Galleria forbids firearms on site, but AL.com says Alabama is generally permissive about gun rights, and it's not clear whether the Galleria had posted signs needed to impose a firearm ban. In the post-shooting chaos, AL.com reports that "several shoppers were seen with their guns drawn."

: Bradford's family says he had a concealed-gun license, the Washington Post reports. The Galleria forbids firearms on site, but AL.com says Alabama is generally permissive about gun rights, and it's not clear whether the Galleria had posted signs needed to impose a firearm ban. In the post-shooting chaos, AL.com reports that "several shoppers were seen with their guns drawn." Videos : See a YouTube video of the chaos here. Per the Post, one cellphone video shows police standing over Bradford and holding someone else down as a man shouts: "That boy didn't shoot at nobody. Hes dead! They just killed that black boy for no reason ... He probably got a gun license and everything."

: See a YouTube video of the chaos here. Per the Post, one cellphone video shows police standing over Bradford and holding someone else down as a man shouts: "That boy didn't shoot at nobody. Hes dead! They just killed that black boy for no reason ... He probably got a gun license and everything." Protest : Dozens of protesters gathered outside the mall Saturday demanding justice in Bradford's death. Their chants included "Police lied, and they still lying," "Stop shopping here," and "Not one more time."

: Dozens of protesters gathered outside the mall Saturday demanding justice in Bradford's death. Their chants included "Police lied, and they still lying," "Stop shopping here," and "Not one more time." The Army : Bradford had received a general discharge from the Army, which said only that Bradford didn't finish his training, per the New York Times. Bradford's family says he was discharged due to injury. In ABC 33/40's live feed, relatives say Bradford was the youngest person in a military family.

: Bradford had received a general discharge from the Army, which said only that Bradford didn't finish his training, per the New York Times. Bradford's family says he was discharged due to injury. In ABC 33/40's live feed, relatives say Bradford was the youngest person in a military family. The officer: The Hoover Police Dept. says it's conducting an internal investigation and has placed the officer who shot Bradford on leave. "The Alabama NAACP believes those officers should be immediately removed and never allowed employment with any police force or establishment where using a gun is a requirement," says Benard Simelton, president of Alabama NAACP.







In related news, a black bouncer was killed by police responding to a bar shooting

(Read more police shooting stories.)
(Newser)  In a bittersweet landmark, European Union leaders on Sunday approved an agreement on Britain's departure next yearthe first time a member country will have left the 28-nation bloc. It took leaders a matter of minutes at a summit in Brussels to endorse a withdrawal agreement that settles Britain's divorce bill, protects the rights of UK and EU citizens hit by Brexit, and keeps the Irish border open. May insists her deal delivers on the things that matter most to pro-Brexit voterscontrol of budgets, immigration policy, and lawswhile retaining close ties to the UK's European neighbors. The agreement paves the way for Britain's smooth departure from the bloc from the EU side, though the AP reports a bumpy ride still awaits in the UK, which is due to leave the EU at midnight Brussels time on March 29.

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Dauntingly for May, the deal needs approval from Britain's Parliament, and she plans to spend the next couple of weeks selling it to politicians and the British public before the December vote. May is under intense pressure from pro-Brexit and pro-EU British lawmakers, with large numbers on both sides of the debate threatening to vote the deal down when it comes to the House of Commons. Brexiteers think it will leave the UK tied too closely to EU rules, while pro-Europeans say it will erect new barriers between Britain and the blocits neighbor and biggest trading partner. If those opposed succeed in voting it down, the BBC outlines what could happen next: "no deal, an attempt to renegotiate, or a general election." But Bloomberg notes EU leaders have already warned that renegotiation absolutely isn't an option. (Read about key points of the deal here.)
(Newser)  Migrants approaching the US border from Mexico were enveloped with tear gas Sunday after a few tried to breach the fence separating the two countries, the AP reports. US agents shot the gas, according to an AP reporter on the scene. Children were screaming and coughing in the mayhem. Honduran migrant Ana Zuniga, 23, says she saw migrants open a small hole in concertina wire at a gap on the Mexican side of a levee, at which point US agents fired tear gas at them. "We ran, but when you run the gas asphyxiates you more," she says while cradling her 3-year-old daughter Valery in her arms. Mexico's Milenio TV also showed images of several migrants at the border trying to jump over the fence. Yards away on the US side, shoppers streamed in and out of an outlet mall.

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US Border Patrol helicopters flew overhead, while US agents held vigil on foot beyond the wire fence in California. The Border Patrol office in San Diego said via Twitter that pedestrian crossings have been suspended at the San Ysidro port of entry at both the East and West facilities. All northbound and southbound traffic was halted. Earlier Sunday, several hundred Central American migrants pushed past a blockade of Mexican police who were standing guard near the international border crossing. They appeared to easily pass through without using violence, and some of the migrants called on each other to remain peaceful. They convened the demonstration to try to pressure the US to hear their asylum claims and carried hand-painted American and Honduran flags while chanting: "We are not criminals! We are international workers!" (A mother was impaled trying to sneak across the border.)
The annual event aims to connect female diplomats and the spouses of diplomats in addition to introducing the culture of countries in the region.

This years event gathered nearly 30 booths promoting the culture of countries in the region including China, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines and Timor Leste.

The Vietnamese booth introduced international friends to diverse cultural products including paintings, books, souvenirs, ao dai (traditional dress), and documents on the Vietnamese culture and popular tourism sites.

Vietnamese delicacies prepared by officials from the Vietnamese Embassy in Laos were also showcased at the party which attracted much attention from the other delegates.

Vietnamese female diplomats and spouses of diplomats in Laos have actively participated in the annual event for years, contributing to consolidating the relations between the Vietnamese Embassy and other agencies of Laos, as well as foreign diplomatic corps in Laos, while promoting Vietnamese culture to international friends.
With a massive turnout in the elections held to elect parliamentarians and municipal councillors, the Kingdom has marked a new chapter of national success. The Kingdoms leadership, people and electoral officials were praised for the smooth conducting of elections.

His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa yesterday received a cable of congratulations from His Royal Highness Prime Minister Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa on the success of the parliamentary and municipal elections.

HRH the Premier hailed the success of the polls which, he said, reflected the dedication of the people of Bahrain to answer the call of duty towards bolstering the democratic process. Deputy Prime Minister Shaikh Khalid bin Abdulla Al Khalifa commended the High Committee to Oversee the Elections Integrity for facilitating the citizens accessibility to the polling stations throughout the Kingdom as well as the smooth election procedures and high standard of its organisation.

Interior Minister, Lieutenant-General Shaikh Rashid bin Abdulla Al Khalifa yesterday asserted that the parliamentary and municipal elections 2018 are one of the fruitful results of the comprehensive reform project of His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa.

He said that the wise leadership of HM the King reinforces the political and national achievements. After casting his vote, the minister highlighted that the high presence of citizens at the polling stations reflects their sense of responsibility, national spirit and love to the nation.

The high number of candidates and voters that participated in the elections shows the enthusiasm of Bahrainis in exercising their constitutional rights, said Ghanim Al Buainain, Minister for Parliament and Shura Council Affairs.
Malicious hackers attempted to mislead voters by text messages with false information, it emerged.

The Director-General of Anti-Corruption and Economic and Electronic Security announced yesterday that Iran was the source for nearly 41,000 e-messages aimed to disrupt the parliamentary and municipal elections.

The crime was committed by individuals in Bahrain and Iran, in which they hacked a number of servers to carry out their illegal act. Legal procedures are being taken to refer the case to the Public Prosecution.

Voters received messages stating that they are ineligible to vote as their names were removed from the voters, say sources. According to sources, malicious hackers sent the messages disguised as Bahraini authorities.

Justice, Islamic Affairs and Endowments Minister Shaikh Khalid bin Ali Al Khalifa warned against such fake messages, adding that their sources are being dealt with.
One of the longest queues to vote was found yesterday at the general centre at the Seef Complex.

Voting here began at sharp 8.00 am after judge Jawaher Al Abdulrahman, Head of the Polling Centre, inspected the ballot boxes. Men, women, young, old and diff-abled flocked to the centre to exercise their democratic rights.

Many prominent citizens were seen queuing up at the centre to cast their votes. Faisal Foulath, the Head of Nazaha Centre for monitoring the elections and Secretary-General of the Bahrain Human Rights Watch Society, said effective measures were in place at the centre to ensure the smooth conducting of the elections. Dubai TV reporter Talal Al Hendasi said he was impressed by the Kingdoms electoral experience.

Bahrainis are living a unique electoral experience. This is a great success for the country. Prominent citizen Shaikh Issa bin Rashid Al Khalifa said that elections serve the proof that His Majestys reform project would deliver bigger goals for the nation.

Lawyer Huda Saad said she expected more women parliamentarians and councillors this time, adding that it would bring more benefits to the nation.

Elderly citizen Jameel Ahmed Alaiwat said that he was shocked to see long queues at the centre, but felt proud over the fact that the whole nation has taken the elections with great seriousness.
The 10th annual conference of the Bahrain Chapter of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (BCICAI) concluded on a high note with Kingdom setting sights on Information Technology to power future change and progress.

The CEO of the Economic Development, Khalid Al Rumaihi was among a stellar cast of speakers from Bahrain who addressed the conference. Speaking about Bahrains management of change in its quest for progress, he told the conference participants that EDB had pulled out all stops to make the Kingdom a data destination for Amazon saying, EDB is keen to leverage the Kingdoms telecoms connectivity and IT knowledge pool to become a regional Fintech hub.

Rumaihi applauded the inputs and professional efforts of the chartered accountants in building modern Bahrain. Other speakers were Dr. Adel Hubail, CEO of Bahrain Commercial Facilities who talked about redefining wealth and striving towards sustainable wealth and social equality and Murad Ali Murad, one of Bahrains first cost accountants and a banking leader who spoke about the importance of accounting in maintaining transparency and powering growth.

Accounting is the center of any business - if treated with respect and discipline, the field paves the way for greater economic growth and stability regardless of domestic, regional or national crises, said Murad.
Leading Bahraini businessman Mohammed Dadabhai said the elections will pave way for new blood to work with the experienced elements in the society for a better Bahrain.

Mr Dadabhai who exercised his democratic right at the Shaikh Khalifa Institute of Technology in Busaiteen, said that the proper functioning of its parliament is important for any country to attract more investments.

Economic growth is good for everyone. The country progresses and the creation of job opportunities serves the public. I am confident that there will new blood in the parliament during the next four years and they will contribute towards the kingdoms democratisation process initiated by His Majesty the King.

Mr Dadabhai added that he hope women would get a fair share of seats in the upcoming parliament. I support women and we all know that they have succeeded at all levels in the Parliament. I hope they will occupy leading seats.

Our democracy is a newly-born one and after 16 years we can now say that it is taking form and the public is more aware of their rights and is aware as to who should represent them in the parliament. I am proud to exercise my democratic right and I believe everyone should do it for our beloved Bahrain.
Frances President Emmanuel Macron agreed Friday to return 26 artworks to Benin without delay, his office said. The decision came as Macron received the findings of a study he had commissioned on returning African treasures held by French museums, a radical policy shift that could put pressure on other former colonial powers.

He proposed gathering African and European partners in Paris next year to define a framework for an exchange policy for African artworks. Macron agreed to return 26 royal statues from the Palaces of Abomey -- formerly the capital of the kingdom of Dahomey -- that were taken by the French army in 1892 and are now housed at Paris Quai Branly museum. Benin had requested their restitution, and earlier this week welcomed that France had followed the process through to the end. But Macrons office said this should not be an isolated or symbolic case.

The president hopes that all possible circulation of these works is considered: returns but also exhibitions, loans, further cooperation, the Elysee palace said. The report he received on Friday proposed legislation be developed to return thousands of African artworks taken during the countrys colonial period, now in French museums, to nations that request them. There are conditions, however, including a request from the relevant country, precise information about the works origins, and the existence of proper facilities such as museums to house the works back in their home country.
The PM asked Cao Bang to focus on agricultural development, processing and high technology application in production, as they are the main industries of the locals. He suggested expanding agricultural production in three key pillars: organic and clean production, high technology application in processing, and value chain connections and the development of brand names in order to increase the value of local farm produce.

Furthermore, the province needs to pay attention to afforestation and wood processing and exports, while promoting investment in logistic services to improve export values.

Cao Bang should promote its heritage values and natural landscapes, such as the Non Nuoc global geographical park, to develop tourism, he said.

During the session, the PM, his working delegation, including key officials from ministries and sectors, and the local authorities, focused on specific measures to realise the implementation of an expressway connecting Tra Linh in Cao Bang with Dong Dang in neighbouring Lang Son province.

The PM agreed in principle to implement the important project, saying that once operational, the 115km expressway would facilitate transport, trade and socio-economic development in Cao Bang, which has a high poor household rate.

On the same day, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc visited the Cao Bang police. He praised the achievements gained by the local public security force in recent years and called for ensuring security and social order in the new situation.
Zikist-Buharist Movement (ZBM), a group campaigning for President Muhammadu Buhari has dismissed the reported statement by the All Progressives Congress (APC) gubernatorial candidate in Enugu State, Senator Ayogu Eze, that the South East Governors visit to the President was fake.The group, an offshoot of Buhari Support Organisation (BSO) South East, also called on Senator Eze not to halt the new Buhari momentum in the South East region in a bid to realize his governorship ambition.The group quoted Ayogu as making the said statement during the commissioning of his campaign office on Friday by the Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo.Nobody should crawl to Abuja and promise you 25%. Dont listen to them. You already have 90% of votes here, Senator Eze was quoted as saying.Reacting on Sunday via a press statement, the acting Secretary of ZBM, Godwin Onwusi, urged the Enugu APC governorship candidate to candidly emulate the pragmatism of the great Zik of Africa.According to Onwusi, All hands must be on deck, irrespective of party affiliations, to deliver President Muhammadu Buhari in the forthcoming 2019 presidential election.He said, We of the ZBM welcome on all hands on the deck and accordingly, salute the South East Governors, Igboezue Cultural Group, UPP, Senator Ekweremadu, Chiefs Chekwas Okorie, Emeka Okwuosa and all eminent Igbo sons and daughters who join us in mobilising and scaling up Buharis vote in the region for 2019 presidential election.The new Buharis momentum, in the South East region we are convinced will reinforce our quest for Nigeria president of Igbo extraction in 2023 and encourage Mr President to invest more in critical infrastructure in the South East region. Its not wise to put all our eggs in one basket.Asked whether ZBM doubts the 90 percent which Senator Eze promised Buhari, Barister Onwusi said, No, but we are Zikists, we are pragmatic and reasonable, the 2019 presidential election may not be easy. So we salute the South East Governors and Igbo patriots for being pragmatic in choosing between two Fulani Muslim brothers, the one whose integrity is higher and the one with home base, hence rising above partisan interest, and putting the interest of our constituents for 2023 on the front burner, plus giving premium to the industrialisation of the region.ZBM noted that for the South East Governors to showcase their genuineness, they thanked Mr. President on behalf of the zone for the award of the Second Niger Bridge to Julius Berger at the sum of N206 billion and acknowledged that N7 billion had been paid as mobilization, even as they appealed to Mr. President to pay 50 percent of the sum enbloc.ZBM equally noted that the South East Governors asked Mr. President to secure the other 50 percent as bond so that they could sleep with their two eyes closed and be assured that the job would not be abandoned, even as they asked that the construction period be reduced from 42 months to 24 months.Consequently, the ZBM called for all hands to be on deck, stressing that nobody no matter his ambition or interest should wittingly or unwittingly play politics with our dream of returning Buhari in 2019 or halting the new Buharis momentum in Igbo land.
President Muhammadu Buhari warned on Sunday that Nigerians should desist from politicising the deaths of soldiers killed after Boko Haram overran their base in Borno State last Sunday.At least 118 soldiers were killed and 153 missing in the attack on 157 Task Force Battalion in Metele, Borno State, according to the most-recent findings.After initial silence from both the presidency and the Nigerian military, Mr Buhari condemned the killing on Saturday, six days after the attack, promising to wipe out the insurgency and prioritise the plight of Nigerian troops involved in the counter-insurgency operations.The presidents comments came a day after the military finally confirmed the attack on Friday night, five days after the attack on November 18. The Nigerian Army said reports of over 100 losses recorded in the media were untrue but failed to provide its internal casualty estimates.In reiterating his administrations commitment to defeating the insurgency on Sunday, Mr Buhari emphasised the need for Nigerians to see the insurgents as common enemies, and shun the urge to seek political advantage from their evil campaign.We must resist the temptation to play politics with the tragedy of the deaths of our soldiers, Mr Buhari said on Twitter Sunday afternoon. They are heroes on the frontlines, fighting to make Nigeria a safer place for us all.Rest assured that the circumstances that have led to these deaths will be comprehensively addressed, the president added.He did not specifically mention any political parties or individuals whom he had seen as politicising the killings.Widespread mourning has gripped the country since the news on Tuesday morning that dozens of soldiers, including their commander, had been killed in the attack, which occurred at about 6:00 p.m. in Melete.The base had previously been attacked on October 8, but it seemed the military did not fortify it to withstand future aggression from Boko Haram thugs.Atiku Abubakar, the main opposition presidential candidate, has condemned the attack and offered what he saw as solutions to the ten-year campaign by the jihadists. Mr Abubakar said there should be increased and prioritised focus on both the military expenditures and the timeframe required to approve them.He also approved scholarships for five selected families of the fallen soldiers and urged the government to set up a trust for the care of fallen heroes families.His suggestions came on the same day the Nigerian Senate suspended plenary over the killings, one of many that have occured since mid-July when Boko Haram elements raided multiple bases in Borno and Yobe.The Senate urged the president to investigate to direct service chiefs on proper fortification of military bases to forestal future attacks.
The majority of voters said that the content of the session reflected democracy and responsibility, adding that reforms in the meeting have helped to improve the operational quality and efficiency of the legislature.

Congratulating the Party chief on his election as President, the voters expressed their wish and belief that the leader would successfully fulfill the tasks assigned to him by the Party, the NA and the people.

They suggested conducting votes of confidence at candidate registration and work places, in addition to legislative meetings, to ensure objectivity and accuracy of the work.

NA deputies should meet voters in their residential areas and work places to discuss specific topics in order to understand their aspirations, they said.

The voters proposed enhancing the inspection of the implementation of the Partys resolutions, and noted their wish that the Party and State would continue with their anti-corruption efforts.

The recent trials of corruption cases have signaled the resolve of the Party and State in the fight, they said, suggesting tightened inspection of heads of agencies and a comprehensive review of the personnel strategy.

They expressed their concern over the settlement of assets of unclear origin as prescribed in the revised anti-corruption law that was passed by the NA with high votes.

Regarding the combat against corruption, Party General Secretary and President Trong emphasised the need to turn words into action.

He also described protecting political security as a crucial and strategic task to spur national development, stressing the Party Central Committees attention to preventing self-evolution and self-transformation within the Party, as well as degradation among officials and Party members.

The leader agreed with the voters opinions on the responsibility for setting examples of officials and explained that the vote of confidence aims to prevent bad deeds among officials.

He echoed their views on the need to step up information work to raise public awareness of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), which was approved during the sixth session.

It is a must to intensify thematic supervision in socio-economic issues and inspection at different levels to prevent bad deeds, which, the leader said, needs a comprehensive plan.

At the meeting, the voters also applauded and showed their support for the Governments drastic and effective solutions to manage the national economy and ensure social welfare.

They expressed their hope that the Party, State and NA would create breakthroughs in 2019 to make the country develop comprehensively and affirm its role when joining the CPTPP.
President Muhammadu Buhari on Saturday said his administration would not allow few evil forces in the country whose agenda is to at...





President Muhammadu Buhari on Saturday said his administration would not allow few evil forces in the country whose agenda is to attain political power by inciting hate and intolerance among the citizens.





He equally said his administration met an economy in shambles as a result of widespread corruption and mismanagement of the nations common-wealth, compounded by a sharp drop in the prices of oil, when he took over in 2015.





Buhari disclosed this while speaking at the graduation ceremony of participants of Senior Executive Course (SEC) 40, 2018 of the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS), KURU, in Jos South LGA of Plateau State.





The President who was represented by the Minister of Defence, Mansur Muhammad Dan Ali, said, Let me assure you that we shall not allow few evil forces in our midst whose only agenda to attain political power is by inciting hate and intolerance among the citizens.





They exploit and manipulate the fault lines in the society to destroy our collective peace, mutual coexistence and social harmony, thinking that they will change the narrative; and the people would not ask them to account for what they looted from the common wealth.





Permit me to use this opportunity to share with the Nigerian policy elite, our governments policy thrust on good governance. Good governance involves transparency and prudence in public finance, social justice, investing in the poor and creating employment for the youth.





When we assumed leadership in 2015, what we met was an economy in shambles as a result of widespread corruption and mismanagement of the national common-wealth, compounded by a sharp drop in the prices of oil.





Indeed, we inherited an empty treasury, depleted foreign reserves, poor and dilapidated infrastructure, huge capital and current liabilities, food import dependency, long-standing insurgency, myriads of internal security challenges, and a situation whereby many state governments owed their workers salaries. To make matters worse, the economy also went into a recession, he lamented.





According to him, These inherited circumstances put us under extreme difficulty, particularly when measured against the expectations of Nigerians who voted for us expecting a better governance. We had to develop and implement some policies that would quickly get us out of this unsavoury situation.





To address the problems fundamentally, we put in place several policy frameworks, the major one being the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP), which laid out the strategy for achieving the governments vision of sustained and inclusive growth.





The ERGP provided the framework for short term recovery and structural reforms aimed at diversifying the economy to set it on a path of sustainable growth over the medium and long term.





We took further measures including the Executive Order on Ease of Doing Business to address identified bottlenecks, he explained.





I am sure you will agree that these policy choices we have made are yielding results.





For instance, the economy came out of recession and has been experiencing growth. We have reduced rice importation by 90% and revived our capacity to produce fertilizer locally.





Moreover, we have tremendously improved on our ranking in the ease of doing business by the World Bank. Our foreign reserve is now USD 44 billion, the highest in the last five years. The implication of these is that Nigeria remains the strongest economy on the African continent due to the policies put in place by this government.





On infrastructure, we have made substantial progress despite earning so much less than previous governments.





In 2015, the power generation capacity was less than 4,600 MW, and in three years, it has now reached 8,000 MW.





However, we are assiduously working to address the legal and institutional challenges in the transmission and distribution chain so that the system can uptake all the power generated, he maintained.





Buhari said his administration has put in place several policies to ensure prudence and transparency in the management of public resources.





However, as the country prepares for the forthcoming elections in 2019, the President enjoined Nigerians to exercise their civic obligation as stakeholders in the nations development project.





We as a government also wish to reiterate our commitment to ensuring that the elections are free, fair and credible as part of measures to deepen our democracy, he assured.




If only the Nigerian people and close observers will cleverly permute some obvious realities on the ground side-by-side practical situ...





If only the Nigerian people and close observers will cleverly permute some obvious realities on the ground side-by-side practical situations emanating from governments deliberate efforts at curbing the free flow of public funds in private hands, it shouldnt be difficult to arrive at the conclusion that things are gradually changing in the country.





Critical and analytical study of the President Muhammadu Buhari-led All Progressives Congress (APC) government should note among other things, that one of the major problems the current administration has is that it doesnt seem to know how to present some factors that represent the change they promised to the people.





Very easily, opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has harped on it that under the current government, Nigeria became the world headquarters of poverty. That is, following a report by Brookings Institution.





Unfortunately, aside an economic factor, which may be explainable by other indices, what is called poverty in practically every Nigeria community is understandable. The present administration vowed to stand up to corruption and it is yielding some practical results that are noticeable in social trends.





What this means is that while artisans, businesses, families, religious groups and so on have freely benefitted from proceeds of corruption that had trickled down to them one way or the other, however, by cutting such channels of leakages that have enriched a few Nigerians at the detriment of the majority, such illicit money had ceased. Simply put, there are no more free meals anywhere.





The indications are rife. While the common man may not know it, those who have milked the country dry through illegal loopholes feel it more. A major change is that it is no longer business as usual. Many previous sources of illegitimate incomes are no longer available under President Buhari.





In some estimates, every day, oil companies in Nigeria lose between 300,000 and 400,000 barrels of oil to theft. Even at an average price of $70 per barrel of Brent crude oil, that is a colossus lost to any country. In some other estimates, about 15 per cent of Nigerias 2.4 million barrels produced per day go to theft in the Niger Delta, where illegal bunkering thrived.





Now, there is reduction in oil bunkering. President Buhari took power promising to tackle the mind-boggling level of corruption in his countrys oil industry. But can he succeed?





For instance, during a familiarisation tour of the bases under his command, the Flag Officer Commanding (FOC), Central Naval Command of the Nigerian Navy, Rear Admiral Saidu Garba, attributed the decrease in oil theft and illegal oil refinery in the Niger Delta to three reasons.





Crude oil theft and other such criminal activities have reduced as a result of a number of measures put in place, one of which is the permanent operation at sea, which is called Operation Tsare-Teku. Tsare-Teku maintains a number of vessels at sea at all times. The second one is the Swamp bogey operation, whereby we go around demolishing all illegal infrastructure that have been put in place for illegal oil production.





The third one is the choke-point regime, in which we have our houseboats at strategic points within the inner waterways, which are the backwaters, ensuring there are no illegal movement of any kind of illegally produced products in that general area.





Weve been able to sustain these three and with them, we have been able to curtail the flow of illicit oil activities in our area of responsibility, Garba said.





He also commended the Nigerian Navy Ship (NNS Delta) and its commander, Commodore Ibrahim Dewu, describing the base as the most critical security outfit to Nigerias oil and gas industry.





For those, who may not be familiar with the successes of the security agencies in the Niger Delta region, the eradication of the gang of notorious oil thieves in Arepo, Ogun State is another attestation to the fact that the business is no longer thriving.





Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) are bedrocks of fraud in the Nigerian political system. In 2016, the acting chairman, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mr. Ibrahim Magu, confirmed this and threatened that whoever in the MDAs was found violating the provisions of the Procurement Act risked five to 10 years imprisonment.





Today, civil servants are more careful than ever. No more contract award racketeering syndicates, no more raising vouchers to steal government funds for work not done and no more multiple bank accounts by MDAs.





The Nigerian government has been posting staggering figures in the range of trillions of naira as the monies the country has saved through the introduction of the Treasury Single Account (TSA), the unified structure of government bank accounts that enables consolidation and optimal utilisation of government cash resources.





On April 17, 2017, the federal government said it had recorded over N7 trillion in the TSA by the end of March of that year and later in August 2018, government announced that it has saved up to N24.7 billion monthly as a result of the policy.





A previous sinister connivance between the executive and the legislators called budget-padding had been another avenue through which very large chunk of public funds is siphoned and find their way into private hands. This government stood against the heinous crime and continued to prevent it.





Hence, the federal government has said it repeatedly that there were no spurious items of expenditure in the 2018 budget. Earlier in the year, the Special Adviser (Media) to the Minister for Budget and National Planning, Mr. Akpandem James, said contrary to insinuations by commentators, all the items captured in the budget were well conceived and carefully provided for by the respective agencies of government.





Even up till this moment, the presidency and the National Assembly are still at loggerheads over where to source the sum of N242.205 billion virement approved for the 2019 general election. The lawmakers, against the request by President Buhari that the National Assembly should provide the virement from the N557 billion inserted into the budget by the federal lawmakers for their constituency projects, had insisted that the money must be taken from the Service Wide Vote.





It is only upon FGs insistence that the lawmakers recently agreed to approve that the money should be sourced from MDAs and the Service Wide Vote.





In totality, for not drawing adequate attention to some of its anti-corruption stances that are yielding positive results and consequently reducing free flow of stolen money, government is getting bashed as creating poverty, but it is only when legitimate money begins to circulate that wealth can be evenly distributed.





Observers can look around Nigeria today and they would be shocked to see construction works and rehabilitation of roads going on everywhere. All abandoned projects are being given attention. Before, contractors collect money for projects, do a little of the work, abandon them and pocket the rest.





Kickbacks are not coming to those in the civil service as usual; money laundering is now very difficult for the political class  no more easy foreign exchange round-tripping transactions fraud, no more dubious foreign trips for trainings and workshops with unbudgeted estacodes, no more traditional rulers and religious leaders trooping to Aso Rock for dollars, and lastly, the ghost worker menace has been reduced significantly.





This governments frugality and incorruptible posturing is curtailing frivolous spending, clearly. How many clergy men, for example, still fly their jets or buy new ones? Ask the black market Bureau De Change operators, they will confirm that dollar is scarce and it is usually the ill-gotten dollars that are being mopped up through the anti-corruption drive of this administration.




Taking place until December 2, romantic spaces are set up on the pink grass hill at the foot of the Lang Biang mountain during the event for tourists to visit and check in.

There are also booths displaying typical products of Da Lat city and a photo exhibition themed Lang Biang when the spring comes.

In addition, the festival features horse racing without saddles, which is a traditional sport of the KHo ethnic people in the city.

Hoang Ngoc Quynh, a vacationer from Hai Phong city said that it is the first time that her family visited Lang Biang plateau during the pink grass season.

She said she felt ucky to visit Da Lat during the festival, and hoped for beautiful photos of her family on the pink grass hill.

Meanwhile, Nguyen Ngoc Thao and her friends from Hai Duong province said they had planned for the trip several months ago. She said she was impressed with the romantic space, pure atmosphere and charming rosy blades of pink grass.

According to Cil Poh, Vice Chairman of Lac Duong district Peoples Committee, the festivals organising board, the festival aimed to promote the districts tourism potential and cultural identities of ethnic groups in Lang Biang plateau to visitors at home and abroad.
As the alliance between Turkey and the US is facing numerous obstacles, promoting relations with Russia has opened a new cooperation door for the Eurasian country. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin recently witnessed the inauguration of an undersea gas pipeline, which is part of the TurkStream natural gas pipeline project, in Istanbul. The leaders hailed the TurkStream project as a new step in the relations between the two countries. Together with the Akkuyu nuclear power plant project, TurkStream has become a symbol for the growing Turkey-Russia partnership.

With TurkStream, Turkey is expected to become an important gas hub in Europe, which will help the country to enhance its geo-political position in the region. The Turkish and Russian Presidents reaffirmed the goal of increasing bilateral trade revenues to US$ 100 billion, equivalent to the figure between Russia and China. The Russia-Turkey relations have stepped into a new page, dispelling the skepticism after Turkey shot down a Russian warplane in Syria in late 2015. Ankara has also bought Russian S-400 surface-to-air missile systems regardless of dissatisfaction from its US and European allies in NATO.

Relations between Turkey and the US have worsened following the acquisition of the S-400 by Turkey. The US and NATO member countries have been upset after being ignored by their ally, while the S-400 is not compatible with NATOs defence system.

The US had repeatedly tried to persuade Ankara to reconsider its decision to buy the S-400 from Russia. The US Department of State even said that the purchase of the missile defence system would significantly alter the relationship between the US and the Eurasian country. The US Assistant Secretary of State also warned that Ankara would face consequences if it did not give up the S-400 deal with Moscow.

However, Turkey has recently taken flexible moves in dealing with the US. After a long period of tensions and mutual retaliation through economic sanctions related to Turkeys detention of US pastor Andrew Brunson, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu paid a visit to the US. During the meeting with his US counterpart Mike Pompeo in Washington, Cavusoglu justified that the S-400 purchase deal with Russia had already been completed and could not be abolished. Meanwhile, Ankara appeased its ally by stating that Turkey wants to buy some other military equipment and could possibly buy it from the US.

Turkey has also taken step to improve its relations with countries in the European Union (EU). The two sides recently held a high-level diplomatic meeting in Ankara, a move signaling the restart of bilateral talks on Turkeys accession to the EU. While the path for Turkey to become a full member of the EU remains thorny, this is a new step forward enabling the two sides to resume cooperation in many issues, such as combating terrorism, preventing the influx of migrants, and energy.

With its important geopolitical location and as a crossroad between Asia and Europe, Turkey is seeking to expand its role and influence in the region. In its strategy, the country wants to seize opportunities from its relationship with the powers. Despite the challenges remaining in relations that have a conflict of interest, Turkey is showing flexibility in its foreign policy aiming to ensure national interests.
BEIJING, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping's upcoming visits to Spain, Argentina, Panama and Portugal will intensify respective bilateral ties and G20 cooperation, senior Chinese officials said Friday.

Xi will pay state visits to the four countries from Nov. 27 to Dec. 5, and attend the 13th Group of 20 (G20) summit from Nov. 30 to Dec. 1 in Buenos Aires.

During his state visit to Spain from Nov. 27 to 29, Xi is scheduled to meet with Spanish King Felipe VI, hold talks with Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, collectively meet with President of the Senate Pio Garcia Escudero and President of the Parliament Ana Pastor Julian, and address the two houses, said Vice Foreign Minister Wang Chao.

According to Wang, China and Spain will publish a joint statement and sign documents on their cooperation in the third-party markets, service trade, taxation, culture, science and technology, and finance.

During Xi's state visit to Portugal, scheduled for Dec. 4 to 5, he will hold talks with his Portuguese counterpart Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, meet with President of the Parliament Eduardo Ferro Rodrigues and Prime Minister Antonio Costa, Wang said.

According to Wang, the two sides are expected to publish a joint statement and sign documents to boost cooperation in such areas as infrastructure, culture, education, science and technology, water conservancy, quality inspection, energy, and finance.

Vice Foreign Minister Qin Gang said Xi's state visits to Argentina and Panama will take place from Dec. 2 to 3.

Hailing the rapid development of China-Argentina relations, Qin said the two countries have set a good example of common development among emerging economies and developing countries.

Xi will hold talks with Argentine President Mauricio Macri to facilitate bilateral ties, Qin said, adding the two heads of state will also have an in-depth exchange of views on international and regional issues.

The two sides are scheduled to publish a joint statement, sign a joint action plan for the two governments in the next five years and cooperation documents on economy and trade, finance, and public security, according to Qin.

Xi's state visit to Panama is aimed at enhancing mutual understanding between the two countries' people and speed up mutually beneficial cooperation to consolidate the foundation for long-term development of bilateral ties, Qin said.

China and Panama forged diplomatic relations last year based on the one China principle.

Saying Panama is a new partner of China in the Latin American region, Qin stressed that bilateral ties have started strong, featuring rapid progress and high efficiency.

"During the one and half years since the establishment of diplomatic ties, the two countries have witnessed cooperation outcomes on trade, investment, maritime affairs, finance, infrastructure, and human resources," Qin said.

Xi will hold talks with Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela to exchange views on issues of common concern and map out future cooperation, Qin said.

The two sides will sign cooperation documents on e-commerce, service trade, infrastructure, economic and trade exhibition, maritime transport, financing, quality inspection, culture and education, Qin added.

CHINA'S EXPECTATION ON G20

The 13th G20 summit will be Xi's sixth time to attend or preside over the summit, which shows China attaches great importance to the G20 mechanism and has a strong will to contribute to the improvement of global economic governance, Assistant Foreign Minister Zhang Jun said.

According to Zhang, the summit will include three sessions and a closed-door meeting, where topics on world economy, trade and investment, digital economy, sustainable development, infrastructure, and climate change will be discussed.

Xi will expound on China's position on these issues and exchange views with other leaders. He will also attend an informal meeting of leaders of BRICS countries.

Zhang emphasized that the upcoming summit, themed "building consensus for fair and sustainable development", is conducive to gathering efforts to oppose protectionism, support multilateral trading regime, and push forward the construction of an open world economy.

Talking about policy preparations for the upcoming G20 summit, Vice Minister of Finance Zou Jiayi said a series of meetings among G20 financial and economic leaders earlier this year resulted in prominent consensus and outcomes.

The meetings witnessed discussions on major financial and economic issues, including the global macroeconomic situation and risks, international financial architecture, cooperation on taxation, and sustainable finance, Zou added.

As an important G20 member, China has played a constructive role in facilitating consensus on issues of common concern, such as responding to opportunities and challenges brought by the technological revolution, forging ahead infrastructure financing and taxation on the digital economy, Zou said.

As for China's expectation for business and trade cooperation at the upcoming summit, Vice Minister of Commerce Wang Shouwen said it is hoped new drivers of growth will be tapped through closer cooperation on trade and investment.

Stressing the importance of jointly promoting inclusive and sustainable development, Wang said China hopes all parties will advocate the multilateral trading regime.

"China supports the WTO to facilitate necessary reforms, to make it more authoritative and effective," Wang added.

China expects the G20 will help advance macroeconomic policy coordination, improve international financial architecture, and promote economic growth in a green, sustainable and inclusive way, said Chen Yulu, deputy governor of the People's Bank of China.

"China stands ready to share its experience in improving financial supervision to match FinTech innovation and infrastructure financing," Chen said, adding that pragmatic outcomes in financial and economic sectors are expected to be produced at the summit.
CHENGDU, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- Senior officials of China and India had reached some important consensus on boundary issues during a Saturday meeting, said a press release from the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

The 21st round of talks between Chinese and Indian special representatives on boundary issues was co-chaired by Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi and India's National Security Advisor Ajit Doval in Chengdu, capital of southwest China's Sichuan Province.

Both sides agreed to continuously promote the process of special representatives talks in line with the important consensus reached by Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on properly resolving border issues and developing China-India relations, to reach a fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable solution as soon as possible, said the press release.

The two sides will jointly safeguard peace and tranquility in the border areas before a final settlement of the boundary issues, said the press release.

Both sides agreed to implement the consensus of the two countries' leaders to all levels of personnel, including front-line troops, and further improve the construction of trust measures in border areas, while strengthening the communication and coordination of the two countries' departments involved in border issues.

Both sides shared the view that border trade and people-to-people exchange should be expanded step by step, to consolidate the public opinion foundation of border areas' friendly cooperation and create a good atmosphere for border negotiations and the development of bilateral relations.

On bilateral ties, the press release said the two sides took the view that China-India relations had witnessed comprehensively positive progress and stepped into a new development stage after an informal meeting of Xi and Modi in Wuhan in April.

The two sides will continuously strengthen strategic communication, lift political mutual trust and expand exchanges and cooperation in various fields to usher in a new level on the China-India Closer Developmental Partnership, it said.
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MADRID, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Saturday that his government had reached an agreement over the future of Gibraltar.

This means Sunday's meeting in Brussels in which European Union (EU) leaders are expected to give their support to the Brexit agreement that would see the UK leave the EU on March 29, 2019, will go ahead as planned.

Spain had threatened to veto the Brexit agreement over what it considered to be a lack of assurances of its future relationship with Gibraltar, the British Overseas Territory situated on the southwest tip of the Spanish mainland.

However, following a reported phone conversation with European Council President Donald Tusk, Sanchez confirmed he would both attend the meeting and support the Brexit deal.

"We have reached an agreement and we will vote in favor of the Brexit," said Sanchez in a declaration made from his official residence at the Palacio de la Moncloa.

"Spain has achieved a historic agreement which would definitively resolve the future of Gibraltar with the United Kingdom in the coming years," said the prime minister.

"Once the UK retires (from the EU), Gibraltar's relationship with the EU will be though Spain," said Sanchez, adding that this decision guaranteed the "national interest, joint prosperity and Spain's key role in the future relationship."

Gibraltar was ceded to the UK in the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht which ended the War of Spanish Succession and has belonged to the UK ever since, much to Spain's frustration and restoring the 'Rock' to Spanish sovereignty is a matter of national pride to many Spaniards.

Nevertheless, 98 percent of the population of Gibraltar voted in 2002 against shared sovereignty between the UK and Spain, while 96 of Gibraltarians voted against the Brexit in the June 2016 referendum in which the UK voted to leave the EU by a narrow margin of 51.89 percent to 48.11 percent.
On Thursday, a gunman injured two people ages 18 and 12 when he opened fire at Riverchase Galleria  the largest enclosed mall in all of Alabama  located in Hoover, Birmingham. Police ended up fatally shooting a man named Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford Jr., a US Army combat engineer who as it turns out was not the gunman.

CNN reports that after speaking with witnesses and going over forensic tests, investigators said that Bradford was most likely "involved in the altercation but likely did not fire the rounds that injured the two youths." The man who was responsible for injuring two innocent kids is still at large.

Now, Bradford's family, as well as protesters are demanding "Justice for E.J." As shown by CNN affiliate WVTM, demonstrators gathered outside of the mall on Saturday with signs, chanting, "No justice, no peace" and "No racist people." According to authorities, the officer who shot Bradford is now "on administrative leave" as a full investigation occurs.
The government is now becoming more aggressive with their approach to the impending transgender ban in the military forces. On Friday, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to issue a ruling on the policy, which was first announced in July 2017.

According to the Associated Press, this is the "fourth time in recent months" that this administration has attempted to bypass the lower courts, and has gone to high court  which is majority conservative  to seek quick rulings on divisive issues. Earlier this month, the government also tried to settle the case of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program by going to the Supreme Court.

The government's justification for rushing to the high court? As AP reports , "The administration argued that the Supreme Court should step in before an appeals court rules because the case 'involves an issue of imperative public importance: the authority of the U.S. military to determine who may serve in the Nation's armed forces.'"

For now, it is unclear whether the Supreme Court will be accepting the case.
Iran hopes e-Visa can attract more foreign tourists

11/25/18

Source: Press TV

Iran has begun to issue electronic visa for foreign tourists as part of a larger initiative to cope with the restrictions imposed by the US administration on those traveling to the country.



Foreign tourists visiting Persepolis ruins in Iran

According to the Head of Iran's Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization (ICHTO) Ali Asghar Mounesan the plan has been implemented since Thursday, November 22.



He added that the plan was implemented following the arrangements made with the Iranian Foreign Ministry as well as the Law Enforcement Force of the Islamic Republic of Iran.



Touching on the main goal of the plan, Mounesan said the plan was aimed at facilitating travels to Iran by foreign tourists. He also expressed hope that the move could play a leading role in attracting more foreign tourists to the country.



On the other hand, the Head of Foreign Ministry's Visa and Passport Department Mojtaba Karimi said electronic visas would be issued without any entry or exit stamp affixed on them.



The plan to issue electronic Visa for foreign tourists began to gain significance in the eyes of the Iranian officials after Washington announced those travelers who would visit certain countries including Iran would face restrictions to enter the US.



Foreign tourists in Isfahan, Iran

Iran issues electronic Visas for foreign tourists in 110 domestic and international airports. There is no difference between Iran's electronic and normal visas in terms of duration. The new Visa provides foreign tourists with a chance to visit Iran without any concern.



The plan was first implemented as a pilot project two years ago in one of the international airports inside Iran.



Iran has managed to establish itself as "safe as much of Western Europe or travelers", a new report on global security said.



Meanwhile, Iran is among the world's top potential tourist destinations with a variety of ancient sites, including 17 places listed by the UNESCO.



Official figures released earlier showed that over six million tourists had traveled to Iran over a period of six months starting March 2018. This was higher than the same period last year by above 50 percent.
The Eastern Regional chapter of the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) has refuted claims that a Ghanaian Times reporter was sacked and disallowed from joining the Presidents Press corps at his tour in the region.



Earlier reports suggested that media coverage of President Akufo-Addo tour of the Eastern Region was done at the behest of National Security in consultation with the Eastern Regional Communication wing of the New Patriotic Party.



A Journalist with Ghanaian Times Newspaper, Ama Takyiwa Ampadu, assigned to cover the President tour in the region was nearly thrown out of the media bus on Thursday by the Eastern Regional Communication Officer of the NPP, David Prah because she was not part of the media personnel okayed by the National Security and Office of the President.



Reacting to the report, GJA said the Ghanaian Times reporter and other journalists who couldnt join the press corps bus werent sacked on purpose as earlier reported.



According to GJA, governments communication team hinted them about the presidents visit and collaborated to invite 21 media houses within the region to cover the tour. But on the first day of the Presidents visit, close to 50 media personnel came asking to join the bus meant for 21 media houses.



But upon careful deliberation, the Association drew the attention of handlers of the tour to security implications of overloading journalists and the possible risk attached.



It therefore decided to go strictly by the number of media houses invited for the tour of the second day, so claims that the journalist was sacked is untrue.



Read below the full statement



RE:GHANAIAN TIMES REPORTER SACKED AS NATIONAL SECURITY TAKES CHARGE OF PRESS CORPS SELECTION



The Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) - Eastern Region has taken notice of a Ghana Web publication dated 23/11/18 with the caption "Ghanaian Times Reporter Sacked as National Security Takes Charge of Press Corps Selection."



The story written without a bar-line sort to paint the Ghana Journalists Association - Eastern Region in a distasteful light.



The GJA - Eastern Region wishes to state that the story presented is shaded with half truth, inaccuracies and intent to draw leadership of the Association into unnecessary party politicking.



The GJA - Eastern Region is noted for championing the interest and safety of journalists and media and will continue to uphold that responsibility. Our records show.



It is worth noting that, the ER-GJA is NOT in bed with the NPP or the government.



The facts are that, the government communication team hinted the Association about the President's visit and we collaborated to invite 21 media houses within the region to cover the President's tour to the Eastern Region.



The media houses include; Daily Graphic, Ghana News Agency, Ghana Broadcasting Corporation, TV3, Metro TV, Pan Africa Television, UtV, Citi News, Multimedia Group, Class FM, Top FM, Good Life FM, Eastern FM, Kingdom FM, Bryt Fm, Agoo FM, Obuoba FM, Radio One , Rite FM, Net 2 TV and Akyemansa FM from the Eastern Region.



Meanwhile, other members of the Presidential press corps were onboard from Accra.



On the first day of the President's visit, close to 50 media personnel came asking to join a vehicle meant for 21 media houses.



Government communication team complied and allowed ALL media houses present including gate crashers to join the bus on the first day of the tour.



The two media vans which were supposed to carry 14 passengers each ended up carrying about 24 passengers each plying on very rough roads in most parts of the region.



The Association drew the attention of handlers of the tour to the security implications of over-loading journalists and the possible risk attached. We requested for additional bus but it was too late to organize a third bus for the media.



Based on past experiences on transporting journalists on Presidential tours, organizers in consultation with the Association decided to go strictly by the number of media houses invited for the tour from the second day.



Indeed, some confrontations ensued between the Ghanaian Times reporter, Ama Takyiwaa Ampadu-Nyarko and Director of Communications for the NPP, David Prah, before the tour but it was settled immediately. No reporter or any media house was "sacked" on the first day - not even the gate crashers.



The GJA Eastern Region wishes to reiterate its commitment to protecting and promoting the safety and interest of all journalists and media practitioners in the region.



Signed



Maxwell Kudekor

Chairman - GJA

Eastern Region

Source: Ghanaweb.com









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BEIJING -- A Chinese mainland spokesperson on Sunday said the mainland will continue to enhance solidarity with Taiwan compatriots and follow a path of peaceful development of cross-Straits relations.

Ma Xiaoguang, spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, made the remarks when asked to comment on the local elections in Taiwan over the weekend.

"We have noticed the results of the elections," said Ma, adding that the results reflected the strong will of the public in Taiwan in sharing the benefits of the peaceful development across the Taiwan Strait, and desires to improve the island's economy and people's wellbeing.

"We will continue to uphold the 1992 Consensus, and to resolutely oppose separatist elements advocating 'Taiwan independence' and their activities," said Ma.

With a correct understanding on the nature of the cross-Straits relations and the nature of exchanges between cities across the Strait, more counties and cities in Taiwan are welcomed to participate in such exchanges and cooperation, said Ma.

The failure of the so-called "referendum" on a name-changing motion for Taiwan to participate in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics showed that putting Taiwanese athletes' interests at stake is against people's will, Ma said.

Ma said the attempts of "Taiwan independence" are doomed to fail.
Seven hundred and thirty-one commissioners for oaths who will be deployed for the National Identification Card (Ghana Card) registration exercise, were yesterday sworn in by the Chief Justice, Ms Justice Sophia Akuffo.



Per the National Identification Register (Amendment) Law, 2017, Ghanaians who do not have a birth certificate or a passport, the two mandatory documents needed for the registration, can have a relative or two persons who have already registered to vouch for them.



The commissioners will, therefore, be in charge of the process by overseeing the swearing of oaths and making of affirmations by such persons.



They were trained at the Judicial Service Training Institute in Accra in partnership with the National Identification Authority (NIA).



At the swearing-in ceremony held at the forecourt of the Supreme Court in Accra, the commissioners who took the oath of secrecy and the official oath were presented with certificates.



So far, 1,031 persons have been trained and sworn into office as commissioners for oaths for the nationwide registration exercise. 500 others are expected to be sworn into office in December in Kumasi.



Caution



The Chief Justice cautioned the commissioners not to engage in acts that would contravene their oaths or the laws of the country, explaining that such acts were punishable under the law.



You should not under any circumstances swear in anyone that you have not seen in person or whose claims you cannot verify. The Republic, in whose name you will be working, requires accurate and reliable information and your task is to make sure that this exercise provides that.



It is an offence punishable under the laws of Ghana to administer or take, conspire or condone in any such unlawful oaths, affirmations or affidavits, she said.



Ms Justice Akuffo further stated that, the integrity of the registration process lay largely in the hands of the commissioners for which she admonished them to be firm but fair, accommodating but faithful to the law and above all, do not compromise your training and integrity.

Source: Graphic.com









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On Friday, the brother of Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez was arrested in the United States on drug trafficking charges.



According to the Honduran government, Juan Antonio Tony Hernandez, a 40-year-old lawyer and former ruling party lawmaker, was arrested by U.S. authorities in Miami. The presidents brother is the latest in a string of prominent Hondurans, including three congressmen, who have been charged in the United States for involvement with drug trafficking.



The Honduran president in his reaction said, this is a heavy blow for the whole family. I hope the justice system gives him the room to defend himself, and as a family, we will do what we can to support him.



A lawyer for the presidents brother has denied previous accusations of links to the Cachiros drug trafficking organisation. A leader of the Cachiros gang had testified during a trial in March 2017 in New York that Tony Hernandez had taken a bribe to help launder drug funds.



The Honduran president, a conservative lawyer who came to power in 2014, has reined in homicides with a tough policy against drug cartels and street gangs that has been supported by the United States and criticised by human rights groups. Former President Porfirio Lobo, who governed Honduras between 2010 and 2014, has also been linked to the Cachiros criminal organisation in trials in the United States and has rejected these accusations.



Last year, one of Lobos sons pleaded guilty before a U.S. court to conspiring to import cocaine into the United States and was sentenced to 24 years in prison.









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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NDC Flagbearer hopeful, Sylvester Adinam Mensah has begun his Renewed Hope campaign in the Volta Region, on Friday, November 23, 2018.



In a meeting with the Volta Regional executive committee members, at the party's regional office in Ho, Sly officially informed them of his tour in the Region and discussed his vision for the party and country with them.



Sly seized the opportunity to appeal to Regional executives to provide a levelled playing field to all aspirants, as enshrined in the party's constitution in order to prevent what was witnessed at the just ended national delegates congress where a campaign song of one of the aspirants was sanctioned and played deliberately giving undue advantage to one aspirant over others.



The regional executives expressed delight in receiving a son of the Region and a member of its finance committee, they thanked Mr Mensah for some of his contributions in facilitating the work of the party in the region.



Sylvester Mensah maintained that his campaign is not about ones ethnic extraction but more about what gives the party an advantage into the 2020 elections. He advised the region to focus on the number one slot and not to settle for number two as that provides greater prospects for the party and country.



TeamSly will spend 7 days in the Region meeting with delegates and paying home to major stakeholders.





Source: Peacefmonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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European Council President Donald Tusk, left, shakes hands with European Union chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier during a media conference at the conclusion of an EU summit in Brussels, Sunday, Nov. 25, 2018. European Union gathered Sunday to seal an agreement on Britain's departure from the bloc next year, the first time a member country will have left the 28-nation bloc. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert)
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BEIJING, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- Senior legislators on Saturday met to study and discuss the legislative and supervisory work to foster and regulate the development of artificial intelligence (AI).

Li Zhanshu, chairman of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, presided over and addressed the study session of the NPC Standing Committee Chairpersons' Council.

The legislators said a speech delivered by Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, set the direction and made plans for technological innovation and AI development in the new era, raising specific demands for the people's congresses and their standing committees to promote the healthy development of China's new-generation AI.

They stressed upholding the Party's leadership over the cause of science and technology development and striving to achieve leapfrog development in key scientific and technological areas such as AI. They said the NPC and its standing committee should plan their legislative and supervisory work around this goal.

The NPC special committees, working organs and relevant departments should carry out as soon as possible research on legal issues related to AI, make sound preparations for relevant legislation work, and promote the healthy and orderly development of AI, the legislators said.
If you were looking for the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee website and ended up here, try this





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GUIYANG, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- Southwest China's Guizhou Province has used remote sensing to monitor the operation of China's Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST), the world's largest single-dish radio telescope.

The provincial natural resources department said that remote sensing has been launched in the radio-quiet zone, to ensure the operation of FAST will not be affected by the electromagnetic environment.

The radio-quiet zone was set up around FAST with a perimeter of 30 km, where the frequencies and radio power are strictly limited. The monitoring scope covers 15 towns in three Guizhou counties and two counties of neighboring Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

Radio stations, communication facilities and high voltage substations scattered in the area will be monitored.

The monitoring will be conducted four times per year.

FAST will start formal operation and open to Chinese astronomers in 2019. It has discovered 44 new pulsars since its trial operation began in September 2016.
Business Insider, November 14, 2018

By John Haltiwanger

The most elite U.S.-trained forces in Afghanistan suffered a devastating defeat to the Taliban in whats often referred to as the countrys safest district over the weekend, in yet another sign the war is a lost cause.

Early on Sunday, a company of roughly 50 Afghan special forces commandos was almost entirely destroyed in the rural district of Jaghori, according to a report from The New York Times.

Over 30 of the U.S.-trained commandos were killed, The Times said, in a district that is famous for how peaceful it is.

The scene in Jaghoris capital, Sang-e-Masha, was reportedly quite a depressing one following the fighting, as soldiers and policemen fought back tears as they piled bodies and bandaged commandos wandered the streets in apparent despair. Officials discussed the best escape plan as the Taliban surrounded the district, which is apparently on the brink of falling to the Taliban.

The U.S. has dedicated a massive amount of time and resources to training Afghan forces with the ultimate goal of ramping down Americas role in a war its been fighting for over 17 years  the longest in U.S. history.

In October, Americas top general in the Middle East, Joseph Votel, expressed his confidence in Afghan security forces in terms of their ability to take on the Taliban.

But the Taliban has made major gains over the past year or so, and controls or contests 61% of the countrys districts.

Last month, the Taliban took a shot at Americas top general in Afghanistan, Gen. Austin Scott Miller, and barely missed. It also managed to wound another U.S. general in the process. During the same incident, a powerful Afghan police chief, General Abdul Raziq, was killed.

Beyond the Taliban, the Islamic State also has a foothold in Afghanistan and claimed responsibility for a suicide attack in the capital, Kabul, on Monday that led to at least six deaths and wounded more than 20 people.

The U.S. has spent nearly two decades, lost over 2,400 soldiers, and spent roughly $900 billion on this disastrous war. America is increasingly finding it difficult to justify the ongoing presence of 14,000 US troops in Afghanistan as the security situation there continues to deteriorate.
Global News, November 19, 2018

By Rahul Kalvapalle

The situation in Afghanistan stagnated and may even have deteriorated during the second half of 2018, despite U.S. military leaders and diplomats insisting that progress is being made.

Thats the assessment not of some international critics of the U.S., but of watchdog offices from the Pentagon, State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

In its quarterly report of the U.S.-led war against terrorism in Afghanistan, the Pentagons independent inspector general said few gains were made between July 1 and Sept. 30, 2018 despite the U.S. increasing strikes against the Taliban, expanding training for Afghan forces and pressuring Pakistan to act against terrorist safe havens.

In public statements, diplomatic and military leaders emphasized that progress towards the goals of the South Asia strategy is being made, the report stated. However, available measures of security in Afghanistan, including total security incidents, population control, and civilian casualties, showed little change.

Civilian casualties and casualties among Afghan security forces were higher than they were during the same time last year, the report pointed out.

Furthermore, ISIS-K  the Islamic States Khorasan Province branch, active in Afghanistan and Pakistan  has continued to mount deadly attacks.

These findings contrast with assertions by some U.S. officials that President Donald Trumps Afghan war strategy  which was announced more than a year ago  is working.

On the other hand, the findings are in line with comments made last weekend by Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who said the battle against the Taliban is still in a stalemate.

The Taliban are not losing in Afghanistan, Gen. Dunford, the top U.S. military officer, told a security forum last week.

We used the term stalemate a year ago and, relatively speaking, it has not changed much, he said.

On Monday, the Taliban said that a three-day meeting with the U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan had ended without an agreement for a peace deal.

Envoy Zalmay Khalilzad declared a deadline of April 2019 to end the 17-year-long war, but Taliban leaders said they hadnt accepted any deadline.

A senior member of the Taliban said Khalilzads move to declare a deadline showed that the U.S. was desperate to withdraw troops from the country.

The Taliban have strengthened their grip over the past three years, with the government in Kabul controlling just 56 per cent of Afghanistan, down from 72 per cent in 2015, a U.S. government report showed this month.

The Pentagon inspector generals report pointed out that only 65 per cent of the Afghan population lived in government-controlled and government-influenced areas, a figure that has not changed in the past year.

Indeed, the number of civilians killed in Afghanistan in 2018 is on track to rank among the highest since 2001.

Over 36 people were killed in various attacks last month as Afghans went to the polls for the countrys first parliamentary elections in eight years.

ISIS-K claimed responsibility for a suicide attack that left four people dead last week. A few days later, Taliban insurgents slaughtered at least 30 Afghan forces.

Meanwhile, the U.S., which has some 14,000 troops in Afghanistan, continues to seek an exit strategy.

 With files from Reuters
Foreign Policy, November 20, 2018

By Lara Seligman, Robbie Gramer

Another devastating suicide attack in Kabul on Tuesday and an independent report on the situation in Afghanistan serve to underscore what is now a growing consensus in Washington: that the United States is making no progress toward ending the 17-year-old war there.

More than 50 people were killed and at least 80 others injured when a suicide bomber blew himself up inside a wedding hall in the Afghan capital, according to reports. This comes as a blow to the Trump administrations strategy in Afghanistan, as American military officials had made defending major urban centers such as Kabul from the Taliban a linchpin of the effort.



Afghan security forces personnel are seen at the site of a car bomb attack in Kabul on May 31, 2017. (Photo: Shah Marai/AFP/Getty Images) Afghan security forces personnel are seen at the site of a car bomb attack in Kabul on May 31, 2017. (Photo: Shah Marai/AFP/Getty Images)

Just days before the bombing, Americas top general admitted the war is at an impasse. The Taliban is not losing right now, I think that is fair to say, Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said during the Halifax International Security Forum on Nov. 17.

We used the term stalemate a year ago, and, relatively speaking, it has not changed much.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Defense Departments Office of Inspector General on Nov. 19 released a gloomy report on the fight in Afghanistan for the second quarter in a row, citing little progress toward reconciliation. Operations in the country drew particular scrutiny over the past month after a high-profile Taliban attack in the southern province of Kandahar killed an influential Afghan police general and the local intelligence chief, narrowly missing U.S. Gen. Scott Miller, the new commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

In the midst of increasing violence, the U.S. envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, reportedly held three days of talks with the Taliban in Qatar over the weekend. At a news conference in Kabul on Sunday, Khalilzad struck a decidedly more optimistic tone than his military counterparts on peace effortsthough he did not mention the talks in Qatar.

I think there is an opportunity for reconciliation and peace, Khalilzad said. The Taliban are saying they do not believe they can succeed militarily, that they would like to see the problems that remain, resolved by peaceful means, by political negotiations.

But the peace talks have sputtered and stalled in the past. While military leaders over the summer lauded a brief cease-fire between the Afghan government and the Taliban over the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr in June, the Taliban did not reply to Afghan President Ashraf Ghanis offer to implement a second cease-fire. Instead, the Taliban focused on disrupting preparations for the October parliamentary elections, according to the Inspector General report.

James Dobbins, a former senior U.S. diplomat who served as special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan from 2013 to 2014, said there has been little progress in the past decade on bringing peace to Afghanistan. Particularly for the last decade, we face a basic dilemma, which is that the best we can do is sustain the status quoand thats not a very satisfactory goal, he said.

Meanwhile, the picture on the ground is increasingly dismal. For the past year diplomatic and military leaders have insisted that they are making headway toward the goals of the South Asia strategy, which in addition to defending population centers also includes airstrikes on Taliban narcotics labs and other revenue sources. The end goal is to pressure the Taliban into engaging in peace talks. In July, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the presidents strategy is indeed working, and Gen. Joseph Votel, the commander of U.S. Central Command, later expressed cautious optimism. Speaking to reporters in August, outgoing commander of U.S. Forces-Afghanistan Gen. John Nicholson also said he believed the strategy is working.

But the numbers suggest otherwise. In addition to the most recent Taliban attacks, the branch of the Islamic State militant group in Afghanistan, known as Islamic State Khorasan, continued to mount deadly assaults in its stronghold in Nangarhar province and in Kabul, according to the latest Inspector General report, which covered the period between July 1 and Sept. 30. The number of suicide attacks increased by 38 percent between May and August compared to the same period last year, although there was a slight decrease in the number of overall security incidents. Meanwhile, there was an uptick in both civilian and Afghan military casualties. Sixty-five percent of Afghans live in areas under government control or influence, a figure that has not changed significantly in two years.
1 News, November 21, 2018

By Simon Plumb

The inquiry into the NZSAS' controversial 2010 Afghanistan raid, Operation Burnham, has begun at the High Court in Wellington - and already there are new revelations.

Prominent Human Rights barrister Deborah Manning, who is representing former residents of the villages of Naik and Khak Khuday Dad in Afghanistan, says the New Zealand Defence Force has now identified a further 15,000 documents relevant to the inquiry - but says NZDF hasn't examined most of them yet and only a tiny portion have been provided to the inquiry.

"Previously it had been estimated at 2000 documents, but now it's far greater," Manning told the inquiry.

"There is currently 17,400 items that have been identified as relevant to this inquiry. To date NZDF have examined and catalogued 1600 of those. And 324 of those have been provided to the inquiry.

"So my understanding of that data is to date, the inquiry has received just under two per cent of relevant information identified by NZDF, and that NZDF themselves, have catalogued and examined about nine per cent of that material.

"That's quite a difference in number."

Manning's two-hour delivery was one of the first submissions in a preliminary hearing.

Over today and tomorrow, the preliminary hearing will lay out the process of how the inquiry will work - crucially, how much classified information can be publicly revealed when weighed against a number of concerns, including compromising New Zealand's national security and international relations, and, protecting the identity of certain individuals.

The inquiry has been triggered by the book Hit & Run, co-authored by investigative journalists Nicky Hager and Jon Stephenson.

Released last year, the book made a number of allegations about what happened during an SAS raid in Afghanistan, in August eight years ago.

Primarily, it alleges war crimes, claiming Kiwi forces were involved with the death of six civilians and the injury of 15 others.

However, NZDF denies the allegations, saying the operation resulted in the death of nine insurgents.

Today's hearing began with the lawyer helping with the inquiry, Kristy McDonald QC, making reference to the huge amount of detail involved.

"This inquiry is likely to be the most complex ever held in New Zealand," McDonald said.

Hager, representing himself, is also making a submission today, with legal representation for co-author Stephenson and NZDF to follow.
Associated Press, November 23, 2018

By Amir Shah

An explosion ripped through a mosque inside an Afghan army base in the country's volatile eastern Khost province as Friday prayers were drawing to a close, killing 27 soldiers and wounding 57, the military said.

The blast may have been set off by a suicide bomber or a remotely detonated bomb but nothing was officially confirmed and details were sketchy. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the explosion.

President Ashraf Ghani condemned the attack in a statement as "anti-Islamic and inhumane." He also wanted to know how the army's security was breached, demanding a swift investigation and the officials responsible held accountable.

It was the latest in a relentless, near-daily onslaughts in Afghanistan, where the Taliban regularly target Afghan military and police forces throughout the country.

"There were soldiers lying everywhere and the smoke was so thick, it was difficult to see," said Abdullah, a spokesman at the base. Like most Afghans, he uses only one name. He spoke to The Associated Press by phone from the base.

The dead and wounded were rushed to a clinic within the army base, while the more seriously wounded were taken to a nearby hospital.

Sakhi Sardar, head of the hospital in Khost said most of the wounded were being treated for devastating shrapnel wounds.

The defense ministry deployed four helicopters to the Ismail Khel district where the attack occurred to ferry the worst of the wounded to hospitals in Kabul.

The explosion came just days after a suicide bomber killed 55 religious scholars gathered in the Afghan capital, Kabul, to celebrate the holiday marking the birth of Islam's Prophet Muhammad. The Taliban denied involvement in that bombing, which also wounded 94 people.

After 17 years and billions of dollars spent training and arming Afghanistan's military, it is struggling against an emboldened Taliban insurgency that holds sway in nearly half of the country. As well as the Taliban, Afghan troops are also battling an audacious Islamic State affiliate which has been particularly brutal in its attacks against Afghanistan's minority Shiites.

Elsewhere in Afghanistan on Friday, hundreds of protesters blocked roads in northern Parwan province to denounce the death of three people who they say were civilians, killed in an operation against the Taliban earlier on Friday.

The protesters said the operation by Afghan special forces involved a NATO airstrike in the Jebul Siraj district that killed the three.

However, NATO spokeswoman U.S. Sgt. 1st Class Debra Richardson said no NATO or American activity took place in Parwan in the past three days. The provincial governor's spokewoman, Wahida Sakhar, said Parwan officials were negotiating with the protesters and promised an investigation into the incident.

Afghan special forces called in a NATO airstrike during an operation Wednesday against the Taliban in eastern Logar province. Ten people died but it's unclear how many were civilians.
The Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee holds a symposium to commemorate the 120th anniversary of the birth of Liu Shaoqi at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 23, 2018. Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the CPC Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, delivered a speech at the symposium. The symposium was also attended by Li Keqiang, Li Zhanshu, Wang Yang, Wang Huning, Zhao Leji, and Han Zheng, all of whom are members of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee. (Xinhua/Pang Xinglei)

BEIJING, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- The Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee on Friday held a symposium to commemorate the 120th anniversary of the birth of Liu Shaoqi at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the CPC Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, stressed carrying on the great cause Liu and other members of the older generation of revolutionaries had dedicated their life to, during his speech at the symposium.

The life-long firm conviction in realizing Communism has inspired generations of Communists to move ahead, rain or shine, Xi said.

The symposium was also attended by Li Keqiang, Wang Yang, Wang Huning, Zhao Leji, and Han Zheng, all of whom are members of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee.

Li Zhanshu, also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, presided over the symposium.

"We are gathered here with deep respect to commemorate the 120th birth anniversary of Comrade Liu Shaoqi... and to remember his tireless endeavors to pursue national independence and liberation of the people, a stronger and more prosperous country, and the people's happiness," Xi said.

Calling Liu a great Marxist, a great proletarian revolutionary, a great statesman, and a great theorist, Xi said Liu was one of the major Party and state leaders, one of the founders of the People's Republic of China and an integral member of the first-generation central leadership of the CPC.

Liu worked tirelessly for the country's revolutionary undertakings and its development, and was held in high esteem among the whole Party, the entire military and people of all ethnic groups, Xi said.

Liu, with noble character, has been and will always be a role model for the CPC members and the Chinese people, Xi noted.

Praising Liu's loyalty to the Party, Xi urged the CPC members to follow his example in keeping to the Communist faith and ideals and devoting their lives to Communism.

Xi also called on them to always stand up for truth and face up to their mistakes and fix them.

Only by doing so could the Party be built into a Marxist ruling party that earns people's sincere support, has the courage to reform itself, and withstands all challenges, Xi said.

"Following the example of Liu, we should put the Party's principles, its cause, and the people's interests first," Xi said.

Every Party member must unwaveringly implement the Party's lines, principles and policies with a strong sense of fulfilling their duties, Xi said.

Xi called on building a learning Party and a learning country by taking Liu as a role model.

Xi underlined adhering to the people-centered approach and putting the people first, urging CPC members to firmly remember that their power is entrusted by the Party and the people, and should be exercised in the interests of the Party and the people.

Seeking privilege and pursuing private gains through power are not allowed at any time, Xi said, asking all Party members to be loyal to the Party, have moral integrity, and demonstrate a keen sense of responsibility.

At the symposium, Li Zhanshu urged efforts to attentively study and implement the spirit of Xi's speech and strive for the Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation.
Japan will on Monday see preliminary November results for the manufacturing PMI from Nikkei, headlining a modest day for Asia-Pacific economic activity. In October, the PMI score was 52.9.

Japan also will see final September figures for its leading and coincident indexes; their previous scores were 103.9 and 114.6, respectively.

New Zealand will release Q3 figures for retail sales; in the three months prior, retail sales climbed 1.1 percent on quarter.

Hong Kong will provide October numbers for imports, exports and trade balance. In September, imports were worth HKD422.68 billion and exports were at HKD374.96 billion for a trade deficit of HKD47.72 billion.

Singapore will release October data for industrial production; in September, production was down 4.9 percent on month and 0.2 percent on year.

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Heres a thought. There are times when we think we are moving forward when we are not. The reality is that we really are going backwards.

It happens a lot more frequently than we care to think.

The thought came to mind after reading the story titled Kidney dialysis services to expand published on page 5 of the Samoa Observer on Thursday 22 November 2018.

The story quoted the Minister of Health, Tuitama Dr. Leao Tuitama, talking about plans to expand the National Kidney Foundation so that it would soon have 60 dialysis units, a major increase from the 27 machines it currently has.

According to the Minister, the plan is to cater for the increasing number of dialysis patients needing treatment both in Upolu and Savaii.

We are continually struggling to keep up with the number of people needing dialysis, said Tuitama. We have gone from just five patients in 2005 to 125 patients who require regular treatment.

But thats not all. The Minister goes on to reveal that some 300 more patients are in the pre-dialysis stage, awaiting treatment.

Dont get me wrong; the Government ought to be commended for responding to the need of members of the public by acquiring the necessary tools, facilities and equipment. It is good to see that they are proactive in terms of providing treatment and cure.

But here is the irony and the sad truth; the current situation is a clear indication of a failing health system where more and more people are on their deathbeds. With due respect to people undergoing dialysis treatment, we know once you start, there is no turning back.

And yet in Samoa today, more and more people are queuing up waiting for their turn. Dont you think this is sad? With the increase from five patients in 2005 to the number we have today, this obviously points to a very sick population in Samoa.

We know this. Lifestyle diseases in Samoa are endemic. We have got some of the worst statistics when it comes to high blood pressure, obesity, gout and diabetics to name a few.

The question is why? How did we get to where we are? The reality is that its almost like weve accepted the reality of a sick population so that everything is geared towards their exit. This is sad.

Can this situation be turned around? And where do we begin?

One of the many ways it could be done  and it is already being done to a degree  is to increase awareness of prevention and care. We cannot stress enough the importance of preaching the prevention measures. We want our people to avoid ending up where they are heading today.

This is why we encourage programmes such as Nobesity Samoa and other similar initiatives who are getting to the community, especially young children. We need to catch them young so that they think right.

Interestingly, in the same article, this is the message being pushed by Mulipola Lose Hazelman, the General Manager of the N.K.F.

We have a big problem with NCDs (non-communicable diseases) in this country, he said. The majority of people on dialysis have end-stage rental failure because of unmanaged N.C.Ds, and we are seeing patients younger and younger all the time.

So what is the solution?

Education and prevention is key, said Renal Services manager Christina Poloai.

When someone comes in for treatment their whole family brings them in to support them, she said. So while we have them all there we take that opportunity to educate them, and make them aware this is all preventable.

Did you know that free kidney screenings are available at N.K.F?

See, chances are if they catch kidney related problems early, there is a possibility they can help delay the progression of issues like diabetes, hypertension and avoid dialysis altogether. Which is wonderful news. How many of our people are taking advantage of this? How many of us care enough to even want to find out?

Which brings us to another point. We cannot just point the finger to the Government and public health officials. Everyone must take responsibility for their own health. We see so many awareness programmes about different health related issues but many of them are falling on deaf ears. Most of us dont care until we are about to die.

Its about time we change our attitudes and take our health a little more seriously. The state of dialysis treatment in Samoa is a timely wake up call for all of us. No one is safe, we are all vulnerable if we continue the way we are going today.

The good news is that for some of us there is still a chance to turn it around.

Where do we begin? Well today is Sunday; do you really need to have all that food for the toanai? Must you have four slices of povi masima, five turkey tails with a side of deep fried chicken to be followed by a bowl of ice cream and more? Must you pour the whole bag of sugar in your tea? Stop for a minute and think about it.

Have a restful Sunday Samoa, God bless!
The Attorney Generals Office will appeal the Supreme Courts decision to return the case of suspended Land and Titles Court President, Fepuleai Atilla Ropati, back to the District Court.

Last month the Supreme Court upheld an appeal by the Police and quashed the District Courts discharge without conviction ruling, and remitted the matter back to the District Court for a re-trial. Presiding Justice Leiataualesa Daryl Clarke directed that section 17 of the Sentencing Act 2016 is applied.

Assistant Attorney General, Rexona Titi, appeared before District Court Judge Alalatoa Rosella Papalii on Friday and advised the Court that they are appealing the decision of the Supreme Court.

But counsel Aumua Ming Leung Wai, who is representing Fepuleai, then told the Court that they are filing a cross appeal on the move by the Attorney Generals Office.

Judge Alalatoa, in response to the submissions by the lawyers on Friday, referred the matter back to the Supreme Court for mention.

The matter before the Court relates to an incident on the night of December 15, 2017 where Fepuleai, the respondent in yesterdays appeal, struck a 55-year-old male at the party twice with a bottle and threw a punch at himleading to the male sustaining injuries in the attack.

The respondent was then charged by the Police and went before the District Court in July this year, where he pleaded guilty to actual bodily harm. Following a full trial, the District Court discharged him without conviction. The Police then appealed the ruling in the Supreme Court, which subsequently led to the quashing of the District Court ruling last month and its remitting back to the Court for a retrial.
(Photo/fmprc.gov.cn)

The Spanish versions of Chinese President Xi Jinping's books "UP and Out of Poverty" and essay collection "Zhijiang Xin Yu" were released in Argentina on Nov. 20 local time.

About 150 Chinese and Argentine guests gathered at the Palace of the Argentine National Congress for the debut ceremony and a China-Argentina seminar on national governance.

Xi wrote the two books separately when he was serving as the then-secretary of Communist Party of China (CPC) Ningde Prefectural Committee, southeastern China's Fujian province, and the then-secretary of CPC Zhejiang Provincial Committee.

The two works, about his exploration and thoughts on local governance, poverty eradication, and development, demonstrate Xi's development philosophy of constant innovation, tenets of serving the people, consistent spirit of reform, and broad mind.

Luis Alfonso Petri, deputy speaker of the Chamber of Deputies of the Argentine National Congress, said in his speech delivered at the ceremony that the debut of President Xi's books in the Argentine capital is of great significance, because poverty control remains an important task for the Argentine's ruling party. He added that the books are an important reference for Argentina's national governance.

Carmen Polledo, President of Group of Parliamentary Friendship with China Chamber of Argentine National Deputies, said the two books reflect the wisdom and patriotism of President Xi, adding that they are very important for Argentina and will enlighten the country regarding national governance and poverty alleviation.

China made decisive progress in targeted poverty alleviation from 2012 to 2017 during which the country's impoverished population was reduced by 68 million, and the poverty occurrence was cut to 3.1 percent from 10.2 percent in 2012 before the 18th National Congress of the CPC was held.

The Chinese representatives were warmly praised and applauded by the Argentine delegates when introducing the books. During the ceremony, the Chinese and Argentine guests together unveiled the books, and the Chinese representatives gave the books to Argentine senators as gifts.

The books were taken by enthusiastic Argentine guests after the ceremony. Teresa, a professor in the University of Buenos Aires, told People's Daily that she pays high attention to poverty, and China's globally recognized endeavors and achievements on poverty alleviation have set an example for Argentina.

During the seminar on China-Argentina national governance, the guests of the two countries carried out in-depth discussion on the two books. They agreed that the publication of Xi's books will help Spanish-speaking readers, including those in Argentina, to have a deeper understanding of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era and the course of China's reform and opening-up, and promote China-Argentina exchanges and communications on national governance.
Minister for Prisons and Correction Services, Tialavea Tionisio Hunt, has reprimanded Prisons Commissioner, Taitosaua Edward Winterstein.

The Minister, in a letter dated November 9, 2018 to the Prisons Commissioner, accused him of not telling the truth in relation to prisoner Tagaloasa Filipaina.

I am extremely disappointed that you did not tell me the truth and you had embarrassed me in front of the Prime Minister.

You are the Commissioner and one of your mandates is to give advice that is fair accurate, and from that I make my decision for the betterment of the Prisons for not telling the truth that Tagaloasa Filipaina threatens the security of the prison, Tialavea said.

Taitosaua did not respond to telephone messages left at his office on Friday by the Samoa Observer, which sought his comments in response to the Ministers letter.

Last month, Tialavea told this newspaper that Filipaina and colleague prisoner Ovaleni Poli Vailiwho are currently being held at the Police Central Stationwill be transferred back to Tafaigata prison.

But the Minister noted in his letter that the prisoners will serve out the balance of their custodial sentence at the Central Police Station.

However, despite meetings pertaining to the transfer of Filipaina to Tafaigata not once you said anything about the Prisons is better off without Filipaina, he added.

Tialavea, in his letter, told the Prisons Commissioner that the oversight should not be repeated.

A good leader, is bold and is not scared to give advice that is balanced and fair as such advice is the basis of the decisions for the betterment of the operation.

The decision for Filipaina, he will remain at the Central Police Station until the duration of his sentencing is complete.

Even after the completion of the new jail in Tanumalala, he will not be transferred, Filipaina will be housed at the Police Station, he added.

Filipaina and Ovaleni were moved to the Central Police Station in February this year, after authorities suspected that they were both behind a plot to lead a mass jail breakout, as Cyclone Gita headed for Samoa at that time.

The Minister, in a letter dated November 9, 2018 to the Prisons Commissioner, accused him of not telling the truth in relation to prisoner Tagaloasa Filipaina.

I am extremely disappointed that you did not tell me the truth and you had embarrassed me in front of the Prime Minister.

You are the Commissioner and one of your mandates is to give advice that is fair accurate, and from that I make my decision for the betterment of the Prisons for not telling the truth that Tagaloasa Filipaina threatens the security of the prison, Tialavea said.

Taitosaua did not respond to telephone messages left at his office on Friday by the Samoa Observer, which sought his comments in response to the Ministers letter.

Last month, Tialavea told this newspaper that Filipaina and colleague prisoner Ovaleni Poli Vailiwho are currently being held at the Police Central Stationwill be transferred back to Tafaigata prison.

But the Minister noted in his letter that the prisoners will serve out the balance of their custodial sentence at the Central Police Station.

However, despite meetings pertaining to the transfer of Filipaina to Tafaigata not once you said anything about the Prisons is better off without Filipaina, he added.

Tialavea, in his letter, told the Prisons Commissioner that the oversight should not be repeated.

A good leader, is bold and is not scared to give advice that is balanced and fair as such advice is the basis of the decisions for the betterment of the operation.

The decision for Filipaina, he will remain at the Central Police Station until the duration of his sentencing is complete.

Even after the completion of the new jail in Tanumalala, he will not be transferred, Filipaina will be housed at the Police Station, he added.

Filipaina and Ovaleni were moved to the Central Police Station in February this year, after authorities suspected that they were both behind a plot to lead a mass jail breakout, as Cyclone Gita headed for Samoa at that time.
Daniel Lualua is the Dux of the St. Joseph's College in 2018. The eldest son of Alofafaiu Lualua and late Faimalo Lualua, his grandmother Kapenteta Toomata Aki did not hold back her tears, as she made her way down the isle at the college hall on Friday to place a candy lei on him.

I have seen Daniel strive hard to make us proud. All thanks and glory to God for his never ending guidance throughout his education as well as our family, she said.

The hall was packed with students, staff and families and friends when the names of the top performers in the 2018 academic year were read out.

But Daniels journey was a challenge as his father passed on in 2011, leaving him and his siblings with their mother Alofafaiu, who was assisted by her parents Kapeneta and Toomatai Aki to raise her children.

Daniels grand parents are devout Roman Catholics, whose background Alofafaiu credits for creating a good environment for her son to excel. Her family supported her sons education and encouraged him to do his best.

He has always made us proud and I know within our hearts his father is too, Alofafaiu said.

Following his acceptance of his dux award, he was invited to give a speech at the graduation ceremony and he shared a story on a fisherman, and how he kept fish that could fit his frying pan and threw the rest back to the sea.

Excuse me sir, you seem to be very lucky catching so many fish today but I was wondering why are you letting the big fish go back to the water, and just keeping the catch of the smaller fish?

The fisherman then replied: Well its very simple, he said you see here I have my measure, so I know the correct size of my catch. This measurement I have is the exact size of my frying pan. If the fish are bigger than my pan, I let them go, if they are smaller or the exact size I keep them.

Daniel compared the story to reality and said some people have big dreamsand there are times when dreams become too big or impossible to achieveso people abandon them and settle for less.

If you have a big dream, follow it. Never let yourself or anyone tell you that it is impossible. Believe in yourself and follow your passion, follow your dream. But most of all follow your heart, he said.

Daniel will continue his studies at the National University of Samoa next year.
Prime Minister Tuilaepa Lupesoliai Dr. Sailele Malielegaoi has forgiven the two suspects who verbally abused him in Brisbane, Australia early this month but the two will not be forgotten.

I have forgiven them but I will not forget them.

If by a long shot they are deported back home and may require assistance from the Prime Minister to return to New Zealand or Australia it be will be provided regardless, he said, in a statement released by the Governments Press Secretary.

Paramount to Tuilaepa is for Samoans at home and abroad to remain calm and let the rule of law to prevail.

I am grateful to everyone who has expressed their genuine concerns for my safety. The majority had reaffirmed their loyalty, but the matter is now with the appropriate authorities and let us all leave it at that. Let the law takes its course.

Acknowledging that he was only fully briefed of what transpired the evening afterwards, Tuilaepa said it is nothing more than a childish attempt to embarrass all Samoans, which he added failed miserably.

I have no doubts its politically motivated and a childish plot by the false messiahs and prophets to embarrass my leadership and Government. And its a good reminder to our people of the saying that you can fool some of us some of the time, but you cannot fool an entire country all the time, he added.

Tuilaepa said during his career and tenure as the P.M. he has been subject false accusations and wrongly blamed, but he took comfort in the Bible.

During my career and tenure as Prime Minister, I have been wrongfully accused and blamed many a times and as a God fearing person, I always taken to heart our sacred Bible which teaches us Christians that Blessed are those who have been persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.

I am comforted that the Angels above should be taking notes and should add the Logan event to my tally of good deeds for being wrongly accused again which by the way, should help with my day of judgement day above.

Tuilaepa said he will reserve further comment on the incident and progress of investigations until he gets an official report from local and Australian authorities.
The Rhema Bible Training College 2018 Dux, Barbara Fonoti, dedicated her achievement to God during the colleges graduation in Apia on Friday evening.

The 27-year-old from Siusega, who is married to Lagolasi Fonoti, came first in her class of third year ministerial diplomas and took the opportunity outline her plans for the future.

I thank my parents Fiti and Leata Tanuvasa for their support and especially my dear husband.

I thank God most importantly for his mercy and Rhema it taught us to develop our strengths and work on my weaknesses to turn it into strengths through spirit.

To the graduates, strive for excellence be Gods go to people, remember that he is within you and keep fighting and keep winning to accomplish what God has put you on this earth to do, she said.

Barbara acknowledged the assistance of Pastor Ah Kui and Pastor Keith Moore and added that she will pursue her fourth year next year.

A total of 30 students graduated with first year certificates of completion (class of 2020), 11 received second year certificates of completion (class of 2019), 28 were graduates in the class of 2018 for third-year diploma in ministry, while four were presented advanced ministerial diplomas. Another 13 were recipients of masters degrees in ministerial.

Brother Keith Moore, in a speech to the graduates, urged them to take up the challenge and embrace their calling by the Lord.

I pray you will all represent the Lord accurately, so that you will all bear great fruits all for the glory of God.

I pray you will bear fruit that will last throughout eternity but most importantly love the Lord with all your hearts.

Not forgetting to live by faith and serve the Lord in all the works that you will face, he said.

Prime Minister Tuilaepa Dr. Sailele Malielegaoi, who was a guest at the graduation ceremony, told the graduates not to forget the Lords divine calling in their livesto heed the great commissionto go out in the world and preach the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

To you the graduates, you are a blessing to Samoa, to your countries from whichever part of the Pacific you come from and to the whole world thus without fear to serve the Lord, for he has used you for his work and he dwells in you.

I congratulate the school in completing their accreditation process with the Samoa Qualification Authority in October this year.

The accreditation is now a labeled recognition of the third year diploma as level five of the Samoa Qualifications framework subsequently as part of this accreditation, the faculty of the school took on the challenge of pursuing higher qualifications, said the P.M.

Tuilaepa also said that through a partnership with School of Bible theology from Jacinto in the American state of California, 13 ministerial masters degrees were successfully completed and bestowed that night.

Rhema Bible Training College is an inter-denominational, ministry training college designed to train men and women who feel a call on their life to work for God.
Staff of Land Transport Authority can get their personal vehicles registered and payments made through salary deductions as part of their employment entitlement.

This is according to L.T.A. Chief Executive Officer, Galumalemana Taatialeoitiiti Tutuvanu-Schwalger, during her testimony in the case of suspended and former Assistant Chief Executive Officers Anoanoai Pepe Lafai and Mataafa Sepelini in the Supreme Court.

Appearing before Justice, Mata Keli Tuatagaloa, the defense counsel Fepuleai Patrick Fepuleai questioned Galumalemana on the policy.

In response, the C.E.O. said it is stipulated in the organisations human resources manual, that staff can only register a maximum of two vehiclesand their ownership should be under the staffs name.

The first step for the staff is to submit an official request is directed to myself as C.E.O. then an assessment is conducted by the corporate services division and finance division, and the decision is madebased on the assessment, she said.

Fepuleai then inquired whether the staff can somewhat bypassed that process and file their request directly to the Corporate Services Division and Finance Division. But Galumalemana, in response, said the testimony given is based on the process.

Fepuleai then put it to her that there is a need to investigate this matter.

Youll probably find that your staff are bypassing this process and they just deal directly with the Finance and if shes aware, he said.

But Galumalemana did not respond to his proposition directly, and instead said: Investigation into this resulted in ways of improvement and the process explained earlier should be accountable to everyone.

Justice Tuatagaloa also questioned the C.E.O. on the entitlement, in relation to staff using salary deductions to pay off their private vehicle registration.

Responding to the Judge, Galumalemana said that particular entitlement assisted staff who could not afford to pay the registration for their private vehicles.

The trial continues.
CITY COUNCILS

DEL MAR

The Del Mar City Council met in closed session Monday to discuss litigation and property negotiations. In regular session, the council introduced an ordinance to regulate and prohibit expanded polystyrene and non-recyclable plastic disposable food service ware, and a draft ordinance to prohibit plastic straws and make non-plastic straws available only upon request. The council heard a report on the Safe Rail Trail and Pedestrian Crossing Feasibility Study and approved proceeding with the study to explore four possibilities for safe crossings. The council heard a report on the North County Transit Districts plan to conduct a safety study that might recommend rail corridor fencing along the Del Mar bluffs. The council agreed unanimously to oppose any fencing, but wished to work with the district on a feasibility alternatives analysis.

The city of Del Mar is recruiting for two voting members of the Design Review Board to serve a four-year term. The boards review process involves an evaluation of a structures placement and size, the materials and colors to be used, and in the case of a new structure, the type and extent of proposed landscaping. The board also evaluates the projects compatibility with surrounding development. Application deadline is Dec. 21. Visit www.delmar.ca.us/volunteer.

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ENCINITAS

The Encinitas City Council canceled its meeting scheduled for Wednesday.

POWAY

The Poway City Council canceled its meeting scheduled for Tuesday.

SCHOOL DISTRICTS

RAMONA

The Ramona Unified School District board met Nov. 15 in closed session to discuss property negotiations and litigation. In open session, the National Demographics Corporation gave a presentation on draft maps for the districts transition to by-district voting. The board also held hearings on initial contract proposals to and from the California School Employees Association Chapter #733 and the Ramona Teachers Association, and adopted the districts initial proposals to each group. The board announced the appointment of Mike Sterner as the new principal of Montecito High School, and Melissa Satterlee as the new fiscal services manager. Mission Federal Credit Union was thanked for its donation of furniture, estimated to be worth $50,000.

VALLECITOS/RAINBOW

The Vallecitos School District board met Nov. 13 to review and approve the annual and five-year developer fee reports for what was collected and disbursed for fiscal year 2017/2018. The board also heard a presentation on the Say Something Program, Sandy Hooks Promise, a free gun-violence prevention and training program. The board then met in closed session to discuss labor negotiations and student discipline.

VALLEY CENTER

The Valley Center-Pauma Unified School District board met Nov. 15 in closed session to discuss personnel and labor negotiations. In regular session, the board approved a resolution starting the process of changing to a by-district trustee election system. The board also heard the results of a parent-guardian survey of Native American children, and reviewed education of district children living on tribal lands. A tentative collective bargaining agreement for 2018-21 with the Valley Center-Pauma Teachers Association/CTA/NEA was presented. The agreement includes a 1.2 percent increase to the salary schedule effective July 1, 2018.

VISTA

The Vista Unified School District board met Nov. 15 in closed session to discuss labor negotiations, student discipline and personnel. In open session, the board discussed a presentation on admission policies at its five magnet schools. Open enrollment begins in January and runs for six weeks. The board also discussed providing a retirement incentive supplementing its retirement programs. The incentive would have the district pay retiring employees 70 percent of the annual salary earned in 2018-19. The district would pay the money over a five-year period to the retirement program, which would provide annuity payments to the retirees. The board also approved various new high school and adult education courses.

laura.groch@sduniontribune.com
North Island Credit Union has announced the 10 recipients of its Fall 2018 Teacher Grants, assisting educators in funding innovative learning for their students in San Diego County. The winning teachers will each receive $500 to use toward their class projects. The grant recipients are:

Adrielle Aldrich, Sherman Elementary School, San Diego Unified School District

Michael Claudio, Sweetwater High School, Sweetwater Union High School District, Chula Vista

Aimee DSpain, Hoover High School, San Diego Unified School District

Jean Dugan, San Diego Cooperative Charter School, San Diego Unified School District

Kellie Gilmore, Los Coches Creek Middle School, Cajon Valley Union School District, El Cajon

Brian Mendoza, Lakeside Middle School, Lakeside Union Elementary School District, Lakeside

Elizabeth Perkoski, El Camino High School, Oceanside Unified School District, Oceanside

Rachel Platz, Valencia Park Elementary School, San Diego Unified School District

Laura Snow, Pomerado Elementary School, Poway Unified School District, Poway

Stephanie Rossi, Washington Elementary School, San Diego Unified School District

North Island Credit Union is committed to supporting our local education community, and our grant program is one way we are working to help teachers bring new programs into the classroom that impact their students and communities in positive ways, said California Credit Union CEO Steve OConnell in a statement. We hope these grants encourage our local educators to pursue innovative projects that spark a new passion in their students, which can make a lifelong difference.

Since the program was created in 2012, the credit union has awarded $85,000 in teacher grants to benefit students throughout San Diego and Los Angeles. Up to 20 grants totaling $10,000 are awarded bi-annually in the spring and fall. Any full-time classroom teacher in San Diego County can apply for a grant to be used in a program that has clearly defined learning objectives tied to students academic needs, displays creativity, and targets a significant number of students.

The credit union grants have been used to help fund a variety of programs illustrating the creativity and commitment that teachers bring to their classrooms and communities, including helping the homeless, community sustainability, peer-based socialization for special education students, development of life skills, plant/animal organic life cycles, and more.

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Visit northisland.ccu.com.

laura.groch@sduniontribune.com
San Diego author Marilyn Chin both laments and celebrates her hyphenated identity as an Asian-American feminist writer exploring the themes of personal identity, exile and cultural assimilation.

Chins new book, A Portrait of the Self as Nation, is a career-spanning collection of her greatest hits and new works ranging from love lyrics to feminist manifestos to political proclamations. As the title suggests, the self portrait is a meditation on the inner life of the poet and her adopted nation.

Hailed as one of San Diegos literary treasures, the Hong Kong-born poet, novelist, translator and educator is professor emerita at San Diego State University, where she co-directed the MFA program.

At times dark, playful, incisive and heartbreaking, shes been called daring, direct, confrontational, fierce, furious, fearless, irreverent and subversive.

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My poems are rebellious, Chin said. If you look at the poems, theres always a moment at which I erupt. Its important for poets to be rebellious. I always want to disrupt things and do my own thing. Rebellion is part of being a good artist.

Her best-known work, the Asian American identity anthem How I Got That Name, has appeared in more than 50 collections, including the Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry and Best American Poetry.

The heartbreaking poem recounts how Chin was named after some tragic white woman swollen with gin and Nembutal. She writes: Of course the name had been changed / somewhere between Angel Island and the sea, / when my father the paperson in the late 1950s / obsessed with a bombshell blonde transliterated Mei Ling to Marilyn.

A Portrait of the Self as Nation includes selections from Chins three-decade career as a writer. Blues on Yellow is based on a 12-bar blues progression. The prose poem The Song of the Sad Guitar is about a chance encounter under the yin and yang sign of a San Diego Safeway. The Floral Apron and Turtle Soup are favorites of her students.

The book dedicates a section to Chins translations of works by Chinese poet Ai Qing and Japanese poet Gozo Yoshimasu.

The new collection includes excerpts from her novel, Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen, which satirically skewers the coming-of-age and immigrant assimilation tropes common in fiction.

Portrait concludes with a collection of Chins newest works. In Little Box Opens Up, Chin writes, Whats in Little Box / Rancid chow mein / A sliver of cold pizza / Last weeks hummus / Youre a starving orphan / From East Brooklyn / And youll eat it.

Chin has won a PEN Oakland literary award given to outstanding multicultural writers in the United States, an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for works that contribute to the better understanding of racism and human diversity and five Pushcart Prizes for the best work issued by a small press publisher.

Shes received fellowships from the Fulbright Program, Rockefeller Foundation, Harvards Radcliffe Institute and National Endowment of the Arts. Chin currently serves as the chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. In recent years, shes been a guest poet at universities in Beijing, Berlin, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Singapore and Sydney.

Chin will speak at UC San Diego in the Seuss Room of the Geisel Library as part of the New Writing Series on Nov. 28 at 5 p.m.

Q: Tell me about your family in the context of your life as an artist. Do you come from a creative family?

A: I was born in Hong Kong in a coldwater flat in 1955 in kind of a messy, colonial time. I came to the U.S. when I was 7.

My grandmother used to carry me on her back and chant Chinese poems, Chinese songs and Chinese lullabies. Very early I heard poetry from the oral tradition. My grandmother was illiterate. She sang and spoke ancient poetry, thousands of years old.

Classical Chinese poetry was always in the heart and soul of the Chinese people. All Chinese students were forced to memorize and recite Chinese poetry. I believe that Chinese poetry is in the DNA. Im the one who sort of carried that forth.

Q: When did you answer the call to become a writer? What was the moment that changed your life and put you on the path to becoming a writer?

A: It was in high school where I was drawn to poetry. I had an inspired teacher who introduced us to poetry. I would go to the library and I would take out poetry books. I didnt know what the poems meant, but I loved hearing them. I loved reading short poems. I was not able to read novels for some reason. I was interested in the music of the short form.

There was something about poetry that really hit my heart and soul. I was a very lonely child, so I loved to read. Very early on I loved poetry above all else. I knew I was going to be a writer of some sort.

Then Maxine Hong Kingstons The Woman Warrior came out. After I read that book, I said, Im going to be a writer. That book changed my life. I carried it around in my knapsack for months.

Q: In every story the hero has a wound that incites them to action. What was your wound? What pain do you write about?

A: My wound is really my mother. I felt that my mother sacrificed her life and was destroyed by the Confucian system by this male-dominated world. My mother was a very Buddhistic, good woman. My father was a polygamist. I felt that she suffered greatly. She stopped eating and died in 1962. She didnt want to live. I felt that I needed to somehow seek revenge for her.

The feminism is personal, political, familial and social. I didnt become a feminist just because I read all this feminist theory in college and grad school. I became a feminist because I really felt for my mothers generation and for my mother in particular. Every morning I think about her and her suffering and sacrifice.

Without this wound I dont think I would have become a poet. Poetry, I believe, is a genre thats closest to the heart. I really felt my mothers suffering. Its really about avenging my mothers pain. My mothers pain is my pain.

Q: Do you have a core message that recurs in your poems? Is there a theme or motif that you return to often? Is there one story that you find yourself telling over and over again?

A: Theyre really immigrant poems. Theyre about the trials and tribulations of being an outsider in this society. Theyre about assimilation. How minority people try to assimilate into the American world and become American. I dont shy away from contemporary issues about racism and the fracturing of society.

Q: Youve equated the loss of country to the loss of self. Youve said to assimilate into America means to annihilate ones mother culture. Can you elaborate on how you bring that sense of loss and annihilation into your work?

A: I used to be bilingual. Im no longer bilingual. English takes over the mother tongue. It happens in a kind of fluid manner. I think it was in fifth grade or so that I stopped thinking in Chinese. The English had taken over.

In one generation, my siblings have become Christians. In my mothers generation, they were Buddhists.

Unless one works really hard at it, one has to let go of language, religion and certain cultural aspects.

The vector of assimilation only goes one direction. You just become Americanized very quickly.

Thats one reason why Im a poet. I want to bring some aspects of Chinese poetry to the Western readers, the reader in English.

Q: A Portrait of the Self as Nation is a career retrospective with a collection of greatest hits and new works. How would you describe your new book? What should the reader expect?

A: A lot of high school and college students would email me and ask me about this poem and that poem that their teacher made them read from an anthology or they found on the internet.

This one kid kept emailing me about certain poems. I said, It wont kill you to buy one volume of the poems. And she said, If you make a greatest hits album, then maybe Ill buy it.

So I thought I would make a chronological anthology of my work for teachers and students with peoples favorite poems. I wanted to include poems that students and teachers have discussed throughout the years.

I also wanted to include some translations from my earlier time as a translator. Then I wanted to throw in little from my experimental fiction. And I wanted to show what Im doing in the here and now.

I wanted to show the range of my talent and the range of my canvas. I think theres something for everybody in the book.

I wanted to keep it around 200 pages. I wanted to make it affordable. I wanted to make it a readable volume. I wanted the student or the poet to put it in his or her knapsack and thumb through it.

Its really about trying to represent my 30 years of writing.

A Portrait of the Self as Nation: New and Selected Poems by Marilyn Chin; W.W. Norton; 224 pages.

UC San Diego New Writing Series: Marilyn Chin

When: 5 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 28

Where: Seuss Room at Geisel Library, UC San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla.

Admission: Free

Online: literature.ucsd.edu/news-events/new-writing-series/nws-fall2018.html

MacDonald is a freelance writer.
The concept for the La Jolla Playhouse-bred musical Come From Away sprang from a day of immense tragedy, but the shows creation didnt actually begin until a decade after the terrible events of 9/11.

Now, the work has traveled from La Jolla to Broadway and back to California (on tour), and is being staged overseas as well. Heres a step-by-step look at how that all happened. (Numbers correspond to locations on the map above.)

Also be sure to check out our main piece on the shows journey here, including interviews with some of the people who made it happen.

1. Sept. 11, 2001: In the wake of the terrorist attacks on the U.S. and the subsequent ground stop of all air traffic, 38 jetliners carrying thousands of people are diverted to the tiny town of Gander, Newfoundland. The last planes finally leave five days later.

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2. September 2011: Irene Sankoff and David Hein, a married pair of writer-composers from Canada, attend a 10th-anniversary reunion of the plane people in Gander, and begin interviewing them.

3. April 2012: An early version of Sankoff and Heins Come From Away receives its first developmental staging at Sheridan College in Oakville, Ontario, through the Canadian Music Theatre Project.

Come From Away co-creators David Hein and Irene Sankoff attend the shows Toronto opening in 2016.a (Richard Lautens / Toronto Star via Getty Images)

4. January 2013: Come From Away receives further workshopping at the Goodspeed Festival of New Musicals in East Haddam, Conn.

October 2013: The show is selected for the annual National Alliance for Musical Theatre festival in New York City, and receives a 45-minute showcase. The work is then optioned by Junkyard Dog Productions, which also produced the Broadway staging of the La Jolla Playhouse-bred Memphis.

5. November 2014: The world premiere of Come From Away is announced as part of La Jolla Playhouses 2015-16 season, with Playhouse artistic director Christopher Ashley (who also directed Memphis) at the helm. The show is a co-production with Seattle Repertory Theatre.

June 11, 2015: Come From Away has its official opening in the Playhouses Sheila and Hughes Potiker Theatre. (Heres the Union-Tribune review.)

6. November 2015: Come From Away opens its follow-up run at Seattle Rep.

7. September 2016: The musical moves to the historic Fords Theatre in Washington, D.C.

October 2016: Come From Away is presented in two concert performances in the town of Ganders ice rink, for about 5,000 residents. The shows bring the entire town to its feet, and bring the house down.

November 2016: The show opens at the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto, its final production before Broadway.

Feb. 4, 2017: The cast returns to San Diego briefly for a concert performance at the La Jolla Playhouse gala.

March 12, 2017: Come From Away officially opens on Broadway (where it continues to run).

Playhouse artistic chief Christopher Ashley accepts the 2017 Tony Award for best direction of a musical. (Sara Krulwich / NYT)

June 11, 2017: The show  nominated for seven Tony Awards  wins one for Ashley as best director of a musical.

October 2017: The Broadway production of Come From Away recoups its $12 million investment.

February 2018: Come From Away returns to Toronto for an extended sit-down production.

October 2018: The shows first U.S. national tour opens at the 5th Avenue Theatre in Seattle.

8. November 2018: Come From Away returns to Southern California for the first time since its Playhouse world premiere, opening a six-week tour stop at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles. (The tour also will make stops in San Francisco in January and Costa Mesa in February, but no San Diego engagement is scheduled.)

9. December 2018: Come From Away is set to open a run in Dublin, Ireland, before heading to Londons West End.

10. 2019: Productions are scheduled to open in London and in Melbourne, Australia.

jim.hebert@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @jimhebert
Forty years later, even after the way it ended, theres a part of Laura Johnston Kohl that still misses Jonestown.

Shes standing in the living room of her San Marcos home, holding a framed photo that usually hangs on a bedroom wall. Its an aerial shot of the compound where she and other followers of the Rev. Jim Jones had turned a jungle in Guyana into what they hoped would be a utopia of respect, justice and fulfillment.

Look how much we accomplished in just two years, the retired 71-year-old schoolteacher said, pointing at the rows of dormitories and cottages. This is where more than 900 people lived.

And where they died.

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It remains among the 20th Centurys signature horrors and one of the most chilling massacres in the history of religious movements. Men, women and children followed the orders of their messiah and drank cyanide-laced punch.

Kohl would have been among them if she hadnt been working with other Peoples Temple members 150 miles away in Georgetown, securing food and supplies for the group.

The photo of the compound held her attention for a few more seconds and then she set it down on a couch.

I was a total zealot who did not see it coming, she said.

Now shes made it her mission to help others avoid that mistake.

She regularly gives talks at schools and libraries, urging people to think critically and pay attention to the hidden agendas of those in power.

She writes articles for a website, sponsored by San Diego State, thats dedicated to the proposition that the story of Jonestown did not start or end on 18 November 1978.

Shes donated boxes of documents, photos and letters to a university in Indiana, the state where Jim Jones was born and raised.

Her willingness to come out of the Peoples Temple closet made her one of the featured speakers last Sunday at an annual Jonestown remembrance in Oakland, where the remains of more than 400 unidentified and unclaimed victims are buried.

She talked about her long journey to embrace the messiness of her story  how her time in Peoples Temple was one of the highlights of her life, and also the source of her deepest sorrows.

I thought that I was making the commitment to building a different world, based on principles I believed in  equality, dignity for all, integrity, she said. I was foolish and naive.

She used to be angry, but not any more.

My existence in and survival from Jonestown and Peoples Temple is part of my core, she said. I somehow survived. I cant waste my life now, even 40 years later.

Drawing her in

As an atheist, Kohl wasnt drawn to Peoples Temple for the religion. She went for the civil rights.

She grew up near Washington D.C., where her politically active single mother often hosted activists in town for protests and rallies.

In college, in Connecticut, she studied philosophy and was involved with campus groups that pushed 1960s progressive causes, including the fight against racism.

Tired of the East Coast college life, she dropped out and moved in early 1970 to San Francisco. She was 22. Before long, shed heard about Jones and his church north of the city.

She found a diverse group of people  young and old, rich and poor, black and white, college-educated and illiterate  dedicated to a more-just society and pursuing it with boots-on-the-ground charity: convalescent homes, drug rehabilitation, foster care.

She wanted in.

Religious scholars have spent decades studying and writing about Jones, and if theres one thing many of them agree on, its that he had a gift for reading people. Many con artists do.

He told you what you wanted to hear, Kohl said.

In her case, he dropped the names of civil rights leaders who were heroes of hers  Cesar Chavez, Angela Davis, Dennis Banks. Here, she thought, was someone who could give voice to her activism.

While working a day job for the state welfare department, Kohl also became more and more involved with the temple. She was part of Jones planning committee and drove buses on cross-country recruiting trips.

Kohl still has a medallion from her Peoples Temple days. (Charlie Neuman)

When Jones took the group to Guyana to create heaven on earth, Kohl followed, arriving in 1977. She worked in Georgetown and lived in a house the temple owned there. She bought food, equipment and other supplies. She helped with the paperwork of new arrivals.

She loved it there, loved the people and the culture, but after she violated a temple rule, she was ordered to the compound. Jones scolded her in front of the group. She was put on a work crew before he sent her back to Georgetown, in October 1978  one month before the massacre.

When she looks back on it now, she sees all the red flags that should have told her Jones was losing his grip on sanity, she said. How he stifled dissent. How so much of what he did was about control, not teaching.

But she didnt see it then.

I would have done it (taken the poison), too, she said. That was my family.

The healing begins

Like most of the roughly 90 survivors, she came back to the United States and hid.

She found a job with a temp agency, explaining the two-year gap in her work history by saying she had been traveling in the Caribbean, which was true, as far as it went.

Away from work she was a wreck, crying at the slightest reminder of who, and what, had been lost in Guyana.

In 1980, still drawn to communal living, Kohl joined Synanon, another California group with an eye toward utopia (and an eventual demise steeped in violence).

She spent 10 years in the group, finding it a comfortable place to talk about Jonestown. She met her husband, Ron, and they had a son, Raul.

In 1990, with Synanons legal and tax troubles mounting, her family left. I was ready to be an adult, she said.

Kohl went back to college and finished her bachelors degree. She got a teaching credential and settled into a 25-year career that eventually brought her to the North County, where she specialized in sixth-grade. Earlier this year, she retired.

She also became a Quaker, which she credits with helping to give her the space and the silence necessary to work through her thoughts and emotions, to get past what she jokingly calls PTSD  Post Temple Stress Disorder.

In 1998, feeling like her life was more in order, she attended the 20th anniversary remembrance of the mass killings, in Oakland. She re-connected with other survivors.

That is when my healing really began, she said.

She began giving interviews to journalists and documentary-film makers, excavating her Jonestown story from underneath two decades of guilt and sorrow.

Along the way, she grew accustomed to people coming up after hearing her speak and giving her what they probably thought was a compliment. You dont look crazy, they said, a bit confused that she didnt fit into the public image of mindless zombies following their maniacal Moses to a deadly promised land.

My job as a survivor is to continue the conversation, to continue the search for understanding, and to teach that those who died in the tragedy were some of the best people I could ever hope to meet in my life, Kohl wrote in one of her articles. Jim Jones was only one of 918.

In 2010, she self-published a memoir about her experience, Jonestown Survivor: An Insiders Look.

I speak only for myself, she wrote in the introduction. My reflections about and understanding of my experiences continue to evolve.

Return to Jonestown

She was never going to go back.

In her mind, there was no way to separate Guyana from what had happened at Jonestown, and all that death still felt too fresh, too horrific.

About six years ago, though, she began thinking it might be a good idea. And in March she went, flying into Georgetown with her family, a few friends, and Jordan Vilchez, another survivor.

They went the next morning to what is left of Jonestown. The original sign marking the compound is long gone. The road is overgrown and unrecognizable. Kohls group followed guides along a narrow, slippery path until they came to what used to be the pavilion.

In a clearing there is a large tombstone, dedicated to the victims of the Jonestown tragedy.

While the other visitors went off to see what else might be nearby, Kohl stayed by the tombstone. It felt to her like a reunion  a reunion of her past self and her present one.

The day everything happened, when my friends and adopted family died, and my dreams were shattered, I split in half, she would later write. Part of me died that November day, the part that was optimistic, cheerful, hopeful, determined, and fulfilled. That day, my sense of humor and my sense of well-being were sucked out of me.

It took many years to allow them back in.

A month later, back in San Marcos, she noticed lumps on her arm and went to the doctor. The diagnosis was soft tissue sarcoma, the prescription radiation and then chemotherapy.

As last Sundays Jonestown remembrance approached, Kohl worried that her cancer treatment might keep her from Oakland. She asked her doctor if it was OK to go.

Live your life, he told her.

She is, she said. After 40 years, she is.

john.wilkens@sduniontribune.com
The Third Plenum of the 11th Communist Party of China Central Committee, held in Beijing in December 1978, was not a dramatic event for the world. There were no major disagreementsno clashes between different leaders. In many ways, the event had an almost disarming procedural smoothness. The newly appointed vice-premier, Deng Xiaoping, delivered a speech in which he broadly urged cadres to "seek truth from facts" and "liberate their thinking".

For someone as senior in the leadership to say this was enough, however. And while most foreign observers, initially at least, did not fully understand the significance of what had been signalled, plenty in the new leadership did.

Deng's directive becomes clearer

Over the next year or so the signs of what "liberating thought" and "seeking truth from facts" mean became clearer. Communes and work brigades started being disbanded. In the countryside, experiments first tried out earlier in the 1970s in provinces such as Anhui and Sichuan whereby farmers were allowed to have greater freedom to plant crops and to then sell the surpluses in an emerging open market, rather than wholly into the State system, were extended till they covered the whole country.

A joint venture law was passed in 1979, with Coca Cola opening up a bottling plant in Tianjin soon afterthe first foreign enterprise to work with a local partner since 1949. By 1981, the Special Economic Zones of Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Xiamen and Shantou were up and running. The contours of China under reform and opening-up were from this point irrefutable and clear. The rest, as they say, is history.

Leaders as diverse as Wan Li, Hu Yaobang and Xi Zhongxun, father of current Party chief Xi Jinping, all made contributions. Some were in charge of provinces that experimented successfully and then had their pilot schemes adopted nationwide. Others offered support from Beijing. Peng Zhen, once mayor of Beijing, and in the mid-1980s chairman of the National People's Congress, introduced the Organic Village Election Law in 1987, which saw the first moves to introduce multi-person elections to China's many tens of thousands of villages. This restored some levels of good governance to China's rural areas, where so many people still lived, and which had been highly unstable prior to 1976.

SEZs play a vital role

There were many other contributions, like the one most closely associated with Xi Zhongxun while he was the second and then first provincial Party secretary and governor in Guangdong province from 1979 to 1981 where he supported the implementation of special economic zones, and allowed manufacturing within China for export markets to raise revenue and build up a more powerful local skills base.

There was no blueprint for reform which was laid out in 1978 to be rigorously implemented from 1979 onward. So instead of rigid central and provincial targets to be fulfilled throughout the country by all State enterprises and entities, more latitude was allowedand expected.

Cadres and those who worked with them were meant to fill in the gaps and use some of their initiative. Deng was supportive of young cadres in particular who showed creativity, moving to promote many of them in the 1980s to more senior leadership positions. In many ways, 1978 launched what can be called a process of "the great learning". Officials were expected to be self-critical, and more open. They were meant to refocus on the thing that mattered most to Deng's political programimproving the lives of the people and addressing their lack of material and daily necessities.

Four Modernizations

The undogmatic approach of the new leadership allowed them to travel the world looking at many different models by which to try to understand how to sustain high growth rates and modernize their technology, industry, agriculture and defensethe Four Modernizations that were mentioned back in the 1950s but which now needed to be addressed urgently.

Deng himself was to visit the United States and Japan. Other leaders went to Europe, and looked at high-growth economies within their own regionSingapore, Malaysia, Taiwan and the Republic of Korea, in particular. Slavish following of foreign models was not accepted. What was allowed was a new ideological focus on "socialism with Chinese characteristics" as it came to be called, which would marry the best aspects of other models with the intrinsic cultural, social and political conditions in China.

There were plenty of unintended consequences that followed from this process of accepting innovation, and openness to new ideas. The town and village enterprises, which started springing up in the 1980s, were largely an outcome of dramatically increased productivity in the rural areas, and with better incentives and more efficient methods, farming became much less labor intensive, and many who had once worked in this sector were free to pursue other opportunities. The TVEs were classic hybrid entities, working in the rural areas in many different sectors, some as factories or enterprises, teaching Chinese how to do business.

The TVEs became the employers of most Chinese people by the end of the decade, and yet, as Deng said, there had never been a specific plan for this to happen. It had simply been a happy offshoot of the whole process of introducing new ways of working.

In many ways, TVEs are the founding entities on which the thriving Chinese non-State sector was builtand which now contributes more than half of all GDP growth, and most employment.

Immediate impact of reform

In terms of impact on raw growth, reform and opening-up was almost immediately successful. From 1980, China's growth started to climb, soon reaching double digits, something that was maintained till the 2000s.

In places such as Shenzhena fishing village of no more than a few hundred thousand people in 1978the impact of reform is material and real. Hong Kong, just over the border, almost seemed like a place from another planet in comparison. But by the mid-1980s, Shenzhen had transformed into a major manufacturing center with its own set of high-rise buildings and modern apartment blocks. Over this period there were some years when its growth was a staggering 45 per cent.

As the outside world came to understand that reform and opening-up were not a temporary phenomenon but marked a sea change in the attitudes and approaches of China, so too links and engagement between the two deepened, and became more varied. By the 2000s, the whole of China became a special economic zone, with the original locations able to now make goods not just for export, but also for the growing domestic market.

After China's entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001, forces of productivity were unleashed in a way that impacted the whole countryfrom the coastal areas right up to the western regions. The "Go West" campaign from 1999 started encouraging provincial governments as far afield as in Yunnan, Sichuan, Gansu and Inner Mongolia to start their own accelerated reform. They too set up science parks and technology zones, and strove to attract not just domestic, but foreign partnership and support too.

In the fourth decade of reform and opening-up, we see two major impacts. The first is that, within China, a middle class with a per capita income of about $8,000 has emergedmore than 30 times the level at the start of this whole process. In 1978, China and the Chinese could only dream of being wealthy and rich. Today, the dream is, for many, a reality. They live lives comparable in standards to those in Europe and the rest of the world. They travel abroad, and own cars and apartments. This was something even their grandparents would have found hard to imagine, and yet it has happened in their lifetime.

The second is more subtle. It has taught the Chinese, and the world, that there is flexibility at the heart of their economic philosophy, and their engagement with the environment around themand that this is something that those outside China should pay attention to, and, in their turn, learn from.

In 1978, Deng asked his peer and colleagues to "liberate their thinking". It was a brave thing to do after so many years of uncertainty, especially as he was directing it at things that were once completely unacceptedattracting foreign capital into the country, accepting entrepreneurship, and allowing a Chinese market to exist. Before 1976, these would have been illegal. But from 1979, they were accepted and promoted. This change in attitude and ability to simply reset and redirect themselves offers food for thought for not just the Chinese, but also everyone else. There are no hard and fast rules, the Chinese experience showsfacts, and situations, can change. The main thing is to recognize and then deal with it, and to be open and self-critical.

Core identity as a distinctive place

China under Deng, and since the reform, has changed radically. But it has also maintained its core identity as a very distinctive place with a unique cultural and social outlook. Which shows that in many ways the pragmatism and flexibility of the Deng approach read something deep and right about the nature of China and the Chinese. To this day, therefore, reform and openingup endure. Because of China's global prominence, the other countries may go more deeply into their own era of reform and opening-up, and embrace more of China and its rich traditions and cultures.

That would indeed be a great global learning process. And it would mean the spirit of "liberating thought" is not just appropriate for China, but for the world as well.
November 25, 1963 The San Diego Union

The San Diego Union-Tribune will mark its 150th anniversary in 2018 by presenting a significant front page from the archives each day throughout the year.

Monday, November 25, 1963

In 1963, two days after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Jack Ruby gunned down accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.

The murder in the basement of a Dallas police station was broadcast nationally to a live television audience.

Ruby was convicted and sentenced to death the following year. He won an appeal of his conviction, but died of cancer in prison before he could be retried.

Here are the first few paragraphs of the story:

Kennedy Assassin Slain At Dallas Jail

Night Club Owner Arrested After Shooting Oswald

By Peter Kaye and Lew Scarr, San Diego Union Staff Writers

DALLAS  Lee Harvey Oswald, accused assassin of President Kennedy, was killed yesterday by a cursing owner of a striptease night club.

Oswald, 24, was killed by a single bullet fired just below his heart from four inches away.

The shooting occurred in the basement of the Dallas jail as he was being transferred to the heavy security Dallas County Jail.

His assailant was Jack Ruby, 42, who leaped past Oswalds police escort, thrust a .37 caliber pistol at Oswald and shouted:

You son of a b---!

Then he fired at point-blank range. The report of the pistol was unmistakable, but it was muffled somewhat by Oswalds body.

Oswald died a little more than an hour later in an emergency room only 10 feet away from the room in which President Kennedy died in Parkland Hospital.

WILL ASK EXECUTION

Dist. Atty. Henry Wade of Dallas County said he would charge Ruby with murder and ask the death penalty for Ruby.

This is a very aggravated case of assassinating a handcuffed man under arrest, Wade told a news conference. It demands the death penalty.

Wade said he had no knowledge of a report that Oswald was seen in Rubys night club a few days ago. William Demar, an entertainer in the club, said he saw Ruby and Oswald sitting together at a table.

I dont know if Oswald and Ruby were acquainted, Wade said. Nor would the district attorney comment on the question of whether Ruby might have killed Oswald to silence him.

FOUR SURGEONS

A team of four surgeons worked to save the life of the accused assassin, who never regained consciousness. One of the surgeons, Dr. Malcolm Perry, had worked futilely to save the life of the President just 48 hours earlier.

Oswald died of massive injury to vital organs and loss of blood.

The bullet passed through his spleen, pancreas, kidney and liver and punctured his aorta. Dr Tom Shires, Parklands chief surgeon, said the bullet remained in Oswalds body. He said he could feel it just under the skin.

I did it because I have a deep sense of responsibility to Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy, Ruby reportedly told a Dallas policeman within minutes of his capture.

I did it to spare Mrs. Kennedy the agony of a prolonged public trial.

Oswald was being hustled down the basement transfer corridor at the jail when Ruby wreaked his sudden vengeance. He had a tiny smile on his lips.

Francois Pelou, a reporter for the France Press, who watched the drama from close range, said:

Im sure he saw the man. Its my feeling he knew the gun was going to fire because he jerked his hands toward his stomach in a sort of reflex action even before I heard the shot.

But Oswald didnt utter a word. He was rushed by ambulance to the hospital in 10 minutes.

He writhed on a stretcher. His left leg was drawn up and his eyes were closed.

Even though Oswald was dying in disgrace, doctors fought to save his life. The doctors did for him just what they had done for the President.

They opened his throat in a tracheotomy to ease breathing. They administered blood and fluids intravenously.

An electronic Pacemaker machine used to stimulate heartbeat was attached to Oswalds heart. The Presidents heart was massaged by manual pressure from the outside.

Oswalds heart had stopped, but it sputtered up again under urging of the Pacemaker. It stopped forever, though, at 11:07 a.m. San Diego time.

And with his death, the case against the self-avowed Marxist officially closed. The state maintained that it had had a cinch case against Oswald. He stuck with his claim that he did not shoot either the President or a Dallas policeman who died in the capture of Oswald.

View anniversary front pages online at sandiegouniontribune.com/150-years. For more from the Union-Tribune digital archives, go to newslibrary.com/sites/sdub. Searching is free, with registration. A fee is required to view full stories.
The U.S.-Mexico border at the San Ysidro Port of Entry was closed in both directions for more than five hours on Sunday after hundreds of migrants rushed the area, prompting federal authorities to launch tear gas in an apparent attempt to get the group to disperse.

Federal authorities said the migrants tried to breach the border at multiple locations, leading to a number of assaults on Customs and Border Protection personnel and dozens of arrests.

The chaos left pedestrians on both sides of the border stranded, snarled freeway traffic for miles and prompted the closure of a nearby outlet mall on one of the busiest shopping days of the season, all as helicopters circled in the sky.

The confrontations highlighted the escalating tensions along the border as thousands of migrants from Central America poured into Tijuana in recent weeks seeking U.S. asylum. President Trump has pushed to keep any migrants in Mexico as they await the immigration process.

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1 / 18 U.S. Border Patrol deploy CS gas on migrants refusing to step away from the Concertina wire set up along the U.S. Mexico border near San Ysidro. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / San Diego Union-Tribune) 2 / 18 One man makes a stand as U.S. Border Patrol deploy CS gas on migrants refusing to step away from the Concertina wire set up along the U.S. Mexico border. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / San Diego Union-Tribune) 3 / 18 Migrants with the Central American caravan breach police line set up by the Mexico Federal Police, then access to the flood channel where they crossed to the north side of the flood channel. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / San Diego Union-Tribune) 4 / 18 U.S. Border Patrol gives instructions to migrants near the U.S. Mexico border to step away. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / San Diego Union-Tribune) 5 / 18 Migrants make it across the flood channel on Sunday and up to the bollard fence in San Ysidro. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / San Diego Union-Tribune) 6 / 18 U.S. Border Patrol deploy CS gas on migrants refusing to step away from the Concertina wire set up along the U.S. Mexico border near San Ysidro. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / San Diego Union-Tribune) 7 / 18 Migrants with the Central American migrant caravan breach the police line set up by the Mexico Federal Police and then access the flood channel where they crossed to the north side gaining access to the bollard fence behind the outlet shopping center in San Ysidro. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / San Diego Union-Tribune) 8 / 18 Migrants left the temporary shelter set up at the Benito Juarez to take part in protest march heading for the U.S. Mexico border on Sunday. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / San Diego Union-Tribune) 9 / 18 Migrants with the Central American migrant caravan breach the police line set up by the Mexico Federal Police and then accessed the flood channel where they crossed to the north side gaining access to the bollard fence behind the outlet shopping center in San Ysidro. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / San Diego Union-Tribune) 10 / 18 Migrants with the Central American caravan breach police line set up by the Mexico Federal Police, then try to access the San Ysidro Port of Entry. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / San Diego Union-Tribune) 11 / 18 Migrants make it across the flood channel on Sunday after the group breached the police line in Tijuana. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / San Diego Union-Tribune) 12 / 18 U.S. Border Patrol prepare to deploy CS gas on migrants refusing to step away from the Concertina wire set up along the U.S. Mexico border. Earlier migrants from the Central America migrant caravan held a protest and eventually broke through the police line which led to access to the U.S. Mexico border fence in San Ysidro. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / San Diego Union-Tribune) 13 / 18 U.S. Border Patrol observes migrants on the U.S. Mexico border near San Ysidro. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / San Diego Union-Tribune) 14 / 18 U.S. Border Patrol deploy CS gas on migrants refusing to step away from the Concertina wire set up along the U.S. Mexico border. Earlier migrants from the Central America migrant caravan held a protest and eventually broke through the police line which led to access to the U.S. Mexico border fence in San Ysidro. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / San Diego Union-Tribune) 15 / 18 U.S. Border Patrol looks on at migrants near the U.S. Mexico border near San Ysidro. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / San Diego Union-Tribune) 16 / 18 Migrants with the Central American migrant caravan earlier breached the police line set up by the Mexico Federal Police and then accessed the flood channel where they crossed to the north side gaining access to the bollard fence behind the outlet shopping center in San Ysidro. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / San Diego Union-Tribune) 17 / 18 Migrants with the Central American caravan breach the police line set up by the Mexico Federal Police and then access the flood channel where they crossed to the north side gaining access to the bollard fence behind the outlet shopping center in San Ysidro. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / San Diego Union-Tribune) 18 / 18 Migrants with the Central American caravan breach police line set up by the Mexico Federal Police, then try to access the San Ysidro Port of Entry. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / San Diego Union-Tribune)

Following Sundays events, the Mexican Interior Ministry announced it would deport about 500 migrants who tried to violently and illegally cross the border. A Mexican federal police officer told the Union-Tribune that authorities were reviewing videotape of the confrontations at the border and would be detaining and deporting those involved.

The statement added that Mexican authorities had contained the protest at the crossing between Tijuana and San Diego and that, despite heightened tensions there, Mexico would not send military forces to control the thousands of migrants from a caravan currently amassed at the U.S.-Mexico border.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials closed all vehicle and pedestrian crossings around 11:30 a.m. Sunday.

The pedestrian crossings were first to reopen about 3:45 p.m., followed by southbound freeway lanes and northbound vehicle processing lanes at 5 p.m.

The San Ysidro border crossing is one of the busiest ports of entry in the world, with more than 90,000 people crossing between San Diego and Tijuana on a daily basis. Two other ports of entry in Otay Mesa and Tecate remained open.

Hundreds of migrants began marching from their shelter at the Benito Juarez sports complex, an open-air sports arena turned makeshift shelter, to Mexicos El Chaparral border crossing Sunday morning.

Around 11:20 a.m., members of the group clashed with Mexican federal police in riot gear before rushing into a concrete canal toward an area of the border near the San Ysidro pedestrian bridge.

Soon after, a group of about 50 people managed to run past police to a small hole in the border fence. A helicopter circled overhead as some in the group threw rocks at agents on the other side and pulled at the structure.

Federal officials said migrants attempted to enter the U.S. at multiple locations along the border as well as through freeway lanes at the port of entry.

During the altercations, migrants threw projectiles at Customs and Border Protection personnel and multiple agents were hit with rocks, federal officials said. Authorities also deployed pepper balls and tear gas canisters in an attempt to get people to disperse.

As the clashes intensified, people in Mexico fled for cover. After one instance, a mother was seen comforting her baby under a train, while covering the childs face with a torn shirt to protect her from the tear gas.

Members of the caravan said at least two people appeared to be injured during Sundays events, including one child.

As the situation calmed, one women could be heard speaking through a bull horn to U.S. Border patrol agents on the other side saying, We dont want war, we dont want killing...

During the incident, Tijuana Municipal Police detained 39 people, including 15 Mexicans and 24 Hondurans. Two of the Hondurans were women. Police worked to escort the group at the border back to the Benito Juarez, the sports complex.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said on Twitter that federal officials will prosecute to the fullest extent of the law anyone who destroys federal property, endangers our frontline operators, or violates our sovereignty.

Tijuana Mayor Juan Manuel Gastelum also took to Twitter to address the incident saying, We will not allow our binational relationship to be broken by the bad behavior of the migrant caravan.

He added that Tijuana residents who work, study and visit the United States in peace were affected by the closure.

The San Ysidro port of entry was blocked by Customs and Border Protection and Department of Homeland Security agents midday Sunday. This is a view from the overpass at Camino de La Plaza looking north at Interstate 5 and Interstate 805 lanes.. (JOHN GASTALDO)

Customs and Border Protection had deployed additional personnel to the border due to multiple planned protests on both sides including CBP officers, U.S. Border Patrol agents and Air and Marine agents recently sent to the region.

San Diego police also readied on-duty officers Sunday afternoon to respond to the border if needed.

After the closure, lines of people who expected to cross into Mexico were clustered on a corner of Camino De La Plaza.

One Tijuana resident who had crossed to shop at the Las Americas Outlet Mall said she had seen the group of migrants moving toward the border on her way to the mall that morning.

The mall was later closed.

Though the woman worried about getting home, she said she felt compassion for the caravan, and had visited the sports complex to bring donations and talk with the migrants.

She said she met a woman whose suitcase had been stolen on the journey and whose child had only a sweater to wear. She said she bought the migrant family some clothes that said I love Tijuana as a way to apologize to the mother for the way her city had treated the asylum seeker.

Theres a strong sense of depression, the woman said. I always ask myself, if they tolerate being here, being cold, sick and hungry, how must it be in their country?

The woman did not give her name because there are some in Tijuana who are angry with the caravan and those who sympathize with them.

The closure created a traffic nightmare, as a number of freeways in the area including stretches of Interstate 805, state Route 905, and Interstate 5 were closed. At one point, traffic on southbound Interstate 805 was backed up more than eight miles, from the U.S. border all the way past Plaza Boulevard in National City.

Public transit was also snarled.

The Metropolitan Transit System suspended Blue Line Trolley service at San Ysidro Transit Center until the pedestrian crossings were reopened. MTS also halted service to the Virginia Transit Center. A temporary stop was set up outside the transit station on Camino De La Plaza.

More than 5,000 Central American migrants have been camped out in muddy and cramped conditions at the makeshift shelter. Mexican authorities estimate an additional 1,669 migrants are trekking toward Baja California from the Mexican states of Jalisco, Nayarit and Sinaloa.

Tijuana municipal authorities have said they are not equipped to handle the growing group. Human rights groups working with Mexicos federal government promised to improve the conditions inside the shelters, where many have fallen ill.

As migrants passed through the bustling border city, Mexican federal police and Edgar Corzo Sosa, an official with the National Human Rights Commission, have tried convincing them to turn around. Officials also urged the group to apply for workers visas in Mexico, claiming thousands of jobs were available in Tijuana.

The migrants have been trying to present themselves to United States immigration authorities for asylum, but the U.S. only processes 100 asylum applications a day, a system that has slowed in recent months, leaving thousands on the waiting list.

Those applications are processed at the San Ysidro Port of Entry, not the pedestrian bridge where migrants said they planned to cross and where hundreds of migrants ran to on Sunday.

On Thursday, President Donald Trump threatened to completely shut down the border, and the $1.6 billion daily trading relationship with Mexico. He also authorized military forces to use lethal force if necessary to defend border agents from migrants attempting to cross into the U.S.

A Department of Homeland Security official said Monday there are an estimated 500 criminals traveling in the caravan. Local authorities in Baja California have detained 57 migrants of which 47 are Hondurans. They were taken into custody on suspicion of public disorderly conduct. Of those detained by local police, 42 of those migrants are now in deportation proceedings in Mexico, according to local police.

Staff Writer Kate Morrissey contributed to this report.

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mike.freeman@sduniontribune.com;

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Climate change is still an abstract concept to many. Sea-level rise is something more relatable. That tends to be the case when water starts lapping at the front door.

Some low-lying coastal areas are experiencing more frequent and extensive flooding and experts say thats only going to get worse.

San Diego Countys coastal cities are being forced to address the inevitable encroaching ocean, and a couple are dealing with it in somewhat different ways.

Imperial Beach is moving toward a long-term strategy of pushing to remove public infrastructure  sewer lines, buildings, schools  in areas increasingly prone to flooding. The South County city also is looking at ways to continue to protect coastal areas where possible with sand-dune building, sand replenishment and other strategies.

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The big question is how the city and homeowners will deal with private property that is projected to be inundated in the decades to come. The issue is sensitive, as some private property owners have raised suspicion that officials may eventually seek to extend that policy of managed retreat to their land. Mayor Serge Dedina says that is not the citys focus.

At a recent community meeting, some residents expressed concern that the city was considering using eminent domain to take over private seashore properties, according to Marty Graham of the Reader. Dedina said it simply isnt true that the city is moving toward eminent domain, Graham wrote.

But the problem will have to be addressed eventually: The rising sea does not discriminate between public and private property.

Managed retreat  sometimes called planned retreat  is controversial, very costly and by no means easily accepted. Its a political minefield.

The policy calls for eventually removing homes, all other buildings, sea walls and infrastructure from seashore property that is certain to be overtaken by the ocean.

Its generally considered a last option, if that. In October, the city of Del Mar headed in the opposite direction when its City Council rejected the idea of including managed retreat in a document that addresses sea-level rise. Residents there worry that property values in the coastal enclave could drop millions of dollars if the city formally acknowledged some of those areas would have be abandoned eventually.

City officials and many residents contend seawalls, sand retention and replenishment, and river dredging can help preserve their coastal homes, though that is not a universal view within Del Mar.

The California Coastal Commission is increasing pressure on coastal jurisdictions to include managed retreat as part of the mix for future planning.

(The above paragraph has been corrected. The initial post said communities that dont include managed retreat could lose out on coastal development permits and grants, but that is not the commissions policy, according to a spokeswoman.)

Nevertheless, Del Mar City Council voted to submit its sea-level rise plan to the commission without that option for retreating from the coast.

Its a decision to stay put and fight the rising sea vs. change existing and future development to allow the land to absorb the incoming ocean.

Imperial Beach is taking the latter route regarding public property as part of a multipronged approach that includes shoreline protection measures. Imperial Beach is unique in that it has to deal with sea-level rise on three sides: the ocean to the west, the Tijuana River estuary to the south and the San Diego Bay to the north.

The city does not have the money to essentially shift blocks of public and private coastline development inland, even if it wanted to. Whether in Imperial Beach or Del Mar, figuring out how to pay for such a massive undertaking would be central to moving forward.

Ultimately, doing nothing might not be an option. Property prices are likely to drop in areas prone to flooding and insurance costs will rise, if insurance is available at all. Tens of thousands of beachfront homes across California face the risk of chronic flooding or worse. All of this could reduce the property tax base in coastal towns.

Unlike the causes of climate change, there is virtually no dispute that the ocean is rising, though studies vary on just how high it will get in the future. Like Del Mar, Imperial Beach will have to address sea-level rise in plans to be submitted to the Coastal Commission. How the concept of managed retreat is dealt with could be a flash point there as well.

Imperial Beach readily acknowledges that sea-level rise will require changes. Earlier this month, the city launched a pilot program with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography to deploy sensors in low-lying areas that will trigger flood alerts. Scripps officials said the system could be a model for other coastal areas to gather information about the effects of rising sea levels.

In nearby Chula Vista, the Port of San Diego is raising the level of land by up to 8 feet for the $1 billion Bayfront hotel and convention center project, according to the Union-Tribunes Gustavo Solis.

The port district, which manages 34 miles of waterfront property, is also elevating the Shelter Island boat launch and building an oyster reef along Chula Vistas shoreline to prevent erosion. Other projects are planned with a rising sea in mind.

The port district is part of a regional amalgamation of cities and agencies called the San Diego Regional Climate Collaborative, which discusses and coordinates efforts regarding climate change, including rising ocean levels.

The port recently entered into a separate agreement with the U.S. Navy to coordinate on sea-level rise.

Homes in other low-lying areas including Coronado and Mission Beach would be lost to sea-level rise by the end of the century, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. San Diego Bay also will be vulnerable, particularly with extreme weather events, subjecting the San Diego Convention Center, among other facilities should they continue to exist, to flooding.

Making adjustments to future projects  or reconsidering where they should be located  will trigger far-ranging discussions.

But as we have seen already, trying to figure out what to do about existing development in threatened areas will make that debate even more intense.

Tweet of the Week

Goes to John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz), editor of commentary and columnist at the New York Post, for this Thanksgiving Day revelation:

My God. Im the crazy uncle!
After the Camp Fire obliterated the town of Paradise this month in Californias most horrific wildfire to date, everyone from President Trump to Gov. Jerry Brown raised concerns about the states overgrown and drought-stricken forests.

Both administrations called for a significant increase in logging on federal and private lands earlier this year to thin timberland characterized as tinderboxes ready to explode.

However, according to research scientists and ecologists, wildfires increasing toll on life and property in recent years has been overwhelmingly driven by global warming and patterns of development  not the states most densely wooded areas.

The fires that are getting everybodys attention right now are not about forest management, said Leroy Westerling, a professor and researcher specializing in global warming and wildfire at the University of California at Merced.

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The major factor is climate change across the west, he added. Regardless of fuels management, we just wouldnt be burning like this, especially in Northern California, in a normal year.

In fact, few if any of Californias most destructive blazes dating back to the early 20th century have been driven by densely packed forests, according to a review of records kept by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, also known as Cal Fire.

The most devastating and deadly conflagrations have most often resulted from high winds whipping fire through dried out chaparral and grasslands. These blazes often torch sprawling subdivisions that abut undeveloped landscapes, such as the Tubbs Fire did in Santa Rosa last fall.

The major factor is climate change across the west. Regardless of fuels management, we just wouldnt be burning like this ... in a normal year. Leroy Westerling, a professor and researcher at the University of California at Merced

Even the Camp Fire, which occurred in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, spread on strong winds blowing down from the mountains across heavily logged forests before jumping from house to house. Trees were one of the only things that remained intact after walls of flame swept through the town of Paradise.

Residences leveled by the Camp Fire in a neighborhood in Paradise, Calif, on Nov. 15, 2018. (Noah Berger / Associated Press)

Researchers call for change amid the status quo

Now a chorus of academics and ecology and policy experts have spoken out across the state  from Stanford University to Sonoma State University to University of California at Santa Barbara  calling on regional governments to tighten zoning rules and even consider buying people out of homes in fire-prone areas.

Weve got to do something smarter than what weve been doing, said Char Miller, a professor of environmental analysis at Pomona College, who has proposed the creation of flood and fire bonds that would allow local governments to purchase and set aside property in high-fire areas.

Backstory: Reporting on wildfire, logging and climate change 

This is very clear. Get people out of there. Go back to the cities and towns and counties, planning boards and zoning commissions and have a very different approach, Miller added.

However, the opposite seems to be happening throughout the state. For example, residents in parts of Santa Rosa that burned in 2017 have started to rebuild. And in San Diego County, officials have approved several sprawling new suburban developments despite the concerns of environmental groups and several lawsuits.

Our experience shows wildfires burn right into the city of San Diegos long-established neighborhoods, so halting new suburban home building is no panacea, said county Supervisor Ron Roberts, whos held the post since 1995 and also sits on the states California Air Resources Board.

The projects this board has recently approved meet stringent, modern fire safety standards, and during our public, televised deliberations, fire authorities responded positively during extensive questioning about their confidence in the safety of those developments, Roberts added.

Those in Southern California are used to bracing for dry fall seasons when so-called Santa Ana winds create dangerous fire conditions. Using the latest technology in building materials and clearing defensible space around homes are established practices.

Still such precautions only go so far, such as in the recent Woolsey Fire that rushed through scrublands on high winds destroying homes from Oak Park to the opulent Malibu coast.

Northern California now also appears to be increasingly facing this dangerous recipe for wildfire, said Noah Diffenbaugh, an earth science professor at Stanford University and the senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.

Autumn precipitation has been decreasing, and is likely to decrease in the future as global warming continues, he said. So when those winds occur, theyre occurring over a backdrop of record dry vegetation.

In this Friday, Nov. 9, 2018 file photo, firefighters push a vehicle from a garage as the Woolsey Fire burns a home near Malibu Lake in Malibu, Calif. (Ringo H.W. Chiu / Associated Press)

Pressure ramps up to log the forest

Much of the official government narrative around wildfire in California has centered on the more than 129 million dead and dying trees ravaged by drought and bark beetles that are scattered across the state. Officials have repeatedly pointed to forests that have turned an ominous red and gray, especially in the central and southern Sierra Nevada as evidence that forests pose a threat.

Timeline: Californias intense tree mortality follows a culture of fire suppression driven by logging interests 

On Tuesday, Trump called on congress to pass legislation that would dramatically expand the federal governments authority to remove dead and dying trees as well as salvage logging following wildfires.

The move comes just days after U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke blamed radical environmentalists for preventing adequate management of forests, telling Breitbart News: You have dead and dying timber. You have years of neglect. It was like a flamethrower of embers shooting through the forest.

The comments echo recent statements made by House Republicans such as Rep. Tom McClintock, whose district covers much of the southern and central Sierra Nevada.

In the name of protecting endangered species, we placed increasing tracts of land off limits to forest management, allowing our forests to become dangerously overcrowded and overgrown, he said in October at a meeting of the Tuolumne County Alliance for Resources and Environment, a group that among other things advocates for logging on public lands.

Brown has repeatedly blamed climate change for the recent fires while reiterating concerns about overgrown forests.

The president has talked about how our forests are managed. Thats an element, Brown said in recent national news broadcast, after surveying wildfire damage with Trump.

The fact is that managing the forest is part of it, he added, while also acknowledging the role of climate change. Theyre a lot denser than they were 200 years ago.

Over the last two years, top forestry and firefighting officials have spent countless hours in public and private meetings discussing how to address overgrown timberland and their potentially catastrophic threat.

The fact is that managing the forest is part of it. Theyre a lot denser than they were 200 years ago. Gov. Jerry Brown, after survey wildfire damage with President Trump

While the states most destructive and deadly fires are largely not associated with current forest conditions, some researchers fear that could change in the future.

As those dead logs fall on top of one another, they can jackstraw and create the conditions for wildfires of unprecedented scale, said Malcolm North, a research ecologist with the Forest Service.

People will say that usually those big logs dont burn, but ten years from now you could get a fire in the concentrated down wood, he said, and if that happens, were going to see fires that weve never seen the likes of before.

Chad Hanson, a research ecologist with the Earth Island Institutes John Muir Project, dismissed the argument as an excuse to prop up the logging industry. He said that removing dead trees, known as snags, would likely increase the chance of a large fire.

I have to say that its shocking to me that scientists funded by the Forest Service would push snag removal as fire management right now, after the Camp fire just blew through an area where the Forest Service had removed nearly all of the snags and then burned down most of Paradise, he said.

Forest Service official countered, saying that efforts to increase logging will be based on the best science.

Its for restoration of the forest ecosystem, to protect it from catastrophic wildfire and insect and disease outbreak, said John Exline, ecosystem management director with the Pacific southwest region of the Forest Service. Its a combination of everyone rolling up their sleeves and working together.

Standing dead trees, called snags, in an area burned in the Rim Fire in California, July 7, 2016. A scientific debate is intensifying over whether too much money and too many lives are lost fighting forest fires, which biologists say are beneficial to ecosystem health. (Noah Berger/The New York Times)

The vision for thinning the forest

Brown set an ambitious goal earlier this year to increase mechanical thinning on private lands from about 250,000 acres last year to about 500,000 acres annually within the next five years.

He also ordered the first-ever creation of Cal Fire crews dedicated solely to thinning forests. The six 10-person teams will be tasked with using chainsaws and controlled burns to help achieve a goal of treating 60,000 acres a year.

At the same time, the U.S. Forest Service has also set a goal of increasing logging and controlled burns, from about 222,500 acres last year to about 500,000 acres a year by 2025.

While thinning out all of Californias 8.9 million acres of dead and dying trees using chainsaws is financially and practically speaking impossible, state officials have focused on projects around backcountry communities most at risk. Clearing timber in these areas can reduce fuel loads, but also give firefighters better access when trying to protect homes and other structures using large vehicles.

Cal Fire is now doling out $155 million in grants to help start the process near backcountry communities. The money comes on top of $170 million in recently awarded funds to local government agencies and nonprofits for everything from fire-prevention education to cutting down trees to burning the harvested wood in biomass plants to generate electricity.

Officials have said that a key part of the equation will be convincing private landowners not currently engaged in timber harvesting to start thinning their property. But the state will have to dramatically boost its logging infrastructure, such as adding new sawmills in the southern Sierras.

There has been a downward trend in timber harvesting in California since the 70s and 80s, so you cannot turn that around on a dime, said Helge Eng, deputy director of resource management with Cal Fire. It takes time to attract new sawmills to certain parts of the state and attract the workforce, but I think the grants will help with that.

And even with new mills in place, clearing out smaller diameter trees doesnt make landowners a lot of money. Most of the profit is in harvesting larger and more fire-resistant trees, which forestry experts say would only increase the danger of wildfire.

Still, the governors plan  if not Trumps  has won over many ecologists because they believe strongly that the forests could benefit tremendously from removing smaller trees and shrubs, known as understory. Beyond concerns about backcountry blazes, such vegetation can suck up limited moisture making a particular stand more vulnerable to drought.

As overgrown forests are exposed to drought and beetle infestations, larger trees die, opening up the canopy for shade-tolerant trees, shrubs and bushes. Beyond the loss of habitat for certain native species, these landscapes are more prone to dry out and fuel the types of wind-driven wildfires that have devastated communities throughout the state in recent years.

If we could restore the fuels there to a more appropriate density and structure through thinning and prescribed fire we could make them much more resilient to climate change, said Westerling of UC Merced, but its getting harder and harder to get ahead of that. It requires a lot of resources.

Craig Thomas, conservation director for the nonprofit advocacy group Sierra Forest Legacy, also said that he supports cutting down smaller trees in targeted areas, as long as private landowners and federal officials dont turn to logging larger old-growth trees once a sawmill is established.

Im hoping that this doesnt devolve into another way to bag some big trees, he said. Weve had enough of that.

The U.S. Forest Service conducting a controlled burn on Mt. Laguna in March 2016 with help from other firefighting agencies. (John Gibbins / San Diego Union-Tribune)

Getting fire back into the backcountry

Another huge selling point for the environmental community: The state and federal governments plans acknowledge the need to ramp up prescribed burns.

Reestablishing fire has been the finding of the fire science community of the last 25 years, Thomas said.

Californias forests are, somewhat ironically, overstocked because of aggressive fire suppression that started in the early 20th century and continue through today, according to researchers.

Timber sales in California, and throughout the west, peaked in the 1980s before efforts to protect several species of spotted owl brought levels down. While logging was dramatically curtailed, the Forest Service and Cal Fire continued battling backcounty blazes with zeal.

Ecologists have long criticized the state and federal government for putting out lightning strikes that burn far from homes and communities because such fire clears out brush and smaller trees that live beneath the canopy.

Reestablishing fire has been the finding of the fire science community of the last 25 years. Craig Thomas, conservation director for the nonprofit advocacy group Sierra Forest Legacy

Unlike bark beetles that prefer larger trees, fire clears out this understory, while also creating habitat essential to a number of native plant and animal species.

While its not as precise as logging and carries the threat of spreading quickly, controlled fires are the most cost-effective way to thin out the forest.

While there is overlap in the rhetoric of the Brown and Trump administrations on forest management and wildfire, its unclear for how long the two strategies will converge.

Both promised to embrace prescribed fire and limit logging of lucrative old-growth trees. However, forestry experts have said that once efforts are underway, private landowners and timber companies will likely push for less prescribed fire and looser limits on logging.

Twitter: @jemersmith

Phone: (619) 293-2234

Email: joshua.smith@sduniontribune.com
The U.S. military said Saturday that a service member has been killed in Afghanistan, while in a separate incident two Afghan soldiers died when their helicopter went down.

The brief U.S. military statement did not provide further details on the soldiers identity or the time or place of death.

The two Afghan soldiers died Saturday when their helicopter made an emergency landing in the southern Kandahar province due to a technical problem, Defense Ministry spokesman Ghafor Ahmad Jawad said. He said two other soldiers were wounded when the helicopter caught fire after landing. The Taliban claim to have shot the helicopter down.

The U.S. and NATO formally concluded their combat mission in 2014, but still provide vital support to Afghan security forces, who have been struggling in recent years to combat a resurgent Taliban and an Islamic State affiliate. Some 15,000 U.S. soldiers are currently serving in Afghanistan.

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International forces have also suffered from so-called insider attacks in recent months, in which Afghan soldiers or police have opened fire on them.

Blast at mosque on Afghan army base kills 27 

UPDATES:

1:05 a.m.: Updates with the helicopter incident.

This article was first published at 11:05 p.m.
Five times a day, the loudspeakers affixed to the spires of some 90,000 state-run mosques crackle to life, and the Islamic call to prayer bathes the streets of Istanbul and other Turkish cities.

For the faithful, the undulating Arabic hymn, called the adhan, is a reminder of Turkeys historic place in the Muslim world. For others, its an unavoidable reminder of Turkeys turn from the secular under its current leadership.

On Tuesday, a lawmaker was expelled from his party for suggesting the adhan be uttered in Turkish again. Chant the adhan in Turkish. I would understand it, Ozturk Yilmaz, with the Republican Peoples Party, or CHP, said on a talk show earlier in the month. Read the Koran in Turkish. My language, if you speak it anywhere in the world, I will understand it. Why do we have this, this insult to Turkish?

His suggestion not only sparked an immediate shouting match with other guests on the show, but also reignited a touchy topic in Turkey: What exactly did Turkeys founders want the country to look like?

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For more than 14 centuries, across the Muslim world, the adhan has been recited in Arabic, a standardized ritual akin to the Latin Mass. But it was not always so in Turkey.

Between 1932 and 1950, the state prohibited the Arabic adhan, and instead, a Turkish translation was recited. The ban was part of a series of restrictions on religion imposed under the rule of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey.

When Ataturk died in 1938, the CHP, which he founded, was the sole entity allowed to hold power and ruled unopposed until 1950, when the countrys first free multi-party elections were held. Lifting the ban on the Arabic adhan was among the very first laws passed by the new parliament.

Each year Ataturks death is officially marked on Nov. 10 at 9:05 a.m. by a moment of silence. Traffic stops and passengers emerge to stand next to their cars, silent and still.

But deep resentment for Ataturks policies simmers just below the surface of Turkeys society.

At a commemoration ceremony this Nov. 10 in the western city of Edirne, a 21-year-old woman in a face veil was arrested after she allegedly shouted, Ataturk is not God! Allah has laws. Ataturk brought the Wests laws, during the moment of silence.

The woman was tackled by police officers and faces up to three years in prison for insulting Ataturks memory. Yet just hours later, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, speaking at a memorial ceremony in Ankara, attacked the CHP, and indirectly the partys founder, for its role in prohibiting the Arabic adhan.

The fact that today the Turkish adhan, one of the defining atrocities of the [1938-1950] single-party period, can be defended publicly, be longed for, is a sign of the endless struggle for the values of this nation, Erdogan said.

The criticism is part of a largely successful long-term initiative by Erdogan to reshape the narrative of Turkeys founder, said Soner Cagaptay, a historian and author. You are seeing an overall trend where Turkey is embracing conservative Islam in general, driven by government policy and use of state resources.

Every mosque in Turkey has been under the control of the Directorate of Religious Affairs, or Diyanet, since 1924, its imams reading an identical Friday sermon every week. The Diyanet was initially used by Ataturk to shape Turkeys spiritual life  with policies like the Turkish adhan. But under Erdogan it has become the primary means of reversing the trend. Its annual budget has ballooned to $1.6 billion, and it employs more than 110,000 people.

The Diyanet was instrumental in thwarting a 2016 military coup that sought to unseat Erdogan. Officials sent out a memo ordering mosques to turn on their loudspeakers and invite the public not to prayers but to the streets, to confront tanks and fighter jets.

Along with the adhan, the mosques broadcast a hymn that has a long history in the Islamic world of being used to rally the public in times of war. In World War I, for instance, locals climbed the minarets of mosques in Istanbul to sound the alarm as European forces advanced on the city. In 1922, the same calls were made as Ottoman soldiers, under the command of Ataturk, took control of Izmir from Greek troops.

It wasnt so much the social media, or Internet-based communication, but mosque loudspeaker network density that explains how much each Istanbul district mobilized against the coup attempt, said Akin Unver, an associate professor of international relations at Kadir Has University in Istanbul.

Unver and other researchers mapped the sonic range of mosque loudspeakers in Istanbul and overlaid that information with reports on social media of anti-coup marchers and clashes. The adhan and other hymns broadcast from mosques, they found, were instrumental and offer a direct causal mechanism to explain what really drove mobilization that night.

Despite occasional complaints from residents, many of those loudspeakers were apparently left at high volume. The complaints drove the Diyanet to issue another memo last year ordering the adhan to be no louder than 80 decibels.

As a result of the coup attempt, the idea of changing the adhan again, said Cagaptay, is incredibly unpopular among the vast majority of Turkish voters. So how do Turks reconcile the fact that Ataturk wanted the adhan to be in Turkish?

Ataturk draws a huge amount of respect regardless of where someone falls on the political spectrum. If you dont like him as a reformer you at least like him as a liberator, Cagaptay said. Erdogan and his supporters, they think [Ataturk] made a wrong turn, but they embrace his image and legacy as Turkeys liberator.

Erdogan won 52.6% of the presidential vote in June. Muharrem Ince, the CHPs candidate, garnered just 30.7%, despite outreach to disenchanted conservatives that included having his headscarf-wearing mother and sister sit on the stage at stump speeches.

With elections for local governments scheduled for March, the CHP had little choice but to distance itself from Yilmaz and his unpopular stance on the adhan, said Cagaptay.

In fact, many in Turkey believe its time to end the taboo on discussing Ataturk altogether. To them, his policies, and his party, the CHP, represent a danger to the Islamic way of life.

The idea to ban the Arabic adhan is always in the CHPs subconscious, and sometimes it comes out, like in the case of Yilmaz, said historian Mustafa Armagan.

Armagan, editor of an often provocative magazine called Deep History, is facing a 15-month prison sentence for insulting Ataturks memory.

Mustafa Kemal, an Ottoman commander, became a national celebrity for winning a multi-front war against European powers in the aftermath of World War I, earning the title Ataturk, or Father of the Turk.

In 1924, the Ottoman caliphate, the successor to an institution stretching back to Islams founding in the 7th century, was abolished. Schools were put under state control. In 1925, the turban and fez were banned. In 1928, the Turkish alphabet, a modified version of the Arabic alphabet, was prohibited and replaced with a system based on the Latin alphabet. In 1934, the Surname Law required all citizens to choose a fixed, hereditary surname that could not include foreign words.

All these reforms were basically meant to cut people off from the Islamic world, from their Islamic heritage, said Armagan. The imposition of the Turkish adhan was a systematic thing, not some kind of coincidence.

That Ataturk instituted these policies is not disputed in Turkey today, but whether the public welcomed them is a different matter.

We know well how in the years just after [Ataturks] death, until 1950, in the single-party era, our nations values, our faith, our culture, our heritage were tossed aside, Erdogan said in his Nov. 10 speech. Todays youth read about the single-party era from books, if they exist, or from newspaper archives. Because we were taught a false history. We are witness to the atrocities of that era.

Many people simply boycotted mosques between 1932 and 1950, said Armagan. Police were posted at the door of mosques in villages across the country, and anyone found reciting the adhan in Arabic faced up to three months behind bars. Yet, in dozens of cases Armagan has documented from that period, locals continued to challenge the law.

Feigning mental illness, men climbed the minarets of mosques and chanted the Arabic adhan. They popped up in crowded movie theaters and began chanting the adhan. The day the ban was lifted, June 16, 1950, was a day of celebrations, Armagan said. It was like the country had been liberated from a foreign occupation.

Farooq is a special correspondent.
San Diegos local supply chain for its marijuana dispensaries is quickly taking shape, but approvals for indoor pot farms and edible factories are becoming more contentious as the city nears a cap it set of allowing 40 such businesses.

The city has awarded permits to nearly 30 marijuana production facilities since August, setting up a fierce battle for the final wave of permits among 31 more applicants.

Those not among the first 40 to be granted environmental exemptions and city approval hearings have begun trying to leapfrog the other businesses ahead of them in line by appealing their exemptions and preliminary approvals.

In addition, businesses located near some of the proposed facilities have begun protesting more vocally based on concerns about crime and safety, including a church in Kearny Mesa and tenants in an Otay Mesa Business Park.

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Meanwhile, leaders of the local marijuana industry say theyre hopeful the city might increase the number of marijuana production businesses it allows beyond 40.

That would boost the local marijuana supply chain and increase the tax revenue the city generates from the emerging industry. In addition to sales tax, San Diego has a special marijuana tax of 5 percent that will increase to 8 percent in July.

Prospects for lifting the cap may have improved with the Nov. 6 election, which shifted the San Diego City Council farther to the left politically.

Most notably, Democrat Jen Campbell, a vocal supporter of marijuana legalization, defeated Republican Lorie Zapf, who successfully lobbied for a cap on dispensaries and voted against allowing a local supply chain.

San Diego officials want the 19 legal dispensaries theyve approved to have an adequate local supply chain to eliminate the need to truck marijuana in from elsewhere and to prevent a local black market of marijuana producers.

Unless the cap is lifted, local marijuana attorneys say, they expect the final wave of approvals to be marked by some fierce battles.

There are a variety of appeals left, right and center, attorney Gina Austin said last week. We are past the halfway point toward 40, so the hearings are starting to get more interesting.

In addition to those appeals, nearby businesses have also been more vocal.

Attorney Jessica McElfresh said thats partly because many of the marijuana production facilities in the first wave of approvals are located in ideal spots where no one would be inclined to appeal them.

But as city officials have moved on to proposed businesses with less ideal locations, the approvals have become more turbulent.

Last month, an Otay Mesa business park association appealed the environmental exemption of a marijuana production facility proposed for 1555 Laurel Bay Lane, contending the businesses would be a bad fit.

The park was planned as an upscale, quiet group of small businesses with a professional image, association president Jaime Casano told the City Council. The need for armed security at this business makes the neighbors nervous.

Casano also said the citys approval process deprives nearby businesses of an opportunity to fight against such businesses until too late in the process.

Last week, dozens of congregants from Kairos Christian Church in Kearny Mesa unsuccessfully lobbied the citys hearing officer to reject a permit approval for a marijuana production facility at 7895 Convoy Court.

They said they were concerned about odor, loitering and crime, noting that marijuana businesses are typically cash-only because the drug is still illegal under federal law, making most banks shy away.

McElfresh said concerns about security make no sense.

I think ironically, these business parks will actually be safer than before because these businesses have to have security guards, she said. So congratulations business park, you have a free security guard and a free surveillance system.

Loitering also seems unlikely, Austin said.

While dispensaries sell products to individual consumers, indoor pot farms and edible factories deliver their products to buyers and dont have any customers coming or going from the site.

McElfresh said she understands the concerns about odor, but she predicted it wont end up being a problem.

I do think that smell mitigation as a concern is legitimate and the operators need to make it a priority, and they will, she said. Its been extensively discussed during city review.

Austin agreed, stressing that the marijuana businesses have a lot to lose if they violate their city permit by allowing smells to drift into business parks filled with dentists and other businesses.

If the smell is escaping because you arent following the rules, that dentist is going to complain to the city and they will shut him down, Austin said.

Austin said a good indicator of the impact of marijuana production facilities is a handful of the businesses that began operating a few years ago thanks to an unintended city loophole.

When you look at the ones that have been in operation, nobody even knows that theyre there, she said. These sky is falling stories will play themselves out because we havent seen that from the ones that are up and running under the old system.

Those businesses were allowed to continue operating for two years when the city voted to allow a legal supply chain shortly after state voters legalized recreational marijuana in November 2016.

Some of them cant obtain a city permit to continue past the two-year mark because they dont meet zoning requirements or city regulations barring dispensaries from being within 100 feet of housing or 1,000 feet of sensitive land uses like parks, churches, schools and youth-oriented facilities.

Others are in the process of getting their city permits, which, in most cases, would allow them to expand.

Most of the proposed businesses are located in Mira Mesa, Kearny Mesa and Otay Mesa, with a handful in other neighborhoods that have the necessary light industrial zoning.

There are many more properties in those areas where marijuana production facilities could meet the citys zoning and land-use regulations, but the cap will prevent additional facilities from opening.

david.garrick@sduniontribune.com (619) 269-8906 Twitter:@UTDavidGarrick
A robber threatened to shoot a worker at a Carmel Valley health food restaurant as she stuffed money into a bag for him on Saturday, San Diego police said.

The hooded man escaped with the cash before officers got to Everbowl on Carmel Country Road.

The employee called police shortly before 6 p.m. to report that a white man likely 30 to 40 years old had robbed her at gunpoint.

He walked into the restaurant, called for her to come out from a back room, and had a handgun on the counter when she showed up, police Sgt. Michael Tansey said.

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The robber demanded that she put cash into a bag he had brought. He threatened to shoot her if she called police, then he left.

He was described as 5 feet 11 inches tall, of medium build, unshaven, wearing a navy blue zippered jacket with a hood, a dark beanie and jeans.

pauline.repard@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @pdrepard
People wearing Hanfu, Chinese traditional costume, walk during an event at the Daming Palace National Heritage Park in Xi'an, northwest China's Shaanxi Province, Nov. 24, 2018. More than 400 Hanfu lovers attended the event to promote traditional Chinese culture. (Xinhua/Liu Xiao)
Customers at Artlexia were offered tangerine mineral water while they browsed the Mexican jewelry, art and crafts inside the North Park shop on Saturday.

Shopkeepers put out hot cider and cookies at Magical Child, the childrens boutique on South Coast Highway in Encinitas.

We are very customer-oriented and a lot of our families have shopped here for years, saleswoman Tammy Arnold said. People that come into this shop are very appreciative of the uniqueness of the lines, the toys and things you wouldnt normally find at Target.

Thousands of shoppers shunned the malls and big-box stores on Saturday, instead choosing to explore mom-and-pop retailers in North Park, Encinitas and other neighborhoods across San Diego County as part of the shop-small promotion known as Small Business Saturday.

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Organized in 2010 by the financial-services giant American Express, Small Business Saturday has become an annual retail tradition that has steered billions of dollars to independent stores and created a broadening awareness of the importance of shopping locally.

The effort is all the more important as more consumers spend money online.

Adobe Analytics, a data-analysis company that examines trends in mobile and web-based shopping, estimated that Americans will surpass $124 billion in online sales this holiday season, nearly 15 percent more than last year.

By 7 a.m. Saturday, Adobe reported some $400 million in Small Business Saturday sales.

In less than a decade, Small Business Saturday has taken a high-profile seat alongside other staples of the holiday shopping season that kicks off after Thanksgiving, regardless of whether the sales are made online or in person.

Today weve been doing great  almost similar to Black Friday, said Damien Cruz of Overload, a clothing and apparel store on 30th Street that was offering 25 percent off everything and 50 percent off anything with a North Park or San Diego reference.

Independent stores are just more relatable, Cruz said. The corporations are so far away and detached from the regular shoppers, you feel more at home here.

North Park bartender Shanon McCloud said she shops at locally owned shops almost exclusively.

You get a lot more personal service and I dont like buying what everyone else has, so this is a little more unique, said McCloud, who bought several of the sale items at Overload. I know Im keeping the windbreaker, but the shirts are too big so I know Ill be giving them as gifts.

Outside Simply Local, a University Avenue boutique featuring clothing and other work from dozens of local artists, a busker played guitar as customers pushed in and out of the storefront.

This is a neighborhood and Im tired of big stores, so what are you going to do? said Pedro Jackson, a North Park real estate investor. I like a small community where you have all sorts of different things.

The Adams Avenue corridor between University Heights and Kensington celebrated the shop-local push Saturday, hosting the fourth annual Adams Avenue Spirit Stroll. The afternoon event offered holiday-themed cocktails mixed by local bartenders to shoppers buying $20 tickets.

For Chad and Stacy Reddell, Small Business Saturday is a critical marketing tool.

The founders of 101 Republic Clothing Co. set up shop early Saturday along South Coast Highway, on the sidewalk just in front of the Encinitas 101 MainStreet Association, the business group that organized the shop-small event in that community.

Small Business Saturday is the epitome of what we are all trying to do, Stacy Reddell said as she displayed racks of specialty T-shirts and other beach-themed clothing. It represents the family-oriented businesses, the husband-and-wife businesses, and it helps us all thrive.

Inside Artlexia, North Park pizza shop owner Kim Newin said she shopped local to support her friends and neighbors.

This is small business supporting small business, said Newin, sipping from a cup of tangerine mineral water and clutching a nearly filled bag with the shop small logo. I bought candles and some really unique gifts  the kind of thing you cant find at the malls.

jeff.mcdonald@sduniontribune.com (619) 293-1708 @sdutMcDonald
New Congress must set impeachment in motion

In the 242 years of our countrys history, there has never been a president so contentious and hateful as the one in the White House now. He constantly lies to us, creates animosity among the press and his staff, continuously brags about his accomplishments, embraces anyone who agrees with him, and humiliates those who do not.

It is mind-boggling that after two years he is still getting away with it.

My family and I sincerely hope that with the current Congress, talk about his impeachment will soon be on the agenda.

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Jack Strumpf

Escondido

Trump deserves to have motives questioned

Re Democrats should follow GOPs example (Nov. 14): The letter writer states that Democrats should let Donald Trump govern and not try to impeach him. The problem is that he could be guilty of several crimes and should be held accountable.

He has admitted sexual assault. Bragged in fact. His companies have been accused of business fraud. I think he is in violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution. His campaign may have sought out information from the Russians that was hacked illegally.

Robert Mueller is investigating whether or not his campaign was actively assisting the Russians and then if Trump obstructed justice by firing James Comey. He may have engaged in tax fraud, no wonder he wont release his tax returns.

If one of his opponents had this track record there would only be one response, Lock him up!

Neil Meyer

Escondido

Trump will take whatever nation lets him

If Trump is allowed to modify the 14th Amendment to our Constitution by executive order to end birthright citizenship, what is to stop him from eliminating the First Amendment for freedom of the press, or the Fourth Amendment for unreasonable search and seizure, or the Fifth Amendment for citizens rights in criminal cases, or the Sixth Amendment for rights to a fair trial?

Wake up. Your democracy and your rights as citizens are slowly disappearing before your eyes.

Mark Falcon

Rancho Penasquitos

Trump shows weakness with attack on admiral

Re Trump may visit overseas troops (Nov. 20): The presidents recent comments on the merits of retired Adm. William McRavens leadership (and by extension President Obamas) of the highly successful Osama bin Laden raid and elimination of a present danger to our country reveal the deeply deplorable spiraling into useless nihilism of a person so utterly mired in paralyzing feelings of personal inadequacy that, no wonder, his minutest effort at proving his fitness for the job is pictured as a Herculean attempt at Making America Great Again.

For the rest of us, Americans and citizens of the world, the Presidents detachment from reality leaves us without human expression adequate for the enormity of Trumps shortcomings as human and as president!

Jack Wormer

College Heights

Trump fans must be honest about why they back him

It is with astonishment that I read GOPers express their unwavering support for Donald Trump, a man with no tether to the truth, no understanding of history and no apparent drive to uphold the rule of law or our Constitution.

Now we are being told Trump has a broad discretion to police journalists access. Really? In other words, he can self-interpret First Amendment rights? This is a man ill-informed, illiterate, self-centered and overly sensitive to criticism.

Pretty sure if Barack Obama was the same, the GOP would not have hesitated for a nanosecond to impeach him. Give me a break. Take off your GOP rose-colored glasses and see Trump for who he is.

If you still support him, great. Just own up to the reality of who you so heartily stand behind.

Darlene Rosemary

Lakeside

Stop hoping Donald Trump is going to change

Dont be fooled into thinking that Trumps going to change one iota. Hes a despicable, brainless and mean-spirited human being  not to mention narcissistic  who can only do more harm to our already great country.

So lets stop hoping hes going to change, and lets focus on impeachment and conviction  or the 25th amendment  to get him out ASAP.

Mike Allen

San Diego

Letters and commentary policy

The U-T welcomes and encourages community dialogue on important public matters. Please visit this page for more details on our letters and commentaries policy. You can email letters@sduniontribune.com or leave a comment below.

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Lightly edited comments from our online coverage.



Re Michelle Obama is wrong about Donald Trump and his supporters (Nov. 18): Mrs. Obama is incorrect. Hillary Clinton lost as a result of Hillary Clinton.

fdbiddle

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Joined April 17, 2016



Clinton lost in the Electoral College (an institution no longer suited to todays society.) She won the popular vote and would have made an outstanding and competent president.

Carlsbad98

Joined May. 28, 2017



After what the DNC pulled last election, I would think the Dems better look themselves in the mirror. Michelle Obama is just as guilty as the rest of them. Not one can be trusted on either side.

92116/858

Joined April 23, 2016



I love how all you right wingers get all contorted and choked with hate over the words of a woman who never had elected office and has said she never will run for one. But: Bragging about grabbing random women by the genitals? Calling members of Congress by childish names? Cozying up to brutal foreign dictators and agreeing with their twisted policies on the world stage? How, even in a mind clouded with hate and ignorance, is this acceptable behavior for a commander in chief?

Yomagisty

Joined April 24, 2018



Re The changing face of O.B.s main street has residents wondering about the future of eclectic town (Nov. 19): Boo hoo. Capitalism only favors one color, and thats green. If someone can figure out how to generate more lease dollars out of an antique shop, Im sure the landlord will be happy to take them in over Target.

Steve from SD

Joined April 11, 2017



There are three types of OBcians. The homeless/transient, the curmudgeons and everyday working people. The first two groups get 90 percent of the attention and represent about 30 percent of the actual total. Everyone else is excited about the Target and whatever will go in the hardware store space. It would still be around if people shopped there. Retail is a pretty democratic system.

htownrr

Joined Aug. 24, 2017



O.B. lost its luster many years ago for most people. Been a good place to avoid for many years. If you want a tie-dyed T-shirt that bad, I suggest you just go online.

fleiger

Joined June 29, 2017



If you have been avoiding O.B. for many years, you have been missing the positive growth going on down there. Some cool places have opened and made O.B. a good destination.

OB Progress

Joined Nov. 19, 2018



Re San Diego fans have hard time forgiving the Chargers (Nov. 20): Good riddance! The only way they are welcome back is with new ownership.

khantot

Joined Apr. 21, 2016



I actually watched for the first time this last game, the two plays that did them in had me in stitches. All Philip Rivers had to do is fall down. Never ever throw an incomplete pass under those circumstances. That has to be QB 101, right? Same ol Chargers, different location.

mdsd77

Joined Feb. 23, 2017



Re Will Americans support Trumps stance on Saudi Arabia? (Nov. 20): Fake prez Donald Trump is a turncoat. He, without any investigation, simply believes Russia didnt try to interfere with the 2016 election because they said they didnt and now he believes Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had nothing to do with the murder of Jamal Khashoggi because they said he didnt. That he is so willing to take their word over our intelligence communities is alarming and borders on treason.

neil_proffitt

Joined April 17, 2016

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Blowout.

The full dimensions of this months Democratic sweep emerged last weekend when the last of the major races were settled, all in favor of the party that already dominated California politics.

Not only did Democrats retain 100 percent occupancy of all statewide offices, but captured six of the Republicans already paltry 14 congressional seats and bigger-than-ever legislative supermajorities.

The blue tsunami, as its been dubbed, even flipped all of the GOP-held congressional seats in Orange County, once considered to be partys most impregnable GOP stronghold.

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What happened?

Democrats sensed that the election had become, in the parlance of politico pros, nationalized. That is, local and state issues and individual differences were irrelevant as the election became the referendum on President Donald Trump he publicly relished.

With California the epicenter of anti-Trump sentiment, Democrats poured big money into get-out-the-vote efforts, especially into boosting Latino involvement, and a record-high voter turnout swamped relatively weak Republican efforts.

UC-Berkeley pollster Mark DiCamillo calls it the Trump effect, telling a post-election panel in Sacramento Monday that the outcomes in the targeted congressional districts meshed precisely with Trumps approval ratings in those districts.

Nationalized elections have happened here before, most recently in 1994, midway through Bill Clintons presidential term. Californias Republican leaders, sensing an opportunity in Clintons declining popularity, borrowed heavily to finance GOP campaigns.

Republicans won half of Californias statewide offices that year, including GOP Gov. Pete Wilsons re-election, and nominal control of the state Assembly.

The Republican surge didnt last, however. Shortly thereafter, the GOP began its long slide into irrelevancy and will wind up this year with just half of the Assembly seats it won in 1994.

The issues that had brought success to Republicans in the 1980s and into the 1990s  national defense, crime and opposition to new taxes  faded in significance after 1994, particularly in suburban communities, such as those in Orange County, that had been GOP bulwarks for decades.

At the same time, California was undergoing sweeping demographic change, such as the growth of Latino and Asian populations and post-baby boom millennials, whose more liberal attitudes on such hot-button issues as abortion, gay rights, feminism, immigration, climate change and gun control clashed with Republican Party positions.

Trump, the bombastic billionaire who had won the presidency in 2016 despite Californias heavy vote for rival Hillary Clinton, symbolized everything the new voters  who were largely registered as no party preference  despised about Republicans.

They were ripe for being motivated to vote against Trump by voting against GOP candidates, even moderates such as Contra Costa County Assemblywoman Catharine Baker.

Theres a tendency, especially in the political media, to see every election outcome as engraved in stone. In fact, however, elections are snapshots in time and, as seen in what happened to Republicans in California after 1994, may have very short half-lives.

California is particularly prone to rapid political turnarounds, so one should be wary about assuming that Democratic domination is permanent.

That said, demography may be political destiny. Californias white population continues to age and shrink and Republicans have been unable, or unwilling, to cultivate fast-growing non-white communities and younger voters of all ethnicities.

Meanwhile, as its relevance in the Capitol and other policy arenas shrinks to virtually nothing, sources of GOP campaign financing continue to dry up.

Finally, the next round of redrawing legislative and congressional districts after the 2020 census will most likely create even more Democrat-friendly seats. So the partys hegemony in California may grow even stronger, especially if Trumps running for re-election and still is a pariah.


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BEIJING, Nov. 24 -- Around every nine in 10,000 people are living with HIV/AIDS in China, a low rate compared to other countries, according to the National Health Commission (NHC).

Sexual intercourse is the main channel for contracting HIV in China, the health authority told a press release Friday.

However, China has essentially prevented the spread of HIV through blood transfusions, with nearly zero cases of infection recorded through this channel and through using other blood products, the NHC added.

Wang Bin, an NHC official in charge of disease prevention and control, said that HIV transmission through injective drug use has also come under control, with reported cases of HIV contraction via drug injection in 2017 seeing a 44.5 percent decrease compared to 2012.

Meanwhile, the rate of mother-to-child transmission declined from 7.1 percent in 2012 to 4.9 percent in 2017, Wang added.

The NHC has been stepping up efforts in HIV testing and discovering HIV-infected people, said Wang, adding that a total of 200 million people in China had HIV tests last year, double that in 2012.

Some 80.4 percent of people living with HIV/AIDS in China received anti-virus treatment in 2017, with the treatment success rate standing at more than 90 percent, the official said.

Noting that HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment is still arduous, Wang said the NHC will strengthen efforts in warning and educating people at risk of contracting HIV, promoting one-stop services for testing, consultation, diagnosis and treatment, and mobilizing social forces, including enterprises, funding bodies, health organizations and volunteers, to participate in the fight against the disease.

According to a joint evaluation by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, UNAIDS and the World Health Organization, there are around 1.25 million people living with HIV/AIDS in China by the end of this year, and 80,000 newly-infected people every year.
SHENZHEN, Nov. 24 -- British writer Richard Morgan has been named the most popular foreign sci-fi writer by the 29th Galaxy Award, China's oldest sci-fi accolade.

Morgan, author of "Altered Carbon," expressed his thanks to the award committee and his Chinese readership in a video clip aired at the award ceremony on Friday night.

The award, widely regarded as a barometer of China's sci-fi production, was announced during the third China Science Fiction Conference that kicked off Friday in Shenzhen, a tech hub in southern China's Guangdong Province.

The award gave its best short story prizes to "Tian Tu" (which literally translates as "the painting of sky") by veteran writer Wang Jinkang, "Amorville" by Bella Han, and "An Account of the Sky Whales" by A Que.

The best novelette prizes went to "The Hearts Behind" by Gu Di and "Forest of Death" by Peng Chao.

The most-anticipated best saga prize was declared vacant, though it was not the first time there was no winner announced.

The Galaxy Award was co-initiated in 1985 by China's prestigious sci-fi magazine Science Fiction World. Liu Cixin had been a multiple winner of the award before his "The Three-Body Problem" scooped the 2015 Hugo Award.
Press Release

November 25, 2018 GORDON SUPPORTS REVIVAL OF ROTC Wanting to foster patriotism and nationalism among the youth, Senator Richard J. Gordon has filed a bill proposing to require all college students and those of technical vocational courses to undergo basic citizen service training. Gordon's Senate Bill No. 1417, or the Citizen Service Act of 2017, which had been referred to the Committee on Education, Arts and Culture as primary committee and the Committees on Youth and Finance as secondary committees in May last year, practically called for the revival of the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC). "The Constitution recognizes the vital role of the youth in nation building and seeks to promote and protect their physical, moral, spiritual, intellectual, and social well-being. It also seeks to inculcate in the youth patriotism and nationalism, and encourage their involvement in public and civic affairs," he said. Likewise noting that the country faces a buffet of disasters, both natural and man-made, Gordon stressed the importance of having an army of reserved officers who could be called upon and mobilized to assist in matters of external and territorial defense, internal security and peace and order, and disaster risk reduction and management. "It is the prime duty of the government to serve and protect the people. Corollary to this, the Constitution empowers the government to call upon the people to defend the State and render personal military or civil service. To provide implementing legislation to these basic tenets in the Constitution, this bill proposes to require basic citizen service training, establish the citizen service corps, and creates the citizen service commission for this purpose," he explained. SBN 1417 proposes to require basic citizen service training, establish the citizen service corps, and create the citizen service commission to create a pool of trained members of the Corps who can render personal military or civil service in times of war, lawlessness, and calamities and disasters. The bill provides that full time basic citizen service training (Basic Training) for at least six weeks will be encouraged of all Filipino citizens and mandatory for all Filipino students, male and female, enrolled in baccalaureate degree courses or technical vocational courses. All Filipino citizens, who are at least 18 years of age and had completed the Basic Training, will form part of the citizens' service corps.
Fisher & Paykel Healthcare reported a record $97.4 million interim profit on record sales across its two divisions.

Net profit rose 20 percent in the six months through September, and was 14 percent higher on a constant currency basis, the Auckland-based maker of hospital equipment and personal sleep apnoea products said.

That beat the firms $95 million forecast and saw it raise its interim dividend by 11 percent. Its shares rose 1.1 percent to $13.20.

Fisher & Paykel, which employs almost 4,200 people in 37 countries, is benefiting as ageing populations and changes in medical thinking increase demand for its products.

While just over half its staff are in New Zealand, only about 1 percent of its sales are in local currency, with about half in US dollars and almost 20 percent priced in euros.

The company reiterated its full-year earnings forecast at $205 million to $210 million. The forecast assumes exchange rates of 67 US cents and 60 euro cents for the period, from 72 US cents and 59 euro cents for the prior March year.

It also allows for an expected $20 million to $30 million spend on litigation for the full-year and a moderate flu season in the Northern Hemisphere. Last year the flu season there had been very strong, meaning more people got sick.

Fisher & Paykel has been locked in patent disputes with rival ResMed since 2016 and in September trimmed its earnings forecast after its San Diego-based rival lodged complaints with the US International Trade Commission.

Fisher & Paykel spent $15.6 million on litigation in the year ended March 31, down from $20.7 million a year earlier. Litigation cost it about $7.7 million in the six months through September.

Managing director Lewis Gradon noted the lumpy nature of legal action, and the fact the ITC action and a Federal Court action in Australia would cause big spending by company later in the second half.

He urged analysts not to try and forecast a litigation spend for the coming year based on the second-half rate.

Operating revenue for the six months through September climbed 12 percent to a record $511.3 million, up 8 percent on a constant currency basis.

Operating revenue for the hospital product group, which includes products used in respiratory, acute and surgical care, increased 13 percent to a record $297.3 million and was up 11 percent in constant currency.

Homecare product revenue  which includes sleep apnoea and respiratory support equipment - rose 10 percent to $211.1 million, up 6 percent in constant currency.

Our devices and systems used for nasal high flow therapy continue to drive much of the growth in our hospital business, Gradon said. Our new F&P 950 heated humidification system for neonates is performing well in New Zealand and Australia, and we are looking forward to the release of the 950 in Europe next year.

Growth in hardware devices used in the home was robust and the company experienced strong demand for its myAirvo and SleepStyle devices, he said. Sleep apnoea masks and accessories growth of 2 percent in constant currency terms was as expected, as the company anticipates the launch of new masks.

Minor changes had been needed to the manufacturing process for its new mask, which will now be introduced early in 2019, followed by further new masks during the year, Gradon said.

Fisher & Paykel is forecasting about $160 million of capital expenditure this year, mostly for construction of a fourth building in Auckland and a second in Mexico.

Gradon noted that while the new Mexican building should be completed in December, production wont start until the new financial year. The Auckland building wont be completed until late 2020 and consideration of other processing sites is probably several years away, he said.

The company noted that its full-year earnings forecast assumes a moderate flu season in the Northern Hemisphere, and that it had experienced a very strong flu season there last year.

Gradon said that, on a full-year basis, the difference between a strong and moderate flu season could be 2 to 4 percent of sales growth for the firms hospital division.

It was hard to be that precise on the earnings impact, he said, noting that in the past seven years the company had experienced two strong flu years, three moderate years and two weak ones.

The company will pay an interim 9.75 cents per share dividend on Dec. 21.

(BusinessDesk)

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